Mr. Julian Seume with Wiferion Talks about Wireless Charging and Increasing Your E-Vehicles Availability
In this week's Industrial Talk Podcast we're talking to Julian Seume, Chief Marketing Officer at Wiferion about “Wireless Charging and Increasing your E-Vehicles Availability by up to 30%”. Get the answers to your “Innovative Charging Solutions” questions along with Julian's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!
You can find out more about Julian and the wonderful team at Wiferion on innovative industrial charging solutions – Bright Future by the links below. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2020. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!
JULIAN SEUME'S CONTACT INFORMATION:
Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julian-seume-424190125/
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wiferion/
Company Website: https://www.wiferion.com/
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
charging, julian, industrial, inductive, solution, vehicle, battery, technology, forklift, assets, inductive charging, company, scott, plug, people, talk, drive, fleet, listeners, cool
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's get All right. Welcome to the industrial talk podcast absolute, again, absolute honor that you have joined this particular platform that celebrates you, as I take my pin and I point to you on the video, you are an industry hero, you are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly your solve problems, you innovate, you're changing lives, and you're changing the world. celebration is what we do here on the industrial talk podcast. All right, in the hot seat, we have a gentleman by the name of Julian zoomy. And he's with a company called wiper Ron. And we're talking this is pretty cool. This is cool technology. This is cool innovation. We're talking wireless power, inductive charging for your E fleet. But it's not that it's how they design and how they are able to do that. You're gonna love this conversation. Let's get cracking. See, this is what's so cool, right? industry as a whole industry. We always talk about innovation. But here's a company, why phoron that's taken inductive charging, and just taking it to the next level that keeps your assets up and running your E assets up and running 30% up to 30% more, that's money in your pocket. That is value, baby. All right, before we get cracking with the interview, again, I want to be able to tell you a little bit about industrial talk 2.0. And it's a redesign. But we all you know, we you know, we do the podcast, you know, we do the videos, you know, we do the blogs, you know, we do all of the stuff, we host we do all of that stuff. But we are just sort of reconfiguring industrial talk so that you can find information and you can find it easily and you can collaborate, you can educate, and you're going to be able to find these individuals that you can innovate. Like why for Ron right here, you're saying to yourself, Scott, I need to be able to look at that solution. Boom, industrial talk.com has it for you reach out, boom, see, everything that you possibly can try to the team here at industrial talk really is trying to work at making it easy for you to get stuff done. Because we're all about that education. We're all about the collaboration. We're all about that innovation and working with companies that embrace those values and recognize in this new normal, this next normal, whatever this normal is that we can't do it all on our own. We've got to collaborate. We've got to find companies that saying, Yeah, yeah, I'll work with you. Let's get this stuff done. That's what we're looking for. That's what we have out on industrial talk. Because it's just going to have to be that way going forward. It's it's, it's an exciting time. Don't get me wrong, I love it. But I want to be able to find people who want to get stuff done. Alright, let's get a kurakin. Wiferion, is the company so let me look at his. This is Julian Seume. You're gonna say Scott, it's not spelled with a Z. It's not it's s e u m e Julian's first name, Ron is w i f e r i o n. And you can go out to Julian's LinkedIn stack card. Impressive, as always, like everybody else. And being the chief marketing officer, he brings the pepper in this particular conversation and pretty bad. I just once again, just as I look at the other screen, once again, the innovation, the technology, then what companies like wife Ron are doing is just spectacular. I don't know, man, do you get chills up and down your spine? I do. And if I had hair I share my hair with tingle in my head would tingle but I don't and so it doesn't. But anyway, wife run wireless charging systems. And in the video, if you look out at the video, you'll see just these, like these little plates, he's holding it. And these plates are just powerful solutions for your E, your, your E fleet, your your, and it just starts there, man, you start pulling on that thread of the solutions that can be provided. And it's never ever ending. It is just God. It's an exciting time. All right. You don't want to hear me continue to Yammer on remember, industrial talk. 2.0 Be on the lookout for that one. All right, here is Julian Seume. Julian, welcome to the industrial talk podcast. How are you doing today?
I'm awesome. Thank you, Scott. How you doing?
We'll see. See listeners. He's got a lot of pepper in him. That's what I like about him. Julian, a lot of In fact, that's his last name, pepper. Seume. Did I get that right?
You got a perfect but today let's let's keep it
easy because I'm sitting there going, quote quote quote unquote that doesn't. And listeners you're gonna say I want to be able to spell his name correctly, it'll all be out there on industrial talk.com Don't worry about the pronunciation. That's my problem, not yours, but you do need to reach out to this gem because he's got a mad stat card out there. And I love what we're going to be talking about the the tech, which is really cool. And then the company is why fire on and that's again, don't worry about it my responsibility. It'll be out on industrial talk calm. Alright, Julian, for the listeners out there. Give us a little background of where you come from why you're such an incredible professional, then we're going to go into this particular topic that I think I'm pretty, pretty excited about.
Yeah, awesome. Let's do so my name is Julian, and that's keep it away. I'm working at a company in Germany, where we coming from, it's called Wiferion. But Wiferion is also fine. And what we're doing is what we do is actually we do call inductive charging pads for making energy transfer over the air without any contacts and not thinking about your your electrical toothbrush, or your your smartphone. We talking about big industrial robots, agvs cars that move themselves that are driven by batteries. And we would like with the solution we would like to discuss today. We want to make it easier to get energy and power into your batteries without any contact
with Julian that that has that been done before in the past?
I mean, the honestly, the technology was developed by Nikola Tesla, maybe some people know from the computer game, I think common and conquer where you have those Tesla power stuff. Yeah. So basically, it's 160 something years old, right. But let's say to have pushed into such a small footprint with that high efficiency. It was not done in the last couple of years in depth, high efficiency and power when we do so. But everybody knows. Maybe we get a very little hint that the smartphone stuff used nowadays. Yeah,
almost no one is plugging anymore. Everything comes you put it on a little desk, you put it into your car, and there's a little mat in there, which says inductive charging. I'm charging your phone now. And basically that's what we do, but with much more power for other vehicles.
Yeah, this inductive, by the way, apparently, I'm one that does not use inductive charging for my cell phone. I still plug it in, I still run around trying to find that plug.
But one question. Are you brushing your teeth with an electrical toothbrush?
Yeah, but it's it's driven by a battery.
Okay. Okay.
Try Julian, I'm trying to leverage the inductive technology. But the funny thing about that cell phone. And I'm sure some of the listeners out there can can embrace this, when that little plug gets bad. And you try to just sort of extend the life of it. And then you sit there and you'd sort of stay. I'm looking forward to the inductive solution.
Wow. And that's actually it's the same issue. If you're running a forklift or something that needs to be plucked after the shift. Just imagine you are the work of the next shift. And the stupid guy from before it didn't pluck the correctly come down with shit. My equipment is not ready. So I got to go to the manager and say, I'm sorry, can't work. The equipment isn't ready. So that's basically some of the things we're going to talk today. And that's what how we want to solve issues about plugging in cables, or, yeah, things like that. So.
So we're talking about inductive in general, macro, high level inductive charging. And we're talking about the technology to be able to do that in an industrial setting. forklifts, other other large equipment within a manufacturing floor, let's just sort of lay that out, and, and keeping the assets charged in a way that they're productive. And so the overall, what was the overall thinking behind the company and why this is so important.
Yeah. So we looked at what happens in the industry and actually the industry is removed from its revolutionizing. It's basically everything is moving now it's going to be flexible. There's robots and ATVs and industrial trucks moving from gasoline into electric. So we saw there's a huge benefit, because at the moment the standard technologies that are charging those electric vehicles, they are either on a cable, which is quite strange if you think about an autonomous truck or an autonomous VIERA this completely alone and can drive me crazy, amazing, intelligent, smart things. But then in the evening needs to drive somewhere where a guy goes and plugs a cable. I mean, that's, that's not what we really think it's a complete solution. So we thought about what can we do with the technology available? And we found four very smart guys were actually researching on a PhD level, how can we make those kinds of inductive charger very efficient. And in the end, we basically came up with a little plate that is just 10 by 10 inches. Just keep holding that up.
If you're looking at on the video, this is this is it looks cool, right? Got a great smile, but it looks cool. So don't get distracted by the smile. And that's all it is.
That's basically what what do you put on in the in the ground or on the ground or on the wall of your manufacturing location. And then you have a similar plate on the vehicle. And basically, the only thing is having the two, the two plates not kissing each other, but getting very close to each other. And then immediately starting communicating and transferring energy without any additional help from from a guy or from software. So that's all full automatic. And the cool thing is there's no context in between. So there's no wear and tear, there's no cables to be plugged in, just the two plays need to get close to each other communication, hey, I'm a vehicle I need energy. And then we generate a magnetic field. And the magnetic field basically charges, vice versa, then the battery in the vehicle.
So I'm a human being. I make, hopefully, dumb decisions. It's not my fault. It's just my species. So I sit there and I say, that's pretty cool. I get it to content, you know, I can get real close. How do you? How does your company prevent me from getting too close? Or too far away? And I, I optimize that distance so that I'm optimizing the charging, and I'm not banging into it, or I'm not that far away. How does that happen?
Yeah, I mean, there's it's quite simple. First of all, the guys who are driving forklifts, if it's a manual driven forklift, there's super good and driving forklifts, they can actually I think they can drive less than an inch if they want, because, you know, they were really amazing in the in the warehouse in the in the manufacturing supply chain. But honestly, the best case where this latest stuff is really amazing is at the autonomous driving. So if you have autonomous driving fleet AGV, that is actually the smart component in the process, that it has scanners and and never then navigation technology, which makes it easy. And we have quite a big, let's say chance of being not in a perfect distance. And that's our experience, no problem at all, it's even a much easier, because compared to other solutions where you have, for example, one of the competition solution, which is on the market is a contact charger, which is it's available since I think the 1980s or 75, or something. So it's it's good, it's traditional, it works. But you have to be exactly on place, you have to push, you have to hit perfect. And if you do, if you are a manual driver, sometimes an interest too much, or even the technology of of the scanning and the navigation software of the self driving ATVs they need to be very precise. In our case, there's like inches left the right enough space, we don't need to be 100% accurate, just close to it. And then we will the thing will do the thing.
Seeing that that's pretty good. So your your inductive solution allows for the human very ability and be able to achieve the objective that is necessary to charge that be keep that asset moving and doing what it needs to do to be productive. Now, it's an interesting stat that I have here. It is fleet availability of your industrial II vehicles v e by up to 30%. So your solution keeps that asset delivering its benefit up to 30%. Is that correct?
I mean, that's that's correct. Then of course, that's that's a marketing talk, but it's a real marketing talk because it's reality. So what what we do have that and that's the difference to other solutions in the past but you had mentioned you have your forklift, you have your forklift driver and he runs a full shift and after 678 hours the battery is empty which is fully fine. Yeah, those two t goes to a charging spot maybe drives whatever 500 meters, stops there gets the battery into the park says goodbye. And the forklift is basically staying there for four or five hours to be fully recharged again. What we do is we basically because that so easily to be implemented the grounds on the floor and on actually on locations where the fork driver is stopping anyway, and there's no petitioner let's say job to be Done with a cable in, let's imagine he has a five minute single break, or you need to go for the restaurant or he has a break for the cafeteria for 30 minutes. No one nowadays drives to forklift 500 meters to the charging location proccing, the charger cable for maybe 20 minutes of breaks? Yeah, go back to the cafeteria. And so what we basically want to do is we're going to implement the charging in the process where he anyway stops, if he stops for unloading the dock. And there's a certain stopping time because the truck is changing, then he has five minutes of standing time, or maybe only two. And as it's fully automatic, and there is no trick, chances are, there's no wear and tear and things like that. It's basically done automatic that the driver doesn't have to think about charging.
And you know, that's huge. Julian as the listeners, I want to make sure that that point is sort of crystallized. And it's just the charging, the function of charging of your assets is just a part of the process. And so if I go to station a, there could be a charging station there. And I just pull up, take care of whatever, it might take me a minute, but I've got a minute of charging that's taking place. And then I pull out and I go to station B same sort of deal. But it's embedded into the process. And so I don't have to make a conscious decision to go eat lunch, but drive the forklift or other asset over to this one charging station, stick it in, and then walk back over there. Brilliant. Scott,
you got and that's exactly what we'd like to do. And just imagine in the manufacturing area where you have no self driving agvs or in a house where you where you anyway have to go to load something which takes 30 seconds, maybe a minute. Or if you're in a production circle and your your production let's let's let's assume your yawn yawn yawn automaker. And nowadays the the body of the of the cars has not been like Ford and 100 years ago, put it on the beginning of the band. And then it walked through. Nowadays we go from station to station and the things are going on an ATV. So that means maybe there's like 50 stations they go through and there's automatic robots and manpower who was working on the on the car. And just imagine every time you drive two minutes to Next station, then you have a one minute working time when robots are going on and, and doing stuff on the car. That's the time where you easily change because it's just in the ground if you want or on the on the ground. Just don't think about
now I'm telling you. That's that's actually that's a cool solution. Great thinking over there. That is I love it. I love it. So the question that comes to mind? Yeah, yeah, good, good answer. Because the question that comes to mind is a couple of things. One, cool, I'm listening, I want to be able to do something like this. Can I do it in a small way? Big way? How do I begin the process of implementing?
Yeah, let's, let's be honest, it's it's basically, there's so many in 1000s of potentials to put it in. And we have to look, it should be also a good business case. And that means you basically started Look, I have a driving situation, I have electric a vehicle. And I'm running more than let's say two shifts, and I have constantly problems with power, power transfer their interior, broken, damaged cables. So what can I do, of course, we are targeting companies who make agvs, who make industrial trucks to make basically upgrade their their vehicle into a smarter vehicle, not only by sensors and systems, but also in the way of charging and energy supply. That's the one thing and of course, that's our first target two is to have a general improvement of the vehicles outside there. And that will bring the revenues for the end customer using those vehicles. On the other hand, if your industrial truck manufacturer, or for example, if you're using manufacturer trucks, we can basically swap your old lead acid battery and swap it into a new tray which has inductive charging with for example, lithium ion in there, which is a little bit better suited for let's say rapidly fast and quick and short charging circuits in terms of lifetime of the battery. And then make in retrofit, you're actually truck into a new very crazy state of the art inductive charging machine. So that's that's these are the two ways which we're trying to get into the market and where we think the product can have a huge benefit for the end customers. See,
here's here's the thinking it's like pretty cool. I can take old assets, battery asset, you know that that has to get plugged in, and I can retrofit it with your solution cool. And be able to create a charging station that sort of elevates And prolongs the value of that asset, because you just sort of updated it, I would imagine and correct me if I'm wrong. Now I'm able to collect real data on that asset as it moves around. And then I can be able to make tactical decisions on my manufacturing process, or where people are at, does it give me more data to look at to be able to be a better business?
Yes, Scott, good question is that we will do it, I think we do it. It sounds like it was not a predefined question. It was not actually,
it wasn't, it was just me.
So it's cool. It's got mister.
So
that's also the new technology without only transferring the magnetic field and therefore putting energy from one side into the battery. We also have a communication connection, basically. And we do communicate all the data from the battery system from the vehicle into the stationary site, which is plugged on the ground, and then into a cloud. So Meaning, if you have a smart management fleet management system, you can hook up to the cloud and basically get not only the information you have anyway, but getting detailed information about a battery, the life cycle, what's the status, and things like that. And one more thing, I think is very important, because we talked about the system does not be belong to one kind of technology in terms of battery, we charge 24 volt, 48 volt batteries, lead acid, lithium, lithium, the tinium doesn't matter what kind of battery and only have the same charging spot. Meaning even if you have different kind of vehicles running on your fleet or on a warehouse, everybody can use the same. And that's where the real game changer comes into the game. Just imagine a big guy like Amazon or whatever the sides, okay, I don't care what kind of vehicles are driving, I just want one investment for the charging. And everyone should need a similar charging spot on the other side. But that's let's say it's visionary. Maybe Amazon list is listening. Please call me we can make a good deal.
That's it.
All right, that's a shameless plug. But it's a good shameless plug. Because the technology's really cool. Okay. So what I see is one, this is an important if you're in whatever application or you're using these assets. And and and i think that it's important that you use these, you're going to have to come up with a, a strategy around that. And I think that this inductive solution is a cool future. You know, thinking into the strategy, it's important. It is a digital transformation journey, because you're going to be able to pull all that information, you're going to be able to make better decisions. I get it. Why do you have certain? What are the roadblocks? Why don't people just say, I get it? Let me push back on it.
Yeah, to be honest, em, as you ask, how long is that on the on the horizon, it's been there for many, many years in a different way. We call it next generation inductive charging, because everyone who has heard about it or use it or tried it out, they basically had a line charger, which is normally placed into the ground with a lot of infrastructure work. And yeah, I would say those system were available also since couple of years. The problem was, it's huge investment. And you cannot really drill into a leased warehouse where you have to know in 10 years, I have to return it to the owner. And I have to fix all the groundwork. So that was one of the topics where where we have limitations. So we come up, let's do it on a spot charger. Let's do that little 10 by 10 inch thing, if we can even put it just on the ground with some plastic mats, depending on the application. So you can easily move it away from one place to another if the warehouse design changes the layout. And the second thing is the second why why is the robot there, people need to understand it's not the old kind of inductive, the old kind of inductive charging was around 60% efficient, meaning if you have those those phone charges, which are like this size, they have a similar maybe 50% 60% efficient efficiency, which is okay for for five watt of charging of a phone. I don't care if I lose too much. But if you lose 1500 watts for 3000 watts, right. Huge, huge issue. So that was one of the biggest roadblocks and people need to understand there's something new in the market, which really works with 93% efficiency that's fully comparable to any other charging solution available on the market. See, and
I think that that's a great point. And because you're in the business and because this innovation just keeps on rolling forward, it only gets better. It's only just keeps on getting better and better and better because your focus your company and others are focused on delivering value delivering success. And that requires me to keep on innovating. And so you're already there. Throw away that dog on old tech uses New Tech.
Yeah, that's a cool thing. If you're a startup, which we been like five years now, and, you know, we can really concentrate on one thing, and we only riding that horse, and we have to ride it until it's dead, or we're going to make a unicorn out of it, you know, but let's, let's see, it looks like other companies are focusing on too many other things. If you have one really cool stuff, which we believe we have. And now as I said, in Europe, it's quite we're quite, let's say established with the category that we have most of the the systems in your running and we now entering us, that's also why we have to talk. We are at promo dx. So that's gonna be amazing. We really looking forward because that's gonna be a big game changer. I think also, yes. All right,
we're gonna have to wrap it up. This is what I've got out of this conversation listeners, outside of the fact that Julian and and the wonderful team at y Ferran or, anyway, right there, they're passionate about your success. It is a true innovative solution that's delivering value that you can deploy. Yes, there has to be a business case. And but they'll help you through that. And it it makes your assets more efficient. And it's, it's, I'm telling you right now, Julian, I'm sold. You had me at pi.
Okay, Scott, let me let me show you one. You can start charging a phone with it. But it's gonna be like very zip charts. It's gonna be you have to be careful. Don't keep it lower than maybe five seconds on the plate.
It goes way. Roast my thing.
Yeah.
Hey, are you active out there on LinkedIn?
Of course.
You will find me under my name was Julian dot Seume. And of course, we and also Wiferion w, I, f, r i o n. You will find us on LinkedIn. We're quite active there, hopefully. And as I said, we're going to entering us on promar Tx. We are one of the ovation award nominees in the finals of the coolest product in this year. So look out, I would really enjoy time with you explaining the idea and developing projects, if you like.
All right, right, efficient wireless power in this is an inductive solution.
And
it's pretty badass. I love it. Love it all. Very cool. Thank you very much, Julian. Now you're gonna say Scott, I got to get all that, you know, it's gonna be out there on industrial talk.com with his particular podcast, all the links and ability you need to reach out to him and this particular company find out more because it is important stuff. make you a success in the future. Alright, Julian, thank you very much.
Thank you, Scott. Stay charged and charge safe.
Bye. Bye. All right, listeners. That's a closing salutation. Stay tuned, we're gonna be right back. You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
Now, that was a great conversation. You got to admit that industry is so cool. And people within industry you heroes. You're just cool. Got a high cool factor. No doubt about that. All right. All the contact information of Julian swimming and wiper on, of course will be attached to his podcast at industrial talk.com. Don't miss out I guarantee that they want to talk. And I think that if you can see true bottom line value to your solutions into their solutions in your your business. Boom. We got to be about making our business succeed because we're about surviving, rebuild, and of course prospering in this new new world. And remember, write, be bold, be brave, dare greatly. Let's collaborate with people who are bold, brave, daring greatly. And I guarantee you're going to sit there and you're going to change the world. Because you're going to change the world through innovation, you're going to change the world because you're going to continue to educate industrial talk to Dotto, it's going to be out there. So there's no excuse, right? All right, we're gonna have another great interview right around the corner, as you always know. So be safe out there. And thank you very much for joining the industrial talk podcast.
About the author, Scott
I am Scott MacKenzie, husband, father, and passionate industry educator. From humble beginnings as a lathing contractor and certified journeyman/lineman to an Undergraduate and Master’s Degree in Business Administration, I have applied every aspect of my education and training to lead and influence. I believe in serving and adding value wherever I am called.
