Freiburg Anyone who buys an induction charger for their smartphone will never again have to untangle cables, fumble small plugs into their device and no longer stumble over the charging connection. Johannes Mayer, CFO of Wiferion, is convinced: “The comfort argument counts even more when loading factory transporters, forklifts or robots”.
If forklifts only have to stand in their place and are loaded automatically, this is less dangerous and saves time and money. Autonomous driving systems could charge themselves, no employee would have to stand by just to plug in the charging cable.
The 36-year-old physicist Mayer wants to set a new industrial standard for induction charging stations with Wiferion – a big goal even for use in factories. But Mayer and his partners also want to offer their system for electric cars. The competition in this market is even tougher.
Wireless power transmission via electromagnetic induction is no longer considered proverbial rocket science – Nikola Tesla discovered the phenomenon more than 120 years ago. With inductive charging, a magnetic field is generated in a charging station lying on the floor. The battery is supplied with power via the magnetic field via a coil on the underside of the vehicle.
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But far too much of the transmitted energy was lost for a long time. Wiferion’s unique selling proposition are technologies that allow the electricity to reach the vehicle battery with only minor losses. The company has had this protected by entire patent families. “We have an efficiency of 93 percent across the entire system. Nobody else can do that,” emphasizes Mayer. The system has been in pre-development for ten years – from the power electronics to the control circuit, the control of the magnetic field, the coil geometry and the physical simulation.
“It takes at least three years for the competition, including from China, to get as far as we are today,” emphasizes Mayer. “Our software with 100,000 lines of code is not that easy to copy.” The European patent attorney Stefan Mayrhofer, who accompanied the proceedings and is involved in Wiferion as a “business angel”, is also convinced of this.
The CFO and founder of Wiferion also wants to offer his company’s charging systems for cars in the medium term.
(Photo: Wiferion)
The founders Johannes Mayer, Florian Reiners, Benriah Goeldi and Johannes Tritschler used to work at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. The smaller version of their inductive charging system costs between 1000 and 2000 euros. They have sold 5000 of them so far, the stations are located in six car factories, including one of the sports car manufacturer Lotus.
Wiferion wants to double sales this year
“Soon, a large German car manufacturer will equip a factory with 350 of our systems,” says Mayer. The systems should become essential components of a car factory of the future, which the customer wants to present himself. Mayer is therefore not yet allowed to reveal the name of the customer.
The Freiburg-based company has been selling its charging systems since 2018, and in 2021 they had sales of 5.4 million euros. “We will more than double sales this year,” predicts CFO Mayer. As of 2024, Wiferion plans to turn a profit.
As a start-up, Wiferion initially focused on industrial customers, explains Mayer. Resources are limited, factories offer a controlled environment and the systems pay off more quickly for commercial customers. In the niche, Wiferion collects important experience for later entry into the car market.
Technically, the systems are also suitable for cars. It will be really exciting for the company if wireless charging technology also becomes established for electric cars in a few years. Here, Wiferion could scale up the business massively, creating a huge mass market.
According to calculations by Siemens, the market in Europe and North America alone will grow to two billion dollars by 2028. Wiferion’s competition is correspondingly large here: After the group’s internal efforts with inductive charging had not progressed quickly enough, Siemens invested 25 million dollars in the US start-up Witricity at the beginning of June.
The Americans are Wiferion’s toughest competitor. Witricity has put together a huge bundle of patents and licenses and vehemently defends them. In order to prevent expensive legal disputes with US patent attorneys, many corporations enter into license agreements with Witricity instead of developing their own systems.
Mahle and Siemens rely on Witricity technology
The large German automotive supplier Mahle has also secured access to Witricity’s technology via a license. A few days ago, Mahle and Siemens announced their intention to jointly develop wireless charging systems for electric vehicles based on Witricity technology. “The combined experience of both companies gives us a clear advantage over the competition,” said Mahle developer Harald Straky with conviction.
The devices are charged via Wiferion technology. To do this, employees only have to park them over the loading area.
(Photo: Wiferion)
The Americans are also successful outside of Germany: Toyota, Nissan and Aptiv (formerly: Delphi) also already have Witricity licenses. With its own high level of efficiency, Wiferion sees itself technologically clearly ahead of its powerful competitor, who, unlike the Freiburg-based company, has not yet sold its systems in large numbers.
“Wiferion’s technology is absolutely convincing,” says Nejila Parspour, Director at the Institute for Electrical Energy Conversion (IEW) at the University of Stuttgart. “But the best technology doesn’t always prevail,” she points out.
However, Mayer also considers it an advantage not to be involved in larger corporate structures. Wiferion will probably not make the leap into big business with charging electric cars without major partners. But the founders want to remain independent of the group for as long as possible.
Bosch is reluctant to use inductive charging
Because always having to convince all hierarchies of an idea is inefficient. Mayer’s father worked in advance development at Bosch, which was out of the question for Mayer. The doubters seem to have the upper hand at Bosch when it comes to inductive charging: “We are monitoring the market, but are not currently involved in projects in this area,” says a Bosch spokeswoman.
Reasons for the reluctance in automotive applications are the additional costs of introducing a parallel system to the current cable standard. The company also shies away from the longer loading times. Competitors such as Continental or Schaeffler therefore rely on conductive processes in which a robot creates the plug connection under the car.
The system is more efficient in that almost no electricity is wasted during the charging process. However, critics such as the Stuttgart professor Parspour fear high maintenance costs, as well as problems caused by dirt and moisture.
However, the different approaches also show that many big players believe in the future of automated charging because it makes electric cars more attractive for private customers and cheaper for commercial operators.
The Scandinavian venture capital fund Nordic Alpha Partners and High-Tech Gründerfonds, among others, are involved in the Freiburg start-up with over 50 employees. 15 million euros have flowed into the company so far. After the financing, the proportion of founders is less than 50 percent.
More: Siemens is investing in inductive charging through its stake in Witricity.