Most battery conversions bolt a generic block onto a machine that was never designed to carry it. The Kiwi platform starts from the machine: the pack is shaped around the drive motor, the motor is matched to the controller, and all three talk on one CAN bus.
Compact floor machines work through their own weight. A sander or grinder needs head pressure right above the tooling, and a cordless conversion that puts 15 kg of battery on the handle or the frame changes the balance the operator has learned to trust.
The Kiwi pack is a horseshoe of LFP cells that closes around the drive motor, directly above the working head. Three things follow from that geometry:
One housing, two capacities: the 1.5 kWh pack for full-shift sanding and grinding, and a 1.0 kWh version in development for lighter drives. Both use the same motor bore, the same CAN interface and the same charger.
LFP chemistry, 16S. Always below 60 V DC, so the pack stays under the SELV limit that a 72 V system exceeds. Under 2 kWh per pack, so no EU battery passport is required for the machine.
Two permanent-magnet motors share one flange, one shaft and one length, so a machine designed for one can take the other:
Both deliver 1500 W continuous and 2400 W peak at 34 A nominal, weigh 6.5 kg and are IP65 protected (excluding connector) and air cooled. Motor data is manufacturer rev A data of 24 August 2026; peak efficiency 94 % per manufacturer.
Because the 1500 rpm motor replaces the AC motor of current floor machines almost one-to-one, a conversion often starts at the motor and grows into the full platform. That is also how our drive sets are meant to be used.
A motor is only as good as the controller that drives it. Ours is a sine-wave field-oriented controller characterised for both Kiwi motors: the motor parameters, current limits and thermal model are set by us, so your engineers do not spend weeks tuning.
SAE J1939 alignment is on the roadmap. CAN specification and DBC file are available under NDA.
Preliminary specifications, rev. 2026-09. Motor data per manufacturer rev A (24-08-2026); battery and controller values are design targets pending sample testing.
Battery plus mains operation for continuous uptime: a bridge to full battery adoption for machines that still work near a socket, and a fallback for the longest shifts.
1,500 rpm: direct drive for stone grinders, standard 1:10 for disc machines (150 rpm). 3,000 rpm: geared drives. No custom high-ratio gearbox.
Peak power limited by battery output (50 A peak, 1.5 kWh pack; 1.0 kWh pack current-limited for light-duty drives).
One CAN bus for pack, controller and machine · SAE J1939 alignment on the roadmap · CAN spec and DBC under NDA.
Charging: CAN-controlled by the pack BMS · temperature-derated, no charge below 0 °C · CAN floor-care charger (Delta-Q class) included in the evaluation kit.
Below 60 V DC in every state · under 2 kWh per pack, no EU battery passport · LFP at a fraction of the weight of 24 V lead-acid sets.
3D envelope models and interface drawings available under NDA · info@kiwidrivesystems.com
A 16S LFP pack sits at 51.2 V nominal and never exceeds 58.4 V. That keeps the whole machine under the 60 V DC SELV threshold, which simplifies the electrical safety case compared with 72 V systems.
The EU Battery Regulation (2023/1542) requires a digital battery passport from February 2027 for industrial batteries above 2 kWh. Both Kiwi packs stay below that line. CE marking, labelling and UN 38.3 transport testing are our responsibility as pack manufacturer.
Lithium iron phosphate stores several times the energy per kilogram of lead-acid, tolerates opportunity charging, needs no maintenance, is cobalt-free and has the highest thermal-runaway threshold of the lithium chemistries in common use. For a machine that runs on 24 V lead-acid today, the weight saving alone changes the design.