Go Eve raises £750,000 to develop DockChain EV charging technology
The UCD and Imperial College London spin-out will use Innovate UK backing to make its multi-bay fast charging system more reliable for fleet operators.
Go Eve, a joint spin-out from University College Dublin and Imperial College London, has secured £750,000 in funding from Innovate UK and private investors to develop its electric vehicle charging technology further.
The money will fund an 18-month project aimed at improving DockChain, the company’s patented system that lets a single DC fast charger serve several parking bays. Supported by NovaUCD, the technology allows multiple vehicles to stay plugged in while a compatible charger works through them one at a time, sequentially.
Cutting infrastructure costs for fleets
The appeal of DockChain for fleet operators lies in capacity. By serving several bays from one charger, the system can reduce how many fast chargers and how much electrical infrastructure a site needs, which in turn can lower installation costs and speed up deployment.
The new funding will go towards custom hardware, firmware and software designed to improve how DockChain automatically starts, stops and restarts charging sessions without needing vehicles to be physically disconnected. This follows lessons learned from real fleet installations, where EVs have not always behaved consistently. Some vehicles fail to begin charging on the first attempt, while others struggle to restart once a session has been paused.
John Goodbody, co-founder and marketing director of Go Eve, said the project is about making sequential charging more dependable. “We’ve already shown that fleets can serve more bays without multiplying the number of fast chargers, that’s where the immediate cost and rollout benefit comes from DockChain,” he said. “Working with fleets has also taught us that vehicles don’t always behave exactly as expected at the charging connector. Some EVs need another attempt to start; others can be reluctant to restart charging after power flow is paused for grid, or priority reasons. This project tackles those practical issues so we can make DockChain more reliable and more flexible.”
Looking towards vehicle-to-grid
Beyond reliability improvements, the project will also explore whether DockChain can support bidirectional charging and vehicle-to-grid services. That could eventually let fleet operators earn revenue from their vehicles when they are not in use, adding a commercial dimension to a technology currently focused on cost savings.
The work is backed by Innovate UK’s Growth Catalyst, Investor Partnerships programme and will be led by Go Eve’s engineering team based in Wolverhampton. The company is targeting a production-ready version of DockChain in 2027, with existing installed units eligible for upgrades once the new version is ready.
What it means for UK fleets
For the UK ecosystem, the funding is a modest but notable example of Innovate UK capital being paired with private investment to support infrastructure technology aimed squarely at the commercial transition to electric vehicles. As UK fleets move away from petrol and diesel, grid capacity and charger installation costs remain persistent bottlenecks, and Go Eve’s approach is designed to ease both.
Go Eve is now seeking fleet operators to trial the technology at sites with constrained charging capacity, variable charging priorities or potential for vehicle-to-grid use. What to watch next is whether those trials validate the reliability improvements promised by the project, and whether the 2027 production timeline holds as the company moves from pilot deployments towards a commercial product.