Monetize the Curb

What we talked about.

In this episode of The Sunny Ray Show, host Sunny Ray talks with Jerry and Melanie, co-founders of aetherEV, a Vancouver based company turning EV parking stalls into revenue generating infrastructure. Jerry, a serial entrepreneur who previously sold a food tech startup, and Melanie, a former veterinarian turned investment banker, explain how they built a vertically integrated charging platform that owns its hardware, software, and service to guarantee reliability. Rather than positioning themselves as just another charging company, they describe aetherEV as a destination commerce platform that layers electricity resale, provincial and federal carbon credit monetization, license plate recognition, in app reservations, and on site digital advertising on top of every charging stall. They discuss why Tesla's closed loop supercharging network left room for competitors, the mistake of relying on government EV rebates, lessons learned from a bad early hire, and the capital and utility power constraints slowing their growth from about 500 to 5000 chargers. The conversation closes with a look at how Vancouver's frozen condo market shapes their expansion strategy.

aetherEV's co-founders explain how EV charging stalls become profit centers through carbon credits, digital ads, and destination commerce, not just electricity.

The questions, and the answers.

What is aetherEV, and what problem are you solving?

Ether is the Latin word for the gaseous heavens around us, and the idea is that ubiquity, we want charging to be everywhere. Our mission is to enable more sustainable transportation. I have driven an EV for over a decade and cannot go back. We are trying to eliminate one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption, which is the lack of reliable charging infrastructure.

What did you see in EV charging back in 2022 that everyone else was missing?

Tesla has a closed loop ecosystem, vertically integrated from the vehicle to a charging network dedicated only to Teslas. As the industry moved from gas to electric vehicles, there needed to be a solution for every other automaker. Ford was never going to hand its production numbers over to Tesla just to access a fueling network. I set out to build a seamless charging experience for all EVs, not only Teslas.

You describe aetherEV as a destination commerce platform rather than a charging company. Can you explain that?

To stop range anxiety you need a bigger network, and to build a bigger network the chargers have to be profitable to own. We make them profitable through electricity resale, provincial and federal carbon credit monetization, and data. When someone plugs in, our app recognizes their license plate, shows a display screen with ads, and sends discount coupons as they shop. We are monetizing the curb, turning a small parking stall into more revenue per square foot than the store.

What did you believe at the start that you no longer believe now?

I used to think government policy would drive this industry long term, things like EV rebates and ICE vehicle bans by 2030 or 2035. Those never lasted the way we expected. Now I see the industry is actually driven by consumer demand, people who drive an EV and realize range anxiety is not the barrier they thought it was. You cannot build a business plan around government incentives that can disappear overnight.

Why own the hardware, software, and service in-house instead of picking one?

From day one, reliability was the biggest issue plaguing this industry, so we decided to build in-house rather than rely on white label hardware and software. If a charger goes down, we cannot point fingers at another company. That ownership costs more, since we are funding hardware development, software development, and user experience at the same time, but it is why we have had zero site churn year to date.

What does a building owner actually care about when deciding whether to install chargers?

Owners usually see a parking lot as a cost center, so first we prove that adding chargers is not a big capital expense or an ongoing operational cost. We make it passive income, they get a check every month and stay hands off. For commercial retail, we are building similar programs for anchor tenants, offering high visibility ad placement and even veto rights over which ads appear near their space.

You're scaling from around 500 chargers toward 5000. What's the actual bottleneck?

Capital is our biggest constraint. There are a hundred projects we could start, so we pick the ones that give the biggest result for the least capital. The second bottleneck is timing, things like construction delays and utility interconnection. As more data centers demand power, utilities are asking everyone to line up for a call for power, and that response can take a year or two, which slows public charging expansion.