In a recent development, California-based ChargePoint, an electric vehicle (EV) charging network company, announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Austria-based has·to·be, an e-mobility provider with a charging software platform.
With this development, ChargePoint will acquire has·to·be for approx €250M in both cash and stock. The transaction is expected to close in 2021.
Pasquale Romano, President and CEO of ChargePoint, says, “As an established leader in North America, our continued investment in Europe is critical to our stated growth strategy. We’re excited to announce our agreement to acquire has·to·be, a leader in its own right with a talented team, an impressive base of customers committed to e-mobility and robust technology. Our combined assets should position us to accelerate our leadership as electrification continues to take hold across continents.”
About has·to·be
Founded in 2013 by Alexander Kirchgasser and Martin Klässner, has·to·be offers EV charging solution platform and services. It offers everything that companies need for success in electric mobility: from the carefree operation of e-charging stations to the management of worldwide mobility offers.
The company’s product be.ENERGISED – an intelligent software developed for the management of electrical charging infrastructures – is used by more than 14,000 charging stations worldwide. Be.ENERGISED records more than 6,500 charging processes every day.
has·to·be is headquartered in the federal province of Salzburg and has offices in Munich and Vienna. Currently, the company has 125 employees in Austria and Germany, as well as approx 40,000 networked ports and over 250,000 networked ports through open roaming agreements.
The company has over 1,000 customers in a variety of sectors, from automotive and fleet to oil and gas and energy, from leading brands such as Aral, Audi, GP Joule, Ionity and Porsche.
Volkswagen is an investor and a key stakeholder in has·to·be. Elke Temme, Head of Volkswagen Charging & Energy, says, “Our longstanding commitment to e-mobility includes an early investment in has·to·be. We believe ChargePoint and has·to·be together have great potential to drive the adoption of e-mobility.”
Aim of this acquisition
Firstly, the has·to·be team, customers, and technology will be part of ChargePoint’s operations. Secondly, this acquisition will help ChargePoint to benefit from has·to·be’s European market share, especially in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Martin Klässner, co-founder and CEO of has·to·be, says, “Over the past eight years, our talented team has helped lead e-mobility in Europe and attracted a large base of leading brands as customers who rely on our charging software platform every day to meet their technical requirements. Together with the resources of ChargePoint, we will continue in this spirit and achieve even greater scale as the market continues to expand.”
About ChargePoint
Founded in 2007 by Praveen Mandal, Richard Lowenthal, Harjinder Bhade, and Dave Baxter, ChargePoint is the operator of cloud-enabled EV charging station network solutions. The company claims to have created one of the world’s largest charging networks with a capital-light model by selling individual organisations and businesses, known as site hosts.
The parking spaces owned by these hosts are integrated into one network available to the driver in the company’s mobile app. It caters to fleets, drivers, apartments, construction and utility sectors, as well as workplaces.
The company has over 115,000 charging stations, and its users have access to an additional 133,000 “roaming” locations across North America and Europe. As per the company, drivers plug into the ChargePoint network nearly every two seconds and have completed more than 92 million charging sessions to date.
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