Torev Motors, a startup in Crystal City vying to improve the motors that power electric vehicles, has just crossed the $1 million funding threshold and is now trying to advance its technology by getting it in front of the world's leading automakers.
After initially raising about $350,000 from friends and family, the 2-year-old company recently closed a $650,000 pre-seed funding round led by BetterWay Ventures, a Charleston, South Carolina-based venture capital firm that funds green tech startups. Houston investment firm EcoSphere Ventures, Los Angeles-based Climate Avengers and Alexandria investment firm Intbox Ventures also participated in the pre-seed round.
The company is now in talks with several automakers about establishing pilot programs that its founders hope will lead to its hardware being tested out in passenger cars and, eventually, construction and military equipment, CEO Rory Brogan told me in a video interview.
"What our investors are most excited about is passenger automotive," Brogan said. "But we are very, very interested in other applications. I think we sometimes even call them 'less sexy' applications. Everyone wants to be in the next BMW or something, but we would be just as excited to be working with construction equipment and things like that. This is a huge market.".
Brogan and Chief Operating Officer Zak Doenmez founded the startup in 2022 while pursuing their MBA degrees at Georgetown University.
Most EV motors today traditionally have used a type of technology called a radial flux motor, which Doenmez said resembles an aluminum can. Torev's pancake-like axial flux motors, however, are smaller but can pack more power due to their design. These motors also require fewer rare earth materials to make and are cheaper to produce compared to radial flux motors.
Brogan, who previously worked in venture capital and has a bachelor's in electrical engineering from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said the design and lower production costs have piqued automakers' interest in Torev's motor. He added that several signed nondisclosure agreements with the startup about establishing paid pilot programs, though he declined to name which ones.
Axial flux motors are proving especially enticing to performance-based automakers, Doenmez said, pointing to Mercedes-Benz's July 2021 acquisition of Oxford, United Kingdom-based Yasa, an axial flux motor maker that now operates as a subsidiary of the German auto giant. Last year, BMW i Ventures, the venture capital arm of the BMW Group, co-led a $16.1 million investment into Munich, Germany-based DeepDrive, another producer of axial flux motors.
"You're seeing these major [manufacturers] start to look at this new type of technology for the first time for EVs because most of them don't really have a core competency in building electric motors. Their core competency is building an internal combustion motor," Doenmez said. "With the switch to electric vehicles, they're looking around for the next break in technology."
Brogan and Doenmez are Torev's only employees but they told me they hope to increase the company's headcount to about a dozen full-timers over the next year.
Still, the founders have ambitions beyond developing a more efficient EV motor. Most of their competitors are based overseas and it's no coincidence that they chose to headquarter their company in Greater Washington.
"We are literally in the backyard of the Pentagon and have the potential for massive, massive contracts with them," Doenmez said. "I actually see that as a competitive advantage of ours. In the motor world, almost none of our competitors are U.S.-based, and if you want to be working with the U.S. government, you have to be U.S.-based."
