R&D

History of creation: ECOFACTOR charging stations

Date:07.12.2021

At the beginning of the company's development in 2015, the number of charging stations for electric vehicles was about 30-40 across the country. Odesa had only one or two such public stations where you could charge an electric car. And the development was slow, while electric cars were gradually becoming more and more common in the country. It was at such a rare charging station in the summer of 2016 that [...]

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At the beginning of the company's development in 2015, the number of charging stations for electric vehicles was about 30-40 across the country. Odesa had only one or two such public stations where you could charge an electric car. And the development was slow, while electric vehicles were gradually becoming more and more common in the country.

It was at such a rare charging station in the summer of 2016 that Sergey Velchev met Vladimir Revera. They got to talking. As they discussed the problem of charging electric cars, they came to the conclusion that only by changing something on their own could the situation be moved forward. The first prototype of a DC charging station was launched in Odesa in autumn 2016, after extensive development, research into materials, technologies and permits.

Direct current charging

Given the regular difficulties with the DC power supply, it was necessary to adapt to the peculiarities of the Ukrainian grid. We understood that it is not always possible to connect powerful electricity. We started working on a new project again.

And in the summer of 2017, he presented the first mobile AC power station at the ECOFACTOR exhibition. Almost immediately, we received orders.

This is how everyone heard about the first national manufacturer of ChadeMo stations. The start turned out to be successful. The benefits were immediately apparent:

charging at a convenient time with different authorisation options;
use of advanced technologies in production;
two-level sealing system;
reliable protection against adverse weather conditions;
anti-vandalism protection;
long-term use;
warranty and post-warranty service.

By the end of 2017, ECOFACTOR was already actively selling mobile chargers and introduced a stationary AC charging station. In 2018, a branded electric vehicle charging point was installed in Odesa for the first time.

"When we started working on charging infrastructure, we saw ourselves first and foremost as an engineering company that would produce the hardware, while service and software companies would be our partners and customers.

"B2B was not very active at the beginning, and we decided that we needed to become a B2C service company. We focused on the application and SaaS platform that allows us to manage the charging infrastructure," says Sergey Velchev.

The development went many times faster and in 2020 ECOFACTOR was named the fastest growing charging station provider. They managed to install 425 AC (+28.6%) stations and 52 DC (5100%) points for charging electric vehicles.

"Now we see ourselves as a partner that has developed and produces a wide range of charging stations of different capacities and provides software as a service for managing charging stations. And our SaaS platform is used by 160 partners of operators," says Sergiy.

For 2022, the SaaS platform is actively developing and investors are joining. The branded app is used by more than 51,000 users. Over 2 million hours of charging and 4 million transactions have been carried out at ECOFACTOR charging stations since their launch. The company cooperates with such large networks as TOKA and IONITI.