Envia, a Tiny Canadian Start-up, Looks to Exploit a Market Toyota, Others Overlooking (Part 3 of 3)
Posted: September 11, 2008
As Toyota and other major car companies keep moving up their dates for introducing new plug-in hybrid electric vehicles – with fleet operators first on their lists – Jay Giraud, founder and head of a tiny Canadian start-up called Envia, keeps his fingers crossed that the big boys will give him enough time to hit it big.
Envia’s business is converting old and new gasoline-powered vehicles to run on electricity. His target: fleet operators in the U.S. and Canada, dozens of which Giraud says are under political pressure to “green” their fleets, notwithstanding the cost of converting a vehicle.
Only time will tell if Giraud’s business model will work. But it’s worth a closer look now for a number of reasons. While Toyota and other major car firms want to sell new plug-in vehicles, Giraud says he expects 50% of his business to be conversions of vehicles already on the road. “There are a lot of cities that want to do their own conversions,” he says, adding, “We’re going to be revitalizing an aging fleet.”
At the same time, Giraud hopes 50% of Envia’s business will come from converting new gasoline-powered cars to run on electricity. For that, Giraud isn’t working with a car company but, rather, a car dealership, specifically western Canada’s largest Ford fleet dealer. Giraud doesn’t think Ford in Detroit even knows he exists, but he couldn’t care less. “What this is really about is selling more Fords,” he says, adding that in his opinion, there’s no better partner than a big dealer, especially in a time when overall vehicle sales are way down.
Still another reason Envia’s business model is intriguing is that Giraud proposes to let fleet operators order a la carte. “We’ll build the vehicle to suit the department,” he says, noting that a city’s police department generally will have much different needs than its water and sewer department.
In an interview, Giraud said some 50 municipalities in the U.S. and Canada have been in contact with him, many saying that cost shouldn’t be an issue. “It’s all about PR and politics,” he said.
Noting that roughly 10% of the 325 million or so vehicles in North America are fleet vehicles, Giraud can hardly contain his enthusiasm as he emphasizes the potential opportunity to electrify millions of existing fleet vehicles while the major auto firms slug it out for fleet operators’ new vehicle purchases. He said he expects to have three to five years before the big boys move in on him and similar firms operating in Canada.
That could be enough time to put Envia in the big time.
For the first two stories in this series, please see: