I've Never Seen A Boutique DCFC Location Like This! Franklin's Charging Little Rock Full Tour

this video is brought to you by Nokian tires a leader in safety and sustainability maximize performance and efficiency with their made in USA allseason tires and their dedicated Haka palita EV winter line from the inventor of the winter tire learn more at Nokian tire.com slev this video is also brought to you by Magna forward for [Applause] all hello and welcome to another out of speec reviews video and welcome to one of the coolest charging hubs I've ever been to you and I I always say this we've been around the world together looking at the coolest and craziest charging stations ever this is an entirely different take on charging that I've never seen before this is what I'm going to call a boutique charging experience my friend JT Franklin's charging here in Little Rock Arkansas built this site because he is a fan of future Tech electric vehicles vertical farming sustainability and he said you know what I'm going to build my own charging Hub and try and make a profitable business and he is well on his way to doing that and so I'm really able to share with you for the first time here on YouTube Franklin's charging in Little Rock Arkansas this is one of two locations they have their own little Hub over here they have AC and DC charging they have vertical farming they have an art studio it's really an amazing place and it's all done by this guy his friends and his family and I think you guys are going to absolutely love this and have huge respect for the Ingenuity and honestly the amount of work that he's put into this site and all of the future ones so join me as I am just so impressed with what I'm about to show you and let's go on a full tour of Franklin's charging here in Little Rock Arkansas just as a warning the audio in this video sucks there's no other way of putting it uh we used microphones you'll see me holding mics apparently they just were never connected into my phone the camera and uh so I really want to apologize we did the best we could with audio levels but I'm going to sound really loud my friend JT is going to sound a little bit quieter but it's as maxed as we could get it dialed in and yeah really want to apologize for the audio the video is still very much worth a watch because it's just awesome but uh yeah I uh dropped the ball on the audio this clip hopefully you guys can forgive me and still enjoy this video because it's just epic join me now let's go and go on a full tour of Franklin's charging well you joined me over here with my friend JT how's it going Jeffrey doing well how are you sir doing great thanks so much for having me over at your charging Hub and we hadn't planned to to shoot a video but I got here and I was like we have to film this absolutely love love to see you here so tell me first a little bit about why you have decided to build a charging Hub and vertical farming and everything all at this location we wanted to be part of the new technologies that are sustainable for all of us and so this was an Avenue that we saw to be able to do that and hopefully make profitable over time of course right well I definitely want to talk about that now of course I rolled up here with rivan I'm driving from Colorado to I don't even know Memphis is the next stop so this is actually probably my last stop before Memphis if I do a pretty deep charge it'll take a while to shoot this video and do a tour and I'm just noticing on the hardware selection but also the location of the highway that's where we should probably start you're literally on the highway if you're coming through the center of L Rock then you come down 6:30 I 630 and we are literally right off of I 630 and right across the street from an electric substation which helps uh to know that we will have power available that's right so my understanding is uh well actually maybe you can explain better did you select this location just because of the proximity to the highway or did it start for a totally different reason may may have had access to this location uh because of other reasons to begin with and then it just turned out to be a great location for this application right and you've had interest in electric cars for a while you actually I can see on the other side of my car is your Tesla Model 3 is it a performance looks good yes absolutely nice hell yeah that's awesome so you were like okay I've got an electric car I want to put in some chargers right next to the highway how did that all start uh well I mean we saw Tesla come to Market in 2011 I believe uh when they had their IPO and thought you know if they can make it then this thing is going to be everywhere electric vehicles are going to be the thing so how do we get involved and we thought I mean my thought was how do you take solar and the battery backups and try and charge cars with them now we aren't doing that 100% here in Practical applications but that was the original exercise to try to figure that out and so in putting myself through night school while I was a teacher uh we were like okay well let's concentrate on how we do let's make a business plan to do that yeah and uh this is kind of the incantation that we ended up with so Franklin's charging is this was the first location right that's cor yes so there's a second location in Hot Springs National Park Arkansas yes sir we will have to get that on video at some point as well coing Station built in the 30s uh that's reapplied to now charging that sounds epic and um can you tell me a little bit ripping it not the electric lifestyle got that's welcome to Arkansas um so you got how much solar up here on the roof there is a 30 kwatt solar system that uh this canop be uh holds up uh effective with our inverters we're at about 26 uh pH very cool and so did the Chargers come first or did the canopy come first it was all package the canopy went up first and then the Chargers came down and the photos that I saw on Twitter I'm trying to think months and months ago maybe even a year plus ago were just the charge Point units originally that's correct yes and so how did that work why did you select these I mean one of the benefits to that I think about charge point is an individual can just easily have a service to drop them in service them in and you know yeah what was uh why why the CPE 250s through the research that I did I just kept coming back to charge Point as being really solid that they had integrated software and hardware and that they were just really solid units and come to find out that is the case okay good to hear so you're pleased with these I mean I would say the only thing that I don't like about the CPE 250s are just the 200 amp maximum output that and the fact that even paired together uh we can only get about 125 on our kilowatts even with the best of the Hyundai or the Kia that are allowed to take that with yeah yeah yeah yeah so that's that's the biggest drawback with those we love the express plus but then we have to talk about demand charges and p Electric yeah so we got to definitely about I definitely want to pick your brain about demand charges but just recently how long ago actually did the free wire unit come in free wire I believe that we finally get that activated in May okay and this is the Boost 200 the Boost 200 okay so that's one of their newer units and um just my experience so far with it rolling up has been a little buggy it's it's not to say it didn't work it worked I plugged in first try I tapped my card we were good to go this this is the only problem on this one it's just the 73 KW Max um but is that just a rivan thing or do you think other cars were having that limitation with it well I'm here pretty much daily uh and try to get here for as many sessions as I can possibly witness uh it's been on and off man yeah it's it's a little buggy for different OEM uh I would I should be ripping this at 150 for you right now right absolutely y and and you know you're only getting one side of the machine functioning I don't know if that's a contactor or the software associated with or what it might be we've been through the business with r with prewire love them they're so great customer service wise I love the concept of the machine but we have had some trouble with the internal battery then recharging after people will use the unit having to reset the unit to be able to get it to function properly yeah we should um you know dig into this a little bit more for sure you guys know I I know the guys at free wire really well and there there's already some improvements I'm noticing by the way this is the first time I've ever seen it show the charger battery when I first rolled up it showed 81% state of charge inside the unit of course um how much power actually do you have this hooked up to to the grid uh this should give the 37 kilow continuous okay so 37 in and so it's got 160 kilowatt hour battery pack or something like that right and then um yeah so it's doing 72 73 kilowatt output about half as much as it should be doing so we got to do a podcast or something with the free wire guys to see what's going on with that because we're sticking with them we want to use their equipment for any and all scaling that we do because of the internal battery I mean because of the grid uh and what we can do to mitigate uh effect on the grid in our demand charges it's just a matter of getting the bugs out so what was the rationale of course you already had these two Chargers here why did you want want to add another one was it capacity was it you wanted to service more power what was the reason to upgrade this one uh capacity and then we definitely wanted to be able to get cars charged a lot quicker okay yep that's you know when it's first come first serve with the CP 250s so if you have somebody plugged up with a ma it's pulling 75 Kow somebody else comes and plugs in then they get 30 Kow right wow you know which is not not ideal yeah not ideal at all so just having I really love the idea of free wire we've done a lot of videos with them um definitely seems like some bugs still left to get worked out at least on this particular unit no question um okay so equipment aside I mean at the Little Rock or we're in Little Rock what the what's the other site again Hot Springs what Chargers do you have at that location we have a canopy there also at an old filling station and under that solar canopy we have in blue of the old two gas pumps we have two cp2 P oh cool okay nice love it and that one's been working out just fine for you then are solid yeah they're not the fastest but they're just reliable yeah that's that's been my impression of using them uh these units out in the public and uh do you think you would upgrade to the express Plus at some point or is it really just a power draw that hurts you I mean it depends on if we can mitigate some of the demand with maybe a larger battery sure like a sight level battery yeah both would really be nice let's hold that thought let's continue I want to go through the numbers because I want to give a little bit insight to our audience but we haven't shown the rest of the site yet so you have a windshield washing station which is great and a trash can you have an OG model 3 over here love to see those it's moms that's awesome 1,000 miles amazing yeah just cruising around and then you've got an air filling pump over here did you did you research the air pump and vacuum are there a bunch of options uh there were a few options these guys seem really solid they worked out to be really solid um and so that's yeah that's a little stall wor that little sucker stays busy okay very cool love to see that and then you have a Tesla wall connector right over here how many amps is this one hooked up to I believe we're full 48 on that 48 on this one uh so back behind the Tesla destination the air station uh we are creating a tiny Forest uh by What's called the trukee method is best as we you can approximate it if you'd like to look that up um uh we have our patio which would be our bread and butter as soon as we get all of our overd counter operations kind of streamline here um this is the our farm on the back side of that thing so you have a vertical Farm in a container over there super cool will we be able to go in there and check that out I don't see why not awesome we don't want to carry anything in with us but we're on concrete we should be okay okay very cool very cool and so how would EV driver I guess know that you would have access to this building or things like that so that's one of the things number one I need to upgrate my website I'm I'm not the techiestudios available at both locations uh and then we also have keyless entry for our bathrooms at both locations uh and a vending machine here we of course want to add machine and hot springs but we're we're getting there so with this location did you was this building already here like this when you guys got it these were three Greenfield Lots wow Zone Zone residential uh we went through the whole shebang and resoning wow amazing so how was it working with the city of Little Rock were they cool with it city of Little Rock was pretty are cool to work with seeming with for us anyhow they they were very open uh to helping us get this reone while saying that this was the last property on this side of woodro which is a main thorough Fair here that they were going to let go commercial okay so you got the spot I got the spot and it's a perfect proximity to of course a substation where you have unlimited power but also the concern of demand charge we want to talk about that and so you built this I guess Hub if you will this is do you call it what do you actually call it uh I mean it may not be appropriate for all audience this is kind of our sit and shin I like it that's awesome and we're turning it into a coffee shop and then hopefully a little happy hour spot eventually down the road hell yes at a to love it uh before we go inside I just want to show the viewers actually the um adapters if you don't mind sure because I think that's also one of those things that you get because you're EV drivers hosting EV charging you understand what an EV driver has to go through and not every old you know EV driver is seasoned has all the adapters all those things so um you actually carry them for them that's right uh so keyless entry again I will not show you my code uh but we do have the code available by contact on the door yep uh have the chat um chatmo and the CCS available we also have electron adapter for the Tesla destination in case of emergencies yeah right just in case the DC goes down for whatever reason or honestly I own some cars that don't even have DC charging and so it's just nice to have an AC charging port when you have the power available really loving the patio space out here and so in the future the plan is when you're selling food items locally grown things you can come and enjoy them while your car is charging that's right and we also have an EMA 1450 out here for food trucks to come pull up and sell their we as well awesome and you've done some events at this location right we've done some events we've hosted a food truck on Fridays for a while and we're just trying to get the feel of what's a good long-term strategy here uh to put all those together on the same side this is uh super duper neat let's run inside let's see what's going on and um yeah just just can't believe this Boutique approach to uh charging i' I've truly never really seen anything like it before and this is Lulu right Lulu the do hey Lulu how you doing sweet girl we only want to charge when Lulu is here hey guys how are you doing well maybe you can introduce yourself and share a little bit about what you do here okay well my name is Melinda and um I'm the mom and I uh do a coffee bar especially on Mondays Mondays with milie so come have coffee with me on Mondays and do a little trash and recycling you know whatever amazing so you're here every Monday morning serving coffee I've just had some thank you so much and um I can see you have some items for sale back here some pottery can you share a little bit about that we do we do have Pottery these are obviously coffee mugs but you can see here there also some other items and um so my daughter-in-law has a has a little studio right next door and so you can also shop while you're doing that is amazing and so is it starting to get busier now that people are finding out about Franklin's charging and all of these things what's your impression of the traffic so it it is better that we could be busier so come s that's right for any of the viewers in the uh I guess you wouldn't call this the southeast it would just be the South we're in southeast but officially in the Southeast you know but yeah it's it's the South for sure yeah well come come definitely and check uh this out but when you're not here just as an example there's also a vending machine over here and noticing the pricing is really inexpensive on a lot of these things what's uh why why are they so cheap what's the what's the idea so kind of an overall strategy if we're going to be a boutique player in the charging industry and we're in uh you know Walmart land um we thought you know Sam was a cost leader uh maybe we can try and put our incantation of being a cost leader with charging and our insul uh revenue streams uh all the same and try to attract people that way which seems to be working a little bit so far great to hear great to hear and this indoor area is also open 247 when you have the code correct that's correct and the restrooms are right here two two adaa restrooms at this location ah great again AV we have filmed quite a few charging station bathrooms on this channel so there we go you got a shout out to our office yeah let's say hello what what's your name Martha and I'm the grandmother and I'm also the cleaning lady and the sweeper and the help JT load the machine and whatever else that is amazing so you really are the one who does it all around here then and she's legit our office manager okay amazing truly the office manager well it was really great to meet you did you ever think you would get into electric car charging business at all absolutely not after teaching school for 40 years I thought I was retired that's amazing so now you and Lulu I guess are are rocking out keeping this place running absolutely and you're welcome and everyone who has come through from other states love it so come try us amazing thank you and I definitely will be back as much as possible uh and I will make every detour possible to come check this place out it's so cool thank you U and no so I know you guys do more than just charging on this specific site so within we have these three City lots that we've developed we have the charging we have the indoor facility here and then we have a turnt uh indoor hydroponic uh Garden uh next door to this uh and then of course you move over one more lot and we have a art studio is a co-op between five uh different ladies right now that make everything from C stock to Pottery to Jord amazing so we'll definitely be able to check that out right for this video good oh definitely so before I think we should probably end the video talking about the nerd stuff on the charging the power the demand charges can we go check out the vertical Farm yeah all right let's go do it and could we interest you in the Franklin uh charging hat yes I will definitely grab the charging hat I want to pay for it too your options I'll go for the gray one here so so save me that one um and yeah and and let me buy it I want to support Franklin's charging so uh that'll be great yeah we're gonna go Cruise thanks super cool that is so you got the family involved you got friends involved it's a family affair for sure you know between here and hot springs and we have deliveries to make for our produce in Hot Springs as well so be able to do all that and go all that with uh running a small business yourself uh yeah we have to have as many people involved as possible and trying to keep overhead low so sure why not family because yeah we love it they work cheap that's right that's great so in here we are in basically a the coolest shipping container I've ever been in and this is a well you were telling me a little bit earlier off camera this is a solution provided by a Massachusetts based company is that correct that's right the company's name is Freight farms and they offer a turnkey solution for indoor hydroponic farming uh they even offer their own um Solutions or their own I should say um oh God what am I thinking of here give me a word give me a word seeds no these are nutrients there we go nutrients how about nutrients I wasn't thinking nutrients when I was looking at that bot so their own nutrient uh packages as well so it's really kind of a turnkey Plug and Play kind of thing now there's definitely a learning curve to be had we found that out very quickly and I have a little bit of a biology background and so I was like you know gungho coming into it and then realized that well plants are a little finicky especially when he gets into the ph and the temperature and everything that could go wrong you know it's Murphy's Law when you get into something that's new like this so it really took us about a year to streamline our operations in here can we uh yeah can you tell me a little bit about what you're growing how the system works because I think one of the cool things about this site is obviously charging and we are going to talk about it but charging isn't necessarily the best way to go out and make a lot of money so when you're building a site you need to find ways to I would say generate Revenue with that land that you already have allocated so you're doing a really cool sort of future focused way of localized vertical farming and it's something I've heard about been interested in but I want the down low what's the reality of this is it worthwhile putting at a charging site all that good stuff so you know everything is kind of a function of pricing so traffic and pricing on your charging side and then customers and pricing on this side of it um so right now we are Distributing to local restaurants uh here in us sprs uh we are about to start a retail business out of this as well over the countertop that you guys just saw so you can pull up and charge and then get food that was grown on site pull up and charge we won't be able to sell full meals out of that which is where the kind of um food trucks come into play okay so that we will just have prepackaged uh produce that you can also buy here over the counter of course prepackaged Foods as well we can do that as long as they're made in a gr from Kitchen um that's kind of the rule okay interesting so again some of this doesn't doesn't look ideal right now because we put this over and then these guys need a little nutrient boost right now looking like so we've got uh Sage at the end that you saw this is uh all this is our bread and butter really this is our basil uh and then Roma we don't make a really big margin on Roma at all uh but this is kind of my baby because of the water out west right I mean Colorado River I mean you're looking at The Valleys in California and where you bringing that water from is that Lake Tahoe I don't know right sure um so we're trying to mitigate as much as we can on our end the demand for those field grown things that are using water from other areas so how much less water does a solution like this use compared to traditional farming so Freight Farms touts this Farm is using about five gallons of water a day only five gallons a day that's right so way less than a shower right they also taled about 2.4 acres worth of capacity I think in reality where we are with mature plants anyway not including the ceiling table at any one point in time probably closer to about an acre and a half acre acre and a half but one shipping container so how many of these could you fit on an acre oh God hundreds yeah and so just the the I guess the capacity increase for land use seems so much better with this solution yes I mean in your neighborhood uh you know Boulder area Kimble M has you know one of these facilities with his containers okay that they've outfitted and I think he's got like eight stacks or something oh wow I didn't even know up that's cool doing kind of the same thing um so yeah pretty I mean we're not we don't feel like copycats but we're definitely not the first ones to figure out that you can do something like this as evidence by a company that actually sells a turnkey system but what I really love is just like you've kind of implemented your your passions or the things you're interested in into this one spot so you have charging you have coffee you have Potter you know art and pottery I should say and now vertical farming with some biology right it's a big science experiment it's so cool I've never seen anything like this because maybe our viewers don't get the impression but you will know because you've been in this world like individuals don't host charging like that's just not really a thing um I mean everyone freaked out when we got our own DC charger meanwhile you've had way more DC Chargers than just us we've been working on it for a while yeah yeah it's amazing I am so impressed and just so blown away um because you know the folks that are putting in charging we're talking about you know BP oil and we're talking about Circle K convenience stores not JT shell that's been you know in the charging business in Europe anyway since 2016 right yep so I mean yeah we're uh we're one of the few that I know of but not the only that I know of that are going to be uh an independent operator that's uh sadistic enough to do something like this yeah this is it's a great way of putting it what a cool experiment and what a cool place and and honestly it's not your only Hub you're already multilocation now so um I have to ask how much power so you mentioned about 5 gallons of water a day can we show what it's like when we put the grow lights on is that possible sure so we will actually separate uh these led panels and these are all low voltage LEDs just red blue lights okay um that are operating with the watering system that obviously has nutrients in it to help the plants grow um but let's see here we look at that guy let's go to auto turn this off it's a it's an automatic um whoa get it just a second and an auto pop up though uh but it's an automatic cycle that works with the watering as well so about every 45 minutes you have 5 minutes of watering that goes on while these stay on for I believe it's a believe that's a 16 hour cycle on these guys whoa that is pretty wild and so uh the the peak power draw of this you mentioned was about 7 Kow 7 and half Kow I believe uh I could be off that again don't quote me CU I'm not an electrician and I'm not an engineer I just try to pay attention and I know you guys you got onetta and I do too just we're in the South I'm just little slower to get to that part love it let's build it and then we'll figure it out right but in theory you know during the day at least you're feeding this from the solar that's on top of the Chargers to the power wall uh through the power wall and then we're net metered still one for one net metered for whatever we can put back on the grid well that's nice yeah I mean you think think so but with a commercial facility at you know kilowatt hours or like two cents sure because you really worry about demand charge and demand charge and now they've come up with this new charges an energy charge and that's a big one so I'm not real sure infg likes to likes to play with their commercial setup sometimes and you know someon man guys like that could tell you more about what schedule I've tried to research our schedule and where that's coming from and yeah we'll get it all sused out eventually sure kind of going with it fig out they just try to kill rooftop solar in Arkansas and it's like well that's the bigger battery build right that's all that is right absolutely biggy that's right so very interesting thanks for showing me around in here this is just uh yeah an absolutely amazing setup here so yeah let's we you still got more to show let's go check it out man it gets bright in there holy smokes no doubt that is incredible so do you things actually grow faster in this than a farm we're we're still at about what when you buy seeds from like Johnny or whatever uh we're still hitting about their grow cycle so stay on about the same grow cycle is uh is stated on your seeds cool cool and just so many EVS around here as well just kind of scattered got have that's right you know that's a staple right now that is just amazing love these folks in free mod we're trying our best to support right love to see it love to see it well wow so this road right here um is it pretty popular I'm seeing a lot of cars coming by there's a lot of traffic through this area we got with a small business incubator on the front end of this when we were going to make this into a restaurant uh just to have them help support um and I think maybe 175 or somewhere around there uh 7,500 Vehicles a day wow wood drow is a pretty pretty good thoroughfare here and I have to ask like Little Rock seems like the worst place to put this only because e adoption in my impression is pretty low we're like everybody else I mean on once it catches on you got the exponential growth uh but before then absolutely when you're in a flyover state where everybody drives trucks they're like oh heck no that's not going to work right sure I was just talking to someone at the gas station earlier and they were like is that one of those battery trucks we don't see an exhaust I'm like yeah it's like normal like everyone in my neighborhood has one um yeah but I I could imagine if you were to replicate this in LA in Denver in places that have huge EV adoption would probably be pretty popular right off the bat I think so I think uh that could be interesting to see what you do in the future hey that's we're always trying to figure out the next project because you know love it so now we're in the studio this is the art studio where the pottery that you saw next door came from uh we have five members of this Co-op uh that is run by Heather Harmon here uh who's my life partner baby mama official title official title um and then this is Aon house who is another one of our partners here uh both of these ladies are actually our partners in the farm oh wow so they they bring their expertise and their um their talent to our farm as well amazing so sorry to put you on YouTube but I have to ask so all of the pottery that we saw at the uh inside the shop this is all yours then right yes amazing and and is there a website where folks can buy it not yet we have woodcraft.com as our website and it is set up and all we have to do is get our images uploaded so images uploaded we'll make sure it's linked in the video and we have Facebook and Instagram and we're happy to sell anything from those and ship them away you should make some EV themed Pottery at some point yeah absolutely it could be amazing yeah well thank thanks so much for the tour and showing us around and uh yeah I don't know anything about Pottery but I'm learning a lot today so not all of it made it on YouTube but you can see just a bunch of stuff over here and uh what was the original use of this building because I'm noticing you have a uh Tesla inverter and power wall over here uh we have lots of solar on the building about three and a half effective uh and one power wall one uh that kind of backs up loads and I use it to mitigate demand charge again so here we're kind of off grid most of the Year wow um except when they run this big count of course so you do have a grid connection absolutely yeah I got to have that is that a legal requirement in Arkansas to have a building with a grid connection oh I don't know saw you know we have some pretty fiercely independent folks that live in the St I don't know if they could make that legal or not I'm not quite sure right may not fly here like it does in Colorado well this is just amazing cool to see the OG power wall one actually are all the power walls that you have on site power wall ones and at our little rock location we have three next door there are power wall ones we have one here that's a power wall one uh by the time that we got to our hot springs build we were upgraded power wall twos very cool very cool just amazing so we'll make sure the the link to the studi is in the video I just think it's it's so neat how you kind of have this like half the street all tied together you also own the house next door so that's yes and we're we're working on the commercial side of that property to try and supplement operations here that's amazing it's really cool to use the space for multiple income streams I think that's a way to do it here while we're doing the new Step next door right yeah so what was this place originally used for this was an actual car shop oh cool so uh there were from what we could tell by the manuals that we found that look like really Mercedes and BMW were a lot of the cars that he worked so sort of a German classic car uh you know repair shop if you will and what a cool place to do it in you know um noticing no insulation or anything you were saying this is not ABS in the sum I get cust ad left and right because even if I put insulation up here there's no r factor in these old casement windows this huge bay door that's on the front you know it's an exercise of utility to try to keep it cool in the summertime uh in the winter time though obviously we have a wood burning stove that keeps it nice and toasty in here for everybody and is a is a fan favorite for sure really cool so you mentioned there were five folks involved with this uh particular area of the operation and are do does each of the ladies do they have like their own specialty that they work on is that how that works we have three Potters four Potters four Potters but one of those ladies is a graphic designer as well does a lot of card stock does all kinds of kitchy stuff oh cool different and then Aaron she's over there making stuff right now she does metal oh let's go check in with Aaron then let's see can we bug you is that okay thank you so uh Aon how' you get all roped up into this whole idea um well Heather approached me whenever uh Jeff bought the building and I was like super down because I needed a studio space and we all needed to work so it worked out perfectly and and what are you working on now what you got going um I am these are going to be earrings so I soldered the Rings and then I'm hammering them to create some Hammer texture um and I was going to actually I've got some uh settings here for some stones that I was working on right before you came in I just used my torch and I did some more of these little settings but they're in the they're getting clean right now in the in the citric very cool yeah and uh do you drive an EV yet I don't I would love to I plan to in the future cool nice well you got the Chargers right at the studio so ex may as well yeah well thanks for the tour appreciate it we'll we'll make sure all of your stuff is linked in the video so everyone can check it out yeah yeah nice to meet you nice to meet you dude epic so should we nerd out about electricity stuff by the Chargers let's do it all right let's walk on out this door is absolutely incredible ah thank you great there we go wood Ro craft make sure that makes it in the video so thanks for that um so 5G antenna right here so you got great Self Service uh I think that's Verizon on AT&T nice I love it right and um Bill Gates is GNA activate the chip in my head soon though and I should beting great service right great service up direct to brain here love that so okay so where are the power walls located here well it's a little messy right now I wasn't I wasn't going to show you on film because I've got a little cleaning up to do but they're back here behind okay it's not that messy come on this is great so you got the three power walls right through there and then some switch gear so these Square deds are both set up and to offer power for the F which does not require nearly as much power um Off the Grid as our uh DC units here our our C dists so having the free Wire yeah let's talk business case of charging we've been alluding to it all episode we said we're going to say you know is it possible to make money from charging sure and I think you figured out the short answer is yes short very short answer is yes but with the caveat in time this is a function of traffic and it's a function of pricing so right now what are you charging per kilowatt hour right now I'm mixed in L Rock because I do not want to change my pricing to 35 cents a kilowatt hour until that thing is extremely reliable the free wire unit we're waiting on that and so that's 32 cents per kilowatt hour right now 32 C kilowatt hour what are the charge Point units right now I've got those stuck at 30 and L Rock okay they're 32 in Hot Springs uh your audience is going to see that and say wow the guys cheap but I've got to go to 35 on all of them in order to make my business case work um over time and so that's our next step and that will happen before the year wow okay so but still 35 cents per kilowatt hour is cheaper than Electrify America Pass Plus yes so that's you know even non-member rollup pay with a card you know I think you could easily charge 45 48 cents a kilowatt hour especially for the boutique nature it sounds like you don't want to do that what's the reason I just don't want to get there yet we don't have this completely open we don't have all of our operations open and streamlined enough yet where I feel like I need to be charging a premium for our DC fast charging we we we pride ourselves on being as reliable as we possibly can be uh also you know you talk about Electrify America we P Electrify America and immediately think I'm at least going to get a 150 unit right here you pull up and again we have 125 paired but if you have two people on the units then somebody's going to be missed because they're only going to be getting 30 40 Kil so what is the hold up on offering higher power charging we've alluded to demand charges a lot just at a high level your per kilowatt hour rates really cheap right right but can you explain that to our audience how the demand Works roughly so in commercial installations and this isn't just isolated to entg our provider or Arkansas or anything like that um they take your Peak demand at whatever point you hit that during the month so how what's your what's your highest Kil so that would be everything ripping here basically right everything plugged in and going and they base what's called a demand charge on uh so that is a huge hit every month on a bill uh which we won't get into dollar amounts because I'm not you know I'm sure energy already loves me and I don't alen anything further um but uh then we have the kilowatt hours that we pay for which are pretty cheap cheap and we're able to mitigate a little bit of with our solar right um and then the batteries as well I let I let those ju sit down a little bit at night to kind of offset uh what we're doing in our farm there right um and then we have another big charge that they just call an energy charge and from what I can get talking to other people that know more than I do it's an energy delivery charge and I'm like might will be cheaper because you're right there not the case yeah really okay crazy so there's just finding ways to build all their Comm commercial customers it's not like you're build differently with EV charging presumably I am not now I still can't sus out from my bill what exact schedule I want looking at the public service commission's scheduling I still I'm still investigating to try and sus out what exactly is my commercial schedule because on the front end obviously I understood that there was going to be a demand charge Associated understood I was going to pay for my kilowatt hours didn't know anything about this energy delivery charge was kind of a surprise that was a surprise yeah but um let's say you had the choice to install your dream Hardware you know you're you're looking at new sitze you're looking at expanding this one what's uh where's your head at what do you like in the market what do you think you want to put in next you know again I love the fact that charge point is integrated software Hardware their units are super solid I love that uh if they had an option to do Express plus that also came with a cabinet with battery backups yeah to where you could draw like constant power off the grid and deliver that kind of energy would be fantastic I love everything that freewire is doing they're integrating all that into one package and they're helping you offset your Demand on the grid also in the future I can pick that unit up carry it down the road throw a solar canopy on top of it a couple batteries and I could probably run that thing off the grid that's probably true that would be awesome that would be again another ambition for the future but um but again we're having some s with it looks like software I mean looks like soft because the concept works like you mentioned from providing high power charging but not getting jammed with demand charges that's your solution right there well I mean right now if I my demand charge monthly if I pulled up these two charge Point units and put four of the free wire 200 B there 200s on here my demand charge would be less monthly than it is now with just the 2622 right and you'd be able to do 200 Kow at that point I'd have 800 Kow installed onside down right so that's just magical when you start getting some batteries in absolutely so that is amazing love the location so cool that you're doing this in Arkansas I can only imagine how huge this can get you know over time I think you're dialing in the first stations organic growth organic growth I'm not going to push you to go too fast or too crazy but I'm just you know it's so great to see honestly a dude who loves electric cars and future Tech putting in charging stations here it's it's next level can't thank you enough for being able to do the tour I didn't tell you ahead of time anything I was just like texted you an hour ago hey I'm coming by hey it's a Monday I'll be here in a minute yeah it's amazing dude thank you so much JT this was epic it was so cool meeting the ladies as well everyone just seems to be so into this idea it's a huge benefit to the local community I hope Little Rock gets involved and helps promote this and push it farther from their side because I think Arkansas needs to do a lot for Electric Mobility and uh you're certainly The Shining Star in the state so uh hopefully they recognize that and uh this is just so cool so to the viewers if you're even coming remotely in the area come to this one come see us and uh you know buy some buy some pottery buy some coffee get some hats and at a minimum just charge here because every time someone plugs in you are actually making money right correct we are making revenues every time you plug in that is that is great and uh honestly not possible in all areas of the country right so very cool that you're able to do it you built it out right you put the money in and I know you're going to be hugely successful at this so uh congratulations so far it's so neat and can't thank you enough for doing the tour much we appreciate you guys

Channel: Out of Spec Reviews

Views: 30,653

Keywords: Car, Review, Acceleration, Braking, POV, Handling, Test, VS, Comparison, Interior, Exterior, Supercar, Hypercar, Sedan, SUV, CUV, TFL, Redline Reviews, Motor1, sports car

Id: OxhTF6IEVxw

Length: 45min 24sec (2724 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 07 2023