In this week’s episode of Are We Doing Tech Right?, Larry sits down with Rachel Corn, head of sales, marketing, and business development at GoPowerEV, to tackle a critical issue: making electric vehicle charging more accessible, especially for those living in multifamily buildings.
With 40% of the population living in apartments, many potential EV owners face barriers to charging their vehicles conveniently and affordably. “Forty percent of the population lives in apartment buildings and really has no credible, good, convenient, affordable access to EV charging and therefore do not buy EVs,” Rachel says.
Rachel also shares how GoPowerEV is helping to solve this issue without overloading the grid. “We typically do not need to upgrade the electrical, so this is much better for the car, it’s much better for the building, and it’s significantly better for the utility and the environment overall,” she says.
Listen to their conversation below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Listen to “The EV Charging Challenge in Multi-Family Homes” on Spreaker.
Transcript
Larry: I’m very pleased to be speaking with Rachel Corn, who leads sales, marketing and business development at GoPowerEV, a provider of multi-family EV charging. Rachel brings years of experience in scaling startups from the ground up. Prior to GoPowerEV, Rachel led an auto tech company as a CEO where she was responsible for developing the product, growing the team, and supercharging sales.
She brings years of technology experience from previous startups, as well as strategy experience from Bannon Company. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School. And Rachel, what excited me about meeting with you is that your company is making EVs. I wouldn’t say affordable, that’s the job of companies that sell EVs, but making it accessible to people who live in multi family housing.
Rachel: Hi Larry, thanks so much for having me on the podcast. I’m really excited to be here and to be speaking on such an important topic. I feel very strongly that EVs have been so far exclusive to the wealthier people, and that in order to create significant climate impact, we need to bring it down to be affordable to everybody in all income levels.
Larry: And in fact, the EV manufacturers have done a pretty good job, whether deliberately or because the market has kind of forced them to, of lowering their prices. Certainly on the newer EVs, now buy, I guess, even a Tesla after the government rebates for under $30, 000. And I’m sure there are even less expensive cars from GM and other companies brand new.
And then of course, there’s a used market and used EV prices have come way down. So despite the reputation of being the cars, the luxury cars for the wealthy, they’re actually mainstream pricing right now on a lot of very good EVs.
Rachel: Prices of new EVs have come down significantly and are now comparable with entry level cars, especially for people in affordable communities.
And in California, there are significant incentives to buy new EVs on the order of $7,500 for each new EV. In the use of EVs, the market has become even better. The Tesla’s and the original cars that entered into the market are now going into the used market and are coming in at significant discounts. And the government recently introduced rebates and incentives for used vehicles as well, $4,000.
As you look further down the line, putting aside the original purchase price, the total cost of ownership of electric vehicles is significantly lower than gas cars. People with EVs do not have to do oil changes, regular maintenance, so they end up spending about 25 percent less every year on maintenance.
And also, uh, significantly less in terms of the, uh, gasoline, especially gasoline prices now at $5. It is a big cost savings you know.
Larry: By the way, I sold my 2018 Tesla model three for about a third of what I paid for it. I sold it to Carvana for $20,000. I think they resold it for $25,000. So they paid a little more than half of what, a little less than half of what I paid for it.
If they live in a multifamily home, they might have trouble getting charging and they might have to drive to a public charging spot. And that might be difficult, expensive, or in some cases even impossible.
Rachel: Yeah. So if you live in a single family home, it’s really easy to install a charger. So the population that lives in their own homes and owns them can easily get that done, which has been done to date.
As an indicator of that, about 80 percent of the EV drivers today live in single family homes. So it’s been very hard for, to own an EV in an apartment building. 40 percent of the population lives in apartment buildings and really has no credible, good, convenient, affordable access to EV charging and therefore do not buy EVs.
And it’s a real barrier to growth in the EV market in the U.S. Yeah.
Larry: And by the way, one of the things I loved about, I love still, I still have an EV, I have a newer EV now. It’s like having a gas station in your garage. And in the case of your customers having a gas station on, on the premises, but tell me a little bit about the program that you’re working on that makes these devices more affordable for folks who live in multifamily homes.
Rachel: Yeah, let me just start, start by backing up a little bit in terms of what is the real barrier in multifamily homes? Why can’t they do the same thing that single family homes do and just go in and install a charger and not go into a lot of technicalities, but the first one is that apartment buildings have centralized power. There’s an electrical panel that gets fed by a transformer that is typically built for the regular usage of electricity in an apartment. That means the oven, the washer, the dryer, lights, computers, etc. They were not built for the typical EV charging behavior today, which is go in, etc.
In 20 minutes, try to draw a lot of power in a very short amount of time. And so it ends up being a construction project to just bring the electricity to where you need it to be. Do you need permits from the city, et cetera. And then that creates sort of an agency problem in that the owner needs to spend money upfront for this capital expenditure, but the owner is not actually the one benefiting from it.
The resident is the one who wants it. The owner is the one who has to flip the bill and typically a lot of significant cash upfront. So there are benefits including to the owners, increasing occupancy, attracting residents, but they’re not immediate one time to cover for the capital expenditures.
So those are kind of in a nutshell, the barriers for installing these things today.
Larry: By the way, when I installed mine, the device, the charger was only about $500, but the electrician bill was close to $6,000 because I needed to upgrade my panel. That was a big expense. So it added up quite a bit.
Rachel: Exactly. You got it.
Most of the costs of these things are labor in terms of wiring the garages and upgrading if needed the panels. So the solution I’ll tell you about our solution where the model is not to be charging as fast as possible, but actually the opposite, as slow as you can while getting what you need. So the analogy is a gas station where you’re standing there and you can’t wait to be done with it versus your cell phone. Cell phone, you come in at night, you plug it in. It’ll slowly charge. Okay. By the morning you will have a full charge. So that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to do the cell phone model in that it’s a slightly lower powered solution, consumes less energy, incents people to charge overnight, and therefore we typically do not need to upgrade the electrical like you did, because it’s just not consuming. So this is much better for the car, it’s much better for the building, and it’s significantly better for the utility and the environment overall, because the last thing you want to be doing is, at peak times add more demand on the grid.
One, the model that we sell and we propose assumes something called personal charging assumes everybody has it in their own space, like the single family model. So we are doing away with, you know, putting four high powered machines up front and everybody has to line up to them and people are fighting with each other.
Everybody gets in their own spot, can stay there for 12 hours and can get what they want. That is by far the better solution for, you know, residents working with each other and to get lower electricity.
Larry: And let’s talk about, you know, there’s a lot of focus on EVs and I know that’s what your company does, but there’s also other alternatives.
For example, here in Silicon Valley, we literally just last week, we now have an electric train that goes from San Jose to San Francisco. So I can commute, I can drive my EV less than a mile to the train station if I, or I can bike or walk and go to San Francisco and not even have to get into my EV.
And I’m wondering what your thoughts are about the integration of EVs with Public transportation, scooters, bikes, e bikes, and other means of transportation.
Rachel: So the smaller means of transportation is the scooter and the e bikes have to be charged on an L1. You cannot do it on an L2.
Larry: Right.
Rachel: It’s very dangerous.
So having the L1 having is, is a great solution because you can simultaneously do that. So we have many customers who have uh, a regular gas car or an EV and then have a scooter or bike for other family members. This is a great solution.
Larry: Oh, so they can use your technology to charge the bikes and the scooters as well?
Rachel: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s, you know, the problem that apartment buildings have been running into is people running their own cables from the apartment. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. So they will run a cord from their apartment to the parking or the common area, and they will charge their bike and their scooter there.
All sorts of hazards involved in this.
Larry: And of course, you theoretically could bring the bike into the apartment. But EVs, I mean, electric bikes are heavy. The batteries, they’re not that easy to carry.
Rachel: Yeah.
Larry: Okay. So the other issue I guess I’m interested in also is grocery stores, supermarkets, shopping areas.
What’s your thought about charging in those kinds of public spaces?
Rachel: Public spaces, people don’t spend a lot of time in. So in that case, something fast. Actually makes a lot of sense. You’re not going to, you’re not going to stay for very long. So it has to be fast charging. There’s a lot of people. So you have to be in and out of there really quickly.
So that’s actually where L2, L3, fast charging makes a lot of sense. So, you know, I think the market has to realize that there are different use cases for different segments. If you’re in a rush, you’re not going to be standing there for a long time. You got to go with something that’s fast and high powered at home.
It has to be the complete opposite. And that’s where sort of the thinking, the advanced thinking is with regulators, and with companies like ours.
Larry: And then the other issue that comes up a lot, and I know, I’m not sure this is an area, you know, a lot about, but I’ll ask you anyway, is the impact on the grid, the concern that great, we’ve got all these EVs, but do we, is the electrical grid going to be able to handle increased demand, not only for EVs, but a lot of people are converting from gas heaters to electric heaters and air conditioning.
So the power draw is going to be much higher if the environmentalists get our way. I’m saying our because I consider myself an environmentalist. We’ve just electrified our home. I’m excited about that, but I’m also aware that electricity doesn’t come for free either. It also needs to be generated and it has its limitations.
Rachel: Yeah, that is a huge issue. And if you look at any of the forecasts in terms of demand, it’s a hockey stick that no utility has the capacity to address right now. And this is just electricity demands from homes. You know, you compound that with AI and data centers and it’s, it’s a real humongous problem that we’re not addressing.
So the only, I can’t solve, you know, our, our global electricity demand problems, but this helps because it pushes the demand overnight. So that alleviates the need in peak hours, at least when you’re competing with, with a lot of things, which certainly helps on the demand for the grid, electricity is a lot cheaper overnight.
The other thing that we’re developing, is back to grid technology and capabilities so that if you’re charging your car, at a very low rate overnight, you can actually use that to power your home later on. There are some EVs that can do that today. Not very many, but that’s a, certainly a technology that’s coming in years.
Larry: Yeah. The Ford F 150 Lightning can do that. But the problem is that not all utilities are equipped, not all utility companies are equipped to actually integrate that into your home, but it can be used for certain things. I guess the rest of us can’t do what Microsoft did and buy or recommission Three Mile Island to have our own nuclear power plant to take care of our home needs, right?
That’s not an option.
Rachel: But you know, we do, I mean, I’m a big favorite of power plants. That’s a totally different topic altogether. But we somehow need to think about it as a society overall when we’re not.
Larry: Yeah, and then are you seeing any of these multi family homes move over to solar? Is that something that, I know again, that’s not your company’s business, but are you seeing that happening at all?
Rachel: Solar is really important. Solar is even more expensive than EV charging. And it’s, again, this agency problem of where is an owner, a property owner, going to come up with all this money. There, there were some subsidies, they sort of dwindled for solar. Now they’re coming up back again. It’s, it’s tough in multifamily because you don’t always have the clear line of sight. You don’t always have a roof that’s angled the right way. So, you know, whatever is hard in a single family home is even harder in the multifamily. Uh, I do feel that the government really needs to step in because that combination of solar and EV charging and battery is one of the ways we can alleviate this shortage.
Larry: Well, and it’s a broader issue too, because I will, I, there happens to be an election for city council going on in the town I live in. And one of the big issues in my town is electrification. The city has really committed to try to get its residents, you know, weaning from their gas heaters and other gas appliances and going all electric, which a homeowner certainly has the option of doing if he or she or they can afford it.
But a lot of renters don’t even have that option. They are simply you know, if they’re, if they have a gas stove and a gas oven and a gas heater in their apartment or their rental house, there’s nothing they can do to solve that problem.
Rachel: Yeah, it’s, it’s, I mean, it’s really bad in apartment buildings, the whole electrification issue, it has to be, you know, it’s an agency problem where again, the owner doesn’t quite have the incentives and the resident does.
And in this case, you know, pure economic theory says that that’s a place where the government needs to step in.
Larry: Great. Well, Rachel, I really appreciate your getting us up to speed. How can people find out more about your company and its products?
Rachel: You would want to go to gopowerev.com. You’ll have an overview of our solutions there.
How we can help you with installations, rebates, and, uh, some good case studies of customers that have installed their solution and how it’s working for them.
Larry: So if you’re a property owner or for that matter, a tenant in a multifamily home, you might want to reach out to the property owner and let them know that there are solutions out there.
And hopefully over time we can see the democratization of EV charging. Just as we’re beginning to see the democratization of EV purchasing power. Rachel Korn, thank you so much for joining us. Rachel: Thank you, Larry. Pleasure.