Marc Fecker of Robo

0:00 Introduction to AutoTech Detroit and Robo

Today in The Garage, we’re recording live at AutoTech Detroit. Our guest today is Marc Fecker, CEO of Robo. Robo is an engineering firm focused on the future of connected transportation.

In our conversation, we discussed how Robo worked with Winnebago to deliver their new Winnebago Connect platform. And this is really interesting because we often think about SDVs as passenger vehicles or perhaps some people think about them as connected, transportation heavy trucks. But RVs also have many of the same needs and Robo was able to deliver a solution that adds value and shows the future of RVs across their Winnebago Connect platform. We also talk about the origins of Robo and the work they’re doing in the future.

Let’s go!

0:47 Meet Marc Fecker

Welcome to The Garage. I’m John Heinlein, Chief Marketing Officer with Sonatus. We’re recording live at AutoTech Detroit, and that’s the background noise you may hear as we’re recording. My guest today is Marc Fecker, CEO of Robo. Marc, welcome to The Garage.

Thank you.

So it’s, first, introduce yourself and tell us about you.

Sure. So as you mentioned, Marc Fecker, CEO of Robo.

I, come from, the world of technology. I’ve been a software developer my whole career. Started actually developing in the Internet space back in 1994, if you can imagine. Fell in love with, the ideas of connected things and, have been kind of on the bleeding edge ever since. I spent seventeen years at Ford, the last five of which was running the innovation lab for Ford Motor Company and the dealers creating the future of automotive retail.

And then, I went back to school, got my MBA at Michigan, and, was really excited to do my own thing. So I started Robo in 2017.

And, yeah, we’re focused on the future of connected transportation.

And we’re an engineering firm here based in Novi, Michigan.

That’s fantastic. So you got to start us off with a fun fact about you.

All right. Well, I’d mentioned Michigan. So I went to University of Michigan, and and I’m one, I believe from what Michigan has told me, I’m one of only two people to have an MBA without an undergraduate degree.

That’s pretty unheard of.

You know, it’s something I didn’t even know is possible. I just went to, talk to them because that’s what I wanted to do. You know, that was my ultimate goal and said, how can I figure out a way to do it and not make it a ten year journey as a, you know, adult family and kids? It, was not something I was looking to go to school full time and, you know, work full time for a long period of time.

But, and they said, well, you know, generally, we’ve never really done that and provided that except for if you’ve, you know, run your own business, had a bunch of patents. And they went through a list of things. I was like, I’ve done all of that. I’m like and they’re like, oh, well, let’s see if we can, you know, get you in.

And, so yeah.

That’s great.

That was a really cool, cool, cool opportunity.

Fantastic.

2:52 Robo’s Focus and Capabilities

So tell us about Robo, tell us about your company.

Yeah.

So I mentioned we’re an engineering firm here at Novi, Michigan focused on the future of But you’re local.

You’re right here.

We are right here. Yeah. We are like a mile away. This is like a dream setup for us because, yeah, we’re right down the road.

But, we have a lab here, where we focus on all the development. We focus on transportation, and we specialize in embedded software firmware type of capabilities. We like to say we’re we’re software and hardware meet. That’s our specialty.

But we’re trying to create the experiences of the future of transportation while at the same time creating the jobs of the future.

3:27 The Importance of Vehicle Software Technology

That’s great. And, you know, the reason we wanted to to talk with you, it turns out you’re exhibiting right next to us. Your booth is literally right there.

I know. It’s pretty awesome.

And, but you you had such an interesting story that, you know, in this podcast, we talk about vehicle software technology, especially how software and and software defined vehicles can enable next generation experiences and capabilities.

And as we were talking, we we realized that that’s exactly what you’re doing with your solution is you’re showing how, in this case, for recreational vehicles in this in this example, you’re able to deliver a kind of a customized advanced new experience for this. So maybe you want to talk about this project and kind of the origins of the project and what you’ve been able to achieve.

4:06 Winnebago Connect Project Overview

Sure. Yeah. So, we’re we’re referring to Winnebago Connect. So we, Winnebago is one of our our key clients and, we help them go from concept all the way to productionization.

We’re now in market with five hundred plus vehicles, in operation and continue to roll new ones out every day. But, it really is a fully connected RV. I like to say it’s everything connected home and connected vehicle kind of mashed up into one. So integration of all of the house systems that’s, you know, lighting systems, water systems, climate management, energy management, slide outs, leveling systems, you name it, all integrated into a centralized control system.

You have a mobile app where you can interface with it near field via Bluetooth or over the air from anywhere in the world because the vehicle is connected and online. And then there’s a lot of really unique capabilities, first of their kind in the RV industry. Things like we do over the air software updates to provide new features and benefits to consumers on a regular basis, quarterly basis. And then we also off board data and really put that data into action to improve the customer experience.

And, yeah, and there’s so many bells and whistles I could go into. But, yeah, that’s, that’s really we again, we brought that from the beginning all the way to market and, working with Winnebago’s leadership team. I think it really all stems from from their belief in the opportunity to create a better experience for their customers and a and a competitive advantage, in the marketplace.

5:36 Digital Transformation in RVs

But, you know, it takes that because it is a when you talk about digital transformation, it really is about organizational transformation. Right? In order to to to design, build, and support a product like that, it it impacts every aspect of a business. And you need to embrace that and and want that and have the leadership really pushing, that, as a priority for the organization.

So many interesting points

6:02 Personal Connection to RV Innovation

you made there. I want to I wanna come back and touch on a couple of those in succession. I want to start by saying, just in fairness, my fun fact back to you because I think I wanted to let you get to your story first is my parents are big RVers, actually.

Oh, awesome.

Yeah. They’re retired. They

they take their RV all over the place, particularly from up in the northeast to to Florida as well. Yeah. So it’s, it’s close to my heart that you’re you’re delivering that innovation because I think, definitely, that’s a space that can benefit from from innovation and digitalization because not all of them are these are like that. So that’s really exciting.

You’re absolutely correct. And it’s actually, you know, helping businesses who are traditionally non technology and non software type businesses bring that capability to bear. That’s that’s really what we’re passionate about in helping, you know, helping more people do that.

The second thing I was gonna say is you mentioned, you know, five hundred units, and that may seem like a small number to our listeners who are thinking about the auto industry in the millions of units, but the RV market is much smaller. And and you’re also rolling out across their fleet sort of in a rolling basis. So you expect to be a bigger portion of their fleet coming up.

7:07 Future Expansion of Winnebago Connect

Yeah. Ultimately, the the the plan is to have, Winnebago connect in every Winnebago product, over time. Exactly the timeline. I’m not exactly sure.

A lot of that is dependent on on roadmaps in the marketplace and things of that nature.

But over the coming years, that’s the intent. The cool thing about it is it can take different forms. If you think about a low cost, you know, twenty, dollars twenty five thousand trailer versus a big half million dollar Class A vehicle.

These things can be vary in the types of needs that they have. But the same system, the same software running in all of those vehicles connected to the ecosystem, that will be consistent no matter what product it’s in.

7:43 Customizing Software for Diverse Vehicles

And that last point is a super important thing because we mentioned that in the context of the work we do in the in the industry that software enables you to make the investments like you’ve done in a in a solution, but recognize that but one size doesn’t fit all. You can take that same foundation and deliver it in a high end vehicle or a low end vehicle, but the underpinnings are the same. And I think that’s something that we were just chatting about this, with another guest yesterday that it’s a really valuable observation that you don’t have to assume that for software defined vehicle and software capabilities necessarily means high-end vehicle. Right. The investment can pay off across your product line with differences and with customization for different price points.

You’re absolutely right. And if you design the the product as a as a platform, if you think about, like, platform-as-a-service, right, that’s the way I view SDV. Right? It’s it’s kind of like, how how do I make the vehicle accessible to integrate with it, how I need to integrate it for the particular application that I’m supporting. And in this case, you know, that’s what we do. And you design the platform from the ground up. That way, it gives you a lot of flexibility to support those different needs for those different products and different customers.

8:48 Future Upgrades and Features

You also mentioned that the platform is modular and you can add new capabilities. OTA is a solution we provide from Sonatus and it’s a key topic in the industry right now. What are the kinds of things that you expect to be offering upgrades over time? Can you give some examples perhaps.

Well, maybe maybe I could just talk about what’s happened other than, because I can’t really talk too much about what’s coming next. But I will say that, so we launched a year ago and, one of the features that we launched just about six months ago was auto gen start. So you got a generator on your vehicle and then you lose power and you want the generator automatically kick on. You can have that capability now where when you when our vehicle first rolled off the line, it didn’t have that. And for consumers, that’s great. One of the cool features that we have in the Winnebago Connect product, again, designed around the customer, that’s really, really important. That’s the key principle in the driving force inside of Winnebago is everything that we do at Winnebago is all about the customer and trying to improve the customer experience.

But listening to the customers, sixty to seventy percent of them travel with a pet and they’re deathly afraid of leaving their pet behind while they go for a hike or need to run into town to get some food Because the power fails.

Because the power fails, you know, you go to a campground, the the power’s unstable.

The temperature can change so rapidly, in the vehicle, and pets don’t deal with it, you know, as well as humans do. They can’t go roll down the window or let themselves out. In the Winnebago Connect product, you can, turn on PetMinder and it will control all those things as well as alert you via text message if you lose power connectivity or the temperature falls out of range.

That’s fantastic.

I mean, it’s such it’s an example that’s, of course, popular in cars as well.

Yeah.

And the idea that you’re be able to roll that out in your platform as well is is super.

10:36 Collaboration with Winnebago

You mentioned also earlier that you’ve had a great collaborative relationship with your OEM customer, you know, Winnebago. Yes. And and and it takes a village really to create solutions like this. Can you talk about, you know, your relationship with them and and some of the learnings you had about that that might even also benefit others that are looking to deliver software projects into OEMs.

Yeah. And I really think that you just brought up a really key point there. Right? It takes a village.

It is not a small effort. I did not do this on my own. I’m representing, you know, probably a couple thousand people who are involved in bringing this, to market. And it takes, as I mentioned, sponsorship and support at the leadership level.

And our journey was really that of, you know, we had worked prior with, with an individual who came in to Winnebago to lead digital transformation there. And she was, needed help in improving the customer experience. We got involved with that and did some UX design work and some support for some of their existing experiences. And as they started to move forward with their strategy and thinking about how they could create a differentiated offering through a connected RV, it started off being called Smart RV.

It was something they recognized myself and my team could help with. And, and they brought us in there. But, you know, then it takes, yeah, building the relationships with all the different vertical owners within the business, with the team that’s really responsible for delivering and getting them to believe in the same mission, in the same direction that we’re trying to move and then help them along on that journey. Right.

12:08 Challenges in RV Integration

And so I think if I think about the journey of bringing Winnebago Connect out, there’s, yes, tons of technology challenges it gets into it. When you start talking about integration of an RV, it’s much different than in the in the auto in the auto world. In the auto world, everything is CAN, J1939. That’s the standard.

And every OEM, has components designed and developed for them. In the RV world, you got to realize it started off with people in a garage who wanted to build, you know, take a trailer and build a little tent on the back. And then they started to put in things they could buy at Lowe’s and, you know, Home Depot or whatever to assemble a vehicle. It’s evolved, but not that significantly.

There’s still a lot of commercial products in there. And we deal with, you know, every variant of CAN, serial interfaces, wireless interfaces. We’ve got to make all of that work cohesively into one system. And that’s a technical challenge that is probably pales into comparison into the organizational transformational challenges.

Really, again, getting everyone to believe, getting everybody educated, getting the right people in the right seats to support, a solution like this. And, and that just takes a little bit of time, but it takes commitment. And if you have that within your organization, you can to bring together a solution like Winnebago to connect.

13:27 The Role of Leadership in Innovation

That’s great. I mean, so it sounds like a key, a key goal is having a champion, having somebody who’s who’s driving for this and pushing it ahead. And then you mentioned these diverse connectivity standards, you know, as you said, vehicles are somewhat standardized. But even there, you have a number of different standards.

One of the things we do is help to bridge some of those different standards together.

So it sounds like you’ve had some of those same challenges. So I feel some kinship with with what you’re doing. Yeah.

I actually sit on the, RVC is the emerging RV CAN standard, and I sit on that board within the RVIA. Very smart. Very smart. Try to try to move that forward, get that mature.

Because if we can get that mature, it pays off for everybody. The supplier, the OEMs, everybody benefits from from, you know, that work. So but it’s all volunteer work. All right. It’s extra, extra work, but it’s important work.

Absolutely. A number of our folks do the same work with COVESA and the Trucking Association and a number of other organizations. So it’s important work.

Yeah.

14:21 Robo’s Future Projects and Collaborations

So pulling back and, aside from Winnebago, what other things is Robo working on? What are you looking forward to next?

Yeah. We, so we work with a number of different companies.

We’ve worked with Hyundai Translead on their eighteen wheelers. We worked with Amazon on their last mile of delivery and getting data off the vehicles.

We’re working with a new company. Very excited to talk about these guys. They’re, they’re called Tripp. They’re just about to launch.

It’s a micro mobility company, with like bike share program that’s launching in Columbus and Cleveland next year. And we’ve done all the embedded, basically electrical system that, on the bike, all the, IoT software firmware development for that. And that again connects to a whole ecosystem and really trying to improve transportation and that micro- mobility offering. And they’ve got so many cool technologies that we’re bringing to bear for them.

That’s an exciting program to talk to. But this is this show is really our first time exhibiting our first time. I like to say it’s our coming out party. So we’re very excited to be introduced to the world.

We’re we’re looking for new clients and, yeah, excited about helping move the future of transportation forward.

Well, hey, Marc, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a great conversation and thanks for being a good neighbor next to us.

Yeah. No problem.

And and introducing a new perspective on, you know, RV, which is a market we haven’t thought as much about. So it’s, it’s exciting what you’ve been able to achieve. Congratulations and good luck in the future.

Thank you so much.

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