The M1, an overhead rail-mounted robot that charges up to 10 vehicles per unit without human intervention, enters pilot deployment now and rolls out at scale in 2027, backed by Scania Invest and Capricorn Partners.

There is a quiet irony at the heart of the robotaxi industry. The vehicles driving themselves to pick up passengers still need a human being to plug them in at the depot. Crijn Bouman has been trying to fix that since 2019. On Wednesday, his company Rocsys took its most significant step yet.

The Dutch startup announced the Rocsys M1, which it describes as the world’s first hands-free charging system capable of serving multiple bays in robotaxi depot operations, and a $13 million Series A extension to fund its rollout.

The round was led by Capricorn Partners, with participation from Scania Invest, Forward.One, SEB Greentech Venture Capital, and Graduate Ventures. Total capital raised since founding now stands at $56 million.

The M1 uses an overhead rail-mounted robotic arm, guided by AI-based computer vision and Rocsys’s patented soft robotics technology, to identify parked vehicles, manoeuvre to the charging port, and connect the plug autonomously.

A single M1 unit can serve up to 10 bays by sliding along the overhead rail. The system works with any EV model, any charger brand, and any connector type, meaning fleet operators do not need to retrofit vehicles or commit to a single charging supplier. Ground- and roof-mounted configurations are available to integrate with different depot layouts.

The company says the system achieves a plug-in success rate above 99.9% in live deployments, trained on more than six years of real-world operational data from its earlier port and logistics deployments.

In a 50-bay depot, Rocsys projects the M1 can achieve up to 75% higher operational efficiency from existing staff, allowing the same people to oversee charging rather than perform it, and generate up to $1.7 million in annual savings.

Rocsys is solving for a problem that becomes more acute with every additional robotaxi put on the road.

Waymo, the furthest-ahead commercial robotaxi operator, now operates roughly 500,000 paid rides per week across 10 US cities with a fleet of 3,000 vehicles. Each of those vehicles needs to be charged multiple times daily at depot facilities, and the charging process, a human worker plugging and unplugging cables dozens of times per shift, is both labour-intensive and, at scale, a genuine operational bottleneck.

Uber has explicitly acknowledged the scope of the challenge, committing more than $100 million specifically to charging infrastructure as part of its autonomous vehicle strategy.

In Europe, the commercialisation of robotaxi operations is accelerating. Verne launched what it called Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb in April 2026, partnering with Pony.ai and Uber.

Motional relaunched in Las Vegas with Uber’s backing. Waymo is targeting a fully driverless London service in Q4 2026. As these fleets scale from dozens to hundreds to thousands of vehicles, the depot infrastructure problem, which has historically received far less attention than the autonomous driving technology itself, moves from a logistical inconvenience to a hard constraint on growth.

“Autonomous vehicles are growing rapidly, and infrastructure must keep pace,” Bouman said.

“Without hands-free operations, autonomy stops at the depot. This is the missing link for robotaxi operators to move from pilots to global deployment.”

The company has validated the M1 with what it describes as ‘a major robotaxi deal,’ though the operator has not been named.

The system is in pilot deployment now, with large-scale rollout across thousands of bays in North America and Europe planned for 2027.

The architecture and the market

The multi-bay approach is the M1’s defining architectural choice. Most robotic charging solutions either dedicate one robot per parking bay, expensive and space-consuming, or require vehicles to stop at a fixed charging point.

Rocsys’s overhead rail architecture means a single unit serves a row of bays sequentially, preserving depot floor space and allowing parallel operations such as interior cleaning and inspection to proceed while vehicles charge.

This is not a theoretical design preference; it directly affects depot economics at the scale robotaxi operators are planning for.

The M1 is the first product in what Rocsys describes as a broader depot autonomy platform that will eventually encompass automated interior cleaning and inspection, extending the hands-free principle beyond the charging cable to every operational task currently requiring a human to touch the vehicle between rides.

The global robotaxi market is projected to reach $45.7 billion by 2030, according to MarketsandMarkets. Whether Rocsys can establish the M1 as the standard charging infrastructure layer for that market, ahead of comparable systems being developed by VW, Hyundai, and others, will be determined by the 2027 rollout and the customer names it can announce alongside it.