May 5th, 2022 — As passenger electric vehicle sales accelerate, EV owners and their driving patterns are also changing rapidly. While early adopters have fueled the growth of EVs to over 7% of global car sales by relying on at-home charging and sparse public charging infrastructure, the next wave of EV drivers are less willing to compromise on charging convenience, with the absence of easy charging outside of the home continuing to be a key bottleneck to the mass adoption of EVs.
Substantially more charging infrastructure is needed in the coming years to support the continued growth of the EV market, with as many as 180,000 fast chargers and 900,000 Level 2 chargers needed by 2030. However, EV charging is an unacceptable investment risk for most site hosts and investors today, due to: uncertainty about future utilization and revenues, high capital requirements even where generous incentives exist, expensive utility demand charges, and time delays in permitting and interconnection.
Mobilyze.ai is a charging infrastructure financing platform that solves this investment bottleneck by providing risk-free charging infrastructure financing to customers including cities, retail chains, parking operators, and auto dealerships. Mobilyze.ai builds and operates charging infrastructure for customers, underwriting future charging revenues so that customers pay the minimum amount necessary. By enabling these customers to pay a low fixed monthly payment, Mobilyze.ai eliminates EV infrastructure investment risk and makes EV charging deployment significantly easier.
What worked for passenger EV deployment yesterday will not work tomorrow.
Demand for charging continues to increase as more passenger EVs enter the US market and as new geographies see growing EV adoption. More and faster charging stations are needed, with fewer than one than one-fifth of existing public chargers able to recharge an EV battery in less than an hour.
A recent Morning Consult analysis reported that almost 80% of US adults do not have access to EV charging at home, and only 11% had consistent access to at-home charging. These access numbers were higher on both the East and West coasts, and among wealthy households, leaving the vast majority of Americans without charging access at home.
This gap exists partly because building public EV charging stations profitably and equitably today is extremely difficult. Utilization rates at public charging stations typically need to exceed 10-15% to be operated profitably, but existing EV charging infrastructure, especially fast charging, rarely reaches that target.
Location analytics & data are key to truly derisking infrastructure build-out.
EV charger siting, taking factors such as EV adoption, traffic, and nearby amenities into account, is critical to attracting the driver demand that enables charger profitability. Utilization can vary dramatically between sites that are geographically close to each other.
For the economics to make sense at a station level, other factors, including government and utility incentives, hardware attributes, and utility tariffs all play a large role. All of these components also vary by location.
The EV market is evolving rapidly, and while an analysis of current usage is critical to knowing what works today, most prospective charging station buyers don’t have access to this information.
Mobilyze.ai’s financing solution addresses a critical bottleneck
Mobilyze.ai offers a subscription-based fast charger financing solution that empowers a broad set of site hosts to build fast-charging stations quickly and without upfront capital costs—a significant barrier for many site hosts today.
Mobilyze.ai’s robust location intelligence engine and data pipeline underpin the company’s predictive ML models that will continue to improve over time, further reducing investment risk.
Mobilyze.ai will shortly be announcing its first capital partnership that will fund hundreds of charging station deployments on the Mobilyze.ai platform.
Mobilyze.ai is partnering with leading hardware and software companies to make charging infrastructure financing available throughout the EV ecosystem.
Powerhouse Ventures is proud to join Mobilyze’s ongoing seed round, joining investors Third Sphere and Constellation Technology Ventures. We look forward to working with Co-Founder & CEO David Keith, Co-Founder & Head of Engineering James Long, and the entire Mobilyze.ai team to continue democratizing access to fast-charging infrastructure.
Special thanks to Shaandiin Cedar and Marie Thompson.
To read more about Powerhouse Ventures’ other publicly-announced investments, visit our Insights page.