
Launch HN: AmpUp (YC W19) – A reservable electric car charging network - dabaitu
Hi HN,<p>This is Tom from ampUp (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ampup.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ampup.io&#x2F;</a>). We&#x27;re building a
reservable electric car charging network out of shared private and
home chargers.<p>As a Nissan Leaf driver without a home charger, charging has been
almost a daily headache for me. For many commutes and trips I have to
ask myself, should I drive my Leaf, use Uber, take public transit,
walk really far, or just not go? This is due to the walk-in-only model
of the public charger, which results in unpredictable availability.
Worse, public charging is growing at a slower rate than EV adoption,
and the range estimators on EVs are no better than a 10-day weather
forecast.<p>I used the Plugshare app and it helped some, particularly the couch
surfing style of charging where I arrange a 2 hour slot with some home
charger hosts. When it worked well, it took out the unpredictability
and therefore anxiety. However, it doesn’t always work well. Many
times hosts won’t respond to text&#x2F;calls to make the booking, and a
couple times I forgot to bring cash&#x2F;check to pay for the electricity
as the host indicated.<p>My first attempt at this problem was building a webapp that worked as
an addon to Plugshare where hosts can create a calendar for their
charger, and set an hourly price where drivers can pay via credit
card. Once that’s set up, the host would paste the unique url to their
charger’s calendar in the description section of their Plugshare
listing. Long story short, this added as much inconvenience as
benefit, and drivers still ended up calling the host.<p>Given enough interests from hosts and based on experiences of a few
drivers including myself, I decided to make a second attempt and just
build a better app that focuses on the hosting and reservation flows.<p>After about 2 months of hustling and grinding, we
released ampUp (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ampup.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ampup.io&#x2F;</a>), where users can host multiple
chargers at flexible schedules and adjustable prices. Since the hosts
set up sharing calendar for their chargers, the other users can make
reservations with instantaneous confirmation. We use Stripe to enable
peer to peer payment with credit card rather than cash&#x2F;check. We know
EV owners are willing to pay for charging and it’s important for hosts
to be able to make a meaningful amount if we want to scale this to
match our vision where one day there will always be a reservable
charger near where the user is or will be. From our analysis, with a
competitive (to public charger) pricing of $3&#x2F;hr, hosts can expect to
make $190-$270&#x2F;month in profit with just 3 rented hours per day.<p>For ampUp, our business model is to charge a flat 1 dollar to the
driver per reservation. If we use the $3&#x2F;hr example from earlier, a 3
hour session will cost a total of $10 to add about 60 miles from a
residential level 2 charger. This &quot;fuel&quot; cost is on par with the most
fuel-efficient gas car which is the Mitsubishi Mirage. These numbers
are based on Bay Area electricity and gas costs.<p>ampUp already has thousands of hosts, but many of them are listings we
collected from all over the internet. The difference in the user
experience with those hosts is that we have to confirm the reservation
with them, as opposed to our own. This is a temporary limitation in
the &quot;do things that don&#x27;t scale&quot; spirit. Our goal is to instantly confirm 
reservations like Airbnb.<p>We sincerely invite the HN community’s feedback on our idea and on the
app and everything else in this space. You can reach me directly at
tom@ampup.io or for info@ampup.io. You can download the app at the top
of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ampup.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ampup.io&#x2F;</a>. We hope ampUp will help more people to drive
their electric vehicles as effortlessly as driving a gas car!
======
wgjordan
> From our analysis, with a competitive (to public charger) pricing of $3/hr,
> hosts can expect to make $190-$270/month in profit with just 3 rented hours
> per day.

$3/hr * 3 hours/day * 30 days = $270. However, this doesn't subtract the cost
of electricity to the provider.

My local utility (San Diego Gas & Electric) has a (rather high) standard-rate
of $0.51578/kwh in summer (beyond >400% of baseline, which I assume I would
hit if I was powering EVs 3 hours every day) [1]. Nissan Leaf's Level 2
charging is 6.6kw [2], so my cost calculation for this service would be:

$0.51578 kwh * 6.6 kw * 3 hours/day * 30 days = $306

So my napkin math says I would _lose_ money ($36/month) providing this
service. Am I missing something or would I have to charge more than $3/hour to
stay out of the red?

[1]
[https://www.sdge.com/sites/default/files/regulatory/3-1-19%2...](https://www.sdge.com/sites/default/files/regulatory/3-1-19%20Schedule%20DR%20Total%20Rates%20Table_0.pdf)

[2] [https://pluginamerica.org/understanding-electric-vehicle-
cha...](https://pluginamerica.org/understanding-electric-vehicle-charging/)

~~~
dabaitu
Yes, the calculation is based on $0.19/kWh charged by PG&E, with tiered rate,
that cost does go up. So hosts will need to adjust the hourly prices depending
on local cost and actual traffic. The $270 is from hosts with solar panels
that have credits stored up. One user living in Santa Clara has 15000 kWhs
saved up from almost a decade use of solar.

~~~
wgjordan
Thanks, that's a helpful example. This does sound like a great way for
residential solar users to offload excess production, particularly if they
can't tie it back to the grid directly (e.g., SDG&E's Net Energy Metering
program [1]), or if the service rates can be higher than the grid-tie rates.

I guess that underscores that the napkin math gets pretty complicated and
local use-cases can vary greatly. I'd be very interested in user-focused
calculators that could help in guiding these napkin-math decisions the right
hourly price to set locally, and/or whether the combo of residential-utility
rates and local average public-charging prices makes it worth providing the
service at all.

[1] [https://www.sdge.com/residential/savings-center/solar-
power-...](https://www.sdge.com/residential/savings-center/solar-power-
renewable-energy/net-energy-metering)

~~~
dabaitu
Yes, we have a ticket in the back-log to offer a feature that recommend
pricing for the hosts. Taking into account public charging rates, utility
rates, and traffic. The smart switch also has the purpose to distinguish
charging vs just parking. So in some areas, we want to offer a separate rate
for parking in the future.

------
yingw787
This is really cool Tom! A couple of questions:

\- I don't have an electric car charger, but my understanding is that the
charger is usually located inside a garage, meaning that the host would have
to let the driver into the garage/house. If that's the case, what kind of
liability insurance would AmpUp provide?

\- Does AmpUp provide pricing recommendations for hosts, or provide
information on what other hosts on the platform are charging?

\- Is there a internal ratings system for hosts/drivers like Lyft/Uber?
Otherwise if a host provides a date/time for charging and doesn't show up and
it becomes a major logic path, you would have to provide calls/text support
anyways.

\- Are you concerned about the possible gamification of prices and hosts on
the platform, like that of Airbnb's, that may unduly affect pricing or quality
of service for customers that would box you into a corner, and are there any
game plans developed for tackling such behavior?

Best of luck, and hope to see greater EV adoption because of AmpUp!

~~~
dabaitu
Ratings and reviews are coming. Right now hosts on ampUp are nearly all hand
picked. A lot of home chargers in the Bay Area are installed outdoor, and for
the ones installed in door the current hosts are all very nice people. I've
been to a bunch of them myself. For term of use and liability, we currently
roughly follow the same used by Airbnb, but we definitely plan to update. I'm
not too concerned about hosts asking for high prices, because public charging
will always be an option, so public charging prices will act as a reference.

------
z-cam
Congrats on launching! Great job getting >1,000 hosts in a concentrated area--
this is where others have fallen short with this idea.

Do you have plans to integrate with public & semi-private CPOs? (charge point
operators)

We are a startup CPO. I'm thinking about some of our multi-res customers who
installed stations in visitor parking. They have asked us to list their
stations publicly so they can recoup their initial costs. Your platform might
be a good fit for this.

Let me know if this is interesting!

~~~
dabaitu
Let's talk! That sounds very interesting. We firmly believe in the reservation
based model. Taxis use to be hailed, but now we reserve them. tom@ampup.io

~~~
z-cam
Yes, removing the uncertainty of if there is a plug available is a big plus

Talk soon!

------
djanogo
In TX I got quote for $500-$800 for installing charging panel anywhere I want.
I am confused why wouldn't somebody who has a house, and can afford EV car
with $7500 credit, not make ONE TIME investment of $1k (US average pricing) to
_permanently_ setup house for EV charging?.

Also there is a high chance of pissing neighbors off if you have constant
stream of new cars coming into the street, I know me and my neighbors would
be, as we have kids playing outside.

~~~
floatrock
Not to mention a lot of utilities will give you rebates for charging
equipment. PG&E is now up to an $800 rebate if you switch to their EV plan...
that will buy the charger or the install.

It's knowing about all these rates and rebates that's tricky. Dealers should
be able to provide you with all this info, but well, that's a whole other
story...

~~~
dabaitu
Yes, I'm still planning to install a home charger and share it.

------
kayhi
"As a Nissan Leaf driver without a home charger" isn't that the main problem
and not the current charging network?

~~~
LeoPanthera
I am also a Nissan Leaf driver. Charging at home is possibly the best reason
to have one. Unlike a gas car, I can leave home for every trip with a full
"tank".

~~~
dabaitu
Fully juiced. haha. Well, I think many people are jealous of you, me included.
I actually live in a single family house, but my electric panel is all the way
in the backyard. I don't have a sub-panel in the garage. The quotes I got are
all around $2000 total to install home charging for me. I wanted to install
one and share with people, but so far haven't been able to pull the trigger.

~~~
myself248
Do you currently just use level 1 charging, or not at all?

Most EVs charge at about 3mph from L1, and if you're on-plug for 10 hours
overnight, hey, that's longer than a lot of people commute in a day. Might be
able to keep your SoC pretty high with that alone.

Of course L1 is too slow to be useful for sharing, but for a resident it often
works out quite well.

~~~
dabaitu
Yes, that is my fall back option. I still keep the charging cable that came
with the Leaf in the trunk, just in case!

So far, I haven't needed to go to the fall back option. I charge at a l2 host
place near my work, and once a week I go to a fast charger near some
restaurant.

------
jasondelta
First off, congrats on the launch and for tackling an underappreciated problem
with EVs.

I'm excited about the concept, because it has the elements of something great.
But I'm skeptical about the "sharing economy" approach of renting out time on
home chargers. Like others have mentioned, the real problem is affordable,
available chargers at the user's residence, rather than trying to make more
chargers available in residential neighborhoods.

But the other problem that EV users have, especially users that aren't simple
there-and-back commuters, is that they need _predictable_ and _dependable_
charging while away from home.

I own an EV myself, and I can't tell you how many times I've made a trip
somewhere during the day, expecting to have a charger available, only to find
that they're all taken when I arrive. This is somewhat alleviated by networked
chargers, where you can see whether they're available beforehand, but there's
been many occasions where the charger is snagged by someone else while I'm
driving there. Because of this I'm extremely cautious about driving too far in
a given day, and in fact, end up using a regular gasoline car if I know I have
to drive beyond the range of my EV, since it's too hard to tell if and when
I'll be able to charge along the way.

So where your concept comes in is the ability to reserve chargers. That means
I can actually plan my day, plan a road trip, etc. And ideally the chargers
will be in the same places I actually want to go - along freeways, in shopping
centers, downtown, etc (i.e. not far off in residential areas).

I could definitely see this as a service that could plug into existing
networks (e.g. EVGo, Blink, Chargepoint, etc), although getting them all to
play nice together is difficult. But I would heartily applaud someone who
could organize and simplify EV charging away from home and make it dependable
and predictable. Good luck!

~~~
dabaitu
Hi Jason,

I can tell this problem has affected you and you have thought about it deeply.
Really appreciate your feedbacks. Overall I agree with you completely. The
biggest assumption regarding this startup/project is that the p2p charging
market can be build up to a substantial size beyond just one-off emergencies
or long road trip cases. This is something some folks doubt and something I'm
betting my blood, sweat and tears in. What makes me confident is my own
experience. I was FORCED to try the couch surfing type of charging with
Plugshare first that I was super skeptical of myself, and LUCKILY my first
experience worked really well. I also noticed with just 2 simple features the
experience can be mostly consistently good. There are more than 10,000 hosts
on Plugshare, and if the experience can be consistently good, it could turn
into THE largest charging network in the world. We are not there, but I want
to get there.

------
JonBar99
Very interesting idea with great potential. I'm sure you will iron out the
problems because the demand is certainly there. May I ask what your tech stack
is for the app and also are you going to develop a web app and what will be
the tech stack for that? Or is a web app seen as unimportant?

------
soared
So this costs the driver $1 per 6 miles? If gas is $3/gallon and my car gets
24 mpg, then I'm paying $1 per 6 miles. This is not on par with the Mirage's
36/43mpg.

Your service effectively makes electric cars equally or more expensive to
drive than gas cars. Could work but seems to remove a solid benefit of EVs.

~~~
dabaitu
You have a point on this one. However, it's not my service that's causing
this. The price suggested was based on public charging rate, and the money
will go to the hosts. There's no way to guarantee profit for the hosts always
given electricity rates will change and gas prices will likely drop. The miles
per kWh also changes depending on how you drive and the weather. Typical users
will have a combination of home, workplace, public, and peer to peer charging.
The total should still make EVs cheaper to drive. If all chargings are done
via ampUp, yes the cost maybe as high or even higher than driving gas car.
It's not likely, and peer to peer charging does add the
reservation/predictability benefit to it.

------
serkanyersen
Awesome project!

Few notes about the website:

Check the meta tags. "title" says "Template" and "description" says "Sample".
I tried to share this with my friends and url preview said Template / Sample.

Currently your website title is "Home" it probably should be your apps name.

Good luck.

~~~
dabaitu
Thank you!

------
mbushey
> From our analysis, with a competitive (to public charger) pricing of $3/hr

My 2012 Leaf takes 3 hours to fully charge on a L2 charger, and that gets me
35-40 miles range. $9 for 35-40 miles. My Camaro gets 20 miles to the gallon,
it's significantly cheaper to put gas in the 320HP Camaro than pay this kind
of rate for charging.

~~~
dabaitu
A 6.6 kW L2 charger should put about 20 miles per hour of charging, so for 3
hours that's 60 miles. I do believe the 2012 Leaf gets maybe 40 in total,
since battery degrade and older Leafs actually tell you how much your battery
has degraded.

With that exact example of $3/hr, yes it's more expensive to use p2p charging
than driving your Camaro. There are hosts that offer cheaper or free charging.
The $3/hr is an example based on public charging rate in the Bay Area. Another
case is if the host happen to be in a highly visited location and charge
$10/hr for charging and parking.

EVs are still overall a bit more expensive than gas cars. That's why there are
still subsidies. In the bigger picture, it's still paramount we switch to a
cleaner and more sustainable energy source, and electrifying transportation is
an inevitable step. I'm confident the technology will mature and will mature
fast.

------
dabaitu
We are still working on a long list of exciting features collected from user
feedbacks and my personal experiences. Please stay tuned for those by
following our Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/ampup_io](https://twitter.com/ampup_io)

------
raleigh_user
I am happy you all are launching and wish you well. Increasingly seems the
companies launching on HN are in search of a problem. Renting a charger
because you don't have one at home seems like a backwards way to solve the
problem! But, I am only one person and not the market

~~~
dabaitu
There are definitely more than one way to solve a problem, and ampUp is just
one of the many efforts out there trying to alleviate the range anxiety issue.
The way you phrased seem to suggest everyone should install home charging,
which is definitely not possible when more people adopt EVs. I started having
a problem myself, then trying to use existing solution to solve my problem
first, and finally offering something I think works better.

------
blitzo
The problem still is the charging time. EV occupied the space longer than a
gas car does refill. Until we reached the technology where the batteries can
be charged in seconds, 'drive EV as effortlessly as driving a gas car' is a
bit of overstatement i think.

~~~
myself248
For the majority of EV owners who do have home chargers, the "time you spend
involved in charging" is about 10 seconds to plug in when you park at night,
and 10 seconds to unplug and stow the cord the following morning. That's less
time than you spend at the gas pump.

This also applies to folks who can charge at work. Charge speed does not
matter if charging happens while you're inside doing something else for
several hours.

------
chaostheory
Do hosts have to be home in person or are you guys partnering with smart
garage door opener companies? I can't see letting people use my garage at
night since space is a premium and I need to charge my own car.

~~~
dabaitu
At this point if the charger is in an access restricted place, the host will
need to somehow allow access. In California, there are many that have the
charger installed outdoor and use the garage as another room or a gym. In the
Bay Area, for instance, 36% of people who share their charger have it
installed outdoor. For chargers installed outdoor, it's fully automated.
Working with remote controlled garage opener and some security camera partners
are definitely in our plans. We are also looking into the option of extending
the charging cable, so it can be left outside.

~~~
myself248
Many chargers have wifi or bluetooth connectivity. Seems to me that there's an
obvious integration here. Visitor's phone and charger authenticate each other,
charging starts.

OpenEVSE could be a perfect platform for prototyping this. Our hackerspace has
one on the wall right now, and we're adding another because so many members
drive EVs now.

~~~
dabaitu
Thank you! Let me know if you are open to try an integrated pilot with us.

------
matchbok
Can't see how this will be a sustainable business, at all. The whole goal of
the network is to eliminate the waiting problems. Which will be solved in 5
years.

~~~
dabaitu
EV growth is much higher than charging infrastructure growth. The current
network of public chargers are predominantly level 2 chargers. There are many
things that limit public charging installations like architectural changes and
grid upgrade involved that need approvals from different entities. Some
apartment management refuse installations because the architectural changes
would violate rights of some tenants. I have heard a year's time was taken
from the moment HOA approved EVSE installation to the actual EVSE being
installed. The most optimistic projection for EV adoption world wide by 2025
is 14%, and I strongly doubt charging infra will be sufficient or have caught
up by then. This problem will get worse before it gets better. If we change
the time frame to 10 years, many many things could happen and I hope ampUp can
continue to adopt.

------
nikodunk
Awesome project, guys! Congratulations on the launch. Can't wait to see where
this electrification takes us, and stoked YC is supporting EV startups. More!

~~~
dabaitu
Thank you! We love feedbacks on the app to keep making it better. Email me
directly at tom@ampup.io

------
franciscojgo
Genius! Applauding for the concept and clean, easy to understand design.

~~~
dabaitu
Thank you for the encouragements! There are still a ton of work to be done to
get the user experience to what we envision. Please keep the feedbacks coming!

------
peter_d_sherman
Great Idea! I hope you have much success!

