Electric vehicle (EV) charging start-up Go Eve has closed a £3 million (€3.5 million) funding round, the first for the UCD and Imperial College London spin-out.
The company is pioneering a charging technology, DockChain, that is trying to make high-power DC charging more competitive with slower AC charging by extending single rapid chargers to multiple parking spaces through a daisy chain of lower cost charging terminals.
The software can manage a virtual queue of vehicles waiting to be charged, bringing power to the connected vehicles and eliminating down time as cars move on and off the charger.
Among the backers for this round are the Pearl Family Office, Carter Gem, Automotive Ventures, Kero Development Partners and Cur8 Capital.
The funding will be used to secure supply chains and grow production significantly, bringing the first installations of the DockChain system to sites over the summer. The company has already successfully completed a pilot programme at Imperial College.
Cofounder Hugh Sheehy said the technology could 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,” he said. “Our technology does all these things, which is why we see a future with rapid charging in every space.”
Mr Sheehy said the company had the capacity for hundreds of installations at present and was prepared for thousands next year, with reliable manufacturing partners who could rapidly scale cable and microchip production as needed.
“We anticipate strong pickup for DockChain, particularly for fleet operators and in destination car parks,” he said.
Cofounded by Mr Sheehy, John Goodbody, Prof Robert Shorten, Dr Pietro Ferraro and Andrew Cullen in 2021, Go Eve has offices in Dublin and London.
The company uses technology that was invented by a team of academics and researchers at the UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering led by Prof Shorten. He then moved to the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial to further develop the technology.
