WeVee Raises £5.1M to Build the Definitive Online Marketplace for Electric Vehicle Leasing

July 5, 2024

WeVee Raises £5.1M to Build the Definitive Online Marketplace for Electric Vehicle Leasing
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WeVee, the London-based electric vehicle leasing marketplace, has raised £5.1 million to accelerate its expansion from the UK into Europe. Founded by Paul Fagan, a leasing industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in the UK market, WeVee launched in March 2020 as the first fully integrated platform for EV price comparison and leasing — bringing together more than 50 models across 30 brands into a single place where consumers could browse, compare, and access finance options. The raise, led by European angel investors and industry leaders, brings WeVee's combined valuation to over $40 million.

The company was built on a straightforward insight that Fagan had identified in his career in automotive leasing: while consumer demand for electric vehicles was growing rapidly, there was nowhere to go to access the full range of EV lease options in one place. Traditional leasing was either brand-specific, tied to a single manufacturer's dealer network, or fragmented across dozens of brokers with inconsistent pricing, limited stock visibility, and no ability to compare across the market. WeVee was designed from the start to aggregate this demand and serve it with consumer-grade digital experience — something the UK's established leasing market had failed to deliver.

The round attracted two prominent new co-founders: Rahmyn Kress, the former Chief Digital Officer at Henkel and a purpose-driven investor operating through HumanCapitalNetwork, and Michael Perschke, a widely respected automotive industry leader who had held senior roles at Mercedes, Audi, and Mitsubishi before founding Automobili Pininfarina, the first sustainable luxury electric car brand. Both Kress and Perschke joined WeVee as co-founders and board members, bringing not only capital but significant European automotive and enterprise networks to support the platform's international ambitions. The plan is to launch in Germany first — both Kress and Perschke's home market and the largest EV market in Europe — before expanding into France, Spain, and Italy in subsequent stages.

WeVee's product sits at the intersection of several high-growth trends. Plug-in vehicle sales across Europe grew sharply in 2020, with European markets capturing approximately 43 percent of global EV sales as consumers and corporate fleets began accelerating their transition away from internal combustion engines. The company's business model has particular strength in the UK's salary sacrifice market, which allows employees to lease an EV through their employer before tax, dramatically reducing the effective cost of leasing for drivers and creating a recurring, sticky B2B-to-consumer revenue stream for WeVee. The platform was attracting up to 100,000 monthly visitors in the UK at the time of the raise.

The funds will be used to launch WeVee in Germany, build out its pan-European commercial partnerships, expand its product offering to include commercial vehicles, motorbikes, and scooters, and develop insurance and related services to extend the platform's value to customers beyond a single transaction. WeVee's ambition, as articulated by its founders, is to become the Airbnb of e-mobility: the trusted, neutral marketplace that consumers turn to first when they want simple, affordable, and transparent access to the full range of electric mobility options.

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