Electric car rhymes with home and energy independence | Coffee from Silla 03 October 2022 185

“save“….Today, there may be a tendency to delay the introduction of electric vehicles in Italy and beyond. To talk about the development of electric vehicles, we went for coffee with Alberto Stecca, co-founder of Silla, an Italian company active in the e-mobility sector, producing e-mobility products such as the well-known Prism wall box. And Stecca has a clear idea of ​​the issues that are causing people to delay switching to electric vehicles.

Today, this is certainly possible for many, not everyone evaluates the transition to electromobility with due objectivity. There are still contexts in which electric mobility is not as functional as traditional, for those who have come a long way. However, in the next 24-36 months, the market will see an explosion of new car models. Many people are also delaying the transition to electric vehicles because of resistance to change. There is a tendency to face the hell of a lot of discomfort when switching to an electric car, when it’s just one of many worries about the multitude of incorrect or misleading information that still exists.

The beginning of the adventure for Silla was certainly not “easy” as 6-7 years ago the context was very complex and talking about electricity was almost taboo…

Even today, there are people who tell us that they will switch to electric vehicles only when the state gives instructions on how to dispose of batteries.

When we started 6-7 years ago trying to figure out how to work in electrical, when you spoke on this topic in the industrial field, you were not well received. If you had an idea and went to the bank to fund something to charge electric vehicles with solar energy, they would ridicule you.

I come from a car dealership and have always provided mobility, sales and service services. When I realized that over time more people would be working on batteries and cars, and the more the price could drop, making EV more affordable, I told myself it was only a matter of time. This is the future and I want to work for it to come as soon as possible. Even if when we started, from a scientific point of view, it was not entirely clear, as it is today, it was already clear that the car does not pollute the place where it moves. Thinking about tomorrow, I prefer cities to be clean and pollution concentrated where batteries are made, because those places can be better controlled, rather than having millions of scattered sources of pollution.

Today, Alberto Stecca leads a company that looks to the future. We wanted to understand where the idea of ​​Silla came from and where the desire to move from the traditional automotive world to the world of the future was born.

The spark was born when I met Cristiano Griletti with whom I started a company. Cristiano is also from the automotive world, but from the industrial world: he is an electronics engineer, a computer hacker who has always been a super supporter of electricity, and in the dialogue between me and him, we realized that there is an opportunity to do something, even starting small and investing our own funds to fund the development of our product. In 2016, there were no products on the market that use solar energy to recharge electric vehicles.

Starting a charging solutions company was certainly not easy, especially in the beginning. Here is what Stecca told us about his experience.

In 2016, there was no pandemic yet, no crisis with the supply of components and no war. These are factors for which the whole world was not ready. I believe that startups have a lot more ability to respond to crises, but there are difficulties that can inevitably lead to “death”, for example, a lockdown that occurs when you have a full warehouse and are ready to start production … and at that moment they close the company. Here you have to choose whether to pay rent to the company or be evicted from your home. I knew our idea would work. It was clear to me that we had a solution that the market would need sooner or later, and that we just had to resist. In the meantime, banks were making fun of us, but the more we talked about it, the more we found people who wanted to help us: from the first employees, now also employees with important roles, to the first group of shareholders, which was the client group.

Silla wanted to target a more sophisticated private market rather than a b2b market where you deal with big companies who in turn deal with commercial enterprises…

We live in an industry where there are many contexts where you are dependent on someone else, perhaps a major operator such as an energy supplier. The decision is not yours, you can just wait and hope that it is, as they say. If, on the other hand, you want to consume the energy produced by your solar system and we choose to do so, no one can make us wait. But in apartment buildings, things are not so simple. It should be immediate, because it should be much more difficult to live the old way instead. So we decided to do what we know people really need to speed up this transition. After all, mobility makes up 80% of everyday life from home to work. Cars for these trips can be fueled locally using renewable energy.

In the future, we will have to focus on greater independence of the home mobility ecosystem.

Public infrastructure will evolve, but not everywhere will need to be relied upon in the same way. Somewhere it is necessary, but somewhere it is not.

Stekka then spoke to us about how the industry is evolving with the advent of electric vehicles and what still needs to be done at the European level.

We live in a time when there has never been so much incentive even to develop new products. funds from Europe. One of the most discussed topics in the press concerns the “damage” of the advent of electric mobility, which will take away from the Italian car industry and bring the Italian car to the Asian-Chinese sector.

There is no denying that the Chinese have an absolutely incredible experience in this sector, but the European target is 2035. We have enough time to develop plans to create our own industry. Many big companies have left. The best-selling electric car in Europe is the electric 500, which is made in Europe and not in China.

I can’t see big companies cutting costs on the pretext that electric mobility came too quickly, when instead they had the time to do so but didn’t invest in reconversion. If we look at Volkswagen, the German manufacturer is a European company that has invested heavily in both factory conversions and staff training.

According to a recent survey, the number of cars registered to those under 25 has dropped dramatically. Young people no longer have the dream of owning a car at the age of 18, which meant freedom for past generations. Perhaps because young people are changing their approach to mobility and therefore waiting for the right car to be “born” directly electric?

In the automotive market in Europe, the average age of the owner exceeds 50 years. Without a shadow of a doubt, over time, these people saw the emergence of a number of financial products in the automotive sector that we are used to today. However, once you issued only 20-25% of loans, and in recent years it has reached 80%. The more you approach the monthly payment with a number of included services (such as insurance), the more you approach the concept of cost of use. In the meantime, many sharing services have emerged, forms of mobility that are less demanding than buying a car. The ownership model, at least for urban mobility, will become less and less common. The new generation is already adopting sharing rather than individual use models. This means that the transition to electric mobility could also lead to more sustainable and less consumer mobility. In fact, by doing a little bit of everything without them, we can clear cities of cars.

Silla will soon launch a new product on the market, which is a turnkey solution to the problem of connecting the home to batteries, cars and photovoltaics.

When today you want to be armed with everything you need for maximum efficiency (electric vehicle, storage system and photovoltaic system), integration is very difficult.

Imagine the walls of houses that have these systems. You can find storage packages, storage inverters, solar inverters, a grid gateway, an electric vehicle charger, and possibly a UPS. Seeing such walls, we tried to understand if it was possible to put everything together, making a single system that guarantees maximum efficiency. So, we got down to business. We presented this concept at Intersolar in Munich and now we are working hard to bring it to market as soon as possible.

I like bi-directional charging the most because I think it’s a technology that will provide an extra layer of efficiency. The ability to get power from cars for utilities or transfer power from cars to the grid when needed can bring huge benefits.

Why 149 (new item name)?

149 is the square of the first 3 primes and is a reference to the proportions of this product: 1 depth, 4 width and 9 height. Silla pays special attention to the design of its products. 149 is an aesthetically beautiful and very futuristic product.

Silla will be present at the Paris Motor Show. So we asked Stekka to give us some idea of ​​what they will bring.

Of course, the central theme will be the integration of renewable energy production with mobility for home users. In the automotive sector, we used to not worry about what was at home. If car manufacturers really want to have a significant share of the electric mobility market, they must come up with solutions aimed at home users. In Paris, we will demonstrate in an automotive context how an electronics manufacturer is interpreting its own concept of an evolving home environment where rooftop renewables are integrated with car batteries, running through all controls. at home.