Tallinn-based developer of tech for remotely controlled cars Elmo has raised €2.6 million in a funding round. Via the investment, the company plans to speed up the licensing of its remote control technology in foreign markets as well as expand the team size.
Elmo’s €2.6 million was provided via Highgoal Capital Management, FlyCap, Barolo Invest, and SAGGIS.
If you’ve been playing along at home and following what Berlin-based Vay following with its teledriving solution, then you’re for all intents and purposes up to speed on what Elmo is doing. In part.
Elmo’s history has been a bit schizophrenic. On one hand, it’s a developer of remote-controlled technologies for EVs, and on the other, a short-term rental service.
“Although Elmo’s greatest competitive edge has so far been the development of the technology as well as the provision of a short-term rental service in one company, we will now be able to conclude the separation of the technology and the short-term rental business into subsidiaries in order to bring aboard new investors with a more specific focus,” clarified Elmo’s founder and CEO Enn Laansoo Jr.
Interestingly, Elmo lays claim to the “world’s first deep-tech company to bring its road legal remotely controlled cars and drivers licenced by the Transport Administration’s into a real-life car sharing service,” (last year) which is odd, as in February of this year, Vay said they were the first to “drive a car without a person in the vehicle on a European public road”.
Furthermore, on the investment, Highgoal Capital Management's Ragnar Meitern commented, “We are happy to contribute to an Estonian technology company such as Elmo which is one of the first in the world to put remote control technology-based services into daily practical use. We see remote control technologies and the related services as a necessary step in bringing fully autonomous driving technologies into our daily life in the future.”
One of the first in the world.
Semantics be damned, and quite frankly it doesn’t really matter who’s on first and what’s on second, but one thing is for sure - remote-controlled, teledriven, whatever you want to call them - cars are more likely than not headed to your neighbourhood sooner than later.
Unless of course you’re in the UK, and the remote driver isn’t. But that might just be a horse of a completely different colour.
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