Estonian electrical vehicle (EV) charging startup VOOL closed an additional seed investment round of €1,3 million. Additionally, VOOL recently received a grant of €1,62 million, bringing its total funding to €7,62 million. VOOL’s technology uses the existing grid three times more efficiently than average without causing an overload, providing reliable and cost-efficient charging for both business and private customers.
The investment round was led by Specialist VC and attracted a mix of influential real estate developers, such as Kaamos Group and Astrigroup, as well as investment company Amalfi. New angel investors participating in the funding round include Taavi Veskimägi (the former chairman of the board of Estonia’s independent electricity and gas system operator Elering), and Kuldar Väärsi (founder of Milrem Robotics). However, the biggest angel investors were VOOL’s own employees, giving 15% of the investment round.
The investment is aimed at further scaling up its recently started EV charger production in the local factory to meet customer demand and increasing its international sales and customer support team in the Nordic countries. VOOL is also continuing the development of new products to implement its three-phase technology in households.
“Currently, you still have access to only a fraction of the full capacity of the grid, even though the whole of Europe is connected to three phases of electricity,” explained the co-founder and CEO of VOOL, Juhan Härm. “We use all three phases and automatically switch between them when needed. This way, we can offer reliable and sustainable automatic charging,” he adds. “We just recently started serial production and the first chargers have now been sent out to customers.”
If consumption in any of the three phases becomes too high, its technology tells VOOL chargers to switch consumption to a less loaded phase. Electrical fuses will never trip. “With further development of new products, it will be possible to use the technology for the whole household,” added Härm. VOOL’s technology monitors your electricity consumption as well as grid load and switches consumers over to another phase all on its own.
VOOL’s current angel investors include the former president of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid, the first CIO of Estonia and founder of the e-Residency programme, Taavi Kotka, the first employee of Pipedrive and the current chief architect at VOOL, Elar Nellis, and many others.
According to research from McKinsey, Europe will need at least 29 million private charging points by 2030. This represents an approximately 77-fold increase from the charging stations available today. By using the grid more efficiently, VOOL enables real-estate developers to avoid additional costs associated with infrastructure upgrades and building new charging spots, thus accelerating the energy transition.
The company was founded in 2018 by energy experts Juhan Härm (CEO), Sander Vahtras (CPO) and Hindrik Kilter (CTO). Recently, they raised €1,7 million from the first seed investment round in 2023.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2023/09/tallinn-based-ev-charging-startup-vool-snaps-e292-million-to-turbocharge-serial-production/
