Arlington EV startup ElectroTempo just raised $4M

With a cool $4 million in its pocket (and then some), Arlington, Virginia EV tech company ElectroTempo is looking at the next phase of the renewable energy revolution.

The startup, which was founded in November 2020, develops planning and intelligence software for electric vehicle charging stations and infrastructure. It just raised $4 million in a seed round led by Buoyant Ventures, with participation from Schematic Ventures and Zebox Ventures. With the funds, the company plans to expand its geographic reach and build out its product and sales team. The company also just won a $2 million award from the Department of Energy for its analytics in the service area of California utility PG&E.

Patrick Finch, a former consultant for the Department of Energy, said that he and cofounder Ann Xu came together after realizing there was a need for tracking tools for the private sector in the electrification space. So far, he told Technical.ly, transportation planning has been very siloed.

“It’s been a very long time since this country needed to reinvest in transportation infrastructure at the scale we’re talking about for electrification,” Finch said. “So a new suite of tools, new approaches are needed to really make sure that this process gets done efficiently and quickly.”

Developed by Xu, ElectroTempo’s software predicts the demand for EV charging at sites and makes recommendations for equipment and infrastructure investments. Customers can use it to design EV charging networks to get the most out of both vehicle fleets and chargers.

So far, the 10-person company raised pre-seed funding in January of 2022. It currently has nine customers, and Finch said the startup increased its annual recurring revenue by more than 150%. By the end of the year, he’d like to grow the team to 15, including a tech group to further build out the product.

Finch attributes the company’s strong growth to the increasing need for this kind of technology in the transportation space. EV infrastructure is complicated, he said, because companies seek to replace 100 years of development in gasoline and diesel vehicles.

“To meaningfully electrify at the scale that is needed to mitigate climate change, you’re going to have to basically duplicate that infrastructure on the electricity side in maybe 15 to 20 years. It’s a tall order,” Finch said. “Our analytics are geared towards accelerating and giving people the tools to break the problem down into steps that they can actually execute.”

Currently, Finch said utilities use existing modeling software that helps forecast and balance the load on the grid. ElectroTempo’s software can integrate with those tools so fleet owners, utility companies and vehicles themselves can all communicate. With that travel data, he said, charging schedulers and grid operators can get a better sense of the charging requirements they’re going to need.

With that available, there can be better infrastructure planning, Finch said, which can help speed up the clean energy transition.

“We’ve seen a lot of either paralysis or people spinning their wheels, trying to wrap their head around the scale of the problem. If our tools can help break that gridlock and lead to the effective planning of the public charging infrastructure and the effective planning of private infrastructure, fleet depots … that’s a real value ad from our company to the world at large.”