Founded by a Russian immigrant, operating out of large garage units in San Carlos, CA, and supporting numerous innovative skunkwork projects, eMotorWerks is a quintessential Silicon Valley success story.
Valery Miftakhov is the recipient of multiple Russian and international physics awards, a Ph.D. from Princeton, a past researcher at Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC), and an experienced executive out of McKinsey & Company and Google. Founding the company upon the fundamental belief that the world needs an accelerated road to energy independence, “Val” set out to deliver a more efficient transportation infrastructure that could dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources and slow the environmental and climate damage resulting from ongoing GHG emissions from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.
First delivering innovative methods to quickly convert European luxury ICE vehicles to electric, Val later developed the industry’s first connected EV charging station, funded it via Kickstarter, and subsequently transformed the EVSE market by making “JuiceBox” the market’s top seller and industry market-share leader.
eMotorWerks then added the ability to control EVSEs individually and by fleet in coordination with the utility “smart grid”, thus opening up “demand flexibility” value streams to customers, EV and EVSE OEMs, and utilities who need to limit high peak-energy procurement costs while also avoiding billions of investment dollars needed to upgrade electric generation, transmission, and distribution networks.
By meeting an immediate need to provide affordable, high-powered charging stations for EV drivers AND solving utilities’ infrastructure issues, eMotorWerks has elegantly combined both an innovative technical solution with a “virtuous” business model that accelerates EV adoption and the transition to a clean transportation industry. Quintessential Silicon Valley.
The company’s innovations were recently recognized through a nomination for Energy Storage North America’s annual Innovation Award. Advancements in just the second half of 2015 include:
eMotorWerks continues to innovate and is working on advancements such as: voice control of EV charging stations, financing options for accelerated fleet deployments, solutions that help workplace managers reduce their corporate GHG emissions while saving money, and further technical integrations that improve the economic utilization of other renewables such as wind, solar, and stationary storage systems.
It’s an exciting time for the rapidly-accelerating EV industry and for eMotorWerks.