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The Electric Truck that Went Viral on TikTok · What's Your Problem?

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. In twenty seventeen, when Tesla announced plans to sell
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: an electric semi truck, Chase Barber was in I reserved
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: a Tesla Semi. On the day of the revealing, they
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: put out the little thing of like reservation numbers, and
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I'm like reservation number five on this Tesla Semi. Chase
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: was the co owner of a small trucking company in
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: British Columbia. He and his partner bought and restored old
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: trucks and they drove them to haul logs and set
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: up power systems for remote towns in northern Canada. So
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Chase was excited about the possibility of an electric truck.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Then a few years passed and a few more and
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: the Tesla Semi still wasn't available. So we thought, well,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: we know how to build a truck. We can make
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: a truck. We've been building and restoring. Why don't we
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: just make our own electric truck. And I said, screw it.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: We can actually do this when we can make it
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: as a company. And while we canceled our reservation, I
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: got the twenty five thousand dollars US back that we
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: had to put down for it, and I use that
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: twenty five thousand dollars to start Edison Motors. I'm Jacob
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, a show where
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Chase Barber, co founder of Edison Motors.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Chase's problem is this, how do you build electric logging
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: trucks in rural Canada with money you raised from people
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: who follow you on TikTok. Before he started his company,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Chase drove a logging truck and he loved it. It
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: is such a good job. It's the only job logging
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: on the West coast or I think you can be
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: scared driving at like five mile an hour, ten mile
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: an hour and you're in a white knuckle on the wheel. Look,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I love it. I love being up in the mountains,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: going up into the bush every day. The roads are challenging,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: there's no traffic, it's just pure driving. Did you ever
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: almost die? Oh yeah, yeah, so many times? Like that's
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: just that's just a fact in life. How'd you get
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: from driving a logging truck to starting a company? Well,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: that started back in university. I decided that I should
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: go back after I was tired of driving truck for
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: like three years and I'm like, okay, I need a backup.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: It's like, in case I don't want to do this
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: my whole life, I'll go to university while I'm still
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: young and single and have you know, it would be
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: a good time. But after four years of university, you know,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I did really well. I had like a four point
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: er GPA in economics. And it's not bragg and it's
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: just tell you how bad the job market is. At
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: least when I was graduating is I did a Bank
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: of Canada economic forecasting contest where I came second place
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: in Canada and got offered a job as a junior
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: economist at the Bank. Bank of Canada's the Central Bank
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: of Canada, Like like that's head in the US. Yeah, yeah,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: the US Federal Reserve as an economist there. And after
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: four years of university, the salary was forty five thousand
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: a year Canadian Like what I drove truck And I
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: made more money driving truck in one summer at university
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: working four months of the year than I did if
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I was going to live in the center city of
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Canada working at this prestige job. I'm like, that's insane.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: So that's where I met my business partner Eric, and
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I said, hey, we should just do a trucking company.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: We got business degrees, I've got a real great background
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: in business. So we had the last of our money
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: that we had left after the year. We pulled it
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: up and we had about ten thousand dollars, so we
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: bought a truck and trailer for four thousand dollars in
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. Kenworth came with an old long logger
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: setup and we put that to work, and that's how
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: we started out in business bout six seven years ago. Now,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: And were you driving that truck that you bought then?
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Were you like owner operating? Oh yeah, yeah, we're owner operators.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: We spent the whole last semester of university restoring this
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: old truck, fixing it all up at sat in a
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: field for like fifteen years. And then we got a
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: job and we went up to the ukon with this truck.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: So up in northern Canada, up on the Arctic Circle
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: in a fifty year old logging truck, and that's how
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: we started our little business. So okay, so far, so good.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: You got your truck, you're driving your truck, You're getting paid.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I mean lots of people spend their whole their whole
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: careers doing that. Oh yeah, that probably would have been
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: a good career. But we started doing like haul and
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: generators and haul and heavy equipment, and like we expanded
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: with the low bed into generators and machinery, and then
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: we thought, well, like, rather than just doing the trucking,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: you can see that the money is doing the installs.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: We can do some of these installs and construction. So
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: what are you what are you installing off grid diesel generators?
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of mines, remote places. There's actually
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: over three hundred and fifty towns in Canada that aren't
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: hooked to the North American grid and rely one hundred
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: percent of diesel. So that's super expensive. You got to
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: bring in the fuel to these remote places. It's inefficient,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: big carbon footprint, it's bad. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: we did a lot of trucking of the fuel in there.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: That's how we really, like, you know, haul a generator
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: in and we're like, oh, well we can haul a
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: fuel in. And are these are these mostly sort of
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: kind of industrial settings? I mean, is it like mining
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: and that sort of thing, or like what are the
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: places that need it. Some were industrial, some were mines.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: There was a few mines in the Yukon and a
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: lot of them though we're residential, like just First Nations
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: reserves up in Canada or other normal cities, so like
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Native American reservations we would call them in the US. Yeah, okay, yeah,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: that's what you would call them. Yeah, Native American reservations.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: So you're shifting your business now. You're going from being
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: just trucker's basically people moving stuff for a fee, to
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: being sort of you're in the you're in the power
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: business now for these remote settings, Is that right? Yeah? Yeah,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I guess we were. If you didn't know, it's a
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: good way to put it. Yeah, I guess we were.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I still thought of ourselves as probably right, you're probably right, okay. Yeah.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: So we did our first big hybrid system installed. How
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: it must be about four years ago now, and it
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: was this community way up northern BC rate on the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Yukon border. And what we did is they had a
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: huge peak power load, so everybody would get home from
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: work at five o'clock, everyone comes home, everyone turns onto
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the power. Where we see it in our national grid,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: huge peak power demands at like five o'clock if everyone
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: gets home. Well, they had that. So what they had
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: is the old way of doing it is that you
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: would size a generator to meet that peak power load,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: to have that power demand when you needed it. So
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: they had a ninety five kilowatt generator running. But what
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: we did is we went in, we start installed a
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: large battery bank, a bunch of solar, and then we
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: downsize that generator to thirty five because that battery bank
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: met that peak power to mat And you had a
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: lot of people there their whole lives, they've grown up there,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: they've listened to these diesel generators always running in the background.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: For the first time in some of their lives, their
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: little village in the mountains has been quiet, no sound.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: That's nice. That's a nice detail. So okay, So there's
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: a town that had a giant diesel generator and you
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: got them set up with solar panels and batteries and
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: a much smaller generator that could charge the batteries when
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the solar power wasn't enough. That's right, yep, Okay, So
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: keep going. I'm waiting for the big moment. We are.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: We at the big moment. It's coming soon. There's no
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: big moments in business, no fair. That's a very business
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: is made of a lot of little moments that add
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: up to a big moments. There's always a little tiny
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: steps forward, steps back. It's a store good story is
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of little steps. That is very wise point,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: very very fair. So what's the next little moment? The
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: next little moment is one day we were looking at
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: all these diesel light towers and we thought, well, why
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: do we make those solar? So on a napkin, I
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: sketched out this little solar light tower and Caterpillar loved that.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Finning loved that they turned that into one hundred percent solar.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: So rather than running a diesel generator on site with
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: all the emissions and noise pollution and having to pay
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: for fuel, we now have made one hundred percent solar
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: one that we designed that works up in northern Canada.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: And then that started as a manufacturing and in between
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: that I was just driving logging trucks doing solar like.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: The solar installed was going really smoothly, so I actually
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: transferred back into hauling logs for a while. Finally we
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: had this kind of aha moment when we did a project,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: and we were sitting there thinking that a semitruck is
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: a lot like these little diesel powered communities. It's got
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: a huge peak load, so it takes a lot of
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: power to get that weight moving, Like to build that
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: initial inertia takes a lot. Once you're at speed, it
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: takes very little to maintain that momentum. So that moment
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: when you're getting the truck going, it's like the moment
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: when everybody comes home from work and turns on all
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: their appliances. It's just this moment of peak demand that's
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: way higher than the kind of baseline. That's right, It's
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: exactly like that when you think of the truck like
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: an off grid power system. So we thought about it
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: and well, why don't we just optimize the trucks patteries
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the same way. And this is what electric can do. Like,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: we're at the point where all the electric technology for
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: trucks is there, the electric drive motors, the batteries, the
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: electric control gears. Well, why don't we make this efficient
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: and run this like a freight train. Freight trains have
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: been diesel electric and they move tons of weight because
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the electric motors have tons of torque, tons of power
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: super efficient. You have regenerative breaking to capture energy slowing down.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: When we built our prototype, we were finding like fifty
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: sixty percent fuel savings on these log and trucks. So
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: and can you plug it in or no? Yep, okay,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, no, we plug it in in the evening.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: So you pull up next to the house and pull
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: it up next to the shop and plug it in
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: and it just charges. So you always start your day
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: with one hundred percent battery and you get about two
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: hours of driving out of this thing, and then the
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: diesel generator turns on, runs for about half an hour,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: shuts back off. You'd get another hour or two hours
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: of driving, and then it runs for another half hour.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: So is it right that part of your thesis in
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: building this diesel charger is that a purely electric truck
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: just won't be able to carry enough enough batteries, enough
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: battery power to do the kind of work that these
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: trucks need to do. That was one of the issues
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: is that electric trucks for eighty percent eighty five percent
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: of the trucking industry will not work and probably won't
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: work until batteries and charging infrastructure massively improves but we're
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: looking at twenty thirty years until we can get to
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: that point. But going diesel electric is kind of that
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: best of both worlds. Oh, I can recharge the batteries. Like, yeah,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: you're not going to eliminate diesel, but you're going to
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: massively reduce the amount of diesel you need. It's a
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: step in the right direction. So okay, So that's the
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: basic idea. It seems like it would be super hard
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and capital intensive to turn that into a business, much
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: harder than buying one ten thousand dollars logging truck in
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: a field and driving it for fun and profit. It
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: was hard. Yeah, that's you're right, that's not an easy
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: thing to do. But thank god we kind of went
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: viral if a company can go viral, and it's been
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: one of those things that's really helped. You're you're big
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: on TikTok, which I would not have guessed. Tell me
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: about your life in TikTok and how that helped. Well,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: it was when when I was still hauling logs. One
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: of the guys that used to work with us, an
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: older guy and you know, late fifties, early sixties, was
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: that kept making TikTok videos and I'm like, I'm okay,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I better download TikTok and see what the hell Shane's
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: posting about me. And I probably scrolled TikTok for like
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: six months before I even made a video. And then
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: I first made a truck video and it just went
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: really big, and then I started making more videos. Was
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: it What was the first one that went big? I
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: think I was shifting gears and dancing. I think it
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: was one of those ten fifteen seconds dancing tiktoks. But
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I was doing like a trucker version of the dance whatever.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: It was dorky. And then yeah, when I announced that
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: we were doing Edison, it all of a sudden took
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: off millions and millions of views. We had our own page,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: we had a little crowdfunding, and I'm like, okay, well
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: we'll crowd fund this first build. And within five days
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: we had raised almost half a million dollars and closed
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the crowdfunding out off of just this one TikTok. So
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: that's amazing. Half a million dollars is a lot of money.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: But when I think of starting a truck company, it's
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: not even It's many orders of magnitude away, right, And
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: this is partly because the way you were starting a
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: truck company is different than what I would have thought of. Right,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: you're not building a factory to mass produced trucks, right,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: tell me, tell me about the way you're doing. No,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: we're starting with a very common sense approach. Let's build
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: one prototype, and let's raising up money to build one
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: prototype to make sure that our idea is valid. Let's
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: take it in a truck, will retro fit it with
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: a diesel motor. We'll connect the control systems that we design,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: and we'll just we'll try it out. We'll see how
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: it works. And we did that, and we built the
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: truck and did it work? Oh? Yeah, yeah, no, it
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: worked great, lots of good power, great acceleration. There was
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: a few little things that we needed to go back
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: to the drawing board. I did not like the drive
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: line system. We snapped the drive line a couple of
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: times trying to do some heavy stuff and then trying
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: to drag race the truck. Is that the way you
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: stress test a truck is all hall bunch of logs,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: a ball and b drag race it. Apparently? Yes, yes,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I let I let another truck driver in town. Real
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: good truck driver. And we were letting all the truck
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: drivers come out and try it, and I'm like, all right,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Jim like give her, just give her the beans, and
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: he throttled into it and ping rain. We're like, okay,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I guess that ends the testing for today. That ping,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: that was a key part of the truck breaking. So
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: they tried a different part. So I'm called an exel
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: that's designed to be used with electric vehicles. The exel worked,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: no more pings. Just to zoom out for a quick
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: set here, I want to just highlight a thing Chase
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: said a minute ago, that idea that sure, electric trucks
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: sound great, but for lots of uses, full on electric
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: trucks just aren't there yet, right, And so I I
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: really like the sort of practical incrementalism of his approach,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: this sort of let's build what we can build now
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: because it's better than the existing thing, even if it
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: isn't perfect. Still to come on the show today, how
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Chase built his company on top of an old law
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: from the Cold War. Now back to the show, And
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: just to be clear, when you talk about building a truck,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I mean you're not like machining all the parts from
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: scratch or something. Right, No, that is our biggest saving grace.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: We looked at these things and what a truck company
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: is now. We realized really quickly that we couldn't afford
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: to compete if we had to make all our own
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: parts like Tesla, And we realized a lot of people
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: don't want to buy custom parts. So we went to
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: the parts that trucks have been using for the last
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: fifty sixty years, those common core parts, and we use
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: the simple off the shelf. We actually had a great
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: partnership with CBS Fleet Break. These trucks supply stores sat
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: down with their parts experts and we said, what parts
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: do you always have in stock? What are you finding
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: out that the people aren't complaining about that aren't breaking
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Give us your most reliable parts that you always have
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: in stock. And then our team and mechanics worked with
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: our few engineers and they said, well, let's just part
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: putting these parts on. Let's pick those parts that we
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: can grab off the shelf. And you know how much
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: time and money that saves you in development cost. It's
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: going to save our customers money, it's going to save downtime,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: and it got us into production. We're now starting on
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: our product first production truck already in just a year
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: and a half of starting the company. When you talk
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: about going to sort of trucking parts stores and using
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: parts that have been around for decades, I mean, I
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: wouldn't it makes sense at a certain level. I would
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: never have thought of it. Like it's almost like you're
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: building the trucks from the parts that are just sort
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: of around, like from spare parts or something. I mean,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: how much of the truck can you build that way?
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: And you build a whole truck that way? You can
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: pretty well, except for some of like the high voltage
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: controls and the elect specific parts trucks have shared for
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: the last forty years. Of very common core parts. You
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: can take a break pot, a type thirty break pot
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: off a nineteen fifty five Kenworth, and that's the same
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: type thirty break pot that's still on a twenty twenty
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: three freight liner. Turn signal on my sixty two Kenworth
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: is the same turn signal that Western Star used up
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: until like two thousand and seven. Like a lot of
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: the parts were just all the same. Why is that,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Like that's not true for cars at all? Right? It
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: has a lot to do with the US defense Procurement
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Act of nineteen fifty four O US Defense Procurement Act. Okay,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: go on, I believe that's what it called. It's something
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: along those lines, but it's basically the US, NATO and
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: these places. They were worried about the Russians, sure, and
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: they saw what we did to Germany was we bomb
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the hell out of their factories in World War two.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: In World War two, okay, yeah, and they realized like, well,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: if the Soviets attack us, the first thing they're gonna
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: do is hit our factories. Well, trucks are so vital
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: to the defense industry and just people surviving. If you
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: run out of trucks, you run out of food in cities.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: And they thought like, well, okay, well they'll hit Detroit.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: We need to be able to figure this out. So
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: they started making all the parts the same. So did
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the government sort of put out a set of specifications
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: and said, whatever, the turn signal has to look like this.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: I mean it was it something like that. That's exactly
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: what they did. It was right down to even the
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: shift knobs. The shift knobs are all the same in
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: color coded on trucks. If you have a fifteen speed,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: it'll have a blue button for your thumb. Thirteen speed
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: will have a red, eighteen speed will have a gray
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: And it's the same across Europe. It's the same across Australia.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Like you op into an Australian truck and you look
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: at your shift knob, even on a brand new truck,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: if it's gray, you know, you can split the bottom
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: and top end so that the drivers could ship Like
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: that is how can and standardized. We had trucks for
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: eighty years or sixty years. That is amazing And it's
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: really interesting to think about that, right, Like the thing
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: about sort of the economic implications of that and the
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: technological implications of it, right, Like, I mean, on the
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: one hand, it seems like it would be really bad
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: for innovation, right Like if somebody came up with a
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: better way to make a part, they kind of wouldn't
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: be able to do it, right. That seems like a
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: downside of it. On the other hand, you can always
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: get spare parts and the company isn't going to gouge
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: you if the turn signal breaks because you could buy
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: somebody else's turn signal. I mean, are those the basic
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: trade offs? Am I thinking about it? Right? Yeah? That's
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: probably about right, So they relax these laws in the eighties.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: What innovation have we really seen in trucks? Well, I
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: don't know anything about trucks, So you tell me what
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: innovation have we seen in trucks? Well, we still have
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: a turn signal, but nowadays, you know, that turn signal
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: for my old sixties is about forty bucks on Amazon.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: I can just order it. They still have it, Like
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: all the parts are there, forty dollars. Now you want
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: to turn signal for a brand new truck, it's five
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars. So are you the rare, you know, founder
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: entrepreneur making the case for a kind of government top
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: down regulation of like all detailed specifications. Oh god, am I?
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Maybe I am? Kids Like, you know what, if that's
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: what it's, that's what it takes. Why not have a
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: little bit of regulation in here. We do need something.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: It's not a pure free market we exist in anymore.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: It's very much a more of a do I say,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: chrony capitalism system. But there's only a few big truck
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: suppliers like you look at some of the big brands
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: are all owned by other large brands. Maybe we need
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: something in there to protect the owner operators of key
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: vital industries. That look what happened just with China during
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: COVID and it wasn't even malicious, but there was the
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: computer chip shortage. You couldn't even and buy new trucks,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: they couldn't put them off the assembly line, that you
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: couldn't repair trucks, like the price of trucks went crazy.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And that was just from a few month interruption in
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the global supply chain. Imagine what would happen if a
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: war broke out with China. What would happen to our
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: trucking industry overnight? If it was some economic war, it
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: doesn't even have to be a full on hot war.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: But if we had another Cold war with China where
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: they stopped supplying us, we would lose our ability to
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: move anything in North America. So when you decide to
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: try and build a prototype, you decide you're going to
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: go back, You're going to basically draw on this sort
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: of reservoir of interchangeable parts from this Cold war policy,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: and you kind of build your truck out of those parts. Yeah,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what we did. So okay, so you got
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: your prototype, like is it around now? Is it like out? Back. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: we parked here for the wintertime. We got a lot
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: of snow here. We only took it out one a
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: couple of days, like when it was minus thirty five
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: to see how it did in the winter. But other
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: than that, we parked it and we're now just building
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the new production truck. So okay, So right, so you
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: did the prototype. It worked, I mean, then did you
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: would just tell me about the financing? Did you raise
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: You must have raised more money to go into production.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: We did. We did another round of crowdfunding and same
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: thing again. Within five days we had raised one point
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: five million dollars, which is more than enough to build
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: the first production truck. We're calling out the production prototype,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: and we've settled on four or five really good first
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: trial customers that are going to be financing the first
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: few truck builds. So and when do you think the
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: first you know, truck driver is gonna drive your truck
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: to go get a bunch of logs. I'm hoping by
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: the end of this summer. Okay, So what what do
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: you have to figure out between now and then? I mean,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: I know you made a prototype, but what do you
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: have to solve to actually have your trucks out in
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: the world. Well, sell them to these first customers. We'll
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: get that real world feedback. We'll figure out. It's kind
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: of that old way of engineering. But let's put it
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: out in the field. Let's see what works, let's see
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: what breaks, let's bring it back in, let's change the
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: parts to break, let's improve it, and then let's go
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: into the general public. I mean in terms of the
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: maintenance space. I know you said you use, you know,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: as many sort of core, old cheap parts on your
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: trucks as possible, but you know clearly it's not all old, core,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: cheap parts. You're doing new things. Is that going to
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: be a challenge for the people who buy the truck,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Like getting that part of the truck maintained, It'll be
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit different on that part. So we designed
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: a lot of these, and we had some brilliant electrical engineers,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: and we took electrical parts that were common for the
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: high voltage world, people working in like power plants, and
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: so you almost need like a mill electrician, like a
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: sawmill that has all these electric motors are a mine.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Has those people that can service those electric motors. That
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: makes sense. It does seem like in this sort of
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: period of transition, or just when your trucks are new
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: and there's only three of them in the world or
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: ten of them in the world, or a hundred of
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: them in the world, Like, it'll be hard for the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: person driving that truck to figure out how to get
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: it fixed, right, Like, it's not obvious how to solve
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: that piece of it, even if there is some industrial
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: electrician who would know, Like figuring out who that person
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: is and getting them to fix the truck seems hard, No,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: So we took advantage and we partnered up with some
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: universities and we bring a lot of summer students now
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: in for the summer, like heavy duty mechanics summer students
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: that are in their second third year apprenticeship. And what
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: we do is we've been training them up as part
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: of their coop education, paying them in wage they learn.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: They work on these trucks in the summer. And now
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: these few companies that want to buy our trucks, they're
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: larger fleets, and they said the same thing, how are
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: we going to maintain these and like, rather than just
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: always coming back to our shop, we're gonna send you
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: this guy. These people's contact information, so you can hire
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: a diesel mechanic that already has a knowledge of how
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: these trucks work because they helped build the trucks. So
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: that was our way around it. When you look sort
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: of from here on out, whatever for the next year,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: next six months, all the things you got to do,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: what are you particularly worried about? Like what at this
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: point are you worried? They are you know, trying to
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: solve actually find a facility to build these trucks. Where
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: are you building them now? We're building them up in
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: a temporary shop, so I couldn't get city permitting to
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: build a shop where we're at, and my house is
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: kind of up a little bit of a logging road
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes out of side of town. So we're
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: building them illegally because I can't. I'm technically not zoned
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: to manufacture run any kind of industry. So right now
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: we're building them as any trucks as we can before
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: the government finds out that we're building trucks where we're
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: building them. So the stressful part is now finding a place.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: And our town had a massive flood about a year ago.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: We lost like twenty percent of our houses. It wiped
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: out the entire industrial district. There's no land available, and
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: I want to own the land. We have the money,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: we have it, like, we got things in place to
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: be able to do this, but there's just nothing available.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: So you're telling me that you want to have trucks
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: on the road in oh, six eight months, and you
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: don't have anywhere to build them right now. We have
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: a spot just nowhere to legally build. If anyone asks
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: our shop is for agricultural use, we could build a
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: big shop for agricultural use. And then they're like, well,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: what are you using it for? But like storing my
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: classic truck collection and they come out and they look
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: at the classic trucks and they're like, oh, yeah, I
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: guess you do restore classic trucks. Yeah. No, it's just
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: a hobby. So we're on that zoning rate now. And
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: where where is it? Where do you live? Where do
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: you live? I feel like I definitely shouldn't say that now. Fair, okay, fair,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: let's let's let's but it's small town in the middle
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: of the middle of BC in Canada, a small town
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: in British Columbia. We'll merrit British Columbia. That that's as
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: much as we can. We should say. We'll leave it there.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: including questions about trucking and TikTok. That's the end of
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the ads. Now we're going back to the show. So
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: I do want to close with just sort of a
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: lightning round, a bunch of questions, mostly fun. Yeah, what's
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: one secret to succeeding on TikTok? Just be real and
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: be yourself? People like the genuine connection. Is it right
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: that you were in the army? I was, Yeah, Yeah,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: I was in the reserves. What's something you learned in
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the army reserves that I was not good in the army? Fair?
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: What's one thing you learned studying economics that's useful, actually
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: useful in running a business. The best thing is cause
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: and effect. You see a lot of things in economics
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: where it's you know, if this happens, this will move
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the supply curve lefter or right. If the supply curve
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: and this industry moves left or right, it affects the
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: price this way, which is going to increase the input
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: costs of this other good. That's like ninety percent of
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: your first few years of economics. That's not the heavy
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: math based is learning that causation, what happens if certain
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: things in business change. It lets you strategize. You listen
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: to music when you drive a truck? Oh yeah, I'll
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: be honest, listen to music about ten percent. The other
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: ninety percent was audiobooks and podcasts. Okay. My main thing
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: is like I like to learn new things and truck driving.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: It's one of those careers where I really really recommend
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: to any young person because you have all day to
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: sit there and learn as much as you want. What
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: other job affords you the opportunity to go deep into
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: whatever kind of passion that you have and learn as
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: much as you can about it. Chase Barber is the
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: co founder and CEO of Edison Motors. I first heard
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: him interviewed on the podcast Odd Lots Good Show. Today's
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: episode was produced by Edith Russolo, edited by Robert Smith
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: and Sarah Nix, and engineered by Amanda ka Wa. I'm
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein. I am not on TikTok, but I am
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: on Twitter at Jacob Goldstein. You can also email us
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: at problem at pushkin dot FM. We'll be back next
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: week with another episode. Of the show