NX Technologies Wins €1.9 Million PERTE Grant for Inverters
A €1.9 million PERTE award sends NX Technologies after a part of the EV supply chain that rarely gets headlines: the inverter inside light electric vehicles.
NX Technologies, a specialist in electric-vehicle power electronics, has received a €1.9 million grant under Spain's PERTE programme to develop a series of inverters for light electric vehicles, with the R&D project running through 2029.
NX Technologies, a developer of power electronics for electric vehicles, has secured €1.9 million in public funding from Spain's PERTE programme to design a family of inverters aimed specifically at light electric vehicles. The research and development project is scheduled to run through 2029, according to electrive.
It is a modest sum by the standards of European industrial policy, and that is part of what makes it interesting. The money is not going into a cell plant or a cathode line. It is going into a component that sits between the battery and the motor, decides how efficiently the two talk to each other, and rarely appears in a press release about electrification.
What an inverter actually does in an electric vehicle
A battery stores direct current. An electric traction motor, in almost every modern vehicle architecture, wants alternating current. The inverter is the box that converts one into the other — and, just as importantly, modulates it, thousands of times a second, so the motor delivers the torque the driver is asking for. It also runs in reverse during regenerative braking, taking alternating current back from the motor and returning it to the pack as direct current.
Because everything the battery delivers passes through it, the inverter is one of the few components where a small efficiency gain translates directly into range. Losses there are dissipated as heat, which means they also drive the cooling requirement, which drives weight, which drives energy consumption again. On a passenger car with a large pack, engineers have room to absorb inefficiency. On a light electric vehicle, they do not.
Why light electric vehicles are their own engineering problem
"Light electric vehicle" is a broad label. It covers e-motorcycles and scooters, quadricycles, small urban delivery vehicles, and a range of industrial and utility machines. What these share is a set of constraints that pull in the opposite direction from automotive design: much smaller battery packs, tighter physical envelopes, far more aggressive cost ceilings, and duty cycles dominated by stop-start city use rather than motorway cruising.
The temptation in the industry has been to scale down automotive hardware. That tends to produce inverters that are over-specified, over-priced, and optimised for the wrong operating points — efficient at high continuous load, less so at the low-speed, high-frequency-transient conditions a delivery scooter sees all day. Purpose-built power electronics for this class is a genuinely underserved niche, and it is where a specialist without a legacy automotive product line has room to compete.
The commercial logic follows the vehicle volumes. Light electric vehicles have electrified faster than cars in much of the world because the economics are simpler: cheaper packs, shorter routes, lower purchase prices and, in fleet applications, a fuel-cost saving that shows up within a year. Every one of those vehicles needs an inverter.
How PERTE fits Spain's electric-vehicle industrial strategy
PERTE — Spain's strategic project framework for economic recovery and transformation — has become the main vehicle for channelling public money into the country's electric-vehicle supply chain. Spain is one of Europe's largest vehicle producers, and the political objective behind the programme has been consistent: keep the assembly base, and build the upstream content around it rather than importing it.
Most of the attention that programme has attracted has gone to the visible end of the chain — cell manufacturing, assembly plant conversions, charging infrastructure. Component-level R&D grants like this one are the quieter part of the same strategy. A country can host a gigafactory and still import every inverter, motor controller and DC-DC converter that goes into the vehicles it builds. Funding domestic power electronics development is an attempt to close that gap.
Component-level R&D grants like this one are the quieter part of the same strategy.
The 2029 end date matters for how the award should be read. This is a development programme, not a production subsidy. The grant buys engineering time, prototype hardware, validation and qualification work — the years of unglamorous effort between a circuit topology and a part a vehicle manufacturer will actually put on a bill of materials. Automotive-grade and industrial qualification cycles are long, and a timeline running to the back end of the decade is consistent with a company aiming at design wins in vehicles launching in the 2030s rather than products shipping next year.
What to watch as the project runs
Three things will tell you whether the money produced anything. The first is semiconductor choice. Power electronics performance in this class increasingly turns on whether a designer uses silicon, silicon carbide or gallium nitride switching devices — wide-bandgap materials allow higher switching frequencies, smaller magnetics and less waste heat, at a higher component cost. In a price-sensitive light-vehicle application, that trade-off is the whole design argument.
The second is integration. The direction of travel across the industry is toward combining the inverter, motor and gearbox into a single unit, and folding the DC-DC converter and on-board charger in alongside. For light vehicles, where packaging space is the binding constraint, integration is often worth more than raw efficiency.
The third is customers. A grant-funded component programme succeeds when a vehicle manufacturer designs the part in. Named platform partners — or their absence — will be the clearest signal before 2029 arrives.
The market backdrop
The announcement lands with public equity markets broadly flat. The S&P 500 tracker (NYSEARCA: SPY) finished at $767.18, down 0.08% on the day from a prior close of $767.81, with the Nasdaq 100 fund (NASDAQ: QQQ) at $741.10, effectively unchanged at -0.01%, and the Dow tracker (NYSEARCA: DIA) at $512.68, off 0.32%. Those are the most recent closing levels as of 20:00 GMT on 24 September 2026.
That calm surface sits over a difficult stretch for the electrification supply chain, where public-market appetite for pre-revenue component developers has thinned considerably. It is precisely that funding environment that gives a public R&D grant outsized importance for a company of this size: €1.9 million of non-dilutive money stretched across a multi-year programme is capital that does not have to be raised from investors currently disinclined to supply it.
NX Technologies is not a listed company, and no financial terms beyond the grant itself have been disclosed. What the award establishes is intent — Spain's, as much as the company's — to build a domestic capability in a part of the EV stack that has so far been largely bought in.
Key facts
- Grant amount: €1.9 million from Spain's PERTE programme
- Recipient: NX Technologies, an EV power electronics specialist
- Project scope and end date: A series of inverters for light electric vehicles; R&D runs through 2029
- Market backdrop (close, 24 Sep 2026, 20:00 GMT): SPY $767.18 (-0.08%); QQQ $741.10 (-0.01%); DIA $512.68 (-0.32%)
Frequently asked questions
What is NX Technologies developing with the grant?
NX Technologies, a specialist in electric-vehicle power electronics, is developing a series of inverters designed specifically for light electric vehicles. The work is funded by a €1.9 million grant from Spain's PERTE programme and is structured as a research and development project running through 2029, rather than as a subsidy for immediate production.
What does an inverter do in an electric vehicle?
An inverter converts the direct current stored in the battery into the alternating current an electric traction motor uses, and modulates it to control torque. It also works in reverse during regenerative braking, feeding current back into the pack. Because all propulsion energy passes through it, its efficiency directly affects vehicle range and cooling requirements.
What counts as a light electric vehicle?
The category spans electric motorcycles and scooters, quadricycles, small urban delivery vehicles and various utility and industrial machines. What they share is small battery packs, tight packaging space, low cost ceilings and stop-start urban duty cycles — constraints that make scaled-down passenger-car power electronics a poor fit.
What is Spain's PERTE programme?
PERTE is Spain's strategic project framework for economic recovery and transformation, and it has become the main channel for public funding into the country's electric-vehicle supply chain. Spain is a major European vehicle producer, and the programme aims to keep assembly onshore while building domestic upstream content rather than importing components.
Why does the 2029 timeline matter?
A multi-year end date signals a development programme rather than a near-term product launch. The grant funds engineering, prototyping, validation and qualification — the long gap between a working circuit design and a part a vehicle maker will commit to a bill of materials. It points at design wins in vehicles launching toward the 2030s.
Is NX Technologies publicly traded?
No. NX Technologies is not a listed company, and no financial details beyond the €1.9 million PERTE grant have been disclosed. For a private component developer of this size, non-dilutive public funding carries extra weight at a time when investor appetite for pre-revenue electrification suppliers has narrowed considerably.
