War Vet Aims Sights on Billion-Dollar Opportunity

During his time as an infantry officer in the Iraq war, Jeremy McCool saw firsthand how drastically energy sources impacted people’s lives

He wanted to radically reimagine energy as we knew it, and found no better place to start than transportation-based fuels

When he returned home in 2011, he stood in his windowless garage and began tinkering with parts alongside Umer Anwer (now his CTO).

Through their tinkering, they landed on a mission to build a wireless charging system for electric vehicles. Now there was just one problem with this goal - their product, the entire essence of the company, was servicing an industry that didn’t exist.

In 2011, less than 20,000 electric vehicles were sold in the US. It was difficult enough for Tesla to receive investment, let alone a downstream charging startup

McCool and Anwer spent the next 4 years in that windowless garage, working to produce a prototype of their wireless charging station

Fast-forward to today, and HEVO has made significant advances. I visited the HEVO headquarters in Brooklyn to meet with McCool and see the product up close. I’m happy to report that they now have THREE beautifully large windows in their office.

Following my conversation with McCool, I wanted to provide my thoughts on HEVO.

(1/4) A solution for EVery vehicle

I think the evidence is clear that electric vehicles are the future - a combination of government/automaker support, consumer demand, and environmental concerns make adoption seem inevitable

While charging your vehicle at home is a convenience, needing to plug a charger into your car every every night is unnecessary friction for users

And nearly all good businesses start by removing user friction

HEVO’s wireless charging mat makes charging your car as easy as parking in your garage

The potential for this product is quite staggering, considering there are 275M+ vehicles on the road today in the US alone

(2/4) HEVO still faces Massive Roadblocks

HEVO has built a working charging mat that is being sold today. But units aren’t flying off the shelf like hot cakes. Here’s why:

Wireless charging for vehicles ≠ wireless charging for phones.

Wireless phone charging is simple, for nearly all new phones you just place it on the charging device.

With vehicles, there are two main problems:

• Consumers believe wireless charging is inefficient - and that’s because it is…for phones. Wireless phone chargers only operate at 60-70% efficiency. HEVO has been able to reach 91%+ efficiency (very close to wired), but will need to overcome the consumer perception that wireless charging is ineffective + slow.

• Even worse, electric vehicles aren’t actually equipped to receive wireless charging. In present form, you would need to manually retrofit your vehicle to allow it to accept wireless charging

(3/4) HEVO needs Fleets

McCool is well aware of the challenges his company is facing. He believe that selling his charging systems to vehicle fleets could be a way of circumventing his biggest roadblocks

You see, vehicle fleet operators have hundreds and sometimes thousands of cars. They order in bulk from car manufacturers, and that gives them the leverage to request customizations to the vehicles

So if HEVO can obtain buy-in from a fleet operator, the fleet operator could ask Ford to build in HEVO’s wireless charging technology into the cars’ batteries.

It’s a brilliant strategy given the tough situation they’re in, and could be the spark HEVO needs to get some early traction. More importantly, it would be a way for HEVO to bring in money.

(4/4) Is HEVO a winning investment?

To me, there are 2 pretty clear paths for how this will play out.

• The Bad: HEVO will be unable to convince automakers to add its charging technology, which would be a death sentence for this startup. Automakers may do this in order to build out their own wireless charging tech, or on the belief that wireless charging will be too expensive relative to consumer demand for it

• The Good: Automakers could make their EVs compatible with HEVO. Once shunned by major automakers, the EV category is fiercely competitive these days. I could easily see HEVO be acquired by one of the major automakers to provide a leg up vs its rivals.

HEVO is in the midst of a fundraising round, and have already brought in $2.3M+ from investors. If you would like to check out their investment page you can do so here

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Please note that CROWDSCALE is not offering financial advice, nor am I receiving compensation for this article. Please do your own due diligence and only invest what you can afford to lose!