Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Electric Vehicle Charging Solutions for Multi-Family Complexes.
158 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to the Plug In For More podcast! Mike, Tom, and Bryant are here to help you on your journey to an Electric vehicle future. Each episode we discuss current events, trends, and a specific topic of education related to EV's. We bring together a diverse experience set, and pair it with guests who are experts in the field. For even more information on EV's, check out www.EVUniverse.com.
In this episode we are joined by David Aaronson, CEO of Refuel Electric Vehicle Solutions. David Share his insights into to his business that provides EV charging stations to multi-family residential complexes. This topic hits home for people looking to get into EV ownership who live in this type of setting. Ultimately REV Solutions provides a low hassle way for property management companies to bring EV charging stations to their properties to benefit the up and coming demand.
Follow the link below to learn more about Refuel Electric Vehicle Solutions;
https://www.refuelevs.com/
Be sure to follow PIFM on our various social media platforms, for more exciting content on EV’s
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pifm_podcast/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PIFMPodcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqXpv3fnOcv-robjLbDINFQ/featured
Recommended
Transcript
The Burden of EV Chargers in Residential Communities
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, I'm Tom and welcome back to the plugin for more podcast. Today's episode is going to be focusing on some listener questions that we've gotten in regards to electric vehicle charging. If you live in a residential community like an apartment complex or townhomes or condos, you know that the burden to provide the electric vehicle chargers is going to fall on the property management company. And depending on the responsiveness of that management is going to ultimately dictate whether or not you're going to have electric vehicle charging stations available to you.
Introducing David Aronson and Refuel Electric Vehicle Solutions
00:00:29
Speaker
On today's episode, we're joined with David Aronson, who is the CEO of Refuel Electric Vehicle Solutions. This company is designed to provide electric vehicle charging stations to residential communities such as apartment complexes or condos.
00:00:44
Speaker
They offer a variety of different solutions for apartment complexes, most of which are turnkey operations. They help with site prep, engineering and working with utility companies in order to make sure that enough electricity is provided, which ultimately for the apartment management company ends up being a very easy process for them. We hope you enjoy the conversation with David. And if you find yourself in an apartment living situation and you are looking for solutions for electric vehicle charging,
00:01:14
Speaker
refuel electric vehicle solutions could be a viable option to refer your property management company to other news of note for us at the plugin
New YouTube Channel for 'Plugin for More' Podcast
00:01:23
Speaker
for more podcasts. We recently launched a standalone YouTube channel dedicated to the plugin for more podcasts.
00:01:31
Speaker
YouTube changed some analytics and now is starting to host podcasts. So if you're getting us on whatever other platform you'd normally listen to, YouTube is now part of that umbrella for us. If YouTube is a place where you would like to listen to our podcast, we would appreciate you following us there.
00:01:48
Speaker
give us a like, give us a share and reviews if possible. Reviews as well on any other platform may listen to us do make a difference to our listenership and how much our content gets out into the world. Please take a moment to review and share wherever you listen to your podcasts. But for now, please enjoy the episode.
00:02:07
Speaker
Welcome to Plug In For More, brought to you by evuniverse.com. EV Universe is your one-stop shop for all things related to the electric vehicle. Here on this podcast, our goal is to educate, inspire, and hopefully make your transition into the electric vehicle marketplace a lot less intimidating. And now, here are your hosts, Mike, Tom, and Bryant.
Are EV Chargers Essential Infrastructure?
00:02:34
Speaker
So we're joined today with David Aronson of the Refuel Electric Vehicle Solutions Company. David has spent a career in real estate and has started to make a transition into the electric vehicle space, and we're really excited to talk to him about his company and the vision and what they're trying to do. David, catch us up on the what and the why of what you're working on. Well, thanks for having me. I have been in the commercial real estate industry, as you said, as a commercial mortgage banker for
00:03:04
Speaker
40 years. And for those who don't know what commercial mortgage bankers do is they work with owners of commercial real estate to find financing for their properties. And so I've done transactions with all kinds of capital sources, all kinds of borrowing entities, all kinds of properties over the last 40 years. A couple of years ago, I realized I came to the conclusion that electric vehicles are here to stay.
00:03:33
Speaker
Whether I like it or not, irrelevant of my political views on it, the reality is we're all going to be driving an electric vehicle at some point in time. Not because we want to, it's because it's the only thing that people are going to be manufacturing. So if that's all you can buy, that's all you can buy. I started thinking, how's this going to affect the real estate industry?
What Challenges Do Properties Face with EV Charging?
00:03:58
Speaker
And it occurred to me that it's just like the gas station provided the infrastructure for the gas combustion automobile, fueling stations, charging stations were going to provide the infrastructure to refuel the electric vehicles. And it was a very easy conversion to jump into the multifamily arena because
00:04:25
Speaker
The multifamily properties have a captive audience. At night, there's hundreds of cars parked there. And that's when the utility companies generally want you to charge at night when there's extra electrical capacity. So that seemed to work. But the more I got into it, I realized there's some real challenges to the industry. And that is none of the apartment properties that are existing today were built with the concept that
00:04:53
Speaker
you would need to have excess electricity to provide power to the EV charging stations to refuel the cars. And while most properties we've come in contact with can handle one to two dual charging stations, that's not going to be nearly enough during the lifetime of that apartment property.
00:05:19
Speaker
because there's going to be 50 to 100 to hundreds of cars that will be electric. And if all you have are two or four charging stations, they're going to be very busy, but your property will not be able to compete with the properties that have more charging stations.
00:05:36
Speaker
So I entered the business a couple of years ago and we specialize in putting up owning and operating EV charging stations and multifamily properties across the country. David, what are you seeing from a, what are the problems that you typically see with these installs? Is it the capacity as far as the model electricity that's going to that unit? Is it just the
00:06:00
Speaker
physical location of these chargers. Can you walk us through what some of the hurdles may be? The biggest hurdle is the electrical capacity, the infrastructure that's in place. And that'll dictate what you're able to do.
Multifamily Industry and Future EV Charging Demands
00:06:17
Speaker
For example, we need to have our charging station within 150 feet of the electrical panel. If it gets any further,
00:06:28
Speaker
the power starts to dilute too much. So we need, and not just us, every charging station needs to be within 150 feet of the electrical panel to work the way it's supposed to. A lot of times you've got an electrical panel that's there. In many cases it has no room to add a circuit to host an EV charging station. So in many cases you need to
00:06:56
Speaker
Figure out a way to get more electricity to that to that panel or redo the electricity in that panel or bring more power and set up a new panel to To power the EV charging stations. It's every single property and I think the industry the multifamily industry
00:07:17
Speaker
is not come to grips yet that every property in their portfolio is going to need to have EV charging stations and putting up one or two charging stations is just a band-aid. They're going to need to figure out how do we get more charging stations and usually that means working with the utility company to bring in more power.
Level One vs. Level Two Chargers: What's Needed?
00:07:42
Speaker
So
00:07:43
Speaker
The industry, I think that the two big obstacles are the amount of power that the property has and how all that's set up. And then the industry hasn't, the multifamily industry really hasn't come to grips with what they need to do in order to make their property competitive for the long term.
00:08:04
Speaker
Sure. Part of the reason is, is because many multifamily owners are not long-term owners in their mind. That right there, I think is a good point. And some things that we've talked about, the particular chargers and the adapters that go with it. So I mean, with a lot of the non-Tesla EVs, I mean, they're going to be a J1772 adapter. But if they're going to use a Tesla,
00:08:28
Speaker
It's going to be an adapter if they're going to use that same charger, that type of thing. Back and forth, it just requires different hardware. Again, if you're going to have someone who's transient, who's going to be there for six months or a year, you don't want necessarily Tesla when it could be a Tesla charger for someone that's putting in a different type of EV. Maybe you do. Maybe you have those adapters for rent or they got to buy them, those types of things.
00:08:58
Speaker
I guess, have you thought about that sort of problem, or are you leaving that mostly to those vehicle owners at this point?
00:09:08
Speaker
To be honest, it's really not that big a problem anymore. The Teslas come with adapters. So if you own a Tesla, you get an adapter and you can buy a second adapter, a third adapter, really inexpensively. I think they're $30, $40. So we pretty much put the J1772 plugs in all of our charging stations. Got it.
00:09:30
Speaker
The other thing that comes to mind when we're looking at these multifamily properties is that a lot of them are centered in larger urban centers. It's more metropolis, not necessarily urban, but higher density areas in the country.
00:09:51
Speaker
With a lot of those drivers, typically they drive less per day than someone who's in a rural setting. Are you seeing the actual need to have a level two charger? Or would level one work for the vast majority of these people and just have sort of plugs throughout the multifamily unit? So that's a great question. And there's an ongoing debate. And I subscribe to the theory that there's
00:10:20
Speaker
a need for both.
What Are the Risks of Load Sharing for EV Chargers?
00:10:22
Speaker
The level one plug gives off two to five kilowatts an hour. So if you have a need for 75 kilowatts, it's going to take you a long time, 15 hours to fill up. The batteries are going to continue to get stronger and stronger. So that's going to make level one charging more difficult or more
00:10:48
Speaker
Not more difficult, but more time consuming. There are places for level 1 chargers, for example, in a multifamily community, the garages, those detached garages that are on the house meter where somebody is rented that garage and they have a.
00:11:07
Speaker
an electric vehicle, they're going to pull into that garage every day, and they're going to have an opportunity to charge. Now, most of those garages only have 110 volt plugs, so they're only going to get the two to five miles, but if all you drive is 20 miles a day,
00:11:24
Speaker
That's fine. The question comes up is what happens if you drive 120 miles? Doing 20 miles a day, you may never catch back up. So the level one charger has a functionality, but it's also got its limitations. I'll give you another example.
00:11:43
Speaker
if they may be good in a condominium situation or an assisted living situation where people who live in assisted living projects don't drive as much and so if they're only driving five miles or ten miles a week, obviously that's all you need is a level one charger and
How Do Tenants' Needs Affect Property Managers?
00:12:02
Speaker
that'll work fine. There's no reason to put a level two.
00:12:05
Speaker
If you're in a condominium property and you have an assigned space and you can every night go get your 15-20 miles off your charger, that's probably okay until you have a road trip where you're gonna have to figure out a way to catch up on that. So there's certainly a use and there's different types of level 2 chargers too. There's a level 2 charger and
00:12:30
Speaker
that works on a 40 amp circuit and only puts out seven, just over seven kilowatts an hour. And then there's the level two chargers. The stronger ones work on 100 amp circuits and can put up up to 19.2 kilowatts an hour. So if you have a need to charge your car and you need 50 kilowatts, which by the way will get you
00:12:58
Speaker
on average about, call it 200 miles, 50 kilowatts will get you 200 miles. If you have a level two charger that puts out seven kilowatts, that's going to take you seven hours, probably longer than that because the battery slows up as it charges. So it'll take you, call it eight, eight to nine hours. If you have a level two charger that puts out 19.2 kilowatts, it's only going to take you two and a half, three hours.
00:13:24
Speaker
significant difference in the type of level two chargers. Yeah. I mean, we've had a couple of people write in with questions specifically around multifamily units and a lot of them are running into the first problem you mentioned, which is not having the overall capacity. Are you seeing any workarounds for that just from a load sharing technology and some of those type of chargers?
00:13:50
Speaker
Well, everybody talks about load sharing and load sharing is great. If there's a load to share, you know, if there's nothing to share, then it doesn't matter. So load sharing only works if there's electricity to share. Okay. The other thing that we see a lot of people do is they overload because of load sharing, because of their understanding of load sharing, they will put
00:14:14
Speaker
more charging stations on a circuit, on one circuit, than they should have. Okay, I'll give you an example. We were working with a client the other day who had 40 amp circuits. And we would, we recommend only putting one charging station on a 40 amp circuit, but he wanted to put two. And
00:14:37
Speaker
Our conversation basically led to, well, we'll go do the two because we can get a grant to pay for it, but I was focused on the user. If a user drives up to a level two station that is on a 40 amp circuit, that first person that drives up and needs a good meaningful charge knows that he will get it that night.
00:15:00
Speaker
But if a second person drives up and starts using the charger next to him, that load balancing, all of a sudden, that first car is going to wake up and he's going to find his cars at full in the morning. It's not going to be fully full. So he's going to be disappointed. And so, you know, yeah, you got two cars partially charged, but, you know, that first person pulled in with an expectation that he was going to have a
00:15:25
Speaker
Full charge in the morning and he wakes up and finds out that he didn't have a full charge. He's gonna be upset over that so And of course we see people put Two duels on a 40 amp circuit we see some companies advocating where you can put five and six Well, that just overloads it that's not gonna do any good. Yeah, it's gonna it's gonna reduce them to a meaningless charge at night and
00:15:52
Speaker
you're listening to the plugin for more podcast. If you're looking for information on electric vehicles, electric vehicles, components or information on how to reduce your carbon footprint. Look no further than ev universe.com ev universe.com is your one stop shop for all things related to electric vehicle.
00:16:12
Speaker
So one of the things with our audience is that we're geared towards the new soon-to-be EV owner, someone who is either a car on order or just got their car. One of the barriers for entry for people that are in the multi-unit residential dwellings is that
00:16:27
Speaker
Like just the problem you're addressing, which is great for those people. Now, if there was somebody in that spot where they really want to go buy their Tesla, but their facility doesn't have it, they're kind of stuck unless their property manager decides that they're going to go and research it and get into it. Are you finding that you're having individuals of residences of departments that are reaching out to you guys to try to help bridge that gap? And what kind of education are you providing to make that happen?
Implementing EV Chargers in Residential Areas: The Process
00:16:53
Speaker
Well, the answer is no. We don't get many calls from the actual EV driver. We get a lot of calls from the manager who says, oh, well, I just had a tenant complain. They want to buy an EV, but we don't have any charging stations. So we do get some of that. And then the other very interesting thing is,
00:17:18
Speaker
A lot of times we'll go survey a property and the manager will say, they don't have any EV charging stations. They'll say, well, we don't have any demand for, we don't need EV chargers. We don't have any demand. Get a lot of that. And we're like, well, if you don't have an EV charger, that EV driver is going to the internet and they're looking to see if within their properties that they're looking at,
00:17:44
Speaker
if there's any EV chargers, so they're not gonna call you, okay? When there are four other properties that have EV chargers, they're gonna go to those properties and see if they like them first. So if you tell me you don't have any demand, I'm gonna tell you, you may not know what you don't know. You're not getting the call. And so, if you wanna get the call, put up the EV charger. And it's very interesting, because I'm in the real estate business, I think
00:18:14
Speaker
Putting up EV chargers is one of the great investments you can make in your property. An average rent is $1,500 a month. Just make an assumption. $18,000 a year. Okay? Now, if that EV driver leases in your property because they can refuel their car,
00:18:40
Speaker
you're collecting $18,000 a year that you would not have collected otherwise, right? If you value that on a 5% cap, it's over $350,000 of value. So you can say, just because I put up this EV charger and attracted or retained just one tenant, I've made $350,000. My property value is increased that much.
00:19:09
Speaker
Now, five years from now, three years from now, when 50 EVs are at the property, it's going to be a different narrative. Sure.
00:19:19
Speaker
can you provide enough chargers to serve your clients? So then when a customer property manager reaches out, I'm assuming you get some that know what they're doing. You probably have some that are really overwhelmed and confused by the prospect of all of this infrastructure that has to be implemented at their facility. What are the options available to that property owner to implement this through your service?
00:19:41
Speaker
So we basically, because I've been in the real estate business for so long, we have a very good understanding of what goes on at an apartment property, what goes on in the interaction of the management company with the residents and what the residents are looking for, and more importantly, what that property manager needs to do to get a charging station up.
00:20:08
Speaker
To be really honest, I've been in this industry now for over two years. Of course, the EV charging industry, I've been in the real estate industry for 40 years. There's a lot that goes into it. When you have people at the property level, they generally don't have the time to understand what's going on in this industry.
00:20:33
Speaker
And you can say that's true pretty much throughout all these things. It's so new. You know, the apartment manager doesn't really have time to go into the necessary detail that it takes to understand the EV charging business. All they want to do is provide their client with the charger so they won't lose any more clients or potential residents. That's all they want to do.
00:21:00
Speaker
They don't really know where the best place to locate them in. Many times they want to locate them in places that are incredibly expensive to put them there because they don't have the electricity close by or they don't have the panels capacity. And so they just don't know. And so they'll go kick upstream.
Refuel EV Services: Turnkey Solutions and Revenue Sharing
00:21:20
Speaker
And a lot of these big management companies
00:21:25
Speaker
they haven't spent the time that it takes. So you're only as good as the person that you're using with the knowledge. That's where it comes down to. And while we can usually stick a charging station or two in most multifamily properties, that's just a band-aid. You need to have a long-term plan. And there's some advantages to it. A lot of utility companies offer incentives to bring in new electricity. Well, if I own an apartment property
00:21:55
Speaker
in an area that's under the jurisdiction of one of those utility companies, I'm knocking at their door for every property to get new electricity, additional capacity. None of the companies, none of the management companies, the property managers, none of them are set up to do stuff like that. And that's something that we have become very good at that we weren't expecting when we started the business two years ago.
00:22:20
Speaker
getting additional electrical capacity to multifamily properties. It's probably the wave of the future for a company like us. David, again, going back to what our audience, the new EV buyer who's living in a multifamily, what would you recommend they do when either looking for a new place to live or let's say they're in a condo association. They got a condo building.
00:22:49
Speaker
They don't plan on moving, but they need to charge their car. They want to get a new Audi e-tron, whatever it may be. What's that process typically look like? What would you recommend? What's the easiest way to go about getting those chargers installed for some of those folks? Well, obviously, if you live in an apartment project, go to your manager. Tell them you're buying an EV. And if they don't give you a charging station, you have to move. That's one way to do it.
00:23:19
Speaker
A condo is a different deal than an apartment complex. And the condo, if you own the condo, you're entitled to owning a parking space. But the condos have the same problems that the multifamily, the rental properties have, and that is they don't have enough electrical capacity. Now, of course,
00:23:44
Speaker
The condo owners haven't realized that in order to maintain their values, they're going to have to deal with this problem of figuring out how to charge the next residents or next owners cars. They haven't figured that out yet, but they will. And it's going to be, it depends on the condo association, but it's going to be expensive. We have solutions. We have financial solutions for almost any owner. Okay.
00:24:09
Speaker
My company, Refuel EV Services, or we call it Revs, we offer a number of different programs. Our most popular program is, we'll pay for everything. We'll pay for the electrical upgrade, we'll put up the charging stations, we'll reimburse you for the electricity, and we'll share the profit with you. We want to have a long-term contract to do that, a minimum of 10 years. In the condo association,
00:24:36
Speaker
will increase that to 20 years. We have different goals and objectives in the condo association, but we will provide everything and we'll lease those parking spaces from that property owner and we'll pay them a share of the revenue is our rent or a share of the profits is our rent. So there's really a scenario where it just doesn't make any sense not to have somebody come in and put up EV charging stations at your property.
Growth of EV Charging in Multifamily Properties
00:25:07
Speaker
For those owners that say, you know, we don't want anybody owning anything on this property except for us. We say fine. We'll do that. We'll put them up. We'll run it and we'll manage it just like we do ours. We're going to charge you a fee for that. We're going to take a share of the profit, but you know, our, our, um,
00:25:27
Speaker
will be totally aligned as far as our objectives go. I'm not trying to oversell charging stations. I want to put the number of charging stations there that meet the demand and then I want to kind of grow with the demand. So, you know, we have solutions where we'll own them and it won't cost the owner anything or the owner can do it and it won't cost them anything or if they want to upgrade their property and have us own the charging stations like the old laundry room
00:25:56
Speaker
you know, format and multifamily properties. We're glad to do that as well. It makes it way easier as a turnkey operation for a property manager that makes a lot of sounds. You know, we were able to tell people, look, we look at it as an owner standpoint. Right now we are managing 150 ports around the country. We're in seven states and in the next six months, we'll probably be in 12 to 15 states.
00:26:25
Speaker
We're getting grants where we can get grants to help defray the cost. We're working with multifamily developers on new construction to make sure that they have
00:26:39
Speaker
the right setup for the long term of this property. And it's really interesting to me how few electrical engineers really understand the EV charging industry right now. So, and then of course you have governmental authorities that are trying to impose building codes and they have no idea what they're really shooting for. I mean, it's kind of,
How Does Demand for EVs Affect Charger Needs?
00:27:06
Speaker
typical of when you get government involved in certain things and you don't have experts. I like to say the business right now is the wild west and we're just trying to serve as many clients as we can because we know they all need our expertise. How has the inflation reduction act impacted your sales approach to this with the tax credits?
00:27:33
Speaker
Look, I think there's a lot of tailwinds. It certainly has provided great tailwinds. It's not going to help us, necessarily per se, put up EV charging stations and multifamily properties. It's not going to really help that a whole lot, but what it is going to do is it's going to encourage the mass to buy electric vehicles.
00:27:55
Speaker
And that will translate to more electric vehicles being parked in the parking lots of multifamily properties, which will affect our business. So I say it has a big impact. It may not be a direct impact, but it is a significant impact.
Contacting Refuel EV Services
00:28:12
Speaker
Great tailwinds. David, we really appreciate your time and joining us to tell us about your business and the progress you're bringing to the industry. I want to give you a chance to
00:28:21
Speaker
plug your business with social media stuff or wherever it is that people can find you for more information. Appreciate that and I've enjoyed being here and visiting with you gentlemen. The company is named Refuel EV Services and you can find us on
00:28:39
Speaker
the web at www.refuelevs.com. And as I've said, our company is an expert in the multifamily EV charging space. We handle all facets of the business from installation to product selection to managing the stations and servicing them once they are up and installed. Great. Thanks for your time, David.
00:29:10
Speaker
Thank you guys, really appreciate it. Thank you for listening to plug in for more. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. In the meantime, check out the one-stop EV Marketplace, evuniverse.com. Until next time.