UCD awards EV charging system start-up
Go Eve, a start-up focused on bringing a novel electric vehicle (EV) charging system to market, has been declared winner of the 2021 University College Dublin (UCD) Start-Up of the Year Award.
The joint UCD and Imperial College London start-up won the award and a €32,000 prize fund, after being declared overall winner of the 2021 UCD VentureLaunch Accelerator Programme.
The annual Programme, which is run by NovaUCD, aims to support the creation and launch of sustainable and profitable new start-ups emerging from the University.
The availability, reliability and associated costs of charging points remain an issue for EV owners. While AC charging options are inexpensive, they are also slow, and DC charging options while fast are expensive and can only electrify a couple of parking spaces at a time.
Go Eve claims to be focused on commercialising a patent-pending ‘DockChain’ technology for charging EVs at scale.
The DockChain innovation allows multiple parking spaces to be rapidly ‘electrified’ from one base power source with a daisy chain of inexpensive and simple charging points.
The technology can significantly reduce the costs involved with charging large numbers of EVs, or where rapid vehicle turnaround is required, and can remove the operational inconvenience of moving vehicles around chargers, according to Go Eve.
Pictured at NovaUCD is Hugh Sheehy, co-founder and CEO, Go Eve. (Nick Bradshaw, Fotonic).
Hugh Sheehy, CEO and co-founder, Go Eve said: “We are truly honoured to have won the 2021 UCD Start-up of the Year Award. Our vision at Go Eve is to make every parking space capable of charging an EV using the DockChain technology. This technology makes rapid DC charging possible for all parking spaces at little more than the cost of today’s slow AC charging infrastructure.
“The technology has the potential to open up a whole number of use-cases, especially where large volumes of EVs are parked, such as for car rental fleet operators, large destination car parks in hotels and office buildings. Many other applications are being examined, from municipal parking to advanced Vehicle-to-Grid solutions.”
He added: “We currently plan to run three pilot programmes with three customers during 2022 and we are now seeking to secure seed investment of €3 million to support these pilot programmes, to support further product development and design and team expansion.”