Electra: a record fundraising effort to develop fast charging stations in cities

Jean Zeid 06:52, January 19, 2024

This Friday morning, we recharge the batteries.

With an electric charging specialist Electra, a French company which has already installed 1,000 charging points for electric vehicles spread across eight countries.

On Monday, it announced a record fundraising of 304 million euros.

This is the second largest fundraising in charging on a European scale, after that of the German network Ionity in November 2021.

Not just because electric cars are on the rise.

This is mainly explained by its model.

Since its creation in 2021 at the beginning of 2021, during the Covid crisis, Electra wanted to offer a fast and accessible charging experience.

Aurélien de Meaux, Julien Belliato and Augustin Derville, the three founders of Electra had the idea of ​​creating this company after having tasted “less noisy and less polluted cities” during the first confinement.

But also by "the urgency of having an impact on the reduction of CO2 emissions" of which 30% of emissions are due to mobility", air transport included.

It actually deploys its fast charging stations in large cities and their outskirts, not necessarily motorways and main roads. So it can be in the parking lots of partner brands, such as hotels or shopping centers. The company's bet is that these electric car charging locations will be increasingly essential in the future with a growing fleet.

The company currently boasts nearly 100,000 charging sessions per month. It is finally banking on an innovation, the "function". Autocharge" which allows automatic identification of the vehicle when charging, but also to reserve its terminal remotely.

Up to 400 km with a charge of just 20 minutes, it is the promise of Electra thanks to a power reaching 400 kW.

It hopes to deploy 2,200 stations in Europe by 2030, which represents 15,000 charging points.