When Halifax’s Zen Electric said in March it had raised about $2.62 million from backers that included Nigerian utility giant North South Power, it was the latest in a series of high-profile announcements from an emerging East Coast innovation cluster — one centred on battery and electric vehicle technology.
For much of its history, the Atlantic Canadian startup ecosystem has been shaped by information technology stars like St. John’s-based Verafin and Fredericton’s Introhive. Now, companies like Zen and Potential Motors, a Fredericton team launching an electric off-roader, are gaining traction in the the world of batteries and EVs.
Halifax-based Glas Ocean is developing electric propulsion systems for boats, which is certainly an electric vehicle business, but the company is also very much a product of Atlantic Canada’s burgeoning oceantech ecosystem.
Glas Ocean highlights one of the key components of this developing cluster: research universities. Between them, the University of New Brunswick and Dalhousie University have ties to many of the most active new startups in the space.
Potential Motors was founded by a quartet of University of New Brunswick engineering students. Zen Electric’s battery technology is the result of breakthroughs by researcher Jeff Dahn and his staff at Dalhousie University, who are also collaborating with automaker Tesla and previously gave rise to Novonix Battery Testing Solutions, now owned by Australian cleantech unicorn Novonix Ltd. And Glas Ocean is helmed by Dalhousie University Adjunct Professor Sue Molloy, who also earned her own PhD in ocean engineering at the school.
Here’s a look at four startups we believe are emblematic of the new energy we’re seeing in batteries and electric vehicles:
Zen was originally founded by Ravindra Kempaiah to make electric bicycles under the name Zen Electric Bikes. More recently, the company has pivoted to focus on battery systems.
Kempaiah’s team estimates that their batteries will be able to last about four times longer than the roughly three-year lifespan of competing products thanks to innovations from Jeff Dahn’s Dalhousie lab.
The business was inspired by Kempaiah’s experiences growing up in India and seeing that buyers in that region are leery of electric vehicles. Specifically, they tend to have concerns about battery longevity, both in terms of how long a single charge lasts and the lifespan of the battery itself — two issues Zen's technology is designed to address.
In March, Zen raised $1.25 million from North South Power, with the Nigerian utility company looking to diversify its holdings into less geopolitically risky regions, like Canada. The deal came packaged with a $375,000 loan from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and another $1 million from an undisclosed backer.
"Our focus market is countries with hot climates where electric two-wheelers are in high demand,” said Kempaiah at the time. “Basically, we will build only the battery packs. And we will be working closely with the original equipment manufacturers to adapt our bikes to their vehicle architecture.”
Founded in 2017 by Dalhousie University ocean engineer Sue Molloy, Glas Ocean is developing technology to convert existing, fossil fuel-powered boats into electric or hybrid vessels.
In the summer of 2020, the company launched its first vessel off of Halifax’s Northwest Arm. Owned by Halifax tour company Ambassatours, the Alutasi was a diesel-electric hybrid and the first lithium-ion battery-powered boat to be approved by Transport Canada to carry more than 12 passengers.
Since then, Glas Ocean has won the Nova Scotia Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Excellence in Engineering, been named to the 2021 cohort of the Ocean Supercluster-backed Ocean Startup Challenge and was accepted into Invest Nova Scotia’s Accelerator program last December.
Molloy is a longtime advocate for electrifying the carbon-intensive maritime sector. She is the evaluation chair of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Discovery Grant Evaluation Group for Mechanical Engineering, as well as a former subcommittee co-chair for trade talks between Canada and China on the topic of renewable energy in the marine industry.
“I want to leave a better world behind for my kids, and one of my ways of going about it is by electrifying boats,” she said in a Nova Scotia government press release in April. “My goal is to reduce emissions and make boats' energy secure.”
Fredericton-based C-Therm Technologies, which sells a range of tools for testing materials’ thermal conductivity, announced in July it will expand its offerings with a suite of new products suitable for use in electric vehicle production.
The move comes after C-Therm’s initial entry into the EV market saw its profits rise 20 percent last year on the back of record sales. The company is currently growing at a rate that would see its top line gross double every two to three years.
“There’s been this massive mobilization of engineering resources to get EVs to market faster, to increase their range, their performance, their safety,” said CEO Adam Harris at the time. “And a lot of that comes back to the thermal aspects of the product. A lot of those issues are thermal-based.”
Originally dubbed Mathis Instruments, C-Therm was founded 15 years ago at the University of New Brunswick. Current CEO Adam Harris purchased the business in 2021 from its prior owner, Chuck Cartmill of Halifax’s LED Roadway Lighting.
Harris’s team also does substantial business with post-secondary institutions as customers, including schools like the University of Arizona, the University of Illinois and Toronto Metropolitan University. And the company’s buyers not just in the automotive world, but across a range of sectors, highlight the interconnectedness of the advanced materials and electric vehicle industries.
Potential Motors is the future manufacturer of the Adventure 1 — a small, overlanding RV powered by a pair of electric motors, with seating for four people and a starting price of US$136,600.
Founded in 2018 by a team of engineering students from the University of New Brunswick — Michael Barnhill, Nick Dowling, Isaac Barkhouse and Sam Poirier — Potential is also developing software to help control off-road EVs, which it dubs OROS. Electric vehicles rely on software to manage functions like modulating how much power is sent to the wheels, how the vehicle responds to steering input and the behaviour of adjustable suspension systems.
Poirier has previously said, that although the Adventure 1 will generate revenue, it is also meant to act as a proof of concept for possible OROS licensees.
“The goal is to be a craft vehicle maker, where we are producing low quantities as a showpiece for the technology that we're developing,” he said.
Last year, Potential raised US$3.2 million or about C$4.1 million at the time from investors that included Montreal- and Toronto-based Brightspark Ventures and Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures.
“We believe that there's an opportunity for a new segment of off-road vehicles to emerge, that’s not hindered by how off-road vehicles have always been built in the past,” said Poirier.
“Electric architecture can open up new ideas in terms of design … that I believe people in the off-road community will be really delighted by.”
