In this episode of the AlchemistX Innovators Inside, host Ian Bergman sits down with Tiya Gordon, founder and CEO of It’s Electric, to explore how a design-driven approach is changing the game for electric vehicle charging in cities.

Tiya’s story challenges the idea that innovation must be complex or “deep tech.” Her company’s model—tapping existing building power to create curbside charging—is reimagining how urban infrastructure can adapt quickly and affordably.

Here are the five key takeaways from their conversation:

1. Innovation Doesn’t Have to Be Complex

Tiya calls It’s Electric a “shallow tech” company—not because it lacks sophistication, but because its brilliance lies in simplicity. Instead of connecting chargers to main utility lines (which requires costly permits and construction), It’s Electric uses existing building power. This behind-the-meter approach reduces installation time to just two days and eliminates the need for heavy infrastructure work.

2. The Urban EV Problem Is a Design Challenge

Most EV charging solutions were designed for suburbs, not cities. In dense areas like New York, Boston, and San Francisco, millions of drivers park on the street—without garages or driveways. It’s Electric focuses on curbside charging, solving a pain point for the 40 million Americans whose “garage” is the street. This design-led, human-centered approach shows how rethinking context can unlock massive market opportunities.

3. Electrification Without the Grid Strain

By pulling power directly from nearby buildings, It’s Electric avoids adding strain to the grid. Their chargers operate primarily overnight, when energy demand is lowest. This approach helps utilities balance loads more efficiently while creating a revenue stream for property owners through revenue sharing—turning charging into a community benefit rather than a burden.

4.  Equity and Accessibility Drive Adoption

Electrification isn’t just about technology—it’s about access and inclusion. In neighborhoods like Jackson Heights, where rideshare drivers depend on vehicles for income, It’s Electric provides affordable, local charging that supports both sustainability and economic equity. Their first Boston installation even inspired a resident to trade in his gas car for an EV within 48 hours—proof that convenience drives change.

5. Design Thinking and Outsider Perspective Fuel Breakthroughs

With a background in design, not energy, Tiya Gordon exemplifies how outsider thinking can spark radical innovation. Her ability to see the problem through a user-experience lens—rather than an engineering one—led to a solution that’s fast, scalable, and cost-effective. It’s a powerful reminder that innovation happens when we focus on human needs over technical complexity.

Tiya Gordon’s journey with It’s Electric is a masterclass in practical innovation—proof that solving big problems doesn’t always require deep tech or billion-dollar budgets. By rethinking how cities charge electric vehicles, she’s helping pave the way toward a more sustainable, equitable, and electrified future.

Have a question for a future guest? Email us at innovators@alchemistaccelerator.com to get in touch! 

Timestamps

🚀 Introduction to Tiya Gordon (00:00:00)

👤 Who Is Tiya Gordon? Background in Design & NYC Roots (00:02:03)

🔌 The Curbside Problem: “Where Would I Charge?” (00:07:42

🚗 Scale Reality: 1M NYC Street Parkers & Infrastructure Needs (00:12:03)

🏆 Momentum: Beating Tesla in Boston; First Curbside in SF & Detroit (00:15:47)

💸 Property Owner Value: Rev Share, Amenity & Future Incentives (00:18:28)

⚡ Adoption Flashpoint: Boston Install → EV Purchase in 48 Hours (00:22:17)

🏗️ DC Fast vs. Neighborhood Power: The Hidden Energy Cost (00:27:36)

💶 Cost Curve: EV Operating Costs vs. ICE Ownership (00:30:37)

♻️ Used EV Wave: $13K Teslas & Adoption Unlocks (00:33:34)

📉 Why Prices Fell: Strategy, Backlash & Market Dynamics (00:35:24)

🗺️ Heatmapping Demand: Property, Driver & Aspiring EV Sign-Ups (00:37:30)

Full Transcript 

00;00;15;22 - 00;00;36;25
Ian Bergman
Welcome to season six of Alchemist x Innovators Inside the podcast, where we explore the world of corporate innovation and dive deep into the minds and stories of innovation. Thought leaders crafting the future. I am your host, Ian Bergmann, and if you're an innovation agitator like me, then this is where you want to be.

00;00;36;27 - 00;00;38;20
Ian Bergman
Here. Good afternoon. How are you?

00;00;38;22 - 00;00;40;11
Tiya Gordon
I'm good. Ian, how are you?

00;00;40;13 - 00;00;51;14
Ian Bergman
Oh, wonderful. You know, it's a beautiful spring day. I am just kind of, like, getting ready for the weekend, but I'm also really excited to welcome you, the innovators inside. I think we're going to have a fun conversation today.

00;00;51;16 - 00;00;58;23
Tiya Gordon
I agree, and thank you for reminding me that it's almost the weekend because I just had a look at my clock and see that it's actually Thursday, so.

00;00;58;25 - 00;01;16;26
Ian Bergman
Isn't that a nice realization as we record this? I think for so many of us in the world of entrepreneurship and innovation, and sometimes we, forget to take a break and none more so than startup founders that are building big things. And that's the role that you find yourself in.

00;01;16;28 - 00;01;25;29
Tiya Gordon
Exactly. I think of the Downton Abbey, Dowager Countess, her line, what what is a weekend? It's very relevant to the entrepreneur experience right now.

00;01;26;01 - 00;01;51;24
Ian Bergman
It really it really is. I want to hear more about it. But for folks that don't know you, I'm just really pleased to welcome Tia Gordon to Innovators Inside. Tia is the founder and CEO of It's Electric and has a really fascinating background in innovation and focus on a bunch of tools that you can bring to bear to wage war against the climate crisis.

00;01;51;26 - 00;02;03;06
Ian Bergman
I'm curious to learn a lot more about that. So, Tia, can you just tell me a little bit about yourself and how did you come to be sitting across from me? What was your journey like?

00;02;03;09 - 00;02;30;03
Tiya Gordon
Sure. So we're chatting in it's May, it's spring 2025 and I am a native New Yorker. I've been born and raised. I lived in every borough but the Bronx, and I really built a really storied career in design here in New York City. And I've worked for a variety of institutions across every possible vertical of design over the last 20 years.

00;02;30;03 - 00;03;12;10
Tiya Gordon
And that's from brand to experiential to architecture, but everything in between. And if you had told me, you know, even five years ago that I would be running an EV charging company, I would not have believed you, because that's not what my practice was. That's not where my interests were. I don't, you know, even have a car. So my journey that got me from working in sort of these very, you know, for lack of a better term, beginning to really high end design companies here in New York City to deciding to move into EV charging was really one that was born out of practicality during the pandemic.

00;03;12;12 - 00;03;22;14
Tiya Gordon
So there's a whole bunch of, origin stories for it's electric. So, you want like, door 1 or 2 or door three? They're all true. Oh, but there's three ways that I can enter the story. I get to.

00;03;22;14 - 00;03;25;21
Ian Bergman
Pick. Let's go, let's go, let's go see what's behind door number three.

00;03;25;27 - 00;03;35;15
Tiya Gordon
Door three. Okay, so New York City, as many can recall, was very much the ground zero for Covid 19 when it first came into the US.

00;03;35;15 - 00;03;36;05
Ian Bergman
Yes.

00;03;36;07 - 00;04;07;08
Tiya Gordon
And so we went into lockdown in New York City in March of 2020. And having obviously lived through before that, 911 and the blackouts and hurricane Sandy and, you know, in my mind, you know, basically over that previous ten years, it was really daunting to be experiencing this, this pandemic, a global pandemic. And I started reading into disaster management as some kind of, like, dark coping mechanism.

00;04;07;08 - 00;04;07;28
Ian Bergman
Wow.

00;04;08;00 - 00;04;09;29
Tiya Gordon
And yeah, I mean, trying.

00;04;09;29 - 00;04;14;17
Ian Bergman
To trying to put kind of a macro perspective on, on this thing that was so yeah.

00;04;14;18 - 00;04;34;20
Tiya Gordon
Your personal work, it was very intense. It was I mean, I don't want to underscore the intensity of, of basically being isolated, not being able to leave your home. I mean, in New York City, the schools were closed, the museums were closed, the public parks were closed. They had police tape that forbade you from going into public parks.

00;04;34;22 - 00;04;54;21
Tiya Gordon
And it was just a really just sort of dystopian period of time. And over the next year or so, I was just reading books, listening to podcasts around disaster management. And there was this one book that came out by Juliette Kayyem, who worked for, Homeland Security, for the Obama administration, and her book was called The Devil Never Sleeps.

00;04;54;24 - 00;05;03;26
Tiya Gordon
And in that book, she introduced this term that just got stuck in my head. And that term was called left of the boom.

00;05;03;28 - 00;05;05;05
Ian Bergman
Left of the boom.

00;05;05;07 - 00;05;33;17
Tiya Gordon
Yeah, the boom is the crisis. That's the event. That's the pandemic. That's the terrorist act. And you can either be left of the boom and you can work to prevent it, or you can live right at the boom and work to live in the chaos that exists after. And for me, I really came to terms with the fact that the next boom, the next crisis that will experience in this in this country will be climate.

00;05;33;19 - 00;06;07;12
Tiya Gordon
And we're seeing that on on a daily basis where we're seeing that absolutely. Los Angeles people being displaced, losing their homes. We're seeing that floods on a weekly basis. If you just read the news and just specifically look for floods across the Midwest, and these are all signals that are leading up to larger consequential problems. And so I really had decided at that point that if there is some way I could transfer all of my experience that I had in design to something that could be beneficial to fight climate, then I would wager to do so.

00;06;07;15 - 00;06;09;20
Tiya Gordon
But the question was, what is that idea?

00;06;09;22 - 00;06;26;08
Ian Bergman
And so where did you choose to focus on like vehicle electrification? And I'm going to give you this opportunity to tell us a little bit about what it's electric is doing as well, because it's really cool. Yeah. I mean, I know like you actually were involved in an award, I think the South by Southwest Innovation Award for Urban Infrastructure, I think you received.

00;06;26;08 - 00;06;31;15
Ian Bergman
Right. So like was was urban infrastructure always going to be the focus area?

00;06;31;17 - 00;06;57;20
Tiya Gordon
So good question. So to answer your first one, you know, like so how did I pivot into electric vehicle charging. So that's door number two of the origin story. So again same scenario pandemic. New York City refrigerated morgue trucks parked across Brooklyn. And I had family that lived out of New York City that normally I would reach through a plane or a train, but all of that transportation was grounded.

00;06;57;22 - 00;07;18;01
Tiya Gordon
And this was family that was much older and I was definitely had comorbidities that made them susceptible to Covid, including my my very, you know, at that time, you know, aging parents. And so I wanted to find a way to be able to reach them if things got bad. And I had to car, that was the only way about it.

00;07;18;02 - 00;07;38;21
Tiya Gordon
There's no way to figure out how to reach them without a car because again, there was no no flights. And so being environmentally conscious, I'm like, oh, maybe I can get an electric car I can't afford like a new one, but maybe there's like a use one or like a hybrid that I can get. Sure. And I wrote this list down and it said like new question mark, use question mark electric circle, circle circle.

00;07;38;23 - 00;07;42;01
Tiya Gordon
And then I'm like, well, where would I actually charge this vehicle?

00;07;42;01 - 00;07;43;25
Ian Bergman
Yeah. The age old question.

00;07;43;25 - 00;08;11;04
Tiya Gordon
And I looked around and in 2020 and in 2020, there's literally no place to charge an EV in Brooklyn. And in 2025, it's not that much better. So it's electric was born because we wanted to be able to find a way to put in EV charging infrastructure in dense cities where people don't have garages or driveways that they can put a charger in, because that's the best way to be able to charge.

00;08;11;04 - 00;08;15;23
Tiya Gordon
An electric vehicle is consistently at home overnight.

00;08;15;26 - 00;08;16;15
Ian Bergman
Yep.

00;08;16;17 - 00;08;26;29
Tiya Gordon
And right now, the other options you have or what's known is destination charging, where you have to go and spend a couple of hours at a Trader Joe's or a Walmart on the weekend. And that's a lot to ask of people.

00;08;27;04 - 00;08;47;25
Ian Bergman
It is. I mean, I've lived this like I've had an electrified vehicle of some kind for over a decade now, and I've always been lucky enough to have some form of easily accessible charging a driveway or a garage, right? I've lived outside of dense urban areas, and I've had the resources for that, but it's been fascinating to me.

00;08;47;27 - 00;09;09;10
Ian Bergman
And when I talk to people who drive an electric vehicle, it's not about the acceleration. It's not about the price. It's not even, frankly, about the environmental story. It is about their satisfaction, their net promoter score. In my experience, is 100% tied to do they have a place to charge it at home? Yeah, because if so, it makes everything in their life easier.

00;09;09;10 - 00;09;15;09
Ian Bergman
And if not, it makes everything in their life a little bit harder. So like this resonates.

00;09;15;12 - 00;09;35;15
Tiya Gordon
You know, 100%, 85% of Americans that have an EV charge at home. And it's just the easiest experience. Like, you go home every night, you plug in your phone and you wake up and your battery is full. And we want to bring that same ease to cars. But it can't just be for people who are lucky enough to have that garage or driveway.

00;09;35;18 - 00;09;45;25
Tiya Gordon
So we need to find a way to provide charging to. By our count, it's 40 million Americans whose garage is effectively the street. That's where they park their car every night.

00;09;45;25 - 00;10;03;04
Ian Bergman
Well, and that's both a sizable kind of problem when you're thinking about electrification of people who need a car. And it's also a sizable market opportunity, like, tell me, so what are you guys doing? Give me the one liner. Yeah. And then we're going to talk about the problems that you're actually solving and who you're solving problems for.

00;10;03;04 - 00;10;05;07
Ian Bergman
But first give me the one liner on what you're building.

00;10;05;10 - 00;10;45;20
Tiya Gordon
It's electric. Solves the biggest problems that cities face in deploying electric vehicle charging. What we learned is that the reason why there aren't chargers everywhere in cities like New York and Boston and DC and Chicago is because the charging companies that were Gen one that came out to kind of try this first, they all just kind of did things in this very old school sort of way, which was that they made their charger power connections to main utility lines, which means that in a city like New York, we would have to contact con ed and request in any utility connection agreement, which would give us permission to basically do a street closure trench seven feet

00;10;45;20 - 00;10;49;07
Tiya Gordon
down, make a high voltage connection.

00;10;49;09 - 00;10;49;21
Ian Bergman
While.

00;10;49;27 - 00;11;15;06
Tiya Gordon
Down, convert that power, and then run that power to the curb and install the hardware that becomes a public charger. And that's as you buy a reaction that is time consuming, expensive, and also just in terms of the human resources, it takes on an upside to apply for those permits to push them through the process. Sure, it becomes untenable in terms of a scalable solution.

00;11;15;06 - 00;11;30;21
Ian Bergman
And it's disruptive, right? Like not like it's, you know, it's disruptive, the neighborhood, etc.. But there's something about the, how people perceive that amount of infrastructure work that probably acts against deployment of electric charging as well.

00;11;30;23 - 00;11;46;26
Tiya Gordon
Absolutely. I mean, no one likes having like a water main replaced on their block. It's an indication once people get annoyed, there's jackhammering. And if we're constantly doing that every time that we it's electric. But if the city is constantly doing that every time they put in a charger, you're going to get a lot of NIMBYism, right? People aren't going to want that.

00;11;47;03 - 00;11;56;02
Ian Bergman
You know, we're not talking like ten gas stations, you know, scattered around Manhattan, right? You're talking thousands of charge points to actually enable electrification.

00;11;56;08 - 00;12;03;02
Tiya Gordon
Correct. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, 1 million drivers in New York City park on the street, just to give you a number to to put that to.

00;12;03;03 - 00;12;13;24
Ian Bergman
Right. That's mind boggling. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we all we always forget 1 million drivers in York City park on the street in a city that I have to imagine has one of the lower percentages of car ownership in the US.

00;12;13;27 - 00;12;34;18
Tiya Gordon
Yeah, we have tremendously. We have the third or fourth largest public transportation system, but we are a city of 8.2 million people. So it makes sense that 1 million of that eight is is is driving a vehicle because also the city is five boroughs. You know, these people who are living in transit deserts where they're not near public transport and they rely on their vehicle.

00;12;34;20 - 00;13;01;16
Tiya Gordon
But to your point, going back. So, you know, how do we put chargers in the ground without it being this huge lift that is not only costly in terms of time, but in terms of money. And so what we discovered at its electric was that, well, why do we to go through all of this conversion of power when we have what's known as the right level of power in every single building?

00;13;01;19 - 00;13;02;00
Ian Bergman
Sure.

00;13;02;03 - 00;13;24;13
Tiya Gordon
So every building has the right power at 240 that we can power an electric vehicle charger. So 240V, 40 amps, right. 40 amp circuit. And so what we wanted to do is just say, well, instead of the power source for a public charger being a utility connection, what if we power it just from the building that's right next to it?

00;13;24;16 - 00;13;40;29
Tiya Gordon
So I joke all the time when I say, you know, like I whenever like a deep tech investor wants to have a meeting with me, I send them an email back. I'm like, heads up, we are not deep tech like we are like an insanely shallow tech. We just like the dumbest possible practical idea. There's no I.

00;13;41;02 - 00;13;46;05
Ian Bergman
I mean, is that is that the first slide of your pitch deck? Because I got to tell you, that's actually kind of brilliant.

00;13;46;07 - 00;14;05;18
Tiya Gordon
I will take a note on that. Yeah. This is something that we talk about. We are not deep. We are shallow tech. We are just the most practical, pragmatic way to put a charger in the ground. And of course, everyone said to me, well, if it's that easy, if that's that simple, then like ChargePoint would have done this right, you know, Tesla would have done this, blink would have done this.

00;14;05;18 - 00;14;33;18
Tiya Gordon
All the what I call of like the grandfathers of EV charging. Right. And I am putting that in the patriarchal view on, on purpose. So we had to prove it. And I'll say that that was, you know, the idea pop into our heads in 2021, we built a prototype that we scrapped together. If you are really very small friends and family around, we raise around $40,000 and friends and family we put in some of our own money to build our first prototype.

00;14;33;20 - 00;14;48;03
Tiya Gordon
We built a partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corporation because we needed a building that we could test this on, that the city basically gave us permission to use. And then we caught the attention of Hyundai and they said, well, we'll give you some money to to sponsor this.

00;14;48;03 - 00;14;48;21
Ian Bergman
Great.

00;14;48;23 - 00;15;15;00
Tiya Gordon
So we're like, okay, this is like and it was really funny, like in the beginning, like I'm a first time founder. So I didn't know any founder jargon or lingo. So I just always talked about this like a project I was working on. This is like my project that I was doing, and when we had the success of that first pilot, we were we found this old building in the Brooklyn Army Terminal, which was a credit union building from the 1980s that was then shut down.

00;15;15;03 - 00;15;47;10
Tiya Gordon
It then turned into a Covid testing site for a hot minute in 2021, and it was shut down again. And from that one little building, we were able to power three chargers with what's known as the spare capacity on that building panel. And from there, it's just been like lightning fast ever since we proved our model. We raised our pre-seed round right after that, and we started talking to cities and flash forward to 2024, we beat Tesla to win the contract for the city of Boston for curbside charging regulations.

00;15;47;11 - 00;16;06;21
Tiya Gordon
Flash forward to two weeks ago. We just put the first curbside chargers in the city of San Francisco ever. We put the first curbside chargers in the city of Detroit ever. And we have seven more cities that have signed up to work with us, because we really feel like we've sort of cracked the code on a scalable solution for urban electrification.

00;16;06;23 - 00;16;26;07
Ian Bergman
Well, okay, so I love this for so many reasons, not the least of which is I'm really, really sick of having conversations with people about, oh, it takes me ten hours to charge my car at a at a charging station, so I don't want to deal with it. But this is complex. So I want to ask you some questions about where the complexity lies.

00;16;26;07 - 00;16;46;28
Ian Bergman
And I loved I loved that you framed this as a simple thing. It's not deep tech, it's not hard engineering. And I love that you framed it that way because a it's true, but I think it calls out a really important point, which is like innovation doesn't have to be hard. New science. Right? Innovation stems from problems that you see in the world.

00;16;47;01 - 00;17;15;11
Ian Bergman
A belief that something else should be possible, and then while just doing something about it. Right. Which is, I think, where a lot of people kind of fall off the cliff. So let me ask you, what are the problems that your company is solving for each of your constituent stakeholders? Right. We talked about kind of a high level, you know, the, climate impact, the need for electrification is one lever that we pull in our fight against climate change, all of that good stuff.

00;17;15;13 - 00;17;33;00
Ian Bergman
But you actually need to change behavior at a human level and at a small organizational level. So what problems are you solving for the city? What problems are you solving for property owners and drivers, and how do you convince them to get engaged?

00;17;33;03 - 00;18;10;03
Tiya Gordon
Yeah. So I have a bunch of different answers for this, but I want to start with a little bit about the model in terms of just how that works specifically. So it's electric puts in the Chargers. But to do so we first need permission from that city to operate. Right okay. Once we have permission from that city we then go find what we call our partner properties, which is literally any building residential, commercial, public, private, anything in between that if you go into that basement of that building and they've got two slots open on their electrical panel, they can support a charger in front of their building.

00;18;10;05 - 00;18;28;14
Tiya Gordon
Yeah. We then do all the permitting, all of the construction, and we put a charger in. After we get that permit, it takes us two days to install one day of interior work in the basement of that building, one day of exterior to put the charge on the ground, and to run that conduit between the charger and the building, the buildings that we work with.

00;18;28;14 - 00;19;01;00
Tiya Gordon
What's in it for them is that to answer your question directly now, is that we revenue share back to them. So they're getting passive income every quarter. They are if they drive an EV, they now have an immediately local charging solution. If they don't drive an EV and they have tenants, they are providing an amenity. And in some cities we're going to look to see where like there's going to be a future where there's potential world of tax credits that building owners will start to get when they start to take certain steps towards electrification.

00;19;01;03 - 00;19;28;18
Ian Bergman
So there's real and effectively immediate economic upside. And framed as a problem you know I assume there's a hey like there's underutilized electrical capacity blah blah blah. But is there is there anything else that you're like whether it's emotional, economic or otherwise that you're sort of solving for property managers, property owners that gets them on board or is it all about the dollars and cents and the rev share?

00;19;28;21 - 00;19;59;16
Tiya Gordon
No. I mean like it's so funny. Some let's put it this way. Like if we put a charger in front of a single family home in a working class neighborhood like Jackson Heights, Queens, here in New York City, where we actually happen to have the highest density of rideshare drivers in the entire country, and where New York City has actually a regulation on the books called the Green Rides Initiative, which requires that all Uber, all Lyft, all TLC are electric and or have wheelchair accommodations by 2030.

00;19;59;19 - 00;20;18;06
Tiya Gordon
We're putting in that infrastructure for that rideshare driver so that they are actually now not only able to earn money from anyone else that charges there, but that it gives them the chance to charge every night overnight. Because without that, in a city like New York, rideshare drivers have to go to JFK airport to charge. Right now.

00;20;18;08 - 00;20;18;28
Ian Bergman
Yeah.

00;20;19;00 - 00;20;40;23
Tiya Gordon
There's few and far between charging. So there's absolutely the economic case to be made. There's also the amenity. I look to a future where you're on Zillow and you can not only see, for example, if you're looking at an apartment, you can say, oh, this has, you know, like central air conditioning, which is, you know, super cool if you can get that in a city like New York.

00;20;41;00 - 00;21;01;16
Tiya Gordon
But you can also be like, oh, it has a curbside charger. Like, this is the future. We need to start to think about it like these are, these are this is an amenity. This is infrastructure. That shouldn't be a nice to have. It should be what we have to basically create a livable, scalable city for everyone.

00;21;01;22 - 00;21;23;16
Ian Bergman
So I love that vision. And it's kind of interesting because like, I almost think you're arguing against the Zillow example that you just made, as, you know, in a way. Right? Because ideally we actually don't want to think about this, right? Ideally, you just know that at the neighborhood level, the urban level, this infrastructure is pervasive and it's there.

00;21;23;18 - 00;21;46;29
Ian Bergman
And I think one of the one of the things that I love about what you're doing and, you know, you you may describe this very differently than kind of me as a naive outsider, but one of the things that I love about what you are doing is that you're flipping this whole question of electrification away from things like, how do I find a spare parking lot?

00;21;47;00 - 00;22;05;28
Ian Bergman
How do I sign a deal with Walmart? How do I put in heavy duty electrical equipment? How do I replace the gas station, which people are familiar with as a destination that you go to to fuel up your vehicle with the idea that you never actually even have to think about this, and that's how it should be, right?

00;22;06;01 - 00;22;17;22
Tiya Gordon
Exactly. Yeah. No, we always say it's not chicken or egg. It's all egg. People can't convert to an electric vehicle if they have to even think for a minute about where they're going to charge.

00;22;17;24 - 00;22;18;10
Ian Bergman
Yeah, that's.

00;22;18;10 - 00;22;46;00
Tiya Gordon
Right. If you just put the infrastructure out there, you get that conversion, you get that adoption. Our favorite story is when we put our first charger in the ground in Boston. Often the partner properties that sign up with us do include someone who lives in the building, who drives, maybe. But this particular building, our very first one in Boston, they all drove internal combustion engines, and within 48 hours of installing the charger, he sold his Ice vehicle and he bought Navy.

00;22;46;03 - 00;22;54;07
Ian Bergman
And this is not. And just to paint the picture for everyone. This is a curbside installation, not a reserved parking space in a garage. Is that right?

00;22;54;09 - 00;22;56;20
Tiya Gordon
That is correct. This is a curbside public charging.

00;22;56;23 - 00;23;06;03
Ian Bergman
And so that one little tweak the existence of that right there, you know, was able to kind of flip the switch for this person. That's really cool. That's so cool.

00;23;06;05 - 00;23;30;12
Tiya Gordon
The auto mall that sold him the car called us and said, you have no idea how many people come in and test drive an EV, but then don't make the lease or the purchase because they have nowhere to charge. Yeah. Which we all know is the case now. Like we're working with this used EV auto mall in Massachusetts to help people who come in sign up to get our charges.

00;23;30;12 - 00;23;47;22
Tiya Gordon
I also want to say just just to your listeners are clear. We are free to the cities and we are free to building owners. We do all the work and we collect the revenue and then share it with the building. And then just to answer really quickly your point about what's in it for cities really important right now.

00;23;47;22 - 00;24;08;16
Tiya Gordon
So we are now living in an age in which cities can not rely on any federal subsidies for infrastructure. It's gone. It's gone. It's it's not a wait and see. It's gone. So how are they supposed to meet their targets without that massive influx of cash that they were getting from the federal government?

00;24;08;18 - 00;24;25;09
Ian Bergman
So this is an example of, you know, maybe constraint opening up opportunity for better innovation, right. Again, like maybe you don't need the billions of dollars of capital for those highly concentrated, you know, developed high density charging centers that are maybe the wrong approach anyway.

00;24;25;11 - 00;24;26;08
Tiya Gordon
Yeah. No.

00;24;26;11 - 00;24;28;22
Ian Bergman
I mean, there's a bit of silver lining there.

00;24;28;24 - 00;24;54;12
Tiya Gordon
I mean, like, our model has always been that we're free to cities and we're having very healthy conversations with a lot of cities that had received that federal funding in 2024, because we're still in the still in the game to respond to RFP. We're not ruled out because we're free. But in the absence of that federal funding, the conversation has definitely the tone of the conversation has that has greatly shifted.

00;24;54;14 - 00;25;11;24
Tiya Gordon
You know, Boston, where we first deployed, they have one of the highest sea level rises of any city. Yeah. Terms of what's projected. And you have to look at it as sort of like this is long term planning to ensure a strong economic outturn for a city like people can't go to work, people can't go to school if the streets are flooded.

00;25;11;25 - 00;25;13;07
Tiya Gordon
These are things that we have to play.

00;25;13;07 - 00;25;36;23
Ian Bergman
So I love what you're doing. I want to dig in just for a second into a couple of what I believe might be objection areas that you have to handle. And I'm kind of curious how you how you handle them. You know, one of them is kind of macro, right? I think almost all of us operating in and around tech believe that energy is a massive constraint and is going to be a bottleneck and a constraint energy supply and availability in the United States for a long time.

00;25;36;26 - 00;25;51;25
Ian Bergman
And we may talk about it and I, we may talk about electrification. Who knows. Does this come up? Does does this come up as a headwind where cities are worried about, you know, managing the rate of electrification, the sustainability of their grids?

00;25;51;28 - 00;26;13;14
Tiya Gordon
Yeah, I mean, that's also the beauty of working what we call behind the meter. Right? So we're not bringing in new electrical demand. We're just using the capacity that's already been allocated. As anyone who invests or works in terms of energy storage, battery storage is not it's not infinite. And it's not. It has it has a limit in terms of the length that you can store that energy.

00;26;13;16 - 00;26;40;27
Tiya Gordon
And so for us to be able to offset that inventory, especially because EV charging is best anywhere, we're basically like in any of our key cities that we're working in overnight. When that demand is lowest and the rates are lowest and use is lowest, you're really building up a perfect opportunity. Because even though we don't work with the utilities directly, we are creating a new revenue stream for them.

00;26;40;27 - 00;26;53;04
Tiya Gordon
I like to joke and say like, you know, like no one's running their dryer all night long, but you don't. You are going to plug in and use that easy chargers, and we're offloading that inventory for that utility overnight and helping them balance that way.

00;26;53;05 - 00;27;16;01
Ian Bergman
I think that's actually a really interesting point that I hadn't really thought of. But it's fascinating, right. And you know, for anyone familiar with electrical production right. Like it's not highly variable with most, most production systems it's kind of constant. Right. So you get times of low demand. You have this excess production. What just clicked for me that maybe you realize but just I am dense.

00;27;16;08 - 00;27;34;20
Ian Bergman
There's another difference with this curbside and overnight charging is that that of course that probably happens more overnight. Whereas if you have to go to a destination charger, you're by definition doing that at peak times when humans are active. So it actually shifts this load demand from electrical cars into the evening when there's more supply.

00;27;34;24 - 00;27;35;11
Tiya Gordon
Exactly.

00;27;35;11 - 00;27;36;06
Ian Bergman
Oh, that's really cool.

00;27;36;07 - 00;28;05;06
Tiya Gordon
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, think about it this way. So, a four stall DC fast charging station, four stalls, uses as much energy in a month as a 300 unit apartment building. Yeah. So when cities are planning these, these stations, like this is a 12 to 18 month planning process. And if everyone wants to juice up on a Saturday afternoon in July, we're gonna have some problems.

00;28;05;08 - 00;28;23;06
Ian Bergman
Yep. Absolutely. Okay, so another question for you, because this is a fascinating space. And I'm sure there's a lot of kind of devil in the details, things you've been learning along the way. Early in this interview, you said I didn't even have a car. And I think you don't have a car now, is that right?

00;28;23;09 - 00;28;31;29
Tiya Gordon
I don't have a car at all. The company has a car that we demo on, but I personally do not have a car. I guess I've never owned a car in your life.

00;28;31;29 - 00;28;41;08
Ian Bergman
And. And you don't have a background in energy. You don't have a background in transportation. You are not in engineer. You're you're a designer.

00;28;41;10 - 00;28;44;06
Tiya Gordon
A useless designer. Exactly.

00;28;44;08 - 00;29;04;17
Ian Bergman
That's that's that was not the implication, but it's a, you know, it's a very different framework. So, you know, on paper, looking at you as somebody building this company, there's a lot of people that are going to be like, well, these things don't match. So like I'm actually really curious has has your sort of outsider perspective been a help?

00;29;04;17 - 00;29;07;17
Ian Bergman
Has it been a hindrance? Is it just something you don't even think about?

00;29;07;19 - 00;29;29;02
Tiya Gordon
I oh, it's been both one of our investors, in a lovingly, jokingly way, said to me once you're you would have raised your last round in a minute if we put like a young Alexander Skarsgard picture on on your profile and put down that you spent a year and a half a Tesla.

00;29;29;04 - 00;29;30;03
Ian Bergman
Yeah.

00;29;30;06 - 00;29;53;11
Tiya Gordon
But the fact that I didn't come from that pedigree and that I'm a first time founder, I'm a woman, I have a design background. People were incredibly dubious. But I do think to your question that it was that outsider perspective of, you know, thinking differently and using more, actually design thinking of what is the condition of the end user here?

00;29;53;14 - 00;30;18;07
Tiya Gordon
Yes, led us to our success. The founder of the nest in the mill, Rogers, Matt Rogers, he wrote this great piece in a magazine about a year and a half ago, and he said, if you want to create behavior change, it's not going to happen by telling people to do the right thing, right. However, you have to make it easier for them and better and cheaper for them.

00;30;18;09 - 00;30;37;22
Tiya Gordon
That's right. And that's how you create behavior change. So again, if I can prevent you from ever having to contemplate spending six hours in a Walmart parking lot on a Sunday afternoon, I'm making your life easier and better. And I'm going to help you make that conversion to electric because it's just easier. It's cheaper. We are a fraction of the cost.

00;30;37;22 - 00;30;44;26
Tiya Gordon
If you fill up anyone else who drives an EV like charging your batteries a fraction of filling up a gas tank in 2025.

00;30;44;28 - 00;31;07;10
Ian Bergman
Yeah, I, I mean, I'm fully on board with the like with the very rare exception of people who either regularly have to drive super long distances in a time constrained way or don't have a place to charge at home, it's insane. Do not have an EV for like in my mind, like I'm in that camp. So you're preaching to the choir here, but I think you're you're hitting on something really important.

00;31;07;13 - 00;31;35;01
Ian Bergman
My key definition for innovation actually is a new idea construct technology, whatever. That gets people to change behavior because it's that much better without outside force. So I think you just hit the nail on the head on something really, really important. And I think kind of full circle, if this works, this is almost by definition, fundamental innovation being thought about in a way that people inside the industry hadn't thought about.

00;31;35;04 - 00;31;48;15
Ian Bergman
Tesla superchargers are amazing, I love them. I love that what Tesla infrastructure has built. But they didn't think about solving this. The problem of at home charging in this way. And I think that actually says something.

00;31;48;17 - 00;32;03;03
Tiya Gordon
Yeah. No, we actually very, very early on, I had a friend of a friend of a friend that was one of the earliest groups, one of the first people in the charging group at Tesla. And we said, did you think about cities? And they're like, no.

00;32;03;05 - 00;32;14;29
Ian Bergman
Yeah, because they probably thought expensive, low car ownership. Where the heck do I put these station? You know, like they thought about all the problems, which is exactly what the headwind to innovation is.

00;32;15;01 - 00;32;30;07
Tiya Gordon
I mean, it's I used to be able to make this joke and I can't make it anymore. So, you know, with great respect, you know, EVs five years ago were merely the playthings of sort of higher income.

00;32;30;10 - 00;32;30;23
Ian Bergman
Oh, that's right.

00;32;31;00 - 00;32;37;14
Tiya Gordon
Individuals that lived in Silicon Valley like, that's really that was the market.

00;32;37;17 - 00;33;00;23
Ian Bergman
But to your point now, it, it it doesn't have to be in a tier. I mean, the cost of ownership of a very nice, you know, like call it a Kia. EV. Yeah. You get a beautiful car with the cost of ownership that is low. And like, I've done the math, I have, I have a, I have an ice pickup truck, and I have an electric sedan.

00;33;00;28 - 00;33;29;24
Ian Bergman
And boy, is the, difference per for mile striking. It's about 25 x. It's about 25 x. Really. Well, once you work a maintenance, once you work like cost of tires and the fact that their size, you know, different sized cars. But it's wild, right. And I think I'm at an extreme because I live in a part of the world where the cost of energy is as low as it gets in North America, and you know, close to and the cost of gas and maintenance in parts is about as high as it gets.

00;33;29;24 - 00;33;34;20
Ian Bergman
But regardless, this stuff just seems like a no brainer. And I, I love what you're building.

00;33;34;21 - 00;33;59;15
Tiya Gordon
Yeah, and on that note, I was there on one more item. You know, the two barriers for easy adoption is, again, the access to public charging. But it also has been up until pretty recently, the cost of electric vehicles. And with the current backlash against Tesla, we're seeing second hand Teslas with very low mileage on the market for $13,000.

00;33;59;18 - 00;34;10;17
Tiya Gordon
So people that previously were completely limited to buying an EV have this whole secondhand market that's opened up to them. I mean, very much an unintended consequence, obviously, of their CEO.

00;34;10;20 - 00;34;33;16
Ian Bergman
I'm going to I'm going to argue with you there. I think it's a partly intended consequence. Like there's the there's the backlash. You know, there is there is kind of the backlash. I also think that you're starting to see a generation of vehicles that are being passed that are naturally going into the second hand market and are holding up really well because Teslas, as well as other electric vehicles, hold up well.

00;34;33;19 - 00;35;04;19
Ian Bergman
But there is something else that I think people gloss over. And maybe you can argue with me on this. You know, Tesla, maybe more than anyone, has been actively working to drive down their own prices. And they they price against themselves. And, you know, I get the reason this is interesting for me, as I was in this conversation with a close family member and, you know, he was like, are you upset that the resale value of your your Tesla vehicle is, you know, so low?

00;35;04;22 - 00;35;24;16
Ian Bergman
And I'm like, well, no, because they've brought down the cost of the new vehicles so much. Like of course it's going to be lower. So I do think there's all of these forces coming together and being, to your point, amplified by, let's just say, some nuttiness, from the top. But it's creating this opportunity that I don't think people realize.

00;35;24;16 - 00;35;32;24
Ian Bergman
Is there how many people realize that you can go buy a very nice electric vehicle for 13 grand, 15 grand, even 20 grand?

00;35;32;26 - 00;35;41;03
Tiya Gordon
Exactly. Now, I mean, we can we have just a few minutes left so we can, we can, we can spill the tea later on that or we can move to a different topic. What do you, what do you.

00;35;41;03 - 00;35;46;08
Ian Bergman
Want to do or do it. No no no. Well we'll we'll wrap up. I just think it's such an interesting point.

00;35;46;11 - 00;36;07;06
Tiya Gordon
I mean, yeah, my, my quick rebuttal is that, you know, if Tesla wanted to really make their stockholders happy, they would have put out a sub20 KB and not put any investment into robotaxi, and instead they just got their lunch served to them by Bezos and Slate, who just put out a sub20 K EV.

00;36;07;08 - 00;36;17;13
Ian Bergman
I think that's true. And I am so excited by slate. So I think that's a I think that it's a super fair point. I am so excited about slate. Did that blindside you? It was it just me that got blindsided like.

00;36;17;13 - 00;36;29;19
Tiya Gordon
It was super stealth, but also shout out to other companies, including like Tello Trucks and Mobility, all building smaller vehicles meant for cities that are low cost.

00;36;29;22 - 00;36;34;23
Ian Bergman
Well and like we shouldn't ignore the bids that.

00;36;34;23 - 00;36;36;01
Tiya Gordon
Oh yeah.

00;36;36;01 - 00;36;56;08
Ian Bergman
The overseas which I don't I don't think most Americans realize the production capacity and the costs they're bringing online. So you know, yeah, there's a lot going on here. Well it's a really exciting space too. Yeah. There are so many. There's so many more topics I was hoping to get into from sort of how this supports a broader mission of equity and environmental justice to like kind of your vision for the future.

00;36;56;08 - 00;37;12;18
Ian Bergman
We're going to have to save that for a future conversation. Okay. But as we wrap up here, for listeners that are interested in following your journey, your personal journey, as well as the company's journey, what's the best way to keep in touch? Are you on LinkedIn? Is there a website? You have a YouTube channel? Where should they look for you?

00;37;12;25 - 00;37;30;23
Tiya Gordon
So website is it's electric.us and we're very active on LinkedIn. We have an Instagram account. But the latest and greatest is always on LinkedIn. But also if you go to selectric.us and you want to get involved, you can sign up as a property partner in any of our active cities. We have them all listed out on the website.

00;37;30;25 - 00;37;47;16
Tiya Gordon
You can sign up as an EV driver in our active cities. You can also sign up as an aspiring EV driver, someone who wants to drive but can't. And what we do is we heat map all this information and then we share it back with cities and we say, look, look at all of this demand that we're seeing right here.

00;37;47;19 - 00;37;49;16
Tiya Gordon
Let us build a pilot here.

00;37;49;18 - 00;37;50;08
Ian Bergman
Amazing.

00;37;50;13 - 00;37;55;10
Tiya Gordon
So it's a really great tool that we use just to help. Also influence policy as well.

00;37;55;13 - 00;38;09;18
Ian Bergman
Well, we'll get all this linked in the show notes to your you're on a mission that I fundamentally believe in. I'm glad you are working on this sort of innovation and urban infrastructure. And thank you for sharing your story. And thank you for coming on. Innovators Inside.

00;38;09;22 - 00;38;11;11
Tiya Gordon
Thank you so much for having me. This was awesome.

00;38;11;18 - 00;38;35;04
Ian Bergman
Have a great one. Cheers. And that's a wrap for today's episode of Alchemists Dax Innovators Inside. Thanks for listening. If you found value in today's discussion, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and check out our segments on YouTube. Links and follow ups are in the show notes, and if you have questions you want us to feature in future episodes, email innovators at Alchemist accelerator.com.

00;38;35;07 - 00;38;39;27
Ian Bergman
Stay tuned for more insider stories and practical insights from leaders. Crafting our future.