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Show Summary
In this conversation, Dave Ogle discusses the challenges and future of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, emphasizing the need for a gradual transition to electric vehicles and the potential role of natural gas and alternative fuels in this evolution. He highlights the complexities of permitting and grid capacity, advocating for a hybrid approach to energy solutions that can benefit consumers, commercial owners, and the energy grid.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Dave Ogle (00:00)
Jet charging comes from in.The concept I learned about in 2008, there were a group of college students that built a kit car and they had a jet turbine engine connected to a generator that was burning kerosene and they developed this really highly efficient electric car. And I thought it was an amazing idea. The concept of using a turbine to run a stator, which then charges a battery bank inside of the car, was absolutely brilliant. So over the years, looking at the way EV technology has evolved and for
whatever reason cars are not using internal turbines to generate power, I came up with the concept of why not hybridize it? Why not split the concept where you have a jet turbine turbocharger that’s charging EVs on site
Kristen (02:22)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Dave Ogle, who is a mechanical engineer and developer. And we are going to talk about jet charging today. So it’s a very exciting concept and it can really help commercial investors. So thank you for being here, Dave.Dave Ogle (02:37)
Yeah, you bet.Kristen (02:39)
So how about you quickly just kind of go into this jet charging concept? What is it?Dave Ogle (02:46)
Jet charging comes from in.The concept I learned about in 2008, there were a group of college students that built a kit car and they had a jet turbine engine connected to a generator that was burning kerosene and they developed this really highly efficient electric car. And I thought it was an amazing idea. The concept of using a turbine to run a stator, which then charges a battery bank inside of the car, was absolutely brilliant. So over the years, looking at the way EV technology has evolved and for
whatever reason cars are not using internal turbines to generate power, I came up with the concept of why not hybridize it? Why not split the concept where you have a jet turbine turbocharger that’s charging EVs on site
and then you have an EV that’s nothing but wheels and a battery bank. So the jet charger concept comes from a turbine jet turbo engine
that is directly connected on shaft to a stator assembly that then runs off of natural gas or liquid propane. Either one, you can set it up either way. And it’s off-grid EV charging. So there’s no pressure on the grid. These can be set in place in so many places that level three charging is not even possible. You can’t have that kind of power draw on the grid. So this is a commercial office space where you can take your commercial building and your parking lot
and turn it into something that generates revenue. You can get your charging station on the map, get your natural gas lines out there in a simple 120 volt circuit that runs out to the jet charging system, that maintains the battery and charges the charging system. It’s like a car. It sits in your parking lot, and when you pull up to it, the engine starts up.
The generators come on and you charge your vehicle on a level three charging experience, which is about 50 to 65 kilowatt. You can charge a Tesla in about 45 minutes with a level three charger, fully, from zero to 100%. Natural gas is available everywhere in every commercial building, so why not use your existing natural gas to then sell it for power and convert it for electric vehicles? And that’s the concept that we came up with.
Kristen (05:02)
Yeah, that’s amazing. And you kind of touched on it, but could you expand on just the issues with the problem with modern charging today?Dave Ogle (05:12)
Modern charging takes too long and as there’s too much pressure on the grid, we don’t have enough grid space available wattage on the grid for all these electric vehicles to come on board. It just can’t happen. You’re going to have voltage drops, brownouts. You’re going to have transformers fry. It’s just it’s not possible. We’re not there. If we were to have all electric vehicles tomorrow, we would have to have twice the size of the electrical grid that we have today. And we can’t do that in one day. It would take decades to be able to build out.the electrical grid. But we have natural gas available today. Why not make the conversion and build the equipment that converts it for you and then create a revenue stream for commercial building owners, gas station owners, strip malls, you name it, anywhere where there’s a natural gas line and they’re everywhere, you can get it over to a jet charging system and have your EV charging system set up. Once the lines are trenched and the power is laid in there just to run the jet charger, it’s simple, it’s just a computer.
circuit, 120 volts, ⁓ simple small wire, and a data wire to connect to the internet for credit card processing and things like that. ⁓ You can have your jet charger set up in about two hours after delivery. It’s just a platform with lines. You connect it up, wire it in, get it online, you’re up and running. You’ve got EV charging in your parking lot.
Kristen (06:24)
Wow.Ow.
And then what’s the profit margin for these people who own these commercial properties?
Dave Ogle (07:26)
Okay, so natural gas can be wildly different state to state in costs.Natural gas is sold in terms of therms. A therm is 100,000 BTUs, right? So when you get billed, you look on your bill, you can take the therm value and you can divide it and find out what the cubic foot cost is. So let me give you an example. For whatever reason, in Utah, they have the cheapest natural gas. It’s about $12 per 1,000 cubic feet. OK? New Jersey, $18.50 per cubic feet.
Okay, so it kind of varies between 11, 12 to 18 to 20 dollars kind of depending where you are in the country. But we’ve done the math on this. You can charge a Tesla in that 45 minutes to one hour range at level three charging for zero to 100 % with anywhere from three to 500 cubic feet. It depends on the battery bank, how large it is, which Tesla model it is. So we’re talking about
Like in Utah, an average of $13 for 1,000 cubic feet, we’re talking $6 to $8 cost to the building owner in natural gas costs. They’re leasing the equipment. We have a leasing model set up for the charger and the turbine generator that connects to it. Very low maintenance. Under lease, it’s protected under a warranty.
That margin is, well, your charging cost total to the consumer would be probably in the $22 to $25 range. That’s what they expect. So you’re taking $8 of natural gas and you’re converting into $25 worth of power sold to the vehicle, maybe $30. It just depends. You make your margins how you see fit and the availability of EV chargers in your area. I know that in like remote areas, if you have a building that is in a remote area off the highway,
you could charge a premium for EV charging because there’s nowhere else to charge. What are they going to do? Right? So depending on location, depending on your cost of natural gas, the margins can vary wildly and we see it as very, profitable.
If structured correctly based on your current natural gas costs in your state and then where your building is, where your property is, depending. If you’re close to an interstate highway, you’re gonna be charging a premium for electric vehicle charging and level three charging. People want level three charging. They don’t wanna go to a grocery store and go walk around with a shopping cart for two hours because they had to charge their car. And we see this a lot where people just try to find something to do. They go to a coffee shop.
and sit for two hours or three hours at level two charging that’s how long it takes because you can’t put that kind of level three charging on the grid is to be able to get a permit and I mean you would have to jump through tons of hoops to prove to the power company that they have that available power and they can do that with jet charging natural gas you don’t involve the electric company whatsoever they ⁓
They don’t have anything to do with it. You’re running a computer circuit out there that uses just a couple of amps. That’s it. Just to make the thing alive and so you can process a credit card. All the main power comes from the turbine charger. The turbine that we use has what’s called a recuperator. So all you environmental people out there, they you know blow a gasket over, we’re now going backwards in the hydrocarbons and… Okay, you got to look at reality, right?
The reality is the electricity you have is already coming from natural gas, if not from coal, right? We have very little nuclear power in the United States. So don’t get your underwear in a knot over thinking, well, we’re going backwards because we’re burning natural gas. You’re already doing it. If you’re charging your vehicle at home, you’re getting your power from natural gas, right? So if you want that level three charging and you want it today and you want dependability and you want to be able to drive the SUVs and the bigger trucks or
and larger four-wheel drive vehicles now, the Tesla Cybertruck, things like that, that’s a level three charging vehicle. You don’t realize that that thing overnight might not even be able to charge at level two if you’ve been driving it all day. That’s eight, nine hours of charging to be able to bring a car like that up at level two charging. Level three charging is a whole other category. We’re talking about 50 kilowatt and above.
know, at level three charging, the Tesla Cybertruck was designed to charge in about three hours. And that’s what our system would do. I see a future possibly for large homes that, or.
Offices that want to integrate EV charging for their employees and be off-grid I mean there’s a whole bunch of different ways to do it, but jet jet Charger and jet turbine charging is the way to do it. We have the available natural gas We have one of the biggest reserves in the world in South Dakota It’s time to revolutionize for clean Burning natural gas now back to the back to the exhaust coming out of a jet turbine
Kristen (13:02)
Yep.Dave Ogle (13:16)
You got to understand that you have natural gas coming into a turbine that’s spinning and burning, right?But all these jet turbines have what’s called recuperators, where they send the gas back through the intake and then it reburns again. So it burns everything off clean, then it goes through a catalytic converter, kind of like in your car. It cleans it up there, and then it’s released back out into the atmosphere. And if you look into natural gas exhaust using a recuperator, there is very little environmental impact. It is the cleanest burning hydrocarbon there is.
Diesel is particles and nastiness. Gasoline is horrific, you know, with the exhaust that comes off the gas engines. Bringing and hybridizing natural gas with EVs is the future. It has to be. It can’t go any other way.
Kristen (14:02)
Yeah.Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, it’s awesome how passionate you are about the topic. You were talking a lot about kind of that charging anxiety that people feel, you know, when they have to charge their electric car. Can you go into that a little bit more?
Dave Ogle (14:21)
anxiety is being recognized in the fields of psychology and psychiatry and it’s real because you’re on the interstate and you’re at 23 % charge and now you’re biting your fingernails going ⁓ no ⁓ my god I might not be able to make it home you know and the anxiety being stuck on the highwayThe anxiety of not being able to pick up your kid at daycare. The anxiety of all of this builds up and it turns people into these worrywart freaks that they’re…
Just bent and not knowing like my god, what about the range? What about this? What about that? What? Okay, if I get to if I can get to betsy’s house I could plug in my car there and then I could go to the get to the daycare by four And then you know people are trying to figure this out and how to make it work And with the lack of ev charging stations out there and there’s a huge lack of them because the electrical won’t permit them because they’re draw too much power And you can’t have level three chargers just pop up everywhere. It’ll overload the grid
Charging anxiety can be relieved by bringing in natural gas turbine Recuperating turbine systems that can turn on run and run these electric generators To then provide EV charging power and have more of them have them all over the interstates Have them in neighborhoods the turbine engines are quiet There’s a nice just kind of hum like a kitten’s purr when they operate. There’s no Pistons like anything like that. They just come on and they have kind of a
low buzzing kind of tone they kind of hum and then they turn down and shut down they’re very very low maintenance ⁓ they can be installed if you have natural gas and a power line ran roughed in the ground trenched and ready in a parking lot you can have a jet charging system delivered drop and have it running in two hours that’s all it takes
Kristen (16:16)
one.Yeah, and can you talk about some of the test studies that you’ve been doing and the success you’ve seen already?
Dave Ogle (17:08)
The testing is really about, well, one, margins, about how can we help commercial property owners make money in their parking lots, right? It varies wildly depending on what you pay for natural gas, your location, how close you are to an interstate highway.or to a busy roadway, or how close you are to the city, city limits, downtown, ⁓ things like that. We’ve spent a lot of time kind of studying this. And generally, you can double your money at a minimum when you’re buying natural gas and then reselling it for electricity. The equipment’s all leased, right? There’s a bunch of different ways and options that you can lease it over terms. ⁓
That problem that issue is solved the maintenance is really really low recuperating turbines really don’t have much of any maintenance They’re pre lubricated and pre set up to spin and run for hundreds of thousands of hours, right? These turbines come from the turbines that were developed for oil platforms so they can have power remote There’s a company in California that builds the turbine and that’s the one we chose it to use in the EV charging system So the skid if you will that comes with the charger and the turbine
all together on it ready to go and you can just land ⁓ it. ⁓ We spent two years of research. I worked with a group of people that ⁓ operate a battery plant in Warrensburg, Missouri. That’s where the original idea came from. We were all on a project together there, an engineering project. That’s what I do. I design control systems and electrical control systems.
And we came up with this concept and it just blew up and we started talking to more and more people about it and then we got the attention of Flying J Pilot, the truck stop chain and they have a headquarters in Kansas City where I live and they sent me to the head of fuel purchasing.
A guy named Arman, he’s from Russia. He’s got a wild story of how he came to America and everything. He’s wonderful guy. And we got into discussions with, know, looking at the margins, looking at the feasibility of this and looking at a way to bring Tesla’s semi truck.
to life and be able to get it on the open highway and hit these truck stops where they can have level three charging in a way where they can get their hours logged driving and the time that they sleep and they have to take a break, they have their charging times, and then they get back on the road and go. So those Interstate I-70 across the country.
Kristen (19:29)
Mm-hmm.Dave Ogle (19:45)
I-10, you know looking at the reality of how far the ranges are and how many stations you would have to have and how many of them at each truck stop you would have to have to make it all work and Getting diesel exhaust out of the air is the first if you want if you want to make a dent environmentallyKristen (19:57)
Alright.Dave Ogle (20:04)
Diesel is dirty. It is dirty dirty dirty stuff and It’s not so much the gases. It’s the particulates that come out of diesel They get into people’s lungs animals lungs. They get these stick to things they stick to your food You’ve got crops that are on the side of the highway. They’re getting hit with diesel particulates, right? So you got petroleum that’s hitting crops, you know floating blowing through the air You see the smog above Los Angeles Denver giant death cloud, you know when the Sun goes downCar, gasoline and diesel exhaust. If we can convert to natural gas, I think in 10 years you’re gonna see a lot of natural gas cars. You’re gonna see natural gas pumps, right? ⁓ You’re gonna see propane coming back on the scene more so, but it’s happening as we, and we’re trying to follow that trend with natural gas EV charging where we can hybridize it and make it viable for the EV people, whether it be cars or cyber trucks or semi trucks, either way. Bring up level three charging.
Kristen (20:50)
Mm.Dave Ogle (21:04)
hydrocarbons of natural gas.Kristen (21:07)
I love that. it’s really, I mean, it’s a win, win, win. It’s a win for the consumer. It’s a win for the commercial owners. And it seems like just a win for the grid as well, kind of with environmental factors.Dave Ogle (21:16)
Yeah.You have to take baby steps. cannot go from running gasoline to 100 % EV. You’re making that giant leap. And that leap is the Grand Canyon. It can’t happen. You have to take baby steps. We might get our grid built out someday, maybe 100 years from now. We have nuclear, small micronuclear plants all over the country. Nuclear is unbeatable. It’s the cleanest, best power there is.
Kristen (21:30)
Yeah.Dave Ogle (21:48)
And there’s a lot of scare tactics around nuclear that just aren’t really, they’re not reality. It’s not as dangerous as some people make it out to be, but bang for buck nuclear, you get a lot of power. just blows the doors off of hydrocarbons completely, but we’re not there yet. So we’re in baby steps, right? So we slowly phase out gasoline. We bring in natural gas and the futures of natural gas look really bright. They really do considering the reserves we have, we have, and ⁓ we need to utilize it.Kristen (22:14)
Okay.Dave Ogle (22:18)
make it work.Kristen (22:19)
Well that’s amazing and I think that’s such a great point to end on, very uplifting. Tell people where to find you and how to get involved with jet charging.Dave Ogle (22:28)
Yeah, you have my contact information, email. I don’t know if you can put it up on the screen, but it starts with an email. You can email me and I can explain what the leasing options are and how to get your turbine, what charger you want to use and get it all put together and have it shipped out to you. It’s a really simple process. ⁓ We’ve worked with Tridium as far as the chargers go. We just work with any charging company that’s willing to connect with our turbine system and set it up. ⁓It’s really easy. How do you do this? Do you share the email address within the podcast?
Kristen (23:03)
Yeah, share the email address,yeah.
Dave Ogle (23:06)
It’s DRO.email at gmail.com like D dog ours and Roy ⁓ and then the word email at gmail.com that’s my direct email and yeah send me an email and i can send you some data sheets i can send you the sizes of the of the 65 kilowatt turbine that’s the most popular one we think would be the best fit because it’s low level three it works really well it’s really efficient for all the like the tesla cars the rivians ⁓ you get charged
up in about 30 to 45 minutes enough to get home. You can get 60 to 80 miles of range in about 38 minutes. It just really beats level two charging. It’s just awful for people. Level two charging is what’s holding back. Level two is what people have in their garage at home. 240 volts single phase power, five, six, eight hour charges typically for cars, Teslas, and Rivians.
But level three charging is really what.
What people want is what they’re gonna need to be able to make it work and make it viable so that you’re not sitting around for hours You know waiting for your car to charge And get rid of the anxiety where you can get a full charge and know that you can get on the highway and you can make a few stops and go to the grocery store and then go home and not have to worry about it or think about getting hit with another tow fee, know of getting your car towed and then having to pay to get it charged so that you can get it home and that’s what we’re seeing right now is tow trucks are going out and picking up
dead EVs on the side of the road and then they go back and then they charge you for charging the vehicle and then you have to wait there at the tow shop for two to three hours if you ride with the tow truck. A lot of people just we have found we’ve called towing companies all over the country and asked them like how do you deal with the electric vehicle and a lot of people just get an uber and they go home and they let the tow truck
or the tow company charge their car and then they go get it in the morning when it’s all charged up and then they drive it back home. And it’s just horrible, you know, that’s just not sustainable. That’s not the way to do things. And if we’ve got natural gas ready to go, this is the perfect fit. It’s a turnkey solution and it turns commercial property owners into investors where you can make revenue with an empty parking lot.
Kristen (25:31)
Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Dave. Thank you for explaining this whole concept. And I think people probably learned a lot from this.Dave Ogle (25:37)
I hope so. That’d be great.Kristen (25:39)
Well, thank you everyone for listening. Hope you did learn a lot and got a lot of takeaways and please reach out today with more questions, but we will see you back next time. Bye.
