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- [00:01]
A
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- [01:10]
B
If you still haven't ordered her Valentine's gift, don't panic. Just hurry and go to 1-800-flowers.com to save up to 50% on beautiful premium roses. What sets 1-800-flowers apart from the rest are their premium first cut flowers backed by their seven day freshness guarantee plus same day delivery when you need them right on time for Valentine's. This deal ends February 10th, so don't wait, beat the clock and save up to 50% at 1-800flowers.com podcast. That's 1-800-flowers.com podcast. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ever Everything Electric podcast where today we have a really special guest for you. But before we get to that, if you could do us the honor of liking and subscribing. We so appreciate it. It really does help us out and ensures that we can come to wonderful places like Antwerp where we're recording today. But today I'm catching up with the CEO of Windrose Technology, Wen Han. Now, Windrose Technology is a relative latecomer to the world of electric vehicles, but it seems to me that that timing is totally strategic. Windrose Technology are developing electric HGVs and unlike some of predecessors or some of those early arrivals, Nikola Volta trucks that were forced to develop components themselves and completely vertically integrate, Windrose have been able to wait for that electric vehicle supply chain to mature and as such rapidly accelerate their delivery of their electric HGV. Today they have a stunning truck that boasts a 670 kilometer range, an unusual central driving position, pretty good aerodynamics and they have a very interesting approach to manufacturing and scaling. So we are going to get into all of that but first a very quick advert break. Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean energy Tech are funded by our fun packed test drivetastic events in the north west and Greater London and our events down under. Next up, Everything Electric North 2026 plus check out EverythingElectric store for merch and much more. Wen, thank you so much for giving up your morning this morning. I guess first things first, if you had to explain wind rose trucks in one sentence, what would it be? What's the goal?
- [03:31]
C
Good question. We're trying to redesign the way trucks are built and operated and designed for the global market.
- [03:40]
B
Now we've had the pleasure of spending some time with the truck yesterday. There will be a full episode coming out on the truck. I think just after this episode, maybe before I'll have to consult the production schedule. But just to bring everyone up to speed, gives the little 101 of the Global E700 truck the top line stats.
- [04:00]
C
Yes. So we. Well, the first thing you should know is we're only four years old as a company with about 122 people. I always start with that because our speed of execution and learning is our most important strength in terms of the product. Our goal is to use it to electrify 5% of the world's total carbon emissions, which is also about 5% of the world's GDP that is going into trucking. So the truck that you saw, long haul, big rigs like that, they actually account for 1/20 of all the economic activity on the planet.
- [04:36]
B
Which is mad. Yes, it's really mad. And I guess partly because we see trucks all the time, we don't even think about them. But actually all of these trucks are carrying around very precious cargo, contributing to economies worldwide. They are cyber and pollution.
- [04:52]
C
Yes, the product is meant to be a very global product, has the name. The E is of course for electric and the 700 is the range. The naming is very different from traditional truck models. Traditionally trucks are named esoterically. They're almost trying to prevent you from understanding what they're doing. Many times the the numbers mean horsepower or you know, sort of cylinders and all these things. We make it really simple. 700 is also about how many kilowatt hour battery we have as well as the approximate range that we have. Right. So it's a global truck, which means we've homologated the truck Certified it in Europe, North America, China. It's coming to the uk. We hope we can get the paperwork done well before summer this year. And as you already noticed, the driver sits in the middle and so that we don't have a left hand version versus a right hand steering version. So global is really the key word, the key key keyword. The second word, E, of course is all electric, battery powered. We focus on LFP battery, 700 plus kilowatt hour and then 700 is the battery size and the range. Conservatively, we do 670 kilometers of range that's been tested in five continents. Asia, South America, North America, Europe, not the UK yet, but very soon. And then also in Oceania, which is Australia and New Zealand. So we're really familiar with right hand steering, left side driving markets.
- [06:36]
B
There are so many questions that we need to get into in this podcast. Not least the choice for lfp, not least the fact that you've been on this journey for just four years and somehow have established yourself in all of these different markets. And of course have a truck that is far more than a simple prototype. So I do want to get into all of those things. But let's just pause on the fact that there is a central driving position. You told me yesterday that no truck with a central driving position has ever been homologated before. And it's kind of crazy to me because it makes so much sense. If you have a central driving position, the very same truck can exist in all of these different markets, irrespective of left hand drive or right hand drive, which presumably that introduces a lot of simplicity into your design and manufacturing process too.
- [07:20]
C
Yes, when trucks were invented in 1890, all trucks looked the same, which was much like a horse carriage. And then the European cabover trucks actually came to the United States. However, later in the 70s, the United States had something called bridge law, which forced the distribution of the weight to be longer, more spread out, hence the longer nose US style truck. But that stopped being a factor. I mean, bridges are much better built today than in the 70s. But trucking is traditionally a local business, meaning as you manage your truckers, your customers, you're generally moving cargo on highway. And highways are by definition not cross Atlantic or cross Continental. So European trucks stay in Europe, US trucks stay in North America. So there hasn't been a pressing need to really make it super global. However, there's a couple of different things about our industry. Electrification is a global industry. If you look at the units people use, there's no more of imperial versus metric Everything is the same. Everybody speaks kilowatt hours, everybody speaks volts and amps, which are actually generally British European names. So luckily for us, electrification is unifying the metrics, which is interesting and not to be taken for granted. The other thing is, as the way we do our. We designed the business to be. To be global for two reasons. One is, like you said, it's going to be so much more efficient. The second is we can do it now because of the way AI is helping us learn new information. So we're in Belgium today. We're people speak Dutch as their official language and then also French and English. However, I speak almost no Dutch. Not speaking the language and choosing to set up our company headquarters in such a place is quite a risky move. However, with AI's help, we can speak to local people or learn documents and regulations very, very quickly and cheaply. So we are aided by AI. We wanted to build a global truck because we had to. Otherwise we don't have time. Yeah, we can't do that because we have AI and we're generally sort of younger people. Most of our guys, and unfortunately, mostly guys today, have more than eight years of trucking experience. But it's just about that. You know, we tend to be sort of at the prime age where you've learned enough, but you can also grow quickly. And again, that's very different from a traditional manufacturing organization. You have the guys here. They were in China last week. They were in Nordics last week, and they're in here this week. And then next week they fly to China in March. We're all in Chile and Australia. Everybody learns together and firsthand. So that's really what's, I think, truly different about our organization.
- [10:28]
B
And that is often the beauty and joy of working in a startup environment. You're forced to wear so many different hats. It forces that camaraderie as well. Now, for anyone who is listening to this podcast and not watching, I just want to point out that when you're annoyingly young and actually have some phenomenal experience behind you. So I want to talk a little bit about your background because you were a Stanford Business School graduate.
- [10:51]
C
Yes.
- [10:52]
B
You worked at Bridgewater in a hedge fund. You then were part of the leadership team at plus AI, which was developing autonomous technology for four trucks. What on earth made you think, do you know what? I'm going to go and do the hardest bit of this and actually make the trucks and perhaps willingly enter into that production hell, as it's so often known.
- [11:14]
C
Good question. Most people don't choose to go into production hell, I think it's. I can't remember who said it. A successful person said it. You can only do what you're good at and then sort of find passion for it. You generally are not so lucky to specialize in the thing you enjoy. So first think about what you're good at and then enjoy it and then make it into a career. So the way I step into trucking is really serendipitous. When I came out of Stanford graduate school business, I worked for a venture capital fund for a short while called GSR Ventures, one of the top ones in the world. And they had invested in plus AI. Plus AI was founded by a number of Stanford graduates also. So there was double connection. And David, who's been a great mentor and now the CEO and co founder at plus AI invited me to join and I said no. I said I would never work for a startup. I wanted to be an investor. I want to be like, meet us list, top name and every business I touch turns into gold. And that never happened. And six months later he still asked me several times and I said, why don't I give it a shot? And so I joined the company knowing nothing about trucks or trucking or even doing business. I had never worked at a real company before. Bridgewater is nothing like a real business. It's a group of really smart people blessed with lots of resources, not having to think about the struggles of everyday life. So went into Plus AI 2018, spent the next four years there and eventually became the CFO and chief strategy person. We did deals with the Amazon trucking program, Scania and Tradetown here. Iveco in sort of Europe and the rest of the world, also Australia. So got to see the world and got to see maybe there's a chance to try to make a more interesting truck. We never say things like we like to replace and kill and eradicate traditional trucks. We always say we want to make a different product where the customers don't even have to choose if they want our truck for this use case of long haul and heavyweight electric usage. And if they want to get the same truck like Ikea Furniture globally, they have to use our truck. They will generally use our truck alongside a traditional or two traditional brands. And we like that very much. So I learned to understand the dynamics of not just being competitive, but also thinking how to make friends. And the truck business is really a group of huge companies who've been around for 100 years. And it takes sort of a lot of thinking to go into that and it is not the recommended path for sort of a Silicon Valley style startup. But I've come to really enjoy it because I think I can do a good job and there's so much more that we can do for this industry.
- [14:27]
B
So I know that a lot of people will look at the truck and think, oh, that kind of reminds me of a Tesla semi. Which I think is a little bit of a oversimplification because the fact is if you are optimizing a truck for aerodynamics, it is going to end up with a slightly swoopy shape, sort of slightly more, a longer nose. But the biggest differentiation between yourself and Tesla is the choice to include a sleeper cab. Tesla have sort of said that they're thinking about hub to hub transport, less overnight transport. But for trucks to exist in Europe, it seems like the sleeper cab is a really essential component. Can you talk about that choice? And especially on a backdrop of a world where as a platform, as a software defined platform, it lends itself so well to a future of level four, level five autonomy, where perhaps we don't need to think about having sleeper cabs for drivers. What was some of the logic?
- [15:21]
C
That's a very good question. It's too bad that not more trucks look like the Tesla truck. I think every truck ought to be more aerodynamic. And you see people do that, they add a little skirt, a little hat and all these things, but it's not enough. The Boulder train design is quite obviously the right answer. What is not obvious is how do you actually make the truck? How do you make the insides of the truck to fit into that shape? Because you have to redo the entire arrangement of the. It's a different thing. So all the tooling, all the capital expenditure you've put in for the last decades is really not usable anymore. So that's why this was such a design change and that's why we got it patented. You can see it on the wall. Yes, this is the chassis and on the other side of the building is the cab, which is patenting it is not our goal way to make money. Patenting is to show people it's a bonafide new technology. Now regarding the Tesla, we're really super excited. I've said this as many times as I can that the Tesla SMI is now in production. It started in 2017 when I was still in business school. And many people question and say, how does it take so long? And I think it takes so long because Elon is doing Samsung, sending people to Mars, putting satellites in space, getting The Robotaxi and also making the world's safest electric car. So now clearly the semi program is also in production. So we were thrilled by that. They have a partnership with truck stops in the United States to build Charger. They will also open up their MCS charger to other truck VMs. And I think there's a real opportunity for us to work together there. The difference now is really the way we think about this truck. Unlike Elon, I only do one thing and this is my only chance. The only way I can make a real impact on the world. And I have to think every minute about it. And to do that, you have to realize the drivers are the most important decision makers. We've already convinced their owners that the economics is better than diesel. The impact is clearly better than diesel. We sit here, this is on the. In the port of Antwerp. You get a lot of trucks coming through and you can smell the diesel. That's one reason why the windows are so dirty oftentimes. And clearly we're making an impact. But how can we make the drivers happier? Well, you first have to think about that. You have to assume they're there. And what do they do in the truck? They do, they sleep in the trucks, they rest in the trucks. We're also going to add refrigerator and also curtains in the truck because they want their privacy, they want to have a cold drink. We even have one version with a microwave and a little faucet in the truck. We want to make it really driver friendly, not driver removing self driving will eventually come. But self driving's first job is to help humans drive the trucks better. And by making it safer. Long haul trucks kill more people on the road than any other means of transportation. These are the deadliest movement tools because you're moving. In our case, two trailers, which is 68 tons total 100 kilometers per hour. Speed that is a lot of mass moving at high momentum every time there's a lethal crash. Seven people die in the truck accident, none of whom is the driver. It's usually the other pedestrians, the other passenger cars around. And the drivers are also fatigued and really a tough life. So we want to make it far better than before. So safety and then comfort, these are the key factor we think about. So it's much more than you've been inside the cab. It's not an rv, it's not a recreational vehicle yet, but we make it functionally, really comfortable. Traffic charging technology, air conditioning, not to mention the lack of noise. Your butt is no longer sitting on the internal Combustion engine which vibrates and almost makes your body numb and your ears deaf with this noise and vibrations.
- [19:43]
B
Well, we spoke to a driver yesterday and he'd driven the truck from Finland to here in Antwerp. And I was like, oh, what do you think? And he went, did this sort of big flamboyant arc and was like, just look at the space. And it is, it's absolutely enormous. It's definitely an enjoyable place to be. And whilst we were filming yesterday, it was very, very cold. So I was grateful to be able to hover in there, turn the temperature up to 31 degrees. It was lovely.
- [20:10]
C
Yes, the, the one thing people say is, oh, you know, EV cars, you've got a Tesla downstairs, they always, they always lose so much of their range. It's not the EVs fault. The internal combustion engine naturally has the heat dissipating, which is a waste as well, which is about one third of all the kilowatt hour from the well to wheel, it's actually wasted. We're not harvesting all the energy, not to mention the smell. So compared to that, we're using clean power to generate heat and air conditioning. Of course, that takes away some of the juice from the battery. However, it's actually only a number of kilowatt hour per day. If you have a 700 plus kilowatt hour battery, that difference becomes negligible. Our customers in Finland and Norway or even in China are experiencing -20 degrees Celsius on a regular basis. This is a hot day for them and they really care about the heating also to do so without the smell and the noise. And that's what we offer.
- [21:11]
B
So I want to talk about the choice of bio battery chemistry because you have opted for LFP rather than nmc, which may surprise some people, because NMC typically more energy dense, which would mean you could probably have slightly more cargo capacity in terms of mass. But also from. What people also understand is that LFP has more cycle life or a longer cycle life. Talk to us about the economics of that decision because I guess it's a careful trade off of making the trucks last longer versus potentially sacrificing some of that cargo capacity.
- [21:43]
C
Yes, the NMC has been popular for trucks because of the reasons you said. We believe all the reasons are correct and still valid. We do believe, however, two things. One is LFP is just far safer. Even if there's a thermal event. LFP offers 25 seconds of extreme escape time, which is enough for the driver to immediately leave the vehicle. That's meaningfully longer than the nmc the second reason is LFE is much longer in lifetime. It's at least twice the performance. It's also good for storage purposes and the reason being it's much longer lifetime in cycles. We're going to dual purpose our battery packs into storage units as well as well, which means for industrial use cases like our own factory that we're building here in Europe, in Antwerp, our inventory of battery packs can be used as the slotting storage units. Right. So if you want to have a dual purpose, long lifetime, long longevity product, it's got to be the lfp. Now, that being said, structurally, NMC is better than lfp. That is the nature of the chemistry of the material. So is there a way to marry the two things? Yes, there is. There's two ways to do it. You can mix and match NMC and LFP in sort of like a salad where the things don't quite mix, they're just oil and water, but one wraps around the other and people have done that. The other thing is you can actually add the manganese into the lfp. So it's going to be lmfp.
- [23:29]
B
Yeah.
- [23:29]
C
And we're working with our partner in the in the United States called Nant Energy nt. They're a team of battery specialists and that can actually improve the performance while keeping the cost down and also having the longevity.
- [23:51]
B
This episode is brought to you you by Hankook. The Hankook ion tyre is built exclusively.
- [23:56]
A
For electric vehicles, engineered to deliver what.
- [23:59]
B
EV drivers need most confident grip, quietness, energy efficiency and long mileage.
- [24:06]
A
As the official tire partner of Formula E, Hankook proves its EV technology is at the highest level of performance and.
- [24:13]
B
Brings that same innovation to every ion tyre on the road. So you're targeting a price of $250,000 or so, which is very competitive when it comes to electric HGVs, but is around double a diesel equivalent. So the total cost of ownership metrics are absolutely critical for fleet managers. Now, I'm guessing that the more they're used, the more they see the benefits of lower cost fueling. But we're talking huge batteries and potentially megawatt charging systems as well. And so how much is the charging infrastructure? A battle or a point of friction in terms of encouraging adoption?
- [25:00]
C
So everything's a battle in setting a new product and changing the ecosystem. But it's a downhill battle, which is to say structurally. When I talked to the Sunday Times a couple weeks ago, we had the same question. I said charging is actually the least of my concerns because I know it will be built the Reason is the world is moving from fossil fuel into renewable. Not for selfless reasons, even for entirely selfish reasons. You have to move to a way to generate your own power. You cannot rely on drilling stuff from underneath the earth from billions of years ago which you're not guaranteed to, to have access to. That's reason number one. Reason number two of course is artificial intelligence has a huge push on the build out for data centers. But what's also being built is the power supply. Now not 100% is renewable, but the nature of the power you need at your site is a decentralized power system, which generally means over here is wind power, United States is solar. Right. And there's hydraulic. And even, even if you're using natural gas, it's still cleaner than using a diesel truck. So the world is necessarily moving to more electricity. Now the question is, is that going to get directed into trucks and that takes the extra push. Right. So here we're working with all of the top charging providers, Mylance, which is quite active in the uk, we're working with Greenlink, which is that picture over there. They're backed by the Daimler Group and Blackrock and Nextera, which is the biggest power company in the United States. People are making serious progress sort of along the way. And then the question is, how do you charge at these sites? Is it mcs, CCS or something even older? It's got to be high power, high voltage DC direct current. And again, coincidentally, that is also how all new AI infrastructure is being built. So for folks in the uk, there's a huge push on AI sort of build out. Right. For folks really everywhere there's that big push. So we are sharing the same underlying infrastructure as AI, which is 800 volt high voltage platform direct current. Because AIs are just giant machines that use electricity. They run on direct current the same way our, our product does. So it's basically there's a source of electricity, it'll flow through some sort of transforming device to get it to the right voltage. It'll then output the electrons into a thing through direct current and the thing will work.
- [27:52]
B
Yeah.
- [27:52]
C
So conceptually we're doing the same thing. So that's why I say if it wasn't for AI and I tell my team too, we wouldn't be making as much progress really. But AI is actually helping us. And also the hours of charging are actually complimentary. Between AI and trucking, trucks tend to charge at night. AI is the least busy at night. So the peaks and troughs actually match. So it's kind of a fantastic pair. And lastly what we do is we offer CCS and MCS1 on each side. So imagine when the iPhone moves from lightning into Type C. If you could have both. Yeah, right. If the. On the other side, the type A and type C, you could have both. You would never have to fumble for a converter. And that's what we offer. So it doesn't matter what you have. And we can charge from two different chargers at the same time, even if you have lower power chargers. So we make it super compatible to whatever you can find, but forward compatible because we believe we're making the perfect product for the future. The scalable high speed charging network.
- [29:04]
B
Now, I noticed that you have some pretty big ambitions for Windrose parks, so called. And also you're offering some customers three months of free charging.
- [29:12]
C
Yes.
- [29:13]
B
So do you see an opportunity that actually the energy services around the truck will be a significant source of revenue?
- [29:19]
C
Yes, we think that's the key thing that matters. It's going to be the most important source because globally 5% of the GDP goes into trucking. But within the 5%, about 1/3 is in the fuel, 1/3 goes to drivers, and the rest goes between the truck and then the tolls and then the maintenance and everything. So the hardware is really the start of how we can help the ecosystem get better. The printer is the start, the cartridge is the key, the E cigarette is the start, and then the pods are the key. We hope to be as addicting as the E cigarette products. We really do. Every time we get a driver into the truck, he or she would initially be onshore. The big screens and standard driving configuration. What do I do? And no one complains. After the first day when the iPhone first came out, there were a lot of people who said, the screen is too big, I can't handle it. It's not their fault. You're not used to a new product, so we try to make it quite addicting. Now the way you really make it addicting and irreplaceable is to make the economic so much better for your customers. We're doing two things. We're making the TCO better, but that's not enough. The retail price of the truck is higher because we're selling a much better product than diesel. It's also just more expensive to manufacture. There's no question about that. Battery is just more expensive today per pound or per kilowatt of performance. However, with our financing partners, which we will announce, hopefully not today, but within the month, we have a Number of financing partners, European, British and American, who will help us smooth out that curve, which means we will charge our customers per km or per month in a way that basically lets it become an operating expense. That's what we have to do. So that's the way we completely change the way. Actually, we don't change the way our customers buy and use trucks, but we change what they use. They're used to paying for truck per month on these and for diesel, we're inviting them to pay for a much better truck per month more, but much less for diesel. So per month we're keeping that monthly cadence the same while we enable them to spend less money on much better things, leaving an impact on the planet at the same time.
- [31:56]
B
I also want to ask you about manufacturing because there's a number of things that are super interesting to me. Not least, of course, the rapid time to market. It's been four years and you have working trucks on the road. Not least that you've kind of let Nikola trucks also Volta kind of fails. You haven't opted to do a load of proprietary technology, but actually wait for the electric vehicle supply chain to mature. And you're also operating in the US and operating in the US whilst describing yourself as a company that has Chinese origins rather than being a Chinese company. And that obviously is interesting for two reasons. One, the 100% tariffs that currently exist on electric vehicles coming from China, and two, any ban on smart software that will come from China or connected car software that will come from China from 2027. Those seem like huge headaches. And then at the same time, you also have this very distributed manufacturing technique where you'll do a lot of assembly in China and then kind of almost do like knockdown kits in other markets within that. And I know that. I've just cobbled together a load of information. How confident are you that that model works? In a way, in a world where Chinese manufacturing is so penalized.
- [33:19]
C
I think, look, I mean, the headaches management business, if I didn't get a headache, then I'm doing something wrong. Because if what I'm doing seems like smooth sailing, then somebody would have already smooth sailing sailed before me. Now, the way you manage the headaches is that you have to understand why your head hurts and where is that coming from and what do the people really want in the policies they've set? Generally speaking, a policy is set not to just kill someone else's economy. It's to protect and help your own. Right. We've seen this play out in China as Well, right when I grew up our biggest luxury was the imported Buick made by General Motors, which is not even a top performing car. It's actually outdated model in the United States which was then recycled conceptually into China as a luxury vehicle. And China had huge tariffs, up to 200% at a time. So 100% seems quite modest to me. It really does. And, and China about 20 years ago had a white listed battery provider list for China made EV cars in China and none of the foreign players were on that list for a while. So states sort of intervention is always present in China or elsewhere. That's why you've never heard me complain about the U.S. tariffs. I believe it is 100% expected. Now the way the drama has been played out is a little bit probably more than people can handle. But I think the reasoning is quite reasonable, which is how can American truck companies and jobs be kept? So what we do is we don't intend to take any jobs away. In fact, we want to make people's jobs better. Same for truckers, same for manufacturer workers. I explained how our self driving thinking is around not the self driving but the making the human driving better. Now I explain how the manufacturing works. We intend to train a number of our key distribution partners and aftermarket service partners on how to assemble this truck. It is a 13 step process after the sub assembly is done and most people with a qualified workforce and sort of machinery for handling heavy duty vehicles can do it. Also you need to understand high voltage batteries and power system. We will authorize not only sellers and resellers and repairers, but also builders of our truck. That's how we think about decentralized manufacturing. So being global and being decentralized is actually these two things are correlated. Being global does not mean we're doing everything ourselves. In China you cannot do that because it is not a sustainable model itself. Being global and decentralized combine they make the word gloco, which is kind of a word now, but it's not in the dictionary yet. So that's my goal for next year. You know, each year there's a new list of words that get added to the dictionary. So that's going to be my contribution to the English language campaign to get.
- [36:54]
B
Global into the dictionary.
- [36:55]
C
By the way, this is a little known fact. I started learning English the first time when I was 11 years old, which is considered traditionally as a disastrously late age. I'm a late boomer. Yeah, well when I was in fifth grade I went to a class where I learned the word when I learned to read the Alphabet the first time.
- [37:17]
B
Wow. And that is surprisingly. Because I feel like you're. We've had quite a lot of analogies in this conversation so far. And they've been logical and also slightly more obscure. They always make sense. And I feel like that's such a native English trope perhaps.
- [37:36]
C
Actually, no. It's a way of thinking. If you're unable to use analogies for your thinking, you're either super brilliant or you haven't really thought through your thoughts that clearly. Because to make analogies to help the mind think about it, everything we do has been done by someone else before. Building trucks not like that form. But building things before has happened many times. So that's why I like my analogies. But yes, they're always a little bit obscure. Hence creative.
- [38:06]
B
I like them. You can tell that you are also a graduate of Williams Liberal Art College in Massachusetts.
- [38:12]
C
Yes.
- [38:14]
B
So something that really strikes me is that you have a tremendous amount of humility and realism when it comes to setting this. This company up for success. And part of that I'm kind of guessing here a little bit. It's a totally software defined vehicle. You've got this sort of global approach to manufacturing and scaling. And I would guess that perhaps white labeling this product or working very closely with additional partners say it's the Waymos or the Auroras of the world. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that that's the direction of travel. Where do you see the future of windrows?
- [38:52]
C
White labeling is sort of a tricky word to use because it means one of two things. It means your stuff is so good that somebody else wants to use it or that they think your stuff is sort of fungible commodity that they can just put their logo on. Right. We try to go for the first approach. We think of our brand. We take our brand really seriously. Windrose is the name of the street I lived on when I went to Stanford. So it was not a creative process of naming a company. However, we really want to make it a long lasting name. That's why we did not choose a name. We did not choose a scientist's name.
- [39:33]
B
Interesting.
- [39:34]
C
The peers you've mentioned are all luminaries in the electric field technology world. From the last few hundred years, we haven't done that. We want to make it sort of a neutral sounding name. It's almost sort of hard to tell what business we're in. And that's the point. Wind Rose is also the thing you use when you sail and then you look at the strength of the wind from different directions. It's called the rose of the winds and that's actually the actual meaning of that word. And that's how we do our business. We have to read the winds and sail. When you sail, you sail faster upwind. When you sail downwind, you tend to lose your wind and then your sails slack and then you just stop moving. That's how we think about our business. Back to your question. White labeling is not the right approach. But we think of sharing our technology with our partners and our customers competitors. We are already supplying our powertrain, which is the chassis, the battery, the motors and then the system to a number of skateboard, medium duty truck, e trailer and also classic truck makers. What we're doing is we're promulgating the technology so that we share our know how. So that's where the patent comes in.
- [40:58]
A
Helpful.
- [40:59]
C
The way we intend to make money with them is we focus on revenue sharing. Only when they sell trucks do they pay us the same way. Only when the electrons are flowed into our trucks do we take the revenue share from our customers. That's really important for us. That's contrary to the traditional model where you either sell the thing to them in a one off deal or you charge a large sort of development fee up front. We do the other way around. The same way we think of our customers. We share only the success when it works. But yes, we're very much intent on sharing our technology with people. We wouldn't do anything to give up our brand. We really think that's one of the most valuable things we can do as business people.
- [41:50]
B
So I'll just share this with you because you were saved in my phone as when windrows.
- [41:55]
C
Yes.
- [41:56]
B
And we were talking about the shoot ahead of time and our videographers were like, oh, so it's just named after him. And then I was like Windrose isn't his surname. But I've just so pictured you as when Windrose for so long.
- [42:08]
C
That's fantastic. That's not a bad thing. Most companies who are named after the founders don't tend to succeed. Succeed.
- [42:16]
B
There's a statistic relationship going through this conversation. I'm like there's no way you ever would have called named this company after yourself. The whole way through this conversation you've always used the term our company, we, our approach. So yeah, it would have been in Congress if you'd named it.
- [42:34]
C
But you know, people don't know that about me. If you walk downstairs around the space, you see the Picture of me and the truck and everything. Being the mascot doesn't mean it's something I enjoy doing. But being the mascot for the company is my job. See there? I use the word my job because that's what I have to do. Being out there also invites a lot of criticism and questioning. And if you look through LinkedIn posts and you especially last year we appeared on the New York Times with a three page spread and if you went to the website and you just read some of the stuff people say it's quite horrendous.
- [43:12]
B
Oh yeah, avoid the comment section. It's a place of. Well, sometimes it can be very constructive, I will caveat that. And other times it can be a place filled with vitriol and hate and it's not worth it.
- [43:26]
C
But it's, you know, being the founder of the company means you're at the. If you live in a multi story apartment, you're the, you're the toilet, you're the sewage system at the end of the. Yeah. At the bottom all the worst stuff eventually gets filtered down to me and I just have to be able to filter the worst things. That's the job of that is my job. So a lot of times I say the word, I decide to do this because decision is mine to make, also the burden and sort of the consequences. But the work is done by us. You have to be clear about the distinction. And that's really the hardest part of the job. Many times you forget and then you believe you start to use the word I or if you use the word we too much then you're not taking the decision making responsibility upon yourself.
- [44:15]
B
So we're coming towards the end of this conversation and you know, you've had an absolutely tremendous first four years of existing as an organization. You're now present in a load of different countries. Your plans and ambitions are huge and you're already working with a number of very, very well known logistics providers and fleet managers. But what's on your big worry list for what happens in the next four years? What are some of those concerns?
- [44:39]
C
We could be moving too slow. We don't have much time. I'm 36 in April. It seems young relatively, but compared to the thing we're trying to do that is Maybe I have 60 years left or 40 depending on how old I work until. You know, Warren Buffett is 99, which means I have 63 years left. 60, yes. That's not many years to do something that's going to change 5% of the world's GDP. So our focus to really keep learning new stuff and keep sort of the execution pace is key. So that requires sort of a degree of thick skin and organizational transparency that makes most people uncomfortable. So we've made many mistakes. I've made, unfortunately, most of the mistakes were made by me. We've hired the wrong people. We've missed the fundraise. I mean the whole thing that was today by a whole year. Given the tariffs and all the supply chain issues we dealt with, we could have done many things more quickly. So the biggest fear is not moving fast enough because we haven't been fast enough. Again, if you only compare yourself on a relative scale, you would generally find what we view as really good. But on absolute basis, it's not fast enough. What we really have to do is to as quickly as we can make sure this design is ubiquitous at any cost because we believe really that this is the best design. And the Tesla is also the really top design. A little bit more optimized for the US and sort of really good for the US Less perfect for the rest of the world. We do believe we have the best design that works for at least the 24 countries we're in. And how do we really have people start to understand that and make that into sort of an assumption? How does the Windrows become the synonym for long haul heavy duty electric truck? How do we become the Kleenex of wipes? Right. That is key. So how do we get into people's minds? That's why we're spending time here. I really want your help and the audience's help to help drive that idea into people's minds. We're not saying you have to love this truck. We want as many people as we can get to give the truck a try. I haven't heard. I've heard many complaints, but I haven't heard people or seen people walk away from the truck. They always keep using the truck, right? So how can we get that done 10 times faster is my biggest. Hi, this is Joe from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly and earning customer trust has never mattered more. Vanta helps companies get compliant fast and stay secure with the most advanced AI, automation and continuous monitoring out there. So whether you're a startup going for your first SoC2 or ISO 27001 or a growing enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta makes it quick, easy and scalable. And I'm not just saying that because I work here. Get started@vanta.com.
- [47:58]
A
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- [48:29]
B
So in order to facilitate that speed, then if I could grant you one wish, it can be outrageous or it can be very logical.
- [48:36]
C
Yes.
- [48:37]
B
Something that would enable that speed. What would you ask for?
- [48:46]
C
I wouldn't ask for money because money doesn't solve things. I would ask for. I would ask for a really fantastic VR tool where any trucker can put on a headset or a chip in their head and just experience the truck without having to travel into the truck. And they can select the environments they want. And whether that's cold or windy or, you know, we also run in the, in the, in the Andes mountains in Chile. It is not a comfortable drive and we want people to be able to experience that sort of in the instant fashion. That's my. That's my biggest wish.
- [49:27]
B
Well, VR headset that seems totally achievable. And if anyone in the comments thinks that they can do that, then let us know.
- [49:33]
C
Yes, I will be the first one to buy 100 of the VR headsets.
- [49:45]
A
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