LED’ing the Way in Technology
Trevor Kaplan Is Making SSV Works Even Brighter with Their New Customizable Switchboard Panel
Words: Matthew McNulty
Photos: Logan Gallagher, Brandon Bunch, & SSV Works
SSV Works has long been a staple of the industry. Providing a wide variety of accessories for you to customize and upgrade your UTV with minimal hassle, especially with wiring and audio, has made SSV Works a popular brand. Their newest venture, however, is a split. SWITCH Works introduction to the market, alongside their Alpha 12 switch, promises some serious innovation and next-level customization. We caught up with Trevor from SSV Works and SWITCH Works and the Trail Hero vendor show to find out more about the switch, as well as more about the man behind it.
UTV Sports: Well, Trevor, can you tell us a little bit about your background with off-roading and power sports in general?
Trevor Kaplan: I’m Trevor with SSV Works, and we are excited to show our new brand SWITCH Works, which is complete electronic controls and accessories for your off-road vehicles. I’m an avid off-roader, and love anything with four wheels or two. Any time we can go out to the desert or the dirt dunes and have a good time, it’s awesome. And, you know, the first thing you do when you get your truck is turn the radio on. So, we started SSV Works 17 years ago, making audio accessories directly for side-by-side vehicles.
We were the first company to have vehicle-specific applications when everybody else was taking car stunt and boat stuff and repurposing it. Everything we build is vehicle-specific. So, as we’ve been using our vehicles off-roading, wheeling it all these events for years and years, we’ve identified a need for better electronic control, something new, something digital with a better display and better control. And that’s where SWITCH Works came from. We wanted to build the best electronic accessory for your off-road vehicle, so you can control your lights, winches, whips, and stereos.
USM: So there’s obviously a lot of upsides and downsides to owning a business in Powersports and you’ve managed to get through it for 17 years so far. What do you think made yourself, SSV Works and now SWITCH Works survive all the odds?
TK: Great question. One after the other. So we’re enthusiasts, we’re wheelers, we go out all the time and take the vehicles out. You know, we find that with a lot of other companies, the people who work there don’t know much about the product they make for you, they are engineers or they are salespeople, but they’re not really enthusiasts.
We go out, we ride, we meet customers, we go out with our industry friends. So we know what customers want because we are those same customers. Everything we do is vehicle-specific and we are even more passionate about it. So again, it’s that we really make the things we want. And we’ve been fortunate enough for customers to like the things we come up with because we are the same customers.
USM: You have branched off with SWITCH Works. Can you talk a little bit about the decision-making behind not just folding it more under SSV Works, but making its own separate entity?
TK: Sure. So, SSV Works technically stands for side-by-side vehicles, obviously jeeps and trucks if you sit side by side, but they’re not in the side-by-side class. So, you know, we focus a little bit more on truck and jeep accessories with SWITCH Works as well. And it is standalone, SSV Works really has focused more on audio and related accessories whereas SWITCH Works is strictly electronic control of those accessories.
USM: So, what is the target audience for these?
TK: SWITCH Works is really geared towards any truck or UTV offered enthusiast, but honestly there is Marine and there are lots of applications where riders can have something they want to control. A lot of riders want to have light bars, they don’t want to add relays, and they don’t want to have fuses. If you want something simple and easy, you can press a button. It’s never going to short, it’s never going to blow or have any issues. It will tell you on the screen what’s wrong with your unit, Monitor voltage, and monitor current. So, this accessory is the next level. There’s nothing like it has ever been made before.
USM: Just so we can have a little background. Can you tell us a little bit about what your product is specifically? And, what can you control and what are the innovations?
TK: SWITCH Works Alpha 12 is a 12-circuit 180 amp Digital Smart Switch. What that means is you have an LCD display with what we call touch buttons. Other people have touch screens, but when you wear gloves, they don’t work similar to how a phone doesn’t work and you miss a text So, we have designed real actual buttons, and LCD screens behind them, so you get the best of a button and the best of an LCD display.
Why do you want an LCD? Because you can put any image; a picture of your car, a picture of your girlfriend, or even a picture of your dog. You can make the buttons red, blue, white, or green to match your vehicle build. You can put partner logos such as t Baja, Rigid, KC, or whatever you want to put on there. You can put these customized logos on there, so it’s unique to your vehicle. With LCD, you don’t just have a piano sticker or boring touch screen that doesn’t work, instead, it’s totally customizable and works effectively.
It becomes frustrating when the technology kind of blends in together, it’s so easy to break, and there is no tactile feedback or proper wiring. Wiring is everything, right? So, we wanted wiring to be simple and with SWITCH Works, we made it so that its power and ground have solid-state electronics. No relays, no fuzes, nothing. It’s just print, connect and you’re good to go. Everything you need is right there. Super simple.
So, we’re an electronics company. We’ve been doing this since day one with Yamaha rhinos, we actually showed the very first Yamaha rhino ever seen at the same show. No one even knew what they were. So that was an awesome, awesome build. And then, you know, it just blew up and exploded from there. Being able to be part of that trend and keep following it, has been awesome.
USM: Do you feel like you will make the same sort of impact with SWITCH Works that you’ve already made with SSV works?
TK: SWITCH Works could be a bigger market. You know, we can do new things for more applications. We’re really excited about where this is going and how many customers we can work with owners of tacomas, jeeps, trucks, and Broncos, everything is awesome.
USM: Do you have a favorite trail here in Sand Hollow?
TK: None specifically by name. It’s just every time we go out here, we’re on something different with a new group of people and we’re fairly new to the area. And it’s a great time every time we go.
USM: What’s your favorite part about coming out to Trail Hero?
TK: Coming out to Trail Hero is a great event. It’s so well attended with Truck and Jeep people who are such a different group of people, but we really love the customers. I mean, these are the people we hang out with, camp with for Thanksgiving and go riding with on New Year’s Day. It’s the same kind of group getting out to Trail Hero. So it’s just a great group of people to hang with.
USM: What’s on your UTV riding playlist?
TK: Great question. I have been adapting my playlist a lot more to country music lately. Depending on the terrain, I might throw some old rock in and you have to throw some AC/DC in occasionally. But Zack Byan’s been pretty high on the list.
USM: Do you have a guilty pleasure song that you’re kind of scared of someone witnessing you rocking out to?
TK: I mean, other than Vanilla Ice, is there anything better?
USM: Do you think there’s anything missing in the Powersports community, be it service, products, or point of view?
TK: My background, other than electronics, is in automotive. Before I started (I used) to work in automotive audio and automotive performance supercharging. The bigger companies in auto drag racing and so forth had a different approach. In Powersports, it’s kind of like the Wild West here, which is nice, and a part of what I love is that we can come back here, make parts with enthusiasts and we can do what we want in the desert.
And while dealing with these customers, we can change seats, [harnesses], cages and all kinds of cool stuff. [UTVs are] a [another] sort of automobile, but the automotive side [of the industry] is definitely bigger. There’s more innovation that’s been there in the past and we’re witnessing and bringing that trend into powersports now. So like we do with our switching systems, it’s cool to take what we know and have learned from auto and bring it into a high-quality product with durability.
USM: What do you think, at least in your view, makes UTV’s so special?
TK: I hate to say it, but they’re kind of like go-karts. You can get in them, you can hammer down, beat the crap out of them, put them away rough, and they are ready for you next time. When we take the Bronco out it’s slow, we’re crawling over stuff and it’s a lot of fun to have the top, the air conditioning and all that. But man, you get in the side-by-side, and it’s just hammer down and go. And it’s just a totally different experience, like riding a dirt bike or like a go-kart. They like to be beaten up.
USM: Do you have a favorite side-by-side?
TK: Honestly, they’re like tools. It depends on where you’re going and what you’re doing. But we’ve been fortunate enough to drive a number of different vehicles, and if we’re riding through the desert or we’re rock crawling, there are different applications for different things.
USM: What is one thing you’d like to leave our audience with? Either something that’s coming out with SWITCH Works, something that’s coming out with SSV Works, or just something that you think our audience should know about this segment.
TK: SWITCH Works is a new brand that we have just recently launched with an entire family of products coming out behind it, things that customers need with better longevity, wiring, installation and overall reliability. And we’re really excited about what’s coming in the next couple of months. So stay tuned because SWITCH Works is going to impress.