Easelink Pursues an EV Charging Standard With EIC Accelerator Aid

Easelink wants its charging interface to become an automotive standard. The Graz company has run Matrix Charging in taxis, brought carmakers into a standardisation group and signed suppliers to prepare production. On 19 October 2026 it named Luxshare as its licensee for China, as reported by electrive and brutkasten. Both reports speak of future vehicle platforms; neither names a production car.

The October 2024 selection list names Easelink's MXI project for blended finance. CORDIS records a grant of €2,499,999 for a project that runs until 30 April 2027. Six months before that date, Easelink has partners and demonstrations, but not yet the finished product generation the grant pays for.

New shares in September 2026, figures still closed

The EVI register publication and Easelink's imprint give the same legal entity and Graz address, with Stockinger as sole managing director since 2016. The register shows two recent steps. On 3 September 2026 Easelink filed its accounts for 2025, according to the Firmenbuch document list. On 26 September 2026 the court entered changes to the shareholders, the share capital and personnel entries, backed by a new version of the articles of association, shareholder meeting minutes and a subscription declaration (Übernahmserklärung).

A subscription declaration is how a shareholder takes up new shares in an Austrian GmbH, so the September entry records a capital increase. Who subscribed and for how much is not public: Easelink has announced no round in 2026, and its tenth-anniversary statement from the same month mentions none.

The accounts themselves are paid documents and were not obtained, so turnover, losses, debt and current headcount are open. The last staff figure is about 40 employees across Austria and China, given in VERBUND's October 2024 investment release and Easelink's own announcement. Without numbers since then, the company counts as active, with its growth unclear.

A physical contact underneath the car

Matrix Charging joins two pieces of equipment: a connector under the vehicle and a pad on the parking space. When the car stops over the pad, the connector lowers and makes electrical contact, and the driver never handles a cable. Easelink's product material and EnBW's account of its investment describe the same mechanism.

The connection is conductive: power flows through a physical contact, while inductive charging sends it across an air gap. Either way, both the car and the parking space need matching hardware. That is why suppliers and carmakers matter more to Easelink than any single charging site: a taxi stand works only with taxis that were converted for it.

Easelink presented its results at the 2026 Vienna Motor Symposium: charging patterns from the taxi fleet, laboratory efficiency measurements and bidirectional charging sessions. CORDIS lists the paper as an MXI result. Its authors work for Easelink, and no outside test of the efficiency figures has been published.

Taxi charging predates MXI

The EIC project did not start from a concept. Wien Energie reported in September 2023 that the first equipped taxi stands were running: eight stands and 56 vehicles in Vienna, two stands and ten vehicles in Graz, using Volkswagen ID.4 and Hyundai Ioniq 5 taxis. A month earlier, electrive had reported a plan for 50 taxis in Vienna. How many of these taxis still charge this way today is not public.

MXI is building a B-sample, not a finished rollout

MXI stands for Matrix Charging Interface Integrating EVs into a Smart Energy System. CORDIS places it in the EIC Accelerator Open 2024 call (HORIZON-EIC-2024-ACCELERATOR-02), signed on 4 June 2025, with no total project cost published.

The first periodic report, covering May 2025 to April 2026, sets the engineering goal: bring the connector, ground pad and wallbox to a B-sample generation and prepare industrialisation. It reports a refined architecture, new hardware and a reworked software workflow. The report is Easelink's own account; no acceptance test of the B-sample is public yet.

1. Automated conductive connectionDemonstratedTaxi operation documented by Wien Energie and electrive since 2023, before MXI started.
2. B-sample product generationIn developmentThe periodic report describes engineering progress; no completed B-sample qualification is public.
3. Preparation for industrialisationProgress visibleSEG Automotive and Luxshare signed licences; no production volumes are public.
4. Smart energy and bidirectional integrationResearch stageConference paper and Nissan's SUITE project; no commercial grid service yet.
5. Cross-brand standardisationConsortium formedAudi, Nissan and Voyah joined an interest group in November 2025; no standard has been adopted.
6. Final delivery by April 2027Too earlyThe project is still running.

The project is too early to judge as delivered or missed. What it has shown so far is credit for interim engineering, not proof that the product generation will be finished on time.

The €11.5 million is an announcement, not a payment record

Easelink announced €11.5 million of EIC funding on 21 February 2025, without the split between grant and equity. The EIC Fund lists Easelink among its portfolio companies, without an amount or date. With a €2,499,999 grant, the equity part would be about €9 million if the full package is paid, but neither the instrument nor its terms are public.

The private rounds are better documented. The €8.3 million Series A of January 2022 was led by SET Ventures, with EnBW New Ventures, Smartworks and Hermann Hauser's investment company; Handelsblatt reported the round. VERBUND X Ventures added €1.5 million in October 2024, a week after the EIC cut-off, as Startbase also reported.

Licences signed, production still ahead

Audi, Nissan, Voyah and Easelink founded the Matrix Charging Interest Group on 27 November 2025 to harmonise the interface, according to its founding release and SET Ventures. Three carmakers at the table is progress for a standard; it is not yet a standard.

The 2026 deals move the technology closer to production. On 24 July 2026 SEG Automotive took a technology licence, said it is preparing Matrix Charging for its product range and will work with Easelink on first carmaker series projects; brutkasten covered the agreement. Luxshare followed as licensee for China in October. None of the announcements names a vehicle, a volume, licence income or a launch date.

On the energy side, Easelink supplies Matrix Charging to Project SUITE, a £10 million UK government-backed research project led by Nissan Technical Centre Europe on automated bidirectional AC charging, as electrive also reported. Easelink's share of that budget is not public.

Europe's interest: parked batteries that help the grid

The Commission's July 2025 battery-data guidance explains how the revised Renewable Energy Directive supports smart and bidirectional charging, and its grid and storage planning guidance names bidirectional charging as a way to absorb renewable power. A car can only help the grid while it is connected, and Easelink's pitch is to connect every parked car without a cable.

For Europe the licensing model cuts both ways. The engineering and the patents sit in Graz. Of the three carmakers in the interest group, only Audi is European: Nissan is Japanese and Voyah Chinese, and one of the two licensees, Luxshare, is Chinese as well.

Partners in place, product still to come