#71 – Tomi Ristimäki | Kempower – Charging Technology for All Forms of Electric Vehicles

Tomi Ristimäki is the CEO of Kempower, which designs and manufactures DC fast charging solutions for electric vehicles and machines.

Key topics in this conversation include:

  • How DC charging works
  • Differences in charging requirements for various mobility applications
  • The role of software in optimizing the charging experience
  • Charging solutions for fleet owners
  • Why 150 kW charging might be enough (and why the charger isn’t the limiting factor for charging speed)

Listen here:

Apple Podcasts: link
Google Podcasts: link
Spotify: link

Links

Tomi’s Bio:

Tomi is the CEO of Kempower, with over 20 years’ experience in electrification and more than 10 years’ involvement in the e-mobility sector. He has worked in cleantech throughout his career, specifically focusing on electrification and unlocking energy savings for all stakeholders. Tomi is passionate about making the world cleaner and more sustainable by enabling the electrification transition.

Tomi joined Kempower in 2019 and leads the company as it establishes itself as the market-leading provider of DC fast charging devices and services for electric cars, off-highway machines, marine vessels and commercial vehicles. Before joining Kempower, he spent nearly a decade at Danfoss Editron, with primary responsibility for business development in the company’s vehicle electrification business unit. Tomi also counts cleantech industry heavyweights in Vacon and Honeywell as previous employers.

He holds a Master’s in Electrical Engineering and Industrial Management from Finland’s Tampere University of Technology. Tomi is quadrilingual, speaking Finnish, English, German and Swedish, while his electric vehicle manufacturer of choice is Tesla.

About Kempower:

Kempower designs and manufactures DC fast charging solutions for electric vehicles and machines. The company comprises a team of electric vehicle enthusiasts with a deep understanding of the charging market and a hands-on mentality. Kempower’s product development and production are rooted in Finland, with over 90% of its materials and components sourced locally. The company focuses on all areas of transportation, from personal cars and commercial vehicles to mining equipment, boats and motorsports. With 70 years of experience in perfecting power sources, Kempower sets the bar in engineering and user-experience design.

Future of Mobility:

The Future of Mobility podcast is focused on the development and implementation of safe, sustainable, and equitable mobility solutions, with a spotlight on the people and technology advancing these fields.

linkedin.com/in/brandonbartneck/

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Rough Transcript:

Brandon Bartneck 0:06
I’m Brandon Bartneck. And this is the future of mobility podcast. Safe, sustainable and equitable mobility solutions. That’s what this is all about. With the climate situation as it is right now plus many other factors, it’s never been more important for us to continue to improve the sustainability of the way that we’re moving goods and people. At the same time. We need to improve safety for drivers and pedestrians, and we need to get these solutions in the hands of the people who need them need them most. So that’s what I covered primarily interviews I’m talking to the people who are developing and implementing covering these technology solutions. Also, my day job…this podcast is brought to you by FEV. FEV is your complete vehicle engineering partner for sustainable energy and mobility solutions. We’re the engineering technology partner behind a lot of what you see on the road and elsewhere. Shoot me a note if you want to learn more, check out FEV.com check us out on LinkedIn.

Brandon Bartneck 0:56
Today’s guest is Tomi Ristimaki. Tommy is CEO of Kempower. If you aren’t familiar, Kempower designs and manufactures DC fast charging solutions for electric vehicles and machines. We also talked Tomi has a long background. He’s been with Kempower for a few years and he has a long background in the electrification space. I think he said he’s worked on like 100 different types of electrified vehicles through quantum with past experiences, which is included a time with Danfoss Editron and Honeywell just overall. And it gives a cool mix of experience in electrification space. So as you might guess, primary topic today is charging technology so we’re talking about the actual chargers that you plug into and get the power that you need for your either plug in hybrid or for the most part full battery electric vehicles. And we’re talking a bit about bit about passenger car applications although you won’t be driving up to a compiler machine there and they provide the technology that’s an answer someone else provides the service to the end user. But we actually I think spend more time talking about other applications so we’re talking about public transit so buses we’re talking about trucks and fleets of various types, moving rail applications, mining, agriculture, construction, maybe a bit about marine wood all over the place talking about what are the different requirements and what what kind of define success in these different situations as they are trying to offer a service to the customer for then we talked about hardware we’re also talking about software which I think was really interesting got his perspective so if you’re in the field you know people can continue to push and you know as charging speed especially for passenger car applications is cited as a reason why people are concerned not transitioning to battery electric vehicles people. I think there’s an idea that we need to continue to push the power output from the charging and we’re talking about, you know, 100 200 300 400 kilowatts of charging which I think that’s where Chem power tops out. But as we talked about that he can’t he can’t really even use that right now for various reasons, which I think is is interesting in itself. So really fun discussion, Tommy’s all has a ton of experience I was able to offer a great expense of great perspective and I guess I probably need to start doing this more because definitely have a global wife reach and guest base for this for this podcast, but Tommy joining from from Finland, which is kind of cool. So with that being said, Please enjoy this conversation with Tomi Ristimaki.

Brandon Bartneck 3:38
Today, I’m joined by Tomi Ristamaki. Tomi, thanks for coming on.

Tomi Ristimaki 3:42
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Brandon Bartneck 3:44
Yeah, I’m looking forward to this discussion. So I think charging is something that I’ve touched on a few times on the podcast and talked about electrical grid a bit definitely definitely on the vehicle side talking about the different charging requirements and the propulsion system and such haven’t really talked too much about the technology itself that is used for different charging and especially DC fast charging applications. I’m really looking forward to getting into this into this topic, too. To start us off, would you mind introducing yourself please and sharing a bit about what you do?

Tomi Ristimaki 4:18
Okay, so my name is Tomi Ristamaki. I’m the CEO of Kempower. So we are fast charging equipment manufacturer from Finland. That’s why the name is so difficult to pronounce as well. So, basically, I myself have been working more than 20 years in electrification industry. So industrial energy saving for the first half, but then more than 10 years in emobility. First working with vehicle power trains, in heavy vehicles, buses, even excavators, ships, whatever you name it and then charting now from 2019. Here in Campo

Brandon Bartneck 4:53
Yeah, and can you share a bit of the background on can power as a company so when Was it formed How was it formed etc

Tomi Ristimaki 5:03
I think it’s a long story basically because the company group was founded in 1949 in bases for welding equipment and the way it’s meaningful is that basically the inverter based DC power source the first one in the world was made by Ken before welding in 1977 so that actually is our grounds camp out as its own company existed already in the 90s and early 2000s but it was the product company making everything else but welding in the in that easy peasy world so we were part of the CERN particle accelerator and whatever projects but it was done a research within the group in and with first a demo charters already in 2013 but the market was too early and then we found out in 2017 that it starts to look interesting and then Kimbo was focusing 100% on easy charting since that with all the all the four guys in 2018 and now more than 100 today so we know the past run to get things started

Brandon Bartneck 6:09
and so when we’re maybe let’s start at the basics and then we can get more more context so when we’re talking about DC fast charging so essentially it’s it’s charging for plug in vehicles other to plug in hybrid or more more typically a battery electric full battery electric vehicle so can you explain to the IDC the direct direct current perspective can you explain how that’s important and how it’s so different than I know if I were to plug into my 120 ac or even a low level 240 volt system at home

Tomi Ristimaki 6:42
it’s all about time and basically AC charging you’re talking about hours in DC charging we’re talking about minutes so it’s how fast people are basically wanting to move fast in the world and you you put it correctly as well that it’s battery electric vehicles so it’s not only personal cars we are doing which even mining vehicles buses trucks so the world is moving to electric in all its forms at the one

Brandon Bartneck 7:09
so what’s actually onboard for the you sell a charging unit what is actually the technology that’s that’s onboard that unit

Tomi Ristimaki 7:22
Do you mean Oh products basically we have our traditional charters as well as personally for the markets who are new to DVS and basically you have a consultant who says charts must be a box with two cables. But that that’s that’s it but nowadays when we go into the advanced market like let’s say Nordics and the UK Netherlands there where people actually see the value we have this distributed charging system where you’re separate the actual charger and the charging output satellites separate so you can actually have more space for the park Park parking lots and have a very slender satellites then feed it through the parking space and then providing even the highest power with a very small compact unit

Brandon Bartneck 8:05
Yeah, actually I’m not sure if we understand Can you dig a little deeper 40 mean by this satellite setup

Tomi Ristimaki 8:11
now basically we have placed actual we have separated the charging outputs and we have separate the actual charger as a separate units and we can place the actual charter which takes a lot of space even up to 50 or 70 meters away from the actual place where it’s at your car yeah so that’s quite unique in the in the in the world today that we don’t see much of those kind of systems yet maybe at Tesla superchargers

Brandon Bartneck 8:38
and then so what are the two The first thing I think about is kind of the challenge of having a long extension cord essentially and having losses over the length of that that cord if it’s 5070 meters is that a legitimate challenge and how do you guys overcome

Tomi Ristimaki 8:52
no no no no that’s not big things. I think you move electricity by miles and miles so couple of 10 meters doesn’t really make a big difference.

Brandon Bartneck 9:02
Gotcha. Okay. How about the so this is something that I don’t think I personally understand too well so I’d be curious when you’re said so, power electronics right. So, we have power conversion you have on the vehicle you have right you have DC that then is converted to to AC through the inverter and the power electronics how and yeah, I understand how that works with semiconductor switching and all that. But what are the I guess the question is what are the inputs coming into your machines and then when you have the DC output, what are the what are the steps what is the what actually is happening happening inside this charger box that allows you to output the DC fast charging out but

Tomi Ristimaki 9:46
of course we rectify first the AC to DC then you’ll manipulate the strength with an inverter unit in between. And what we do actually there we have the high frequency isolation to keep it Save as well and then basically when you do it high frequency then you’re gonna make unit very compact and then you again more change the AC to DC sounds quite complicated but that’s also how it’s done in a modern welding equipment that’s pretty much the core what our company group has been doing for the past since 1977

Brandon Bartneck 10:23
yeah it’s interesting so the I wouldn’t I guess thought that welding equipment would would have a direct application to electric charging like that.

Tomi Ristimaki 10:35
Yeah it is basically the if you look at the engineers if you look at the schematic which actually opened my eyes when I was in first top interview that there is real synergies in this it’s in engineers eyes It’s actually the same thing one creates an arc and the other one tries to avoid it so that’s all those levels are different. welding is low voltage charging compared to welding is a high voltage which meaning that in welding it’s 1000s of amps and in in charting you have only a few 100 amps so the difference is but the power levels are about the same if you look at the high power welding as well and it’s quite it’s not the same device but it’s very similar

Brandon Bartneck 11:18
Yeah, so and I know jump jumping all over the place but I’m curious so it sounds like your background was more on the the vehicle side and electrification for various applications.

Tomi Ristimaki 11:29
What What was I think I have on my record about 130 different kinds of vehicles I’ve been involved with during that 10 years

Brandon Bartneck 11:37
scale look like can you can you talk to get kind of what what is this all encompass that you’ve worked on?

Tomi Ristimaki 11:42
That’s I think when I’m looking at promoting vehicles and let’s say luxury yachts into small street cleaning machines and machines and drugs and the world is wide when you look at all the vehicles which can be electrified

Brandon Bartneck 11:57
Yeah, maybe. So I’ll get back to the question I was gonna ask but the so actually I was at the mining Expo or the mine Expo down in Las Vegas for the first time a few weeks ago and it’s kind of a new world to me so I’ve been with FPV I’ve been focused on automotive kind of on road applications

Tomi Ristimaki 12:15
you should have if you have been in the correct ports in my Expo that was going on with charters as well but not where it’s with the mining vehicle brands Yeah, yeah there they were there they were in Las Vegas as well yeah.

Brandon Bartneck 12:29
Yeah, I do I do think I see the I saw the power logo for sure. Yeah, so thinking about the mining application so I mean, me personally before getting into this I didn’t understand kind of the whole scale of everything that goes into excavating in the Surface Mining and digging the pit and then you know drilling and removing rock and then also the underground mining which is on a toe other world so what what type of applications have you personally worked on within this big mining ecosystem?

Tomi Ristimaki 13:00
It’s the Waco side I’ve personally it’s a vehicle deck I’ve been with seven sprayers and loaders and haulers and things like that that’s also where we are working with charging Yeah, and that’s that’s exactly the vehicles and especially the loaders and haulers those are the big segments in there that’s those are actually quite cool machines when we look at these are $45 machines working on a crowd lifting really heavy

Brandon Bartneck 13:29
Yeah, this is the yeah and the technology is incredible whether it’s even an underground loader hauler and then the ground ones are an incredible scale Can you can you speak to so charging charging for some of this and so my understanding is you know what liquification has been around for a while a lot of these vehicles have run on electric propulsion system but not necessarily battery electric it’s been a lot of kind of hard to hard wired or hydraulic hybrid types applications and I think one of the challenges right the charging infrastructure and getting the power in place and having reliability and all that type of stuff can can you talk to so in this mining ecosystem, what what are some of the unique concerns challenges? What what are the things that your customers are most concerned about? And then how are you addressing that?

Tomi Ristimaki 14:20
That of course, that you have to do equipment that survive in the mining environment if you look at the girl girls with caches and things, what are happening in the mind so of course you have to have a study equipment and that’s where actually the welding background helps how we protect the electronics in there. You’re basically in welding machine the normal way to maintain it is to pressure wash the electronics so that’s where we are coming from we are we are using as a protective devices, all the electronics, same things. What do you have actually, when you’re fixing your teeth with this plastic filling, so we’re actually protecting electronics with very similar material. I think that’s Yeah, It’s basically this kind of very hard surface, it’s not just your normal luck hearing what you have in industrial electronics, you are using special materials for that. That actually helps the devices. Of course, in our normal world is stainless steel, but we live underground as well. So it’s different units we have on the crowd, but the design is to say,

Brandon Bartneck 15:22
an hour. So in this in this ecosystem, who are you? Who are you selling to? directly? Is it the Is it the big mining companies as they’re setting up a new site or so

Tomi Ristimaki 15:34
no one no two, today we are cooperate with the vehicle manufacturers in there, because it’s normally a like a project delivery, that you have the vehicles and the charters and the batteries combined into one, one entity, because it’s very new in the market, then it would be really high. I think our charters already in mines in South Africa and Kazakhstan in Australia, in G letto. It would be for a newcomer in the market would be hard to service on your own. So you cooperate with vehicle manufacturers in that, that space.

Brandon Bartneck 16:03
And then also this, this application rater reliability and uptime is huge. And I would say that’s not the only place I think applications are working on it’s important to how how do you how do you guys think about that? So I imagine charge charge speed is important. what’s what’s what type of power output Are you able to get from your devices for us to be some of these off road applications.

Tomi Ristimaki 16:24
That’s normally high voltage cases. So we are going 800 volts or even above in some of the cases, I think the charging powers can go three or 400 kilowatt mah. If you have a big vehicle, if we have a battery swap system, then the powers are lower normally, because you have a let’s say modular batteries that you’re charging outside of the vehicle, but they both exist in the mining world.

Brandon Bartneck 16:48
Yeah, that’s that’s actually where I was gonna ask. So I know I some there was some display of kind of, especially for underground applications of battery swap techniques. So we are rather than waiting for even a fast charger, if it takes 20 minutes, if you can swap out the batteries, it’s faster for potentially, you know, five minutes walk or whatever. But so you guys would service both of those. It’s just a different. It’s a different application, a

Tomi Ristimaki 17:11
different application for the charger? Yes. Yeah. That’s that’s basically when you are in control of the whole whole technology, what you have in the device that’s benefit of ours that even it’s a different kind of connectors, different things. It’s still a charging technologist, same

Brandon Bartneck 17:27
gadget, and how about, you know, jumping around application segments? So you’re also servicing like the rail type applications, right? What can you can

Tomi Ristimaki 17:40
you from Ray read by by at least to service locomotives and things like that in rail, if you talk about steel will kind of stuff? Yes, some customers in there as well.

Brandon Bartneck 17:51
So what does that what does that look like? So what’s what, what’s, what’s the role of the charger in that place? And what what are some of the unique boundary conditions you’re dealing with

Tomi Ristimaki 17:59
there. That’s not to say it’s a work machines normally worked up on machines, it’s like, you know, the Local Motors which work in in stations actually moving the equipment because that’s normally where the battery vehicles in that space. So that’s basically repairing vehicles and things like that, because the main big transaction take the power from from from directly from the grid. So that’s, that’s not the application, but it’s all the small stuff, which needs to work also in the places where you don’t have a catenary system on top of the vehicle.

Brandon Bartneck 18:32
Yeah. And then jumping around a bit more. So other off road applications about like agriculture, construction type of stuff, is that is that a big market?

Tomi Ristimaki 18:41
Some but that’s still I think we have to wait a couple of years that to be big. I’ve been in development projects doing full electric, when done excavators in my past life, but that’s still quite nice. And mostly Norway, because of the outflows dividing that these old machines are not entering certain areas anymore at all. But that’s still on the world scale. I think construction and agriculture is is something that it’s hard to organize the charting efficiently in the places whether wherever things are operating.

Brandon Bartneck 19:16
Yeah, in how I mean, my mining is gonna like this, too. So for I guess you got a huge, you have a huge site, but I imagined for construction agriculture, when it’s especially construction when the site’s moving frequently. So yeah, how do you guys try to think about I guess those constraints, right? So getting getting the power input that you need to a given given site? Is those some of the biggest challenges for like a construction application or what

Tomi Ristimaki 19:44
do you normally put to have enough power grid and then because the sites are moving as well, you cannot have permanent installations and that’s giving also we have a movable charters which are mostly used in this environment, but it’s also limited power, what you can have in the mobile We have 40 kilowatt units which you are using actually with smaller machines. And we have cities using those as well in the maintenance, street cleaning machines and garbage trucks and things like this. But normally if you have something that a person can move, then the powers are not that that big. But then do have these theories also bigger powers, but then the grid is a little bit problematic that how much power you can have on the on the construction side when they are starting to build something. So this is something that involves and it’s not maybe the best way actually when you think about green values that if you have a diesel generator charging electric vehicle that’s kind of like wasting time and effort. Other bio diesel generators helping charging actually construct a vehicle somewhere that you have some biofuel that actually helps if the machine itself cannot handle biofuels or something like this. But I think the more more urgent market is to public transportation and actually the upcoming of especially logistic vehicles, we see now finally the trucks moving into the market and that’s definitely interesting.

Brandon Bartneck 21:10
So public transportation, like buses and then so on the commercial side, so yeah, logistics so certainly I’m seeing the kind of last mile type application and also some of the middle medium duty type type applications. Is that kind of where you’re seeing as some of the Yeah,

Tomi Ristimaki 21:28
I think the big big thing after the public transportation buses will be the logistic trucks moving in in the city City area. This is what happened also when I when I was not involved with in China when we were selling the power trace that’s what happened in China as well right after the buses. Next thing to move is the the lorries and trucks that operate within city borders. And so how do you adapt in Europe as well?

Brandon Bartneck 21:54
Yeah. How do you so from, from your perspective, can power perspective so there’s so many so many markets that are moving and we’ve talked about a few of them here towards electrification, there’s, you know, the charging equipment sounds like you guys have a modules modular setup, you can offer value to nearly anyone in this space, who needs some type of a charging structure setup? How do you think about prioritizing your sales efforts? And then also understanding so we just scratched the surface, but the boundary conditions and the things that your customer cares about in each of these, this, these situations are? Slightly or sometimes very different than each other? So out? So how? Yeah, how do you prioritize? And how do you make sure that you understand exactly what each of these different types of customers that really needs and wants?

Tomi Ristimaki 22:41
Yeah, it started actually from the RNA from the beginning. And the modular product range actually helps us a lot because we can vary the powers we want and basically deliver also choose different sizes, different topics. So it was designed from the beginning to serve all these markets. But of course, the sales effort is a different thing. Of course, we have to choose the ones that go forward. But also I see it very important we normally think about we have three legs we are standing on. So we have the personal car space, then the basic commercial vehicles, trucks and buses, and also the off Highway, that it’s also let’s say that if there would be any problem in one of these segments, the other one would help. So normally when you cooperate for example, in all five segments, your partnership with the vehicle manufacturer are normally very long. So once you deliver a let’s say design something for them, and you cooperate them their cooperation last long, but basically, for example, in private car charging, that’s a basically public thing. And if somebody has the best decade, it changed in a year. Like we’ve seen that now our success in there has been really in a very short time.

Brandon Bartneck 23:56
I forgot to print my follow up question but uh yes, so some of that may be thinking about the past Oh, no business models. That’s what I wanted to ask you so so is it is it always that you are selling and it’s a, you know, a finished product? And then maybe a maintenance contract on the back end of it? Or have you worried or are you exploring other models where you are

Tomi Ristimaki 24:16
selling the electricity consumers, we are staying in the b2b segment in in a business to business that we are selling basically what the companies who offer the charging to consumers that’s, that’s the plan and also maybe requires a little bit less manpower on the support side than dealing and because event and trying to be in the place where we are really good. That’s also like the focus that allows us to also move into let’s say, public transportation and personal cost because your customer base is limited because you’re not dealing with everybody.

Brandon Bartneck 24:51
Yeah, and that’s that’s where it’s interesting, especially in the public transportation areas, especially the personal transport, like setting up these these charging ecosystems. On all the charges that you drive by, you know, on, whether it’s at a gas station or public parking or whatever, my understanding, and I’m certainly not an expert here. But my understanding is that’s not a terribly profitable endeavor endeavor right now in the public space trying to look for the companies actually offering the charging service. But you guys, I guess, if you’re just selling to them, you’re a step removed.

Tomi Ristimaki 25:22
I think we are a little bit step ahead. I think in the when you look at in the long run, if you look at already Norway, I think they are really enjoying those payments also by selling electricity, the cars because it just needs them enough. Enough week, or somebody also said that if you have 10 servings a day per charter, then it’s good, then it starts to provide you money fast enough to make it interesting. So I always look at Norway also as an interesting lab for the future that the rest of the countries could be in that space in five years or so. Because it’s a people, the 5 million people country with more than half a million electric cars. So that’s kind of the small clients of the future in there.

Brandon Bartneck 26:03
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s also it’s a, it’s a clean grid, comparatively. So it’s, that’s that’s one of those cases for sure whether they’re doing a lot of good and decarbonizing their fleet. Hmm. How this is thinking again, about kind of the, the interaction so with your customers, customer, the end consumer, the person, so if you’re charging or fear, if someone’s coming in there, they’re charging on the side of the road or the park someplace, and they’re charging. What what are the most important aspects? And my my guests correct? And I’d be curious, obviously, your opinion, but my guess is that reliability, and then also, this, this user interface, so the interoperability, the ability for them to figure out how they can charge their specific vehicle with this specific charging system? Those are two of the big factors, because I mean, those are two of the concerns I have, when I’m, you know, thinking about what what this looks like, as a as an electrified vehicle owner. Is that accurate? And if so, how? How do you? How do you think about trying to make that user experience as seamless as possible?

Tomi Ristimaki 27:07
That’s actually one of our main goals. We come from the user experience being I think, in my employers, we look at more than 35% of the employees and kambala Eb drivers. So we’re kind of making things for ourselves. And we are now looking at also that if we could provide more accurate local exit charting time estimations exit as default from the charger, because we have absolutely no back end we are recognizing the cars already. So we know which brand which battery size, even in some cases even we which year model the car is and then we have an algorithm that actually tries to calculate an estimated based on the temperature and and also the car battery temperature is estimated based on the the the power of the car the same compared to the all the other cars of that brand has charged before. So there is a lot of things that we tried to provide also the information as a title manufacturer on the screen, or basically because you can take our screen also with you, with your mobile phone that without needing an app that we try to give make it as simple. My personal goal is to make it more simple than than typing fuel into the car. But there is of course, a lot of this Russification, because the cars don’t take the power that the manual says, and things like that. So we try to provide now more accurate information from the charter.

Brandon Bartneck 28:33
Because the cars don’t do that yet, do you? You don’t get any CAN data from the vehicle or there’s no you don’t get detailed information from the vehicle about battery state of charge and status and all that they don’t

Tomi Ristimaki 28:45
charge you get the state of charge you get. But that’s where it metabolically and what goes you know, what, what is the state and basically, you can also you know, at what power to start, so you can throw that you can estimate the battery temperature then compared to the other vehicles of that type that has charts. So it’s actually, I think we were we are now able to recognize 98% of the cars which are charging by the type. And I think the guys at least the most common ones, we can go to less than 1% error in the estimate of of charging times. Let’s see that when we can bring it actually to the displays. Now it’s an internal use by our r&d. And we are tuning it up. It’s a real neural network model that we created with the mathematicians from university that we have a I think you could call it an AI even even the phrase is too much used in today’s world but that is basically that you could have accurate estimations for people that how much it takes to charge to 80% or 60% or wherever you want to go normally in first chapters you don’t go to 100%

Brandon Bartneck 29:52
and I don’t even know if I if I can ask an intelligent question here but my feeling is that there’s there’s more on the software control side Then is typically understood like yes and someone myself kind of included you see a charging system and you think it’s hardware right and they’re, they’re providing some they’re taking energy converting it and they’re providing it to your vehicle but I mean you were just touching on some of the software some of these algorithms in the backend for predicting charge time other what other what other software what are the key things that you guys are working on or that you offer in the software space that you think makes a big difference?

Tomi Ristimaki 30:28
I think, especially for our customers who are providing the charting there is a lot of this preventive maintenance data plus we are doing the complete control of a bus site that we have this double master version of the of our charter that we are actually giving the possibility that you can just feed in when the buses need to leave and the system takes care of the power and our optimizer even warms up the bus before it leaves because that’s actually important for the drivers especially Scandinavia, when it’s minus 25 outside you want the bus to be warm when you leave that’s not the big base and takes a lot of time and it will suck a lot of the battery power if you don’t warm it up before with the grid power so those are the kinds of things which move in there and there’s a surprising benefit for us being within the company group we are because the actually in welding side can be our sister company they introduced the first cloud system or in 2008 to advanced welding and and are still the one of the top references in Amazon Web Services for industrial IoT. So we were able to actually from the start start the development on ready made platform that we have a solid base to work that we didn’t need to basically point out everything by the hard way that we were writing into the application development when we started the development with the charges

Brandon Bartneck 31:50
in May maybe you already touched on on this amendment misinterpreted but the the planning of the charging overall so so yeah you mentioned your boss comes in you’re trying to predict charge times and make sure it’s warm when it leaves and all that type of stuff but are you providing any services so so kind of Fleet Management I imagine is something important in this space so the people who own this this bus fleet or whatever type of Fleet need to make sure that you know with with the infrastructure they have in place that the buses are timed properly coming in and they’re charging and you’re providing the right amount of charge yeah

Tomi Ristimaki 32:26
we are recognizing the even the bus individuals because this is a little bit different than the personal cost base so we are allowed to read the actual IDs of the bus and LD that the operator of the bus because normally when you operate the electric buses you have these open overnight charging sites which could have 100 or 200 active positive on the same site and you have only limited grid power and you want to also save electricity so the system optimizes also the electricity use based on the correct cost if you have open electricity price market it actually finds the sweet spots because it knows how the system should work and it actually helps the customers in that way in in the buffet transportation space so that’s actually something that we will have experienced I’m probably have some publications done one that was the first customers have been using it like one year or so. So that that’s interesting stuff but in private cost the different differences are there that you can see everything you can maintain everything and our guys also when we are supporting our customers don’t need to visit the sites you can see all the proposals on especially really good in this COVID time because our international sales the whole company has grown during the COVID time so that’s allowed us actually to operate and commission all the charges remotely

Brandon Bartneck 33:44
How do you think about inductive charging so if that’s something that you’re interested in, like the bus application, I’ve heard a case which kind of makes sense that you know public bus if you could have an inductive charger at every bus stop where it comes in it sits for five minutes you can get a boost and yeah, theoretically maybe make sense is that something that you think is realistic And is that something that can power is looking into

Tomi Ristimaki 34:08
I think the inductive charging inside the application is definitely interesting for us is test one one way to connect the electricity to the to the to the vehicle, but also for the buses, it sounds pretty expensive way to do it. I think the cost might come into hand and plus the thing that you waste energy when you are when you don’t have a proper connection. But that’s the electrical engineer me it means speaking because I trust moving the power with the rail connection. But that’s an interesting thing for the future for weezy there’s an opportunity for the future but let’s see not coming before the vehicles actually already for that. And how do you direct inductive occurrent so that you don’t heat the other parts of the because that’s basically the same way as you you cook your food today. inductive stops so there is some we’ve been studying something over noon before this sort of wireless charting and things like that so it’s new deck and it’s probably coming and I see it more basically if you have at home charging at your garage that would be really convenient to have a basic you just park your car but at the same time if you live with the full battery because the best inventions of humankind have been made because of laziness. And that’s that’s the truth of it so I think because of laziness and people don’t want to step out and plug in the car that will come even worse

Brandon Bartneck 35:39
yet yeah for sure about again jumping around but the Max Max charging speed so the at least in the passenger car market my read is I think the icon at like 270 kilowatts is the highest or around the highest claim charging systems i think i think you mentioned three 400 kilowatts is

Tomi Ristimaki 36:01
we haven’t we have installed some satellites in Denmark which can do 400 kilowatts today but there is no vehicle which can accept it. So it’s more or less just for social media to show today that but the satellites could actually do it that what we have in there and they actually charge in titles quite a lot but it’s nowhere near the limit of the charter but it seems to be very funny now that people are showing that I have the biggest power charter but there is no vehicle which is going to accept the power we like to be more realistic I think this 150 to 200 kilowatt is somewhere that is reasonable because the real limit is not the charger it’s not the battery it’s the CCS connector at least is today that how do you call down the pins to connect to pins are basically the limiting factor not even because bigger people are talking about charging cables being the limit but it’s actual the connection unless all the cars change their connectors I think the world has to settle to a certain limits that are bring those liquid cooled cables and that they are not really for the cables they are also trying to cool the pens and mainly on the car side because nobody wants to melt the connector on the car because that would be a little bit catastrophic as an experience but that’s that’s basically the limit where it comes from and how do you cool down the connection, the actual connection to the vehicle. And now that the electric cars are getting more and more popular, there is a lot of cars with the SATA connector and then you are still bound to those limits. Let’s see if new things happen in the connector space and all the new cars will suddenly have something else and more of more sturdier connections you could move on power but as Evie driver we know several years I actually don’t have a combustion engine at home and we have TVs and even electric lawnmower so that’s looking at that I feel comfortable with this 100 kilowatt 150 kilowatt because you have to stop for lunch you have to stop drinking a cup of coffee or things like that and then only inconveniences that you have to think today because there’s not so many charters anywhere that you have to build with think when you start driving when I went up where I’m going to have lunch so you have to know it before so that’s the other person who is not so systematic like myself It is a little bit let’s say stressful but not that hot yeah I would say

Brandon Bartneck 38:29
yes to change but not not something that can be that can’t be overcome but I guess it’s something I wanted to ask you so the with all your experience on the vehicle side and so the teams that can that that’s where you started what was attractive to you when you say you’ve been with compound for a handful of years if I understand if I remember yeah what was interesting about this this opportunity for you Why were you interested to move to the charging space

Tomi Ristimaki 38:54
it was of course starting something new that that that’s always interesting to me but and but then I have to believe in it. But like I said it was actually for me the synergy between the welding machine and charting equipment is was the deciding factor that there is actually reason behind it. Because I’ve seen a lot of new companies coming into the space with not so clear idea what they want to do and then there was the early concept of of the distributed charging system as well but I saw in the in the first discussion and coming from electrifying the machines and heavy vehicles, I also liked the mobile I thought that was fresh idea into this space as well that you can bring the child to do the vehicle and blog into a three way connection and some actually have the fast charging, moving, moving, moving around around the space. If I like the concept, and I believe that this these guys who were here before me that they could actually do it. And once you believe it, and then then you have the chance to start something new That was good for me that was very interesting space. And being enabled, let’s say electric vehicle space for some years. That’s, I think, is or should be the dream of every electrical engineer in the world today that finally we are in a spotlight.

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