Stronger. Faster. Cheaper. Welcome to the New EV Charging Station

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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

SH1: To start off with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the history of the company?

BL: I'm a career energy guy. I’ve been around public companies, energy services companies, consulting, new venture capital, sort of generalist by nature. I've had a lot of manufacturing operations experience, a lot of stuff around transactions. So pre-merger, post-merger, startups, sort of greenfield type opportunities. Indie Power has been around for a while, really focused historically on microgrids. I did some of the early work around secondary use batteries and recycling and over the years developed five patents that sort of give us the leg up in terms of managing a microgrid ecosystem. So that's kind of where we've been.

SH2: For viewers out there who are new to clean tech and the EV and EV charging world, can you give us a quick overview of the market and key future trends?

BL: Well certainly, everywhere you turn these days it's on the internet, it's in the newspapers, E-mobility and cleantech is all over the place and relatively a new industry and I think very dynamic so people are trying to get their arms around exactly what it is. Certainly from an E-mobility perspective it's a big market. When you talk about E-mobility, people think obviously about passenger vehicles but certainly it extends to fleets, large trucks, boats, trains, heavy equipment. Any of those are potential, if it moves and it needs power, it's potential for an E-mobility solution. I think in addition to that the market is poised for just really big growth and there's a few things that have enabled that growth. I think the biggest thing is technology advancements and in particular batteries have really evolved to the point where it really comes down to economics, Dave.

What's the price of an EV versus the price of a traditional internal combustion engine? And you're seeing that the EV’s are starting to approach a break even point with that technology, so they're able to have an advantage and people ultimately want to buy the EV platform. I think in addition to that the big auto manufacturers have jumped on board. You see them now; they've started with a very small selection of EV’s but you're seeing the Chryslers and the GMs and the Fords and the Nissans and the Toyota’s are all either adding pieces to their fleet or going completely electric and interestingly they're starting to expand into luxury vehicles, they're starting to expand in the big pickup trucks, see the Ford F-150 Lightning as an example of a vehicle that Ford is really sort of taken a big, I guess, commitment on.

So all that's sort of where things are going and then of course, there's a lot of mandates from governments around the world to that's putting wind in the sail and so total cost of ownership is coming down for electric vehicles and it's got a lot of momentum. Penetration rates in the market are still around 3%, but it's growing. I think the other thing is what's key to note is the type of people that are sort of the early adopters, who are the users of EVs.

I think if you do the research, it's really younger folks, urban folks and people who have a pretty good paycheck have been the adopters and really where it stalled a little bit is in the rural areas and in the suburban areas and that's primarily due to the stuff you mentioned in your preamble, was charge anxiety and range anxiety. Am I going to have enough battery under the hood? And if I don't and I'm halfway between here and there is there somewhere I can pull in and get a top up and you don't want to be stranded on the side of the road. So a lot of the solutions that have come into the market are focusing on the charging side and the battery side to come up with a solution to sort of propel the E-mobility market forward.

SH3: Can you update our investor audience on any exciting, new company developments that are relevant to our investor audience?

BL: Yeah, I, guess the biggest thing in our big focus right now Dave is around our DC fast charging platform. We're really excited about that. We've made great progress, look for sort of third quarter of this year for a prototype and a pilot and then by the end of the year Q4 for some commercialized product. If I take a step back on that, the big risks I think in everyone's business these days but certainly in our business is around relationships and supply chain and a couple of the things we've done in our business to sort of make us resilient and ensure that we're able to de-risk the business going forward, really focuses around building collaborative relationships with some great bench strength right now with engineering firms to help us drive the development of the product forward.

So we're excited about that. That's something that really is going to help us as we move forward and then of course building good relationships with supply chains. I can't think of a single industry right now, you name it and have been impacted through COVID and then the risks with the war that's currently ongoing in Eastern Europe, and it's kind of that what's next economy almost, you wonder what's around the corner, is there another problem coming down the pipe and trying to stay nimble, trying to stay focused to make sure that we can manage those risks as they come up.

SH4: Beyond fast EV charging stations, what are some of the other applications for your proprietary tech?

BL: Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, I think the energy management system and the microgrid space is something where we've played before and we have some technology and some patents around that. I think we're talking about true microgrids. We've actually fielded, we're currently looking at opportunities for true micro grid applications, which we're excited about. If you think about where these opportunities come up, they come up in oil and gas, they come up in mining, they come up in crypto, we had seen some stuff around crypto, certainly the Canadian north or other regions of the planet where you've got an isolated communities or isolated mining sites for example are good potential opportunities and we're starting to see more and more of those.

I guess a little closer to home on the commercial industrial space and sort of the one-megawatt range, just being able to help customers reduce demand charges , better manage their bills, their power bills, save some money. Other customers are very focused on resilience they just don't ever want the power to go out. So there's a number of opportunities in that energy management space that we're seeing some traction and our technology is such that we're able to leverage sort of the base technology to go and pursue those opportunities.

SH5: For potential investors, what kind of future development and progress can we expect rom your R&D and operational systems?

BL: Well, the magic I think in every business is to be able to see what's around the corner and in an industry that's so dynamic and so fresh and so new, being nimble and being focused and I think the real challenges is trying to get around the corner before everybody else. So really, really focusing on that and I think the way we do that is with data driven software solutions. So two-pronged approach to focus on user experience, the people that are actually going to be out there charging their vehicles. How do we make that a more pleasant experience and the second side of that, the people who own the infrastructure, how do we unlock value streams for them? How do we make it profitable and generate positive ROI? So I think data and software solutions are the stuff that's around the corner and the stuff we've sort of focused on is sort of as a product roadmap as we move forward.

SH6: What separates Indie Power Systems from the competition and makes your business model particularly unique?

BL: I would say what makes our business unique is that we're really focused on the human experience. For the end user, is it available, does it work and what optionality, the new economy we live in, the people want options, people want to be able to adapt things to how they want to use things? For the owners of the infrastructure, I think they want to be able to optimize their assets. They want to be able to upsell people on the service they're providing and ultimately they want to be able to monetize it, and I think from a software and data perspective, being able to manage the assets in an efficient manner, as well as driving down the total cost of ownership, as well as I think ultimately really enhancing the overall human machine experience is really critical.

SH7: What’s the long-term strategy for the company moving forward and what should retail and institutional investors be looking out for once you go public?

BL: I think that's a multiple pronged answer, I guess, first of all, focusing on business fundamentals, supply chain relationships, good technology is very important to us, but look for us in the DC fast charging space, look for us in software and hardware solutions on a global basis. We're starting with the end in mind, so we're very cognizant of the global reach of these products. Look for us in the microgrid energy management space, I say more on a niche basis in some of the industries I mentioned earlier. Look for us in the CNI space in that one-to-two-megawatt range in that space. I think that's where we play very well. So look for us there and that's a potentially a large opportunity for us and our investors and really just focused on execution and delivering quality products and really focusing on the human machine experience and to deliver just really good solutions to end users and our customers.

SH8: And finally, Bern, if there’s anything I’ve overlooked please feel free to elaborate…the floor’s all yours.

BL: I guess Dave, I'll just go back to the team. I think it's all about the people. It's all about relationships, it's all about collaboration. We're really excited about the engineering bench strength that we've brought on board. We're also very excited about the supply chain relationships and collaboration that we're engaged in. We've managed to pull together an advisory board team that that has decades of experience, technical commercial experience but also deep sort of deep channels into the industry. So automotive microgrids. So we're really excited about the team we've put together and thinking about all the risks that are currently in the market and how do we make sure that we're able to hit milestones and deliver on our potential. I think that's the key, is continuing relationships, continuing to work with people, build bench strength and I think that's a winning formula for us.

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FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.