Tesla acquiring wireless charging developer Wiferion

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Tesla has plans to acquire Wiferion, a German wireless charging technology company. | Source: Wiferion, Tesla

Tesla has plans to acquire Wiferion, a source who wished to remain anonymous told The Robot Report. The source told The Robot Report that Tesla is interested in Wiferion’s R&D team and capabilities and that existing business at Wiferion will likely go on as usual.

Wiferion is a German-based company that offers wireless charging systems for autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs), autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), forklifts, and collaborative robots (cobots). It was founded in 2016 under the name Blue Inductive, which was changed to Wiferion in 2019.

The company was founded by four former researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. Its first product was the etaLINK 3000, a contactless inductive charger for industrial vehicles that works with any type of battery.

More recently, Wiferion released the etaLINK 1000, the latest and smallest edition of its line of robot charging systems, which is compact enough to be installed into a small AMR. Wiferion earlier in 2023 opened a North American subsidiary in Chicago. This new location was designed to help Wiferion shorten delivery times, enhance onsite services and support and provide consulting services for North American customers.

Gründerszene first reported on news of the acquisition on Tuesday. Documents were filed on June 12, according to the commercial register, that show the shareholders’ intentions (see on page 6 of the PDF) of selling their shares to Tesla International BV, the European subsidiary of the company.

Wiferion has primarily focused on making chargers for electric industrial vehicles, so its technology could be used in Tesla’s electric car and battery factories. Teslarati, the publisher of a Tesla-related news outlet, wrote a story a couple of months ago about Tesla teasing a wireless home charger during its recent Investor Day.

Tesla could also potentially use the technology in its Optimus robot.

Editor’s Note: Steve Crowe contributed to this story.