Blackhorn Ventures is excited to announce our latest investment in rail efficiency platform RailVision Analytics, with participation from Trucks Venture Capital, MUUS Climate Partners, Incite.org, and Measured Ventures, and returning investors Active Impact Investments and Neil Murdoch.

The rail industry is the backbone of the global supply chain. Easily overlooked, it is responsible for moving the majority of the world’s raw and finished materials. According to the Association of American Railroads, in a typical year, US freight railroads move around 1.7 billion tons across nearly 160,000-miles of track – and the physics of steel on steel vs. rubber on asphalt mean that rail will always be more efficient than air, road or sea transport.

While COVID exposed the Achilles heel of global supply chains, new climate realities and domestic supply chain reorganization are demanding a more advanced rail system. However, innovation in the rail industry has been underfunded for decades, in favor of cost-cutting. Meanwhile as domestic manufacturing ramps up and manufacturers demand more reliable and timely service from railroads, rail remains by far the most efficient and environmentally friendly mode of transportation.

Source: JustMeans.com

Two-thirds of the global rail market still relies on diesel fuel for propulsion, versus electricity, (which tends to be the fuel of choice in China and the EU). The most recent study, from 2o12, suggests that freight rail electrification in the US could cost $4.8M per mile, which is prohibitively expensive. In 2021, the US transport sector consumed approximately 47 billion gallons of diesel fuel, an average of 128 million gallons per day, according to the EIA. Unfortunately, diesel fuel will be with us for a while.  While railways consume 9X less energy per tonne-kilometer traveled than trucks, they have yet to benefit from the digital revolution that has drastically improved our planes and cars, let alone the cloud-native and API centric architecture that is driving enterprise efficiency. The penetration of next gen GE Wabtec diesel electric locomotives today is minimal: less than 5% of all locomotives running in North America are diesel electric. Our rail infrastructure still consumes billions of gallons of diesel fuel each year, generating millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions and cancer-causing particulates, especially around urban rail corridors.

Digital advancements are needed to improve railway operations and enable cost-savings and emissions-reductions within the industry.

While the railroad industry is open to innovations that will drive efficiencies (including locomotives powered by batteries or hydrogen), tools typically used by the sector to address the issue of high fuel costs are limited and require complicated integrations. Low rates of digitization across commuter, passenger, freight and switching systems means that rail operators and agencies have limited visibility into where fuel efficiency gains are to be found. The rail industry’s second biggest expense is fuel (after labor) at $60B annually. Innovation in the rail industry must be durable, high value-add, and user friendly. And it must be broadly adopted by rail industry management and labor; The Association of American Railroads estimates that a national rail shutdown (which Congress is actively trying to avert) would cost the U.S. at least $2B per day and could cripple energy delivery with risks for grid reliability.

RailVision substantially reduces a rail provider’s carbon emissions and fuel costs

RailVision was launched in 2020 with the objective of mitigating skyrocketing fuel prices by lowering consumption, reducing emissions, improving crew safety, monitoring operational compliance, and reducing wear on equipment for the $100B North American rail industry. RailVision’s flagship EcoRail platform is a lightweight app used on a crew tablet. RailVision’s platform integrates data sources already on locomotives (including passenger data and scheduling, equipment monitoring systems, fuel consumption data, event recorder data, crew reports, GPS mapping, and wayside inspection devices) to create an intuitive tablet-based app. The app securely collects and sends existing rail data to RailVision’s cloud platform. Then, the company’s machine learning algorithms analyze and translate that data into simple suggestions for braking, throttle, and other train-handling operations — all of which provide concrete ways to reduce fuel consumption, decrease CO2 emissions, and improve safety. Crews and supervisors are then able to use RailVision’s dashboard to monitor their savings and performance.

RailVision’s flagship solution, EcoRail, enables real-time fuel-saving recommendations

Source: RailVision Analytics company materials

The rail industry is just beginning its digital revolution and its contribution to sustainable transportation

The transportation sector makes up 27% of US greenhouse gas emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels – the most of any sector.^[1] While rail emissions are dwarfed by emissions from passenger vehicles or heavy duty trucks, railroad operators have recently faced increased pressure and incentive to reduce emissions and increase investments in digitalization. We believe that there is a huge opportunity for this sector to accelerate its path towards efficiency, and gain market share as the low-carbon option for freight. Rail can reduce heavy congestion and pressure on public roads, GHG emissions, and the likelihood of traffic accidents (according to NHTSA there were 5,601 fatalities involving at least one large truck in 2021.) In early demonstrations with Canadian customers, EcoRail delivered meaningful fuel cost savings of 10 – 15% and in turn lowered GHG emissions.

RailVision’s team: domain expertise, engineering DNA, and deep enterprise sales know-how.

RailVision is led by CEO and Founder Dev Jain, a mechanical engineer and former member of the Canadian Armed Forces with 5+ years of rail experience. RailVision’s CTO, Mark Smith, has 35+ years of team building and product experience and was formerly a VP of Technology at Virtusa. Dennis McDonald is RailVision’s VP of Sales and brings 10+ years of enterprise software sales at IBM, Oracle and Infor. Dennis also founded the rail association’s fuel efficiency conference 20 years ago. The broader team of 15 has experience across CN, Siemens and Urbint. The team has already demonstrated early traction and has been in pilot testing with several companies, including Genesee & Wyoming, Metrolinx, Port of Montreal, and Via Rail. The app is now commercially available for deployment by all passenger and freight shortline railroads. We’re excited to partner with this stellar team as they build digital infrastructure to power the future of rail transportation efficiency.

Blackhorn Ventures is proud to announce our latest investment in smart EV fast charging storage provider Electric Era Technologies, with participation from Proeza Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and previous strategic investor Remus Capital.

The unprecedented acceleration of EV growth has created an urgency to build affordable and accessible charging infrastructure: 145 million electric vehicles (EVs) will be on the road and require fast charging by 2030.^[1] Recent federal and state policy, such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, provide incentives and funding to switch to EVs, while President Biden’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program includes $5 billion dedicated to deploying public EV charging infrastructure. While federal leadership is welcome, states across the US are also passing historic policies – California and New York recently mandated that all new vehicles sold be either electric or plug-in hybrid electrics by 2035.  Making fast charge EV infrastructure ubiquitous is a generational opportunity.

The EV landscape is growing quickly, but installing fast EV charging today accentuates key grid challenges, resulting in higher costs for site owners, utility ratepayers, and EV drivers.

Electric vehicles are expected to demand nearly 60X more electricity by 2040 – from 11 TWh in 2022 to an estimated 655 TWh in 2040.^[2] Even if utilities drastically increase their investments into grid upgrades, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to source equipment and deploy capital quickly enough to accommodate forecasted EV growth. Public site hosts – such as convenience stores, gas stations, and retail chains – recognize the need to install EV fast charging to remain relevant, but face two major challenges: 1) Expensive and time-consuming grid upgrades, and 2) higher expected energy costs for site hosts and EV drivers that are subject to volatile peak energy prices depending on their time of use.

Electric Era’s behind-the-meter smart EV storage solution gets fast EV charging infrastructure built quickly – without needing to wait for grid upgrades.

Electric Era builds modular EV battery and smart charging systems that are easy-to-install and adaptable with any EV charger. Its PowerNode solution includes a 120 kW/60 kWh battery pack and a smart power management platform. This enables site hosts to discharge power to 4 separate fast chargers via one centralized location while using just 120 kW of power from the grid rather than the 600 kW required with a direct grid connection (see image below). Its small-footprint, power-dense solution uses 10X less energy storage than alternatives and is the most affordable EV fast charging solution today. Importantly, the PowerNode platform enables convenience store owners to meet eligibility requirements for the $5 billion in federal NEVI funding, minimize costs, and still support fast EV charging speeds.

Source: Electra Era Website

To reduce peak energy demand costs for site hosts and consumers, Electric Era’s solution includes an AI-driven smart software to predict and optimize charging.

Electric Era’s patent-pending smart software solution enables battery and charger site control, predicts expected power load and peak demand charges, monitors utility tariffs, and manages power load and delivery to ensure the optimal and most economical charging for site owners and consumers. One existing DC fast-charge site host and Electric Era customer noted that their utility costs exploded after installing fast chargers directly. With Electric Era’s PowerNode system, they were able to save thousands of dollars each month as its smart software filled the battery pack when energy prices were low to avoid peak demand charges while still ensuring EV fast charging was available whenever needed.

By enabling affordable and accessible fast EV charging, Electric Era will help us accelerate towards a clean transportation future.

The transportation sector makes up 27% of US greenhouse gas emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels – the most of any sector.^[1] According to BloombergNEF’s lifecycle analysis, EVs produced in 2030 will emit 70% to 90% less carbon dioxide than equivalent internal combustion engine vehicles.^[2] We need smart hardware plus software charging solutions today to enable the electrification and decarbonization of the transportation industry and reduce our global emissions footprint.

Electric Era’s team has the right mix of engineering and business skills to lead us into a new era of transportation.

The Electric Era team has an exceptional background: CEO & Founder Quincy Lee, CTO Sam Reineman, VP of Software Sith Dharmasiri, and Director of Build Development Eoghan Kyne all worked together previously at SpaceX. Lee and Reineman were Lead Mechanical Engineers there, where they led the engineering design, development, rollout and business outcomes for the Starlink Gateway Antenna Ground Stations. These engineering heavyweights are complemented by Director of Business Development Will Hersey, who previously led go-to-market sales and strategy, fundraising, and business operations at an early stage clean energy company. With their collective skills and experience, the Electric Era team stands out within the EV charging space, and we’re excited to be on this journey together.