C2C-NewCap is a Portugal-based deep-tech company developing next-generation supercapacitor solutions for the automotive, stationary, and electronics industries.

Their flagship product, GO-START, is a plug-and-play supercapacitor module that replaces lead-acid starter batteries in heavy trucks, cutting fuel costs by an estimated €2,000 a year and CO2 emissions by 11%.

Its key differentiator is a water-based electrolyte, which the company says makes it the only non-flammable supercapacitor of its kind on the market and allows for recharging in minutes rather than hours.

Founded in 2014 and born out of research at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), a leading Portuguese engineering school, the company set out to solve a problem that has quietly dogged the transport industry for decades: the lead-acid battery.

A mission built on taking the lead out of energy storage

C2C-NewCap’s ambitions go beyond trucks, with the same core supercapacitor technology adapted for stationary and electronics applications.

The mission behind all of it is to reduce the unnecessary use of toxic and critical raw materials like lead by scaling cutting-edge electrochemical solutions from labs to commercially available products.

What makes that possible is the water-based electrolyte at the core of the technology, engineered and manufactured entirely in-house rather than sourced from third parties.

The company’s nickel-carbon supercapacitors are made in Lisbon and tailored specifically for EU vehicles. It’s a seemingly small chemistry choice but with outsized consequences: safer performance, faster recharging, and a credible alternative to the lead-acid batteries that still dominate the industry.

From the same lab bench to a shared company

C2C-NewCap was co-founded by André Mão de Ferro and Rui Pedro Silva. Mão de Ferro, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, holds an MSc in Environmental Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico. He has become the company’s public face, representing C2C-NewCap at events like GITEX Europe and leading its outreach with the EIC and European media.

Silva, Co-Founder and Executive Manager, holds a Master’s in Materials Engineering, also from Instituto Superior Técnico. The company’s roots trace directly to his research: he was investigating energy storage in batteries and supercapacitors as a student when he and his colleagues realised their results were strong enough to build a company around. He has since focused on keeping the company’s core electrochemistry development in-house.

The transport industry’s default battery technology is decades old, environmentally costly, and increasingly out of step with what electrified, fast-moving fleets need. And these two engineers from the same Lisbon lab believe they’ve built a safer, cleaner replacement.

Turning prototype into a product

C2C-NewCap’s biggest challenge was proving the science could scale. The company grew out of Silva’s academic research at Instituto Superior Técnico, and its early years followed a familiar deep-tech path: promising lab results, then years of turning that into something manufacturable, certifiable, and sellable.

As Silva put it, the goal was to move from building one prototype a month to reaching production capacity of around a hundred units a year, a scale-up that required both new funding and new manufacturing know-how.

Funding for that transition came in stages, from an early pre-seed round backed by Caixa Capital and EIT InnoEnergy to a €5.4 million EIC Accelerator award in 2022 to bring its lead-replacement and tantalum-replacement supercapacitor products to market.

There’s also the market challenge that comes with the territory: convincing an industry built entirely around lead-acid batteries to switch to a fundamentally different chemistry.

From a Lisbon lab to Lviv's streets

C2C-NewCap’s timeline traces a steady climb from academic research to real-world deployment. The company was founded in 2014, growing out of Silva’s work on energy storage materials at Instituto Superior Técnico.

Early validation came two years later, when Caixa Capital and EIT InnoEnergy backed the company with a pre-seed investment to support technology development and commercialisation.

A bigger vote of confidence followed in 2022, when the European Innovation Council awarded C2C-NewCap €5.4 million to develop and bring to market two supercapacitor products: one to replace lead batteries in heavy vehicles, the other to replace tantalum capacitors. That funding helped move the company from single prototypes towards real production capacity.

In October 2025, the company took its technology entirely beyond the truck cab. In October 2025, C2C-NewCap completed the installation of four solar-powered backup systems in Lviv, Ukraine, keeping traffic lights running through power outages, in partnership with the Municipality of Cascais, InnoEnergy, and the Schréder Together Fund.

Each unit combines lithium-ion battery modules with custom solar panels designed to perform through Lviv’s harsh winters, and the project doubled as a community initiative, with local schoolchildren’s artwork decorating the installed units.

Part of the EIC Scaling Club

In October 2024, C2C-NewCap joined the EIC Scaling Club, one of 120+ European deep-tech scale-ups selected across six market sectors, with C2C-NewCap representing Batteries & Energy Storage. The announcement came at the Scale 100 Forum in Athens, alongside Europe’s most active VCs, corporates, and EIC representatives.

The Club connects top startups with leading investors and industry experts, offering fundraising support, leadership mentoring, and corporate matchmaking. As Mão de Ferro said:

“Getting into the EIC Scaling Club means so much to us—it’s a huge acknowledgement of everything we’ve achieved so far. Plus, it’s an awesome chance to take on the next scale-up challenges with more confidence, backed by an amazing network of experts.”

About the EIC Scaling Club

The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.

The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.

The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.

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