Nicholas Johnson started the company because he lost a bet.
Johnson dined with investors at Lyt, the traffic congestion management company he co-founded. As the dinner conversation faded into the background, the decision was made about electric vehicle charging and how best to bring it to multifamily housing.
Apartment dwellers with electric vehicles often have two less-than-ideal options: public chargers or plugging the vehicles into regular 120-volt outlets, which adds 5 to 5 miles per hour of range. Johnson, a Tesla graduate, wasn’t intrigued by the problem, so one of the people at the dinner presented him with a proposition.
“One of our investors made a bet that I would drive to and from work (about 70km at the time) for six months by charging my electric vehicle only from a Level 1 outlet,” Johnson told TechCrunch. “He said, ‘If you don’t need to plug in a DC swift charger for anything other than weekend trips, I win the bet and you have to build me a prototype.’ He won the bet and I built a prototype for him.
This prototype would become the basis of a recent startup, Orange charger, where Johnson is currently CEO. The company, which sells 240V clever outlets to owners, among other things, has raised a $6.5 million oversubscribed seed round, Orange Charger told TechCrunch exclusively. The round was led by Munich Re Ventures and Climactic, with participation from Baukunst, Crow Holdings, Lincoln Property Ventures and Space Cadet Ventures.
Charging has long been the Achilles’ heel of electric vehicles, and few EV drivers are as familiar with it as apartment dwellers, and many are not guaranteed a place to charge at night. Currently, most electric vehicle charging takes place at home, but most multi-family homes do not have chargers or even sockets in every parking space. If electric vehicles are to achieve mass adoption in the U.S., the 40 million people living in multifamily housing will need a more convenient way to juice up.
A number of startups have sprung up looking to solve this problem, and most of them are focused on selling and installing enough charging equipment to serve a certain percentage of renters. Even then, it can be an steep proposition, often costing several thousand dollars per booth. Landlords are hesitant to install if there are not enough tenants equipped with electric vehicles. “When you’re creating about 100 or 200 parking spaces in a multi-family home, you really don’t want to be laying 200 cables in the parking lot, especially when 10 to 20 will be used the first day,” Johnson said. But at the same time, renters may be hesitant to purchase electric vehicles without a convenient place to charge them.
Orange Charger thinks it has a better solution and assumes that renters will prefer it. Instead of installing a swarm of Level 2 chargers that provide enough electrons for several days of daily driving, the Orange Charger offers 240V outlets filled with clever devices. Electric vehicle owners can plug in the Level 2 portable charger that often comes with their vehicle and activate the outlet using the app.
Orange Charger Level 2 sockets provide less power than commercial units, but are still enough to add approximately 250 miles of range overnight. Lower power consumption means electricians can apply thinner wire, which Johnson says costs about a third less. “The savings per foot add up really quickly.”
The socket design has been tested to withstand plugging and unplugging at least 10,000 times. “We didn’t want everyone to have the experience of being plugged in on a plane or in a hotel and it just fell out.” Johnson said.
Orange Charger sells Level 2-capable outlets for $750, not including installation, which Johnson says is the company’s “core product.” It also offers Tier 1-capable outlets for $600 and a Tier 2 full-freight loader for $2,000.
Each of the Orange Charger products has a circuit board inside that serves as a node in a mesh network that can operate via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and each socket can continue to function even if the Internet connection is lost, sending any session data to the cloud after restoring communication. “Imagine not being able to charge for five hours because someone cut the wrong cable on our street,” Johnson said. “We wanted to create something solid.” So far, the company has managed to initiate over 99% of all charging attempts, he added.
Orange Charger bills renters based on energy consumption, not the number of sockets installed. So far, the company has installed approximately 2,000 devices throughout the country.
“There is no downside to installing 50 outlets from day one,” Johnson said. “We only charge when the device is in apply.” This approach could solve one vexing chicken-and-egg problem that has hindered the adoption of electric vehicles.
