Inspiration Mobility: Inside the Economics of Fleet Electrification

In Episode 28 of Field Frequency, Jason welcomes Dan Wilson, Vice President of Energy Solutions at Inspiration Mobility, for a deep dive into the realities of fleet electrification, charging infrastructure, and the evolving economics of EV adoption. Dan shares his journey from renewable energy consulting to leading charging strategy for one of the industry’s most comprehensive fleet electrification companies. Together, they unpack the six charging models shaping commercial fleet operations, the impact of changing federal incentives, the role of AI in charger maintenance and fleet optimization, and why long-term success in the EV industry comes down to discipline, adaptability, and solving real operational problems. 

Show Notes: 

• Dan Wilson’s path from sustainability studies at the University of Michigan to EV infrastructure leadership
• Lessons learned deploying 614 DC fast charging ports for FedEx delivery fleets in California
• Inside Inspiration Mobility and its “outcome-first” approach to fleet electrification
• The six charging solutions fleets should evaluate:
  • Depot charging
  • Home charging
  • Public charging
  • Mobile & temporary charging
  • Park-and-charge solutions
  • Multi-fleet charging hubs
• Why total cost of ownership still favors EV fleets despite policy and tax credit changes
• Inspiration Mobility’s work advocating for commercial EV incentives on Capitol Hill
• How AI is improving charger diagnostics, predictive maintenance, and operational scalability
• Structuring fleet charging deals around utilization, energy pricing, and risk allocation
• Roaming partnerships and expanding charging accessibility for fleet operators
• What separates durable EV infrastructure companies from hype-cycle casualties
• Dan’s outlook on the future of EV adoption and the biggest barriers still facing fleet electrification

Dan Wilson Bio: 

Dan Wilson is an accomplished technology and product leader with a proven track record of driving innovation, building high-performing teams, and delivering transformative digital experiences. With extensive experience spanning financial services, enterprise technology, and emerging AI initiatives, he is recognized for his ability to translate complex challenges into clear strategies and measurable business outcomes. Throughout his career, Dan has led cross-functional teams across product development, engineering, user experience, and innovation, helping organizations accelerate growth while navigating evolving technology landscapes.

Known for his collaborative leadership style and strategic mindset, Dan has successfully guided initiatives ranging from startup innovation to enterprise-scale digital transformation. His expertise includes product strategy, human-centered design, generative AI, technology business development, and organizational leadership. Colleagues and industry peers frequently describe him as a thoughtful leader who combines technical depth with strong communication and relationship-building skills.

Dan is also passionate about fostering innovation cultures that empower teams to experiment, learn quickly, and deliver meaningful customer experiences. His work continues to focus on leveraging emerging technologies to create practical, scalable solutions that drive long-term value for both businesses and the people they serve

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

On today's episode of Field Frequency, I sit down with Dan Wilson, Vice President of Energy Solutions at Inspiration Mobility. We unpack what fleet electrification actually looks like on the ground. Not the headlines, but the operational and economic reality. We get into roaming networks, AI and charger diagnostics, and why the biggest constraint to EV adoption isn't hardware or policy, it's human inertia inside fleet operations. If you operate fleets, infrastructure, energy assets, then this is a practical conversation about how electrification gets deployed. Let's tune in. Today I'm happy to have Dan Wilson, Vice President of Energy Solutions at Inspiration Mobility. Hi, Dan. Hey, great to be here, Jason. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

I just want to say I've listened to every single previous episode. I think you've done a great job bringing on a lot of different industry leaders. And I learned something from every single episode I listened to, and really honored to be here with you and to join that uh that illustrious group.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Well, thank you, Dan, and thanks for doing your homework. I don't know that everyone does their homework, but I appreciate you taking time to listen to the episodes and and really connect with what Field Frequency is doing in the space, just trying to create thought uh you know, thought leadership platform and bring on subject matter experts like yourself, fo folks that are out there in the trenches making this EV thing happen. So uh appreciate you uh being a part of this and uh also for listening to.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Of course. So uh let's get started. Uh I want to get uh kind of going on your background first. Obviously, we want to get a walk through your personal origin story and what led up, you know, what experiences led up to your role at Inspiration Mobility, and then also just talk to us about who inspiration mobility is as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Absolutely, yeah, happy to do that. So, in terms of my story, when I was toward the end of college, I didn't really know what I wanted to do, honestly. So I was kind of searching around trying to figure out what what my next step was. I actually took a year off after college and during that time got really passionate about sustainability, clean energy, electrical mobility, all those things. And so I ended up going back to grad school at the University of Michigan um to pursue the kind of that field and got had a really great experience there um getting a dual master's degree from Eastern University of Michigan in both sustainability and kind of energy systems engineering. And that led to a lot of great job opportunities. So I ended up joining a company called Black and Beach. It's a pretty well-known engineering construction company in the infrastructure world. Um, and I was a renewable energy consultant there for a number of years, working on grid integration and kind of mostly large-scale wind and solar projects and renewable energy technologies. And then toward the end of my time there, I migrated more toward um focusing on distributed energy resource technologies like root-of-top solar and battery storage and EV charging, uh, among others. And also during that time while I was at Black and Beach, I got my first EV, which was a first-gen Nissan Leaf. And I know from previous episodes you were also a Nissan Leaf driver. So you could sympathize with uh, you know, the limitations of that model, but also it was a really cool car. And I was, I I loved that thing. It was great. I it had like 80 or 90 miles of range, but I didn't care. It was it was awesome. I just loved the electric driving experience. And then I'm now on my fourth EV since since then. That was 2014 when I got my first Leaf. So we're now 12 years later, and I've got a Rivian R1S now. It's my fourth EV and love it. It's the best, best car I've ever had. Um really just um I'm amazed to see the kind of the progress and the evolution of the technology, right, in that time in terms of the vehicle side. But coming back to my background, so I uh because of my time at Black Beach, I had this kind of deep knowledge in kind of the utility and energy infrastructure space as well as distributed energy resources. I was recruited by a startup called Change Energy here in the LA area in Southern California that was focused on uh selling medium-duty electric delivery vans to FedEx and other last mile delivery fleets. So I uh was on that team for several years. We worked with FedEx, was our big kind of marquee customer, where we deployed a lot of charging infrastructure at their fleet depots all over the state of California from San Diego up to Sacramento. We did 21 sites, 614 DC charging ports actually at their site. So it's kind of an interesting technology where we actually put the chargers overhead inside uh this indoor uh depot where they would park at the loading dock to load their vehicles. So that was uh a really interesting experience. Also, learned a ton. And unfortunately, that that company change energy went out of business, uh lack of funding. So I know that a lot of people in this space like me have gone through that experience of either gone through instability. You know, if you haven't been you haven't been through that experience, you probably haven't been in this industry very long, I guess is what I've found. But anyway, it was a painful experience at the time, but led to something really great because I got introduced uh by a mutual friend to Josh Green, who's the founder and CEO of Inspirational Stability, where I am now, really hit it off with him and really resonated with his vision of starting a company that was sort of a both a vehicle and charger agnostic solution provider and financier for fleet electrification and and all the all the assets related to fleet electrication. So I was I joined as a very early employee, I was tied for number number five on the team, and I was the first member of the team that was focused on charging specifically. So I kind of started the our charging business basically from scratch, which was really fun and interesting. And today I am really focused on leading the deployment of all of our kind of charging solutions that are especially more on the Fleet Depot, larger fast charging hub kind of side of things, generally our subject matter expert when it comes to hardware and software in the charging space, all those sorts of things. So uh I've really been enjoying my time at Inspiration. And then just to give a little bit more background on what Inspiration does. So Inspiration Mobility Group is the first fleet management company that really combines an energy infrastructure business with fleet management, right? And kind of putting those pieces together to make it much easier for fleets to adopt EVs. So the idea is that we're one-stop shop for supporting commercial fleets from along every party of electrification journey, right? From initial basic education through planning the EV transition, procuring vehicles, financing and leasing those vehicles to the fleet, providing on-road fleet management services, things like manage maintenance, tolls and violations, roadside assistance, fuel carts, all that kind of stuff. And then also going in and providing the charging services, right, alongside alongside that to make it as easy and kind of seamless and cost effective as possible for fleets to electrify. So you can think of inspiration primarily as a company that is doing financing and fleet management, right? Um, in this space. And basically all those other services that we provide is really kind of just figuring out reducing the barriers and figuring out how do we deploy more EVs faster here in the United States. So, in terms of what we do with customers, uh, just one type of customer that we've been really focused on lately is large corporate fleets. And with those, they often have sustainability goals. And so we help them think through like, okay, how how can EV deployment really help you meet your sustainability goals? But we also always really highlight the fact that not only is it a sustainability one when you deploy EVs, if you do it right and if you have the right partners to do it correctly, then you should save a lot of money, right, on an ongoing basis, right, by switching. So we think any any company that has you know any fleet of any size should really be looking at electrification seriously, because there are a lot of use cases today where it makes a ton of sense economically, as well as from an environmental perspective. So uh, and then just quickly on the charging side of the business in terms of what we do there, we're really, really flexible in how we what types of charging solutions we deliver, how we deliver them to the customer. So think of we can be anything from just an advisor to help them kind of do initial planning, we can be a general contractor to build some charging infrastructure for them, or we can be a complete charging as a service turnkey provider where they literally just pay by the by the kilowatt hour, and we can be the developer owner operator of the infrastructure. So very flexible there. Um so instead of really selling like a specific product, like you know, we're not selling a specific hardware product or a specific software product, or even a specific, you know, service, right? Like engineering service, we're really selling an outcome. We will help you as a fleet figure out what is the right set of charging solutions or optimal mix of charging solutions to make it again as like seamless, as easy, and as cost-effective as possible to bring EVs into your fleet. And we really find that if you're a fleet of any size, you're probably going to need a mix of charging solutions to really um get to the best outcome in terms of EV adoption because there's so many different factors, different use cases, different vehicle types, different locations, right, that fleets need to deal with uh that often lead to, you know, you need to kind of mix and match a lot of different things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Well, that's a that's a robust solution. And I like the way you framed that, that you're selling an outcome, not necessarily just a product. So that's got to take a lot of of probably ingesting of the customer needs and and probably a calibration of what they think their needs are, because as the subject matter experts, you're you're coming in and it's not just a widget. This is a this is an outcome. And I think that's really that's a powerful phrasing. The way you've you've phrased that is an outcome. So when you're talking to corporate fleets, there's obviously that that's just like a Pandora's box, I would think of, in terms of who those customers are. And so there's got to be different fleet charging solutions that meet the different and varied needs of these corporate fleet customers. And so in in that co-creation with them based on their needs, what what are the what are those different fleet uh charging solutions that inspiration inspiration mobility offers?

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Yeah, and it's it's a pretty wide mix. So so yeah, we happy to talk more about that. Like I said, when we're working with you know a fleet of really any size, right, whether it's hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of vehicles, which we work with fleets literally just about any size you can think of all over the country, we really need, yeah, it's it's really a mix and it's everything from a single charger at home up to a very large, you know, uh depot, right? With tens or hundreds of chargers potentially, right, at a single location. But specifically, you know, we think about uh really six different types of charging solutions, six different categories that we usually talk about with our fleet customers and think about how do we, you know, again, mix and match the for each fleet. So first one being um when people think of fleets, often they think of you know vehicles that come back to a depot, right? And marketing overnight. And so putting on on-site depot charging, which is often you know level two AC chargers for overnight, you know, kind of slow charging. That's you know the default solution that a lot of fleets think of. A lot of people think of when they when they you know envision fleet charging. But really, that's just one piece of the puzzle. So there's in addition to depot charging, there's also home charging. I think a lot of people are surprised about the proportion of fleet vehicles in this country that actually go home with the drivers every night. Yes. And that's everything from sedans that are used by sales reps up to pretty large vans and trucks that are like work trucks or or service vans, right, that are taken home by the drivers. So often it like there's a great solution, which is often just put in a level two AC charger at the driver's home, right? If if that's feasible, right? If they own their home, right? If uh if they get the right approvals from their landlord, et cetera, then that can be a great solution, right? Because if you charge while you're sleeping, that's that's pretty much the best way to go. Also, most people will probably be familiar with public charging as another option, right? And we usually recommend that it's more of a backup option for fleets, but it it is can be part of the solution, right? And obviously it's kind of the quickest and easiest way to get started. If they you know have a small number of vehicles and they know there's you know good public charging available in a given area, then that can be a perfectly reasonable solution again for a certain type of use case. It's usually you know DC fast chargers, right? Um, that we're talking about for public charging. Fourth category we think about is um mobile and temporary charging, which um I think there's been a lot of talk about that in the last few years. Certainly we think that it is often can often be um not the ideal solution for the long term, right? Because it can be kind of expensive, right? Um, but uh it can be a great kind of bridge solution, right? Uh until you get to a kind of a more permanent on-site depot charging solution or home charging solution. It can also be a good solution for backup and resilience, right? For for on-site charging as well, in some cases. So we, you know, certainly familiar with all the many vendors that are you know providing those types of services now. And that's everything from uh putting a big battery on a trailer, right, attaching it to some chargers, and having that battery you know fed from a building, you know, grid connection. Uh could be a battery that's taken off-site to and charged off-site and then brought back and then you know dispenses energy to the vehicles, or it can be an on-site um set of chargers that are fed by some kind of either generator, which is you know fed by diesel, natural gas, propane, some kind of liquid fuel. And so that's a pretty wide range of those solutions out in the market today. But but the we think that again can be part of the solution. Then the fifth category we think about is called park and charge, which I think a lot of might be a new concept to a lot of people. And I can actually talk about this a little bit because we uh I know you recently had uh Kieran from Curo, the company Kiro. Kieran is the CEO on the on the show, and again, really enjoyed that episode, among others. And so we work closely with Curo basically to provide this park and charge service, which is essentially you have a lot of existing level two charges that are out there in the world at office buildings, corporate campuses, healthcare facilities, hotels, etc., that are often underutilized today. And so you can basically have a fleet customer sign up, sign a contract and basically reserve that charge install. It could be overnight or during the day, depends on on their needs, and basically um give them uh this dedicated charge install that they don't have to pay for all the capex up front, right? They just pay on an ongoing kind of monthly payment. So I think that's a pretty interesting solution and has been helpful for some of our fleet customers already today. And then the sixth category I'll mention is um multi-fleet hub charging, where we're we are looking at a larger project that's got you know a number of DC fast chargers on a site that is serving usually multiple fleets, kind of sharing the infrastructure, but it but it's kind of fleet dedicated. So it's different than public charging, right? Public charging, generally light duty past new vehicles, right? Kind of anybody can pull up these multi-fleet charging hubs are you know generally built specifically to serve fleets. And so that's that's another important solution that that we have actually you know uh developed some of those kind of sites ourselves as well. So those are the six types. Like I said, it's it's really one of the big jobs that I have, and our our team as an inspiration is helping fleet customers sort through those six different options to every different vehicle, every different location in their in their fleet, right, to figure out like what is the right mix.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Yeah. You know, uh that's that's fantastic. And thanks for that robust overview of Inspiration Mobility's solutions. And so for those fleet managers that are listening, for those fleet operators that are listening, you need to call Dan at Inspiration Mobility to let them help you with your electrification plans. And I, you know, I appreciate that. I appreciate the solution that you're working on because in a in a previous life I was a fleet manager, and so I understand all the needs. And so when when when a fleet is looking at the integration of an alternative energy-powered vehicle, it changes everything. It changes everything from maintenance to fueling, on-site fueling to everything, staging, technician training, parking. I mean, it just it just impacts. And so, like you said earlier, it's it's it's driving towards an intended outcome. And and there's a lot behind unpacking what what gets us to where we need to be in terms of of a of a fleet solution. So that's uh that's that's great, Dan. Thank you for sharing all that. I would I would like to get into maybe some policy and and headwind conversation with you. Um inspir and the reason is inspiration mobility has engaged Capitol Hill, providing get guidance on legislation in the past and um has has been involved in in helping kind of frame up uh in terms of a legislative uh perspective, world EV deployment. Are you able to talk about what inspiration mobility has done in that sense and and share some some of that experience and and maybe well we might talk about uh policy changes here in a minute, but yeah, could can you share some on that?

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Yeah, absolutely. And we have been very engaged, just as a quick summary, in uh policy, especially over the last 12 months, right? As you can imagine, with the new administration coming in, a lot of big changes in terms of policy and incentives. So um uh I'll go back to just about a year ago now. We as a company basically joined with a bunch of other companies in the fleet electrification uh space and formed a lobbying group called the American Fleet Leadership Coalition, uh, which was specifically formed a year ago to lobby for keeping the 45W commercial vehicle tax credit, which was part of uh the IRA for Biden. And so, as part of the one big beautiful bill, negotiations in Congress, there was a lot of discussion about potential changes that were going to happen with all those different uh tax credits and incentives. And so we advocated very strongly that the 40 tax credit specifically was really important for businesses, right? As a way for small businesses and and large businesses to save money and reduce emissions at the same time. And just, you know, help EV adoption, right? Which should be good for everybody. Had a lot of good meetings, you know, met with a ton of people both in the House and the Senate, all up and down Capitol Hill over many months. Unfortunately, as we all know, we lost that battle. And uh along with the consumer vehicle tax credit and many other incentives from the IRA did go away. Um and 40W specifically was at the end of September last year that that that that was taken away. Um, so that was that was uh you know a major kind of frustration and disappointment for us. And I think the uh part of the impact has also been that has just really um been another reason for people in the fleet industry to feel skeptical and hesitant about EVs, right? Because they're seeing all this kind of policy whiplash happening, right? Um uh at the federal level, especially. So that's and you know, that just sort of a general perception that um the Trump administration has done a lot of things to basically like kill EV adoption, kill infrastructure funding, you know, for EV charging, etc., which is not really the case, but but again, there's kind of a perception that has come, you know, come about, I think, yeah, for a lot of people. Um we and it was unfortunate, right, because basically 45W, which was really a business incentive, right? Like wasn't for consumers at all, um, just got lumped in as part of this kind of like politically charged environmentalist policy, being sort of like a business policy, right? Uh so you just didn't really unfortunate the way that played out. So I guess the impact of losing for you has been that, you know, there may have been I think there are some some deals that we see where the loss of that 45W tax credit, you know, maybe makes some EVs less cost effective than they were before, right? As an alternative. But it really didn't change the fundamental economics, which is that, you know, for a very large number of fleet use cases today, fleets will save money on a total costume ownership basis with EVs over time, right? And so that kind of fundamental economics hasn't hasn't changed. And as we continue to see costs come down over time for EVs, we're gonna just see more and more fleet use cases that become that are in the money, basically. And and also want to remind people that even though there's been a lot of changes at the federal level in policy and incentives, in many cases, that is actually bolstered at the state level and at the utility level, the offer of different, you know, EV and charging related incentives, right? So um, you know, don't let kind of the Trump administration's, you know, kind of changes uh make you think that the whole industry has completely you know died. I guess right. There's still a ton of incentives at other levels of government, other other organizations that are providing. Yeah, absolutely. You make a good the other thing I was gonna mention is we, you know, we another thing that I think we need to keep our eyes on is uh electricity affordability, right? And making sure because you know, for EV adoption and for electrification in general in the economy, right, we need affordable electricity. That's a big political topic now and it is getting some attention, but I think it is important to tie that back to EVs as well and make sure that people know, especially here in California where I am, you know, some of the utility rate increases recently just kind of are shrinking that fuel cost advantage that EVs have, right? More and more. So that's been something that we need to keep our eyes on. And then we're also uh something that we've heard a lot more about recently, actually in the last few months, is that because this administration and the industry in general is really excited about autonomous vehicles, that because almost all autonomous vehicles today are electric and then the future continue to be true, there's a lot of policy and regulatory work happening and interest in AVs, and that I think can be kind of a backdoor way for the industry to kind of push for you know helpful policy that will work for EVs as well. So that's something we we're trying to kind of get that message out there as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yeah. Um I I think you made a very good point. While the commercial uh vehicle uh tax um or you know incentive went away, uh the TCO does not change. That still remains the same because and really operators are going to be looking at it from that standpoint too. Yeah, the the tax credit would be um you know an offset of in terms of the acquisition of the vehicle, but over the lifecycle of the vehicle, your uh your your DC TCO has not diminished. You maybe spent a little more money or didn't get that rebate, but your total cost of ownership still still stands. And I think that that's uh that's an important call out, uh, as well as some of the other points that you've made. Uh you know, an outsider looking into this space would only be able to cite probably the clickbait aspects of the news to really think have an opinion about EV and EV charging and the EV industry as a whole. And it would might be a little negative, but at the same time, uh, you know, it's not reality once you're inside of it and really look. Looking at the economics of it and how it's coming together. And like you say, even present the president administration is looking favorably towards AV AV. And to your point, A V is pretty much always going to be electric. So, you know, it's it's not doom and gloom. It's pivot. It's not the end of things. It's it's transition. And I yeah, I have appreciated the public funding opportunities that have come into the market. I've appreciated those tax credits, but I've always been of the opinion that the market itself will always decide whether subsidies are in place or they're not. And so folks are gonna move in a direction that's right for them. I I remember some of the early chargers that I sold, you know, before 2020, and how there was funding available through Volkswagen back then. And there was something that's like, you know, we're not gonna mess with it. It's not worth our time to invest in it and apply for it and either get it or not get it. We have the money and we're gonna do it, or we don't have the money and we're not gonna do it. And it was, and I think that that's probably the right, the right framing. Hey, funding and credits and tax rebates and all that. Hey, we love all that, but it's it's not been um an impediment as those have come in and gone out. And I think that's what we'll continue to see is uh is an ebb and flow of of subsidies as it is. Fleet electrification. I want to talk about capital stack and and risk allocation as it relates to fleet electrification. That obviously requires someone to absorb risk. And to your point about affordable energy, that's the fuel source. And so affordable energy. I don't know what you guys are paying on average per kilowatt out there at charging stations in California. It's it's fairly affordable here, uh, but again, that volatility is a factor. And so someone's got to absorb that uh that risk. And then, of course, the utilization uncertainty. I imagine utilization is a topic that you have on the regular when you're talking to fleet operators about utilization. And so throughout all of that, uh you've got to navigate through that. So, how does inspiration mobility structure the deals so that risk is allocated intentionally rather than it's that gotcha? It's that, oh, we didn't think about. You're you're thinking about that and you're helping your customers think about that. So, what's that look like?

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely as a finance company or you know, you kind of a finance-oriented company, you can you can imagine we think a lot about risk and how to allocate it properly, right? And how to you know share it between the different parties. Um on the I'll I'll talk about the vehicle side and the charging side. So on the vehicle side of our business, when we lease vehicles to our customers, we give fleets, you know, usually different options when it comes to how much risk they want to take, especially on the residual value of the vehicle as part of that leasing structure, right? We have different options when it comes to, you know, basically do they take the the risk on the residual value at the end of the lease period or or do we, right, uh as the uh as the finance company. So basically, you know, they have different uh accounting systems and preferences, different financial situations, different balance sheet situations. And so different fleets have very different preferences on how they want to treat a lease, basically, right? And how much risk they're willing to take on residual value. So we do like to you know give some options there. Um and uh and just depending on the fleet, you know, they'll they'll do what's best for them. On the charging side of our business, yeah, we certainly are not in the business of doing pure public charging, um, just to be clear. And so when if we're gonna you know deploy charging infrastructure, there needs to be some utilization and really some contracted revenue, right, associated with that project for us to go and build you know significant uh piece of charging infrastructure. So um we what we need generally is the fleet operator to make a commitment, right? And in in writing that says, okay, we're going to use this many kilowatt hours per month, right? And so that we can underwrite the deal basically and have some sort of some sort of certainty there. We certainly don't want that to be punitive, right? And we always work with the customers very closely to make sure that the targets and the commitments that we put in the contract are you know realistic for them, right? And they feel comfortable with that. And and certainly there are cases, right, where up front we had a certain expectation, and then as we get a year into the deal, things have changed, the circumstances have changed. And so we are also willing to kind of you know be flexible and renegotiate things to kind of make it a win-win for both parties. So certainly that's really important to us is to make sure again that we're making this a good experience for our customers, right? We're not trying to just like you know make as much money as we possibly can and and not provide any benefit, right? We want to make sure that the benefit the customers are getting the benefit from their EVs and that it's not uh not you know kind of uh something that's hanging over their head. And so basically, as long as we get sort of a you know a commitment from the customer in terms of they're gonna adopt so many EVs and use this much energy on an ongoing basis, basically we will you know take basically all the risk when it comes to actually deploying that infrastructure, right? And like developing it, planning it, engineering, building it, operating and maintaining it, all those things, right? Like we kind of take on all those pieces, right, for fluid customers that are not energy charging infrastructure experts, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:55

In the um in the technology vein and and as it relates to where you sit from an operational edge, um, AI is a buzzword. There's a lot of aspirations around how AI integrates into our space, how it's leveraged from a utilization standpoint, from predictive maintenance standpoint. There's all these ways that AI can help us. But I would like to know kind of where inspiration mobility sits in that. First, I'd like maybe your opinion on where you think AI is actually creating some measurable leverage as it relates to charging, and then is inspiration mobility leveraging it and maybe how? Whatever you can share. Obviously, not secrets, but a secret sauce. But um, yeah, share what you can.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So I I think really quick at a high level, the fleet industry as a whole is adopting AI, you know, different fleets at different paces, right? But they are adopting it, you know, the industry is adopting AI and seeing it as a super important tool in the toolkit, right, to help optimize fleet management in the future. So we see that trend kind of across the board. Everybody, a lot of people are talking about it when it comes to inspiration specifically. We have spent a lot of time in our kind of in-house software development team has spent a lot of time building a kind of a ground-up tech stack that is really AI enabled and has kind of AI built in everywhere, right? Is to kind of enable a lot of different AI native tools and capabilities. So we're spending a lot of time on that. Like we have our own in-house uh fleet management platform that we uh that we call Garage, that has just got a ton of really cool AI-enabled features built in uh today, and that's only gonna increase in the future. That's kind of in general some of the things we're doing with AI as a company. Um, when it comes to the charging part of inspiration's business specifically, just um to get a little bit more granular there, um, I did recently write about this in a blog post, which uh certainly people can find online, um, about the intersection of AI and charging. And the most immediate and measurable benefit that we see so far from uh from AI is really um diagnosing and troubleshooting chargers, um, charging firmware failures, that kind of stuff. Just this one specific example, we had one of our DC FAS chargers at one of our sites in recent months that had repeated failures of a single part um over a few months. And we basically threw all the context about you know error code patterns, whatever field maintenance work was done on the charger over that time, kind of threw that all into the AI tool and got some really useful feedback basically and guidance um with all that context about what are what are some potential root causes for this particular part failing repeatedly, how to test for and and kind of identify, like isolate which root cause is actually the one that's causing it. Um, and even like a prioritized sequence of troubleshooting steps that we could go through to like if it's this problem versus that problem. And so that was that's been really helpful for us, right? And that's really accelerated our ability to kind of isolate problems, get them fixed faster. We can give the charting hardware vendor who's you know looking at the logs on you know with us. We can give them a lot more context so that they can speed up their diagnosis, and we can also give much better guidance, more specific guidance to the the field technician, right, that goes out to actually fix a charger. Obviously, you know, field advantage. I'm sure you guys are doing some of that as well on your side, right? Kind of that's it's it's just there's so much potential there, I think, for leveraging automation through AI to really just make it so much easier and and faster, right, for us to fix charger problems. And I guess the bigger impact of that that we see is that today we have the team that we have managing chargers that are sites, and we see that with these AI tools, we'll be able to scale up our business, manage more chargers without growing our headcount very much, right? It's just gonna be a lot more efficient, and therefore, like the operating cost per charger per site is gonna just go down over time, which is just a good thing for the industry, right? We can lower the opex of charging. Uh that's only more affordable for fleets and everybody else to uh to you know use EV charging. We do have a couple other things, just you know, use AI for automating reporting, doing better analytics on the performance of our chargers. We're talking, you know, seeing some partners that are doing like optimizing load profiles for charging uh to reduce utility costs, those sorts of things. And and yeah, really our internal kind of software development team, you know, is is you know has been reinventing itself and kind of rearranging its internal processes and roles because of the impact of AI, really, and taking it very seriously. So we're spending a lot of time on it internally as a company figuring out how do we leverage this amazing new you know tool and set the capabilities.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Yeah, I certainly uh there, you know, to to your point of of not increasing your headcount and but using the the technology and the resources of AI. I know um pretty much at field advantage, pretty much everybody has an executive assistant now, and that is an AI. So that's uh that's been helpful in in you know kind of streamlining certain tasks and certain you know things that are monotonous or routine, you know, that that can just be exponentially increased through that digital executive assistant there. As I was uh thinking about your you know, kind of customer base and the suite of solutions that you you bring to those fleet operators. One of the things that I was thinking of is wh whenever I was a fleet manager and we had converted to compressed natural gas, we of course brought on-site fueling, on on-site CNG fueling, but it was time-filled. And so there would be a need when vehicles, even though they arrived and parked every night, there was a time when they would go out beyond their normal road route profiles. And we needed to leverage kind of commercial CNG to be able to make sure they could get back home. And so that created a need for partnership uh because some of these CNG stations, especially way back then, they were few and far between, but we had to find them. And then we had to kind of create a partnership with them in order in order to get it, get accessed in and and and kind of go through whatever their transaction process is, and then they had to be able to bill us, we had to be able to pay at that site. And so I imagine that um, you know, through the through the creation of some of your sites, there's ones you're operator or one you're helping your your customers operate, there's got to be roaming partnerships that kind of expand uh the sandbox for them as a f as a fleet operator, but maybe even offer an opportunity for them to net revenue by allowing others into their into their fueling environments. And so how is inspiration mobility structuring roaming partnerships or if if you're doing that and what what's the site economics look like around that?

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Yeah, so we uh roaming partnerships really helpful and important, you know, for the industry as a whole and for us specifically. So I'll say on one side, in terms of when we have flea customers that are doing public charging, we have you know an app basically that that we you know provide to them that makes it easy for them to kind of like access many of the different poly charging networks with a single app, uh kind of simplify that interface and make you know kind of tracking payments and all that stuff easier. So on that side, you know, we have a solution that helps with public charging for our fleet customers that are going out in the public in public domain. For the DC fast charging sites that we uh own and operate ourselves, which we call our uh Power Up Point spites, is the brand name that we use, even though they're owned by Inspiration. For our Power Up Point sites, where we the business model there is we've got kind of an anchor fleet customer, which is a great customer of our Z Trip, which is the largest taxi fleet operator in the country. So we've got some sites we built for them where they're the kind of anchor tenant, if you will, but we've got other fleets that are sharing the same site coming in, and then those sites are also open to the public, to the general public, which we did you know last year. We opened those sites to the public as well. And um that's great. And in order to open to those other fleets and to the public, one of the ways that we have done that, and the main way we've done that is is through roaming partnerships, right? So we've done integrations between our charging management system backend and some of the other you know the apps that are out there to allow fleets to uh make it easier for them to access our site, right? And so that brings uh incremental uh demand, right, to our sites, which is good, you know, from a regular revenue perspective, obviously, makes the sites more profitable. And and we really see that as because we're not trying to build a consumer brand necessarily, right? We're really free to company, right? So we don't necessarily care as much if they're using somebody else's app, if it's a public, just a normal public driver, right, that's using somebody else's app to start a charging session and paper charging our site. That that's not really a problem for us, right? What we care about is that we're getting the incremental revenue and just opening out as many different channels and making it as easy as possible for as many drivers to find us, find our site as possible. And so we've got multiple roaming partnerships and back-end integrations already. We've got more kind of in the on the roadmap and the pipeline that we're working on as well. For us, um, that's something that we see is gonna continue to be an important way for us to kind of increase utilization of our sites um, you know, for the foreseeable future.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

That's good. Um, wanna kind of zoom out and and talk about the market kind of as a whole. We've obviously over the last few years seen companies overextending, cash burn, ships crashing. We've seen that. And so I imagine there's been some intention around structural decisions at inspiration mobility and and how you move in the market. And what what just your comments as an industry expert, as someone that's been in space for a time, what what structural decisions separate durable charging platforms and solutions uh from the ones that are built kind of on grow, go, you know, break things, move fast, build the plane as you're flying, and and really just some stabil stable long-term um you know growth and benefit.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Yeah, absolutely. So in this pretty volatile market, I would say inspiration is doing well, and and I'm very proud to be able to say that, you know, because that's not every comp not every company in the space right now can say that. Um and and yeah, we've certainly we are constantly evolving and finding new ways to serve customers, right? Kind of new niches, et cetera. So it's not like we've got everything or we had everything figured out on day one, but what I think we have been fairly disciplined and careful, I would say, especially compared to some of the other folks in this space. We were, as a company, we were founded right at the beginning of 2021, so just about five years ago, a little over five years ago, uh, which was like the peak of the SPAC hype cycle around EVs and EV charging, right? So companies were raising millions or in some cases billions of dollars, you know, pretty easily. Uh, and you know, a lot of investors were trying to get in there uh and make a quick buck on in that kind of you know hype cycle. What we did was we raised money uh and got commitments from some very serious, stable private equity firms in the infrastructure space that saw this as a long-term trend in terms of fleet electrication and were not just looking to make a quick like you know, get in for a year or two and then get out. Um is really like this is a big market that we that they wanted to plan. So that I think that was part of our strategy, right? Was having the right investors that had the right kind of mindset and right approach to the market. Like I said, we've been pretty disciplined and pretty careful about hiring and expansion plans. We've you know not grown ahead of our actual revenue or or you know, having visibility on real revenue to pay for uh the business and the people that we're that we have, and actually an eye on being cash flow positive since pretty early on in the company. So that's been super important, I think, just the that financial discipline. And it's been really gratifying to see that we have not, you know, we didn't do what a lot of companies did, which was get a bunch of SPAC funding and then grow their team super fast, right? Get to hundreds of people, you know, very quickly on the team, and then have to lay, you know, most of them off, you know, a couple years later when you know the market kind of materialized more slowly than everybody expected. So it's really you know, really easy to do that when times are good. And now as the market has slowed down a little bit, we feel like you know, it's really showing those who have been more disciplined, I think are standing out more. And I and I'm I'm proud to say that you know, we're in a strong financial position as a company. Today, that allows us to control our own destiny while so many others in the space have you know had to shut down, get acquired, or drastically reduce headcount and just to stay alive. And many of those companies now are coming to us, right? And so I think that's we're very we feel very fortunate and uh and very proud of that. Um and and I think we've been able to adapt quickly as well. Like we talked about 45W tax credit, you know, disappearing last year. And so we had to, you know, adapt to that pretty quickly in terms of how we were structuring our deals, right? Like how we were selling customers, et cetera, et cetera. So um there's been plenty of adaptation along with that discipline and careful planning. And the other thing I'll say is that you know, we really believe that we're establishing ourselves as a reliable, credible, long-term player in this industry, right? That is, you know, has is now become known as the partner for fleets that are serious about electrifying. So if you want to electrify your fleet, you know, you come to inspiration. And and I think that's that's been earned, you know, having been in the market now for several years and and just you know being kind of a steady presence, right? And not being a flash in the pan. And we're ready to you know support and work with customers and a lot of our large flip corporate fleet customers, right? We're talking about a 10, 15, 10, you know, five or 10, maybe more year process for them to transition their fleet to EVs, right? So want to be that long-term partner that goes from beginning to end from initial planning of that small pilot, you know, to start all the way through, you know, 100% or as close to 100% as possible of their fleet to EVBs.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

Yeah. Well, Dan, this has been a great conversation, um, insightful, and appreciate you sharing your thoughts. I'd, you know, I'd like your kind of forecasting around, you know, over the next few years, if we were to fast forward, just kind of what what do you think are the next binding constraints that we need to to navigate through? What's uh what are the barriers, what are the the hills to climb for this all to continue in, like you say, not being a flash in the pan, but but a long term. What what are the gates we need to get through to to get to that longevity?

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Yeah. So when I think about uh on the kind of EV charging side specifically for fleets, really what's holding the market back is the fact that you know fleets are not adopting EVs as fast as I would say, you know, we all probably wanted them to be. You know, when again, when I joined Expiration almost five years ago now, we had you know certain expectations about where the market was going to be in 2026, right? And I we're not there. And so that kind of like slower adoption has meant less willingness to you know send contracts to you know build charging infrastructure, right, as an example. And if some of those, you know, if it's if the adoption sped up, I think that would mean that there are a lot of the companies that are in the space focused on fleet charging would be expanding and doing great right now instead of you know consolidating or exiting the market. What that means is that the kind of the main bottleneck is really fleet strategy, the kind of fleet focus on on EV adoption. And we know there are a lot of different barriers around EV adoption, right? There's charging project costs and timelines, there's upfront cost of the vehicles, there's having the right EV models available to fit you know specific fleet use cases, there's the complexity of managing electricity costs and many others. And it really takes the right partner and team to help customers figure out where EVs make the most sense, right? And again, that's like a big argument we do, right? It's just that kind of upfront planning process, right? It's the adoption strategy. And our goal is really just to make that adoption process as smooth and easy as possible. But I really think that what it comes down to ultimately behind all those barriers, there's really the barrier which is human inertia. Fleet operators are sometimes with I think reasonable thoughts behind it, afraid, skeptical of EVs, about this different paradigm, which I, you know, you've talked about on previous episodes, this totally different paradigm of both fueling and operating the vehicles, right, with EVs. Um, and and or maybe they're frustrated about you know feeling like they're being forced into EVs by regulatory mandates, right? But we've had in California, for instance. So I know in my mind, the goal is really how do we overcome that human inertia by making you know EVs irresistible for right? And we've got still plenty of work to do in the kind of knocking down all the barriers and also having kind of successful case studies and examples to point to, right, for every different segment of the fleet market, right? I think we've got a lot of good examples today, especially for light duty passenger vehicles. And most of those are looking pretty good from a you know economics perspective and a use case perspective with EVs. Um more work to do, you know, certainly on the medium and heavy duty side of the market and those vehicle classes, right, to really point to like great examples of like this fleets that were successful, right, with EV deployments. But those are those are coming, right? They they do exist and they're gonna become more common. Um, but yeah, we've we've still got some work to do there. But I think, you know, like I said, that really the the constraint is ultimately um human uh resistance to change is a a difficult thing to overcome. And it just takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of different players in the market kind of working together to educate and like I said, to have to show these successful case studies that will overcome the skepticism.

SPEAKER_00 43:55

Well, Dan, as we get ready to close out this conversation, I'd like you to share any any final thoughts, being shots of wisdom. And then also for for the the audience, I'd like you to share your contact information and and how folks can get in contact with you to reach you directly to find out more about what you're doing in the space, what inspiration mobility is doing. Yeah, if you could do that.

SPEAKER_01 44:16

Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, just wrapping up what we're thinking about and what inspiration is thinking about is the fact that although the EV market in the US is growing more slowly than some of us would like, and and has slowed down a little bit again under the current administration, policy head ones, et cetera, the deployment is growing globally. Fleets globally are adopting EVs, right, in increasing numbers, and and and it's it is growing in the US too, right? Just more slowly than we were hoping. So the long-term trend toward electric mobility generally, right, is very clear. And we have absolutely no doubt about the fact that the end result is going to be that most transportation in the future will be electric, if not all. And so the only question is now, you know, how quickly we will get there in the United States versus other parts of the world. So even though we are not at the peak of the hype cycle right now for EVs, like we were a few years ago, you know, we still think that like, you know, this is a super exciting industry to be in. Uh, I wake up every day, you know, excited and eager to uh tackle the problems around fleet electrication. Um I think it's it's just a really rewarding and and fun place to be and uh working with interesting people like yourself in this in this industry to tackle these problems. And then the other piece of it, I think, is that you know, both electric vehicle and charging technology is maturing rapidly. Uh, I think it you know really is, you know, at the point where it's ready for mainstream adoption. Companies like Inspiration are, you know, despite like, you know, maybe a lot of people moved on to like hype about AI or other technologies or focusing on data centers, et cetera. Companies like Inspiration, we're gonna stay focused on this problem because it's really important for the future of our planet. Um, and also because it's not just a sustainability strategy, but it's also uh an economic and operational improvement um right that fleets will see with with electrification as well as something that again, like it's just necessary for us to have the future that we want for our kids. And then sorry, talk about my my contact information. So reach me by email, just dwilson at inspirationmobility.com. If you want to email me, I'm happy to respond that way. Um our company website is inspirationmobility.com. And then uh, of course, LinkedIn is a great way to uh contact me and also and I'll just Dane Wilson on LinkedIn. Uh and then Inspiration Mobility obviously can find inspiration mobility on LinkedIn as well, and that's a great way to do that. And uh and yeah, would love to hear from anybody that's interested in working with us on electrifying fleets or partnering with us to you know deliver solutions for electric fleets as well.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

Dan, thanks for coming on Field Frequency. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

Really appreciate it, Jason, and and keep up the good work here.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

This episode was produced and edited by the team at Atozi. To find out more, visit autosy.co a-ut-o-z-y.co.