Second-Life EV Batteries: How Voltfang Raised €15M to Replace Coal in Europe

Hey guys, what if the key of Europe's energy future is sitting in the trunk of yesterday's electric car? Today on StartupRaid IO, we're talking to David Odansia, CEO of Voltfang, the startup that turns EV batteries into grid stabilizing green powerhouses. We'll ask how did a broken camper battery lead to a 15 million US dollar raise? What's behind Europe's biggest second life battery factory? And how do you pitch a vision bold enough to replace coal? You don't want to miss this. Stay tuned.

Welcome to Startuprad IO, your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news, interviews and live events. David Usanti is the CEO and co founder of Voltfang, a German climate tech startup that transforms used electric car batteries into cutting edge stationary energy storage systems. With a background in industrial engineering from rvthen R wth Aachen, David leads one of Europe's most ambitious second life battery

initiatives. A company that just raised 15 million euros, opened the continent's largest second life battery factory and secured projects with partners like Stuttgart Airport and grid operators. WorldFunk's technology is not only reducing CO2, but also decentralizing energy security across Europe. David, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Totally my pleasure. We. We already made some jokes before we started, so we both pretty relaxed. Take us back to the camper trip that sparked

world fun. When did you realize there was a business behind repurposing EV batteries? And are you still camping? I wish. I actually wish I was still camping. It's. It's a

long time ago when I. When we were camping the last time. But to start the story, I'm David, co founder and CEO of Vol. I'm originally from Cologne, so in Germany we say Kung. Then I moved to Aachen because of my studies 10 years ago, roughly 11, where I also met my two co founders, Afin and Roman. So we. We started studying together at the rwth. And if you are studying there, you always want to escape when the exams, the exam phase is over.

So what we did, we bought a camper van together. And the reason was just to get out, to get to the Netherlands, to the Belgium, to every kind of party, festival or vacation we could to get some freedom back. And that's what we did. We bought a camper van, an old time of year Ducato, which we lovely called Mia. And with Mia we did everything. And the problem was just that Mia is an old timer with not such a huge motorization and the batteries was as old as MIA. And in Germany you need to be 30

years or plus years old to be an old timer. Therefore you know how degraded the battery was. So our idea was to change first of all the battery storage system inside of it and also to integrate a solar panel on the roof. Because if anybody, everybody wants to charge their phones, then the battery gets empty extremely quickly. So we decided to do that. Roman just jumped on the roof and put a solar panel from ebay Klein inside, inside of it or on top of it.

And then the idea was, which kind of battery shall we take? And we found out that you could buy Tesla batteries just out of the Eber Kleinenzeigen. And therefore we said, why shouldn't we take them? Easy answer, way too heavy. And the motorization is so bad we just go downhill if we want to get up a hill. Therefore we decided not to do that and we bought another battery storage and then we put it

inside. Everything was fine. But a few weeks later, Roman's father just asked him why, whether he knows where to buy a storage system for his workshop. So he has a solar panel on the roof and he wants to consume as much solar as possible. And we engineers are really naive and we think we can do everything. Therefore Rohan just said, we can build you one. And that's what we actually did. We just closed the doors behind ourselves

for we anticipated three days. In the end it was two weeks to build a storage system with these kind of Tesla modules, everything based on open source. And after two weeks and a lot of, no, not a lot really less sleep, we were able to actually run the system. And then we thought, look, we are at the end of our studies, we don't want to just end up in a corporate, we want to do something which matters. And actually we want to be free also in our work.

Therefore we said, look, let's just sell it from the neighbor to the next neighbor and maybe to five other neighbors. So that was the idea, just to sell one by another. And we didn't even thought about VC startup and raising a lot of money and so on, so forth. We just thought, maybe that's a solid business. And after the university, when you don't do it after university, when shall you do it then? And therefore we started World Fund.

Interesting story. I have to admit. Taking it from there, what was your first major challenge like tech regulation or team that made you doubt that your idea may work? So in the end we just started, we had the tech, we had a prototype running, we didn't have so much knowledge about batteries. Therefore the tech was one of the biggest things, we actually didn't care about regulation so much. We just said,

okay, they have pilot projects, we just start and try. And therefore we didn't, we didn't think so much about regulation

and the team, since we three are friends and long time friends, we didn't care about the team either. And also the RWTH has a lot of engineers who are like minded, therefore that was also not an issue. So tech was the biggest thing and selling our storage systems with the limited amount of capital we had in the beginning. So we just said, look, how could we develop something with so much so less money? And then we tried to sell something which we didn't even have and it

was actually really hard. And then like after a half a year, one year, we still was wasn't able to sell one. But that was also the time we thought shall we do that? Maybe it doesn't work out, and so on, so forth. But since we started, since we said why it should work, because it's logic that we need something like this. If you have solar, you need to store it somewhere either or you will put everything into

the grid and destabilize it. So we said, look, we just do it for one, two years and if it doesn't work out, we try something different. But actually it worked out. I see, so at one point you realized it works out. I was wondering when you were a student in Aachen, now you're cleantech founder, helping to rewire your script, did that also change your self image? Totally. To be completely honest, it

changed it totally. I in the university, if you are at the RWTH and you are not the smartest person on earth, you will be average or below average. And therefore I always had the feeling of not fitting because all the others were way better engineers. For example, Afshin, which is one of the brightest minds I know, Roman as well. And therefore I always had the feeling of not being being able to do what the engineers are doing.

And therefore I didn't knew what in the future I actually will be bringing value of. And that was something I had in the beginning. Now I know actually somebody who can, who is not the inventor, but who can explain what we have invented to people in easy words is. Is also something necessary and therefore it changed completely. My confidence boosted.

We hold ourselves humble all the time. But still after five years, after building up a not small company anymore, rather a big company, you have some self confidence in your decisions, in the skills you have, and therefore it changed. I see. From our audience, I would like to Know what made you believe in your startup, share in the comments and or tag us wherever you're sharing this. We are on LinkedIn, we are an ax, we're in blue sky threads and so on and so forth.

From a very good spot. Let's take us to your darkest day. There must have been a day when a pilot failed a route, a funding round almost fell through. What kept you from giving up? So the most important thing in the whole journey is Roman and Afcin the team. Since we we had always like a customer said I want to have the storage system, huge deal. Then they dropped. We had funding rounds where we had really, really less time actually to pay everybody. And always we always kept each other's back.

That was incredibly important. If something doesn't work out, it was not like I told you so. It was like how can

I help? Let's keep on doing it, otherwise we do something different and we will be successful either way. And this kind of mindset helped us through a lot of. A lot of phases which weren't good and but we still keep on doing it because we said what shall we lose? What have we. What can we lose? And therefore we just keep on going. The friendship just grew and actually these things together were like the resilience we needed to overcome this kind

of. Yeah. Darker times. I actually plan to put right here some questions about your co founder and team dynamics. That works really well. You've lived and worked with your co founders for years. What is the biggest I do. What is the biggest people lesson you had to learn the hard way there? Actually my two confidants and I, we still are living together and we share a dog and we do a lot of

things together, sometimes also on vacation and things like this. Therefore one thing I learned which is really important is having people around you you can trust who have the same values and who are loyal. This is such a relief in your whole life and who actually keep on want to to. You want to compete with them, you want to be better. You the best of yourself. Therefore this is something which is really good. But on

the hard way. The most important thing is sales people can sell themselves really good. Therefore if you think you have the best salesperson on earth, you can be completely wrong. And that's something we learned on a hardware. A lot of times. You and your two co founders still live together. Just between you and me and something like 50,000 listeners, who's the one who doesn't do the dishes? All three are not so good at this. Therefore let's Call it all of us. I see, that's fine

but we don't. Do so much dishes anyways because we are always late at work. But, but to be, to be fair, we have really strict things who is doing what. So for example, Roman is most of the times like getting the groceries. Afin is the one of the best cooks and I do the rest. Okay, I see going a little bit into a potential emotional toll here you are operating at the heart of energy, climate and impact. What's been a personal toll of building this climate

tech rocket ship. So if you don't want to make it your living or your your life, then you will probably have a hard time to be successful. What I heard from my family in the last few months, a lot of times you are, you haven't been around at the weekends and so much you weren't available over the last five years. So much. Because I actually had a lot of things to do and if I'm not doing that, I'm

trying to take my time and calm down. So it needs also a lot of self discipline, a lot of time and also a lot of focus on yourself to be the best you can for the company, for the team and for the growth. So you, you for sure you have your time with your family, your friends, but it's lesser than before. Plus I also do feel the value of just sitting in the evening outside on our covered porch here. Just be by yourself, do something you enjoy, for example, listening to an

audiobook and just have to do nothing. No, to do that gets a very much higher value over time. Totally. Having a book, reading it and being completely by yourself is incredibly helpful for calming down. Talking about breaks here. We will be back after our short ad break here. Then we talk about make or break moments, founder misconceptions and vulnerability to value.

Hope to have you back soon. Hey guys, welcome back to the interview with David from Voltfang. We've been talking about a lot already and now I want to dig a little bit deeper. The make or break moment you've transitioned from a startup to scale up. Was there point when you had to pivot hard or double down? Yes, a lot of times. So in the beginning we started as a residual storage provider. So for the home storage we figured out that's not the best way to grow. Therefore we decided

to pivot into commercial industrial. We did a lot of things by ourselves which we said no, we need to focus and focus and focus. Therefore we needed to pivot from home storage to commercial industrial storage system. We needed to Also change sometimes the business plan, the strategy, so on, so forth. So yes, a lot of times you need to always evolve yourself. You need to, you have a lot of evolutions within yourself as the company leader, but also the company as itself.

I was wondering, is there like one moment that extremely, extremely has been sticking to your mind for that. When we started, we wanted to give the people the opportunity to actually produce and own their own energy. So if you have, if you own a home or you are living in a home, then the solar energy, the storage system, you can be as self sufficient as possible. Giving away this kind of dream of being able to help everybody to decentralize the energy, that was a

hard moment. So what I mean is the pivot from home storage to commercial industrial was hard times. You misconception. I'm very sure not everything worked out the way it should be. But what were you completely wrong about when you launched like tech readiness, market demand, or was this something else? And how did you fix it? Yeah, the misconception is really in the DNA of an engineer to be able to do everything

by yourself. So we started to, to develop and testing facility, we, we wanted to develop and certify a Bennett battery management system, the whole system by itself, then the energy management system. So we wanted to do everything on the horizontal to actually on the tech side because we thought, okay, Tesla can do it, why shouldn't we do it? And there was actually one of the biggest mixed misconceptions we, we had since you need to focus, you need to focus, focus. And again, you need to

focus to be able to grow fast. And that's something we figured out rather sooner. But for us it was late after two years or three years. And therefore we burned a lot of money and time by following different paths, which in the end we needed to cut and just focus on the main things we need to do. You've shared openly about building in a tough space, what part of yourself felt like a liability, but turned out to be an asset.

So as I mentioned, when I was studying, I always had the feeling that not being able to actually get to be able to invent something new is a huge liability. To not be able to understand everything on point in the first second when you were in mechanics or physics or something like this. That was in my opinion always a bad liability for myself. But this turned to be something my biggest asset where because I believe being able to understand them and

after a while and then being able to also explain it to everybody was extremely important. If you are in a team of really true engineers. And therefore this is something I believe which is from liability to assets. For our audience. Guys, what's one founder trait you've turned from a liability in a powerhouse? Let us know on threads or LinkedIn. There are always surprises when you're an entrepreneur. What was the most unexpected insight you've

learned from a customer? Supermarkets, airports or grid operators? So what we actually found out was that all of the companies didn't have so much knowledge about their energy space. They didn't knew how much they are actually consuming and how much they're producing, how much they need, what they can actually avoid on cost of the energy. Therefore that was something we actually figured out really quickly that we can, we need to show everybody what they are capable of. And

this is something we didn't expect. But that's actually also something which helps us a lot to grow because there are so many potentials we with our battery storage system can take for any kind of customer. Therefore that was amazing to figure out. If you are a huge company like Bayer or something, then you know everything about your energy. But everything below that there you don't have the capabilities of actually figuring out everything. And there that's something

we want to help with. It's like almost my level. I know there's a power outlet, I plug it in and every year I go to the cheapest provider. So that's it. Thank you for the answer so far. Now I would like to look a little bit ahead five years maybe. What's your moonshot for Voltfang? A coal free grid. European energy independence. So we want to decentralize Europe. We want to give Europe the resilience of being able to protect their energy transition, energy grids, everything.

And that's something where we believe as Volfang we can help by becoming one of the biggest energy providers in Europe. We want to put smaller and bigger storage system everywhere in the countries and then also connect them to a virtual power plant with who we then can for example, which is also our vision

to shut down Weissweiler which has 1.6 gigawatt. That's actually our our moonshot of Voltfang getting rid of coal as soon as possible with the resilient energy grid of Europe. As a last question, I would like you to reflect a little bit. If your 40 year old self could speak to you now, what would they say about this moment in Voltfunk's journey? Good question. If a 40 years old self would tell me or would look at the moment right now, they would probably say how The F

did. How the F did you come so far and how did you manage to get over the next steps? Because right now we have so many things which are incredibly cool, which we are developing right now. Where two or three years ago it didn't. It was like slow growth. And now we can really show the hockey stick, which I always promised the investors. But now we are able to do that. Therefore, I believe

they will. If you look into the retrospective, then you will figure out how much myself, Voltfang and the company grew within this short amount of time, within the last year to the next one or two years. I know that from some projects, looking at the presentation, then looking at the real thing and think, huh, that really worked out. What a surprise. That's a. The funny thing is I'm. I never know how we got here, but I know where we'll go in the next years.

Okay, we close with this indirect Heisenberg quote. David, with such a pleasure having you as guest. Best of luck and hope to have you back in a few years doing an update. I would love to. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye. Bye. Bye. That's all, folks. Find more news, streams,

events and interviews@www.startuprad.IO. remember, sharing is car.