What role does your company play in the wider automotive industry?
Emporia was founded in 2018 with the goal to revolutionize home energy. The Western society has been powering their homes the same way for the last 150 years and we believe it is about time to employ technology to use, produce and store energy in a more efficient manner. We are taking a holistic approach and building our whole energy management system by combining a suite of custom hardware with third party appliances smart home device integration. Given that 76% of the 300 million houses in North America would rather use sustainable energy generated in their own communities, we believe we could become the nexus between EVs and home electrification. At the end of the day, the home energy management space alone is projected to be an $80 billion business in the second half of this decade. The fact that, now, we can leverage the car battery as an extension of the home to drive energy efficiency and carbon reduction is a huge opportunity.
Why this necessity of a holistic approach to cover every aspect of energy in a home?
Spending 25 years as a commodity marketer and trader, a large portion of my job focused on trading North American energy. By 2015, I realized how the energy transition was upon us and it was only going to start accelerating throughout this decade, thanks to a mix of technologies, policies and cultural belief. By digging further into this subject, we became big believers in bi-directional EV chargers, which could offer battery capacity at $50 per kilowatt versus the $1,000 per KW in the case of stationary storage. As all companies were focused mainly on massive residential buildings, we felt here was an opportunity to deliver a low-cost solution that could fit the bill for any household in North America. We believe that this micro grid technology is the way the world is going to get power in the future.
What is the main product that you offer for EVs and are there any scaling up plans related to this?
Our core product today is the Level 2 EV charger but we are working hard on bringing a bi-directional EV charger to market, which will hopefully be available by the end of 2024.
Controlling EV charging through port telematics does not require a smart charger so we can offer a pretty straightforward solution. We aim to reduce energy spend for the average consumer by 30% to 50% by using the car battery during expensive peak hours and recharging it when energy is inexpensive. A home usually needs 4 kW of power but our initial product can offer up to 11.5 kW, and with Emporia's proprietary software doing all the energy management, consumers can sign up to monetize that excess capacity. We strongly believe that it will become standard that homeowners can enlist into VPP programs, with companies like Emporia managing their energy usage and flexibility against the grid.
The city of Boulder, for example, hooked on one Nissan Leaf and they saved $270 a month on average over a twelve-month period. Our long-term plan is to scale up this model and make it available across North America and Western Europe, and the fact that California has recently started pushing legislation that mandates EVs to support bi-directional charging tells us we are on the right path. Hopefully, most of the major automakers will be willing to support this new approach by 2025, although Tesla is placing their bets on a future where their cars are being monetized through rideshare mobility. We believe that the stationary battery leverage is much more palatable for drivers since it does not imply letting strangers wear and tear your $50,000 EV.
What is the main challenge that you would need to solve in order to succeed and take Emporia to the next level?
Tesla has a closed system and high brand loyalty, and, as a result, only 0.3% of owners are buying our charger as opposed to the 7% of non-Tesla users. We met Tesla’s specs and beat their price point and, as we enter the point of sale of vehicles with raw manufacturing partners, we hope that our sales are going to really accelerate. Our main concern at the moment is the willingness of automakers to support open communication protocols around bi-directional charging. As consumers start to demand choice and ubiquity, we are going to see more and more OEMs complying with this new way of interconnecting EVs with homes.
