Startup Series: Electrifying Trucking with Flipturn
Katie Siegel is CEO and Co-founder at Flipturn.
Flipturn is an EV charging management platform for fleets and we're diving into the electrification of trucking.
At the beginning of 2024, the Advanced Clean Fleets law came into effect in California creating a number of mandates for zero emissions vehicle adoption in the trucking space. And the law impacts any fleet doing business in California, so there are nationwide implications.
Cody and Katie dig into this as well as the impacts on various types of trucks and routes. As fleet managers begin to anticipate compliance, they're realizing that understanding and managing charging will need to become a core competency for them. All of a sudden, things like power procurement and efficient energy usage will become a huge part of the equation for running a business that moves goods around. Flipturn raised a seed round in 2023 from Accel and Katie brings hands-on experience into the company after having previously grown her career through IPO at Samsara, a leader in telematics and Internet of Things, connectivity services for trucking and logistics.
Episode recorded on Jun 27, 2024 (Published on Aug 15, 2024)
In this episode, we cover:
[01:48]: Flipturn’s mission to electrify trucking and enhance fleet management
[02:28]: Katie's journey from Samsara to founding Flipturn
[03:39]: From telematics to EV infrastructure innovation
[05:14]: Transportation's role in pollution and the shift to electrification
[07:19]: Focus on electrifying last mile delivery and drayage
[10:25]: Differences in EV charging needs for delivery vans vs. drayage trucks
[17:23]: Flipturn’s software for efficient fleet charging
[19:00]: Strategies for setting up fleet charging stations
[22:21]: Challenges and solutions in vehicle electrification
[27:32]: Integrating truck OEMs with charging networks
[30:06]: How fleets choose charging software
[33:23]: Hydrogen vehicles in new zero-emissions law
[35:12]: Evolving challenges in the trucking industry
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Cody Simms (00:00):
Today on MCJ's Startup series, our guest is Katie Siegel, CEO and Co-founder at Flipturn. Flipturn is an EV charging management platform for fleets and we're diving into the electrification of trucking.
(00:15):
At the beginning of 2024, the Advanced Clean Fleets law came into effect in California creating a number of mandates for zero emissions vehicle adoption in the trucking space. And the law impacts any fleet doing business in California, so there are nationwide implications.
(00:34):
Katie and I dig into this as well as the impacts on various types of trucks and routes. As fleet managers begin to anticipate compliance, they're realizing that understanding and managing charging will need to become a core competency for them. All of a sudden, things like power procurement and efficient energy usage will become a huge part of the equation for running a business that moves goods around. Flipturn raised a seed round in 2023 from Excel and Katie brings hands-on experience into the company after having previously grown her career through IPO at Samsara, a leader in telematics and Internet of Things, connectivity services for trucking and logistics. But before we start, I'm Cody Sims.
Yin Lu (01:21):
I'm Yin Lu.
Jason Jacobs (01:22):
And I'm Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey.
Yin Lu (01:29):
This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (01:34):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help. Katie, welcome to the show.
Katie Siegel (01:48):
Thanks.
Cody Simms (01:49):
All right, we are diving into the electrification of the trucking space, so let's start from the top. Give us a little bit about yourself and a bit about Flipturn.
Katie Siegel (02:00):
Yeah, I am Katie. I'm the CEO and Co-founder of Flipturn. Flipturn is a EV charger and fleet management platform. Specifically, we help electric fleets manage their chargers in conjunction with all of their fleet operations, and so we work with various folks across the last mile delivery, refuse and heavy duty space helping them manage all their fleet operations.
Cody Simms (02:28):
Before starting Flipturn, it seems like you had a pretty relevant gig in your last company. Maybe explain a little bit about that.
Katie Siegel (02:36):
Yeah, so my journey in the fleet industry started at Samsara. I was one of the first dozen or so engineers at the company, so it was really fun to go through all of that growth when it was a tiny company through when it was a company that went public in December of 2021. That's really where I got both an appreciation for how complex fleet operations are, as well as the impact that technology can really have on them. Also, going through that startup journey was what inspired me to start Flipturn. I had the opportunity at Samsara to help launch a few different products. I was one of the first engineers on the Dash camera product, which is now one of their major product lines, and that was really fun to get started. And then in my last stint at Samsara, I led engineering for a brand new product line focused on on-site cameras and that was an incredible experience to be able to help start that product from scratch and launch it to market.
Cody Simms (03:39):
And Samsara is not exclusively in trucking but has a fairly sizable business line in, I guess, for lack of a better term, trucking IoT. Would that be the way to think about it?
Katie Siegel (03:50):
Yeah, Samsara has diversified from just being devices that track vehicles, there are multiple different product lines. And one of those product lines, the Connected Sites line was my main focus for the last two and a half years I was at Samsara.
Cody Simms (04:07):
And then you at some point thought, "Oh, there's going to be a bunch of EV trucks coming online," what was the path from building on-board cameras to EV charging infrastructure for trucking?
Katie Siegel (04:20):
After I left Samsara, I knew I wanted to work in climate and the area that I had the most background in was fleet. Transportation is the most polluting sector of the US economy, and in my opinion, electrification is one of the most obvious ways to decarbonize. The technology already exists at scale. If you just look at Europe, around 25% of all vehicles are electric, so we know it works and we just need to roll it out in the US to have a huge impact on emissions. And so that's what inspired me to start looking in that area. We talked to a bunch of different folks in the EV fleet space, mostly folks who were trying to deploy EVs into their fleet and started asking what their biggest pain points were, what problems they were running into their biggest frustrations, and that's what got us started.
Cody Simms (05:14):
And you mentioned that transportation's one of the most polluting sectors. I saw recently California has passed a pretty landmark law called the Advanced Clean Fleets Law that also has had some controversy with other states, I think recognizing they might need to comply with California. But one of the stats I saw about this law, which I'm going to have you tell us all about, one of the stats I saw says that the law could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from trucking fleets in the state of California by an equivalent through the year 2050 of taking 90 coal power plants offline. That's the size of the emissions footprint that this law would ameliorate from the trucking industry by going into effect.
Katie Siegel (05:58):
Yeah, it's amazing. California has passed a series of laws that have already made a huge impact on the deployment of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure in the state, and the ACF is probably the biggest one yet. And the thing that really stands out to me about the ACF is that it puts concrete percentages that fleets have to hit as time goes on. So it's a phased rollout where the most restrictive or the most aggressive legislation is being placed on the segments of the fleet industry where it makes the most business sense to electrify, for example, last mile delivery or drayage and then rolls it out a little bit later to those where the technology is still catching up. I think California has rolled out legislation in general in that way. For example, in 2021 it passed regulation on the ride-share businesses and that's why if you take a ride-share ride in California, most likely it's going to be in an EV more and more often these days.
Cody Simms (07:10):
Can you explain why last mile delivery and drayage are the first sectors of the trucking industry to be targeted by the new law?
Katie Siegel (07:19):
Yeah, looking at the duty cycles of those segments of vehicles as well as the cost analysis in those segments, it starts to make a lot more sense. So for example, with last mile delivery, the duty cycle is you're driving shorter distances, you're doing a lot of local driving and you're making a lot of stops and you can generally come back to a central lot and charge overnight. That's really friendly to EVs. EVs are more efficient comparatively in local driving where there's a lot of stopping because EVs have something called regenerative braking where when you stop, the EV can actually recover a lot of energy back into the vehicle and drive more efficiently and can save you even more money on your fueling costs. Additionally, since there is such a long dwell time overnight, the EV has plenty of time to charge and you can get away with a cheaper type of charger, level two versus DC fast charging, much cheaper to buy, much cheaper to install, much lower energy requirements for that charger.
(08:28):
And then lastly, everyone has heard about range anxiety and that short routes of local driving is one of the best ways to avoid that for the time being, in comparison with long haul where you're going much, much, much longer distances in a single route.
Cody Simms (08:44):
And what about drayage?
Katie Siegel (08:46):
It's very similar with drayage. Drayage vehicles are going from the warehouse or the yard where they can charge to the port. You also get a very similar effect with the driving patterns where there's a lot of idling that happens today by the port. You go down there and you'll see a line of diesel powered vehicles today spewing fumes into the air and generally being very inefficient. It wastes a lot of fuel to sit there idling and EVs do a good job of not utilizing a lot of fuel when you're sitting there, and so not only do you again maximize the fuel savings, it's also extremely impactful from a public health aspect. For example, those areas tend to be lower income and a higher percentage of electric vehicles means that you're spewing less fumes into the air to impact public health in those areas.
(09:41):
One more thing on drayage vehicles, they have the ability to come back to a central lot to charge. While there are definitely some pretty big challenges when it comes to installing, charging at scale to be able to support a large fleet of drayage vehicles, they still are able to come back to a predictable location to charge and don't have to rely on public charging, which as of today is relatively under invested in and unable to support for example, long haul EV trucking at scale.
Cody Simms (10:13):
And these are also different types of vehicles. A last mile delivery vehicle is probably more like a van type of thing, whereas a drayage truck looks like a semi truck. Am I making the right mental leaps here?
Katie Siegel (10:25):
Absolutely. A delivery van is [inaudible 00:10:28] delivering your packages on a day-to-day basis, it's a smaller vehicle. Drayage is essentially the same size of vehicle that is doing the long haul trucking. So these are huge vehicles and that's why I mentioned with last mile delivery, you can get away with charging them with level two chargers, they have smaller batteries. With a drayage truck, you try to charge a Class 8 truck on a level two charger, you're going to be waiting for a very long time and that's why these vehicles require this more expensive charging infrastructure with higher energy requirements to be installed, which does pose some challenges to the fleet.
Cody Simms (11:06):
And what in particular are the conversion requirements as part of this new law for each of these two categories?
Katie Siegel (11:14):
So the conversion requirements start at 10% in 2025 across box trucks, vans, yard tractors, delivery vehicles. That's the biggest focus right now. The next segment that is under the ACF, the 10% requirement is in 2027 instead of 2025. And then for that first segment, the percentages increase in steps over time until a hundred percent is required in 2035 and beyond. That being said, it's worth mentioning that currently the ACF, even though it was supposed to go into effect in January 1st, 2024 is currently not being enforced. There is a bunch of legislation going through and CARB has said that it is not currently going to be enforcing it. However, it has also mentioned that it may retroactively enforce it starting as soon as later this year once some of those discussions are resolved.
Cody Simms (12:17):
CARB being the California Air Resources Board. And I think some of the legislation that you talked about is, as I mentioned, there are I think something like 17 states suing California saying, "Hey, you're making our own economies more challenging because," as I understand it, in order to do any... This law applies to any trucking fleet that wants to do business in California. And so basically if you're in Kansas or Illinois or whatever and you need to get goods out through a port in the West Coast, a port in California in particular, you now are subject to compliance here.
Katie Siegel (12:54):
Yeah, California has taken a very strong stance and it is challenging for fleets to electrify. I really don't want to understate the challenges that folks have to work through in order to make this happen. And I do think that California has taken the stance of, we're going to just pass a really aggressive law and that will push the whole industry in the way that we think it needs to go and then folks will figure it out along the way.
(13:22):
A lot of the fleets that we work with at Flipturn are dealing with all of these challenges in operationalizing their EVs and installing charging infrastructure and operating the charging infrastructure efficiently and coordinating their operations across EVs and chargers and training up everyone on how to use the new technology. And so I really have a lot of empathy for the challenges there. That's why as a company, we not only provide a product, we also spend a lot of time talking with folks and hearing their problems. And so I totally understand why a lot of folks are upset that the legislation has been rolled out as it has.
Cody Simms (14:07):
All right, I have one more question on the intrastate impacts and then let's definitely dive into Flipturn and what you do. One of the reasons I think this law is so interesting is because it's California essentially trying to be the big heavy and create legislation that's relevant for California, but because California's population is so large and it has so many ports that it really does almost become essentially national level legislation. And yet, you just described that at least for the first phase of this law, it's primarily focused on last mile delivery and/or drayage, which is back and forth travel. Most of that seems like that would be in California, like long intrastate trucking feels like it is not impacted in the immediate term. Am I following correctly?
Katie Siegel (14:52):
Yes, you're following that correctly. The legislation for say the Class 8 vehicles that go longer distances doesn't start coming into effect into 2027, but that's not that far away. So folks are correctly looking ahead and starting to move on legislation and also starting to get worried because in order to deploy EVs in 2027, you need to start now on your charging infrastructure sometimes, especially if you're doing the heavy duty vehicles.
Cody Simms (15:23):
All right, I said I'd move into Flipturn, but I have one last question which is are there enough EVs yet to handle all of this? Is the supply of Class 8 EV trucks that great yet?
Katie Siegel (15:36):
No, there have definitely been some challenges on the supply chain side. However, what I will say from my perspective inside the industry is that even in the last two years, it's come a huge way. What I saw when the original EVs went out, folks were piloting them, there were definitely some challenges in keeping them operational. Today I see a whole bunch of Class 8 EVs that are in operation and are performing reliably. I still think that there's more to come, but the technology does work today and I know that folks are ramping up production and see electrification as inevitable.
Yin Lu (16:16):
Hey everyone, I'm Yin a partner at MCJ Collective here to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast.
(16:28):
We started in 2019 and have grown to thousands of members globally. Each week we're inspired by people who join with different backgrounds and points of view. What we all share is a deep curiosity to learn and a bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change. Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams have met, several nonprofits have been established and a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made as well as ongoing events and programming like monthly women in climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops and more. Whether you've been in the climate space for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to mcjcollective.com and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show.
Cody Simms (17:17):
All right, let's dive into Flipturn. Why don't you start by describing your product? What is the solution that you're offering?
Katie Siegel (17:23):
So Flipturn helps EV fleets handle their charging operations. What we do is our software only platform connects remotely to on site charging infrastructure. So we're directly communicating with the on site charging hardware and we can tell you the status of the charger, we can tell you if there's any health problems with the charger, and we can also directly control the power output of the charger, which helps us do some interesting things.
(17:52):
On the flip side, we can also connect up to a whole host of different fleet software systems that have valuable data that needs to be pulled into the picture. For example, I worked at Samsara, we have a Samsara integration and we have multiple other telematics integrations. We utilize data about the vehicle's current state of charge and status and historical driving patterns as well as information about the vehicle's schedules and routes to optimize the charging and let you know if there's going to be any problems with your operations. And finally, we also offer the ability to integrate with on-site battery and solar as a third piece to this whole puzzle because a lot of folks who are installing EV charging at scale need to increase the amount of energy supply that they have and one of the best ways to do that is to deploy on-site DERs.
Cody Simms (18:51):
Are most of these fleets installing the charging stations at some kind of truck bay that they operate that the trucks come to at the end of the day?
Katie Siegel (19:00):
Yes. That's the most common thing. The best time to charge is overnight when folks are not driving the vehicles and energy is relatively cheaper. So a lot of the largest deployments of EV trucks is in Southern California. That's because of the California legislation and it's also because that's where a lot of the incentives are. SoCal Edison, the utility in particular has been very proactive about incentivizing electrification and even helping pay for charging infrastructure through incentives.
Cody Simms (19:37):
It makes for an interesting transition if you think about it, because these large truck operators or fleet operators didn't used to have fuel on-site. At the end of the day, you would stop at a big truck stop and you probably had some corporate rate with that Flying J or whatever, and you would fill up your truck and then you would go wherever you're going to go to turn the truck in at night, now you're actually going to the central depot, if you will, and fueling happens there. And that means all of the sudden these depots, I'm making mental leaps here, hopefully you'll tell me if I'm right or wrong, but these depots now need to think about things like power procurement to the truck depot, which they probably never had to consider before.
Katie Siegel (20:22):
Yeah, it's worth saying that in the trucking industry, historically a lot of fueling has happened on-site, but definitely also at truck stops and additionally, the energy thing is totally new. So there are a lot of roadblocks that folks run into when they're first getting up and running and installing their charging infrastructure. The most common problem you run into first is let me just energize my site. And that's why you need to start planning for electrification pretty early. So taking a step back, what do you need to do to install EV chargers on your site? You need to first contact your utility and say, "Hey, can you deliver all this energy to my site?" We're talking about a huge energy upgrade, especially if you're installing DC fast charging.
(21:08):
One of those DC fast chargers can be 350 kilowatts maximum power. We're even seeing megawatt charging systems come out these days and that's a huge infrastructure upgrade. You have to work together with your utility because it's on their side and they need to make the investment to upgrade the energy delivery capabilities to your site. That can take one to three years and requires coordinating with different folks to get it done. And some of these timelines have coincidentally been challenged by the surge in AI companies who also need a lot of power. However, one side benefit is because of these AI companies, I think the US electrical grid and utilities have been getting a lot more scrutiny on that side because now there's lots of folks who want to improve the capabilities of the grid.
Cody Simms (22:06):
With Flipturn, are you mostly focused on these large class 8 trucks that are going to have to set up upwards of a megawatt of power at their site or are you mostly for now focused on last mile vans and box trucks?
Katie Siegel (22:21):
We're honestly diversified across those segments. It is easier to install a site of level twos because the power needs are a lot less and the individual chargers are a lot less costly. So I definitely expect the last mile delivery segment to grow the fastest when it comes to EV deployment, just look at Amazon, they're rolling out EVs en masse. Same with the other last mile delivery players.
(22:47):
On the other side. We do work with quite a few folks that have deployed heavy duty EV trucks. We work with both the fleets on that who have deployed their own charging infrastructure, and we also work with charging as a service companies such as, for example, Zeem Solutions and Forum Mobility who are providing the much needed charging services for fleets that have bought EVs but don't want to go through the pain of installing EV infrastructure. There are a bunch of these companies that are popping up and installing EV charging en masse across the country. I don't think a lot of folks are aware at what scale EV charging is rolling out for fleets across the country right now, and many of these companies have launched their inaugural sites or their initial sites in Southern California but there are dozens that come over the next few years.
Cody Simms (23:41):
Just a side note for listeners, we had Forum Mobility who Katie just mentioned on the show probably a year or more ago, for anyone who wants to really dig into the drayage sector and the implications of electrification of that sector, go listen to the forum episode, it's a good one.
(23:59):
And Katie, I guess you all aren't necessarily needing to get involved with these fleet managers as they're making their decisions on what their charging infrastructure looks like per se, you're more showing up saying, "Now that you have this infrastructure in place, we're going to help you manage your operations against it as efficiently as possible." Is that the right way to think about the work you do?
Katie Siegel (24:23):
After fleets get up and running they typically run into two main pain points. The first is they care a lot about uptime. Uptime is the number one thing that matters. They really need their vehicles to be able to leave on time for the route it needs to accomplish. Fleets constantly worry that a driver will get on site to pick up a vehicle and it just won't be charged. Maybe the driver forgot to plug it in the night before, maybe the charger erred out mid-session leaving the vehicle half charged, but either way, if the vehicle can't go, they're letting their customers down, which is totally unacceptable.
(24:57):
I was talking to an electric bus operator that oversees a hundred buses for example, and I asked how many of them spontaneously stop charging overnight every day and he says, "At least one." So we haven't really figured out charging yet, and sometimes these chargers can be unreliable. It's new technology. What would you expect?
(25:17):
So that's the first thing that we help folks with. We help them get full visibility into their charging operations. We help them understand when their vehicles are going to be ready to go, whether they're on track, what the status of the charging is, and if there are any errors that are impacting their charging operations. We can show that to them in real time in an operational dashboard that they can use to monitor all of their operations or we can send them proactive alerts to get them to pay attention if there is a problem in the moment.
Cody Simms (25:51):
Everything you just said checks out from my own personal experience not driving trucks but just charging my phone at night. I swear maybe one out of every 60 days I wake up and I know I plugged it in, but for whatever reason, either the plug was unplugged from the wall or whatever, but darn thing didn't charge. And gosh, it's frustrating when that happens. With a phone, it's not that big of a deal. You just plug in your backup battery and you're off to the races, but if you can't deliver your kids to school that day because the bus didn't charge or you have an entire shipment of stuff that can't go out, obviously there are huge implications.
Katie Siegel (26:24):
Absolutely. There's also a whole new dimension of this, which is the cost. So charging your fleet EV is quite different from charging your personal EV. When you take your Tesla to a supercharger station, you want to charge as fast as possible so you can leave as quickly as possible and all of the electricity costs are getting passed on from the site to the consumer so they don't care as much about the price of electricity because it's getting 100% passed on. On the flip side, when you have all of your delivery vans come back to a central site at night, you know that they don't need to leave until the next morning, and so if you can save 30% or 40% on your electricity costs by just shifting charging to a less expensive time, you definitely want to do so since that's going to have a huge impact on your bottom line.
Cody Simms (27:19):
How vertically integrated are the truck OEMs that are starting to show up and the charging networks? Are you seeing, because this is an entirely new space, is anyone trying to own the whole stack like Tesla did?
Katie Siegel (27:32):
I'm still thinking about that last question that you asked, the previous one, I still have one more thing to say on the way that fleet charging is different from public consumer charging, I would say there's a lot bigger the need for visibility at scale because as an individual EV driver, you're going to notice if you're sitting in your vehicle and the vehicle stops charging. On a larger site, you have all the drivers come back, they plug in their vehicles and they leave for the day. And as someone who's responsible for all of those vehicles being charged, you might not be at the site. You might need remote visibility into the status of all the chargers, whether they're all still healthy, whether they're all charging the vehicle on time, and that's an additional need that is required for a fleet to deploy EV charging at scale.
Cody Simms (28:25):
Kind of similar to in a software tech company, the overnight operations manager who's just making sure all the servers are still running, it's the same kind of deal.
Katie Siegel (28:34):
Yeah. Or like how Samsara helps you monitor the status of all your vehicles and how they're doing and whether there are any health problems there.
Cody Simms (28:43):
I'm curious on the market dynamics. Are you seeing vertical integration happen between the trucks themselves and the charging networks, much like Tesla as they came to market originally, just wanted to own the whole pie, and if you are, does that give you room to play as a third party software analytics provider in the middle of all of that?
Katie Siegel (29:04):
What we're seeing is that when we first got started, or even right before we got started, a lot of folks on the OEM side were trying to own the entire experience vertically providing the hardware and the software and sometimes even providing the vehicle. I'm seeing a shift in the industry that coincidentally and luckily benefits us, which is that a company that focuses on building really great software and has expertise in building really great software is going to be able to build a better software product than a company that has their expertise in building hardware or power electronics for chargers. And as a result, when we approach the fleet and provide our value prop and do a live demo, the fleet is able to see the difference in the OEM provided offering and the offering that we have, and it's ultimately the fleet customer that makes that decision.
Cody Simms (30:01):
Interesting. And the fleet customer that makes what decision, can you elaborate on that a little bit more?
Katie Siegel (30:06):
The purchase decision. So when a fleet installs charging, they have to make a decision as to what software they're going to use to manage the charger, and there are some charger companies that build their own software and there are some charger companies that prefer to partner with software providers. What I've seen is that even if a charger company offers their own software, the trend these days is that the fleet will go make an independent decision of the software they use to monitor those chargers. And a company that focuses on building really great software and has that as our spike in expertise is going to build a better product than a hardware company that needs to split their attention and also has a primary expertise in building hardware. And so when it comes to the selection process, we're able to stand out in that process and move forward and close deals with customers.
Cody Simms (30:57):
And timing wise for you guys, you mentioned that, for example, the new legislation in California, the Advanced Clean Fleets law hasn't gone into enforcement yet. Are you already up and running managing active fleets, you have some companies that are getting a jumpstart on this, or is everybody putting the infrastructure in place waiting for this to be forced to happen?
Katie Siegel (31:19):
People have really been moving much more than one would expect from the doom and gloom on the news. Even folks that are suing California are under the radar investing in their electrification programs because now is the time to figure it out if any law is going to go into effect. Additionally, a lot of folks, even folks that are very loud on the challenges of electrification really believe that this transition is inevitable, and I think that a lot of these fleets have very valid concerns. Electrifying is a huge undertaking, installing charging infrastructure and operating it is difficult and is a new muscle, and so I think the reaction is reasonable in that they understand it'll be a challenge in their operations, but I do think talking to a lot of them individually, there is a sense of the inevitability of the ship.
Cody Simms (32:13):
What about hydrogen? Where does that fit in? It almost seems like a foregone, that's not part of the equation here, but surely there are also continuing to be investments in hydrogen for long haul trucking, I would think.
Katie Siegel (32:27):
Yeah, I suspect that the future will be that of a mixed fleet. I think that hydrogen is a really interesting technology, really promising, definitely is not as widespread as EVs. I, as well as all the other folks in the sector am really interested in how it works out. There's a lot of pilots going these days with hydrogen vehicles. In a way it's a little bit like all those EV pilots that went out a couple of years ago, and I'd love to see the data of how it all works out. That said, just like with delivering electricity to EVs, there are going to be challenges in delivering hydrogen fuel at scale. That infrastructure is not built up quite yet, and so it's not a free pass to just go with hydrogen, there are still a bunch of fueling challenges.
Cody Simms (33:16):
Is it contemplated as part of the Advanced Clean Fleets law or is the ACF wholly focused on battery electric vehicles?
Katie Siegel (33:23):
The ACF mentions zero emissions vehicles, so hydrogen would totally count.
Cody Simms (33:29):
Okay, interesting. What else do I have for you, Katie? Tell us a bit about how you've financed the business so far.
Katie Siegel (33:35):
Yeah, we are backed by a couple of different investors. Our lead for the seed was Excel, so I work with Dan Levine over at Excel, and it's been a good time.
Cody Simms (33:45):
Dan is who put us in touch, and I'm very glad he did because this has been a fun conversation. What else should I have asked? I got one, where do you need help right now for anyone listening who's motivated by what you're doing?
Katie Siegel (33:56):
Well, I would say that things are pretty exciting at Flipturn right now. Not only are we working with the folks that you can see on our website, we love working with them. We are also working with a whole bunch of fleets that we haven't announced yet. Some folks in the Fortune 500, and as a result, we are growing the team. We haven't opened any new roles yet, but over the course of the next year as we bring on more and more customers, I would expect us to incrementally grow both on the engineering side and on the go-to-market side. Our website is Getflipturn.com, and as we open up these roles, we'll be posting them on our website.
Cody Simms (34:36):
Katie, I so appreciate you joining us today and good luck. You're in the thick of a incredibly dynamic transition and trucking is the backbone of the American economy, really. You're helping it as it's completely going through the type of change that, frankly, that sector has never had to navigate.
Katie Siegel (34:57):
Thanks. Yeah, I'm really excited for all the changes that are going to come to the industry over the next few years. I know there's a lot to figure out. I love working in this industry because there's a lot to figure out, and I feel like we're just getting started with the transition.
Cody Simms (35:12):
Awesome, thanks for your time.
Katie Siegel (35:14):
Thanks.
Jason Jacobs (35:15):
Thanks again for joining us on the My Climate Journey podcast.
Cody Simms (35:19):
At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem-solving capacity.
Jason Jacobs (35:28):
If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at mcjcollective.com. And, if you have a guest, let us know that via Twitter @MCJPod.
Yin Lu (35:41):
For weekly climate op-eds, jobs, community events, and investment announcements from our MCJ Venture funds, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter on our website.
Cody Simms (35:51):
Thanks, and see you next episode.
