After many years of loyal service to our respective former companies, both of us co-founders were looking for a new and meaningful challenge. Loïc left Envision and set-off on an adventure of a lifetime: a bicycle journey all the way from Shanghai to Shangri-La in Yunnan province. Carrying everything with him on the bike, this journey would take three months and cover 6,000km through rain, wind and shine; blood, sweat and tears. This experience is a story in itself.
By the end, Loïc was mentally reinvigorated and ready for the next chapter. Determined to be there at both the beginning and end of the adventure, Mike flew to Yunnan and joined Loïc on the last few days of the journey. To keep our carbon footprints lower, we took a twelve-hour train journey back to Shanghai and consciously took this opportunity to plan what the company would do.
We asked ourselves a question: let’s say we are old men in the twilight of our lives looking back; what did we do that had meaningful and significant impact on quality of life on earth?
This forty-year time horizon gave us the liberty to think of all possibilities, unencumbered by the constraints of today’s technology or practice. We looked at everything we could think of: heating and insulating homes, food and farming, waste, AI, transport, health, politics and more.
Many of these discussions came back to their fundamental issues and none are bigger than the issue of energy and where it comes from. After some initial concept work and calculations, we tentatively concluded that there is an opportunity to build a low-cost energy storage product based around a flywheel. Over the next few months, through extensive research and analysis, we proved it to ourselves and committed that this kinetic battery was the perfect project to work on and Qnetic and born.
We are based in Shanghai, so the company starts here but our intentions are civilisation-scale, hence Qnetic is global. We have been blessed to be joined by a number of superbly qualified and experienced people who believe in the mission, and the Qnetic footprint is already in Singapore, Europe and USA.
Our mission is to provide low-cost, grid-scale energy storage to enable the full transition to renewables and the end of fossil fuels. If you love this mission and believe you can help, then please get in touch: connect@qnetic.energy.