A robot charger is in motion.

As the founder of EV Safe Charge, Caradoc Ehrenhalt is a big believer in electric vehicles.
He started the downtown-based company to provide electric charging stations, first in residential and then commercial buildings.

And now Ziggy is making its way back into mobile charging stations with its ride-on and battery-on-wheels.
After all, one of the barriers to mass electric vehicle adoption is increased stress, or the fear that a vehicle might run out of power before reaching a charging station.

Details

Ziggy stands about 6 feet tall and runs on four independent wheels and has cameras on all four sides. The mobile robot uses two-wheel steering to ensure it can climb and descend highways, accelerate and turn tight corners.
“The weight is stored at the bottom with the battery, so it’s very stable,” Ehrenhalt said.
How it works is simple: a driver uses an app to have Ziggy come to their car or book a space for the vehicle. Ziggy appears, the driver can plug in and go to work, shopping, the gym or anywhere else and get a notification when charging is complete. When the customer returns to her car, Ziggy will be unloaded, which will be returned to her residence for payment or picked up and towed away.

Each time the driver uses Ziggy, he pays at a rate determined by the site owner. A site may offer its services for free.
“Some may want to subsidize Ziggy’s use and cover some of the costs, such as for staff and so on,” Ehrenhalt said. “We help guide sites every step of the way as they decide how they want to implement and use Ziggy.”

Ziggy is entering its next phase as the functional demonstration robot is built and nears the manufacturing stage, Ehrenhalt said.
The idea is to make them work in the areas they serve, he added. It expects units to arrive in late 2023 or early 2024.

Some customers have already ordered Ziggy for their properties, including the Holiday Inn Express in Redwood City. Opera Plaza, a mixed-use development in San Francisco; and The William Vale, a luxury hotel in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood.
David Lemond, general manager of the Brooklyn Hotel, said his guests and neighbors will benefit from the technology. “Zygi is perfect for the growing need for simple charging,” Lemond said in a statement.

Charging stations

EV Safe Charge still offers charging stations for residential and commercial customers.
But the business model with Ziggy is to rent out the robot to parking lots and garages, event spaces, restaurants and hotels, then decide who can use the rooms.

“For example, a company might want to have certain Ziggy classes for employees only,” Ehrenhalt said. “Sites also decide how they want to allow access, and in most cases this is done through an app.”
As battery technology improves, the company can easily recycle existing batteries and replace them with new versions, he said.

Since the parking garage has no infrastructure costs, Ziggy takes the entire payment experience from capital costs to operating costs, Ehrenhalt continued.

“This is very interesting for sites that now have a monthly fee and don’t have a big financial outlay at the beginning,” he said.

EV Safe Charge has raised $1.5 million in private funding since Ehrenhalt’s founding in 2016. The financing came from angel investors, including Mountain View-based Sand Hills Angels.
Sand Hills Angels board member Drew Freeman said the organization invested in EV Safe Charge because it believes the acceleration in electric vehicle adoption will lead to a growing shortage of charging capacity.

The cost of retrofitting parking structures for EVs can be prohibitive for operators and lessors, and installing enough permanent charging capacity to meet the demand in each parking lot would be inefficient, Freeman said.

“Ehrenhalt and EV Safe Charge had the vision and foresight to create a simple and elegant solution that we believe will unlock the potential of the EV market,” Freeman added in a statement.
“At EV Safe Charge, we are thrilled to have Sand Hill Angels among our angel investors and on board,” Ehrenhalt said in a release.

Carl Norman, president of the Capstone Financial Group, an international investment bank in the automotive and mobility space with offices on the West Coast in San Jose, said that the company was excited about Ziggy and believes that the EV market will be well received because it represents the robot. A cost-effective option that simplifies EV charging infrastructure.

“We look forward to Ziggy going into production and supporting the future dynamic charging needs of parking operators, office and residential landlords, hotels, event venues and more,” Norman said in a statement.

Setting himself apart

Ehrenhalt says there are several differences between Ziggy and stationary charging stations, including the cost-effectiveness of the robot and the flexibility of the system.
“With Ziggy, you have complete flexibility of residential or off-site charging, and then if a tenant comes in with some EV drivers and the company wants us to have some extra chargers, the site can easily add some more Ziggy units,” he said.

But what about the name – Ziggy?
When thinking about what to call his robot, Ehrenhalt said he wanted a name that would be memorable and work well internationally. He is a big fan of David Bowie and his replacement Ziggy Stardust and likes Ziggy Marlin, son of reggae pioneer Bob Marlin.