MONTREAL — A Montreal company behind a charger capable of using an electric vehicle to power the home has secured US$40 million in funding from a host of major U.S. and Canadian investors.
Founded in 2015, dcbel began taking orders for its r16 home charger late last year. The unit provides “Level 3” charging for EVs, meaning it converts AC current from electrical grids and renewable sources like home solar panels to DC current used by EVs. The r16 also works in reverse, effectively turning the EV into a giant battery that can power a home in the event of a power outage.
Talking Point
Montreal-based dcbel is producing one of the few, if not the only, commercially available EV charging units. It also turns EVs into giant batteries that can power a home in the event of a power outage, and will modulate a home’s power use to take advantage of off-peak wattage rates. The company is focusing its attention on markets in California and Texas, home to large populations and generally unreliable energy grids.
Equity Investors in the round include New York-based hedge fund Coatue Management as well as San Francisco’s Narrative Fund. Other investors in the round include Vy Capital, Real Ventures, WTI, as well a total of five family offices and private investors in the U.S. and Canada. Silicon Valley Bank is providing venture debt.
Real Ventures partner John Stokes believes dcbel is poised to do well in the U.S., which, under the Biden administration, has suddenly become a viable greentech market. “Dcbel is beyond anything that exists. Even Tesla, which has so many of the charging components, doesn’t have a single central unit that can manage all aspects of solar recharge, vehicle fast recharge and vehicle-to-home and battery backup,” Stokes told The Logic. Montreal-based Real Ventures first invested in the company in 2018, and has invested a total of US$7 million over three rounds in dcbel.
The unit retails for US$4,999, and the company has begun taking orders and expects to begin shipping this summer. “It’s the ‘iPhone of energy,’” said dcbel founder and CEO Marc-André Forget. “If you buy solar or buy an EV, you’re going to buy a dcbel.”
Dcbel CEO Marc-André Forget. Photo: Handout
Dcbel is first targeting suburban and rural markets in California and Texas, both of which are blessed with large populations and cursed with often unreliable energy grids. California, which has the most registered EVs in the U.S. and whose clean-energy legislation mandates solar panels on new single-family homes, is a particularly ripe market for dcbel, said Forget.
The unit uses AI to modulate household electricity use to take advantage of off-peak hours. Level 3 chargers, which are typically used in public EV-charging stations, can charge an EV battery from empty to 80 per cent in 30 to 45 minutes. There are currently few commercially available Level 3 home-charging units.
About the size of a desktop computer, the wall-mounted unit can be installed inside or outside the home, and charge up to two vehicles at once at Level 3 and 2 rates. When there is a power outage, the unit creates a closed-loop circuit between the house and the electric vehicle, allowing the latter to power the former.
The r16 will be available in Canada in 2022, along with the r8, a smaller unit that offers only Level 2 charging, which will retail for US$1,999. “There’s actually nothing else like it on the market; it’s a new approach to solving the problem,” said Narrative Fund partner Jamie Wong, an early dcbel investor. “It’s an integrated system into your whole home, which is exactly what everybody wants. Because not only are we driving electric cars, but we are seeing non-stop blackouts.”
The home-charging market is key to dcbel’s growth. President Joe Biden’s proposed US$2-billion infrastructure plan includes US$174 billion earmarked for incentives to push Americans to adopt EVs. If their popularity ramps up, more people will draw energy from power lines rather than the neighbourhood gas station. In the energy-hungry U.S., which burns roughly 390 million gallons of gasoline a day, and where most EV owners do more than 80 per cent of their charging at home, the shift to electric cars would likely mean a boon for home charging.
“We are going to have 50 per cent penetration of EVs in the next nine years, meaning there will be US$500 million worth of fuel a day not flowing through gas stations, but our homes,” Forget said. (Both dcbel units can convert solar electricity from AC to DC without a separate inverter, as well.)
Both the r16 and the r8 will connect to dcbel’s operating system. Known as Orchestrate, the system will include an app store where users will be able to download updates from the company as well as apps from third-party providers—a potential source of recurring revenue for the company, said Forget.
