#movingpeople meets BaTTeRi

Tomer Shahaf founded BaTTeRi to solve car-parks charging. Using a specially designed charging robot named THOMAS, BaTTeRi is delivering energy to cars with a zero-infrastructure approach, increasing efficiency and saving costs. 

#movingpeople is a part of Mobility Business  - a consultancy dedicated to "All Things Mobility", focused on growth.

Hi Tomer. The first thing that came to my mind when looking at your charging robot - THOMAS - was “this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it”. What is it? How does it work? How did it come to be?

We began working on the project 3 years ago, identifying a number of infrastructure challenges with the future adoption of electric vehicles, focusing on car parks. First, installing a large number of electric-ready parking spots is expensive, and secondly, they are underutilised. Only roughly 10% of the day do cars actually charge in those designated spots. That’s also because you have diesel cars sometimes parking on those spots, but even if it would be only reserved for electric, utilisation would still be low. The 3rd challenge is grid capacity - there is simply not enough grid to supply an entire car park. 

Looking at the pains - costs, low utilisation and grid capacity - we decided to turn the table around - bring the charger to the car. That’s how THOMAS was born. 

I come from a background in energy - prior to BaTTeRi, I worked in energy infrastructure and consumer facing companies, in C-level positions. I was joined by Tamar, who also has experience in energy and roads, and by Ram, our CTO, who brought in extensive R&D experience. 

OK. Tell me more about THOMAS. 

THOMAS is a mobile, autonomous, fast-charging DC unit, supplying 60kW of electricity storage, built on a zero-infrastructure concept. It takes about 50 minutes to charge, and can charge a car in 1 hour. So that’s 2 hours turnaround time, allowing to fully charge up to 4 cars in a work day, or dozens of cars if only a partial charge is needed. It’s small enough not to interrupt traffic in parking lots and supports a wide range of EV standards. It has a unique shape - which is patented - if you look at it, the entire platform is the battery itself. We also built an app - so you can pre-book THOMAS. 

How does it navigate to the relevant car? And how does it charge?

THOMAS navigates on its own, using LPR - License Plate Recognition technology. For now, it requires a human operator to put the charging handle into the car. The operations costs are negligible, as that person is usually already employed on the premises, as a security guard or a facility employee. And that one person can handle up to 10 robots if needed. We’re working on two solutions to make it fully autonomous - one is developing a robotic arm; the other is making ourselves ready for a wireless charging future. 

You mentioned costs. Let’s talk about that some more and explain your business model. 

The economic feasibility starts with a parking lot with at least 40-50 parking spaces, with a minimum of 3-4 robots deployed. 

I’ve mentioned before that THOMAS can charge 3-4 cars in a work day, that’s 180-220kW of energy that is discharged into vehicles. Existing solutions charge at 7 or 11kW, depending on which country you’re in, so while it is more expensive than your average charge point, it has much more energy in it, X3 of a normal charger, and the economics make sense because it avoids installing dozens of underutilised fixed chargers. On top of that we’re saving on misuse, or just plain vandalism. It is a trained operator that manages the charging, and the robot returns to a safe place at the end of the day. 

Our business model is flexible to the customer's needs. We either sell or lease the robot, and have a fee structure which is linked to the energy usage. That way we assure that pricing is linked to usage. 

Where are you now - in terms of customers, deployments? 

We had pilots in Israel and Greece. In Greece, the pilot was in Saloniki together with EIT Urban Mobility. It was part of a grant we got from EIT. In Israel, we’re piloting and also have commercial deployments. We have THOMAS deployed in Tel Aviv and Haifa, serving company and general public car parks. We’re revenue generating at this point.

Where are you targeting next?

We’re targeting fleets, company-car parks and public car parks, in B2B and B2B2C models. Public car parks range from Park & Ride to shopping malls, parking at large supermarkets such as Tesco, to parking at airports. Anywhere there are over 30-40 cars parking at a single time. The TAM is huge, the world is full of cars and the EV segment is only growing. 

In terms of geo, we’re focusing on Europe but also targeting the US. In Europe we’re focusing on parking garages in city centres, in both Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Europe is more advanced in EV adoption and we see a greater need for it than the US. In the US, the focus will be on Tier 1 cities, airports, and shopping malls. 

One of the key areas I’m exploring is Europe vs. the US, in terms of innovation, regulation, funding. You said you’re focused in Europe - how do you see the differences between Europe and the US, from where you stand?

As I said, Europe is more advanced in terms of EV adoption than the US; with Trump, we still don’t fully know the effect his policy will have on EV adoption in the US, but it raises questions. This brings us back to EU regulation - we see much more work being put into low-emissions zones and, for example, in 2023 France passed a law that mandates open-air parking lots with over 80 spots to install solar charging, which could work great with THOMAS. So on the EV question, Europe is leading for now. 

I know you are in the middle of an investment round. Tell me about that. 

We are looking for a lead strategic investor to invest $1M–$1.5M. We have other investors committed as well.

So far we’ve raised $1.2 million in different trenches, $500k from angel investors and the rest from government and EU grants such as the Israeli Innovation Authority and EIT Urban Mobility. 

Good luck. You’ve come a long way in three years - any advice to fellow founders? 

Prepare for a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time. 

Another advice is be very picky where and with whom you do your proof-of-concept. It is extremely important to get that right, to have the right partner by your side when you’re just getting started. 

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