Honda Buys Major Stake In Mobile Metering Company Ubitricity
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In a recent funding round, Honda purchased a significant amount of shares in the mobile metering startup ubitricity. This investment signals potentially big plans for Honda to incorporate the startup’s technology into future generations of cars.
electrive reports that the Japanese manufacturer invested in the Berlin-based company and secured 15% of ubitricity shares, alongside reinvestments from the company’s previous investors: Siemens, EDF Germany, IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft, and the former Daimler and railway boss Heinz Dürr.
ubitricity specializes in a mobile electricity meter which can be used with street lamps or other public infrastructure, and makes mobile charging and billing easy and transparent. The company has worked on projects in London and Berlin to install city-wide street-lamp charging points to improve public and private charging infrastructure. However, the vision that founders Frank Pawlitschek and Knut Hechtfischer originally had was for their technology to be installed inside of the car itself by the manufacturer. ubitricity’s goal is “to make the car even more intelligent than an intelligent consumer and to make the infrastructure stupid,” co-founder Pawlitschek told electrive’s German site. “We are sure that the technology will find its way into the car!”
It follows then that this may be what Honda has in mind with their investment. No specific plans have been confirmed from either side, but Honda’s first fully electric model for the European market is expected to go on sale in 2020, with a premiere this September. We’ll just have to wait and find out!
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