Our best competitive defense is to proactively collaborate within the industry: Esmond Goei, Co-Founder & CEO of Power Hero

“Our PowerPac^TM product could be marketed by EV dealers to residents of apartment buildings where personal charging is just a dream.”

California is committed to a ratio of one public charger for every 12 EVs on the road by 2030, yet the U.S. Department of Energy says that 80% of EV charging happens at home. That suggests that prospective EV buyers would consider being able to charge “at home” as a key factor in their decision to acquire an EV. According to the National Multifamily Housing Council, California has 6.7 million people living in apartments, so how do these apartment residents charge ‘at home’. Also, most buildings were constructed before EVs became a mandate and do not even have the electrical infrastructure for EV charging, let alone personal individual charging. As such apartment residents won’t be adopting EVs anytime soon as they won’t be able to charge ‘at home’.

California-based clean energy company, Power Hero believes that its portfolio of products and intellectual property will solve this charging problem and thus help accelerate EV adoption. Power Hero was established in 2017.

Esmond Goei, co-founder and CEO of Power Hero, spoke exclusively with The Silicon Review, and here’s what he had to say.

Interview Highlights

Q. What makes Power Hero fabulous? What are its focus areas?

We are fabulous because we provide solutions for every EV driver whether they live in an apartment or a detached home. The products we are developing such as the Cameo^TM enables the first automated, reservable “Airbnb” for EV charging. We enable neighborhoods with mixed housing to foster Airbnb-like charging whereby charger owners with detached homes could rent their chargers out to residents in nearby apartment buildings. Better yet, our PowerPac^TM product will enable apartment residents to have their own personal charging in a shared garage, and mPower^TM, which is a roving mobile charging station, can be summoned to you when you can’t get to a fixed station.

Setbacks are a part of every growing business. Tell us about a few roadblocks and learning lessons that helped Power Hero grow through the years.

We view setbacks as mere path corrections. In any emerging industry such as EV, where we are today is not necessarily where we will be next year or five years from now. When we started Power Hero, we didn’t have the benefit of EV user experience expressing the 80% home charging preference. That revelation convinced us that apartment residents would be left orphaned in the transition to EVs and that we need to focus on that abandoned market, hence our PowerPac product. The second setback was the Covid-19 pandemic but that forced us to reorganize as an online community with remote workers which reduced our overhead costs yet increased our effectiveness and resulted in five patents issued and several more patents pending. As an online community, we became more tuned to happenings around the world and of progress in the EV charging industry, which frankly gave us more confidence that we were on the right path with our product and IP portfolio.

Q. How does Power Hero help scale recharging infrastructure for electric vehicles?

We help scale the charging infrastructure by leveraging what already exists and by distributing the cost of building the infrastructure with all the stakeholders in the market

such as the EV owner, the apartment building owner, the government agencies, the utility companies, the EV manufacturer, and even the charging equipment provider like us. Power is everywhere but they are not being tapped or allocated on a timely basis. According to J.D. Power, 54% of EV owners have already installed level-2 chargers in their homes. Our Cameo adapter makes these chargers reservable for rent by other EV drivers like an “Airbnb”, by simply plugging the Cameo onto the nozzle of the charger. That could quickly make available 10 times more EV chargers than there are installed publicly today. What if apartment buildings could allocate power on a 24-hour basis for use by its tenants to charge their EVs but make that power available when the tenant needs it. That’s where our PowerPac product comes into play, which also helps utility companies manage their power generation. Both Cameo and PowerPac are examples of scaling the charging infrastructure without adding much capital cost. In addition, our patented mobile charging station in development, mPower, reduces the need for fixed stations.

Q. What continuing learning opportunities do you have for your rank-and-file employees?

The first step to employee education is to keep them well informed so that they can assess their current roles and career paths, and how that relates to the company’s growth. Our open-door policy encourages employee queries and dialogue to ensure everyone is pulling in the same direction. We are also transparent about our finances so that prudent spending is inbred and not dictated, and they know why we are currently conducting a crowdfunding campaign on Netcapital. Our employees understand how big the opportunity is because they participated in our development. They know the potential of our PowerPac product in providing personal EV charging for a market of 100 million apartment residents, and for our Cameo to give EV drivers peace-of-mind for emergency charging as it is adopted in communities across America.

Tell us, what’s next for Power Hero.

What’s next for Power Hero depends on the success of today but we do plan. I believe that our best competitive defense is to proactively collaborate within our industry. We see licensing our Cameo technology to manufacturers of standalone (dumb) EV charging equipment so that they can network their chargers and participate in the greater opportunity of sharing charging revenues in an Airbnb-like network. Our PowerPac product could be marketed by EV dealers to residents of apartment buildings where personal charging is just a dream. PowerPac would provide fast 240V charging on an individual parking stall basis.

Q. What is your final message to The Silicon Review readers, your current and future clients, and your partners?

If your readers missed investing in Tesla on the ground floor, then Power Hero could be your second chance to invest in the EV sector, by investing in EV charging companies like Power Hero, because EVs need charging. For the industry, we say let’s collaborate because together we can all rise faster and help make the world cleaner and quicker, so register on our website

(www.powerhero.com).

Esmond Goei | Co-founder & CEO

Esmond Goei is a serial entrepreneur with many successful startups and turnarounds spanning over 30 years. He started Power Hero in 2017 after selling a modular solar-powered battery systems company, which he founded in 2009 and sold in 2016. Esmond has participated in several other emerging companies with successful gains upon their IPO or sale, such as a multi-media processing company (IPO), a wireless hospital bedside information systems company (IPO), and even an organic baby foods company that was sold to Heinz.

Mr. Goei is an electrical engineer with an MBA from Western University.

“We help scale the charging infrastructure by leveraging what already exists and by distributing the cost of building the infrastructure with all the stakeholders in the market.”