Nearly 300,000 electric vehicles were sold in the United States last quarter, the latest record for a flourishing market amid the transition away from gas-powered vehicles.
It's a trend that a new Austin startup is banking on continuing.
Bullet EV Charging Solutions LLC installs and maintains electric-vehicle chargers in homes, businesses and parking garages. The company, which was formed last year but launched publicly this month, expects around 90% of EV charging will happen in homes and while parked at work, with the remainder occurring at remote charging stations.
While many electricians and companies offer charger installations, Bullet EV is counting on its acute focus on EVs and solar panels to help it win market share.
The startup is funded by its founders, including Allen Rezapour, who was a co-owner and managing director at Fox Rent-A-Car, acquired by France's Europcar Mobility Group in 2019. Bullet's other co-founders are Andres Pinter, a former managing director at Ares Management Corp. in Los Angeles, and Mark Vogel, a former vice president at two solar energy companies.
The three men have known each other through the years. Pinter's investment management firm, for example, worked with Rezapour's car rental company, as well as the homebuilding business where Vogel worked. Pinter said his firm loaned money to a lot of HVAC companies, in part because it saw needs in virtually every home.
That sense of scale translates to EV chargers, which Pinter said will likely become very common as electric vehicles replace those with combustion engines.
"Whether it's the consumers demanding it or whether it's the auto [original equipment manufacturers] pushing it or whether it's government mandates, EVs are inevitable," Pinter said. "So my kind of 'aha moment' was when I read somewhere that at the end of the day, 90% of EV charging is going to occur at home or the place of work."
With that, he reached out to familiar faces: Vogel for his solar and building experience and Rezapour for his business insight and fleet management experience. Together, they've self-funded Bullet and don't have any immediate plans to seek venture capital. The company has about 100 EV home charger installations under its belt and operates in Texas, Arizona, California and Colorado, with plans to go nationwide next year.
"We're the company that's going to give the consumer the whole entire envelope to become grid independent," Vogel said. "You're gonna' have the solar, you're gonna' have the storage, and you're gonna' have the EV charging, and not just necessarily in cities and towns but the rural areas. John Deere is gonna' make an electric tractor here pretty soon, and the rural community has got to be taken care of, as well."
In addition to the home charger installations, executives at the young company said a pipeline of commercial bids and contracts in the works put it on track to generate $20 million in revenue this year. Bullet is headquartered in Austin with an office on Congress Avenue, which the co-founders joked they picked because of the Fareground food court on the bottom level of the One Eleven Congress building.
The team is still small, with about 10 full-time office workers and roughly 35 field technicians performing installation and maintenance for both EV chargers and solar panel arrays. The co-founders said Austin is a prime location because of its high rate of EV adoption and the presence of Tesla, the nation's most prolific EV maker. The company plans to hire about 1,000 electricians by 2024 as it expands nationwide.
While forecasters anticipate EV sales will slow after some frothy years, Bullet's co-founders said sustained demand is assured. That's fueled by a couple factors: First, vehicle makers are introducing more electric models as government mandates nudge them in that direction. Second, Austin Energy and other utilities and governments are offering significant rebates that bring down the cost of installing solar panels, solar battery storage and EV chargers — not to mention tax credits at the federal level.
For example, Austin Energy offers EV owners a rebate of about 50% of the purchase and installation cost of an approved level 2 (240 volt) charging station. It provides a maximum rebate of $1,200 for open charge point stations and up to $900 for non-open charge point stations. The utility requires that chargers be installed by licensed contractors in order to qualify for the rebate and lists about 50 licensed electricians for the program.
While Bullet feels its offerings provide customers more assurances and expertise, the EV charging market is a competitive landscape that includes both very small businesses and corporate giants. For example, this week seven major manufacturers — including General Motors, Honda and BMW Group — announced a plan to double the number of fast chargers in the country by installing 30,000 near big cities and along well-traveled roadways.
"I'm not gonna' say that we're the only player out there," Pinter said. "But I think that one of the things that differentiates us is that this is all we do."
The company trains its electricians on solar and EV installations and pulls all necessary permits to comply with local rules. Bullet's leaders said it has been certified by two of the industry's biggest players, Tesla and ChargePoint, for charger installations.
"I think we're the Boy Scouts of the EV charger world," Pinter said. "I think there's definitely a lot of people out there that are in the business and a lot of competition, but we're trying to just kind of be the ones with professionalism and speed and especially specialization."
This story has been updated to correctly attribute information provided by Andres Pinter, one of the co-founders of Bullet EV.
