CEO and Founder of Smartcar, Inc., Sahas Katta
Mar 13, 2019
EP003 - CEO and Founder of Smartcar, Inc., Sahas Katta
http://www.vehicle2.getspiffy.com
Episode 3 is an interview with Sahas Katta, CEO and Founder of Smartcar, Inc.; recorded on Thursday, March 7th, 2019. Sahas and Scot discuss a variety of topics, including:
- The origins and purpose of Smartcar
- Sahas’ experience pitching to investors
- Smartcar attending hackathons across the country
- Impact of software developers on the future of connected cars, vs innovations from automotive brands and companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon
- How Lyft looks to change traditional car ownership in light of their IPO filing
- Growth of electrification in regards to range and convenient recharging, including Tesla’s V3 Supercharging announcement
- Realistic expectations for the wide use of autonomous vehicles
Be sure to follow Sahas on Twitter and LinkedIn!
If you enjoyed this episode, please write us a review on iTunes!
The four pillars of Vehicle 2.0 are electrification, connectivity, autonomy, and changing ownership models. In the Vehicle 2.0 Podcast, we will look at the future of the auto industry through guest expert interviews, deep dives into specific topics, news coverage, and hot takes with instant analysis on what the latest breaking news means for today and in time to come.
This episode was produced and sound engineered by Jackson Balling, and hosted by Scot Wingo.
Transcript:
Scot:
[01:00] Welcome to the Vehicle 2.0 podcast. This is our third episode and it's being recorded Thursday, March 7th, 2019. Today on the show, we are excited to welcome Sahas Katta, CEO of Smartcar. Welcome to the show, Sahas.
Sahas:
[01:16] Thanks for having me.
Scot:
[01:17] Yeah, so let's start off. Um, you and I have known each other for a little while here about six months. Um, but the listeners don't know you. So let's start off with a little bit of your career path. How did you become the CEO and Founder of Smartcar?
Sahas:
[01:30] Yeah, absolutely. So my background, I grew up in a Silicon Valley, uh, studied computer science and engineering at UC Davis. And as I was growing up, I was someone who'd always be tinkering on my family or parents, cars, not per se on the engine itself, but actually oddly enough, more on the, uh, software and infotainment side of vehicles trying to figure out how to get lossless audio codecs, deploy on my stereo system or create a way to play videos on my infotainment system or things along those lines. I never really thought the world of software engineering would really collide with automobiles or mobility. A few years later after I had left UC Davis, I ended up, uh, on a weekend deciding to try to build an application for a car, uh, just for fun and realize that that was actually very difficult to do and, uh, uh, decided I want to do something about it and started prototyping and trying to build a car platform. And that was kind of the early genesis of a Smartcar coming about and me ending up starting that company.
Scot:
[02:42] Cool. The, uh, so I've met a lot of people in Silicon Valley. You're, I think you're the only person I've ever met that's actually from Silicon Valley. How is that? Is that, uh, is rare for most people as it has been for me?
Sahas:
[02:53] I think so. Um, uh, it's been very exciting being here just because a lot of the founders do know are all Silicon Valley born and bred, but there are people from pretty much every corner of the world who are building really incredible things. So, uh, it, it is pretty exciting to get to work with at least people.
Scot:
[03:12] Yeah. Awesome. Um, so give us a little perspective on Smartcar how, what's your kind of elevator pitch when you're at a cocktail party and people ask you what you're building?
Sahas:
[03:21] Yeah. Smart car is the API for your car. Uh, if you're a software developer, you can write a couple lines of code after reading our Api docs on our website and you can actually do a lot of really incredible stuff to your car. Uh, whether that's, uh, getting the location of the vehicle YLC over the Internet. It's a domino reading or even sending signals to the Karta lock or unlock it stores remotely over the Internet so it could write it literally a couple of lines of code on your computer and the car in your driveway will magically unlock. That was something that was very difficult to do. And we somehow figured out how to turn it into a process where developer can go from start to finish in making that happen. And no matter no more than a few minutes.
Scot:
[04:06] Awesome. And then I should have said it at the top of the show, but full disclosure, we are partners. So over here at Spiffy, we were using Smartcar as part of our connected car initiative and, and you know, by, uh, our developers are using your, your wonderful Api Apis to help us get access to vehicles for surfacing them. So, uh, we, we can vouch that it's real and it works and we've enjoyed working with you guys.
Sahas:
[04:28] Appreciate it. Thank you very much. It's been great working with your team as well.
Scot:
[04:31] Yeah. So, uh, as a, as a fellow startup guy, uh, one of my first questions is, you know, how, how big are you guys? Um, I know I saw that you guys have raised some capital, so the extent, whatever you're comfortable sharing, you know, obviously I don't want to get into, into dicey territory, but, but how, how big are you guys and how big do you think this could be?
Sahas:
[04:49] So taking a step back, um, the company started off, uh, with myself and a female into kind of getting the idea. I started working on convincing my brother who now happens to be the co-founder and CTO of the company to quit his job at Linkedin and join me on this journey to build this company. And that was maybe three months in of me trying to start the company. And he was a little resistant at first. He thought it was a crazy idea. And I've worked on that for probably about six months or something of that sort of trying to join. And finally, by the nine month mark or 10, 10 month mark, he finally said, okay, I'll quit. And let's do this. By that point, even though he was working his full-time job, he was on weekends and evenings, uh, um, helping prototype the first version, very, very early version of the product.
Sahas:
[05:43] And we use that very early prototype, uh, that, uh, he built, um, with me while he was still working another job to take that to investors and pitch idea. So the company at this time, it was just him and me and we were living in a small in South San Jose. And, uh, we went out to pitch a lot of ECS and uh, start off with a lot of angels and incubators. We unfortunately got rejected from a lot of the incubators. Almost everyone said, this is a ridiculous idea. Uh, I don't see, oh, you could actually make this work. But within about a few weeks, um, we ended up meeting, uh, Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen and entrepreneur partners at the firm, Andreessen Horowitz. And we pitched to him. We really didn't know who they were at the time. Uh, for those who aren't startup, we're holding, um, it's a really famous from a, they've been early investors in a lot of incredible companies like Airbnb, Lyft, Facebook and uh, octa and a lot of really a well regarded companies today.
Sahas:
[06:44] But we walked in not really knowing who they are. Uh, we should have probably done her homework, but we hadn't, uh, we didn't spend all their time reading about vcs. We were just focused on our product and we give them a genuine pitch of what we do. Uh, we brought a couple of cars so there are parking lot and demoed or tech working. So we were standing in the parking lot and writing a couple lines of code on her command, prompt our terminal on our computer and showing them how we're pulling data out of these cars and unlocking the doors to these vehicles. And they got pretty excited and they ended up up, uh, writing a check to us. It just the two of us, uh, for $2 million. And that's how the company got started and fast track to kind of where we are now. Since then, we've now raised a little over $12 million in venture capital from both Andreessen Horowitz and another firm called NEA I, which is not as new enterprise associates. And, uh, the team is approximately 20 people and this year we're actually on traction doubling the head count. So, uh, we've had a pretty exciting journey and, uh, we're really looking forward to what's coming next.
Scot:
[07:49] Pretty cool. Um, yeah, the, I'm a huge fan of, uh, Ben's book, "The Hard Thing About Hard Things." It's uh, it's one of my go tos so I have not met him. I've met mark a couple times, but I'm, I'm super jealous that you got to meet and pitch him. I bet that was fun.
Sahas:
[08:06] Yeah, no, I love that book. There is just a, I think the first time I read it was before I uh, or right after I started the company. And uh, um, I didn't really understand most of it because I have not really gone through any aspects of building a company. Uh, but I actually re-read it, um, uh, just a few months ago, a second time and it added so much more value. What the context, having tried to build something, uh, with learning how to hire people, manage people, uh, unfortunate circumstances of learning how, what and to let go of people and a tough decisions when it comes to your finances, numbers and scaling the company. So I think it's a really great book for entrepreneurs who are maybe pass their seed stage and maybe at least around the series a stage of their company and uh, figuring out how to get it to scale.
Scot:
[08:56] Yeah. Last time I was in your office, it seemed like half the folks there were coming back or going to a hackathon. And that seems to be a big way you guys get your APIs and the in the hands of folks don't tell us about the hackathons that you guys sponsor.
Sahas:
[09:10] Yeah. Um, so when we think about are the connected car market, when we, when we look at the industry, what we see is the innovation that's happening moving forward is no longer necessarily hardware innovation but really software innovation. The next generation of companies and ideas that are making the world a better place and turning mobility in general into something that's more accessible for more people than ever is really being driven by a software bill. Uh, advancement, suffer advancement. So she'd say or applications. And when you answer the question of who is, uh, uh, built software, it comes down to developers. Most of the innovations until today in the soft or in the automobile or mobility space weren't really being driven by, uh, application developers. And that's because there hadn't been really a platform for them in the space. What we realized is we need to figure out a way to get this in front of all sorts of developers, even if it's a girl in her dorm room, uh, who, uh, as a hobby is building the next killer app without knowing it.
Sahas:
[10:21] So that meant we had to figure out how to get our product in the hands of a lot of really talented students. And what we've been doing for the past year or so is actually going to some of the top universities in the country where they're hosting. These are actually pretty large hackathons where, uh, in some cases over up about a thousand people show up to these and spend 48 hours building an application. And we've been bringing, uh, vehicles to them, uh, to the back. Athens are real Tesla in person and uh, these students are issue, see the passion in their eyes. They get super excited and within 48 hours to have some incredible application actually built that's working and they're able to actually test it on a real car that's parked right in front of the building. And we've seen this as a really great way to get our product into the hands of a lot of innovative early developers and you think a lot, a lot more companies should actually be doing something in that space.
Scot:
[11:15] Cool. Any, um, uh, what are some of the things that you can talk about that people have built it, these hackathons using, using Smartcar?
Sahas:
[11:23] There has been, there's been a lot of uh, really incredible and so maybe I'll tell you one of the sillier are fun ones, but, um, we had someone, actually I want to hurt first hackathons. We had this uh, API endpoint. We were still testing in the early days, uh, to let you actually hook the car. So someone bill actually an alarm clock app that honks your car in the morning to wake you up. And uh, I think everyone got a really good laugh out of that. Um, but, um, and if you actually kind of look some of the more serious things people are building, we've seen people build some really cool things from voice assistance, uh, Alexa integrations or Google home where you can do things like when you're going to bed, say, Hey Alexa, lock my car for me. And it sends a signal to your vehicle and locks, locks the car in your driveway or parking the sidewalk in front of your home. So people are building a lot of really, really neat things that can actually build in a pretty short timeframe. But um, in some way or another actually, uh, could be utilized by a lot of people. Um, if that application, we're a distributed into the marketplace with a little bit of marketing. I do think a lot of these are really incredible valuable ideas.
Scot:
[12:35] Awesome. Yeah, those are, those are good examples. I like the skill. I'm actually have to, uh, hopefully they're release that and I, I can use that myself. Absolutely. So, so here on the Vehicle 2.0 podcast, we have a framework where we talk about kind of what I think of as the four big changes that are rocking the car world. Um, so there's connectivity, uh, there's electrification, autonomy, and then changing ownership models. I wanted it to spin through those with you and kind of get your, your, your thoughts for what's going on there. Uh, let's start with conductivity cause that's obviously near and dear to your heart. Where do you think we are as an industry right now with connectivity? Uh, and then where do you see it going over the coming years?
Sahas:
[13:15] So this is one of those things where when you look at vehicles today, most people who are kind of bystanders or just the average person driving their vehicle may not realize it, but all these new cars that are now shipping our, uh, shipping, uh, right off the factory law or dealership lot. When you, when you pick it up, uh, with a cellular Modem Builtin, that means that the car itself is talking to the Internet, uh, through, uh, one of the Telcos, the same seller carriers you use for your smartphone as the service provider. The number of cars that are actually shipping now, uh, with the seller Modem Builtin is growing very dramatically. Um, I think the last number I heard was, uh, nearly two out of every three cars shipping this year are now shipping with some form of a four g cellular connectivity Builtin. Mm. And the neat thing here is that, uh, within the next few years, uh, essentially 100% of all new cars hitting the streets will be internet connected, almost guaranteed. And this opens the doors to an insane number of possibilities where these cars can now integrate dramatically more easily, uh, with all sorts of applications and services without having to still retrofit on some form of aftermarket hardware or any pain points of that sore. It can, these cars are, are good to go around in the box just like your cell phone is.
Scot:
[14:40] Cool. So, um, so that's sort of kind of foundationally we're going to have 100% of cars connected. Uh, and then what are some of the use cases that you, you had forecast once we have that platform in place?
Sahas:
[14:51] Yeah, there is a lot of fun, but let's go back to the topic you asked me about right before that, which is actually developers, um, water, at least developers, uh, kind of building this platform and what are the use cases that they're coming up with? And, uh, one of those companies, uh, who's developers is using us as you guys, you guys have figured out a way to take advantage of these APIs and enable your customers to not have to be present at a vehicle to be able to unlock their vehicles stores and vacuuming, cleaning the interior. And ideally that hopefully is creating a much more compelling experience for people who want to have an on demand, a carwash, uh, make that happen. Um, but if you kind of continue down that thread, there are a lot of really incredible companies for utilizing this technology. We have companies who have fleets, large fleets of cars, and they didn't really have an easy way to build some sort of a dashboard to know where their cars are at any given time.
Sahas:
[15:53] And they're able to use this technology to build those internal dashboards and uh, or even a tablet applications for themselves so they can keep an eye on, uh, where there vehicles in their fleet are at any given time. Uh, we've also seen companies in the insurance tech space utilizing our tech. Uh, one of the new trends that's really taking off recently is a new models of pricing insurance, uh, specifically models of insurance where you're charged by the number of miles you drive. And, uh, our technology lets developers really use an endpoint to get an abdominal reading from a car or I'll see over the internet. And that actually makes it very, very easy for some of these insurance companies with, of course the customer's consent to be able to get their odometer reading and price them based on the number of miles they drive.
Sahas:
[16:42] And all of these may seem really, really small, but when you kind of put together that whole future picture, uh, you end up in a world where you have all sorts of really incredible applications that kind of makes the whole car ownership experience a lot better than it is today. Very cool. Um, are there use cases as you think out where it makes sense for the cars to talk to each other? Um, so this is something that I think, uh, the industry's been going back and forth on. Um, the term you just mentioned, cars talking to each other is under a label called VTV vehicle to vehicle communication. Uh, that's something that's been under discussions by the industry for probably over a decade now. And it's seen in a lot of ups and downs. And, uh, I think when we end up looking at the world we live in today, um, I personally am starting to lean towards realizing that centralized communications have been for the most part, um, the more successful and mechanism of enabling devices to communicate or vehicles to communicate with one another.
Sahas:
[17:45] Uh, and if you look at anything from file sharing your Dropbox on your computer or your cloud storage or how you send emails, all of these today or even this podcast we're on, uh, it's not happening peer to peer for the most part, but most of our mobile devices or computers and services we use are all reliant on centralized infrastructure. And we do think there is a valid need in some cases to have HIV. Uh, we think if when the latencies come down and you have things like five g and a bandwidth is available at even larger scale instead of being just, you know, megabits, but gigabits of bandwidth and latencies are milliseconds, you may not really need VTV. Um, I think that's going to be, uh, not as big of an opportunity as a lot of people do think it is today.
Scot:
[18:37] Okay. Um, one thing, uh, whenever I start talking about connected car a, I've always been a little surprised. There's a lot of people that the first thing they bring up the security, I guess I've, I've been in it enough, I don't really worry about it, but what's, what's your standard answer when people say, oh my gosh, you know, what, what about security?
Sahas:
[18:54] Yeah, I think first of all, um, that's a great question because there today isn't really much regulatory policies around automotive security. When you look at the financial sector, you have requirements like PCI compliance, uh, what comes to having to store, um, data like a customer's credit card number on file. There were a lot of, uh, regulatory steps that you need to take in terms of being compliant to be able to do that. When you look at the healthcare industry, you have things like Hipaa, which when it comes to storing anything, data about medical records, about a patient or whatever it might be, there's regular regulatory frameworks and, uh, you need to comply with a lot of those, uh, that structure to be able to actually store medical records or anything on a patient. But when it comes to cars, unfortunately there isn't yet something of that sort.
Sahas:
[19:51] Uh, I think that's something that's on the horizon that will come and companies like Smartcar like us are probably going to be on the cusp of helping define that as it happens. Um, but today, uh, it, it's, it's, it's a good, it's a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that, um, we have a lot of freedom to operate. The curse is that there may also be bad actors in the space who don't take consumer interests at heart, who don't take data privacy at heart and are building things that aren't in the best interest of the average person who may not know what's actually happening with their vehicle data or vehicle information. So to Kinda answer that again, like what is it that we're doing a Smartcar, uh, we fundamentally at smart Smartcar believe that data is a fundamental human right. Uh, we believe that people should have control over their information.
Sahas:
[20:39] Uh, we don't believe that people's automotive data should be sold to marketers or advertisers or anyone who is willing to pay a for it. But rather our mission and belief is that we want to really empower the end consumer, the person who drives a car. Uh, we want to empower them to have control over the information and voluntarily be able to opt in to use applications and services of their choice. So if they want to go ahead and say, hey, I want to, uh, install the spiffy app and I want to allow spiffy to be able to locate my car so they can find it, and then they can unlock it during that, uh, surface order delivery window, do that service and leave. Um, and they choose to give, uh, that company access. They should have the tools to be able to do that. But what shouldn't happen is if some insurance company says, Hey, uh, I'm considering selling a policy to this person and I want to go buy this customer's data from them, and I don't want them to know that I'm doing this.
Sahas:
[21:39] That should never happen. Um, if a consumer voluntarily chooses to say, hey, I'm fine sharing it because I choose chose to do so, they should be able to do that. But there should never be a practice in the industry where information about a cut infancy tumor, whether it's worth Victor van, where they're going, where they've been, or any of their telementory like how much they've driven their car, who's driven their car, when they drove their car, anything of that sort that should all be controlled by the user. They should be able to make their decisions as to who gets access to that, why they would give it access to it and actually do the actual final clicking of the button to say, I approve this.
Scot:
[22:17] That seems like a good framework. I like where you're going with that. Yeah. Um, well then connected car, it's been interesting to watch. So it seemed like, you know, so, so we talked about the car itself being connected to, to the Internet. Uh, but then there's also a lot of the in dash experience kinds of things and it seems like the OEMs and kind of the early days, they tried to do stuff there and then, you know, consumers are like, well, I've got this phone in my pocket, I'll just connect to Bluetooth and, and use that. So all this dash stuff was happening and people weren't using it. Um, now we see, uh, all the big players. So, so apple, Google, um, and now you're in the Apple really doing things like CarPlay and um, what's the Google one called to the, was that, yeah, there you go. Android auto. Uh, and then, uh, you know, now Amazon has an Alexa for, for insight. Alexa auto I guess is what they call. Um, how do you view those things as far as the topic of connectivity and is that going to be the winter or are we going to see another cycle where the OEMs now come back and they've done a better job?
Sahas:
[23:17] Yeah, it's, it's, it's hard to tell, but I can kind of give you a couple of examples of, uh, how I think it may play out. Um, so, uh, it's kind of funny because, uh, let's take a platform that's like Google's Android for instance. Uh, it's today worldwide, uh, the predominant market share. It's a very successful platform. Uh, I personally use it on my mobile device as well. I have a android device. Uh, however, if you take a step back and ask the question, uh, where else has android in successful? Google had this vision where android would be running on all form factors, all platforms, all types of devices. And now let's look at where, what's happened with it. Um, they tried bringing into tablets and it had a little bit of success for maybe a few months or a year, about several years ago, but that really faded away. Uh, Google try to bring android two watches and that also never really took off.
Sahas:
[24:20] They also try to bring android to TV's, android TVS. Um, they tried it still kind of around, but it's just hanging in there. It's never been anything. I would call an outright success by any means. Uh, and in fact, Google has competing services to themselves, like Chromecast, which doesn't run on Android, uh, uh, and Google home doesn't run on android or a lot of these products that they now have had successes with to not use android. So now let's talk about the car. Um, Google is undoubtedly putting a dramatic amount of effort into turning, convincing car companies to make android the default operating system, uh, for the maps, navigation, uh, music and, uh, infotainment system as it's called in the vehicle. Uh, but it's still at the end of the day begs a question, we'll android succeed in this ecosystem on this form factor, which is a vehicle when it has repeatedly failed on everything from televisions to watches to tablets.
Sahas:
[25:18] And so that's, that's where I kind of have to say I leave it at, but, um, if I would also look at it from another perspective, Google is hilariously actually at a race with itself and there's, they're working in one group and the organization as part of the sibling company of Waymo, which is under the alphabet parent company. On during self-driving cars to market. And another end of the spectrum, they still have this other group called android under Google that is building an infotainment system for cars. And here's why they're at a race with each other. In my opinion, if the self-driving car ends up winning, uh, you won't need an infotainment system in a vehicle because the moment that you know, the seats turnaround, the front seats are facing the rear seats, there are seats are facing forward. It's kind of like a living room in your car, uh, traveling on the road.
Sahas:
[26:06] Uh, in any of those situations, you're likely gonna end up choosing to pull all the brand new smartphone or maybe a tablet out of your pocket and choosing to use that device over whatever is built into the car. And the reason for that is what our is building in the car by definition is probably already three or four years old because that's the time cycle, product lifetime cycle that it takes a car company to get something into a vehicle. So what that means is that if the autonomous car comes first, any efforts Google has in terms of trying to make their infotainment system, uh, prevalent in the market is going to be relevant. Uh, but if the car doesn't come around and for you know, a decade or something longer, there will be definitely an opportunity for Google's android infotainment system to have some lifespan span before the autonomous vehicle eventually does show up.
Scot:
[26:55] Yeah. Cool. And then, uh, how about Apple and Amazon? Any, any point of view on those guys?
Sahas:
[27:00] Yeah, so apple, apple hasn't yet taken to my knowledge so far, uh, an initiative to bring some form of Ios to run natively in a vehicle itself. And that's going to be, in my opinion, the biggest roadblock for their success. Uh, if, uh, today that depending on a smartphone to project the end of the vehicle, uh, and, but the vehicle can't have nothing in the car if your phone isn't there because your phone might be out of battery or we may break it, which means you can't use infotainment system if your phone's broken or something of that sort, which means that the car companies still needs to have an operating system, uh, that need to be present in the vehicle as you're, everyone's familiar with. Apple's always had a strong stance about having apples upbring systems only running on apple hardware that we'll watch a watch. Ios only runs on an apple watch. A ios only runs on iPads and iPhones and Macintosh only runs on Mac books. Even there are television, the apple TV that they're Tbos only runs on apple TV hardware. So they would need to be breaking something that's culturally been part of their core philosophy to decide to for the first time, bring their operating system to run on a hardware and experienced that is not built. And designed by apple. So if that does happen, it'll be very interesting. But I see it unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Scot:
[28:24] Cool. Um, so stepping outside of connected car, let's talk about car ownership. So you had a, you'd entered that there's some fleets out there using Smartcar to kind of know what's going on. Um, do you see individual ownership, uh, diminishing pretty rapidly and, uh, I was, I'm sure you've read the Lyft S1. This kind of been the most interesting reading in the industry for awhile. Uh, you know, they're, they're projecting a, uh, you know, the end of car ownership here pretty quickly, so, so where do you fall on that?
Sahas:
[28:53] Yeah. Um, so I read that as well, and I think, uh, um, one they need to create an optimal outlook for their own business as their IPO. So, uh, it's a nice for them to ever in that, uh, that outlook. Um, and I've met both John and Logan, who are the founders of Lyft a couple of times are incredible people and I'm very supportive of, uh, uh, an admiration of the incredible company and they built. Um, but, uh, when you actually look at what's happened today, um, yes, there is definitely a decline amongst a certain age demographic of people who are buying vehicles. Uh, but, uh, the, when you look at the end result of it, there's also the fact that the market size itself is just growing. There is also a lot of room for more modes of transport that include private ownership to coexist as well. And I think there is always going to be a pendulum swing. Sometimes people thinking, Hey, we'll uh, uh, use everything as a service and then people go back to us saying, hey, we should run this infrastructure or have ownership of this ourselves. So that shift back and forth I think happens every 10 or 15 years in the industry right now. I think you're correct that there is a trend towards using vehicles as a service. I think it will sway back and forth and I don't think that it's, it's settled anytime soon. I'm just yet.
Scot:
[30:15] Cool. Um, so the next kind of pillar is electrification. You're the only person I know that has an electrical Volkswagen. So you must be a true believer to have taken that plunge. Where do you think we're going? On the eve slope of the curve.
Sahas:
[30:29] Yeah. Um, so definitely a very early adopter of all sorts of technology, not just cars is some, is the way I would kind of describe myself. I actually convinced my father to buy a one of the first hundred or so Tesla model s's as they rolled out. Um, so definitely a very early her on the front end, a huge believer in electrification and electric vehicles. I currently, as you mentioned, uh, drive a Volkswagen Eagle, which is very limited I should say with a 80 mile range. Uh, I am fortunate enough that I live very close to our, my apartment is, um, but there are undoubtedly a lot of challenges that need to be resolved. As an example with myself, um, I used to actually live in a house, um, before moving into my current apartment since I was trying to move closer to work and my home had a, a one to 40 volt outlet in my garage.
Sahas:
[31:26] So I was fully charged, uh, in my, with my vehicle and ready to go every day and never really had to worry about charging my car, waiting somewhere for my car to charge, cause, uh, plugging in at night and I would be ready to go in the morning. Uh, but since moving to my apartment, my apartment complex, which probably has a couple hundred apartments in that block, offers one ed charging style and there's probably a couple dozen people who now how evs in my complex. So there's this problem with infrastructure not being ready. Uh, people who do live in cities who don't have residential homes with the traditional, you know, two car garage may not be able to have a bible to even consider an electric car is an option unless there is infrastructure provided to them by their apartment complex. Or maybe their workplace is willing to provide them a network of chargers so that they can charge while there cars parked your work. So there are undoubtedly significant challenges. Um, but I do think that the future is undoubtedly electric.
Scot:
[32:30] So how do you solve that? And now I'm worried that you're going to get stuck somewhere.
Sahas:
[32:35] Um, well, uh, I think, uh, I don't know if you saw the news, but last night, uh, Tesla actually announced a version 3.0 they're supercharging. And it was very interesting. Uh, and part of why is Tesla is laid out, you know, something like over 10,000 superchargers across the country. And, uh, and they were already starting to, in some certain areas, uh, reached peak, uh, acid. And the reason for that is when they just had the model lesson x, there weren't that many cars on the road. Uh, there wouldn't be too much congestion at any of these charging stations for instance, and mountain view or something in San Jose, California. However, now with model threes in the road and then likely shipping, you know, millions of these cars over the next few years, if there's going to be no way to satisfy a large, and where people with the number of stalls they have to charge these vehicles.
Sahas:
[33:29] So what Tesla actually, well everyone thought they would do would be to simply put twice as many or three times as many charging stalls and every grocery complex or in every supermarket complex or wherever it is, where these charging stalls are, but they actually did something rather interesting. They actually solved the problem in a different way. Uh, what they've done with supercharging 3.0 is they make it now possible to charge your car from zero miles of charges, 75 miles a charge in five minutes. They brought the time it takes to charge your vehicle down by nearly 50%. So what that means is when someone previously had to wait maybe 30 40 minutes to charge their car, you're not finishing that and maybe 10 or 15 minutes tops, meaning that during the same number hours during a day, you can actually satisfy twice as much capacity without even having to go around getting around to add in more stalls. So I think there are a lot of creative, ingenious ways to solve this problem. And if you get to a point where it's even faster than the s version 3.0 they just announced within the next few years, you're practically at the same speed and time it takes to fill up your gas at a gas station, which is no more than a couple minutes. And when you get to that point it, you, you don't need women think about or worry about this being a challenge. So it's actually very exciting to see a trend going in this direction.
Scot:
[34:45] Yeah. The, uh, the other thing they've done, um, I've, I had a model s and now have a model three is they've introduced idle fees. So, uh, because the superchargers usually weren't that full. A lot of times I would just charge and go shopping and the vehicle will be done and I'd still be shopping. Uh, and now they start to hit you with a little fee as, as you kind of sit there idle. So they're creating an economic disincentive for idling at the chargers, which is interesting.
Sahas:
[35:10] Yeah, that makes it a lot of sense. And it's pretty brilliant. Did you say it? You said you just said you had a Model 3.
Scot:
[35:15] Yeah, I do.
Sahas:
[35:16] So your car is actually compatible with this out of the box. So yeah, as they are rolling out this update and announcement, um, within the next few months you'll probably have a supercharger somewhere near your home where you can likely charge up the entire car from empty to nearly full, probably within, you know, 15 minutes or so, which is pretty incredible. Yeah,
Scot:
[35:37] yeah, yeah. I'm looking forward to trying that out. Do you, uh, uh, one thing that always surprises people that come from the e-commerce world is we're really only of fiscal items. We're only at about 15% are bought online. And I think when people look at their individual usage, they would expect it to be more like 20, 30, 40%. Because a lot of times people are on Amazon prime and they're, they're, they're, they're really overindexing on that. When do you think we get to kind of that material amount of, of electric vehicles? Like, like let's call it 15% or 20, somewhere in there?
Sahas:
[36:10] Uh, honestly I haven't been keeping up with the numbers, so I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. Um, but what I do know is, uh, there is one market where there's undoubtedly that level of transformation actually happening in a very short timeframe. And that's China. That's early due to the fact that there are the right garment incentives likely in place too, and courage, um, uh, OEMs to actually make these vehicles, make them available at certain price points and also incentives to enable consumers to actually be able to afford and buy these vehicles. And I think that if, uh, the United States also figures out something similar, if that sort, whether it's on state levels or whether it's on the federal level, that could help drive that transformation sooner than later.
Scot:
[36:59] Pretty cool. Yeah, China's can be fascinating to watch to see, see how that comes up. Um, so the, the last pillar of vehicle 2.0 is autonomous vehicles. And, uh, what are your thoughts on that as a guy that tinkers with cars? Is are, are we going to get there or is it always going to be some kind of a limited use or maybe a public transit kind of a thing?
Sahas:
[37:19] I think we're going to get there. Um, and I think we're going to get there quicker than most people think. Uh, I once again, I have the unique luxury and privilege to live in mountain view California. And uh, if I walk out of my office or out of my home and just watch the street for no more than 10 minutes, I will likely in that short window of time have seen multiple self-driving cars drive by, whether it's Google's Waymo or Apple’s self-driving car or something out of Ford's R&D lab or BMWs or Honda's Nissan's or one of the self-driving car startups like Nero or drive AI or deep map or any of these companies. While you may not see it in most parts of the country, if you are a mountain, you don't even need to be an you downtown are you?
Sahas:
[38:10] I'm not even talking about standing in front of Google's campus, pretty much any street in this town. You probably won't go 10 minutes without seeing more than at least two different types of self-driving cars driving by with all sorts of Berlin, um, engineers and mine's working at working on solving this problem. So I am very optimistic that some modes of transport will become fully autonomous. Whether specific types of routes between, let's say the SFO airport in San Francisco, downtown or some, some farms, some specific paths. At the very least, uh, I'm quite confident will become so well mapped out and so well structured that you can confidently send someone down that road in an autonomous vehicle with almost zero risk. And I think something of that sort is probably no more than months away from actually occurring.
Scot:
[39:04] Okay. So very bullish on autonomous vehicles. It's interesting. Yeah.
Sahas:
[39:08] And to be clear, it's not a, I'm not saying you're going to have the dream that everyone has where you can really get into your car, press a button and it navigates anywhere you want it to go. What I'm saying is you, there are specific routes between, let's say the, uh, UC or Stanford campus and San Francisco airport, specifically that route that's specifically mapped out with almost guaranteed confidence. Something of that sort will be more like be possible in a short timeframe before we get to kind of the all in one purpose, self-driving car that can do anything and everything.
Scot:
[39:42] Yeah. One of the things that kind of blows my mind is a software guy is, you know, so these, these vehicles are gathering so much data, terabytes and terabytes of data at night. They plugged them in and they just download all that into the cloud and then what they're able to do is run the simulated miles. Right. So, uh, so now and then, and then because you can, you know, now that you're in the cloud, you can run parallel simulated miles. So they may go, uh, I dunno, 500 miles a day, but at night, you know, they could virtually take that experience and 10, 20, 30, 40,000 exit if they wanted to too. So kind of very much being in the matrix and it hurts my head to think about it too much. I just sort of, yeah,
Sahas:
[40:19] Funny story where, uh, some of these self-driving car companies that have a test fleet, let's say in Arizona where there's a lot of them are running right now at quarters and Silicon Valley. There's just simply not enough bandwidth, uh, to actually transmit the status between r and d centers and their actual test fleet in a different state. So the way they're actually transporting the data is by briefcase with an engineer flying hard disks, a back and forth on an airplane. And that's apparently faster than uploading it through in fiber networks because just the sheer size of volume of information they're collecting from these cars. So I thought that was pretty interesting to hear about.
Scot:
[40:57] Yeah, we're still living in a sneaker net world sometimes. Cool. Um, last topic, uh, another way to think about what's going on with cars is kind of the, the lifecycle of cars. You talked to a little bit about, you know, some of these innovative insurance models being per mile and, and that kind of thing. Uh, I can't watch TV without the whole set of commercials being, you know, one of these Carvana or room and one of these kind of companies. So all of these new ways of buying and selling and owning cars, um, what are you seeing out there in Silicon Valley from innovation around that?
Sahas:
[41:31] Yeah, I'll give you examples of where we're at at the same time. And you know, 2019 or let's say a year ago in 2018 one, uh, my Volkswagen e golf and then the Tesla model three, uh, I went ahead and leased my Volkswagen. I went to my local dealer. I love this car by the way, but it did take me nearly four and a half or five hours. Maybe I'll spending time at that dealer from when I walked in to actually leaving with that car, just to do the paperwork and get everything done and out the door. And then at the same time, uh, helped, uh, my mother, uh, order her model three. Um, it took maybe two or three minutes, um, through the webpage on tussles website. Uh, it was, no, it took no longer than ordering a new pair of socks off amazon.com and you're living in a world where both of these are happening still in parallel. So when I look at that, I think it's quite clear that one is going to be the future. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see that level of a car purchasing experience emerging, uh, across all brands within the next hopefully year or two.
Scot:
[42:49] Yeah. What, what, um, I often think what's going to happen to the dealers, right? So Tesla doesn't have this, this kind of, you know, dinosaur dealer type model or, or you know, uh, uh, incumbent innovator's dilemma style thing. But the other OEMs would really struggle with that, right? Because they've, they've got all these dealers that kind of hold the inventory and everything like that. But do you have a point of view of what happens to, to car dealers down the road?
Sahas:
[43:14] I think that they will need to go away. Um, if he, you know, they were, the dealership was introduced in a way to protect consumers from the car companies that consumers are buying cars from under the circumstance that they don't, um, uphold some form of contract when it comes to effects and a vehicle or workmanship issues and things along those lines. And that time was very necessary a long time ago when automobiles were introduced. However, let's look at any other industry again. Um, you can buy your iPhone directly from apple or you can buy it through what you may want to call a dealer, whether it's a best buy store or another retailer like target that may sell your an iPhone. It's the same thing for your Dell laptop or you're a Samsung android device. Uh, you always have a way in 2019 across the most technology products to purchase it directly from the manufacturer or through a distributor.
Sahas:
[44:17] The automobile today, aside from Tesla, the only way to get it is through a licensed dealer or distributor. You cannot get it for the most part, uh, directly from the OEM unless it's some sort of exception, uh, fleets or something of that sort. So I think that aired, I'm needs to change. I think there needs to be both options. And I do think that, uh, the R and d capacity for innovation to happen, uh, it's not sitting in the hands are on the laps of dealers who can reinvent the diverse experience. Uh, if someone wants to innovate the direct sales model, uh, OEMs, even though, uh, it may take them some time, they do have the capital and the willingness to actually create an example or an experience that rivals Tesla and they do have the capital to do it. But there are some regulatory stuff that's in the way for them to make that happen. But I do think consumers at the end of the day should have the option to buy it a vehicle that they want in the way they want it, whether it's direct from the manufacturer or from a dealership that they're comfortable with.
Scot:
[45:22] Yeah. And over back in my e-commerce world, this is a, you know, it was never was rarely thought of a brand could good, right? She had almost be like Nike level. Uh, and then now that that damn has broken every brands going direct, it's total chaos. And uh, and now every retailer is trying to be a brand and every brand is trying to be a retailer. So it's interesting to watch these things kind of reached this tipping point and then like go through a massive acceleration. So we'll, we'll kind of, it'll be fascinating to see what happens to these dealer networks. Absolutely. Cool. Uh, so we're, we're getting up against time here. Any last thoughts for listeners? So you want to share her, cause you're, you kind of spend all your time marinating in this world and in any other thoughts on the future of, of vehicles and where they're going, you want to share?
Sahas:
[46:03] Yeah, sure. I'll let, maybe we'll leave everyone with one thought. Um, when we look at what is the purpose of vehicles in most of the United States, the automobile is the only way to get to most places. Whether it's work, whether it's your school library, Grocery Star Hospital, or you know, to visit your family or friends is the only viable option because there isn't really a strong public transit infrastructure, uh, in most parts of the country, which means that mobility and cars are really more than just a luxury. It's, it's actually a necessity which really makes mobility fundamentally a human rights issue. Uh, to be a productive, successful member of society and to have a path to opportunity in a better life. You need mobility. So in our opinion, we want to really figure out a way to empower these developers to build all of these new forms of transit, new forms of car sharing, new forms of car rental, new forms of insurance, all of these things to become possible and ultimately will hopefully see a world in the near future where transportation is more accessible to the demographics that have kind of have been left behind in the dust where transportation is more affordable, it's more efficient, it's environmentally friendly, and ideally safe as well.
Scot:
[47:25] Cool. It's a, it's a deep thought. I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend some time pondering that one. Um, and last question, if a, if folks want to find follow friend tweets, uh, whatever, uh, with you, where do you hang out online?
Sahas:
[47:39] Smartcar.com is our company's website and you can actually find my email, my phone number, everything on the about page. I'm also on Twitter and Linkedin, so I'm very easy to find.
Scot:
[47:54] Awesome. Well we really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule, connecting all the cars in the world to join us on the Vehicle 2.0 Podcast.
Sahas:
[48:02] No, I appreciate it, Scot. I think, uh, what you guys are doing is pretty incredible and you're one of the key companies, I think driving a lot of innovation, you know, the vehicle 2.0 evolution. So we're really excited to be working with you. We think you guys are working on something incredible and I think companies like you are really those, uh, FM, the data companies that are helping make this transformation happen. So thank you very much for having me look forward to continuing working with, with you guys.
Scot:
[48:27] Awesome. And listeners. If you enjoyed today's podcast, please take a minute and go rate us in your favorite podcast listening app. Five-stars is always appreciated. Vote with how you feel and we will join you on the next episode.