Good morning Grid connections listeners.
Grid connections is the podcast where we explore the latest trends and innovations in clean energy, electric vehicles, and our electrical grid time, all of them together.
I'm your host Chase.
And in today's episode, we're speaking with Joseph Nagel, the head of corporate strategy at Pando electric.
If you're interested in the future of EV charging, particularly for multi -tenant facilities like apartments and condos, you won't want to miss this episode.
Joseph shares how Pando Electric is revolutionizing EV charging by developing outlet -based systems designed to make electric vehicle charging more affordable and accessible
for renters and property owners.
We'll dive into their groundbreaking partnership with Peninsula Clean Energy, which has led to significant cost reductions in EV charging station installations and discuss the
importance of at -home charging solutions for accelerating EV adoption.
Whether you're a property manager looking to offer EV charging to your tenants or an EV enthusiast interested in the latest industry trends, this episode is packed with valuable
insights for you.
Before we jump into the conversation, if you find this episode helpful, please share it with someone who might benefit from this discussion and leave us a positive review on our
podcast page.
helps us reach more listeners and keep the conversation going.
with that.
Enjoy.
That's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
So Joseph, if someone isn't familiar with Pando electric, can you share a little bit more about what you guys do and, kind of the realm you guys work in.
That's a great question.
We make socket -based EV charging systems that have been specifically designed for multi -tenant facilities like apartments and condos.
We found that that was a huge market that's being kind of ignored.
And we wanted to be able to bring affordable charging solutions to that market so that people who live there can enjoy driving electric vehicles just as much as everybody else
does.
Yeah, I think that's really a big challenge right now for the EV adoption.
I think there's still a long ways to go.
But as everyone kind of talks about in the news, we're obviously kind of going past that first adoption wave into the more of the mainstream.
And there's a lot of people who want to get an EV, but may have challenges about plugging in at home if they are renting and stuff like that.
So I think that's why I was so interested to speak with you today.
I know there's a few different things you guys are doing.
Especially with partnership.
So I know when we were talking about this beforehand It was one of the things you want to talk about.
So maybe let's just kick it off there and Explore that partnership you're working on with Peninsula clean energy and can I go from there for the conversation?
Yeah, absolutely.
So Peninsula Clean Energy is a clean energy provider here in the San Francisco Bay Area.
They're based out of San Mateo County.
They are actually partnering with a large number of EV charging providers, not just Pandoelectric.
But the thing that they really did, which was very unique, was that they added in
EV charging outlets to their incentive program.
And that has made an absolute world of difference for EV drivers, multifamily property owners, and renters alike.
The reason it's so important is that when you substitute in an outlet over traditional EV charging station, you actually are able to drop the upfront costs pretty significantly.
So like at Pando Electric, typically we see around a 70 % drop in costs.
just by switching over to one of our outlets rather than a traditional system.
And the reason that we thought that this was such a great program, not only because we obviously get the incentive funds, but because it actually opens up something that was
kind of denied to a lot of apartment renters and apartment owners, which was the simple fact of charging from an outlet.
And we found that most people who own an EV charge from an outlet anyway.
And so by forcing the apartments to have like these more complicated EV charging systems,
it wasn't actually very equitable for the EV driver themselves.
Now we're able to bring in a charging solution that kind of fits for just about everybody.
And so that's really the key thing here with Peninsula Clean Energy.
And now it's being, that particular program is being replicated across the Bay Area through a lot of different clean energy programs.
And we're also starting to see it trickle down into Southern California as well.
That's great.
So when you say outlets, are we talking about level one level two?
Does it just kind of depend on the actual installation?
Yeah, so very good question.
Pando Electric makes the only 240 volt, 40 amp level two charging outlet.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't other outlet manufacturers out there who are doing lower power level two, 20 amp level two outlets, or even level one outlets.
So you do have a wider range, but we currently are the only ones that are doing the full scale level two solution.
That's great.
so looking at Peninsula clean energies partnership, what, what are some of the kind of things that you going into it probably had some ideas of what it'd be.
And then were there any things in particular that kind of coming out of that, that really stood out to you and some big takeaways.
I think the biggest takeaway that I had was just the forward thinking process of the group of people who designed that system within Peninsula Clean Energy.
They really took a wide view of what was happening within the electric vehicle market rather than just copy paste what everybody else was doing.
And so they took a little bit of a risk there because especially at that time, I don't think that there was many EV charging outlet suppliers in the marketplace.
Pandoelectric certainly didn't exist yet, but now it's starting to grow and become more of a widespread thing here.
So I think that in general is the most surprising is just how forward thinking this whole thing was.
Interesting so kind of looking at that project and moving forward What are some of the big takeaways if someone is listening?
And they're kind of looking to do something similar with their own project Maybe some of the things to be aware of as they're going into the planning phase for a project like that
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is efficiency and it's more or less the efficiency of how that incentive money is being spent.
And the biggest difference is the costs, right?
So if you only get a pot of say $10 million, you can install quite a lot of traditional charging systems with that $10 million.
Yeah.
But if you're looking at a 70 % cost reduction, you're also seeing probably a 70 % increase in the number of charging stations that you can supply by just switching from
traditional charging systems over to outlet -based charging systems.
And that doesn't mean that the properties themselves don't get to choose anymore because there's still incentive money for those traditional systems.
So if they really wanted to, they could go put in, you know, very expensive, you know, level two charging system because that's what they want.
However, if they went with the outlets, they are just going to be a lot more.
So they're covering a lot more of their spaces.
And that's something that's desperately needed out here in the Bay Area.
We're rapidly approaching 40 percent of new vehicle sales as EV.
So they're needed to be.
some kind of a shift in policy in order to meet the needs of the growing number of EV drivers here.
for sure.
And so for someone listening, I know we've talked a little bit about this, but you're talking about 70 % price reduction in that example.
How is that achieved?
That's the $48 ,000 question, isn't it?
Yeah, so there's a lot of different ways.
Number one is the hardware cost straight out of the gate, right?
Pandoelectric costs $499.
That's $499, right?
Like if you look at a comparable, I don't want to name names because I'm not that guy, but there are some systems out there, some of the biggest providers, you're looking at five,
six, seven, $8 ,000 for the same output of the station.
So right away you're looking at a pretty dramatic cost.
Now on the back end of that is the infrastructure side.
So traditional systems have to do what's called a home run from the charging station back to the panel.
That means you have to run your conduit from the station all the way back to the electrical panel.
With a outlet -based system, you can actually daisy chain them together.
So instead of running each one individually back to the panel, you can daisy chain them together and then just run one back to the panel.
So that's another way of reducing the infrastructure costs.
You're cutting down a lot.
copper wiring that's going in and know, six and eight gauge wire is relatively expensive and unfortunately copper prices keep going up.
So being able to reduce those costs brings it down more.
And then on top of that, if you leverage a power management system, similar to what Pandoelectric is doing, you're able to actually install more stations on infrastructure
that could not support it.
So you're cutting out more infrastructure again, which...
again reduces the cost.
So when you combine all of those factors together, that's how you're getting that 70 % cost reduction.
Yeah, that's great.
mean, just with what you're talking about, sounds like a big part of that 70 % reduction, I'm sure, is also in the labor side of it, from having to run much less conduit and then
also the panel upgrades.
Is there anything else from the labor side that your technology really helps save with?
You hit the nail on the head.
It's the labor side of, know, if you have a straight line conduit run, that's the easiest you're going to get.
And that's pretty rare.
Most of time you have to bend it around a wall or something.
And if you've ever handled, you know, six gauge copper wire, it's not something that's super malleable.
It's going to take a little bit of time and a lot of strength to bend it into the correct shape to get it around a corner.
And if you have to do like a zigzag pattern through, you know, a complicated garage zip, that can actually add quite a lot of
additional labor costs to a job that may be pretty simple.
Now with daisy chaining these together, is there a limit to how many you can do at one installation or is it kind of also determining on what maybe the panel is going into is?
Yeah, technically there's no limit, but you don't want to daisy chain like 100 together.
That would be very efficient.
So there's like an efficiency balance that you need to kind of come to at Pandoelectric.
We don't do any more than five on a single chain.
And the reason is you can't have all of those pulling all at the same time.
So you're to have to shut a few of them off and come up and bring a few of them online.
And that's what the power management is designed to do to balance that load out.
So you're not
blowing the breaker.
So you don't want to go crazy with it.
So if you tie it back to a 40 amp breaker and you have a hundred of these on there, you you're getting basically no energy anyway.
So you want to be able to balance that correctly so that every single vehicle that's attached to that chain is going to get a full charge by morning.
That's great, it sounds like there's also a very large kind of software layer to this component to make a lot of this work, especially when the way you're talking about it,
plugging into existing panels and avoiding those upgrades.
Yeah, there's that aspect of the software, the power management aspect.
And then there's also actually the more complicated one is the billing and reimbursement services.
This is something that a lot of companies have always struggled with.
they're constantly, it's not because of the ideas being bad, it's actually the regulations not really matching up with the current technologies or being vetted correctly.
So, and on top of that, every state's different, but we have a built -in commercial grade meter into each one of our outlets.
that's monitoring and tracking all of the energy that's used, and it's billing each individual driver for their usage.
So you have to actually be able to tie individual sessions to individual drivers, and then be able to accurately bill them, and then reimburse the property for the energy that's
used.
So as an EV driver, how would that work?
Do I pull up and then it's kind of, I swipe a card or what?
sounds like it's kind of a little more going on in the back end than that.
Yeah, so it depends on the provider.
So with Pando Electric, you're going to come in, you'll have a mobile app that you'll come and scan our QR code that initiates a little bit of a Bluetooth handshake.
And then you can start your charging session.
So it just activates the outlet.
The outlet says, okay, I can provide you energy now.
And then because you've activated it through your phone, it shares a special code that knows that you are the EV driver that's using the station at that time.
And so that's how it's accruing all of the energy.
Now there's other systems out there.
Some companies use just a credit card system.
Some companies use, you know, an NFC card.
But we found that the easiest way is to just use your phone and scan the QR code.
Gotcha.
are you seeing, mean, I can imagine this is the probably most common is people are charging for these installations, but I'm just kind of curious if you've seen any
apartments or kind of installations where they almost baked that into the price of the rental and just say, Hey, you get free charging, but really it's, and it just simplifies
the whole kind of a billing part of it.
A lot of apartments do that initially.
In fact, a lot of our business right now is to go into apartments and replace the quote unquote dumb outlets that they've installed because when they started doing that, they
didn't really account for how much energy electric vehicles actually use.
And all of a sudden their energy bills started to skyrocket and they couldn't figure out why until we come on and we say, well.
you're just using these outlets, EVs use a huge amount of energy every single year.
Most likely what's happening is it's pushing them into higher energy pricing tiers.
And so then their energy prices just start spiraling upwards.
So even if they try to offset that by saying, we're gonna charge you another $100, $200 a month for your rent, that might not actually cover your actual energy costs because it
pushes you into a higher tier, your energy rates go up, and then it's just a spiraling.
So being able to put in like a power management system that stops charging before it gets over that tiered threshold and then just pushes it off into lower pricing tiers, that's
how you're able to kind of as a property owner, protect yourself from that situation.
And so you do need to have like a smart solution in place to prevent that from happening.
Now, do you get around a lot of that by like time of use tiers or is it also just depending on the utility, there's just total volume of electricity being used that does
kind of push some of these apartments up?
Great question.
It really depends on your area.
I have seen places that do both.
So it's more common out here in California, especially commercial properties.
They do have time of use that goes into it, but then they also have tiered pricing based on volume.
And because multifamily housing is technically classified as commercial, that is something that they have to be very mindful of.
Interesting.
Okay.
Well, let's talk a little bit more about kind of the challenges and solutions that Pandoelectric provides in multifamily since you brought that up.
So I think probably a lot of our listeners are probably in single family or like condos, but let's kind of maybe unwrap and take a little step back and just kind of talk about the
use case for Pandoelectric in multifamily and how that works just for level two in general.
And then we can kind of talk a little bit more about the challenges and
some of the solutions you guys provide for that.
Absolutely.
So I think one of the biggest things that you have to take into account when you're looking at a multifamily housing is
there's a delicate balance going on within that community on whose needs you need to adhere to.
So the EV drivers, they just want access to energy and they wanna be able to have that access anytime day or night so that they have the peace of mind when they come home,
there's going to be an EV charger there that's open and ready and working for them.
The community at large,
They want to have equal access for everyone.
So they don't want some people getting special access or having to, or being able to just park their car all day and night in the one EV charging spot.
They want everybody to have the same access.
And then the property owner, they have the most complicated kind of need, which is A, they don't want to be the ones paying for your electricity.
I always bring this up and Mike, would you expect your landlord to fill up your car with gas?
And the answer is always no.
And so, you know, that same problem, they don't want to be filling your car up with energy either.
So they want to be able to recoup the costs of energy.
And then sometimes they want to make a little bit of return on their investment because of the infrastructure that they had to put in is rather expensive, even with incentive funds.
Sometimes it gets pretty expensive.
So you have to be able to balance all of those things when you're bringing in a charging system.
And that's what's made this market particularly difficult, especially on the front end side of cost.
the front end capital expenditures that you're going to need to bring in EV charging stations without incentives are often really, really onerous.
When I worked, I was the first hire at Ever Charge.
When I worked there, our upfront costs were on average $4 to $6 ,000 per station installed.
So if you can think about that, 10 of those is gonna cost you like 50 grand.
And that's...
That's if you have enough power, that's not, know, hey, I've got enough energy, I can add in 10, $50 ,000 straight away.
Like that's expensive.
So with Pandoelectric, same scenario, we can probably drop that down to like, like one to 1 .5 per station.
So you're seeing like a pretty significant reduction there.
And then the more complicated things get, you know, if they're power limited scenarios, there's no panel space, those types of scenarios, that's where we start to see those 70%.
deep cuts because we're able to daisy chain, we're able to use our power management system to install more stations than would have been able to.
So you don't have to bring in, which are the more expensive things, new transformers, new panels, which are, you know, 20, 30, $50 ,000 just for the one thing.
So that's how you're really getting to make the cost more comparative to EV charging at a single family home.
Yeah.
So that's kind of an interesting thing too, is obviously, what you're kind of talking about is not just going into multifamily home, but it is kind of upgrading a multifamily
home.
So can you explain maybe some of the challenges and do you see that this is usually done when maybe there's being, some sort of like up, like retrofitting an older building that
that's when they start looking at kind of these updates or what is usually kind of, in your experience, what motivates
a building owner to kind of bring you guys into this process.
I think the first thing is usually at this point in the life cycle of Pando Electric, we're brought in when the traditional systems are still too expensive.
So a lot of our properties that we get today are people who've already looked around at your charge points, your ever charges, know, a blank and they're just, this is still too
expensive.
So we need something a little bit more cost effective.
They call us.
That's typically what we're seeing right now.
The other big issue here is that every single property is completely different.
So people often ask us, why can't you just give me a general quote?
And I'm like, well, it's pretty difficult because I don't know your pack, your panel situation.
I don't really know how old your electrical infrastructure is.
I don't know how much power capacity you have.
I don't know what the garage layout is.
So I don't know the runs.
Like it just keeps going and going and going.
So you really can't understand what's happening there until you get boots on the ground and you go there and look.
at the panel, at the situation, and then you can give a more realistic quote.
So that's kind of still one of those things where people always ask and it's like, I can't tell you, I don't know until I go there and see it myself.
Right.
Now that that's interesting you bring that up because that was very similar to the issues.
Like when I worked in the solar industry, that people always want this kind of flat number and you could kind of say, yeah, it's this, but it could be plus or minus a hundred
percent.
Either we can't do it or it could be way more expensive, but that is kind of interesting.
So doing these upgrades and kind of these improvements to the buildings, how does, is it.
And I think the reason I'm asking is you brought up some of those other competitors.
Some of them approach it as you buy it, you own it, you maintain it.
Does Pando Electric kind of, once they've done the installation, is it the property owner or do you guys offer any sort of kind of maintenance plan or stuff like that to, cause I
know a lot of EV chargers we've run into have definitely had over their lifespan issues where they get broken and then they're kind of never fixed again.
Yeah, that's actually one of the biggest selling points that we have as a company is the fact that because it's an outlet, it basically carries no maintenance.
I always ask people, Mike, do you ever maintain an outlet?
Do you ever sit there and be like, no, my outlet broke?
Like it's pretty rare.
so, and for us, because the hard, the nature of our hardware is so affordable, you know, if it does actually break and the only time that ever happens, if someone came in and
bashed it with a hammer.
It's actually pretty easy fix for us.
can just ship out a new unit.
It's $500.
It goes on the wall the next day.
You know, pretty simple.
So one of our biggest selling points to property owners is the fact that you're not going to have to maintain these.
You don't have to worry about someone coming in and vandalizing and like snipping cables to steal it for the copper because there is no cable.
It's just an outlet.
So those are the types of things that we've actually like built into the product itself to make sure that there is a long -term play.
The other thing is that we've tested these outlets to last 5 ,000 cycles.
So under our current usage, that actually means it'll last 40 years before you'll need to replace it.
So you've got time to figure out a new solution in the meantime.
Yeah.
No, that's great.
And so that's really interesting because what the model you guys are kind of following is actually more of what you see in Europe.
And I think it does make a lot of sense.
And it is that kind of intentional when you were kind of looking at the research of essentially you bring your own cable and then that kind of minimizes some of the
ongoing maintenance like you're talking about and then also just kind of puts the responsibility on the actual EV owner.
I think that was more of like a bonus perspective of the European model.
We didn't go out to intentionally copy that model.
The reason that we made outlets is we actually went and looked at what single family homeowners are doing.
single, most single family homeowners are going in and just putting an outlet in or using an outlet that's already there to charge their vehicle.
And so it just boiled down to a simple equity problem, right?
Like if we want people to all enjoy EVs the same way,
they should be able to charge from a simple outlet rather than having to rely on these very complicated, complex charging systems that we've seen so many articles and they're
all more or less true.
know people like, it's all FUD, it's all lies.
It's true.
Like some of these charging stations, do break.
They do just sit there for weeks and weeks, maybe months on end before they're actually fixed.
And that's a big problem.
you...
went and rented an apartment because you're like, like the area, you like the apartment and hey, big bonus, it has an EV charging station.
And then the first day you get in there, breaks down and then for months and months on end, it's just never working.
That's gotta be really frustrating.
And so we wanted to be able to resolve that issue and the best way to resolve those issues is to not go more complicated.
It's actually go more simple and bring in something that's just a simple outlet.
You plug in.
If anything were to break, we can just replace it real quick.
Like everything should happen within 24 hours is kind of one of our models.
So if your cable breaks, you can go to Amazon and get one shipped overnight.
If our station breaks for whatever reason, we'll replace it.
No problem.
Just give us a call.
We'll send a new one out and you can swap it out yourself.
Like that's kind of where we're trying to get to, to bring in a more equitable solution so that everybody's having more or less a shared experience on how the EVs work.
similar to a gas car, everybody knows they go to the gas station.
It's not like some people have to go to a special gas station, right?
It's everyone goes to the same place.
So it's the same kind of conundrum that we're trying to solve for.
So for the actual outlet does and my apologies for not checking this previously, but you said it's a 240 volt 40 amp.
So does that mean it's a 1450 outlet that they, the EV driver actually plugs into?
Yeah, it's a NEMA 1450 plug.
The reason we went with that was it's obviously it's the most common plug type for level two charging.
It's more or less a universal standard at this point.
And then on top of that, something that often gets forgotten about is the NEMA standard has been around for over a hundred years.
It's not going anywhere.
And the reason I bring that up is because we've already seen a shift in connector type from J7072 to now we're going to an ACS.
And we don't know what's going to happen in there.
We're seeing a transition, but some of the automakers aren't really moving.
And so it is causing a bit of a headache for people who are purchasing EV charging stations.
Like, well, which one should I go with?
Well, if you went with Pandoelectric, it doesn't matter.
We're using a NEMA standard plug.
Most vehicles today come with that option or they come with that charger in their vehicle on the day they purchase it.
So it's really easy to just keep using the same type plug type rather than
trying to figure out what kind of new connector type is going to come out.
No, that's a really good point.
So as the different charger types or it doesn't really matter what kind of EV it is, excuse me, someone can kind of actually bring the right charging thing for their car and
just make it work pretty quickly.
Right.
And it's, it goes back to that 40 years, right?
So they last 40 years.
So we need something that's also going to be like relevant, relevant in 40 years, not this connector type is going to shift over to something different.
Right.
And a good example that I always use is like, am a bit of a gym rat.
go to the gym and I always see like the old iPhone docs that you could plug in an iPhone that, you know, nobody owns that type of iPhone anymore, but they're still on the
treadmill and it makes it useless.
And I'm like, well,
They didn't really think that one through, they?
They could have had a different system to plug in or work with that particular treadmill.
And that's kind of what we're looking at with EV charging.
Like, I don't know what connector type they're going to invent 40 years from now, 30 years from now, 20 years from now.
I don't know.
Maybe Elon's going to come up with something crazy and new.
But for us, it doesn't matter, right?
Like, if it's a NEMA standard plug, that's not going to go anywhere.
And until wireless charging becomes more viable, which maybe.
in the next 10, 15, 20 years, it's still just, this is the best solution that you have to put into any kind of a building, not just an apartment, but also your home.
Yes, that is kind of interesting bringing up the outlet, especially the 14 NEMA 1450 specifically, because we have seen in the case of some single family homes, people plug it
into that of which one they have and that those outlets were really never designed for repeated usage.
They're usually designed for like once every 10 years or something.
So many plugs and unplugs their dryer and then
That's kind what it's for.
Whereas like daily usage, you can see a lot of damage for those.
And I, I'm sure you guys have kind of figured that out, but I was just kind of curious in that kind of design when you're going through that, like what, are there any things that
are just kind of interesting that stood out when you were building it to be kind of made for that 40 year lifestyle or what you guys did to really make sure that, it wouldn't have
those issues like some of the 1450 outlets are at home.
Right.
So that's, it's, it's almost an uninteresting answer because the only way you test that is you make a machine that just plugs in and unplugs a charger endlessly until the socket
breaks.
yep.
I have a video of a robot just in and out, in and out, in and out for hours.
And that's what it's doing until the, until the, we pull it off the wall and say, look, it broke at, you know, X number of cycles.
And that's all you're doing.
But you are correct.
Like if you went and said, I'm just going to solve this on my own.
I'm going to go down to the Home Depot and just buy a dryer plug.
That'll work if you leave your charger just plugged in forever.
You're good to go.
Well, actually, I take that back.
You want to buy an industrial plug for that because you need clamp force for the downforce because charger cables are heavy.
And so if that's sitting there hanging, pulling on that outlet for a decade, it's going to wear out the connector just the same.
So yeah.
is people go to Home Depot and they'll be the one that like, this outlet's three bucks.
I want 30 bucks.
Why would I buy pay for 30 bucks?
It's exactly the same.
Right.
And I think unfortunately there have definitely been some lessons learned the hard way about that, but that there's a big reason for that discrepancy, even though it's not in
the scheme of things, that huge of a price difference.
Right.
And I think that's one of those things are I've seen it a bunch with a lot of my friends who have convinced to buy EVs and they have their garage set up.
go in and I'm like, my God, like you can't, like you can't, have, some very underrated extension cord that's going to the wall and you can feel it.
It's hot.
And I'm like, I'm surprised your house didn't burn down because you shouldn't be doing this.
Like those types of situations people do need to be aware of.
think it's more just general public education.
And which is why, like, I love this podcast.
to help educate people.
Yeah, thank you.
No, it's, actually funny.
You, I haven't shared this with anyone yet, but I mean, to post something about this, we're actually, I was living in bend, Oregon, but we just recently moved.
And so we're in a rental before we, find something we kind of went long -term in, hood river, Oregon, which is kind of a little windsurfing town and the rental we're in and it
has a two car garage, but it doesn't have a two 40 or anything.
It's literally a wall outlet.
120 wall outlet so I've been charging our model Y that way and It seemed like the electrical was fine, but I was just always a little like a little skeptical it's a little
bit of an older house and I never seen this happen before but I go in one morning and on the EVSE there's essentially I'll just be kind of glowing green where it's like this the
Tesla Name and it just goes like from left to right kind of green thing
And this time the T is red, it kept glowing green.
was like, that's really bizarre.
What, is going on?
And when I got in the car, it had said that the, EVSE had detected that the, Outlet was getting warm.
And so it brought it down from 12 amps down to six amps and it's been charging at a measly six amps on 120.
So it's like pretty much barely half a kilowatt.
And obviously not ideal, but I just thought that was really cool.
And I'd never seen one be, have a, mean, it kind of makes sense for them to have a heat sensor, but that was just something that happened to me recently that I thought was pretty
funny, but just to exactly that, like how many times did something have to go wrong before they realized this would be a good thing to have and to design it this way.
And obviously a software layer is so important in these kinds of things to realize that.
Why 100 % and I think that's kind of why even with all the angst around what's happening with Tesla that's why Teslas are still the best EVs.
They've thought through all of these problems already.
It's not something that they're like, shoot, like we have to now make a thing to add that in.
It's already done, right?
If you had like a Ford Mach -E, I don't know if that feature exists.
I don't know if it's on like any of the Hyundai, like I don't know.
But I know for a fact that Tesla's got that stuff already baked in and that's why they sit at the top of the EV chain because there is no competitor right now for what they're
doing.
Well, I mean, and I think you could say this, not just at them, but maybe more at the startups too is like inherently, even if you're a smaller company, if you have engineers
focused on one kind of product style versus that and hybrids and, combustion engine, does really help you keep focused on the mission to think about these things instead of being
kind of, and obviously their engineers are focused on one product, not really hop around a lot, but it's just kind of something throughout their complete supply chain.
They're thinking about dealing with, which it's.
I think those other companies will get there, it's just, you're right.
It's just interesting to see like every now and then I just see something where it's so easy to hear the news like, all these competitors are catching up and doing something.
But then you look at just the EV focus, like startup companies and realize just being focused on that one product style and try to, instead of trying to do multiple styles,
vehicles really does give you a leg up.
Yeah, 100%.
I think a lot of the auto, the old school auto OEMs are really doing themselves a disservice by not just going full force into EVs and saying, okay, like, we're just going
to start warehousing people over on this EV side, which you're starting to see more and more of like Ford is being very,
forward thinking on what they're doing.
But there's a lot of catch up that has to occur before they even gonna come to match Tesla or any other or Rivian or anything like that.
So there's a lot of catch up time that's gonna happen.
The one thing that I'll give the OEMs is that they know how to manufacture vehicles really, really well.
So that's their like major, we can produce, you know, millions of these things, and they're all gonna be of similar quality while a lot of the startups are still struggling
through that.
for sure.
It was really interesting.
I was at the Electrify Expo actually this past weekend in San Francisco.
And it was just really interesting to see the number of automakers there.
And kind of just naturally where, mean, obviously Tesla had a cyber truck there.
So I think that had some of the interests and obviously they're made in the Bay, or at least most of their vehicles.
And so it was just wild to see like how long the lines were to look at the Tesla.
was really a Tesla and Rivian.
And then there were some other automakers there's out felt.
but.
So I guess one of the things is we're talking obviously about electric vehicles and we were kind of mentioning there's other types of vehicles.
Is there anything to be aware of or any issue that, let's say I have a plug -in hybrid, I'd imagine that could just work just as easily with this as it would be kind of like for
those people who are trying to take the leap and not completely convinced of going fully electric yet.
Yeah, anything can get plugged into that outlet as long as it an EMA 1450 plug.
So you can even use an adapter as well.
So that's really not much of an issue.
My biggest issue with the plug -in hybrid owners is a lot of them don't plug them in at all.
So, yeah, so that would be my one thing is that I'm not too worried about that because it seems like they don't care about the plug -in aspect of it, which I don't know why they
bought the vehicle in the first place then, but to each their own.
No, for sure.
So, we, we've obviously been pretty focused on what you guys are doing and it's, it is great to see on, especially in the multifamily area, but I'm kind of curious.
I take it you have an electric vehicle.
I guess we haven't clarified that or what, what, what are you driving currently?
So I live in San Francisco, and I have street parking.
So I actually don't have a car.
I drive an electric scooter, like a Vespa, that I get around.
So it has a removable battery.
So I just bring it in the house and charge it.
It's actually charging right now.
And the nice thing about that is to get around San Francisco on a scooter is vastly superior than a car or any other method of transit.
California lets you do lane splitting.
so it's...
quite fun during rush hour to just cut straight to the front of the line.
But in the future, I'll probably, if I end up moving, of course, I'll probably end up with a more normal style EV.
Yeah.
No, I mean, I totally get that.
I lived in the Bay area for a while.
was mostly down Palo Alto where it's still a little more suburban.
It's easier to have a car, but like being in San Francisco proper, especially with off street parking, mean, that's about as good of a situation as you can have.
And it's like that in Manhattan or kind some of the cities where it's almost more of a pain in the butt to have a car than a benefit.
Yeah, well not only that, my other concern was vandalism.
As much as I don't want to like bring up the stereotype of the city, there was a period of time, it seems to be settled down now, but there was a pretty significant period of time
where if you left anything in your car, anything, the windows are going to be smashed.
And so I'm I don't want to put a $50 ,000 car out of the week.
No, there is not.
So, no, that's great to hear.
So actually, I guess I'm curious about that.
What kind of range does it have?
it says it has 40 miles, but that's a lie.
I'm also a bigger guy.
I'm, six, one and 200 pounds.
So it's, I mean, I'm sure if it was, you know, five, five, 150 pounds, it'd go a lot further.
but, know, and then the other problem is that it has a definite power loss, to the, to the motor after like 50 % battery life.
So going up the big Hills here, if I have a hundred percent battery, no problem.
I'll probably cruise in.
But once it goes under 50%, it's actually pretty painful.
Yesterday coming home from the gym, I was going over a hill and I think I was going up that hill eight miles an hour.
Like the lower it gets, the slower it gets.
So it's kind of one of those situations where like that particular subset of electric vehicles, they need to boost it up a little bit.
I do see like in warm weather environments, it could be a perfect solution for mobility, but it's still got a long way to
Well, that's, that, that's interesting.
So is it just plugged into the, just a regular one 20 outlet at home and then just kind of just charge it overnight then.
Gotcha.
Well, I guess we could talk about level one charging, but I, I, guess I would be kind of curious about that and your thoughts on just level two charging in general, and maybe some
of the interesting trends you're seeing from kind of, where you are in the company and also just in the Bay area in general, it's always kind of interesting how.
Like you're, you're kind of a perfect example where it's like, people always think of the Bay being this like, everyone's got electric car and all this stuff.
But once you live there, you definitely realize there's definitely areas where it makes a lot of sense.
And there can be a lot of challenges and even going, when I was down in the South band, like going into the city, sometimes it is really hard to not just find parking, but to
even find level two chart.
mean, I, I'm sure that's changed a little bit, but I'd just be kind of curious on your thoughts around them.
Yeah, I think number one, I'd say that level one is fine.
People tend to be, it's too slow, it'll never work.
And like, you know, it actually gives you, know, just enough to cover your daily driving needs.
The thing I always tell people is most of us grossly overestimate how much we actually drive.
We equate time in the car to miles driven, which is definitely not true.
See.
you might be sitting in traffic for an hour and a half, but you probably only went 30 miles and you didn't realize that it just wasn't that far.
number...
Yeah, like that's something that I, even myself, I'm like, my God, I must've been driving all day today.
It's 70, 80 miles and it's like, no, you only went 40 miles down the road.
Not that far.
That's number one.
I would say number two for the Bay Area, we are seeing a lot more thoughtfulness.
play out here.
I'm seeing like if I use California in general, there's a big split between Northern California here in the Bay Area and Southern California down in LA San Diego.
And I think it really does boil down to at home charging.
I think up in the Bay Area, there's obviously there's better programs.
We have Peninsular Clean Energy like we spoke about doing the socket based charging as incentives for multifamily.
And that's having like a huge effect on the number of people being able to get charging at home.
And I'll use an example.
We just did a project out in Woodland Creek.
It's actually on our website right now at pandoelectric .com.
And we continue to talk about it.
It actually got a lot of press.
We were able to bring in 90 EV charging stations, one for every single unit in a 90 unit condo.
So everybody gets a charger.
We were able to do that for $405.
first station fully installed.
That means that's all each individual resident had to pay to get a charging station installed.
That increases the property value, by the way.
So even if they don't have an EV, it increased the property value of their property, of their condo.
And we were able to do that because of Peninsula Clean Energy and their incentive program.
And so we're seeing like a big difference.
And the thing that I'll, one last thing I'll bring in is that they looked at the most famous charging supplier, not named Tesla.
I won't name them, you can think of who they are.
They looked at them first and they could bring in eight of those charging stations before they spent all of the money that we spent.
So we put in 90, they're going to put in eight.
And that's the difference.
And the reason I use the example of California and Northern California versus Southern California is we're starting to see in Northern California, the public chargers,
specifically the Tesla superchargers are not overburdened.
Yeah.
of the time, there's no line, you just come in, park and charge.
In LA, different story.
You come in, you're gonna have to wait.
sometimes that wait is gonna be really long and really painful.
I don't have the data to back this up yet, but I will bet my last dollar that it has everything to do with charging at home.
And because there's just not enough charging at home down in LA yet, that's the problem.
Well, I think I've definitely seen this.
even experienced this first hand in the Bay Area recently.
Yeah, I kind of had a funny thing when I flew in last weekend, I got an Uber.
And the guy, first thing he asked me was, Hey, can I go charge?
And I wasn't even thinking, I was like, and I, maybe I was just coming off the flight and had been delayed.
I was like, sure.
And he literally, as I'm in the back of the Uber pulls into a charger, a supercharger, just charges there, which I was like, okay.
I guess I'm getting built for this.
That's a fun twist.
But, and we, I think really it was just, one.
He didn't need the charge because I looked over his screen and said he had four percent range.
But then too, I think it was kind of an easy way for him to get a smoke break.
looked like, but what I'm kind of what's really interesting to me is I completely agree with you.
It's like, it's hard to have the as much as I like to have the facts, everyone I've talked to and even just personal experience anecdotally.
And even, even though that was in the North Bay, like a big part of it is especially in Southern California.
Just DC fast sharing is so overwhelmed.
And a big part of that is due to, Uber drivers and other kinds of rideshare drivers.
And, one of the things I've definitely talked about with people, it's like a lot of these companies, I mean, it's no different than like taxi companies.
have their own commercial, gas filling stations.
And I think we're in kind of a rough transition period with EVs, but that also needs to, I think be solved.
Whether it's Uber or whichever right company, has their own charging stations specifically for them.
So it doesn't kind of jam up some of the, normal charters for people trying to use, especially if they don't have level two charging at their home.
But I think that's why I was really so excited to talk to you today was to really get more companies like yours, get awareness for it, because that is really what's having a big
impact is not having those places where you can charge on a level two to really, make sure that.
day to day, you don't have to go to a fast charger because there's definitely a perp.
There's definitely a place for it, but for the majority of the time, it really should be for people kind of going through town or visiting.
And if you can use a level two and you're not on a road trip, honest, I just think it's a much better experience.
Anyways, just plugging in and walk away.
Yeah.
And I think one of the things that you can be hopeful about is that I don't think Uber or Lyft are going to build their own charging stations, not their MO.
I think the thing that is going to change it, and I hope that you got a chance to see this when you were in the Bay Area in San Francisco, is that Waymo is going to completely
destroy that industry.
Most people here use Waymo now.
They're not really using Ubers unless Waymo is overburdened.
So those cars do have their own charging depots.
That's true, yeah.
Yeah.
So like, and I think that's where we're actually heading for, like the taxi cab type companies is it's going to be all autonomous anyway.
And they'll just go back to a centralized location on their own and charge up there.
I do believe 100 % that people need to be educated about the DC fast model.
People still get really tied to the idea of DC fast and gas stations.
Same thing.
that's what we're going to do.
And it's like, yeah, that's not actually how this should work.
And the thing that I've actually gotten people to understand better is when I describe it like with your cell phone, right?
Like when my cell phone's, you know, running low, yeah, I'll find it like a public outlet or something.
I'll charge it from that public outlet.
But most of the time, like the majority of the time, I just plug it in at home and it doesn't matter if it's at, you know, 90 % or 1 % when I'm going to bed at night, it's
getting plugged in.
And then on the morning it's a hundred percent.
And that's how I'm, if I look at
internal data from Pando Electric or even my time at Evercharge.
Like it was always the same.
was people come home, they plug in, they go out with a hundred percent.
That's what they want or they're, or they're capping at like 80, 90 % just to save the battery.
But that's what they're doing most of the time, rather than waiting until it bleeds down to zero and then running around trying to find a station.
Like that sounds like crazy to me now, but before with a gap, like your gas card, that's what you did.
And so we have to change people's mindset and that's just going to take time.
We've been fueling our vehicles one way for 100 years, and now you're asking everybody to rethink how that's actually working.
so that's kind of going to be a little bit of a bumpy transition, I think.
I think that's actually for one of the things I want to ask you about was kind of like scaling and looking forward.
talking about the future, can you share with us kind of what Pando Electric is looking at and kind of how your team is thinking about it?
boy, you're going to end up getting me in a lot of trouble with my boss if I say the wrong things.
know, startup life, you always have to be a little secretive about what you're looking at and what you're going to do next.
But I will say, look at the industry in general, and I'll say there's a lot of information out there that's what's going to happen, right?
So you're seeing a lot of press like, the grid can't handle all these electric vehicles.
That's true.
That is absolutely true.
If I were to snap my fingers right now and every vehicle on the road turned into an EV,
we'd have some problems.
Good news, I can't do that and it's probably not gonna happen for quite a long time.
So we have some time to figure this out.
But in the meantime, there's a lot of interesting ideas around grid stability, grid stability solutions.
You can do V to G.
I don't see a huge platform for that for like a consumer, but for maybe those, you know, the taxi cars, that makes sense.
But like, if you're gonna look at grid stability,
How do I balance out the load that the building is going to draw?
I want to make sure that I'm not always taxing at the highest time of use rate.
So you can bring in batteries to stabilize the grid and act as like almost a reservoir for the vehicles to pull off of.
So I can pull in energy when it's being generated for cheap, middle of the day, solar, wind, whatever, store it until it's going to be used for an EV.
You can help balance out the load that way.
There's a lot of really interesting things around like smart panels.
I love what span is doing.
I think there's a lot of really interesting things there to like add intelligence into our grid.
And that's kind of where I'm seeing not just Pando electric going obviously because I mentioned it, but a lot of the EV charging companies are starting to look more at grid
stability solutions and power management solutions for
whole building energy loads rather than just the vehicles.
And I think that's where we're to end up next is properties are going to start to realize they have a lot of control in terms of power.
And they're going to be able to start to do some really interesting things by adding solar and batteries just on the low end.
they were to go, that's the simplest solution we're going to add is solar panels on the roof, batteries in the garage.
And we have all our EVs charging up whenever they want.
you can see that, can charge up, can fill up my batteries in the middle of the day with the solar panels and then wait for the vehicles to come in at the end of the day.
I've paid no money for that energy.
But then I can turn around and charge the EV drivers their normal utility rate.
So the EV drivers don't feel like they're getting squeezed.
And so then you're starting to make some pretty significant profits as a property owner.
So you're gonna start to see that shift happen.
I would say over the next five years, that's 100 % coming.
Yeah, I think, especially in a market like California where energy rates are pretty high, there's a lot, even if you don't have solar panels where you can just have a battery
backup system that charges during kind of the low time of use and then either use that energy when it's more expensive.
And I think exactly what you're talking about of still providing a value to the EV driver, but then there is that price difference.
And so it just kind of gives a more levelized and predictable cost to the EV driver.
But then as the building owner, there's definitely a financial advantage to it.
One question, you mentioned V2G and I agree with you, it's still early days, but is that something Pandoelectric can support or is looking to support or would that really require
much for your system to be upgraded to have that kind of functionality?
Cause I, I mean, I'll be the first to admit right now there's no clear like standard for what even V2G is from the software side.
So I'm curious to see like how,
big of a thing it actually becomes, but I definitely personally would love to have some sort of system for that in my next home, but it really does seem to be just almost walled
gardens between each automaker for that current light.
Yeah, I think much like EVs were adopted by single family homeowners first, V2G is going to be adopted by single family homeowners first.
I think as we move down this path, the answer is 100 % yes.
Pando Electric is already looking into how to support those types of initiatives.
The thing that I'm always concerned about with the apartment owners, apartment dwellers is that
The last thing you want is, it's not coming off of your energy bill, it's coming off the building's energy bill.
So it's like, okay, well, I'm not getting any benefit.
And then also my car might end up at, went from 100 % to 50%.
And I'm like, well, I didn't get anything for that.
And my car has less energy in it.
That kind of seems like a lose -lose.
So there are some initiatives going on like, well you get paid back for the energy or.
Demand response is going to be the first big one for the apartment communities where they'll be able to just shut off the chargers when they're seeing peak demand to prevent
like a rolling blackout.
Those types of things are really, really interesting.
think those are gonna come, that's gonna be here very, very soon, like in the next year or two, especially for California.
But 100%, I think V2G is coming.
It's something that Pando Electric has looked into.
We couldn't support it today with our current setup.
It's just an outlet, so there's no inverter or anything that can push power back out or pull power back in.
So those things need to be sorted out and thought through.
one is really that reservoir that you kind of I do feel that that's something you do need in the apartment community is a place where the power goes that's localized not just dump
it back into the grid.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a really great book called The Grid.
It outlines all the issues with the American electrical infrastructure.
And it outlines just why doing that doesn't solve many problems.
It actually creates a lot more.
So you'd rather have it go to a place where it's going to sit and get stored rather than, I'm going to just send it back out into the grid, because then you're just like, where
does it go?
Because the one thing that people...
it's really not going to do anything other than just become wasted.
Right.
They have to just dump it.
And that's one of the things that people don't understand is that, you know, for a lot of us, energy, electricity is like almost magical.
I just push a button in my home, the lights all come on.
That's like true magic.
The thing is, is that it's actually the world's largest machine that we've built here.
The minute I push that button, the energy generated has to be created that second.
So it has to be instantaneous.
So that's something that like in general, like when you think about it, it's mind blowing that we've had the system around for so long and that's how it works.
but you can't just dump the power back in and be like, it'll go somewhere else.
Well, no, somebody needs to have the ability to use that power at that moment.
For sure.
And you actually brought up a really interesting thing that we've talked about on this podcast a bit before around VDG is you mentioned an inverter and you have some automakers
who are essentially backfitting with it would be DC that comes out and others that are kind of going AC and it kind of just depends on the automaker.
It seems like for your product and generally the less expensive, expensive option is if it puts out AC, but then,
Yeah, like you're saying that depending on how you want to store that and then use that and especially in a multifamily situation, you probably would need to convert it anyway.
And then, if you do the AC output, just puts, it's not a huge cost, but then technically it is more on the vehicle purchase you're making.
so yeah, I think there's a lot of hope and there's a lot of kind of still kind of the rainbow and sparkles and kind of sunshine.
stage of it where it's like, it's all, it's all, good and all promises and nothing bad can happen.
But now we're kind of getting to that other side.
Like, okay, it's a great vision.
How do we execute this and kind of make it practical?
And there's still, I think every day it just seems, which is kind of a good thing because it's getting solved, but it just seems like there is another kind of hurdle and thing to
logistically work through on the technology.
Unfortunately.
There is, but I would always say to people that we're still in the very early stages of this technology.
Like this is not something that has been around.
This is not mature at all.
This is, you know, you know, the earliest stages.
And so there's a lot of really amazing innovations that are going to come.
tell people like think about when the automobile first became mass market and how different it became over the next you 50 years and that's where we're like that's what
we're walking towards is like a very very different future than we're at right now there probably is going to be a lot of vehicle to grid solutions there is going to be a lot more
batteries there's going to be different types of you know know scenarios where it's stuff that I can't even think about is going to exist so I'm honestly like super excited for the
future of this.
It's going to be, it's going to create a shit ton of jobs because we're now in like a totally new world of having to re -org our entire grid around bringing the transportation
sector on top of our already electrical infrastructure for our families and housing and stuff like that.
merging those two things together is causing a lot of problems right now.
But I always, know, in the startup world, those actually problems create solutions.
So these problems are going to create something really unique and hopefully quite wonderful for the world.
I have seen the other way go around, but that's where my hope, my optimism comes in.
It's like, this is going to be, I'm really excited.
I think it's going to be an amazing future.
And V2G is just one of those like really amazing innovations that's going to happen.
No, I think that's, I agree with you.
I don't want to sound cynical.
I think it's easy to be about that kind of like in the moment, but the more you look to the future and stuff, there is a lot to be optimistic about it.
So Joseph, I think it's best to end it on a positive note there, and looking at the future, but I guess for anyone listening, what's the best way to get ahold of you or learn
more about Pandoelectric?
Yeah, pandoelectric .com is the best place to learn about the company.
You can reach me at joseph .nagle at pandoelectric .com.
I love to talk about electric vehicles.
I love to talk about building a new grid.
So reach out to me with any questions you have.
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much, Joseph.
We'll have to have you back on soon.
This has really been a pleasure because I know, like I said, we get so many questions and people want to know more about level two.
And I think it's really great what you guys are bringing to the space.
So thanks so much for coming on today.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much for having me and I would love to come back anytime.
Thank you for tuning into this episode of the grid connections podcast.
hope you gain valuable insights with our conversation with Joseph Nagel, the head of corporate strategy at Pando electric.
If you're interested in the future of EV charging solutions, especially for multi -tenant facilities like apartments and condos, this episode was packed with crucial information.
And don't forget to check out Pando electric's website at Pando electric .com to learn more and speak with the team there.
As we discussed, the partnership between Pando Electric and Peninsula Clean Energy is leading the charge in making electric vehicle charging more affordable and accessible.
From reducing installation costs to improving grid stability, these innovations are crucial for the continued growth of EV adoption.
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Thanks again for tuning in and until next week, this is the Grid Connections podcast signing off.