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“Experience and expertise are the hallmarks of the KEYOU team”

The KEYOU team has known each other for a long time and share one vision: engineers Thomas Korn and Alvaro Sousa have worked together for 15 years, 10 of which were spent researching and developing alternative drives at BMW. Added to this mix is Ivo Pimentel, who brings a wealth of experience in the field of renewable energy to the table. Now they are pooling their talents and expertise in KEYOU, the high-tech company they founded together at the end of 2015 with the aim of shaping mobility to be sustainable and environmentally friendly. And that shared vision? To create affordable and clean mobility based on the sustainable, energy-rich fuel of the future – hydrogen.

Thomas Korn

Thomas Korn studied engineering at the Munich University of Applied Sciences, with a particular focus on technical physics. He began his career in the late 1990s as a design engineer in the R&D department at BMW, working mostly on alternative drives and fuels. During this period, he was heavily involved in developing two generations of hydrogen vehicles. From 2001, he led the BMW research department for fuel cell technology, before relocating to California in 2006, where he was the project manager responsible for the BMW North America H2 vehicle and filling station programme. He then moved to Alset and took up a role as Vice-President for Technology and Innovation; this was also where he gathered first experiences on how to run a start-up. Finally, in 2015 Korn established his own start-up business: KEYOU. As CEO and Founder, this is where he is now turning his dream of developing sustainable and clean hydrogen engines into a reality.

Alvaro Sousa

After completing his degree in automotive engineering at the University of Porto, Alvaro Sousa started his career in the R&D department at BMW in Munich. He spent his first four years there researching and developing the first BMW pre-series production vehicles with hydrogen combustion engines, storage systems and fuel cell vehicles. In 2007 he relocated to California, where he headed up BMW’s customer and technical service departments for the hydrogen fleet in the field there. He returned to Portugal three years later, where he worked as a lecturer at the University of Porto. Between 2011 and 2014, Alvaro worked for the start-up Alset, first as an outside consultant, then as Vice-President for Fuels & Infrastructure. This is where his path crossed again with Tom Korn. KEYOU Co-Founder Alvaro is now Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the company, responsible for developing the hydrogen engine and its components.

Ivo Pimentel

Ivo Pimentel’s career began at JP Textiles, an international fabric sales company, where he started in the sales department and took over commercial management in 2000. Since his passion had always been cars and kart racing, in 2003 he moved to England to study automotive engineering at Oxford Brookes University. In 2006 he joined BMW’s MINI Plant Oxford as a project engineer for quality engineering. Spurred on by his entrepreneurial spirit and strong commitment to environmental issues, in 2007 he founded his own renewable energy company in Portugal. Pimentel is one of the three KEYOU Co-Founders as well as the company’s Chief Business Development Officer, being responsible for market launch and commercial roll-out activities in selected markets.

The high-tech company, based in Unterschleißheim near Munich, develops innovative hydrogen technologies, special components and combustion processes that can be deployed to transform conventional engines into zero-emission engines. The technology is not specific to a particular engine or manufacturer and can be used in both new and existing vehicles. The current focus is on the commercial vehicle sector.