WHILL raises $45 million in latest round of funding to fuel expansion

WHILL, the innovative company behind the next-generation Personal Electric Vehicles (PEVs), announced last week that it has completed procurement of $45 million dollars in funding, bringing its total funding to $80 million.

The company launched the Model Ci in the U.S. in January 2018 at the Consumer Electronics Show where it took home the Best of Innovation award in Accessibility Tech. In April of the same year, WHILL expanded sales into Canada, then into UK and Italy in July. This latest funding round will give WHILL the ability to greatly broaden its geographic footprint across other European countries through new partnerships, branches and hiring employees to support this global growth.

Beyond their global expansion efforts, this funding will offer flexibility to significantly expand WHILL’s innovative consumer product offerings while developing and expanding its MaaS (Mobility as a Service) side of the business. WHILL’s MaaS business will help to shape the future of autonomous personal mobility technologies and infrastructure as society prepares for the paradigm shift in the aging population by building the technology and infrastructure to efficiently and safely move people through large and crowded venues such as airports, sports venues, shopping centers, and public sidewalks.

WHILL will be addressing a major issue in the current PRM (Passengers with Reduced Mobility) service within airports, which is very labor intensive. Currently, airline passenger assistants are required to manually push PRMs in a wheelchair through different parts of the airport, which is highly inefficient. Passengers are then dependent on the assistant to take them where they want to go, including the restroom.