In August, Danish electric vehicle (EV) charging app announced its expansion into the UK market with an intention of helping to solve what it described as a national shortage of chargepoints.
Speaking to Current±, Casper Rasmussen, CEO of Monta, said that it’s clear EV adoption in the UK is really starting to accelerate, with the country having an ambitious plan of phasing out new internal combustion vehicles by 2030.
Lauding the app as “really solving your charging needs everywhere”, Rasmussen said it’s a one-stop-shop. He explained that if a driver has a chargepoint at their house, they can connect it, they can smart charge, and they can share their charger with family or neighbours. Alongside this, there’s the semi-public space, including locations such as office buildings, golf clubs and other locations in the day-to-day community, as well as access to the public networks through roaming partners.
Currently, Monta’s commercial strategy is to go out and partner the bigger electricians and installers who want to put chargepoints in the local community, or even large companies deploying chargers at scale.
“The chargepoint manufacturers themselves, the wholesalers and the installers; that’s our target,” Rasmussen said.
“We believe that once it gets installed, then the local community will start using that chargepoint; they will naturally become a user.”
Since its inception in December 2020, Monta has raised £4.2 million in capital investment to help support its goals. This fundraising is being spent on enhancing its product, Rasmussen said, and commercially scaling into Sweden, Norway, the UK and Germany.
As part of this, Monta is localising the platform, making sure it gets all the local networks added to it as well as elements like the different rules around VAT.
While the company isn’t in a rush to raise more money, Rasmussen said everything is “accelerating much faster” than predicted even six months or so ago. As such, there are dialogues happening with current investors as to what it would mean for the company to go even faster.
Rasmussen added that the company is already going very fast, and has scaled from five people in December, to 12 people in April and now around 45.
“But then we also have a very ambitious roadmap about doing new things for the users- we really want to push this to the limit,” he said.
New aspects of Monta include a feature that went live within the last few weeks that allows drivers to start charging without having the app installed. This works by scanning a sticker on the chargepoint, which allows drivers to pay and get started. If they like the experience, they can then download the app after and become a proper user.
Alongside this, Monta is also looking at the issue of drivers parking in chargepoint bays for long periods of time, blocking the bays for other drivers needing to charge. Rasmussen gave the example of a housing unit that has four chargepoints, with Monta allowing drivers to join a queue, with a notification sent when it’s time for a driver to charge. They then have 15 minutes to go out and start the charge.
“So it’s not all about how many chargepoints are actually set up, but also how much they’re actually used,” he finished.
