Presto is building Stripe for EV charging
Presto is helping connect fleets and charging networks so drivers can find working chargers quickly.
Charging an electric vehicle in public can be the best of times or the worst of times.
An EV driver can be charged and back on the road in a smooth 20 minutes, but they might also encounter broken chargers, unresponsive touchscreens, and blocked stalls, all of which can make for a frustrating experience.
It can be a headache for everyday consumers. For fleet or ride share drivers, a broken charger is lost money.
Those frustrations prompted Ashwin Dias and J.J. Raynor to leave their jobs at Uber, where they led efforts to electrify ride share drivers’ vehicles, and start Presto, an app that points fleet drivers to the best chargers.
“Coming from an Uber background, we think there’s a dynamic marketplace where we can help make everything smoother by matching diverse demand with diverse supply,” Raynor said. That might mean nudging price-sensitive drivers to wait 30 minutes for a cheaper charger to open up while guiding time-sensitive drivers to faster and more reliable but pricer stalls.