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Transcript

Prefab Review

Hi, my name is Michael Frank and this is the Prefab Pod presented by Prefab Review where we interview leading people and companies in the prefab housing industry. Today, we're speaking with Galiano Tiramani founder at Boxabl. Welcome.

Boxabl

Hey there. Thank you so much for having me and yeah, my name is Galiano from Boxabl. We have just set up a large factory to produce houses and we've got a bunch of innovations that we think are going to make a really big impact.

Prefab Review

Awesome! Well, we're excited to dive into it. So I think, just to set the stage, can you tell me how did Boxabl get started? I know you're a newer company.

Boxabl

Yeah, we're definitely brand new. We actually just turned on this factory late last year but the company started when we had the initial innovation which was to actually fold up the houses. So one limiting factor we saw with with prefab and modular is that it's so expensive to ship the wide loads down the highway because they don't fit on the highway. They have these expensive follow cars, police escorts, restricted routes, and all kinds of issues with shipping these wide loads. So we thought if we could turn these into a highway-legal load by folding up the rooms that would ship at the lowest cost, and that therefore allow us to scale manufacturing and hopefully dramatically reduce the costs.

Prefab Review

That's super interesting. So by the way we'll get into your product line, but my impression is right now we're primarily talking about your I think it's called the Casita. It's like a 20 by 20 unit. So I know that a lot of the companies we work with and cover on our site have 14 or 15 foot wide modules. Are you saying that your units actually fold much narrower than that?

Boxabl

Yeah, the initial product we have, as you mentioned, is the Casita. So it's a twenty-foot by twenty-foot room with a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and couch. Its kind of a little studio apartment. And although we end up with a very large twenty-foot room that actually folds up to 9’ wide and that makes it highway legal. And even though we're folding it up to 9’ wide we're still able to finish almost everything in the factory. So the kitchen, bathroom, electrical, HVAC, windows, flooring, all of that is done before it arrives on your site. 

Prefab Review

Got it. So obviously the appliances come separately but everything else comes in the fold of units?

Boxabl

Yeah, so if you look at the way it folds up on the website which is boxabl.com, you can see that although it is folding, not all of it is folding. So there's a portion of the room that remains uncompressed and that's really important because that's where we can finish things in the factory. 

Prefab Review

I see.

Boxabl

In this model, the kitchen and bathroom is in that uncompressed space. And then we're also able to fit in the washer, dryer, fridge, and oven all in there as well.

Prefab Review

Cool and is drywall completed as well?

Boxabl

Well, yes and no um because our innovations go far beyond just the folding. And that includes using all different building materials so that we don't actually have any drywall.

Prefab Review

The equivalent of the the the interior wall is basically complete?

Boxabl

Yes, the walls are completed. Yeah, it's all done, painted, everything ready to go once it arrives on site. All you really need to do is unfold it, and bolt it down to a foundation, or no foundation depending on the use case.

Prefab Review

Yeah.

Boxabl

Plug in utilities and throw in some furniture.

Prefab Review

Yeah, very cool. So I love the idea. It's in some ways a very cool combo of a lot of what we've seen with other companies, right? Meaning we've got this sort of flatpack, we call them kit-style providers, right? And we've got the modular providers. And it totally makes sense that this sort takes a bunch of the positives from both of those things and combines it. I guess one question I have on this is why hasn't anyone done this before? Is there a special sauce or sort of innovation that you all created? I don't think I've seen people do this at least at scale before like you're trying to do.

Boxabl

You know I don't know why no one's really solved this problem before because if you look at building construction in general, it's really one of the last big industries that's still pre-factory. Pretty much all the other modern products are mass-produced on an assembly line with automation and all these other benefits you get in a factory.

Prefab Review

Right. And it's actually North America where it seems like there's higher adoption than in other parts of the world.

Boxabl

Yeah, and you know, although factory-built housing does exist it really only takes about 10% of the market share. So the bulk of it is done on-site. And an example I like to use is, imagine you buy a car and they show up in your driveway and start building it with pieces of metal and welding torches and hammers. That would seem totally weird and crazy. And of course the car would be very expensive, very slow to build, and very poor quality. But that's what they do with housing. So you kn