Daze: Six Years After Its EIC Accelerator Grant, No Robot Charger

Charging an electric car at home still means a cable: pull it out, plug it in, unplug it, coil it up. DazeTechnology, a Bergamo start-up trading as Daze, set out to remove that step with DazePlug, a robot on the garage floor that finds a connector under the parked car and plugs itself in. In the European Innovation Council's 7 October 2020 cut-off it was selected for blended finance, grant plus equity, according to the Commission's list of EIC Accelerator pilot winners, which names Dazetechnology Srl as the only company in the project. The grant was €2.5 million towards a €3,979,375 project, according to CORDIS.

Six years later Daze is a growing company, but not a robot company. It sells wallboxes, DC chargers, a hybrid solar inverter and home batteries, and DazePlug appears nowhere in its product range. The robot reached a Maserati prototype and then went quiet.

What Daze Sells Today

Daze describes itself as "an Italian company specialized in the production of charging stations for electric vehicles and energy efficiency systems" on its company page. Its current range runs from home wallboxes (Dazebox One, Home, Share, Pro and C) to AC charging from 7.4 kW to 22 kW and DC charging from 50 kW to 400 kW, plus a solar line with the Helio hybrid inverter, storage batteries and an energy management system. In January 2026 Forbes Italia put about 40,000 Dazebox units installed across Italy and the team at 90, with a significant presence in Spain, France, Portugal and Switzerland; the profile mentions no automatic charging product. The company's blog was still publishing in October 2026.

Since early 2025 the wallbox has also been sold through Autotorino, a car dealer group with 70 sites in northern and central Italy, which began distributing the Dazebox in February 2025, according to EconomyUp.

By the plan's definition this is a pivot: the company is the same, but its lead product is not the technology the EIC funded. It is a soft one. Daze was already selling its first Dazebox in 2020, developed with FCA and Engie EPS, according to EconomyUp, and the robot was always the longer bet.

The Technology: A Robot That Plugs In From Below

DazePlug has two parts. An on-board unit under the car is wired directly to the battery. A robotic connector on the floor, linked to the mains, moves to that unit once the car is parked and makes a conductive, metal-to-metal connection, according to the CORDIS objective. Nobody has to handle a cable. The EU's results summary describes the final version as an app-controlled system with a wall box, an on-board plate and a robotic arm.

The hard part is not the robot but the car. The connector has to sit on the vehicle's underbody, so every model needs it designed in. Project coordinator Giacomo Zenoni told CORDIS that the biggest challenge was "working closely with car manufacturers to establish a new standard for under-vehicle connectors". Daze built its first DazePlug prototype in 2018, according to its own history.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The grant agreement was signed on 21 May 2021 and the project ran from 1 June 2021 to 31 May 2024. Its stated aim was to "take the technology to the industrial stage", working with a carmaker (Maserati), an energy utility (Engie) and a Tier-1 automotive supplier (Zollner), according to CORDIS.

The only periodic report on CORDIS is labelled period 2, June 2022 to May 2024, but its text describes the work of months 1 to 12. It says a patent application for the fine positioning system was filed at the end of August 2021 and that an already granted patent was extended to the United States; that Daze selected positioning systems with Zollner and designed its own "charging brain" circuit board; and that a second prototype was in progress. The patents could not be independently checked for this article.

The results summary published in October 2024 adds that prototypes were installed on several vehicles, including the Maserati, that Daze had a strategic agreement with "a major manufacturer" to take part in a request for quotation in January 2025, and that agreements with an automotive supplier "will see the system go into mass production". Neither the manufacturer nor the supplier is named, and no result of the tender has been announced since.

1. Working prototypes on carsDeliveredSeveral prototypes installed on different vehicles, per the CORDIS results summary.
2. Integration with MaseratiPrototype onlyA GranTurismo Folgore prototype charged by DazePlug; Maserati offers no such option.
3. Positioning system patentSelf-reportedApplication filed August 2021, per the company's CORDIS report.
4. Industrial stage, mass productionNot deliveredNo production start announced; DazePlug is not in Daze's product range in October 2026.
5. Work with Engie on DazePlugNot deliveredNo joint DazePlug work announced; Engie EPS is named only for the Dazebox.
6. Carmaker tender, January 2025Not announcedNo outcome published by Daze or any carmaker.
7. Final project reportingThinOne report, covering the first year in substance.

On paper the project did what an innovation grant can fairly be asked to do: it moved a prototype onto real cars and into talks with carmakers. What it promised beyond that, an industrial product, has not appeared nearly two and a half years after the project ended.

What Daze Has Achieved Since the Award

The growth came from the wallbox. Daze passed 10,000 wallboxes sold in Italy in September 2022, according to e-ricarica, and opened offices in Madrid in 2022 and Paris in 2023, according to its company page. The installed base is reported inconsistently: the company says it had installed more than 30,000 chargers by 2024, BeBeez reported "over 100,000 products installed" in February 2024, and Forbes Italia gave about 40,000 Dazebox units in January 2026.

In February 2022 Daze raised a €1.1 million seed round led by the Bergamo holding 035 Investimenti, with the EIC also taking part, according to Milano Finanza. Two years later it closed a €15 million Series A led by CDP Venture Capital, with the EIC Fund, a Simest-managed fund, Founders Future, Prana Ventures and 035 Investimenti, according to BeBeez and Forbes Italia. Mazars, which did due diligence for CDP, said the money would also develop "automatic charging". Both EconomyUp and Forbes Italia listed automatic "Comfort Charging" on the 2024 to 2025 roadmap. A parallel Mamacrowd crowdfunding campaign of up to €1.5 million was announced; how much it raised could not be verified.

The Money

Revenue went from €509,837 in 2020 to €5,096,862 in 2022, then fell to €4,161,695 in 2023 and €3,611,298 in 2024, according to filed accounts summarised by Quotidiano Net Top Aziende. The company was profitable in each of those first three years and lost €1.57 million in 2023 and €1.91 million in 2024. For 2025 Reportaziende reports revenue of €6.0 million and a net loss of €1.7 million, and Atoka also gives €6.0 million for 2025. Press figures differ slightly: BeBeez cited €4.3 million for 2023 from a Leanus report, and Milano Finanza cited €1.8 million for 2021. None of the register summaries consulted mentions insolvency proceedings.

Why Europe Should Care

Charging is the bottleneck of the EU's switch to electric cars. The Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, in force since 13 April 2024, requires at least 1.3 kW of public charging capacity for every battery electric car registered, according to the Commission. At home, the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive says recharging points "will have to enable smart charging" and, where appropriate, bidirectional charging, with national rules due by 29 May 2026, according to the Commission's energy department. Daze's smart wallboxes, load balancing and solar integration sit squarely in that market, and a European maker of charging hardware is part of keeping that supply chain in Europe. Automatic underbody charging is a different matter: it only matters if carmakers design the connector in, and none has publicly done so with Daze.

The Verdict

Daze has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.