Your Next Taco Bell Order Could Come with a Side of Electricity

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

​Concept of a Taco Bell with an electric car charging station in its parking lot.
Rendering courtesy of ChargeNet

Electric vehicle charging startup ChargeNet raised a $6.2 million seed round from local investors including the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, as it looks to expand its network of charging hubs at fast food restaurants across California.

Aligned Climate Capital, a New York-based venture capital firm with offices in Burbank, led the funding. Arts District-based Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, which incubates startups focused on renewable energy technology, invested through its venture arm, the LACI Impact Fund. Nonprofit early-stage investor Tech Coast Angels also backed ChargeNet’s seed round, as did its San Diego chapter, San Diego Angels.


The funding will aid San Diego-based ChargeNet’s strategy of deploying solar-powered EV charging stations at fast food restaurant parking lots, starting with six charging ports at a Taco Bell in South San Francisco later this month. The company plans to add similar locations in and around Los Angeles as part of its goal of expanding to more than 80 fast food restaurants by the end of the year, ChargeNet CEO Tosh Dutt told dot.LA.

"We expect to expand into Los Angeles, as well as surrounding counties, in 2022 and are finalizing the specifics now,” Dutt said. “This is just the beginning for ChargeNet Stations in and around Southern California, and today's investment is fueling the growth.”

The fast food restaurants partnering with ChargeNet are able to use extra energy stored in the charging stations to power their own facilities, and may also qualify for green energy incentives offered by local and state governments.

A row of concept electric car charging stations in a fast food parking lot.A row of concept electric car charging stations in a fast food parking lot.Rendering courtesy of ChargeNet

“More than five million people eat at Taco Bell restaurants across the country every day,” Aligned Climate Capital COO Brendan Bell said in a statement. “ChargeNet brings fast charging to these drivers, and clean energy to the restaurants.”

The LACI Impact Fund backed ChargeNet in part because the company was among its Spring 2021 group of companies joining the incubator. ChargeNet also was a finalist in a February 2021 pitch competition for funding led by the University of San Diego’s Knauss School of Business.

Dutt said the chargers are designed for quick use, and can give customers a 100-mile charge in 15 minutes at a cost of around $10. That’s cheap compared to L.A. County gas prices, which currently average $4.68 per gallon, according to AAA.

Dutt is an alumni of USC and has worked with companies focused on renewable energy for the majority of his career, including as a technical sales engineer at Honeywell. He founded ChargeNet in 2019 with chief operating officer Venus Jenkins and chief technical officer Rebecca Wolkoff, who previously worked at Tesla.

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Astrolab's New SpaceX-backed Rover Could Change Space Exploration Forever

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
Astrolab's New SpaceX-backed Rover Could Change Space Exploration Forever
Photo by Samson Amore

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

Local Los Angeles-area startup Astrolab Inc. has designed a new lunar vehicle called FLEX, short for Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover. About the size of a Jeep Wrangler, FLEX is designed to move cargo around the surface of the moon on assignment. It’s a bit larger than NASA’s Mars rovers, like Perseverance, but as it’s designed for transport and mobility rather than precision measurement, it can travel much faster, at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour across the lunar surface.

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Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn

Kristin Snyder

Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn
Creatorland

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

LinkedIn hasn’t caught on with Gen Z—in fact, 96% rarely use their existing account.

Considering 25% of young people want to be full-time content creators and most influencers aren’t active on LinkedIn, traditional networking sites aren’t likely to meet these needs.

Enter CreatorLand.

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https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M
This Week in ‘Raises’:

It has been a slow week in funding, but a local decentralized computing network managed to land $9 million to accelerate deployment of its new product called Universal Communication Identifier (UCID™). Another local company that secured capital included Kevin Costner’s location-based audio storytelling platform and the funding will go toward expanding the app’s content library and expanding into additional regions in the United States.

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