Sweden’s first urban electric car, Uniti, yesterday launched its global equity crowdfunding round with a goal to raise €500.000, representing 5,1% ownership in the company. The company, which is developing a lightweight electric city car that combines holistic sustainability, a futuristic user experience and is developed in an open-source manner, reached 63% of its investment goal from 68 crowd investors in the first 4 hours after launching to the public. The Uniti crowdfunding campaign will run until November 15, 2016 and a total of 50,000 shares are available for crowd ownership – at a minimum of €500 per investment.

 

This round will provide the seed funding required for Uniti to build a production-ready prototype, which is scheduled for 2017. Uniti began as an open innovation research project at Lund University where the team studied the underlying logic of modern mobility, the core problems that need to be solved, and the emerging technologies that should form the basis of the next generation of automotive. Findings showed that city streets don’t need to be dominated by heavy combustion engine vehicles, or even oversized electric vehicles, as they typically only carry an average of 1.2 people for short distances at low speeds.

 

And so Uniti was created – an electric city car that is designed to match the needs of the modern urban commuter, with a light and lean construction designed to maximize the benefits of electric car technology, utilizing sustainable materials and the highest quality 'off-the-shelf' solutions from leading suppliers. Uniti’s main source of revenue in the short-term will be through licensing the core technologies to other auto manufacturers, while in the long-term it will be through the direct sale of Uniti-branded vehicles.