HeyCharge, a Germany-based startup with a Ukrainian engineering team in Kyiv that is expanding access to electric vehicle charging infrastructure, has secured $4.7 million in venture capital investment.
What the funds will be used for?
The seed round was led by BMW i Ventures, the venture capital arm of BMW Group. Also participating was Statkraft, Europe’s largest producer of renewable energy. BMW i Ventures was one of the first investors in Chargepoint and Chargemaster, so it has considerable experience in the electric car industry.
“The rapid growth of the electric vehicle market in coming years will necessitate greater infrastructure build-out of charging solutions around the globe. HeyCharge is the first company to enable EV-charging without an internet connection, which is a key enabler to cover untapped white-spots. With HeyCharge’s technology, it becomes attractive to install chargers in locations that before would have not been commercially viable,” Kasper Sage, managing partner, BMW i Ventures, said.
The fresh funds will allow HeyCharge to significantly upgrade the product through innovative equipment developments. Also, the money will help the startup further scale the project, including the full launch in the European and US markets, the development of additional technological solutions, as well as the opening of offices in Munich, and expansion in Kyiv.
“When I built my first engineering team in Kyiv for my previous company E.ON, I was absolutely surprised at how quickly we found people. So when I launched HeyCharge and several people from my Kyiv E.ON team wanted to join the project, it was not difficult to create a new and strong team of engineers in Kyiv. We start looking for opportunities to scale in the markets of Ukraine and Eastern Europe — so Kyiv can be not only the location of our development hub but also a major business center,” said Chris Carde, CEO of HeyCharge.
Special features of HeyCharge technology
HeyCharge provides a scalable and affordable solution for charging electric vehicles in apartment buildings, offices, hotels, and underground infrastructure.
As BMW Group describes, HeyCharge’s patent-pending technology, SecureCharge, eliminates the need for an on-site internet connection, allowing the app and chargers to communicate directly over Bluetooth with the HeyCharge App or SDK. This maximizes the availability of the system while minimizing latency between the phone and the charger. When combined with Access Point, HeyCharge’s simple and effective hardware component, total costs can be reduced up to 80% in buildings.