That awesome wireless charger for electric bikes just hit a surprise hurdle

For the last few years, one of the coolest bits of e-bike tech I’ve seen didn’t involve more power, bigger batteries, or new motor designs. It involved getting rid of the charger cable altogether.

Last summer, I covered Dutch startup Tiler’s newly developed wireless charging tile that lets an e-bike charge directly through its kickstand. You roll the bike into place, lower the stand onto the tile, and the battery starts charging automatically via an integrated magnetic coil. There are no plugs to deal with, no dangling wires, and no forgetting to bring your charger to work.

It was a promising solution for both the laziest among us who just want to charge their bike without any bending over, as well as for commercial applications like bike sharing fleets parked in public spaces.

But now, according to reporting from BikeEurope, the company behind it has filed for bankruptcy.

Tiler’s technology traces back to a patent from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The idea was elegant: embed a transmitting coil in a floor-mounted tile and a receiving coil in the bike’s stand. Because the system didn’t require millimeter-perfect alignment, it felt practical and quickly gained significant interest in the market. Early versions focused on B2B applications like bike fleets and rental operators, markets where daily charging logistics can become a real headache.

The company’s first CE-certified product, Tiler Uno, launched for business customers after several years of development. But while the tech reportedly worked well, production costs were high and margins were thin. That limited adoption largely to select fleet operators.

Last year, Tiler unveiled a more consumer-friendly version called the Tiler Compact at Eurobike 2025. It was designed as a plug-and-play home solution aimed at higher-end and cargo e-bikes. More than 100 retailers in the Netherlands and Belgium reportedly placed pre-orders to carry the new wireless e-bike charger, and the company had ambitions of eventually building a broader “Tiler network” for wireless charging on the go.

Unfortunately, legacy financial issues appear to have caught up with the company. Loans taken out during earlier development stages of the more expensive-to-produce initial version, including government-backed loans, reportedly became impossible to restructure. According to reports, potential investors were hesitant to see fresh capital used primarily to service old debt rather than scale the business.

But there may still be good news on the horizon. Founder Olivier Coops has expressed optimism about a restart, and discussions with financiers and a trustee are ongoing. The stated goal is still to deliver pre-orders before the end of the year, despite the recent financial turmoil.

It’s a tough moment for a genuinely innovative idea. Wireless charging for e-bikes isn’t a necessity, but it’s the kind of friction-reducing convenience that can quietly reshape user experience – especially for fleet operators, cargo bike users, and daily commuters. Few people need wireless charging for their phones, but many still prefer it for the convenience of simply tossing their phone onto a charging pad or table. The same could be true for e-bikes, if the same action already used for parking – simply dropping the kickstand – could replace the act of fishing around for a cord and bending over to find a charging socket.

For now, though, one of the more promising charging innovations in the e-bike world finds itself waiting on a different kind of connection: financial rather than magnetic.