We build machines to prove the platform, and partner with OEMs to scale it

Kiwi Drive Systems is the OEM platform of Kiwi Floor Solutions, a floor-machine builder from Dordrecht. We did not set out to make batteries. We set out to make a better floor machine, and found that the battery had to become part of the machine.

Vision · where we are going

Every compact professional machine cordless, quiet and emission-free indoors

Sanders, grinders, scrubbers and trowels still run on cords, lead-acid or petrol because no battery was ever designed for how they work. We see a generation of machines where the battery is part of the architecture: weight where the machine needs it, one data bus for power and process, and a form that takes each new cell generation without a redesign.

Mission · what we do today

A proven 48V power and drive platform for machine builders

We give OEMs of compact professional machines a horseshoe LFP battery pack, drive motors and a matched controller, engineered as one system and co-developed with their engineers, so they can electrify their range without building a powertrain team. Machines are the proof. The platform is the business.

Vision and mission in one line: the vision is the world we want to see, the mission is our part in getting there. Ours fit in a sentence each because the idea is simple: shape the battery to the machine, not the machine to the battery.

Our story

From marble floors to a power platform

Kiwi started on the floor, not in a lab. Founder Edward Lagerwaard has worked in flooring since his teens: stripping linoleum, sanding parquet, and from 2007 running his own floor company specialised in marble. The wish to grind marble floors deep with a machine that ran on ordinary mains power led him to modify existing machines, then to design his own.

The Kiwi Floor 400 series followed: walk-behind and floating planetary machines with interchangeable drive modules and central dust extraction close to the floor. Building those machines taught us what a compact floor machine really needs from its drive: torque at low speed, weight on the head, balance that never changes, and a centre that stays free for the process.

When battery technology made cordless professional machines possible, we found that no battery pack on the market respected those needs. A block of cells bolted to the frame moves weight to the wrong place. So we shaped the pack around the motor. That horseshoe is now the core of the platform, patent pending, and the reason machine builders talk to us.

Today Kiwi builds its own prototypes to prove the platform under real load, on real floors, and partners with OEMs to bring it into their machines. Series supply and support run from our hub in Dordrecht, twenty minutes from Rotterdam.

Kiwi floor machine built on the 48V platform — Kiwi proof-of-platform machine: horseshoe pack, drive motor and controller as one unit above the head. Studio, 2024.

How we think

Five principles behind the platform

Mass is a function

In this class of machine, weight is wanted: it is head pressure, balance and stability. A battery that delivers its mass in the right place is a better battery, whatever its chemistry.

Integration is the product

Cells are a commodity. What an OEM buys from us is the geometry, the matched motor and controller, the CAN data layer and the engineering that makes them one system.

Enabler, not competitor

Our machines exist to prove the platform. Your machines are how it scales. Your machine design stays yours; the platform, firmware and parameter sets stay with Kiwi.

Claims that hold

Every specification carries a revision and a date. Design targets are labelled as targets. We would rather publish a preliminary number than a marketing one.

Designed and supported in Europe

Engineering, evaluation, series supply and support from Dordrecht. Under 60 V DC, under 2 kWh per pack, certified at pack level by us, so your machine file stays simple.

Built for what comes next

The same housing takes the next cell generation. The same CAN bus carries diagnostics, fleet data and, when your roadmap gets there, autonomy. Prepared for, not promised.

Kiwi horseshoe LFP battery pack, opened — The horseshoe pack: the subject of our international patent application.

Intellectual property

Patent pending

The horseshoe battery around the drive motor, acting as balance weight and head pressure of a floor-treatment machine, is the subject of international patent application PCT/NL2025/050216, published in November 2025 and now entering the regional phases. The claim sits at machine level, so it protects the architecture regardless of who supplies the individual components.

What that means for a partner: a launch partner builds on protected ground within its machine category, and the platform, firmware and parameter sets remain with Kiwi. Envelope models, interface drawings and the CAN specification are shared under NDA.

Kiwi also holds earlier IP from its machine-building years. We keep that out of the first conversation and on the table under NDA.

Team and partners

Small team, deep bench

Kiwi is a small company by design. The core team combines twenty years of floor-machine building with senior automotive battery-systems experience in BMS, system integration and CAN-based communication. Around it sits a network of engineering, prototyping and manufacturing partners in the Netherlands and Asia, and a specialist patent attorney.

What you get as an OEM is direct access: the people who designed the pack and tuned the controller are the people in your integration session.

Milestones

2007: Edward Lagerwaard starts his own floor company in Dordrecht.
2018 to 2022: Kiwi Floor 400 series, interchangeable drive modules and central dust extraction; first patent filings on drive and sanding systems.
2024: first horseshoe battery prototypes; US provisional application on the pack around the motor.
2025: international PCT application filed and published; cordless prototypes sanding and grinding on real jobs.
2026: 1.5 kW motor line confirmed, pack redesign for series, OEM programme opened. Evaluation slots Q4 2026.