Jordan Ramer
Executive summary:
- CEO and Co-founder of EV Connect
- Before joining EV Connect, the company I founded almost 12 years ago, I led
corporate development for NanoH2O, a venture-backed developer of energy-
efficient water purification technology, and previously held executive positions in
business development, product management, and marketing at AeroVironment,
an electric vehicle infrastructure developer. - I spent seven years elevating AeroVironment into an industry leader,
spearheading the company’s global expansion and launching its fleet
management software solution. - Collectively, I have helped raise tens of millions of dollars in financing for growth
companies in the clean energy, transportation, and resource efficiency sectors.
What is your field of expertise?
With over 20 years in the clean and climate tech industries, I am a technology executive and an entrepreneur most recently focused on mobility / Electric Vehicles (EV) solutions and leaving the world a better place for my kids. At the start of my career, I held roles in business development, finance, and strategy with several venture-backed technology start-ups. Now, I’m the CEO of EV Connect, a SaaS company I founded over a decade ago to address the charging infrastructure needs of EVs.
Describe your journey to where you are today.
At an early age, I decided to make it my personal mission to confront what I saw as an existential threat to our planet—environmental pollution and its impacts on society. I needed a job too, so I paired my interest in protecting the environment with my professional goals in the burgeoning clean energy and transportation industry by joining AeroVironment, the first EV fast-charging station manufacturer. Between my experience at AeroVironment, Tesla’s early success with its Roadster, and launches of on-road electric vehicles by mainstream automakers such as GM and Nissan, I quickly realized that site owners, parking lot managers, fleet operators, and utilities would need a way to manage the complex and diverse infrastructure required to meet EV drivers; rapidly expanding charging requirements. Ultimately, I saw an opportunity to democratize and decentralize fueling with electricity. Electricity is the only transportation fuel that gets cleaner as more renewable generation is added. When I realized this I couldn’t help, but be drawn to it.
When electric vehicles first hit the road, troubleshooting malfunctioning EV charging stations was a cumbersome, manual process that required days to diagnose and fix properly. I recognized it would be impossible for the EV market to thrive under this model and was inspired to begin creating tools that would enable the monitoring, management, and maintenance of thousands of charging stations from a single dashboard. In 2009, I formed EV Connect to address that challenge.
What does your company do, for whom, and how does it fit into the bigger picture of solving global issues with clean tech?
EV Connect is a privately held software-as-a-service company that has built the infrastructure to allow EV charging site owners and utilities to deploy quickly, manage, and scale customized EV charging networks by serving EV charging operators, utilities, municipalities, and site owners in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America. Using open-standard protocols, EV Connect offers a powerful software management platform that connects drivers to charging stations, site owners to their assets, utilities to demand data, and service providers to their networks. By simplifying the set-up, management, and optimization of charging stations with premium customer service, the EV Connect platform makes it simple to manage thousands of EV charging stations for site hosts or EV network operators. EV Connect actively manages over 1 million transactions per year across thousands of sites, dozens of networks and supports nearly 100,000 EV drivers.
Since its inception in 2010, EV Connect has saved drivers over 1,350,000 gallons of gasoline, powered over 56 million electric miles, and reduced more than 12 million kilograms of greenhouse gasses. The EV Connect platform is ready for many thousands more connectors, site owners, sites, and drivers.
What do you wish you could tell the younger you? What would’ve been incredibly helpful to you ten years ago?
It’s not about the finish line; it’s about the journey and enjoying it. There will be moments that might feel insurmountable, but in reality, you will overcome and those twists and turns help shape the person you become.
LinkedIn: Jordan Ramer