MORE DURABLE AND PERFORMANT LITHIUM BATTERIES THANKS TO AN INTELLIGENT SOFTWARE, CALLED “EVE-AI”: THE SUCCESS STORY OF FABRIZIO MARTINI, FOUNDER OF ELECTRA VEHICLES
A smart brain that analyzes data 360 degrees, increasing the life cycle and safety of batteries: the electric revolution is now closer
Credits: economyup.it
He created a smart brain for lithium batteries (and not only) and called it Eve-AI. He founded Electra Vehicles in the United States, a company that combines data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and electrification. But now he dreams of returning to Italy: in summary, this is the story of the Italian Fabrizio Martini who, at the age of 21, left Milan to pursue a master’s degree at Boston University. Expected duration of stay: one year. 13 years have passed, and he has not returned yet.
From Milan to Boston, through the American government and NASA
Born in 1986 and passionate about MotoGP, cars, and bicycles, Fabrizio Martini has a three-year degree from the Polytechnic University of Milan in Vehicle Dynamics. At the age of 21, he is already abroad for a Ph.D. in Battery and Energy Storage at Northeastern University in Boston. Then the university introduces him to the world of work. At 22, he develops innovative batteries for the American government: first for the Department of Energy and then for the Department of Defense. At 23, America gives him $5 million to create the batteries and asks him to show his results in the desert, Houston, and Cape Canaveral.
From there, he arrives at NASA: “Things happen there as you see in the movies. They ask you to insert a cylinder into a triangular shape and never want to hear that it cannot be done or is difficult. They want to hear that you can do it, even when it is almost impossible. They were working on exploring Venus through electric drones and asked me to find the ideal battery for that environment. For that project, I developed software. After years passed, I asked NASA for the patent to start a business.” The positive response came with a condition: stay in the United States for four years.
And so Fabrizio invested all his savings (about $65,000) and founded Electra Vehicles in 2015. Then came the concession from the State of Massachusetts, a $300,000 grant, and that of Amazon Web Service, another $150,000. “Companies had so much data and didn’t know what to do with it. We offered to look at it, analyze it, and then give them a lot of useful information. We started billing immediately.”
Today, Electra Vehicles, which has a team of 50 people and an annual turnover of $10 million, has just closed a $21 million round, led by United Ventures, a Milan-based venture capital vehicle, along with other investors, almost all of them Italian.
More durable and safer lithium batteries thanks to data analysis
The smart software, called EVE-AI, developed by the workgroup led by Fabrizio Martini, is based on a 360-degree analysis of data from the battery, driver, driving style, vehicle type, and environment. And the results are impressive: “We can improve the performance of each individual battery by 28%, make it last up to 14-15 years instead of 6-7, and predict damage three months in advance. We now sell data under license in the automotive field, but we could also expand into other fields, such as avionics, robotics“.
A very ambitious and multi-sector project that Fabrizio does not exclude from bringing back to Italy, where he opened a branch of Electra Vehicles two years ago, choosing Torino as a “second base”. In the coming months, the Company plans to hire another 50 people between Italy and the United States, bring its vehicle technologies to market, and close commercial contracts with various automakers.
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