UK firm plans EV buses for Irish market
Zenobe, a British electric vehicle and charging provider, plans to expand into Ireland.
The company, which recently secured a £241m (€287.5m) facility from several major banks, provides and supports bus operators with electric vehicles, batteries, charging infrastructure and management software, charging a monthly fee for the service.
The company has been active in the UK, where it recently inked a deal with National Express, and Australia and New Zealand.
Co-founder Steven Meersman told theSunday Independent that Zenobe is now looking to Ireland as it bears a lot of similarities to the UK that it can capitalise on.
“There are some similar ways of operating’” he said.
“Some of the [operators] are even the same. We’ve had Go-Ahead entering into the Irish market. It’s close by from that perspective, we think we can service it quite well with the network we’ve built up here.”
Meersman declined to comment on what companies in Ireland it is working with but said it plans to be up and running in a few months.
“We will build that [for an operator], we’ll fund it and then in return, they sign up for a service contract for a period of time where if we don’t deliver on these KPIs, fully charged on time and the right temperature, then we pay penalties,” he said. “That takes a lot of the technology risk away from them and puts it on us.”
The electrification of bus transport is ramping up, he added, with operators “getting more comfortable with bigger commitments”.
Zenobe recently raised a funding facility from banks including NatWest and Santander as well as Siemens.
