Robot chargers by Rocsys just got a $36 m funding boost
Rocsys, a company specialising in autonomous charging, has raised another 36 million dollars from investors in a Series A financing round. The company intends to use the equivalent of 32.6m euros to expand its presence in Europe and the United States.
Rocsys adds that it will grow the team dedicated to cooperation with car manufacturers. While expanding the business in Europe – the company is initially Dutch – the US bases will go deeper into more operations, customer service, and manufacturing. On the R&D front, the funding will help to build new features for Rocsys’ platform, outlined as automated parking guidance, software integrations, and additional remote diagnostics and teleoperations support.
Rocsys has been deploying autonomous charging platforms powered by soft robotics and AI-based computer vision since 2019. In less technical terms, the company uses robots to automate the docking process of the connector and says it removes the need for human interaction with the charger.
This should make the charging of larger vehicle fleets scalable, particu. “As more and more autonomous transport solutions enter the market and are deployed in the workplace, the manual charging process simply doesn’t make sense,” writes Rocsys CEO Crijn Bouman in a blog post. “Why would a car that can drive itself need a human babysitter to charge it?”
It looks like investors agree. The company already raised the equivalent of just over five million euros in May 2021. The two existing investors Forward.One and SEB Greentech Venture Capital have also participated in the significantly larger financing round announced today. The Graduate Entrepreneur Fund and the European Investment Bank also took part. Individual sums remain undisclosed.
Rocsys has scored a range of deals and cooperations, both in the US and Europe. Existing partners and customers include SSA Marine at the port of Oakland, for example, or bus builder Ebusco in the Netherlands as one of its first clients in 2020.
Internationally, the company is working on standards for robotic charging, including work with IEC/ISO, CharIN, and the ROCIN-ECO consortium with Audi, Porsche, BMW, Ford, and Mercedes-Benz, among others.
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