The Future of EV Wireless Charging

Dietrich: 00:07

We really can't predict the future because nobody can. What we can do though, is help auto manufacturers recognize, prepare for in profit from whatever comes next. Auto Supply Chain Prophets gives you timely and relevant insights and best practices from industry leaders. It's all about what's happening now in the automotive supply chain and how to prepare your organization for the future. Because the auto supply chain is where the money is.

Jan Griffiths: 00:40

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the auto supply chain profits podcast. We're live here at the OESA supplier summit in Novi, Michigan. Get ready because you're about to meet a company that is pioneering the technology around EV wireless charging, and don't take my word for it. They were the recipient of the 2022 automotive newspace pilot innovation to watch award. You'll hear about the technology and you'll meet the visionary CEO who is leading this company into the future. There's a tremendous amount of buzz in the press about this company. And we'll put some links in the show notes so you can check it all out. Let's dive in and meet Jeremy McCool, CEO of HEVO. Jeremy, welcome to the show.

Jeremy: 01:31

Hey, thanks, Jan. We do wireless electric vehicle charging, we make it seamless, really safe, and also simple for people to charge their cars. There's nothing like it on the market, because we're the only company in the world. That's SAE and UL approved already to date. And we've got projects on four continents already.

Cathy Fisher: 01:50

That's absolutely amazing. Tell us a little bit about how you folks are developing the supply chain to support your product.

Jeremy: 01:56

We started off with production about a year ago. And we're producing in Brooklyn, New York of all places. That's batch production. So what that means is we're doing one to 10 units at a time for specific automakers, fleets, and channel partners. But now the next ramp up for this is hundreds, even 1000s of units that we have to get to we're expanding our production lines for that at the moment and looking at locations even in the Detroit metro area. Because of the great talent that's here in this space that's already made available for what we do. The pandemic had some problems with supply chain, so we had to go through that just like everybody else did. But we finally got to a point where we feel very comfortable in managing all of our suppliers or contract manufacturers. And we do the final assembly process and quality control at our facility. So that's all done in a HEVO. But everything else is coming in pre made and ready for us to do the final assembly work. As we start to expand that out into our next assembly works area, we're looking at 10s of 1000s of square feet dedicated just to that alone.

Cathy Fisher: 03:02

When we think about supply chain, we also think about the consumer facing side. So tell us a little bit about the model of getting your product out there to consumers.

Jeremy: 03:11

Yeah, that's first and foremost, our beachhead market is fleet because it's very simple for them to adapt something like this and adopted in. Why? Well, they have a lot of safety standard requirements around OSHA, there's a tripping hazard, frayed cord hazard all kinds of things that come with plug in charging that, frankly, they're not equipped to be able to handle they're not used to this, right. It's not like they're used to just pulling up at a gas station at their fleet yard and filling up at their fleet yards. And a lot of these kinds of logistic companies don't own their fleet yards. They're leasing it from other companies. So they're having to figure it out on the fly. The other thing that really doesn't get spoken enough about is union labor problems. Because being the fact that most of major fleets are unionized, they can't actually plug in the car, because it's similar to filling up a car. And they're not allowed to do that either. So there's this complicated matter of OSHA and union that really marries up with wireless charging, because we make it simple, safe and seamless for them to build it without having to worry about all these different problems. Now, to the consumer effects. We start with fleet because we have immediate, huge customers demanding it today that we're delivering it to today. But with the consumers, it's all about working with a major automakers they have to adopt it in and make it factory built in or an aftermarket solution that they've approved. And so there's about six to seven of the big 10 automakers that we're currently working with to help them come up with resolutions and solutions for their customers for wireless charging.

Terry Onica: 04:47

I would love to have a wireless charging mat in my garage. You know that just seems like it would be so much more convenient for the consumer than having to plug in. How quickly do you think we'll be able to see that?

Jeremy: 04:57

We believe that wireless charging makes adoption of electric cars easier why? Well, a lot of reasons you don't forget, you don't have to get out and think that day did I need to charge that day or not? I'm just going to do it later on to your point, we see automakers bringing it out around 2025 2026 factory built in some have even contemplated 2024. But that might be an aftermarket solution first that they approve, but we really see it factory built in 2025 2026. And from that point forward, you'd be able to get several different models by different makers that you'd be able to buy with wireless charging built in.

Cathy Fisher: 05:34

For our listeners that may not understand exactly. This is like the inductive charging for your cell phone, correct?

Jeremy: 05:41

Yeah, exactly. Except, it's much more efficient. It's much more powerful. Of course, we can charge cars as fast and as efficiently as you get with plug in charging. So if you go to a supercharger network, like you've done quite a bit, you expect to see your car charging at a rate of about 250 kilowatts, which is equivalent to around 750 to 1000 miles per one hour charge, we can actually do that today. Now, here's the thing that we can do with wireless charging, that makes it already better for the we'll say commuter and consumer or passenger vehicle, you can drive and charge at the same time. We've already started demonstrating that in the Detroit metro area, we started doing that in April, using a Maki, we had Ford people come in that had nothing to do with the project. And then they all sudden saw their car driving and charging at the same time. And we're starting to expand this and to other projects around the area that's continued to showcase what we can do.

Cathy Fisher: 06:38

So this is embedding the technology into the roadways.

Jeremy: 06:41

That's right, absolutely. And making it where like this technology, if it goes into the roadway, it goes under the asphalt, so it goes three to four inches into the ground. They're like large Lego bricks. Imagine two meters long by a meter wide by about a foot deep. That goes under asphalt. So all you do is when you need to resurface just like you do with normal roads, you just take the old asphalt off, skim it off, and then put asphalt on top. This stays underneath and lives underneath that forever. I mean, this isn't a technology that needs to be replaced. What we could do for people, is for every one mile while you're traveling at highway speeds, 60-70 miles per hour, every one mile that you're passing over the wireless roadway, you're getting somewhere in the range of eight to 10 miles of extended range. When batteries come out that allow us to charge faster, we could take that up to 30 to 50 miles for every one mile traveled at highway speed. Our technology is limited by battery technology. So we need battery manufacturers to help us get to a point where we can charge your batteries faster.

Cathy Fisher: 07:44

I have one question about the electricity that's feeding these, what is necessary from an infrastructure standpoint to provide enough electricity?

Jeremy: 07:54

Infrastructurally, there's a couple of things here and people are absolutely correct. We need to make sure that the power that's going in to electric car is clean if you want to put it that way or renewable. Because the total effect of end to end co2 emissions abatement only happens in the way that we want it to if it's connected to renewable, what's great about our technologies, you can connect it directly to solar directly to battery storage directly to wind, imagine if you're driving down the street or driving down a highway, the best place to have really solar is off the side of the highway. Because nobody really cares about it at that point. It's not it's not a NIMBY problem with not in my backyard. But here's what we can do with that now. You charge while driving on sunshine, pretty cool. And then you return to your home or to your work. And our technology allows you to then take energy out of that battery and feed it back into the grid. So you could literally get the electrons or the power that you need to keep your lights on and to work from home or be home at nighttime, you know hanging with your family. That could be all being powered by your car with renewable energy that you picked up while you're driving home. That is what we bring to the table we have that capability, the full cycle of energy.

Terry Onica: 09:09

How quickly can you install whether I'm a consumer or it's in a parking lot on the road? How fast is your technology go in?

Jeremy: 09:15

Great questions from the vehicle side. If it's an aftermarket solution, take it to the mechanic, they can get it done in less than an hour. You do it from factory built in its seconds to have it bolted on to the bottom of a car. Then if you're talking about the actual grid infrastructure, it's the same amount of time it takes for a plug in charging installation. The point is, is that if it takes an hour to do a plug in charging installation, it takes an hour to do the wireless charging installation. If you're doing it under the roadway, and you're doing it something much larger in that kind of effect. It's a day of construction similar to if it was a day of construction of roadway. Now here's the real remarkable part. Wireless charging in terms of cost efficiency is the benefit to everybody. Why? So first thing, stationary charging with wireless, it's going to be a little bit of a premium for wireless charging at your home. But you'll never have to worry about forgetting the charge, right. And you could use your feature for pulling into your garage, your autonomous feature to valet your car. Your car could just pull in and charge itself for an amazing. Then the other side of that coin is when we get to the higher power charging the equipment cost for 300 kilowatt charger, it's gonna run around 75,000-200,000. Compare that to a 300 kilowatt charger for plug in charging, you're looking at about 150 to $300,000. The reason why much less material, we use a significant less amount of material versus plug in charge. And when we get to the higher power, final thing, one mile stretch of charging equipment for wireless charging from HEVO will be equivalent cost to two three, plug in fast charging stations. The difference is, instead of charging one car at one time, you're now charging in that same period of time for that one car, dozens of cars at that one period of time there is a cost efficiency to deploying this technology. And we need to do it now because it's the real true universal way to do it and make it easy for everybody to adopt.

Terry Onica: 11:16

What's one recommendation you can give to the industry to ensure the future of the supply chain?

Jeremy: 11:22

Automakers had to get involved. We need the leadership of automakers, the visionary people out there to go, alright, we get it. We need a charging solution that we should give to our customers because they demand better. They know now the data is out there charging stations, for most electric vehicle owners is a terrible experience, meaning that they pull up to a public charging location. 25% of those charging stations are not operable. Could you imagine if there was four gas stations that you pulled up to and one of the gas stations was out of fuel, that'd be an insane thing to think about. Right? The equivalency of that is terrible. But then there's a whole other part of it. These stations are in these dimly lit back of the alley back parking lot locations and garage ways where you got to go pay $15 to valet to just get into the garage, and then pay for the charging. All this doesn't help EV adoption right? The seamless, most universal way to do it is wireless charging, just like the mobile phone. All mobile phones can charge on any wireless charging dock around the world. The same is the case with wireless charging for electric cars. There's one universal standard. The SAE standard is the one that we follow because we helped to bring it forward and bring it to life.

Jan Griffiths: 12:37

Thank you Jeremy.

Jan Griffiths: 12:39

This episode was brought to you by Quistem. Transforming your automotive management system

Dietrich: 12:49

Are you ready to find the money in your supply chain? Visit www.autosupplychain prophets.com To learn how or click the link in the show notes below.