🔒Green transportation startup Electra Technologies sees future in emissions-tracking app

West Hartford-based green transportation startup Electra Technologies is Bermuda-bound.

The company, run by co-founders Kyle Bryan (28) and Amanda Dyas (26), is piloting its zero-emissions rideshare concept in the island’s capital city of Hamilton with two Tesla cars and a mobile app they developed, which tracks carbon emission offsets.

Bermuda will serve as a proving ground for the nascent company’s business model, which long term will likely depend more on its app-enabled emissions-tracking technology, than the rideshare service, the founders said.

“Right now we’re competitors with Uber and Lyft, but really this ride service is serving as a pilot,” Dyas said. “We’re not looking to do a ride service as a long game, we’re looking to build a software for operators like Uber and Lyft,” that allows them to track their fleets’ emissions.

West Hartford native Bryan met Dyas, a New Yorker, through friends in 2019. Later that year the two founded Electra Technologies as a zero-emissions rideshare company. They applied for a spot in the University of Connecticut’s Technology Incubation Program in Farmington, which provides office space and support for technology startups. They didn’t get accepted into the program, but left with valuable advice, they said.

“At that time we were really talking about the ride service, and not so much about technology and the software,” Bryan said. “They gave us a lot of advice, information and feedback, and as soon as we finished our meeting with them it was like, ‘back to the drawing board.’ “

The entrepreneurs also gained a slate of advisors from UConn, including Eric Jackson, associate research professor in UConn’s engineering school, and director of the Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center.

Meantime, earlier this year Electra participated in a Hartford accelerator program run by reSET, which counsels social-enterprise startups.

After completing some market research and talking to Jackson and other advisors about ideas they had, Bryan and Dyas decided the rideshare app’s software that tells users the amount of carbon emissions they saved by riding in an electric vehicle could be the company’s most valuable asset.

Pilot project

The green rideshare business could work, Dyas said, but Electra may find more success selling or licensing the carbon offset tracking technology to companies like Uber, Lyft and livery services, or other businesses that want to better track their carbon emissions in order to receive government tax credits that incentivize emissions reduction.

Under that model, Electra would collect a percentage of the tax credit savings.

That’s where the Bermuda project comes in. Bryan and Dyas are currently working with Bermuda’s Economic Development Department on a sustainability-focused smart city pilot in Hamilton, which will help analyze traffic patterns, carbon emissions and air quality indexes. As part of that project, the Bermuda government has approved Electra to test its technology via its smart ride service.

At the same time, the duo is working with the Connecticut Department of Transportation to get permits necessary to run a rideshare service locally. They expect to receive approvals before summer’s end.

Electra is still a pre-seed company raising funds from family and friends; the co-founders wouldn’t disclose how much they’ve raised so far. But the two said the app already has more than 1,000 downloads and users will be able to get their first ride once the rideshare service is up and running. Additionally, they said they’re in talks with a prospective undisclosed local investor with hospitality industry clients interested in partnering with the company.

For now, Bryan and Dyas are headed to Bermuda, where they expect to launch the pilot by the end of the month. As they embark on the island project, Dyas said she’s confident in the company’s expanded business model.

“It’s really to make sure that we can capture all of the different information we’re trying to collect using an electric vehicle, and then show the metrics of overall air quality savings, the consumption of gas and how that could go down perhaps by using electric infrastructure,” Dyas said. “There’s a lot of different things that differentiate us [from rideshare services].”