The startup Motor will expand its efforts to encourage electric-vehicle adoption with a recently raised $7 million Series A investment from AES and Mitsubishi Corporation.
Motor’s premise is that millions of Americans want to switch to electric driving, and could do so without disrupting their routines — these households can charge their EV at home and have a second, non-electric car for long trips. That’s a refreshing alternative to the conventional worries that EVs will never take off until battery packs deliver far more range and public charging becomes broadly available.
As Canary Media previously reported, Motor tries to reach these potential EV drivers by taking care of all the banal but often confusing logistics: acquisition and delivery of the electric car, registration, insurance and charger installation.
Motor’s subscription-based business model means that drivers pay a flat monthly fee for as long as they want the car. The cost of the charger and its installation get waived if the customer subscribes for a certain amount of time. Motor simultaneously gets paid by electric utilities for facilitating new electric-car customers and signing them up for smart-charging programs to help the grid (with the chance to opt out, if desired).
Motor started within power company AES, which owns traditional utility companies but also develops its own clean-energy projects around the world. Motor launched operations with two of the company’s subsidiary utilities — Indianapolis in early 2021, and Dayton, Ohio more recently. So far, Motor has helped hundreds of drivers get an EV, said founder and CEO Praveen Kathpal. In its first year in Indianapolis, Motor helped increase the city’s rate of EV ownership by 20 percent.
The company has yet to close a deal with a non-AES utility, but that will happen this year, Kathpal said. Mitsubishi’s investment does signify that a company outside of AES sees Motor as a viable way to navigate the intersection of the automotive and power industries that results from replacing gasoline with electricity.
Electric utility companies broadly recognize that the EV revolution promises a massive source of new demand for their core product. That’s good for business — but it’s hard to plan for when utilities themselves have little or no role to play when someone buys a car. Motor offers utilities a way into that sales process.
