Business operations and workforce change under the Wirelane roof. The new owner is now planning two product lines for e-cars: charging stations and street lights.
The Munich-based charging station developer Wirelane rescues the battered charging station startup Elumninocity from insolvency proceedings. In an asset deal, Wirelane has taken over the business operations, all 13 employees and the two managing directors Sebastian Jagsch and Michael Schwarz.
Eluminocity filed a petition for bankruptcy in self-administration at the Insolvency Court in Munich last November following a lack of interim financing. On January 1, then a regular insolvency proceedings were opened. The insolvency administrator was Max Liebig. He had previously accompanied Jagsch and Schwarz as trustee.
The shareholders of Eluminocity GmbH include the lighting manufacturer Trilux and the RWE subsidiary Innogy. They had joined the startup at 17.5 percent each in November 2017 and together had invested six million euros, of which two million were convertible loans. The startup was thus worth a good eleven million euros. Wirelane boss Constantin Schwaab does not want to talk about the start-up agreement on the start-up agreement.
The Eluminocity GmbH will go through the insolvency proceedings and then expected to be wound up, so Schwaab. Whether the brand disappears completely, is not yet decided. Eluminocity develops LED street lighting with charging function and charging modules for e-cars that can be mounted on street lights (similar to Ubitricity) and thus retrofit them to charging stations.
The startup worked together with BMW, Infineon and Intel for this purpose. The lantern development will be continued by Wirelane, so Schwaab. As a producer, the automotive supplier Hörmann Automotive stands behind the Eluminocity hardware.
By purchasing an existing production, Wirelane secures a time advantage, because the production of its own charging stations “Wirelane W1” is scheduled to start only in the middle of this year. Wirelane continues ongoing pilot projects of the acquisition in Europe and Asia, but sets in the US, but says Schwaab: “In total, over 1,000 installations were made. The number of cities is beyond the scope. ”
Wirelane develops charging stations for electric cars and management software for the station operators. The latter are now being used at 7,000 charging points, says the CEO. The startup had collected millions in mid-November. The charging infrastructure market shares with other start-up companies, including the US provider Chargepoint and the Chinese XCharge.
Also published on Medium.