WiTricity is a trailblazer in the EV charging world which develops wireless charging technology and recently received $63 million in its last funding round. Alex Gruzen, CEO and board member of WiTricity, joined Cheddar News to discuss the company's wireless chargers.

WiTricity is a trailblazer in the EV charging world which develops wireless charging technology and recently received $63 million in its last funding round. Alex Gruzen, CEO and board member of WiTricity, joined Cheddar News to discuss the company's wireless chargers. “It becomes like having an infinite range car,” he said.

WiTricity Lets You Charge Your EV Wirelesly 

now it's the latest installment of our road ahead E. V series electricity bills itself as a Trailblazer and wireless charging for electric vehicles. It recently closed the $63 million funding round. The company develops technology that allows electric vehicles to charge with no cords or cables. Here's a look at how it works. This is an ordinary 2018 Tesla Model three but you're about to see it do something that is quite extraordinary. Isn't that amazing? Wait, what you didn't see anything amazing. That is why Tress cities wireless charging solution. So what you're seeing here is this Tesla is charging wirelessly just as fast as the plug but with no cords, no cables, no hassle and electricity. Ceo Alex Cruisin spoke earlier this week with cheddar anchor, Shannon linear and share more details about what his company offers through the E. V. Space and how its technology differs from typical wired chargers. Take a listen. We invented the technology that lets you just park your car over a pad and have it charge. So just think about that. You just drive your car, you park it, you just walk away and you always come back to a fully charged car. Every technology that could go wireless and history sort has, right? And once you go wireless you don't go back and the last one we're stuck with is the charging cable. Right? And so electricity invented technology that lets you eliminate what's that last cable in our lives, which is the power but we do it just as efficiently and just as fast as if you had plugged in. You know, you think about it today's Evie buyers are for the most part early adopters and we want to welcome in sort of the whole next wave of buyers and so, you know, I think charging is sort of the one thing that people are have anxiety about, but if you have wireless charging, you just sort of park your car and walk away and you never have to think about it. So it becomes like having an infinite range car, right? If you just drive it park and drive it park and never have to think about charging, it's sort of perfect. Now, what about the timing, does it take longer to charge or is the same amount of time as if you were wired? Now, that's what's really important about what electricity is developed right, is that we charge just as fast and just as efficiently as if he had plugged in and in fact we've been working with all the automakers for about 10 years to create a global standard and these vehicles with this, you know, wireless charging technology are just starting to roll out for example, Hyundai just launched their new genesis sort of premium E V, the G V 60 in south Korea with our wireless charging built in right from the factory, wow, that's great that so many people are trying to adopt it and we'll talk a little bit more about that later. But I also want to talk about how this wireless technology doesn't really open up the possibility for dynamic charging and charging while driving, which I'm really interested in. Why not just put solar panels on top of the car and let the sun charge you while you're driving. Well, we need a little bit more power electricity brings to the table. It's an interesting question you ask, right, is the idea of like what beyond just sort of parking and charging. What can you do with electricity is technology. So one application really is this idea of dynamic charging. You know, I don't think we're really going to rip up miles and miles of highways anytime soon. But it's super useful when you think about taxis and a taxi queue at an airport or train station. And another extension of our technology that we're working really hard on and we'll we'll deploy the next few years is wireless vehicle to grid. So you could actually send power both directions both to sort of power your house or make money off the power stored in your battery in your car as well as charge it and you know, without having to plug in without having to worry about it. It's just available. Mm And you mentioned that infrastructure. So I do have to ask you about the inflation reduction because it's perhaps, you know, the most significant legislation to really accelerate that transportation electrification and the US history. So, you know, how will your company be impacted by the extension of the federal credits that they're providing up until 2032? Well, I think it's just great to boost the tv business as a whole tv industry and the adoption of the VSO more E. V. S is good for electricity. Um, but also the credit specifically to to fund public infrastructure is important as well as, you know, the earlier infrastructure bill, partial credits to installing a charger at home. So, you know, I think it's just a boost the U. S. Adoption rate of EVs is lower than the rest of the world. In fact, electricity is a global company and we have active customers in Asia. You know, we've launched multiple automakers now in ASia, both south Korea and in china europe is going fast. And so it's exciting to see the U. S. Government get behind supporting the industry here in the US and you mentioned earlier that you'll be working with automakers like Honda, Honda Nissan, some big names in the auto industry GM as well. So you're testing these prototypes with them for wireless charging. So what have you learned so far by doing these tests and will you continue to work with them in the future? Well, we spent 10 years getting all of the automakers aligned around a global common standard. I mean that took a long time in cables and uh, and now we've got it for wireless as well. So any charger at home or public charger will work with any vehicle that launches with wireless charging. So, those partnerships are really important. The standard was really the starting point And it was ratified by the industry in 2020 and so now we're starting to see the cars coming to market with factory installed, but we are also enabling fleets with upgrades where we can add wireless charging to a car afterwards. Now, back in August, I know you guys announced some pretty exciting funding of around $63 million, what would that funding be used for? Well, it's really the transition of sort of building this technology to making product that we can put into people's hands. So it's the shift to product for our company. In fact, this week at the Detroit auto show, it's really exciting for us. We'll be showing our first product in a booth at the show and also demonstrating on a vehicle on the show floor. So it's a big week for us. Thanks the ceo of electricity, Alex cruisin and of course cheddar anchor, Shannon linear