TCS acquires a minority stake in start-up sun2wheel
1. March 2023TCS & sun2wheel Press Release March 1, 2023
Vernier, March 1, 2023. Switzerland’s largest mobility club is teaming up with sun2wheel and acquiring a 20% stake in the company. Through this collaboration, TCS intends to further strengthen its commitment in the field of electromobility and to be at the forefront of the further development of bidirectional charging and storage solutions with the Swiss market leader in this sector.
Today, Switzerland burns about 5 million tons of fossil fuels annually. By 2035, the demand for energy for mobility will shift to electricity to a large extent – thanks to the increasing electrification of road traffic. According to estimates by Swiss eMobility, the share of plug-in cars in new cars will be between 40% and 60% in 2025 and should be 91% to 99% in 2035. The Swiss passenger car fleet will thus consist of between 50-60% plug-in vehicles in 2035. This increasing electrification will result in significant energy savings thanks to 3-4 times better efficiency compared to the combustion engine. The consumption of imported fossil energy will thus fall sharply. Compared to 2019, around 10% more electricity will have to be produced by 2035, partly through the expansion of photovoltaics.
In addition to offering conventional monodirectional charging stations, TCS intends to exploit a forward-looking potential of electromobility through its minority stake in sun2wheel. The start-up, founded in December 2020, is pursuing the goal of establishing bidirectional charging as a standard and is developing intelligent charging and storage solutions for this purpose. Through such bidirectional charging stations, costs can be optimized by using the vehicles, instead of a permanently installed battery at home, as storage and thus optimizing the self-consumption of a photovoltaic system. The TCS wants to offer this technology to its electric driving members as a storage solution for electricity produced by photovoltaic systems. In addition, this turns the electric car into a power bank, so to speak, against future power shortages; the available flexibility in the form of control power can do stabilize the power grid to compensate for grid fluctuations.
By participating in sun2wheel, TCS wants to equip itself for the future, as Bernhard Bieri, Director Club emphasizes: “sun2wheel enables the intelligent control of charging stations with its innovative technology. In particular, we see great potential in the bidirectional area. This will allow e-car drivers to use their car battery to improve the self-consumption of their photovoltaic system (vehicle to home). In addition, this could create the possibility in the future for electric cars to contribute to grid stability (vehicle to grid). As the largest mobility club, we want to open up these possibilities to our members and have therefore taken a stake in sun2wheel.”
The solutions developed by sun2wheel already enable better utilization of self-produced solar energy and optimized demand-based load management. Typical users are homeowners, real estate companies and SMEs including their vehicle fleets. sun2wheel also has an exclusive right to sell bidirectional EVTEC charging stations in the B2C sector in Switzerland and, unlike its competitors, also offers monodirectional charging stations.