Meet the issuer — Wenea
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Wenea are raising money on Abundance right now, to help fund the EV charging infrastructure for Plymouth’s new sustainable transport hubs. We recently sat down with Jose Contreras, Head of UK at Wenea, to learn more about the company, their mission, and why they believe it is so important to work with partners to create sustainable transport solutions that work for everyone.
Can you tell us a little about the history of Wenea?
The beginnings of Wenea started to coalesce in 2016, as Diggia Group, driven by its commitment to sustainable innovation, began putting together a team to target the electric vehicle charging market. Then in 2018, its sister company in the UK, Gamma Energy, won an “Innovate UK” award to deploy more than 100 chargers in the city of Exeter, with an investment of 10 million euros.
The following year, in 2019, Wenea successfully launched its digital platform designed to optimise the customer experience of EV charging, and expanded its operations to the UK, establishing its first team outside of Spain. This was Diggia Group’s second venture in the UK, aligning with Gamma Energy’s focus on the EV sector.
In 2020, the European Investment Bank backed Wenea’s ambitious expansion plans in Spain with a €50M loan, complemented by a further €50M of private financing, with the aim of deploying 470 Ultra-Rapid Charging points in Spain, in a project requiring an investment of over 100 million euros.
By the close of 2022, Wenea was already operating 30 chargers in the UK and 500 chargers in Spain and achieving 100,000 downloads of its application. The opening of its UK network is set to establish Wenea as a major operator, particularly in the Southwest region of England.
Wenea has also established interoperability agreements with major European operators, allowing its customers to access more than 85,000 charging points across Europe through its app, which also includes route planning and payment functionality, among other things. These milestones reflect Wenea’s dedication to sustainable innovation and its goal of providing a seamless charging experience for electric vehicle users.
Wenea offers a comprehensive range of EV services for public urban charging, including design, deployment, finance, operations and maintenance. More than 10 local authorities have now trusted Wenea with their EV charging roll out plans, concentrated in England’s Midlands and Southwest regions.
Wenea has a mission to lead the transition to sustainable mobility to deliver zero emissions. Can you tell us what this means in practice?
Wenea’s mission to lead the transition to sustainable mobility to deliver zero emissions is centered around reducing or eliminating the carbon emissions associated with transportation. In practice, this should involve a variety of initiatives aimed at promoting sustainable transportation solutions.
For example, Wenea is focussing on developing electric vehicles (EVs) that run on renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, instead of relying on fossil fuels. This could help reduce the overall carbon footprint of transportation and encourages more renewables to be built to match demand.
Another key element is to expand charging infrastructure for EVs, making it more convenient for people to switch to electric vehicle by bringing charging to them, while reducing range anxiety. By providing a network of charging stations, Wenea is helping to increase the adoption of EVs and reduce the use of combustion engine vehicles.
Finally, we believe our partnerships with shared mobility providers like Co Cars enables us to offer a multimodal suite of solutions for customers — shared EVs, shared e-bikes and dedicated chargers. This is not a common offering in the UK, and we are pleased to work with Plymouth City Council and Devon County Council to make it a reality, changing the equation of urban transport in the process.
What experience do your team have on delivering EV charging infrastructure?
Wenea opened its public network in the UK market in 2022. However, our sister company Gamma has several years of experience installing and providing operation and maintenance services for several hundred EV chargers owned by another recognised CPO. Our growing UK team is very experienced, with colleagues coming from leading UK energy and infrastructure companies like EDF, BP and Centrica.
Wenea won an Innovate UK award for the deployment of more than 100 chargers in Exeter. Can you tell us a bit about this project?
Rapid Charging Devon was originally an Innovation UK project launched with the aim to deliver a comprehensive, rapid electric vehicle charging network across Exeter and East Devon using novel technology. Having generated some useful technical learnings and established a collaborative relationship between Devon County Council, Gamma Energy and Wenea, the innovation project ended in 2022. However, continuing with the same aim of increasing access to reliable rapid charging in the Devon area, an agreement was signed between us and Devon County Council to enable the continued deployment of over 100 chargers, most of which will be deployed on-street.
The project provides a unique template for comprehensive public urban charging that will be replicated across the UK. Existing networks are either slow/fast (AC) or with few chargers (rapid DC). Ours is the first DC and larger than most other examples (100+ chargers). Outside of London this is one of the largest deployments of public urban rapid chargers.
You mostly deploy chargers with partners, such as local authorities and companies. Why did you focus on this strategy?
First of all, our goal is for any type of customer to be able to charge wherever and whenever they want, emphasizing Wenea’s “ChargingEVerywhere” slogan. This highlights our objective to deploy chargers everywhere, focussing on locations that are convenient and beneficial to the communities in which we ultimately operate. We recognise that many UK local authorities have ambitious goals to lower their emissions from transport, and that electric mobility is at the heart of that.
There are many elements that go into developing a regional network of EV charging points, involving many stakeholders. By partnering with local authorities, we are able to plan and confront these challenges together, deliver a network that truly benefits local communities and build meaningful relationships that will allow us to deliver a high-quality service to residents and visitors to each community.
You are partnering with Plymouth City Council on their Connect Plymouth project. What excites you in particular about their approach?
By participating in projects like ‘Connect Plymouth’, we can help to make zero-emission transport a possibility in more communities and accelerate the transition towards electric mobility on a national scale. Improving access to EV charging infrastructure in a community where it’s severely lacking.
In this case, the deployment of 150 chargers throughout the city will completely change the picture in terms of access to, particularly rapid, EV charging solutions, removing a significant barrier for potential and existing EV customers. The involvement of our partner Co Cars is also crucial, as people who don’t own an EV will be able to participate, while that offering will be complimented by micromobility solutions from Beryl Bikes. All together, we are convinced of the potential of Connect Plymouth to help reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality in Plymouth, therefore improving the day-to-day of local residents.
What are your future plans for how Wenea will grow in the UK?
First of all, our goal is for any type of customer to be able to charge wherever and whenever they want, emphasizing the “ChargingEVerywhere” designation. We are targeting the deployment of around 2,000 chargers in the UK by the end of 2025.
Why was it important to you to allow members of the public to invest in your Plymouth project?
Allowing members of the public to invest in a project like the one in Plymouth can bring several benefits. For one, it can help democratise access to investment opportunities, giving individuals the chance to invest in a project they believe in and potentially earn a return on their investment.
In addition, allowing public investment can help build community support and engagement in the project. By giving people a stake in the project’s success, they may be more likely to become advocates for sustainable transportation and promote the project to others.
This will hopefully have the added benefit of attracting more attention to our company’s mission, which is to foster sustainable innovation to reduce emissions. We want to help drive the transition to a world with more efficient and sustainable mobility and bring as many people with us as possible.
How do you see EVs fitting into the wider picture of low carbon transport?
Electric vehicles (EVs) play a crucial role in reducing emissions from transport, the largest emitting sector in the UK economy according to government data from 2022.
At the simplest level, EVs are “zero-emissions” vehicles, meaning they don’t directly release pollutants or release greenhouse gases (GHGs) at the point of use. Providing that the electricity they consume is renewably-sourced, they represent a cleaner alternative to traditional petrol-powered vehicles, which are a significant source of the aforementioned gases.
Second, EVs are often more energy-efficient than petrol-powered vehicles, meaning they require less energy to travel the same distance. This is due in part to the fact that electric motors are more efficient than internal combustion engines.
While EVs hold a lot of promise, there are many logistical and technoeconomic challenges involved in accelerating the transition towards low-carbon transport. Our combined experiences in the renewable energy and electric vehicle charging sectors make us well-placed to navigate those challenges.
Wenea offers a range of services through our agile, digital platform with the goal of facilitating the customers. We think this will help us to achieve our goal of bringing “ChargingEVerywhere,” to the UK, ultimately implementing charging solutions for all contexts: urban, highway, corporate, and residential. We are confident in our ability to deliver that and therefore bringing about emission reductions in the UK transport sector.
Do you drive an EV yourself?
Yes, I have driven an EV two years now and I haven’t looked back since!
Wenea Plymouth is open for investment now. You can find out more details and invest here.
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Abundance Investment Ltd, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (525432). Approval date: 16th May 2023.
