BYOC
Bring Your Own Cable
Introduction
BYOC is in the business of revolutionizing the future of EV charging in the United States through easy-install, low-cost, scalable commercial EV charging, where drivers bring their own charging cables. Current products in the US public EV charging market have two fundamental flaws - they are unscalable and unreliable. BYOC solves these by changing the form factor from a gas pump to a plug, which will allow EV charging to rapidly scale at the small cost of drivers bringing their own cables – the ‘C’ in BYOC.
Problem
Both NREL estimates and reality show that the cost to install a single public charger often exceeds that of a brand new car, making the unit economics infeasible where the latest city building codes mandate 50-100% of “EV Ready” parking lots in new construction. Moreover, studies show that up to 25% of chargers do not work, mostly because the frequent malfunctioning of cables and payment systems damage reliability. These problems affect EV adoption hesitancy and range anxiety amongst the 31% of Americans who live in multi-family housing, or the 34% of American households which are renter-occupied, as these demographics do not have easy access to home charging. It also affects small and family-owned businesses, which stand to benefit from accessible EV charging, but lack the capital to install existing options. Solving this problem will enable the market to move beyond the lowest-hanging fruit to enabling a viable, sustainable transportation option for the vast majority of Americans.
Opportunity
We believe the root cause of the problem is that the industry treats public charging as a replacement for refueling, instead of recognizing the vast differences in the behavior of EV users. Our solution to this is three-pronged. Firstly, we adopt the form factor of a plug instead of a gas pump, allowing us to create a DIY, low-cost, self-installation charging unit that can be delivered in a package. This involves the adoption of the durable “Type 2” plug interface seen in Europe, and the proliferation of detachable cables with BYOC users. Secondly, we leverage the existing power supply of commercial buildings, which are all wired for 220V power at the electrical panel, making the electrical work for BYOC a standard installation instead of a specialized upgrade. Thirdly, we create the largest and most ubiquitous charging platform enabled by the network of low-cost chargers, facilitating transactions between providers and customers in a similar fashion to AirBnB.