250 - The Mid-Season Round Table 1

Gary :

Hi I'm Gary and this is episode 250 of EV Musings, a podcast about renewable electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. And on the show today, it's a roundtable episode.

Now before we start, I wanted to remind you that we're doing a Q &A episode later this season, so send in any questions or topics you want addressing to info@evmusings.com, let's see what I can do about answering them.

So, welcome to episode 250 of the podcast. they grow so quickly, don't they? Anyway, moving on, our main topic of discussion today is a round table episode. And before you start checking your podcast feed and saying, don't those usually come at the end of the season, Gary? Yes, they do. But I'm trying this out, see what it feels like. This season I'm putting in a mid-season round table and there will be one at the end as well, but it's going to be similar format to the main one, just held at a different point.

So just like our usual end of season show, I invite a number of esteemed guests on each one presents a topic of discussion, which they introduce up to the panel. When we've set the world to rights without topic, we move on to another one. Now, usually there's myself and three guests, but for the first mid season one, myself and two guests. So let's get on with the introductions. My first guest is Charlie Gilbert. Charlie is a partner of Field Dynamics while sponsoring this particular episode of the podcast. Welcome Charlie.

Charlie:

Hey Gary, thanks for having me on.

Gary :

My pleasure. second guest is Liz Allen. Liz is a fellow Yorkie and her focus is continuous improvement through her work with full circle continuous improvement. She's very much focused on improving the customer experience for EV drivers. Welcome Liz.

Liz :

Hey up love, how you doing?

Gary :

cracking, cracking. I've gone all grommet. Let's, I think what we'll do, normally I go ladies first, but I got a break with tradition again and I'll say let's start with Charlie. So Charlie, what's your chosen topic? Take it away, Okay.

Charlie "

So I'm going to talk about how can we make EV charging as seamless as possible by ensuring chargers are always where drivers need them most. So that's the exam question that I'd like to discuss and debate. I think we've moved well beyond simply asking where should we put EV chargers to a more strategic question, which is where, when, and how.

Will they actually be used and by what types of drivers? And for ChargePoint operators, as we know, it's all about utilization. Their business model is really simple. In many cases, they need EV drivers to plug in and use their charges regularly. But I think we've moved away from the build it and they will come mentality to something that's far more nuanced, more complex. And we really need to put lots of data around that decision to make.

and investment. And there's also this competitive landscape in the mix as well. And there's a need now more than ever to justify the decisions that we're making. And for drivers, I think this has to fit into our patterns of life. As infrastructure grows, our tolerance for deviation diminishes rapidly as there's more more choice about. I'm an EV driver myself. If I'm on a long journey, I want...

Charlie :

I live in the Midlands, my parents live in Devon, and my tolerance of having a little trip away from a motorway junction to try and find a charger has diminished significantly over the last few years. And the data backs this up. And it's no surprise that things like traffic counts are used by charge point operators when we look at this area. If I live in a terraced house without a driveway, I need chargers nearby on street.

or in places that I go to in my regular weekly patterns of life, supermarkets, retail parks, et cetera. And I think that's probably why some of the research that we've undertaken at Field Dynamics on on-street households has been really well received by the market. But we've seen these charges pop up in the obvious places we expect now. Motorway service stations, arterial hubs, supermarkets, retail parks, on-street locations, and then the slightly more niche

use cases around hotels, leisure attractions, airports, et cetera. But my most hated consulting bingo buzzword is low hanging fruit. And I think a lot of these, yes, let's all shiver. A lot of these types of locations are either have been wired up or will be wired up. So then the follow-on question for that, for the panel, I guess, to discuss is how do we ensure the next wave of charges meets demand in both

rural and urban areas as we move away from some of these more obvious locations. And if I break it down, I think there's a bunch of things here to unpack. There's the location itself and the type of demand it's serving. What function does that site serve? Is the demand coming from residential? Is it coming from in transit? Or is it coming from destination charging? Or is it a combination of all three of those areas?

And we see that the strongest sites, the sites that do really, really well, either cater for one of those demand vectors very well indeed, or we have locations which surface up a combination of those three areas. But it's important to measure, it's important to measure all of those three areas in different but consistent ways with different datasets. And we are finding that if a charger site only serves one mode,

Charlie :

and serves that poorly, that's where you see poor load utilization and the risk of a stranded asset. The other area that we look at is how does this site compare to its peers? And we work with four, probably about 70 data sets. Many of them correlate to how well that site is performing from a utilization perspective. But many metrics and data feeds that we look at have no correlation whatsoever. It's like taking a

firing a shotgun at a scattergraph, there is no relationship at all. But the ones that do have a strong correlation, we weight those and give each site a kind of weighted score. We've also got the ever-changing landscape of infrastructure going in. 75,000 public charges in the ground, but we know they're not evenly spread. We've got the government's £341 million levy scheme. There is a

daily tenders out there for the local authorities at the moment. They're all out to procurement and some of the programs of investment are significant. Many thousands of on-street charges going in that kind seven to 22 AC units over the kind of 15 to 20 year contracts. So for your listeners, think be assured there's an awful lot of planning and extensive data analysis to ensure that these charges

are going in the places where we need, but we can't rest on our laurels. Because I think that ultimately this leads to the really more complex question, which is how many and when are we installing the right number of chargers at the right speed at the right time? And this really matters. If I've got a portfolio of locations, which ones do I look at first? Which ones do I put into future phases of rollout?

And I think the same question is pertinent if you're a provider of ultra rapid hubs or you deliver on street charger. And I'd like to just finish off just in terms of pose the question in terms of some facts. So we've measured the MOT data from all 140 million MOT records and we look at every make, every model and understand how many miles that vehicle's taken. And we have a data set that we put together that

Charlie :

helps people understand that demand landscape. And the average UK car or van travels 137 miles per week. That's up from 106 miles post-COVID, and I think we can all feel that the roads are busier now than ever before. And if we add up all the mileage of every single car and van, swap them immediately from ice to bed, then we have an 80 terawatt hour demand.

need by: 2050

big risk here is that for investors and whether that's private organizations or the public sector, we don't get multiple shots at this. We can't put a load of stuff in and then have the need to kind of rip it out five years down track. We largely get one chance to place the infrastructure correctly. I think get it right, everybody wins. Get it wrong, it's a really, really expensive mistake. And I think that's why good data-driven decision-making is really important.

Gary :

So do you have a question you'd like to open the discussion up with?

Charlie :

For me, I think it's what do you see as the most important factors when we're looking at location?

I'm going to ask Liz, I'm going to divert this to Liz because when it comes to public charging, a lot of my stuff is very, very, I know where I'm going. I start here, I go up to my parents, I'm pretty much M1, maybe a little bit around the M25. Liz, your son has just started down at Exeter University. So you're having, you've got a lower range car than I have. You're tending to go out more into what I would term, you know, the charging wastelands. So how's your experience been in terms of you know, locating the charges and how has that affected the way you plan a journey?

Liz :

Well, you've got to remember that I'm also married to a map geek, which I probably have never shared before, but my husband being the professor of climate change that he is, climate science, he wanted to be a cartographer. So finding the charger isn't always a biggie unless it's just me on my own. And usually what I will do in advance is when I know I've got a long journey, I will even now check out where the chargers are.

on the way. I'm a planner anyway, I've always been a planner. No matter how my neuro spicy brain works, you know, I still plan certain things. And actually, because of the fact of moving from a VW Golf couple of years back into, you know, that had 520 miles range on average to a Hyundai Ioniq that's got kind of a maximum of 195 miles in the summer is a bit of a different.

Liz :

You know, it's a bit of a different kettle of fish. So my planning skills came in and I'm probably a bit like my dad. My dad used to do this as well. So finding charges, there's only been an odd occasion where I've not been out. I'll say it slightly differently. It's not that I couldn't find the charger. It's just that when I got there, the site was down. The whole site and we're talking three sets of, it was a massive hub. You'll know this hub, Gary. Massive hub with three sets of charges.

And actually when I got there and it wasn't advertised, there was nothing to say that this site was down. But it was finding another charger that was the problem because I didn't have 5G, so I couldn't get on any of the aggregator apps. It was really hard to work out, God, I've only got 20 miles range left. What do I do now? So I ended up...

I had a phone signal, I rang my husband and he looked on the aggregator apps and went right this one half a mile away from you. But of course the pin location wasn't right.

Gary :

I'm going to jump in because I feel that you're tending to drift over into your particular topic, which I think we're going to cover in a second. want to bring it back to what Charlie was saying. My impression is that, as you said, we've had a bit of a land grab. We've had a lot of Chargepoint operators going in saying, I've got this piece of land, I'm going to put a charger in there without really looking back and thinking, is this the best place to put that charger? And as you've said, as we move forward, there's going to be a need for a lot more chargers.

and the places in which they need to be installed, they're probably going to be a little bit different to where they are now. Do you have any sort of thought or, or, or impressed about the level of stranded assets that the charge point operators are going to have as a result of putting these charge points in what will ultimately come to be probably the wrong place?

Charlie :

think there'll definitely be some and there'll be a lot of factors that will dictate whether they become stranded assets or not, not just the location. It's going to be the end-to-end service and the whole end-to-end experience of the driver using the vehicle. But I do think as we go into some of the slightly more nuanced areas, there is going to be more more rigor needed to ascertain whether this is going to be a viable site or not.

And I think that's good. can't just do a Gatling gun and put them everywhere because there's only so much money. And yes, we need to make sure that the rollout is socially inclusive. And it's great to see that as we're involved in a lot of the Levi work, that that is a big factor. the tenders that are coming out from local authorities are really stressing that. And that's great because my big fear is that particularly in rural communities that they get.

are villages with a thousand,: 2000

The usual suspects that I mentioned are there and will grow. And the exam question there is not whether they'll come, it's when will they come and in what order. think particularly in rural areas, there's going to be a lot of focus needed. And I think that's where the risk is most stressed.

Gary :

harger capacity by the end of: 2026

I'm going to put another one in London or something like that. Is that something that you would expect to happen?

Charlie :

I think just to kind of push back on that, there is a lot of activity that's being undertaken from a procurement perspective in the public sector. So I think there will be a large number of charges that will go into these areas as tenders are rewarded, contracts are rewarded. And they will because they're going to typically be towards the slower end of the market. They're going to be close to people's homes in some of these communities. And I think that's

One of really good things about the Levi program, local authorities are taking the responsibility because they know their areas and it's particularly in rural areas. You don't know the nuance. You don't know the seasonality. If I'm down in Devon, near where my parents live in certain weekends of the year, it's absolutely gridlocked. In other weekends of the year, I can drive for five, 10 minutes and not see another car. So you have to look at these local factors.

which is why think it's right that local authorities are leading the charge on putting some of this infrastructure in place. So yes, report does highlight these things, but the market's not standing still and the investment will continue to go in. yes, is a disparity, geographic disparity between certain areas. You mentioned London and yeah, you're absolutely right. There's local authorities in London that have probably got enough infrastructure to last them for decades in terms of planning ahead of need. But from my perspective, I think there's a lot of good work being done. And we see it from both sides. We see it from the bid activity of the charge point operators themselves, who are our clients. We see it from the local authorities who come to us for support. And we also see it from the network operator side of things in terms of connection requests and helping to try and streamline that process because that's the other challenge is grid capacity and making sure that these connections are energised so that people can start accessing the infrastructure as soon as possible.

Gary :

Liz, are you an AC charger or a DC charger mostly? In public, not at home.

Liz :

Yeah, so I would say I am a DC charger because of the need to be in and out as quick as I can.

Gary :

So what is the AC charging like because you're based in the Reading area? What's it like around there? Would you say that if you didn't have home charging you would be well served or not?

Liz :

I would say for AC, it's a little bit hit and miss. I don't think there's been a lot of infrastructure development for AC charging around here. But again, because having a home charger for me makes a massive difference. So I can't say I've looked specifically at the AC numbers locally, but I have, but there's just not a lot.

And Charlie might know otherwise, but yeah, I don't think Reading has got a lot of big spread just yet.

So Charlie, would we be looking at potentially somewhere like Reading? Is that the kind of place where the Levi Fund would go, right, we've got this need here, we'd put those in and they'd come to someone like Field Dynamics and say, where is the actual best areas within Reading to do it? Or is that the kind of place where they'd push back and they'd say, no, we're going to hand this off to the big charge point operators, the rapids, the ultra rapids, the grid serves, the ospreys, the ionities of the world and let them sort that out on our behalf.

Charlie :

So think one of the things that's really useful to look at in the round in this is that it's not an either or in pretty much everywhere. It's got to be a combination of solutions that are going into the market to service different types of demand. So in somewhere like Reading, where there's lots of arterial routes, there's high traffic flows, there's an urban center, then yes, absolutely, you'd expect to see a combination of supermarkets being wired up, retail.

units been wider and the local authority also has saw supporting with on-street infrastructure in time. So whilst, you might say, it's not as predominant a factor at the moment, I think we are going to really feel the wave of this infrastructure come through and we'll start to see with that more more households that are currently on-street making the switch, which is what we need.

Gary :

Liz, any other comments?

Liz :

Yeah, just, suppose, whether, and you can tell me whether that you want me to go into this. I'm just looking at Reading specifically, the capital funding that they've received and the levels of capability funding. And I think it's just some of it for Reading for the council, for the local authority. It's just take, these things are just, they just take time, don't they, to come through. So as you know, Charlie, it's just that level of.

of time scale and being able to utilize the funding and whether it's getting the right people in place or getting the assets in there with the kind of the agreement and choosing the CPO. I think that's it, it?

Charlie :

Exactly. And it's the selection of that partner and local authorities taking lots of guidance from DFT and so on, and the Levi Fund program to look into this. you're right, is a, certainly we've seen from the work that we've done, there are local authorities who've really led and done lots of their planning upfront. there's local authorities have also just had some capability funding. So this is where there is funding for offices within council specifically to look at helping to roll out EV infrastructure. that's been, I think, a really successful use of money because otherwise, local authorities are really, really hard pressed. They're so time poor, actually having some dedicated resource has made this happen. If there wasn't that dedicated resource, it would just be some of the leading innovative authorities that we all know doing their thing and leaving everyone else behind. But we have had people come to us and they are not not EV experts. They've done a whole range of different types of career before entering roles as EV officers. And it's our job as an industry to support them because fundamentally it's a reasonably complex thing for somebody to go into. And also the commercial agreements that need to be negotiated and reviewed in that process. They are typically 15, 20 year contracts. So there's a lot of nuance in their commercially and legally and all those sorts of things and technically. putting all that all together and pushing it on one person within the local authorities has been hard for lots of local places. think that Senex and others have been doing some great work with training and making sure that those people are as match fit as possible to make those decisions. And we've certainly been helping with them with tools and data and making that process as seamless as possible. It's not perfect, but it's a great site better than it was before the program started.

Liz :

So I was going to add on to that, Charlie, with regards to Cenex. I mean, I think the thing that Cenex has been doing with their road shows have provided local authorities with the ability to get to know one another a little bit as well, because by going to a training event or whatever, a road show event, but actually when they're there, they get that opportunity to network with other councils. And I just see that as a good thing.

Absolutely.

Gary :

Charlie, I think we're about ready to wrap this up, but obviously I've got a lot of, hopefully, Chargepoint operators who listened to this episode. You've got a lot of data that would be useful to these Chargepoint operators as they look to roll out their network. How could they get in touch with you and get that information?

Charlie :

Look on our website. We've got a brand new shiny website at fielddynamics.co.uk or just drop me a note on LinkedIn. I'd be more than happy to have the discussion. Thank you, Gary.

Gary :

Thank very much. Over to you Liz, what is your chosen topic and take it away.

Liz :

It's not going to be a long intro, but so I want to talk about the EV charging customer experience, not from a business point of view, not to start with anyway, but as a driver. Because honestly, when I plug my car in, I don't want to be thinking about back office systems or fault management processes or payment systems or whatever. I just want it to work. I want to feel confident that I won't be stranded, that the app will behave if I need to use it, that I won't be hit with unexpected costs like through pre-auth fees and that if something does go wrong, someone actually cares enough to fix it. So yet too often it's not always the reality. The basics still aren't consistent and that erodes trust from the drivers and also if it's revenue sharing model from those people who are involved, the other stakeholders, which is something the EV sector desperately needs if we're serious about widespread adoption. So my question is, how do we make sure the driver's real everyday experience becomes the starting point for everything else.

Gary :

Fantastic. Charlie, do you want to start with this or do you want me to wade in?

Charlie :

Have a wade, have a wade Gary and then I'll uh...

Gary :

I was at a charging site quite recently, fairly recently open one. I'm not going to name any names on this, but I was there for about three hours overall for various reasons. I wasn't charging that whole time. There was a nice on-site facilities and things like that. But I did keep an eye out on some of the people who were coming and going and it was quite busy. And of the half a dozen people that I specifically focused on who came in to do a charge, there wasn't a single one of them who was able to start the charge first time including myself. I know, I know. And some of this was teething issues with the work because it was a fairly new site. Some of it was just, well, they're trying to use a payment method that wasn't valid. Some of it was, and I know this is a personal bugbear of yours - they plugged in and then tried to authenticate, whereas they should have done the authentication before plugging in.

Liz :

Gods.

Yeah, yeah.

Gary :

And I think that's exactly the kind of thing that you're talking about, isn't it, Liz?

Liz :

All of the above. We're never going to expect this to be as simple as putting a fuel pump in a petrol or diesel car. I'm not saying that. And I can understand, and I know which site you're talking about, and that could be teething issues, theoretically. But if you're talking about every single person that you saw over that three hour period had problems, that's an issue. To me, that's kind of, you know, what happened prior to that. Why was it opened and why was there not a pilot first? Just bring your mates around, who's got an EV, let's all charge and I'll bring all the business, know, anybody who's got an EV in the business, just bring them in and just, let's just pilot it. Let's see how it works. Do a bit of testing rather than just going straight in for it and kind of going, having those issues because that in itself is not building consumer confidence.

Gary :

I think half the problem that comes from that is that the people who do the testing, test it, expected it to work as opposed to test it, expecting it to fail. And I'll give you a prime example. If you were listening in the previous few weeks, you'll know this. I spoke to Andreas Atkins from Ionity. They've recently opened a charge thing in Fleet, which is a couple of miles from where I live. I went there the day it opened. Well, within 24 hours of it opened, they've got, I think, eight units there. Six of the credit card readers were throwing a fault within 24 hours of it being opened. And then I sent my friend of mine back there about three weeks later and he said two of the credit card readers are still throwing a fault. And I think what happens is when they're testing them, they'll go in and they'll go, right, I'm going to use an Ionity card because I know when Ionity card works, look, the RFID card works, therefore it's fine. Or they'll... They'll set up the credit card readers and they'll make sure everything's right. And then they'll do the test. And of course it's going to work if you set the system up to work, but it's when the rubber meets the road. And you've got to do this in a real life situation where the sun's been on the credit card reader for a couple of hours and it's nice and warm or it's rained and a bit of rain's gone in where the credit card reader attaches in the little connector cable there and it's allowed ingress and that sort of stuff. And that's what causes a lot of the issues which end up with people like yourself there, Liz, who are going, you know, this needs to be easier, it needs to be simpler. And like you say, it's never going to be as quick and there are always going to be issues, but it needs to be the absolute minority rather than, as I experienced yesterday, quite a large majority of them.

Liz :

.: 9999

It's got to be, we've got to look at it holistically. We've got to look at it from a continuous improvement point of view. You can't just chuck those assets in the ground. And I know all the stuff that Charlie's, Charlie and Field Dynamics are doing is fantastic. The knock-on effect of not identifying what happens after those charges in the ground will have that subsequent issue with utilization, trust. And, and you know, I just think it's that testing beforehand, like you just said, Gary.

If you've not done it and you've not, it's about proactive rather than reactive. And that's maintenance service or just get it in the ground and making sure that, okay, let's not invite the public in until we know that it's behaving. And it's not always their fault because there's all sorts of things that, know, different software and different platforms coming into one piece of hardware. So I know it's not easy, but Don't put it out there until it's right.

Gary :

Yeah. Charlie?

Charlie :

Yeah, I think it comes back to this patterns of life common that I mentioned. I mean, I have two EVs. I've got a driver Tesla, so I plug and charge, so I don't have any of that sort of hassle usually. And then I also have a mini electric, which we've had for a while and we probably need to change it actually because the kids are now big and it's a bit like two giraffes trying to get out of the phone box when they climb out the back of it. But that said, I think it is, when we look at it, coming back to

The experience, I mean, I've had a number of instances and I like going around and testing stuff out and playing the role of the on-street household because then it's such a part of what Field Dynamics do. Plugging in charging at home, it would be remiss of me not to hit the public network as much as I can just to try it. My experience is that when I've been in the mini and I've looked, needing to charge, I've had a range of different challenges.

I've had one incident where we decided to go camping for the weekend and we took both cars and the Mini only does now probably 90 miles, something like that. So we definitely needed to charge it up. Particularly it was rammed full of paraphernalia for this camping trip when we got down there. And the, behold, the campsite had an EV charger. I was like, brilliant. But there was no phone reception at all.

And the Wi-Fi didn't work outside the office where this charger was. And it's just like the simple things. I know I guess that's team comms and I'm sure that's been fixed now. But what it does mean is that it registers something in your brain to go, right, okay, next time I won't do that. Next time I will charge somewhere else or I'll do something different. So I think it does have that impact. yes, the experience for me.

when I'm driving around the country and dropping into supercharger hubs and all those things is great. It's easier than filling up with petrol or diesel because you just plug in, plug out, and then off you go. It's as simple as that. if that's the standard that's set, then I think as technology matures, I think we will move more and more to that type of experience. And it has to for mass adoption to take place.

Gary :

la have been doing this since: 2016

Liz :

Love to see it like that, Gary, seriously, because that's what we've got. We've got to be aiming for, got to be aiming for less people on the naughty list and more people on the good list. And I was going to say, I think we are still, the three of us on this session, we're still quite unique in this country because, and I can't remember how many we're up to now. It was about 1.3 million drivers or EVs on the road. So really, Yes, there might be two people driving one car, you know, but we are still unique in the, in, you know, because of the low number of people driving EVs at the moment, we have to remember that moving forward, people aren't going to be as patient as we are. They won't stand in the freezing cold as me and my husband did, but that was his choice. And I was, I'm so cold, you know, trying to actually get a charger to work when, and then we were on the phone to customer support for probably about another 10 minutes and it didn't work, there will be people who will just jump on social media and they'll just be stabbing it up. You know, it'll just escalate and we don't want that. We really, really don't. So we've got to try and put some effort in to make it as simple as possible, even with all of these different systems. So yeah, I'd love for it to kind of be like the Tesla experience. And Charlie, can I come with you a few times, please?

Charlie :

Yeah.

Gary :

We're in the minute. Yeah. But I want to throw one other sort of curve ball in here, which you know, my personal little hobby horse here, which is education. And we've all done this. We've all spoken to people at charges who've said things like, I don't know what I'm doing. This is the first time I've ever done a charge. I don't know how this works. I had, literally had a French guy approach me at a motorway service area, just south of Paris with a brand new BMW. And he said to me in French, "I literally just picked this car up. have no idea what I'm doing. Can you help me get a charge started?" And the number of people I've encountered at charges and they're saying, I can't get this cable to fit. won't go into the connector. And I say, yes, but do know, you've got to pull the little rubber bung out to expose the high volt. nobody told me that. So Liz, how much of the kind of issues that we're, that you're experiencing or that you're hearing about are education related as opposed to the other aspects that we've already discussed.

Liz :

You know, there's still a lot of education that's needed, even people who have been driving EVs for a while. And actually, I think there are a number of places, and I know me and you've talked about this before, Gary, where that education needs can and needs to be provided, you know, right back at the point where however you purchase that vehicle. That's where it's got to be, you know, or even, even when you're purchasing the vehicle, if it's with a dealership, for example, and that's one of my personal hobby horses are jumping on, you know, when it's with a dealership, they just, they need to be asking the driver, how many miles are you driving? Where do you commonly drive? What do you, what does your week look like? Are there any really long drives that you do on a monthly basis? That kind of thing. Where are you living? We've got your address here, but does that mean you've got a drive? Are you going to have to use on street charging? This kind of thing, because actually, I think it's just a bit of care and attention, and it's not about selling a petrol or a diesel car anymore. It's about making sure that that driver who comes in and is thinking about buying an EV, wherever they live, have enough Information to make that informed decision.

Gary :

Yeah. It's a shame this is audio only because Charlie and I busted in nodding furious. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right.

Charlie:

And I'm waving my arms around as usual, so yeah.

Gary :

And anything else to say on this before we move on?

Liz:

No, I think the only thing I'd throw into the mix as well that as well is that sort of view of the forward plan. All that sort of great work that I talked about in terms of charges going in, are the dealers aware of that? And it's that joining those dots that I think is really, really important. And they should be interested in being, hearing the argument and what's coming down track because it's only going to help their sales.

Gary :

Yes.

Liz :

Are they bought into it as well, Charlie? This is the other thing, isn't it? It's kind of one of my local dealerships and you know this, Gary, I've talked about this before. One of my local dealerships, I've taken our REV in for a service and the guy behind the service desk has gone, well, I don't really know about electric. kind of see it as an alternative fuel really is the future. And I'm like, my God, please. Let's just go now. And I'm actually, we've got a service to you very soon.

And I've not chosen that garage. We're going somewhere else. That dealership should have said, going somewhere else.

Gary :

Cool, right, so that's topic number two down. I'm going to keep on the public charging bandwagon and talk about charge speeds. Now, you and I know Liz because we've talked about this and I'm sure Charlie knows as well, there's a huge amount of misunderstanding about what an EV driver can expect when they arrive at a 350 kilowatt charger, for example. I can't...count the number of people who are complaining because they're not getting 350 kilowatts despite the fact that they're in a Nissan Leaf which will max out at 50 kilowatts. know, some expect the maximum charging speed of their car. Some expect the maximum charging speed of the charger. And as a general rule, most people, Tesla accepted, don't get anywhere near the charge speed that they're expecting. And I know the reason why this is, but I wanted to sort of open up this discussion by asking the rest of the panel here. What is their experience when it comes to charging speeds, what they get versus what they expect? And we'll start with Liz because I know Charlie's going to go straight onto the Tesla bandwagon. So we'll, bring him in later.

Liz :

Gary, honestly, you know, I've kind of, I've talked about it recently. Our Ionic, it only takes supposedly 44 kilowatts. So I'm really pleased when I get that. In fact, the other day we had a CPO and I actually got 47 and I was bowled over. So for us, getting the speed that's kind of promised or just that we need. It's so important because ours is a small battery and actually we need to have what it stated, but I know that there are different situations and the one recently going down to Exeter, the car had, my husband had been driving, we hadn't stopped, we literally got all the way down there. So it's about 164, 165 miles, no stop, good conditions, about 13 degrees temperature. And that's when we got this 47, 48 kilowatts. And that was great. But people don't understand. I didn't understand this. I didn't understand why some chargers, we only got 35 kilowatts. You know, so actually I had to ask another IONIQ owner and I went, do you ever get this thing happening? So again, it is that level of education about it and understanding.

Gary :

So let me ask a follow up there on that. Given that your car won't charge at anything more than about 50 at an absolute maximum, do you actively seek out 50 kilowatt charges or do you say, I'm going to use 120 or a 350 kilowatt charger?

Liz :

Depending on where we're going, Gary, to be honest, I'm more likely to choose somewhere that works with what we have planned. So for this one, we went to a supermarket to buy a couple of things and we'd driven a long way, so it was a comfort break too. So it had to have those things there and the charges were much more powerful than we needed. So I think it just depends where you go to what you need. I'm not going to specifically look out for somewhere that that is a 50 kilowatt if it's not got the facilities that I need in there.

Gary :

So again another hypothetical if you pull in a grid serve motorway service area that's got a lot of the high power charges they will also have what they now deem the medium power charges which are the 50 kilowatts which are usually over another side of the car park. Will you go to the 50 kilowatts or will you go to the brand new shiny ones?

Liz :

You've just said to me though it was in the other side of the car park. So you know what I'm going to say, don't you? If it's at the other side of the car park, I'm probably going to go to the higher power charges. But I mean, you know, thinking about it now, you're probably going to be playing devil's advocate because I know that's your favorite phrase. And I'm saying I might be stopping somebody who's got a higher powered car getting a charge. That set me thinking.

Gary :

Charlie?

Charlie :

Yeah, I think we need to stop thinking that everybody is electrical engineers and knows charge curves and all that kind of stuff. Ultimately, it's time and cost. Those are the two metrics that people really, really care about. And if we start to normalize and educate, as we're saying, then I think there's a very simple matrix. I can visualize it now saying, okay, if you're going to charge it, this type of charger, you've got this type of car then you're this sort of window of cost and time. And then that helps you coming back to your point, Liz, to plan. yeah, and it's not, I'm guilty of it as well. I love watching the car, the charger curves and all that kind of stuff on the UI on the dashboard, but that's because I'm a nerd and most people don't care. They just want to go somewhere that's convenient, pay a fair price and carry on seamless experience into the bargain.

Gary :

There we go. But I think there is definitely, you can't touch on it there, Charlie. There's a lot of, again, my hobby horse, a lot of education on this because I was lucky enough to get people from Polestar, lent me a Polestar 2 for a couple of weeks over Christmas. And I tried a number of different chargers under different charging conditions. Now that particular car will do max about 200, 205 kilowatts. And I tried all sorts of different Alpatronics and I tried Ionities and all that.

The only one that actually gave me anywhere near that was surprise surprise. Tesla supercharger. Everything else gave me 80 kilowatts, a hundred kilowatts, maybe 105 kilowatts. And a lot of that was due to, well, it was first thing in the morning. The charger was cold. The battery was cold or I plugged in at 65%. So it's not going to give me the maximum charge because of the charge curve. And again, as you say, Charlie, you don't have to be an electrical engineer to know this, but it would be useful to have just a little bit of education. And even if it's just from the point of view of, know, if you're on a rapid charger and you get to 80%, 80 % probably best to unplug because you're to be there forever. Otherwise, and a lot of people don't understand that and then complain that, I was there for two hours charging on this thing. took it, took it 90 minutes to do 80 % to a hundred, you know, problems with the charger. And of course it's not the problems with the education of the user.

Charlie :

But think there's role to play there for the providers of the hardware and software to nudge that to them so that you're not finding that out. It's part education, but it could also be part automation. And it just happens. I went up to Harrogate the other day for a beer festival, actually, which was lots of fun, and charged, just as I came into Harrogate at Garden Center, and there were a couple of things there that I've noticed. I plugged in and because it was a busy time period, it's like, yeah, you're only getting up to 80%. Okay. That's fine. And then you need to move it. And the second thing that I found was that there were two non-Tesla vehicles that were parked in between a bay, which meant that the bay in the middle, you couldn't charge because they were front facing things. there's again, a continuous improvement thing there from There was a guy there from Tesla actually who was also trying to say, yeah, I know, know. Yeah, they've got on the new ones that they've sorted this out, but not here.

Gary :

Yeah, the new V4s with the longer cables so you don't have to block two two-bass to get in. Yeah, fantastic ones. Fantastic ones. Anybody else? Any final words on this before we wrap up?

Liz :

I was just going to add in that same about the 80 % rule. think that's, it's really important. think it's a great idea for, for CPOs to, you know, if it is busy to actually be just allowing that, but they've got to, they've got it again, they've got to be able to provide that information, but use the displays to provide it because they're, they're, they should be able to add interactive information or kind of AI, use some kind of AI integration so that that information is there. Yeah, you know, I love AI, Gary. But, you know, just be able to provide it simply because not everybody wants to just look at loads and loads of text. Some people just want, you know, that people learn in different ways. So I just think we have to think about everybody who's plugging in, how they would learn. If they came for this to this country from somewhere and they were non-English speaking. What would they do when they previously, you know, maybe drove an EV and wherever they are, how would they know how to do this?

Gary :

Excellent. Very valid point. Very valid point. Fantastic.

Charlie :

thought you were going to say Martians from Mars then, this.

Gary :

I'm hoping if they've come from Mars they've sorted out electric vehicle charging to a higher degree than we have.

Liz :

I've just got a smash, smash advert in my head then you know, they peel them with their metal knives. Sorry.

Gary :

Yeah, you're dating as old out here, with that advert. Anyway, moving on, it's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with the listeners. I'm going to start with Liz on this. Do you have anything?

Liz :

I do. In: 2023

Gary :

So what, eight billion people with 60 kettles each?

Liz :

60 kettles, 2.5 kilowatt kettles each. There you go. I bet you know where I got that from.

Gary :

Yes, I do. And we've mentioned him already on this podcast, haven't we?

Liz :

We have mentioned them already.

Gary :

That is a fascinating stat and very, very frightening as well. Charlie?

Charlie :

Slightly different than Yours less scary then.

Well, cable theft, it's so common. Now, I've seen it from three different sites in the last few months, just near to where I live. Any innovations that sort this out are good and there's lots of work being done on alarms and resistance in cables so that people, it makes it harder for people to clip them and all that good stuff. I think that is a really, really good thing and we need more innovation in this space. Because coming back to the point I made right at the beginning is utilization is key. And for lots and lots of CPOs, they only make money from the kilowatts that go through their equipment. And if they're not in use, it's really, really tough. So any innovation in that space and there's lots of really good stuff coming through is very much welcome.

Gary :

.: 54609

Charlie :

Thank you for having us.

Liz :

Thank you for having me.

Gary

My pleasure.

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I know you’re probably driving or walking or jogging now. But if you can remember- and you enjoyed this episode drop a review in iTunes, please. It really helps the old algorithms. Now if you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you. Why don't let me know you got to this point by tweeting me at musingsv.beescar.social with the words "Mid-season already? #IfYouKnowYouKnow' nothing else. Thanks as always to my co-founder Simone. You know I asked him how often he lets other people have a go on his electric unicycle. He said there's not a lot of people he trusts with his pride and joy.

He's been bitten too many times by people doing things they really shouldn't.

Liz :

It's gonna be aiming for less people on the naughty list.