ACT EXPO: Kempower EV Chargers

Show Notes

Tune in today as we interview Kempower's CEO, Tomi Ristimäki, as we spotlight what their organization is bringing to the US market!

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Charging up your knowledge on all things EV

Jessie: 00:00

Honestly, you look through a lot of these charging systems, they're the exact same. This is a unique offering that offers the type of charging I think everybody

Josh: 00:08

Welcome back to Turn Down For What. We resume this week at the ACT Expo. Today, we are spotlighting our interview with Kem Power, a newer entry into the US EV market with an established presence in Europe. Like and subscribe for more content. Let's dive on in.

Jessie: 00:27

Welcome back to another episode of turn down for what. We are here with Tim Power and they're gonna kinda go over some of the details on their charging units and what they offer to everybody. Thank you for coming today.

Guest: 00:37

Yeah. Thanks.

Jessie: 00:38

What do you offer our listeners?

Guest: 00:40

I think it's today what what Kenpo does. We do basically a systematic approach, so we are not so interested how we how much power we have for 1 vehicle. We are looking how to charge fleet of vehicles because we actually believe in the future where there will be a lot of vehicles coming into the same sites. The charging has to be handled many vehicles, and this is basically the main differentiator from our side, from the Absolutely.

Jessie: 01:06

So and also, we are located in East Tennessee. You have a brand new facility just over the mountain in North Carolina. Can you tell everybody what you have there? Because I've heard it's a beautiful location. We will try to be making it that way the next few months ourselves.

Guest: 01:20

Definitely. Welcome there.

Jessie: 01:21

Oh, can't wait.

Guest: 01:22

So we are producing, now charters. We delivered the first charters in the December last year. Went to Canada first, but we have to make delivery now the US as well. But it's, the idea was to first address the Navy Fund, like, especially the Navy Fund qualified products to be because you need to have the Buy American rules. Yes.

Guest: 01:43

And this is basically it. But we are transferring all the product units that we can produce all our products actually there.

Jessie: 01:50

Okay.

Guest: 01:50

We had now a 154,000 square feet capacity.

Jessie: 01:54

Okay.

Guest: 01:54

And this basically, we do our power units. We do our charging satellites. Not this one yet, but we've discussed this more. But, charging units.

Jessie: 02:04

So pretty much. So now and let's before we go into your nevi charger, let's talk about this piece. So, at this event, we've been looking around. This is the first megawatt charging system that I have seen and this is gonna be more for your industrial base use, your trucks, your class 6 through 8, your tugs. You know, we've talked before about the electrification of our waterways.

Jessie: 02:28

What can you tell us about this unit?

Guest: 02:30

So the first version of our dispenser for the megawatt charging is a 1.2 megawatt. They will be bigger actually when we

Jessie: 02:36

talk about that. That's that's the new year.

Guest: 02:39

3 megawatt. But it's what the standard actually does. It's a new charging standard called megawatt charging, MCS, and this goes to several megawatts. The original purpose was really that you can drive a truck, like, 4 hours, have a half an hour break, you fill in the battery, you continue another 4 hours, charge it. So that's basically where the megawatt charging comes from, the the need.

Guest: 03:01

Yeah.

Jessie: 03:02

So you're probably looking at about a 45 minute charge rate on some of these large vehicles that get you that 4 to 600 mile range

Guest: 03:07

Exact

Jessie: 03:08

of some.

Guest: 03:08

Exact

Jessie: 03:09

And that is just exceptional. So we'll go ahead and walk over here to your other charging unit that that you offer. And this is a 300 kilowatt. And what can you tell us about your charging? Obviously, you got the the the maintenance and the and the, core maintenance systems is very unique for the industry.

Jessie: 03:32

What sets these apart in comparison to what else

Guest: 03:34

is the idea also that we have the smallest footprint to the place where the cars park. We had a, actually, convenience store owner in Finland saying that's the paying area. He doesn't want to occupy that with the big boxes. So that's and then that one is over there is then bringing the power. So you centralize the power and you then distribute the power to different, dispensers.

Guest: 03:58

We call them satellites. And this is basic idea. You can have 2 times 300 kilowatt in a single unit. And the idea is that you can have a car in any way you want, so it goes pretty far. So you can have, like, a 4 or 5 meter distance.

Guest: 04:14

The connection could be any side of the car. And, I think what we did a little bit differently, we thought about we had one electric car when we started, 10 guys. And I think, we started looking, how do we know this? So let's get everybody company for our EV. The people actually understand what they're doing.

Guest: 04:35

When you're making products for yourself, then you actually get the point. Yeah. So several of the features were done from the perspective of the EV driver.

Jessie: 04:43

Well and even at that so when you take this and compare it to to any other system, it's a lot lighter. Yeah. And that reach to be able to do that, when you start looking at an older generation, it's it's a little harder to take that weight. Yeah. This feels very good.

Jessie: 04:58

I think this would be very usable in that case. And again, it's a unique design

Guest: 05:02

to be

Jessie: 05:02

able to use a spring system like that. Yep. So so where are you going from here? What's happening next year as we wrap up? Where do you see your company still developing?

Jessie: 05:13

Are you obviously, the NEVI program is getting ready to hit and

Guest: 05:16

Use also the high power range.

Jessie: 05:18

Yes.

Guest: 05:18

What I see is actually more power and more blocks. That's basically it. We see actual sites growing. We see when the electric vehicles get more popular, there will not be 2 chargers. There will be actually 16 chargers on the side.

Guest: 05:31

Okay. For personal cars as well, because people want to stop in the same places you have, the way you have the services, you have the power. I think Tesla had a good idea on these large sites. They those are popular, and that's actually a good way to do it. It's a long charter.

Guest: 05:46

There was a study in Europe. They looked at it. If you have a single charter with high power, which has only 2 outputs, and then you have a site which has 8 chargers, every charger at the place with 8 chargers gets more charges than this alone charger because people trust it. They want to go into place where you know that there is no no lines and things. So that's exactly Well, I believe in the large sites and concentrations and

Jessie: 06:13

And you have the facility to make them. You have, and you have, obviously, the innovation to come up with unique products that's not on the market today because for Anytime,

Guest: 06:23

you start looking for the info you get, You can actually get the charger displays with your mobile phone everywhere, and you have the charging curves. Especially enthusiastic, you will get the full curves, hours, kilowatts. Mhmm. We want the info have the information. That's

Jessie: 06:41

That's The values and the info.

Guest: 06:43

It's really the info. And guys like you doing actually the podcast, you will be able to actually tell about the info.

Jessie: 06:49

Well, I mean, obviously, my truck can fit this as well, so can my partner. So it's it's definitely we all have lightnings, Josh, myself, and, Chris. So, we can't wait to come over to North Carolina to try it, and I thank you very much for your time. This has been the ACT Expo here at Kimball.

Josh: 07:07

Thanks for tuning in to turn down for what. Tune in tomorrow for another special episode as Chris visits Kim Powers brand new EV charging manufacturing facility for their grand opening. Turn on notifications for more episodes like this one. See you then.