You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern, your host. I’ve got Jordan Ramer, CEO of EV Connect on the program today. Welcome to the program, Jordan.

Thanks for having me, Matt. It’s real pleasure.

Okay. Well, tell us a little bit about your background. And what brought you to EV Connect. And what does EV Connect do?

Yeah, so my background, I’ve been, I guess what you would now call a climate tech entrepreneur for going on 20 years now. And really started, I’d say in the late 1990s started to see and believe that there was a really an issue with climate change, and wanted to be part of a solution to it. And so that personal interest in passion led me to a career, also combining something that I was very interested in, which was technology and, and trying to put those two together to come up with solutions to the challenge that that I felt the world was was facing and will continue to face.

And so I started working at a company called AeroVironment, in around 2000, which was, which was addressing a lot of things related to what we will now call climate tech, one of the things that it had done was to build a fast charger for off road electric vehicles. But at the time, about half of off road electric vehicles were or half of electric off road vehicles were electric. And, and so they needed to be charged, but the concept of fast charging was was quite new.

And so I was very involved in getting that product launched in managing it. And through that seven or eight year period, helping to get that business going, I noticed that there are a lot of challenges with the charging infrastructure and supporting these vehicles. And so one of the key challenges was uptime, making sure that they work for customers, the user experience for drivers and other parts of the ecosystem.

And, and so that sort of planted the seed for me, you know, fast forward to 2009, which really began the, the origin story for EV Connect, you know, Tesla had the Roadster in the market, and Nissan had announced the leaf and, and GM had announced the Chevy Volt and, and I knew that charging infrastructure was going to be a challenge, not only for the deployment of it, but also the ongoing support, user experience and uptime. And so I decided that was the the opportunity and guide eConnect going in late 2009.

Okay, well, for those of us who have had electric vehicles, I had a Tesla there 2015 2018 before it switched to hydrogen. You know, I recall the days when Chargers were less common, but it always seemed like there were chargers potentially available, but they sometimes were paying the NEC to deal with. So how have they gotten better in that period of time?

Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of things that are involved in making them better and or even just producing them. I think the two key components that that are involved is when you think about charging infrastructure is one is the actual physical hardware. You know, that’s the thing that as a driver, you know, Matt, you’re used to using and you’re seeing and you’re connecting your, your car into.

And then the other part of it, that’s, that’s often kind of the unsung hero, and in my experience, is the is the software that makes the overall charging experience happen, which happens behind the scene. It’s the things that power the drivers mobile app, or if you’re in a Tesla, the interface to your through your your vehicle. It’s the things that help manage the building’s load.

From an electricity standpoint, or the grid, it’s the things that enable the driver to pay for it, as well as the people that own the infrastructure to monetize it. And so that’s the stuff that EV Connect does. And that’s the part that I think is really improved and created an opportunity for what I see is the industry to cross a chasm, right? You know, in the in the days of, you know, from up until say 2015 16.

A lot of the charging infrastructure that was deployed was non smart, right? It was or non networked where it was just a charging station that you’d go up to you you’d plug in and you could charge your car. But the reality is you didn’t know when it was available.

You didn’t know I didn’t know if it worked, you didn’t know where it was all the time, you had to have road signs, you know, you didn’t, the people that that paid to put the infrastructure in place, had no way of monetizing it, getting a return on investment, supporting drivers, you know, all of those things that go along with that. And so I think that’s the, the key piece that’s really changed over the last seven years and has gotten incrementally better. There’s still lots of challenges.

And, you know, we’re as an industry and maybe connected particulars, working toward making those that better. But I think that’s really the crux of what has improved over the last, you know, say seven years?

Well, so currently, is there an app that kind of connects a driver to where exactly they can get a charge? And maybe, I don’t know, the pricing of the charging?

And that’s right. Yep. Yes, yeah. So you know, we, you know, EB Connect has an app. And it enables the driver to do just exactly what you described, you know, some of the things around locations and finding charging can also be found through some of the vehicle manufacturers interfaces, you know, you mentioned Tesla, GM has their own as well. So that’s part of the equation.

But there’s also more much more to it, right, there’s the, in the app, there’s ability to pay for the charging, you know, be able to see the rEVws of the performance of that charger. In certain cases, you know, even being able to reserve spots, you know, get notifications about starting charges, and finishing charging sessions, get receipts for what your you’ve paid, you know.

So there’s a lot more to it that, you know, a mobile app can can address to improve that user experience, the best analogy that I think about is it’s kind of the difference between, you know, the somewhat more analog experience of driving in a taxi, where there’s a, you know, a meter, where you, you know, the driver pushes the button, you you finish your ride.

They push the button again on the meter, and you pay in cash for that meter usage, versus say, you know, an Uber or a Lyft experience where everything is done within that app, and it obviously enhances a lot of the overall experience.

So where’s it going next? What’s the what’s the next chasm that needs to be bridged in order to kind of make electrical vehicles a more viable option for the average driver?

Yeah, you know, so you may you, you probably know this, but you know, that the US now hit a pretty big milestone, you know, over I think 5%, or more like 6% of EV, sales of all of sales are EVs. Now, and that’s, that’s growing for all sorts of reasons.

And so they’re, they’re, we’re definitely at that point. And I think, you know, in, the more experts you speak with, the more they will continue to agree that we are at that point of Crossing the Chasm drivers are getting, and consumers who are buying cars are getting more and more comfortable with this idea of driving an electric vehicle. But it is different, right, their charging is different. And the overall technology in cars in general is different and has improved.

And so drivers are still adjusting to do those things. And I would say that the the most important piece is what I was describing is getting, I’d say it’s really two things. One is that overall experience that I mentioned, and improving that so that it’s as simple as, you know, grandma can buy an Eevee. And, and they’re not going to even have an issue will, you know, fueling it and, and driving it. And then the other is, I think getting more charging infrastructure deployed.

That that there’s there’s about 60,000 charging stations. And that’s that’s actually like locations for charging stations throughout the US. Most experts agree we need millions of charging stations to support the number of vehicles that will be coming onto our roads over the next few years.

So it’s, I’d say, you know, at the end of the day one is getting more charging infrastructure deployed, and then at the same time, making sure that the user experience the usage of those stations is It’s absolutely fantastic.

So in terms of these charging stations, how do you how do you envision it becoming effective for lower income or middle income people to be owning electric vehicles say, particularly if they don’t own their own home? Or they’re living in a place where they can’t have a charging station? It’s kind of challenging to, to take a half an hour or more to charge your vehicle.

Sure, sure. Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s quite a few things. So you know, one is there’s, there’s certainly quite a big effort to deploy charging infrastructure in multifamily environments, and and we’re certainly seeing a lot of incentives around doing that. But even short of of charging, specifically at the home location where, you know, a good percentage of the population, I think it’s upwards of 50% of the US population lives in a multifamily dwelling.

You know, that’s, that’s really, you know, it also comes down to public fast charging, you know, much like a gas station. And, and public fast charging can happen in, you know, five to 10 minutes, not terribly different than, than a gas station style, charging infrastructure. And I know, there’s lots of companies like BP and 711, and others that we work with quite closely that are deploying charging infrastructure in kind of fast charging style, convenience store style, use cases.

Well, Jordan, pleasure to, you know, get this insight. You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern, your host, and I’ve got Jordan Ramer on the program, Jordan, CEO of EV Connect, we’re gonna be right back in just one minute to talk to Jordan.

You’re listening to A Climate Change, this is Matt Matern, your host. I’ve got Jordan Ramer, CEO of EV connect on the on the program. Jordan, where we’re just talking about all the charging stations that are going to be needed over the coming years.

You know, I guess I’m wondering who is going to be kind of making the money from this? Is this going to be a diffuse group of the equivalent of gas station owners that are all going to have their fingers in this? Or are there going to be some big players that dominate the market for charging stations going forward?

Yeah, you know, when the way I think about a man, it’s a great question. You know, for the last 100 years, we’ve grown accustomed as a as a global population to fueling vehicles in a very centralized way, which we call the gas station, right. And the gas station really grew out of a lot of the limitations of petroleum based fuels. They’re either liquid or they’re a gas. And they need to be trucked in, kept in tanks pumped underground, they need to be contained.

There’s a lot of infrastructure that’s required to maintain the gas station and distribute the fuel that gets delivered through the gas station. And so that’s why it’s been decent. It’s been centralized for for 100 plus years. And so the thing that I think it makes electricity as a fuel so interesting, is that it can be completely decentralized. And it can be completely decentralized, because in many respects, electricity is completely decentralized. I’m sure wherever you’re you’re sitting today and I’m sitting, and there are a lot of our listeners are there’s an outlet near them, right?

And or even in their cars, there’s an ability to get electricity from their cars if they’re sitting in their car today. And so the reality is that now, electricity as a fuel can be completely decentralized and democratized in many respects. And so I think what that does is it creates a whole new class of infrastructure owner and fueling provider. And so that’s a lot of what EV Connect has been doing for the last, you know, 12 plus years. It’s working with this new class of fueling provider. And that crosses all sorts of new industries, everything from you know, the hotel that has historically provided, you know, beds and rooms for people to sleep and restaurants for people to eat.

Now, it can become a fueling location for their guests. It can also be a workplace where, you know, historically, you, you know, you might have provided an office with, with coffee and maybe bathrooms, but now you’re providing fuel, and it can go on and my examples can go on On, including schools and municipalities and all sorts of other providers. And so I think that’s where we believe the new owners and providers of this fueling infrastructure will come about. The reality, though, is that the business models are very different.

Each of those use cases that I described, and many of the other ones, and types of users, or providers of fuel are looking for different ways to pay for their investments. And, and so that’s in large part where a lot of the software that we provide and the user experience that we provide comes into play, because sometimes customers decide that they’re going to give the fuel away for free just to get people to the location.

Others decide that they want only to provide it to certain, you know, guests that are staying at their hotel, for example. And so it’s it’s a whole different, you know, it’s just a whole different kind of way of thinking about the how fuel is delivered, who’s doing the delivery and where it’s happening. Today,

I guess I’d ask kind of how does your firm or firms like your firm kind of monetize this opportunity? If say, a hotel is giving away the electricity to its guests? Where’s the margin for your firm in that equation?

Yeah, good question. Yeah, so a lot of it is not about you know, a lot of it is not about the, the delivery of the electricity, a lot of it is just about the service to write it historically, with a gas station, you know, we’ve grown used to like, it’s all about that transaction of fuel. But now, when you start to connect the fuel to more distributed and decentralized fueling locations, the fuel gets much more connected to what those locations are doing, I like to pick on the hotel example.

So I will, and that’s that, you know, a hotel is incentive may not be to, you know, make money selling electricity as a fuel, it may very well be tried to maximize the occupancy of its hotel. And, or it might be, you know, selling more entrees within the restaurant. And so to do that, it, they might decide that we’re going to, you know, provide this service and give away the electricity.

So for us, our model as a business for EB Connect is, we’re a technology solution and service provider to these parties, who are then using the fuel and distributing their fuel to drivers. And the business model, their business models are really up to them. We provide the tools and capabilities for them to deliver the bottle business model that makes the most sense for their location, their industry and their intentions for their customers.

Do you see a number of businesses that are going into the distribution of electric power to two cars as a money making opportunity? Like that’s, that’s their sole thing? It’s not a hotel? They’re putting up stations? Purely to, to make profit?

Yeah, yeah. So there are some, for sure, there’s a there’s a, it’s typically more on the fast charging side. So you know, if you kind of think about it, the charging at a hotel or at a workplace or you know, usually like a government municipal parking lot, or school tends to be you know, slower charging, where you’re, you’re doing it during the course of a day or overnight.

And it’s it’s slower charging, usually the business models, they are much more connected to the location when you start getting into fast charging, which is much more you know, we’ll call it quote unquote gas station style fueling where charging times are 1020 minutes to fill up the majority of the battery. T

hat’s when you start to see some of the like AV connects customers like BP and 711 and some of these other you know, larger players that are looking to really build businesses around the distribution of electricity as a fuel and so yes, we’re seeing that we’re seeing that with other convenience store operators, other gas station operators. And then also you know what I would call pure play EV charging companies, like EV Go, that that have built, you know, dedicated charging locations.

We call them charging hubs, or are using shared locations within gas stations to put charging locations for EVs, and, and their business models are much more akin to the, you know, they’re much more akin to the business models of, say, a gas station or a convenience store where you’re spending a few minutes time, you’re filling up and you’re spending, you know, a decent amount of money, not only at that convenience, store location, but also for the fuel that you’re buying.

So what partnerships is EV Connect, your company, forging, with other with other players in this industry?

Yeah, I mean, it crosses so many different sectors. But it’s a great question, Matt. And I think we’re going to see more and more of this happening. I mean, one, we’re working with automakers. So you know, companies like, you know, General Motors where, you know, we’re working with them to improve the user experience and deploy charging add their dealerships to we’re working with an integrating into their, their vehicle systems. We’re working with payment systems.

So you know, companies like Apple Pay, and, and other Visa MasterCard type payment solutions, so that there’s a whole spectrum of ways for drivers to pay for charging, their, we’re working with many of the mapping and location based services like Google Maps, so that wherever Google Maps is powering a location, you know, we can deliver and tell the driver where they can go, and you know exactly where it is what the location looks like, you know, perhaps the hours and the costs of using that charging infrastructure, or working with utilities, across the country to use it for grid services.

So instead of the utility in building more power plants, or expanding their infrastructure to deliver more electricity as a fuel, we can use our technology to help them to manage their grid as it relates to electricity as a fuel. And so that’s another area that we’re we’re working with very closely. We’re working with finance providers to provide financing solutions. So this whole new, you know, going back to what I was saying about decentralization, but it’s also democratization right now, all these new people can be fueling providers, they need financing.

And then, of course, we’re working with all of the hardware providers, most of them are major hardware manufacturers globally, we’re working with in some capacity to be able to control and manage their charging infrastructure to deliver the types of services that, you know, that I’ve mentioned before. So it’s, um, I’m sure I’m missing a few but but it’s a pretty comprehensive ecosystem. And we’re right in the middle of it with EV Connect. And it’s, it’s pretty exciting as a software platform to be able to bring together all of these parties.

Well, it is a complex web of pieces that you need to put together to make those whole new network work while you’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern. And I’ve got Jordan Ramer on the program CEO of EV Connect and we’ll be right back to talk to Jordan about the technological wave that is hitting the US and the entire planet.

You’re listening to A Climate Change this is Matt Matern, your host. I’ve got Jordan Ramer, CEO of EV Connect on the program. And Jordan, we’re talking about how this technology is built, being built out across the country and really obliterating or in part, the whole network that’s been a part of the country’s fabric for 100 plus years, the gas station to creating a new powering stations have all over the country to power this new wave of electric vehicles, which is only going to increase.

And I guess I’ve asked you like, what are the barriers and incentives that you see that are out there both barriers and incentives to making this change possible and workable?

Yeah, you know, I think one of the things talking about the incentives is, you know, the the I’d say it puts into two big chunks. One is government incentives and other as utility incentives, you know, in the the federal government has been largely absent until recently in in supporting charging infrastructure. And, and to some extent even EVs.

You know until recently with the infrastructure bill that was passed the bipartisan bill about a, you know, I’d say it was about a year ago now, that put a pretty big emphasis on deploying charging infrastructure and is, has given the various states an opportunity to build out fast charging networks, in their, their areas. And so I think that’s, that’s going to be a huge opportunity to put more charging infrastructure in place, as I talked about earlier. And then also, you know, the, the federal government has set standards and expectations for how that infrastructure is supposed to perform.

And I think that’s going to really create an opportunity for the industry to coalesce around a certain set of, of standards that they owe, you know, we’re expected to operate under. So you know, that’s one piece at the federal government level, the state governments, you know, especially, you know, states, in the northeast and in the West Coast, have built pretty substantial programs to help facilitate the deployment of charging infrastructure.

And so there are incentives there that help bring down the capital cost for this new class of fueling provider to own and provide charging infrastructure and electricity as a fuel. And then further there, they’ve also also put in incentives to help reduce the operating expenditures associated with electricity as a fuel and, and some of that comes down to California and Oregon’s low carbon fuel standard program, it looks like Washington is going to approve a program like that, as well as I think the entire country of Canada just recently approved a low carbon fuel standard program as well.

So there’s quite a bit of incentives at the government level. The other key piece of the incentive puzzle is utilities and utility programs that are typically rate based. So utilities, utility utility commission is helping you’re giving the utilities and opportunity to invest in charging infrastructure for the utilities within their their territories. And so the utilities have been building programs to help their customers go electric with transportation.

And there’s lots of pretty amazing programs out there that EV Connect in particular, you know, we’ve been working with utilities for many years, to make those programs available to our customers, make sure that they are effective, and ultimately, efficiently rollout charging infrastructure.

And, you know, we’re now well over, you know, 60,000 locations, and probably 100,000, over 100,000, you know, actual charging stations that have been deployed across the US, and a lot of that is with been with utility and incentive money. So, lots of good incentives.

How many of those 60,000? Or are individuals who have charging stations are those all 60,000? commercial stations?

Yeah, good question. I know I’m talking all commercial. Yeah. If you started adding residential locations, it would be substantially more than that. Yeah. So everyone who’s charging at their homes is another. No, I’m talking about more publicly available locations.

So what was this low carbon fuel standard that you were saying that the western states and now potentially Canada are adapting?

Yeah, so the low carbon fuel standard is a you know, in a very simple way, a way to put the onus on essentially, those that distribute high carbon fuel, so think, you know, the, the oil and gas industry, and so if you want to produce and distribute high carbon fuel within the state of California, for example, you actually have to buy carbon credits to offset the that distribution.

And so to create carbon credits, you have to distribute low carbon fuels. And so there’s a market that’s been created. And so if you distribute hydrogen or biofuels or electricity, you create carbon credits that then can be sold to the likes of the oil and gas industry.

Right so it’s a it’s an incentive to build out the cleaner future market. likely to get the oil companies who have tons of money to put some money back into the system to make that work. It’s an interesting situation in that the utility companies to error standing to benefit greatly because of the rollout to electric vehicles and more electricity within instead of instead of petrochemicals, you see a boom in the utilities in the coming future?

Or is it going to be kind of balanced against the fact that more people will have rooftop solar, which will kind of reduce the utilities’ Monopoly?

Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s a good question, man. I mean, I think we are going to see more, you know, producer slash consumers. So, you know, individuals and businesses that actually not only consume electricity, but also produce their own, I still think there’s a place for the grid for the foreseeable future, certainly my lifetime.

But there’s so much more so much electrification going on, that you have to imagine that people are going to produce their own electricity, you know, especially with solar and perhaps wind. And of course, that’s renewable based, so and then the cost of energy storage is going down. So I think it’s pretty safe to assume that we’re going to find a situation where more people are producing their electricity that they’re consuming, as opposed to getting it from the utility.

But I also believe that there’s going to be so much more demand from, you know, people needing more electricity through electrification programs, not only with transportation, that utilities are not going away, either.

Right. Right. Well, one interesting development I saw recently is a car being developed, it’s a purely solar car that will run off of its own solar panels, I think it’s called a serif or something I have you seen that one?

I haven’t seen that one. But you know, I mentioned early on in the program, my background, I worked at a company called AeroVironment. And prior to my joining AeroVironment, built a prototype of a solar car called the sun racer, kind of famous in certain circles. But yeah, that concept has been around and, and I, I can’t claim to be an expert in that area.

But you have to imagine that, as the efficiency of solar cells improves, and more materials are getting lighter. And the the, you know, you you could imagine a time when you could produce enough electricity to to propel a vehicle, I think we’re still a ways from that actually happening.

Based on the type of performance we expect from cars, you know, from a normal consumer or the average consumer, but, but it is pretty cool to imagine for sure, well, it’s a very small car, I’ve seen the pictures of it. And it’s, it’s not it’s not going to replace your truck or SUV or whatever, it’s to people. But it’s it’s putting a marker out there, though, you do see, some of the electric car companies, I believe, are putting solar arrays on their cars to kind of as a supplement, right?

Yes, yeah, for sure. I’ve seen that for sure. Where you, you know, it can power say, if you’re just sitting in your car, and you’re not moving, it’s not it’s not going to build produce enough electricity to move the vehicle or be the, you know, the actual, like, traction part of the vehicle. But, but it certainly can power some of the ancillary services within the car, right?

Whether it’s, you know, charging your battery or, or keeping your AC and climate on or are the onboard computers and other things that you might use while you’re sitting in the car and not have to use your main battery.

I believe that’s, that’s certainly an area that that a number of, of the automakers have gone down and, and as I said, I think as those solar cells get more and more efficient, cheaper and cheaper, and and materials, science improves around those areas where we could see more and more body components of the vehicle get replaced, and eventually, you know, start producing electricity for actual movement of the vehicle as you as you mentioned in that one example.

Well, it’s a fascinating area and it’s moving so fast. We’ve got a lot to talk about and well, Jordan, one of those things I’m going to talk to you when we get back from the break is is the changing market? And where do you see this going? In the future.

So you’re listening to A Climate Chnage. This is Matt Matern, and I’ve got Jordan Ramer, CEO of EV Connect on the program, we’ll be right back.

You’re listening to A Climate Change, this is Matt Matern, and I’m back with Jordan Ramer, CEO of EV Connect. And Jordan, before the break, we’re talking about the changing market such a dynamic market plays so many different players.

And I mean, it’s it’s turning kind of a an established market on its head in terms of us getting our energy from gas stations, and now getting it from so many varied sources. Where do you see this moving? In the next few years? Five years? 10 years? 20 years? Where do you see this headed?

Yeah, so I mean, I think in the 20 year timeframe, Matt, that, you know, we’re gonna see certainly consolidation and, and a move more toward just a few players, as we do in most industries. But I think what’s most interesting is what’s going to happen between now and the next 20 years.

And so, what we’re seeing in the next, say, five years, or 10 years is just more players entering the market, you know, especially on the hardware side, players from all over the world who have been making charging infrastructure in their, their home markets, looking to enter the US as a as a pretty robust market for electric vehicles.

The one caveat to that, which I think, you know, is is certainly something that we’re keeping our eye on is that the the Inflation Reduction Act bill that recently passed, that has mostly climate related provisions, did a lot to incent the market, I would say, toward moving toward electrification of transportation. But one of the things that it did do is that it also has a lot of build America provisions. And so, you know, players coming from charging station manufacturers and even automakers that are producing cars outside of the US, will, will not, will not be able to take advantage of those incentives.

So, although we’re seeing a lot of new entrants into the market, you know, how they end up performing, and if they’re able to be viable in over the next few years, by not being able to take advantage of some of those incentives? I think we’ll certainly be interesting to see, I think it’s working with what Congress was trying to do with those provisions, because many of them are building American manufacturing facilities, and looking to be, you know, having American source product, we’re using American labor. And so what we’ll see, but I think over time, that will certainly create some consolidation.

With all of that said, I think at the end of the day, the most important thing that we need to do to improve adoption of EVs and get more people into EVs is the the experience, right? They, we have to be able to make it so simple. That it’s really not hard for them to to, to not only buy the vehicle, but drive the vehicle and fuel the vehicle and find fueling infrastructure, regardless of where they live and, and their socio economic status and all of those things.

And so I think that’s going to be some of the bigger challenges. The inflation Reduction Act started to address many of those things by putting in incentives for people to buy EVs. It needs to be American source TVs, but it also needs to, you know, you have to meet certain income thresholds in order to receive the incentive. And so, you know, Congress and our lawmakers have been thinking through a lot of those, those things that you mentioned, Matt, for for sure.

Well, where do you see your company headed? Obviously, there’s a lot of competition in the marketplace and how do you differentiate your, your company to stay ahead of this wave that is riding high and fast?

Yeah, I mean, look, we we’ve been staying very focused on that experience. You know, we think if we continue to deliver the highest level of service, and providing, you know, really feature rich and flexible solution For our customers, that we have the potential to, to win and be the best. And I think we’re well on our way there. And so that’s really what we’re focused on today.

You know, we’re also focused on globalizing our platform. So we’ve we are already in Australia and New Zealand, we, we work in parts of Europe, we’re already in Canada and parts of the Caribbean as well. But we’re spending more and more time helping other parts of the world as well, with their electrification of transportation goals.

Because at the end of the day, right, climate change is a global challenge. And and we really want to be part of the solution for the global market. And so that’s, that’s really what we’re doing, improving that experience and thinking about the global market.

So in terms of global market, to the places you didn’t mention, China and India, pretty big piece of the market. Any thoughts about going over there?

Yeah, I mean, I think for the time being, we’ve certainly rolled out the Chinese market, it’s pretty closed off for players like us, where you know, that they have a lot of incentives to keep homegrown folks, you know, in, in business, so to speak.

So, so that’s tough one, you know, we’ve certainly looked at India, and and we do think that there’s opportunities there, the dynamics are a little bit different, because of the type of transportation that’s used there, there aren’t nearly as the even though the population in the market is quite large, the concentration of what we would consider to be you know, traditional transportation around light duty vehicles, that is very different, the vehicles tend to be more, you know, two wheeled or, or scooter type, you know, bicycle or rickshaw type transportation, which have much lighter power needs.

And therefore, the just the distribution of electricity as a fuel is very different. And the needs associated with that is very different. And so we haven’t endeavored to, to make our way there yet, but I think that is certainly a market that we would you know, that we would get to it. In the future.

Coming back to the US. Do you see that you focus most of your energy on places like California and maybe parts of the East Coast where there’s probably higher percentages of EV usage? Or do you see more opportunity in some areas that are kind of the virgin territory where there’s lower EV usage, but you know, that eventually those areas will come online?

And, yeah, so five years ago, if you asked me that question, I would have answered yes, California, New York, northeast west coast, was where, you know, we were spending the vast majority of our time, partly because that’s where the incentives were, but partly, that’s where the vehicles were going.

That’s really has changed a lot. You know, now, you have, you know, large population centers in Texas, Florida, which have not traditionally been, you know, super open to transportation electrification, are now some of the largest EV markets in the world. And so there’s lots of opportunity for charging infrastructure there. But even outside of those large population centers, I mean, we’re operating in 44 US states.

And so, you know, it’s, it’s there, there’s charging everywhere, there’s EVs everywhere now, and, and I think, especially with the inflation Reduction Act, and the infrastructure bill, both of which, at the federal level, are, are putting a lot of incentive and economic growth behind this area, you know, we’re going to see that across the country and be much less, you know, a patchwork of, you know, which states or which areas we’re investing in, and it’s just going to be everywhere.

So in terms of like Tesla, they have their own supercharging stations. And they’re a pretty substantial piece of the EV market. Is that a piece of the market? That’s kind of off your radar off the potential for for your services? For the most part?

Yeah, for the most part, I mean, we, we certainly support the Tesla vehicles, but Tesla has become very vertically integrated, and that’s part of their strategy. And so not only do they make their vehicles, but they also own and operate the charging infrastructure that powers them. And so that that charging infrastructure is sort of not what we would you know, or can’t say Port today under Tesla’s business model, that’s starting to change a little bit.

Tesla has now opened up or has said, they’re going to open up their charging infrastructure to non Tesla vehicles. And so we’re starting to see, you know, this, this idea of a completely walled garden approach, not necessarily being the best.

But, you know, for us, it’s really much more about all the other vehicles, and Tesla, but providing charging infrastructure for everybody, regardless of what car you drive, and making that an accessible and amazing experience.

So, you know, it’s been a fascinating conversation with you, Jordan, I really wish you all the best. I wonder, you know, if you have any final words as to where you see all this going, and are you optimistic that we’re going to get to, you know, an all electrical vehicle experience in the US in the next 20 years? Or is it further out than that?

No, I mean, I think we’re well on our way, man, I’m extremely excited. I mean, many states, including New York and California have, you know, ruled to ban internal combustion vehicles by you know, 2035 and so you’re gonna see all evey sales in you know, a little more than a decade.

I think it’s it, we’re, we’re, we’re targeting 50% of, you know, all EVs in the US sold by 2030. There’s a lot of ground to cover at that point. But I think the main, the main stumbling block is going to be more charging infrastructure and AV connects right there making that happen.

And ultimately, we’re going to get more infrastructure in the ground, and we’re going to do it in a way that makes people want to buy more EVs and tell their friends and family to buy more EVs and that’s really our goals.

Well, it’s been great having you on the program, this A Climate Change with Matt Matern, your host, and I had Jordan Ramer, CEO of EV Connect on.

Thanks, Jordan, for being with us and wish you and your company all the best going forward, everybody.

Thanks so much, Matt. Ya know, it’s been a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.