Canadian startup takes a GPS approach to smart metering transport

Toronto, Canada-based Skymeter’s smart metering system puts a new twist on a term that’s often associated with monitoring energy consumption in homes and businesses.

The company’s CEO Kamal Hassan told the Cleantech Group his company is pursuing smart meters for cars and trucks. The technology generates and can store data required for financial transactions by vehicles, such as road use, using a global positioning system (GPS).

As the global road and parking infrastructure transitions from a free system to a paid one, he said smart meters are being implemented to help measure usage and collect payments. His company offers an alternative to cameras on every street corner in London or tolls such as the San Francisco Bay Area’s electronic collection system FastTrak, used on bridges.

Skymeter’s patented GPS prototype has been tested by Cisco Systems Korea and California’s Department of Transportation, he said. The financial grade device is accurate enough to be used for financial transactions. It doesn’t have positioning mistakes or “urban canyon” issues, where streets that cut through dense blocks of structures can cause problems with a GPS signal.

Skymeter has been funded with $4 million to date from institutional investors and the Investment Accelerator Fund, an early stage seed fund managed by the Ontario Centres for Excellence.

Following the Cleantech Group’s Cleantech Forum XXIII - Boston this week, Skymeter expects to close a $1 million round, said Hassan, who is also presenting at the conference.

Skymeter is currently seeking $7 million to be able to deliver its product to integrators. The pre-revenue company’s potential customers are integrators, such as IBM and Siemens, which are looking to sell the metering systems to municipalities or states that own the infrastructure. Hassan said Skymeter has signed non-disclosure agreements with seven of 10 of the biggest customers in the industry.

Skymeter would sell its product as well as the financial data feed to the integrator for a monthly fee, similar to Mastercard's or Visa’s models.

He said Europe has taken the lead in advancing such systems, specifically in Germany, followed by Singapore, with the United States trailing behind (see Smart meters revolutionize transport in Europe). Hassan said his company has a $2 billion global market opportunity next year alone.

Germany has already launched a $2.5 billion smart metering system for all trucks, but because of some of the GPS mistakes, a FaskTrak-type hardware had to be installed at intersections. Hassan said Germany’s integrator Toll Collect is consequently looking to upgrade to a more efficient 700,000-truck system that can handle $5 billion in transactions a year.

Singapore has put out a request for proposal to put GPS systems in 500,000 cars to alleviate traffic problems. Companies including IBM and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are expected to be bidders.  

In Slovakia, Sanef won a bid to install about systems in every truck in the country, or about 100,000 trucks.

France is planning to install an eco-royalty or levy on all trucks.

“They don’t want to use the word 'tax,'” he said.

Trucks would pay per kilometer to drive on French highways, with a fee to be calculated with an in-truck, GPS-based, smart meter. Companies include Siemens, Sanef, IBM, and Spanish integrator Telvent are expected to bid on that contract.

In the United States, he said, there’s currently a $135 billion shortfall to maintain the road system. If drivers were charged a road usage fee instead of higher taxes, Hassan said it would do “wonderful things to traffic,” not to mention greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2008, Milan launched an eco-pass system where drivers were charged to come into the downtown area, and emissions dropped 15 percent.

Hassan said there has been a flurry of concern around reducing emissions by 2020 (see California adopts nation's strictest emissions regulations and Europe may need more cuts in transport emissions).

“We don’t need to wait until 2020. Nobody has to buy a new car. Rather than paying taxes when you use the road, we’ll charge you when you use the road,” he said.

Skymeter is one of 16 potential new investment opportunities the Cleantech Group added to its innovation pipeline this week, available exclusively to members of its Cleantech Network. Members can click here to search the database.

Interested in emerging cleantech innovations? Here are two new companies added to the Cleantech Group's database this week also looking for funding:

• Toronto-based engineering company Vicicog is seeking $700,000 to fund the first phase of its plan to commercialize a transmission technology for the automotive and wind power industries. The company says the technology reduced fuel consumption in vehicles by at least 15 percent and improves wind turbine reliability and energy production by 10 percent.
• Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based WindStream Technologies is developing what it says are highly efficient, small scale wind devices for urban settings. The company is raising $1.5 million in funding to further develop its line of products and bring them to market.

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