The EV charging management software WeaveGrid today announced a strategic investment from Hyundai Motor and Kia, for an undisclosed amount.
This is the company’s second investment from an automaker in as many months. In December, the company closed a $28 million raise led by Woven Capital, Toyota’s growth fund.
WeaveGrid’s software platform essentially turns electric vehicles into distributed energy resources, managing the charging process of plugged-in EVs so that it happens during the most convenient time for both paying customers and utilities. So of course, the company needs to work closely with the utilities that decide to offer their customers the option of using the software; WeaveGrid’s partners so far include Baltimore Gas & Electric, Dominion Energy, and Georgia Power, among others.
But, according to Apoorv Bhargava, WeaveGrid’s CEO and co-founder, the latest rounds of investments also highlight the importance of working closely with the automakers producing the EVs.
“Automakers are extremely touchy about how you talk to their cars, about how you talk to their batteries inside of the cars, how you dispatch the batteries, how you eventually start discharging the batteries,” he told Latitude Media. “We’ve built this deep collaboration model with our automotive partners, where we don’t only integrate into their systems… but we’re also collaborating with them on designing the right kind of standard for the vehicle so that when you plug in a car, it operates in a way that a grid operator accepts.”
One of the reasons why the virtual power plant market hasn’t taken off as quickly as it could have, he explained, is that there’s a lack of trust and communication between grid operators and consumer device OEMs, such as EV manufacturers.
By turning EVs into “grid-interactive vehicles,” WeaveGrid positions itself between automakers and grid operators — as an “enablement platform” between the two industries.
“A big part of why we chose to bring on OEM partners is because we believe that the utility industry needs to collaborate more closely with the automotive industry,” he said, adding that doing so requires the teams to actively work together. “It’s not going to happen naturally. You can’t just put the CEO of Ford and the CEO of PG&E in the room and expect that it will magically turn into a collaboration.”
The automaker appeal
For automakers such as Toyota or Hyundai, investing in a company like WeaveGrid also means getting as involved as possible in their customers’ charging experience.
“Toyota and other partners have been very excited about [figuring out] how to make it super seamless so that as soon as you buy a Toyota you’d be able to enroll into a utility program by default,” Bhargava said.
Such seamlessness is essential to increase DER adoption, and it can only benefit from closer collaboration between utilities and OEMs, according to Bhargava. He added that the main question utilities, automakers, and companies like WeaveGrid should answer when it comes to encouraging managed charging software adoption is “how do I make this easy?”
EVs already have an advantage compared to other DERs, according to Bhargava, because people will buy them as transportation regardless of their energy-saving intentions — and because they’re “a cultural part of your identity” so consumers tend to spend more time thinking about their car than about their thermostat.
There have been other instances of close collaboration between managed charging platforms, utilities, and automakers. Last October, for example, Nissan invested in ChargeScape, an EV-grid integration joint venture created by BMW, Ford, and Honda, and in July Sunrun and Baltimore Gas & Electric launched a “vehicle-to-home grid support program” using Ford trucks.
These are emblematic of the wider embrace of electrification in the U.S. This is an embrace that the Trump administration seems intent on short-circuiting — on his first day in office, President Donald Trump laid out plans to cut EV incentives — but at this point most major automakers have fully committed.
According to research from the Atlas EV Hub, the U.S. expects to see $312 billion invested in EV manufacturing; as of August 2024, nearly 71% of that total has been allocated to specific facilities. As a result, political incentives are a smaller factor for the industry than they were early in the Biden administration, before the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.
“Electrification is a global phenomenon, and that’s not being driven by the Trump administration or the Biden administration,” Bhargava said. “It is an existential imperative for automakers, whether or not they get a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars from an administration.”
