Wolfe Power Club
The Wolfe Power Club Podcast is an exciting platform for exploring crucial topics in the energy sector! With a focus on investment trends, governmental policies, and the evolving landscape of energy consumption, it promises to provide valuable insights for both industry professionals and the general public.
Host Alex Wolfe's background as an Energy director and experience in opening the first HVO Truck Bunker in Britain undoubtedly brings a wealth of expertise to the discussions. By engaging with guests who possess diverse perspectives and opinions on energy-related issues, the podcast is likely to offer a well-rounded exploration of the sector's challenges and opportunities.
Every guest will answer the big 3 questions:
- Where are you investing in Energy Industry?
- What do you want from the Government?
- What do you want Energy Customers to do?
Wolfe Power Club
Can Electric Trucks Drive Over 400 Miles? Windrose’s Wen Han Overtakes Elon Musk! | S1EP51
The transportation sector is facing its most significant revolution since the internal combustion engine, and Windrose Technology is leading this transformation with electric heavy-duty trucks that are redefining what's possible.
Could this be the beginning of the end for diesel trucks? The revolution in heavy transport has begun.
On this week's episode, our host Alex is joined by Windrose founder, chairman and CEO Wen Han. Wen utilises Windrose for their clean-slate approach to truck design. Rather than retrofitting existing models, they've reimagined the truck from first principles, creating a center-driving configuration that works universally across markets regardless of which side of the road is standard.
The company's rapid ascent has caught the attention of world leaders, with Wen recently meeting French President Macron at Versailles to announce a €175 million factory investment.
Windrose's website: https://www.windrose.tech/
CREDIT
Windrose EV truck completed a 677km trip for Kerry Logistics -- 68% battery used, 0 charging stop (windrose-EV-truck – YouTube)
Wen Han, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Windrose Technology, is building next generation HGV trucks that can do over 670km. Wen graduated with an MBA from Stanford University.
Early Career Worked at Bridgewater Associates and GSR Ventures, gaining exposure to finance and venture capital. Served as Chief Strategy & Financial Officer at autonomous trucking company Plus, where he developed strategic insight into self-driving logistics platforms.
Founded Windrose in March 2022 with co-founder Haoli Chen, aiming to design long-haul battery-electric semi-trucks for global markets. As CEO and chairman, Wen has overseen strategic planning, fundraising, and global operations from the outset.
Wolfe Power Club is proud to be partnering with the Spectator Magazine to co-host their Energy Summit 2025 on November 24th. If you want to become a potential partner and have the last word on energy debates in 2025, please contact us.
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- A focus on investment trends, governmental policies, and the evolving landscape of energy consumption, it promises to provide valuable insights for both industry professionals and the general public.
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Sponsorship:
Season One is sponsored by Aim Recruit – https://aimrecruit.com/
Aim Recruit is an expert recruiter for transport, logistics and energy positions.
We've solved the weight issue by redesigning the chassis. We're basically reshaping the entire truck so that we can fit a much bigger battery inside while allowing for much better energy density, which is what allows for the much lighter weight.
Speaker 2:But you've met President Macron. Tell me about why you met President Macron.
Speaker 1:We were hosted at the Versailles in Paris a few weeks ago. The goal of that summit was to really bring leaders into France to talk about how France can support innovation, particularly AI and electrification. We've got the best range that is published 670 kilometers. We've got the best customers we're now used by six of the world's top 10 third-party logistics companies. That's more than half of the world's best.
Speaker 2:If I had started the company earlier than three years ago, I don't think we would have been able to build this product in 10 years time, I think we're going to look at this episode of Wolf Power Club and be saying to ourselves that Wenhan and Winrose Technology are the Henry Ford or the Elon Musk of their generation. What they're planning to do with the diesel truck and what we're covering today is absolutely mind-blowing. We're going to cover how they've raised hundreds of millions of pounds from the biggest banks in the world. We're going to look at how their talks with the French president Macron have potentially led to a new factory opening in France to add to their additional headquarters in Antwerp. From their American Chinese origins. We're also going to look at the claims that maybe the diesel truck, even though it's 99% of the world HGV sales, could come obsolete. And finally, we're going to look at the man behind this company of Windrose Technology, enjoy, and this will truly be a groundbreaking episode for the Wolf Power Club. Massive thank you to our partners. So we've got aim recruit who look after the logistics solutions across all the sectors in energy and the haulage industries. At the moment they're focusing on their customers who are increasing their, their staff workforce for the grain drying operations and how they can have a flexible workforce going into the winter. If you'd like a meeting with aim recruit, please contact us. We also have a flexible workforce going into the winter. If you'd like a meeting with AIM Recruit, please contact us. We also have a new partnership developing with the Spectator magazine, the oldest magazine in Britain, and at this November we're going to be hosting jointly their Energy Summit. If you want to become a potential partner of this event and have the last word on energy debates in 2025, please contact us and again, we'll go through all the various options. Enjoy this week's episode.
Speaker 2:I think the big elephant in the room, or you know the the big dragon or you know whatever concept you want to do is weight. You know, um, obviously, uh, when I was running commercial fleets when we were buying, you know I was involved in a fleet of just under a thousand trucks when we were buying product it was all about weight, from saving weight on wheels to saving weight on the cabs, because ultimately in Britain and the majority of Europe, you have a 44 tonne limit. The most expensive part of your truck is the driver and therefore you're worried about the drive train being extremely heavy and most transport managers you will meet in the next year will be like don't batteries weigh loads and it's so much heavier than a diesel tank to do that same distance. How have you solved the weight?
Speaker 1:issue. Well, again, we started by really taking the lessons from our predecessors right and also starting with the Chinese EV supply chain, which is really the world's best. We've solved the weight issue by virtue of doing two things. Mainly, we've solved the weight issue by redesigning the chassis right, so we've removed the traditional ladder frame so that we are creating much more weight allowance with the leaner chassis structure and also more truss structure in the chassis. We've also designed our own battery pack, so we own the battery pack patents, which enables us to have over 200 watt-hour per kilogram battery density on the NMC version. So we're basically reshaping the entire truck so that we can fit much bigger battery inside while allowing for much better energy density, which is what allows for the much lighter weight you've not just met wolf power club, and I know it's probably the highlight of your european tour yes, that's why I came here, but you've met president macron.
Speaker 2:tell me about why you met President Macron. Is he thinking about supporting the truck infrastructure in France? And you can't get bigger than a G7 leader, so talk me through that meeting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is actually a signature by President Macron. We were hosted at the Versailles in Paris a few weeks ago Nice place to have dinner, I recommend it and there were about 179 leaders from business and sort of politics invited there. I was lucky to be one of those. We announced our factory for northern France in Valenciennes, next to Toyota factory. It's about $175 million of investment on top of what we already do in Belgium. The goal of that summit was to really bring leaders into France to talk about how France can support innovation, particularly AI and electrification.
Speaker 2:So if weight is the elephant, this is the albatross or the bull. Is that? Every transport solution I've ever done whether it's bringing new fuels to the UK market, whether it's truck stops, whether it's infrastructure is who is going to service it? The service agents. And, as we all know, there are certain manufacturers that have quite a bit of a massive network, so almost their product USP is that it breaks down in the afternoon, we'll have you back on the road tomorrow morning. And it could just be small stuff, right, you know, like, like you know, small items go wrong on the truck but it makes it illegal to drive and think how will you solve that service agent problem? There's one thing, building a factory in France and Belgium, but how are you going to sort the service agent? So, let's say, your big logistics company in the united kingdom will have enough faith that essentially, their product can be back on the road doing its deliveries. Um, how are you guys going to get around that?
Speaker 1:so if you ask the owner of a rolls royce where is the leadership, the dealership for a Rolls Royce, the answer is it never breaks down. Right, so it's a bit of an extreme, but I believe the structurally different design of an EV truck makes our product and many other products much less likely to break down and to have an issue. So we start with a much lower percentage of need for maintenance. The second part of our solution is we do like to work with the best and the most open-minded partners. So in the United States we work with a company called FleetNet which is owned by Cox Automotive. They've got 65,000 service providers on their network. Wow, they're the biggest by far actually in the world in terms of sort of aftermarket servicing. So we are turned on already in their network.
Speaker 1:So anytime a windrills truck, in the unlikely event that we break down but something will go wrong, someone will hit the curb or get hit there's the fender bender, so you can call any one of the 65,000 providers on the FleetNet network. That's just one of our suppliers in the United States, in Europe, in the UK, the rest of the world. We're actively looking for partners to help us do that. And don't forget, many of our customers are such large logistics names. They have their own shops which are able to perform a lot of the work right. So we're really trying to simplify the aftermarket process by focusing on the key things right, which is the key spare parts, the key, the few keeping key things that could break the battery, the powertrain and so forth. I really work with our partners to train their technicians to understand how to actually perform a simple surgery on an EV truck.
Speaker 2:Now it's true to say many things are British. We've actually have a history of electric trucking back from the 1950s. We have a department store called John Lewis who tried it back in the 1950s and it failed. It's fair to say that I have come across in my 20 years of trucking, of running truck stops, of fueling thousands of trucks, lots of people with ideas and suggestions, but no one's really cracked it with HGV. Tell us about your company and why you think you're going to crack it tell us about your company and why you think you're going to crack it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we started the company three years ago and it's been about well. We started a company three years ago and now we have trucks running on four continents north america, europe and very soon the united kingdom, australia, new zealand, oceania, as well as in Asia. So China primarily. I believe we have today the most exciting EV heavy-duty truck, or Class 8, as we call it in the United States, or Prime Rover as we call it down under in Australia and New Zealand, or just sort of a heavy-duty truck in China. So we've got the best range that is published at 670 kilometers, fully loaded, 49 tons. We've got the best customers.
Speaker 1:We're now used by six of the world's top 10 third-party logistics companies. That's more than half of the world's best globally, the best logistics players, including companies like Siva, which is solidly a top ten and, in fact, a growing ranking player. So these businesses are really showing support in our product. We think there's a couple of things we're doing that's differently. One is the timing. Frankly, if I had started the company earlier than three years ago, I don't think we would have been able to build this product. Many people before us have done the work, including your peers from the 1950s I mean in the year 1900, there were about as many electric cars as there were diesel cars.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, yes, so shortly after the automotive was invented, ev versus gasoline or petrol was actually sort of a close call. So I think it's about time for us to sort of come back to the electrons as a source of power, and the Chinese supply chain, no doubt. And then worldwide, many people have attempted to make EV trucks a reality, and we've learned from their successes and sometimes mistakes. So the timing is really, I think, the most important important thing. The rest of the truck is built around the battery, right, so we think about having the power train in the back, which is the battery, and the e-axles, which we've also designed ourselves with our partners, and the rest of it is really optimized for an ev truck, right, so we've thrown away anything that's unnecessary for a clean slate, redesigned EV truck.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, that's exciting to hear because I think that was the big problem that I've always seen. You know, for the last decade you've had the classic someone's ordered an electric truck because the government's given them a grant. They've used it for a little bit because it was free, but then, as soon as the free trial's up, they've then never reordered or ordered a massive fleet. Um, what's been your biggest fleet order and where do you see yourself in like 20, 30, getting sort of with fleet orders in that?
Speaker 1:would you think it's a reality that a company that has hundreds of trucks and maybe a depot of, say, 40 to 80 trucks in one location could go completely wind rose well, I think, uh, we may not be, and we shouldn't be, the only oem of uh reliable and uh functional ev truck out there, but I think ev truck, if designed correctly like ours uh is can effectively make diesel trucks obsolete. I do believe that there's also a future for hydrogen, which is really effectively a range-extending technology for battery trucks. I think, in any case, electrons should power trucks as they used to 100 years ago. What's different is we now have a better design about how we use electrons and also how we generate electrons. So the world is now much more able to generate electricity structurally at much lower cost and increasingly decreasing costs. So we believe, structurally it takes more than the truck. The fueling system, the energy ecosystem plus the truck itself can really make this the new standard.
Speaker 1:You're filming me with an iPhone. One of my colleagues worked for Nokia before right 20 years ago when the iPhone was unveiled in 2007,. No one would imagine the iPhone would make the keyboard obsolete, but it has. So how can we accelerate the obsolescence of diesel trucks? That doesn't mean the obsolescence of sort of other OEMs. We'd like to see more people succeed because we shouldn't be the only man standing. But do believe uh before, uh, hopefully before my next trip to london.
Speaker 2:Uh, we will be able to see us being sort of a go-to choice, the windows truck being a go-to choice for fleets in the uk and the rest of the world and just before I go to some bigger global issues and sort of exciting issues about you guys, can you tell me about the the cab design, because your colleague Justin was showing me inside? It looked a lovely, spacious space. I obviously have dealt with drivers my whole life, but also, let's be honest, the cockpit is probably the coolest cockpit of a truck that I've seen in a long time. You know, I grew up with Transformers and I immediately think awesome, that looks like a transformer. Tell us about inside what you're thinking about, the driver's journey, because I appreciate one customer is the director of transport procurement at like a Siva, but then the other customer is his boys in the field doing the driving. What did you think about when designing that part of the design outside of the technology?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you think about the designing the right product, the universality of the design outside the technology, yeah, so if you think about designing the right product, the universality of the design is key, because we should really think of why are trucks so different between the US conventional design and the cabover design in Europe? It's really from a historical sort of artifact in the United States, where the bridges were unstable and therefore you need to have longer chassis to spread out the gravity distribution. So that's called the bridge law. It's actually the name of the law. Luckily for us, bridges are much better built today across the world, so why should there still be a difference? So the other reason is why are people driving on two different sides of the cab or the cockpit? It's a fantastic sort of thing to look into.
Speaker 1:What we try to do is we try to universalize everything. Right Again, when you take that iPhone of yours by the way, our trucks are also used to haul Apple products in China right, when you take that iPhone of yours, it doesn't matter who you are, you can find the language inside the app, right? So the idea of new product is to be universalizable, or generalizable across regions. So having the driver sit in the middle. Here is precisely one way we solve it right. By the way, as you may recall, the unit for electricity is called the kilowatt hour, and watts and volts and amps. These are universal. There's no longer the difference between the metric system and the imperial system, which the uk doesn't even use anymore right so these funny things about the gallon versus the pound or the gallon versus the liter and two gallons.
Speaker 2:There's a us gallon, anda uk gallon.
Speaker 1:There's a metric ton, there's the imperial ton, right. So all these crazy things, uh. By the way, the us system is called the standard, which is the funny misnomer. So how can we unify things in a way that makes the process so much easier? We're even doing some so far as to standardize the tire dimensions. By the way, the word tire is also spelled differently UK versus US. These things are just such ridiculous artifacts that really can't be fixed Now within electrification.
Speaker 1:France is known as one of the biggest trucking markets, perhaps even bigger than the UK, and we work with President Macron and his team, including the Minister of Transport, to accelerate the adoption of EV trucks.
Speaker 1:Transport to accelerate the adoption of EV trucks. A couple of things will be in place in terms of just faster acceleration of the homologation of our truck, which is targeted for the end of this year. There's also more allowance for what is the aerodynamic design. So we talked about the center driving configuration a little bit, but what's also important is this creates 0.2755 of drag coefficient, which is the world's best in the truck, even better than the Tesla Semi, which we deeply respect as a formidable competitor and fantastic player. But we've done better by virtue of having a better design, having learned sort of lessons from previous players. So this, however, creates a special design, including the center driving configuration. So having the support from a national leader enables us to be sort of faster accepted as the new standard. And then, of course, there's the investment in charging. We're working with French businesses that are fueling businesses, gas station businesses, also charging players across Europe to set up chargings both inside depots for our customers and also, of course, public ones, such as Milans, who we work with.
Speaker 2:Fantastic Because, although it sounds great you're meeting presidents, you're having beautiful lunches the reality is, to launch any product in the EU, uk, us, anywhere globally there's a huge amount of things that have to be met homologation wise, standard wise. It's one of the main reasons why there's so few players actually either in the truck market or, in reality, in the car market these days, because this criteria is so hard to meet. How is wind roads going to take that challenge on? Because, as you said, for this to work, you've got global ambitions, but they're very different markets with very different legislation. You've already said, in some of your markets they can do 49 tons. In this market it's going to be 44 tons when it's all together. So how does that go and what are the challenges? Because there's been very few new entrants to the hgv world over the years.
Speaker 1:So I think uh, you know, every few decades there's sort of a generational shift in terms of what the next paradigm of product is. I think we're lucky to be at the right sort of cusp of going into the next generation for trucks. We've designed the truck having in mind all, basically the homologation rules for all of the world's major markets, the four continents we play in. When we do so, we're basically designing a slightly over-engineered product. Do we have too much space in the cab? Probably. We have 8.2 cubic meters that can fit myself and you, and four times over I've put an entire basketball team in the cab. Why is that? Because in the United States particularly, we like a large space with a sleeper with the bed in the back right. In China, many of our drivers live in the truck. They don't spend any time at home, unfortunately. So we are over-designing for every market by finding the smallest common numerator, which is sort of the cap that captures every rule across every major market.
Speaker 1:What we're doing next is to really understand how to further refine the truck for each market. So you know, like you said, in the United States we're hauling 30 plus tons, In China 49. In Australia, we're hauling three trailers. In the Nordics we've done 60, plus tons of vitamin water, which I have here and in the UK and continental Europe it'll be about 44 tons, right? So how do we then refine the product for each market? That's our next generation work. However, for today my goal is to find a truck that works for most markets. Enough use cases for us to really grow a meaningful business out of what we do and, at the same time, penetrate people's minds to really leave the impression that ev trucks work On a TCO basis. We can even make the math work it's actually cleaner and cheaper than diesel trucks in many markets.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's awesome to hear and I think I've always seen that historically. I mean, there's a famous company called Cummings in this country that their engine can be in a bus, in a truck, in a luxury yacht, and it's the same power unit but it's just changed and tuned in different ways to to do it. And it's fantastic to hear at scope. But we want to hear more about you guys, right, because I think we've got the gist of it. You've got an awesome vehicle. It's coming to the uk soon, um, but let's be honest. You've just alluded to that.
Speaker 2:One plant is initial, this investment of 175 million. I was with the electric vehicle company which you'll know is the Black Cab Company, or you know, they're owned by Geely these days and they required half a billion to turn their factory electric. How did you raise the funds for this company and what was that journey? Because a lot of people in this podcast would love to know how you go from a dream of what you're trying to achieve to suddenly the reality that you're about to go live and you've already delivered, as you said, to some big logistics companies already. So how did you raise that capital?
Speaker 1:So we started the company in 2022, which was when Shanghai was in lockdown, so I couldn't actually step out of my home. So we started the company at the worst, probably, time in recent human history. Since then, we've gone through a number of things called tariff friction so the US-China what I call back and forth, generally the world being just sort of unstable the past three years. I like to say I'm the living proof of Murphy's Law, which states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. I think the main journey is to really think of how do you stay patient and how do you stay sort of focused on the goal while living through the pain of the everyday life. So people see me going on stages and sort of meeting presidents and so forth, but behind the scene or even just in the middle of it, it's full of surprises. The world has never been kind or the world has never been easy on us, but it is my job and our job to fight through all that right. So we sail into the headwinds. Actually, that's why we are called windrows. Windrows is actually a navigational concept that measures the strength of winds coming from different directions. It looks like a rose of winds, so we think of sailing. When you sail which I did in school you sail better into the headwind. When you sail downwind, you actually lose your power, your wind, very soon. So sailing against the headwind is our specialty.
Speaker 1:How do we raise the money? We work hard on it and today we're backed by five of the world's top 15 banks, one of which is HSBC, which is a familiar British name, a British and Asian name, and then Citibank, as well as three of the top five banks in China. So we're backed by over about $200 million in bank financing. We've also raised about $100 million in equity. That's from investors. That's a mix of US sort of Boston investors, singaporean, hong Kong, mainland China and, of course, the rest of the world, including European investors. So we like to be diplomatic in the way we raise money Hong Kong, mainland China and, of course, rest of the world, including European investors. Right, so we like to be diplomatic in the way we raise money.
Speaker 2:And we like to make friends in all the key markets we operate. So can you tell me about the first Eureka moment? Because there's one thing, as you say, sat in your home office during lockdown. You've got a great idea. You've got a history of going to the best institutions working in that world of raising capital. There's another moment of when that first bank says winrose, we like your story. Here's a check. Tell me about that moment. You don't have to necessarily say who the bank was, but but what was that feeling like? Because that must have been suddenly, yes, someone believes the vision that I'm seeing today.
Speaker 1:You know it's actually not how it works because unfortunately there oftentimes isn't a eureka moment in the first three to five years of a company's life. Before starting Windrose, I worked at a self-driving company called Plus, so we supplied the self-driving software to Scania, man, iveco and also US and Chinese truck brands. So Amazon, for example, has over 100 of our trucks equipped with our system. So having spent four years in trucking prior to my current sort of career at Windrose really taught me sort of how to deal with trucking customers, how to really understand them, and many of our investors are repeat customers. They are investors in my previous venture.
Speaker 1:So there's actually, you know, there ain't no such thing as a eureka moment because in our business it's a long cycle business. Many of our key customers, like I mentioned, takes three years to sell the first truck into them right. So we have a customer called carry logistics, world's 20th biggest logistics company. It took me at least two years from first meeting in hong kong when I went to the meeting and rushed to it right after I got off the airplane from the United States, to when we delivered our first batch of trucks. It is a long process and many times investors don't enjoy the long wait. So the degree of trust is actually more important than one single moment of the light bulb going off.
Speaker 2:Watching me chug along this journey, uh, is probably the the most important thing that uh, they look for well, if I was an investor right now, I'd be really proud, not only if you got onto the biggest energy podcast on apple, but you know you're willing to you're willing to meet hours.
Speaker 2:You know, before the day is over. It's a late night and you're working hard to do it. So if I was an investor, I'd be very, very happy. Bit more about you as a man. Um, I think that we've got kind of one thing in common that we've both studied in multiple places outside of our own country.
Speaker 1:So, um, you're better looking you've got more hair for now.
Speaker 2:Yes, we'll see you talk to me in a couple years after the startup thing, yeah, but maybe I sold too much diesel in my youth and that's another reason to go electric. But essentially I really enjoyed. So I did an MBA with Manchester but we did modules in the Middle East but, more importantly, I did modules in Shanghai, I did modules in Hong Kong and I also did modules in Miami to give a flavor of the US and Asia. And then our final project was about fueling companies in the Philippines and that was a great experience. You went to Stanford. Tell us that journey, because not everyone would go that far away from their homeland to do an MBA.
Speaker 1:And I was just interested in your journey of this cultural mix of China and America being key parts in your journey well, I'm actually more mixed than that, so the grew up in China, born and raised in China in a coal mining province called Shanxi. Oh nice, which is funny considering what we do now. We're trying to make coal mining obsolete quicker. I went to the United States when I was in middle school and then lived with a Mexican homestay, so I actually learned to speak Spanish when.
Speaker 2:I was 16.
Speaker 1:And I went to the East Coast for college at a place called Williams, which is a fantastic, smaller liberal arts college in the United States. During those four years I studied abroad in Spain and France, so that's where I pick up my Spanish and French. And then I worked in New York for a hedge fund called Bridgewater Associates, world's biggest macro hedge fund. I went to Stanford Business School. I had no idea I was going to do trucking.
Speaker 1:So actually I'm going to speak at the 100th year anniversary for the Stanford University in Hong Kong and also in Paris, where I'm invited to talk about the journey, and I'm going to say I had no idea. In fact, I was so sure I would never start a company when I went to Stanford. So life is full of surprises but I try to capture them, just like our startup journey has been. I mean, every day I wake up, something goes wrong, especially in the recent past, but sort of, you know, enjoy, live with the serendipity, right, because life is full of surprises and then just try to make the most of them. So that's kind of my life story, which is sort of a mix of twists and turns, trying to make quick tacks up the wind, and that's how I got here.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. I can actually like enjoy those similarities. I remember the reason I joined shell was not because I was so interested in fuel, um, but I loved f1 and there was no like real jobs that would make mom and dad happy. But it's a good graduate scheme at shell and they sponsored ferrari, um.
Speaker 2:I like your story about Wynrose because one of the key funders of the Wolf Power Club is a company called Setpoint Group and a bit like you're saying, I'm a big tennis fan but almost Setpoint is when you kind of get your make or break.
Speaker 2:The amount of players that have lost Setpoint or even Roger Federer losing championship point at wimbledon is. And that's why I called the company set point because, as you said, there's those moments, those ups and downs that that bruise you a bit and that leads me nicely to saying this year you probably woke up as this guy who is culturally in both economies, financially it'd be great if your products can be in global economies. And then there's the tariff wars. Genuinely, I guess two parts of the question one, how did wind rose and yourself feel the morning that this sort of trade battle started? And secondly, do you think there's an opportunity of uk china of being almost your stable partner to potentially grow your business, while dealing with the ups and downs with the us relationship, that you have such a close relationship on a personal level, outside of even a company level yeah, I think, uh, look, the uk has always been in, been in a fantastic place to do business with many parts of the world.
Speaker 1:The United States has taken a strong stance on tariffs, but that's not new. So the United States has imposed tariffs on Japanese imports, korean cars, chinese washing machines. China has imposed tariffs on imported cars up to, I remember, 50% back in the days before I was born. So tariffs are almost sort of a naturally expected phenomenon. When a country is sort of feeling a little bit nervous about some industry, it feels like it's losing the advantage, right? So the way you embrace tariffs is you understand the underlying thinking, which is how can you help the country itself still keep and grow its manufacturing in the face of a strong competitor from abroad, right?
Speaker 1:So China had the same problem, japan the same problem, when the Western powers came into these places and sort of introduced forcibly and quickly their own products, and vice versa. The same is happening, right? So I think it's kind of uh, almost part of part of the natural cycles. So what I do is I've decided to set up a manufacturing in france, in belgium, also in the united states, where actually, uh, I'm going to be airing on cnbc on the 27th, which is a smaller platform than, of course, yours, and just to really be able to talk about our plan to select a site in the United States as well. So setting up production sites, sharing our knowledge with the local labor force, I believe the pie can keep growing. It's not a zero-sum game. So that's how actually we think about and deal with tariffs Understand the, the actual reasoning behind and help the people, uh help us sort of to grow the business together.
Speaker 2:That's, that's what we do, definitely, and I think it's very interesting to say it, because the the biggest car manufacturers discussing your colleagues in in the uk still is still nissan at sunderland. That obviously was a starting point of a limit of numbers that could come into the eu. When we remember the eu, um, they invested heavily, just like, at one point, toto invested heavily into wales, um, and now you also see that you know the likes of gili byd are investing heavily into british companies, um, and I was just wondering, therefore and I saw it also see it in like solar panels, uh, energy storage, when we have the equivalent shows at the Excel. It's fair to say, in the last decade, chinese companies have been fantastic at being global. So when the podcast is at solar and storage, which is the big trade event for solar and storage, I'd say probably 40% of the companies there have some sort of Chinese origin or investment, and then so on. Why are you guys so great at scaling? What's the secret behind that?
Speaker 1:I think. The number one. I believe we have no choice. We must scale quickly. That's the destiny of a startup. Number two the way we do it is we structurally change the way we build and market the product. We build a new product from a clean slate so that we can design it to meet various requirements in different nations. Many of the requirements are idiosyncratic, but we can really have a design that captures all of them.
Speaker 1:We're selling to top 10 and, in fact fact, top 49 shipping and logistics companies globally. They all tend to have businesses everywhere we operate. And the third is myself and my team. We're able to basically so I circle the earth about eight times every year. We're visiting all of our customers across all of their key locations, planning pilots for them simultaneously. But the synergy, or the economy of scale, is actually critical. There's also network effect, which is when one of the top 10 uses our trucks, more likely are the other top 9 going to try the trucks, assuming your trucks are good enough, right. So I believe the economy of scale. I'm sort of within a single business, attacking and aggressively going after all their key markets, satisfying their needs, at the same time also taking advantage of the network effect from one company to another one in terms of building our brand awareness and sort of market recognition is how we do I think we've heard about the company, we've heard about the product, we've heard about.
Speaker 2:We at the wolf power club also have three quick questions or four quick questions. Okay, uh, and, and we're interested. What would you like the uk or british government or eu government to do in the next 12 months that could really support EV trucking growth?
Speaker 1:A good question. I think the government can actually do a huge job in terms of helping accelerate the adoption of EV trucks by simply promoting it. We're not talking about so we build a business based on no subsidies, but just sort of by being vocal about it and by telling people not only the windrush truck, many EV trucks can actually be a viable solution. I think just being out there and reminding people of that, inviting people to come sort of even think about the possibilities, is key. So actually vocal support from the government is critical.
Speaker 2:Okay. Second question On this podcast we've had a lot of people that have had honors from the government is critical, okay. Second question On this podcast we've had a lot of people that have had honors from the British King that have come billionaires, millionaires. Do you think trucking can still give you those opportunities and what would you like to get out of trucking?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Trucking is a trillion dollar market. It's actually 5% of the world's GDP. Not many single product industries are 5% of the world's GDP. Not many single product industries are 5% of the world's GDP. It also accounts for about 5% of the world's carbon emissions, right, greenhouse gas. So it is one of the most important things you can do as a single product line. What that means is there's lots of money involved, right, we're helping people save money because we're helping people save about one third of the trillion to $2 trillion market per year, which is diesel. Electricity can be meaningfully cheaper than that. So we're actually helping people shave off several hundred billion dollars a year.
Speaker 1:I think with that comes great financial rewards for our investors. We need to keep growing because we'd like to keep raising more money for our investors. We need to keep growing because we'd like to keep raising more money. We'd like to raise a total of $1 billion by the end of this year, sort of the cumulative sum including historical fundraisings, but also our IPO in the United States this year. So we think of sort of capturing the mass of market perception, but also money and capital to be able to really keep growing Myself. I've already pledged away a lot of my wealth to universities, so I've got a $15 million scholarship to Stanford. I'm actually working on a program with Oxford as well, even though I never attended Oxford.
Speaker 1:I got into the business school but I chose a different one in a place with better weather called stanford, and uh, we're actually hosting a cancer awareness program at cambridge. Uh, september, uh, in the early september, uh and uh. These are all the things I'm doing with my time and my, my, my wealth. So that's how we think about the company's financing goals, but also my personal goals.
Speaker 2:And a tip a lot of people who watch this invest in companies, invest in energy sources, invest their time in different parts of the energy sector. Quickfire question where would you invest your time and energy in the energy sector in the next 12 months?
Speaker 1:Interoperability. So what we try to do is really try to be open to every platform because wherever we go we tend to be able to help people bring awareness to the feasibility of the product. So so far we've already tested over 300 public and private chargers across the four continents. Anything you can imagine that's sort of a viable hardware provider or CPO. We've plugged the electrons into our trucks. We can even dual charge. We offer any charging standard CCS1, CCS2, MCS, the GB in China, so anything you can think of. We can prove interoperability because we like to offer a product that works anywhere that there's a plug right. So I think my time and energy are really invested in drawing more attention to certain key corridors where we show that really a number of charging options can work between sort of private depot and also public ones, and then that will, I believe, get people really excited and convinced that, uh, ev trucks work yeah and then uh.
Speaker 2:Final question for our listeners we also like to pick on the customer. You know we've picked on governments, we've picked on you. What would you like the customer to do in the next 12 months to actually make this awesome?
Speaker 1:I think the customers uh truly have been fantastic because, let's not forget, they've been really disappointed by many ev attempts before. Right, the customers have invested money and time into the products as a category and they have not been truly satisfied and many of them have been burnt, I think. So what I think the customers are doing today is already great, because the burden is upon us to actually provide the fantastic product. What I would like the customers to do is, I believe, to just get out there and share the news more. I believe the customers are already doing that. We'd like to provide a menu. Maybe your channel is also a great place for them to go on. Just share their success stories, but also failures, and so that people can just see the starting of sort of getting past the cusp, of going from disillusionment to finally, you know, true adoption of this new generation which is EV trucks.
Speaker 2:Well, as we say on the Wolf Power Club today, we've heard about the ambitions to raise Nillebieren. We've heard a French president is meeting because he sees the dream you're doing a tour of the world eight times in one year. But, more importantly, what we'd love to say to you is welcome to our home city of London. And as we finish with every Wolf Power Club, run with the pack. Now, that was an amazing half an hour going through when I just it's been blowing my mind about what could be possible in the electric HGV world. But a big shout out this week to some of our younger listeners. There's two young gentlemen in Darlington, still very much in the middle of their school years, but I'd like to give a big shout out to Rory and Hector Bell for being big listeners of the podcast and following us and sharing it with all their friends in Darlington. I hope both gentlemen have amazing careers in the energy sector in the years ahead.
