A £30 million investment from the Zouk Capital-managed Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund (CIIF) will finance a new public electric vehicle (EV) charging company.
Zest – as the company is called – is aiming to democratise EV ownership by filling the gaps in the UK’s maturing EV infrastructure. It is to rapidly grow a network that makes fast charging available where people regularly park for over 30 minutes, such as for shopping, leisure or work.
For landowners such as enterprises, parking operators or local authorities, Zest removes financial and operational barriers to committing to large-scale charger deployments. This includes everything from planning and installing the chargers to ongoing maintenance, Zouk said.
“The idea is to provide a way to charge EVs without disrupting people’s routines, and at the same time making it easy for landowners to join the EV revolution,” Massimo Resta, partner at Zouk Capital, said.
He added the investment is “fully in tune with CIIF’s central objective of scaling open-access, public EV charging networks for the UK’s EV drivers”.
The CIIF was first announced in 2018, with the intention of raising £200 million from the private sector, which would then be matched by government funding.
The first investment from the CIIF was made into Instavolt, while the second investment went to fund a joint venture between Zouk and Virgin Media owner Liberty Global looking to rollout on-street residential chargers using Virgin Media’s infrastructure.
In June, char.gy saw a £6.4 million investment from the fund.
