%20copy.png)
In this episode of Real Estate Insights presented by NowMedia TV, Andrew Glisson sits down with our Founder & CEO, David Aaronson to discuss:
The opportunities and challenges of EV charging in the multifamily industry
The story behind the establishment of REVS
The ins and outs of REVS' operations and core business
Excerpt from Real Estate Insights – Presented by NowMedia TV.
Andrew Glisson: Welcome back to the show, everybody I told you guys we're going to talk about all things real estate. That doesn't necessarily mean it's all about lending, buying and selling assets, and investing in real estate. We're talking to David Aaronson today. David is the Founder and CEO of a company called Refuel Electric Vehicle Solutions. They install electric charging stations into real estate assets. Mostly multifamily at this point, right David?
David Aaronson: That's correct, glad to be here. We're in the EV charging business just getting going. But the reality is, real estate is going to offer the most convenient way to refuel your cars. We're already seeing it with people who buy a car and live at home and they refuel their car at home. Yeah so apartment dwellers should have the same opportunity.
Andrew Glisson: David we have a lot of real estate investors who watch the show and a lot of them are going to be curious about your story. You have a real estate background, but tell us how you got into start doing this on a broad scale?
David Aaronson: I've been in the real estate investment mortgage banking industry for 40-45 years now and after doing something for that long you get a little bored so my mind wandered. I started thinking - what does a real estate infrastructure play look like? Many years ago when they developed cell phones, they had to put cell towers on each site so phones could communicate. Well I started thinking, being able to refuel your car where you live - it's the same thing. If you go back a hundred years ago to gas stations, there weren't any gas stations around. So the limiting factor for people driving gas cars was where do we fill up, right? You needed a place to refuel, so I thought this would be the same thing.
Andrew Glisson: So you're really kind of on the front lines of helping the electric vehicle industry get more adopted into society because there's going to be more opportunities to fill up your car.
David Aaronson: Absolutely we are. We know we're early but putting it off isn't going to make it go away. This is what people need to understand, electric vehicles are here to stay. It doesn't matter whether Ford sales are down this month or this year or VW sales are down. The reality of the situation is that all the car manufacturers have said we're going to stop making gas cars and we're going to make electric cars. Right? That's all you're going to buy. So it's just a matter of when it's not a matter of if.
Andrew Glisson: I agree with that. Tell us, did your history in real estate investment banking tee up the ability - did you know how leases worked for this type of infrastructure play in a building? Did you have familiarity with that?
David Aaronson: Well I definitely think that my real estate background has helped us and separated us from our competition. Most apartment properties back in the 70s and 80s had laundry facilities. If they didn't have washers and dryers in that unit they would build an area or have somebody a third- party service come in and own and operate the washers and dryers in that area. EV charging stations are the exact same. These are little devices generally speaking and the property management teams that run these apartment properties don't want to mess with fixing them. It's time consuming to fix them when they go down. It's one of the problems that the industry faces right now and one of the opportunities.
Andrew Glisson: So you guys will lease this or?
David Aaronson: What we do is we lease parking spaces from the apartment property. Every one of these apartment projects were built and they never contemplated EV charging stations. So they don't have enough electricity to provide enough energy to the charging stations to meet the future demand.