About us

Our Vision

A world where everyone has access to sustainable energy when they need it.

At Orange, our mission is to make right sized EV charging reliable and affordable to everyone no matter where they live. The first step to solving that problem is accessible, affordable, and convenient EV charging.

40%

40% of America’s population lives in multifamily properties. Public-style chargers were not designed for multifamily homes and they are expensive, have a high maintenance cost, and are an ineffective use of energy.

Source: PWC

20x

By 2040 20x more EVs will be on the road and the electricity demand will be 1850% more — that’s about the total electricity generated today in the state of Texas *

Source: PWC

We designed and purpose-built Orange to offer right-sized charging that is convenient, efficient, and affordable to multifamily properties, offices, and garages. And we are just getting started.

Our History

Why we started Orange

July 2019

Over dinner with Sven and his EV-charging environmentalist crusaders, a low-cost scalable  EV charging receptacle emerged on a whiteboard. Nicholas, a long-time EV driver, felt that level 1 was too slow and told Sven that he couldn't drive charging that way for six months. Nicholas lost the bet and helped create a level 1 energy-metered receptacle for PCE’s new apartment charging pilots, kicking off an exploration into installing EV charging at apartments.

Jan 2020

Orange gets its first angel checks from Sven and Marc, along with Marc T and Martin E, the original founders of Tesla Motors. They all understood the problem with EV charging at apartments and how it slowed the adoption of electric vehicles.

A person holding a digital clamp meter, measuring electrical current.

Aug 2020

After moonlighting on the product for a few months, Nicholas went full time on Orange after seeing a once-in-a-lifetime market opportunity and developing a level 2 right power NEMA 620 Outlet. Nicholas’s close friend from Tesla, Jon Thomas, joined to help bring the prototypes to production.

Nov 2021

Orange received UL approval and completed the production design of our custom plug contacts, engineered to withstand the abuse of EV charging cords' daily use without wearing them out. Through the end of the year, Orange completed the first installations with early customers, building all units from Nicholas’s garage in Silicon Valley.

Jan 2022

Orange closes a pre-seed round of funding led by Baukunst, a fantastic collective of creative investors at the forefront of creativity and innovation. This capital helped Orange start larger production runs and build out its early sales strategy.

Feb 2023

Orange closed a seed round of funding led by Munich Re Ventures and Climactic while achieving the milestone of installing just shy of 2000 Orange Outlets. With the rapid adoption of EVs and new building codes, Orange aims to enable an EV to plug in at any parking spot where someone leaves their vehicle for long periods.

May 2024

Orange launched Gen 2 Outlets and EVSE into a complete charging platform; with these new product lines, Orange set out to redefine the poor user experience and energy limitation the EV charging industry has accepted for too long. OrangeOS and OrangeNet bring a whole new network and user reliability to our Software.  

Team Orange

A dedicated team of professionals

Nicholas Johnson
CEO

Nicholas is passionate about enabling humans to live carbon-neutral lives without compromising lifestyle. Before starting Orange, he built A.I. software to optimize traffic signals to reduce congestion. He started his career at Tesla as an electrical design engineer, bringing the Model 3 thermal designs to market.

Neil Joseph
COO

With a passion for launching products focused on delivering customer value, Neil joined Orange as an advisor on day one. Neil is a former founder himself, successfully scaling and exiting Stack Lighting (acquired by Philips Lighting) then later becoming VP of operations at Go Capital. Before branching off on his entrepreneurial journey, Neil worked for three years as Head of the delivery organization at Tesla, shipping Model S worldwide.

Volker Schönefeld
CTO

Volker is a successful entrepreneur and co-founder of ARVO mobile games. Previously, he was the co-founder and CTO at Limbic acting as the principal architect of the software infrastructure, game engine, and game design. He brings his deep technical expertise to make EV charging seamless to both property owner and driver.

Cinzia Pinamonti
VP Sales

Cinzia is a versatile GTM leader with over a decade of experience driving technology growth in the real estate industry. Before bringing her formidable proptech experience to Orange, Cinzia was the VP of Sales at Latch and before that led Strategic Enterprise Sales at WeWork where she led teams that closed over $750m in revenue and managed some of the most complex and creative deal structures.

Our investors

A rare breed of multidisciplinary advisors

Marc Tarpenning
Venture Partner

Founded Tesla with Martin; director of software at Tesla and now is a cleantech investor at Spero.vc

Raj Kapoor
Managing Partner

Co-founder of Climactic, a climate-focused venture firm, Raj is a two-time founder, Chief Strategy Officer at Lyft, and partner at Mayfield.

Matt Thoms
General Partner

Co-founder and General Partner at Baukunst, Matt is a former founder and has been a first-check investor in emerging tech companies for over a decade.

Matt McElhattan
Managing Director

Matt joined as the second member of Munich Re Ventures (MRV) in 2015. With over $1b capital under management from the the world’s largest reinsurance company.

We're hiring!

Come join us and transform the energy landscape.