Go Eve, an EV charging solutions provider, secured £3 million (~$3.9 million) in its first funding round, valuing the business at £12.6 million (~$16.2 million).
The first funding round was led by The Pearl Family Office, a multi-family office that invests in sustainable and innovative businesses. Other investors included Cur8 Capital, a private investment platform for ethical investors; Kero Development Partners, a sustainable engineering investor; Gemarter, a clean energy investor; and Automotive Ventures, a transportation innovation investor.
“For EVs to replace fossil-fuel cars, charging needs to be faster, lower cost, more widely available, and most efficiently use available grid capacity. Our technology does all these things, which is why we see a future with rapid charging in every space,” stated Hugh Sheehy, CEO at Go Eve.
The company’s “DockChain” technology promises to make high-power direct current (DC) charging more accessible and affordable. Go Eve plans to use the funds to secure its supply chains, ramp up production, and install its DockChain system on sites across Europe and the US over the summer. The company aims to ensure volume availability in both markets before the end of the year and expand its presence in other regions.
DockChain is a unique system that allows a single rapid DC charger to service multiple parking spaces by connecting them with low-cost charging terminals. This eliminates the “downtime” that occurs when EVs have to move on and off the charger and maximizes the charging potential of each station. Go Eve’s software then intelligently manages a virtual queue, flowing high power to each individual connected EV, scheduling each in turn.
The company claims that its technology can significantly reduce the cost of DC charging, making it competitive with lower-power alternating current (AC) charging options. Go Eve developed and tested The DockChain charging technology at the Dyson School of Engineering at Imperial College and University College Dublin. The technology proved its worth in a pilot installation at the Imperial campus in November 2022, which boosted Go Eve’s performance in the first funding round.
According to Mercom’s Q1 2023 Funding and M&A Report for Storage and Smart Grid. There was a 66% decrease in QoQ for Smart Grid VC funding in Q1 2023, with $280 million raised in 14 deals compared to $846 million in 15 deals in Q4 2022. YoY, funding in Q1 2023 was 14% lower compared to Q1 2022, when $327 million was raised in 13 deals.
