PACE gains Eberspächer as a powerful partner for further growth

Together with PACE Telematics, the automotive supplier Eberspächer wants to develop new, cloud-based mobility concepts. The company based in Esslingen, Germany, acquire over 20 percent of the startup’s shares in the course of a capital increase. With Eberspächer, PACE gains a substantial strategic partner to advance the development of its big data and IoT business.

The automotive supplier Eberspächer–based in Esslingen, Germany–becomes a share holder of the startup PACE Telematics, founded in 2015 and based in Karlsruhe, Germany. Over the last months, PACE has already been demonstrating the potential of their manufacturer-independent cloud technology based on automotive data: collaborations with renowned partners like SAP, ABT Sportsline and DEKRA were made public. 

In cooperation with Eberspächer, the startup can now tap into further, new business potentials. The three PACE co-founders Dr. Martin Kern, Robin Schönbeck and Philip Blatter stay co-shareholders and managing directors.

Dr. Martin Kern: “We are very pleased about being able to gain a strong partner as a shareholder in Eberspächer. We’re expecting many synergies, in particular for further development of our B2B business. Similar to Eberspächer, we cooperate as a neutral partner with automobile manufacturers and the free aftermarket.”

PACE as partner for connectivity and the Internet of Things

Besides the connected-car retrofit solution PACE Link, PACE meanwhile also offers a number of microservices concerning automotive data and connectivity, which can be licensed as software modules based on the PACE big-data cloud. With this technology, the PACE IoT experts will now enable Eberspächer to connect their own products–like for example auxiliary heating and air conditioning systems–with each other and with other car components. This creates completely new value-added services for automotive workshops, fleet operators and drivers themselves.

“We’re convinced that data-based services are a central element of the mobility of tomorrow,” Heinrich Baumann, managing partner of Eberspächer, explains the investment. “Moreover, the large Internet-of-Things expertise of the startup opens up new possibilities for our products,” adds Baumann.