An idea. A garage. An instant success.

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:

• Established the first-ever mechanism for independent, utility-accepted metering of energy usage that does not require thousands of dollars investment by homeowners in order to take advantage of special tariffs that save EV drivers money while charging their vehicles
• Proved that EV charging is a viable Distributed Energy Resource (DER) for which grid operators and utilities can now make utilize to help them balance energy loads and avoid multibillion-dollar upgrades, and - provide payment streams similar to those used for years in multi-billion dollar “demand response” and “ancillary services” markets
• Enabled EV drivers to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted during the charging of their vehicles
• Pioneered the near-instantaneous, remote control of smart charging stations by linking their time of use and power demand to big data intelligence captured across millions of collection points in the smart grid while at the same time anticipating drivers’ needs so as not to impact their driving schedules
• Developed the first, cost effective fast-charging device for electric motorcycles
• Launched a cloud-based platform now being adopted by EVSE fleet operators, vehicle OEMs, and EVSE OEMS to participate in grid services revenue streams without having to build those relationships, technology underpinnings and market understanding themselves

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.