ELIX, a Canadian developer of wireless charging technology, has signed a strategic collaboration agreement with Chongqing Zongshen Power Machinery Co Ltd, a listed entity of the Zongshen Group. Zongshen Power also acted as the lead investor in ELIX’s $5 million A-Round of investment.
The investment will be used to finalize the development of the E8K chargers, and to strengthen the team, especially in the areas of engineering and supply chain. These hires will help to ensure that ELIX can meet its goals to ensure mass availability of its 8,000, 4,000 and 1,000 Watt wireless chargers by the end of 2017, in time to save Tesla 3 owners the hassle of plugging in their cars.
Manufacturing of the ELIX chargers will move to China.
“Zongshen bring unparalleled engineering and manufacturing experience to the company. Whereas ELIX has one of the best R&D teams in Canada, it would have taken years to scale up manufacturing, as we could not find that kind of manufacturing expertise in Canada. By teaming up with Zongshen, ELIX will be able to enter the market much faster,” said ELIX CEO Rosalie Hou.
Zongshen founder, Zuo Zongshen added, “We have grown Zongshen to a multi-billion dollar company based on carbon engines, but the Chinese market is making a rapid turn towards electrical transportation. By investing in electric vehicle (EV) technology Zongshen will stay at the forefront of the transportation industry. ELIX is the only safe way to charge large numbers of electrical vehicles in public spaces, so we expect China to adopt this technology on a massive scale.”
