Written by Jennifer Fitzgerald | Photos by Anthony Harden
Brightfield Transportation Solutions, headed up by Stan Cross and Matthew Johnson, leads the way for electric vehicles with solar driven technology.
Asheville-based Brightfield Transportation Solutions (BTS) started on a hike—actually, multiple hikes—taken by co-founders Stan Cross and Matthew Johnson.
Cross, originally from Connecticut, had moved to Asheville in 2000 and was working at Warren Wilson College directing the environmental leadership center and running sustainability programs. Prior to moving to Asheville, he was a vegetable farmer and wilderness therapist in Northern New Mexico.
Johnson had moved to Asheville in 1999 with his young family. He owned a bicycle shop in Cincinnati that he started when he was 24 and decided to open a second store in Asheville. The store, BioWheels, was successful right out of the gate. Johnson learned how to run a company at age 23, coming right out of college and opening his business, raising his own funds, selling stock, and doing business plans.
Cross and Johnson became friends when they first moved to Western North Carolina through their young daughters, who were friends.
“The bike shop was a great incubator to learn a lot about business,” says Johnson. “In 2010, after Stan and I met, we were both getting a little antsy and wanted to do something that was more meaningful with our energies. Both being outdoor-oriented, we were using some of our hikes to brainstorm.”
“Matt was deep in running a successful bike shop and I was deep in running sustainability programs for Warren Wilson College, which is regarded as one of the top sustainability colleges in the country,” says Cross. “Those hikes were both of us speaking to the excitement about what we were doing. Matt, every day, getting people out of their cars, getting people on bikes, helping people be active and be in the outdoors. And me, helping people try and think about ways to solve climate change through energy and agriculture and waste management. I think, for me on those hikes, it was realizing that I wanted to do something where I was part of the creation from the ground up. I was ready to move away from working in a very creative environment to doing something that was more fully entrepreneurial.”
Just before they started hatching the Brightfield plan, Johnson completed a green renovation on the BioWheels building located at 81 Coxe Avenue in downtown Asheville. The renovation included installing a solar radiant floor heating system for the building, including solar thermal panels on the roof that fed hot water loops in the store’s slab floor; a solar PV awning that fed solar electricity into the building; counters and cabinets made from plant materials; low-water fixtures; and a renovated exterior envelope of the building for efficiency. All the finishings were soy-based.
It was during this renovation that he learned about the technologies involved with deploying renewables into the building. Through that process and being a nuts-and-bolts kind of builder person, he was inspired by what he was learning about how he could integrate systems into buildings and how he could see transportation as a part of that overall investment of what it takes to be here—on this planet.
“There’s excess energy in homes—there’s energy all over the place, and Stan and I knew this because he had overseen renewable energy projects at Warren Wilson,” says Johnson. “I got into some pretty intense stuff on our commercial building and I think we both felt comfortable enough to say, ‘We’ve got this technology side down—we can connect the dots.’ If we want to see the nation driving on sunshine—if we want to replace gasoline—it’s really a matter of taking the components that are pre-existing and rearranging them, and that’s really what Brightfield has done—taken all of the technologies that are out there and business models that are available to us and aggregate it into a solutions provider company—which is what we have evolved into essentially.”
Connecting the Dots
Cross completed a project at Warren Wilson where a dozen pickup trucks that were old and polluting were replaced with golf carts. A solar canopy was built to park the golf carts under and charge them from power that was generated from solar panels.
“So, for me, that project, even though it was golf carts before modern-day EVs (electric vehicles) were in the market, showed that theory that you could replace gasoline vehicles with EVs that power off of the sun,” says Cross. “For me, that was the connection. Matt’s the nuts-and-bolts guy and I’m the business development, communicator role in the company. From that perspective, I saw the opportunity—something that we could sell in the market and something that would have high desirability by consumers, particularly those who I was interacting with every day who were sustainability-minded and concerned about climate change, and air and water pollution, and energy security, and national security interests.”
“From my end, to build things and put them together is pretty easy to do,” says Johnson. “When I say that, I mean that all the resources are there for us to solve the technical problems. The hardest part was to get the funding—to get some capital behind the idea. My end of it, I don’t want to undersell it, there’s a lot of complexity in our products and how things come together.”
Cross and Johnson officially started Brightfield Transportation Solutions in 2010 when they won a $380,000 grant from the North Carolina Green Business Fund, which is funded by the North Carolina Commerce Department for businesses that bring green technology to market. They used that capital to bring the work they had been doing on paper—designing and engineering and thinking about their solar projects—to market. They were able to use those funds to install Brightfields in Asheville: at UNC-Asheville, downtown on South Charlotte Street at the Public Works building, at Land of Sky Regional Council on New Leicester Highway, and where Matt had his BioWheels shop (which later closed, in February 2013). In fact, those were the first four public solar integrated EV charging stations deployed in the United States. Cross and Johnson were ahead of the market and ready to make a difference.
What is a Brightfield?
Brightfield Transportation Solutions delivers B2B Solar Driven® charging solutions for the expanding EV marketplace. At present BTS is the only electric vehicle charging station developer with a patented grid-connected system for integrating generation, storage, and delivery of solar fuel to America’s electric vehicles, the goal being state-of-the-art charging solutions that optimize grid performance and lower the total cost of ownership. Brightfield’s vision, according to the founders, is to leapfrog fossil fuel and literally “drive on sunshine.”
The company name came from Cross and Johnson looking for a word that was inspiring and that would give them a visual when you closed your eyes and said the word. They believe “Brightfield” brings to mind a sunny bright future that is open and isn’t industrial and filled with smokestacks. (Worth noting: The United States Department of Energy originally defined a “Brightfield” site as an abandoned and/or contaminated property that has been cleaned up and redeveloped through the incorporation of solar energy.) And they realized that whether or not they succeeded at building personal wealth, this was a path that was true and needed.
As outlined above, they brought the Brightfield product to market with grant funds from the Green Business Fund. They received additional grant support from Advanced Energy, the NC Clean Fuel Alternative Transportation (CFAT) Fund, and Nissan North America that carried BTS through 2015.
“We came to market early with a concept ahead of its time,” explains Cross, describing Brightfield’s initial business arc. “[But] we hit many walls along the way that forced us to pivot. From 2011 to 2012 we tapped into grant funds to launch our business because the market was not ready to purchase our products; there were simply not enough EVs on the road to justify the expense of charging stations, let alone the added cost of solar-integrated Brightfields. In those early days, all the EV charging stations deployed were grant-supported. As the grant funds dried up, we leveraged our early-to-market position to access industry support from Nissan, BMW, and others to keep the business alive. From 2013-2015 we shifted our focus to deploying fast chargers across North Carolina and East Tennessee because that was what the auto industry was willing to pay us to do.” (A direct current fast charger is a charger that ranges in power output from 50kW to 350kW and currently has the ability to charge an EV in under 30 minutes, soon to be under 15 minutes. This is the technology that enables intracity travel as larger battery/longer range EVs come to market, such as the Tesla line and Chevy Bolt.)
In 2015 BTS made the pivot as a company when they realized that the market had matured enough that people were ready to start buying EV charging stations. No longer was it going to be a grant-supported industry: It was an actual market that they could build a strong business case around.
“As we got to late 2015, the market began to mature,” continues Cross. “EV sales hit 40% year-over-year growth, and we recognized an emerging appetite for our solar-integrated Brightfield Charging Stations among sustainably-minded businesses, universities, and municipalities.”
Still, he admits, they had originally expected the market to mature much faster than it ultimately did. “The drop in oil prices in 2015, [along with] shifting federal pressure on industry for climate change solutions and cleaner air, created EV market uncertainty that slowed growth. We [also] underestimated the amount of market and product education we have had to provide prospects and the impact that has on prolonging the sales cycle. And we waited too long to get beyond the North Carolina market and build capacity to sell into markets where EV adoption has been stronger, such as in New England and the mid-Atlantic.
“We are now seeing the ramp-up fueled by the drop in battery prices and massive investment by the auto industry as the uncertainty has settled globally and the electrification of transportation appears inevitable—seven years after we installed our first Brightfield.”
Selling a Solution
When Brightfield shifted to their current business model, they stepped back and thought deeply about the value proposition of a Brightfield charging station. Investors came onboard in 2016 and began to infuse the capital in the company that they needed to grow. Brightfield’s primary investors are VentureSouth, Pinnacle Fund, and eight private individuals. Cross is board president and CEO. He and Johnson hold majority ownership collectively—approximately 70%.
Miller Williams’ career was as a telecommunications and energy industry executive. He is an investor and chairman of the Brightfield Board of Directors. “I believe that electric vehicles will capture 50% of the vehicle market within 30 years,” he says. “This growth in sales is highly dependent on the existence of a national charging infrastructure. Brightfield shares this vision. I invest in capable people who share my vision of the future. Stan Cross has assembled a capable management team that can capture the opportunity before us.”
Paul Clark, a member of the BTS Board of Directors and a general adviser and supporter, explains that board members are responsible for helping to set the strategic direction of the business. “I’m particularly focused on investor relations and financing sources, cash flow management, and strategic issues like partnerships with larger companies. As the representative of Brightfield’s early investors (Asheville Angels, part of VentureSouth), I help connect Brightfield to potential sources of capital to grow faster, to people that help the company with sales or operational development, and to other strategic advisors.”
“I believe that the U.S. and world economy have already hit a tipping point on electric vehicles and there will be dramatic growth in this sector,” adds Michael Shore, an investor and advisor. “Brightfield has strongly positioned itself to take advantage of this trend as one of the premier developers of EV infrastructure projects. The market opportunity, combined with unique partnerships and a capable and tested management team, are the ingredients to create a fast-growth highly profitable company.”
“We managed to show up in 2016 with essentially no debt,” says Johnson. “All of our R&D was paid for and we had a product line ready to go and a balance sheet of our existing assets on the ground—charging systems. We cobbled together five years’ worth of grant support to the tune of a million and a half dollars over that period of time, and all of it is invested physically somewhere. None of the money evaporated into consultants.
“When we decided to make the pivot, we didn’t want to be an owner/operator/installer. We wanted to sell the solution and get the real muscle of this country to learn how to install the stuff fast and efficiently. That knowledge of owning and operating enables us to really think deeply about and offer the best solutions for any customer, which of course has opened up why we can customize a solution probably better than anyone out there.”
Cross points to when industry support for fast charger deployment began waning as having a direct impact on the BTS strategy. “We put together a business plan based on selling our product to the retail, workplace, municipal, university, and destination channels, and began raising investor capital. It was a long and challenging process. It took us nine months of pitching investor groups across the Carolinas and Georgia before we closed our first $250K seed round investment. We used those funds to hire our team and go to market. Over the following two years we raised another $400K as we worked to market and sell our products, build strategic partnerships, and expand into new markets.
“By the middle of 2017, we had grown our pipeline to over 1,000 targeted prospects; we had pushed into the hot Massachusetts and Maryland markets and had formed strong technology, sales, and vendor partnerships to enable national expansion, while we confronted our early-to-market reality once again. Many of the channels we were focused on lacked either knowledge about the EV market and hence did not understand our value proposition, or they lacked motivation to buy as EV charging infrastructure was not seen as a priority. These issues created an overly long sales cycle that we had to address.
“As we came into 2018, we pivoted our strategy again to focus on the three areas where our value proposition, market expertise, and plug-and-play full-featured EV charging solution is strongest and where immediate and scalable growth opportunity exists: (1) Utilities—Brightfield Charging Stations are grid assets that combine solar power production, battery storage, and energy management to create a ‘Peak-Proof’ EV charging solution that mitigates utility’s peak demand, demand charge, and transformer load concerns, while bolstering the image of the utility among its customers as an innovative, forward-leaning company. (2) Investor Owned Brightfields—In markets like the ZEV (zero emission vehicle) states where EV sales growth is strong and incentives in place; where we can leverage federal and state solar tax credits and incentives; and where the deregulated utility market allows us to sell kWh to drivers who will pay a premium for electricity at EV charging stations that offer fast, convenient, and renewable-powered charging: We can provide strong cash-flows and long-term returns for investors. (3) Sales Partners—To accelerate the sales cycle, we have built a network of sales partners whose relationships with retailers, hoteliers, developers, corporate workplaces, etc. can be leveraged to penetrate new markets and sell Brightfields more efficiently and effectively than we can do alone.”
EVs on the Move
When BTS was founded, there was one electric vehicle in all of Western North Carolina. Fast forward to today where market predictions are anywhere from 30% to 50% of all new car sales being electric in the next 10 years. Just imagine if every other car you were seeing on the road was electric.
“On average, an EV saves a driver $1,300 a year in fuel and maintenance costs,” says Cross, who explains that this is based on 12,000 miles at $2.50/gallon gas. As gas prices go up, so does savings. “Here is an interesting thing to note: As a [Nissan] Leaf driver, I save $1,300 a year, but my savings account has not gone up. Why? Because I spend those savings, much in the local economy, on meals out, entertainment, and other purchases. When you buy a gallon of gas, after you account for state taxes, $0.97 of every dollar leaves North Carolina for corporate headquarters and foreign nations. North Carolina does not produce any hydrocarbons, meaning we import all the oil, coal, natural gas, and propane we burn. So, when you switch to local sunshine, you keep dollars in North Carolina and retain community wealth.”
(As EV sales rise, states are dealing individually with a loss in tax revenue. For example, three cents per gallon of gas going to the state would add up to a substantial drop in revenue over the course of 20 years. In North Carolina EV drivers pay $150/year in additional property tax that goes to roads. That is the amount the legislature determined to be fair.)
Notes Cross, “At the end of 2017, United States EV sales topped 700K, with North Carolina topping 7K and Western North Carolina at around 1K. Buncombe County has the most EVs per capita in North Carolina. North Carolina is now the third fastest growing EV state and Raleigh/Durham the third fastest growing EV market in the country. Last year we saw 36% year over year growth in national EV sales every month since July 2016, breaking previous sales records.”
Target Market
Brightfield is aggressively pursuing customers nationally. They do this with a targeted approach and focus on companies that have a deep commitment to sustainability and have sustainability officers or directors who they can reach out to. BTS currently has sales in Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, and Tennessee. They have over 50 clients they are working with. There are other companies installing solar canopies and EV charging stations, but not necessarily in the pre-engineered, systematized, and scalable manner that BTS is doing.
“As a company based in Asheville looking to expand nationally in a fast-growing emerging industry of EVs, we have to be very focused and targeted,” says Cross. “In our expansion efforts we focus on the markets where EVs are selling really well—New England, mid-Atlantic states, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado. We can track the industry—see where things are selling.”
Polk/IHS Markit tracks sales by zip code and provides access to data for a fee. The National Renewable Energy Labs and D.O.E. Clean Cities access this data to support planning efforts at the state level. Many websites such as Inside EVs and EV Volumes provide national month-by-month sales. Cross adds that BTS can also track the progress being made by states known as zero emission states who are committed to putting millions of EVs on their roads: “Where we have that broad overarching commitment from the political side and we have a strong market uptake from the consumer side, then those are the markets that we target with our expansion.”
Other factors that are considered are where gas is expensive, where there are increased tax incentives at the state level for buying an EV, where utility rates are favorable for charging your EV, and where there are overarching clean air standards that the adoption of EVs helps to meet. BTS can track all of these factors to determine where they need to be selling their solutions.
BTS provides customized EV infrastructure solutions to clients in the retail, destination, municipality, university, workplace, and utility markets. The very visible charging stations are designed to enhance clients’ brands, increase customer and employee loyalty, manage energy resources, and promote future-oriented sustainability solutions—all while keeping clients’ business goals and realities at the forefront.
For example, says Cross, “We went to retailers like Ingles and Earth Fare. They totally understood if they put these charging stations in their parking lot, EV drivers will come, plug in, and shop in their stores. They saw a direct value to them. When we sold stations to Appalachian State University and Western Carolina University, they saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and get prospective students in the door. When we started to pivot and sell to workplaces like AvL Technologies (profiled in the March 2018 issue of this magazine), they understood that if they put charging assets at their place of work their employees would benefit from that amenity and there was a value. As we shifted our thinking around the value of our product, it went from what Matt was articulating to something that we were doing for the good of all.”
Western Carolina University (WCU) heard about BTS from the Land of Sky Regional Council Clean Vehicles Coalition. The university’s Brightfield Charging Station not only offers charging for EVs, but also is tied into the grid and therefore offsets energy usage from an adjacent building.
“This project idea was submitted to the WCU Sustainable Energy Initiative (SEI) by a former WCU student and alum in 2016,” says Lauren Bishop, chief sustainability officer at WCU. “The SEI Committee voting members approved funding for the project and installation was completed in 2017. The Brightfield Station is important to faculty and students because it supports the usage of electric vehicles and workplace charging.
“At the time this project was approved,” she adds, “there were not a lot of EV charging stations in the region. The SEI Committee wanted to assist with increasing accessibility for EV drivers to reduce range anxiety in our rural area and increase the amount of EV driving visitors to campus. The station is located in a public parking lot so any faculty, staff, student, or visitor to campus can access the station. Parking Services charges $1 per 30 minutes to park in the lot. EV drivers can plug-in at no additional cost.
“Currently, there are only a handful of students, faculty, and staff that drive EV’s. We have received several inquiries this past year about installing more stations on campus from students, faculty, and staff that are interested in purchasing an EV in the coming year. We expect this number to grow in the near future. Many of our daily commuters live 30+ minutes from campus. Having adequate infrastructure in place to charge during the day will help reduce range anxiety.”
Team Work
As founders of the company, Cross and Johnson don’t expect to have “clean” job descriptions. Cross serves as the CEO and works with the BTS sales team to make calls on potential clients. Johnson serves as the COO and is responsible for everything on the project develop and production side.
“Like every start-up on a journey, we—especially Matt and I—our job description is everything and then some as founders,” says Cross. “We’ve been successful at pulling together a team that can begin to take the company to the next level, but we remain very active in all elements of what’s going on in the business and will be for the foreseeable future.
“We are fortunate to have assembled a talented and dedicated team of technology, energy, and sustainability entrepreneurs with a deep understanding and passion for the electrification of transportation and its broad impacts. All of our leadership team has an equity stake in the company and are committed to our solar-driven vision. Our team is what makes BTS the well-respected market-leading company that we are. Without their capabilities and grit, we wouldn’t be a start-up on the verge of high-growth.”
The BTS team includes VP of Sales and Marketing John Minor, VP Strategic Partnerships and Informatics Ged Moody, and Marketing and Brand Director Eric Krause.
“I enjoy working for a company that is on the cutting edge of where transportation is going,” says Minor. “A company that is nimble, smart, and humble enough to see its strengths and place ourselves in a position where we add the most value given these strengths. This takes good communication and egos that can bend, which we have.”
The team agrees that they are in a good place at BTS. Moody shares that BTS provides him the chance to apply his technology and strategy experiences while working with a values-driven company that is doing positive work in the region and the world.
Krause was around as the Brightfield vision formed and was co-owner with Johnson of BioWheels. “There were many wilderness excursions and campfire chats about how we could effect change in the world of transportation,” he says. “Could we have a part in making it more sustainable? Matt and I started with bicycles, and our entrepreneurial spirits led us to evolve. When Matt and Stan got together and built the foundation for Brightfield, there was hardly a doubt that I would be there when the time was right to bring the vision forward. And it seems the world is finally ready for a new transportation paradigm.”
Grid Connected
Brightfield charging stations are all grid connected—generating solar and then putting it where the highest value is. Sometimes that’s selling it to the grid, sometimes it is pushing it into a building, sometimes storing it in a battery located on site. It could be a cloudy day and as a driver of an EV, you need reliability, which is exactly why the Brightfield charging stations are grid connected.
“We monitor all the production from the solar through the inverters, and we monitor all of the output from the chargers through the chargers, and we can show a client are they 100% solar driven, are they 50% solar driven, [or] are they 150% solar driven,” says Cross. “It depends on how much solar they are generating and how much charging they are putting out. We can generate solar power and put it into a building, or we can put it onto that grid for the utilities’ use, or we can put it into a car.
“If you just install a charging station, then after you install it you are going to have nothing but maintenance costs. When you add a Brightfield, you now have the solar revenue and that revenue, can defray O&M costs with an eight-year payback—which isn’t super sexy in business terms, but it is very real. If you install just a charging station versus installing a Brightfield, by year eight, it will be cheaper to have installed that Brightfield. And your panels are guaranteed to produce electricity for 25 years.”
Customers who install networked chargers—those with communication, data gathering, and payment processing capabilities—pay an annual network service fee. Customers who install non-networked stations—no capabilities beyond providing electric to the EV—do not.
Because Brightfields are solar, they qualify for federal solar tax credits. When a client buys a Brightfield they receive a 30 percent tax credit and they are able to depreciate the entire asset in year one. So, about 50% of their upfront costs are avoided by those benefits. And those benefits aren’t there if you don’t have the solar.
Brightfield products include the T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5 chargers, which have solar canopy sizes of, respectively, 2.4 kilowatts, 7.2 kW, 11.7 kW, 15.3 kW, and 18.9+ kW. The T1 and T2 are the primary sellers right now. They are right-sized for the current market, as most clients only need one to six chargers and that’s what fits nicely on the T1 and T2. As the market grows and clients need more chargers, and as fleets begin to convert from gasoline-powered cars to EVs, then those larger Brightfields will be necessary to meet demand.
According to Cross, when a Brightfield is priced, it doesn’t include installation, because that installation cost is variable—where is it placed in a parking lot? How far do you have to trench? BTS just prices the product and you can have a Brightfield starting at $20,000—and then from there it goes up. Turnkey, including installation cost, would be approximately $30,000.
Since 2011, BTS has deployed over $2 million of EV charging infrastructure to over 40 clients in five states. In 2018 they expect to do over $5 million in business, expanding sales into the burgeoning utility market and pushing deeper into the hot North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Colorado markets.
A Partnership that Works
Cross and Johnson believe that it is their ability to divide and conquer that has made their partnership successful, as they both bring very different skill sets and are able to perform roles in the company that fit the strength of those skill sets.
“We have a shared vision, but two different ways of perceiving—two different personalities,” explains Cross. “We’re able to create tension so when we are working well, that tension helps generate creativity. If Matt and I both totally agree on something, we probably have a blind spot somewhere. The ability for us to manage healthy disagreement around what we are trying to accomplish is something that works really well. For us to have been able to sustain and grow the company and maintain our partnership, it’s been that shared vision. We’ve had it from the beginning and we have never wavered on it. We’re both in it to make money as a way of demonstrating the viability of transitioning America from oil dependence.”
“There’s a lot of respect between us because I know how hard Stan works and I’ve seen the benefits of his work,” says Johnson. “I think the other part is that we both sense we are at the right place at the right time. Everything has aligned in such a way that how can we not work together to do this?”
The Future’s So Bright
The BTS partners have stayed the course since those brainstorming hikes and the beginning of their business in 2009. There was no school for them to attend to learn how to create solar integrated infrastructure. Together they worked through how to get oxygen into BTS because they knew that in America today, the only way that a vision is going to be viewed as valuable is if it can show its ability to make money. Their goal is to get as many Brightfields in the landscape as possible. They see this not only as a means to growing their business, but also as a means of executing their vision.
“The Brightfield charging station solutions that we have coming out now will be the benchmark of public space charging,” predicts Johnson. “We’ve, as a company, made some protections around the ways that we put these things together. We didn’t do it in a preventative way; we did it for the investors and for the good of the company. However, we believe there will be licensing of some of our stuff out. The job globally is too big for one company, and I believe that not only our solar driven concept and business model could be adopted globally, if not nationally, but the stations themselves, I really believe, are just head and shoulders above anything else out there in the marketplace.”
BTS was granted a utility patent that states that any structural member (such as the base of the solar canopy) that has a charger mounted to it and the ability to carry a load above it (such as a solar canopy) is a Brightfield. They have additional patents pending around the integration of battery storage and energy management onto the Brightfield solar canopy system and around their innovative geo-sleeve footer system that enables fast and cost-effective installation.
To those starting a business today, Johnson suggests storing away as many nuts as you can and be willing to do whatever it takes to get you through before your vision succeeds: “If your heart is not in it, if it’s just a way to make money, it’s an empty, soulless pursuit. Don’t try to synthesize that if it is not there.” Cross is quick to add that “doing what it takes” means devoting 100% of one’s professional energy and focus to grow the vision and model into a viable and sustainable business.
It’s exciting for the BTS team to show up today in an emerging industry and sit down with a client. Because of the BTS history of owning, operating, installing, fabricating, designing, and engineering Brightfields, they know all the challenges the client is going to face and can bring all the lessons they have learned from their own mistakes and successes, such as the ones Cross outlined above. They can help that client not only put a charging station on the ground, but do it in a way that’s going to fulfill any overarching strategies they have for their property or for their business, and be able to connect it directly to that in a meaningful way.
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Ultimately, says Cross, “We have a tremendous amount to be proud of over the past years and we’re really excited to be at the cusp of the high growth that we’ve been working towards for a long time.”
“A success for us is simply now that people now get it and the cars are selling,” says Johnson. “I feel successful already because we are seeing the momentum in the market we forecasted years and years ago with our projections. In connecting those dots, it was information gathering, tons of research. If you drive on sunshine, you save money—you save the planet.”
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