Modular By Design, Durable By Nature: Kempower’s Take on Reliability & Uptime

In this episode of Field Frequency, host Jason Cortes sits down with Jed Routh, VP of Markets and Products at Kempower North America, to explore what makes a DC fast charger last—and why so many don’t.

Jed shares his personal journey from Thomas Built Buses and Duke Energy into the EV space, offering a front-row perspective on how Kempower is translating its European success into the North American market.

They cover:

• Kempower’s modular DC architecture and why “more plugs” often beats “more power”
• Lessons learned from Europe’s mature EV landscape and how they apply in the U.S.
• Designing for uptime and serviceability—redundancy, swappable modules, and intelligent load sharing
• The realities of subsidies and funding programs like NEVI—when they help and when they hinder
• Customer experience from every angle: CPOs, site hosts, utilities, and EV drivers
• Why the fleet market may be the ultimate growth driver for DC fast charging in North America

It’s a candid look at reliability, design philosophy, and the operational challenges that outsiders often underestimate.

Transcript

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On today's episode of Field Frequency, I'm joined by Jed Ruth of ChemPower. ChemPower is manufacturing DC fast chargers and is based in Durham, North Carolina. They have a modular architecture that's solving real problems for fleets and CPOs alike. On this episode, Jed and I discuss what it takes to stand out in this volatile space, why some chargers last and others don't, and how ChemPower is thinking differently about uptime, serviceability, and customer experience. Let's get into it. Welcome to Field Frequency. Today I'm joined by Jed Ruth of ChemPower. Jed, so glad to have you here today. Thanks for being on the show. It's my pleasure. looking forward to it. Great. Well, we want to talk about all things, ChemPower, but I think first it makes sense for you to kind of share your personal journey into the EV space, what led up to your role at ChemPower. So share your role, kind of what preceded you coming to ChemPower. And then from there, for those that aren't familiar, because there might be some that aren't familiar, go ahead and share what's ChemPower's mission and where does ChemPower sit in the EV charging landscape. Sure, so I spent most of my career with Thomas built buses owned by Daimler Trucks. And so towards the end of that time, we made the decision to offer an EV. So, and I got to a really unique experience because I got to experience them from three sides of the company. So when I started, when we started that EV journey, I was in the product management space. And so we were looking at spec in the product, getting demos. I actually got to drive the very first one that we built on the streets of San Francisco. That was a lot of fun. Moved over the supply chain space. So we're in that side about how do you source components, who's the vendors we're going with. And then wound up as the VP of sales there. And so got and also had the responsibility for service. So got to do the first marketing, do the first bidding, you know, actually do the service planning, which I didn't do, but the department did. So I really kind of fell in love with EVs at that time. I remember driving that school bus coming off a highway in San Francisco and just being amazed by really how much power I had. So moved over and worked for Duke Energy for a little while. We were doing depot-based fleets. So kind of got a taste of it there. Bought my own personal EV during that time and kind of fell in love with that and then had an opportunity to come to Kim Power. So Kim Power is we manufacture DC fast chargers. It's a finished company with a background in power electronics. Their parent or their founding company was a company called Kimpy, which is. DC Welding Company, so they had that power electronics and interestingly enough, a software background, kind of leveraged that technology into creating a charging business. Been very successful in Europe and in early 2023 decided to establish a manufacturing plant and a presence here in North America. I came in about May of 23 and have been here since and it's been a fantastic journey and a great ride. Okay, so you've been in the seat since May of 2023. So in the world of EV, one year counts for two to three years. So two years, you're almost a 10-year veteran there at that chem power. That's good. that's good that you had Thomas in your background. I myself spent a lot of time in the yellow fleet world. So I spent spent almost 14 years in that space as a fleet manager. I went through alternative energy projects, moving buses from diesel and gas over to CNG back then. now the school bus. All right. Well, we got some commonalities in our background. Well, good. That's good background. And thanks for sharing Kim Power's mission and where they sit in the EV charging landscape. He alluded to the parent company. And obviously, the business around Kim Power and charging products has a presence already in Europe. So strong presence in Europe where infrastructure is more mature than here in the United States. I guess the question is, what insights or lessons from Kim Power's European success has informed or adjusted maybe the North American strategy here. Yes, I always say Kim Power is a Finnish company and the Nordics really, especially Norway, are ahead of many other parts of the world in EV deployments and also just proliferation. Over 50 % of new cars in Norway are EVs now. So they've had a lot of learnings, had them pretty early on really all sides of the market, on the fleet market, on the private car market. so kind of the backbone of our technology and what we really like to push is we've got is multiple plugs and uh dynamic charging. So, you know, we would put out like a 600 kilowatt system, maybe divided by eight plugs. But it's not just that simple math. We can deploy kind of what the car needs up to the max of 600 kilowatts. And then after that, can all kinds of strategies. We can do it democratically in order. We can prioritize one charger. But I guess all that to say, the learnings there is as you start to add cars, as you're beyond the point where you just need a charger in some odd place, and you really do need an infrastructure there, what they've learned is that more plugs is really the key. That we tend to think as an EV owner, we look at the marketing and we say, car can charge this fast. And you start doing the math around the max and think, I need all this power. Maybe one day that'll be true when every car is taking huge amounts of power. But right now, I mean, you may have a car that has a maximum of a 50 kilowatt max flow rate. And then maybe you've got a Porsche Taycan over there, but you've also got a Bolt. And the deal is, don't wait. Get the cars into multiple plugs. It's better to have multiple plugs than a couple of high power plugs and people queuing in lines. It just flows them through faster. And we've done several studies on that and found out that really is the optimal strategy. So we kind of do build our strategy that way. And we will certainly will sell you a station charger, we'll sell you a movable charger. But what we really like to sell is a distributed system that has that dynamic capability to change power among the dispensers, which we call satellites. And that's key to the operator also, because when you look at an intelligently managed system around the distribution of energy, to your point, you could have a public charging destination where if have a Porsche Taycan over here, you want to direct larger gulps of energy to that, whereas a Chevy Bolt over here with its smaller design. You know, you want to allocate that power. so intelligent management around, around power distribution is important from a customer standpoint, you know, from the customer experience, the EV driver, but then also from the operator when it comes to how their power is managed. And we all know about the, the gotchas in the DC fast charging space around peak charges, know, demand charging and the costs that are there. that's what Kim Power is, is, is thinking about that from the standpoint. energy distribution. looking at, you know, Kim Power in the U S market versus Kim Power in the European market, are there key differences in how the CPO in Europe or the fleet operator in Europe would operate in those regions versus the North American? do you, you just looking at it, maybe at a more macro level from a product standpoint or how, I guess the question is, is how does your product, how you set sit with the CPO in Europe versus the CPO in the US. Or maybe there's not a differentiation there. for maturity on the CPO side, at least the business model is pretty common. Maybe in Europe, you do see more like retail kind of installations at a restaurant or a gas station. But I don't think that's going to be uncommon here. I think that we're just behind there. I mean, as more EVs hit the road more, if you own a McDonald's, it's really great for you to have a spot for somebody to charge to come in for a meal. bring somebody into your establishment or a drug store, supermarket or whatever. So there's more of that in Europe. I think also you'll certainly see some gas stations there that are saying, you know, it's time for us just to experiment with an entire station just for EVs, kind like their own CPO. So I think more of that in Europe. But like I I don't think that's going to be in common here. Fleet, I think more is just the fleet itself might be a little different. So there's no such thing as really a school bus in Europe, so you don't have that segment. Or maybe if you have, maybe the driver, the legislation's around driver time is different. So in Europe, you might have some mandatory rest time that's a little more than you have in the US. So you might can plan some installations a little differently that way, a little more public charging for trucks there than here. But on the grand scheme of thing about what you need in a product, except for like local regulations and local incentives and that kind of thing is different. But product sales are pretty similar. Well, I guess I've got one question that'll proceed this next one I'm going to ask you and that's when did our enter the U.S. market? What year was that? Yeah, it was 23. So we announced in January of 23, we had the plant operational by the end of the year, which to me, you know, coming from the automotive world was, I thought a miracle. I just could not believe that we actually took a building converted the building, put a manufacturing line here and actually put product out of here before the end of 2023. So didn't and we had there were some sales here of our movable product before that. But as far as really things come out this facility. It was the end of 2020. Even just for the audience that may not know and where is manufacturing taking place here in the US. We're in Durham, North Carolina, and they're very close to the Research Triangle Park here. fully, I mean, we're our own complete business unit. We've got every kind of function that's in a business sits here. So we've got accounting department, purchasing department, manufacturing folks, sales, marketing, engineering, all those functions. Yeah. Well, appreciate that. um Yeah. I need to get to the Kempower plant. I've been to many different plants, been in this industry for eight years, worked for some manufacturers myself. And so I've been to different plants, but Kempower is one that I haven't seen. So that's on the bucket list here. All right. Right. I'll hold you to it. All right. Well, so I asked about when Kempower got into the US market. So as an OEM, in a space with legacy players, uh homegrown startups, a constantly shifting market as we see every day. How does Kim Power maintain a competitive edge in North America? I don't want you to reveal the secret sauce, obviously, but how is Kim Power maintaining that competitive edge in this market? Yeah, so I mean, I think every one of those kinds of players has certainly their own strengths. I mean, you're competing against some legacy player with long-term like sales networks, engineering talent, those kind of things. And then some up and coming startup type folks with that kind of thinking. I think we sit in a decently unique space. I think there's another couple of players like us. But certainly the advantages are we do have that, even though we're a relatively young company, we do have that kimpy background around power electronics and software. That's not always understood, but welding software has been around for a long time. It kind has to be really precise down to the nanosecond. So you've got to got that background. And I think the Kempi family did a really smart thing when they spun the business off as its own entity. Because now we've certainly, we use them as a vendor every day. And we've got that, we've brought plenty of employees over from the company. So you had that background. But at the same time, we're really fully focused on charging. And I think that is a differentiator. So, you know, it's our core and we're gonna live and die by it. And, you know, it's no secret, we're a publicly traded company. You can look at our financials and they've been historically strong. So, you know, we're a company with, you don't have to worry about, you know, you know, angel investor paying the paycheck. I mean, it's owned and even though we're publicly traded, Kempi family, Kempi itself owns over 60 % of the stock, so there's stability there. I think it's a really good place to be and a fairly unique place to be in this whole landscape that we live in. It is, and it's it's a, it's a important place or an important consideration of that place for those that are going to invest in Kim Power products. Because when we, when we, when you look at Kim Power and you zoom out and you see there is a, a uh product, a Kim Power, you know, Kim Power charging products are undergirded by a established company and a healthy company, know, publicly traded, as you said, but a legacy company that's, know, didn't just show up in the market, but you're not depending on Kim power chargers to keep the lights on. There is a healthy, mature business backing that. And to the point when comes to ownership and how that is supported, that's important to the market from the standpoint of, don't know as a, so look at it from the perspective of an asset manager or someone that's got to, what charge do I buy? It's not just on the feature set of the charger, but it's also Is this manufacturer, if I invest in these products, is this manufacturer going to be here tomorrow because it's an unstable market? And so that, that healthy background to Kim Power, think is important. It's an important consideration for those that are looking at around what charger to buy. We don't consider it a market niche or anything like that, but a decently significant part of our business is replacing chargers that are less than five years old. For just the reasons you said, you know, there's somebody that are totally out of support. There's nobody to work on them. They don't know who to call anymore when they break. And so they're like, it's better for us to just go with someone else. And that's a shame. mean, it's really not been a, it's been a black eye for the charging market itself. And we, as The manufacturer won't be a part of changing that. And that's something that does need to be changed because to your point, talking about an asset that lasts years, mean, know design and the way things are built makes a difference in what the life cycle of a charger is for the most part. DC Fast Chargers should have a 10-year life cycle at least. And so when you get five years or less and you're having to pull those units out to help that customer, that sends messages to the... to the market in a number of types of messages. And so that speaks to that whole point of what do we invest in? As a manager, as a CPO, what do we buy? And so I guess that tees up the next question. In a capital constrained environment, CPOs are dependent on uptime. How does Kim Power balance product innovation with real world serviceability and field performance? so the latter part of that That question obviously speaks to where my focus is as a field service provider, but I'm thinking about the perspective of the CPO, reliability, uptime, utilization, all the things that are driving their business and important to them. How does ChemPower balance their product innovation with things that will impact their bottom line, i.e. that serviceability and field performance, et cetera? I honestly don't think it's a balance. I think it's really part of all our consideration around innovation. So, and it's really a part of the way the product's designed itself. So in two ways. So there's a, obviously the company, Manta puts out an uptown scorecard and we're always at the top of that scorecard and they're dealing with CPOs. think, like I say, I think two things are going on. Typically, the way we kind of just design our product, we would have a power unit that has power modules inside of it. So in 50 kilowatt increments, so know, a 600 kilowatt system would have 12 of those power modules in there. And in most, in the life of most CPOs, they're not fully utilized at any one time, almost ever. It just, it doesn't happen much. So what our system allows is if one of those, if we do have an issue with one of those power modules, All you did was lose 50 kilowatts of capacity in that system. Still works. We still switch the power modules around. And very often, I've seen CPOs wait a week or two to even fix it, just because it's like everything's okay. We'll get to it when we get to it. So from that, there's a redundancy built in the system. that's oftentimes the driver never knows the difference. And then the second thing is most of the time, you know, our system can be fixed with just a couple of parts. If you're a CPO and you invest in a couple of spare power modules, it's simple enough I can do it. It's kind of a lot to help people. mean, there's four screws, get them out of there, the power module's on the wheels, you take it out, you put the other one in. It's heavy, you might have to have a helper or a jig or something to help you lift it, but besides that, it's a quick replace and then you're done and then we can reman that power module and off you go. And so I think we've designed the system in that way. It's kind of a calling card of ours. It's the same power module, regardless of the product you buy, whether you buy a station charger or you a movable, same technology, same module. So certainly you can get different voltages, but besides that, it's the same. And I think it's just, that will be a part of our strategy, I think, going forward. It's so important, you know, just to be able to, number one, have the redundancy to keep the uptime up, have a good product that doesn't break much. And then at the end of the day, if it does, You get it fixed quickly. Yeah, that's good feedback. I can say as a field service provider, we encounter a number of types of customers where they know we're out, our technicians are out in the field working on hardware. They're out there working on products. One of the questions we get when it comes to where do they invest in is who do I buy? Because you got the service technicians out there working in the field. What are you working on? What are you not working on? Kim Power is always one of those brands that comes up as we appreciate Kim Power's partnership and the fact that we're trained on the hardware, but we don't get a lot of business because the products don't, you know, apart from commissioning and, and, and preventative maintenance, it's, it's really just fact. mean, data supports and we're working on multiple brands of hardware, but Kim Power is one of those where it's probably in a commissioning context or preventative maintenance. So, clearly that's, you know, that ties back to your response about it's not an afterthought, it's going into the design of the product and market feedback has been favorable towards Kim Power's modular system that you talked about, your scalable DC architecture, both when it comes to serviceability, but also the user experience. So, to that end, I guess the question is what, from the dynamic load sharing that you talked about a moment ago to your strong charger... management software, because you talked about software as well. Was the design intentional from the R &D or did it evolve customer feedback? Because I guess that question is framed up because you were a legacy company that entered the EV space with a problem. what's kind of the genesis of the design? Was it R &D from the start or customer feedback?&D from the start. And I think just that idea that, hey, we can do this. Yeah, we've got the background to do this. I think just a good, some people a lot smarter than me said, there's waste here. I think that's the example I always give people is, if you had that lucid that pulls in beside that bolt, in a typical scenario where you've got a you know, a 200 kilowatt charger with a split two ways, 100 kilowatts. You kind of lose opportunity on the Lucid and you kind of waste opportunity on the boat. You've got 100 to give the boat and it can only take 50 and the Lucid would love to have 200, but you can only have it, so on the Lucid side, you're not getting paid as fast and on the boat side, you're wasting your investment. And I think that some very smart people early on saw that if you could figure that out, and honestly, I think it's just almost part of the Finnish culture. practical, know, they don't waste and I think they just saw it that way. You know, why would I invest a megawatt of grid capacity when I could get the exact same performance for 600 kilowatts? And then you just save all the way down. It's not just in the cost of the system, it's the switch gear and the transformers and you know, maybe even the ability to get it there because the utility might only have so much grid capacity in that area. So I think it just kind of, just filters all the way down the system. We even have customers that tell us, hey, I can use off the shelf equipment with you, and I've got to order equipment for someone else. That always winds up mattering. think our former CEO used to say that you solve problems. The EV industry had solved problems one step at a time. We started off with, we don't have a standard to even charge anything, then we get a standard. Then we got to charge the car faster, then we got to give more power, then we got cars. And now we're kind of all the way to the end where you got to get power to the grid. And that's really the hardest problem to solve because it's really capital intensive. And so we can kind of stay away from that problem and help people stay away from that problem. So really big advantage. Yeah, that's all insightful, all good comments there. Going over to the customer experience side of things, when an OEM like Kim Power is looking at customer experience. And when I'm talking about customer experience, I'm going to make an application to the diversity of stakeholders in the EV space. So that's not just the CPO, but that's the site host maybe that have. let out some real estate to a CPO to operate and they're using Kim Power hardware. know, customer service when it comes to the utility engagement or field service teams like FieldAdvanced, your third party networks, your e-mobility providers. What does Kim Power define as excellence in that customer experience? What's the goal for you guys when it comes to customer experience and interfacing with all those? honestly in the EV business itself, you just want things as simple and seamless in every area as you can possibly get on. I mean, we've got a, you what if you drive one like me is second nature and off you go, but there is a little bit of fear for that person to transition. I personally had the, I had worked with them for so long that my first day was fine. But if you've not done that, you know, So we want to make, even from like our cable management, we want for the driver, we want the cord to be, you know, off the ground and simple to use. And we certainly have CPOs that use apps, but we don't want an app necessary with our system. So if you're a driver and you plug in and you can scan a QR code on the satellite and you can see how long it's gonna take you to charge. And then we have for it from the CPO side, very often, Customers don't understand that that charger says I should be able to get 240 kilowatts, but I only get 80, you know, something wrong here. So we'll tell you, hey, you your car is limiting the session or the grid's limiting the session or, you know, the system itself. If you've got, you know, if you've got six cars plugged up to a 600 kilowatt system, know, the way we might do it in that situation is give everybody a hundred. So in that situation, it might be, you know, the system itself is limiting it. So we try to give that kind of information. And then like we try to make the footprint small. if you're, you know, if you're, if you're setting up a parking lot, you don't, we don't just like destroy your design. So we have a small footprint for the satellite. And then like we said, we try to make serviceability easy. there's like, like you said, there's multiple stakeholders from the guy driving it to the guy fixing it. And we just know that it's a big transition. like I I spent most of my career, like if you look hard enough, you can find a podcast out there with me talking about diesel engines. Okay. So I've done that. I've done the gamut. And I spent most of my career in that industry and those guys, they're smart, you know, and they've been doing things forever and they've got all these systems figured out. And then somebody comes in and says, we're going to change. that's hard. You know, it really is. It's a tough day in your life to figure out, you know, can't do everything about working on this. And now you're asking me to be a master electrician. So we want that change to be just as easy as possible for everybody. Now we can't do much about the vehicle, but vehicles are really pretty. They're pretty reliable, so we want our system to be just as reliable as the vehicle. So reliability, simplicity, that's it. That's part of the, no, was not rambling at all. was listening and that was my takeaways from there for sure. It's good. know, kind of zooming out and looking at headwinds in this industry, the complexity of this industry. You can answer this from the perspective of Kim Power. You can answer this from the perspective as a, know, someone that understands this industry. What is one technical or operational challenge in the EV charging space that outsiders underestimate? I honestly think it's think it's probably just that grid connection. You just can't put one anywhere. So I think that's it. And then think the other thing is we are so used to the lingo around an internal combustion engine vehicle that if I say kilowatts, sometimes I might as well say in a foreign language. And I think those kinds of things We're still kind of in early adopter stage of the industry and that stage tends to be the guys that are into it, you kind of geek out on it. But you got to get past that because that next stage of folks has to say, I can do this too. I'm very hopeful. I I've got a Mustang Mach-E. My 85 year old mother has a Mustang Mach-E. and my 27 year old daughter has one. So we've got three very different generations. We just all like that car, but there's plenty of them. I do think that, certainly it's not a technology that's just that you can't understand. It's just there's a few differences that you have to get your head around. And then I think the other thing just, and you've heard this before, you've been in the industry, but range anxiety is a huge term, man, it doesn't happen. I mean for the normal everyday driver, I mean I work for DC Fast Charging Company. I certainly charge on our DC Fast Chargers a lot just because they're here and they're convenient. We have them in the parking lot. But I drive a lot. There's 80,000 miles on that car. I've probably publicly charged 15 times. So I'm in the business. I want people to charge as much as possible. But it's not, know, if you get the home charging thing down, It's a really pleasant experience. You wake up every morning with your car full and then when you have to take a trip, then that's our job. It's our job to get that infrastructure built out. And yeah, that's something I'm excited about with the business is it is really a great technology. I think, especially once the cost of the vehicles comes down, they're coming down all the time, then it's gonna take off. It's been several years ago, but you mentioned range anxiety. It's been several years ago that I heard someone say, and of course they were speaking from the perspective of a mature market. They're not in the U.S., but they said there is no such thing as range anxiety. And that stayed with me. Of course, they expounded on what they meant by that and it was experiential. And that's to your point. You've been in the space, you know where the chargers are at. Range anxiety really... is not a thing as much as experience or inexperience anxiety, because you don't know. I see chargers everywhere when I'm driving, because I'm kind of looking for them, but at the same time, I don't have to look for the charger. Technology tells me where they're at. And so it's all experiential. I think that's really cool that you got three generations all in different categories, all driving an EV. That says a lot. you talked about... Uh, you know, kind of the pervasiveness of chargers out in the, you know, you're charging at home, you're charging at work, but there is a need for public market, uh public or marketplace charging. Obviously there, there's a need for that. you know, I charge at home as well, but I also charge in the marketplace, whether I'm. You know, we're, you know, charging my local market that I live in and work and shop and all that in, but at the same time, when you go out, and traveling, you're, you're, you're charged in that case. And so. You know, the whole thing around EV adoption is public charging, access to public charging. Where are the chargers? How do I use it? Of course, that is from the perspective of those that haven't been in the space or don't drive an EV. So, but to that end, when you're talking about public charging, and of course we know that there's subsidies and funding out there available, whether they come from the state, the feds, NEVI, utility, let incentives and programs to help offset the capex with deployments. But there seems to be at times, like Nevi is an example, where there was money allocated, then the money was withdrawn, now it's back in. so, I don't know, I've been involved in Nevi projects. I've been involved in kind of the Volkswagen money that was out there as well, that was in the space for charging. public funding seemed to always be a hog in the wheel that either helped the machine turn or kept it from turning. And so, I guess the question that I have just from a macro industry perspective is, do you think funding helps or hinders long-term? What's your opinion? I'm asking Jed, not necessarily perspective of Tim Gower. What's your opinion? the same thought process you do because I think there's some of both. And what I do tell people is, you need to get picked on a little bit in that space, right? Because it's like you're the only business that's ever had funding before. But there's a road in West Texas from, know, wherever from El Paso to go into New Mexico or whatever. that probably hasn't paid for itself with traffic. There's probably very little traffic, but it's a public good to have that road because people have to get from one place to the other. And we do that all the time. I I live in a rural area. There's been subsidies to get internet connection through my area. We do that for public good and in a lot of ways, in a lot of ways with infrastructure. I'm sure there's plenty of bridges that have never paid for themselves, but the local community need to get over the river. And EV, I think, has instances like that, where on those same stretches of road, there needs to be charging. And that's really what NavV is for, right? Is to get charging along the interstates and allow you to get from long distances on EV and everybody else take care of it locally. So I think in instances like that, funding is very good. At the same time, I don't know if you guys remember, I was telling some folks here, you remember the kind of the big buzz a few months ago over DeepSeek, the Chinese AI thing. And they came in and said, we did this for so many millions of dollars when all the other American AI companies were raising billions of dollars. And I don't know how true that was, but the point I heard made about that was that's what they had to deal with. You've got this to work with, and so you make something happen. I think sometimes funding does that. It kind of makes you a little fat. I think the good news for us is we've done a lot of businesses with folks who haven't used funding. And so um we've certainly got some Neve business. We've certainly got some business that had EPA funds tied to them. When it gets to utilities, I think then they're just kind of doing a little pay ahead stuff. I mean, they realize that it's good for everybody and it helps things. So I think we were kind late enough to the game. that we did have to get scrappy in that area and get the funding a little later. I think short term, these things going away, it isn't gonna help the business as it kickstarts. But I don't think it's gonna destroy it either. think we've had a very good quarter last quarter in the middle of everybody being afraid the funding was gonna go away. So I think it's there. Maybe if five years ago somebody did a high, medium and low and guess about where the market's going to be. Even the low gas still was a lot of growth. So I'm not discouraged about I've seen it from both sides. Like you said, I've seen good and bad come from it. When I entered this industry, the first four years was spent at the convergence of traditional liquid petroleum fueling and EV charging. So I entered the EV space from downstream oil and gas, literally at the retail level calling on because working for company and we... did build design on gas stations and commercial refueling center, and then began to look at EV chargers, this was 2016, 2017 as a emerging technology, but also another fuel source. And EV, the retailer, the gas station operator, buy chargers, find some real estate. You're already selling diesel, you sell gas, sell electrons because people are going to be buying EVs. And moving the EV. this is customer retention for you. It's customer acquisition for you. you've got space, you're a fuel provider, provide electrons. so back then it was really odd to be calling on retailers for that type of thing. Today it's business as usual. Everyone's got them. All the major retailers have some degree of representation when it comes to EV charging at not all their sites, but many of their sites. And so it's... There's been a whole shift towards that, but it was interesting because I feel like any, any chargers, I sold any projects I managed when it came to EV charging in the petroleum retail world was, was forward looking and they saw, you know, I'm not going to be dependent on funding if there's subsidy, subsidies back then available. But it was kind of like, that was a good to have, but I have to have. But yeah, I don't know. So it's always a question I like to ask folks within the space, whether thought, especially with Nevi being paused and now Nevi being back activated again. So anyways, well, I've got a couple more questions for you. This has been a great conversation, but I wanted to kind of zoom out and look also at kind of vision execution in a market with high volatility. We kind of talked, we started off talking about what brought Kim Power into the US market, how it's differentiating itself in the US market, how it has proven itself in the European market. But I guess the US obviously has high volatility when it comes to EV. So what does long-term success look like for an EVSE OEM? What are the markers that Kim Power knows it's on the right path whenever it's looking at this volatile space? Well, I mean, think there's the obvious. Certainly, we've got dollar growth kind of targets internally. And we want to be growing our footprint and our installations and our employee base and everything else. we really think for DC charging, you'll never. I think people all the time have this misconception about everywhere there's a gas station, there's going to be a charger. And you and I know if you charge at home, it's just not true. mean, there just doesn't, the market doesn't need that much. And so while we certainly think the personal car market will continue to grow at a high rate, I mean, there might be some things to figure out about like multifamily home and could you get by with level one charging there and some things around that. There's some creative ideas I've heard about that. But we really see if you kind of like measure, you don't really measure in vehicles, but you kind of measure it like terawatts of power. It's the fleet market that comes around. I think there's a few reasons behind that. Certainly the cost of the battery has got to come down where you can afford the vehicle. Right now it's disproportionately different than it is in the personal car space. But the good news about that is as the bag gets cheaper, the price comes down faster because of the size of the battery. So I think when that happens, but then you start talking about, you 70, 80 cents a mile potential savings on those kinds of fleets, depending on what they are. And now the TCO number gets really big. And then the power that you almost have to charge those things with a DC charger, because if you've got a 600 kilowatt battery, you're not going to do it any other way. And so I think that's the market we see, you know, for North America. And then you just start to get in all the variants of it, know, mining. and marine and port and all those variants where that yeah, if you don't, really knew nothing about ports till I came here, took a tour this summer and at the, in Norfolk and just honestly couldn't believe the size and scale there. And there's a bunch of those in this country. So I think those kinds of markets are markets that people think about for EV, but they're typically in areas where you don't really want to pollute very much. And so you get all that other advantage around, you know, cleaning up the environment. The stat I always give everybody is, know, nobody believes it, but just looking up on Google, they give this problem to fourth graders, but I've forgotten some of that stuff in my life. A gallon of diesel or gas weighs about eight pounds. And when you burn that diesel, you actually put 20 pounds of CO2 into the air because the oxygen molecules, two of those attached to that carbon, it's about, you know, 80 % percent of that carbon is not 20 % efficient or less. So that's what you're doing. So if you're a big truck getting six miles to go out, mean, just think about that. So huge opportunity to up the environment. Really, regardless of what you feel about all that, that is true. That CO2 is going into the atmosphere. So great opportunity there. And then also, think eventually, when we get the cost of the vehicle right, a great opportunity to save money. Yeah. Yeah, that's all good comments and all insightful and comments I agree with, know, when we look at, you know, not to politicize, you know, the whole shift towards EV. I don't know why vehicles can get politicized in one sense or another, but the idea of cleaning up the environment, the output, it didn't start with EV. I know whenever I was a fleet operator, there was funding available to get those... dirty older diesel engines off the road, whether they were repowered with CNG or updated diesel with, you know, particulate systems, the way, I forget the name with catalysts and particulate traps to capture. That's, that's, yep, yep. That's what I was looking for. Yeah. All that to try out some of that output. You know, there was money and, and incentives to offset that back then. looking at from LNG, CNG and other, other, know, updated diesel. So all the more reason, you know, you know, we talked about school buses earlier. That's the, that's the largest people mover in, the U S is, is the school bus. So many people, you know, from point A to point B and, you know, just, just the invented, you you talked about TCO, the, the advantages of shifting to alternative energy for, you know, for the way you move people from point A to point B just makes sense. But. Cool. Well, great. uh know, kind of closing out, we were looking at, you know, what's it look like, you know, kind of going down the road in this market, but maybe you could speak to, you know, what Kim Power's footprint over the next five years in North America looks like. What do you hope people say about the company five years from now, whenever you got more units out there in the wild? Yeah, we just want to grow. mean, so we're new here. The sales cycle takes a little while. mean, because if you start with a customer and you start a project, you've got to get permits and break ground, which in and of itself is going to take some time. But then you've got some equipment that's been in heavy demand on the utility side that I think is just starting to kind of break free. we've really been encouraged this year about our growth. But if we're thinking the market's growing 20 percent, We got to grow up more than that to be at the market share that we want to be at. I mean, we really, I don't know that people always ask me, are you focused on fleets or you focused on CPOs? And I just say, yes. You know, our product really fits both. And so we want to, we've segmented our sales strategy and our marketing strategy into both areas. And we want to be able to serve both customers. Canada as well. I mean, I think that's a huge huge market for EVs as well. They're a little ahead of us in their implementation in a lot of areas. So yeah, I think that's it. We really want to be ahead of that growth curve so that we can be a top three, top five player in this space. And yeah, I think the people here that work here just feel really good about that. They feel like they're working on a great product that does an ultimate good. And so I think that's another part, is we want to be a part of that as well. Well, Jed, this has been a great conversation. I appreciate you sharing your time, your insights, your background with us. Thanks for talking to us about ChemPower. Appreciate your time and was a pleasure having you on Field Frequency. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Thanks so much, Jason.