HiON Franchisee Training — terminology rubric

A single page that defines every term, acronym, and named concept the rebuilt curriculum uses. The audience: anyone reviewing the modules who isn’t fluent in all three of franchising, EV infrastructure, and HiON’s internal operating vocabulary at once. (Most of us are fluent in two of three, not three of three.)

Where a definition differs from the common-use meaning, the difference is flagged. Where the Operations Manual is the source of truth, the citation points back to the relevant section.

Two house rules to internalize before you read anything else:

Capitalization is fixed. It is always HiON — capital H, lowercase i, capital O, capital N. Never Hion, HION, HiOn, or hiON. Across every register, font, document, and context — including all-caps display.
The three things HiON sells, manages, and operates are named carefully. A HiON EV Franchise is the franchise entity. A HiON EV Facility is the site. EV Charging Equipment is the hardware. Never HiON Supercharger Franchise, HiON Supercharger Facility, or HiON Supercharger Equipment — those phrasings break the Tesla relationship and create FDD risk. Tesla brand language is reserved for direct Tesla references (Tesla Supercharger network, Tesla-manufactured Supercharger equipment, Tesla mobile application) — preserve those verbatim.

1 · HiON entities and naming hierarchy

Term	Definition
HiON	Default short form. Conversation, internal references, headlines, social. Pronounced HIGH-on (rhymes with “lion”).
HiON Superchargers	The consumer / product brand. Signage, driver-facing materials, anywhere a driver or property owner encounters the brand.
HiON Franchise Group, LLC	The franchisor entity. FDDs, term sheets, franchisee correspondence, formal first references in external documents. After first use, drop to “HiON.”
HFG	Internal shorthand for HiON Franchise Group. Board materials, financial models, Slack.
HFG Holdings, LLC	Legal entity. Contracts, FDDs, real estate agreements, banking documents.
HiON IP, LLC	Affiliate of HiON that owns or exclusively licenses the Marks (trademarks, logos, trade dress). The franchisee receives a non-exclusive license to use the Marks solely in connection with the HiON EV Franchise.
HiON EV Franchise	The franchise entity — what the franchisee buys. Never “HiON Supercharger Franchise.”
HiON EV Facility	The physical site. Never “HiON Supercharger Facility.”
EV Charging Equipment	The hardware (cabinets, posts, dispensers, switchgear, network gear) installed at a HiON EV Facility. Tesla-manufactured. Never “HiON Supercharger Equipment.”
Site Host	The owner of the underlying property on which a HiON EV Facility is built. Not a franchisee, not a HiON employee — a third-party landlord who has entered into the HiON Lease + Lease Addendum + Collateral Assignment of Lease. Appears in every module.
The System	Catch-all in the Operations Manual for the HiON operating standards, brand, network, and the operator playbook. When the Manual says “the System,” it means everything HiON requires the franchisee to operate inside of.
The Marks	HiON’s trademarks, trade dress, and licensed brand assets. Used per the marketing-review queue and the Brand Asset Library; never modified without approval.

2 · People, roles, and named acronyms

Acronym / Role	Definition
Owner	The natural person (or entity principal) who signed the Franchise Agreement and bears ultimate financial and legal accountability for the HiON EV Franchise.
DBM — Designated Business Manager	The franchisee’s named on-site operating manager. Mandatory attendee at every Franchisee Training session per FDD Item 11. The DBM is the day-to-day operating principal — the person Joe Frank’s OJT supervision actually trains.
FBC — Franchise Business Consultant	HiON’s primary point of accountability for a franchisee. Reviews pipeline submittals, audits site visits, and runs the second-failure assessment review process per Assessment Format §4. Currently Joe Frank for v1 cohort.
Functional Director	The HiON internal escalation point one level above the FBC. Stage 3 of the escalation ladder (after FBC escalation has failed).
NOC — Network Operations Center	The 24/7/365 monitoring and dispatch function for the EV Charging Equipment. The franchisee does not contact Tesla directly — every equipment-related fault, severity event, or driver-stranded scenario routes through the NOC Hotline or the Partner Portal NOC Fault Escalation path.
Operations Lead	The franchisee’s secondary operating contact for site-level operational matters. Below DBM in seniority; receives certain access tokens and Manual extracts.
AHJ — Authority Having Jurisdiction	The local government body (most often the building department, fire marshal, or utility) with permitting and code authority over a HiON EV Facility. Different AHJ in every market; never assume continuity.
GC — General Contractor	The construction firm executing the build under HiON’s site-design package.
SME — Subject Matter Expert	Internal designation for a named expert (Jim, Joe Lewis, Joe Frank, Tony, counsel) responsible for resolving a specific cluster of `[CONFIRM]` tags.
CX — Customer Experience	Tony Cuomo’s function. Covers the driver-facing aspects of the HiON EV Facility, the Tesla mobile application flow, payments, and driver support routing.
BD — Business Day	A non-holiday weekday. Cure periods, escalation triggers, and CAP deadlines are denominated in BD, not calendar days. “5 BD” means five business days.

3 · Documents and FDD items

Document	Definition
FDD — Franchise Disclosure Document	The pre-sale disclosure document HiON delivers to a prospective franchisee, prepared in accordance with the FTC Franchise Rule and state-specific registration requirements. 23 numbered Items. Currently in draft.
FA — Franchise Agreement	The contract the franchisee signs at the close of the FDD sales process. Defines the grant of rights, the territory, the term, the royalty, default categories, and the franchisee’s operational obligations. The single most-cited document across the curriculum (365 references).
MSA — Master Services Agreement	The companion contract under which HiON provides equipment, maintenance, network, payments processing, and uptime services to the franchisee. Carries the equipment ownership and the operational service stack.
MUDA — Multi-Unit Development Agreement	Where a franchisee commits to opening multiple HiON EV Facilities in a defined territory under a development schedule. Attachments A, B, D define the Search Area, the Development Schedule, and the Reserved Territory.
Lease	The base commercial lease between the franchisee and the Site Host for the underlying property.
Lease Addendum	The HiON-required addendum to every Lease. Carries the franchisor’s standard protections (assignment, cure rights, brand obligations, post-termination rights). Non-negotiable in substance.
Collateral Assignment of Lease	The instrument by which the franchisee assigns the Lease to HiON as collateral. Frequently the term that Site Host counsel reads late and balks at — covered explicitly in M05.
CAP — Corrective Action Plan	The franchisee’s formal written response to a “Corrective Action Required” finding from a HiON audit. Typically due within 10 BD per Operations Manual §3.3.4. Missing the CAP deadline is a material default.
FTC Franchise Rule	The Federal Trade Commission regulation governing franchise sales disclosure in the United States. Sets the 14-day FDD-review minimum and the FPR discipline.

FDD items the curriculum touches

Item	What it is
Item 5	Initial fees. The Initial Franchise Fee per location.
Item 6	Other fees. Royalty, audit fees, transfer fees, renewal fees.
Item 7	Estimated Initial Investment. The per-location investment range disclosed to prospects.
Item 11	Franchisor’s Assistance — including the Franchisee Training Program description, classroom hours, pre-work hours, OJT hours, trainer-staff disclosure, and “successful completion” language. The line item this entire rebuild is anchored to. Resolved 2026-05-19 as Option 2 (~38 classroom hours).
Item 19 — FPR (Financial Performance Representation)	Any HiON-published statement about historical or projected financial performance at a HiON EV Facility. Heavily regulated. The franchisee cannot make Item 19-class statements to a Site Host, a lender, or a prospect unless they fall within the four named exceptions in FTC guidance.

4 · Site and training lifecycle

Term	Definition
Search Area	The geographic territory inside which the franchisee is authorized to develop a HiON EV Facility. Defined in FA Attachment A (or MUDA Attachment A for multi-unit). Has an expiration date; passes back to HiON if not used.
Site Walk	The franchisee’s initial physical visit to a candidate property, prior to the On-Site Audit. Light-weight; informal pass/fail.
On-Site Audit	The structured site evaluation that produces the Site Authorization Submittal. Includes power availability, parking-stall count, sight-line, co-tenant mix, traffic count, and utility-interconnection assessment.
Site Authorization	HiON’s formal sign-off authorizing the franchisee to proceed to lease execution and design on a given site. Must be obtained within a set number of days post-FA-signing.
Commissioning	The structured handoff from construction to live operation. Includes utility energization, network connectivity, Tesla network integration, safety walkthrough, and an OSHA/AHJ punch-list resolution. Produces a Commissioning Approved (or Approved with Conditions) status.
Ribbon-Cutting	The 5-day window inside which the franchisee must execute the public launch event for a newly-commissioned HiON EV Facility.
Initial Investment	Total per-location capital deployment by the franchisee, as disclosed in Item 7. Currently ~$550,000 (subject to FDD finalization).
Franchisee Training Program	This curriculum. 15 modules, ~38 classroom hours + ~14 pre-work hours + ~9 OJT hours = ~60 hours total. Item 11 disclosure. Mandatory pre-opening; “successful completion” is a precondition for opening per Operations Manual §8.3.
Continuing Training Program	The post-Initial-Training cadence (annual / Manual-update-triggered / amendment-triggered / new-hire). Framework drafted; specific modules to be designed post-v1.0 lock.
OJT — On-the-Job Training	Field-based training that occurs at a live HiON EV Facility under a designated OJT supervisor (Joe Frank for v1). Embedded inside specific modules (M03, M04, M10).
Application demonstration	The performance-based assessment component of each module. The trainee executes a real task (e.g., screening a Site Host pitch, building a Site Authorization submittal) and is rubric-scored against four universal criteria.
Knowledge check	The recall-based assessment component. 8–12 multiple-choice questions per module. 80% pass; one retake allowed before FBC review.
Pre-session knowledge check	A 5-question check submitted via Partner Portal at least 24 hours before each session. Failing it gates classroom attendance. Same “successful completion” standard the FDD applies to module assessments.
Successful completion	The FDD-disclosed standard the franchisee must meet to open a HiON EV Facility. Defined in Assessment Format §6.

5 · Operations, escalation, and compliance

Term	Definition
Partner Portal	The HiON-operated digital surface the franchisee uses for every official-channel interaction — pipeline submittals, training submissions, audit responses, NOC Fault Escalation tickets, financial reporting. In v1 it is also the LMS surface for the Franchisee Training Program.
NOC Fault Escalation	The Partner Portal path for SEV 1 and SEV 2 equipment events. Triggers the applicable response clock.
NOC Hotline	The 24/7/365 phone path for live equipment faults. Used in parallel with NOC Fault Escalation.
Severity levels (SEV 1 / SEV 2 / SEV 3)	Operations Manual §3.2 classifies every fault, incident, or escalation into one of three severity tiers. SEV 1 is full-site outage or driver-safety; SEV 2 is partial outage or repeat fault; SEV 3 is intermittent or single-stall. Each tier has a defined response clock and reporting cadence.
Escalation ladder	The 5-stage sequence the franchisee must follow before any formal dispute resolution: Stage 1 (FBC notice) → Stage 2 (FBC formal escalation, 5 BD post-stall) → Stage 3 (Functional Director, 10 BD post-Stage-2) → Stage 4 (Senior Management Referral, 20 days of good-faith engagement) → Stage 5 (formal dispute resolution). Skipping a stage is itself a material breach (§3.4.2 MANDATORY).
CAP — Corrective Action Plan	See §3 above. The written response to a Corrective Action Required audit finding.
Audit Fee	A fee the franchisee may owe HiON if an audit produces findings above a defined threshold. Amount currently `[CONFIRM]` against the FA.
MANDATORY (in the Operations Manual)	A standard whose violation is automatically a material breach of the Franchise Agreement, not subject to interpretation. Operations Manual sections flagged `[MANDATORY]` are non-negotiable.
MFA — Multi-Factor Authentication	Required for every credential that touches a HiON system. Part of the access-control posture covered in M12.
ADA — Americans with Disabilities Act	Federal accessibility law. Applies to HiON EV Facility site design (accessible stalls, path of travel, signage). Covered in M06, M14.
OSHA — Occupational Safety and Health Administration	Federal workplace-safety regulator. PPE requirements and incident-reporting obligations covered in M14.
PPE — Personal Protective Equipment	Required gear for on-site work involving high-voltage equipment.
GAAP — Generally Accepted Accounting Principles	The accounting standard HiON expects franchisee financial reporting to comply with. Covered in M13.

6 · Hardware, technology, money

Term	Definition
Tesla Supercharger network	The Tesla-owned and Tesla-operated DC fast-charging network. HiON EV Facilities are nodes on this network. Preserve the phrasing verbatim.
Tesla-managed / Tesla-operated	Standard descriptions of who controls the station-level technical operation. The franchisee does not control or operate the equipment.
V4 (Tesla V4 Supercharger)	The fourth generation of Tesla Supercharger hardware — the form factor deployed at current HiON sites. Higher power, NACS-native, supports Magic Dock.
NACS — North American Charging Standard	The connector and protocol Tesla developed, now adopted as the SAE J3400 standard. Native to V4 hardware. Means a HiON EV Facility serves every EV brand that has adopted NACS, not just Tesla vehicles.
Magic Dock	The CCS1-to-NACS adapter built into certain Tesla Supercharger stalls. Allows CCS-only vehicles to charge during the NACS transition.
DCFC — Direct Current Fast Charging	The category of charging hardware HiON operates. As opposed to AC Level 2 (slow charging) and AC Level 1 (trickle). DCFC is the only category where HiON competes.
kWh — kilowatt-hour	The unit of dispensed electricity. The royalty is denominated per kWh ($0.05/kWh). Always lowercase k, uppercase W, lowercase h — SI standard.
Uptime	The percentage of time the EV Charging Equipment is operational. Tesla network reports 99.9% network-level uptime; HiON does not control or guarantee site-level uptime, which varies by site.
ICE-ing	When a non-EV (internal combustion engine) vehicle blocks an EV charging stall, preventing use. Covered as a customer-experience scenario in M11.
Sinking Fund	A franchisee-owned reserve, funded on a recurring schedule, that pays for predictable future capital outlays (refresh, equipment replacement, lifecycle work). Covered in M13. Item 7 discloses the Sinking Fund commitment.
Royalty	The recurring fee the franchisee pays HiON on dispensed kWh. Currently $0.05/kWh. Defined in FA.
Initial Franchise Fee	A one-time per-location fee at FA signing. Item 5 disclosure.
ACH — Automated Clearing House	The standard US electronic-payment network. The franchisee’s recurring payments to HiON are ACH-debited.
Brand Asset Library	The Partner Portal repository of approved Marks, photography, layouts, and creative templates. Unmodified use requires no review; modified or new creative routes through the marketing-review queue.
Brand Audit Pack	A specific document set the franchisee produces for the brand-compliance portion of an audit. Defined in M03 Section 7.
NEVI — National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program	Federal funding program for EV charging infrastructure. May be available to HiON sites depending on state administration and timing. Eligibility never assumed; covered conditionally where it appears.
30C	The federal Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit (IRC §30C). A site-specific tax credit potentially available to qualifying HiON EV Facilities. Eligibility depends on placement-in-service date, location, and the franchisee’s tax position — never asserted as automatic.
Depreciation (accelerated / bonus)	Federal tax treatment that may apply to qualifying charging equipment. Eligibility and percentages depend on placement-in-service date and current federal tax law. The franchisee consults a tax advisor — HiON never represents specific outcomes.
FPR — Financial Performance Representation	See §3, FDD Items. Any forward-looking or historical financial-performance statement; heavily regulated. The franchisee is permitted to make FPRs to a Site Host only under the narrow circumstances HiON has documented.

What’s deliberately not in this rubric

Module-internal jargon defined inline. Many modules define a specific scenario type (e.g., “Stage 5 dispute,” “Corrective Action Required finding”) in their own Section 4. Those definitions stay in the module — this rubric covers the cross-cutting vocabulary, not the per-module shorthand.
Voice Playbook vocabulary lists. The Always / Sometimes / Never columns are in voice-playbook.md §05 and aren’t repeated here. If you’re writing customer-facing copy and need to check whether a word is allowed, that’s where it lives.
Operations Manual section names. When a module cites §2.1.2 or §3.4.1, the section name is in the Manual, not on this site. The Manual itself is the source of truth — this site does not duplicate it.

If you find a term that should be defined and isn’t

Send Will the term + the URL where you encountered it. v0.1 will get a sweep before lock, and missing entries are the highest-priority correction class.