Charging an electric vehicle in public can be the best time or the worst times.
An EV director can be charged in a smooth 20 minutes and back on the road, but they can also come across broken chargers, not -repeating touch screens and blocked stalls, all of which can ensure a frustrating experience.
It can be a headache for daily consumers. For fleet or ride drivers, a broken charger is lost money.
These frustrations led Ashwin Dias and JJ Raynor to leave their job at Uber, where they led the efforts to share the vehicles of the ride, and start PrestoAn app that points fleet control programs to the best chargers.
“From an Uber background, we think there is a dynamic marketplace where we can help make everything smoother by matching a diverse demand with a diverse supply,” Raynor said. This may mean that the price -sensitive drivers have to wait 30 minutes for a cheaper charger to open up while you lead time -sensitive drivers to faster and more reliable but praising stalls.
Presto recently raised a seed round of $ 15 million under the leadership of Union Square Ventures, the company told Techcrunch exclusively. De Ronde also included investments by congruent companies, Jetstream and Powerhouse Ventures.
The team starts with fleets, partly because they drive so many kilometers.
“Uber drivers, who drive 40 hours a week, are those who have to be in an EV -good if we need to electrify quickly and have an impact,” Dias, the CEO of the startup, told Techcrunch.
The duo lobbyed Uber to tackle the problem in the Driver app, but realized that it could not really be solved by one company.
This is partly due to the proliferation of companies that install and execute EV -Laadtampjes.
“Charging is just increasingly fragmented in the US,” said Raynor. Last year almost 60% of all new DC Fast Chargers came from more than 40 different networks in the US. “We went from three or four major players to people we have never heard of,” she said.
Both sides of the comparison feel the pain of this fragmentation.
Vloten would benefit from directly connecting to the software of charging networks, but charging networks do not want to support API for dozens or hundreds of customers. On the other hand, fleets do not want to integrate with a growing number of loading networks.
Presto’s software is something that both parties can connect with. It gives fleets and loading networks one partner to work with and gain access to more customers – a classic platform game.
“In some respects we regard ourselves as a line, as a transaction layer for charging,” said Dias.
The startup offers its own app and API, with which companies can integrate; It can also deal with payments.
The combination provides Presto a series of data to provide the Machine Learning’s recommendation engine with power, and tells drivers which chargers they should use and where networks must lead their maintenance teams. For example, let’s say that a network reports that a charger is online, but a load session that started via Presto failed. Presto can road drivers away from that stall and report the problem to the network.
Rental cars have been early adopters of Presto’s Platform, including Hertz, Avis and Zipcar, Dias said. Uber control programs also use the app, which warns them of networking that offer a discount on charging a discount.
Other fleets such as delivery companies have accepted the app, Dias said, even when they have chargers on their depots. “Sometimes the chargers in the depot do not work or there are more vehicles than chargers,” he said.
The main goal of Presto is to stimulate API integration, but encouraging fleet to add the recommendations of the startup to their own apps and dashboards. “I don’t think we want consumers to have another app,” said Dias.
Raynor said the company was approached by large car manufacturers, but for now it is aimed at fleets. If someone who has had his part of poor charging experiences, I hope that changes will change quickly.