Go Eve, an electric vehicle (EV) charging start-up and a joint University College Dublin (UCD) and Imperial College London spin-out, has announced that it has secured £3million in its first funding round.
Go Eve’s so-called 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.
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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 company completed a successful pilot installation at the Imperial campus last November.
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Go Eve is using the success of this initial fundraising round to secure its supply chains and significantly scale production. The financial backing will also be used for the first installation of the DockChain system on sites over the summer. Go Eve wants to ensure volume availability in Europe and the USA before the end of the year.
Go Eve was co-founded by Hugh Sheehy, John Goodbody, Professor Robert Shorten, Pietro Ferraro and Andrew Cullen in 2021. The technology was originally invented by a team of academics and researchers led by Professor Shorten at the UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Professor Shorten subsequently moved to the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial, where the technology was further advanced by him and his team.
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‘Go Eve offers a technology that can transform EV charging,’ said Sheehy, Go Eve’s CEO. ‘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,’ he continued. ‘We currently have capacity for hundreds of installations; we’re prepared for thousands next year. We anticipate strong pickup for DockChain, particularly for fleet operators and in destination car parks.’
‘Given the importance of climate action and sustainability. it is fantastic to see Go Eve close this £3million seed-funding round to enable it to take the next steps in bringing its innovation electric charging solution to market,’ said Tom Flanagan, director of enterprise and commercialisation at UCD. ‘We are delighted to continue to collaborate with our colleagues in Imperial College London as we support Go Eve in commercialising its exciting DockChain technology, which has potential to make a significant impact on how EVs are charged on the global stage.’
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‘Go Eve is another great example of an Imperial start-up that has the potential to deliver a strong return on investment while tackling the challenges of climate and environmental change,’ said James Groves, head of investment services at Imperial, which is a shareholder in the company.