Spinout raises £3m to ‘daisy chain’ electric vehicle charging

An electric vehicle charging startup that span out from Imperial College London has secured £3m in its first funding round to roll out its technology across hundreds of sites this year.

Go Eve has developed technology that expands the capacity of EV charge points to service multiple parking spaces at once.

The patent-pending technology, called DockChain, works in a similar way to a domestic plug extension but for parked EVs.

Existing EV charge points typically charge one or two cars at once. Go Eve says its technology creates a “daisy chain” of rapid charging terminals, with its software managing a virtual queue to provide power.

“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,” said Hugh Sheehy, CEO of Go Eve.

“Our technology does all these things, which is why we see a future with rapid charging in every space.”

Go Eve’s technology is based on research conducted by Sheehy, Professor Robert Shorten, and John Goodbody at the Dyson School of Engineering at Imperial College and University College Dublin.

Go Eve was founded in 2021 and spun out of the two universities in March 2022, with both UCL & UCD retaining a stake. It now has eight full-time members of staff and four part-time. The company completed a successful pilot installation in November last year at the Imperial campus.

The equity funding round gives Go Eve a £12.6m post-money valuation. The spinouts received investment from the Pearl Family Office, Carter Gem, Automotive Ventures Inc, Kero Development Partners, Cur8 Capital.

Go Eve said it will use the cash to secure supply chains and scale production. A company spokesperson told UKTN that Go Eve has also raised cash from universities and UK Department for Transport grants, with its prior investments totalling around £1m.

Increasing the number of EV chargers is crucial ahead of the government’s ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030. Go Eve isn’t alone in developing solutions to improve the management and efficiency of charge points. Lancaster-based startup Fuuse raised £2.5m in May, while Zapp-Map raised £9m in Series A funding in August last year.