November 22, 2023 • 40 mins
Imagine traveling the world in your camper van... and you never have to fill up the gas tank! In this week's episode, Kristin sits down with Sam Shapiro, CEO of the electric RV startup Grounded. Sam shares how the idea for Grounded was sparked after he converted his own van during COVID and traveled around the country for 6 months, constantly frustrated by issues with the gas engine and lack of available power.
These pain points led him to conceptualize an electric camper van, free from the maintenance and pollution of fossil fuels. The recently launched G2 model features a customizable, modular interior and a robust 250-mile range - this van comes packed with some serious battery capacity! We also discuss the challenges in the current EV infrastructure and how Grounded plans to help address these in the future.
These pain points led him to conceptualize an electric camper van, free from the maintenance and pollution of fossil fuels. The recently launched G2 model features a customizable, modular interior and a robust 250-mile range - this van comes packed with some serious battery capacity! We also discuss the challenges in the current EV infrastructure and how Grounded plans to help address these in the future.
Beyond just the RV space, Grounded aims to position themselves as leaders in the modern electric outdoor gear market, tune in to hear what's coming next!
Check out the full episode blog post here: https://www.thewaywardhome.com/episode61/
Connect with Kristin Hanes and The Wayward Home!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
One major bummer about van life is just how
expensive it is to purchase fuel.
Our Sprinter Van costs anywherebetween $80 and $100 to fill up
, depending on fuel prices, andwe have to fill it up at least
once per week, or more dependingon just how much we're driving.
Well, imagine a camper vanworld where you never had to
fill up.
And yeah, that world might soonbecome a reality, especially as
(00:21):
electric RVs start to grace themarket.
Today we're talking to one ofthose electric camper van
companies called Grounded, andthe CEO is here to tell us all
about these rigs, theircomponents and when they're
expected to hit the market.
Let's go.
Welcome to the Wayward Homepodcast all about van life, boat
life and nomadic living.
We'll bring you tips,interviews and stories from the
(00:41):
road and on the water.
Now here's your host, KristenHaynes.
Hey there, I'm Kristen Hayneswith thewaywardhomecom and I
spend half the year in my campervan and half on my sailboat in
Mexico.
I hope to inspire you to livenomatically too.
So electric RVs and camper vanshave been the talk of the town
lately, with several companiescoming up with models and
prototypes of new electric, andone of those is the company
(01:02):
called Grounded, based inDetroit making some really cool
camper vans and RVs, and I'msuper happy to bring on the CEO
of that company, Sam Shapiro,onto the Wayward Home podcast.
Sam, I'm really excited thatyou are joining me today.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, thanks, Kristen .
Happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah.
So first of all, I want to knowhow you got the idea of even
building these types of campervans.
I understand you used to travelin a van as well.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I did, yeah, during COVID, you know.
So I used to live in New YorkCity and I was working there and
advertising.
Covid happened and I built acamper van and I traveled around
the country in the van andworked remotely from the van
full time.
So I spent about six monthsdoing that.
(01:50):
I found a used Chevy Expresscargo van low roof.
It was about 20 years old and Isort of bought it.
It was an old work truck forAT&T and I spent a month or two
designing it and then about amonth building it out before
heading off on the trip.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Very cool.
And what about?
That trip sparked your ideathat you wanted an electric
version of a camper van.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah.
So there's sort of a couple ofthings.
One has to do obviously withthe combustion engine in terms
of driving and kind of thevehicle side, and then the other
part is the interior.
So on the vehicle side you knowjust sort of a lot of the pains
that come with combustionengine vehicles.
(02:38):
So maintenance, oil changes,paying for gas when you're doing
that amount of traveling, asI'm sure you know from your van,
it can definitely add up,especially when you're traveling
in a gas powered van like that,which don't especially mine it
(02:58):
didn't get great mileage oranything and so you're kind of
polluting and there's thisdichotomy of wanting to spend
more time in nature and embracenature and then at the same time
you're kind of burning fumesinto the atmosphere.
So there's all that stuff andthen at one point the vehicle
(03:19):
just broke down entirely withengine failure.
So that was a big one too.
So because of all of that thewhole time I kept thinking you
know, man, if this was electric,it seems like all of these
problems, or most of theseproblems, just completely go
away.
You know there's really nomaintenance.
The risk of you know like thesort of motors failing or
(03:40):
something is a lot less than youknow some one of the thousands
of moving parts in a combustionengine vehicle breaking down on
you Obviously no pollution, andso that's a lot of what I was
thinking about.
And then, on the interior part,you know also, as I'm sure you
(04:01):
know, you experience this ideaof being power budgeted and
having to really think about youknow what's my battery capacity
of the house battery that'sinside the RV.
How much solar am I going toget today?
You know, what appliances do Ineed to run?
You know, like, how long do Ineed to run the hot water?
(04:21):
For how long do I need to runheating and HVAC?
And in my experience in mycamper van and talking to other
people in RVs and vans, that'ssomething that you're always
kind of thinking about and awareof and almost planning and
budgeting around, unless, ofcourse, you have, you know,
maybe like a generator on board.
(04:42):
You know, but then it sort ofcircles back to bucket number
one problems that I was talkingabout.
And so the cool thing abouthaving an electric vehicle, RV,
is that now you have this giant,giant battery and the you know
the battery that's powering thevehicle that you can pull from,
and so all of a sudden.
It kind of just changes theparadigm a little bit of the
(05:07):
types of appliances you can runand how long you can run them
for.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, that's all super interesting.
And so you've got.
You've got this idea.
And then how did you bring itfrom this idea to a reality?
Pride to you know.
Get a team together and startworking on some prototypes.
Describe how you got to whereyou are now in terms of you know
everything that had to go intoplace.
I understand, I read somewherethat at first you were working
out of a tent.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Right, yeah, we.
So I'm originally from Atlanta.
It's actually where I kind ofleft New York to go back to and
build my first camper van out of, and you know we were sort of
yeah.
So I guess I guess kind of thebeginning is that I ended up
after that whole van experience.
I ended up going to work forSpaceX, for Starlink, for a bit
(05:56):
as an embedded software engineer, and actually the way that I
got there was also related to myvan experience because, you
know, this was 2020.
So Starlink was sort of justrolling out when I was building
my van and I wanted one so badlybut it was sort of impossible
for me to get at that point intime.
But because of the camper vanand the obvious need there for
(06:18):
internet, you know, no matterwhere you're going.
That's that's where I reallystarted like closely following
Starlink and what SpaceX wasdoing and that's actually like
what led me to going to workthere.
And so I did that for a bit andthen kind of kept thinking
about this whole RV space andelectric, electric of the RV
(06:39):
space.
So ended up leaving and spent alittle bit of time sort of
thinking about this more andtalking to people, doing some
research, putting together someideas and ultimately found a
co-founder and we, you know,sort of got to the point.
(07:00):
We did it sort of as much as wecould have, just kind of
initial planning on paper, andthen got to the point of like,
okay, we need to, we need tostart building a prototype, and
we were looking at somedifferent cities to go to.
We ended up coming to Detroit,which I've never lived in and I
actually had never been tobefore at that point, and
Detroit is great for a lot ofreasons to build this company.
(07:22):
I think One is that the wholeautomotive space is here and so
there's a lot of likemanufacturing capability here,
shop and prototyping capability,built out supply chain machines
.
You know all of thatinfrastructure is here in the
city or in sort of the metroarea.
(07:43):
Similarly, there's a lot ofautomotive engineers and
manufacturing engineers here aswell, that you know.
The idea is we can tap intothat network of people and
experts.
Another cool thing aboutDetroit is we're only a three
hour drive from Elkhart, whereyou know, 80, 85% of the RVs in
(08:04):
America are made, and so MAJORmanufacturers and engineers and
suppliers and just the generalRV supply chain is all sort of
close.
And so you know, in some ways Ilike to say that we're kind of
like just close enough, like wedon't necessarily want to be in
Elkhart, like right there whereall the other RVs are made,
(08:25):
because we want to do thingsdifferently.
But we're also not, you know,all the way on the West Coast,
where I think it would be reallydisconnected, you know, from
that ecosystem.
And then the third reason thatwe're in Detroit is because
there's an organization calledMichigan Central and they
partnered with anotherorganization called New Lab and
basically they've built thisgiant sort of collaborative
(08:52):
co-working manufacturing spacefor startups in the mobility
sector right here in Corktown,which is basically next to
downtown Detroit and so, youknow, we've been able to kind of
build the company here in thisbuilding, that's, you know, a
quarter of a million square feet.
(09:13):
We share it with other startupswho are also manufacturing kind
of electrification of mobility,so like there's an electric ATV
startup here, there's anelectric bicycle startup here,
those types of things, and weget access to equipment, we get
access to.
You know, we've sort of metlike mentors and investors and
those sorts of things here andthen, of course, like you know,
(09:36):
engineers, shop technicians,stuff like that.
So it's been a great place tobuild the company and to build
the product.
We're very glad we came toDetroit.
I love Detroit now, I'm a hugefan and so, yeah, so we came
here, we started building andbasically since then, over the
last little more than a year now, we've built a few of sort of
(09:56):
our MVPs, which were called theG1 and they were electric camper
vans built on the FordE-transit.
Obviously, the big problem withthose was the range.
The range was super limited.
It was barely over 100 miles.
Granted, I do think there's areal use case for those If you
are not going far, if you are,you know, living on, if you have
(10:18):
a big piece of land or you're aresort or something like that,
where you want sort of housingthat's easy to stand up and move
around, like one big piece ofland, or maybe you have two
properties and they're 30 milesfrom each other.
Like, I think there are usecases, but the use cases are
obviously more limited thanpeople who might really want a
(10:39):
lot more flexibility in beingable to get up and go, you know,
further distances.
And so that was the G1.
And we did build a few of those.
But now we have since launchedthe G2, and the G2 is a 250 mile
range electric camper van builton the Brake Drop chassis, and
we just launched that last month, in October of 2023.
(11:02):
And we, as part of the launch ofthat, we did a 1500 mile road
trip in the first G2 around thestate of Michigan.
So we left Detroit, we went allthe way up to the upper
peninsula, across the MackinacBridge and all the way up to
Pictured Rocks, lakeshore,marquette, big Bay and then kind
of came back down around theMitten, around the west side of
(11:26):
the state, all the way downthrough Grand Haven and then
eventually back over to Detroit.
And that was like a reallyreally amazing trip and kind of
like proof point, you know, toourselves and to others, of like
, hey, this is feasible, likeyou can actually really go far
distances for a long period oftime, you know, in this new
(11:49):
fully electric camper, van yeahthat's super cool, because I
think that was a lot of people'sissues with buying electric
vehicles, especially the largerone, is the range was so limited
.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
So now that you've come out with the 250 mile one,
have you noticed that interesthas peaked?
Are you getting more orders?
What is the response been tothat?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, the reception's been great and I think I think
when we launched the G1, thereception was basically you know
, because, by the way, likethere's some other interesting
things that I should definitelymention just about the products,
like the modular interiorsystem that we have that allows
people to customize the interior, kind of like Lego blocks, that
(12:27):
you choose where pieces go andwhich pieces you want.
And then we have a kind of asmart app, sort of like the
Tesla app, but for RVs, so youcan monitor your battery, solar,
which appliances are on, turnthem on and off, and you can do
that from your phone remotelytoo.
So even if you're not near thevehicle, and we integrate with
the underlying vehicle too.
(12:48):
So we bring in the actualvehicle EV battery into the app
and stuff like in vehiclediagnostics.
Actually, we're working onright now integrating to.
So there's cool stuff, evenabout the G1, and the reception
was basically, I think, from alot of people it was like oh,
this is great, we love thatthere's a startup working on
(13:08):
this, it looks beautiful, it hasall these cool features, but
there's this range issue andthey need to address that, and
so that's what we did with theG2.
And also, as you can imagine,made some improvements on the
whole interior too.
So we decided to actuallyexpose the modular mounting
(13:29):
system in the G2 and have a bitmore of a Spartan look that we
still think looks really cleanand beautiful.
But by exposing the rails itallows customers to have the
opportunity to just mount stuffthemselves like other
accessories, and also change outmodules themselves.
(13:50):
So with the G1, it wasn't reallythe type of thing where, as a
customer, you weren't reallyexpected to change the layout
over time.
But with the G2, you actuallycan.
You could say, hey, I'm goingon a different trip and I want
to switch this whatever benchmodule with a twin bed module to
(14:11):
bring it.
Maybe your life changes, youhave another kid, whatever it is
.
So that was one of the otherbig changes with the G2.
But yeah, but in general thereception's been great and a lot
of people have put downpre-orders and reached out to us
with questions and stuff likethat.
So we're kind of starting.
(14:32):
We'll ramp up basically overthe next few months and the next
year, but we are alreadyshipping G2s to customers.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Very cool.
Yeah, I was looking at yourwebsite and some of these
modular interior components andso when someone's in the
ordering process, can they justgo on and decide the layout, or
how does that work and whattypes of modules can someone put
in one of these?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, so in the future we will have a
self-service online tool whereit will be kind of like a 3D
drag and drop tool to customizeyour layout.
Right now we have not deployedthat self-service tool, so the
process is a little bit moremanual with our designers right
now.
So essentially we'll get incontact with you and then kind
(15:21):
of show you some of thedifferent options, talk to you,
learn about your use case, howyou want to use the vehicle,
what you need, and thenbasically send you a 3D render
of what we're proposing for thelayout and make sure you're good
with that.
But that's basically what theprocess is now.
But we do eventually want tohave the self-service tool just
(15:42):
to kind of streamline the wholething, and then people can kind
of just see a lot faster like oh, here's how this would look.
Here's how this would look Interms of types of modules.
It's something that will expandover time, like the catalog of
available modules, but right nowit's pretty simple.
It's like benches and kitchenand closet.
(16:03):
We have like an actual fullheight closet that you can hang
clothes in and stuff.
An indoor shower is a big onethat we get asked a lot about.
Wet bath has a shower and atoilet inside.
Obviously the queen size bed,which is kind of the default bed
that we put in the back.
We will offer in the futuresmaller beds like the twin size
(16:30):
bed that I mentioned, and alsorear seats with seatbelts, and
overhead cabinets or overheadstorage units are sort of the
other thing, and those goobviously above, so you can mix
and match those things.
But the cool thing is that evenwith a fairly limited set of
(16:53):
modules, there's a lot ofpossibilities in terms of layout
, so you can choose where thingsgo, and then things come in
different sizes too.
So we're doing like a gridsystem, so everything is a
standard unit size, and so youcould think of the floor as
being, I think it's 8 by 2,basically, or 8 by 3 if you
(17:18):
count the aisle in the middle.
And so in the G2 that you'llsee photos of on our website,
the kitchen is three units wide,which is pretty big.
I mean, it's a really, reallybig countertop space, and then
next to it is a two unit widebench.
But somebody might be like, oh,I don't cook that much or I
(17:43):
don't need that much countertopspace, so I want a.
We offer a two unit widekitchen, and so you could choose
that instead and you could putit in the same place and then
you could have three unit widebench or you could put something
else in that one extra unit.
So that's kind of the ideathere.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
And so can someone put other components in there
from other companies, like anL-Track system, or is it just
proprietary to your modules?
Speaker 2 (18:09):
So the L-Track system would be a little bit different
, because that's kind of likeputting in the whole new system.
But what you can definitely dois just mount your own
accessories to our system.
So, yeah, you could totally dothat.
It's kind of a standardaluminum extrusion that we use
(18:32):
right now and so, yeah, if youwanted to, you could leave a
slot somewhere and then youcould put something there.
Or if you look at the photos,you'll see that there's
basically these rails that gosort of like laterally across
(18:52):
the length of the van andthere's I think there's four of
them from the bottom to the top.
And so obviously, the kitchen,which comes up pretty high, that
has two mounting points interms of that vertical axis.
That has one at the sort ofbottom rail and then one at the
(19:15):
second rail up, but then there'sstill two more rails above that
right.
So, like, the overhead cabinetsobviously will be on the top
rails, but even like above thebed, if you want to put a
reading light, you know that canmount into the track.
So, yeah, I think there's a lotof customization opportunities
and that's obviously somethingthat's super important to people
(19:36):
.
It's something that I meanthere's things like your house
on wheels, and so people wantcustomization, they want
flexibility.
You know stuff like that.
That's what I wanted when Ibuilt mine.
That's obviously what youwanted when you built yours.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Yeah, for sure Cool.
And how does it compare to sizewise, to like a Mercedes
Sprinter or a Ford Transit?
What's that comparison like?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, so, first off, we actually offer the G2 in two
different sizes, and that'sbased on the fact that the
Braedrop underlying platformcomes in two different sizes,
which is the Zivo 600 and theZivo 400.
And basically the only realdifference between these two
things is the length, and sowhat we sort of launched with,
(20:27):
you know, like, if you see thephotos on our website or like
read some of the articles,everything you'll see is the
longer version, which is the 600, and it's about 24 feet long
exterior length, and a lot ofpeople have pointed out that
that is like pretty long for aclass B camper van, and so I
(20:50):
think that the shorter one withthe Zivo 400, which is about 20
feet long, you know that thatmight be a much better fit for
someone who's looking forsomething a little bit smaller,
a little bit more maneuverable,a little bit more accessible to
park in like a regular parkinglot type of thing.
So we do offer both of thosesizes.
(21:12):
I think in both cases, for bothvehicles, the interior is a lot
more spacious than what youwould get with like a Transit
Van and a converted Transit Van,and the reason is because,
basically, the vehicle is a lotboxier.
(21:33):
So like the Transit Vans or theSprinter Vans, you know the
walls kind of these like metalwalls kind of cave in at the top
, like they're not, they're notstraight, they're not boxy and
they also have, you know, quitea bit of thickness to them,
because you know they leave sortof that, like there's the,
there's that exterior layer ofmetal and then there's usually
(21:56):
like another inner layer andthat that inner layer will have
like pre-drilled mounting holesand stuff like that and then the
whole, and then all of that'slike caving in, and so you
really like lose a lot of spacethrough all of that.
And of course, like all ofthese vans are designed like
across the board, whether it'sFord or Mercedes or now Bright
(22:19):
Drop, like all of these vans arereally designed for, you know,
commercial purposes, notnecessarily for like living in
them.
And so you know, I think that'swhy, like the engineers at
these OEMs are fine with thattrade off and that loss of
interior space, because in mostof the use cases it doesn't
actually matter that much.
But what's really nice aboutthe Bright Drop is, I mean it's
(22:42):
it is perfectly rectangular andthe and the whole exterior wall
is kind of a very thin, almostlike type of plastic and there's
obviously, like some, somealuminum structure to it, like
some ribs on it, but that's notnearly as thick as, or the sort
(23:03):
of like interior gap there ofthose metal ribs is not nearly
as deep as you know, what you'dfind in kind of like the ribs of
a Ford Transit Van on the walls.
And so basically, for all ofthose reasons, like the shape
and the thickness you have, youhave a ton more room and we have
(23:25):
a ton more room that we canwork with, and so what we do is
ground.
It actually builds basicallylike a whole substructure out of
aluminum.
So we basically build like awhole box out of aluminum and
then that whole box gets mountedinside the Bright Drop Van and
then you know, to the hardmounting points that are
(23:47):
provided by Bright Drop, andthen we obviously add all of our
wall panels, we add insulationin between our wall panels and
the exterior walls, but what youend up with is like basically
something that that doesn't likecave in on you, in the same way
that most of these other vanconversions are like.
Even even the ones coming outof Elkhart from some of the
(24:08):
bigger companies have to becauseof the chassis that they're
starting with.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Totally.
I did notice that, when lookingat the photos of your van too,
that it was more, you know, boxyand probably more spacious
toward the ceiling.
So that was an interestingconcept.
And I was wondering can youtell me a little more about the
power system?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
you mentioned earlier that it has a pretty beefy
system in it, so if you couldtalk about that a little, yeah,
so the battery in the BrightDrop, like the high voltage
vehicle battery, is 173 kilowatthours and, for context, I think
the battery in most Teslas isaround 70 kilowatt hours.
(24:47):
So it's like you know,something like two and a half
times as big as a Tesla battery.
It's a.
It's a giant, giant battery andthat's part of why it's so
expensive to you know theunderlying vehicle platform and
so it has this really bigbattery and of course that's
that's like why it can go so far.
And then we ground.
It also adds an additionalhouse battery.
(25:09):
The house battery that we addby default is 10, another 10
kilowatt hours.
We can do bigger ones ifsomebody wants a bigger one.
10 kilowatt hour house batteryis already like a much bigger
house battery than what you'dfind in most van conversions.
And then our house battery cancharge.
(25:29):
You know, basically in threeways that can either charge.
It will charge from the brightdrop battery.
So every time that you drive,that you turn the bright drop,
that you turn the vehicle on sosort of analogous to how people
will wire up house batteries tothe alternator of an ice vehicle
so every time that you turn thevehicle on, it's charging.
(25:50):
So same thing here Every timeyou turn the vehicle on, the
house battery is charging fromthe high voltage vehicle battery
.
Obviously it also charges fromsolar panels on the roof, and
then you can also charge it fromshore power if you want to just
plug it in directly.
And then we have a threekilowatt inverter, which is also
(26:11):
something we can.
We can upgrade if a customerwants, but three kilowatts is
enough for 90% of people's usecases.
I would say that's about liketwo space heaters at the same
time, or you know, a hot waterheater and the induction stove
on at the same time.
So that's, that's kind of thebattery situation.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Yeah, very cool.
It sounds like people can runmore appliances and you know,
when they're off a grid thenthey typically would.
With a lot of the vanconversions we're seeing on the
market, yep, yeah definitely.
And it can probably power.
What are some of the optionspeople are getting, like air
conditioners, or what are peopleusing all this power for?
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah, so we put an electric HVAC system, so we put
a heat pump in electric heatpump and they can do hot and
cold and so that's kind of theother big power draw.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yeah, and so how long do you think this thing could
just go boondocking or stay offa grid?
What would be your idea aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, I know people love people, love.
People love to ask thatquestion.
I mean it's a great question,of course, like anyone who's
done this before know, as I knowyou do.
Like it just depends so much onwhere you are in the country,
what the climate situation is,what the solar situation is,
what you're running, you knowall those sorts of things.
(27:31):
So I think, depending on theuse case, it could.
There's a huge, huge amount ofvariance.
So I always think it's a littlebit funny when, when RV makers
like quote some amount of timebecause I'm like, well, what,
what, what assumptions were madefor that amount of time, what
you know what appliances arerunning and stuff like that.
But I think you know definitelyseveral days at minimum and I
think you know, depending on usecase, that could be stretched
(27:54):
pretty substantially.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
So, yeah, depending on what people are using out of
all the components they have intheir van.
They could definitely cut itback by using a propane stove
outside, which we do thatsometimes.
So there are ways to makethings last off grid.
But it's cool.
It can go off for a while.
You know, that's fantastic.
So many people are like likeloving to do that instead of
having to be plugged in.
So that's great.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah, so well and then the other thing I should
mention is you know, with ourapp you know we can monitor and
track your usage patterns, andso you know you that that
hopefully helps because youcould.
You could sort of see like,okay, you know, I'm spending
(28:34):
this much amount of energy, youknow, by running these things.
And in the future, you knowwe're going to keep deploying
over the air software updatesover time, and so we want to add
more features to this app inthe future that that do smarter
and smarter things, like evenautomating some of this.
So you could imagine the app issort of smart enough to be like
(28:59):
, you know, hey, he's, you knowthis this person's been, you
know, this is kind of a sillyexample but like this person's,
you know, had the water heateron for for so long that they
probably are done with theirshower and, like, forgot to turn
the water heater off, so we'rejust going to turn it off
automatically.
You know that sort of thingwhere or maybe we don't do it
automatically.
(29:19):
You know, maybe there's asetting in the app whether you
want to let it actually makedecisions for you or not, but at
the very least something thatpops up and says, hey, you know
you've been running this thingfor a while.
Are you sure you want to keepthis thing on and kind of like
make suggestions and makepredictions with things like
like hey, you know, we can seethat where you are tomorrow is
(29:39):
going to generate this amount ofsolar wattage, you know.
So maybe you want to thinkabout doing XYZ or turning XYZ
off, you know, or only runningit.
You know, normally you take ashower for this long, but you
should think about taking ashower that's two minutes
shorter tomorrow.
You know, to save the energyfrom the water heater because
(30:00):
there's going to be an overcastday.
You know that that type ofintelligence we want to build
and we'll continue to kind ofupdate and deploy over time.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Cool Sounds really interesting and I'm also curious
, like with the amount ofcharging stations across the
country.
Does it seem like there'senough out there for someone to
buy one and do like crosscountry road trips, or how is
that currently looking?
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, it's a great question.
I mean, I think it's definitelypossible.
That's probably our next kindof marketing like fun marketing
thing is getting someone todrive one of these across the
country.
I think that infrastructure isprobably the single biggest
definitely, I would say, thesingle biggest barrier to higher
(30:43):
EV adoption right now, andbecause I, like, truly, truly
believe that that EVs arebasically better in every single
way other than this issuearound charging, and so we need
to improve the charginginfrastructure.
It's a horrible feeling if youlike show up to an EV charger
expecting to charge your vehicleand it doesn't work because
(31:04):
it's down, and that's way toocommon right now.
There's apps that help withthat, a lot like plug share,
where you can see, like, oh,someone was here earlier today
and they said that it worked, soI feel pretty dang confident
it's going to work when I getthere.
That helps a lot.
Before I started using plugshare, my success rate with EV
chargers was pretty bad, andthen I started using it and now
(31:26):
I basically don't have issues.
But, like, we need to deploymore chargers and we need to
improve the reliability of theones that that are out there now
.
The good news is that there isso much happening behind the
scenes or sort of like.
If you think about it as likean iceberg, like what I think,
like what people know about orlike read about in kind of like
(31:51):
the tier one press right now isreally just the tip of the
iceberg, like in the kind of thetech world and automotive world
which we're pretty immersed inhere in Detroit.
We can just see how muchactivity and how much money is
going into improving the EVcharging infrastructure all
(32:11):
around the country.
And obviously with the IRA youknow that was passed somewhat
recently there's also likebillions and billions of dollars
that are going into improvingthe charging infrastructure and
I think we're going to continueto see picture of the charging
infrastructure improve.
And then, of course, tesla nowhas signed agreements with every
major OEM, including GM, whoowns Sprite Drop, to allow Tesla
(32:37):
chargers to charge other OEMvehicles in the future, and
that's even going to be.
You know, there's this littlebit of a tangent, but there's
two for your, for your viewerswho don't know there's basically
two EV charging standards.
There's Tesla and there'severything else.
Tesla is called NACS, the otherone is CCS and these are
(32:59):
actually like different hardware, right, like the physical
connector is different and, ofcourse, like the accompanying
software, is also different theway that the vehicle
communicates with the charger,and so you know, 99% of the
Tesla chargers in America ofthese, like public public
chargers obviously have the onlythe Tesla NACS standard.
(33:23):
But the good news is that Teslais deploying adapters to their
chargers, physical adapters, sothat in the future, potentially
as early as next year, gmannounced you will be able to
charge GM CCS vehicles at aTesla charger with an adapter
(33:44):
that Tesla provides to connectyour vehicle.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Oh, that's cool.
So there's probably way moreTesla adapters out there than
the other type, right?
Just because they've dominatedthe market so far.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, I mean, the unfortunate reality for these
other OEMs has been that Teslacharging infrastructure is 10
times at least 10 times betterand more reliable than sort of
all of these other third-partyCCS charger companies out there,
(34:19):
and so, you know, that's whythe OEMs basically made the
decision.
I mean it's like a little bitfunny because for the last 20
years, these other OEMs havebeen sort of like, you know, a
bit patronizing toward Tesla andskeptical of Tesla's future
chances of success and thingslike that.
And now they've all kind of,you know sort of, in signing
(34:41):
this agreement with Tesla tohave their customers charge
their vehicles at Tesla chargersand pay Tesla money for
electricity.
They're sort of implicitlysaying you know what, you did
the best job out there atsetting up this infrastructure.
So, yeah, I think I thinkultimately it's a great thing
for consumers and for for, like,the whole EV picture in America
(35:02):
basically.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Totally, and how long does it take to charge the van
once you get to one of thechargers?
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah, so the G2, you can do 20% to 80% in about an
hour and a half and a fullcharge is a little bit closer to
three hours if you, if you wantto go like zero to 100%, and
this is at a fast charger.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Totally Cool.
So what are your like?
Plans moving forward andexpectations for 2023?
I'll probably be a big year foryou, because you're starting to
ship the G2s outright.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, I think 2023 is kind of like the launch year,
like we put this thing out thereand and people are sort of
learning about us and you knowwe'll get sort of like our
initial initial early adopters.
And then 2024 is going to be alittle bit more about scaling up
and and trying to build a lotmore of these and get them in a
(35:58):
lot more people's hands.
And then the other thing thatwe have plans for 2024 is we
will launch a towable trailerproduct as well, and so it the
idea is that Grounded wants tobe a kind of modern electric
outdoor recreation company, andso you know, we're not saying
(36:23):
like we're, we're not a campervan company, we're not an RV
company, but obviously RVs,towables and motor homes are
sort of at the.
In a way, they're kind of likethe hub of the of like outdoor
recreation.
Right, like you can you takeyour RV out and you bring your
other outdoor recreationaccessories with you, like your
(36:43):
bikes in the back or your oryour kayak or whatever it is,
and so it is a really good entrypoint to customers.
But eventually we want to haveother product lines that are not
just RVs, you know, but but thetowable will be kind of an all
electric aerodynamic.
You know, if you have an EVtruck and you want, or even SUV,
(37:05):
and you want to tow the trailerwith that, it won't hurt your
range as much as some of thesemuch bigger, boxier trailers out
there.
And then of course it'll have abig battery so you can even,
like, charge up your EV if youget somewhere, and then power.
You know it won't have any gas,so it'll just be sort of an all
(37:26):
electric version.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Cool and I saw that if people want to rent one,
you've partnered with RV sharesthat right Just in Detroit only
so people can try them out.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah.
So right now, yeah, if you'rein Detroit or coming to visit,
or coming to visit Michigan, youcan rent a G1 from Detroit.
We were thinking about, youknow, maybe making G2s available
, but for rent, the problemright now is we have to.
We want to kind of prioritizeactual customer orders for G2s,
(37:56):
but but that might be somethingthat we do in the future.
And then, and then you know too, if you're an owner, you know,
if you buy G2, I think there's agood chance that you might want
to rent it out to make a littleextra money or help pay for
those payments when you're notusing it.
And so that's something that wealso definitely encourage and
can help connect people, like ifwe get interest in a certain
(38:18):
place to rent one and connectthat person with a G2 owner
that's in their area.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Totally.
And so these, the G2s, start.
Are they just 200,000 or canthey go up, depending on what
sorts of products and featuresyou add.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
So the way we decided to launch was to keep it as
simple as possible.
You know, because we're anearly stage startup, you can get
really complicated with pricingand and super granular, but we
just did 195,000, no matter whatthe options are.
(38:55):
So if you get the shower or youdon't get the shower doesn't
matter.
You know for the near future,if you know if you order one now
or in the near future, it'sjust going to be the price will
be whatever it is and that's notgoing to be based on based on
(39:15):
any customization.
So in the future that willchange.
In the future we willeventually make the pricing a
little bit more sophisticated,so potentially have like a much
lower base base cost and thenbased on what you choose.
You know, each thing kind ofhas its own, each module would
have its own price and stufflike that.
But we just wanted to startsimple and just get something
(39:37):
out there and get it intopeople's hands.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
So yeah, totally.
And are you going to be at anylike RV shows or van expos in
2024 where people can come seeyou?
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yeah, we're starting to.
We're starting to look at that.
Right now, we don't have anyany concrete plans yet, but we
definitely want to bring somevans around the country in 2024.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Totally cool.
Well, thank you so much.
Is there anything else youwanted to add that we missed?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
No, I think.
Yeah, this was great.
Thanks for having me on theshow, kristen.
It's great meeting you andtalking with you about Grounded.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, totally.
I'm looking forward to seeingyou know how the camper vans do
and I look forward to seeingthem out and about as I'm out
camping.
So good luck with everythingand thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Awesome.
Thanks Kristen.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Wayward Home
podcast.
If you know someone who wouldlike this episode, do me a favor
and forward it to them.
Word of mouth is one of thebest ways you can help me grow
this podcast.
Again, thanks for listening tothe Wayward Home podcast and
I'll see you next time.
One major bummer about van life is just how
expensive it is to purchase fuel.
Our Sprinter Van costs anywherebetween $80 and $100 to fill up
, depending on fuel prices, andwe have to fill it up at least
once per week, or more dependingon just how much we're driving.
Well, imagine a camper vanworld where you never had to
fill up.
And yeah, that world might soonbecome a reality, especially as
(00:21):
electric RVs start to grace themarket.
Today we're talking to one ofthose electric camper van
companies called Grounded, andthe CEO is here to tell us all
about these rigs, theircomponents and when they're
expected to hit the market.
Let's go.
Welcome to the Wayward Homepodcast all about van life, boat
life and nomadic living.
We'll bring you tips,interviews and stories from the
(00:41):
road and on the water.
Now here's your host, KristenHaynes.
Hey there, I'm Kristen Hayneswith thewaywardhomecom and I
spend half the year in my campervan and half on my sailboat in
Mexico.
I hope to inspire you to livenomatically too.
So electric RVs and camper vanshave been the talk of the town
lately, with several companiescoming up with models and
prototypes of new electric, andone of those is the company
(01:02):
called Grounded, based inDetroit making some really cool
camper vans and RVs, and I'msuper happy to bring on the CEO
of that company, Sam Shapiro,onto the Wayward Home podcast.
Sam, I'm really excited thatyou are joining me today.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, thanks, Kristen .
Happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah.
So first of all, I want to knowhow you got the idea of even
building these types of campervans.
I understand you used to travelin a van as well.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I did, yeah, during COVID, you know.
So I used to live in New YorkCity and I was working there and
advertising.
Covid happened and I built acamper van and I traveled around
the country in the van andworked remotely from the van
full time.
So I spent about six monthsdoing that.
(01:50):
I found a used Chevy Expresscargo van low roof.
It was about 20 years old and Isort of bought it.
It was an old work truck forAT&T and I spent a month or two
designing it and then about amonth building it out before
heading off on the trip.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Very cool.
And what about?
That trip sparked your ideathat you wanted an electric
version of a camper van.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah.
So there's sort of a couple ofthings.
One has to do obviously withthe combustion engine in terms
of driving and kind of thevehicle side, and then the other
part is the interior.
So on the vehicle side you knowjust sort of a lot of the pains
that come with combustionengine vehicles.
(02:38):
So maintenance, oil changes,paying for gas when you're doing
that amount of traveling, asI'm sure you know from your van,
it can definitely add up,especially when you're traveling
in a gas powered van like that,which don't especially mine it
(02:58):
didn't get great mileage oranything and so you're kind of
polluting and there's thisdichotomy of wanting to spend
more time in nature and embracenature and then at the same time
you're kind of burning fumesinto the atmosphere.
So there's all that stuff andthen at one point the vehicle
(03:19):
just broke down entirely withengine failure.
So that was a big one too.
So because of all of that thewhole time I kept thinking you
know, man, if this was electric,it seems like all of these
problems, or most of theseproblems, just completely go
away.
You know there's really nomaintenance.
The risk of you know like thesort of motors failing or
(03:40):
something is a lot less than youknow some one of the thousands
of moving parts in a combustionengine vehicle breaking down on
you Obviously no pollution, andso that's a lot of what I was
thinking about.
And then, on the interior part,you know also, as I'm sure you
(04:01):
know, you experience this ideaof being power budgeted and
having to really think about youknow what's my battery capacity
of the house battery that'sinside the RV.
How much solar am I going toget today?
You know, what appliances do Ineed to run?
You know, like, how long do Ineed to run the hot water?
(04:21):
For how long do I need to runheating and HVAC?
And in my experience in mycamper van and talking to other
people in RVs and vans, that'ssomething that you're always
kind of thinking about and awareof and almost planning and
budgeting around, unless, ofcourse, you have, you know,
maybe like a generator on board.
(04:42):
You know, but then it sort ofcircles back to bucket number
one problems that I was talkingabout.
And so the cool thing abouthaving an electric vehicle, RV,
is that now you have this giant,giant battery and the you know
the battery that's powering thevehicle that you can pull from,
and so all of a sudden.
It kind of just changes theparadigm a little bit of the
(05:07):
types of appliances you can runand how long you can run them
for.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, that's all super interesting.
And so you've got.
You've got this idea.
And then how did you bring itfrom this idea to a reality?
Pride to you know.
Get a team together and startworking on some prototypes.
Describe how you got to whereyou are now in terms of you know
everything that had to go intoplace.
I understand, I read somewherethat at first you were working
out of a tent.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Right, yeah, we.
So I'm originally from Atlanta.
It's actually where I kind ofleft New York to go back to and
build my first camper van out of, and you know we were sort of
yeah.
So I guess I guess kind of thebeginning is that I ended up
after that whole van experience.
I ended up going to work forSpaceX, for Starlink, for a bit
(05:56):
as an embedded software engineer, and actually the way that I
got there was also related to myvan experience because, you
know, this was 2020.
So Starlink was sort of justrolling out when I was building
my van and I wanted one so badlybut it was sort of impossible
for me to get at that point intime.
But because of the camper vanand the obvious need there for
(06:18):
internet, you know, no matterwhere you're going.
That's that's where I reallystarted like closely following
Starlink and what SpaceX wasdoing and that's actually like
what led me to going to workthere.
And so I did that for a bit andthen kind of kept thinking
about this whole RV space andelectric, electric of the RV
(06:39):
space.
So ended up leaving and spent alittle bit of time sort of
thinking about this more andtalking to people, doing some
research, putting together someideas and ultimately found a
co-founder and we, you know,sort of got to the point.
(07:00):
We did it sort of as much as wecould have, just kind of
initial planning on paper, andthen got to the point of like,
okay, we need to, we need tostart building a prototype, and
we were looking at somedifferent cities to go to.
We ended up coming to Detroit,which I've never lived in and I
actually had never been tobefore at that point, and
Detroit is great for a lot ofreasons to build this company.
(07:22):
I think One is that the wholeautomotive space is here and so
there's a lot of likemanufacturing capability here,
shop and prototyping capability,built out supply chain machines
.
You know all of thatinfrastructure is here in the
city or in sort of the metroarea.
(07:43):
Similarly, there's a lot ofautomotive engineers and
manufacturing engineers here aswell, that you know.
The idea is we can tap intothat network of people and
experts.
Another cool thing aboutDetroit is we're only a three
hour drive from Elkhart, whereyou know, 80, 85% of the RVs in
(08:04):
America are made, and so MAJORmanufacturers and engineers and
suppliers and just the generalRV supply chain is all sort of
close.
And so you know, in some ways Ilike to say that we're kind of
like just close enough, like wedon't necessarily want to be in
Elkhart, like right there whereall the other RVs are made,
(08:25):
because we want to do thingsdifferently.
But we're also not, you know,all the way on the West Coast,
where I think it would be reallydisconnected, you know, from
that ecosystem.
And then the third reason thatwe're in Detroit is because
there's an organization calledMichigan Central and they
partnered with anotherorganization called New Lab and
basically they've built thisgiant sort of collaborative
(08:52):
co-working manufacturing spacefor startups in the mobility
sector right here in Corktown,which is basically next to
downtown Detroit and so, youknow, we've been able to kind of
build the company here in thisbuilding, that's, you know, a
quarter of a million square feet.
(09:13):
We share it with other startupswho are also manufacturing kind
of electrification of mobility,so like there's an electric ATV
startup here, there's anelectric bicycle startup here,
those types of things, and weget access to equipment, we get
access to.
You know, we've sort of metlike mentors and investors and
those sorts of things here andthen, of course, like you know,
(09:36):
engineers, shop technicians,stuff like that.
So it's been a great place tobuild the company and to build
the product.
We're very glad we came toDetroit.
I love Detroit now, I'm a hugefan and so, yeah, so we came
here, we started building andbasically since then, over the
last little more than a year now, we've built a few of sort of
(09:56):
our MVPs, which were called theG1 and they were electric camper
vans built on the FordE-transit.
Obviously, the big problem withthose was the range.
The range was super limited.
It was barely over 100 miles.
Granted, I do think there's areal use case for those If you
are not going far, if you are,you know, living on, if you have
(10:18):
a big piece of land or you're aresort or something like that,
where you want sort of housingthat's easy to stand up and move
around, like one big piece ofland, or maybe you have two
properties and they're 30 milesfrom each other.
Like, I think there are usecases, but the use cases are
obviously more limited thanpeople who might really want a
(10:39):
lot more flexibility in beingable to get up and go, you know,
further distances.
And so that was the G1.
And we did build a few of those.
But now we have since launchedthe G2, and the G2 is a 250 mile
range electric camper van builton the Brake Drop chassis, and
we just launched that last month, in October of 2023.
(11:02):
And we, as part of the launch ofthat, we did a 1500 mile road
trip in the first G2 around thestate of Michigan.
So we left Detroit, we went allthe way up to the upper
peninsula, across the MackinacBridge and all the way up to
Pictured Rocks, lakeshore,marquette, big Bay and then kind
of came back down around theMitten, around the west side of
(11:26):
the state, all the way downthrough Grand Haven and then
eventually back over to Detroit.
And that was like a reallyreally amazing trip and kind of
like proof point, you know, toourselves and to others, of like
, hey, this is feasible, likeyou can actually really go far
distances for a long period oftime, you know, in this new
(11:49):
fully electric camper, van yeahthat's super cool, because I
think that was a lot of people'sissues with buying electric
vehicles, especially the largerone, is the range was so limited
.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
So now that you've come out with the 250 mile one,
have you noticed that interesthas peaked?
Are you getting more orders?
What is the response been tothat?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, the reception's been great and I think I think
when we launched the G1, thereception was basically you know
, because, by the way, likethere's some other interesting
things that I should definitelymention just about the products,
like the modular interiorsystem that we have that allows
people to customize the interior, kind of like Lego blocks, that
(12:27):
you choose where pieces go andwhich pieces you want.
And then we have a kind of asmart app, sort of like the
Tesla app, but for RVs, so youcan monitor your battery, solar,
which appliances are on, turnthem on and off, and you can do
that from your phone remotelytoo.
So even if you're not near thevehicle, and we integrate with
the underlying vehicle too.
(12:48):
So we bring in the actualvehicle EV battery into the app
and stuff like in vehiclediagnostics.
Actually, we're working onright now integrating to.
So there's cool stuff, evenabout the G1, and the reception
was basically, I think, from alot of people it was like oh,
this is great, we love thatthere's a startup working on
(13:08):
this, it looks beautiful, it hasall these cool features, but
there's this range issue andthey need to address that, and
so that's what we did with theG2.
And also, as you can imagine,made some improvements on the
whole interior too.
So we decided to actuallyexpose the modular mounting
(13:29):
system in the G2 and have a bitmore of a Spartan look that we
still think looks really cleanand beautiful.
But by exposing the rails itallows customers to have the
opportunity to just mount stuffthemselves like other
accessories, and also change outmodules themselves.
(13:50):
So with the G1, it wasn't reallythe type of thing where, as a
customer, you weren't reallyexpected to change the layout
over time.
But with the G2, you actuallycan.
You could say, hey, I'm goingon a different trip and I want
to switch this whatever benchmodule with a twin bed module to
(14:11):
bring it.
Maybe your life changes, youhave another kid, whatever it is
.
So that was one of the otherbig changes with the G2.
But yeah, but in general thereception's been great and a lot
of people have put downpre-orders and reached out to us
with questions and stuff likethat.
So we're kind of starting.
(14:32):
We'll ramp up basically overthe next few months and the next
year, but we are alreadyshipping G2s to customers.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Very cool.
Yeah, I was looking at yourwebsite and some of these
modular interior components andso when someone's in the
ordering process, can they justgo on and decide the layout, or
how does that work and whattypes of modules can someone put
in one of these?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, so in the future we will have a
self-service online tool whereit will be kind of like a 3D
drag and drop tool to customizeyour layout.
Right now we have not deployedthat self-service tool, so the
process is a little bit moremanual with our designers right
now.
So essentially we'll get incontact with you and then kind
(15:21):
of show you some of thedifferent options, talk to you,
learn about your use case, howyou want to use the vehicle,
what you need, and thenbasically send you a 3D render
of what we're proposing for thelayout and make sure you're good
with that.
But that's basically what theprocess is now.
But we do eventually want tohave the self-service tool just
(15:42):
to kind of streamline the wholething, and then people can kind
of just see a lot faster like oh, here's how this would look.
Here's how this would look Interms of types of modules.
It's something that will expandover time, like the catalog of
available modules, but right nowit's pretty simple.
It's like benches and kitchenand closet.
(16:03):
We have like an actual fullheight closet that you can hang
clothes in and stuff.
An indoor shower is a big onethat we get asked a lot about.
Wet bath has a shower and atoilet inside.
Obviously the queen size bed,which is kind of the default bed
that we put in the back.
We will offer in the futuresmaller beds like the twin size
(16:30):
bed that I mentioned, and alsorear seats with seatbelts, and
overhead cabinets or overheadstorage units are sort of the
other thing, and those goobviously above, so you can mix
and match those things.
But the cool thing is that evenwith a fairly limited set of
(16:53):
modules, there's a lot ofpossibilities in terms of layout
, so you can choose where thingsgo, and then things come in
different sizes too.
So we're doing like a gridsystem, so everything is a
standard unit size, and so youcould think of the floor as
being, I think it's 8 by 2,basically, or 8 by 3 if you
(17:18):
count the aisle in the middle.
And so in the G2 that you'llsee photos of on our website,
the kitchen is three units wide,which is pretty big.
I mean, it's a really, reallybig countertop space, and then
next to it is a two unit widebench.
But somebody might be like, oh,I don't cook that much or I
(17:43):
don't need that much countertopspace, so I want a.
We offer a two unit widekitchen, and so you could choose
that instead and you could putit in the same place and then
you could have three unit widebench or you could put something
else in that one extra unit.
So that's kind of the ideathere.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
And so can someone put other components in there
from other companies, like anL-Track system, or is it just
proprietary to your modules?
Speaker 2 (18:09):
So the L-Track system would be a little bit different
, because that's kind of likeputting in the whole new system.
But what you can definitely dois just mount your own
accessories to our system.
So, yeah, you could totally dothat.
It's kind of a standardaluminum extrusion that we use
(18:32):
right now and so, yeah, if youwanted to, you could leave a
slot somewhere and then youcould put something there.
Or if you look at the photos,you'll see that there's
basically these rails that gosort of like laterally across
(18:52):
the length of the van andthere's I think there's four of
them from the bottom to the top.
And so obviously, the kitchen,which comes up pretty high, that
has two mounting points interms of that vertical axis.
That has one at the sort ofbottom rail and then one at the
(19:15):
second rail up, but then there'sstill two more rails above that
right.
So, like, the overhead cabinetsobviously will be on the top
rails, but even like above thebed, if you want to put a
reading light, you know that canmount into the track.
So, yeah, I think there's a lotof customization opportunities
and that's obviously somethingthat's super important to people
(19:36):
.
It's something that I meanthere's things like your house
on wheels, and so people wantcustomization, they want
flexibility.
You know stuff like that.
That's what I wanted when Ibuilt mine.
That's obviously what youwanted when you built yours.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Yeah, for sure Cool.
And how does it compare to sizewise, to like a Mercedes
Sprinter or a Ford Transit?
What's that comparison like?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, so, first off, we actually offer the G2 in two
different sizes, and that'sbased on the fact that the
Braedrop underlying platformcomes in two different sizes,
which is the Zivo 600 and theZivo 400.
And basically the only realdifference between these two
things is the length, and sowhat we sort of launched with,
(20:27):
you know, like, if you see thephotos on our website or like
read some of the articles,everything you'll see is the
longer version, which is the 600, and it's about 24 feet long
exterior length, and a lot ofpeople have pointed out that
that is like pretty long for aclass B camper van, and so I
(20:50):
think that the shorter one withthe Zivo 400, which is about 20
feet long, you know that thatmight be a much better fit for
someone who's looking forsomething a little bit smaller,
a little bit more maneuverable,a little bit more accessible to
park in like a regular parkinglot type of thing.
So we do offer both of thosesizes.
(21:12):
I think in both cases, for bothvehicles, the interior is a lot
more spacious than what youwould get with like a Transit
Van and a converted Transit Van,and the reason is because,
basically, the vehicle is a lotboxier.
(21:33):
So like the Transit Vans or theSprinter Vans, you know the
walls kind of these like metalwalls kind of cave in at the top
, like they're not, they're notstraight, they're not boxy and
they also have, you know, quitea bit of thickness to them,
because you know they leave sortof that, like there's the,
there's that exterior layer ofmetal and then there's usually
(21:56):
like another inner layer andthat that inner layer will have
like pre-drilled mounting holesand stuff like that and then the
whole, and then all of that'slike caving in, and so you
really like lose a lot of spacethrough all of that.
And of course, like all ofthese vans are designed like
across the board, whether it'sFord or Mercedes or now Bright
(22:19):
Drop, like all of these vans arereally designed for, you know,
commercial purposes, notnecessarily for like living in
them.
And so you know, I think that'swhy, like the engineers at
these OEMs are fine with thattrade off and that loss of
interior space, because in mostof the use cases it doesn't
actually matter that much.
But what's really nice aboutthe Bright Drop is, I mean it's
(22:42):
it is perfectly rectangular andthe and the whole exterior wall
is kind of a very thin, almostlike type of plastic and there's
obviously, like some, somealuminum structure to it, like
some ribs on it, but that's notnearly as thick as, or the sort
(23:03):
of like interior gap there ofthose metal ribs is not nearly
as deep as you know, what you'dfind in kind of like the ribs of
a Ford Transit Van on the walls.
And so basically, for all ofthose reasons, like the shape
and the thickness you have, youhave a ton more room and we have
(23:25):
a ton more room that we canwork with, and so what we do is
ground.
It actually builds basicallylike a whole substructure out of
aluminum.
So we basically build like awhole box out of aluminum and
then that whole box gets mountedinside the Bright Drop Van and
then you know, to the hardmounting points that are
(23:47):
provided by Bright Drop, andthen we obviously add all of our
wall panels, we add insulationin between our wall panels and
the exterior walls, but what youend up with is like basically
something that that doesn't likecave in on you, in the same way
that most of these other vanconversions are like.
Even even the ones coming outof Elkhart from some of the
(24:08):
bigger companies have to becauseof the chassis that they're
starting with.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Totally.
I did notice that, when lookingat the photos of your van too,
that it was more, you know, boxyand probably more spacious
toward the ceiling.
So that was an interestingconcept.
And I was wondering can youtell me a little more about the
power system?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
you mentioned earlier that it has a pretty beefy
system in it, so if you couldtalk about that a little, yeah,
so the battery in the BrightDrop, like the high voltage
vehicle battery, is 173 kilowatthours and, for context, I think
the battery in most Teslas isaround 70 kilowatt hours.
(24:47):
So it's like you know,something like two and a half
times as big as a Tesla battery.
It's a.
It's a giant, giant battery andthat's part of why it's so
expensive to you know theunderlying vehicle platform and
so it has this really bigbattery and of course that's
that's like why it can go so far.
And then we ground.
It also adds an additionalhouse battery.
(25:09):
The house battery that we addby default is 10, another 10
kilowatt hours.
We can do bigger ones ifsomebody wants a bigger one.
10 kilowatt hour house batteryis already like a much bigger
house battery than what you'dfind in most van conversions.
And then our house battery cancharge.
(25:29):
You know, basically in threeways that can either charge.
It will charge from the brightdrop battery.
So every time that you drive,that you turn the bright drop,
that you turn the vehicle on sosort of analogous to how people
will wire up house batteries tothe alternator of an ice vehicle
so every time that you turn thevehicle on, it's charging.
(25:50):
So same thing here Every timeyou turn the vehicle on, the
house battery is charging fromthe high voltage vehicle battery
.
Obviously it also charges fromsolar panels on the roof, and
then you can also charge it fromshore power if you want to just
plug it in directly.
And then we have a threekilowatt inverter, which is also
(26:11):
something we can.
We can upgrade if a customerwants, but three kilowatts is
enough for 90% of people's usecases.
I would say that's about liketwo space heaters at the same
time, or you know, a hot waterheater and the induction stove
on at the same time.
So that's, that's kind of thebattery situation.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Yeah, very cool.
It sounds like people can runmore appliances and you know,
when they're off a grid thenthey typically would.
With a lot of the vanconversions we're seeing on the
market, yep, yeah definitely.
And it can probably power.
What are some of the optionspeople are getting, like air
conditioners, or what are peopleusing all this power for?
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah, so we put an electric HVAC system, so we put
a heat pump in electric heatpump and they can do hot and
cold and so that's kind of theother big power draw.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yeah, and so how long do you think this thing could
just go boondocking or stay offa grid?
What would be your idea aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, I know people love people, love.
People love to ask thatquestion.
I mean it's a great question,of course, like anyone who's
done this before know, as I knowyou do.
Like it just depends so much onwhere you are in the country,
what the climate situation is,what the solar situation is,
what you're running, you knowall those sorts of things.
(27:31):
So I think, depending on theuse case, it could.
There's a huge, huge amount ofvariance.
So I always think it's a littlebit funny when, when RV makers
like quote some amount of timebecause I'm like, well, what,
what, what assumptions were madefor that amount of time, what
you know what appliances arerunning and stuff like that.
But I think you know definitelyseveral days at minimum and I
think you know, depending on usecase, that could be stretched
(27:54):
pretty substantially.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
So, yeah, depending on what people are using out of
all the components they have intheir van.
They could definitely cut itback by using a propane stove
outside, which we do thatsometimes.
So there are ways to makethings last off grid.
But it's cool.
It can go off for a while.
You know, that's fantastic.
So many people are like likeloving to do that instead of
having to be plugged in.
So that's great.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah, so well and then the other thing I should
mention is you know, with ourapp you know we can monitor and
track your usage patterns, andso you know you that that
hopefully helps because youcould.
You could sort of see like,okay, you know, I'm spending
(28:34):
this much amount of energy, youknow, by running these things.
And in the future, you knowwe're going to keep deploying
over the air software updatesover time, and so we want to add
more features to this app inthe future that that do smarter
and smarter things, like evenautomating some of this.
So you could imagine the app issort of smart enough to be like
(28:59):
, you know, hey, he's, you knowthis this person's been, you
know, this is kind of a sillyexample but like this person's,
you know, had the water heateron for for so long that they
probably are done with theirshower and, like, forgot to turn
the water heater off, so we'rejust going to turn it off
automatically.
You know that sort of thingwhere or maybe we don't do it
automatically.
(29:19):
You know, maybe there's asetting in the app whether you
want to let it actually makedecisions for you or not, but at
the very least something thatpops up and says, hey, you know
you've been running this thingfor a while.
Are you sure you want to keepthis thing on and kind of like
make suggestions and makepredictions with things like
like hey, you know, we can seethat where you are tomorrow is
(29:39):
going to generate this amount ofsolar wattage, you know.
So maybe you want to thinkabout doing XYZ or turning XYZ
off, you know, or only runningit.
You know, normally you take ashower for this long, but you
should think about taking ashower that's two minutes
shorter tomorrow.
You know, to save the energyfrom the water heater because
(30:00):
there's going to be an overcastday.
You know that that type ofintelligence we want to build
and we'll continue to kind ofupdate and deploy over time.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Cool Sounds really interesting and I'm also curious
, like with the amount ofcharging stations across the
country.
Does it seem like there'senough out there for someone to
buy one and do like crosscountry road trips, or how is
that currently looking?
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, it's a great question.
I mean, I think it's definitelypossible.
That's probably our next kindof marketing like fun marketing
thing is getting someone todrive one of these across the
country.
I think that infrastructure isprobably the single biggest
definitely, I would say, thesingle biggest barrier to higher
(30:43):
EV adoption right now, andbecause I, like, truly, truly
believe that that EVs arebasically better in every single
way other than this issuearound charging, and so we need
to improve the charginginfrastructure.
It's a horrible feeling if youlike show up to an EV charger
expecting to charge your vehicleand it doesn't work because
(31:04):
it's down, and that's way toocommon right now.
There's apps that help withthat, a lot like plug share,
where you can see, like, oh,someone was here earlier today
and they said that it worked, soI feel pretty dang confident
it's going to work when I getthere.
That helps a lot.
Before I started using plugshare, my success rate with EV
chargers was pretty bad, andthen I started using it and now
(31:26):
I basically don't have issues.
But, like, we need to deploymore chargers and we need to
improve the reliability of theones that that are out there now
.
The good news is that there isso much happening behind the
scenes or sort of like.
If you think about it as likean iceberg, like what I think,
like what people know about orlike read about in kind of like
(31:51):
the tier one press right now isreally just the tip of the
iceberg, like in the kind of thetech world and automotive world
which we're pretty immersed inhere in Detroit.
We can just see how muchactivity and how much money is
going into improving the EVcharging infrastructure all
(32:11):
around the country.
And obviously with the IRA youknow that was passed somewhat
recently there's also likebillions and billions of dollars
that are going into improvingthe charging infrastructure and
I think we're going to continueto see picture of the charging
infrastructure improve.
And then, of course, tesla nowhas signed agreements with every
major OEM, including GM, whoowns Sprite Drop, to allow Tesla
(32:37):
chargers to charge other OEMvehicles in the future, and
that's even going to be.
You know, there's this littlebit of a tangent, but there's
two for your, for your viewerswho don't know there's basically
two EV charging standards.
There's Tesla and there'severything else.
Tesla is called NACS, the otherone is CCS and these are
(32:59):
actually like different hardware, right, like the physical
connector is different and, ofcourse, like the accompanying
software, is also different theway that the vehicle
communicates with the charger,and so you know, 99% of the
Tesla chargers in America ofthese, like public public
chargers obviously have the onlythe Tesla NACS standard.
(33:23):
But the good news is that Teslais deploying adapters to their
chargers, physical adapters, sothat in the future, potentially
as early as next year, gmannounced you will be able to
charge GM CCS vehicles at aTesla charger with an adapter
(33:44):
that Tesla provides to connectyour vehicle.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Oh, that's cool.
So there's probably way moreTesla adapters out there than
the other type, right?
Just because they've dominatedthe market so far.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, I mean, the unfortunate reality for these
other OEMs has been that Teslacharging infrastructure is 10
times at least 10 times betterand more reliable than sort of
all of these other third-partyCCS charger companies out there,
(34:19):
and so, you know, that's whythe OEMs basically made the
decision.
I mean it's like a little bitfunny because for the last 20
years, these other OEMs havebeen sort of like, you know, a
bit patronizing toward Tesla andskeptical of Tesla's future
chances of success and thingslike that.
And now they've all kind of,you know sort of, in signing
(34:41):
this agreement with Tesla tohave their customers charge
their vehicles at Tesla chargersand pay Tesla money for
electricity.
They're sort of implicitlysaying you know what, you did
the best job out there atsetting up this infrastructure.
So, yeah, I think I thinkultimately it's a great thing
for consumers and for for, like,the whole EV picture in America
(35:02):
basically.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Totally, and how long does it take to charge the van
once you get to one of thechargers?
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah, so the G2, you can do 20% to 80% in about an
hour and a half and a fullcharge is a little bit closer to
three hours if you, if you wantto go like zero to 100%, and
this is at a fast charger.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Totally Cool.
So what are your like?
Plans moving forward andexpectations for 2023?
I'll probably be a big year foryou, because you're starting to
ship the G2s outright.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, I think 2023 is kind of like the launch year,
like we put this thing out thereand and people are sort of
learning about us and you knowwe'll get sort of like our
initial initial early adopters.
And then 2024 is going to be alittle bit more about scaling up
and and trying to build a lotmore of these and get them in a
(35:58):
lot more people's hands.
And then the other thing thatwe have plans for 2024 is we
will launch a towable trailerproduct as well, and so it the
idea is that Grounded wants tobe a kind of modern electric
outdoor recreation company, andso you know, we're not saying
(36:23):
like we're, we're not a campervan company, we're not an RV
company, but obviously RVs,towables and motor homes are
sort of at the.
In a way, they're kind of likethe hub of the of like outdoor
recreation.
Right, like you can you takeyour RV out and you bring your
other outdoor recreationaccessories with you, like your
(36:43):
bikes in the back or your oryour kayak or whatever it is,
and so it is a really good entrypoint to customers.
But eventually we want to haveother product lines that are not
just RVs, you know, but but thetowable will be kind of an all
electric aerodynamic.
You know, if you have an EVtruck and you want, or even SUV,
(37:05):
and you want to tow the trailerwith that, it won't hurt your
range as much as some of thesemuch bigger, boxier trailers out
there.
And then of course it'll have abig battery so you can even,
like, charge up your EV if youget somewhere, and then power.
You know it won't have any gas,so it'll just be sort of an all
(37:26):
electric version.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Cool and I saw that if people want to rent one,
you've partnered with RV sharesthat right Just in Detroit only
so people can try them out.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah.
So right now, yeah, if you'rein Detroit or coming to visit,
or coming to visit Michigan, youcan rent a G1 from Detroit.
We were thinking about, youknow, maybe making G2s available
, but for rent, the problemright now is we have to.
We want to kind of prioritizeactual customer orders for G2s,
(37:56):
but but that might be somethingthat we do in the future.
And then, and then you know too, if you're an owner, you know,
if you buy G2, I think there's agood chance that you might want
to rent it out to make a littleextra money or help pay for
those payments when you're notusing it.
And so that's something that wealso definitely encourage and
can help connect people, like ifwe get interest in a certain
(38:18):
place to rent one and connectthat person with a G2 owner
that's in their area.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Totally.
And so these, the G2s, start.
Are they just 200,000 or canthey go up, depending on what
sorts of products and featuresyou add.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
So the way we decided to launch was to keep it as
simple as possible.
You know, because we're anearly stage startup, you can get
really complicated with pricingand and super granular, but we
just did 195,000, no matter whatthe options are.
(38:55):
So if you get the shower or youdon't get the shower doesn't
matter.
You know for the near future,if you know if you order one now
or in the near future, it'sjust going to be the price will
be whatever it is and that's notgoing to be based on based on
(39:15):
any customization.
So in the future that willchange.
In the future we willeventually make the pricing a
little bit more sophisticated,so potentially have like a much
lower base base cost and thenbased on what you choose.
You know, each thing kind ofhas its own, each module would
have its own price and stufflike that.
But we just wanted to startsimple and just get something
(39:37):
out there and get it intopeople's hands.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
So yeah, totally.
And are you going to be at anylike RV shows or van expos in
2024 where people can come seeyou?
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yeah, we're starting to.
We're starting to look at that.
Right now, we don't have anyany concrete plans yet, but we
definitely want to bring somevans around the country in 2024.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Totally cool.
Well, thank you so much.
Is there anything else youwanted to add that we missed?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
No, I think.
Yeah, this was great.
Thanks for having me on theshow, kristen.
It's great meeting you andtalking with you about Grounded.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, totally.
I'm looking forward to seeingyou know how the camper vans do
and I look forward to seeingthem out and about as I'm out
camping.
So good luck with everythingand thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Awesome.
Thanks Kristen.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Wayward Home
podcast.
If you know someone who wouldlike this episode, do me a favor
and forward it to them.
Word of mouth is one of thebest ways you can help me grow
this podcast.
Again, thanks for listening tothe Wayward Home podcast and
I'll see you next time.
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