Czech VCs Invest in Rightcharge to Accelerate Europe’s EV Transition

• British CleanTech Rightcharge raised GBP 1.6M led by Czech Soulmates Ventures
• The platform simplifies EV charging payments and reimbursements across home, work, and public locations
• It helps fleets cut charging costs by up to 90% and emissions by 30%
• The funding will fuel European expansion and further innovations like vehicle-to-grid reimbursement

This October, The well-known Czech VC firm Soulmates Ventures (invested in Ogre AI, among others) led the GPB 1.6M Seed round of Rightcharge — the British platform for businesses and drivers to manage their electric vehicle charging across locations. The round was joined by another proactive Czech fund, Purple Ventures (invested in Delta Green recently) alongside Blackwood Ventures and Unruly Capital.

The Founder’s Journey to Clean Mobility

Charlie Cook founded Rightcharge in 2019 and took on the role of the new company’s CEO. He holds a MEng Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Nottingham and a MSc degree in Climate Change, Management & Finance from Imperial Business School. After starting his career as an engineer at CERN in Geneva, the founder-to-be joined Octopus Energy, where he helped launch Octopus Electric Vehicles and Octopus Electroverse, leading some of the company’s first large-scale EV charging and vehicle-to-grid projects. This experience gave him a firsthand impression of how confusing and fragmented charging could be, especially for fleets: from choosing the right tariffs to managing home and public charging costs.

This sparked the idea for Rightcharge as Mr Cook realised that the right technology could make charging simple, fair, and cost-efficient for both drivers and businesses, and the technical background and industry experience added to the confidence in building a platform capable of removing the big barrier to mass EV adoption.

Early Success, Market Validation, and  Strategic Pivot

Starting with a simple idea to make EV charging easier for everyone, Richtcharge developed its first product that helped drivers compare and install home chargers. Within the first month it was already generating revenue, validating the real need for clarity in a confusing new market. Over the next few years, Rightcharge helped tens of thousands of drivers get set up at home and launched the UK’s first energy tariff comparison service designed for EV owners.

In early 2023, the Richtcharge team realised that while the consumer market was growing, the real opportunity—and the bigger pain point—was with fleets struggling to reimburse drivers for home charging. A tough decision was made to pivot and build a new product from the ground up. Within a year, the team launched what they believe is the world’s most accurate and transparent reimbursement platform for fleets, integrating live tariff data, vehicle data, and AI to ensure complete accuracy.

The Rightcharge Platform Today: Savings and Sustainability

Today, Rightcharge is a smart platform that unifies home, workplace, and public EV charging into one seamless payment and reimbursement system. It helps fleets and drivers automatically track charging costs, access the cheapest energy tariffs, and manage sustainability data, simplifying the operational and financial side of electrification.

‘As an enthusiastic electric car owner since 2018, I understood how complex the issue is to calculate monthly charging costs of a company EV. Its charging during the month may turn out different: slow at work, slow at home, fast on the road, plus perhaps free at business partner sites, abroad using roaming, etc. Plus each charging location may have dynamic electricity prices by the hour. It is a sophisticated problem, considering part of the journeys are business, and the rest are private, to get exact running costs. And Rightcharge comes with an intelligent solution. Charlie, the founder, seems to be a great competent manager and leader, and the market is growing fast for many years to come,’ Purple Ventures’ general partner Jan Stanek tells ITKeyMedia.

‘For us, Rightcharge represents what real sustainability looks like — practical innovation that truly works, is scalable and profitable, helps companies save money and reduces emissions at scale. Fleet electrification is one of Europe’s biggest levers for decarbonisation. Rightcharge is building the infrastructure that makes this transition faster, simpler and more efficient for businesses,’ Soulmates Ventures founder, managing general partner, and chairperson of the board Hynek Sochor comments.

The company cites cost savings of up to 90% and emissions reductions around 30%. According to the team, all the data gets verified using three key integrations:

• directly with the driver’s home energy supplier to get the exact tariff rate,
• with the vehicle itself to confirm the right car was charged,
• and with the charge point to measure precise energy use.

Namely, public charging rates in the UK are typically 70p and 90p per kWh, whereas home charging can be as low as 7p per kWh. By making home charging possible for fleets, Richtcharge’s solution cuts costs by up to 90%. Charging at home also enables energy use during early-morning hours, when most charge points can automatically schedule charging. The energy consumed at these times is up to 30% cleaner, producing less CO2 than energy used during the day or evening, which is how we help fleets lower their emissions.

A proprietary AI model gets trained on thousands of charging sessions and used for detecting anomalies or incomplete data before invoices go out, entirely in the background, with a human-in-the-loop review to ensure reliability, so fleet managers don’t need to take any action. This ensures increased accuracy and transparency for both fleets and drivers.

Rightcharge’s early traction has been with larger fleets, companies like the AA, as well as organisations in construction, healthcare, facilities management and government. According to Mr Cook, these are the sectors where the challenges are most complex: hundreds of vehicles, multiple charge locations, and a real need for accuracy in reimbursement and reporting. That’s why these are the sectors where Rightcharge’s solution delivers the biggest impact.

‘At the same time, we also have a large number of smaller fleets on board, and onboarding them is often much simpler. We offer a self-service sign-up through our website and app, allowing these businesses to get set up and start managing charging reimbursements in just a few steps. They move through the journey quickly, which makes adoption easy and scalable for both sides,’ Mr Cook remarks.

Partnerships and Expansion

As Rightcharge is growing fast, with major customers like the AA and partnerships with Octopus Electroverse, Edenred, and Fuuse, the company’s readiness to scale across Europe takes shape. Particularly, Octopus brings reach and credibility in the fleet space, while Rightcharge provides the technology for accurate home and public charging payments. The partnership empowers both parties to expand across Europe, starting with Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

‘In general, we look for partners who share our goal of accelerating fleet electrification and can help us reach more drivers efficiently. It’s about collaboration that amplifies impact,’ Rightcharge’s founder states.

Naturally, expanding across Europe, regulatory, tariff-structure and grid-access differences between countries are to be anticipated. Rightcharge’s solution indeed requires integrations with energy suppliers, presenting the main challenge in entering new markets. At that, the company can already boast about having achieved an average of 60% coverage across Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Germany in preparation for launch, and this number is growing rapidly.

‘Because the popularity of home charge point brands varies between markets, we’re carrying out extensive charge point integrations to ensure wide coverage. For drivers whose energy suppliers are not yet integrated, we offer a manual input option. For our competitors, that’s the best they can offer; for us, it’s the back-up method to phase out quickly,’ Mr Cook specifies.

Notably, some markets (e.g. Spain, Germany, Belgium, Norway, and Sweden) have home electricity tariffs split between wholesale energy costs and grid fees, while in others these are combined into a single unit rate. As such, Righcharge has to adapt its tariff data models and sources in those countries to account for both components accurately.

Scaling, Growth, and Innovation Ahead

Rightcharge will use its GBP 1.6M round to expand its operations out of the UK and localise the technology for European markets. Most of the funding goes into our team and marketing so we can push harder on the opportunity. The platform will be localized to support Octopus Energy’s rollout in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium as soon as this November, followed by Norway and Ireland in Q1 2026.

The overall goal is to grow to GBP 10M in annual recurring revenue by building strong partnerships and scaling the technology internationally. On the product side, Mr Cook shares that Rightcharge is also working on new innovations like vehicle-to-grid-compatible home reimbursement and tools to help fleets earn from grid flexibility revenues.

According to Rightcharge’s vision, electricity demand will need to be spread more evenly to minimise grid infrastructure investment across all markets. Grid operators will pay EVs to charge at specific times of night when the grid is constrained. It’s great news for fleets as it could earn them between GBP 100 and GBP 1,000 per vehicle per year as this market develops.

Rightcharge’s plan is to provide the technology behind the scenes, embedded directly into its reimbursement solution, to unlock this new revenue stream. Enabling fleets to benefit from flexibility payments automatically strengthens the financial case for electrification and helps accelerate the transition to EVs.

Powering the Continental CleanTech Shift

‘Fleet electrification is accelerating fast, with businesses leading the transition. Most EVs today are purchased by companies rather than individuals and home charging has already become the norm, accounting for around 70% of all charging across Europe. By 2035, we aim to empower 10 million drivers worldwide through our platform. We estimate that around 100 million people globally will need this service, and our goal is to be the trusted technology powering a large share of that transition,’ Mr Cook wraps up.

Rightcharge’s mission is at the heart of Europe’s energy and mobility transformation, tackling one of the toughest barriers to widespread EV adoption with practical, data-driven technology. The focus on accuracy, transparency, and cross-market scalability exemplifies how innovation can make sustainability both achievable and profitable. In turn, the involvement of forward-looking Czech investors like Soulmates Ventures and Purple Ventures underscores the growing international role of Central European capital in shaping the continent’s clean-tech future.