Episode Summary
Today, given route lengths and cargo capacity, it is possible to electrify 65% of medium-duty and 49% of heavy-duty trucks. Commercial fleets’ are responding to this promise, with announced commitments to electrification surpassing 140,000 vehicles in 2022 in the United States alone. Still, the number of electric fleet trucks currently on the road in the US is well under 1% of all medium and heavy duty trucks, and companies are facing a dearth of EV charging infrastructure to support the expansion of these commercial fleets.
The good news is, companies are emerging to fill the gaps in charging infrastructure, assuage concerns from prospective EV fleet owners, and make commercial adoption not just a possibility but an advantage. In this episode, the second installment of a three-part series on the state and future of electric fleet charging, Climate Now is joined by three industry leaders: Anthony Harrison (TeraWatt Infrastructure), Jonathan Colbert (Voltera), and Jeffrey Prosserman (Voltpost). Anthony, Jonathan, and Jeffrey join Climate Now’s James Lawler and Darren Hau to discuss what factors prospective EV fleet adopters are considering, what their companies are doing to facilitate buildout of charging infrastructure, and how that buildout means growth for many industries – not just EV charging.
These interviews were recorded in Summer 2023. Since then, Voltera has published additional playbooks, which you can find here: Playbook 1, Playbook 2, Playbook 3.
Transcript
James Lawler: [00:00:00] Welcome to Climate Now, a podcast that brings together experts across industry, academia, and the public sector to take our listeners to the front lines of climate change mitigation, adaptation, and the energy transition. I'm your host, James Lawler, and this is the second episode in our three-part series about charging infrastructure that supports different driving fleets.
Darren Hau and I are co-hosting today's conversations about building out charging hubs to unpack the real estate, equipment, financing, and utility agreements underpinning full-service charging operations. This conversation integrates representatives from three companies that are working to make commercial fleet electrification a reality by building out affordable charging hubs.
Darren Hau: Our first episode covered some of the new products companies are using to fill gaps in EV charging infrastructure. We dove into the itselectric curbside charging pillar serving individual consumers with light-duty EVs, as well as FreeWire's battery-integrated DC [00:01:00] fast charger used for power-constrained sites like gas stations and trucking depots with medium and heavy-duty vehicles.
Today's focus is on companies providing commercial fleets with end-to-end infrastructure solutions. These entities have raised billions in capital for their plans. Their business models lean into recent mandates from California and adopted by over a dozen other states that aim to aggressively decarbonize freight logistics.
One example of this new breed of companies is Terawatt Infrastructure, which develops full-service charging hubs for commercial fleets.
James Lawler: Our first guest is Anthony Harrison. Anthony is Terawatt's lead public policy and communications specialist. After our discussion with Anthony, we will share portions of our chat with Jonathan Colbert from Voltera, another full-service EV charging company using battery, electric, and hydrogen fuel cell technologies to meet the needs of private commercial fleets.
Our final guest today is Jeff Prosserman, founder and CEO of Voltpost, whose company retrofits lampposts to provide accessible [00:02:00] public and private commercial charging hubs in urban environments lacking EV infrastructure.
So with all of this in mind, let's hear from Anthony about what Terawatt has coming down the pike. Let's get started. Anthony, welcome. It's great to have you.
Anthony Harrison: Yeah. Excited to be here.
James Lawler: So Anthony, I wonder, you know, if you could just start by telling us a little bit about what you do and what is Terawatt?
Anthony Harrison: Yeah. So I lead up all of our public policy and communications work here at Terawatt and Terawatt Infrastructure is a full-spectrum solutions provider for commercial fleet electrification. So what that means is we provide basically fueling solutions to a variety of different types of fleet customers, ranging from light, medium, and heavy-duty.
And this can be everything from building and funding the infrastructure solution on a customer's preferences behind the fence, so to speak, um, to opportunity charging at a Terawatt-specific [00:03:00] multi-fleet charging depot, uh, that would be along a customer's route or, you know, located near, uh, a logistical hub along a highway corridor.
James Lawler: When you divide the market for fleets up in the way you did, lightweight, medium, heavy-duty, what kind of fleets are we talking about? What kind of vehicles are we talking about?
Anthony Harrison: Yeah, you're really almost compartmentalizing by type of vehicle, but more often than not, these are commercial businesses that are using vehicles to either move people or goods. And that's a very different kind of economic proposition around electrifying than it is if just, you know, you or me and our own personal vehicle for getting around town or going to work.
What we're typically seeing around fleet electrification on the light-duty side, um, are things like municipal fleets. So these are, you know, cities that are taking a look at their light-duty vehicles and transitioning those over to electric. And now we're starting to see that expanded to private sector or commercial fleets and anything from city taxis to things like Uber and [00:04:00] Lyft. And then that ecosystem that's supporting those types of businesses, primarily rideshare and autonomous vehicles, you're seeing companies like the traditional rental car companies invest heavily in this space.
So whether it's Hertz or Enterprise, it's the same vehicles that people are buying for passenger vehicles, you know, Chevy Bolts, Teslas, those kinds of vehicles, but providing them for a business purpose.
Darren Hau: Yeah, that's, that's really cool. I mean, it's interesting to see even the light-duty fleets being such a large part of the market with Hertz. I do have to say that I was very disappointed.
I'm on a business trip to LA right now. I was expecting to get to LAX and hoping to get an electric vehicle, but they were all reserved. Everyone was using them already. So I had to settle for a Toyota Camry.
James Lawler: Yeah, that's my experience. I would say like 50 percent of the time you can't get an EV, I don't know if that's just luck of the draw, but it's very hard to rent an EV.
Anthony Harrison: It's almost a good problem to have in this stage that we're in now that demand is outpacing supply from a [00:05:00] rental market perspective. ‘Cause prior to Terawatt, I was working for another EV charging company.
I've been in this space around seven years now. And to talk about even the proposition of being able to rent an
EV three, four years ago, it was out of the question because there was justJames Lawler: Yeah, that's a good point.
Anthony Harrison: Yeah. And so the fueling aspect of that, I think is going to be the key to unlocking it. And that's why you have companies like Terawatt investing in, you know, commercial charging centers, because we understand that overall investment in infrastructure for light-duty is going to support the space as a whole.
James Lawler: Yeah. Why does it matter to have this designation of fleet in particular?
Anthony Harrison: When you approach it from the perspective of providing solutions into the market and providing infrastructure and bifurcating between publicly available infrastructure that's just for anybody using an EV, um, the needs are significantly different.
When you provide fueling for that- it's why we look at it from the Terawatt perspective and have the core focus on fleet electrification, because we [00:06:00] understand that it's a more complex set of solutions that they need to solve for. And, you know, they're looking at the incorporation of things that go beyond just, you know, plugging the vehicle in.
It's- they're managing on a daily basis down to the penny. What is the cost of that fueling? How long is it taking? How much energy am I using? What is my route that they have to complete? How many miles? So there's just a lot more insight that goes into the management of it. But that asset class where the vehicle itself is essentially tied to, you know, revenue generation for the business, that cross cuts across all, all businesses.
James Lawler: So Terawatt is essentially saying, like, “We're going to sort of handle all of that stuff. From thinking about the real estate to thinking about what particular charging solution might be most appropriate. And we're going to work as, like, a development- sort of handle all of that and provide that as a solution to, to the companies operating these fleets”?
Anthony Harrison: This- that's exactly right. If you look at it in parallel to how they're already operating today, most, if [00:07:00] not all fleet customers that are out there today, never had to build their own gas station. That's not the capital expenditure that they want to plan for, and they haven't had to adjust the way that they operate their business around them building their own gas station, for the most part.
The other part of it, when you're dealing with something that is a- especially when you get into like medium and heavy-duty, where we're talking about a lot of power, their facilities themselves may not even be able to accommodate that because when they originally built out their, um, depot, they didn't plan for it to need megawatts upon megawatts of power.
They just needed it to fit the vehicles. And it's distinctly different than fueling for passenger vehicles. We have to factor all of that in and we have to make it make sense for the fleet and then provide them a innovative and hopefully cost effective way in fueling their vehicles that doesn't require them to put sometimes millions of dollars up front first, just to put in the fueling station.
Darren Hau: Well, obviously charging is a massive space with potential for massive investment. I think when the U.S. alone needs to [00:08:00] put in tens of billions of dollars into this, at the same time, charging does seem to be a pretty crowded space. Could you describe why a fleet would want to work with Terawatt versus another company?
Anthony Harrison: Yeah, I think it's actually a positive sign when you start to see density and, you know, entrance into the space and, and growth, like that means that we're onto something and we're on the right track. And the other thing, when you look at the ecosystem is that, um, there's a lot of folks in the charging space, but then there's a lot of aspects in order to deliver charging.
So there are folks that where they are in the space is providing the actual charging hardware. We provide the stations and that's what we're investing in and we provide, you know, best in class on that. And somebody like that, we work with a variety of different companies who do this would be a partner for Terawatt since we're not trying to create our own charging equipment itself.
Then you have software providers who are providing solutions that help control and manage the, the, the, the solutions. Um, and then you have kind of all these other ecosystem players that are sitting somewhere in there.
And I think what Terawatt's role is, is to [00:09:00] reduce all of that complexity for the end customers, which are the fleet operators themselves and bring together capital, which we think is incredibly important. And the other piece is really working with fleets from the get go.
We're still at a place in commercial fleet electrification where, let's say you're a fleet that has, you know, routes that take you from the port of Long Beach in California all the way to El Paso, Texas, all the way along the I-10. Well, we're building corridor-based highway charging centers along that route, and so you can have, you know, the assurances that your vehicles over time are going to be able to make that.
Really, what is specific to Terawatt is that we're thinking about this from the entire life cycle perspective of not just the vehicles, but the fleet operations themselves.
Darren Hau: What are you seeing from your customers in terms of the demand and desire to transition to electric?
Anthony Harrison: We cannot downplay the impact of regulations. Those are going to have the strongest impact. And if you've been in this space and working in EVs long enough, there's been [00:10:00] this messaging that the total cost of ownership should be cheaper. But 10 years ago, there was no data to prove that.
I think as we're starting to get some of that data in and some of the early adopters in the fleet space, you know, some of the folks that adopted early on the transit bus side when there was vehicles ready and starting to see the positive benefits. But I think that those are going to be key long-term factors.
Once you get past the regulations, once you get past kind of the sustainability goals, the operational cost of electric vehicles is going to be the biggest key to this working. You get into the details around, you know, what is the cost of the fuel? How much am I paying for the infrastructure?
Darren Hau: Yeah.
Anthony Harrison: Does that all work together?
James Lawler: Anthony, what are most of your customers, most of the customers of Terawatt today? What is the primary reason they're coming?
Anthony Harrison: Most of the customers that we're engaging with today are in the place of looking at either the direct impact of meeting some sort of policy obligation [00:11:00] or corporate sustainability obligation, or anticipating one.
And we're seeing a lot of customers who started the process where they've gotten their first couple of vehicles and at the time, they were really just concerned with how this is all going to work, and they may have even put in a couple of charging stations on their own property behind a fence.
And now as they look to what needs to happen next, is- they've started to realize, this isn't something either I want to do alone, or can do alone. Across all three of the sectors, light, medium, and heavy-duty is allowing us to be reactive to our customers. Whether you're on the fleet side or you're on the infrastructure side in 2018, what you thought the solutions were going to need to be, that's evolved.
James Lawler: I think for folks who are thinking about the job creation, what that looks like in this energy transition, this is such a great example of how, how these opportunities develop and build.
Darren Hau: Oh my gosh, James, like, I can't tell you, we need so many more charger technicians. We need so many more electricians, skilled labor trades. Funny enough, it's desk jobs are the ones that [00:12:00] are becoming automated. And at the end of the day, building physical infrastructure is still super valuable and there's a lot of job security in that.
Anthony Harrison: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that it's going to be a sector that you're going to see a tremendous amount of growth. And part of my job is talking to a lot of policymakers. And I talk about that aspect a lot, of the need to continue to invest in the workforce development side of this.
James Lawler: How does the IRA affect Terawatt's business and the business- the businesses of its customers?
As a reminder, the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, has been called the largest investment in reducing carbon pollution in U.S. history by the Department of Treasury. The federal legislation includes the potential for billions of dollars in tax credits for EV purchases that will last until 2032 and the pledge of $3 billion in environmental justice grants to reduce carbon based pollutants in areas that have been negatively impacted as a result of disproportionate pollution.
The legislation promises to curtail nearly 40 percent of domestic emissions by 2030 as it creates jobs, provides grant and loan opportunities, as well [00:13:00] as clean energy investments in support of improving climate resiliency.
Anthony Harrison: There's two components wrapped into the IRA that, that have it. The probably easier one to talk about is that for the first time ever, we have a vehicle incentive. It's a tax credit underneath the IRA, 45W, and yet to see the impact of that as that starts to roll out.
One of the challenges for that to be kind of a wholesale transition for the medium and heavy-duty sector is that $40,000 off of your vehicle sounds great, but if the vehicle costs $500,000, that's- is that the IRA alone, the thing that's moving the needle between buy an electric truck today and not? We haven't seen that yet.
While it'll have an impact, I think there has to be other motivating factors for someone to adopt specifically a medium or heavy-duty vehicle in addition to the IRA to see the needle move.
The impact on the IRA, from the infrastructure standpoint, one of the biggest things from a geographic [00:14:00] perspective, it is incentivizing the infrastructure to go into disadvantaged communities and areas, everything from the way that our real estate team operates to the way that we're engaging with fleets around where this infrastructure is going to be located, we definitely have that screening on there.
Now we're looking at and running through screening tools to see if it's IRA-eligible. We're going to start to see more of an impact on it as the infrastructure itself gets built out as a result of, you know, the, the tax incentives being there. So it's. It's definitely, um, an integral component.
Darren Hau: When you are building all of this charging infrastructure, what, what makes a winner in this space?
Anthony Harrison: It's the main driver around success- is the ability to secure the amount of power you need at the locations where you need it, how well we're able to do that and mitigate delays into that process from our side and help be, um, a good citizen to the utilities on their side so that, you know, we get everything we need to, to expedite the process.
We've seen, you know, great examples. You know, one that I would, I would love to highlight is just, [00:15:00] you know, the team that we work with over at Southern California Edison, where they're really ahead of their colleagues in this space and dedicating specific teams and staffing to understanding, you know, the roadmap of upstream where they need to be planning over the next three, five, seven, 10 years for the amount of power that's going to be needed to support this entire sector.
Darren Hau: Are there any, like, more novel tricks or techniques that you guys can use to overcome this power challenge? Or is it just at the end of the day, rely on the utility, you have to just proactively engage them?
Anthony Harrison: Oh, it's a great question because of the way that we look at a holistic approach to the solutions, including on-site power generation, there is temporary power solutions that we can bring to the table in order to close the gap in terms of working with our customers that say, "Hey, I, I have trucks on order and I'd love to be able to charge them when they get delivered” and that timeline doesn't necessarily [00:16:00] exactly match up with the timeline from when the utility is going to be able to provide power.
We can deploy, strategically, temporary power solutions. So I think that's the other piece- is that you have to be flexible and you have to be really innovative at this stage of the market right now and not, and not get too cookie cutter with the way that you're deploying solutions because of these other structural things.
Darren Hau: Well, it sounds like you're going to have a bunch of work cut out for you, Anthony.
Anthony Harrison: Yeah. You never get bored and it's an incredibly exciting space.
Darren Hau: Yeah. Real pleasure meeting you and having this conversation with you, Anthony. Really excited to see where Terawatt goes with this.
James Lawler: Our next guest today is Jonathan Colbert, who leads marketing strategy at Voltera, a company expanding battery charging and hydrogen fuel cell solutions to solve infrastructure issues for clients within the world of private commercial electric vehicle fleets. Jonathan, welcome to Climate Now. It's great to have you on today. We're really excited to kind of dive into all of the things that you're working on there at Voltera.
So what is the problem that Voltera is focused [00:17:00] on addressing?
Jonathan Colbert: Great question, James. So we're, we're at this inflection point of zero emission vehicle adoption where customers are like, "I want to adopt, I want to transition. How do I do it?". We come in and help them secure, develop, and operate the critical infrastructure they need to scale quickly.
James Lawler: And so who are Voltera's customers then?
Jonathan Colbert: So we work with primarily fleets, everything from an autonomous vehicle fleet all the way up to a Class 8 fleet in a drayage company or logistics company or even a long-haul trucking application. So for us, fleets are our primary business, bread and butter.
But because there are just very clear economies of scope and that we can support, really, the land acquisition, the power procurement, the energy services and site services, we also work with- “branded networks” is what we call them- or charging networks or hydrogen networks.
James Lawler: I think most people think about charging and they can imagine two players, [00:18:00] right? The person driving the car who needs to plug in and charge and will pay for that. And then the entity providing the charging service.
Would you mind sort of painting a picture of the charging infrastructure ecosystem and maybe where a company like Voltera slots in?
Jonathan Colbert: This is great. It's a good chance to kind of zoom out. We started with these charging networks. And if you think about it from a fleet perspective, the first answer to like, "I want to convert my fleet to fully electric" was well, just have them pull up to the charger that's here at the shopping center and kind of morph your whole operations around them going and charging for, let's say an hour there and then getting back into operations.
Obviously, that's not going to scale. And that's- that was never going to be the end result for, for fleets. So those same networks and some other providers started providing charging-as-a-service products where they would provide that charging and infrastructure on-site for those fleets.
And then in addition to that, there've been these newer entrants that, [00:19:00] um, have started saying, “You know what? We're going to tackle the vehicle and the charging and we'll build it on our site and fleets can basically rent the vehicle and access to the charger or lease the vehicle and access to the charger on our site”.
And then you also have real estate and logistics companies that own a lot of property and saying, "Hey, why don't we just put charging infrastructure on our properties and provide that to these customers, these fleet customers?".
Where Voltera sits in this whole landscape, and what's unique about us, is we work with a partner, we go out, we acquire the property that is perfect for their use case.
James Lawler: In this example, a partner is a fleet owner, right?
Jonathan Colbert: Exactly. It could be a fleet or it could be a charging network operator for that matter. And we go out, we'll buy that land, we'll develop it.
James Lawler: It probably requires some sophistication to even figure out what land you need or where your chargers should ideally be located.
How do you even know where to site your chargers? How does that even start?
Jonathan Colbert: We actually have a real estate and development team [00:20:00] in-house that are going out and doing site acquisition on behalf of our customers. They'll whittle through hundreds of sites to get to the ideal sites in a, in a metro, but it is a very healthy back and forth.
We have to understand the dynamics of the fleet, what their current day to day operations look like. It's not a one-size-fits-all by any means, but for us, the fleets that we're dealing with, they need a site that's more bespoke to their operations. And in addition to that, the amount of power they need on site kind of dictates a greenfield site.
So once we've purchased that site, once we've worked with the local authority having jurisdiction and the utility to get through permitting and the interconnect, we then also will bring all of the power equipment and charging infrastructure, put that in on site and run all of the operations for our customers.
And in addition to that, depending on the needs of that fleet, we will put in other onsite services like maintenance bays or data centers, really just depends on what the fleet needs.
James Lawler: Wow, okay. [00:21:00] Got it.
Darren Hau: It sounds like how you differentiate from the solar industry is typically there's just developers that will go do all the land acquisition and permitting and like actual buildout of the site And a lot of times the developers will sell their projects before they even start construction on it because it's about getting a pipeline of sites there.
But what you're saying is that model is unlikely to work directly for charging infrastructure because of the utilization risk, so what you're going to do is to almost use that initial foot in the door to build that ongoing revenue stream through operations.
Jonathan Colbert: That's exactly right. And the only way it really scales is not only on the Voltera side, we have to deliver, but we also have to deliver for the right customers and partners. And as we're- we've been ramping up, I've been learning more and more about hydrogen. And my initial thought was, Oh, this is going to be great. Like if we're deploying hydrogen sites, the, the interconnect process with utilities will be shorter. So they should be- it should be a faster timeline.
Well, what's interesting is whereas you have a longer [00:22:00] utility interconnect process on charging and a shorter permitting process, it flips with hydrogen because there's so much upfront training, you have to do with the authority having jurisdiction to get them comfortable with hydrogen in their backyard before you can actually deploy, right? So what I thought would have been like, yes, this is going to be a slam dunk, this is going to be so much faster, it's not necessarily the case.
James Lawler: Where, geographically, in the United States, do you think we'll, we'll have hydrogen deployment the soonest?
Jonathan Colbert: Yeah, it's interesting in automotive as a whole, it's just known that California sells the most vehicles, like, period- on average.
So when you look at any legislation or regulation coming out of Sacramento, it is going to impact the industry. They've announced some regulations recently that are pushing zero-emission vehicle adoption in the state of California, both the Advanced Clean Trucks and the Advanced Clean Fleets [00:23:00] rulings.
And the- on the truck side, it's focused on the mix of zero-emission vehicle sales for the state of California. So there are external factors outside of our business that are pushing fleets to adopt zero-emission vehicles very heavily in the state of California.
James Lawler: As we build out more and more solar, you know, utility scale and, you know, more distributed, we will have more and more power, you know, that's, that would otherwise be curtailed.
And so hydrogen, like the production of hydrogen through electrolysis, where you take that excess solar energy, you run it through water, you produce hydrogen, you store that hydrogen for later use, you know, and it has been proposed to be a great way to use some of that, that excess solar at sort of peak times during the day.
Is that another reason why, you know, hydrogen could make sense as a source of power for transport, because of those dynamics?
Jonathan Colbert: I think 100%. One of the biggest challenges in developing these sites [00:24:00] of this scale is getting power to the site. So to bridge the gap between when the customer needs power on site and when we can actually get it from the utility, we end up doing all types of temporary power solutions and on-site generation.
And if we could leverage hydrogen to provide another form of clean energy on site, ongoing, or even just in these critical time periods where we need to bridge the gap for temporary power, I think it would be a huge win, and it is something we're exploring.
Darren Hau: What are the other major challenges besides utility timelines?
Jonathan Colbert: Well, utilities and, like, authority having jurisdictions are what you're going to hear the most, but I just want to take a step back and say we're in uncharted territory. And what we're asking of both of these types of entities is literally bringing a skyscraper's worth of power to a site, sometimes within a year or a year and a half, right?
And, um, that, coupled with supply chain [00:25:00] issues, getting the actual power equipment, I think a lot of times folks go straight to the chargers, but the actual power equipment that you need on site makes you really have to button up your operations. So thinking about our supply chain and logistics and our strategic procurement approach help circumvent that.
On the utility side, we've recently hired an industry vet, so he's over all government and utility relations, thinking strategically about how we can partner with these types of entities to, to help kind of smooth out these operations, but, um, share best practices and information across the board in general.
So we've started a series of playbooks where we go out and we're basically sharing what our lessons learned are, like some, some of the challenges you'll face. And then also some of the solutions that we've uncovered.
And the first one was, was focused on real estate and site identification, so site identification and acquisition.
And the next one we'll be coming out with this quarter will be on power procurement. So [00:26:00] one, would love for folks to give us feedback on that, see other topics that they'd want to learn more about and that we can focus on. But two, I just encourage everyone in the space to think about how we can share more best practices and do this kind of work because the rising tide really does lift all boats.
James Lawler: Our final guest today is Jeff Prosserman, CEO of Voltpost, who is here to shed light on a new cost-cutting technology, expanding EV charging access by retrofitting existing public infrastructure. Jeff and his team are already working with municipalities and utilities to roll out this novel commercial EV charging approach.
For full disclosure, I'm a current investor in the company. Here's Jeff.
Jeff Prosserman: Voltpost is on a mission to decarbonize mobility by democratizing charging access.
James Lawler: Okay.
Jeff Prosserman: And we do that by retrofitting existing lamp posts into an EV charging platform. By doing this as a retrofit, we can significantly reduce the soft costs up to 10 times to a traditional charger that requires construction and trenching. [00:27:00] So much more chargers can be deployed in the built environment.
James Lawler: Okay. So what does that look like in, in practice? You're taking a lamppost and you're wrapping a charger, effectively, around it. In what kind of context does that make sense to do?
Jeff Prosserman: So we started this company in New York and San Francisco and recognizing in densely populated cities, when over half the cars park on the street without access to private garages, if we really want to get everyone to go from gas to electric, we need to provide convenient and affordable charging access.
James Lawler: And where do you forecast the greatest uptake for your solution?
Jeff Prosserman: We really see Voltpost as a solution that enables all communities to have access to charging rather than just focusing on those who may be in a higher income bracket who can afford EVs today.
And as we go from early adopters into the mainstream, we think that [00:28:00] we can truly ratchet down millions of tons of carbon at scale, help build stronger communities, and create local jobs, all aligned with the climate targets on both the federal and local level.
James Lawler: What does it take to take our existing lamppost infrastructure and turn them into chargers?
Jeff Prosserman: So the first question is, who actually owns the existing infrastructure?
And that can either be a municipality directly for a smaller town or city could be a Department of
Transportation in a larger city like New York, or it could be the utility and lastly, potentially privately owned.
And with each of those customer segments, it's effectively the same value proposition and same opportunity to the end user in providing that convenient access point, it's just a bit of a different sales cycle of which stakeholders we have to approach to get the permission to deploy on their existing utility poles or lampposts.
[00:29:00]
James Lawler: Got it. Got it. I'm wondering if Voltpost is considering any partnerships with fleets of vehicles, and if so, how you're thinking about deploying in those contexts.
Jeff Prosserman: Yeah, 100%, and that is certainly an opportunity for us and other companies in the charging ecosystem. When we look at fleets, there's a clear opportunity recognizing that, as they're electrifying their fleet, providing that convenient, affordable, scalable charging in their existing parking lots, is really an opportunity, both for the fleet owner and for us.
And by being able to guarantee a certain utilization threshold per charger based off of knowing that the fleet vehicles would be using this as a primary source for charging, it actually unlocks stability for us as a company when we're looking at that project, as well as obviously provides assurance to that [00:30:00] partner that they will have charging for their entire fleet.
James Lawler: If I understand the technology correctly, you're not messing with the wires coming into the lamppost. So you have to work with the electricity that is coming in, as it's coming in today. And you have to convert that to a power supply for electric vehicle charging. How challenging is that engineering?
Like, what do you have to do to the voltage and the power to make that work?
Jeff Prosserman: Yeah. In simple terms, we were providing level-two charging, not DC fast charging. Sometimes there's power at the pole and sometimes it's not. And in the cases that the power is not there, then we leverage the existing conduit to pull a single cable through to provide that level two without construction or trenching up front.
We can also drop a cable down if the power's overhead to provide that same [00:31:00] interconnection to the grid. And when it's obviously a fleet and a parking lot that is controlled by a public or private entity, then in that case, we're checking the panel and how much power is available on site, and being able to run through a very similar process.
James Lawler: Got it. So tell us what you forecast for Voltpost in the, in the year ahead. When might we be seeing Voltpost chargers on the streets?
Jeff Prosserman: Yeah, so we've done two pilot projects to date. One in New York City with the Department of Transportation, the second in Detroit at the Detroit Smart Parking Lab. We started in Brooklyn, recognizing densely populated neighborhoods need access to charging, but we soon realized that this solution made just as much sense in parking lots, both public and privately owned and over the last six months have been really ramping up production in our facility in San Francisco, as well as [00:32:00] securing contracts to begin public deployments this year, where press releases will start going out in March.
James Lawler: When you introduce your concept, that is retrofitting these lamp posts into Chargers, who would you say are the most responsive audiences? Who, who's most excited about that idea?
Jeff Prosserman: First, actually taking a step back-
James Lawler: Yeah.
Jeff Prosserman: -there's three customer segments, the public, private, and utility sector. Okay. And on the public side, obviously we have with the IRA, a unique opportunity in history where 7.5 billion for charging and 2.5 billion for community-based charging.
And we're a company that's made in America, built coast to coast, and can actually access those funds. The first wave of that funding announcement that went out a few weeks ago for over $600 million to about 48 groups. So we have active relationships that we're developing projects across those partners.
[00:33:00] Second, on the private side, I mean, from enterprise sales of employees who just want to charge their vehicle and don't have enough chargers in the existing parking lot, we see it as a set of quick wins for us and being able to quickly install at a lower cost than other chargers and create a model which, frankly, everybody is just more excited about at scale.
And on the utility side, I mean, we have Exelon, largest utility in the US as an investor in the company. And they're supporting project development across their six territories, as well as RWE, the largest utility in Germany, which is making a significant investment in the clean energy transition in North America, based here in New York.
So the utility segment, certainly they're trying to figure out how to electrify everything and meet the power they demand alongside the grid upgrades needed. So we become a meaningful solution in that ecosystem.
James Lawler: [00:34:00] Right, right. And really that, that is enabled by just the low cost profile to actually deploy a Voltpost charger because you don't have to do any trenching. You're really just repurposing it. The cost per charger to deploy is, is lower than other solutions.
Jeff Prosserman: Yeah, there's tens of thousands of dollars saved on each deployment by removing that construction and trenching, and we can install a charger in an hour. So we can truly create a more scalable network approach for both the public and private sector.
James Lawler: Wow. Exciting. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for joining us.
Jeff Prosserman: Yeah, thank you, James.
James Lawler: Thanks for joining us for today's episode. We hope you'll tune in next week for the third and final episode in our fleet electrification series. We'll hear about running charging operations through the lens of leaders from ChargerHelp!, a leading electrification technology company [00:35:00] that provides direct service repair and maintenance fixes on EV charging infrastructure.
To learn more about the full service charging hub companies we chatted with today, visit our website, climatenow.com. That's all for now. We hope you'll join us for our next conversation.
Charging Electric Fleets (2/3)