With its app designed to take the hassle out of EV charging, Click4Charge aims to expand its B2C market in the coming year and anticipates deployment in other European capitals by 2025. COO and co-founder Julien Friederich reveals more.
When it was created in 2022, Click4Charge set out to address the problem the founders anticipated: there would be a rise in the number of EVs on the road but possibly not the convenience of enough charging stations to meet those needs.
The service is based on over 10 years of experience in electromobility and batteries, and the team—currently eight FTEs and two PTEs—wants to take the headache out of EV recharging.
As COO and co-founder Julien Friederich explains, Click4Charge allows for EV recharging at a place and time users need it. Users download an app and can request a charge at a time and location that suits them. Friederich says the recharge, serviced by specialised small vans, takes around 30 minutes, although the team believes they’ll be able to reduce this to 15-20 minutes. “What’s good is it allows them to take away the stress of charging… they can do other things to gain time,” the COO adds.
B2B to general public
Click4Charge’s focus has mainly been on B2B so far, although it’s hoping to extend more into the B2C realm by end-2024 or early 2025.
The B2B focus was in response to EV fleets, and Friederich explains that despite businesses wanting a more sustainable solution, they aren’t always in a position to install on-site charging stations for their employees, be that due to lack of parking, costs, etc. “If the employees can’t charge at home, which is often the case, but they’re ‘forced’ to move to electric, we’re confronted with a new segment of people who are blocked and can’t charge at home or at work,” he explains.
By end-2024 or early-2025, Click4Charge is hoping to develop its service for the greater public. Friederich admits there’s strong pressure and it can be a challenge as a startup to develop quickly but not too quickly.
“Big industrial players have understood how our solution has an interest in terms of investment,” he adds. “We’re in the midst of analysing that… and hope in 2025 to be able to deploy easily in European capitals.”
Longer term vision
Friederich says that Luxembourg continues to do a lot in the EV space but he looks to Norway as an example of what more could be envisioned to accelerate EV use—free parking for EV, for instance.
He’s also aware of the myths surrounding these vehicles, comparing it to the initial skepticism the public had about moving from horse-and-carriage to cars. For the EV shift, he believes users will need plenty of solutions—superchargers at petrol stations, communes, other flexible options.
As a next step, he anticipates charging itself and battery power will be enhanced. “We could imagine having more battery, and we have a lot of solutions to propose,” he explains. “The cherry on the cake [would be] finding partners that allow us to charge batteries without necessarily needing to pull from the grid.”
