Voltera Is Powering the Growth of Robotaxis

Voltera Power operates 20 charging depots across the US and is rapidly expanding to meet robotaxi commercialization demand. CEO Frank Reig explains that securing the right real estate near utility substations, navigating complex permitting, and future-proofing conduit infrastructure are the core challenges and competitive advantages of the business.

The company prioritizes land ownership and off-market deals to control costs for AV platform customers, while standardizing depot design for scalability. With investors including EQT, Global Infrastructure Partners (BlackRock), and Toyota, Voltera is focused exclusively on US AV ride-hail infrastructure through 2030.

Key The Road to Autonomy Episode Questions Answered

The Road to Autonomy Topics & Timestamps

[0:00] AUTNMY AI

AUTNMY AI is an applied intelligence firm whose mission is to develop a field-tested, ground-truth understanding of how the Autonomy Economy is being built and translate that understanding into the intelligence, foresight, and counsel that help the world’s leading institutional investors navigate the most consequential industrial transition of this century.

[0:36] Growth of Robotaxis

The robotaxi market is moving from proving out the technology to commercialization, with AV platforms planning to scale to tens of thousands of vehicles across North American cities by 2030.

[1:34] The Voltera and Revel Merger

The merger doubled Voltera’s development and real estate capacity, combining operational depots across the US South and West with the largest fast-charging network in New York.

[3:31] Permitting and Powering Depots

Access to power is the hardest problem in every market. A 50-stall depot needs 7.5 megawatts, which is why Voltera sites depots near utility substations and prioritizes owning the dirt.

[7:49] Airport Depots

Land near major airports is becoming some of the most strategic real estate in the autonomy economy. Voltera sources off-market deals with boots on the ground before sites ever hit a listing.

[11:37] Standardizing Depot Design

Voltera standardizes site layouts while staying flexible enough to adapt to local constraints, down to preserving existing permits like on-site car washes.

[16:11] Single-Tenant vs Multi-Tenant Depots

Some robotaxi operators want dedicated facilities while others share infrastructure. Voltera designs for both, including converting Revel’s public charging network for robotaxi use.

[18:18] Automation Inside the Depot

Depot flow, vehicle spacing, and uptime drive the design. Automation inside the depot is coming as fleets scale and labor becomes the bottleneck.

[20:49] Future-Proofing for 800-Volt Architecture

High-capacity underground conduit, mandatory fiber, and high-voltage power architectures future-proof every site for escalating power demands.

[24:38] Will Voltera Expand Internationally?

Robotaxis are going global, but Voltera is staying focused on AV-only infrastructure in the United States, where the demand pipeline is deepest.

[30:48] Hub-and-Spoke Depot Model

Large central facilities handle heavy maintenance while strategically dispersed charging hubs deliver high utilization and quick vehicle turnaround.

[35:39] The Future of Voltera

With a single stall supporting 1,000 charge sessions a month, location is the economics. Success in two years is every major robotaxi platform viewing Voltera as the right arm of its team.

Full Episode Transcript

Robotaxi Commercialization and the Voltera-Revel Merger

AUTNMY AI: Billions and soon trillions in value will be created in the autonomy economy. By the time a trend becomes consensus, the alpha is already gone. The gap between uncovering signals and reading headlines is widening fast. When it’s a headline, it’s no longer a signal. Enter AUTNMY AI We decode signals before they move markets, giving you conviction in the autonomy economy. Autonomy AI, your models, our intelligence. Visit AUTNMY.ai.

Grayson Brulte: Frank, I gotta tell you, first and foremost, thanks for coming on. Voltera is a great company, but I’ll sit here and I’ll have my morning cup of coffee and I’ll watch Bloomberg, CNBC, I’ll open the FT, and now it’s robotaxi, robotaxi, robotaxi. And two months ago, three months ago, it’s, eh, maybe once a week, twice a week. The market is really picking up on the growth of robotaxis. As the market picks up on the growth of robotaxis, How Are you positioning Voltera for that growth?

Frank Reig: Yeah, Grayson, th- thanks for having me here. when I think about the growth of the robotaxi market, it’s clear we’re moving from proving out the technology to commercialization over the next three to five years. every single platform is thinking about, “How do I go from several hundred or several thousand vehicles to several thousand or several tens of thousands of vehicles by 2030?” Right? And mapping out, “How do I go from one to five cities to five, 10, 30 cities in North America?” So we are absolutely at this commercialization stage. In terms of Voltera, we just brought two companies together. on July 1st, we officially closed Voltera, and Revel become now the new Voltera. So we doubled the size of our development team. We doubled the size of our real estate team. we took the strength of Voltera in the US South and all of our 20 operational depots today through LA and the Texas markets, and Phoenix, and Atlanta, and Miami, and we added the largest fast-charging network in New York, which was Revel’s secret sauce. And also us starting to now think about Philly, Boston, DC, Chicago sort of like I’ll call it where the puck is going over the next few years when it comes to AV not where it is today.

Grayson Brulte: I love it. It’s the great one. Wayne, Wayne Gretzky has made an appearance here on the podcast. I, I really like that analogy. The timing is perfect because if you look at the public statements, the CEO of Hyundai came out in, in a CNBC interview this week and said they are doubling the output of the IONIQ 5 in Savannah. We all know very publicly that’s where Waymo’s robotaxis are coming. Zoox has put out multiple blog posts, and they have two factories now in Hayward, where they’re ramping up production. And globally, OEMs are ramping up production. It seems like more and more OEMs are ramping up production just as you ramp up the infrastructure. Seems like it’s the Perfect time for The merger.

Compression of Customer Contract Timelines

Frank Reig: Needed to get bigger to support that growth in the industry that we’re seeing right now. Grayson, I’ll just give you an example. Every AV platform we’re working with right now, if we were talking 12, 18, 24 months ago, by the time we put a potential site in front of them and worked through everything, it could take nine, 12 months to actually have a customer contract and actually say, “Okay, we’re moving forward together in developing this site.” It could take a year. Now we’re seeing that get compressed into two to three months ’cause the platforms are moving, and we need to meet this demand that we’re seeing in this commercialization. I’m seeing it in real time right now just on the commercial side of the business

Grayson Brulte: I’m really curious in having, you know, decades of Experience in This, the compression of the timeline’s awesome, but then the Experience Says there’s a little thing called permitting and city councils and ordinances that historically take a very long time. How do you Compress That?

Frank Reig: I think a big way we compress that is just our experience and having multiple reps in a specific market because every single utility, every single AHJ has a different permitting regime, have a d- has a different land use pathway or zoning pathway that works in that particular township or city or town, you know, whatever it might be. So the fact that we could take a city like Miami

Grayson Brulte: Frank, I have to give you a lot of credit, and I don’t know if it’s on purpose, but I hope it’s on purpose. I’ve been to your Miami depot, one of your many Miami depots, and I noticed you’re right across the street from a FPL, Florida Power and Light substation. So I I drive around the back, and lo and behold, I can’t go down the Street, I see a FPL crew working and digging in micro tunnels. I said, “Aha, there’s power going in here. He’s getting energized.” How important or strategically important is it for you to locate a depot near a substation such as one of your Miami ones is directly across the street?

Power Access as the Primary Site Selection Challenge

Frank Reig: Yeah. Access to power is probably the most difficult thing we deal with in every single market. Grayson, if we’re putting a 50-stall site in a market like Miami, each stall probably would be designed for a minimum connected power of 150 kW, which means for 50 stalls, you need 7.5 megawatts for that site. it’s just a basic example. 7.5 megawatts, that’s like what the Empire State Building needs, right? Just to put things in real terms. So yes, you need to be close to utility infrastructure to get that kind of upgrade on a timeline and a cost schedule that makes sense for the business. So typically, yes, we’re looking at utility infrastructure. Where does our zoning and land use pathways and permitting and a rational landlord that actually wants to sell a piece of land, where does all of that Venn diagram of problems match up with power? So it’s probably a good way to look at it as well. This is a Venn diagram of issues, and we’re trying to find that sweet spot in the middle where everything lines up, from land use to zoning, to permitting to rational landlord that wants to get a deal done at a rational price and power. And then obviously you want all of That in rideshare demand zones. It’s easy to build infrastructure 30 minutes outside of the core rideshare zone out in the middle of nowhere, but nobody wants that for their business, right? you’re thinking about utilization. You’re thinking about your unit economics as a ride hail platform. You need to be in the demand zone so that deadheading’s you know, as reduced as possible.

Grayson Brulte: It is, and I have to stay in the Florida theme here because this is probably one of the most famous real estate stories, at least here in Florida it is, and how much is a tall tale I’m not gonna vouch for. But there’s the story when Walt Disney was buying up land for Disney World, all these different LLCs with, with different names were used so nobody would, would jack up the price. say, “Oh, Mr. Disney’s Here. He’s trying to expand Disney World,” ’cause the lesson that he obviously learned in California when he was Boxed in with Disneyland. How do you avoid that Where If real estate owners say, “Okay, I’m within X amount of feet of a substation. I know there’s Shopping, there’s a Lot of folks around here,” or, “I’m by an airport.” How do you avoid that if you want to call it That energy tax?

Frank Reig: It’s funny, the way we talk about it internally as a team Sure, we can call ourselves a builder, developer, owner, operator of AV infrastructure for ride-hail fleets. That’s what we do day in and day out. but another way to describe all that Grayson. Is we’re a real Estate developer. And real estate is key to all of this. It is so key. so finding the right real estate, meaning it’s priced Right- power is available, again, on a timeline and price that makes sense, and then all of those other issues that people forget about but are, extremely important and change completely by market and township and city and wherever you are that’s permitting, land use, zoning where all that matches up, Grayson. That’s a real estate business. which is one of the reasons why too Voltera prioritizes ownership of the dirt in every site that we build. we want that long-term value because as AVs continue to scale in numbers in markets, there’s only so many locations where there are, quote-unquote, what I said earlier, the sweet spots where everything matches up from power and land use and permitting, et cetera.

Grayson Brulte: You’re right about that. In the sweet spot in, in our Omega database, we have tracked every publicly available US depot, and we’ve noticed a common trend outside of one, one outlier. Every depot, airport depot is within sub four miles of a major international airport in the United States, and obviously that’s not by coincidence because of the rideshare demand historically there. When you’re looking at airport real estate, obviously you’re competing with cargo companies, your FedExes, your UPSes, your, your large DHLs. How do you secure that land? Because I’ve visited probably most of these sites, and I’ve noticed some weird locations. There’s one that I cannot figure out. It’s not your property, by the way. I won’t name whose it is, but it backs up to A river. I said, “Yes, I can see the airport, but it backs up to a river.” I’m like, Okay, well, electricity and water don’t really Go together and You’re limited in expansion. How do you Find those secure sites, one, and then two, that Allows you to expand as the demand goes? Let’s say You have a customer or client that’s operating, say, 200 vehicles out of there, and then they call you up and say, “Hey, Frank, we need to put 1,000 in here.” How do you ensure that you have that ability to expand and meet your customers’ Demands near airports?

Off-Market Real Estate Strategy to Control Costs

Frank Reig: Yeah. If I could paraphrase everything you just said there, Grayson, it is finding high quality Real estate at the right price seems really hard, and I agree with you. So the way that we do things At Volterra is we prioritize a lot in the real estate team. Sure, we might work sometimes with the national brokerages that everybody works With, But those national brokerages will Put that site in front of everybody. Okay? So we have boots on the ground in markets like LA, and the Bay Area, and Washington DC, and New York, And Miami. Real estate managers on The ground that live there, that their entire job is sourcing off-market deals. That is their entire job. ‘Cause The off-market deal is the one where they just negotiate with you, and it’s not being put in front of 14 different clients. And you know what that means, the price goes up. So off-market deals, finding those is harder. It takes longer. You need to invest in each market, but we think it’s very much worth it. And I know our customers appreciate that ’cause they’re getting cheaper land, which means at the end of the day, cheaper pricing For them.

Grayson Brulte: I love it, and you know, somebody who ingests l- large amounts of data, the real estate industry, they like to brag. Well, I mean, and these fancy PDFs of how Much this property went for, what the cap improvement is, it’s amazing the amount of detail that they, they put out there, and if I’m one of your customers, I don’t want that detail Public. ‘Cause to me, it, it it hurts my competitiveness. Do these art off-market deals, do they Help you to keep that, that, that semi secrecy that some of your customers, clients need to operate their business? And I say that Also from a security perspective because we have seen documented incidents of not nice things happening.

Frank Reig: And just to be clear, when I’m talking about off-market deal, I’m talking about you’re looking at zoning maps, you’re looking at where power is. and a lot of times in markets, take DC for instance- There are only a few Select corridors, Grayson, where you’re gonna be able to build an AV depot. It’s, it’s not the entire city. and especially when You take those corridors. and match it up where rideshare demand is, right? It’s Not many places. So if You Just put boots on the ground and Literally walk into every piece of real estate along those corridors that make sense from a size perspective, and ask to talk to the owner. Are you looking to retire soon? You got this auto body shop. What’s your number? Also, I don’t need this land tomorrow. Are you retiring in two, three years?” Right? So it’s that level of detail, and there’s no shortcuts here. You literally have to walk the corridors. you literally need to go meet people face to face. That’s how you find the deals. And That’s Exactly what we do

Grayson Brulte: I love it. You’re like me, but I put an inspector hat, on to find depots, and you put, and you put on the Inspector hat to Buy depots. So I like that analogy there. And, and putting on my inspector hat, having visited several of your sites, I have noticed a lot of design similarities between Sites in different states. How does the design team inside of Voltera think about Designing depots?

Frank Reig: I think it’s what I mentioned earlier. We have 20 operational depots today, plus another dozen plus in permitting construction, right? we are pressing on the gas pedal. and all that means we have a lot of Learnings. What is the best way to design a Site? What is the best way to have ingress and egress for fleets? what is the best break room to have on site, and what manufacturer should we use? Should we build the building ground up or use a modular design? So just with all of our experience, we’ve learned a lot, and now we’re starting to standardize that alongside our customers, Grayson. ‘Cause The more we standardize, the more we’ve learned and feed back into our design process means lower price For customers, right? Anyway, so th-th-that’s how I think about that.

Grayson Brulte: But it, to me, it says scalability, that, that you’re able to scale. So when we think about this, let’s just use Broad numbers. Let’s just say you have a, a a 30-stall Depot for let’s call Customer A And then Customer B says, “Hey, I really like what you did on these 30s. I really want 120 plus a warehouse.” Will you grow with The customer through the, through the life cycle and build different, I’m gonna call them modularities, different Designs depending on their needs?

Frank Reig: As much as we try to standardize, you also have to just, face reality, Grayson. And we’re building big hubs in New York City. We’re building big hubs in Los Angeles, the Bay Area. The real estate isn’t always perfect. For instance, I was literally in a meeting earlier this morning where the team was talking about one site. We’re trying to, you know, finalize and, and start actual construction on. And The permitting pathway says you basically can’t build a new building On site. So guess what? The current building that’s on site, we’re gonna make That work. that has nothing to do with our standardized design, but we’re gonna make it work, right? Because land use has made us do that. so you have to adapt to just, like, the actual real-life circumstances in each market at each site. But as much as we can, yes, we wanna

Grayson Brulte: Standardize. And when you have to let’s call it adapt to the realities of the local market, do the c- are the customers understanding of that, or is it like this, this back and forth Push and pull?

Frank Reig: Now, I think one nice thing, you know, take any AV platform here in the US that’s of scale, consider them a customer of Voltera. One nice thing is they’ve also had their learnings, whether it’s with us or other infra providers, right? We’ve all learned Together. So I think everyone also just, as long as you’re communicating well and being transparent, I think everyone understands, ’cause we’re all trying to just get this Operation, I’ll call it, which is AVride here. We’re all trying to commercialize this over the next few years, and that requires everybody to just, you know, roll up their sleeves, be transparent and communicate, and realize every site may have a couple of yellow lights we need to work through and transparently and openly communicate About it

Grayson Brulte: I’ve started to notice a Trend of, of one Particular AV operator now, and these are all According to local filings, at these depots is putting a car Wash in. I said, “Oh, that makes sense.” Are you starting to s- get requests like that from your customers saying, “Okay, Traditionally we had charging.” Let’s just call it light cleaning as, as I’ve seen. Are you starting to get the, “We want the car wash in now”?

Frank Reig: I would say, broadly, yes, we do get that request sometimes. I Think for us, something like that is actually extremely hard to get permitted from a place of zero, right? So when we look at a particular piece of property that may already have a car wash on It, yeah, you damn well know we’re gonna try and preserve that permit for that car wash, ’cause it’s really hard to get a new car wash permit in Miami, let’s say, right? All of the regulations around water use and everything else. But if it’s already permitted, it’s already there on site, yeah, let’s try and reuse that infrastructure for its next phase. but I would say building from scratch a car wash on site, you know, this is where permitting is just so hard sometimes to deal with in cities. It, it’s nearly impossible

Grayson Brulte: I love that. And, but that goes back to if you wanna call it the Voltera talent, where you have individual team members that are on the ground doing their homework or doing their research or doing the, the inspection. That, that makes a big difference when you’re trying to scale this because, you know, this is, it’s NIMBYs, not in my backyard. And, and when I served on the tech committee for the city of Beverly Hills and then I ran the AV task force, I mean, all these little nuances of things that you wanna think about until You’re in a city perspective, and that gives your team, person speaking out there it might be a local coffee shop owner who says, “Hey, well, You know, th- this ticketing guy’s not very nice on this block, and if you’re there for this, you might not wanna buy.” And, and then that is on-the-ground intel that you can’t buy. When we think about Voltera depots, should we think about, them as single-tenant use, multi-tenant use, or will these be hybrid? How should we think About those?

Single-Tenant vs. Multi-Tenant Depot Models

Frank Reig: Yeah. To date right now, every depot we have across the US is single-tenant use. That doesn’t mean with certain customers right? now, Grayson, I’m literally having that exact conversation. ’cause especially as the AV platforms start to scale Now, Everyone’s thinking about, “How do I lower my long-term costs, and can I be more flexible with what my infrastructure looks like in markets?” And also maybe, listen, you’re always gonna need some private depots in markets, but maybe you can have 60% of your infrastructure be private and maybe 40% be multi-tenant, right? so I think we’re having those conversations right now Nothing is built today that’s multi-tenant, but that’s definitely a conversation we’re happening that, that we’re having. I think one unique thing about the Revel business as well is we currently operate some very large public depots in New York City. We have the largest fast-charging network in New York City that’s publicly available. so we’re also talking through, “Hey, how do we maybe have a site that we maybe build now that’s zoned for AV but is public today and maybe the next few years, and then maybe five years from now we make it an AV private site?” So that’s also an interesting sort of like, it’s not multi-tenant, but it’s thinking about, how do I build infrastructure today without a customer in certain markets knowing that customer will be there in the future. So anyway, using our public network in certain cities is something that we’re deal- also considering.

Grayson Brulte: I like it because what you clearly stated earlier is that the ownership, and I said it gives you flexibility. So let’s just say day one it, it’s, I have an EV. I can go in there and I can charge it on day two. You can have a tenant go in there and perhaps you might something, but you have the permit, you Already have the electrical in

Frank Reig: Exactly

Grayson Brulte: There. Th- th- that makes it scale. When you’re building these things and Looking at scaling, every single company operating in the robotaxi industry is obviously autonomous. They– That’s what they want. Are you starting to see Autonomy and automation make it into the depot? Okay, so there’s a cleaning robot arm that comes. There’s A, a, a charging arm that goes. Are you starting to see any of that stuff work its way Into The depots yet?

Frank Reig: I feel like every meeting I have with my operations leadership, at some point during that meeting, we start talking about different providers that are offering us solutions for autonomous operations. Like, we can’t– It’s a constant conversation, Grayson. With that being said, I think there’s gonna be a very long tail on humans being on these sites. And I also think over the next three, five, seven years, the Objective here is not to go to zero humans. The objective is to provide platforms with the most price-efficient operation that turns vehicles around and gets them back on the road doing paid Rides. And that may involve humans for a long period of time still. But where possible, yes, we’re constantly looking at where can we add autonomous operations to a site that serves autonomous- fleets. That just makes sense. but I do think at a high level, there’s just gonna be a very long tail, I think, with humans on these sites. I don’t think that’s going Away anytime soon

Grayson Brulte: I agree with that because the key metric, no matter your, who your client is or who your clients will be, is uptime. If the vehicle is not out there picking up paying passengers, It fails. It doesn’t matter, and you have to be able to ensure that the vehicle can come in and whatever your metrics are in, in and out within a prescribed amount Of time. In order to keep that prescribed amount of time from Either the charging, Cleaning, inspection, Whichever it might be do you have to add extra room in between vehicles to ensure that if Somebody has to do something to a lidar or do something to a Camera, they can fix it without disrupting the whole overall flow of the Depot?

Frank Reig: Absolutely. I mean, that goes back into how we design the sites. Pathways where workers are actually walking through the site for their own safety. also making sure there’s sufficient space between vehicles so that they can be cleaned sensors can be cleaned the vehicle inside obviously whatever work needs to happen on that car, data offloading. So yes, I mean, I think both the platforms as well as us as an infrastructure builder, developer, owner, we’ve all learned a lot over the last few years, and now we’re– It goes back to that earlier question, like are you standardizing design? I think we’re getting to that point with every single customer now

Grayson Brulte: Okay, so then it goes, the whole theme of This is becoming scalability. And Now if you go back to, you know, the early days, it was trickle charge, and then we had the very different chargers, and now some of your customers or, and And say industry Providers are now moving to an 800-volt architecture and, ’cause they’re, they’re trying to reduce the charging time. How Do you prepare for that change and the change that eventually is gonna come next?

Future-Proofing Electrical Infrastructure for Higher Charging Speeds

Frank Reig: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I was actually talking to our development team last week about this because we’re Going through some new designs on sites that are coming online in the future, and we’re talking about the different conduit at Those sites, right? the sort of wires in the ground that are bringing the, the, the power to Each charger. If you think of these sites, Grayson, as, say, a 50-stall site in Miami as the example where any AV platform is gonna want 70, 80, 90% utilization at Those sites. And You’re talking about 24/7 Operations And charging speeds only go up. So you need to make sure that the infrastructure you’re putting in the ground can handle power that we all know is only heading up and to the right, where, you know, taking the, the Jaguar from, you know, Waymo as just an example they’ve Used historically. I think top charging speed on that. Car is about 50 kW. Okay, the IONIQ 5 now sort of stabilizes at what, 180, 175? Five years from now, is it Gonna be 270? So just making sure that we’re building, everything we’re putting in the ground can handle just higher and higher power Standards For sustained long periods Of time. To me, that’s like maybe the most important thing as we put this infrastructure in the Ground. ‘Cause you can always replace a charger, You can always replace a charging cord, you can always do things like that. It’s much harder to actually, you know, rip out switch gear or the conduits you’re laying in that Site.

Grayson Brulte: The conduit’s the key. You hit the nail on the head. If, if, if if you have a very small conduit, Oh. Oh. Then you have operational downtime, your revenue goes down, your Customer’s not happy. Since, since the conduit runs in pipes, Do you put mandatory fiber as well to all these sites? If your customer needs to download data from in these vehicles, they have the ability to do that?

Frank Reig: I would say nothing’s mandatory, but yes, typically we put fiber on these sites as well for all of the, I’ll call it data offloading that happens at these sites at, at many of them. So Yeah, so the, I’ll just call it the bucket of IT infrastructure is also something that we s- we pay a lot of time and attention on.

Grayson Brulte: Years ago, Peter, Peter Von Schmidt, CEO T- Torc Robotics, he hosted me out at Albuquerque when they were operating in Albuquerque, and he took– He said, “Come on, we’re gonna go to the depot.” Okay, this’ll be exciting. It was an old Dodge dealership. I said, “Peter, what the heck? Why are we going to an old Dodge Dealership?” And he said, well, there was a, there was conduit to an AWS connection below it, and that’s why they, that’s why they picked to get all the data off of the trucks. I was like, “Oh, okay.” He’s like, “That’s the only reason why we picked it. Horrible location, but we were able to get the Bandwidth we needed.” So we talked about energy. Now, do you also look at direct connections to AW- AWS And, and Google Cloud and Azure as well, where some of those are running and where you put sites?

Data Infrastructure and Proximity to Data Centers

Frank Reig: I’ll just say this. the first Voltera AV depot that we went live on, the first one this company ever built back in 2022, was a site in Phoenix That was a parking lot of a data Center So w- what else do you need to know. It was literally the first site we ever built Had the power, it also had the data requirements. It was just you know, the, the perfect site

Grayson Brulte: Yeah, and that trend continues today. And I’m not gonna say how or why, but I can say that that trend continues today. Staying in the trend theme, there is a trend of robotaxis going global. On the Voltera site, you post a really great map which showed energized, soon to be energized, of, of your footprint in the United States. Autonomy is now going to the UK and Europe, and it is Scaling. Waymo, say, for example, announced Germany, Munich, which we found out 90 days ago from a regulatory filing. is will we eventually see Voltera go overseas as the market Dramatically expands overseas?

Frank Reig: Right? Now, the focus is On all things US. There is enough To do here. There’s so much scaling going on from our different customers and needs over the next two, three, four years through 2030. there’s Plenty to Do here. With that being said, Grayson, who are my three largest investors EQT. Global Infrastructure Partners, which is part of BlackRock. If you had to say what are the best two infrastructure funds globally, probably they’re top three, Right? And then my third largest investor is Toyota. So, Of course, we’re constantly having that conversation Of, Do we go into The UK? Do we do a JV and do something in Japan? Do we– Yes, like, how can we not have those conversations with the investors that I have and the capital that’s willing to be invested in this market that’s behind us? But today, right now, we’re focused on the US.

Grayson Brulte: I’ll say this, and having done a, you know, pretty good amount of due diligence to prepare for this, your customers are very happy with you. So I’ll say for the record, in my humble opinion, there is a possibility that’s based on, on, on the level of excitement and, and positive feedback I got from your customers prior to recording this podcast with you. So, so hat tip to you on that. W-well done. As you build on the success of your relationships with your customers, obviously, You’re seeing several of your customers are dancing with fleet management partners, different, you know, different partner for this market, different partner for This market, different partner for this market. You’re now going across Several markets. Do we ever see an opportunity where if you look at GIP and you look at EQT, Where in Toyota, for example, where they say, Okay, Frank, there’s an opportunity to enter the fleet management business.” Is that something that could ever emerge in the future?

Frank Reig: I guess I’ll say three things. First is I’ll never say never, right I, I can’t sit here and say, “No, we’ll never do that.” Let me go to the next two things, though. The next one is one thing I’ve learned being CEO of Revel for nine years, And some of the mistakes I made along the way, Was we didn’t have enough focus. Trying to run multiple types of businesses, trying to pivot. What I am trying to bring to Voltera now post-merger is focus, ’cause focus is really Our s- secret sauce right now. We are building Infrastructure In the US for AV ride hail, and we’re doing it better than anybody else, and we’re doing it at lower cost and better timelines, Right? and that focus will help us Win A lot. So right now, that’s where we’re focused. I had a third thing. But Grayson, I, I just lost it. So I would say never say never, but our focus right now is just there is So much ground to cover on the infrastructure layer. And maybe, I I’ll just say one other thing. Anything vehicle, that is just a different business. Financing vehicles, insuring vehicles, maintaining Vehicles. Who controls dispatch of those vehicles and how do you work with the AV platform or technology provider and what does that arrange? It’s just Like a completely different business. And I go into that very eyes wide open ’cause I used to run a 500-car Tesla fleet in New York City For four years. So I know exactly all the pitfalls. I know exactly all the things that maybe. I just come into that very eyes wide open. I like the focus we have right now. on the infrastructure layer. I’ll just say that

Grayson Brulte: I agree with you. O- operating, I mean, a fleet, I mean, you have the experience. It’s I’ll use the nice word, complicated, and I think that’s probably the, the, the, the nicest way to say it. And obviously, depreciating asset and the, and the insurance. There’s a lot Of complicarities in there. it. is interesting if you subcontractor just basically put a Cleaning or maintenance thing on top of, It. Gets, gets interesting depending on, on where you wanna go, But I Love the the, the the pure focus on AV Ride hail? Will your Public sites that you have, or you wanna call it The mixed sites where I could go, will those all Eventually become AV Ride Hail? Will you stop building all of those, or how should we think about those?

Frank Reig: What I will say is We’re never building a public site again. That’s not already, let’s say, in. construction and was sort of, call it, legacy Revel. we’re never putting a new site into our development pipeline that can only Be a public. Site. So if the Zoning permitting doesn’t allow for an AV private site in the future, It’s not being put In our development pipeline. So this is where I go back to what I was mentioning earlier. In certain markets where zoning and land use allows this and we’re thinking about, “Hey, can we have a site public and then flip it to private in the future if someone wants it?” That’s something I’m Interested in. But we’re never building another 12-stall site in San Francisco that’s forever going to be public. It’s just not the business we’re in

Grayson Brulte: Smart. Smart, smart, smart. We said Earlier, access to airports. We, we we know the demands there just based on traditional ride-hail activity. How about access to highways? How important is that when your team is out there looking for potential sites?

Frank Reig: I would frame that question a little differently. It’s not necessarily access to highways that’s any Sort of secret sauce. It’s simply where is the trip demand for drop-offs and pickups that happens to be near a highway, and that highway gets you quick access to that rideshare demand zone, great. It doesn’t need to be a Highway. It needs to be where Is the business for Ride-hail? As I mentioned earlier, I used to run a 500-car Tesla fleet in New York. I know all about fleet uptime and utilization and reducing head time and how important it is to think about infrastructure on a network basis for a market, not just one site. One site is useless. You need to think about where are the six sites you’re putting in that market, and how does all of that work together in one network to provide the utilization you need to make bus- to, to make money in this business

Grayson Brulte: I gotta give you a, a, a round of applause here because you hit the nail on the head, and I don’t mean to keep harping on Miami ’cause I spend a lot of time in Miami. If you look at the strategic locations of one particular robotaxi’s depots of where they’re located in the Miami market, what Frank said is 100% spot on. I look at it from traffic, demand, and being able to get there. So let’s just call it, if you want to, I’ll g- the airline term, like the hub-and-spoke model. Obviously, you airlines have their hub, and then they have the, the regionals. Should we think about that the same way? And I say this because one particular large ride-hail robotaxi company has one very large depot and then, you know, smaller micro depots. Should we think about that in, in markets Where there’s been some real estate filings that I’ve seen, One depot is 80,000 square feet, another one’s 120,000 square Feet, and then you have your, your 30, 30, stall here, your 50 stall there. Should we think about it from a Hub-and-spoke model as you look at multiple depots inside of a multiple inside multiple markets?

Hub-and-Spoke Depot Network Model

Frank Reig: Absolutely. maybe go a Level deeper. Take in Miami. If you’re an AV platform Wanting to scale to 2,000 vehicles in that market eventually you’re gonna need one large fleet maintenance depot That is maybe 100,000 square feet or bigger, that maybe has 8, 12, 16 maintenance bays in that Depot. Also may have 20, 30, 40 fast chargers to do charging as well, But that site is built more for Maintenance of the vehicle fleet. Then you’re gonna have, using that same example, 2,000 vehicles eventually in Miami, maybe You have five Smaller Hubs. And they may not be that small sometimes. They may still be 50 stalls with a lot of High-power charging, but you’re not really doing maintenance at all, Just cleaning. And you’re focusing on cleaning and maybe just very light main- maintenance, maybe One Bay, Right? So, but you need that one big fleet hub. You need to be able to do intensive maintenance at scale, or else there’s no way you’re Getting one, 2,000 cars on the road

Grayson Brulte: In, in Miami, there’s one Place that you operate in particular, which I’ve noticed Change over time, and I’m curious what the change was: lightning. when it was first operating, there was no lightning cover, nowhere to Go in case of a storm. Now I’ve noticed that you have that. Do you look at the weather Elements in, in, in these markets, when you’re developing these from a design perspective?

Frank Reig: Yeah. It, It’s a really Good question. I think Markets with, let’s just say extreme weather, So like a Phoenix Or Miami. Honestly, just keep Miami. That sunshine is Brutal. If you’re cleaning cars all day, Come on, you need to have shade or else I just don’t think it works. So yes, obviously canopies are really important. We’re having that conversation with customers right now in the Northern markets, Let’s just say where it snows a lot more often. Do you want canopies There? Obviously canopies add cost and permitting timeline extensions, and it’s, it’s not a slam dunk, right? So Every element you put in the design and you say is a must-have means things get more expensive and timelines can extend. So it’s a constant conversation with the customer too, of what they actually need for their operational needs, for lack of a better term. And also trying to keep costs down and things like this. So it’s a conversation.

Grayson Brulte: Yeah. No, I, I appreciate this conversation, and you’re right about cost ’cause at the end of the day, you’re running a business and your, your customers are running a business. And we’re starting to see this call– I wouldn’t even say we’re inning one. We’re, you know, triple A about to make it to the big leagues Where robotaxis are now starting to expand, in especially the Dallas market, for example, into more traditional suburban areas than dense urban cores. When it comes to Voltera from, from the real estate, how are you thinking about the urban core. versus suburban as your customers and your future customers are. looking to expand further and further out from the metro?

Frank Reig: We’ll always follow the customer, especially if it’s a customer that we want to continue to lean into and grow with. So if they want specific infrastructure in Specific places outside of the urban core, we’re gonna go there. And we even have a couple of sites I would argue are in our pipeline right now that would classify as that. I would still say the main focus though on everything that we’re doing is the urban core. That’s where the rideshare demand is. That’s where the pickups and drop-offs are. You don’t want 14 minutes of deadheading to a site that’s a bit outside of that core. It just kinda kills the whole model, and every AV platform Knows that. So I would say our focus will continue to be urban core. Obviously, if a customer wants something in a specific location, we’re gonna go get that for them. but yeah, I, I don’t see That changing anytime soon, Grayson.

Grayson Brulte: I’ll say it this way. You’re doing it right, Frank. There is a competitor of yours that built and operated a depot 35 minutes, this is without traffic, without traffic, 35 minutes outside of the ODD, of, of where they operate in this urban core. and I asked the CEO of this company, I said, “Why?” He said, “Well, ’cause the land was cheap.” I was like, “Oh, boy.” And like what you said “Okay, here goes the deadhead miles having to go back and forth 35 minutes, and in some traffic you’re 50.” But you’re– but Frank, you’re taking the Right approach. you’re thinking about this, “Okay, how do we Build this a business?” And that’s, th- th- there’s the bottom line, what it came across to me, which raises the question as I like to look Close here, Frank. What is the future of Voltera, and what do we need to look for in the market as you continue to grow and expand This business?

Voltera’s Growth Strategy and Vision Through 2030

Frank Reig: I’ll answer that, but I, I can’t leave what you just said and Not talk about it. If you think about this business and high throughput of a robotaxi through One stall, You’re looking at maybe 1,000 Charge sessions pretty easily in a month. 1,000 in one stall. Right? So if that cost to the customer is a couple of hundred dollars more per stall or even $1,000 more per stall to put that stall In the right area, that’s across 1,000 charge sessions in one Month. To not have another 15, 20 minutes of deadheading, are you kidding me? I don’t even need the Math. It– Like, It’s a no-brainer, right? So just, like, to be super clear about How important deadheading is because of the high utilization of these stalls and the placement of them is so important and a little more expensive, it kinda doesn’t matter when You look at those economics. So sorry, I, I just kinda, like, leave that out there With what you, With what you just said. In terms of the growth of Voltera and where we’re going, Listen, every AV customer of ours right? now over the last six to 12 months has sort of called the siren here, Grayson. We need to commercialize a lot. We have big plans. Let’s sit down at a table and talk about it. How can you partner with us? How Can you meet the moment? That’s what we’re trying to do. That’s why Rev One Voltera just came Together, and we’re looking to get Bigger, right This was not a merger to cut costs. This was a merger to double the team size and put job applications out there and opportunities to bring the team, Even more development folks and real estate Folks To meet this moment. So I would say like I Already talked about focus, AV only, US. There’s so much to do. Success for us in two years is every major AV platform saying “Voltera’s a right h- right arm of our team, right? That’s how I want them to think about us

Grayson Brulte: To think about us. It’s smart. I would summarize this way. Voltera’s prepared for growth, and to borrow a, a famous line from MasterCard, Voltera’s approach to robotaxi depots is priceless. Frank and the team are looking at all the little nuances that you need to operate a Business. And if you look at the MasterCard analogy, MasterCard provides payment Rails, and Frank’s providing energy rails with Voltera because without those energy rails, robotaxis can’t scale, and location matters. As the old saying goes, it’s all about the location. The future is bright. The future is autonomous. The future is Voltera. Frank, thanks so much for coming on “The Road to Autonomy” today, and we can’t wait to see your growth.

Frank Reig: Thanks, Grayson. Appreciate it