249: Making More Reliable EV Chargers - Soheil Akbari Interview

https://youtu.be/hIZbGfNbKpM

Matt sat down with Soheil Akbari, CEO of Teal EV, to talk about the challenges and innovations in EV charging. From rugged, cold-weather-ready chargers to simplifying the user experience, Teal is rethinking what reliability and affordability mean in this space. Soheil’s insights into building better charging infrastructure are a must-listen for anyone curious about the future of electrification.

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Matt Ferrell

Host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, Still TBD, and Trek in Time podcasts

Host

Sean Ferrell

Co-host of Still TBD and Trek in Time Podcasts

What is Still To Be Determined?

Join Matt Ferrell from the YouTube Channel, Undecided, and his brother Sean Ferrell as they discuss electric vehicles, renewable energy, smart technologies, and how they impact our lives. Still TBD continues the conversation from the Undecided YouTube channel.

Hey everybody, welcome to Still to be Determined. This week on Still to be Determined, we're talking about EV charging, but before we get into that I'm Sean Ferrell, I'm a writer, I write some sci fi, I write some stuff for kids. With me as always is my brother Matt, he is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell.

And Matt, how was your New Year's?

The reason I'm laughing at everybody is because Sean and I are recording this like a couple of weeks ahead. We're not even at Christmas yet, so this is not coming out until January. So I think my New Year's went great. That's very confusing.

If that's true, then why am I already drunk?

Oh, Sean. So, as Matt just said, we're recording this a little bit ahead of time, but I know that Matt and I both genuinely hope that everybody's end of 2024 has gone well, and their entry into 2025 has been safe and happy. And that we are on the path to, in whatever circumstance we're in, making 2025 as good a year for ourselves and those around us as possible.

So best wishes from us to all of you, and to kind of pull in what normally sits at the end of the episode and pull it into the beginning. Thank you to all of you for your support throughout the past year and for the now, I don't even know how many years we've been doing this, your support of this channel and giving Matt and me a platform to talk about things that we both care about, to talk about things in a format that pulls all of you into the conversation.

Matt and I really, really enjoy that. And we appreciate all of your support. So best wishes for a good year and thank you for the previous one. And we're looking forward to doing many, many more of these. So on now to this episode, Matt recently had an opportunity to sit down with Soheil Akbari. He is the CEO of Teal EV and they were talking about the challenges and innovations around EV charging.

They are, of course an issue and doctor, is it Dr. Akbari, Mr. Akbari is located in Canada. So you're talking about EV charging, you're talking in Canada, you're talking about some rugged cold weather needs around charging. And so that's a part of this conversation. Teal is rethinking what reliability and affordability mean when it comes to EV charging and their insights into building a better charging infrastructure are going to be an interesting conversation for everybody to take a, take a listen to. So on now to Matt's conversation with Soheil Akbari.

So thanks for joining me, Soheil. I met you at Everything Electric in Vancouver and was really blown away by what you're doing. So before we get into what you're doing, Why don't you just kind of introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers as to who you are and what you do.

Yeah.

I'm, my name is Soheil Akbari. I'm chief executive officer at a company called Teal. Teal made EV fast charging solutions where you know, both public and, uh, fleet sector, we're excited to, to be in this, this, this space. I think there's a, it needs a lot of love. There's been a lot of, you know, products out there that just haven't performed and, you know, the industry is, uh, is known with a lot of, uh, reliability concerns.

So the passion of the company is to really make, uh, electrification, you know, um, affordable and reliable.

It's precisely why I wanted to talk to you because it's like when I was, saw you at Everything Electric, you had a couple of units on display and you were showing me through all the intricacies of like what you guys put together for it.

Like, so what is the background of what inspired you? To start doing Teal, like, what was the inspiration behind it?

Yeah, it's a good question, actually. I was born and raised, um, I'm a Kurdish Iranian, so born in the west part of Iran and below that, eight years of war with Iraq. So, um, growing up, I've seen a few things, uh, but in the family of, uh, automotive enthusiasts, so I was always a fan of vehicles.

I did mechanical engineering, uh, Being so interested in cars and, um, uh, came to Canada in 2012, did a master's here at University of Saskatchewan, where I'm exactly living now, and, uh, was always passionate with vehicles. When I graduated, I started an automotive repair shop. So I did close to like 2000, you know, kind of repairs on vehicles.

I work on a lot of Europeans, um, you know, uh, Japanese local vehicles. So seeing, uh, you know, all the work of Germans and Japanese and Americans Learned a lot from them, uh, quite passionate, it was quite passionate to do something that's really beyond the local business. So I wanted to do something that's scalable and potentially I could, you know, uh, do something that could, people could benefit from what I know and what I could provide.

And, um, from day one that I really touched an electric vehicle. You know, being a car Mechanical Engineer, I realized like really is a time for mechanical systems again, and again, and again, to lose to electric systems. And uh, I was really passionate about something in the EV space. Initially started with developing some medium heavy duty vehicles, pure electrics.

Made very good progress in the technical aspects. But, uh, COVID hit and we, uh, sort of ran out of resources for doing a project that was kind of that capital intensive and you couldn't kind of financially handle it. So, and at the same time, you saw like, well, there is a lot of needs in the market for, Uh, charging, because, um, uh, any, any, any time we reach out to customers, like for selling a medium heavy duty vehicle, they always complain about the chargers and the charging costs.

It's like, well, this is maybe the biggest pain point that needs to be solved. And, um, obviously the market demand for, you know, uh, commercial medium heavy duty vehicles at that time wasn't strong and steel is not strong. Steel is in kind of an expensive market, whereas on the passenger side, that's, uh, You know, the market has really taken off.

So, charging technology between the commercial and passenger vehicles is the same thing. They're same interface and same different power level potentially, but they're essentially the same thing. And, uh, once we realize, you know, how expensive these chargers are and, um, Uh, what kind of liabilities should they have?

Um, we decided to kind of pivot. So all that vehicle technology development, we put on a back burner, obviously still does exist in the company and the IP, and we did some patents and all that. We decided to just kind of pivot to manufacturing the chargers, which was the biggest kind of pain points. And that's what we did, uh, kind of post COVID.

And, um, now now excited to go to market. So it's, um, like a really quick sort of background of how things happen. Yeah. Hopefully I answered your question.

When you were talking to people and you said they were, they had complaints about chargers and the costs. I'm curious, what were some of the biggest complaints around chargers that you were hearing?

Well,

big time is reliability. And, uh, in general, just the industry has gone, um, in a weird way. Like it's, um, lots of these charging stations, uh, you know, you can't, Easily go to, um, like a gas station and kind of pump, uh, like, do we use a pump and I use them, you know, they need, you need to install a mobile app and then an app wants to track you and basically wants, you know, everything on your DNA before you could, you know, charge your vehicle and like, things are complicated and lots of reasons when you like dig into why companies are doing things this way is, you know, sell their stock, the most expensive in the stock market, they have all kinds of reasons of tracking data and all that.

And just at the day, they're really forgetting. About the experience of the end user that might not be the client they sell to. You know, they sell to an enterprise client. You know, our products are obviously B2B. We're not selling to a direct customer typically. But, uh, that end user experience is kind of lost in there.

And, uh, the difficulty of using these products has been definitely one of the pain points for the end users. And for the companies who buy these and install these, definitely, um, the cost and reliability has been a challenge. They've had a Hard time to keep these things in operation. And, uh, we really did a couple of years of really deep dive into what causes those problems.

And with the sort of, uh, you know, back to first principles kind of mindset, uh, try to, you know, provide a solution that kind of addresses those, those challenges. But definitely, definitely reliability and, you know, not being able to use these things easily and maintainability, serviceability, all that has been a really huge, huge hurdle for industry to adopt, adopt a new technology.

The first principles thing is like I mentioned when I saw you and you, you walked me through the internals of all the system and the way you described every component and the care that went into designing it really, to me, showed that first principles thinking. And I was curious if you could kind of walk through how you kind of, like, Okay.

So current EV chargers stink. They're, they're bad. So here's all the problems. What was your, what was the team's thought process as you went in and designing it? Like what were the key aspects of how you went at it, um, to try to improve on those issues?

Well, you know, back to kind of first principles, you know, the electricity from grid should flow and go into these vehicles, right?

That flow requires a certain, you know, circuitry to do that. And, um, obviously there's quite a bit of standards involved for safety that. Uh, you need to, uh, be able to address those requirements to be able to provide a product, uh, in a people of personal, in the hand of a layperson to, to operate such, such a equipment.

So we basically looked at how we could simplify and basically remove, uh, as many parts as possible, not physical parts, but also the code, also anything that, that does something in there to remove as, as many as possible to just make this energy flow happen. While we're, you know, safe and, uh, compliant with the standards and in my opinion, the best parts in these chargers are the parts that don't exist.

It's, uh, the ones that don't exist, they're not gonna break. You don't need to worry about their supply chain, you know, they, there's no interfaces. I, I've always brought this kind of very, um, uh, interesting examples like, look, a hammer is a mechanism with two parts. It has a handle and it has a head. And it's something very simple.

The head is robust as hell and the handle is very robust too, right? Took human probably centuries to figure out, to do it in a way that this head doesn't fall off the handle. Like, it's, it's like, maybe younger kids, they, they don't remember that, but, you know, as a kid when I grew up, especially in a, like a, a poor country, you know, that, that was a big problem.

You never could kick the head on the, on the, you know, and the interfaces are, you know, Absolute demons, you know, and yeah, nowadays we manufacture how is it a composite, uh, hammers, they got composite handles. They, you know, the head don't fall now and I'm the one I'd say like, we're at the Stone Age. We don't have technologies to solve problems and do things.

We do have a lot of tools, but you know, how these tools are, are used in the know how that's required to really, um, uh, make things work. It's very important. Sometimes we forget. As you brought an example, you know, in one of the shows, like, you know, they're running a Chargers on a version of Windows. I mean, that's irresponsible.

That means, like, you know, the development team there, they didn't know any better. You know, the chief engineer that was involved in making those decisions said, like, they didn't know any better. So, why I do this? And, you know, we shouldn't forget how complex of a monster something like Windows is. And, you know, all the reliability concerns and issues that a system like Windows has for that kind of, you know, infrastructure type of equipment, it's, it's not a good selection.

Right. So yeah, really, that's how we kind of looked at it. See, like, let's get rid of any part, any line of code that's really doesn't need to be there and let's get rid of any interfaces as many as possible, so minimize those interfaces and basically develop as much as we can so we have the full control over, over that development and manufacturing. And you know, at times you need to buy something as a component to use, do a really serious due diligence on that component. See like, who else has used it? You know, how reliable the thing has been, how it has performed in similar markets in terms of, you know, climate and temperatures and all that, and really, uh, make decisions that are, uh, well researched.

And I think that was kind of the mentality to really simple, simplify things, and I think that's, that's a key. Uh, and that kind of lesson I learned from my automotive kind of life, you know, the simplest mechanisms were the one that typically work the best.

I love that because it's like here in the States.

I think I said this year when we were together in the States, we have electrify America and other charging networks. And you mentioned some of these are built on windows and they're very complex software, which is prone to bugs and issues. And so you pull up to the charger and it's got the blue screen of death and you can't even use it.

It's just completely out of order. And then on the flip side, you have the Tesla supercharger network. And I was surprised a number of years ago when I learned what was inside those. And it's it was literally just like, of small circuit board, a simple modem, and that was it. And that's part of the reason why the supercharger network has a good reputation of being very robust.

Absolutely. And just always working. And so when you were showing me your stuff, I was kind of like, wow, this is very much like a supercharger. It's like really streamlined. It's like, it only is what it needs to be. And so it's like, it seems like you can put this in a remote area of Canada or wherever, and it's just going to work for time.

But the other thing that you showed me was like the components. You were thinking about ways to make them super easy to take out for like, if it did need service, that somebody could very easily just go up and swap a little part out and put a new part in and it's up and running again as fast as possible.

How much R& D did it take to kind of figure out all those components to get them

just right? Well, it takes a lot of iterations. It's um, you know, I've learned a lot of lessons from the Japanese engineering over the years I worked on cars. The Japanese are my favorite nation in terms of how they do things.

I'm really impressed with their, um, you know, approach toward reliability. You look at their public transportation systems, probably the most reliable and most fascinating in the, in the world. And it is a tough thing to, to, to entertain a public transportation system. It's very difficult. And, uh, they've been able to do an incredible job at it.

And, um, you know, their philosophy is that, you know, design things in a way that they don't fail. But if they fail, make sure they're, they could be repaired quickly and simply and at low cost. These are, uh, three things that they, they always keep in mind. So like, yeah, we, we try our absolute best to make sure things don't fail.

Failures do happen. There's a lot of reasons for something to fail. And once that happened, make sure we could bring it back in service, like, as quick and as cheap as possible. And, uh, that kind of the mentality has been, been there. And, um, uh, it takes a lot. You know, it's, you go through like, you know, we've gone through like, six, seven generations of just a cabinet.

Uh, to test them, you know, under different conditions, you know, we had, uh, this weird test. We were running the power from the charger into a basic water heater that would heat water to 70 degrees. And that hot water, just with some nozzles will, will, you know, shower the, the charger with it, which this, you know, hot, like kind of steaming water is, is pouring on this charger that actually is steaming it itself.

And that would cause the charger to you know, push the fans to the absolute maximum speed because it needed the most air flow to be able to cool itself down. And that was the criteria. We convinced ourselves that due to this fan operations, water is not going to go into these chargers. Because this is the absolute, the hottest and the maximum speed and the worst conditions that could ever happen, which I don't think anywhere in the world that thing could ever happen.

But we tested it with that and made sure. Actually, this thing don't suck water in, which lots of the chargers out there actually have infiltration issues. Water goes in there and causes issues and simple things, or our chargers are 18 inch flood proof. So, if there's 18 inch flood in a parking lot that you walk in, there's no life parts or uninstallable parts on that first 18 inches that impairs the operation of the charger.

So, You know, paying attention to all these details puts you through, you know, a ridiculous number of iterations to be able to address all these things and put it in a package and make it work and make it happen. And, uh, you know, definitely makes the design and development parts a lot more daunting and a lot more challenging.

But, um, at the end of that day, um, you know, it's a, it's a great reward that comes with it because we're confident things are gonna, gonna perform. Obviously, there might be bugs, you know, that we'll figure out and, and solve down the road. That's, uh, kind of impossible too adjust everything 100%, but as long as, you know, there's no major structural issue, there's nothing that really causes, uh, any, any serious problem down the line, then you're able to spell.

It's talking about how much harsh conditions it can take. I know your chargers, what, what are they rated? They're rated down to like negative 40 degrees Celsius. Minus 50. Minus 50.

Yeah. That's kind of insane. Um, yeah, it is minus 58 Fahrenheit. Yeah. It's a pretty intense. Yes.

Okay. And it's meaning

they do cold start in that temperature.

So overnight, you leave it in a chamber that's minus 50 and you cold start them within basically 45 seconds. This thing boots up and is able to push the full power at that temperature with no problem. That's different from just, you know, being in operation and going down to minus 50. Because um, once things operate, start working, they warm up.

So it's different. So this thing, once actually cold starts from the minus 50, it can go down to minus 60, and still stay operational. Because things, it generates a little bit of heat, but, um, It's interesting, when I was doing the test, I personally did the test in the chamber, In that scenario, you know, the exhaust air from, from the power electronics is the hottest air.

It was like minus 22 degrees. That was the exhaust. And that was the hottest? Yeah, it's the hottest spot on that system was minus 22 degrees. And it was just hilarious to watch. But, you know, things Work flawlessly and that's what we wanted to do really is just make sure things work and uh, you know, for an infrastructure piece of equipment, reliability is everything.

Infrastructure has to be reliable and um, uh, that comes first. You know, the look and the features and bells and whistles, I think those are, those are next.

I've seen YouTube videos from other creators out there that have done testing where they take their, you know, EV truck, whether it's a Rivian or whatever it is, to a charger.

I won't name the brand and pulls up and it's like 10 degrees below in Fahrenheit and they plug it in and like nothing is happening, like nothing. It just doesn't work.

We're completely aware of that. Um, really dive into why it doesn't work. And, um, you know, most of it is, um, uh, rush to market.

Unfortunately, it has been one of it. You know, a lot of companies that really has given the industry a really a black eye. In my opinion, they've been a startups that, uh, they raised a lot of money from VCs and then they had to build something and bring it to market to show. You know how they, in the first year, they did the 2X and 3X and whatever the VCs expect and all that.

And they put pressure on their development team and they slap something together and just like throw it in a box and call the charger. And, uh, those things, um, you know, is a nightmare of off the shelf components in the engineering world. You know, off the shelf components, they don't solve your problem.

In fact, they solve the problem of the company who made those components to sell them. They probably wanted to sell those components, and they developed that. And, you know, if you wanna solve your problem, you, they develop your own own systems that, that, that solve that exact problems. You know, an off the shelf component.

If you're lucky, it might work to a certain limit, but at the end, they're not designed to solve your problem, they're solving another company's problem, which that, that problem might not be your problem. And because they're easy, they're available, people tend to use them and all that. And, um, you know, uh, piece these, these components together and obviously.

When you have 7, 8, 9, you know, circuit boards in a charter and each of them has its own firmware and then they're all connected to each other and communicate somehow. Sometimes they don't communicate properly. You know, the error handling of these different codes from different companies, the different subsystems, that subsystems that you purchase and put together becomes an absolute nightmare because nothing is talking to each other anymore properly.

And once things fail, you just don't know where is the source of it because it's not a unified solution and that becomes an absolute kind of nightmare to maintain in the field. And obviously, 6, 7, 8 circuit boards, you know, the interfacing, connections, like I just feel so bad for a technician that, you know.

You know, minus 20 day shows up in front of one of these chargers. I've got to maintain it. Well, I'm going to do, you know, I'm supposed to do this, right. And parts after parts, you're replacing it. Nothing works. And it becomes a total nightmare. That's the challenge really that the industry has been facing.

You know, another part of the industry has been just, you know, not, uh, managing the businesses really well, you know, companies like ChargePoint. I got respect for their products. I mean, product work, uh, the company was really a respectable company. Uh, but on the management side, what they did, you know, raised a lot of money.

They didn't have enough to show for that money. And, uh, you know, it got them to two points of challenges that they, they're right now facing some real, real tough, tough time. Uh, lots of other examples of this industry that why, why things didn't work. Sometimes just the ideas from the beginning was, you know, uh, was not good.

Company like FreeWire, Uh, first time I saw them in, um, uh, the product in, uh, in Golden BC, if I remember correctly, two years ago. And I was shocked. It's like, look, they've put so much of these batteries into a box so they trickle charge it. So when the vehicle comes, they could charge at high speed without having a, you know, high power kind of AC input.

I mean, that might work for the first car. What happens with, what happens with the second car? That company with that idea, they raised nearly 300 million dollars, right? And the execution of the product design was just a total nightmare, in my opinion. And they put this thing in the field and, you know, once everything, after a year or two, started to break down, they couldn't maintain them, they filed for bankruptcy.

With nearly 300 million. A lot of that, unfortunately, is happening in the industry and it's hard to watch, uh, why these things are happening. Yeah, we've taken a very different approach up to this point. We'll bootstrap the company and try to really buy ourselves time to make sure we understand the problems.

Uh, we solve the problems. And We provide a product that we're confident in providing a good warranty on it and make sure the customers could really use it. So basically there's, it

sounds like there's two kinds of basic paths. One path is you're using more off the shelf parts, speed to market, and the other path is it's a little slower to market.

But you're doing something very boutique, tailored to your design, solving your problems, which is going to make it more rock solid and easier to maintain going forward. So it's like you've got these two paths.

Absolutely. That has been the, what we've seen in the industry. Like, I mean, the only company that's really done that, uh, second path has been Tesla and they've done a great job at it.

I think they were an incredible team. They put us, well, we've learned a lot from them on the positive side. We've learned a lot from other companies on the, the negative side, but, um, those are all learnings. And from the, you know, competing in the market perspective also, you know, we see that more and more, you know, often, especially with companies that they are manufacturing hardware and physical products is, uh, you know, they, they need to be more and more vertically integrated.

They need to, uh, do as much as possible in house in terms of not only design, also manufacturing. And in some cases. Uh, even the material, they, they try to be as vertically integrated as possible to be able to control the quality, control the costs and be able to compete in the market. And um, that has been the approach we've, we've taken.

Um, obviously we're not fully, we're both vertically integrated, but we've done, you know, you know, basically anything that's possible and anything that's, you know, smart enough. You know, some components are kind of dumb. Doesn't really matter, but some of the components are like, you know, there's code involved, there's software involved, there's error handling involved.

All those things that, you know, constantly needs to be evolved and developed. Uh, those are all done in house and try to have a, you know, good balance between what to buy and what to build, which majority we, we built. And some of it we really couldn't build, say, you know, there's some thousand volt relays in this systems that they go through a very strict, uh, certification process and, you know, four companies in the world, they're making them, you just might as well buy those, you know, if you're building those, you might, that's a separate company, right? You're not, you're not building the charter, just go build those relays. That's a lot of other things we kind of did in house. And I think then turned out to be very cost effective. Um, point we were in, we could basically sell in the Chinese market and still make a low profit product made in, made in North America, which I think is something remarkable.

I mean, you were, you were, when you were showing me everything inside, you were like, custom design circuit board, check this out. Custom design component here. Chassis, we make this chassis ourselves. It's like, you were going through everything and it's like, you're the master of your own destiny by taking control of all the key components of the system.

Uh, which again, I was very impressed by. It was very Tesla. Like as you're walking me through the whole thing, I'm like, this is, this is very cool. And it's not, it also explains why your cabinets, the right behind you, your cabinets are very small. They're very compact for what they are. And I think part of the reason for that is you've custom designed everything.

So it's like you were able to fit everything into a very small package.

Yeah, absolutely. That was the goal. And, uh, we're happy that, uh, to see like some people really appreciate this, you know, lots of time decision makers that are purchasing things. You know, they're not technical enough to really understand what they're getting into.

And, uh, you see a lot of the sales happen in the market is, is happened that way. That's, you know, ends up with, with, with kind of terrible results, but, um, it's always rewarding to see there's some people out there to, who appreciate, you know, the work you've done and kind of your, your message comes across.

I appreciate that.

Uh, you also, and right behind you, you have, I think the smaller one is the, what, the 30 kilowatt charger. Yes. And then the one directly behind you is the, is the DC one. The,

what is Both of them, all of them are DC. But, um, um, you know, um, the one right behind me is like 320 kilowatts. So it's, um, superchargers.

I put it in perspective, you know, a Tesla supercharger cabinet is 250 kilowatts. So, and this is, you know, in that kind of caliber speeds, it's meant for, you know, beside the highways, you know, supercharging application is not for, you know, everyday kind of use. And, uh, the one very far as like, um, the last unit is, is for bus depots.

It's specially designed for operations in, in bus depots. And again, with that same kind of uh, first principle mindsets, like how we could service bus depot's the best. And we came up with a solution. I think it will be probably the most versatile solution now in the market. And you know, exciting to see, like, there's no North North American player in that market at all.

None. So all the Germans that are, um, basically have almost a hundred percent of that market and, uh, we're going to be the first company in North America that is, um, offering a product for that market. And, um, we're excited to be part of that.

There's another part of your chargers that I was very impressed by; the cable. Because like you go up to a Tesla supercharger and the cables are not that big for like the newer models and that makes the cable lighter to pick up and easier to use.

And then you go up to a Electrify America or I don't know any of these other DC fast charging units. And the hose is like. It looks like it's two inches around and like they weigh a ton and they're super long and you have to almost be work out to be able to pull it away from the machine and try to get it to the charge port.

And if you're somebody who has accessibility issues, like your elderly or in your wheelchair, whatever it is, you're going to have a hard time using some of those chargers and the cable and your chargers, especially for the 300 plus watt version, kilowatt version you've got, it's like, it is super thin, very pliable.

And I'm assuming it's, it's, you, you took that into account of trying to make it as easy to use as possible, as light as weight as you could possibly make it.

For sure. You know, we've, uh, when it comes to cables, it's, uh, uh, it's been a very evolving, uh, you know, uh, segment of this, this industry. Uh, we've, uh, we don't make the cables, we just purchase them, but, um, we've done, you know, a whole study on cables.

Like who's making the best in terms of, you know, uh, quality, reliability, and also, uh, you know, ease of use is very important. And we got this kind of. Uh, within the company standard called a lady in a high heel. So a lady in a very high heel has to be able to comfortably operate these, this, obviously some ladies, you know, drive EVs and they wear high heels, right?

So it should be possible for them to use it. And, uh, let alone, you know, people with accessibility issues and all that, the higher power versions, they use a water cooled cable that's, uh, common industry, the cool thing about water cooled cables is that the mass of the copper is a lot less. And, uh, there's, there's water running on, on these coppers and water is a lot lighter than, than copper from the density perspective and, uh, makes the cables actually a lot lighter than what you expect. You know, pick it up. The thing is like a hose, water hose, that kind of light and feeling has, and very easy to use. And those are really important. You know, the details are everything and, uh, paying attention to those details are super important.

So why do you think some companies are choosing these cables that are just massive?

Well, this is lack of care. You know, it's truly the development teams. The company is, is an orchestra that's not tuned. You know, sales guys pushing for selling something, you know, the engineers, they want to build something, you know, that that's cool, but they didn't have the, the, the time for it. Um, the guys who's the engineering manager pushing them to do something and they don't care, so like get whatever we can get first and just, you know, throw it in there and just call it like it is really, most of it is that, you know, you, you, you, you, you talked about Electrify America.

I mean, these are owned by Volkswagen, you know, Volkswagen started Electrify America. After their kind of mission scandal to kind of prove their, their, you know, it's not that they got no money. God, that they got no talent, no resources. It's like, you know, those guys have no resources than Teal does?

Obviously no, but if it's a small startup company, you know, it's definitely the very opposite. You know, the truth is lack of care. It's just, you know, it's whatever. Just do this and, you know, whatever we do, we're just gonna get a salary and just let's go home and kind of that kind of mentality of really not caring.

And, um, and it comes back and hunts you. Definitely haunts you. Like those, those, um, products, you know, at the show, we're looking at, uh, one product and talk to, talk about brand, but you were thinking you're actually wrestling with this boa snake. And this thing was just, I was, I am like 180 something pounds.

I was struggling and I'm a pretty strong person. I was struggling really handling this, this cable. And, um, You know, that cable is probably 6 to 7000 dollar cable proprietary to that company that actually made that charger because they want to sell that charger and then obviously that cable fails. It's the number one maintenance item in any charger as a cable.

And they want to keep selling these, you know, outrageously expensive cables because that's the only cable that actually goes on that charger. And that charger costed $300, 000, so whoever who bought that charger has to buy that cable, right? And it's just a, you know, treating your client as a victim. That's the kind of the mindset, like, just try to take any dollar we can from them, because they, they're a victim of us, they bought our product, they have to continue doing this.

And that is really long term doesn't work for customers. People wanna See some love, see some something that works, you know, and this has been something we've really paid attention to. Our cables, they cost anywhere from $400 to $800, a full cable, and uh, we were aware that they need to be serviced, so we made them in a way that they can be serviced under five minutes, very simply, and uh, you know, a technology should serve you, you should serve your clients, and what matters long term, how you build, you know, relationship with your customers, and help.

What your brand actually talks, how, how people feel about you. Some great brands we have, you know, lots of respects for in the market, different markets, and you know, people, they have a feeling toward both brands and those are important, right? To build this feeling that, you know, this company is there to serve their clients and their interest is, is to do the, whatever they can for the clients to, to succeed, to enjoy what, what, what service and product they provided.

That has been the passion here.

You've brought up cost a couple of times. I'm curious. How does the finished units like that 30 kilowatt version, the 320 version, like how do they compare cost wise versus a comparable system that might not be from another company?

Well, compared to the European, uh, competitions where costs are around like half of them in terms of, uh, yeah, yeah, roughly half.

Yeah. We still have a very healthy margin to really cost optimizing, you know, very well managed supply chain has helped with that. And, um, we're also the only company that offers three years standard warranty on the chargers, uh, and includes everything, including cables, which, um, most of the chargers, they don't cover the power electronics, but that's what the expensive part is, and the cables also they don't cover, but we cover both, thanks to, you know, our supply chain, they've been able to provide good quality and kind of low cost cables to be able to, uh, you know, pass those savings to the customers.

And at this point being said, I mean, you clearly remember that when these, you know, LaserJet printers came out. They were very expensive. They were extremely expensive, especially the, um, the, um, uh, you know, the, the, the color ones, um, you know, the cost has gone down like, you know, incredibly, um, we're at the point that still the costs are high, uh, being said, I mean, these are not consumer grade products, these are like infrastructure type products, so, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll see some reduction in costs in coming years, but, um, you know, at this point it's, it's considered a fairly high margin product and we, we're, we're I'm more excited to serve the clients than, you know, maximize that margin.

Because, you know, the company is really, is, is all here. We're not, uh, you know, in a lot of VC debt that we have to really show big numbers for and whatnot, so we should, um, you know, uh, kind of follow our passion. That's like, obviously we want to be profitable. Obviously we don't hate money. Right. At the same time, we're able to not host the customer, you know, like if a cable that should cost 400, we don't have to charge $2000, I just find it, you know, kind of irresponsible and bad to people.

And, uh, you know, it's my passion to provide something that's, you know, the client could use, use, use the system. And, you know, uh, in my previous business, obviously it was a local small business, but that word of mouth and, you know, that repeating business that comes back and back, it was incredible. I had zero advertising for anything I did and I had so much business, I didn't know what to do.

And that has been kind of the mentality of, you know, once you put this in client's hand and they see it for themselves that, you know, it's superior thing, they come back and do more business with us. And that, that has been the goal. So who, who,

like you've mentioned that you're kind of a B2B company at this point with these kinds of chargers.

So who is your client base? Like who would typically be coming to you for these? Well,

um, client base are, uh, private fleets. One of our customers that we've had success with, uh, they're operating, you know, a number of EVs for, for their fleets. Most of the chargers are behind the fence. That's, that's one part, you know, we've been working with, uh, grocery chains, hotels, you know, um, we're, we're exploring restaurants, uh, uh, the markets that they want to have these EV chargers for attracting potentially customers.

And, uh, lots of clients also are interested in, you know, uh, the carbon credit parts of it, because, uh, you know, I'm not sure what, what, what the rules in, in the U S looks like, but now in Canada, in certain provinces with, with the provincial and, and, uh, you know, federal carbon taxes, uh, carbon credits, you basically have the electricity free, or even more than that you get in carbon, carbon credits, which, uh, is, is, could be sold in the market.

You know, that also helps with, with their operational costs and, um, corporate branding and all that is kind of important for clients, but currently, you know, Esky Fleets, uh, you know, larger private sector, um, operators, uh, have been most of our clients and now we're tapping into the, uh, transit companies and bus depots mostly that are mandated to, to go electric.

There is, uh, a very clear, uh, justification for these diesel, diesel buses to be replaced with fully battery electric buses. And, uh, that is a market that we're also very passionate about to do some work in that segment.

I mean, here in the U. S., we have the IRA bill that was passed that put a lot of money into trying to expand the EV network here in the US, and there's all these kind of incentives around it. There's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into it, but it's, it's, when I saw you guys, my first thought was, well, first, the NACS standard that finally got adopted here. We finally have a charging standard that everybody's getting behind. Got me excited.

It made me worried. Like, I hope the IRA is like, the money that's going into that system is building out any NACS chargers. And then when I saw your stuff and you were like, Oh, this is much cheaper than a typical thing. I'm like, I would hope we go that route because we could get more chargers for every dollar that's spent.

I'm curious. Are you doing anything here in the US?

Well, we

will

be expanding in the US in 2025. So there's a number of key trade shows want to be in the U. S. and start, you know, uh, building partnerships. Um, we eventually want to be, uh, having a facility for manufacturing in the U. S. to be Buy America. Um, as a part of Buy America, you have to make 100 percent of the enclosure in the US. That is one of the requirements and, uh, also more than 50 percent of the overall uh, product has to be sourced from US, uh, you know, sources. So this is something we would like to, to do, uh, but we're early in the market and we're kind of, um, at this point, mostly, uh, we have some installation in the US already in Texas, but that's not something we have put, you know, all of our focus on.

Next year we'll, we'll be doing that. And, um, we're excited to see, uh, how we could, you know, serve American clients.

This is going to be a question that I know you may not be able to answer because it's Nobody wants to give away what they're going to be doing over the next coming years. But I was curious, do you have a roadmap for kinds of products and how you want to evolve Teal over the next few years?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I can talk a week about that. Is there anything you can kind

of share without giving away trade secrets? Is there anything you can share? No,

no, no. It's, uh, I think it's, um, you know, Uh, we're trying to do the good things and, um, once you do that, you could just, you know, with your cards down, you could play that game because it's, you're playing an honest game.

It just doesn't, doesn't hurt you. Um, but, um, I think in the next few months we'll have the DC Fast Charger product lineup completed. So the R& D team will be basically looking for new products and new projects. At this point, I think, uh, energy storage systems are extremely important and anyone who's in this segment and has the knowledge and expertise, if they're not in that market, they're making a mistake.

Um, we're excited to develop some of that, uh, battery storage systems, um, for different projects and different technologies. We have like a lot of the ingredients from that truck development that I mentioned. We, we do battery packs that are, uh, obviously perform down to minus 40. They go to the vibrations, uh, our design, we pattern the designs too.

They were serviceable down to a cell level. We used kind of large form factor cells, but we designed it in a way that you could disassemble this pack and if there's three cells filled in it you could replace those. And we did a lot of great work in that field. That is existing in the company. So we want to bring that kind of expertise to develop some energy storage systems, um, which there's a huge demand now, you know, drop in price of lithium and how, uh, solar has evolved over the last couple of decades.

I think it's incredible. All these two technology and also wind, wherever available could, could go together and make a really, really big difference in terms of, um, you know, uh, GHG reductions and also really, uh, economically and, and financially. Demand charges are a huge part of, um, loss of, uh, you know, uh, industrial customers.

And this battery pack could handle demand, uh, charges, and could bring, uh, more resilience to the grid with a distributed system. I think, uh, in future we'll see more distributed systems with the advantages they have. And, uh, that is a area that, uh, on the power electronics side and, you know, conversion, all that we have really a lot of expertise because of the chargers and, uh, also on the energy storage source and part in the battery and battery management system, terminal management, uh, with the work we did on the, uh, the trucks, I think we're quite ready for, for that now, I don't know, all the ingredients for it, just get it put together.

It's a very expensive development, um, just a standard called UL 9540, I think if I don't, uh, remember it wrong, but, uh, It's, read the standard, it's just mind blowing. Each of the tests are just like $100, 000 one shot of a test. So they put this battery pack, they build a house around it and set it on fire.

It's just like something ridiculous like that. Sorry. Yeah, it's, you know, read the standard. Is it serious or is this like, well, am I really going to do this? So that's, that's how that, that part of the market is. But, um, you know, um, it's big business too. So, uh, we're really excited to be a part of that. Um, I think that will play a big role in, in, um, uh, our energy sector and needs, uh, needs to grow solutions again, that you can stand behind in terms of warranty, reliability, and, and cost and make it affordable for, um, whoever is part of that. So EV chargers are just

the start, basically.

Yeah. Hopefully. Yeah. Hopefully. You know, it's, um, we're passionate about technology and, uh, bringing it to the market. I think money and kind of financial success falls with good work. Every decision we make is not how we maximize, you know, ROI or how we maximize our sales or profit.

But, um, uh, yeah, definitely charging is, is a part that, um, There's so much to it, and once you get to the very bottom of it, it's time for the next one.

Kind of looking industry wide for EV charging, what's the biggest challenge ahead for the EV charging industry that you think

is out there? Um, I think, uh, the challenge is not on, on the proponent side, it's mostly on the grid side.

These EV chargers are huge loads that the grids are not designed for them. They have to, um, increase the grid capacity. I do not see it as a big challenge as much as, um, lots of the news and media are bringing up is, um, you know, a lot of these news and media are fed by oil and gas and they're running this propaganda.

Oh, like these things are going to break the grid and whatnot. I think that's not the case. If you're a utility company and, you know, your demand is going to go up. For this much for next quite a few years, you know, it's a great news. You got more business, right? Utility companies. I mean, they're connected with bankers.

There's, you know, capital to join this technologies do exist either nuclear or wind, you know, uh, wind, solar batteries or whatnot. Like, I mean, there's, there's a rise of knowledge could be, and, uh, it's a great news. And, um, I think mostly the challenge is how fast, you know, doing utility parts and the energy generation part.

Could, uh, catch up with the demand, uh, that's one part. And the second thing is really, uh, shifting that peak. So if we could, uh, with, you know, battery storage, you know, peak that four, five hours, uh, shift that four or five hours of peak in, in the evenings, uh, and flatten this, this demand kind of curve, uh, then there is, there's a lot of capacity with the same grid.

Because the grid could handle those peaks and our infrastructure, you know, is able to deal with that current peak, but not maybe the future peaks. So if you could, you know, flatten that, you know, demand curve that looks like something that already the system could handle, that might not be even as scary.

So that would be more challenging, but I think the EV charging technologies are slowly, you know, maturing up and should, we should see better products in the market.

Well, taking, we look to the future and I have one question for you about looking back. What's the most rewarding part of your journey with Teal so far?

Every time I

looked at last two years, I feel I'm, I was an idiot. So it's, uh, the learning has been incredible. It's, um, you know, uh, anytime in the last quite a few years that I've been doing Teal. I look back a year or two years ago. It was like, man, what a stupid mistakes you made. It's um, the learning has been, I think the most rewarding part and, um, seeing this, this products in people's hand, using them, I think that's, that's Probably very rewarding.

We would like to see that more and more. We have some installations right now, but it should scale up, right? And again, being able to serve and do something that has an impact, positive impact on everyone's life is probably the most rewarding part, despite feeling an idiot.

On that note, it's kind of related to this. This is like the last question I've got for you, but I like asking this of all the kind of innovators that I've talked to. What advice would you give to somebody, a younger, somebody that wants to get into the renewable energy space, sustainability, they're a mechanical engineer or something like that.

What advice would you give them going into this?

I think maybe I'm a sort of a scary person to answer that kind of question 'cause I, I'm very fearless, so, um, the advice I might give might be a little bit scary, but like my message to them is like, you know, don't be scared. If you want to do something, just go do it.

Life is once you have this one opportunity to do things, you know, at best life is 30, 000 days, right? And 30, 000 is not a big number. It's, you know, it is not a big number. If you know the numbers and math, it's just, you know, you don't have much time. So the time for doing anything is yesterday. Just go do it.

And don't be afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes are probably the only way of learning things. Yeah. It's the only solid way of learning things. That, uh, you know, I'm not talking about things that you could learn from a textbook or things that are taught in a university. Those, there's a lot better way of doing that, you know, at universities and whatnot.

But real world stuff, lots of the time, it's just the only way of learning them. It's just doing them and doing them partially right and partially wrong and just learning from your mistakes. Obviously, you know, repeating your mistakes, same mistake is not a, not a good thing. But. Don't be afraid of making mistakes, just do things and move forward with life.

It's, uh, don't let life to time you out. You know, especially when you're young, you could pick up things quick, quickly. You could learn faster. You're a lot more resilient, you know, as you age. That's not the case. You know, I'm, yesterday I turned 39. And man, I can't learn as fast as when I was 22 or 18. It's, you know, it's just can't pick up things as fast.

So, you know, really understand that those years of being young is very valuable. And if you want to do something that's beyond mediocre, You don't have much time, just go do it and, um, pay the fees for it. I mean, it's sometimes going to be painful, it's going to be, uh, difficult. It's going to be nights and nights being up and being challenging, but if you're really driven by it and you care about it, then you want to do it.

That's a

really good piece of advice. So is there anything we haven't touched on that you'd want to touch on before we wrap up?

I really enjoyed the questions you brought up. I came to this meeting, uh, kind of podcast, 100 percent prepared. So I was hoping for just a natural chat that we did. So, um, and, uh, yeah, I think it turned out great.

I really don't know. Top of my mind, I didn't have anything. I think your questions were really, really nice.

Again, thank you so much for your time. I, I, I loved meeting you in Vancouver. Um, I'm really inspired by what you guys are doing and I'm so glad you took the time to talk to me now.

Yeah, likewise, uh, I have been a huge fan of what you and your team are providing.

Um, you know, there's a lot of YouTube content. It's, uh, someone is showing off and just hyping something and just like there's no real solid material to it. But, uh, every single of your videos I watch is, um, well researched, really well understood, and well communicated with very crisp content that, um, you know, helps people making decisions.

The whole, even the names of, you know, Undecided, the Tubi's German, just like everything, like kind of matches, right? It feels like our chargers when I look at it. I really, really, yeah, really, really, you know, it just relate to that content. And, um, uh, I think, uh, With all the work you and your team are putting into this content, you know, watching things that is just so nice and it just flows so easy might sound very natural.

Once you want to do that, you actually figure out how difficult it is. Doing things that are streamlined and natural is very, very difficult to put all that content together. I really appreciate the fact that you're, you know, putting all the effort to, you know, uh, give the best out of the time that people spend on, on this content, providing a segment of education that, uh, universities don't.

Industries don't, you know, industries, it was, you know, pretending that what we got is the best and you got to buy our solution. That's what it is. Universities are just way behind in every aspect. There's not talk about them. And, you know, uh, And then comes guys like you that, you know, you are, you know, more between everything and understand, you know, all that and provide that content that's real and is well researched and, uh, highly valuable to me.

I've been learning a lot from what you provided. Keep doing that.

I'm trying. I'm trying. Yeah, no, it's a good job. You keep doing what you're doing too. You're, you're building a better world and I'm just talking about that. Well, that's, that's great, you know, like,

The world needs both. We need builders, we need politicians, we need people to bring, uh, you know, awareness.

Like, those all really matter. Those all, you know, different elements of, uh, moving toward the same goal, that's sustainability. I'm extremely excited about sustainability in general. I think in North America, we're really behind. Hopefully, uh, movement toward that direction is going to be, uh, stronger. Um, uh, we'll look at this election and see what happens.

I'm excited. November 5th, what's going to happen.

Excited is not the word I'd be using, but

well, I am scared as well, but I don't know. It's, uh, I'm looking forward to see like what's happening because it really affects our business as well and how we, how we could operate. And I mean, coming to the U S next year is, um, Uh, that would definitely affect our, our, our kind of game plan and, uh, yeah, thanks again for everything.

Yeah. Thank

you. Our thanks to Soheil Akbari for sitting down with Matt and thanks to all of you for sitting down and watching or listening. What did you think about this conversation? Was there anything here that was surprising to you or was there anything that you wish Matt would dive deeper into perhaps in future episodes of Undecided?

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