Commercial electric vehicle energy platform startup PIT IN has raised 12 billion won (USD amount pending verified conversion) in Series A funding.
ZER01NE, the open innovation platform of Hyundai Motor Group, participated as a strategic investor (SI). Other participating investors include Nautilus Investment, a Silicon Valley-based firm, the Credit Guarantee Fund, and Korea Asset Investment Securities. Once the round closes, PIT IN’s cumulative funding, including seed investment, will rise to 17.3 billion won (USD amount pending verified conversion).
PIT IN spun off from Hyundai Motor in 2023. It plans to use the new capital and government support to move beyond battery swapping services (BSS) and develop a “distributed energy platform” that connects its swap stations to the power grid.
PIT IN was selected in July as a manufacturing and mobility company under the “Innovation Premier 1000” program, which the Financial Services Commission and other agencies are promoting. The company was under the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment at the time of selection. It has also recently been included in the special-track projects of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ Scale-up TIPS. Over the next three years, PIT IN plans to invest a total of 4 billion won in R&D, including 3 billion won in government funding, to advance its Station-to-Grid (S2G) technology, which links battery swap stations and the power grid in both directions, and to develop its commercial EV energy platform.
The company has built a battery-swapping subscription service as its core business under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s demonstration special exemption for EV battery ownership separation. Vehicle and battery ownership are separated, so transport operators subscribe to batteries alone. A depleted battery can be swapped immediately for a fully charged one at a station. This lets operators avoid the upfront cost of buying expensive batteries and reduces charging wait times.
PIT IN is running its service for corporate and individual taxi operators from its Anyang No. 1 station. As of August, 37 vehicles from four corporate taxi companies were using the battery subscription service. Another 318 vehicles, mainly individual taxis, were using membership charging.
The company is also expanding its footprint. PIT IN is building the “Incheon No. 2 Mega Station” in Bupyeong-gu, Incheon, which is about five times the size of the Anyang hub and can handle 200 battery swaps and 500 membership charges per day. Completion is expected in February next year. In the first half of next year, PIT IN also plans to begin construction on stations in Busan and Gwangju. It will operate the Incheon station directly through 2029 as its core demonstration hub, where it plans to verify the stability and business viability of its bidirectional grid-connection technology.
Se-kwon Kim, CEO of PIT IN, said, “Battery swap stations must always hold a substantial inventory of batteries to run the service, and until now we have viewed that only as operating inventory.” He added, “Going forward, we want to use these batteries as distributed energy resources for the city, lowering energy costs for commercial EVs while developing them into new infrastructure that reduces peak loads on the power grid.”
