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The PROPERTY DOCTORS, Sydney Australia Novak Properties
EP. 1359 NO CHARGER, NO PROBLEM! ELECTRIFYING YOUR CAR SPACE AT HOME
Curious about the future of electric vehicle charging and how it could transform your daily life? Merrich and Yaesmin from Alchemy Charge are here to enlighten us with their firsthand insights as Tesla owners. Navigating the challenges of EV charging in residential and strata settings, they reveal how their Smart Point technology is making waves in the EV infrastructure world. Through the lens of their personal journey and inspiration drawn from the success of Norway's EV market, explore how Alchemy Charge is tackling the common hurdles faced by strata properties, offering practical solutions without the need for expensive individual power connections.
Join us as we discover the practicality of adapting to apartment living with Alchemy Charge's innovative solutions, which significantly reduce costs and streamline the charging process for owners corporations. Through a compelling customer case study, see how switching from local superchargers to their system has brought both financial savings and increased efficiency. Merrich and Yaesmin also discuss the potential of upgrading to level two chargers and the importance of adapting charging habits. As we close, find out how you can connect with the Alchemy Charge team on LinkedIn and continue the conversation on revolutionizing the EV space.
Alright, guys and girls, we know the electric cars are not going away and the biggest problem we see in the industry is the bloody chargers, the power points. We've got the ultimate solution. I'm the ringleader, so let's go A-wa-wa-we-wa-wa-wa, billy, tell us what we have today. A couple of special guests.
Speaker 2:Specialising in the electric car space field, but this is such a hot topic, you know we're finding buyers, sellers, you know, selecting properties as to where they can charge their electric car. They don't want to give them up.
Speaker 1:They're like children so we've got the entrepreneurs of the industry, uh merrick and ymin from Alchemy Charge Guys. Thank you so much for coming on, and boy do you have a solution.
Speaker 3:Morning, happy to be here, excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Is Merrick the most nervous person out of these four people.
Speaker 4:Not at all. I reckon Billy might be. I'm not blushing.
Speaker 2:It's extreme sunburn. My God, what happened to your face, billy? Are you talking about the sunglasses in there or just the colour of it? I got a bit too excited in the sun yesterday. After four weeks of having no sun, I just went crazy.
Speaker 1:Look at your ears. Yeah, yeah, it's all pretty bad it's lucky, I'm not hurt by an ev charger. Good luck, yeah, um so guys slap campaign it is, it is um. So, guys, you've got this great solution. Can you tell us a little bit more about how it works?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. We purchased our first electric vehicle about three and a half four years ago now, and when Merrick was going to do the purchase, he was obviously trying to convince me. Merrick is lucky enough to be my co-founder and husband of almost 18 years, so we make these decisions together. It was at that point that I said okay, you're getting electric vehicle, how do you plan on charging it? And he said from the powerpoint in our garage and I kind of thought sure, mate, you're just pulling my leg, you just want a fancy new car. But it works out. It was true, and that's exactly what he did. We purchased our first Tesla and he only ever charged it from the PowerPoint in our garage.
Speaker 3:And, having a background in remedial building Merrick is a remedial builder we thought, okay, here we go. We've worked with apartments for the last 15 years. Electric vehicles are on the rise. This is a match made in heaven. Let's go. Little did we know that our path wouldn't be so linear. So we went to someone who is now one of our competitors and said you know, we're shopping for an electric vehicle charger for our facility here in Brookvale, and we pointed at one that we liked and the guy kind of just laughed, didn't he, merrick?
Speaker 4:Yeah, he did, and he goes. Look. We turned around and said, look, we like the look of that one, how much is it? And he laughed he goes. Look, don't worry about how much, how much power do you have? And we've got 300 amp at our facility so we thought that should be decent enough and he laughed he goes. No, you need around a thousand amp for that particular charger.
Speaker 4:So it was that moment. We said, okay, what do you have? That'll be suitable. And he took us this tiny little charger on the wall and we laughed and said, okay, what are you doing in the strata space? And it was at that point in time he turned around and said look, strata's a hard sell. There's four issues, and one the hardware is too expensive. Two the installation costs can be blown out. The infrastructure is just non-existent. So when you look at these older buildings, they just don't have the capacity to put these level two charges in. And at the end of the day, when you go to do these installations, you've got to bear in mind that every resident is going to fork the bill for that. You know what I mean. So it needs to be, needs to be an economical solution. Yeah, so this is when, yes, and I put our minds together and came up with our alchemy charge. Smart point yeah.
Speaker 3:So we kind of we looked at some mature markets, so we looked at europe and we specifically looked at norway. And what are they looked at Europe and we specifically looked at Norway and what are they doing over there? They're probably about seven to 10 years ahead of us in the adoption curve and you know, what we came across was some really interesting statistics in that 95% of charging is done either at home or in the workplace and of that, 95% 63% is done by a portable charge cable.
Speaker 3:And it's probably at this point that I should kind of delve a little bit more into the different levels of charging, because I know that that can be a little bit overwhelming, especially when you initially start looking into EVs and how you're going to support them if you do go through with the purchase. So there's levels one, two and three. Level three is the super fast stuff. That kind of it resembles what Billy has in his background there. So we're talking 350 kilowatts it's what's on the side of the freeway and you get a super fast charge. In some instances you can go from um zero to 80 in like 16 minutes.
Speaker 3:It's amazing level two is what you see out and about in your fingers. So you know, if we pop down to the mall, um, the car park that's below the valet, there's like four tesla charges on a wall there. They're always taken, but, um, you know, they're the level two chargers. So we're talking seven to 22 kilowatts and level one is what you refer to as charging with your portable charge cable. Most cars in Australia come with one of these in the boot and all you do is you plug it into your standard Australian PowerPoint.
Speaker 3:So if we take a step back and we look at Australian driving behaviour, the average Aussie travels 38 kilometres a day and I'm kind of no different. All I do is I drop the kids off at school and I come into the office. I work all day. I might go to the gym at some point, pick up my children and go home. That's what I do 99% of the time. Every now and then we might do a trip from Sydney to Canberra or Sydney to Brisbane in a day, because we're crazy like that. But you know, for the most part it's just 38 kilometers a day and you know if we what's my train of thought? Of course started ranting, yeah, but that 38 kilometres a day.
Speaker 4:Three hours of charging.
Speaker 2:Three hours. On what level?
Speaker 4:On level one. So level one cable you get between 10 and 16 kilometres an hour of charge, depending on your vehicle.
Speaker 1:So generally two to three hours is enough to keep your car fully topped up yeah, and when you're charging your car, it's like charging all right, but the problem is that, um, a lot of australians don't have a powerpoint um in their garage because they don't have a garage, or they don't have a powerpoint in their, in their, in their house because they don't have a house. So if they're in a uh unit or if they're in a um townhouse, how? How do you guys find a solution for that? With us, we got a solution for you mark oh, I love, I love. They always make me happy when I see those that's it.
Speaker 1:I don't know why. Look at that, okay, okay, okay, I like that one more yeah the padlock on it tell us more all right, merrick do you want to go through it
Speaker 4:so essentially what we have here is we refer to it as our smart point, so it is a monetized car point, so pay-per-use powerpoint. So what you do is, let's say, let's use strata for an example. So if you live in an apartment building, you want to ev or you have an ev, you apply to the owners corporation to get one of these installed. Um, because it's a powerpoint, you don't need a special resolution, so you don't need to have an AGM. The owner's corporation is free to actually approve installation of one of these. So you get one installed that connects the house power, so it doesn't actually need to even connect to the unit owner's own power. So once it's connected to house power, we do all the collection of the funds and the reimbursements.
Speaker 4:So as the strata committee once they have one of these installed, they can actually set the price. And then you as the user come along, you plug your charger in so you'll be in your own dedicated parking spot. You come home, you plug in, charge your vehicle. End of the session. Our network collects that money and then on a monthly basis. We reimburse that money back to the owners corporation.
Speaker 3:So in part of our network.
Speaker 4:there's no ongoing fees for the host. So once the charter committee actually purchased the device, have it installed. There's no ongoing costs for them. So all our commission is paid for by the end user. So it's a win-win solution. Because what we're finding is they don't want to fund John, doesn't want to pay for Gary to charge his EV.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, okay, how much. As an example, what sort of premium are you paying for this over your plug-in into your house? It's going to be more expensive electricity when you go to an external charger, like if you go to the mall or something. How much are these cats charging over and above? Just plug-in into your house power?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've actually got a really good case study that was written up recently by a journalist and Merrick can probably go through the numbers. So we had we have a customer that um tried to get ev charging into his apartment parking space for about four years, wasn't it merrick? And they just kept knocking. The building didn't have the infrastructure, they didn't want to pay for the expense, etc. Etc. Etc. He came across our solution. The building approved it because it was really, you know, it was kind of like a net zero solution. I shouldn't use the term net zero. It's got too many implications, sorry.
Speaker 3:But, and yes, what were the numbers?
Speaker 4:So four years. Throughout those four years he is here to supercharge twice a week at the local supercharger. So not only would he spend roughly two hours a week, he was paying around $0.60 to $0.70 per kilowatt. So at the moment he's paying $0.32 a kilowatt, and that includes our commission. So he's saving two hours a week and he's only paying half the amount of money.
Speaker 2:And that's referring to one of these. That's one of these things on the street or at the mall.
Speaker 3:Yes, similar to.
Speaker 2:Yep, so he's winning. You know he's happy saving time and half his money.
Speaker 4:Yeah, definitely yeah, it's convenient right.
Speaker 3:You come home, you plug in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great. And are you finding people have an appetite to upgrade their standard power point to a level two? Is that something people are doing or they're just going?
Speaker 3:it's too expensive at the moment, too complicated with strata I think that people um think that they do need level two charging to be able to, you know, have enough power to get through the next 24 hours. Because when it comes to Charging a vehicle, the psychology changes. It's no longer about going to the server one point, getting a tank of fuel and writing off that. You know, you don't let your phone get to zero before you top it up. All about your incident. You don't let your phone get to zero before you top it up. It's all about incidental top-ups. So you know, the average Aussie only needing 38 kilometres a day means three hours of charging. So even if you've only topped up every third day, you've got enough charge in the overnight charge to get you through another few days. You know, if you and I were sitting at a cafe right now and there was a charge pad between us, I guarantee you that one of us would have our phones on.
Speaker 1:It, sure, yeah, I can understand, so also on the use case like car space are you guys? Every car space in a unit block? Or are you that people own their own car spaces, or are you guys putting it in like a visitor space?
Speaker 3:own their own car spaces or are you guys putting it in like a visitor space? So we can do either. But our solution is kind of built for every parking spot and the concept, the, the reason behind you why you can put it in every parking spot, is that it's a 2.4 kilowatt, 10 amp solution opposed to seven kilowatts. You know seven to 22 kilowatts, you know 7 to 22 kilowatts, which requires so much more power. And it's just, you know, if you take a step back, there's not enough power in the grid, in a suburb, in a street, in a block, in an apartment block, to be able to, you know, provide sufficient power to all of those 7 to 22 kilowatt chargers at the same time.
Speaker 4:Yep, and not only that, our smartphone can actually load manage. So let's say your building only has a capacity to have five running at any given time. You might have 10 parking spots, so you can put one in every spot and our software will automatically work out that queue. So the first five will charge when user number six comes along. His session won one actually start into one of the early ones ends. So no longer.
Speaker 4:If you want to put one in every spot, you don't have to actually go and do a building upgrade. So in a few years time, once we are hitting these limits, then the buildings can go. Okay, look, we're hitting this limitation. Let's look at doing the full building upgrade now, instead of doing it right now. You know what I mean.
Speaker 4:So when there's no need for it, great that must be popular how much well today, only for you mark, it's 399. And if you call in the next 15 minutes. And if you call in the next 15 minutes, throw in a free sign, but that sounds like a bargain though. Yeah, so it's $3.99. There's no ongoing cost, as I mentioned earlier, but we do charge a $0.10 commission per kilowatt that is paid for by the end user.
Speaker 4:So, like I mentioned before, so let's say the Strata building want to charge their guests and residents 20 cents a kilowatt. We bump that up to 30. But we collect 30 cents a kilowatt off the user at the end of the month. We reimburse the strata committee that 20 cents that they want, so they can actually charge whatever rate they want, and we just add our 10 cents to that. What we're finding is most strata buildings don't actually put a profit on, they're just doing a pass-through. We have many Airbnbs, for example, that are putting these in and they're actually putting a profit on top because that's their main purpose is to profit off the guests. So that's also another use case that we have. It's an affordable way for short-term rental properties to provide every charging services for guests.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, yes, stunning. Now, you guys will do the strata paperwork, you'll do the installation, you'll supply it, you'll do the backbone. So you're like a one-stop end-to-end full, one-stop shop Recharge.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we provide the hardware. So we provide the hardware to the electricians. The electrician can be your own or you can go to you know. You can jump on our website and you can have a look at our network of electricians in your area. It doesn't have to be a specialised electrician. Any licensed electrician can install our product. The second it has power, we're told it's easier to install than a PowerPoint because you only need to connect three cables. The moment it has power 12 seconds and it's on our network so it's instantly functional.
Speaker 1:So what's that? Got like a S and it's got a 4G card or something inside it, does it? How does it commute that that's you don't need in, like they don't need to go on to, you don't need internet for them?
Speaker 4:yeah, so we've got two different versions. So one is wi-fi and one is 4g on the social network. So depending on your use case. Um, majority of properties have wi-fi. If they don't, you can go the cellular version. There is a sim card cost per month which is around 12, but the majority of buildings, because they're looking at putting one in every spot, they do end up getting a centralized wi-fi installation done that's incredible well, I think this is helping a lot of people.
Speaker 2:So many people are looking for electric car spaces in their building Buildings not being proactive enough to do it just yet, but it sounds like this is pretty simple.
Speaker 4:Yeah, super simple Go on, mary, we're talking over each other. You should give them.
Speaker 3:The Waterloo example yeah, so we have a building that we're working with in Waterloo and they want to electrify every parking spot. So they went out to their residents and they did a survey and the results came back that 60% of people in their next vehicle will be an electric vehicle and 20% said that their next vehicle will be a plug-in hybrid. So you know we're talking about 80% of residents will need a form of charging in the next, you know, two to three years when they operate their vehicles. So what that meant was that the committee and the management went and looked into charging solutions. They looked at putting seven kilowatts so level two, the base of level two charging into every parking spot, and the result was that there was a need for an electrical backbone upgrade totally expected and in addition to that. So that was going to be $770,000. And that's just the backbone alone.
Speaker 3:I should take a step back and say there's was it? 290 parking spots, merrick? Yeah, yeah. So for 290 parking spots it was going to be 770 grand in electrical backbone, and then on top of that, for every uh lot owner it was going to be an $8,000 hardware and installation cost. So Strata's picking up the 770 bill. The lot owner is picking up the $8,000. There's ongoing fees. So you know, when you've got that many devices, they have to be networked, so there's a fee that is attached to that. They need to be load managed. There's a fee that's attached to that. They need maintenance.
Speaker 3:And it was just was it was stacking up pretty quickly yeah so they kind of came to us once we came to market so we've been in market for about 18 months now and they said look, what would your solution look like in our building? And you know, we went in with our team and we did our assessment. The backbone was going to be is going to be $170,000. So $170,000 opposed to $770,000. So you know, a huge saving. And in addition to that, for each lot owner it's going to be $1,000 for supply and install.
Speaker 3:So the hardware and the install and there's no ongoing fees to the building or to the lot owner. The ongoing fees are paid by the end user. So if you're plugging your car in, you're paying for the privilege and yeah, so that's. You know. That's one example of what it looks like for the strata committees, as opposed to looking at it from the end user, which was the example that Merrick gave, saving two hours and halving your charging costs and in some case, the end user, which was the example that Merrick gave saving two hours and halving your charging costs and in some case the end user will be the owner.
Speaker 2:Do I understand that right?
Speaker 3:yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:It's whoever is using that parking spot yeah, so I guess they're paying a little bit more, you know, per use, but the installation cost and getting it going is just, you know, more than half yeah yeah yeah, brilliant, okay, and and your, um, your, your system is is a level one similar to the plug version yes, it is a level one.
Speaker 2:You utilize the portable charge cable that comes with your car yeah, I think this is going to help a lot of people guys. So I think this is going to help a lot of people guys. I love the product. You don't need to be a building to get one right, you can be just a one-man show. Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 4:We've got airbnbs. There's so many use cases because at the end of the day it's just PowerPoint. It's a paper-used PowerPoint. Yeah, We've got buildings using it for e-mobility to charge electric scooters and bikes. Got caravan parks looking into it Like there's just so many use cases. When you step back and look at it, End of the day you won't plug anything into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, brilliant, flavio's got a comment. Sounds like an entire new market being developed off the back of EVs. Yeah, you, flavio's got a comment. Sounds like an entire new market being developed off the back of EVs. Yeah, he gave a major power crisis with respect to baseline. What about on-site battery slash solar for EV charging? Any comments there?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. If you've got an on-site battery and you have access to solar, that's the way to do it. And you know solar has been a bit of a hard sell into the strata space. And you know solar has been a bit of a hard sell into the strata space. And you know we obviously speak to some of these solar installers and solar. You know, like Solution Architects, for example, wattblock does a lot of work in this space and it's definitely the solution.
Speaker 3:You know, if I can take it a step back and talk about, we don't live in a strata building but we do have solar at home. We have a 16 kilowatt system which actually means that we can charge. You know, on a nice sunny day we can charge both of our cars at the same time for free, absolute winner. If we had a battery it would be even better. But when you look at things like um vehicle to x, so vehicle at things like vehicle to X, so vehicle to grid, or vehicle to home, which has just been approved in Australia, it's definitely the future and it's unbelievably exciting. You know, for a power sustainability nerd like myself, that's where you really start getting excited.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Guys, there's so much to talk about, we're going to get you on again. We've had a lot of viewers this morning and some good questions, so thank you so much for your time. Before we go, anything else we've got to mention, guys.
Speaker 3:Alchemychargecomau. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can reach out to Merrick or myself Anyone in the team. We're all very excited and receptive to talk to you.
Speaker 4:Definitely.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you so much Take care guys All right.
Speaker 2:Thank you, outro Music.