“Living off the grid has always been a dream of mine…”
With SEED that dream can easily become a reality for anyone who has it! With a push of a button it grows in seconds into a small house, with extensive insides and a 360 degree perspective of your environment. Up to 8kW from solar panels and a big battery bank makes this self sustainable unit excellent for incalculable potential uses, lodging for refugees, versatile medicinal facilities, transitory catastrophe alleviation settlement to name a few. Or why not a portable little business on the beach?:) And of course for a nice recreational travel, living of the grid for a while!
How did you come up with this idea and what made you “go for it”?
Living off the grid has always been a dream of mine as it allows people to be one with nature. As a child I would sit in church and draw pictures of mobile houses on wheels that ran on rain water and on energy from the sun. My fascination with electric cars took this to the next level. In 2007 when I graduated university as an Electronics Engineer my dream was to design mobile dwellings that could one day be towed by an electric 4×4 and could charge the 4x4s engine when sitting at a particular destination. It was the release of information on Tesla’s model X vehicle that made me think it is time for the SEED products to come to life and it is my passion for products like Tesla’s vehicles and my SEEDs to exist that will see me make Prodengin succeed.
You mentioned 3 different markets, what are those? And if everything goes according to plan, what’s your ultimate vision for SEED??
The three markets I see are:
1. Small business applications where business owners need mobility such as mobile workshop, mobile restaurants, mobile coffee stalls or retail stores.
2. Affordable housing is another market that is of significant interest to me. The SEED products are the size of a studio apartment and have the facilities required to allow people to live for long periods of time away from civilisation. It would be fantastic if these products could be used for emergency shelters for the disadvantaged as well however the cost to manufacture our products at this stage makes this difficult. This is part of our future plan though. Disasters and wars happen and emergency shelters will be required for many years to come. I have heard people on social media say that these dwellings wouldn’t last in a tornado. What they don’t realise is they don’t have to stay in the danger zone as these products allow users to pack up and move as soon as they get the warnings and then return afterwards.
3. Recreational vehicles and caravanning is another market that suits our products. Caravans are all very similar in shape and size and I believe people need more room and more renewable energy powering options to be comfortable for longer periods when away from home. The high capacity solar panels also ensure there is enough energy being derived when the sun shines for short periods throughout the day to allow people to go further into nature for longer periods of time. The curved front and back walls also allows fuel costs to be dramatically reduced allowing journeys to go further.
Give us 3 tips from what you have learned on your way to other future tech/environment entrepreneurs?
1. First tip is to push past those that say it cannot be done and the risk is too high. Nothing worth doing is easy. This statement has been stated a lot however this is what keeps engineers and business professionals passionate about what they do.
2. Second tip is to do something you are truly passionate about that lines up with as many of your interests as possible. My favourite interests are: spending time with friends and family, technology, travelling, camping and the environment. See how they all fit into the Prodengin SEED products ?
3. Last tip is to spend as little cash as possible to do as much as possible. When the time is right and the concept is proven your clients will determine how much more you should spend.
Finally, tell us why your campain should get funded?
Our funding campaign was set-up to allow us to bring these products to life. It is very difficult to get a business like this off the ground in Australia and hence I am looking globally for interested partners and clients as well as funding and this is the purpose of the whole campaign and the surrounding media. Without a successful campaign these designs will wait for VC or government funding which could take many years and I believe people can use products like Solar-powered Expandable Eco Dwellings now. If a sponsor walked in tomorrow and said we want Prodengin in California or Pennsylvania for example to manufacture these products we would negotiate this without hesitation. A successful campaign will drive these sponsors to Prodengin much quicker.
Electric vehicles are going to get more and more powerful. I hope there are people like me out there that would love to travel throughout the world towing a comfortable, spacious and sustainable dwelling that can charge their tow vehicle in days thus allowing them to move between destinations without the need to see a fuel station or to spend a cent on fueling their vehicle.
Thanks Kevin Kelly at Prodengin and go fund this campaign at Indigogo!
