249 - The Ionity Episode

Gary:

Hi, I'm Gary, and this is episode 249 of EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles, and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today, I'll be asking the important questions of Ionity. If they're charging 74p a kilowatt hour on the one hand, but by your own definition, you are comfortable with 43 pence a kilowatt hour, help me understand how that's not price gouging.

Our main topic of discussion today is the Ionity Charging Network. Over the 250 episodes of this podcast, I've tried to speak to senior executives at a large number of the top charge point operators in the country. I've spoken with Osprey Charging, Fastend, Gridserve, Podpoint, Geniepoint, SmartCharge, BP Pulse, BEV, Connecticurb, Chargy, and Instavolt over several seasons.

Well, as many of you will know, if you've listened to the podcast or read my substack articles and newsletters, we currently have around 70 charge point operators in the country. I think speaking to all of them would be a bit of a futile exercise. Some of them are very, very localized, so asking them their rollout strategy wouldn't be of interest to many listeners, for example.

But there are a number of CPOs who rate in the Zapmap top 10 large and medium-sized best CPOs with whom I've yet to speak, and one of them is or was Ionity. So let's start with a bit of background. Ionity is a service that came out of the Dieselgate scandal where VW used cheap devices to bypass emissions.

ai Motor Group came in during: 2019

months, and this was: 2020

But since then, they've accelerated the rollout and now have around 40 sites. The hardware is great, and generally it's fast and reliable, but the Ionity model is a little different to other CPOs. Because they were designed for use with vehicles from the founding members mentioned earlier, they provide contracts with owners of those cars to get relatively cheap charging. If you have one of their cars and you take out an e-MSP contract with them, it can be down in the mid 50 pence a kilowatt hour. But if you don't have a contract, they are towards the higher end of the public charging spectrum, although not necessarily the most expensive for ultra-rapid charging. I mean, it used to be even worse. At one point, when I was paying around nine pence a kilowatt hour for charging with a Chargemaster subscription, Ionity put their rates up to 69 pence a kilowatt hour. At that time, everyone thought this was financial suicide. But of course, it was protecting their core customers, the drivers of the cars from the manufacturers supporting them. They'd kept the price, the ad hoc charging price, relatively stable for public charging since then. And now other CPOs have caught and overtaken Ionity in terms of prices charged. So knowing that, I wanted to get Ionity onto the show to chat about their network.

A:

My name's Andreas Atkins. I'm the country manager for the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland for Ionity.

G:

Now, I have a fairly standard number of topics that I like to cover when I speak to charge point operators. It allows me to compare and contrast the answers. I'd like to start, if I could, with your actual site rollout. At the moment, you've got something in the region of about 29 or 30 sites in the UK.

You started quite small in the UK, stayed small for quite a few years, and then you did a fairly rapid expansion. Talk to me about your rollout strategy for new sites. How do you decide what the locations are?

A:

e sold in absolute numbers in: 2024

G:

I'm not far from your Cove/ Farnborough site just off the M3. Now, two years ago, that was a grass verge next to a restaurant.

A:

Yes, I remember this one well.

G:

And now it's got either eight or 10 chargers in there. How did you decide that that was where you wanted to put a new site? What was the thought process that goes into saying, right, you know, it's 900 metres off the M3, but there's nothing there at the moment?

A:

Ionity's core business is coverage for EV drivers. There's been a slight tilt in the strategy. We're also now looking to build hubs in more urban locations. We literally map out journeys, customer journeys across the UK, across Europe, the networks connected, and try to find the best roadside locations that will best suit customers for their journeys when they're making longer distance journeys. And we always pay attention to not only the location, but also customer amenities that the customer experience whilst on the site is an important factor. The example that you gave, the fleet just off the M3 is located next to a pub. There's a Starbucks drive-thru just around the corner. There are amenities, and there have been amenity services that customers can use. That's why we were interested in this circumstance. We actually purchased that greenfield piece of land that we've, as you said, we've changed and is now a fully functioning hub. We also work with a number of different asset classes that tend to work really well for us. The electric vehicle charging industry has opened up opportunities for the service industry to benefit from that. Our expertise through our shareholders is the car and through R&T is the charging. It's not food and beverage. So we like to work with select food and beverage suppliers. So we have a number of sites on out-of-town retail parks. Newcastle Metro Centre was one of the first of those, for example, it's on the ring road of the city there. Lots of amenities on site. The retail park and the tenants there benefit from our customers visiting the site because they would then use the facilities to spend on tea, coffee, and food. We've done quite a lot of work with hotels, major roadside hotels, and Starbucks. A number of Starbucks drive-thrus with the franchisees. The two businesses tend to complement each other. So we lease land and sometimes we purchase the freehold.

G:

So Andres, you mentioned that you're adding another, did you say 20 odd sites this next year?

A:

Yeah, we'll double the network. So there'll be around 40 sites that we will add this year, which should be around 500 chargers. We also expand existing sites as well. So as and when we see the utilisation levels increase in line with EV adoption, where possible, we will add more chargers to existing sites. So for example, the extra motorway. services were present across their portfolio. We are currently expanding most of those sites from the six charges we have today up to 24. Cobham has already reached 18. You'll see 24 charges there. The next in line Cambridge, Baldock and Peterborough. Most of the additional 40 sites, you'll be able to see them on our webpage. They will all show us under construction and various stages, but we will see an almost weekly new site opening happening through most of this year. Like I said, it's the fruit of the work that's been done over the past two years.

G:

s would be live by the end of: 2024

A:

Yes, well, there's always hurdles that come across when you're in the middle of the rollout, but this is in full flow now. A big portion of the sites that will open this year are in collaboration with the Village Hotels. The partnerships make sense for both parties. Their hotels, by nature, are located on motorways or major A roads, generally speaking, to enable the traveller for the traditional sort of hotel stay. But they also strategically pick locations that are close to cities on the main ring road, because they obviously have the facilities they offer. Things like the Village V-Works, they've got the Starbucks, they've got the gym and stuff, but they'll attract people from the urban locations.

And so the overlap seemed to really make sense. And yeah, you will see a big chunk of that portfolio go live over the next weeks, months, this year.

G:

Now, notwithstanding what you've just said, intuitively, and I know I've had this discussion with a number of other charge point operators, when I look at a hotel, a hotel is a long duration, it's got a long dwell time, you're there overnight, and rapid charges do not seem to be the right solution for a hotel. Talk to me a little bit about the thought process that you went through to say, right, I understand that, but we're still going to put rapid charges in anyway.

A:

So speaking specifically about the hotel asset class, hotels are very good at maximising the night time revenues, of course, for overnight stay, where the hotels have more opportunity to grow as a business is through daytime revenues. Like I said, Village are already quite good at that with things like the gym and conferences, leasing space within their car park to a business like ours, the charge point operator allows them to generate brand new revenues for the hotel on site.

We're not stopping the hotel from also installing its own AC chargers, for example, if they wanted a slow option on site, we give the hotel an opportunity for new revenue, not just from the lease, but also our customers, we will bring new customers to the site that will spend on the amenities inside the hotel, which is also another benefit. And hotel guests, of course, can use the charger, the average fueling time on our network across Europe is 24 minutes, someone can come plug in, check in, and then move the car and park it somewhere else.

A:

Now, without divulging any confidential information, you mentioned two sources of income for people like the Village Hotels, there's a lease, they're leasing you the land, they're also getting income from the customers themselves.

Do you have any profit sharing agreements where they will take a percentage of the income from the actual charging itself?

A:

So, deals like this are quite commonplace in the industry, but I think it'd be unfair to get into specifics with specific site partners, as we call them. Let's talk about the actual design of the locations themselves.

G:

What's the minimum number of chargers that you will actually put in at any given site?

A:

With the switch to electric from liquid fuels, it changes the fueling ecosystem. In a petrol or diesel vehicle, the only way that you can fuel up is to drive to the petrol station. With electric, it opens up new ways to fuel your vehicle. I always describe three main segments. All drivers will fuel up across all segments of this charging ecosystem, just depending on their circumstance, the proportion might change. The first segment is home and workplace. This is an obvious one. If someone has off-street parking, the opportunity to fuel up at work, it will be the cheapest for them. They will predominantly, if not always, fuel up at home overnight on the tariff. The second is destinations. It tends to be more urban locations. It could be something like a supermarket or a gym. You have a slightly faster charger, sized to the dwell time of that location. Then you have charging on the go, which is where Ionity specialises. It's rapid charging to help people fuel up quickly while they're on the go. Refuel again to carry on their activities. The key difference between the first two segments and the last one is the last segment, the reason that you're making the decision to visit that location is to fuel up. The first two, you fuel up while you're at home or the supermarket. There's two things that the customer needs to know when making the decision to come off the motor or the A road to the Ionity hub. Is there a charger that's working? Is there a charger that's available to use? Is it going to be quick for me? Our model is never based around installing one or two chargers because the likelihood of that being in use will be greater. The minimum for us is six ultra-rapids. If you remember, 24 minutes is the average fueling time. The turnover is already quite quick here. The standard in the UK is 12. Most of the sites that you will see open this year and last year have 12 rapid chargers. We even have some now that have 24. We just opened at Dartford near the Dartford Bridge at that side of the M25. We've already spoken about the extra portfolio. There's a couple of sites on the M1 that will soon open over the next couple of months with 24 chargers. The driver can feel comfortable. They'll be able to fuel up and then carry on the journey again. That's the principle.

G:

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for that. If I look at a number of your competitors, I'll pick Fastned, for example. They all, with very few exceptions, get the canopies over their locations. Do you have any sites that have canopies installed?

A:

Of course, we have tested a few. We don't have any in the UK. I guess it's does the customer, are they really asking for this? I would never install a site that's isolated. We always work with site partners. There's always the opportunity for the customer to go inside the building, the site partner that we're working with, whether it's the Starbucks drive-through, the hotel or a retail park. If there is this question mark, is it actually what the customer wants? There's always a trade-off between that and extra costs. Every site is like a business. It's a P&L. The lower that we can keep the costs, the more advantageous we can be on the end price for customers and particular work that they pay. I'm going to come on to talk about pricing in a little while, but just to round up the site design aspect to this, talk to me a little bit about accessibility.

G:

vels of compliance to the PAS: 1899

A:

We've always paid attention to accessibility. We've always, for example, set our charges to the ground. They don't generally have a curb. We've always paid attention to the spacing in between a crash bollard so it's wide enough for someone, if they're in a wheelchair, to be able to access. Looked at design in the charger, for example, on the screen, how people can pay through the app. We're working closely through Charge UK as most to the other CPOs and paying attention to the new guidelines that that will come out very soon. One of the core principles has always been for our business that it's an open to all network and that includes people with accessibility, but it is a complicated scene, sometimes you have complications with a site partner that you're working with who might have certain restrictions or ideas on their sites. We try and accommodate within that where possible. I think as an industry, there's more that we could do in terms of information that's given out to customers. I always like to perhaps use the example of the London tube map. Everyone knows the London tube map and on the map, you can see which stations have elevators that are accessible. Is there something like this that can be introduced in the industry so people can understand which sites have accessibility, how much of it is there so they can plan their journey in the way that everyone else does.

G:

Have you had any interaction with Kate Tyrrell and ChargeSafe?

A:

No, not to date.

G:

It might be worth sort of having a chat with her because that is her USP. She comes in, she looks at accessibility and safety and she's got apps that they help to manage that. So I'll put the two of you in contact after this. Talk to me about getting power to the site. You mentioned about expanding, for instance, Cobham up to 12 units. Are you hitting barriers getting the power to the site?

A:

It used to be a big issue. Is that still an issue or is it getting easier? Power, of course, the site can't happen without power. Once we have a potential site identified and a site partner or lander we can work with or a seller of the lander we can work with, the next key question is, can we get power to the site? You can always obtain power. So when people say, well, we can't get power, it's a little bit untrue. You can always obtain power. It's about how much you're willing to pay for that power and how long you're willing to wait for the reinforcement works to be done, agreed. It's a key factor. As I said, each site is a business and the ability to invest more will in certain terms also be dictated by road traffic count, the potential demand at the site, it's a natural way to look at the viability of a site, most sites. We try and create an opportunity to do something unlike other businesses, like a factory or housing estate, where the power requirement is fixed. It needs that amount of powerful start. We can either do it or don't. There is some flexibility with EV charging. Even if, for example, we had the ambition to ultimately achieve 12 charges at a location. But the power today would only allow us to do six. We would start with six and then ramp up as the power became available. But I do have some sympathies with the grid and the DNOs. There's so much new demand and it's not just electric vehicles, it's sustainability. It just takes time to do the works. And often it's the physical works on reinforcement further back in the grid that just has to be done. It's a process, it's happening now. We're still, the industry is still quite nascent. We're seeing more and more electric cars, but it is still a nascent and it's an investment in the infrastructure today. We will see that happen. It's, yeah, it's being done.

G:

That brings us quite nicely onto pricing. I want to talk a little bit about subscriptions. From an Ionity point of view, there are two types of subscriptions. There are ones that are offered by your OEM partners to people who've bought their vehicles. So if someone buys a Mercedes or something from Volkswagen, Audi Group, Hyundai, Ford, et cetera. For example, you've got the Mercedes me contract at £10.99 a month, which gives you an Ionity rate of 53p/ kilowatt hour. So I have questions related to this. Firstly, what are the financials behind this? Because I know from discussions with other charge point operators at 53 pence a kilowatt hour is not a price at which they can make quote unquote profit at the moment. So how are Ionity able to offer those prices?

A:

pence in the UK back in: 2018

G:

So my followup question is, I understand how you don't want to get into the detail of this, but I feel I need to push you a little bit further. I've stated already that I've spoken to charge point operators who feel that at 53 pence a kilo hour, they cannot make a profit. Now, when I say a profit, I don't necessarily mean you're rolling in money. I mean, that you have enough to cover the costs outside of the actual charging itself. Is 53 pence a kilowatt hour selling their service at a loss?

A:

We are a commercial business. We're here to stay. Trust us as a business. We know what we're doing in this space. We're here for the long term. Trust us that we're pricing in a way that works for us as well as the customer. I cannot compare ourselves to any other business. There's loads of things that come into play with this. I don't know the locations that you're talking about, the rents that they're paying, how much they've paid to construct the site, how much they've paid for the hardware, there's so many factors in this, even pricing strategy for a company, the ad hoc price is part of a portfolio of pricing. We have a portfolio of revenue streams within our business. It's not as binary as one or the other. It's impossible for me to comment on how does another business make money or not at 53 pence. But you can trust us that we understand how to operate in this space. Any customer that wants to pick any of the products that we have on offer in the marketplace, if that works for them and their particular lifestyle and how they need to charge on the network, then great, if they're happy, then we're happy because it also works for us. And it sounds like you're also interested in this, if you're an advocate too, and if there's products out there that resonate with you, you drive an EV, then great, we also welcome that, it works for both of us and I think that's the underlying point here, subscriptions built within that, there's the assumption of course around repeat business with ad hoc pricing, you never know if you're going to see the customer again, we put a value in being able to communicate with the customer, which we can do if someone has registered with us in some form. And remember, we also have coming to market soon, the Ionity Go product, which is a discount on the ad hoc, but all the customer has to do, do is basically sign up to our app, but there's no ongoing subscription with it, so they'll get a slight discount on what the current ad hoc price is and yeah.

G:

So if I take that to his sort of logical conclusion then, you've talked about the Ionity Power subscription which gives a, for a £10.99 a month or £10.50 a month subscription, you can get pricing as low as 43p/kWh, which is I think a 42% discount on your ad hoc price of 74p/kWh. So let's take me out of the equation, let's talk about somebody new who's just coming into using electric vehicles and they look and they go, right, this is expensive, it's 74p/kWh, while it may be, as you say, one of the cheaper high power tariffs, it's also considerably more expensive than petrol and diesel. So somebody who's new to electric vehicles is going to come in and go 74p/kWh, okay, but they can also provide 43p/kWh for the same product, for the same kilowatt hour of electricity. So help me understand how somebody's not going to look at that and go, well they're obviously price gouging, because if they're charging 74p/kWh on the one hand, but by your own definition you are comfortable with 43p/kWh, help me understand how that's not price gouging.

A:

Firstly, they're not the same product because one is an ad hoc price, as we mentioned, it runs through a contactless machine, already there, there's another business in the chain, you know, there's another cost, I guess, in that chain. We as I mentioned before, we obviously also then place some assumptions and values in here. So there's assumptions that someone is going to be a repeat user, which allows us stability to plan. There's a guaranteed revenue stream with a subscription, which again offers some stability for a business to plan longer term. And there's a matter of scale here, you know, you make assumptions that someone will repeat. And like I mentioned before, any customer is free to choose any of the products if they want, if their charging needs best suit the Ionity Power product that you've mentioned, then great, you know, they should sign up for that. We would welcome it. I don't think it's any more complicated than that, really. It's true in other industries, supermarkets have loyalty schemes that they give discounts, Tesco's with the club card, for example, if you go to, if you're into sports, football, which I am, a season ticket on a per match basis is much cheaper than just going and paying per match. It's not an unusual pricing strategy for any business in any industry.

G:

I understand that. And I totally agree. But let me play devil's advocate here, 42% discount for something which by your own website's definition is the most popular product that you have the most popular offering. That's a huge discount for something which again, by your own website, says the subscription will be recovered probably within two charges.

A:

Yes, correct. And I mentioned before, this is one of a number of a portfolio of revenue streams for us. It's not binary. It's not just the ad hoc price and just the Ionity Power product. It's part of a portfolio of revenue streams, which goes into the hundreds when you take into account the different MSPs and such. And as I mentioned at the start, we put a value on repeat business. That stability allows us to incentivize customers with a lower per kilowatt price. And trust us that we know how to operate in this space, that we're making commercial decisions that suit us for the long term. We're not going to disappear. We haven't. And I'd like to think that just what we've seen over the last six years, we came into the market particular products, everyone was shocked, it's too much, it's too powerful. Now everyone wants this product. The price has hardly changed through the time. We know the commercials, we know the product. We know what's coming down the line through our shareholder OEMs in terms of technology. And we're preparing our sites for that. We already spoke earlier. And for example, about plug and charge, it's enabled, because the whole network, you have been wired. Yeah.

G:

Talk to me about pre-authorization for paying by credit card. I believe it's £40 on your network. Who sets that value?

A:

So the company does. We used to have a £1 reservation fee. We did see some issues with fraud. Ultimately, it's a risk decision with the business. We had a pre-authorization fee of £40. There is discussions internally about reviewing this, you know, especially in the UK market. It's an important market for us. But the new Ionity Go products will help someone navigate this pre-authorization because someone can sign up on the app, they'll get the RFID card. And in the same way as contactless, you'll be able to tap the RFID card and transact. There will be zero pre-authorization fee with this. We just ask that someone registers with the app.

G:

I had Sarah Sloman from Paythru on the podcast a couple of times. I've spoken to her outside of the podcast. One of the things that she's quite keen on is the concept of a rolling pre-authorization. So you do an initial sort of £20 pre-authorization. And as the user puts in, you know, when they get to about £18 of energy put into the vehicle, you add an extra £10 authorization on top. And then as they get to £30, you add an extra. Is that possible? Is that something that you've considered?

A:

Like I said, this is a very prominent discussion that's happening internally. We're open to listen to all ideas. Something like this may not be out of the question, but it is something that we are reviewing and we'll continue to review with especially the UK market, as I said before.

G:

Final question on pricing. Talk to me about roaming. So you've mentioned it tangentially. I'm a big fan of roaming. The sponsors of my podcast, Zapmap, have the Zap-Pay product. What's the policy when it comes to connecting with roaming providers?

A:

I touched on this before. So we have an open to all offer. We literally have more than 200 different MSPs that can use the unnetwork across Europe. It's been part of the policy from the start that it's open to everyone, not just all cars, but all individuals and businesses that might have their collection of customers. Our shareholders, the likes of BMW, Audi and Porsche, when they sell the car, they might want to have effectively a fuel card with that, or it could just be independent MSPs. MSP or new business that's formed in Poland, for example, and they'll have their set of customers that will sign up and that person can drive to Europe, to the UK, and they'll be able to transact on the UK energy charger on whatever scheme that they've signed up to. The offer's open to all, so people, MSPs via the roaming platforms, Hubject and such, can sign up freely any time or end the contract at any time.

G:

Do you have plug and charge on all your hardware or is it limited to certain manufacturers?

A:

Yeah, so all the hardware. We have a testing center in Munich, the Ante HQ is in Munich, we have a testing center there and all new hardware and all the software and all the updates, everything's tested there and then we will roll out across Europe. All the chargers all across Europe are plug and charge enabled.

G:

Now let's just talk about a slightly delicate issue. Traditionally, some of the earlier installs of the R&D hardware did not have credit cards. You could only use the app to start them, which made them slightly more complicated to use. You've always had the ability to use the RFID card because of the MSPs that you've talked about. Now I was at one of your Manchester sites with my nephew a little while back and I gave him an RFID card and I said, right, go and plug me in and get it started and he did everything right, but the image came up on the screen that said, select this side for RFID or this side for app and he starts pressing the screen and of course the screens are not touch sensitive and it took us a while to work out, well, why isn't, is the screen not working? It just seemed to me to be a UI issue as to why he he looked at that and thought it's asking me to select which side of the screen I want depending on whether which payment method I'm using. Now he's a fairly intelligent guy and after a few seconds he thought all right there's the button down here that I actually need to press. Who defines and manages the user interface that would be able to sort of look at that and potentially make it a little clearer? Is that an Ionity thing or a hardware provider thing?

A:

It will be a combination of the two. We have contactless now in the UK and all of our sites. There were some that we retrofit for all new chargers, all new hardware that we have. We'll have the inbuilt contactless payment systems and they tend to be with Payter. They kind of have a hold on the market. There are not that many ultra-rapid charger manufacturers. I'd like to see more out there but we are always in contact with all of those providers. Because of the Ionity business and the size and scale we are able to bespoke to a certain extent some of the hardware but they do play a critical role. The contactless comes as part of the charger. It's inbuilt to the charger itself so when it arrives on site the systems will already be in place embedded into the charger. If the user interface was more difficult for people to understand we always take that feedback. We have tried to add some more instructions on the actual charger itself. There's a bit of a trade-off between having too many stickers everywhere and it gets confusing for people.

G:

Absolutely. Now you mentioned Payter and the credit card units themselves and that brings me on to another question I want to pose to you about those. I mentioned earlier that I'm located near the Fleet install. I went there the day it was opened within 24 hours and half the credit card readers had security errors and were unable to be used which for a newly opened hub is not ideal. But I'm prepared to give you a pass on that because you know teething issues. A friend of mine went back there recently within the last 10 days and he said that two out of the credit card readers were out of order. Is Payter the problem here?

A:

I'm not sure. I said it's difficult for me to comment on specifics. I mean Payter seems to be a successful business. They're quite present across most CPOs. We have our own in-house service and repair team that will attend defaults. Ideally everything opens and it's perfect on day one. It sounds like in this particular circumstance it wasn't so we would have come very quickly fixed or replaced or repaired those units. We never have just one or two chargers on site. There is always a selection or choice even though we would have experienced some of these teething problems. I'm sure that a customer would have been able to transact and fuel at that particular site.

G:

Yeah I'm sure they could but my follow-on question for that is how are you being informed if there is a credit card issue? Now if power module goes down in the unit itself you'll get a warning somewhere. Your CPMS system will deal with that. Does it also know when the credit card reader has an issue?

A:

So obviously there's customers that will report this and we have a robust back office that can generally pick up on various fault codes within the system. With regards to the fault particularly in the PAYTA system I'm not actually sure. I'd have to check that with the back office team but it's something I can revert back on to see if we are able to proactively understand and discover that. Generally speaking we have a very good uptime. We're 99% in terms of uptime at a site. The feedback we get from customers also if someone comes to site they will be able to fuel up.

G:

Two questions coming out of that. The first one is you mentioned you've got an in-house maintenance team. What's the SLA for getting out and fixing a charger? Is that 24 hours, 48 hours?

A:

We will attend to the site as soon as possible. It's for the customer as well as ourselves. I like to think that we're pretty quick and we don't have specific SLAs. We're not talking days here. It can be hours in some circumstances. A lot of times the repair can be done remotely. It's not always someone in person that has to be on site. We're replacing or changing hardware another time. Faults can be fixed and repaired remotely which is a 24 hour seven day a week operation we have.

G:

What happens if somebody comes in and hits the accelerator instead of the brake, comes in at a weird angle and takes out one unit completely? Is that then taken off the system and not included in the stats? Does that remain on the system and be included as an unavailable unit?

A:

We're getting into very hypothetical situations here. At a site level 99% of the time there'll be chargers available for customers to use. In the hypothetical example you've picked this would affect at a charger level because the charger would be out of use. But like I said we never build one or two chargers in isolation on the site. There is always a way for someone to charge. This would be the same with the liquid fuels market as well. There's never one petrol pump. There's several. Sometimes one might be out of order. Customer can use an alternative.

G:

But again if I play devil's advocate here the 99% is at a charger level not a site level. Now I know that there are other charge point operators out there and when their chargers go down for a long period of time they take them off the system so they're not included in the stats and that is gaming the system.

A:

Yeah I think that's a little bit unfair. We don't and wouldn't advocate this methodology but I said it's quite a hypothetical situation you have here and we don't assist the chargers. They're not taken off you know it's not taken off the system. It will be marked down as out of order and needing repair and you would see that through the app and through the web page.

G:

What's your opinion on having the big totems at the site so like the petrol stations have that tell you the ionity charges are here and this is how much you would pay on a contactless payment ad hoc? Signage is quite an on-go topic at the moment. You will see more signage both directional signage and some totems fairly soon across the UK ionity network. Is there a need to have an all singing and dancing totem like with the petrol station?

A:

I don't know. We have the ability to display pricing and it is displayed pricing is displayed clearly on the charger itself. As I said before that there are many different ways that customers can can sign up many different products that they have and so it would be impossible to display every single option that someone has. You would just have the ad hoc contactless price but that's already displayed on the charger. With a totem does it help someone find a site potentially? There's planning implications as well so it's not always possible to put totems up on every site but it is something that we have listened to and paid attention to and you will see totems across some other sites in the near future.

G:

Interesting I was at a site yesterday that's freshly opened and it has a totem but it didn't have the price displayed. When I asked the managing director of the site why he gave a very similar answer which is well the price is displayed in different places already. My pushback on that and I'll push back to you is if you go up to somewhere like Gretna Green you are not the only charge point operator there. If I'm coming in and I'm paying ad hoc I don't have an RFID card I don't have your app I don't have any MSP I'm going to look and I say well who's the cheapest? Is it Ionity? Is it Apple Green? Is it GridServe? And if there's a totem it makes it a lot easier for me to work that out.

A:

Ultimately what you're referring to here is communication to customers and drivers. A totem is not the only way to communicate with customers there will be other forms of media for example ZapMap is a popular tool for people when they're planning their journeys and can clearly see what price being offered from various different suppliers. I'm not sure they necessarily need the extra investment in totems on all sites to serve this purpose.

G:

Coming to a close now, Andreas, is there anything you'd like to add that you'd like my listeners to know or understand about Ionity, please?

A:

d expect more to come through: 2026

G:

Excellent. Andreas Atkins, thanks for your time.

lt of the work carried out in: 2023

To me, the key discussion in this chat was around subscriptions and pricing. The whole area of pricing is one that's fraught with misunderstandings, lack of transparency and frankly, conspiracy theories. We've discussed why CPOs are not making huge profits when we looked at how tariffs are calculated in episode 186, link in the show notes.

Now, Andreas was keen to point out that I honestly have been in this business for quite a few years and understand the market and how things like pricing work. As you will have heard, I asked him flat out on several occasions if they were making a profit of 43 pence a kilowatt hour and he wouldn't give a direct answer on any of those occasions, which is absolutely his prerogative. Pricing and profit is a very taboo subject within charge point operators. I'm thinking of putting together a whole episode on pricing for later on in the season. But for now, let's chat at a fairly high level about the three different types of charge point operators. The first type are what are termed pure play CPOs. These are companies that raise their own finances, stole their own sites and run their business on a standard financial footing. I'm thinking Osprey Charging, Gridserve, Connecticut, Mer, Fastned, GeniePoint, for example. The second sort of those where charging is an offshoot of other things they do and they factor the cost of this into the overall picture. And this camp includes companies like Tesla. And the third are groups where the CPO is an offshoot of a bigger company where funding is internal and capital cost repayment is not as vital or as time dependent as with pure play CPOs. And in this group, I would put BP Pulse and Shell. Ionity is interesting because it almost straddles a couple of these classifications. At its basic level, it's a pure play CPO that has to compete financially with others. And this is what Andreas told me he thought Ionity were. But it's also backed and funded by vehicle OEMs, Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, Audi Group, etc. There is a case to say that the capital repayment on that is different to the capital repayment on companies like Gridserve, who've gone to market and borrowed huge sums of money to fund their expansion.

But Ionity are also funded and co-owned by BlackRock. This is an organisation that invests in companies and creates funds that people can invest in based on the companies into which BlackRock has put money. I asked Andreas about BlackRock and their involvement in Ionity. Are they an investor or a funder? And he declined to specify what their actual role was, saying instead, I think it's a little unfair to get into the details, but we know that BlackRock is part of a collective of the joint venture that is Ionity, along with the car OEMs. And yeah, I think it's a successful joint venture that's enabled us to expand.

So what did we learn about Ionity? Well, it's good to know that Ionity are looking at fairly rapid expansion this year. Their units are generally reliable, generally quick, and as we've identified, with a subscription, they're considerably cheaper than competitors in the space.

Have you used Ionity? Good experience? Bad experience? Let me know.

It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with your listeners. We had Alex Thwaites from OVO Energy on the show a couple of seasons back talking about the 7 pence a kilowatt hour OVO Anytime tariff, available 24-7 for EV charging. But that's for customers who've already got an electric car.

Since then, they've introduced a scheme called EV Saver. It will allow petrol and diesel drivers to start banking EV miles ready for when they switch to an electric vehicle. It's really easy.

You just activate the offer in the OVO Charge Anytime app and start banking 100 miles per month for up to two years. So when you do take delivery of your EV, you can have up to 2,400 miles in your account that you can redeem against EV charging. Three miles can be redeemed at any time during the two-year accrual period or within three years thereafter.

Terms and eligibility apply, of course, but I think this is a pretty cool way of cutting down your charging costs. If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages to pass on to me I can be reached at info@EVMusings.com

On the socials I’m on Bluesky @evmusings.bsky.social

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They’re 99p each (or equivalent) and you can get them on Amazon

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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 me out. Thanks.

If you’ve reached this part of the podcast and are still listening - thank you. Why not let me know you’ve got to this point by messaging me @musingsev.bsky.social with the words [It’s financed by OEMs #ifyouknowyouknow] Nothing else.

Thanks as always to my co founder Simone. You know now the winter is starting to fade he’s looking at where he can go for his summer holidays. Last year he went to Greece - but took the electric unicycle and left his family in the hotel while he tore around the island on that. What’s the situation this year?

A:

Like I said, this is a very prominent discussion that's happening internally.

G:

Thanks for listening. Bye!