Hammer Down at ACT Expo 2024: California Paves the Way for a Future of Clean Transportation

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Hammer Down on the Market Scale Network. I'm your host, Mike Busch, and I'm coming to you from a super cool venue today. I'm at the ACT Expo in Las Vegas. ACT being Advanced Clean Transportation. So this is actually one of my favorite shows of the year, and let me tell you why. When we hear about a more sustainable future, when we hear about cleaner trucking or cleaner transportation, this is the show to find the technology companies and the companies that are really pioneering it. Not just incremental steps, we're gonna see folks that are building EVs, hydrogen vehicles, all sorts of cool add ons and solving problems that quite frankly, I don't even know existed. I love this show, and I'm delighted to be here. I'm so thankful to the folks at ACT who, allowed me to attend as a media member. I hope that over the next couple days, I'm able to pull together some really interesting interviews, really interesting footage, and that that this episode of Hammer Down, this sort of super episode is a really fun one for you. Thanks for checking it out. Enjoy the show. Hey, everybody. So this is Jim Herliss with CBRE. And, Jim, what? So CBRE let's start with the basics. What is CBRE? CBRE is a real estate firm that specializes in brokerage, project management, and facilities management among many, many other things as well. We're the largest firm in the world. Alright. So commercial real estate to we're at an expo for clean trucking and transportation. Where do you fit into that? Yeah. So back in, March of twenty one, actually, we had a a great opportunity where one of our fleet operator clients came to us and said, we need to convert our fleet from combustion engines over to electric vehicles. We're not exactly sure how to do it and what is that impact on our overall real estate portfolio gonna look like. What is this? Do we just put chargers in the ground and add our lease at, sites? Or what is the best way for us to really come forward and build out this infrastructure and what's its impact? So back in twenty one, we started this project, this initiative to see how we could actually support the industry, the real our clients, and the industry as a whole, the infrastructure providers, to determine the best places and strategy for deploying this infrastructure to capture the public charging, whether it's for these large fleet vehicles moving product, close to the freight or close to the port for drayage type Sure. Applications or on a long haul. If I'm going from Los Angeles port to Las Vegas where we are today, Where should we have our charging along the way, and how should we deploy this infrastructure? And CBRE was able to fill that hole and really support our clients, identify those opportunities. Okay. So I everything you said is interesting. Yeah. Let me let me let me start. When when you talk to the electric companies, they're they're in from the trucking perspective, they're happy to say, listen, you have to create demand in order for me to say I'll put infrastructure in place. You're taking a different approach with that. Correct. Correct. We're really focusing on, strategy and knowing that we're going to have to build the infrastructure prior to the vehicles coming. The chicken and the egg in my perspective and what we've seen in the industry is we really need to have that fueling infrastructure. It doesn't do good to have a a truck When When we're talking about shorter distances, last mile, drayage type concerns, or or routes rather, we're able to really focus and and keep those more in a central location and even have a a a more simple solution to handle. Now when you talk to a checking company or you talk to a warehouse and they say, look, we wanna talk about electrification. What does putting enough charging infrastructure, what does that do to actually the the value of a property? Is that is that good for it? Is it bad for it? What walk me through? So that that's a really great question, and we know that there is an absolute increase in the value of the property of that asset when we put that additional infrastructure in. If you think about it, you're bringing a lot of energy, a lot of opportunity. That one of the struggles that we see actually in the industry is the best use of property and the best use of real estate. So, you know, while we wanna go and deploy infrastructure at all of these different asset classes, sometimes the best use or the best rate of return for the investor is to do an industrial building. So oftentimes, our biggest competitor for deploying this infrastructure is best use of the property, which, again, could be industrial where I can get higher rent rates and higher returns. Okay. So is best use of property is, a legal term? Is that a gov a government term? Is that regulated? What does that mean? That well, that that means how can I get the most money? If I'm gonna develop a piece of property Okay. Got it. And I'm the developer putting my money into the property, into that asset, what's the best rate of return and what and and what is the best use case? And in a lot of cases, we're we're competing a lot against industrial. However, there are, some great segments of the industrial world like the, the industrial off-site storage developers where they traditionally store truck parking or trailers, but now they're able to convert an acre or two of that and maximize the usage of those that that portion of that property for electrification overnight parking. Got it. Okay. So, basically, if I if I own a yard, I own a a storage facility, the idea is if I put a couple of spots up there, theoretically, I can charge truckers to charge their truck. Is that That's exactly right. And then park it overnight as well. Got it. Okay. So so we're creating ancillary revenue streams with land that's going unused. That's correct. Okay. Perfect. How did you get into this? You know, I raised my hand. We our our leadership team at CBRE had some questions, and my background prior to this was in infrastructure for a large company, a large infrastructure company. And I had some background and some knowledge around, building up business models and figuring out the art of the possible. And, quite honestly, can we make money for our shareholders? And is this a can we get a rate of return and provide the outcomes that our clients are expecting from us? And that's really I I raised my hand and, volunteered. Alright. So along those lines, one of the questions I ask every guest is if you're talking to a younger version of yourself or talking to a soon to be or a recent college grad who's thinking about supply chain or logistics, What's the piece of advice you'd give them? You know, I would absolutely say go out and I'm sorry to say the phrase again, raise your hand, put yourself out there. If you don't understand something, ask a question, learn and grow. My degree is in philosophy, but I went into a real estate world and and got into real estate by selling office furniture and then, grew into infrastructure projects for data centers and into where I am now at CBRE. All of that was by taking risks, trusting in yourself, and really going out and and and making yourself vulnerable to a point, and not being afraid of failure. What's the thing you're hoping to to bring home with you? You know, I'm really excited to have conversations around capital and solving the capital issues that are out there. We're we're we're having a lot of clients that have goals and sustainability goals to transition their fleet. However, they don't have the right funding mechanisms internally. So I'm really excited to to be able to talk I've got several meetings with several equity partners here. We've got meetings with end users or those fleet operators and we're really wanting to put them together so that we can really grow these networks so that we can drive EV adoption, help be that catalyst to, you know, for broader EV adoption for longer haul vehicles as well. Sir, I mean, so that that that is the biggest discussion. Right? Like, everybody there's nobody who's against clean air. Nobody. Everybody's like, look, I like clean air. Met them yet. Haven't met them yet. Everybody asks the same question, who's gonna pay for it? So it comes down to, you know, is the shipper gonna pay more for their goods? And then that comes in a couple of different ways. Right? Like, that is is the I'm gonna pay more per container, or I'm gonna need more containers because I'm gonna lighten the load in them because an EV truck or a hydrogen truck weighs so much more. You have a nine thousand pound difference between an actual diesel truck and a, you know, an EV. So therefore, the the legal amount they're allowed to carry has to be lighter. Yeah. Versus do I ship more? You know, how do I how how how have you found, you know, talking to Capital Partners, who does pay for it? Let me That's a great great question. So, obviously, first thing we look at is the federal grants and incentives. And I and, actually, I'm gonna take this step further. It's not just the federal. It's the state municipal and even the utility grants and incentives that are available in most cases. So that's really a a key place to start looking to how can we chip away at the capital cost right there. Right? The other, reality is equity partners that are out there, there's infrastructure the do a lease back so that they they'll lease the facility or the the dirt, if you will Sure. Rather than, have to purchase it outright themselves. Got it. So we're we're there's a lot of different partners, but I think it's a combination of incentives and grants the utilities and and the governments, capital partners and equity that's out there. And then ultimately, it will come down to consumers, will, at some point, have to pay a little bit more because the cost of, to the company itself is going up. And in order to be profitable, they have to adjust the rate to their price. We're we're talking about how landlords are looking at their current tenants that are looking to electrify. We're seeing some landlords are hesitant about allowing the infrastructure to be placed on-site, and there's a couple reasons for that. Number one, who owns it at the end of your lease? How much term is left on your lease? If I have seven years left on my lease, we know it's gonna take two years to bring the infrastructure in. Five years have to depreciate that asset. If it depending on who's paying for all of that, the landlord wants you to rip it all out at the end because they don't know who their next tenant is or what kind of vehicles they're gonna have that are gonna be the requirement. So it becomes this conversation of do we charge on-site behind the fence? Do we charge off-site? What is the risk and reward? You know, what is our overall strategy? And then applying across an entire strategy from that fleet owner and operator. Right. That that's important. And the last thing I would say is you brought up the weight of the vehicles. That is a very real scenario where municipalities are now having conversations with us and and tenants and REITs developers landlords about wear and tear on feeder streets coming into the industrial parks with the weight of these vehicles and if you're in Arizona, you have an asphalt street and it gets hot and these big trucks kinda start trenching them out, that becomes a a real problem and real issue as well as the, asset the the loading base. You know, who's doing all of these infrastructure upgrades and and improvements as well at these locations. So there's a lot more than just pure infrastructure that needs to be invested in. It is an investment in the roadways. It's an investment in the parking infrastructure. Can I put can I convert twenty diesel engines into twenty electric, vehicles on the same parking lot? The answer is probably no because I've got all my charging, stations or posts, my bollards, my switch gear batteries to have micro, micro grid strategy I have to deploy to bring the capacity up. There's just so much more that goes behind this programmatic approach to deploying infrastructure for these fleet operators. Sure. One thing we haven't touched on is solar. Are you helping, you know, landlords? Are you helping companies put panels on in place so that the infrastructure that that they're also laying is more affordable or, you know, theoretically more affordable because you once you get through that upfront cost, solar is free. You know, are you are you helping with that conversion as well to to drive down so in in LA Long Beach, for instance, if you charge between four PM and eight PM, you should anticipate three to four times the cost of a typical diesel truck. Are you using solar to offset some of that? Solar coupled with battery storage, you have to have that storage component as well to help offset that that or to to make use of the the electrons during that period of time, to help shave that the the peak shaving. But a lot of, the partners that we do work with are deploying solar as a part of the overall solution. You know, there's there's a lot to it. You can have just the chargers or you can have chargers and more of a, strategy around so incorporating solar, incorporating the battery storage, incorporating other micro grid technologies. You know, example of, tracking CNG lines and can we use CNG to generate power on-site? Very expensive. Yes. We understand that. Right. But can that bridge that gap if I need ten megawatts and I only have three today? Perhaps. That's one of the solutions that's there. What's the the coolest deployment you've been a part of? Or what what's the most interesting thing you've seen along the way here? Who who's who's unique? Yeah. I would say, you know, there there's been some really great deployments that we've done in the health care sector to help them with their entire fleet, transition. And while not heavy trucks, they're still in that area of having traveling nurses that need to build a programmatic approach to bringing their vehicles home at night. And sometimes they're going to the office. And then it's also in bundling in the ownership of that vehicle themselves so that in that scenario, they had a goal of converting about, you know, they need to hit about five hundred vehicles a year to hit their sustainability targets. Their capital plan only allowed about a hundred to a hundred and fifty. We were able to work with some of our partnerships and develop a program that incorporated the vehicle ownership as well as the infrastructure. And they were able to get four hundred vehicles a year. So that one, it kinda makes me proud to help solve what keeps our clients up at night through some of our relationships, you know, across the board with equity partners or, with our our third party charging infrastructure providers. Got it. You talked about home charging. Mhmm. So the the idea is not with class a vehicles perhaps, but with with maybe a pickup truck or whatever. I'm gonna bring my EV home. I'm gonna charge it in place. Do you help companies figure out, one, how to set up the infrastructure in an employee's home and charge that charge back to the company, or, you know, where where do you fall within that role? We really don't participate in the residential charging. When I say residential single family take home fleet kind of charging. That's not really where CBRE is focused and where we, thrive. Multifamily scenarios, we absolutely have programs in place for that, but not on single family residence. A lot of times, we will put them with our third party operators and let them kind of have their own home strategy, charging strategy, and and lessons learned. I don't know. It's my pleasure. You've been here. Pleasure. Thanks, Scott. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. I'm Mike Bush, joined today with Carlo Rodriguez from Ryder Systems. Excited to chat with you, man. But isn't Ryder Systems the guy is, like, Ryder System the guy I go go to to, like, rent a truck in order to move my apartment? Oh, thank you, Mike, for having me. Yeah. A lot of people think about Ryder and the yellow trucks in one way, but we are a ninety year old company going back to nineteen thirty three, and we had that consumer business for a short not a short period of time, but there was a stretch there over a couple decades. But we sold that business in the nineties. Our, focus is transportation and logistics and perfecting the supply chains, for our customers and to, eventually help, you know, that end consumer. So that's why we're here. Okay. Now now who is your customer? How how tell walk walk me through the basic business model. Yeah. So, I mean, you could go through a day in the life of any individual, and you're gonna touch Rider whether it's in the morning with with what you eat or going to work and getting on your computer, ordering pizza, getting meals delivered to your home. A lot of those companies that are doing that, driving your vehicle in automotive space, a lot of companies that are doing that, they're using rider to transport their goods and provide their services. So a lot of times you'll you'll see the company decaled and wrapped. Mhmm. But, you know, behind the scenes, it's a rider lease truck or truck running in dedicated transportation. So sure. The the way to think of this is you're kind of the guy behind the guy in trucking. It's, if if I wanna operate a trucking company, I can buy my own trucks, or maybe I should have a conversation with riders. Yeah. We're the company behind the guy or the girl in trucking, and, we've been doing it for a while, and we're trying to be that expert for our customers and then helping also prospects outsource, and just adding value. Okay. So we're we're in a clean trucking expo. What are we doing on the EV or the hydrogen space? Where where is where is Ryder play in carbon neutrality? Yeah. So last year in Anaheim, California, we launched Ryder Electric Plus. We're behind some of the, collateral here, and we're here a year later, and, we've been always at the forefront of testing new technology, whether it's natural gas or more efficient vehicles and engines and even our electric vehicles early on. But, you know, starting in the early twenty twenties, you see more traditional OEMs coming to market with vehicles. Now you walk this floor, it's massive. It's the biggest expo. I think it's over fifteen thousand attendees. Yep. There's eighty vehicles outside in the ride and drive or demo area. So there's a lot going on in this space, a lot of momentum, and our customers, need solutions. They need to know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. So we did wider electric plus, which is a industry first turnkey solution where they could get electrification advisory services. They could get the actual vehicle. Actual vehicle. They could get the charging and EV charging infrastructure. They could get the maintenance and the telematics with one contact under one contract for one cost. So you're sort of doing the trucking as a the truck as a service plus telematics and location. Is that It's not so much as a service. It's it's in our choicely service solution offering. So it's it's a a contract when it's ChoiceLease, or it could also be in the rental space. It could be no commitment, rent it for a day, rent it for a week. We do have now, light duty, medium duty, and coming soon here in a month or two, heavy duty in our rental fleet, EVs that customers could test and demo before they get into a long term lease contract. Got it. So, of the EVs, I know I can't I know you have to say I I love how much you learn equally. Yeah. Is there is there a particular e EV brand that you're really excited about or a particular especially on the class eight side, on on the larger trucks. Is there is there a larger truck that that really you've seen your customers kinda be surprised and delighted by? Yeah. So right now, the the focus and where you see in a lot of applications and EV benefit compared to the ice and internal combustion engine is it's light duty. It's it's, you know, that's the sweet spot. When you get up to medium duty, it becomes a lot more expensive. It could be two x for the vehicle. Right. And then then you're you're having this uphill climb of, you know, a situation where the fuel and the maintenance cost savings that come with EV is not enough to overcome that asset purchase. So that's where you need grants and incentives and tax credits. And then heavy duty is really expensive now. So, you know, there's a lot of good options in the light duty space. I think depending on the customers and the application, some are very excited about some OEMs because it's a good fit, and others, you know, are excited about other players. But you have Ford with their e transit. You have, GM with their bright drop unit, Mercedes, eSprinter that's coming soon, Dodge, eProMaster, Rivian is a nice vehicle. So, there's a lot of different options and even some I'm not mentioning in the light duty space. And then medium duty and heavy duty, the Freightliner, vehicle. Navistar has a, a straight truck. And then, you know, we're the the kinda sexy one, that we're kinda waiting to see is Tesla and the semi keynote yesterday, by Dan. That's a vehicle that, is gonna be great, I think, for the industry. It's gonna create more competition in that class eight space where the price is very high, and then there's a lot of sensitivities for the fleets with mileage and range. So, you know, that's gonna be great for our industry. And and, you know, Tesla themselves, Dan was was saying this we need it takes a village. I'm paraphrasing. No. Of course. Of course. We need competition. We need everyone to come come up with great solutions and good vehicles and really compete here. How did you get it? What what what attracted you to trucking, man? So, I am an attorney. So I, started at Ryder as an in house attorney in their law department in in South Florida. They're headquartered there. And after eleven years working contracts and transactions and and and that type of thing, decided to move to the business side. So I've been on the business side for about seven years, product management first, and now more focused on new products. And this, latest role started late in twenty twenty two, managing our great team. Shout out to our team. Just do a great job in handling the ecosystem we discussed and the things you see at our exhibit, with the solution. So when it comes to managing the team and new products, what what are the things that Ryder's done in the past, say, three months that have really, like, been eye opening to your customers? Yeah. So the focus is first becoming an expert, knowing what's going on, what's coming, monitoring, this the you know, whether it's compliance and mandates or new grants. So being an expert is key. And then the carrots and the sticks. Right? What grants incentives and credits are gonna help customers adopt EVs and make it simpler from an economic standpoint? And then on the stick side, the compliance and being an expert there and advising and trying to model out with our tools and resources in house that we developed with with this, solution of what needs to be EV by when, what's it gonna cost depending on customer's goals and and desire. My favorite question to ask everybody in this industry. You're talking to a new or recent college grad. They're thinking maybe supply chain logistics is for me. What's the one piece of advice you'd give them? I I'd say, you know, no matter the industry or sector, there's gonna be exciting jobs that match well with different personalities. So you think about marketing and corporate communication and finance and sales and business development, accounting, the law department. Right? So there's great matches no matter what the company because you need all these departments. So if you are into heavy duty vehicles or even medium or light duty and you want to join this movement that's happening now with sustainability because so much of carbon, emissions is, you know, there's a lot, a big chunk that's caused by fleets. So it's just a good way to make an impact. And that's the great thing about this job is if you're in the fleet and sustainability space, you're able to work, but you're also able to go home and feel good about giving back to the environment and doing your little part. So I would say explore it, you know, reach out, get connected on LinkedIn, start seeing what may work for you, what might be a match, maybe even go to a trade show. But there's so many opportunities that, in college, you and I probably would have never thought there would be a trade show this big on just commercial fleets and vehicles. Right? You just think, oh, there's a truck on the turnpike or highway and And you you at that age, it was my god. Get out of the way, guys. Right? That was that that's to be what yeah. On corn. Kindly. If people wanna get in touch with you, what's the best way to, to reach out? So, I'm on LinkedIn. I try to stay active there. I try to post, good updates there. Try to keep it fun and light as well. So LinkedIn's great. It's Carlo Rodriguez. Also, rider dot com is another good way to reach out. There's a special page just for electric vehicles and the rider electric plus solution. And then Ryder System Inc is on LinkedIn. We're on we're on Twitter. We're on Instagram. I think we're on most social media channels. So reach out. Market scale as of now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate it, man. Thanks so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Terry Terry O'Day from InCharge. Welcome to HemorDown. Tell me what it was about yourself, man. I'm Terry O'Day, and I'm a cofounder of InCharge Energy. I, live in Santa Monica, California where we're headquartered, and I am, now on my fifth EV startup. Fifth EV. Okay. What is so what let let's start with the most recent one. Yeah. What does InCharge do? InCharge is a turnkey provider of fleet services, for electrification. So we come in and we can do the design and engineering, installation, the hardware, software, and we stay behind and do the service, for chargers across all of North America. Got it. So you're you're not quite the truck as a service guy, but you're the, hey. You got a truck that's electric. We're gonna make sure it's always charged and running and and basically where it needs to be. That's right. For the most part, we meet fleet managers when they have, begun their journey of thinking about what trucks they want to deploy or what school buses or, delivery vehicles. Yeah. And then we talk to them about how to best provide the charging solutions for those vehicles. Okay. What are the common top two or three things where fleets oh, that where do fleets screw up? Where what what are the three things if you're like if you're if you're going this journey, make sure you do a b c. Yeah. I would say number one, in, complexity of the products. Right? So a lot of fleets are choosing products that are either on test or build for public charging markets or retail, charging. You want something that's fleet specific. Number two, you wanna have something that you know works together. So if you start pulling together, oh, I want this piece of hardware and that piece of hardware and this kind of software and this service team, you're gonna get into trouble trying to get it to all work together. Okay. Got it. Particularly in the medium and heavy duty space, the vehicles are still early days, and the interoperability with the charging solution is a meaningful challenge. Now when you say interoperability with the charging solution, is that this is like Apple back in the day when it had a different plug than everybody else had, or is this more along the lines of the software and the charging equipment won't talk to the soft software in the truck? For the most part, we're in a good spot with the connectors. Okay? Now there is this dynamic with Tesla that's come in with air connector, and the vehicle manufacturers are all adopting that. So we do have a transition moment associated with that. Our chargers provide both Okay. The standard CCS, it's called, connector or the Tesla Max connector. However, what I'm describing is a little different. So, the actual ability for the charger to communicate with the truck needs to be confirmed for the fleet manager. And so let me give you an example. The vehicle, you want when you plug it in at six PM, you want it to start charging at ten PM. Right. Because the electricity might be cheaper at that time of day. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And so, in order for that to happen, your charger might be scheduled to start at ten PM. But when it sends the signal to the truck, if the truck's turned off, it goes to nowhere. Got it. So the vehicle manufacturer has to be able to receive that signal, wake up the truck, and start charging. And that's where the manufacturers are still not quite there yet. And in Charge Energy has a laboratory where we are working with engineers Similarly, a vehicle manufacturer might do a firmware update on their software on the vehicle. We need to know that because that firmware might knock out the ability to charge it, on those chargers. Right? So we work together with their engineers to make sure that our firmware happens, they know about it, their firmware updates happen, and we're integrated. And those are the kinds of failures that are real bugaboos that you just didn't know because you wake up one day and somebody updated the firmware over the air, and all of a sudden your vehicle's in a charge overnight. You're like, oh my god. What do I do today? I don't have any revenue. Right? Right? So you said this is your fifth startup. How did walk me through. Is this like a a a straight line path into to InCharge, or is this kind of meandering meandering approach, man? It was a straight line with one jump. Okay. So in the early days of the EV industry, started with Edison International. I started two companies that are doing EV charging, one in industrial and one in on road vehicles. We did a couple of other companies. This was the heyday of energy deregulation in California. Yeah. And at Edison, we thought we would print money with the Edison brand on it. One of those companies, persisted and is now the standard in airport, ground support equipment and electrification. I left there and founded the first rental company in the country that rented only electric cars. Got it. And I have five makes of cars, from the major automakers, and then we went into natural gas and hybrid electric cars. We got out to sixteen airports in five states, and I, couldn't get enough cars. This was the days of who killed the electric car. You know that story? And, had to sell that to a major rental car company, and that was the hiatus. That was the skip where I went into philanthropy. Okay. Got it. So I ran a foundation in California that was, starting environmental activist groups all over California and Mexico. So I was still doing startups, but in a nonprofit space. Got it. Okay. And the EV industry started coming back to life, and I was gonna be damned if I was gonna sit on the sidelines for it. Sure. So I joined the founding team of e b go Okay. And built out e b go to the largest public charging, provider in, North America, and then sold that to private equity. Had a stint running a German company, investments in US charging. So, did a start up there. But what changed over these years is that we were always very focused on the most important things with EVs. Do you know the three most important things about an EV? So the battery. Battery, the battery, and the battery. There we go. Yes. Right? And so when we were focused on these very expensive batteries, we use you know, the automakers design small vehicles to maximize the utilization of a battery and not go over the price, abilities of the consumer. So you had, like, two seat sports cars, and then you have, like, Honda Civics and those kinds of vehicles. About six years ago, huge volume of production came online of batteries globally for transportation, and prices plummeted by, like, seventy percent. And at that moment, we looked at the dynamics of the industry, and we said, we can now beat gas and diesel on a per mile basis. And if that's true, then you no longer wanna be in those fuel efficient vehicles. You wanna go after the most fuel hogs. Right? Because the more fuel consumed, the bigger the savings opportunity. And that's when we said the fleet market's gonna take off, and we looked at the industry and said there aren't really good fleet solutions out there. We started the company selling multiple makes of chargers, multiple types of software, and most of it had been optimized for public retail charging for light duty vehicles. It had a lot of bells and whistles, credit card payment solutions, and mobile apps for drivers. And those are all really great, like, you can still have them for a fleet. Right. But complexity adds failure points, and failure points are a problem for fleets because they need reliability as their number one factor. And no matter how reliable your system might be, it breaks because truck drivers. It's like, you know, people who don't own the vehicle necessarily. Right? It's operators. So, it's gonna break and that means you need a technician team. So we built a team of technicians across the country. They drive EVs and they test the chargers with their own vehicles. They go out to your site to fix your charger. They don't get home if it doesn't work. Got it. That's that's a good point. Yeah. That's a hell of an incentive. Yeah. So one of one of the things you talked about, you know, was was the credit card component of this. And so so the company I work for has EVs deployed, and we we've actually started to talk to some of the other trucking companies to say, can we do sort of a a charging exchange program? Or if my truck is out near you, I might call you and say, hey. Can I get can I can I borrow your charger for a couple hours or vice versa? Yes. You know, are you when you talk about interoperability, is that are you building that ability into all the char the in charge solutions? Yeah. Our in control platform is a software solution that we built for fleets. So ground up, it is designed to do what a fleet needs, not everything else, all of those bells and whistles. But it will track all of your kilowatt hours used, and you can do a private party to party contract with another fleet and, and, exchange that information and, you know, page other skills when possible when it comes due. Got it. So one of my favorite questions to ask is, you know, if you're talking to somebody who's new to the industry or somebody who just graduated college and they're thinking about getting into supply chain and logistics, what advice would you give them? You know, my advice is get into a space where you have into a an organization where there's a lot of folks that you know are experts that you can learn from. Show up to work first, go home last. Read everything that comes into the organization, learn from everybody in that space, and you'll soon find that, like, when you're showing up, you demonstrate some confidence. People will begin to ask you to take more responsibility, and it'll happen fast. It's a dynamic space for looking for good people who are, motivated and take ownership for the end result for a customer. And I think if you keep that mentality, you'll do well. You know, a lot of young people today too, I would say, are relying on technology for communications. And, you know, they'll send an email and think they're done. It doesn't really work. You still do have to pick up the phone. You still do have to go to talk to somebody in person, And this conference kinda demonstrates that. There's a value that you cannot, exchange for an online communication for sure. It's a really appreciate you, man. Thanks for being on the show. Great meeting you. Alright. Cool, guys. I'm join excited to be joining Alexia Bednarz from Nikola. Alexia, tell us a little bit about yourself. Absolutely. So I stated Alexia Bednarz. I lead sustainability for Nikola Corporation. Okay. So Nikola is, like, the one of the cleanest trucking companies out there leading sustainability. What does that actually mean? That means that, we inherently have a sustainable product, but we wanna practice what we're preaching. And so we look internally to ensure that we're also adopting sustainable values, taking a look at our environmental footprint, our social impact, and our governance structures to assure they're aligning with our sustainability goals. Okay. So baselining it from the beginning, tell me a little bit about Nikola. What what is it that that the company offers? Where are you heading, etcetera? Absolutely. So we're an original equipment manufacturer of two different purpose built zero tailpipe emission vehicles. One is a battery electric vehicle, and the other is a fuel cell. And because we understand there's this poultry problem, the chicken and the egg, you can't have a product without the fueling solutions to support it. We also have an energy dimension of our company called Hyla that builds up the hydrogen fueling ecosystem. We also have a few, interim charging assets that we can deploy to kinda bridge the gap while permanent infrastructure is being built for charging. Gotcha. And as you've gone, what's been sort of, what's what's been the uptake, or how how are most trucking companies thinking about it? How how are folks, you know, receiving the Nicholas? I think really well. Seeing is believing. When they get in the trucks, they understand that kind of the future is here and now, that we can have zero tailpipe permission vehicles deployed, like, within the year. There are solutions available. And, the folks that I work with often have ambitious sustainability goals or, you know, CEO board pay or employee bonuses based off of performance and sustainability. So they're highly motivated to achieve decarbonization, and, they do realize that there's a lot of decarbonization value or decarbonization for your buck in the class eight truck space. They inherently, though, there's fewer, class eight trucks on the road, they produce, on average, more emissions than, say, a passenger car. So it's on a scale of, like, one to twenty three. Right. Now one of my one of my favorite things about the Nikola trucks is the fact that it's a cab over, meaning that the the actual driver sits above the wheel and it's a flat nose. So everybody who's on Twitter is saying, oh, that's a cab over. It must be in Europe. You guys are are correcting that for us, which is wonderful. So thank you. I it's one of my favorite little things because it that's what that's whatever is get goes crazy over that. Yeah. So how did you get into this? How did you start out? You know, what attracted you to Nikola? Sure. Well, I I've been in the sustainability industry for over a decade. Prior to this, I worked for U Haul International. And while I was at U Haul managing their sustainability team, we did do fleet electrification studies. Alright. So, they're a transportation focused company as well, and that's been always been a passion of mine. But when I joined the Nikola team, I saw that they were a pioneer leading in the space, not afraid to, make zero emissions their legacy, and that was what was really attractive. Not to mention, like I've stated, just the impact. We know that about twenty eight percent of emissions in the the US, according to the EPA, is attributed to transportation. And of that portion of the pie, twenty three percent is attributed to class eight trucks. So the impact is great, in implementing zero emission trucks and how we can decarbonize. Sure. So the the my favorite question to ask everybody, if you're talking to your younger self or talking to a newer recent college grad who's thinking about trucking as an industry, thinking about logistics or transportation or even supply chain, what's the piece of advice you'd give them? I would not be afraid to kind of follow your heart and your interest and your passions, and see where that leads you. And then also, you know, by experience here, we're pioneering solutions, and and sometimes you it's difficult. Right? If it was easy, everyone would do it. You can get beat up at times and jumping over hurdles that because there's no path to follow. But I wouldn't be afraid of that. I would take that challenge head on. Don't be afraid of new experiences and challenges. Alexia, if somebody wants to get in touch, how do they do it? So I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me, Alexia Bednarz. You can also send an email to alexia dot bed narz at nikla motor dot com. That's cool. Thanks for being a guest. Yeah. So so, Jay, what do you do, with with US Energy? So I, I'm working on branching our our large company of US Energy, that send more traditional fuels into the electrification sector, and we're doing that with our initial product offering, Volt Vault. So Volt Vault is, an electrification offering, that is a purpose built on-site on demand machine developed for EV charging. Volvault is a product to US Energy whose parent company is US Venture, which is a large privately held company located in Wisconsin. We're the fifth biggest company in the state. And US Energy is dedicated to bringing transportation fuels to a variety of different customers. Everything from legacy fuels now to electrification products. So what we do is, within this, shipping container here, we take, either renewable or standard natural gas, run it through a genset, turn that into electron, send that through our electrical room, through our purpose built machine to do EV dispensing. Okay. I got it. So I basically I take a renewable fuel or or natural gas. Yep. I put it in the machine. It then powers my electric truck. Is that That's correct. Okay. Now so if I if I think that through, the idea behind electricity and electrification was we don't have to rely on natural gas. We can go away from that. Is that defeating the purpose, or are we getting better? Like, is there a comparison where I say, you know, x gallons of gas equals y mileage per gallon in a truck versus in a charging it it's better. Walk me through. Yeah. So there's a couple ways to think about that. So one, we're bringing power, three phase power to where otherwise, when you've got it. So that can either be because it's in a really remote location or it could be in a really congested location as well. So this is what we like to think of this is this is a pragmatic step on the ladder to on the ladder to zero more zero emission vehicles on the road. Okay. And then getting more down to the nuts and bolts of it, having more zero emission vehicles on the road means we're displacing diesel trucks on the road. And if you ever looked at our worst case, which is CNG fossil land versus the diesels we're displacing on the road, there's a net carbon reduction there. Okay. Got it. And that's that's not even to get into. We're also able to supply this with renewable natural gas, and the percentage of renewable natural gas that we pump into it brings down the carbon intensity of the whole machine. Alright. So if I'm a trucking company and I put a unit like this maybe in my facility or at a yard where I'm I'm doing some remote deliveries Yeah. Do you then do you bring the fuel to me? Do I have to set that up with somebody else? How do how does the fuel get into the machine? Yeah. So there's, really three different ways that could happen. The first way is we could actually tie directly into a natural gas pipeline if you have that available on your site. And that's really convenient because then we don't have to worry about any kind of refueling, operations. And, also, if we use a natural gas pipeline, we can deliver electricity at fourteen cents per kilowatt hour Okay. Which is an amazing rate compared to what you can get it off the grid, basically anywhere in the country. Alternatively, if you don't have a natural gas pipeline nearby, we have versions of this where there's onboard compressed natural gas storage in the rear. Or if you need, if you're gonna use it, really pretty frequently, we can connect to a a tube trailer. So another trailer that would show up is a large container of compressed natural gas, and it would connect, connect to the system. Okay. Gotcha. How did you get into this? So, yeah. So I've only been doing, the old fuels for transportation for the last two years. Prior to that, I was doing electrification projects for the US Navy through a private defense contractor. K. But then, I mean, long story short, I was going back to graduate school, and I made a few connections. And, I was excited to apply my experience of running large scale naval programs to solving today's issues in, the transportation sector. Got it. So, Jerry, we're at ACT Expo, which is all about advanced transportation. What's the coolest thing you've seen other than your own product? Right. You know, what what's the coolest thing you've seen or the most exciting thing you've seen? Or what what's the takeaway you you hope you would you'd hope to share out? Yeah. So, I mean, number one, number one, full full. Most exciting thing here. We we already know that. But, I think number two is just the momentum behind this whole movement. I mean, mean, the excitement, the buzz, it's there. There's a sense of optimism in the air. You know, the the feeling around advanced clean or alternative clean transportation feels a little bit cyclical. Sure. But here at ACT, it feels really like, almost like the beating heart of the industry. And you could tell that there's tons of smart people working together, all moving towards the same shared vision of the future. And that's that's a pretty cool thing to see. So one of the questions I ask every guest on the show is if you were to talk to either your young your younger self or talk to, you know, a new or recent college grad. Just thinking about supply chain or logistics as an industry, what's a piece of advice you you would give that person? I would just say get to work. I mean, there's it's it's a great industry to be in. You know, it's what it's what runs our economy. I mean, we don't we don't we can't sell or make goods without the movement of products. So supply chain is a really critical part of it, and, there's a lot of exciting jobs out there for it. Awesome. Thanks for Okay. Tell me a little bit about the company. So ZevX, awesome company. Really focused on providing mobile charging solutions, charging solutions to the EV industry Yeah. And to kind of the genset, event space, construction space industry. We build our own battery packs. We design all of our own systems, van based, trailer based. Okay. Really exciting opportunity. So so what what's what's your perfect customer? Who's who's your perfect use case? So the perfect use case is really split into multiple things. Right? The goal is going green. Alright. Right? So in the genset world, it's eliminated those diesels, getting to a silent product that provides that output for, you know, concert events, sporting events, things like that. But on the other side, it's really fleets. Okay. Fleets that are looking for EV charging solutions where the infrastructure's not there and the OEMs can't deliver enough EVs because there's no infrastructure to charge them yet. Got it. So it's kind of those combinations. So there there's two two very specific use cases. One of them is any place you'd see a big generator, whether it's a concert, whether it's, you know, any play maybe construction for outdoor lighting. Right. And then the other one is if you're a fleet and you're going to go someplace where you're gonna need to recharge your truck, you guys are the ones to call. Exactly. Because the infrastructure's not there, but the OEMs are ready to deliver. Got it. Okay. Where where that gap are. Now how did you get into this? You know, forty years, I know. I don't look that old, but Mhmm. Forty years in power electronics, battery technology, software. And this is really the only company that brought it all together and provided that solution, which to me is really exciting. Okay. Very cool. What were you doing before? Well, before I came here, I was actually running a software company that was looking at logistics and security all over the world. Okay. Now if I tie in that experience, does it make it so you're you're absolutely the right person to say, here's where you're gonna put your temporary, unit in order to to improve your operations. Is that kind of the Exactly. Right? It's leveraging telematics, leveraging the software of the fleet, and then tying those things together so we really offer that total solution. Got it. Okay. Greg, one one of my favorite questions to ask is, you know, if you were to talk to your younger self or talk to, you know, a a recent college grad about our industry and say, here's something I wish I would have known, or here's here's the best advice I'd give you. What do you think it is? So it'd be the same thing I've given my children. Take the chance. Okay. Right? Don't settle. Take the chance and trust in yourself. So tell me, tell me a little bit about your time and tell me about Autofleet. Yeah. Autofleet, we focus exclusively on fleets and mobility operators. So our customers are large rental car companies, car sharing operators, taxi companies, really anything from a scooter to a car to a truck. Okay. We provide three core solutions, a fleet planning simulator. We provide a fleet management optimization layer to orchestrate all the fleet management tasks, and the turnkey solutions for operating any kind of ride based service, both fast mile delivery and passenger based services like taxi, ride hail, school transport, monomercial medical transport, and others. Does that sort of make you like a a transportation management system for everybody outside of class eight fleets? Or how do I how should I think about that? Yeah. So really focused exclusively on fleets, but really a wide range of different verticals. Okay. So we have, like, for mobility customers, car sharing operators, taxi, rental, what have you. We even have some trucking customers as well. Okay. Gotcha. And how did you how did you get into it? What what what prompted us? Yeah. So we, before founding Onofleet, I was, head of product company called Get, which is in ride hailing industry. And, we kinda saw the opportunity of focusing on fleets, asset heavy fleets. We think that they play a very important part in the value chain of mobility already today, but even more so in the future. So, we just wanna focus on that. Yeah. So sort of the the Intel inside for, I guess, like like, the Uber freight almost or kind of the the the the technology back end to enable? Yeah. Exactly. So all the software needed to operate a fleet all the way from fleet planning to managing the actual fleet and all the fleet management tasks and operating a ride based service. Yeah. Okay. So if I if I break that down, the first component of that is smart route smart smart routing. Right? So is that is that something you offer? Are you building it on AI? Are you looking at historicals? How how do you come up with, your routing recommendations? Yeah. Absolutely. So we do, the on the routing side, there's actually a few steps to it. One is, future future order planning. So as future orders come in, whether it's, future orders for school transport or delivery or what have you, Basically, considering all the constraints of the rides, the vehicles, the drivers, and so on, and creating a master route plan. Then real time, dispatching those rides to drivers, with very accurate ETAs, also considering rides that come in kind of ACP. And then finally, as those rides get dispatched, also, we optimize them. So looking at all the, drivers that might be delayed versus the ones that are kind of ahead of time and shuffling the rides between them. Overall, it's really provide kind of really good SLAs. Okay. Now one of the things you said that was really interesting, Dave, you talked about, understanding the limits of vehicles. Right? So if I'm hearing that correctly, it's if you're driving an eighteen wheeler that's an EV, you obviously have a limited range as opposed to just stop and get diesel. Are are those the types of variables you're focused on? Yeah. So the constraints that we look in the vehicles can across capacity, weight, and number of passengers that can ride in those vehicles. And if we're talking about electric vehicles, then definitely the state of charge. And we consider also when and where the vehicles should charge. K. So, for example, if you just go according to a static threshold and say, oh, when the vehicle hits twenty percent charge, that's kind of a naive approach to go about it. Because, for example, if you consider future demand, you may wanna charge the vehicle in advance of that demand Right. Even if it's at sixty, seventy percent charge. So taking all these things into consideration, all those constraints, in order to create the most optimal. Okay. Gotcha. So am I am I else am I correct? You're also including the ability to, like, track deliveries, track, you know, motion. So if, to to fleet management as sort of a delivery service, if somebody shows up like DoorDash, you know, DoorDash tells me, hey. Your delivery was made. Are you doing that type of things on the back end as well? Yeah. Absolutely. So we track, all the vehicles, in very high granularity. So, we use both telematics data as well as our own driver app that we collect data. Okay. So sub second, location data. So you could track the all the vehicles on the map. You could see historical reporting. You can you have full audit of exactly what happened in retrospective and so on. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. And then, you know, if I wanted to in in in freight, for instance, uploading documents or getting you know, once I got the signature out of bill of lading, approved for delivery, etcetera. You know, in is in the app, do you have the ability to scan that stuff, upload it into a single board? Exactly. So proof of delivery, whether it's a signature, whether it's taking a picture, whether it's scanning a barcode, that's all available inside the driver app as well. Yeah. Kobi, one question I try to ask every guest. If you're talking to somebody who's new or thinking about supply chain, maybe it's a career change, maybe they just graduated, what's the best piece of advice you can give them? Specifically for, in the mobility space? In mobility or supply chain? Yeah. So I would say, like, I came from the industry. Right? And so I had kind of a, an unfair advantage of knowing exactly what's going on before starting the company. So I would say take your time, get to know the industry that you're in. You'll be surprised at the kind of the nuances, that you find, and then I think you'll be able to cater the best solution to based on the experience that you've paid before. Thanks, Appreciate it, man.