Short excerpt from a YouTube conversation (Mike Andes and another speaker) about whether customers will pay more for electric vehicles and the operational challenges of scaling electric fleets. Main points: most customers are unwilling to pay even a small premium; a minority may pay 10–50% more; scaling is limited by charging/battery logistics and small crews.
Very rarely is a customer willing to pay a dollar more for electric compared to gas.
The jury's still out on how much more people are willing to pay. You know, right around 10, 20, maybe up to 50% in some cases of people who are really aligned.
The challenge I see is like just the scaling part of it. Like, even right now, it's like bring the truck back here to charge. You know, we run out of batteries. That's why I see a lot of the electric guys still being solo. Maybe one helper. What do we want?
No, I mean, we're already way past that. My first season it was 1, 2, 3 employees. The second season it was like 4, 5. We really need 6 to 8 at a minimum, and then for snow removal, you know, double that. So we're past that. I think it's possible to get to an 800k mark.
