Alexander Isaacson and Xeal Energy

Alexander Isaacson is the cofounder of Xeal Energy. Starting his company with his friend Nikhil Bharadwaj, Alexander was focused on making EVs more viable in the United States. Having only started his company in 2019, right after graduating from Penn State University’s School of business, Isaacson chose to focus on the ever-growing, and problematic, EV charging industry.

With the goal of marketing to city and shared housing developers, Isaacson cofounded Xeal Energy, A company that was focused on streamlining the customer experience for charging their electric vehicles. Isaacson found that most EV chargers around where he lived were inoperable for a multitude of reasons. some were neglected victims of disrepair. Others were designed in such a way that customers found them impossible or frustrating to use. However, the most frustrating of all, was that almost all of them would have trouble communicating with payment processors.

While gas pumps have been reliable for decades now, the EV charging stations of today have yet to be refined. What Isaacson found to be the biggest issue that plagued most EV stations was the fact that they all required standalone internet connectivity in order to accept payment. EV chargers normally aren’t organized at designated stations where internet is readily available. Unlike gasoline pumps, they’re normally in the middle of parking lots where there’s nothing remotely close to them in terms of internet connectivity. Because of this, transactions with the charging stations of today are handled over the internet, normally through wireless connectivity. This leads to a laggy, and oftentimes unreliable mess of a process. Isaacson found that the issue of connectivity alone takes most EV stations out of commission, leaving customers stranded.

Xeal Energy aimed to solve this issue by creating a revolutionary solution to the EV charger connectivity issue. Instead of having each station be connected to a centralized server for payment processing, each station is its own server in a way. Using a system called the Apollo Protocol, Xeal chargers use Cryptographic tokens with your smartphone to handle standalone operations. All you have to do is download the Xeal app, tap your phone at the charger, and make your payment. So long as the charger is connected to power, your transaction will use your phone’s encrypted cellular capabilities to work. These chargers can be placed anywhere, and so long as your phone is able to communicate with cellular networks, you can charge your EV and be right back on your way in a few minutes time.

This revolutionary technology is already being implemented in housing developments, universities, and commercial buildings across the United States. Isaacson hopes that his company’s innovation will make the appeal of owning an EV even greater by streamlining the “refueling process”. Along with the EV Charging business, he hopes that his Apollo Protocol software can infiltrate other public service markets, like laundromats, Point of Sale (PoS) applications, vending machines, delivery services, and so much more. Now that the pandemic of 2020 has familiarized people with the concept of using their phones as their wallets, the sky’s the limit for what Isaacson and his company can do in the future.