Zagreb-based Greyp is a high-tech mobility company that designs, engineers and produces electric bikes. Today the startup has announced its partnership with two blockchain groups to advance its work on vehicles’ automated payments for tolls and rentals, as well as green energy charging.
Greyp is partnering with slock.it, an IoT company connecting physical devices to the blockchain, and the Energy Web Foundation (EWF), a non-profit organisation applying blockchain in the energy sector to bring connected mobility applications to users.
Greyp will initially focus with its partners on the specific use cases of machine-to-machine (M2M) value transfer, which allows vehicles to pay for tolls and charging, and vehicle access management that facilitates rentals, including with cryptocurrency.
Greyp is currently conducting a digitalised equity offering for retail investors. It’s also backed by Porsche AG and Camel Group, and is the sister company of Rimac Automobili, which developed the first true all-electric supercar. Greyp’s connected mobility development with slock.it and EWF follows its partnership with T-Mobile, whose eSIM technology powers connectivity for its Greyp G6 bike.
Greyp, which has gained prominence as a maker of smart e-bikes, has won numerous industry awards, most recently the Eurobike Award for quality and innovation. The company is currently focused on expanding its platform to support third-party mobility applications as part of CEO Mate Rimac’s vision of a connected future of zero emissions, zero accidents and zero ownership.
Together with slock.it and EWF, Greyp earlier this year unveiled proofs of concept of each use case and is now focused on developing them into working projects.
“We envision a network where every vehicle has a digital ‘wallet’ enabling autonomous machines to receive and create payments, both to humans and to other machines,” said Greyp COO, Kresimir Hlede. “This is a big step forward toward realising our vision for a sustainable, connected future. We are excited to be working with slock.it and the Energy Web Foundation to achieve this.”
The Greyp platform incorporates blockchain technology, which allows devices on a network to securely ‘sign’ and verify information and transactions without a human or CPU intermediary.
“My vision has always been a holistic one focused on building a truly connected world,” said CEO Mate Rimac. “We are grateful for our support in the bike community. Now, we are taking the next step toward building an integrated network that can support an unlimited array of interoperable, sustainable, smart mobility options. And it is rewarding to collaborate to build this future with such innovative groups as the Energy Web Foundation and slock.it.”
“Greyp’s vision is closely connected to slock.it’s vision – to connect smart devices with blockchain to enable these devices – and in Greyp’s case e-bikes – to use the advantages of this technology like decentralised security or to pay or get paid autonomously and completely without intermediaries. With our Incubed client – the smallest fully verifying blockchain client – we are proud to partner with Greyp to bring blockchain technology to real-life products,” said Steffen Kux, slock.it Chief Product Officer.
“Our mission is for blockchain-based solutions to accelerate a low-carbon, customer-centric electricity future,” said EWF’s chief commercial officer Jesse Morris. “In the years ahead, we forecast that customers will invest more in the grid than utilities. Electric mobility is a key part of that megatrend. We are proud to partner with Greyp to make it one step closer to reality.”
Greyp’s innovative digitalised equity offering, which allows retail investors to own equity in the company with voting rights for as little as €100 via its Neufund financing platform, was launched earlier this month with the approval of government regulators in the EU.
Founded in 2013, Greyp Bikes has since been awarded second best employer in the small company category in Croatia based on employees satisfaction.
