Episode 105: Lightship, the all-electric RV that tows itself

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head-on. I'm Molly Wood. 

This week we’re going to talk about electrifying transportation but make it sexy and take it camping. 

My guest today has spent a long time working on electrifying various forms of vehicular travel before landing on a startup that might feel a little unexpected until you realize the size of the market and how much you can potentially do with an electric vehicle that also happens to be a massive battery on wheels. 

Let’s talk electric RVs. 

Toby

Love it. Yeah, so I'm Toby Krauss, co-founder and CEO of Lightship. We're building the first American all-electric RV manufacturer. yeah, we have the privilege of speaking from one of our units today. This is, you can see a little bit around, but this is the whole shebang, not a fake background.

Molly Wood

It actually is so like perfectly minimalist that now that you mentioned it does sort of look like a fake background. For those of you who are not seeing this, don't worry. Yep. Okay. But let's start like with the origin story. What is your background and how did you come to be building beautiful electric RV’s?

Toby

Yeah, we get that. We get that. We get that a lot.

Toby

So I have been working on electric vehicles pretty much my whole career. I did a brief stint in banking. I was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley during the last financial crisis. Fun time to be an investment banker. Lots of fun stories. My roommate got fired twice, both from the Bear Stearns and then from Lehman Brothers.

Molly Wood 

Yeah.

Toby

And when two of the three largest global, you know, car manufacturers, GM and Chrysler went out of business, I thought it was going to be a smart idea to go work at a startup car manufacturer and went over to Tesla in 2009. And I've been doing EVs ever since. Absolutely love them. Big believer in the movement. And yeah, what brought me to Lightship. So.

Tesla we were working on sort of like consumer EVs obviously and this is like very like early when I started as 400 people nobody really heard of it. And Tesla obviously became extremely successful company. But I would say one of the, not failings, but just something that is.

a reality about Tesla even today is it's sort of serving a specific demographic of people. And with the culture wars and Elon, it's like almost even more apparent now. And so from that point forward, I really wanted to be focused on working on bringing electrification to new demographics of people. So the next role I had was at a company called Proterra. They do electric transit buses and other power systems for big vehicles.

And I was inspired to do that because on the transit bus side,

You know, there's this expression in transit that if you take a bus, you frequently can't afford a car. It's a transportation means of last resort for many people. So this was great because it was electrification for a new demographic of people. And here at Lightship, I actually feel very much the same way where we are working on electrifying a recreational vehicle. is squarely not an early adopter market. Many of our customers don't have a Tesla or a Riviera.

Toby 

in the driveway. They have a Ford F-150, gas, maybe hybrid, Dodge Ram 1500, maybe diesel. And guess what? They love awesome products as well. And we have an opportunity to meet them where they are and bring an awesome sustainable product. And that was the inspiration that really got me started. That was four and half years ago. And yeah, it's been one heck of a ride ever since.

Molly Wood

Mm-hmm.

Molly Wood

So the company is four and a half years old. us a, before we sort of dig into the specifics of the product, give us the lay of the land where you are now, because I know you have just started manufacturing the flagship product, right?

Toby

That's right. Yeah, we so the first yeah, the first two years of our existence, myself and Ben, the other founder, were really focused on.

you know, just learning. So we spent a lot of time RVing. We spent a lot of time talking to people who RV. An electric RV could be many things. And that really crystallized into, you know, the very first concept of the product. We built a show vehicle. I'm sitting, this vehicle I'm sitting in is in our factory and in the corner of our factory, we still have the show vehicle. We called it the Alpha. And we brought that to South by Southwest about two years ago. That was our big

moment where like everything we learned, all of our inspiration went into this sort of like singular giant 27 foot thing and took it South by Southwest and it was a big hit. You know, we got a bunch of bunch of pre-orders, good press, and that was really how we capitalized the business to bring us to present to really actually go out and develop the product. So we spent the next two years.

doing a full engineering development program, setting up a supply chain, moving into a factory. And now, yeah, it's really exciting because behind me we have, I think, five of our first customer vehicles on the line. One of them's done. Second one's almost done. We'll ship about 10 of them out this year to customers. And it's...

It's really cool. It's a fun time.

Molly Wood

What, you know, sometimes you have these moments in life where you're like, have done everything wrong. Why didn't I start a startup that involved like me going RVing a whole bunch as research? duh. What is, you know, when you think about the movement as you referred to it and the climate impact of what you're doing, like why target RVs? Is it about electrifying a demographic almost like a Trojan horse? Or is there a specific

Toby

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Molly Wood

kind of emissions profile that you're targeting. And also we should be clear, these are pull behind trailers, right? They get attached to the RAM or the F-150.

Toby

Yeah, really, really good question. So a little bit about RVs. So when we when we started and this was this was a big part of our learning process and really actually what the other know the other element that really inspired me. So RVs are

They are a part of Americana. It's a massive pastime in our country. The crazy stat that still blows me away to this day is that one in 10 American families own an lightship . I'm sorry. I wish they had a light ship. One in 10 American families owns... Yeah, I fast forwarded to the future. The crazy stat is that one in 10 American families owns an RV. So it's like, it's a cyclical industry, but in any given year, it's, you know, 400,000 to 600,000 RVs sold.

Molly Wood

You fast forwarded a few years.

Toby

It's huge and you working on electric vehicles, know my whole career like that was that kind of floored me because you know cars are mad, know cars are king, cars are you know

in our country, 10 to 14 million cars sold every year. All these other vehicle categories, a lot of them I was working on at Proterra, even the really high volume ones like class A trucks or something like that, they're low hundreds of thousands of units. So all this to say that RVing is a very large category of ground vehicles in the United States. And therefore it is a sizable opportunity when it comes to emissions and emissions reduction.

So that was something that I thought was very important. And then I'd say the other part of it is what I kind of alluded to a little bit before, which is if you look at the adoption of electric vehicles, I mean, I hate to say it, but electric vehicles are kind of not cool anymore. There's a few hype cycles now.

Electrofuels are kind of on the bottom of the hype cycle for various reasons. Some of them, you know, deserve, maybe some of them not deserve. But one of the real factors that I think is happening is they're hitting the mainstream and they're hitting groups of people who have different needs. And regardless of sort of like where, you know, where you fall out politically or

you know, putting all the culture wars aside, it's not good for electric vehicle adoption or sustainability if only one group of people buys the thing, right? Like that's just, we're not going to go very far in hitting our climate goals. And so the mission we're on is to sort of break through that barrier. We want to bring it to the mainstream. And so we believe in so doing, not only are we

Toby 

you know, making a very large category of vehicles sustainable, but also we are helping to, you know, work through some of that, you know, sort of like mental and emotional and like sociological sort of barriers to adoption of clean technology.

Molly Wood

Yep.

Molly Wood

Right, so it is a bit of a Trojan horse. It's a little bit of both. So big market sounds like big market and also you get to sort of see the potential benefits of this technology. it's a storytelling question really when it comes to EVs. I'm like, don't you want to go fast? I don't know. I mean.

Toby

Yeah.

Toby 

Yeah, think it, I'd say I'm, I think it's totally, you know, impacted by Trojan Horse. But what I would say...

Molly Wood 

I mean, and I should be clear, like I grew up, you know, to your point about demographics, I grew up in Montana and North Dakota. Like my dad is very worried about the idea of getting a car and you just drive everywhere, right? You just, it's a day trip to drive three and a half miles to the town nearby, cause that's where the football game is. And like, it's very worrisome to think about not having charging.

Toby 

Yeah.

Toby

Yeah.

Molly Wood 

especially if it's the winter and your battery is draining fast because it's cold outside. Like these are real, I just want to acknowledge that, you know, it's not just a culture war thing. It's a real question about is this vehicle, is this EB as my primary car workable? And so those have been some of the barriers to adoption that even before it became like a badge of identity.

Toby

Totally. Yeah.

Toby 

100%. I mean, I think that, you know, Tesla was one of the early examples of this, but when it comes to consumer products, at least, there is a recipe that works for adoption. it involves setting for a moment aside the climate stuff. It's just got to be a better product. And if it is a better product, it will be broadly popular.

If it is not a better product, some people who are very, you know, climate minded will buy it, but it won't have as much impact. So I think that it's a good thing. think it is the recipe that works. and the other, the other thing I should say, and this gets a little bit into the product, which we can talk more about, but we actually don't care what you tow a light ship with. and what's cool is that.

in our first cohort of customers, half of them have electric vehicles and half of them don't have, they just have standard tow vehicles. And it's sort of helpful that some of the challenges like what you mentioned, like range anxiety, like going a long distance across rural Montana, this is something that if you're very concerned about that.

you can tow a light ship with a regular truck and it'll still reduce your impact and improve your fuel economy. You'll still get a lot of the benefits.

Molly Wood 

Okay, that's a perfect segue then into what is in fact better about the lightship over another RV.

Toby 

So I should also say, like getting back to the RV market, the reason we do a towable, so of that roughly half a million vehicles that are sold, about 90 % of them are towables, so something you're gonna pull behind a truck or SUV. This has a lot to do with.

Molly Wood 

Yes, actually, yes.

Toby

Americans love trucks and SUVs. It is just the reality. think it's like four or five years running ever, you know, it's the the top selling vehicles are like the Ford F-series, the Dodge Ram, the Chevy Silverado. So it kind of makes sense that RVs have evolved, the product topologies evolved to work with trucks and SUVs. We want to be, you know, focused on the biggest part of it. So that's why we do a towable. And then if you if you think about a towable, so you're to, you know, you're going to pull up behind a truck, we're doing

Molly Wood

Yeah.

Toby 

a few things. So we say it's all electric. What does that mean? Number one, traditionally an RV has a bunch of different fossil fuel systems to sort power the experience. So you'll have a propane system doing your heating, your cooking. Believe it or not, frequently the refrigerator will run on a propane system, which is a little crazy. And then separately you'll have a generator and that's doing all of your electrical loads.

Molly Wood 

Mm-hmm.

Molly Wood 

Yep.

Toby 

What's a little bit wild is like some of the things on a traditional RV don't actually even work Unless you're running a generator or unless you're plugged into shore power. So like air conditioning for instance, you actually can't climate control a standard RV just like without doing other things and and that's something that Nobody loves so we get rid of all that and we replace it with a single fuel source. It's a battery

And that means we have all electric appliances, an induction stove, a heat pump, lot of the sort of like modern electric things that you would expect in a home. We have that in a light ship. And then the second thing we do, which is the crazy thing, it's a vehicle, something that you tow. And we kind of took the Tesla approach of...

starting from a clean sheet of paper, we said we want to build this from the ground up to be hyper efficient. And so what we do is, if you sort of look at our website, the vehicle transforms. We have what we call road modes. When you're towing, it's about seven feet tall. And then when you get to your campsite, you pop it up and it goes up to about 10 feet tall. The reason we do that is because when you're towing,

you want to be very aerodynamic, regardless of if you have an electric tow vehicle or a gas tow vehicle. And the sort of principle equation that matters here is CDA, coefficient of drag times frontal area. So all electric vehicles try to make themselves very slippery, which is the CD part. But you also have to deal with the A part. So if you make a very slippery vehicle, but it's got a massive frontal area, you're still towing a sail.

Molly Wood 

Mm-hmm.

Toby 

So by collapsing the vehicle, we manage to really reduce our frontal area and make our vehicle very passively efficient. And then the next crazy thing we do is we propel it. So even though it's a towable, it's not autonomous, doesn't drive itself, but it does have a motor and the motor pushes the rear axle so that you effectively don't have, you have very little force on the hitch.

And therefore you don't lose range if you have an electric tow vehicle or fuel economy if you have a gas tow vehicle.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Time for a quick break and it’s a good time because things got a little embarrassing for a minute when my little RV-loving heart just about exploded because I was looking at the website while Toby was describing how the top pops up anyway. When we come back, we’ll talk a little more about the interior, off-grid living, and my favorite topic, what happens if you can you this to charge your house. 

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. We’re talking with Toby Kraus of Lightship RV. 

Molly Wood

How would you compare, let's say, the gas mileage of towing, you know, a regular tow behind or fifth wheel, which I grew up calling them, to this?

Toby

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, so we actually just did some really cool range testing and released a video on this, the rough math or way to think about it is when you, it's easy to think about it with an electric vehicle. if you have a, you know, called a 300 mile range electric vehicle, if you tow a traditional trailer, depending on the size and depending on the speed, you're gonna lose

about two-thirds of your range. So 300 mile range becomes about 100 mile range. This is kind of like the Achilles heel of electric vehicles is like, you know, I mean, think charging and range anxiety is definitely a major consideration, but towing is something that they simply can't do well right now.

So, so yeah, 300 miles becomes 100 miles when you have traditional RV. And then if you, if you take, um, kind of how I described the product, the passive stuff, so having it pop up and down, that gets you about a hundred miles back. So if you didn't even propel it, you would go from 300 mile range to 200 mile range.

And then the active propulsion closes the rest of the gap. It doesn't close the gap 100%. When we started, we said like no range loss. That's not precisely true because you always do have a little bit of force on the hitch. Our latest testing is that you have like, you know, 4 % range loss. It's very minimal compared to, you know, 60 or 70%.

Molly Wood

So really for people who want to actually RV, this is the only, with an electric, with a Rivian or some kind of an electric truck or a lightning, this is sort of the only option, realistically. If you wanna go more than.

Toby 

Yeah, think it's, mean, we like to think it's like, you know, it's an awesome product. It's the best trailer you can buy sort of regardless of what you tow it. But it's kind of the only one that works if you have an electric vehicle.

Molly Wood 

Right. Okay, so then, then let's talk about that. the, the, certainly the, I hesitate to call it camping because since it has all the creature comforts of your house, thanks to this big battery, it's really just like mobile home living. what, then what is that experience like and how long could you be, let's say off the grid?

Toby 

So I think it's fair to call it camping. mean, it's definitely like that is the lifestyle and folks who RV, it's, you they would consider it camping. just, you want to have more amenities with you.

Molly Wood 

It's still camping.

Toby 

So yeah, because we built it from the ground up, we took some liberties to do it pretty differently, including on the interior of the vehicle. because of that transforming motion, you get a really high ceiling. So probably what you experience the most and what people love the most is when they walk into a light ship, it's just wide open, tons of glass, seven and a half foot ceiling. It feels like a residential space. Typically in an RV, you're probably like six foot ceilings or something like that.

Molly Wood 

Mm-hmm.

Toby 

And then it's designed kind of like a modern apartment or like a studio apartment. Most RVs are like everything you have in your house, but it's really small. And then you talk to people, RV a lot, and they're like, oh yeah, we only use the restroom at the camping site because I can't stand up in the shower or like we would only cook outside because the kitchen stinks. So we took an approach of, you know, a little more minimal. It's not going to have everything miniaturized, but everything that's there is going to be super usable.

Molly Wood

Mm-hmm.

Toby 

So just a really nice open space. And then what's really awesome is because of the power system, has a huge battery, about five or six Tesla power walls of energy that you can store. And then we have 1800 watts of solar embedded in the roof line.

You have a ton of power and to answer your question, can camp off grid without any hookups for about a week. And actually the reality is power is not an issue. If you're anywhere sunny, like it can kind of run itself perpetually, but you'll run out of water. So we don't advertise. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There's yeah. 1800 watts of solar in the roof.

Molly Wood

because there's solar on the roof. I don't think we've actually explicitly said that. Yeah.

Toby

And yeah, the only reason we don't say longer than a week is because you'll eventually run out of water.

Molly Wood

unless you're really like good at getting your water from the stream and all of the ways that people get water when truly being off the grid.

Toby 

Yeah.

Toby 

Yeah, yeah.

Molly Wood 

On the one hand, you have a camper, which is great. But on the other hand, you also have like an ADU and five Tesla power walls sitting in your driveway.

Toby 

Yep.

Molly Wood 

And I wonder how you think about the potential other uses of a vehicle like this, because when it's in your driveway or wherever you're storing it, it seems like it could also really have value, especially if it has bi-directional charging. My favorite thing.

Toby 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. we

We actually have a bunch of customers who are buying it sort of for the explicit purpose of using it as an ADU. Like maybe they'll tow it around or go RVing sometimes, but most of the time they're just going to use it as a place, you know, for their in-laws to stay when they're visiting or, you know, an office to work in during the day. And I think that's great. What is super cool for that use case or the RV use case when you're not using it is what you mentioned, like the bidirectionality. So we have...

Molly Wood

Yeah.

Toby 

you know, five to six power walls of energy, a bi-directional inverter. So if your house is, you know, wired for a generator, you basically, get a, it's called a transfer switch installed in your house. This is a one-to-one replacement for a generator. And I think as V2G and you know, some of this gets a little bit more, yeah, V2G.

Molly Wood 

vehicle to grid for people who aren't up on that. I'm sure this audience is, but just in case.

Toby 

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sorry. Vehicle to grid. I think as that become, those types of technologies proliferate a little bit more. This also can be a V2G asset, vehicle to grid asset. That requires the homeowner to have some electronics on their side so that you can actually be doing grid services. So we haven't explicitly invested in going all the way there. We'll sort of wait for the tech to catch up. But in the interim, using it as...

Home backup, powering your house behind the meter. You can do that all day.

Molly Wood

Yeah, which I just think is a really, I mean, I just think that's an interesting sort of larger possibility demographically, right? Is that one, I decentralization and power security are big trends across the country. And then as a storytelling piece, like the literal Montana prepper in me is like, I mean, there's a big kind of prepper off-grid.

Toby 

Yeah.

Toby 

Yeah.

Molly Wood 

storytelling opportunity for you, I would think.

Toby 

Hehehe

Yeah. Well, I you get into sort of, you know, why people love the product. You know, if it's not the sustainability and the sustainability is important to some people, but what is more important are in terms of like, you know, how the product is used and why it is delightful.

are these types of aspects, right? Like people love that it can augment their home solar system, it can back up their house. They are happy to know they have something that can be self-sustaining for a week. That is sort of like the translation of the EV tech stuff into the like what matters to people who buy it.

Molly Wood 

Yeah. Okay, let's talk about pricing. And for those who are not familiar with RVs, they're expensive. Like I'm gonna just start by, I'm gonna start by level setting that you will hear a high number that might be more than an existing RV, but RVs are a lot more expensive, I think, than people who don't have them realize.

Toby 

Yeah.

Toby 

Yeah, so we sell two versions of the product. So the product we sell we call the AE-1. AE stands for aeroelectric, which is kind of the encapsulation of the benefits I described, both aerodynamic and electric. And then we have really two trims, the AE-1 Panos, and that one is $151,000, and the AE-1 Atmos, which is $184,000.

Though, you know, that might be a high number, but what I would say is if you look at sort of the premium trailer segment, like an Airstream, for instance, we really, and this is a strategic choice, we really priced kind of right on top of the market. It's really not at a premium to the market.

And the reason we did that, I think there's all sorts of additional value, all the things we've talked about in this vehicle. But, you know, we try to be humble. Like we are a startup and a company like Airstream is a hundred year old heritage brand. I think like as we go and we build a brand and it's starting to get this well established and get some enthusiasm and excitement, you brand love and, you know, customers following us. You know, maybe we'll have more.

you know, pricing power or whatever. But right now we're like, just want to want to build a business around a price point that we know exists in the market. And then I should also say like the the vision is not to

be a premium camper seller and just sort of stop there. You know, this is our Tesla Roadster. Much has been said about, you know, the sort of like Tesla, you know, adoption expansion approach from Roadster to Model S to Model 3. But I'm going to I'm going to use it too. This is our Roadster. And, you we'll have subsequent versions of the product that will get, you know, more and more into the mainstream, both in terms of form factor sizes and importantly, price.

Molly Wood 

Mm-hmm.

Toby 

you

Molly Wood 

Yeah. Where are you finding that you are sort of marketing and selling the most of these? Like, I think I'm curious about the branding because like you said, you're sort of targeting an existing RV demographic. Like, are you at those shows or will you be in the future as you're manufacturing more?

Toby 

This is probably one of the things that we have to be the most thoughtful about because there really are at least two pretty distinct customer types. One is maybe more ready to expect people who drive a Rivian and the...

sustainability aspect of it is very important. And then other people, the sort of other distinct group is people who just loved RV. And I think it is we want to be inclusive to both of those audiences. But I think it's important to or we sort of have to communicate and market a little bit differently. And that affects it, you know, even where you show up in terms of shows and stuff like that. So a couple of interesting points. So one is if you look at RVing in America, the

Molly Wood 

Yeah.

Toby

Biggest markets are California, Texas and Florida. If you look at our customer base, our biggest markets are California, Texas and the Mountain West and our factories in Colorado. So it's like kind of the same, but maybe with like a little bit of a skew towards our origins. Also, we have not yet gone to a single event on the East Coast. So I think Florida will be a bigger market once we actually do something out there.

So I think that's pretty cool. And then as far as like events, we have gone to RV shows, we've gone to electric vehicle shows, we've gone to like the GoPro games and Vale. We've sort of tried all sorts of different things. And I'd say we've gotten pretty good returns, pretty good enthusiasm at all of them. The early, our early like sort of foray into RV shows was

probably the most challenging. was largely because we didn't yet have a product to sell. People are sort of like, they go to an RV show because they're ready to buy an RV. And we're sort of like, but here's a cool RV you can get in a year. So that was a little bit, you know, harder, but I'm still optimistic about RV shows now that we actually have a product to sell.

Molly Wood 

Right. Yep.

Molly Wood 

Totally.

Molly Wood 

By the way, listeners, if any of you have never been to an RV show, like go to an RV show because turns out RVs get pretty amazing. Yeah.

Toby 

Yeah, they're cool. the last one I went to was really fun. was like tons of different RVs. I got interviewed by a local radio station. It's like, you know, the radio station, like they cover things like was like hunting and fishing and RV show. And so it was a fun one.

Molly Wood 

Yep.

Molly Wood 

That's awesome. Because of the both passive and active assistance, towing assistance, if you will, can you tow this with an at all smaller vehicle? Like, could I do it with like a BMW IX?

Toby 

I wish the answer was yes, and we get this question a lot. There's sort of two factors to consider when towing. One is tow capacity and one is payload capacity. So it's basically tow capacity is how much the thing is pulling on the back of your car and payload capacity is how much it is pushing down. And if all you had to worry about was

Molly Wood

Yeah.

Toby 

If all you had to worry about was tow capacity, then the answer might be able to be yes. But payload capacity is also a consideration. And most vehicles that don't have significant tow capacity also don't have a lot of payload capacity. So like trucks, they're built sort of body on frame. They can take a lot of force down and they can tow a lot.

Molly Wood

Yeah, let's put a finer point on payload capacity. You're talking about the amount of weight that is attached to the hitch that is then pushing down on the frame of the vehicle that's towing the trailer. It's all of that, right? Right.

Toby 

Yeah, it's all of the mass that goes into the vehicle and is pushing down on the axles, including occupants, including cargo and including the downforce of a trailer.

Molly Wood 

Yep. So like it would help you, it helps you tow, but unfortunately it weighs too much basically. Yeah.

Toby 

Exactly. Yeah, like our our our hitch weight is, you know, about 10 % of the of total mass. So it's like 800 pounds and that's that would be a lot for a like a small vehicle unless you were like really, you know.

Molly Wood 

Yep.

Toby 

one occupant and not a lot of cargo. And so we really just don't want to interfere with like manufacturer's recommended weight limits. And so we say you really should have a vehicle that has the right tow capacity.

Molly Wood 

I'm gonna stop geeking out on the mechanics of towing because again, it's it's one in 10 Americans, not everybody listening. Toby Kraus, the company is Lightship RV. Where can people find you? And a reminder again on what they could order today.

Toby 

Yeah, come check us out. We're LightshipRV.com and we sell our campers. We have two versions, the Atmos and the Panos on sale now. yeah, and also we have an awesome factory. Come visit us. Drop us a note on our website and I'll tour you around our factory. It's pretty cool.

Molly Wood 

Amazing. Toby, thanks so much. I appreciate the time.

Toby 

Yeah, thanks so much, Molly.

Molly Wood Voice-Over:

That's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thank you so much for listening.

And if you’d like to see a video walkaround of the Lightship, check out the newsletter this week at everybody in the pool dot com, or subscribe to my Instagram at mollywoodpro. 

And as always email me your thoughts and suggestions to in at everybody in the pool dot com! I got a note from Bruce in Tennessee in response to the 100th episode with a little more on retirement account and investing options 

He said his former employer offered but did not advertise something called a Personal Choice Retirement Account, or PCRA. In his case, it was through Schwab I’ll note here that this is Schwab’s branding for something called a self-directed brokerage account, which Fidelity, Vanguard and some others do offer within some retirement plans. 

In Bruce’s case, he was able to put those funds under the management of his socially conscious advisor, so his entire retirement portfolio, including his IRA, is free of of fossil fuels and tobacco, and strong on renewable energy and local investment.

He said hardly any of his fellow employees knew about that option sounds like a small percentage of companies offer this option in their retirement plans but hey might as well ask!! Great tip, Bruce, thank you! 

Keep those emails coming and find all the latest episodes and more at everybody in the pool dot com, the website. And if you want to become a subscriber and get an ad free version of the show, hit the link in the description in your podcast app of choice.

Thank you to those of you who already have. Together, we can get this done. See you next week.