Energy Tech Startups

0:00 Transform your startup journey with the energy tech nexus. Connect with fellow founders, access critical resources, and be part of a community shaping the future of energy and carbon tech. Your

0:10 path to building a Thunderlizard starts here. Learn more at energytechnexascom. We're back here with David Aronson. He's the CEO

0:19 and founder of Refuel EV Solutions. Welcome to the show. Tell us about what you guys are all about. Well, thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here We're basically a company that

0:31 specializes in owning and operating EV charging stations in multifamily properties. And I've been the real estate business. I've been the real estate industry for 45 years. And one thing, and I've

0:47 financed all kinds of properties. So I'm familiar with all property types. And one thing that kind of made me think about this business was a number of years ago when we had COVID in. I was

1:01 watching CNBC and they had an electric vehicle charging company that was on and it got me to thinking that these companies,

1:13 well, as we transitioned from gas cars to electric, which I had never really thought about before, but I became convinced after I did a little research that everybody is going to be driving an

1:25 electric vehicle, not because we want to. Although after I got one, I realized, yeah, it's a better deal, but because that's all the automobile manufacturers are going to be making in 10 to 15

1:40 years. Every one of them have said, we are no longer going to build gas powered cars. And in fact, when you talk to most of these companies, all the engineers are now focused on electric.

1:54 They're not even focused on gas anymore. So you'll have fewer and fewer new products coming out. gas and more and more coming out in electric. So I started thinking about real estate and I said,

2:06 Well, this transition from gas to electricity is going to affect real estate. How is it going to affect it? And I came to the conclusion that just like cell towers are the conduit to make our cell

2:22 phones work.

2:26 EV charging stations are the conduit to make electric vehicles work. And then I had a crazy thought. I said, You know, I come from Houston. I'm a real estate guy. Houston has probably the most

2:38 sophisticated multi-family developers in the country. And they've thought of every amenity before anybody else did and they've given away cars They've given away televisions and anything to get

2:54 people to rent, they were the leading edge of all this. And I thought, here we are in Houston. I wonder why no apartment developer has put a gas pump on their property. Think about it. It has a

3:08 Costco, right? Ultimate, the ultimate amenity. Being able to refuel your gas vehicle, where you live. And when I mentioned to people, they say, Well, you got zoning, you got environmental

3:21 issues, you got this, you got that. Well, I said, Look, just us, you know, but you can solve most of these problemsif you really wanted to, okay? But this would be the greatest amenity. And

3:36 so I said, Well, as we transitionto electric vehicles, it now gives us an opportunityto put these refueling centers, which are charging stations, at each multifamily property. It's the ultimate

3:49 amenity. It's the ultimate inconvenience. It will be used more than the racquetball court that they built, okay?

4:15 It'll, you know, pickleballs now the rage. Everyone's building pickleball courts. Well, what about that tennis court? Nobody's using it. This is something that will be used for years, for,

4:15 until they come up with another solution for cars. Maybe they run on oxygen. I don't know what the next one is, but I'm pretty convinced that the electric vehicle transition has left the train

4:23 station Nothing can stop it. Certainly there are things that can slow it down, but it's here. Do either of y'all drive electric vehicles? So, I'm the one here who doesn't. So when I first moved

4:37 here to Houston, I lived in a gravestone property over on TC Jester, and I was looking for a car, and I said, Well, I'm not buying any of you, 'cause there's nowhere to charge it. And even if I

4:48 got like a little garage unit, there was only like a single 120 plug in there. Yeah, as a trickle plug. Yeah That's what I got, I got a Ford. I got a Ford SD, which is a nice, loud, you know,

4:58 gas guzzling car. Um, but it was, it was a real challenge. And then my wife moved from London, um, to come in as well. Same thing. We looked at it. So there, there's a good plant here. We

5:09 don't know where we're going to be in the next 24 months. So let's just play it safe. And we got her a little Toyota Corolla. Right. She, she got herself a Toyota Corolla. Yeah. Let's be clear.

5:16 A little Toyota Corolla. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. No, I mean, I actually got my first electric car because we were living in Norway Yeah. Um, and in Norway today, I think 90 of the car sold

5:29 are EVs. So there was, you know, it was like the new trend. Um, and also because buying an EV was a lot cheaper than buying any other car. Because of the government subsidies. Because of the

5:38 subsidies and gas there is very expensive. Uh, even though, you know, they produce oil and gas, but they heavily tax it. So, um, so just economically it made sense. You don't have to pay

5:50 tolls. It's just, I mean, it's a country where you have a lot of tolls. So it's interesting because I went to Norway to check out the

5:59 EV, what's going on, EV-wise and charging-wise there. And I stepped off the, out of the train station in downtown Oslo, and much to my surprise, I saw zero cars. There are no cars on the road

6:15 in Norway, or at least in Oslo, I say that, there were some cars, but it was amazing how many people rode bikes and they'd do it during the winter. But look, I mean - I mean, the public

6:27 transportation system - It's really good, right. I mean, it's just amazing, it's amazing. So we didn't have to use our car until, I had to go to our site, which was a bit further off, so I

6:36 would take my car every now and then, or on weekends if we're going on ski trips and things like that. But if you looked at, you know, you made me think about, okay, what did the charging

6:45 infrastructure look like? All offices to now have, have EVs. Yeah, I could charge my cars there, have EV chargers. We didn't have, you know, we lived in an apartment, we lived in the city,

6:57 we didn't have a parking on, like on our apartment building because it was an old building. But there like, there was an apartment, there was a parking lot where you could get a spot. And that

7:10 was also, they had, they installed EVs because there was, there's so many people driving and they can see it, right? Like what you're seeing that's going to happen here 10 years from now, it's

7:19 already kind of happened in Norway. But I think, you know, what you described is, is you're seeing something not a lot of people are seeing, especially in Texas, a lot of people who are used to

7:30 driving their F-150s still think that, you know, it's a very small amount of people that was telling somebody the other day that in my neighborhood, at least 30 of people have an

7:44 EV And that's amazing, you know, when I started, there were about 20 20,

7:54 000 EVs on the road in Houston four years ago. I don't know what the number is today, but I know by 2030 they want to get to 600, 000, which is a number. I don't see how it's ever going to happen.

8:03 I mean, it's going to eventually get there. The question is when's it going to get there? Yeah, and I think people still have the impression that EVs are expensive. But an average car price today

8:14 is45, 000. And that's how much an EV costs Even a Tesla Model Y, that's how much it costs. And you know what I found, I drive a Tesla S. You know what I found? It was really interesting. I

8:24 took it to the shop for one of the few times in the three years I've owned it, didn't need to be there. They gave me a Y. There was so little difference in the quality of the drive. It was

8:35 negligible. And of course my car costs twice as much. And so when I was on vacation in Southern California and I rented an Ionic. Fantastic car. 45, 000, it just is a fantastic car. What brand

8:53 is that, is that a Kia? It's a Kia, yeah, you're exactly right. The media story on electric is not the correct media story. Okay, they are not, everyone talks about more expensive. I don't

9:05 know what they're comparing it to. Exactly, of course. I have no idea, because when's the last time anyone was able to buy a25, 000 or30, 000 car in the US? Well, I only buy used, so

9:19 When was the last time? It's been decades. So I agree that the story that people tell on the cost of having an EV is incorrect. And then that doesn't even get to the operations and the ownership of

9:35 it. I mean, every time I gas up and I look at that75 gas bill, I'm like, Ugh, why am I spending more? Right, and so I fill my car up at home Yeah.

9:47 where I think I pay about 12 cents a kilowatt hour. So it costs me about20, 25 a month based on how much I drive. If I lived in an apartment complex served by revs, okay, and we make money, just

10:04 like a gas station does, you put in the gas pump and that little clicker goes, we do the same thing. It's the same exact thing. If you live in an apartment complex, you'll pay depending on how

10:15 much you drive about60 a month for fuel. So less than one fill up of that gas car. Yep, so tell us about this model a little bit. So you kind of alluded to it. I think you said you're an owner

10:27 operator, you work with multi-tenant. Tell us a little bit about kind of who that target buyer is and then what service you're giving. So our client, we have several clients, okay? The first

10:40 client we have is the property owner, the apartment property under the company that owns the apartment project. And we go to them and we ask them if we can lease parking spaces from them for a

10:53 period of time, usually 12 to 15 years. And so they get money from here. And so, well, so, hold on, and

11:02 what we do is, we'll come in and we'll put the charging stations in. And what does that entail? It entails making permanent improvements to their electrical infrastructure So, we have to, a lot

11:15 of times, update the electrical panel. Every time we have to run conduit, 'cause there was no conduit that allowed the electricity get from the electrical panel to the charging station. And then,

11:26 of course, we have to put up, you know, a lot of times we have to put up a pedestal to support the charging station. So, we do all of that at our expense. Got it. Okay. And what does the

11:38 landlord get? we give the landlord a share of the revenue.

11:45 we incur all the expenses, they pay for the electricity. And the most important thing they get is a charging station that they didn't have to pay for for the use of their residents. So their

11:60 residents, as you had mentioned earlier, Jason, you were concerned, you lived in an apartment, they didn't have charging stations. That was a tenant that you could have bought a car and said,

12:12 I'm moving to a property that has a charging station, okay? Or like in your case, it stopped you from buying one. But if you already had an EV, you would look for a property that has charging

12:26 stations because it's the most convenient way to refuel your car. And so what we're doing is we're putting the charging stations where we own and operate 'em into these apartment projects. And we've

12:39 done it all over the country or in 19 states, depending on how you count DC.

12:45 Um, and we're in 83 different cities

12:51 and 125 different apartment properties now. So, so just a question, a little bit on, you know, how you described the business model. You said you, you share, you share part of the revenue with

13:04 the, with the property owner, but they're paying for the electricity. So in, in some way, you kind of paying them for the electricity too Well, we are, that's exactly what our revenue share is.

13:16 It's a, it gives them a partial reimbursement of their electrical expense. We started out, we started out on our business model and still we'd consider doing it, uh, reimbursing for actual

13:28 electricity, um, and, um, and sharing a little profit with the property owner. What we found is while our property owners, our clients are always concerned about the electricity on the bill.

13:42 after we were up, they would never send us electricity bills. It was hard, they couldn't put their hands on, it was too much work. So we always just keep the same electricity rate. So I don't

13:53 really know how, you know, it sounds good, but to get reimbursed for electricity, I don't know how much they care. 'Cause not that much. Well, they're getting their residence. They're keeping

14:04 a residence, which is the real value play, 'cause if you assume that the average rent in Houston's1, 500 for an apartment, and of course, in most of the apartments, we're putting them right now

14:15 that it's more than that. But that's18, 000 a year. They're getting

14:22 a resident for18, 000 that they wouldn't have gotten, or more 30, 000, that they would not have gotten if they didn't have the charging station. Yeah. What are you seeing when you're going to

14:32 these property owners? Are they seeing this as a problem? Well, it's funny, every year we've been in business and we've been in business about four years now. It's, it's, uh, they recognize,

14:45 we're finding they recognize it more and more that they have to have these. And so every year our business has grown pretty significantly. And, uh, this year, you know, is, is no different. I

14:56 mean, we're, we're experiencing hypergrowth and, and, um, but it's funny. One thing I learned is it's going to happen on the property owner's time. It's not going to happen on my time. If I

15:09 went to him and said, look, I just got a hundred million dollar investment to put them up. They're not going to change their priorities. Okay. And right now, according to a gray star study that

15:20 just came out, five percent of the residents that they surveyed said that they wanted to have EV charging stations. So you can look at that and you say, well, only five. Yeah. Well, Last year,

15:35 it was two and a half. It's the only one that's grown. exponentially year after year, and it's going to keep growing. But from a company standpoint, you want to tackle your major problems first.

15:48 And so 5 is not a major problem. Okay. It's something to be looking at. And so it just depends on the owner. We find that more owners that have

16:05 the institutional investors as partners are more sensitive to the environment and the ESG initiatives, and they're more likely to put them in than owners who really don't have to worry about what

16:21 their investors or partners want. So how do you size an installation for a property owner? So we really, it's all about the property, Jason. Every property is different. And by the way, just

16:34 because you give us a set of building plans that say here's what was built. When we go to look at them, it's not necessarily what's there, okay? So every property is different, and we basically

16:46 take what the property gives us, okay? We look at the electrical panel, we see if there's any capacity in there, and then depending on if there's capacity, how much, and then we'll put in as big

17:03 a circuit as we can, okay? And then we'll run the conduit, usually on an existing property, we're putting up two to four charging ports to start out. And this is something that separates us from

17:19 a lot of companies in the business, and because we are running a business on this property, and we are looking very heavily at supply and demand, okay? I don't want to over-supply a property with

17:31 charging stations because, well, I'm paying for it, and if they're not going to be used in the near term. Why have them sitting there? The vendors that sell us the product, they're kind of our

17:44 competition, kind of. Their mission is to sell as many charging ports as they can. That's what they look for, because with those charging ports comes a network fee. And that network fee is what

18:01 they've built their business model off of. And so to explain an network fee, is that like a like retained earnings that they get? It's just, it's a network fee, it allows them to run the software

18:12 that operates the charging station. And is it that the vendor gets like a piece of the action or is it that they made the software? So they made the software, they built the software and this is a

18:23 return on their software. And so that's their main income stream. They have secondary income streams that they use to - But this is like a subscription that keeps them coming Exactly, exactly. Yes,

18:35 exactly. Usually with the, I'm assuming, I don't know. fact, but usually they're selling the hardware at the lowest margin possible, knowing the software is sticky and 90 margin and low turnover

18:47 because you're kind of tied to the hardware. But you know what? It's interesting because when I looked at the business, of course, I could have started off and we could have built the software. I

18:56 do not think

18:60 that income is very sticky. It's a 30-day contract. They'll sign a contract and it's a250 a year on average payment. Maybe it's 300. You know what? How sticky is it? You want to walk away

19:13 from300 midway through the year you walk away from it. It's not that sticky. Who's paying for that today? Generally, the owner of the charging station is. It's one of our operating expenses. If

19:28 you're a property owner and you've bought from a vendor, you're obligating yourself to pay for that Okay, and so

19:37 I looked at the business model and I said, is we make this transition the very first property that's going to be able to develop a steady income stream from EV charging is multi-family. Why?

19:54 Because there's hundreds of cars parked there every night doing nothing and that's the perfect time to refuel your car. It's when electricity rates are the lowest and you have no use for the car.

20:09 Okay, so you're setting up two to three chargers per multi-tenant. We start two to four. And then, but since you've worked on the entire infrastructure, it's easy for you to scale and ramp up.

20:19 Is that true? Absolutely. We can see utilization. We see the utilization and when it gets to a certain point, if we can add more charging stations, we do. But most of the properties, have a

20:35 very difficult time. It's very expensive. It's very difficult to add additional electricity. So to that's the problem. That's the limiting factor. That's the limiting factor. Exactly. Have you

20:47 been looking at we've seen a wave of technology companies doing storage plus charging behind, I guess, at the point of use? Is that something that you've explored? Well, we've looked at it the

20:57 product. It's just expense. Oh, yeah. And look, when you're when you're making revenue, 15 a charge. There's only so many, so many cost burdens you can have. And so, you know, right now it

21:13 doesn't make economic sense for us to use batteries or solar. We've looked at solar. I mean, solar is is one day it would be great to have a solar cell on top of the charger that you can be off the

21:27 grid and charging your car. But right now, it's just not a Yeah, it's not a cost efficient. business model, in my opinion. Yeah, I keep, this is like a very Houston thing to me where you go to

21:38 a car park and they have the people who are not willing to pay, have to park out in the open, but if you pay the extra50 a month, you get the covered parking, and I'm like, that's a perfect spot

21:48 for solar. If only it was a place for the solar to go. And there are companies that are building solar carport panels,

21:55 and they've got very good value propositions, but

21:59 even then, it's not enough to really do anything significant for the charges. It'll get there. It'll get there. It'll get there. It's just a matter of, yes. 'Cause it's a small capacity is the

22:10 primary issue. Yeah, it'll get there. It's just a matter of when. Hmm, okay. How do you, I'm curious about how you build a customer, and then how do you keep them from camping too long if a

22:20 lot of people want it? So when we first started, we got a introduction to a client in Antonio,

22:30 and they had an apartment complex, and they probably had -

22:35 eight or 10 EV charging stations there, and they were getting used like crazy. They had different brands of charging stations, and some of them were working and some of them weren't, but they were

22:46 getting complaints from their residents that people were sitting in the spaces and not using them enough. And so they called us and they said, Look, we want to get another 10 charging stations. So

22:58 we said, Look, let's come in and look at your setup And when we did, they weren't charging their residents. So the residents were saying, Well, shoot, this is my personal space. I'm just going

23:08 to go park there. So I drove 10 miles today. I'll park in the space and I'll top off my tank. Yeah, if it's available, yeah. Right, if it's there. And so what we did is we said, Look, we

23:20 don't need to sell you 10 new ones. What we need to do is take these eight out and put in six that work and that you can program and you build the residents and they're like, well, you know, that

23:33 it's. We've been giving it for free. I said, well, yeah, but you know, you're going to give Exxon or gas cards or show gas cards to all your residents and drive gas vehicles? I mean, that's

23:44 what you're doing. You're giving them free gas or electricity or whatever. Why would these select residents? And by the way, do you know how much it's costing you? Well, no, it's costing you

23:59 about300 per year per car

24:03 And you put a value to that. Yep, yep, yep. So we implemented a,

24:09 you know, we did what we said we were gonna do, we took out the old, we put in the new, we programmed them. And when we program the charging stations, we put what we call a transaction fee. So

24:20 every time you pull the cord, you insert the socket, the charging station, at this property, we charge the3.

24:31 And guess what?

24:34 Nobody was abusing it. We were able to track the average usage and the average usage of that property was about 28 kilowatts of charge, okay? So if it was getting seven kilowatts an hour, it's

24:49 about a four hour charge, which is what we expect.

24:54 Solve the problem. So if they were, it was fully charged and they were still keeping their car there, you would continue charging So look, we are in apartments and I can't, in my good conscience,

25:10 charge somebody if they've filled their car up and it stops, it's filled at three am. I'm not gonna charge them money because they didn't move their car at three am. So we give them until eight or

25:24 nine am. and then we can put an idle fee on it. But they usually have gone by then. They're gonna work.

25:32 So that pretty much handled that. But it's interesting because we work with a lot of different products. Not every one of our vendors offer the features to do that, which we deem to be important.

25:48 We also deem to be important

25:52 reservation systems. Not as important today, but one of these days it's gonna be important And I wanna have an ability to set up a reservation system at a property if we're getting usage and we

26:07 can't find any more electricity. Yeah, I think I'm entering so much of our process when we're buying stuff now. If there's a phone app and we can buy something ahead and I don't have to wait in

26:17 line like this morning for breakfast, like we just dialed it in the app and we're in and out. I can imagine, you're coming home, you look at the idol or the ticker starts hitting empty and you're

26:26 like, Okay, let's get this booked So I know I can plug in and not have to come back later. It's just worth the mental load. Look, it's gonna be a standard deal. One of these days, we just

26:38 haven't gotten there yet. And look, in the multifamily sector, we're gonna have so many properties where we have more demand for charging stations than we have supply that we're gonna have to have

26:53 reservation systems that are effective.

26:57 Not there yet, but we will get there. Yeah So you said you operate in, did you say 19 different states today? Have you seen the difference in uptake or what the customers want and the

27:10 geographically and the different states? Not really, I mean, you know, look, California is probably a little more open to EV charging in California and Oregon and the state of Washington,

27:23 probably a little more open to it, but you know, our biggest challenge is our clients.

27:31 are getting called on by the vendors who really only give them information on their product. They don't really know the other products on the market. We own an operate, I don't know, probably

27:43 seven or eight different brands right now. And we can handle any brand. So if I'm an apartment owner, shoot, I don't know of any other companies in the country like us, okay, where you can call

27:58 and get somebody who knows actually how to operate these things, what the companies, the vendors' strengths and weaknesses are, are we getting paid monthly? There's none of that. Nobody really

28:12 knows what goes on behind the scenes. Are we collecting the right amount of money? I've had

28:19 readings come off of the charging stations 'cause we can see how much kilowatts is used And when we get our money from the vendor for the kilowatts, it's different. Well, how does that happen?

28:33 Nobody's looking at this stuff, but I'm looking at it 'cause it's my money. So, the apartment manager looks at it and they say, Well, where'd this16 come from?

28:44 What is it made up of? They have no idea. The details. We were talking about the other day, about the difference between an innovation and an invention. And I really like what you're doing with

28:56 your company is really innovation 'cause it's not like you're inventing anything new. What you've really done is like the technology's already there. People have already invented these softwares.

29:08 The hardware's already there. And you've just figured out a problem that's gonna become bigger and bigger over time.

29:17 And the innovation is in the business model. And the innovations in the business model to talk to us a little bit about, I'm sure there are other people who are seeing what you're seeing, who are

29:26 also trying to address this, at multi-tenant properties. What are you doing differently, you think? Are you ready to lead the decarbonization charge? Energy Technexes is your platform for growth,

29:38 offering unique resources and expertise for energy and carbon tech founders. Join us at energytechnexescom and

29:45 start building your Thunderlizard. So, you know, some of it is just you step in a hole and figure out how not to step in it again

29:56 But look, what we do different is we do different brands. And the reason we do different brands is we looked at our clients. Our clients own real estate all over the country. They own all

30:08 different types of real estate around the country, apartments, office, retail, industrial. You name it. Okay. And they have all different kinds of property managers managing these things

30:19 Sometimes, you know, I mean, they split it up around the country. And so,

30:26 and those properties, are never going to have the same charging products on them. I can't, you know, maybe in the far future they're going to, but for the foreseeable future, there's no way for

30:40 them to take all their property types. Why? Because they're gonna be buying and selling properties. It always changes, okay? And so I wanted us to act like one of our clients. So when we set up

30:55 our business model, we assumed that we were one of our clients and we had different charging stations and brands and hardware and software around the country. So we can go to these clients and say,

31:06 Look, this is your problem. We know your problem. And by the way, we fixed it. So some of the things we do that are unique or we can pull in the information that is put out by these charging

31:22 stations, information like kilowatts used, you know, hours. that they've spent at the charging station. We can pull that information in no matter what brand it is. And we put it in a, we're

31:35 able to organize it and then put some output that makes sense for someone to see. And so I'm curious, because we always like to dig in. So you mentioned before part of your differentiation is by,

31:47 what was this? You said, stepping into a hole and not stepping into it again. I'm curious what holes you've stepped into now that you, and you, you realized, no, no, we're not doing that

31:56 anymore. Well, look, I mean, you know, when we're doing installations in other parts of the country,

32:06 you know, everyone's got their own set of rules in terms of like the state or like, well, the state or the city or building permits or whatever. And, you know, sometimes unbeknownst to us,

32:17 we've, we've done it wrong. We've either wrong electric Look, if there's been a mistake, we've made it. We try not to make it again. Okay. So, so there are some installations that are that

32:30 we've done that are more expensive than they should be. You know, that's pretty standard. We also learned a lesson in

32:41 working with these companies on how they handle their warranties. The vendors. The vendors. Now, I look at a warranty when someone sells me a product. Okay, like this, you know, I equate it to

32:42 like a

32:57 car. If that car breaks down in three months, whether it's been driven a lot or not driven, I want it to be fixed. Yep. Yep. And there are several companies in our industry who have an attitude.

33:14 I'll send you the part, but you need to pay to put it in. And I'm like,

33:22 that's not a warranty. Yeah. It may be a partial warranty, but You know, I bought this piece of equipment from you. I don't care whether it was a game or whatever. If it doesn't work, you

33:34 should fix it. Period, on your expense.

33:39 Some companies do not believe in that. So I caution anybody in our business. If you're buying EV charging stuff, read that fine print on the warranty. Now, of course, we're a very large client

33:51 and for a lot of these companies And if they're not going to take care of us, I like to say, good business is good business. You have a large client. You want to bend over backwards to keep them

34:05 on so they'll keep buying.

34:08 So I look at the warranty and I said, look, I'll deal with these companies. If there's a warranty thing, I'll call them up and see how they're gonna handle their clients. So if they're not

34:18 handling me good, how are they gonna handle somebody else whose owns, whose maybe bought one. You know, it's charging stations for two or three properties, not a big client. Yeah. It's not

34:31 gonna be any different. I can tell you that. They're not gonna treat them better than they treat us. So you learn which of these companies are customer friendly, make good business decisions.

34:44 Yeah. But one of the first lessons I learned from a business mentor was warranty. As much as it is about treating customers, right? It's also a marketing tool. And it is something where if you

34:54 stand behind it, it is reinforcing your brand. And so when they are interpreting their warranties in a certain way, it tells you everything you need to know about their brand and how they view the

35:03 customer and the customer need. Absolutely. And not everyone equates that those are so tightly constrained. Well, and look, you know, people say, well, that's not including the price.

35:14 Increase the price, 3. It's worth it. Increase the price, 5, and take that on. It's just common sense business to me And that's how we've tried it, you know. I can't tell you how many people

35:27 tell us, we should name it Common Sense EV charging because everyone, you know, so many people said, well, that makes Common Sense, well, yeah, I think it does, but go look how they do it.

35:36 Makes no sense at all. Yeah. So before we start this podcast, you said that you're probably one of the oldest people who's working on this area. And you seem to have kind of figured out this space

35:51 really well pretty quickly in the past four years And I mean, I'm really impressed by all that I'm hearing. Tell us a little bit about your background. It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks,

36:03 but I've been in the commercial real estate industry for 45 years. In fact, I'm retiring from my current job at CBRE to focus full time on my EV charging business. But I've arranged financing,

36:19 whether it's debt or equity for

36:22 clients over the last 45 years. So I've gotten really good exposure. I've met a lot of people. It's been a great business for me. And I highly recommend it for others. It's a great industry. But

36:38 I think one of the challenges people my age have as you move into the retirement years is wanting to remain relevant And

36:52 this has allowed me, at least in my mind, to remain relevant. I always say I like to talk to. And the mortgage banking industry, all you have is talk. You gotta talk about your products you're

37:01 selling. And

37:10 so, at least in this area of EV charging, there are so few people that I can have a real high level conversation with on it that it allows me

37:25 feel relevant being right so much. I guess it sounds horrible, but that's kind of what got me into this

37:34 in the first place. And the need, look, whenever you see a need, it's just to me, we'll get back to that word common sense, there's 22 million apartment properties out there. And nearly 40

37:48 million people live in apartments, okay? And there is a real need to put up EV charging stations and apartments. And it's not going to go away. Yeah. So do you think it's like, because you come

38:05 from real estate and you really understand that need and the problem that makes it a lot easier for you to then solve it because you've been there? I absolutely think so. You know, I've had people

38:17 with very large companies when we call on them say, well, we've never thought of this. Well, you're too busy to think of it. You're certainly smart enough to think of it, but you're too busy to

38:30 think of it. So yes, we have a number of things we do or because of my real estate experience and how we market and how we, and the services that we provide are just a

38:44 direct result of

38:47 my experience in the commercial real estate industry I generally know what these property owners and managers need from an EV charging company. They don't know 'cause they hadn't really thought about

39:03 it. And so when you think about it and you put a list of requirements that you want from your EV charging companies, I think Revs does a really good job of meeting those needs. Yeah. So on the one

39:16 hand like it makes perfect sense perspective of how you've been able to start the company but I think there's a You know, you've got a lot of peers in the industry. Certainly a lot of other folks

39:26 who work at CBRE. But you're the one who's made the choice and made the leaps. What do you think was different where you looked around and said, I'm gonna be the one who did this and all your other

39:36 peers are not. You know, look, I'm entrepreneurial. Yeah. Okay, when I started, I didn't really think of my age as a factor at all

39:51 But it was just the insatiable need to do things that keep you relevant, okay? And I don't think it was anything more than that. I mean,

40:06 I knew that the need, I knew that there was demand for what we were doing. And, you know, I didn't wanna just do nothing for the rest of my life. Yeah, yeah. So how did you start? because I'm

40:19 sure this required some investment. to start off it. Talk to us a little bit about that. That's the first project I guess. So, yes, I started off with my checkbook, my pocketbook.

40:30 And when that ran out or got close to running out, I had contacted an acquaintance, a friendly acquaintance of mine that I had known for many, many years. He was an apartment developer, very,

40:43 very successful apartment developer, and started talking to him. And he basically said, you know, and he had just retired. Okay, so he said, you know, if I hadn't retired, this was one of my

40:58 things I was thinking about. You know, I really did think that this was a trend in the industry, and we needed to deal with it. So it was kind of good timing that that I came along. And we talked

41:14 and he invested in our company six months after we started. And then from there, it's been

41:44 you know, just contacting pretty much individuals. And I've been very fortunate to find several individuals that have helped us funding wise. But we've outgrown that. Now we're looking for other

41:44 funding sources. And it has been a very long and challenging experience for a lot of reasons. Most of the people I think really like our business model but I've heard every excuse in the books now.

41:53 And one of the things is, it's interesting. I've had a lot of people tell me, well, if this business, it's not like our solar business that we invested in. Our solar business, we have somebody

42:05 who knows the solar business really well. Like on the investment team. On the investment team, yeah. They know the business really well. If the company doesn't make, we know what we can do with

42:15 it. They know they can offload it to someone else 'cause the solar industry is. 30, 40 years old. Right. Exactly. Exactly. My business, they're like, well, we don't have anybody that knows

42:26 this that well, you know, and we don't know what happens if we don't make it. There's no solution for that. Well, there is a solution. There's plenty of people who could take over what we do,

42:37 but they don't have it on that. They don't have that knowledge on their staff seem more, so that's been a very common thought process It's funny because they're really good analogs for your business

42:50 that I think traditional energy is familiar with, because in many ways, this reminds me of contract compression or contract power generation. You kind of have an asset, go out there and do a

43:00 partnership with the user, and there's some variability in use, but you're basically your own operating, and what's interesting about Houston is a lot of big businesses here that get funded that do

43:12 that When you think about a company like, gosh, I forgot what they're calling out, but Xteran, They started in the same place. Nobody knew that was gonna be a giant market, but then they became

43:22 huge. Well, and so our business is what I say as a nickel and dime business, okay? We're putting up two to four charging ports, so we're investing 10 or 12 to30, 000 in

43:39 each property, okay? Not a very large investment So it takes a, you know, we have people tell us, well, we really wanna do, you know, very large investments, we're too small.

43:55 So yeah, that's the size of investment that we're looking for. There have been companies in our industry

44:03 with similar business plans that have attracted, you know, 40, 50, 80 million, 100 million And every one of them are struggling because they can't get the money out. quick enough. We got to

44:16 head to those. Yeah. I mean, the reality of the EV charging business is it's pace is it's pace. Yeah. Okay. And it doesn't matter whether you have money or no money, it's still going to be it's

44:30 pace and it's going to keep picking up. But it's not going to make somebody move faster

44:40 in the decision making process So just in summary, so it sounds like the early capital you brought in were initially as a friends, we would call a friends and family round. And then other people

44:50 who were aware of the industry that we're a part of your professional network. Right now we're friends and family right now and we're in the process of moving to the next stage. Got it. What does

45:01 that next stage look like for you? Well,

45:07 I hope it's an institutional investor, but we're

45:13 seeking tend to 20 million, so it's a number that when you have

45:19 a500 billion fund, doesn't make a dent. And so, it's a niche in the market that you have to go to that is not an easy niche to fill.

45:33 Have you thought about people that you could go to in Houston for that or are you thinking outside of anywhere? You know, I've even talked into some companies in Europe right now, so who want to

45:46 come to the United States and bring their business model here? Yeah,

45:52 no, it's always interesting to see on the fundraising side, right? Because one of the things that we often talk to our founders about is that it's actually hard to raise here in Houston, because

46:05 we just haven't matured the investor community for a lot of, in particular, if it involves, you know, hardware.

46:15 But you're different in the sense that you're actually cash flowing. Well, we have revenue. We have revenue. We're not cash flow positive yet. There's a pathway, but we need to get more stations

46:26 up the faster we can do it, the quicker we'll get there. But there's a lot of things that have been driving this kind of investment the last several years. And it's been one of the challenges. I

46:37 mean, most of my clients have invested in real estate their whole career That's what

46:45 they know and of course, if they've invested in real estate the last few years, it's been a very, very difficult

46:55 investment period for them. So they're not selling properties anymore. They're getting capital calls and they don't really want to invest anything new until they figure out what's going on with the

47:09 investments they made over the last few years. Yeah. That's been the biggest check. That's been a big challenge. So I understand that there's challenging commercial, but is there also a similar

47:18 challenge in real residential? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. In multi-family, absolutely. Okay. A lot of

47:29 investors who invest in real estate and would invest in my kind of tranjak, my kind of business, invested in apartments over the last four or five, six years when interest rates were really low.

47:42 Okay. And those interest rates, when they went up, it meant they can no longer refinance their loan balance. Got it. And they couldn't sell because they don't have, they need to go find any loan.

47:57 There's no liquidity So, you know, they're getting the capital calls from their, from their, you know, sponsor and, you know, it's, it's the same thing, you know, and it's all throughout the

48:10 real estate sector right now. Yeah, it would be interesting to see I was reading something about how in Texas, in Florida, in particular, there are lots of houses that have been in the market for

48:20 a very, very long time. It's hard to sell property right now because of the high interest rate. People don't want to leave their current mortgages and enter new ones. Well, and on the residential,

48:29 the single family side, think about it.

48:33 You have somebody who bought a house four years ago, they got a 3 interest rate They borrowed a million dollars, okay? And they only have to pay interest30, 000 a year, 2, 500

48:49 plus your principal. So call it3, 000 a month to borrow a million dollars. Now they're like, well, my family's outgrown this million dollar house. I need to move into a new house and what

49:03 happens to them? They go look for that bigger house than their house and it's a million two.

49:10 But instead of the payment being 30, 000, it's 80, 000. And they say, I can't afford that. Yep, yep, yep. So it'll be interesting to see how all this eventually shakes out. Talk to us about,

49:13 'cause there's been a

49:30 lot of change the past couple of months, I was gonna say, but in the past month, when it comes to EVs, people are expecting like, the subsidies are gonna go away. How are you envisioning it

49:42 impacting your business? So, a number of ways, and I get this question a lot, okay? So I'll just start kind of from the top. The number one thing I think that promoted EV sales, at least our

49:58 government did, our federal government did, to promote EV sales was a7, 500 tax credit, okay? And of course, when it started out, It really didn't work for everybody because not everybody is in

50:10 the top tax bracket to take advantage, so they adjusted it. And I think it definitely is promoted EV sales. Okay, and in December, we set a record number of EV sales. And I think the latest is,

50:26 is they have, you know, the current administration has announced they want to get rid of it altogether. But as of this minute and this day, it's still there, okay? Don't know if they'll be able

50:41 to, it was, you know? And, you know, they may or may not be able to get rid of it. So, but, it's interesting. You gotta say, well, why would somebody like Mr. Musk agree with this? It's

50:59 gonna hurt his sales. And I think what he's figured out

51:06 If you look at the math and the comparison between him and his competition, which are the people who are making the gas cars and now trying to make the EVs, his cost model is so much lower, okay,

51:15 that it's going to make it more difficult for the gas

51:26 manufacturers to compete, okay? Think about it. What is Tesla? And I'll just use them in an example, you know, they're building electric vehicles that have 250 moving parts versus a gas, 2,

51:40 500 moving parts or whatever. So which one's going to be put together quicker,

51:47 okay? Yeah, it's going to be the idea. Right. And then what happens to how is Tesla sell their cars over the internet, right? Well, what is the. I don't have to go to a dealership. A

51:60 dealership. Right And so you have to go to a dealership with the gas manufacturer. Well, what does that do? at cost. So it's not even a close comparison. And in fact, I'm of the personal

52:12 opinion that the gas car manufacturers will not survive in their current format. Yeah, they're gonna have to evolve. They will have to evolve. I mean, back we had in the 90s and the early 90s,

52:27 many, many banks had failed. And they evolved, they took all their bad assets and put them in what they called junk banks, sold those off and started new businesses, basically. I think that's

52:40 what's gonna have to happen to the automobile sector. They just can't compete. It was a little surprising. I think Honda and Nissan and Mitsubishi were in discussions to potentially merge. And

52:52 when we see this consolidation, we saw consolidation with Daimler Chrysler. So it's not unexpected to see that, but a lot of it was because the EV driver, fortunately that discussion looked like

53:02 it fell apart. But they're not competitive. No EVs over there, so look at that line up. No, no, no, and it's gonna be really hard. I almost think if you really wanna make this transition and

53:15 you wanna do it and you wanna

53:19 do it the most effective way, just outlaw or just stop making gas vehicles. If that's all they did, now of course you say, well, why not? Well, you can't produce enough batteries. We can't -

53:31 We don't have enough charging stations. We don't have enough charging stations. We don't have enough charging stations, I mean - We're not ready for it Right, and so some of it's gonna take time,

53:38 but in the EV charging industry, we currently in this country have 210, 220, 000 chargers of public chargers. There is demand by 2030, they say, for two million. Yeah, well you need one for a

53:56 car. We can't, well no, you don't, not in a public space, you know, okay, but you gotta wonder, How do you get from 200, 000, 220, 000 when we're growing 30, 000 a year to two million? It

54:11 doesn't make sense. It's not gonna get there. It's not gonna happen. We can't make, I don't know how many EV charging stations were made in the US last year, but I do think we probably put up

54:24 about 35, 40, 000.

54:28 To get to two million in five years, it's gonna take hundreds of thousands It just doesn't, you know. But their countries who are ahead of us, right? Like, I mean, look at China now, right?

54:39 They have way more EVs than we do. How are they tackling that issue? Yeah, you know, they - The government says, go build it. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. But I was in Singapore

54:51 a while, 18 months ago, and they were excited 'cause they had the first charging station installed on Orchard Road, which is their high street. And you realize, even the country like that, which

54:59 is, they're still on gas, but very much trying to have energy in the pundits. It's kind of coming late because it's an infrastructure problem. Like no one wants to buy a car there when they also

55:09 don't have charging infrastructure. And that's a, that's a small country. So everyone is on their own path. Yeah, absolutely. And you asked a question about the administration and the government

55:19 and how that's going to work. So, so I took the7, 500 credit and we talked about that. And of course they are also building a series of charging stations on the freeway systems around the country

55:34 through Nevi, that's been put on pause.

55:40 Look, eventually it's going to go through and it'll start up again. OK, but, but we don't really worry too much about that. I mean, I would say most people who have EVs today or dry or are

55:55 getting them for local driving Okay, because the reality is, if all you do is travel, on long trips, the EV is a challenge until the NEVY program gets all the chargers up in working, okay? So

56:13 the reality is most of our clients live in apartments and they're driving locally, okay? And they need charging stations. So each city, in each state, in each utility company has different

56:29 programs to promote EV adoption and EV charging. So like where the federal government has said they're no longer gonna give the7, 500,

56:42 well, you go to California and they're talking about saying, well, that's fine, we're already giving X, we'll increase it. They'll pick up the program. The utility companies, we see many of

56:53 them give us rebates for putting up EV charging stations. Okay, so, so. really our businesses change very little. In fact, we track the usage of the charging stations on

57:11 our properties. And last year, we saw

57:16 a, what was it, about a 50 increase in usage on the charging stations. So we know it's happening, we know it's there, we see it firsthand. And so there's not, I mean, obviously if the federal

57:32 government says, well, we're done with EVs, that would affect my business. But I don't see that happening. So I'm curious, maybe it's more of a Texas problem, but like one of our member

57:44 companies, Robert, whenever he has a program to help people time when they charge things to coincide when there's either a more green power output or honestly when the cost of energy is less. Do

57:57 you find you're ever pulled into like helping

58:01 I think when we had like low power supply, do people ask you guys to not charge or how does that? We haven't had that yet. And so some of our clients are very sensitive. They've spent a lot of

58:12 money on their properties to get them to be more cost efficient, greener, cleaner on the environment. And so when you come in and say, look, we're gonna have to increase your electric bill

58:24 because of EV chargers, they're worried about that, okay? So, yes. But even in California, right? They have like a peak charge versus average, right? They do, they do. Do you help them

58:33 manage that? Well, if we don't have a charging station that can make the adjustment, and very few can, they all will, one day, but very

58:42 few can. Yes, it's software deal. And a utility company deal,

58:48 we just turn them off during the peak hours. Yeah, so how do you communicate that to an end-user so they don't get frustrated? We tell them what times, it just like the store opens it enough 6 pm.

59:00 and closes it, you know, 8 am, you know? Is it the same throughout the. Every utility company is different. It's a different, okay. Everyone's different, yeah. Okay, and so how many hours a

59:13 day would it be, you would not be able to charge? Depends on the peak when they have the surge pricing. Yeah, interesting. Depends on the surge pricing. And so to come back, that's part of your

59:24 expertise is local market, different hardware, different property, and it is a little bit custom And we can keep up with all that stuff and deal with it, yes.

59:34 Interesting. I mean, we know they can't do it, okay? And the management companies, the big management companies have got their hands full with so many other things. They could do it, but

59:45 they're gonna have to educate all the people in the field, and it's a heavy lift. What we see the management companies doing now when they do it on their own, they're doing setups that we would not

59:58 do.

59:60 And that's where Revis is the solution. That's our solution, yes. Because we are going to invest in your property and that aligns our interest, okay? If that charging station is down,

1:00:15 pressure's on us to get 'em up, right? I mean, we just invested money and we're not making anything. We can't make money if the charging station's down. So you don't really need to worry about it

1:00:26 because we're gonna worry about it. Yep, yep So I'm looking at the clock.

1:00:32 Tell us how do people find you and how do they get in touch if they want a charging system? Well, the easiest way to get hold of us is our website. It's wwwrefuel, R-E-F-U-R-R-E-F-U-L-E-V-Scom.

1:00:52 Okay. Or that's the easiest way. And that'll get you the phone numbers and everything else. Okay, good, good, thanks for joining us here. Yeah, thank you so much. This was great, thank you

1:01:04 so much for having me.