New EV Charging Infrastructure Solutions with it's electric COO & Co-Founder Tiya Gordon

MotorTrend

MotorTrend's Ed Loh & Jonny Lieberman sit down with COO & Co-Founder of it's electric

Transcript

00:00:00Welcome to The Inevitable, a podcast by Motor Trend.

00:00:15Hi there, and welcome to The Inevitable.

00:00:17This is Motor Trend's podcast, our podcast

00:00:20about the future of the car, the future of transportation,

00:00:24the future of owning an electric vehicle where you don't

00:00:27necessarily own a home.

00:00:29How are you going to charge it?

00:00:30And we're going to discuss that with our today's guest.

00:00:33But before we get to that, this guy, Ed Lowe,

00:00:35has a special message just for you.

00:00:38The Inevitable podcast is brought to you by the all

00:00:40electric Nissan Ariya, inspired by the future,

00:00:42designed for the now.

00:00:44And right now, we're going to have our one

00:00:46question of the episode.

00:00:49Comes from nowhere.

00:00:50Did you hear there was some kind of election that went on?

00:00:54No, I missed it.

00:00:55Missed it?

00:00:55Yeah.

00:00:56So apparently there's going to be a new president here

00:00:58in a few days.

00:00:59A new old president.

00:01:00New old president.

00:01:01New old stock.

00:01:01Yeah.

00:01:02We won't go deep on our personal feelings about it,

00:01:05but I think there's some questions around what

00:01:07this means for this podcast.

00:01:11Well, we're going to keep doing the podcast, because clearly,

00:01:13apparently, podcast got him elected.

00:01:15But what does it mean for the auto industry at large?

00:01:18Interesting.

00:01:18There's a lot of theories abounding.

00:01:21There's some jokes about who should maybe

00:01:24be over at the Department of Transportation.

00:01:27I'll just look in the camera, put my hand up.

00:01:30President Trump, I was on Fox and Friends numerous times

00:01:34talking about cars.

00:01:35And I probably do probably a little bit worse job

00:01:38than Pete Buttigieg, because he's pretty good.

00:01:40But I'm available.

00:01:42Well, what do you think, John?

00:01:43What's coming for the auto industry?

00:01:45For EVs in particular?

00:01:47The wild card, weirdly, and maybe by design,

00:01:50is this Musk character who has emerged

00:01:52as Trump's number one friend.

00:01:56Apparently, I was reading this article,

00:01:58like Trump's inner circle are freaking out

00:02:00that they can't get Musk out of Mar-a-Lago.

00:02:02He's just living there.

00:02:03He's on phone calls with Zelensky.

00:02:06Closer to Trump than Vance.

00:02:08Yeah.

00:02:09Have you heard from JD Vance since the election?

00:02:11No, you've only heard from Musk.

00:02:14And so this guy, Musk, he's the CEO of a pretty big electric

00:02:20car company.

00:02:20So I don't know.

00:02:23There could be bad things.

00:02:24Tesla's already out of the $7,500 federal credit

00:02:28you get for buying an EV.

00:02:30They can't give any more out.

00:02:31So Musk might say, hey, let's not bother renewing that.

00:02:34That's government waste or whatever.

00:02:36And that would hurt other EV startups and other car

00:02:38companies.

00:02:39Or he might think of rising tide raises all boat.

00:02:42I doubt he'd think that.

00:02:43But he might think that.

00:02:45The unintended consequence, though,

00:02:48is if you get rid of regulations,

00:02:51like what they're talking about doing, that might actually

00:02:53speed up the electrification of the automobile.

00:02:58Because if it's just pure economics,

00:03:01well, there's no restriction on mining.

00:03:04You want to pull lithium out of the ground, out of my backyard?

00:03:06Go nuts.

00:03:07There's no law preventing that.

00:03:10And one of our guests from another episode

00:03:12was saying that right now, with hydrogen production,

00:03:18it's mostly not very green.

00:03:20You're taking natural gas, and you're

00:03:23burning it to create hydrogen. Well,

00:03:28if Biden's policies continued, you

00:03:30wouldn't do a lot of that.

00:03:31You'd try and only use renewable resources to make hydrogen.

00:03:34But hey, no regulations.

00:03:36Do whatever you want.

00:03:37Burn all the natural gas you want.

00:03:38Make hydrogen. Boom.

00:03:40The hydrogen infrastructure's there.

00:03:43It's not the cleanest.

00:03:44It's still cleaner than diesel fuel.

00:03:46And then when another administration gets in there

00:03:48and says, hey, let's go to zero emission, boom.

00:03:50All you got to do is turn off the natural gas,

00:03:53turn on the renewable energy, and you have green hydrogen.

00:03:58So it might, counterintuitively, it

00:04:00might actually be better for the planet, which is weird.

00:04:02I think the operative word there,

00:04:04because that's an oddly specific example,

00:04:06but the operative word is counterintuitive.

00:04:08I think the key takeaway from the election is up is down.

00:04:12Black is white.

00:04:13Left is right.

00:04:15Right is left.

00:04:16Whatever.

00:04:16And we don't know.

00:04:18But to the point of Musk having sort of an outsized influence,

00:04:23hey, you know, the guy still has,

00:04:25he's been a champion of EVs and wanting the whole world

00:04:28and thinking that it is the future.

00:04:30But listen.

00:04:31And if this influences, really, the party that

00:04:34has kind of been more on the side of big oil and gas,

00:04:38maybe it may be the, the whole point is we don't know.

00:04:40Yeah, and look, Musk could turn around and start dropping

00:04:43in V8s into Teslas tomorrow.

00:04:44Who knows?

00:04:45He's a wild card, man.

00:04:46He's crazy.

00:04:46Buckle up.

00:04:47I think we're in for a wild ride.

00:04:51Let's pivot to our guest this week.

00:04:53She's awesome.

00:04:54Tia Gordon, co-founder and chief operating officer

00:04:57of It's Electric.

00:05:00She has a design background.

00:05:02She's a very non-traditional guest for us.

00:05:04I don't think she owns a car.

00:05:06She doesn't own a car.

00:05:07Yeah, doesn't own a car.

00:05:08Owns a bike.

00:05:09And does not come from the automotive industry,

00:05:12does not come from the big tech side.

00:05:16She's not into software-defined vehicles or any of that.

00:05:18She has a very strong design background,

00:05:20a very strong design background regarding, I think,

00:05:23public spaces.

00:05:25Fascinating conversation, really,

00:05:28about one of the topics that we kind of dance around a lot,

00:05:32which is how can you charge your car if you

00:05:37don't live in a house?

00:05:39Single-family home.

00:05:40Single-family home where you can install a home charger.

00:05:43What do you do for multi-unit dwellings?

00:05:45What do you do for people who live in apartments?

00:05:47What do you do for big cities like New York,

00:05:49like LA, high-density urban situations?

00:05:53It's Electric, her company that she co-founded,

00:05:56has a solution.

00:05:57Fascinating conversation.

00:06:00You watch it now or listen, either way.

00:06:02All right, Tia Gordon, co-founder, COO It's Electric.

00:06:06Thank you for coming all the way from New York to see us.

00:06:09Although, I guess you had other business in town.

00:06:11Yeah, you really don't have to twist my arm to come to LA,

00:06:14but I'm really glad to be here.

00:06:15Oh, you're one of the rare New Yorkers that likes LA?

00:06:19Yeah, I mean, just the succulents alone, it's, yeah.

00:06:21Succulents, I've never heard that.

00:06:23That's it.

00:06:24It's the Mexican food, the weather.

00:06:25The succulents are great.

00:06:27Have you been to the Huntington?

00:06:28No, where's that?

00:06:30OK, it's in Pasadena.

00:06:31The Huntington Library has amazing gardens,

00:06:35but the Cactus Garden is, you've never seen anything like it.

00:06:38It's the best on Earth.

00:06:40You've got to go.

00:06:40It's fantastic.

00:06:41That's a weird, really.

00:06:42Yeah, the best on Earth.

00:06:44It's also got a bangin' Japanese garden.

00:06:46That's good, too.

00:06:46And the Chinese garden is absolutely huge.

00:06:48Yeah, all that stuff's nice, but the succulents.

00:06:50All the rich people in that area,

00:06:52all the rich Chinese people paid a lot of money

00:06:54to endow the Huntington.

00:06:56Yeah, but the succulents, I'm telling you,

00:06:58there's nothing else like it.

00:06:59Food, weather, succulents, and electrification.

00:07:02Ah.

00:07:03Instalment.

00:07:03Ah, nice, on brand.

00:07:05The big four.

00:07:06OK, all right, so what is It's Electric?

00:07:09Let's talk about this.

00:07:10So coming at you from Brooklyn, I

00:07:13live in an apartment, I don't have a driveway or a garage,

00:07:17and I don't have a car.

00:07:18I ride a bike, because I live in New York City.

00:07:21And It's Electric is a solution for cities

00:07:24to allow the scaling of EV charging en masse.

00:07:28So it's really hard to have this conversation in LA,

00:07:30because you guys are like, what's the problem?

00:07:31We've got charging everywhere.

00:07:32No.

00:07:33Can I stop you?

00:07:34Can I stop you?

00:07:35Because we've talked about this probably a dozen times

00:07:37on this show, and I talk about it probably 100 times a week.

00:07:42For people that don't own their own homes, so in other words,

00:07:44if you rent a home or you live in an apartment,

00:07:47the barriers to putting in a level two charger

00:07:51are massive, for no good reason, but they're massive.

00:07:54And I've mentioned this several times, too.

00:07:57I was in Norway, where they just said,

00:07:59everybody gets a charger.

00:08:00And my friend lives in an apartment,

00:08:03and he picked me up from the airport in his Model 3.

00:08:07And we got to his garage, and he got out of the car

00:08:10and plugged it in at his apartment.

00:08:12And I looked, and every single spot had a box.

00:08:14And you pull the cable out of the trunk.

00:08:17And I was like, wow, why are we doing this in America?

00:08:19Yes.

00:08:20And.

00:08:21Exactly.

00:08:22So It's Electric is laser focused

00:08:26on solving this problem here in the United States,

00:08:28both East Coast, West Coast, and perhaps in between.

00:08:32So in, yeah, like you said, it's really

00:08:34impossible to charge if you don't have that home

00:08:36driveway or home garage.

00:08:38And the reason why is because right now,

00:08:41all the other charging companies,

00:08:42when they're trying to install a public charger,

00:08:45L2, not even L3 or DC,

00:08:47they need to do an inner utility connection, right?

00:08:49So they need to connect to that utility.

00:08:51They need to basically trench seven or 10 feet down,

00:08:54connect to the main transformer, high voltage,

00:08:56down convert, customer service box.

00:08:59This is expensive.

00:09:00This takes a lot of time.

00:09:02And it's slowing down everything

00:09:06because it delays the ability to see infrastructure,

00:09:10which then delays the ability for people to say,

00:09:12I can get an electric vehicle because right now,

00:09:14no one knows where they can charge.

00:09:15Therefore they don't make that choice.

00:09:18So compare New York city to London, right?

00:09:21London has 6,000 curbside chargers ready to go.

00:09:26And that's because the accessory feed,

00:09:27the power that goes to their streetlights

00:09:29and their lampposts is all 220, 240.

00:09:32It's good to go.

00:09:33In the United States, with the exception of LA,

00:09:36we're all 110, 120 in our lampposts.

00:09:39So LA is the one exception,

00:09:40but everywhere else in the country,

00:09:41we can't just retrofit existing street furniture.

00:09:44So what's it?

00:09:45I didn't know that, really?

00:09:46Yeah, fun fact.

00:09:47I didn't know that.

00:09:48I forget why I didn't know that.

00:09:48So LA is 220, 240.

00:09:51It is.

00:09:52But the rest of the country is 120, oh.

00:09:53Yeah, I always think about Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.

00:09:56Someone made that decision 80 years ago

00:10:00to make it that voltage and here we are now.

00:10:02I remember it had something to do with Thomas Edison

00:10:05running around saying that AC current,

00:10:08and he was like electrocuting horses and cows and stuff,

00:10:10but he scared everybody on alternating current

00:10:14because he was pushing his every mile

00:10:18having a power station DC thing.

00:10:20It was crazy.

00:10:21Yeah, so LA has the one oddity

00:10:23and the rest of the country doesn't.

00:10:24So in a city like New York, what we did, it's electric.

00:10:27We said, well, if that electrical infrastructure

00:10:32isn't going to do the job,

00:10:34what is the other infrastructure that is abundant around us

00:10:39and has 220, 240, and that's buildings.

00:10:42Every building is ready to go.

00:10:44The building doesn't have a physical garage,

00:10:46but it doesn't mean it doesn't have the power requirement.

00:10:48So what we do is we put a public charger on the curb

00:10:50and we power it from the spare capacity

00:10:53in the building right next to it.

00:10:54The building is the power source.

00:10:56Every building has spare capacity.

00:10:57New York City's building stock,

00:10:59according to the Green Building Council,

00:11:0049% of buildings in New York City

00:11:02have spare electrical capacity.

00:11:04This means that you go into the basement,

00:11:05you open up the panel, there's extra slots open.

00:11:07And that's what we do.

00:11:08It's like level two charger is the same as an electric dryer

00:11:11that you would put in that building.

00:11:13So again, we just run that conduit right below the sidewalk

00:11:16to the curb that becomes our public charger.

00:11:19And then we revenue share back to that building.

00:11:21So we're saying, hey, thanks so much.

00:11:23Your bill never goes up.

00:11:24We have a direct meter

00:11:26and we're giving you passive income every month

00:11:29from anyone who parks and charges at that charger.

00:11:32Wait, wait, wait, wait.

00:11:33This is great.

00:11:34Because my first question,

00:11:35and I did a little research looking you up,

00:11:36it's like spare capacity.

00:11:38So you answered that.

00:11:38So really there's that much capacity in like,

00:11:43I mean, it's a, what'd you say, 49?

00:11:4549% in New York City.

00:11:46But it's like, what about, I mean,

00:11:49like a huge apartment building.

00:11:51Yeah, I mean, new construction even more so.

00:11:53So we did our first pilot in Sunset Park, Brooklyn,

00:11:56transit desert, no charging, old bank building,

00:12:01hadn't been touched in, it was built in the 80s.

00:12:05Maybe had an upgrade, maybe in the 90s.

00:12:07And we powered three chargers off of the spare capacity

00:12:09in that building.

00:12:10And don't forget, we're not looking to have a charger

00:12:12in front of every single building, right?

00:12:14You're looking in a city like New York,

00:12:16they wanna go from the current 50 pieces of hardware

00:12:19they have on curb,

00:12:20which each costs around $230,000 to put in,

00:12:24to have 10,000 in the next five years.

00:12:27So if you spread that across the five boroughs,

00:12:28you're talking about having a charger,

00:12:30every five or six blocks.

00:12:31It's not like you're having a charger as a domino row,

00:12:34as far as the eye can see.

00:12:36So I like, this is great,

00:12:37because now I understand the origin story.

00:12:39So you actually are taking the,

00:12:40the London public charging infrastructure was genius, right?

00:12:44Because it was like, let's take the light posts

00:12:46and literally just run the cables out of them.

00:12:49And then there you go.

00:12:51This is fascinating, because we don't have,

00:12:54to your point, we don't have the voltage.

00:12:56And then we actually don't have a lot of light posts,

00:12:58right, I mean, a lot of our big cities are like,

00:13:01what do you need it for?

00:13:02And they've been brought down to LED at this point too.

00:13:04Okay, right.

00:13:05So what's super fascinating is your initial disclosure

00:13:10that you're actually really focused on

00:13:12solving this at the curb and not,

00:13:15to Johnny's point or your point about apartments,

00:13:17this is the mud problem.

00:13:18Multi-unit dwelling has been a huge,

00:13:20it's a huge issue globally, except currently in Norway.

00:13:25Apartment buildings, it's horrifically expensive

00:13:29to retrofit chargers for every,

00:13:31certainly every parking space or every other, whatever.

00:13:34Most landlords do not want to do it.

00:13:36You mentioned, can you just break down

00:13:38some of the cost barriers to some of these muds

00:13:42or other solutions, right?

00:13:43Like, cause it's, I've heard your level two,

00:13:46the level two I have at home with the wall box,

00:13:47I just looked it up, it was 900 bucks.

00:13:49So that's not very much, but like the higher,

00:13:52the level threes are like six figures.

00:13:55Yeah, but we're not talking level threes.

00:13:57I know, but that's why Hertz,

00:13:58it's electric solution is simple, elegant, affordable.

00:14:02Because my understanding from Kyle,

00:14:05from out of spec Kyle is the level threes

00:14:09are like six figures and then the construction build out

00:14:12is another six figures, typically, right?

00:14:14Correct, yeah.

00:14:15And a level two build out is, again,

00:14:18it's, you can buy a charge point for about $800.

00:14:22You want like a very basic L2, right?

00:14:24But then your construction costs for that,

00:14:27your utility connection is still six figures.

00:14:29So we avoid that, we call ourselves,

00:14:31we're not deep tech, we're shallow tech.

00:14:33We're going like four inches below that sidewalk.

00:14:35It's just like, we just need to put sockets on the street.

00:14:39So what does that cost?

00:14:40How much does that cost to trench in a charger?

00:14:44Well, I mean, that's the fun part.

00:14:46So we've brought costs down so much

00:14:48that we're free to buildings and we're free to cities.

00:14:52So-

00:14:53What do you mean you're free?

00:14:53We're free.

00:14:54They pay for it.

00:14:56Yeah, the drivers pay for charging,

00:14:58but the building, the multi-unit building or that city,

00:15:02they don't pay us anything.

00:15:03They just give us permission.

00:15:04So you just do it, you have a way to do it

00:15:06that it fits in your business plan.

00:15:08Yeah.

00:15:09Okay.

00:15:10Basically we stripped down everything off of chargers.

00:15:12My background is in public facing design.

00:15:14So I don't come from transportation.

00:15:15I don't come from energy.

00:15:17And literally when I started looking at this problem,

00:15:19which was the whole origin story during the pandemic,

00:15:23I was like, why are these so big and bad and ugly?

00:15:26And they're all broken.

00:15:27Like why-

00:15:28And they're all broken.

00:15:29Very good, yeah, yeah.

00:15:30And it's just very basic design principles

00:15:34are not being followed.

00:15:35So my background is design and yay design,

00:15:38cause it actually makes things better.

00:15:41You don't wanna put a touchscreen.

00:15:43You don't wanna put a keypad.

00:15:44You wanna put all of these like accoutrement

00:15:46on these chargers that then give you more fail points.

00:15:51Like every possible fail point

00:15:52is on public chargers right now.

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00:16:22We've spoken with a couple of people about this,

00:16:25but it seems like the credit card readers

00:16:27are like the biggest fail point for some crazy.

00:16:29Even though credit cards work 100% of the time

00:16:31everywhere else on chargers, that's the fail point.

00:16:34So you're eliminating that.

00:16:36In other words, it's all app-based, I assume.

00:16:38It's app and then we've got an old school RFID card.

00:16:40You just tap it.

00:16:41Like, how do we just make these indestructible?

00:16:44How do you put these in a city?

00:16:45You know, cities are rough.

00:16:47Things get beat up.

00:16:48We know that, we know that's gonna happen.

00:16:50Design something to withstand that abuse.

00:16:54Okay, so I'm sort of gonna drop a picture on this

00:16:56during the pod or probably in the social,

00:16:58but can you describe the charger?

00:17:01Yeah, it's been described as sleek or cute.

00:17:05It's about yay high, 36 inches off ground.

00:17:08It's silver, our first model called the Brooklyn 718.

00:17:12It's silver and it literally just has a port

00:17:14that is a detachable cable port.

00:17:16So that's the one thing that really stands apart

00:17:18when you look at it, you're like, but where's the cable?

00:17:21So we like to say, not we're just European.

00:17:22We're the only BYOC, bring your own cable solution

00:17:25in the United States.

00:17:26And this is really important

00:17:28because the cable is actually the leading fail point

00:17:30on public chargers.

00:17:31See, I think that's really brilliant

00:17:33because I've seen so many chewed up

00:17:36and not even like someone cut it and stole the copper

00:17:41to buy whatever.

00:17:43No, just like, just chewed up from like falling

00:17:46on the ground and you know, it's whatever

00:17:48and they're disgusting and they're not replaced

00:17:51as you said, like, you know, like again,

00:17:53like level three chargers, you know, the fast chargers,

00:17:57the companies come and they replace the cables

00:17:59from time to time.

00:18:00But like ChargePoint, you know, I was thinking of one

00:18:02by my friend's apartment.

00:18:03It's just, it's been dead for nine months

00:18:05and no one like the landlord doesn't care.

00:18:07ChargePoint doesn't care.

00:18:08No one uses it.

00:18:09Just this ugly orange broken thing.

00:18:11Yeah.

00:18:13So, and I think bringing your own cable

00:18:15is based on what I saw in Norway is the way to do it.

00:18:19It just really makes sense.

00:18:20Yeah, the way that I like to think about it is like,

00:18:22like I'm going to the airport after this, right?

00:18:23And so I've got my phone in my pocket.

00:18:25I've got my charger in my backpack

00:18:27and I just find a socket and I plug into it.

00:18:29But imagine a world in which you can't bring your charger,

00:18:32your own charger and you're reliant on finding

00:18:35like that one kiosk at like the Brooks bookstore

00:18:39that has like a kind of frayed Android cable on it.

00:18:42And that's your only option.

00:18:44And you can't charge.

00:18:45And there's 10 other people using it, yeah.

00:18:47But there's hundreds of sockets all around the airport

00:18:49that you could just plug into.

00:18:51So again, like just putting these ports on the street,

00:18:54making this ubiquitous, making this a no brainer.

00:18:57Literally, my favorite department of energy,

00:19:00our current department of energy

00:19:02has something called fact of the week.

00:19:03And so fact of the week number 1,355

00:19:07is that a car that is parked and charged,

00:19:10charging on an L2 charger gets more miles in one hour

00:19:15than it drives on average in a week.

00:19:17So we don't need consistent fast charging

00:19:21every day, all the time.

00:19:23You can charge every 10 days, every 20 days

00:19:26and that's more than enough.

00:19:28And so we don't like to think about it as range anxiety.

00:19:31I don't think that's the issue anymore.

00:19:32I think it's access anxiety.

00:19:34Where am I gonna charge?

00:19:36So you're Brooklyn 718?

00:19:38Yeah.

00:19:39What's the, you bring your cable,

00:19:42the cable, I know on the one end, it's J1227.

00:19:47It's the standard, current standard.

00:19:51You think you're gonna go to NACS?

00:19:52Well, that's the beauty is that we are future proofed.

00:19:55So it's bring your own cable, but it's level two.

00:19:58So when it's electric is in your neighborhood,

00:20:00you see a charger on your block,

00:20:02you go on, you download the app,

00:20:03you click the button, say send me a cable.

00:20:05We confirm that you drive an EV

00:20:07and we send you the right cable for your car.

00:20:09So we send you CCS or NACS.

00:20:13So we're future proofed

00:20:13and we're also available for legacy vehicles as well.

00:20:16And then if the standard completely changes again,

00:20:18it doesn't matter because the port

00:20:20that's on the charger side is Menakese.

00:20:22And that's universal.

00:20:23That's the same as the European standard.

00:20:25We're fully in line with the SAE J3400 standards

00:20:28that are coming out.

00:20:29They actually have a carve out

00:20:30for detachable cable called case B.

00:20:33And that's where we fit in.

00:20:38In the United States,

00:20:39we did things a little bit backwards, right?

00:20:41We had to create-

00:20:42No.

00:20:43No, we, you know, whoever was in charge

00:20:47or no one was in charge

00:20:49and it was a committee of individuals

00:20:52were like, let's put some EV chargers out there.

00:20:55Hmm, what should they look like?

00:20:56Well, Americans go to the gas pump every day

00:20:59and they go like this.

00:21:00Right.

00:21:01So let's make the EV charger go like this.

00:21:05Yes, this is the horsey-horseless problem.

00:21:07Yeah, so I'm like, I'm making a gesture

00:21:08for those that are not watching.

00:21:10And then the actual equivalent is like,

00:21:11actually, I'm going home

00:21:12and I'm plugging my phone in, right?

00:21:14And so it's this weird thing I talk about all the time

00:21:19called skeuomorphism, right?

00:21:20Like it's a design principle,

00:21:21which means like, why does the folder on your desktop

00:21:23look like a folder and not like a cookie?

00:21:26So you're familiar with it, right?

00:21:28There's this horsey-horseless was a car from like 1906

00:21:31and there was a car

00:21:33and they stuck a horse's head on the front.

00:21:35Oh my God.

00:21:35And the idea was it wouldn't scare the oncoming horses,

00:21:38but then you as the driver,

00:21:40you're used to driving, seeing the back of a horse's head.

00:21:43So now you get to see the back of a horse's head.

00:21:45It's a great picture.

00:21:46And yeah.

00:21:46How did you find that?

00:21:47Yeah, I just Googled horsey-horseless,

00:21:49but it's exactly what you're talking about.

00:21:52It's famous in the car world.

00:21:54But yeah, and you're right.

00:21:55They went out of their way

00:21:57to make these giant gas pump sized things

00:22:00that didn't need to be that big.

00:22:02And yeah, and okay, so that's great.

00:22:05I got a lot of questions about the cable

00:22:07that we want to come back to and the charging unit,

00:22:09but let's talk about the business model a little bit.

00:22:11Cause you just kind of revealed as an owner,

00:22:15you see the charger, you're like, oh great.

00:22:18I got an EV.

00:22:19I'd love to use that.

00:22:20I don't use it.

00:22:21There's no cable.

00:22:22Oh, I got,

00:22:22and there's probably some information there

00:22:23or a QR code or something you might.

00:22:24Yep.

00:22:25So you scan, you go and you order it.

00:22:28What's this cost for me, the end user?

00:22:31You're just paying for charging.

00:22:32The cable gets sent to you for free.

00:22:33Oh, no kidding.

00:22:34Yeah.

00:22:35Okay.

00:22:36So I think that this is like a short-term pain point

00:22:38where we're just giving these cables out.

00:22:40We know that auto manufacturers are going to start

00:22:42to put these L2 cables in the car

00:22:45when we have this network

00:22:46of detachable cable solutions in the US.

00:22:48We are the first, we're not going to be the last.

00:22:50And that's fine.

00:22:51We need millions of ports and there'll be other companies

00:22:54that come along and do something that are either similar

00:22:58or within the same vein.

00:23:00I've seen some demos of like,

00:23:04what's it called?

00:23:05Bidirectional charging cables where you could go

00:23:08from car to car, but it actually detaches

00:23:12and then it connects to a thing, like a coupling.

00:23:16So I'm sure it's the same port as you guys have.

00:23:19Yeah, I usually, it's small, it's lightweight,

00:23:23you throw it in your trunk.

00:23:24It's really, it's not like a DC cable

00:23:27that's like big and cumbersome.

00:23:29But other things to think about with detachable cable,

00:23:30which we don't consider, again, going back to design

00:23:33and user principles is that, you know,

00:23:35if you're in New York and you're dealing with, you know,

00:23:38freezing weather, if you're below zero,

00:23:40like have you ever tried to like move a charging cable

00:23:42when it's freezing out?

00:23:44No, but I can imagine.

00:23:44It's incredibly unpliable.

00:23:47And it's, you're basically limited to the range

00:23:51that the cable has, as opposed to like going into your car,

00:23:53taking out that warm cable and then plugging it in.

00:23:56The actual units, the charger posts themselves

00:23:59are highly tested in terms of heat and cold,

00:24:02and they can withstand all of those ranges in value

00:24:04and swings for different environments.

00:24:08It's the cable, again, that's always the problem.

00:24:11So it's the keep it simple methodology across the board.

00:24:15Like, oh, that breaks, take it off.

00:24:17That breaks, take it off.

00:24:18How long is the cable?

00:24:20We have different styles.

00:24:21There's like a pig's tail coil,

00:24:23and then there's just like a straight long one.

00:24:24So you can get it to either end or side.

00:24:27And don't forget Rivian, they're moving their charge port

00:24:30on the R3s to accommodate curbside

00:24:32to help get into a European market.

00:24:34Oh, didn't know that.

00:24:35That's super smart.

00:24:36Wait, from the, Rivian's up front?

00:24:39Rivian's on the driver's side, front corner.

00:24:41So you wanna put it on the passenger side?

00:24:43Yes. Anywhere.

00:24:44The R3s are going on the passenger side rear, I believe.

00:24:46Right, okay.

00:24:48That makes sense, because so when a customer,

00:24:51a potential customer tells you what car they have,

00:24:54you can advise them, oh, your port's on that side,

00:24:56you're gonna need a long one,

00:24:57or your port's on the curbside, you can use the pigtail.

00:25:00Yeah, I mean, yeah.

00:25:02Ultimately, right now, we're getting the cables

00:25:03that are all just standard cables that exist right now.

00:25:06But within our roadmap, you know,

00:25:08we're gonna have custom cables.

00:25:09I mean, the same way that I go to the store

00:25:11when I break my phone, which is not that often these days,

00:25:14but I'm like, hmm, the iPhone case,

00:25:16like, hmm, blue or gray or black, you know what I mean?

00:25:19It's a fun little option.

00:25:20But when the iPhone 1 or 2 was out,

00:25:22there was like one case, right?

00:25:24And then suddenly there was like a couple.

00:25:25Now, like half the Apple store is cases.

00:25:28Yeah.

00:25:29Okay, so you're weather tested

00:25:31for the temperature swings and precipitation.

00:25:34Testing in New York, what about the human element?

00:25:37Like vandalism, like can you,

00:25:40I could imagine people like hacking these,

00:25:43you know, stealing power, or is that a,

00:25:45or charging their e-bike on it or something crazy?

00:25:47Is there anything else you could,

00:25:49you guys run into some strange testing problems?

00:25:51No, I mean, funny enough, again,

00:25:53like we've piloted in Brooklyn,

00:25:55and we've piloted in Detroit,

00:25:56like two pretty like tough cities, right?

00:25:59And the worst thing that's happened

00:26:00is that someone put a sticker on it in Brooklyn,

00:26:03which was an EV charging etiquette sticker.

00:26:05I'm not joking.

00:26:06It was like, please move your car

00:26:08when their battery is full.

00:26:11Which is a great question.

00:26:12Yeah.

00:26:13So how would you actually-

00:26:14Who made the sticker?

00:26:15I don't know, like the fact that they went

00:26:16through the effort of making this sticker

00:26:18to then like vandalize the charger is-

00:26:20Well, they probably put on a lot of chargers.

00:26:21Exactly, yeah.

00:26:22So how do you deal with, that's a great,

00:26:24that was my next question,

00:26:25which is, you know, the idea sounds lovely.

00:26:29It's great, I'm sure the,

00:26:31and we'll talk about what the apartment owners,

00:26:33the landlords think,

00:26:35but how do you deal with,

00:26:40you know, a level two charger for my F-150,

00:26:43it would, if I was at 10% and I wanted to get to 80,

00:26:47it would take 12 hours.

00:26:48Yeah.

00:26:49And then can I park there that long?

00:26:51What's the sign say?

00:26:52Is there also a parking meter next to it?

00:26:55How does this work?

00:26:56100%.

00:26:57So what we're also trying to do

00:26:58is really influence behavior change around charging.

00:27:03We want people to find charging to be easy

00:27:06and not cumbersome.

00:27:07And right now it's super cumbersome

00:27:09because like we have a demo car,

00:27:11even though I, again, I have my bike in New York City,

00:27:13we have a demo car from Hyundai that we use all the time.

00:27:15And we also have one from MINI that we use all the time.

00:27:18And like, I literally,

00:27:20I have to drive it to the one charger.

00:27:24That's about two or three miles from my apartment.

00:27:27Park it, plug it in.

00:27:29Hopefully that one charge is available

00:27:31and then take a bike back home,

00:27:33go home, work for six or eight hours,

00:27:35then go back and unplug it, right?

00:27:36That's nonsense.

00:27:38What you wanna be able to do is plug in overnight

00:27:41and get that overnight charge.

00:27:42And even though, again,

00:27:43we don't have to work with utilities,

00:27:45that's, you know, we're avoiding any utility connection.

00:27:47We really enjoy our relationship with utilities

00:27:49because we're working to help encourage overnight charging

00:27:52when demand charges don't exist,

00:27:54when peak use is at its lowest.

00:27:56So even though you're saying 12 hours for the F-150,

00:27:58it's a larger battery,

00:27:59most batteries are around six to eight hours.

00:28:01So again, like, you know,

00:28:04assuming a car's coming in at 20%, 18% battery,

00:28:07you know, you plug it in and you wake up,

00:28:08you have that full battery.

00:28:09So we're available 24 seven, obviously,

00:28:12once we're installed,

00:28:13but really trying to get people

00:28:14to get into that overnight charging habit.

00:28:17Oh, I thought you were gonna say

00:28:18you would want people to do more regular, shorter charges.

00:28:23So there's a higher turnover at the parking space itself.

00:28:27No, we're trying to really move people

00:28:28to like an easier and more relaxed approach to charging.

00:28:32Charging is really stressful right now.

00:28:34And that's the thing though,

00:28:35if an EV owner that owns a home,

00:28:38like I never think about charging

00:28:39because I just plug it in.

00:28:41And you know, when my battery gets below 20%,

00:28:44I plug in, when it's not, I don't think about it.

00:28:46And my phone is set up to tell me

00:28:48when it's, you know, whatever,

00:28:49I can look at my, you know,

00:28:50it's a widget now on the lock screen

00:28:53and I can see what it's at.

00:28:54And that's the only time I think about it.

00:28:55That's exactly right.

00:28:56And we wanna bring that ease that you're experiencing

00:28:58with that home charging to people who park on the street.

00:29:01Now, what about muds?

00:29:04What about people that live in apartments?

00:29:06Yeah, I mean, so again,

00:29:07that's sort of like an LA, New York thing too.

00:29:10There's not a lot of garages in muds in New York.

00:29:13There's more garages here.

00:29:16So like New York City.

00:29:17Like Phoenix, Vegas, Texas, huge population centers.

00:29:21People live in big apartment complexes.

00:29:23They usually have garages.

00:29:24Usually have garages.

00:29:25I was thinking in Philadelphia,

00:29:27I've seen a lot or the suburbs of Philadelphia,

00:29:29you know, and they don't have chargers

00:29:33and the cars sit there all night, every night.

00:29:35Yeah, most cars sit there all the time.

00:29:37Like, you know.

00:29:38Most cars don't move 90 some percent of the time.

00:29:41So I mean, multi-unit dwelling,

00:29:42there's lots of good solutions

00:29:44that are out there for garages.

00:29:46There's sort of like smart outlets,

00:29:47which are really kind of taking off.

00:29:49There's a few companies that are doing things like that.

00:29:52But we're-

00:29:53Let me rephrase.

00:29:53It's electric, your company.

00:29:55Are you guys doing anything with muds?

00:29:56I mean, we are servicing muds

00:29:58when muds don't have garages

00:30:00and their tenants park on street.

00:30:02Okay, so you're just outdoor street parking.

00:30:04Yeah, curb.

00:30:05I'm sorry, I misunderstood.

00:30:06Yeah, curb is our purview.

00:30:07Got it.

00:30:08We get a lot of requests for sort of surface lots as well.

00:30:11That's great.

00:30:12Again, like building power chargers, let's go.

00:30:15But multi-unit dwelling, interior garages,

00:30:18not necessarily our sweet spot

00:30:19because we're designed for, again,

00:30:21rugged public curbside use.

00:30:24Got it.

00:30:24So, but one thing,

00:30:26how do you deal with,

00:30:28or how does the conversation go

00:30:30about getting the parking spot itself?

00:30:32Because that's also not the building owner's purview.

00:30:35You have to talk to the city, right?

00:30:36100%.

00:30:37So for us, we gotta get in with the city.

00:30:39That's our top level.

00:30:40That's our top grass tops.

00:30:42And then once we're in, we're grassroots

00:30:43and we go around and we talk

00:30:45to all of the different building owners.

00:30:46But when the city lets us in,

00:30:48they are then saying that they already have planned this.

00:30:51New York City has this law on the books.

00:30:53LA has this law on the books.

00:30:54Boston will have this law on those books

00:30:56that says that that is a dedicated EV charging spot.

00:30:58If there's a charger there, that is for EV charging only.

00:31:01And there's signage or painted demarcation to indicate that.

00:31:04And again, everyone can come down who doesn't drive an EV.

00:31:08Like we're not taking away all the spots.

00:31:10That's usually the fear that happens.

00:31:11Like, oh, they're taking the spots.

00:31:13Like, believe me, I live in New York City.

00:31:14I'm a New Yorker.

00:31:15Like I've had people get out of a car with like a two by four

00:31:18like when I'm trying to park.

00:31:19It's because I'm a bad parker,

00:31:20but it's a 16 point parallel park.

00:31:25But that spot's dedicated.

00:31:29And again, it's not every single spot on every single block.

00:31:32In a city like New York,

00:31:33you have about 60 parking spots on an average block.

00:31:36So New York City would have maybe two of those

00:31:39be dedicated EV charging.

00:31:40So it's not like the EVs are taking the spots.

00:31:43It's not a concern.

00:31:44And we want to just dismiss that narrative entirely.

00:31:48Well, what about, because I don't, do you guys have,

00:31:52you know, when I go to New York, I take the subway.

00:31:54Yeah, of course you should.

00:31:55I've driven in New York a lot, it's fine.

00:31:58Hooray, 25 mile speed limit within my hand.

00:32:03What about meters?

00:32:04Or how long can you stay at a parking spot?

00:32:06It doesn't matter now, right?

00:32:07Because when you get in with the city,

00:32:09this spot, you can park there,

00:32:10as long as you're charged, as long as you're plugged in.

00:32:12Most places don't have meters.

00:32:14Yeah, let's talk about it this way.

00:32:16So we are deploying in the city of Boston.

00:32:18They have incredibly progressive administration, right?

00:32:21Like let's not disassociate EVs from climate, right?

00:32:24Like the two go hand in hand.

00:32:27And cities that are leading with climate principles

00:32:29are also leading with EV infrastructure.

00:32:31That's usually the order of operations

00:32:33that things are happening.

00:32:34And no one's like saying, yay, EV,

00:32:35because it's cool, it's EV because of climate.

00:32:37We're here because we're worried

00:32:38about too much carbon in the atmosphere.

00:32:40Correct, exactly.

00:32:40I was listening to your Science Moms episode

00:32:42and really enjoying it.

00:32:43She was the best.

00:32:44So good.

00:32:45Yeah, I mean, and LA's basically like all,

00:32:49the ability to see the mountains during the pandemic

00:32:51when people were just not driving.

00:32:53It's just, it's right there.

00:32:54Dolphins in the canals of Venice.

00:32:56Right there, just right there for the taking.

00:32:58So again, Boston, Mayor Wu has a mandate

00:33:01that she wants an EV charger

00:33:03within a five minute walk of every Bostonian.

00:33:06It's awesome, right?

00:33:08And there's 4.9 million people in greater Boston.

00:33:12Right, well, I was just gonna say,

00:33:14things like that, when cities actually mandate stuff,

00:33:16it has huge effects.

00:33:17Like, you know, Paris famously,

00:33:19when they built the subway,

00:33:20they said it's within 500 feet.

00:33:22You can't be anywhere in Paris

00:33:23where you're not 500 feet from a subway.

00:33:26And the subway works great.

00:33:28It works phenomenal there

00:33:30because you're always close to the entrance of a subway.

00:33:32Exactly.

00:33:33And so this, what was the?

00:33:36To the point of the question,

00:33:38it's not like I'm putting these chargers

00:33:40on 42nd Street in Manhattan.

00:33:43We're putting these chargers in Brooklyn,

00:33:45in Queens, in the Bronx,

00:33:47in Yonkers, in Staten Island.

00:33:49You know what I mean?

00:33:50Like these, that's,

00:33:51we wanna be in the outer boroughs.

00:33:53But also in East Village.

00:33:53People rely on their vehicles.

00:33:56And yeah, East Village,

00:33:57there's street parking everywhere.

00:33:58Yes.

00:33:59And they're on the residential side streets.

00:34:00We call them, our director is an amazing urban planner.

00:34:04And she's coined this term called a juicy corner, right?

00:34:07You wanna put the charger on a residential block

00:34:10where you have dedicated parking for overnight charging,

00:34:12but you also want it to be within view

00:34:14on commercial corridors

00:34:15so you can get attract some daytime charging as well.

00:34:18So that's our juicy corner.

00:34:18That's our sweet spot that we deploy these chargers on.

00:34:21And then the best part,

00:34:22my favorite part of all of this, my CTA,

00:34:26is that we do something called community requested.

00:34:29So we have a wait list on our website.

00:34:31It's electric.us.

00:34:33Join, ask us for a charger.

00:34:36If we are allowed to deploy in your city,

00:34:38we put a charger in front of your building.

00:34:40It's free.

00:34:41Now it's electric.us.

00:34:43The call to action is if this sounds interesting to you,

00:34:46go there and request for your city.

00:34:48Yeah.

00:34:49Okay, Johnny.

00:34:50And if we get that heat map and we're not in your city,

00:34:52we're gonna go to your city and say,

00:34:53hey, we've got like 4,000 people that want this

00:34:56or how do we start to move this forward?

00:34:59And this just happened.

00:34:59We just had a call with a few cities in California

00:35:02and we're like, oh, I just heard about this.

00:35:03We're gonna be in Alameda, San Francisco, Los Angeles,

00:35:06but obviously there's so many other areas.

00:35:07Sure, tons.

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00:35:45I used to live in New York.

00:35:47I had a landlord that lived in New York.

00:35:48I have a lot of friends that still live in New York

00:35:50and I know about their landlords.

00:35:51Tell me your landlord story.

00:35:52New York landlords are literally insane.

00:35:55It's one of the craziest classes of people.

00:35:56Tell me your landlord story.

00:35:57Oh, just, I mean, they're just horrible.

00:35:59I mean, mine was, it was just, you know, it was like,

00:36:00hey, our toilet doesn't work.

00:36:02It's like, okay, that's nice.

00:36:03You know, our toilet, our one toilet.

00:36:05There's a good Instagram account called like,

00:36:06Landlord Repairs.

00:36:07Yeah, yeah, it was, this was in the 90s,

00:36:09but our one toilet on our sixth floor walk-up,

00:36:11you know, it didn't work.

00:36:12Anyhow, what's in it for the landlord?

00:36:15Like, how are you convincing landlords to do anything

00:36:19to help anybody with anything?

00:36:21Yeah, hey, landlord, we're free

00:36:24and we're gonna give you enough money every year

00:36:26that's gonna offset your property taxes.

00:36:29Ah, so there's a financial.

00:36:31Renumeration, okay.

00:36:32It's the rev share, right?

00:36:33So if that one charger in front of that one building

00:36:36in Jackson Heights or in DTLA

00:36:41is being utilized 60% of the time in the seven-day week,

00:36:46that building's earning around 3,400 a year.

00:36:49Okay, and so you'd split that with-

00:36:51For one charger.

00:36:52One charger.

00:36:53And so you'd split that with the landlord.

00:36:54No, that's what they get.

00:36:55Oh, the landlord's getting 3,400.

00:36:56That's what they get, yeah.

00:36:57That's not the-

00:36:58Well, here, okay, what's the split?

00:36:5980-20.

00:37:00So we pay the energy and then the revenue that remains,

00:37:05we give 20% to the landlord.

00:37:07Got it.

00:37:09Right, we have a direct meter.

00:37:10So that 20% equals 3,400 bucks, so the 80 is-

00:37:16Based on utilization.

00:37:17Right, the 80's pretty high.

00:37:19So then what's the kilowatt, assuming what rate, what-

00:37:24Yeah, I mean, we want it to be less than a tank of gas.

00:37:26We want it to be less than a DC fast charge.

00:37:28So it's gonna be based on what the kilowatt hour is

00:37:30in that particular city.

00:37:32So it ranges, you know what I mean,

00:37:34like Boston is different than New York,

00:37:35it's different than LA.

00:37:36Sure.

00:37:37But on average, around 40 cents per kilowatt hour,

00:37:39which is more than you would have at home, obviously.

00:37:42But for a public charger, we want it to be competitive.

00:37:46And also, we have incentives to bring it down even lower

00:37:49through work with utilities that are giving preference

00:37:51for, again, overnight and preferable rates.

00:37:53What's your home rate, you know?

00:37:5520 or 21 cents a kilowatt hour, something like that, yeah.

00:37:58If you live in-

00:37:59Although, yeah, that's off-peak.

00:38:00But also, there's DWP, I gotta look into it.

00:38:02They have this program where it's like .02 or something,

00:38:06some crazy thing, it's like to try and get people

00:38:09to convert, yeah.

00:38:10Yeah, no, I mean, like it's-

00:38:11I found it and didn't do anything about it, but yeah.

00:38:14Yeah, do it, I mean, like-

00:38:15Yeah, no, no, no, it's-

00:38:16I think the average utility cost across America,

00:38:20I think it's 18, 18 cents per kilowatt hour.

00:38:23That takes into account super rural in Texas or Southeast.

00:38:28But I know that like-

00:38:28That's super high California.

00:38:29I know that like Electrify America or whatever,

00:38:31a fast charger is now like about 56 to 61 cents

00:38:35a kilowatt hour.

00:38:36We're looking at, Motor Trend, we've been looking

00:38:38at the surcharge, the premium for GM

00:38:44and the other manufacturers now have to pay

00:38:46when they access NAX chargers during peak times.

00:38:51But the difference is between a Tesla owner's rate

00:38:54and then what's your-

00:38:54What is the difference?

00:38:55It can be, I think we saw, actually I shouldn't comment,

00:38:57I think Christian was looking at it,

00:38:58maybe like 10 cents, Delta, which is pretty, I think-

00:39:03Favoring NAX?

00:39:05Favoring Tesla, yeah.

00:39:06So it's kind of like-

00:39:07So if I'm charging on CCS, I'm paying 10 cents more?

00:39:10Yeah.

00:39:11Why?

00:39:12So they-

00:39:12That's how they make profit.

00:39:13Yeah, that's how they-

00:39:14That's how they open it up to the network.

00:39:17Yeah.

00:39:17Someone's paying for it.

00:39:19This is great.

00:39:20Yeah, it's fascinating.

00:39:22So that's in theory, that the landlords get some money back,

00:39:27but have the conversations with landlords generally been,

00:39:29have they been receptive or they're like,

00:39:31get out of my, I don't care,

00:39:31I don't want anything to do with this, or how does it go?

00:39:34We're just getting started, right?

00:39:35So right now we're just basically pulling

00:39:37from our wait list, it's just like inbound

00:39:39and it makes it very easy.

00:39:41We're starting to go outbound now

00:39:42to kind of like scale the solution much larger.

00:39:46And it really, for us, we don't worry about conversion.

00:39:51Like if someone's like, no thanks, we're like, cool,

00:39:53let's go down the block and talk to that guy.

00:39:55Right.

00:39:56It's not a thing that we have to push on because again,

00:40:00if we're looking to put 30 chargers in a two mile radius,

00:40:06there's hundreds of different properties

00:40:07that we can talk to.

00:40:08Right, and hundreds of landlords.

00:40:09Yeah, exactly.

00:40:10So I mean, again, we're a small team,

00:40:13we're scaling this up right now,

00:40:16but right now it's been very favorable.

00:40:19There's a lot of questions and we have FAQs

00:40:22because this is a brave new world.

00:40:23People are like, what, we're doing who, what, how,

00:40:26how does that work?

00:40:27And so the simpler we can make this for people, the better.

00:40:31And that's again, like, that's all we're trying to do

00:40:34at It's Electric is to kind of remove all of this friction

00:40:38and this naysaying around charging and like,

00:40:40oh, but what about this and this?

00:40:41Like, it should just be easy.

00:40:43We need to bring like, you guys both drive EVs, right?

00:40:47You understand like the pleasure of it.

00:40:49We wanna bring that same emotion into charging.

00:40:52Like, I mean, we're called It's Electric for a reason.

00:40:54It's this idea that this energy is out there,

00:40:57it is all around us and we can harness this

00:40:59and we can move clean transportation forward

00:41:02in a very collaborative way.

00:41:03It's crazy.

00:41:04Cause you know, up until, I don't know, 20 years ago,

00:41:07we weren't plugging phones into anything.

00:41:09And then suddenly every single human has a phone

00:41:11and we plug it in and we never think about it

00:41:12cause you just plug it in.

00:41:14Whereas like cars, we made it so complicated to plug in.

00:41:18It's wild.

00:41:21But again, the only time it's not wild

00:41:24is my simple to use home charger

00:41:26where I just plug it in and forget about it and walk away.

00:41:29I just wanna comment on Tia saying

00:41:31the pleasure of driving an EV.

00:41:33So in hopes that this will be the social clip,

00:41:35I'm gonna look directly in that camera and say,

00:41:36not just the pleasure, but the moral superiority I feel

00:41:40when I drive an EV over all those nerds in gas cars.

00:41:45Wow.

00:41:46Sean's over there spitting his coffee.

00:41:48I don't feel morally superior.

00:41:49I feel I'm much quicker than everybody else,

00:41:52which is a feeling I love.

00:41:54I got more questions.

00:41:55So the, okay, the cable, cable on the curb,

00:42:00is that a liability issue for anybody, for you?

00:42:02If you have somebody tripping on it, like.

00:42:04I mean, we're insured.

00:42:07There's gonna be trip and fall

00:42:09everywhere in this world forever.

00:42:10Okay. Yeah.

00:42:13And just, you know, the joke is that,

00:42:16I won't name names,

00:42:17but there's other charging companies out there

00:42:18that over-engineer to a degree of hilarity

00:42:24cable management systems

00:42:26that are like these giant arms,

00:42:28like, you know what I mean?

00:42:30And I'm pulling this lever and I'm,

00:42:32and then you walk by after the official install

00:42:36and there's cables all over the ground.

00:42:37Yeah, right.

00:42:39So much effort.

00:42:40And then guess what you get from a result of that?

00:42:43You get nimbyism.

00:42:44You get people saying,

00:42:45I want a 14 foot tall blue or green charger

00:42:49on my residential block.

00:42:51With a green light, you can see for like three miles.

00:42:53Yeah, exactly.

00:42:54Which is actually helpful to find, but yeah.

00:42:56Think about it like a fire hydrant.

00:42:57Do you ever think about fire hydrants?

00:42:58No, unless I'm parking, but no.

00:43:00No, exactly.

00:43:01Unless you're parking, exactly.

00:43:02This is what we need.

00:43:03We need this ubiquitous electrical,

00:43:05we need ubiquitous electrical access on the curb.

00:43:09That's a great way to put it.

00:43:10It's just there.

00:43:11You don't think about it and you know,

00:43:13but every block has one.

00:43:14Yeah, exactly.

00:43:15Right, right, right.

00:43:16Okay, now I got a more selfless question.

00:43:17Yeah.

00:43:19Could I like email you guys or go on to itselectric.us

00:43:23and say, hey, why don't you put one in front of my house?

00:43:26I'd be happy to get like 3,400 like.

00:43:29That's the wait list.

00:43:31Any building, any building.

00:43:32Even a single family home?

00:43:34Especially a single family home.

00:43:35Oh, sweet.

00:43:36Yes.

00:43:37Oh, really?

00:43:37Homes, schools, libraries, schools.

00:43:40He's gonna do this.

00:43:41No, the funny thing is,

00:43:43my house, we installed one

00:43:45and I made sure to put it on the side.

00:43:47I had a corner lot.

00:43:48I had a juicy corner lot.

00:43:50Nice.

00:43:50And I'm asking about the trip and fall

00:43:53because I put the wall box on the side of the house.

00:43:57You made your own curbside charger?

00:43:58Yeah, I was able to run.

00:44:00If I had a, if the car had the port

00:44:04on the correct side of the vehicle,

00:44:05I could run it,

00:44:06but it had to run across about three feet of sidewalk.

00:44:09Exactly.

00:44:10My neighbor told me, you can't do that.

00:44:12So I would put a cone, you know, whatever,

00:44:14see it step around it.

00:44:15100%.

00:44:16Those like, you know,

00:44:17those rubber matty things.

00:44:17The McMister car.

00:44:18That's how, like the city of Cambridge,

00:44:20that's their ordinance right now

00:44:21is that you can run your cable across the sidewalk,

00:44:23but you have to put like those McMaster car,

00:44:25like rollover truck,

00:44:27which is not a long-term solution, right?

00:44:30Right.

00:44:31Exactly.

00:44:32So we're just putting that cable under the sidewalk.

00:44:34Okay.

00:44:35But back to the question.

00:44:35So if you're, so I, that's great.

00:44:37Like I'm willing,

00:44:38if I'm willing to share the power from my home,

00:44:41then I can request that you put one in.

00:44:43Profit.

00:44:44Ah.

00:44:45Yeah.

00:44:46Okay, I'm into it.

00:44:46By the way, he's on your waist right now.

00:44:47Get on, get on.

00:44:49He's not kidding either folks.

00:44:52He's really not kidding.

00:44:53Make, make this a social clip.

00:44:54Yeah.

00:44:55Yes.

00:44:56Put the, put the number up on the bottom

00:44:57of the lower third of the screen.

00:44:59I don't want anyone near my house.

00:45:00Okay.

00:45:01No, thank you.

00:45:01We will not go near your house.

00:45:02No, thank you.

00:45:03Thank you very much.

00:45:04Yeah.

00:45:05Go to my neighbor's house.

00:45:06That's fine.

00:45:07I will.

00:45:08I will.

00:45:09So you mentioned how new this,

00:45:11the recency of It's Electric.

00:45:13You guys have, let's, let's work backwards.

00:45:16Established when?

00:45:18April 1st, April Fool's Day, 2021.

00:45:21Okay.

00:45:22Because.

00:45:23Yeah.

00:45:23Because we're doing something crazy.

00:45:24Yeah.

00:45:25Uh-huh.

00:45:26But we didn't actually get going until 2022.

00:45:28We just, we just incorporated on April Fool's Day.

00:45:33Just because it was the pandemic.

00:45:35And.

00:45:36What else to do?

00:45:38And the world was upside down.

00:45:41Yeah.

00:45:42And that's actually the origin story of It's Electric

00:45:43is that I was living in Brooklyn.

00:45:45I lived in an apartment and I had family.

00:45:47I didn't have a car, right?

00:45:48And I have family who lived in upstate New York

00:45:50and they worked in the hospital system,

00:45:52specifically in respiratory wards.

00:45:54And it was like, oh shit.

00:45:55Oh wow, yeah.

00:45:56Must've been tough.

00:45:57If something happens, how do I get up there?

00:45:59Again, don't forget, no trains, no planes, right?

00:46:02So how do I get there?

00:46:03So I looked at getting a car

00:46:05and I made a list and I'm an environmentalist.

00:46:07So EV was at the top of the list.

00:46:09So I had that circled with a question mark

00:46:11and then I had to cross it off

00:46:12because in Brooklyn in 2021,

00:46:14there is no place to charge without me paying

00:46:16to park in a garage

00:46:19and then to use the charger in the garage.

00:46:21So there's a wealth tax to drive an EV, right?

00:46:24Not only the cost of the EV,

00:46:26but the privilege to reserve a spot that has a charger.

00:46:29And parking overnight in New York garages is a fortune.

00:46:32It is.

00:46:33Yeah.

00:46:34Yeah, I think I paid,

00:46:36I had a car there for two days

00:46:37and it was like 250 bucks for two nights

00:46:39or something like this.

00:46:40This is in East Village.

00:46:42Exactly.

00:46:42It was a lot, yeah.

00:46:43Yeah, so that's how It's Electric was started.

00:46:46It was like, well,

00:46:47how are we gonna scale this infrastructure?

00:46:48How are we supposed to all drive EVs

00:46:50if there's literally no place to charge it in a city?

00:46:53And my fun story, my fun fact is that

00:46:56when we first, first, first started,

00:46:58I think I'm in the right generation

00:46:59to share this factoid with,

00:47:01is that there's a talking head song

00:47:03called Nothing But Flowers

00:47:05and it goes from the age of dinosaurs,

00:47:05cars have run on gasoline,

00:47:07where have they gone?

00:47:08It's nothing but flowers.

00:47:09And that was just kind of like this loop

00:47:11that ran in my head until we got this going.

00:47:14And when we did our very first pilot in Brooklyn,

00:47:16I reached out to David Byrne,

00:47:18who hates cars and rides a bike.

00:47:21And I told him my story and I said,

00:47:22can I paint your lyrics on this,

00:47:24paint your lyrics on this building?

00:47:26And he said, yes.

00:47:27Nice.

00:47:28Yeah.

00:47:28How'd you get in touch with David Byrne?

00:47:29Instagram?

00:47:30He's in New York City.

00:47:32I mean, I used to,

00:47:34actually I was gonna say,

00:47:35I knew Rick Ocasek when I lived in New York City.

00:47:36Oh, good one.

00:47:37Yeah.

00:47:38Of the cars.

00:47:39You're from the band Cars, yeah?

00:47:40Yeah, I was saying, it's meta, it's super meta right now.

00:47:43Yeah.

00:47:44Okay, sorry.

00:47:46But rest in peace, Rick.

00:47:47He married Paulina.

00:47:49Paulina Puskova, yeah.

00:47:50Yeah, I knew her too.

00:47:51Yeah.

00:47:52Still in New York.

00:47:53Yeah, they lived down the street,

00:47:54but the woman I knew was their nanny.

00:47:56That's, yeah.

00:47:58So they lived in Gramercy, anyway.

00:48:00Okay, so.

00:48:02We're 80 years old, it's horrible.

00:48:03Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:48:04What else can we talk about?

00:48:05I don't know.

00:48:062021, so you had the idea.

00:48:10And then we got going in 2022.

00:48:14And you have a co-founder.

00:48:16Yeah.

00:48:17And I mean, what were the...

00:48:21So fun.

00:48:22Where did you get the,

00:48:23where did you get,

00:48:24like what ideas were thrown out on the way to,

00:48:27let's do a kind of version of what London is doing,

00:48:30but without the light posts.

00:48:32It wasn't even that sophisticated.

00:48:34Oh.

00:48:35My co-founder's an architect with a background

00:48:37in oversight of specialty engineering.

00:48:39My background is design and technology.

00:48:42And in the pandemic,

00:48:44during the height of it,

00:48:46everything was closed.

00:48:47Parks, playgrounds, stores, restaurants, museums.

00:48:53Let's not forget, we've gaslit ourselves.

00:48:55Everything was closed.

00:48:57Yeah, and New York was really bad.

00:48:58Yeah.

00:48:59Yeah, New York was really bad.

00:49:01We can't just go,

00:49:02we're not very close to a national park

00:49:04or anything like that in the city.

00:49:05So everyone was just taking walks.

00:49:07Everyone was just like,

00:49:08and you would wave to people across the street

00:49:09because of social distancing.

00:49:11Right.

00:49:12We lived through this.

00:49:12It happened.

00:49:14And what you saw when you were taking these walks,

00:49:16you saw that a lot of roofs in New York City,

00:49:19because of local law 97, had solar.

00:49:21Right.

00:49:22And we were like, that's interesting.

00:49:24And then my co-founder was like,

00:49:26not my co-founder at the time,

00:49:27but a person who I was walking with,

00:49:29said, wouldn't it be cool

00:49:30if somehow like the solar on the building

00:49:33could then power an EV in front of it?

00:49:36And I said, cars powered by buildings.

00:49:38And we started riffing.

00:49:41And we then kind of back walked that

00:49:44into our understanding of how it happens

00:49:47in the EU or the UK and the Nordics

00:49:49and made the parallel and the corollary to the understanding.

00:49:52Like it all happened at the same time.

00:49:53Like, oh shit, need a car to get out of the city

00:49:56to see family if they die.

00:49:58Right.

00:49:59Sorry.

00:50:00Oh, need to do that.

00:50:01You know, oh wow, like there's no infrastructure

00:50:05yet we have to make this transition in five years.

00:50:08And then my background in design and building things.

00:50:11So the biggest project I worked on

00:50:13before starting It's Electric was the public facing tech,

00:50:16basically any kind of hardware in public space.

00:50:18And it was for all of the tech at the 9-11 Memorial

00:50:21and at the museum in downtown Manhattan.

00:50:23So that was my project that I worked on for eight years.

00:50:26And that's seen now over 43 million visitors.

00:50:30So in terms of like, how do you build something

00:50:32that doesn't break and that lasts?

00:50:34And the answer is you keep it simple

00:50:36and you make sure that user experience

00:50:39is at the forefront of the work that you do.

00:50:41So, you know, the last thing I wanted to do

00:50:44when suddenly going from being a sort of like

00:50:48power professional in New York City

00:50:50to then waking up and being a homeschool kindergarten teacher

00:50:54because my daughter at the time was, you know,

00:50:56four years old.

00:50:57Gotcha, you were a three-year-old, yeah.

00:50:59Last thing you wanna do is like,

00:51:00oh yeah, let me start a climate tech startup.

00:51:02Like, no, like that's not like,

00:51:04that was not how it happened.

00:51:05Like, it was like, let's have this idea

00:51:07and we treated it like a project

00:51:10for better or for worse at the beginning.

00:51:11Like, wouldn't this be cool if we could do this?

00:51:14But then it was a pandemic, right?

00:51:15So like, it's a time where like, you're like,

00:51:16hey, I can like Zoom anyone, like everyone's home.

00:51:19So we just started reaching out to random people.

00:51:21David Byrne.

00:51:22David, well, that was a little bit later,

00:51:24but we reached out to the former deputy commissioner

00:51:27for the New York City DOT.

00:51:29And we were like, hey, can we have a call with you?

00:51:31Because this gentleman named Michael Replogle

00:51:34wrote New York City's electrification plan.

00:51:37He's the one who wrote the original EV vision plan

00:51:39for New York City.

00:51:40And we ran the idea by him and he was like,

00:51:42huh, I think you're onto something.

00:51:44And he became our first advisor.

00:51:46Nice.

00:51:47We reached out to Mia Burke,

00:51:48who was one of the original founders of City Bike.

00:51:51And so again, taking away parking spots

00:51:53for public infrastructure, public-private partnerships.

00:51:57And she goes, huh, I think you're onto something.

00:51:59And she became an advisor.

00:52:01And if you haven't been in New York in the last five years,

00:52:03the City Bikes are everywhere.

00:52:04Everywhere.

00:52:05They're fantastic.

00:52:06It's my first mode of transportation.

00:52:07I almost get run over by them constantly.

00:52:09So I have a different opinion, but okay.

00:52:11You get run over by them or you almost get run over?

00:52:13I almost get run over by somebody on a bike

00:52:15in New York City.

00:52:15Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:52:16There's a lot of bikes.

00:52:18I mean, I'm a responsible biker.

00:52:19I wouldn't do that to you.

00:52:21And so it just started to build momentum.

00:52:24Everyone's like, huh.

00:52:24And again, this was a very nascent idea.

00:52:27Now looking backwards, it seems so obvious.

00:52:30Like, oh, of course.

00:52:31And then, oh, Tia, and you have these contracts

00:52:33and you're working with all these cities

00:52:34and you have this funding.

00:52:35And now it just seems very matter of fact.

00:52:38But literally, everyone said to me,

00:52:41that wasn't able to kind of see the vision.

00:52:44They said, well, that's too simple.

00:52:45It'll never work.

00:52:46Right.

00:52:47And that was the most frustrating thing to experience

00:52:50in repetition.

00:52:51But to me, it's the fact that you had the brilliant idea

00:52:57to the driver carries the cable.

00:53:01Because I'd just never seen it, really.

00:53:03And when I saw my buddy in Norway

00:53:05just pull his out of his trunk,

00:53:06it just was like this light bulb moment where I was like,

00:53:08duh, duh.

00:53:09Because you recommended it's electric.

00:53:12How did you, right?

00:53:13Yeah.

00:53:15Or did Kirsten?

00:53:16No, I think it was me.

00:53:17I think I read something about it.

00:53:19Just some thing I was reading, but yeah.

00:53:21I'll tell you.

00:53:22Because I'm fascinated by, like you said,

00:53:25it's not five years, it's like 10 years.

00:53:27Like, you know, 2035,

00:53:29California is gonna stop the sale

00:53:31of internal combustion vehicles.

00:53:32And 12 other states have signed onto that.

00:53:36New York being one of them.

00:53:37And that's where all the population is.

00:53:40And, you know, every other country

00:53:42is gonna do the same thing before then.

00:53:45So this is a real issue.

00:53:47Like, that's great.

00:53:48If you're gonna stop selling internal combustion,

00:53:49how are you gonna charge these things?

00:53:51Norway is 100% electric now.

00:53:53January 1st.

00:53:54Yeah.

00:53:55January 1st, yeah.

00:53:56So, yeah.

00:53:57That's communist.

00:53:58But they're 90, well, they're better than communists.

00:54:00They're capitalists that gives everybody money every year.

00:54:04Norway's fantastic.

00:54:05But no, but I was in Norway a year ago about,

00:54:08and yeah, it's 90% electric.

00:54:10So the city, it's weird.

00:54:11It's kind of eerie.

00:54:12The cities are totally quiet.

00:54:13Quiet and it's clean.

00:54:15My favorite thing is the sound of an electric vehicle

00:54:19when I'm like walking home at night.

00:54:20It's, I don't know, it's cool.

00:54:22Okay.

00:54:23All the weird noises they make

00:54:24because they have to make a noise below 20.

00:54:26Oh, that noise, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:54:29Well, I was gonna say, before I forget,

00:54:31because I wanted to make sure I don't say,

00:54:32I think you're onto something, like everybody else, right?

00:54:35Yeah.

00:54:36Greg wants to be an advisor.

00:54:37No, the thing though, because it's,

00:54:41I feel like others have attempted this,

00:54:43but it is a very simple solution.

00:54:45And the key is that you,

00:54:48well, let me, you can confirm this.

00:54:50I think the unlock is that you,

00:54:52you kind of cut through all the bureaucracy.

00:54:54You kind of cut through all the red tape and solve for,

00:54:57because I'll tell you, I have this Wallbox charger

00:55:00and they have some wacky idea that you,

00:55:05I could make money doing essentially this

00:55:08by letting people like park in my driveway and charge

00:55:09and I get a notification of the app

00:55:11and there's some revenue share.

00:55:13But I can, you can tell that I have no idea

00:55:16how it works, I've never done it before.

00:55:17Cause it sounds insane to me.

00:55:18Like, I'm gonna let somebody park in my driveway.

00:55:20Then, so they have to,

00:55:21so my charge is gonna be outside the house

00:55:22and the cable's gotta be available to everybody.

00:55:24And then they're gonna plug it in.

00:55:25And then like, this doesn't make any sense.

00:55:27Yeah, that's like the peer to peer model.

00:55:28People sometimes call us peer to peer,

00:55:30but I don't really consider us classified under that

00:55:33because we're not coordinating the use of the charger

00:55:37that you installed.

00:55:38Yes.

00:55:39And we're taking you out of the equation.

00:55:41Guess what?

00:55:42That spot on the street is not your spot.

00:55:47It is a public spot,

00:55:49but you have power that's adjacent to it.

00:55:53So how else, there's no other way to monetize

00:55:55an eight inch by eight inch piece of land in the city.

00:55:58Except by the meter.

00:56:00Yes, but that doesn't benefit the citizen.

00:56:03Right, so what we wanna really push on here

00:56:06is that when we go into a neighborhood,

00:56:08we're bringing infrastructure,

00:56:10we're bringing economic benefit, right?

00:56:12And we're bringing cleaner air.

00:56:13Like, it's a win-win.

00:56:14And there's a lot of pushback.

00:56:16People say, oh, gentrification, right?

00:56:17But you have to build the infrastructure

00:56:20to ensure that people can adopt the technology.

00:56:22And we know, we know, we know

00:56:24that if we can get a cheaper EV out there,

00:56:26can we have that conversation, please?

00:56:27Yeah.

00:56:29This is gonna just take off.

00:56:31That's the one thing that is killing me right now.

00:56:34And we won't name names,

00:56:36but the $25,000 Tesla that never happened, right?

00:56:40Well, to be fair, it is happening.

00:56:42As a robo.

00:56:43No, no, no, no.

00:56:44We just, I just read an article today or yesterday.

00:56:46Today's happening, last week it was.

00:56:48No, no, no, no, not new.

00:56:50There are sub $20,000 Teslas rolling around

00:56:52because Elon has cratered his own vehicle lineup

00:56:58with all of the price war that he's had.

00:57:02And Hertz has flooded the marketplace with all,

00:57:05because they made a huge bet like three years ago

00:57:07and it hasn't paid off.

00:57:08The cars have depreciated like crazy.

00:57:09So I tell people all the time,

00:57:11you wanna get an EV, it's never been a better time,

00:57:13but you have to be okay driving a used Tesla

00:57:16because you can get a model three easily under $25,000.

00:57:19And now apparently going sub 20

00:57:21and you get model Y it's around 30 or less,

00:57:24which is nuts because they're there.

00:57:26Whatever the politics are,

00:57:28they're actually really good EVs with huge batteries.

00:57:30And they charge quickly.

00:57:31And used EVs, you know, there's no service.

00:57:34You don't do anything.

00:57:36Other manufacturers are coming out with sub 35, sub 30.

00:57:42I think it gets really difficult to get to the 25,000

00:57:45just because the battery prices

00:57:47have to come much farther.

00:57:49Otherwise you're literally just gonna drive.

00:57:50What's the cheapest internal combustion engine new?

00:57:53In the US?

00:57:53Yeah.

00:57:54It's under 25.

00:57:55You can get, used to be the Mitsubishi Mirage,

00:57:59but that's gone.

00:57:59Yeah, you can get like a Versa type car for 23.

00:58:04Nissan, the Note.

00:58:05But there's nothing sub 20, right?

00:58:06Not anymore.

00:58:07Right?

00:58:08Used to be, yeah.

00:58:09Not anymore for a new car.

00:58:10Yeah, for new.

00:58:11Look, the average price of a new vehicle,

00:58:12I mean, this is my data's two years out of data already,

00:58:14but it was 48,000.

00:58:15So cars are just expensive these days.

00:58:17Yeah.

00:58:18But yeah, I mean, used EVs,

00:58:20Chevy said the other day, the new Bolt is coming.

00:58:24You can get a, they have the Chevy Equinox EV.

00:58:27There's the LT1 trim starts at like 30

00:58:31and you get the $7,500 credit.

00:58:33So it's a $2,500 EV, which is unbelievable,

00:58:37but apparently it's true.

00:58:39So you can get a very cheap EV right now,

00:58:42if you want one and a lot more coming.

00:58:44Yeah, exactly.

00:58:45And that's, so we need to get those out,

00:58:48get them out fast, but then we need consumer education.

00:58:52Most people have never plugged in an electric vehicle.

00:58:55Right.

00:58:56Like I run an EV charging company.

00:58:59My very old parents are terrified of getting an EV

00:59:03because in the news cycle,

00:59:05no matter how much I can tell them,

00:59:07and they have a garage.

00:59:09You know, they're in a retirement community.

00:59:11It's like.

00:59:12Great.

00:59:12They're the perfect,

00:59:13because they probably don't drive very far or very often.

00:59:16They'll never have to go to a gas station.

00:59:17It's a golf cart, guys.

00:59:18Yeah.

00:59:19Also, these coasters hate gas stations.

00:59:21That's a little less.

00:59:22100%.

00:59:23They hate gas stations.

00:59:24You have to get in your car when it's cold.

00:59:26You can't smoke in it, that's why.

00:59:27No, no.

00:59:28It's this Jersey thing.

00:59:29They just hate gas stations.

00:59:30No, it's also like insane.

00:59:31Like, why do we want to preserve

00:59:32this legacy of a gas station?

00:59:34People always say like,

00:59:35we want to replicate the gas station experience.

00:59:37Like, why?

00:59:38Why do I want?

00:59:39It's the most unpleasant experience in the world.

00:59:43Let me ask you.

00:59:44I can think of a few more there.

00:59:46Just going back.

00:59:48By the way, I asked the Motor Trend Slack channel

00:59:50just now, hurry.

00:59:51I need an answer.

00:59:52Do we have an ice car sub $20,000?

00:59:53And the answer has come back.

00:59:54It is the Nissan Versa.

00:59:56The Versa, yeah.

00:59:57Yeah, I think.

00:59:57I'm debating whether it's still on sale.

00:59:59Yeah, but I don't think it's sub $20,000.

01:00:00It is, $17,820 with destination.

01:00:03And you can often get them with money on the hood.

01:00:07Thank you, Nissan, our sponsor.

01:00:11Let me ask one question.

01:00:11Why isn't, because again, I have this vision in my head

01:00:16of putting one of these things in front of my house

01:00:17and making some money.

01:00:18How come the cities are not interested in?

01:00:20They would do it and recoup the revenue.

01:00:23Like City Hall?

01:00:25Oh, you put it in front of city-owned properties?

01:00:28Yeah, everyone wins.

01:00:29Let's put it in front of city-owned properties.

01:00:30They get the money.

01:00:31Let's put it in front of privately-owned properties.

01:00:33You get the money.

01:00:35I mean, my-

01:00:36Or like in front of my house and the city gets the money.

01:00:38You know what I'm saying?

01:00:39No, no.

01:00:39They don't wanna plug into the grid directly?

01:00:41Yeah, no, good question.

01:00:42So cities don't wanna own and operate networks

01:00:45of electric vehicle charging stations, right?

01:00:48So other companies out there,

01:00:49your charge points, et cetera, right?

01:00:51They previously operated on this model

01:00:53called hardware as a service,

01:00:55where they said, okay, we're gonna sell you this charger.

01:00:58It's gonna be $3,000.

01:01:00We're gonna put an option for you to install it yourselves

01:01:04or we can install it for you.

01:01:06And then you can buy operations and maintenance.

01:01:08And then the cities were left holding the bag

01:01:10on these chargers that were broken, that didn't work.

01:01:12But the cities, when they would do this

01:01:14hardware as a service model, they would keep the revenue.

01:01:17But it wasn't worth that.

01:01:19And so we wanna, again,

01:01:20we wanna make this easy for everyone.

01:01:22We're partnered with ChargerHelp,

01:01:24if you're familiar with them,

01:01:25LA-based amazing company that is basically out there.

01:01:29Their whole job is just making sure

01:01:31that chargers have 98% higher uptime.

01:01:35That's all they do is make sure that charge works.

01:01:37Like Ford's Charge Angels or whatever.

01:01:38But we also designed our, again,

01:01:40everything that was broken about chargers,

01:01:42so I am rubbing my forehead right now.

01:01:43Everything that was broken about chargers,

01:01:45we tried to just do the opposite.

01:01:48So apropos to having a four-year-old during the pandemic,

01:01:54the charger is actually designed like a Lego.

01:01:56So there's a subgrade unit

01:01:58and then there's the top that pops on.

01:02:01So if our charger goes down for some reason

01:02:02and it's just gonna break,

01:02:03I'm not gonna pretend like something's not gonna break.

01:02:06We're not out there like rolling out a truck

01:02:08doing diagnostics, waiting for a part.

01:02:11We literally roll in, we pop that top off.

01:02:13It's less than 40 pounds, I can lift it.

01:02:16It gets thrown into the back of a van

01:02:18and we put the new one on and we drive away

01:02:20and it's working.

01:02:21So modular, clean.

01:02:24And then again, with the component of the cable

01:02:26being the thing that breaks the most,

01:02:28even if someone breaks their own cable, no problem.

01:02:31Here's your new cable.

01:02:32Everyone else's cable still works.

01:02:34Yeah, but I think also like if it's your cable,

01:02:36you'll take a lot better care of it

01:02:37than if it's a thing in public.

01:02:39100%, that's how it goes, right?

01:02:41Yeah, it's just, that's how Americans are, yeah.

01:02:43Yeah, my cable.

01:02:44Yeah, it'd be different in Japan,

01:02:45but in America, if it's yours, you'll take care of it.

01:02:48Yeah, especially if it's a cool looking cable too.

01:02:50Sure, okay.

01:02:52This is great.

01:02:54Okay, so it's itselectric.us.

01:02:56When you go to the site,

01:02:58it says you can join the wait list.

01:03:00So I'm gonna join the wait list.

01:03:01Are you really gonna do that?

01:03:02Yeah.

01:03:03But let's be honest,

01:03:04because the first thing you said.

01:03:05Your wife will kill you.

01:03:06No, she'll love it.

01:03:08The first thing you said is,

01:03:10California, you got chargers everywhere.

01:03:12Where are you, what's the likelihood you're gonna,

01:03:15I know you said Alameda's interested,

01:03:17but are you not gonna come to LA?

01:03:19Because we're so rich in.

01:03:21She just said LA.

01:03:23She said LA, San Francisco, Alameda.

01:03:24Yeah, those are our first three cities on the West Coast.

01:03:26Okay, and how many have,

01:03:27if you were a listener,

01:03:29and you wanted to go see one of these units,

01:03:31you can go to New York, you can go to Boston,

01:03:32you said currently?

01:03:33Right now, you can go to New York, Detroit,

01:03:34and very shortly, Boston.

01:03:37We're working really closely with LA right now

01:03:40to get chargers out there,

01:03:41especially if you are in South Central Los Angeles,

01:03:44sign up for the wait list.

01:03:45That will be our first neighborhood, please.

01:03:47South Central, meaning?

01:03:49Meaning, we have.

01:03:51Compton, Cardina.

01:03:52Yeah, Compton, exactly, exactly.

01:03:53Yeah, that'll be our first key area

01:03:56that we are deploying actively in,

01:03:59and then Koreatown.

01:04:00Oh, nice, oh, smart.

01:04:02And well, let's talk about Rideshare.

01:04:04We didn't talk about Rideshare yet, right?

01:04:05Okay, let's talk about Rideshare.

01:04:07All right, so I don't have a car,

01:04:09but I do take Rideshare,

01:04:11and Rideshare, Uber, is pushing

01:04:14to be all electric by 2030.

01:04:17They just had their Go Zero event, right?

01:04:19They're doing so much around sustainability.

01:04:21How many Rideshare drivers,

01:04:22you guys will know this fact,

01:04:23this is gonna be fun.

01:04:24The first people I never stumped, go, ready?

01:04:25How many Rideshare drivers in New York City?

01:04:27Oh, I don't know.

01:04:29None, taxis.

01:04:31No, 80,000.

01:04:33Okay.

01:04:34So if New York City has a law now

01:04:37called the Green Rides Initiative,

01:04:38where they all have to drive electric in five years.

01:04:41Oh, wow.

01:04:42Yeah.

01:04:43So 80,000 vehicles will have to be electric.

01:04:44In five years.

01:04:45In five years, yeah.

01:04:47We're gonna need a bigger boat

01:04:48because we have 50 public chargers.

01:04:51So.

01:04:52That's insane, but go ahead.

01:04:53She made a Jaws reference right there.

01:04:54No, I got the Jaws reference.

01:04:56I'm saying the insane part is that

01:04:58New York City's eight some odd million people,

01:05:01and there's 50 public chargers.

01:05:0250 public L2s, yeah.

01:05:03Yeah, that's wild.

01:05:05Yeah, no, we need, New York City has big goals,

01:05:07big ambitions, 10,000 in five years.

01:05:10Man, they're behind the eight,

01:05:11I mean, just behind, like, that's crazy.

01:05:13We're trying.

01:05:14Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:05:15We're trying.

01:05:16We're doing a lot.

01:05:17The number is shocking.

01:05:18We're doing a lot.

01:05:18We've got a lot going on in New York right now.

01:05:19Okay.

01:05:21And so, I don't know about you,

01:05:23but last time you were in New York, perhaps,

01:05:24how long did it take you to get from midtown

01:05:26to the airport in an Uber?

01:05:28Forever, yeah.

01:05:29Yeah.

01:05:30It's an hour and a half.

01:05:31Yeah, so right now, Uber drivers are losing wages

01:05:34because they've gotta drive out to the airport

01:05:36to get to the chargers.

01:05:37And then they gotta drive back into Manhattan

01:05:39to pick up their next ride.

01:05:40Oh, that's ridiculous.

01:05:41Yes.

01:05:42They can obviously pick up a ride from the airport

01:05:43and bring it back, but still.

01:05:44So, that's why we're thrilled.

01:05:46Part of our most recent funding round,

01:05:48in terms of our growth and where we've come,

01:05:50has come from Uber,

01:05:51because we're working to help put chargers

01:05:52in the neighborhoods where their ride share drivers

01:05:54are just going home and parking at night

01:05:56so that parking is equivalent to charging.

01:06:00Right.

01:06:00Huh.

01:06:01And as we know from a few episodes ago,

01:06:02man, Uber's got some cash, so.

01:06:04Yeah.

01:06:05That's great.

01:06:06No, this is awesome.

01:06:08Very cool.

01:06:10Again, if you look up It's Electric,

01:06:12you will note, as I did,

01:06:13that the charger looks like the arm

01:06:16of the robot in Interstellar.

01:06:17It's very futuristic looking.

01:06:19Stainless, is it stainless steel?

01:06:21Stainless and aluminum, yeah.

01:06:22Yeah.

01:06:22So, it looks really cool.

01:06:25I'm really into the idea.

01:06:27Yeah.

01:06:28We'd love for you to come back

01:06:30when there's more that we can,

01:06:33maybe we can go sample one of these.

01:06:35Oh, absolutely.

01:06:35Locally.

01:06:36Yeah.

01:06:37Talk about it.

01:06:38Maybe we can go do a little video on it.

01:06:39I don't know.

01:06:40Yeah.

01:06:40Or EV curious, if you will.

01:06:44But yeah, thank you so much for coming in.

01:06:47Thanks for having me.

01:06:48Tia Gordon.

01:06:50Co-founder, chief operating officer for It's Electric.

01:06:53And again, it's itselectric.us.

01:07:20The Inevitable VodCast brought to you

01:07:22by the all electric Nissan Aria inspired by the future

01:07:25designed for the now.

01:07:40you

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