Good morning Grid Connections listeners and welcome back to Grid Connections podcast where clean energy, electric vehicles and the grid converge.
Today we're joined by Aubrey Gunnels.
She's the CEO of 3V Infrastructure to take us on a deep dive into the future of electric vehicle infrastructure, overcoming charging deserts and scaling sustainable solutions
across the United States.
Aubrey shares critical insights on how data-driven planning can accelerate EV adoption, the importance of strategic partnerships for expanding charging networks,
and real-world challenges and solutions 3V infrastructure is pioneering through their business model, all using their unique financial modeling for making their electric
vehicle charging sites as efficient as possible and as reliant for the EV driver as can be.
If you've ever wondered how the industry plans to meet the rapidly growing electric vehicle demand or are curious about the role of smart infrastructure in the energy
transition, this episode is packed with actual takeaways you'll want to hear.
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infrastructure, and clean energy innovation.
With that, enjoy.
Yeah, so Aubrey Gunnels, I'm the CEO and one of the co-founders of 3V Infrastructure.
So we are a level two EV charger charge point operator.
an industry termed CPO, where we really see ourselves as we deploy capital to build more level two chargers um and specifically focus on the multifamily space, especially right
now with a no capex, no op-ex option for property owners.
um And that really comes out of
The majority of charging happens at home.
30 % of Americans live in multi-family homes and about 5 % of those buildings have chargers today.
So really try to bridge that gap as it relates to creating access to UV chargers where people live.
That's great.
I think actually, I know we were kind of talking a little bit about this before we went live, but let's try and kind of unpack the multifamily part of it.
Cause I know we have a lot of our listeners who either work in that space and are curious to kind of learn more.
Uh, but we'd love to kind of learn more about how 3V is helping with that and what kind of led to the focus for that realm specifically, where you're seeing a lot of the traction.
Yeah, definitely.
so multifamily, uh, so you charge your car, like you charge your phone, which is at, um, at home or, know, at rest.
Um, so it's very different than how you fill up your normal gas, um, gas tank.
So to solve for that, uh, multifamily is extremely important as it relates to 30 % of the population, um, in the U S and that's really through, it's very similar to maybe shared
laundry or.
the WiFi in the building is not owned by the property owner.
It is normally a third party owner and operator of those types of amenities.
And that's for a variety of reasons, including that it is just a whole nother type of business operations.
So it's really trying to create those charging opportunities at multifamily buildings.
So our clients are large real estate REITs or medium size or small.
And we really work at the portfolio level to say, we will take your portfolio.
We will
or will rank order the sites of basically saying in the first year we will build these sites and so on and so forth.
And that's really driven by localized EV penetration rates and growth curves.
um And through that, we own the charger for 12 to 10 years.
um We will go back and build more if that demand uh makes sense.
And then uh drivers just pay at the charger directly for how much they use.
So we outsource the software to best-in-class software.
We outsource the construction of the chargers to best-in-class of regional EPC and construction partners.
And really we see ourselves as we are here to deploy capital and asset manage as more of a traditional infrastructure investment would be in other asset classes.
Yeah.
And that's kind of interesting because like from the building side of it and kind of actual financing model, it makes sense for a lot of, like you're talking about, especially
even in multifamily for a lot of the different services that might be at one of these sites.
What was it specifically?
Uh, if you can share that drew you to EV charging of all those, cause there is obviously a lot of different business models, but like speaking of the capex and the OpEx of it,
that's a really interesting perspective that we probably don't.
A of listeners probably either don't think about or hear as much.
I think that might become interesting to kind of pull that apart a little more.
Yeah, definitely.
I actually started, I've always wanted this infrastructure technology policy kind of intersection.
And through that and the infrastructure bill, I was advising state DOTs on Nevi.
um And so that's really how I got into EV charging specifically, but I've always spent time in the infrastructure space.
uh So just through that, I worked at a company that we're really focusing on level two.
um And that became very obvious of
just the focus and the importance of level two in the ecosystem.
95 % of chargers are level two and 95 % of all charging happens at a level two charger.
So it's just critically important.
And it became very clear that there is a lot of softwares in the space that are pretty mature and all competing in a great aspirational market.
Then we have the hardware that is very much a commodity at this point.
ah But then what was really missing is the infrastructure long hold piece that is really critical to building these kind of projects.
So we've seen CPOs over the years, so like charge point links to the world that we're trying to do all three.
And that is really hard, especially as a publicly traded company.
If you are trying to get VC returns for a long-term hold asset, then those things contradict each other.
So while I think maybe in five or 10 years, it will make sense to then bring all these assets back together in the same stack.
um The way that just like the capital works is that you should really focus on, so we are solely focused on looking at it from an infrastructure long-term hold.
That means the returns are not going up like an S curve that like you'd see in VC, but still interesting enough that you can attract ah infrastructure dollars to it.
It can, no, I appreciate the kind of the detail that so like looking at, think probably from the perspective of a lot of electric vehicle drivers and just seeing how the
technology, just even on the charging side has kind of evolved over the years.
And you might roll up to a level two charger that is either been out of commission or is clearly not like maybe not all of the chargers are operating at like, or a couple might be
down.
And I'm curious, like when you look at.
financing of this and you're working with like sites, how does maybe like long-term, mean, especially speaking to some of the CPOs you mentioned, like how does the long-term
management of the site kind of play into that financial model and kind of how your team might also kind of help to ensure that the sites stay up over time.
Yeah.
like down chargers is the big thorn of the entire industry.
And that, um, I believe one of the largest reasons that we have so many stranded assets is because they were bad deals.
So there had some really people had models and they were trying to, you know, finance getting these chargers in the ground.
So it used to be property owner.
Um, I will pay you whatever a month for you to let me put a charger on your property.
And without factoring in how much O it would cost or whatever it is.
And now it's flipped to say, property owner, you pay me in order to let a charger, to build a charger that's more for public charging, but nonetheless is, uh the flip is the
script is flipped.
And that is because there's some realities to the financing of it that created these really bad deals that no one is financially incentivized to make sure they work.
Cause you just will never drive enough revenue at that site to maintain it.
And for that reason, there's no.
there's no one there to make sure it works.
And that's just, you know, how markets work.
I think it's one for us to win in the space and for anyone to win the space right now is to make sure that we are signing, you know, deals that make sure that these companies are
here for, for a long time and making sure that, that, uh, like we can't really, it's funny, we keep talking to some property owners and they're like, like they used to be able
to pay us to put chargers on the properties.
It's like those deals no longer exist.
they might like they you will not find them in the market.
And that is because people have done the math.
No one is willing to put that kind of capital at risk.
Interesting so I think that just covered a lot of interesting topics because once again from like the perspective of the EV driver you kind of roll up Whether it's free you have
to pay or whatever At the end of the day what you really want is whether the charge works or it doesn't work So I'm kind of curious about You're kind of talking about some of these
Not necessarily bad actors, but bad executions and can you maybe highlight a little bit more of like?
what a bad execution has been in it.
It sounds like a big part, obviously is the expectation that there might be a financial reimbursement for the location, but also then kind of highlight specifically what makes
like a great uh site.
So if someone is listening, like, maybe my uh gas station I have or something in my real estate portfolio doesn't work, but this site would actually be great for this kind of
investment.
Yeah.
So, uh, so for three V we get paid if the charger use it, if the driver uses the charger.
we're not a technology firm.
We are here to deploy capital and hold it.
We work with great technology partners, but we really only get paid if someone uses the charger.
So that means the charger has to be up and that means they have to be in some form delightful to use.
Otherwise you can go somewhere else.
um But what we think, so we take full utilization risk.
So that means that someone has to use the charger for us to get paid.
That is the riskiest form of infrastructure investing because infrastructure investing does not take consumer driven.
risk like that is just most infrastructure is some sort of contracted cash flows.
So that's what really makes our model unique and also why the space is very risky, but nonetheless.
the way that we, our investment strategy can work is within multifamily specifically, and that is because we see multifamily buildings as like a microcosm of localized adoption.
So if you have a 400 unit building and say that the adoption into your city is about 10%.
then you can say with enough confidence that that building has at least 5 % adoption.
And we have models and data that back that up in much more detail, but to simplify it.
um the intention of that is to say, if we're betting on that, then we can also bet on how much the demand of that building is, because based off of vehicles miles traveled, the
VMT, the em battery efficiency and things of that nature,
can take all those assumptions and say, in a year, I can expect the KWH at this building to be blah in the year.
And then you can kind of model out what you expect the revenues to be.
And that's really important of how we decide which uh chargers and which properties to build first and also how many chargers to build.
So we see multifamily as extremely interesting.
um And then when you think of other types of asset classes and specifically in level two, and I'll speak to level two because I don't think people talk about level two enough.
Um, because while level three plays a very important role in range anxiety, the majority of charging happens at a level two charger.
and so I think when you think three of where you would spend the most time at a longer dwell charger, um, it's really not at a grocery store.
It's really not at a shopping, at a shopping area.
It's when we think about work, it's kind of interesting.
When you think about hospitals, it's pretty interesting.
When you think about hotels, it's pretty interesting.
Um, but in those places.
the demand for that revenue and the demand for usage is a lot harder to model and a lot harder to bet against.
I consider investing betting, but nonetheless, because you're really just trying to make an educated assumption that you can say with whatever shot of a doubt, you can get your
money back next time um and can give money back to my investors type of thing.
But so I do think hotels are really interesting.
Hotels do pose an interesting challenge of just you can't say hyper localized adoption.
You also can't look at traffic patterns.
Like there's a lot of things that go into hotels that make it really hard to invest in the hotel model, which is why I think we're seeing a lot.
Why are we seeing also an equally large gap in hotel um EV charging projects?
uh so all to say, would say multifamily first.
I would put hospital second, just because I think they're really interesting.
They're 24-7 like workplaces with the captured, like you have to park at the hospital.
And then I think hotels would be third.
And is that driven kind of by dwell time?
Because you mentioned some of these things that locations, other people have mentioned as doing it, but it seems like the ones that you're specifically targeting seem to be like
the highest return is the ones that have kind of a higher dwell time than maybe going to the grocery where you're there depending for like maybe 30 minutes.
Yeah, it's like when you charge your phone and say you just got a new phone, so like the battery is at its peak.
How many times would you charge it just overnight or like while you're at work or like when you come home and you're going to charge it for 45 minutes and then take it off the
charger?
That's like not normally a charging pattern.
It's not so obscene that you'd like.
So it's just so much easier to do, to just do it when you're not thinking about it.
And so really the long dwell is really important in thinking about consumer habits.
And is that mostly why hospitals stand out to you?
it the time?
Or are there any other things that kind of make that specifically a unique opportunity?
I think they're interesting because workplaces, they're obviously five days a week and then during the workday versus hospitals are 24-7 workplaces.
So that becomes interesting.
um They just have a lot of available power, which is like...
going ask about too, is the actual power of the site because that can usually be a big determining factor.
think probably more so for multifamily home locations sometimes.
Is that probably what you'd say as well for what your team runs into?
Yeah, it's definitely interesting.
think, especially as you start getting into like buildings that were built before the eighties, it becomes a challenge.
I would say between the load share software out there.
That really also does help quite a bit.
And that just because if you say you have, you know, six cars on the charger and they all have to load share and some capacity, you can still, they can all charge within the eight
hour timeframe and still get full at the end.
It doesn't really matter.
to them whether they charged at 2 a.m.
or at midnight.
So I think that technology is really interesting.
And so think as we see battery prices go down, there'll be more of a demand of how can we make the financials pencil with battery technology.
It is not there yet.
Anyone that says otherwise is, it does not pencil.
But as we see those prices go down, I think it'll be interesting to start uh using batteries on projects.
Yeah, one other thing you kind of mentioned was like when you were looking at some of these models that you present to clients, you're talking about, well, we can safely say
there's 10 % probably adoption, but we're going to go with 5 % on the safe side for what we should do for this implementation at the site.
Does your team kind of like when you're looking at the financial model of it, is it with the idea to expand, is that built into a lot of these financial models or to like almost
kind of future proof.
mean, it's interesting when you talk also about site sharing, cause that does kind of get into, or, the power sharing over time that kind of gets into a little bit of that.
I'm just kind of curious how that plays into, um, maybe the site selection for your team.
Yeah.
Um, we definitely look at expansion.
think expansion is really, so there's like somewhere of a balance of like, if I build say, well, just like, say I build four chargers today, but then I have to go back and build
four more in two years.
Then like, that was not a great use of resources because we could have built it for a smaller price that we built at the beginning.
Um, so, but then say I build.
You know, say I build 12 today and then I don't have to go back and build more chargers until, you know, you're six or seven.
Um, and also my breakeven point is then surpassed my cost of capital about there's like the financial piece to it is ultimately like, it is not, I just don't think it's like
private equity being stingy.
It's very much, it is a risky, it is a risk to say how many do you need today?
And then how much will the technology evolve?
what does adoption really look like?
So it's like trying to make a safe estimate of what can we say is conservative enough that like I can give my investors their money back while also saying, how can I provide the
best amenity possible to residents um and then be able to go back and build more if demand uh hits?
So we also cap all of our models at 30 % utilization.
And that's really where we find the best uh resident experience.
So we're also only happy if
Like if a building's getting a bad Google reveal because the EV charges are always full, then like that is someone that does not want to do business with us in the long term.
And we assign very long partnerships with clients.
So it's also finding the right balance of making it fair to the resident while also making sure that everyone else is secure.
Otherwise we ended up with stranded assets or like EV companies go under too often right now.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I think what's funny, mean, when you were saying earlier kind of around gambling and I guess the old saying that investment is kind of like legalized gambling, but there is also
that point where you do have to kind of go through those variables and make sure it kind of works for everyone.
Cause I think unfortunately there have been so many of the negative experiences and even publicity around stranded assets.
and whether it be they're broken, they're not working, they're too expensive, all this.
And I think this is why it's really interesting to have you and your team on to kind of talk about this because there's so many variables that go into a site selection and site
design in the background that just doesn't register or in the moment kind of click with the EV driver and especially moving forward why it's so important to make sure that these
sites are uh just essentially reliable first.
and then trying to figure out that long-term strategy of making sure that they have the right site number, the right utilization and all of that.
I guess to kind of go a little from that, we've talked about, obviously pretty in-depth about how it works on the backend.
I mean, for the average EV driver, is it going to be...
They could go to one site and expect what would be a 3V infrastructure site to have essentially a different CPO or vendor uh
that they would plug in and then they go to another three V infrastructure site.
It seems likely that they're actually going to use another CPO there.
I mean, as far as the normal EV driver, three V infrastructure is really doing all this and making this help, help them in the background.
Or are there any things that an average EV driver might engage or realize is three V technology or investment without uh knowing it a day to day, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
Um, I mean, my goal is for drivers to never contact us.
And that is because we were normal business hours.
So like, if you have a problem outside of those hours, then like we cannot help and would not have the to go into the charger and say what fault code it is, et cetera.
Um, and that is why we are trying.
So we are trying to stay in our lane because there are incredible, incredible softwares, incredible companies out there that there's no.
there is no reason that we should be recreating the wheel on it.
So I hope that they don't interact with us, but I would say, you know, if you had a true, yeah, if you had a true EV nerd, yeah, but I think like EV nerds are EV nerds, which are
the best while also being extremely, like they are what they are.
But nonetheless, if you can figure out which, you know, properties we work with, then hopefully we will become known as the most, you know.
a reliable network and that if you live in a building with a 3B infrastructure charger, uh financed by 3B, then it's reliable and it'll be up.
um And hopefully we can have that branding.
oh
speaks to me on a lot of levels, not just as an EV driver, but also kind of from coming from a background and kind of the tech account management space.
If you've done the job right, they shouldn't have to call you.
And obviously when things do go wrong, as long as you have the right systems in place, a lot of this should solve itself or happen before the customer even recognizes it.
So I think as silly as it kind of sounds or funny as it might sound to people, like the fact that no one is calling you is the ideal.
ah goal to have and kind of strategy to make sure you're helping to ensure that there is this high level of reliability and a good site experience for the user.
So.
Yeah, it's been interesting too of just like adding data and process to this space is like, some of it seems so easy, but it's just, is putting data by site and you know, and
tracking it in a centralized way is, is we are setting ourselves up for like long term and also hyperscale.
So hopefully that'll pay off.
No, and I think it's definitely a strategy that makes it much more proactive versus I think a lot of players in the space, whether it be due to lack of technology in place,
being more reactive and creating these bad experiences that also kind of make the driver feel helpless, uh as opposed to now moving to more of a technology first proactive
experience to it where things get solved before the driver and realize there was ever an issue with the site.
uh Now, can I take a step back from the perspective of the site owner?
Who kind of, do they just work with you directly or how, who kind of, pays for what if I was a site owner?
I'm kind of curious of are you the single point of contact or is it kind of you help kind of get the people together almost as like a project manager versus maybe the point of
contact.
Yeah, so we, so we normally work with property portfolio owners.
So say you're like you own a hundred properties, let's say, um we will work with you that probably the legal piece is signed through you.
But then if you say you own a hundred properties, you're probably divided into regions or something that then you have your regional asset management teams.
But also we have found that real estate groups are structured in very unique ways and there is very little.
Um, there's very little like similarities between the different ones, but nonetheless, um, and so then they, uh, we work with them of like, whether they're regional, um, or not, but
nonetheless, so from there you'll, so the property owner doesn't pay any money.
So as, uh, you know, an owner of hundred properties, you don't pay anything.
We're providing the amenity.
We put up all the capex and we take care of all the op ex and then we reimburse you for your energy.
Um, and then once we get to a certain return point.
then we'll start profit sharing with you.
um And then for the installation process, we'll work with most likely the regional managers ah to coordinate with the property managers to do the site walks, do the
installation and things of that nature, get the site plans, et cetera.
But so we really try to take it as much as we can off of our clients' plates.
But there's also like checks and balances to say like, we're not going to just.
walk the site, decide where the chargers are going to go, and then chargers show up at your doorstep in six months.
We're at least going to ask to make sure you're cool with making sure we put them there.
So you sign off on that, and then sign off on the legal and things like that.
if there's a hiccup or something, then we'll coordinate.
So we try to take it as hands-off as possible, but still uh check in to make sure we're all on the same page.
That sounds good.
And I realize every project can have its own kind of unique challenges, but is there an average or at least kind of a goal as to what you shoot for when it comes to like that
profit share or like one, I guess the actual site execution from like start to finish and then actually having a users charge at the site.
And then two, like if I, if someone is listening to us, a uh person that has a lot of real estate properties, like what usually are you kind of shooting for, for the profit sharing?
return as far as a site going alive.
classic answer, but it really depends.
It depends what kind of site site, what the portfolio is.
Um, we really like as many sites under exclusivity as possible.
Um, just because what we've also learned and I consider this like wave two of EV charging and we get to learn from wave one and wave one, we very much learned that,
the return on investment by salespeople does not work.
We have learned that from every legacy chart like charging company that a large sales force and one site and how much it takes to knock down to take one or two sites is really,
really hard.
And that's why I actually think condos, any buildings with HOAs.
are going to be actually like the farthest behind as it relates to EV charging uh as far as where people live in the US.
And that is just purely from the amount of time it takes for one salesperson to go to an HOA meeting or to like approve a budget to then get the EPC partner to rework it.
There's just not enough margin in the level two space.
And to pretend that there it's anything otherwise, I think is setting people up for failure.
So I think that really
us all to say working with portfolios can increase the profit share we can offer.
No, that makes a lot of sense.
And I guess that's a good way to think of it too, especially from the side of the condo and HOA realm, unfortunately, being some of the unintentional laggards, I guess, for at
least getting those sorts of implementations between not only the scale of that kind of site design, but also just the cost involved for some of the upgrades, especially if it's
an older location and older HOA.
One of the things that you were alluding to that I do think is really interesting, it's been
something we've talked to with a lot of other guests looking at as you can put a wave one versus wave two of EV charging.
And I mean, I, I, I can kind of think back to like charging back in like 2011, 2012, maybe we're even on like wave three or four in some ways, but I'm kind of curious from your
standpoint, especially from the financial modeling and kind of like the investment side of it, what are some, are there any things you can kind of share as to what are
those lessons learned from kind of like the wave one and previous uh companies in the charging space and what your team's really using to make sure that you are executing
correctly and kind of doing things differently to essentially make it the best for your team and investors.
Yeah, the list is really long, but I would say a couple that come to mind that I think are just not repeated as often.
think one construction partners that understand telecom and understand networking signals is like actually extremely important.
Like, yes, building a level two charger for the electrical side is as hard as building a new laundry port, which is like
not that difficult as it relates to an electrician.
um But the telecom and the signal piece is actually much more difficult.
So finding someone that can do both is uh really important in vetting partners.
And also I would say one of the things that we really work on is providing uh projects at scale to our partners.
The margins on these projects, just as the revenue is tight, like also building them.
is also tight.
So the only way it makes sense for also our construction partners is if we give them bulk projects.
So we try and be fair in that capacity.
And then I think I already talked about the economics and then that you have to account for O and more O than you expect.
And then it'll be more than that.
and anyone that says otherwise is also incorrect that I think, but I feel like that's, that's one that anyone would say, but I think the networking one is interesting.
Yeah, I guess to go a little deeper in that, is that due to networking needs for payment processing, for the communication between the cart, or what exactly, is it just all of it
that it kind of needs for the charge to be effective?
For the key to the charger online.
like if you are working off a stem in your charger, if it's say, if it's not a universal SIM, so it doesn't flip between different service providers, then if Verizon stays down,
then like the chargers down.
Um, and so one you meet using universal SIMs, but then we had a site that was next to an airport.
And so one charger is facing this way.
One charger is facing that way.
One charger could not stay online.
And the other one was just fine.
from disruption from the airport.
So then if you're connecting to like a router or something, then it really like where you put the router, where and all the networking equipment.
So um networking and the software piece is really the piece that we're seeing in addition to economics of charging sites.
call it definitely the second most important thing is definitely the networking piece to make sure they stay online.
And then kind of looking at the O about it, what has really stood out to you with kind of this wave or areas that at least you've been able, your team's been able to optimize with
them.
Um, you'll have to have a software provider that can remote reset them without having to do breaker flips that have diagnostics in the different parts of the charger that can
report on them in a very reliable way that you can see it in a UI and a dashboard that makes sense.
Um, to cut down on truck rolls is the goal.
And that is because you make about $2,000 in profit off a charger when it's about 20 to 25 % utilization, um, at a 20 cent margin, which is what we model.
Um,
So if you're making $2,000 in a year and it costs me $300 to roll a truck to go fix something, that payback period starts getting pushed out until like year seven or eight.
So it's again, not us being unfair.
It's just trying to really use the software capabilities to be able to reset things remotely really does make a meaningful impact of making sure these charges are up and also
reliably maintained.
Yeah, and with that is that what is kind of like the average because we've definitely heard from people on the podcast and obviously once you have the actual Copper in the
ground a lot of these other things you can replace the chart you can do some of this maintenance but um Some people say like the main charger can last anywhere from five to
fifteen years I mean, I'm kind of curious like with your models.
What do you assume?
Do you assume like okay, you're gonna make the the idea is like two thousand per charger and this is
over a 10 year period or what is kind of usually the timeline that your team shooting for?
Um, yeah, we do 12 year contracts normally, but some are 10.
Um, but yeah, the depreciation of the actual charger.
So if you put a, if you put a chart, a level two charger in the ground, um, 80 % of the cost is from labor and pulling conduit in.
So the actual charger is not the piece that's expensive.
Um, so that's also what really affects depreciation value and also really affects, um,
basically the floor of the investment.
basically saying that, the project needs to be ripped out, the only thing you can really take is the charger and the charger is worth, is only 20 % of the project.
So that's another reason it's just an investing class that is really difficult.
um But so it depends if you look at our tax depreciation or our life of the asset or our O and then we run a couple of different scenarios and that's really just out of, you know,
we.
We really care.
So somewhere between five to eight years is what we normally.
Gotcha.
And then kind of looking at that, are there different models or like when you talk about these kind of different lifespans, is it usually just dependent on the site or will there
if you're assuming it's a hospital, I guess to go back to that example, you're expecting that to either have a shorter or a longer.
I guess what I'm trying to ask is I'm curious if there's any industries you see an impact on what might have a shorter or longer life cycle or is it purely just dependent on the
site?
um So we use one word nerds and we're data nerds and also financial nerds.
So we, we run a million different scenarios and that's really just because there is a reason that there is not a huge three V competitor.
And that was because of the risky business.
And so to do that, that is modeling on top of modeling and re forecasting off of re forecasting.
um And that, so I would say from asset classes for our multifamily, that model is like very baked.
So we are launching as a service model, which is basically saying that we are not taking utilization risk, but you want chargers at your property and you don't want to put up the
catbacks to be able to build them, then we will build them and then you just pay us a monthly fee for it's like an infrastructure as a service product.
There's a number of them out in the market right now, but we really just want to be a financing partner.
For those, we do model a more conservative maintenance and that's just because the risk is a little bit different.
But so we use the same underwriting assumptions and then also jack up, you know, all of to make it the most conservative model lover and then also get a little bit crazy and make it
and make it, you know, like, what if this happened?
Then we also like to look at the upside.
But yeah, we run a lot of scenarios.
Well, and that's kind of interesting.
And that's obviously great to hear for what we've seen in the industry and looking at the infrastructure as a service.
When you present what 3V does, what are, guess maybe I'm trying to think of like, what would be other popular ones?
I mean, you talk about telecom.
I could see that being kind of one or maybe, actually it's pretty different, but I'm even thinking like commercial solar installations, obviously different market and different
buyer.
But I'm kind of curious of what...
attracted and what made, um, try, especially with the focus on level two charter, what really make that stand out to you and kind of was one of the reasons to focus on that as
the service, uh, versus others, count the space.
Like you're saying, you're kind of the only, there aren't many competitors in it and there's obviously a need for what your team does.
I'm just kind of curious how you got to that or what was, was there ever kind of a light bulb moment?
It's like, okay, this is how we need to apply these resources and this kind of
either business or financial model to really help with not only just EV charging, but actually have a solid business case for it.
Yeah.
Well, I was working in a different company before 3V and was working on level two charging uh and multifamily.
And that's also where I worked with my co-founder Bin was working at Loop Charging Software.
And he did call me one day and he was like, what if you could build a business anywhere and like in this realm, like what would it be?
And I was like, it's exactly this, but with more capital.
And he was like, all right.
And then a couple of months later I called him and I was like, do you want to go raise capital and do that?
um And yeah.
And he was like, call you back in 24 hours and I'll let you know.
And he called me three hours later and was like, yeah, let's do it.
and then we found our investors Greenbacker Capital.
They had been looking at the level two space for a long time.
So also when we took our assumptions and aligned it with their assumptions, they're very, very similar.
So it did allow us to close within two months of meeting them.
um And we were also the earliest investment they've ever made.
So it was really just trying to come up with a name and everything that goes with uh building the company.
No, that's great.
guess, obviously, we've been really focused on the financial and kind of the creation of the business, but kind of like looking forward.
Obviously, you're scaling and you're kind of taking more of these sites.
But where do you see kind of 3V going and kind of like any opportunities for those that are listening to this that might be thinking about how to either reach out to you to work
or suggest it to others in the space?
Yeah.
Um, we plan on owning thousands of sites of, of level two chargers nationwide.
Uh, I would say it's like, so we're a year old, about last week.
So we, and as construction cycles go, I like wish I could sit here and be like, we now have a thousand chargers live, but that's not how construction cycles go.
But we do have about.
Yeah.
We have about 200 sites in flight right now.
and then we'll be adding another.
like 250 here in the next two months.
we'll have, hopefully this time next year, I can talk to you and tell you about all the charges we have live.
so it just takes time to build them.
So right now once, and then once we have that, I think it really goes into also acquisition phases.
Uh, I think that the market will be ripe with, uh, with projects that have, you know, infrastructure that's been built out, but needs to be, um, you know, refinanced and, know,
with cash put into it and make them, make them well oiled.
So.
It's really to build chargers and luckily but unluckily, the gap is very, large.
So um we have lot of work to do.
Yeah, actually that's kind interesting what you mean about the acquisition for like existing sites.
Can you kind of walk through, I think that's really great framing kind of context for being a year old.
And obviously I think a lot of people listening understand that as much as we'd like it to change the reality of most of these EV construction projects, it has a pretty long time
construction cycle.
But looking forward, what, uh
Maybe it is a little early, what are you kind of looking for as like these new sites to kind of go in and maybe either not necessarily new sites, but existing sites and find
those opportunities to probably help with that or kind of grow those opportunities.
even to make the broken charges work.
a lot of our clients have, you know, portfolios of, you know, say 100 properties, they probably have 15 sites that have charges at them, whether they know it or not.
They will they normally probably have like 15 charge like sites that they know about and then five more that they didn't know about that will like see on site walks.
But they're really just trying to get out of it.
Like they these property managers or property owners are very tired of hearing.
complaints and then not be able to get customer service or anything to service them.
So I think that, you know, we'll continue to see that in the market and be able to truly, hopefully, hopefully like create more reliability of any stranded assets out there.
Well, and that sounds kind of like what we're talking about of like the wave one experience and lessons learned going to this wave two.
Are you seeing with most of those, especially when they find out these extra ones that are already live, but they may not know about, are they usually with multiple different
vendors and providers?
Cause it seems like that's what I've kind of anecdotally seen is especially with some of these larger, whether it be even hotel groups or others that have multiple locations,
they're now kind of
realizing this isn't like an HVAC unit or something that you install at once.
And then you have maybe a local guy come work on in 15 years at that scale.
do start needing to have like a pretty strong one source of truth or one point to kind of make sure that these sites work moving forward together instead of when they did this,
like, we don't know if UVs are even going to be that big of a thing.
So it might be, might've been, um, subbed out to quite a few different companies and there isn't really a cohesive strategy or at least
not a cohesive strategy at the time when these were put in.
Is that kind of what you're seeing as well with a lot of these customers?
Yeah, we're seeing a couple of things I would say.
is also these brands have like signed agreements with software providers.
Most of these brands don't own the buildings that they operate their franchises in.
So therefore they do not have the ability to build charters at those locations.
I'll use hotels as an example.
Hotels are largely owned by like
one person that owns maybe three or four buildings, that is a very, very also hard sales cycle.
So going back to the CAC and like being able to do acquisition of those sites, it's just gonna be an uphill battle to solve, which is why we really wanna pair our as a service
offering with any software that we, is one of our preferred vendors to basically say like, we will finance it.
We just need you guys to go sell it because you guys already have a sales team and we,
we do enterprise sales for other types of properties.
So I think that will be a really interesting opportunity.
And then, yeah, I feel like they're just, the market used to also tell property owners that this was a huge money driver.
If you did this, then you would make, you know, buckets of money.
That is not true.
It is a headache.
is only interesting at thousands of properties.
Even if you own 300 properties, like having a full-time head count, that's what you would need as well to like,
deploy at 300 sites um that you don't get your ROI or you break even.
um So it's really trying to, so we've also been meeting with new clients or even old clients that became, that are becoming new clients that are like, yeah, like this actually
doesn't make any sense for us to continue to do.
We should outsource this and move on with our lives basically.
So, you know, that's, that's really interesting thing.
You kind of bring up the kind of the conversation of maybe obviously salespeople came through and we're kind of promising this is what the outcome is, or this is what you're
going actually see.
And now as we've gone into this wave to reality has kind of set in, there's a need, there's an interest, but what was the position originally is just not following through.
We talk about this a lot on this podcast, kind of like around fast charting and level three and
You're seeing that obviously with more of the traditional, even gas companies and the loves and the travel centers of America coming in.
They already have what makes the money, which is not gas.
It's all these other amenities that they sell.
Is that similar to what you see in the level two space?
what is the business model um from a
kind of a secondary value or I guess if that's making sense, cause obviously there's, there's kind of a need with a DC faster and you go in there, you get your stuff, you use
the bathroom, maybe you buy a bottle of water and you go in or you go somewhere else.
And obviously, especially with DC fast churning, there isn't going to be as much, uh, or at least not, um, at the same place, kind of that repeat business.
Cause people are usually traveling.
It's not like they're going to use it unless, I mean, there's some cases where people can't charge at home, but
I think, especially when we're talking about level two and just like looking forward, it's probably going to move more and more towards level two.
there any like strong, um, situations where you can get those kinds of quick secondary sales benefits or is it best to kind of look at it as well?
We've kind of talked about a little bit or alluded to, which is this is somewhere somebody works and this is kind of like a benefit of either working there or having an apartment.
You can charge your EV there.
What, are you kind of seeing with
any of those models that actually work or has a strong benefit for it.
Yeah.
Um, I would say it's so from an apartment building perspective, uh, it would be like, would you ever move to an apartment building that doesn't have wifi?
Like today?
No.
15 years ago, like wouldn't even think about it.
Um, or however many years ago, mean, 25, whatever it is.
Um, then it's just, it's becoming an amenity that people expect.
Like what?
32 % of renters, uh, are looking for it as of the last like gray star.
survey because even if people don't have an EV today, they're still asking about it because they're considering it in the future.
So it's really building out that amenity to make sure that you can keep captured client customers and then also retain them, especially and beat out the competition as it relates
to retention because it's about $10,000 if you have a turnover in a resident.
So really trying to cut down on those costs because vacancy is something that multifamily cares a lot about.
Um, and then as far as additional revenue streams, we are, we, we're, we've looked at a couple different things.
would say, what one that I don't think works well, but we spent a lot of time on, especially at my last, at my last job was ad ad revenue.
So there was a belief and granted, I'm sure at pencils in some places, but doing a large scale.
investment to it is really difficult.
um And that's for a number of reasons.
One, permitting a large screen on a charger is actually like, if it's too close to a road, you can't get a permit.
and then that also, but that also is where you get the most eyes.
So then you get the most ad dollars.
So it's almost, it's very, very hard to build those projects in the first place.
And then two, the additional cost of the screen and the insurance and the extra O for if anyone ever breaks that screen.
actually is very hard to pencil with the ad rev dollars that come in from that screen.
So that model, it's also really hard.
And then also convincing infrastructure investors that MarTech, so marketing technology is interesting, is something that they deal with PPAs.
They don't deal um with advertising.
So that was also really interesting.
Well, and that I've always found that style of advertising to be really interesting because like when you look at a marketing technology, traditionally there's, or at least
when you get to like the mobile or someone, there's, there's ways you can kind of connect the dots.
And then this really is kind of more on the ad tech side where I don't know.
I, I it's, you might actually be the first person that's brought that up on our show, but it's something I've always kind of anecdotally struggled to understand the business model
with as to what that.
It seems it's like one of those.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Right?
It does not pencil very well, especially at scale.
And then I do think it goes back to like sustainable infrastructure is at an inflection point.
You can't talk about infrastructure without talking about technology.
Technology risk is something infrastructure investors have never had to handle.
And then if you add in any other industry that they also haven't touched, like infrastructure investors are the most risk adverse group of people.
Yeah.
if you add in, know, add tech in there, it's like.
it gets it gets into so many of the things that there's already struggles around like what we were talking about earlier around making sure there's even a cellular or strong
internet connection.
So if you're trying to switch out what ad you're running on this screen and you don't have that in a reliable way, you can't quite know if even the chargers down or all these other
just kind of variables that start kicking in with it.
No.
Yeah.
I haven't looked at it in like a year or something.
They still make like, they still made like $3 million last year on ad revenue.
like, it's not a it's not a not model.
It's just like a very hard model.
Yeah, but weren't they also acquired by BP?
So I mean, for BP, that kind of amount of revenue is like a rounding error of a rounding error.
I mean, there's it is.
why should they still operate as their own like PNL?
I don't know.
Anyways,
That could be its own podcast talking about the financial model for that.
But no, I really appreciate that Aubrey.
That's really interesting.
And it's been really fun to talk with you about this stuff.
I realize we're kind of coming up on the Navarra a lot of time, but for people who are interested in kind of learning more, can you share with us what's the best way to get a
hold of you and also just kind of 3V infrastructure to ask more questions and kind of learn about what your team's working on uh moving forward.
Yeah, definitely.
3binfrastructure.com.
The three is a backwards E.
So that's how we count the name.
Some people don't see that, but nonetheless.
um And LinkedIn, we're very active on.
But yeah, and so I would say to any listener that lives in a multifamily building or has friends that live in a multifamily building, I would say the number one way that we get
property owners to pay attention to let us build charges of their property is through residents or future residents asking for that amenity.
And it really does drive the market and really does get them to move faster.
The number one thing that keeps us from building these things is just how quickly the legal reviews can move.
um And that is controllable by how much they're prioritizing it.
So that would be the biggest ask for any listener.
Great.
Thank you so much for coming on today, Aubrey.
We'll have to have you on again soon.
Thanks, Chase.
Thank you for joining us today on Grid Connections
And a huge thank you to our guest, Aubrey Gunnell, CEO of 3V Infrastructure for sharing her invaluable expertise on building scalable data-driven EV infrastructure.
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