Munich-based EV charging technology
company HeyCharge has been awarded a €2.5 million grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator. The company, backed by BMW i Ventures,
Statkraft Ventures, and Y Combinator, has raised €6.3 million in private
funding to date.
The funding comes as EV charging
access in residential and workplace settings remains a challenge despite the
expansion of public charging infrastructure. Around 200 million people in
Europe live in multi-unit residential buildings, many of which include
underground or semi-underground parking areas where mobile and Wi-Fi coverage
can be limited.
Conventional EV chargers typically
rely on continuous internet connectivity for authentication and billing, which
can reduce reliability in these environments and increase installation costs
due to additional communication infrastructure requirements.
HeyCharge’s SecureCharge platform is
designed to address these limitations through offline operation using one-time
cryptographic tokens generated on a user’s smartphone for authentication.
According to the company, this approach allows chargers to function without
continuous connectivity and can reduce installation costs by removing the need
for additional communications infrastructure.
Commenting on EV charging challenges,
Chris Cardé, founder and CEO of HeyCharge, said that underground parking areas
can create difficulties for chargers requiring continuous internet access.
Our technology works 100 per cent
reliably even in underground garages, and because we’ve eliminated the need for
communications infrastructure – the cabling, the specialist labour, the ongoing
maintenance – we cut installation costs by more than 40 per cent. That’s how
you democratise home charging.
HeyCharge’s co-founder and CBDO Dr Robert Lasowski said the grant reflects confidence in the company’s approach
and will support scaling the technology from existing deployments to wider
adoption across Europe.
The grant will support the
SecureCharge FLEX project, accelerating development, certification, and
large-scale pilot deployments of HeyCharge’s EV charging platform across
multiple European countries. The company said the project is intended to
improve EV charging access in apartment buildings by addressing reliability and
installation cost challenges.