Electric vehicle (EV) charging start-up Go Eve has secured €3.5 million in its first funding round, valuing the business at nearly €15 million.
The company’s “DockChain” technology aims to make high-power DC charging cost-competitive with lower-power AC charging options. DockChain achieves this by extending the reach of single rapid chargers to service multiple parking spaces.
Current EV charging technology only allows for one or two EVs to access a fast-charging station at a time. This creates “down time” – wasted charging potential as vehicles are moved on and off the charger. Go Eve’s technology solves this problem by extending the reach of a single rapid DC charger to a daisy-chain of low-cost charging terminals.
Go Eve’s software then intelligently manages a virtual queue, flowing high power to each individual connected EV, scheduling each in turn.
The commercialisation potential of this technology attracted several major investors to the funding round, including:
- Independent multi-family office The Pearl Family Office.
- Property and technology investor Cur8 Capital, a private investment platform for ethical investors.
- Sustainable engineering investor Kero Development Partners.
- Transportation innovation investor Automotive Ventures Inc.
Go Eve is using the success of this initial fund-raising round to secure its supply chains and greatly scale production. This financial backing is also being used for their first installations of the DockChain system on sites over the summer. Go Eve wants to ensure volume availability in Europe and the US before the end of the year.
Hugh Sheehy, CEO at Go Eve says, “Go Eve offers a technology that can transform EV charging. 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.”
“We have reliable manufacturing partners who can rapidly scale cable and microchip production to meet our expected growth. We currently have capacity for hundreds of installations now – we’re prepared for thousands next year. We anticipate strong pickup for DockChain, particularly for fleet operators and in destination car parks.”
Led by Professor Robert Shorten and entrepreneurs Hugh Sheehy and John Goodbody, Go Eve honed its DockChain charging technology at the Dyson School of Engineering at Imperial College and University College Dublin. A successful pilot installation at the Imperial campus in November 2022 cemented the technology’s potential and propelled Go Eve to a strong performance in first-round funding.
Hugh Sheehy, Go Eve’s CEO, has more than 30 years of experience in digital transformation and engineering. He has held senior roles at Google, HP and Shell and holds an MBA from INSEAD.
John Goodbody, Go Eve’s co-founder and Marketing Director, is an experienced marketing professional with an extensive background in the automotive industry, including with Honda, Avis Budget Group and Zipcar.
Robert Shorten is Professor of Cyber-Physical Systems Design at Imperial College London, inventor of DockChain and Go Eve’s Head of R&D. Robert was previously Professor of Control Engineering and Decision Science at University College Dublin, and has also held private sector positions at Daimler, IBM and AEG.
Source: Go Eve
