Viennese EV sharer Eloop faces insolvency

Eloop is apparently struggling with drastically increased interest rates and high operating costs. However, as Leroy Hofer, CEO and co-founder of Eloop, told the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, there has recently been an increase in damage to the vehicles – including total losses.

The company will file for bankruptcy to save as many jobs as possible through reorganisation. In addition to the car-sharing business, Eloop is also active as a service provider for tokenisation, and this division is set to form the company’s main business in the future.

“For some time now, we have been moving away from being a pure EV sharing provider and offering the tokenisation of physical assets as a service,” explains the founder. “Whether it’s e-scooters, solar panels or WiFi routers – as long as the assets in question are revenue-generating machines, we can represent them as digital assets. That allows companies to interact directly with their community and finance projects through them.”

However, the tokenisation platform is still in its first demo version. Although “numerous projects” have supposedly been initiated, none have been realised.

Eloop launched its EV sharing service in 2019 with 20 vehicles. Following a financing round in 2021, the fleet was expanded to 200 Tesla Model 3s. As the funding requirements (described above) were very high, further financing rounds with millions in proceeds were insufficient to achieve a sustainable business model. The token model was already at the centre of interest during the most recent financing round, when Swiss energy service provider Energie 360° invested €1.5 million in Eloop.

derstandard.de (in German)