As EV makers struggle with short driving-range, this start-up is speeding up charging time

Transphorm CEO Mario Rivas joins Yahoo Finance to discuss his company's semiconductor technology and its role in the rapidly growing EV market.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: Transphorm, and the CEO, Mario Rivas, joins us now. His company actually makes what you might call semiconductors focused on transistors. I'm going to read from the description of your company. Made from gallium nitride for use in switch mode power supplies. I am not an engineer. In fact, you're looking at an old Studebaker guy here. So I got to ask you, what do you guys do? How would I understand what it is you do?

MARIO RIVAS: I will trade it for your Studebaker, because that would be fantastic. But no, we make transistors. Usually you can hear them in silicon. We have come up with a new compound semiconductor called gallium nitride. It's not entirely new. It's also used in LED light bulbs, as well as Blu-Ray DVDs. But this application makes it for power conversion.

So essentially what you need to think of it is, gallium nitride is faster, lighter, more efficient than silicone when it comes to applications and power conversion. In electric vehicles, it's all about power conversion. You need to charge your batteries, you need, from the batteries, you need to power multiple systems. And if you can make it faster, lighter and even cheaper, this translates into a longer range for your electric vehicle, which is what everybody wants.

JULIE HYMAN: So Mario, it's Julie here. Thanks for joining us. So as you, talk to me about your clients and how they are using your technology now, and the kind of difference that it's made in speed, for example, of charging.

MARIO RIVAS: Well, the speed for charging, the best example that I have for you is rather than an electric vehicle, will be on the charger for your 5G phone. So in the 5G phone, we produce now converters that allow you to recharge to a 50% range in five minutes. So you forgot to charge your phone, in five minutes, you're going to get 50% charge. And really, we guarantee 100% charge within half an hour. So that is the kind of increase in speed that you're going to see. And depending on the kind of system that you plug your electric vehicle into, you're going to see similar charges.

JARED BLIKRE: Jared Blikre here. You talk about using a new material, gallium nitride. What does it take to scale up and to get this get this material into factories? And are there any supply chain constraints that you're dealing with here?

MARIO RIVAS: That's a good question. We grow gallium nitride layers on top of regular silicon wafers. And we make it right here in California, in Santa Barbara. And we can scale to very large volumes in very short period of time. We have a secondary production of wafers in Japan. And because of our ability to a scale, it is why we were certified by the Department of Defense to be as a qualified supplier of gallium nitride on silicon wafers.

ADAM SHAPIRO: So the technology that you have doesn't matter if there's a standardized version of charging. Because right now, depending on the car you buy or the electric device you have, there different ways to charge. You're cross platform essentially, correct?

MARIO RIVAS: That is correct, however, it always helps to have standard. So we're happy to see standards come out, like Qualcomm just did a Quick Charge 5, but it will force everybody into a certain specification. And that can only be supplied with gallium nitride.