AeonCharge is a universal payment mobile app allowing Electric Vehicle drivers to locate, activate, and pay for any charger across providers.
Current Status
We launched our private beta on July 2021, limiting it to 20 early adopters, yet, we received more than 368 enthusiastic applicants whom we waitlisted to our Slack group. This includes 12 state-level EV organization leaders and the board members of the largest national EV organization in the US. Now we have 143 beta users and more than 3000 waitlisted users for our public launch in November. Through our private beta, we received an 84 Net Promoter Score. In addition, we also have won multiple first-place recognitions, are a Pepperdine’s Most Fundable Startup finalist.
Problem or Opportunity
Public Electric Vehicle (EV) charging is broken. Currently, there are more than 50 EV charging networks in the United States that are segregated and have limited accessibility, forcing drivers to download multiple charging apps and juggle multiple network cards to fulfill charging needs. Furthermore, EV drivers often face issues such as broken chargers or gasoline vehicles occupying charging spaces.
Solution (product or service)
AeonCharge offers a universal payment mobile app that allows EV drivers to locate, activate, and pay for any charger across providers. Our payment passport eliminates the pain of downloading multiple charging network apps, creating accounts, and inserting payment information for each of the accounts. We improve the charging experience for EV drivers, while allowing business owners around the chargers like restaurants and retail shops to advertise their brands to EV drivers and earn more revenue.
Competitors
EVMatch and AmpUp (Peer-to-peer charging apps) find a niche market of home charger owners to share their chargers for others, but most drivers would not prefer to charge and wait at a stranger’s house for an extended period of time. ChargePoint, EVgo, Flo, Blink, etc. (public EV charging networks) focus on building and deploying their own restrictive charging network. These public charging networks along with new localized charging networks (such as Electrada, ZEF Energy, Adopt A Charger, EVLink, ChargeNet) are furthering the fragmentation of the market. Plugshare, Chargehub, and OpenChargeMap (EV charger geodatabases) provide drivers the ability to locate any charger in the US, but require drivers to download each of the respective charging network apps in order to activate and pay for the chargers. GM’s Ultium Charge 360 integrates a few charging networks into a single platform, but is only available for GM manufactured EVs (to create a point of differentiation for GM vehicles).
The competition that we fear the most is the interoperability between public EV charging networks. However, so far there has been little traction (the furthest is between ChargePoint, EVgo, and FLO). This is due to intense conflict among big players (such as Electrify America against ChargePoint or ChargePoint against SemaConnect). As a neutral player in the industry, we are able to aggregate chargers across different providers through the utilization of Open Charger Protocol and the mass purchase and resale of “charging credits”.
Advantages or differentiators
We have 2 main unfair advantages: Technology and UX. Similar to how Expedia gets access to all airline booking pages, our team developed a proprietary way to locate, activate, and pay for EV charging sessions. Unlike other charging networks, we don't need to rely on partnerships. On the other hand, similar to how the investment platform, Robinhood, flourishes on top of the existing giants: Ameritrade and J.P. Morgan Chase Investment; we offer a simple mobile app and user experience, eliminating the barrier of entry.
Business model
We have two revenue pipelines: a freemium model for EV drivers and an advertisement fee for business owners. Standard EV drivers pay a 10% fee per charging session, basic subscription users pay $10/month for discounts and perks, and premium users pay $50/month for unlimited charging (ARPU of $12.92/mo). On the other hand, business owners around a charger have the opportunity to purchase an advertising plan to attract EV patrons, consisting of a $0.50 Cost Per Click for ads on the app and a $2.50 Cost per each paying EV driver at their business. (Average Revenue Per Site of $90.00/mo)
Money will be spent on
Product iteration, sales and marketing, customer support, and relocation. (More information about financials are available upon request)
Startup Weekend in Greater Lafayette, Indiana (2019), Elevate Origins pre-accelerator program by Elevate Venture (2020), and YC Build Sprint by Y Combinator Startup School (2020).
Won the competition and other awards
1st place of Burton D. Morgan Business competition (https://www.insideindianabusiness.com/story/43950690/purdue-business-competition-awards-over-dollar100k)
