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“Procrastinate“…. Today there is perhaps a tendency to procrastinate towards the adoption of the electric car in Italy and beyond. To talk about the development of electric mobility, we went for a coffee with Alberto Stecca, co-founder of Silla, an Italian company operating in the e-mobility sector, producing products for electric mobility such as the well-known Prism wallbox. And Stecca has clear ideas about the problems that lead people to delay the adoption of electric cars.
Today it is certainly possible for many people, not everyone evaluates the transition to electric mobility with the right objectivity. There are still contexts in which electric mobility is not as functional as the traditional one, as for those who go a long way. However, in the next 24-36 months there will be an explosion of new car models on the market. Many people postpone the switch to electric cars also because of resistance to change. There is a tendency to face who knows what kind of immense discomfort in switching to an electric car when it is just one of the many anxieties, thanks to the many wrong or misleading information that still exists.
The beginning of the adventure for Silla was certainly not “easy” since 6-7 years ago the context was very difficult and talking about electric was almost a taboo …
Even today there are people who tell us that they will switch to electric cars only when the state gives an indication on how to scrap the batteries.
When we started 6-7 years ago to try to understand how to work in the electric, when you talked about this topic in the industrial field you were not well received. If you had an idea and went to the bank to get something funded to charge electric cars with solar energy, they would ridicule you.
I come from a car dealer background and have always provided mobility, sales and service services. When I realized that over time, more people were working on batteries and cars and the more the price could drop, making electric mobility more accessible, then I said to myself that it was only a matter of time. This is the future and I want to work to make it happen as quickly as possible. Even if when we started it was not entirely clear from the scientific point of view as it is today, it was already clear that the car did not pollute where it moved. Thinking about tomorrow, I prefer that cities are clean and that pollution is concentrated where the batteries are produced, because in these places it can be controlled better instead of having millions of diffuse sources of pollution.
Alberto Stecca today leads a company that looks to tomorrow. We wanted to understand where Silla’s idea came from and where the desire to move from the traditional automotive world to that of the future was born.
The spark was born when I met Cristiano Grilletti with whom I founded the company. Cristiano also comes from the automotive world, but from the industrial world: he is an electronic, a computer hacker, who has always been a super supporter of the electric and in the dialogue between me and him we understood that there was the possibility of doing something, even starting with little and by putting our own means to finance the development of our product. In 2016 there was no product on the market to exploit solar energy to recharge electric cars.
Creating a company that deals with charging solutions was certainly not easy, especially at the beginning. Here’s what Stecca told us about his experience.
In 2016 there had not yet been the pandemic, the crisis in the supply of components and the war. These are factors for which the whole world has found itself unprepared. I believe that startups have much more ability to react to crises but there are difficulties that can inevitably lead to “death”, like a lockdown that comes when you have a full warehouse and are ready to start production .. . and in that moment they close the company. Here you have to choose whether to pay the rent of the company or have you evicted from the house. I knew our idea would work. For me it was clear that we had a solution in hand that the market would have wanted sooner or later and that it was just a matter of resisting. In the meantime, the banks ridiculed us, but the more we talked about it, the more we found people who wanted to help us: from the first collaborators, now also employees with important roles, to the first group of shareholders which was a group of customers.
Silla wanted to aim at the more complex private market and not at the b2b one where you talk to large companies that in turn talk to commercial businesses …
We live in an industry in which there are many contexts in which you depend on someone else, perhaps a large operator such as an energy provider. The decision is not up to you, you can just wait and hope it is as they say. If, on the other hand, you want to consume the energy produced with your solar system and we decide to do so, no one can make us wait. In condominiums, however, it is not easy. It should be immediate because, instead, it should be much more difficult to live the old way. So, we’ve decided to do the things we know people really need to accelerate this transition. After all, mobility is made up of 80% of everyday life from home to work. Car refills for these trips can be managed locally with energy produced from renewable sources.
For the future, we will have to focus on greater independence of a home-mobility ecosystem.
Public infrastructure will develop, but it will not have to be relied on in all places equally. In some places it is essential but in others it is not.
Stecca then told us about how the industry is evolving with the advent of electric mobility and about what still needs to be done at European level.
We are at a time when there have never been so many incentives even for the development of new products. Funds that come from Europe. One of the most discussed topics in the press concerns the “damage” of the advent of electric mobility that will take away the Italian automotive industry and that will deliver the Italian car to the Asian / Chinese sector.
It cannot be denied that the Chinese have absolutely incredible experience in this sector, but the European target is 2035. We have plenty of time to set up our plans to create our own industry. Many big companies have left. The best-selling electric car in Europe is the electric 500 which is produced in Europe and not in China.
I can’t stand seeing big companies making cuts with the excuse that electric mobility has come too fast, when instead they had the time to do it but have not invested in reconversion. If we look at Volkswagen, the German manufacturer is a European company that has invested heavily both in the conversion of the plants and in terms of staff training.
According to a recent survey, the number of cars registered to the under 25s has collapsed. Young people no longer have the dream of having the car at the age of 18 which meant freedom for past generations. Perhaps because young people are changing their approach to mobility and are therefore waiting for the right car to be “born” directly electric?
In the car market in Europe, the average age of an owner is over 50. Without a doubt, with the passage of time, these people have seen the advent of a series of financial products in the automotive sector that we are used to today. Once, however, you only made 20-25% of loans while in the last few years it has reached 80%. The more you go to approach a monthly payment with a series of included services (such as insurance), the more you come to a concept of cost of use. In the meantime, many sharing services have arrived, forms of mobility that are less demanding than having to buy a car. The ownership model, at least for urban mobility, will be increasingly rare. The new generation is already adopting models of sharing rather than individual use. This means that the transition to electric mobility can also lead to more sustainable and less consumerist mobility. In fact, by doing a bit of everyone without them, we can empty the towns of cars.
Soon Silla will bring on the market a new product which is the turnkey solution to the problem of how to make the house communicate with batteries, cars and photovoltaics.
When today you want to equip yourself with everything you need to be as efficient as possible (the electric car, a storage system and the photovoltaic system), integration is very complex.
Imagine the walls of the houses that have these systems. You can find storage packs, storage inverters, solar inverters, a grid gateway, electric car charger and maybe ups. By dint of seeing walls of this kind, we tried to understand if it was possible to put everything together by making a single system that would guarantee maximum efficiency. So we set about doing it. We presented the concept at the Intersolar in Munich and now we are working hard to bring it to market as soon as possible.
The thing I like the most is bidirectional charging because I believe it is the technology that will allow an additional level of efficiency. The possibility of being able to take energy from cars for utilities or to pass energy from cars to the grid when needed can bring enormous benefits.
Why 149 (the name of the new product)?
149 is the square of the first 3 prime numbers and is a reference to the proportions of this product: 1 depth, 4 width and 9 height. Silla has a certain eye for the design of its products. 149 is an aesthetically beautiful and very futuristic product.
Silla will be present at the Paris Motor Show. We therefore asked Stecca to give us some anticipation on what they will bring.
Surely the central theme will be the integration of the production of renewables with mobility within domestic users. In the automotive sector, before, we didn’t worry about what was at home. If car manufacturers actually want to have an important market share in electric mobility, they must enter with solutions dedicated to domestic users. In Paris we will demonstrate, in a context linked to the car, how an electronics manufacturer interprets its own concept of an evolved home environment where the renewables generated on the roof are integrated with the batteries that are in the vehicle, passing through the entire management of the house.
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