The Exchanges

Q To go even further back, how did this start? So when were you founded, and how did you get the idea?

A I was thinking in this space probably like, 2018, 2019 time frame. Um, the initial thing was actually, I think the initial, Thing that caused me to order some stuff online for prototyping was I wanted to build a overpowered pizza oven that could cook like Neapolitan style pizza and like the correct time, like 90 seconds or whatever. And so was like, Realize that there was not, that was not something you could do from just a normal plug. Like, um, for reference, like the, the standard US electrical plug gives you about 1500 watts of power, which is like, yes, it'll run a toaster or a blender at like okay power, but it's not something that's gonna make that, make a pizza in 90 seconds or something like that. You need substantially more power. And then I kind of went down the path of looking at batteries and being like, Hey, so how much energy and how much power can you get out of kind of the latest and greatest batteries that you could buy today? Realized it was more than adequate. And, uh, kind of annoyed the crap out of a lot of my friends talking about this and other ideas and things like you could do it. So I kind of started from like the product first. I was like, okay, if you embed a battery in an appliance, you could make it more powerful for the first time. And this was also just, just as a reference point for like where the market was, there were a number of, um, I think…

AI assessment note: “I was thinking in this space probably like, 2018, 2019 time frame.”

Q Learn more about how Archer is set to open up a new world of opportunity for passengers by providing safe and efficient access to people, places, and events across the communities they live. Visit Archer.com. How do you integrate these into the home? Like, I know my friends who have Tesla Powerwalls, you know, they have to get special setups and that kind of thing. Is this the same thing?

A No. So, so one thing that actually, I think this is, this is part of the whole kind of Trojan horse play is an appliance installation. So a Tesla Powerwall installation costs about six grand. And then like, so the Powerwall costs like 12 grand, but like installing it costs six because you essentially have to go to your main electrical panel and do all this hacking to make your house able to back up parts of the house with the Powerwall. Basically there's, there's all this huge mess there. Um, in our case, um, we're not doing a whole home backup solution. We're just making a single appliance to start. So there's no tear up on that side of the house that you have to do. You just have to like essentially plug or wire in the appliance, just like you would plug or wire in a normal appliance. So we can actually go through the normal appliance installation path, which happens every day in every community, all over the world, basically.

AI assessment note: “No. ... You just have to like essentially plug or wire in the appliance”

Q Anyways, I wanted to really get to a question and then we're going to wrap up, but do you, do you imagine given these different elements that we just mentioned, like, do you imagine America becoming a strong competitor for creating and actually manufacturing batteries?

A Yeah. So we're going to have to be, um, and ironically, China is going to help us here. Um, and, and is in process of helping us here. And so I think that's also a narrative violation. Like, The most probable biggest battery factory news in the U S is Goshen, which is, um, anglicized form of Guoshan. The, the Chinese large battery cell and pack manufacturer is opening a cell and pack line. I believe targeting automotive and stationary storage in Illinois. They did a big buzzy announcement with the governor and stuff like that. I think like earlier this year, like maybe it was, maybe it was late last year or early this year. There's an, and BYD has a facility that builds, like, all the transit buses down in LA. There is, there is Chinese manufacturing pieces moving to the United States. I've also heard stories of, like, Tesla buying CATL cell and pack equipment and relocating it to the US for the same reason. And a lot of this is driven by, um, the tariffs on battery cells and packs getting pushed up a little bit and that making sure that, like, Essentially Tesla's trick of getting these Chinese packs and putting them in cars in the U S is going to run into the issue of, they're going to want to source the packs locally, but that doesn't necessarily mean the Chinese firms are going to get cut out. They just may relocate their alliance to the United States. So that's the first th…

AI assessment note: “Yeah. So we're going to have to be, um, and ironically, China is going to help us”

Q What is the science behind pancakes always sucking on the first pancake? Why does that happen?

A That's a good question. Um, there's actually, basically a, I think a family of things revolving around I am not good at cooking is actually that you are not good at controlling the temperature of the pan. And so, and I'm not accusing you of being bad at cooking. I'm just saying that general saying that generally, um, the, uh, the reason the first thing it's bad is maybe there. One reason is maybe you don't have the oil spread around the pan properly. And that's, that's, that's one legitimate thing. But the second and most probable case of failure is you're using like a cast iron pan or a cast iron griddle. It is not yet up to temperature because you have to wait for the heat to kind of like spread out, especially with the cast iron ones. It takes a very long time to do that. Um, and if it's not the right temperature, you end up in this situation where it will most likely undercook and stays stuck because like it won't dry out the bottom of the pancake basically enough for it to naturally de-stick. And then there's a other situation where if you're like not, maybe you're using like, um, maybe if you're using a stainless steel pan, you might have the opposite problem where it gets so hot that it burns and then it sticks. And so there's this interesting Situation where, like, the entire existence of nonstick pans is driven by the fact that people, like, basically stoves have, like…

AI assessment note: “most probable case of failure is... It is not yet up to temperature”

Q Yeah, she's awesome. She's so good. Okay, so we talked a little bit about your background. We talked about the general ideation and vision. Now that you mentioned your stove guy, I can't get that out of my head. I'd love to understand the landscape to which you're building on. What percentage of Home energy usage is tied to appliances, and why stoves first?

A Yeah, so this is gonna sound like I'm not tackling the big problem. And so when you think about home energy use, the, the, the first thing you really need to think about is heating, ventilation, and cooling. So, um, and that's about 50% of American home energy use goes into that. Um, so you, you think like, oh yeah, you should just figure out how to time shift power for HVAC or something like that. But it is no one really like, you don't think if you have to have a gas boiler in your house or a heat pump, they can be centralized, but the UI UX is still the thermostat. And that's why Ness went for that versus necessarily like ripping up the entire home energy system. Um, the desire to go for stoves is, and I would say this is kind of crazy as the average us house uses something like 20 or 30 kilowatt hour, all electric house is about 20 to 30 kilowatt hours of energy a day. Um, my understanding of if you go look at the energy star standards for induction stoves, An induction stove on average uses like in the 300 to 500 watt hours per day or something very limited like that. So it's like one percent basically of, of, of home energy use goes to, goes to something like a stove. Um, appliances are about 15% if you like exclude HVAC and I think hot water. And then hot water by itself is also about 15%. Um, but you could argue that a water heater is an appliance, right?

AI assessment note: “Appliances are about 15% if you like exclude HVAC and I think hot water.”

Q So how do we get more people to adopt it? How are you going to be, uh, selling these? Are they going to go straight to Michelin chefs first, or are they going to go to some luxury home designers, real estate developers? I don't know. How's this going to work?

A So there's an all of the above kind of thing that we're taking here. Um, the Michelin star chef thing is actually a really funny note in, in States. I don't know when this podcast is being published, but stay tuned for announcements there. Um, we're very, we're very excited about, about some future partnerships in that direction. Um, and, and a lot of that's driven by straight up because of the temperature sensing capability. Like, like the battery is like a bonus in some sense from like, versus the product bona fides of getting this sort of awesome stove performance into, you know, Even regular people's hands. Um, and so the, the thinking is basically, yeah, like we're going to excite people about the capabilities of this product, make it like, and make sure that we make the case that this is a unique kind of end of one device. Like there's nothing else that has the power and precision of this product period on the market. I have not, I like, I have a pretty good understanding of appliance rare maps. I've talked to leading folks at Major appliance companies. And I don't think that there's going to be anything that comes close to this for many years effectively. And so, and so the thinking is you get people who want basically the best stove to go buy it. They could be Michelin star chefs. They could be my mom. Like it doesn't really, you know, it doesn't really matter, um, who …

AI assessment note: “So there's an all of the above kind of thing that we're taking here.”