Ep 02 PJ Tezza Founder/CEO of ModVans

Alright. So there you go. You guys are watching the Vanasaur podcast. This is episode 2. And here, we get into if you don't know this, Vanasaur is all about exploring class b, RVs Overlanding, and Vanlife culture That's right. That's what we get all of it to here. I'm joined by my friend, PJ of mod vans. Welcome, PJ. You're you're live in California. Thank you. Yeah. I'm here in California. It's not quite a sunny day here. Is this is what we call the June gloom.

It's a little bit over asked, but it's nice and cool. Probably, like, you know, high sixties. And I'm sitting here in, our MH 1 X demo van. I know you're in your van as well. So, and and it it's actually a great place. The the I'm here at our factory. So it's super noisy inside, but it's nice and going quiet right here in the van. So this is a great place to do a podcast. Yes. Is and and a couple of things I wanna get out of the way for everyone's who's joining us here.

One, I am actually a very tiny infinitesimal owner of mod fans, such as Thank you for your investment. Yeah. Full disclosure. You know, I I met you guys a few years ago, and I really think that mod Vans is on the cutting edge of this whole class b van game. I know you guys obviously aren't the biggest in that kind of stuff, but Not yet. I don't know. And this is this is me. Some people, you know, other people might have other opinion.

But I really do think you guys are on the cutting edge of that. You're really designing and engineering things, that I don't really see anywhere else. So Thanks for yes. Thanks for doing that. I'm just letting everyone know, you know, where where my motivations are. You know, I I actually came to see you guys out at the factory last year. Lolo and I were out there, but you've moved.

Yep. We moved to a new location. We're 10 minutes, closer to LA for better and worse, in a town called Camarillo. So we were previously in Oxnard, now we're in Camarillo. It's about still sixty miles, West of LA. Okay. So it's closer to LA? A little bit. 10 minutes. 10 minutes. Okay. What was the reason for the move? What are the benefits you guys got out of I mean, the biggest thing is we tripled our, manufacturing space. So we were in 84 100 square feet now. We're in 22,500. We got 10 offices.

We're had 2 offices before. So just a a much bigger facility. We, we were just, you know, people were ready to quit because we were we were tooth packed in, you know, too many people in two two offices. It the kind of joke was we need to hire. We need to balance the bathrooms. So we had to make the the female bathroom in deck. That wasn't. Laurie didn't like that plan. And now we Hank, enough bathrooms to to to handle handle the team, and and we've been able to, hire a lot more people.

So we're kind of getting back into growth mode where, we had done a lot of R and D in 2022 kind of grown that facility to build as fast and as many as we could, and we really had and maxed it out for quite a while. So it was time to move. Okay. Cool. Let me just do a quick shout out to Go Small Live Large. Also, a Van YouTuber Van Sent Rick Youtuber. Shout out to him. If you guys aren't following him, you should follow him.

I'm gonna make some plans to actually go on his live that happens on Wednesdays, but shout to Scott out there. And, and travel dreamer says that they said Apple was small too back in the day. Yeah. Everybody has to start somewhere. So there you go. So, you know, that's that's the reason why you guys did it in you know, what are the what's the downsides? Are there any downsides to that, you think? To the move?

Yeah. You know, we did, originally, we had talked about moving, into a nearby state to still be close to California to be outside some of the, really the cost of living here. So we're we're still kind of faced with a high cost of living. So, yeah, there there's trade offs to everything, that, you know, the good side is that we didn't have to really stop production.

We were able to really smoothly transition to this space And, I think, you know, some people are kind of, sometimes interested in the details. So, like giving them out the actual space to to lease here really isn't that much any more expensive, really, than a similar industrial space in, let's say, Nevada or Arizona. But, but the, but cost of living is is higher here. Okay. Alright. And let me also shout out to my friend, shooting gallery who's out there. He says, well, it's crackalacking.

That's it. That's his comment. Go small, live large, says, thanks Hank would enjoy you being our guest on what's up Wednesday. So, yes, we're gonna make that happen. Do you wanna start PJ by maybe explaining to folks out there showing people or, you know, just telling them about mod vans and what exactly you guys do? And if you want to here, I can actually pull up, either your screen or my screen and show people some examples of what you make.

Everyone just Hank Sure. I I think that's supposed to be is if you could share your screen, maybe pull up the mod band's home page and just scroll down and see them. Yeah. I will do that here. Let me see. I will, you know, first of all, what I need to do is actually take take some cameras off and that's really the best way to do it here and put some cameras on and let's see. I will change this, I think, to let's go to my phone. So this is vans, if you want to, it's modvans.com, right?

And folks can go in there and take a look. Let me see. Probably, I we're probably gonna get a better look at what's there if I go this way. So we can go to the different can we go to the different models that you guys can? Which one do you wanna start with the MH 1? Or Oh, it's okay. You could just show them, and and I'll kind of explain to people what we do while while you're kind of just scrolling through Mhmm. So so mod vans is is basically a brand new RV manufacturer.

We specialize in class VRVs. But, you know, we consider them actually more multipurpose vehicles with camping features. We started with a with a low roof, a a van, a class VRV built on a low roof van that had a pop up top to give you, you know, extra space while you had the that low roof van to give you standing space and space for two beds. And we really, you know, my original, use case was I wanted a vehicle for my family that I could draw every day. I didn't have a long commute for work.

I didn't actually drive every day, and I didn't wanna own a separate vehicle set a separate vehicle only camping. So I built this crossover vehicle that that had camping features, but also had enough safe and comfortable seats, had two beds, that particular version had 5 seats total. So that's how Modvan started. And then, you know, fast forward 5 years, we've really doubled down. We have 6 models total offered in 3 different sizes.

So we have still our low roof, which is very close to the original one that we did. Now we have immediate roof. We have a lot requests from customers. These are all, you know, we we've grown the business based on the feedback that we get from the market. We've built a medium roof, model. And now now we have a high roof extended length model that is more of a true class VRV that would be, you know, almost a dedicated.

It depends on the person, but a lot of people would consider that to be a kidded camping vehicle. Right. That would be the image 1. Right? The big one? Yeah. That's the the initial image on on the home page. And what I'm sitting in for this podcast right now, And, you know, one of the things that we did was we kind of start off with that multi purpose modular feature. So we're the only, you know, truly modular class VRV that you can take everything out.

Like, literally, we have videos where we show it. Everything behind me can come out, and then you have a cargo van, and then you can kinda add the components back in to get the thing you want, but the thing that's different about hot vans is that includes all the normal RV system. So we still have an air conditioner. We still have a heater, a furnace, you know, we still have microwave, kitchen sink, you know, water system Hank and all that, but it's still modular.

So you basically, you could actually take all the out. And you can still almost use it as an RV, even with all the systems out. So like I said, we have some videos on our website that kinda demonstrate that. So that was our original, you know, focus was really innovating in the RV space and coming out with these unique designs that for something that have never been done before. Literally, we have patents and patents pending on some of these design concepts.

And then in the last couple of years, what we've done, we've matched that up with a really big push into technology. And just as an example, we have the biggest battery available in any RV that I know of. It's over twice as big as anything else on the market. So, you know, people will be like, oh, you know, these guys just came out with a with a 12 kilowatt or 13 kilowatt hour battery, and our big battery is 26 kilowatt hours, and we're looking at ways to make that bigger.

But at the same time, we're still really focused on, you know, how do we Hank that big battery, but still be super innovative and and and practical. So normally, to get a 26 kilowatt hour battery, you'd have these boxes in the back of your van, and you wouldn't have any storage back there for your adventure gear.

And what we did was said, no, that's unacceptable because part of the point of having adventure van is to go on adventures take the things that you want, you know, your kayaks, your surfboards, your bicycles, you know, on your adventure. So we came up with this idea of a floor battery where the entire floor is a 1 inch, layer of battery. And that 26 kilowatt hour battery actually almost peers. It takes practically no space inside the RV because it's built as a 1 inch layer of the floor.

And then, you know, the last little piece is the super high technology. So we actually created custom circuit boards, and we wrote our own software, and we have an app that controls everything inside vehicle. So your lights, your plumbing, your heating, it's all controlled with a mod van's app.

And sure there's other companies that have little pieces of that, but there's nobody who's built it in house and offers it as just of 1 integrated solution, you know, one stop shop where we built the battery. We built the app. It's all integrated together. The power, all the battery power flows through the the circuit boards that we designed. So it's a totally integrated system. Yeah. And, just to answer a question from Go Small Live Large. He said, which chassis does van, mod vans build on?

What chassis, man? Yeah. So so I built the first time for myself. And I did a survey of the market. This is I'm an engineer. So this is, you know, kind of my engineering background coming into play. Mhmm. I've looked at the Strange. I looked Pro Master. I looked at the even the Chevrolet, and I decided that the Ford Transit was the best, available van at any price. Price is not a factor. The Ford Transit expressed.

And so I started with, I I built a van for my family, on the Ford Strange, and Mod vans now only builds on the Ford Transit because we still see it as the best fan. We Hank women during the supply chain.

We Hank ourselves some really hard questions about that because some other vans were more readily available possibly in the market, and we just, you know, I I kinda said, you know, revisiting this choice again, I wanna stick with the Strange because it's still, in my opinion, the best van available. Yeah. I, I would agree with you on that. And by the way, playing around with everything while we're doing this. Yeah. So ignore me.

I'm always I can't I can't stop messing messing around with things here. While we're doing this because this is, like, the first few episodes. So, you know Yeah. We're, yeah, we're still figuring I'm still figuring everything out, but, you know, I agree with you. To me, personally, of the 3 main options, because in America, basically, is only 3 options for vans, right?

That would be the sprinter van from Mercedes, the Pro Master van from Ram, and and then obviously Ford has the transit that's the options you have. To me, the transit is just the best. I think because it has all wheel drive, the the it's easier to to get maintenance for it and all that kind of stuff. It's also bigger. I think the Pro Master is pretty cool, but it doesn't have all wheel drive. It doesn't come as big as the, as the, as the transit. But the Sprinter gets the biggest one.

I just don't think that power and all that is there. Go ahead. Yeah. So, we actually have some great videos. You know, one of the one of the things that kind of, you know, people have this idea that the Runner is more capable off road, you know, because it came with 4 by 4 in the beginning. Even though, you know, the transit, you can get a 4 by 4 aftermarket conversion, Then later, Ford came out with an, an all wheel drive system from the factory, which they called all wheel drive.

And I think there's another perception in the market that somehow the 4 by 4 Mercedes was more capable off road than all wheel drive. And I really actually didn't know because I hadn't bought mercedes and taking it off road. And I couldn't really, you know, tell you the plus and minus. But 2 years ago, we did a a great over landing ride with a whole group of vendors and there was 2 Mercedes Sprinters on that ride. And then there was 2, of our vehicles that we took.

We took a low and a high roof fan. And on that ride, it it came, I mean, apparent to everybody on that ride, you know, and, and I'm gonna, I'm actually gonna, I think we can do a little bit of a clip from that. Let me see if I can Oh, you want a screen share? Yeah. I'm gonna screen share and see if I can, get that right in there. Yeah. See if I can, I will put that put that back on, and then I'll switch this to your screen share? So I'm gonna do Here we go.

This one, and it should be showing I don't know if you guys do see it, but yeah. There you go. Mhmm. So this this this video in just a second, you're gonna see some video of this footage of us going up this hill at 13000 feet in Colorado. Yep. And here we go right here. And then, you know, it's gonna be hard to see in this little postage stamp, you know, but you can, get a link to this, video later. But the sprinters couldn't make it.

They had to be towed up the hill because they didn't have enough power. So this is actually the one of the sprinters that had to be towed up the hill. Another one had, you know, problems with this rear differential. And both owners were just saying, yeah, we we we were really struggling on this ride. And in contrast, the transits were just they drove perfectly, you could just, you know, drive them the way that you needed to.

And all, you know, debate about all wheel drive versus 4 by 4 went away. So this is a a picture of, our MH 1 going up these, you know, Rocky Hills, up in high reef of Colorado. So at the end of this ride, the one of the things that came out of it was you know, yeah, the transistor is way better. And this is also one of the reasons that we've, you know, decided not to build a model on on the on the Strange. Yeah. And I think that this ride, our personal our personal experience on this ride.

Yeah. I think that the, what is the the transit is, I would say, like, almost twice. I think with the Sprinter, you were getting the old let's say we talk about the old Sprinter. I think it got as much as a 188 horsepower is as high as it would could would go? And Yeah. It it had way less work. It's still, you know, the the Strange has way less horsepower power and torque than the Strange. But also, I think the earlier Strange 4 by 4 system wasn't as good for off roading.

It didn't have 5050 torque distribution. It's putting a lot of the torque, you know, in one place, even if the other wheels were slipping. And then the new all wheel drive system, I think, is more comparable where it can do 50, but they were still doing a lot of fun stuff with the brakes to try to make it act more like a four by four system instead of putting, you know, like limited slip.

That that, you know, Ford basically, they called it all wheel drive, but you could put it in mud and ruts mode, and it became something that's very similar to the 4 by 4 mode that we Hank. Yeah. Earlier versions of the Strange. Yeah. I differential transit k transfer case. I yeah. I think the power's a big difference, and I did do a video at Overland West. That we were both at recently with, Engel Halt Allrod. So good. That's it.

It's a German company when they make They make a real 4 by 4 out of the Sprinter van. You know, they really lift it, put on the big tires. There's actually a shifter to go into 4 by mode and all that, but you still have the power, and there's not there wasn't that much, you know, I think well, they had a V Six. I think now it's a four cylinder. Right? They they just went down in power. For Mercedes. I don't think they went down in power. I think the That way they went out.

Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, they went down in cylinder count. Yeah. And I drove it. We we'll get off this subject here, but I drove the new all wheel drive, the new Mercedes Sprinter. And when there's nothing in it, actually, it's not bad. It's still not better than the transit. It's not bad. But when you put a lot of stuff in it, and if you guys want to know about that, we could PJ is the expert on this, obviously.

But when you put a lot of stuff in there, you're talking completely different driving characteristics. Yeah. And that's where that four hundred foot pounds of torque in transit really shows shines. You know, it's just Yeah. Yeah. No problem. Whatever you put in transit. No problem. Yes. So we got a question that maybe we have to go back a little bit here. Travel Dreamer 46 says, do you have integrated temperature control for pets? So, we do have an app that you can monitor it.

But it doesn't have like a specific pet mode yet. So one of the cool things about this technology stack that we're delivering is we've delivered you know, the X Series is what we call with our big battery system and all computer controls. It's connected to the internet. It's connected to the cloud. You can or control your vehicle with the mod bands app. But we don't have pet mode yet, but that's something we can add with the software update.

So, so that's where, you know, we're kinda still an early company. We don't have all the really cool, capabilities of Tesla, but we did build that into the stack and and we hope to offer it in the future. In the meantime, if you want Pet Mode, There are 30, apps with temperature monitoring that you can get, and then you can use that in conjunction with our very big battery and 12 AC to to run your your AC.

So you would use this third party monitoring to make sure your pets is safe and then you would use the the the mod band's giant battery and AC to keep your pet cool. Yes. And, you know, I think you already said this, but there's videos out there. Loew and I have done some videos. We have even more videos come out, and we have a factory tour, which is actually it's not obsolete, but, you know, you move factories. I don't know yet.

Yeah. But so I got a new task to keep up with mod vans, Hank. Yeah. I know. I know, man. But, you know, we'll we'll I'm still gonna put that factory tour video up because I think it's really good and there's lots of tech. But that point that people are asking, because you do write the software and everything for this, if you find that that's something a lot of people, want to have You it's very easy for you to to just really write something to make that happen. Right? Absolutely.

We have 26 temperature sensors. So spread throughout the van. And then we have, you know, big battery, and it's all connected to the internet. So these are kind of the basic building blocks that we have. It will be fun to combine them in different ways to to solve these, you know, things that people wanna do with their with their vehicles.

Yeah. And very quickly, we've got less probably about a minute here, but, yeah, that the big battery that you have that takes up the floor, you know, And then also, I think what is it? You have six hundred watts in the in the roof solar? Yeah. So the the, you know, we'll we'll round it to 600. The roof has 600, and then we have an additional 400 watts that we can deploy as a portable pack that plugs into the side of the van. So we have a 1000 watt solar available.

Yeah. So you can actually replace some of what that big battery is losing, and I know you have 2 options because you've got a 1000 amp hour 1 and a and a little over 2000 on that. Right? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. The the the thousand watt solar, yeah, even the 600, we notice it makes a significant So for example, you know, that's really close. The the the unit that's on the roof, the 600 is really close to what the AC takes to pass.

So a lot of times during the day, you may not even be using really practically using your battery power, in order to run AC because most of the power is coming from the solar system. Yeah. So there you go. So we're gonna take, a little break here and shout out the people who help us, make this happen, and then we're gonna right back. And if you guys have questions, feel free to ask those questions.

So as you guys might have already heard Lola and myself our brand ambassadors for Sunshine State RV.

And as Vanasource, I wanna take this moment to encourage anyone who is in the market for a class b van to start their journey with SSRV. Sunshine State RVs specializes in selling class B vans and B plus RVs. That is the reason why they are the number one dealer in all of the state of Florida. Number 3 in the whole United States SSRV will fly you right to their location in Gainesville, Florida.

They'll give you a very detailed and thorough walk through of your van and they'll give you a 2 night stay at a local campground so you can get used to your van. If you don't like that, you can actually have hands free delivery anywhere in the United States of your RV. We bought our coachman Beyond from Sunshine State RV 2 years ago. And over the past 2 years, we've seen how they treat customers when it comes to warranty side. Their service team is great.

Whether you bought it from them or not, every person that comes in there gets the same service and care when it comes to warranty repairs, the same service, attention, and care. And their team does a great job getting you back on the road safe So if you guys are in the market for a B or B plus van, consider Sunshine State RV. We've got a link in the description that you can use to see their China Strange RV. I'm just gonna ask this question. I see there are some questions coming in.

So everyone asks the questions, hit those thumbs up. Share this if you can. It's a really good opportunity to talk to PJ. I could make this show probably 5 hours easily if PJ had the time. But because, you know, just with the knowledge, I always tell one of the cool things I like about the relationship I have with PJ is that I can just run a whole bunch of crazy questions by him, and they get all this, data back or even explanations of things I don't understand.

So I think this is really cool to have this happen, and we'll try to do it more. But if people want to buy Ahmad Vans, right, they can't go to Sunshine State RV. You guys have a very specific way you sell. Not yet. Oh, not yet. What does that mean? Not yet. You know, we're not we're not committing to a path. Right now, you We saw direct to consumers. So Yes. I know you did see Nick from Sunshine State RV at the at the Overland show. Very briefly. Yes. Yes. You did see him.

What do people do if they wanna wanna buy my vans or just find out more stuff? You know, the first thing is to do your homework because, you know, any class BRB, but a mod vans, is also a significant investment. So we, you know, we want you to do your homework. We we feel like that, you know, that's gonna show well for us, but, you know, we, we want you to do your homework first. So that could be involve calling us. That could involve come into our factory.

We do offer, the ability to come see demos or meeting us at a show, which is how we met you at Overland Expo East. We do have shows and we just at an events link on our website. They'll show you the shows we'll be attending. So you could actually meet us, and we take 3 vans to all those shows. You can get a good idea of how the space, lays out. You can call us. You can email us with your questions. You can get a Zoom demo.

Once you've done your homework and you feel like that modvans is the right, you know, choice for you, then you place your order online. So you literally, you know, go to modvans.com. You know, you click on order now, and then you'll choose your, chassis, your your Ford Transit. We have some chat Transits in stock. We're one of the very few people that that have these awesome all wheel drive, eco boost, and all the cool gray colors, available.

We actually have them for all models right now so that you can go there and place your order online and then choose all your options. So if you want the big tires, you want the winch, you can choose that. If you don't want it, you can, you know, delete it or not put it on your van, and you go through that process. And at the end of it, you'll you'll have order your van online. I'll give you an analog though. It it's like ordering a Tesla, you know, you're gonna go through that same process.

If you come to our factory, a great, you know, our salesperson will answer all your questions, give you all the tour, but at the end of the day, he's gonna help you place your order on the website. That's it. To do it. Yes. And and I think you guys are, you you you do a lot of communication with people because there are some options and, you know, it's gonna yeah. That's probably what people are gonna yeah. Lots of questions there. So that's the thing.

Now and and I know I saw that you guys do have a stash of vans, and that's actually a big deal, right? Because these fans are becoming more and more and more rare, and you've got them in different colors, like my favorite, Avalanche, the gray.

Do you do you still have all that going on or no? Do you We have a limited number of MH 1 chassis, which is what, you know, what you you you were most excited about, which is, you know, our class b alternative. You know, it's a high roof extended length version. But, yeah, we we actually have chassis for all the models right now. And we even have, some transit Strange, available for selection on the website. So that's pretty exciting.

That's gonna be, a new thing from Ford, they've really decided to double down on the adventure band segment. So they're gonna offer, the transit with a a lift kit to give you better clearance off road driving, bigger tires to give you, more aggressive tread and then also more clearance. And then a few other, off road, you know, off specific features. And that package is called the Strange Trail. So they generated a ton of interest.

There's almost no I haven't seen any customers actually taken a delivery of transit trail, but we actually have some on order. And we've actually have bins and build dates, and we put a couple of them, online for people They are going to be expensive. They're, there's no getting around that, but they're, but they're amazing vehicles. They're going to have all the electronics that people want with a 360 camera.

You know, blind side information system, adaptive cruise control, plus those, off roading features. Yeah. And I know Pete has a question I'm gonna get to that here in a second, but you brought up the trail. So, you you haven't actually gotten any in, but you do have VIN numbers. Yes. And, yes. Alright. So that is a that is a big deal. I, you know, I there's all these rumors out there.

I know that Ford is gonna build them and, you know, I think we're probably gonna see them later in the year or something, or at least that's what I hear. I don't know if have any I I've heard. So we're, you know, obviously, we're kinda stuck on forward. So we have our ear to the ground all the time. I do believe that the initial customer deliveries are probably happening right now, or they'll be happening in June sometime. And then, yeah, our bill dates are not far off.

So, you know, we have vendors. Sometimes, you know, you'll get a a VIN and a bill date from Ford, and they'll have to push it off. Once you have that VIN number, you know, you're gonna it's not gonna be pushed off into the next model year for sure. You know, and it's pretty rare actually that they miss widely on the bill dates.

So, I mean, the trails, new models, you know, all bets are a little bit off, but I would say, you know, having those, VIN number and And bill dates from Ford is a really good, indication that they will be coming in the next couple months. Yep. Yes. I I believe they're gonna happen. I know people think they're not gonna happen. I believe they're gonna happen. I've seen some evidence of that. The I don't know how much I could even really talk about.

However, it leads me to believe it's going to happen. Let's get to Pete's question and then come back to the to Trail and Ford and all that since you're Ford Centric. Pete's, Pete Hat says I would love to buy a true bee van with a top top, but hate the promo Chassis, what made you decide to do the pop top on the Strange, and have you had any issues with it thus far? Okay. So I'll break this down into different parts.

I explained in the earlier part of this video why we selected the the transit because I believe it's the best van I originally put the pop up top because I really wanted to maximize that multi purpose, capability of having a somewhat smaller vehicle And also, I wanted a really great driving vehicle. So I'll explain a little bit. At the time I lived in Berkeley, California, and my idea of adventure was every weekend.

I had to work during the week but every weekend, I took off into the mountains. And the mountains were about 3 hours away, you know, 2 a half to 3 hours away. Sometimes you're sitting in traffic. Often, you're in wind, because that's how California is. You get into the mountains and the winds there.

And so I wanted something that was relatively small, but I still wanted kinda all the features that you'd have in a an event with a a big comfortable bed, a furnace, you know, to keep warm when it's cold, all those things. And I kind of mapped out my brain.

The only way to get the features I wanted was put a pop up top and have that bed, the the primary bed to be above the the living space so that it, you know, if you look at a, an adventure van, Most of the adventure vans don't have pop up tops. And then what happens is that bed is in the back, taking up a ton of space. And that works if you have the extended length. But as you get into the smaller vans, the twenty foot vans, and all of a sudden, you have a van that is mostly a riding bed.

And so putting that bed up into the pop up top, just makes sense from an engineering and architectural standpoint. So that was what drove me to select the pop up top. And of course, you know, I thought that the the transit was the best van. So that's why I put a pop up top on a transit. Have we had problems? So, we have about 150 customers driving our vans all across the US right now. So, to say that we've never had a problem, that would not be true. We have had problems.

I would say, the problems have been way less than I expected in the beginning that we actually have very few problems Some of the problems were growing pains. So for example, you know, we had people that we trained on how to do certain things like sealing, the pop up top so that we didn't get water leaks. And we discovered that the training, you know, wasn't as effective as we had hoped it would. So these are issues, you know, that that we've, just getting better and better at.

And I would say our pop up tops right now, you know, super cool. Like, we we're just not having very many problems. The the, you know, but we still have, you know, we don't have any, vans that, you know, we haven't been able to to solve whatever challenges came up even from the early days. Yeah. I think leaks on pop tops is very common from what I've seen. You know, so that's definitely a a place that everyone has to pay attention.

I've seen it happen even with the big guys, but that's definitely a thing that could happen. Right? Since we're here, yeah, so I I'll give you the nitty gritty engineering. So, actually, the the system that we use to seal the pop up from leaks. It's pretty much tried and true. So you can look at a company like Sports Mobile. They've been in business really since the 1960s putting pop up top on vans.

Mhmm. And there's a ceiling system that everybody's kind of, you know, we we use a very similar ceiling system that that sportsmobile does, and it works. It it's a I mean, it has its, deficiencies or whatever. But then you have the problem of, you know, making sure because, these vans are not built by robots, not yet. So making sure that, you know, that it's built, you know, the engineering is correct to begin with.

And then over time that the people that are actually doing the work or, you know, doing it in the way that it was originally designed that is good and leaks. And so what we kind of discovered is we we we what actually happened was we had greatly problem with we had no problems with leaks in our first, let's say, 20 or 30 pop up top. So we thought we had it down pat. Then we hired more people to help us build faster. It makes sense. And we gave them Strange, and we were like, oh, okay.

This is gonna be, you know, we we have the system. It's been working. And then all of a sudden, we find, you know, some of our newest customers are having water leaks. And what we, you know, we did an investigation, and what we uncovered was that even though the person Hank had the training, he, you know, wasn't doing the procedure correctly. So what we did was we kind of went to the drawing board. And we said, okay. We need to improve our training. We need to improve our documentation.

Also, we need to, stop these leaks immediately by doing water testing on every van. And I've owned tents. I've been a tent camper a long time in what I discovered a tent camper was, you know, not all tents come, seam sealed from the factory. So, you know, back in when we were kids, Hank, you bought a tent from, you know, your your local sporting goods store and it didn't have seam seals.

And what that means is if it rains, it'll come through the the holes made by the the needle when it does the stitching. And so they make a seam sealer. And one of the first things you do when you tint back in those days was you'd seem sealed if you plan to be out there. Caveman. Yep. And so, so, anyway, I discovered that, hey, if I sprinkle my tent water on a hose that and it didn't leak.

That was a really good sign that when I got it out in the field that it's not gonna leak either because the hose you know, if you spray it hard enough, it actually does a really good job of simulating what you're gonna encounter in the real world. And so that's how we test our vans now. So, you know, the first like I said, 30 or so vans, we actually weren't leak testing. And, you know, people are like, why didn't you leak test in the beginning?

The answer is because you know, we're trying to build a van that's somewhat affordable for the masses, you know. So we do have to pick and choose. We can't exhaustively test everything thing. So, you know, and as we learn, we're like, okay. Well, we made a mistake. We should have been leak testing from the beginning because this is really important, and we learned training is not perfect. So even though our engineering system is great, training is not perfect. So now, we do leak test.

And and and, you know, another one that kinda got us later was Let's say a customer, we have one right now. Somebody hit an overhead sign. They put a dent in their van. We're gonna do some repairs for them. Now we actually lead test after we do repairs because we ran into the same problem. We did a repair for a customer. Customers drive around first rain. You know, they get some leaks in there. We'd learn that even repairs need to be lead tested.

So now we have, you know, our QA procedure is new builds and anything that's ever, you know, even looked at period penetration is gonna get lead tested again by mod bands before we deliver to the customer. And that combination has served us really, really well as far as leak go. Yeah. And that's where, you know, that's where experience counts, you have to have experience.

And I think just to to move on from this and go to some other questions, out there, the other difference with your popped up is that it's powered, right, versus I don't think I've seen anyone else do a powered popped up. Am I wrong Yeah. They're they're they're some smaller companies like Modvance, the sportsmobile, Colorado camper van. They offer power. You know, maybe they have a manual Well, I think mostly that everybody's gone to the power in in my world.

Okay. We specifically chose power from the beginning for 2 reasons. One is on the engineering It's actually simpler for us than coming up with a a compensation system like springs that would help somebody, you know, or or or air air cylinders that would help, you know, get the the top up when a person's not strong enough to lift it by themselves. The other one is we wanted from the very beginning to be able to offer air conditioning and solar panels. And so we wanna put those items on the roof.

We wanna be able to lift cargo and, you know, being able to lift a £100 top plus, you know, a £100 air conditioner plus a £50 solar system, is just not possible for you to most people just can't, you know, push up. Yeah. So the so the air the air conditioner one. So this is where, you know, we have the 3 models. When we built the MH 1, it was extended link. So we were to get some extra length on the back and get away from putting the the air conditioner on the pop up top.

And that worked out really well in the MH 1. Our other two, models are too short. They're 20 feet long. And so in order to get a air conditioner, we had to put it on the pop up top itself. And it actually works really well for that design because those are meant to be more SUV replacements And then the air conditioner is in the perfect place for for for that scenario.

Whereas the MH 1 is more of a class BRB, the air conditioner is more in the back in the bed where traditionally be, but it's not on the image one pop up top.

Okay. Very good. Alright. Let me get this question from travel dreamer, he says, what is approximate? What is the approximate bill time? So there's 2 answers question. How long does it actually take us to build a van? And part of the answer is it depends on the model. So the m h ones are definitely taking us longer right now. It's a new model for us. So the m h one x is taking us the longest time.

Our CV 1, which is kind of the one that we started with, we can build one of those in about 10 working days. So we can build those pretty quickly. So that's that's kind of the technical answer. The more practical answer is when can I get 1? And that answer is best given by our website. So if you actually go through our online ordering process, you'll see it's gonna give you a price which is firm and an estimated delivery date, which is our best estimate right now.

Based on the combination of what we have in the queue in front of you and, you know, the the inventory that we have when those are gonna be available and how long it's gonna take us to actually build it once we start building your your van. Okay. So have you I can't remember exactly how many you guys are building when I came to see you. But have you been able to up how many vans you guys are working on at a time at this new factory? Is that or how many buildings?

Yeah. So we can definitely build more at a time. We just moved. So we only moved 3 months ago. So we, you know, I wouldn't say that we're really, we've hired some new people, but they're still kind of in training mode. So I wouldn't say our production has significantly increased yet. We're right on the cusp of that, though. We're right on the cusp kind of stepping up production.

But again, going back to, you know, the training issue, we do wanna take our time to make sure that we don't rush the the growth too fast so that we have quality problems down the road. So, so it will take us a little while to get to our full production. We're hoping this new facility, we'll be able to build, 15 to 20 vehicles per month. 15 to 20. Okay. Cool. Mhmm. And you guys are gonna be there for some time? You know, we haven't decided yet.

So we're still, you know, hoping to grow ever faster. So, you know, if it turns out that we can to that 10 to 15 within, like, let's say a year and we're ready to make the next move. We'll move again. So we're, you know, we're not one of these companies that just, you know, get comfortable.

And, you know, this is what we're gonna do for a while. We're like, no, we're we're pushing harder. And so as soon as we, max this one out and we have the funding to get to the next place, that will we'll be moving again. One one thing that we have discussed is leaving a service center in California. So so it could be that this facility stays with us for a long time, but is our primary production facility in the future. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Speaking of the future, I don't know whether or not you're talking about this. I'm assume well, I guess I already know this, but you guys are thinking about expanding, going out of California. You know, finding other places to build? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, the cost of living here is just tough for us for for manufacturing. We We're we are, you know, in Oxnard.

I haven't done a survey in Camarillo, but in Oxnard, we were probably the top paying manufacturer, and it still wasn't enough our guys to to afford to own their own home, which is, you know, the American dream. And, you know, we kind of get that And, and so, you know, we want everything. We want my advance to work for our employees as well as for us. So, you know, that's a a big fact. For us.

Yeah. And you guys wouldn't know this unless you're actually looking, but it's one of the things that I observed when I went down to the factory visited with you guys. You really care about your employees. You, you know, you really care about their well-being. You you guys, I think, do a lot, you know, to to help out the employees. And that's really the core of any business, right, until like you said, robots could do everything. You have to have people.

You have to have those people feel like it's worth it for them to work for you, you know, and then and you've gotta be able to retain them. Right? In a lot of them to I mean, I think there's different different people have different kinda like what their goals are in life. My goal in life not to end up being a rich guy. My goal in life is to end up being surrounded by, you know, family and friends. And, you know, enjoy the company of the people around me.

And that means that, you know, if I work that backwards from there, you know, when I build a company, a to be a company that every everybody. Everybody there is excited to be there. They wanna come to work. They can see how they're, you know, they they're either happy with their position or they can see how they can grow with the company. So, yeah, we really want it to be a a fun and exciting place for everybody to work and we and we work hard on that.

You know, we have, we just made some changes in the production floor and, you know, right now, we're we're literally asking the employees, you know, what do you think about these changes? You know, can you please let us know if, you know, you feel bored or, you know, you feel like this isn't a good use of your talent so that we can, you know, adjust and and try to accommodate. You know, obviously, you know, it's, there is a compromise. We still have to work every day.

And we have to work pretty hard. Yeah. But, you know, but at the same time, we want it to be, like I said, a fun and exciting place where where everybody can, you know, one of the big choices we have is, you know, do we promote from within, or do we, you know, hire these external managers when it's time to to open up the thing. And I have consciously, chosen over and over again to promote from within because we want mod vans to be a place where people see opportunity. Yeah. Absolutely.

Okay. We got a couple of seconds here. We're gonna go to the next segment And we've got some questions and things like that.

We'll get to right after this. Lola and I are now official brand ambassadors for Coachmen Class B. So I wanted to take a moment to tell you guys why we, as Vanasource, like it says on our t shirt, are very excited about our partnership with Coachmen Class B. First off, Coachmen RVs has been a leader to the great outdoors since 1964. So next is the fact that Coachmen really cares about you as an owner, whether you bought new or used After you buy your van, they really take care of you.

With Coachmen Klosbee, you have all the options. Coachmen bills on all three van platforms. On the Mercedes Strange, it's a coachman Galleria. Before Strange, it's a coachman Beyond, and Ram Pro Master is a coachman Nova. Lastly, value for money. We've had our van for 2 years and coachman bills to the highest standards of quality and craftsmanship. You can't go wrong with a coachman class be.

So if you're interested, check out the link in our description and find the Coachmen van that's best for you. Alright.

We are back Pete said a couple things. 1, to answer the the, question about, availability. He did look the website, it says it's showing mid October. So there you go, that's not really too bad. And, another question. Well, here's what I wanted to say before even get to this. If you if you're looking to buy something, a lot of times people buy the the person behind that product more than thing. Right?

Product is important because it's got some function or some reason why you wanna have it, but the people who are selling it to you mean something. And I always say, well, look at how they treat the customers. Right? That's really important. How does that company deal with people after they buy something from them, and then I think another thing to look at is how they treat the folks who build these things, you know, the people who work for them.

So, that's that's another that's another good thing. That's one of the things that I like about you guys. I don't think you're just saying what you just said. Hank you really believe that, you know, you really and I've I saw that. I I think you care about the folks who work for you and, you know, that's That's a big deal. So go ahead. And and, you know, one thing that has worked out for us in this social, you know, media world or whatever is Mhmm. We actually have an owners group.

It's a faith Facebook slash group slash mod bands. You know, you can actually anybody on this podcast list of this, you can actually pull that Facebook group. You might have to, you know, beg your grandfather for, and a log in through Facebook. Yeah, you guys go. I don't log to Facebook, but yeah. Okay. That's fine.

Just, you know, get on there, give them a fake email address, whatever you gotta do, but you can see what our customers are saying about our vehicles and about how we support, them you know, with their own words, you know, and I I do feel like I, you know, that we represent ourselves very well, particularly, you know, if you kind of pull up those same groups for other manufacturers. And and I do. I I belong to all the groups.

And, you know, one of the reasons I belong to those groups is to learn from their experience in building RVs and the kind of challenges they have to try to not repeat those mistakes and then also customer service. You know? What frustrating those people, and how can we solve that? You yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, Pete, had this follow-up question He says, how does someone, get warranty or support that doesn't live in California?

I live in Florida, and I've been considering your MH 1 and a coach from Beyond just were, worried about not having access to a service facility. So that's that's a question for Peter. Question. So so this is something that, we tackle a couple different ways. So first of all, one thing to understand is that when people come to take delivery from us, we understand that many times their first, usage of our van is gonna be a vacation when they drive their van home.

And it could be all the way to Florida from California. So we're kinda, you know, we're we're prepared. We are proactive about that. You don't need, well, I'm not gonna say this, but, you know, I see in a lot of groups where people Hank these massive lists of things to double check for before they drive off from their RV dealership we purchase because, you know, there's a lot of defects that are sitting right there on the dealer lot.

We're gonna do that inspection for And, you know, we have a big long checklist. So so that experience is quite a bit different from what I read in the groups about how we deliver a van. We expect you to to drive this, you know, on a vacation straight at home, and we build it that way, and we deliver it to you that way. So, secondly, we have a 1 year warranty.

You know, if you actually look at the wording of our warranty, technically, it it requires you to bring the vehicle to our service center in California to our factory, but that's actually not what happens in practice. What happens in practice is that we are willing to let you take your RV to any RV dealer. So I I heard actually in your, your commercials over and over again, that Sunshine State will treat, you know, any RV owner just like as if they had bought the RV, at Sunshine State.

And I think that's an amazing thing in today's world because there's so many people, especially out here on the risk. You didn't buy buy your RV here. You you know, you're not gonna get a service appointment. The good news is It happens. It happens. I've I've seen it happen. The good news is because of our flexibility, not going to necessarily require you to take your van to even an RV dealer. You could take it to an RV repair center.

And then what we'll do is we'll work with you to pre authorized, any inspections or repairs, and and to reimburse you if if that's what happens. For for the repairs, we'll send out part And again, you know, for people that have, concerns about this, what they can do is they can get on our Facebook owners and ask real owners. We have owners over the country.

We have owners in Florida and ask them about their experience with, you know, what happened when they did need to have some service done in Florida. And and see see how it works. After the 1 year is up, we're still gonna support, whoever it is, because what happens is actually interestingly, you know, now that I've been doing 5 years. I learned that not every everybody keeps their mod bands vehicle forever.

You know, sometimes they will support the next customer down the line, you know, the same way that we support the original owner. Also mod vans qualify for extended warranties. Now that the pandemic kind of relieve some of the pressure from RV dealers and repair centers. I think that's a a a new option that's come up, and you can actually get one of those extender warranties for out to 7 years, on both the the chassis, the Ford Strange, and the conversion, which is the part that we build.

So so that's an option for people who, you know, wanna have control over how much, you know, repair could potentially cost. And those are nationwide, those warranties. And then the last piece of the puzzle is that the Ford Transit itself, still covers, you know, the original factory warranty the thing that's probably gonna be most likely to be expensive and difficult to repair.

We do encourage customers to to get even the extended warranties from port on their, Ford Strange chassis so that if their engine blows up at a hundred thousand miles, that it could be covered by that warranty. Because the the the Ford Factory warranties are pretty affordable. So if you don't get like, let's say, a 7 year a warranty that includes the the chassis itself that go ahead and get that Ford Factory warranty. Those Ford warranty is you can take it almost any dealership.

That's that's one big advantage. You know, we didn't talk about this with the Ford Chassis. 4 dealers are to working on trucks. They're used to working on vans. You can go to 3 or 4000 four dealers all over the US, all over Canada on the way to Alaska. Many dealerships in Alaska can all, work on your, Ford Strange fan.

Yeah. So it's, you know, I mean, I think there's a lot of people that realize this, but obviously, if if you're getting a class B van, you've got 2 things going on, the chassis, which, in this case, comes from Ford or it could come from Mercedes a Ram, and then you have that actual coach build, which some people call it. I don't know what you guys call it, but, What's that conversion? The conversion. So the conversion side of your build. And, yeah, I would agree.

So I've spoken to folks who, you know, who are dealing with eighties and the sprinter vans, and they have to go on waiting list for, like, 6 months to get a oil change, for example. Or, yeah, there's certain areas of the country that are very for Mercedes Service. Yes. Now when it comes to Ford, can you run into issues? Yes. You know, I live right outside of Gainesville, and my local Gainsville Dealership.

If you call them up right now, they'll say it's a 2 week wait, and and they actually want that van over there for 2 weeks sitting there, which doesn't make any sense to me, but I live I live outside of Gainesville and, closer well, actually, I think it's, like, the same distance, but in the countryside, there's a Ford dealership that if I called them up right now, they would probably tell me, okay. Come in tomorrow at 10 o'clock in the morning. Yeah. So And that's how it is.

We have I mean, we had, you know, dealers that told people, oh, we can't work on your whatever. And then they literally called the next dealership over, and they were like, oh, yeah. Bring it in. We love we love off roading in our in our Ford vehicles. Yeah. And I think and I think, like, I've traveled a and there's only one time I came across a Ford dealership that had like a bad thing. And it was actually when I was in California.

And I asked you about it and you're like, oh, we don't like those guys either. So, you know, that all of that could happen, but with Ford, there's just a network out there for now. I think 10 10 miles away. There's another dealership to choose from.

Yes. And I think that's for now. I know that with the electric vehicles and things like that coming in, there are these big OEMs that are planning on on cutting back on dealerships at etcetera. But I think for a long time, we're still gonna see a lot of 4 dealerships out there. The one I go to in the country is really great. I would say to people a 100% on that chassis you want to extend that warranty.

I've owned my van for 2 years, probably a little bit over 2 years, and I'm probably at 53,000 miles already. So way past the factory warranty. You know, just shop out that warranty like crazy. You know, if you're not on the Advanced If you're my vantage customer, we'll help you, but, but, you know, the, shop out like crazy.

You can get a really good you know, I I don't wanna quote prices here, but to me, like, the the the price for getting like a 100,000, mile warranty, you know, extending the powertrain warranty a hundred thousand miles where the Ford, you know, genuine Ford warranty was was very approachable. Right? Yeah. And it's worth it. You've just got a lot of computers in these things. You know, if you have wheel drive. There's extra stuff that can go wrong. And so I I think it's worth it.

And you have an expensive coach, you know, that was built on top of it. So the the choice is different. You know, we all know about the, you know, vehicle that has 400,000 miles on it and the transmission goes and you're like, that's it. We're cutting it off. But what if you have, you know, a van that has 80000, 90000 miles on it, and the engine goes out. You know, I mean, you know, and maybe no fault of anybody. Right?

Yeah. You're because it was such a significant investment upfront, you're very likely that you're gonna have to you know, it's gonna make financial sense, but now all of a sudden you're talking about a $20,000, you know, motor and turbo, with these modern engines, they are very expensive. And that's where I think they weren't he really starts to make sense. It's like, okay. You don't have to make that hard choice. You're like, okay.

Well, you know, I'll pay the deductible on the warranty or however that works. Yeah. It's gonna be worth it. That's my that's my impression. And, and I know I think we've got another question from Pete, but I I would just say on this, and I could probably talk about this more in the future if we if, we Hank the time. I don't know if PJ would wanna talk about it, but I really feel the tea leaves are telling me p j that even forward with the transit, which is the the most popular van in the world.

Okay. They don't want to build them. They wanna go electric. Right? They would rather have the commercial fleet go, fleet go electric. I just recently looking at an interview with the Ford CEO, and he said a lot of things like this. They just wanna go electric with it. So especially commercial, which these vans fall into commercial. So you wanna think about this.

If you want to have a actual engine, you know, and you're getting into this, you probably wanna about this more long term, and it is getting more and more difficult. When I talk to other manufacturers out there, they tell me that they're having a tougher time getting their hands on specifically the fords, but it's even happening with the other chassis that, that you have out there. So I don't know. Honestly, I I think a lot of that is related to supply chain issues and Mhmm.

The kind of, you know, what happened throughout whole world and it's not just vans. It's everything is that, you know, certain items became very limited supply. And, you know, consumers rushed in and the the demand has just been way overwhelming the supply. And we haven't worked our way out of that yet. So I think, you know, in in 2023, maybe things will return to normal in Ford Transit I I don't even know.

You know, I I'm hoping 2023 will kinda be the normal times, but, you know, you can't just you just to give you a roll it backwards, when we launch the business in 2018, 2019, I could just go to Ford and order a van, and it would show up in 10 to 20 weeks. I mean, just there wasn't a question. You know, you'd had to have locations, but you could get vans. Whereas now, it's like, it's a totally different level, but it's not because they aren't running the factories.

It's because they can't get all the components that they need. To to build those vans. So, I mean, I do hear what you're saying about, you know, the direction from a high to kind of favor electric, but I don't really think that's what's causing the limit. I think it's still a hangover We'll call it a hangover from the supply chain. You know, I call it a bubble.

There was a bubble of missing pieces that is still here with us you know, where that bubble, you know, started during the pandemic, it arrived, you know, in the middle of the pandemic. And now it still here. It's just a lack of inventory of certain critical pieces. And eventually, we'll build our way out of it. You know, they're building more chips and all these other things. But, but we're not quite yet. Yeah. Okay. There you go.

We could probably do a whole podcast on this discussion, me and you. Yeah. Pete's Pete says he has one last question. There are no limits to the questions here. You can ask as well, except until we go off air, but, you can ask as many questions as you want. This is why I'm doing it. And I know Pete you're very obviously interested. So he says one last question. What's the typical CCC on your h one build out. I'm not sure what CCC means. Does that have to do? I don't know. CCC. Yes. Oh, okay.

I'm I'm not sure about that either. Is that the weight? Is that, like, maybe, you know, how heavy the Oh, yeah. Yeah. Occupant cargo carrying capacity. Oh, okay. So we're definitely gonna wanna, yeah, build out on the 350 chassis for the full battery. It's gonna be I think it winds up being about a £1000. So my the van that I'm sitting in right now, I think the, the final weight was 84100 pounds. And the, the, you know, the the gross, vehicle weight rating was 96, I wanna say.

So it was a little over a £1000 for this particular vehicle. But then if you get the full battery, it's gonna add that extra £200 in. It's gonna be closer to about a £1000. Okay. So you so what is that? That £1000 that you have is what how much extra weight you could put in? Or So that's your Okay. They call it occupant and cargo carrying capacity. It's interesting because very specific. I mean, you know, there's Ford saying this is what's allowed.

And then there there's items that have to be taken in account. They be taken into account. And I'm just gonna give you an example. When you do the weight, like the £8400, it does include a full gas tank. That's required. By the federal regulations, but it doesn't include water in the in in the freshwater tanks. And with the idea that you could potentially fill up your water Hank somewhere else, if you wanna to save that weight for cargo.

Yeah. And all of this is for safety, right, because the manufacturer has to make sure it goes out with a certain, capacity for extra weight so that and then you, as the consumer buying, it needs to be aware of that you don't overload the vehicle. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there's what the it's designed for.

And then I think my personal guess is that in the transit, they're also always making sure that it's not too heavy duty because it might take away from F One Fifty sales. Okay. I can be wrong about that. Yeah. All of that. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to avoid getting into deeper things here with that, but, yeah, I think that's a good point you may King. Bravo hearing aid service says, are the chassis warranty extensions available on vans already made by the big players?

So this, I do know the answer to. It really is gonna depend by, you know, vendor by vendor and van by van. On the Ford, generally, you can get it, the extended chassis warranties, until the original factory warranty expires. So for example, the, Ford Strange comes with right now, I think a 36, 1000 mile 3 year warranty, a bumper to bumper. I know for sure you can get, like, on a mod van's vehicle, you can get that warranty. You can add it anytime during that.

I think you can actually add it until the powertrain warranty expires. That's 6 years, sixty thousand miles, I think. Don't quote me on that. So you have some time to decide if you wanna do And then also, those warranties are usually transferable. The Ford warranties are. Now, if you go aftermarket third party and get a warranty from somebody else, all bets are off. You know, it can be something different. But generally, the Ford ones you can buy later.

And then I'm gonna guess that, you know, that the other, you know, like Sprinter and Pro Master have competitive but you have to look at the really specific details of what the coverage is and what the rules are. The, you know, the insurance companies, that's what they're doing. They're they're setting down those rules so they can make money. And it's up to you to kind of review those rules and make sure that, you know, your purchase, fits your needs. Yeah. Yeah. Read the fine print.

And always, if you can, the Ford 1 will be better. So let's see. I think so just because, yeah, you're you're definitely, you know, they they tinted, are willing to buy new parts rather than, you know, bringing yeah. It's just a little bit more straightforward if you get the Ford Factory warranty. Yeah. And it's easy process too because you would, like, some of the other ones, you have to go. It's like this whole dance. You've gotta pay for the thing.

And then And if you don't follow the rules, they don't pay. That's the number one reason they don't pay is because you reauthorized. Yes. Yeah. And that will be very frustrating. Gunmetal guy has a good, question, I think. We've got a certain amount of time here to answer it. He says, has anyone, had a deep dive discussion or video on the practical feasibility of the charging network capability to sustain all the RV vans if they go electric going forward. So that's an electric question.

Yeah. Yeah. This is actually a really big complicated question that Right. We could do a lot of analysis, but what, you know, my my kind of main thing is if you've owned an EV, which Hank you have, say yes or no to this, most of your charging is done home on level 2 chargers. And just to give you an idea, a level 2 charger pulls about the same power as a large window unit, large window AC unit.

So, you know, people that are panicking about, you know, the the load on the grid from electric vehicles, I Hank, aren't really, taking into account the most common charging scenario for most of us is that we're charging at home on level 2 chargers. So, yeah, I mean, definitely there needs to be more infrastructure out there, to truly handle electric camper vans, but I I don't think that the grid's gonna have a problem. This is my kinda analysis based on engineering principles.

Yeah. And and and the time that we have I may have to bring this over into the wrap up section. In the time that we have, I think it has to do with that particular location where people Some locations people charge more, at superchargers than at home. So there's all that kind of stuff going on. I agree that for your most of your traffic, you're charging at home, but relative to vans, you're gonna be traveling.

So you're gonna be charging on that supercharger network, and I have an electric van, and I've owned a bunch of things. Yesterday, I was actually pick I picked up my electric van from c sucker that they it because it was in their booth at the Overland Expo. And on the way back, electrify America that I stopped at, there was several of those things that weren't working. Versus Lola was driving a Tesla, and she was totally fine. And the van has, like, a 115 mile rate. So that makes it kinda worse.

Hey. Goodness. Ford signed up with Tesla. That's what I say. Yes. It is a good thing that they did that. You know?

Unbelievable. Yeah. I'm I'm shocked, but Yeah. I think I think Ford is thinking forward here. I think Ford is very serious about shifting into electric electric vehicles for big segments like commercial, like I said, and I think you can't do it. You can't be practical about doing it unless you make some agreements with existing stuff. We're gonna take a quick break. There is another question in this vein. I'm gonna ask that when we come back from this.

All I can We didn't even we didn't even go anywhere, so I can ask the question right now. John John says, there has been problem with lithium and water being dangerously explosive. What has mod bands done to mitigate this problem? So there you go. So all the cells that we use in our batteries are UL listed. So they're tested, exhaustively to, to meet all these kinds things.

I actually don't even know, if the water and the, you know, if you were to puncture a cell and try to stuff it, you know, full of water in would happen. I do know that we have done thermal runaway testing so that, you know, if one is punctured, if one cell catches on fire, it's not gonna cause what they call thermal runaway event where the other cells around it will catch on fire. We have done some some testing like that.

And then, you know, like I said, the cells themselves are designed to to withstand water. So so So this isn't a major issue. I will say, just in general, anytime you have a high concentration of power, whether gasoline, batteries, you know, anything, you know, you concentrate a lot of power in one space. Yeah. You have to there have to be precautions and there is higher risk than if you're in a place where there's not a high concentration power. Like Washington, DC. I don't know.

I'm not trying to get I'm not trying to create trouble. It. I wanna be had in Washington. See. Yeah. There's a lot of power there. And, just Castro says Strange Trail on MH 1. Question? Yes. You can order those today on our website. Yep. There you go. Listen, I it it it's, you know, I was talking to PJ about this. It'll be so easy for me PJ to have a really long extended conversation here.

I think an hour is probably a good time because we got to a lot of stuff, but I guarantee you that there's questions that folks have out there. So I would say check out my videos because I've I've got some very long videos with mod beds. I do have a factory tour coming, and there's some are more videos coming from Lola and I actually borrowing your van and living with it for a few days. You can also get in touch with these guys.

We're gonna get into all of that, but great questions from everyone out there. PJ, where would you direct people? I know you kind of answered this already, but as we're wrapping up here for the folks out there who have probably a ton more questions. How would they go about getting their their questions answered, especially if they're interested in buying among that. Sure. I would say, you know, the number one resource is gonna be our website. We did actually just publish an update to it.

Within the website, you're gonna find, like, our news link you know, every article that we've published about all the fun, exciting technology, and design innovations that we've done, we we're kinda chronologically cronalog, you know, we have articles linked for for, you know, the history of all of mod bands. So you can just get there on the website. If you wanna experience some owners, experiences. Check out our Facebook group. It's facebook slash group slash mod bands. Pretty easy to find.

Just type mod bands in the air. You can check out our Facebook page. That's gonna be kind of redundant, I think, with the with the website information there. And then we have a YouTube channel. And, one of the things we've done on the YouTube channel, which is you kinda gotta dig for it. So this is worth talking about is we've curated some playlist.

So you have to go and find the playlist feature on the YouTube, but if you go through that effort of finding our YouTube channel and then find the playlist. What you'll find is you'll find the the great videos that, Hank and Lola have done with us they're actually linked right there on the playlist because, we love those videos and we wanna try to get those out to our fans and we know not everybody's gonna click on every news circles.

So check out our YouTube channel and and really, if you wanna get in-depth, maybe check out the the playlist, not just the the list of video see on the front page, which is our videos. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And and and, you know, you can always leave questions and things like that and comments here. And PJ will probably look at some of those. So we're gonna wrap it at this. One more. Do you wanna take one more quick question? Do you wanna if you want It's up to you guys. Yeah. See a little bit.

Yeah. I can do JD says any advantage to under chassis mini split, be installed versus a 12 volt on the roof on the roof to First of this is a great technical question. I own I own a bull collection of mini split air conditioners. I don't think I'm ready to sell them, but but I have really experimented with this idea quite a lot and my conclusion at this moment is that, it's not worth it for a camper van. It's just too much work, too much filling around.

You end up with a cold air blowing from underneath and set that up on top what you want. And a rooftop AC is just a such a simple and easy to service item. You know, when it breaks, you know, we just pop a couple wires. We pull lift it out. We pop it back in. If you have a problem with one of these split units that's installed and all throughout the van, it's just a nightmare to service.

I do have some great ideas about how to tackle air conditioning, but those are gonna have to wait because I I believe I'm gonna have to build my own air conditioner. So that that's coming. Yes. I guess for that. But, yeah, as far as what's on the market right now, I I just, you know, I know people want it. I know they want that kinda lower profile. Not having the rooftop AC, but it's just, you know, it it's not worth it. We actually Hank one customer actually pay somebody.

They took their mod vans via people. They paid them to put in a split unit under the kitchen cabinet underneath. They had a lot of problems with it. And in the end, it didn't keep fan cool. And so they actually paid us to install a rooftop AC after the fact because it didn't work for them. So that's my experience with it. That's good info. And just think about this quickly. You need to go back to a question someone asked with get us getting service.

Let's say you live in Florida and are in Utah and you need a new AC, it better be one that could be found really sharp. The stamping rod and guess what they saw that. And they they can get the dramatic, and they they and they could actually accomplish. Yeah. Yeah. The and so. Absolutely. Alright. Listen. I'm gonna wrap this up Hank so much, PJ. I really, it, you know, I really appreciate you coming on taking the time, to come on. I would Oh, you're you're absolutely welcome.

I would encourage people out there to find out where mod vans is gonna be and get out to those shows that are near you, Overland East is coming up towards the end of the I think is in October. If you're on the e if you're on the East Coast, let's say you're in Florida, it's a couple hours to get there versus the other place but find out where they are and go there.

PJ and everyone else that works at mod fans that shows up, at these events are very knowledgeable, and they'll be happy to talk to you, their nerds. That's what I love about them. So, check them out. Yeah. Mod vans makes what I think is a really, really cool van. If you're looking for something, different out there. So, gunmetal guy has more questions, which is the next mod mod fans chat for more questions. When's the next when's the next my advance.

We'll work it out, and I'll let you guys know probably a little bit more in advance so that you can, come on and ask those questions. Thanks a lot, PJ. Stay right there. I'm gonna end this right now. Thanks so much, guys. We really appreciate you. We'll see you next week, I Hank, on Thursday at 2 o'clock EST, and we'll do this again with another company.

We are out of here. Peace. Alright, Hank. Thank you.