Consulting

The ASME Consulting Team provides students with hands-on experience in engineering consulting by tackling real-world industry challenges. Through research, design, and problem-solving, members collaborate with companies to develop innovative solutions while gaining valuable technical and professional skills.

Join Our Slack

EMPV Charging Station Network

A joint venture of Purdue ASME Consulting and The Sustainable Energy Club of Purdue

The Need

Every day, tens of thousands of students cross Purdue's sprawling West Lafayette
campus — and thousands of them do it on electric bikes, scooters, and skateboards.
Nearly 4,900 students currently rely on these vehicles to get around, yet not a
single public charging station exists on campus. Fire-safety rules now bar charging
them inside dorms altogether, leaving students with no safe, official place to power
up. That gap is what the EMPV Charging Station Project sets out to close.

Project History

Launched in December 2025 by then-SEC Co-President Andrew Kudinov and then
Consulting Project Director Lakshme Chari, the project has grown into a joint
venture between Purdue ASME Consulting and The Sustainable Energy Club of
Purdue (SEC). Over Spring 2026, the founding team — Lakshme Chari, Hector
Salinas, Klee Sill, Bryant Ricke, and Joe Thomas — researched student travel
patterns, scouted four campus locations, and built four working station prototypes,
presenting a completed Critical Design Review to stakeholders and prospective
industry partners that April.

Two Designs, One Network

The project is built around two complementary station designs.

Together, the two tracks let the team roll out real infrastructure quickly while continuing to push the technology forward — all within Purdue's campus-aesthetic and safety requirements.

Mass-Produced

The Mass-Produced design is engineered to scale fast and affordably, delivering essential charging functionality campus-wide at minimal cost per unit.

Advanced

The Advanced designtargets a smaller number of high-traffic locations, adding premium features and astronger user experience while still holding costs down.

Student-Built, Purdue-Backed

Every stage of this project — planning, engineering design, and manufacturing —is being carried out entirely by students, from initial concept through the completedCritical Design Review and into construction. Purdue's facilities and administrativestakeholders are active collaborators: reviewing designs for campus-aesthetic andsafety compliance, advising on code and permitting requirements, and supportingsite selection across campus. What our project does not yet have is funding formaterials. Purdue is contributing oversight and approval, not hardware dollars —which is why our team is actively sourcing finance and material partners to movefrom design into physical construction

Benefits for Students

A safe, legal place to charge — removing the fire risk that currently forces charging out of dorms entirely
Extended range and less downtime, making EMPVs a more reliable way to get across a sprawling campus
Weather-protected, roof-covered advanced design stations that help protect students' vehicles from Indiana weather
Support for a much lower-emission, less car-dependent campus commute
A charging network designed, engineered, and built by Purdue students

Benefits for Partner Companies

Visibility to a highly engaged population of nearly 56,000 students and the broader Purdue community
A real-world testbed for charging hardware, materials, and self-powered/solar systems before wider deployment
A direct pipeline to Purdue's engineering talent for recruiting and early relationship-building
Association with a hands-on, student-led sustainability initiative
Co-branding and naming opportunities across a growing network of physical campus infrastructure
First-mover positioning on what would be the first student-built infrastructure network at scale in Purdue's history

Industry-Ready Skills Gained

Because students are running every phase of the project themselves, team members are building experience that goes well beyond typical classroom work: CAD and mechanical design, design-for-manufacturing and hands-on fabrication, electrical and power-systems integration, project management across multiple engineering divisions, regulatory and code compliance, and stakeholder communication, fundraising, and business development. It is, in effect, a full-scale engineering program run end-to-end by students — experience that maps directly onto entry-level engineering roles in industry.

Partnership & Next Steps

With design work and stakeholder approvals underway, the team is seeking manufacturing, hardware, and funding partners to help cover material costs and move the project into construction as early as Fall 2026. Interested companies are invited to reach out to the project team to discuss sponsorship and partnership opportunities.