Amsterdam-based electric scooter startup, Bolt Mobility, has raised 3 million euro from equity-crowdfunding platform Seedrs. More than 2000 investors from the UK and the Netherlands chipped in. The round was oversubscribed by over 200%.
Previously Bolt Mobility secured a record investment of 3 million euro from the angels investment platform Leapfunder.
The startup founded by Marijn Flipse en Bart Jacobsz Rosier in Delft in 2014 aims to use the funds to bring its top-of-line AppScooter, to the market in 2018. The AppScoorter, as the name implies, is a smart – ‘’The Dutch Tesla on two wheels’ – electric scooter with 4G internet connection and smartphone connectivity. It can travel up to 400km on a single charge and is able to accelerate from 0 to 45 km in 3.3 seconds. The scooter enables the driver to send automated text responses and answer phone calls from its handlebars and touchscreen, preventing as such dangerous smartphone use while driving. The startup claims that it’s the first electric scooter on which you can safely run apps.
Elon Musk has showed that entrepreneurs can indeed accomplish where others, often government run programs and projects, have failed so often: reduce fossil fuels induced pollution, by making electric cars a mass and ‘sexy’ transportation option. Now Flipse and Jacobsz Rosier are aiming to do the same for scooters, capitalising also on the changing political stance towards pollution from smaller-sized vehicles. Amsterdam will, for instance, ban scooters made before 2011 because of the pollution they create. In Italy, the Mayor of Rome has in banned drivers from using scooters on Sundays.
“We aim to have delivered more than a quarter million scooters to customers by 2020. We are truly excited to be at the forefront of a lucrative market worth over 30 billion pound market a year”, said Jacobsz Rosier to the British publication The Independent upon this latest investment round.
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