Podcast transcript: What the future holds for charging infrastructure

Ade Thomas:

Welcome to EV Y, the e-mobility podcast that asks the bigger and better questions of the EV industry.

Ade Thomas:

Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of EV Y, the e-mobility podcast diving into the hot topics and trends in the e-mobility industry. I'm your host, Ade Thomas, and every week I'll be asking a key question to experts in the field to delve into the what, why, and the how in the EV industry. I'll be joined by some fantastic guests from across the sector, including a specialist from EY's automotive and e-mobility network every episode. Today's episode is all about charging infrastructure, arguably the backbone of a successful transition to electric transport. Charging infrastructure has to suit every use case, from micro mobility to trucks and everything in between. But we're still some way off having the infrastructure readily available to support mass EV adoption.

Ade Thomas:

And today we'll be looking at the future and asking, "What does the future hold for charging infrastructure across the EV market?" To help answer that question. I'd like to introduce our guest speakers for today. Firstly, from EY Maria Bengtsson. Maria is a Director at EY and EY's lead for electric vehicles, focusing on advising clients engaged in the energy transition, including renewable energy, energy storage, and electric vehicles.

Ade Thomas:

And our featured guest is Dr. Susanne Koblitz, the head of charging tech at IONITY and expert on the charging tech, helping to drive forward innovation in the sector. We'll begin the podcast with a question from one of our listeners. Then I'd like you to get your take on that question. So the question coming in from the audience is from Greg Lewin, and he asks, "Where does the balance lie between charger utilisation and charger availability during roll-out? Presumably there's some needs to recoup costs, but it seems that the consumer confidence and therefore the number of people taking the plunge will require a huge oversupply until people form new habits?" Maria, what's your take on that from a business model and investability perspective?

Maria Bengtsson:

Yeah, I think it's a really good question actually. And I think the point is well made, the key bit here is to get consumers confident that they can take the plunge, as he says. And so investment really has to lead. There's no doubt about that. So in terms of how we can make that happen, I think the fact that the government has launched the two funds recently in the UK, setting aside almost a billion pounds for investments in charging infrastructure is a really good thing. But I think that there needs to be incentives and business models available for private investors as well.

Maria Bengtsson:

One of the things that we come across is clearly investors don't like uncertainty, and they don't like business models that they don't really understand. So, developers and investors together need to look at business model that works in terms of how you contract, what you can do to reduce that degree of uncertainty by forming bilateral partnerships, et cetera, to build it out. Because as I said, government can do their bit to create the market and create a degree of certainty, but really there needs to be private initiatives as well.

Ade Thomas:

Very good. I mean, the UK government's doing pretty well and obviously there's always room for improvement in every area of life. But generally, do you think the UK government is helping to provide that level of certainty and reassurance for investors that you've just outlined?

Maria Bengtsson:

I think so, absolutely. It signals that there is money and the government will come in and invest alongside private companies, which is a really good thing. I mean, there's other areas obviously where you could reduce the degree of uncertainty in terms of regulations and other things, but from a point of view of investments, I think it's a really good signal and it does drive the private investment.

Ade Thomas:

Very good. And Susanne, over to you. From a tech perspective, what do you think of that that question from our audience?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

I absolutely agree with Maria. That is a perfect question for the development of e-mobility. It's the big challenge that we're facing at the moment. We are just on the takeoff of a market that still needs to find its shape. And from my perspective, we're trying to sort of address that by finding flexibility to allow fast growth of sites of faster availability. It's very challenging, because in the end every charging site still is a big investment to do, but we are trying to find places to be flexible to make sure that customers don't have to wait on our sites in the end.

Ade Thomas:

Thank you. Thank you, Susanna and thank you, Maria. Hopefully, Greg, that answered your question. We'll be answering a question from a listener every episode. So do please send yours in to evsummit@green.tv. So moving on now to the main part of the debate, this podcast is all about asking bigger and better questions. So it's time to dive straight in and we're asking, "What does the future hold for charging infrastructure across the EV market?" Maria, if you could give us your take on that big opening gambit question to start off, please.

Maria Bengtsson:

Yeah sure. So, I mean, I always think of charging infrastructure on a national level, I suppose, as a tree where you've got the trunk, which are the big sort of motorways and where you need the likes of Susanne and her colleagues to come in and provide some of that charging infrastructure. And then you're going to move into smaller roads. You have destination charging and smaller charging points, and then eventually you get into the residential areas. And for me that really helps, because they all got their own challenges. And I think they're really interesting companies looking at the motor service areas, for example charging, which will give consumers confidence around those kinds of longer trips that I think currently a lot of consumers are quite wary about.

Maria Bengtsson:

But I think also there's a really interesting point around the societal effects of transitioning to EVs and how the charging infrastructure needs to be available for everyone. And it needs to be available at similar costs. Clearly there's a lot of energy retailers, for example, who are looking at bundling EV charging with their energy retail. So if you as a consumer have your own driveway, you might be in a different situation to someone who only has access to on-street charging, for example. So I think from a point of view of the societal issues, finding ways to make charging available for everyone at comparable cost for me is a really key bit, which I think at the moment perhaps that's lagging behind some of the other areas of charging. It's something that definitely needs to be looked at and needs to be developed.

Ade Thomas:

Where do you see, I mean on that, where do you see maybe the main bottleneck, the main pinch point being what's the key element to address in the here and now?

Maria Bengtsson:

So I think there might need to be incentives or perhaps even regulations around making charge points available, whether it is from a council perspective or a regional perspective, or land owners, et cetera. But I think that pretty soon we will see a clear picture. It will be sort of a crystallised picture of whether the market will sort this out on its own or whether you actually need, whether it's a carrot or a stick to actually get into some of those areas that perhaps wouldn't be covered otherwise.

Ade Thomas:

Interesting. Thank you very much. Susanne, what would you like to add from a technical perspective to that question?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

I think the development of charging technology or charging in itself have the need that Maria was pointing out. We have some ideas on how we can charge the cars. A lot of technology concepts were developed and discussed. And at the moment we're at the point where larger and larger numbers of EV drivers join the market. And some of the use cases are absolutely clear. I mean, the highway use case, high power charging has been discussed quite a lot. There are companies such as ours, but others as well. So from my experience, long distance travelling isn't that much of a problem anymore.

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

Home charging itself also has found its place, but anything else around destination charging, it's not quite clear. For example, there's a supermarket around the corner where I normally stop for an hour. It provides an AC charger with seven kilowatt, where in that hour I get another range of 50 kilometres or something like that, which does not really address my need when I go to that supermarket once per week. I mean, it's absolutely great that the supermarket already has done that transition, but it's still sort of this matching of the customer needs to the technology possibilities hasn't quite happened yet. And I think that is what's coming and what has to come in the next couple of years.

Ade Thomas:

We touched on that both the government framework side of things and the technology. And we also looked at the customer needs side of things. I like to talk about the ideas infrastructure, in that we need to educate consumers as to what's available, what's out there. Do you think there's a big play on that side in needing to give customers more education around the charging infrastructure options available to them?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

I wouldn't restrict that to the customers, but to the society as a whole. I mean, we use EVs and suddenly new use cases, new needs are there, but the awareness of what these needs are actually, and how you can determine them or what would be the best offer you can make as a restaurant or a cinema or a supermarket or anyone who wants to progress in that, that discussion still needs to go ahead. And the understanding of these needs need to go ahead. And with that, obviously some of this, we're always talking about things that need to be invested and understanding on how these needs can be best addressed, and then also financed. Because it doesn't help us if I go to a cinema and I can charge and it's perfect, but I pay 10 times the price than at home.

Ade Thomas:

Maria, anything to add to that from a business model perspective?

Maria Bengtsson:

No, I agree with what Susanne has said. I mean, at the end of the day I think coming back to one of my earlier points, which is around investment, unfortunately does need to precede utilisation to get consumers and others comfortable. But at the same time it needs to be done in on an understanding of what the market is going to look like and what needs to be there eventually. I mean, the last thing we need is a lot of standard assets, right? So I think that yes, the investment needs to precede, but doesn't mean that you just chuck a lot of chargers into the market just to increase the number of chargers it needs to be made on a sort of a knowledgeable basis where you really understood what the user needs are.

Ade Thomas:

So I assume, Susanna, you're looking very carefully at that user needs side in terms of your mapping out of the technology side. Where do you see the changes coming in the progression, the development of charging infrastructure technology?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

So I think in the next couple of years, the sort of immediate changes will all go really about usability interfaces, maybe also payment processes. In the longterm we will see larger development steps, but such as, I mean, they are already involved in standardisation around autonomous charging where the customer doesn't have to stay with his car to initiate the charging session, but that's really a longer-term. For the short term it's really about making charging as comfortable as possible for the customer, so that the actual threshold for people to decide, "Now I'm going for EVs," is as low as possible.

Ade Thomas:

It's interesting that you used the word comfortable there. What do you define as a comfortable user experience for a future EV driver?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

I think the most important point is not having to worry about anything. So being able to simply drive and where I am, I find charging infrastructure that is suitable to my immediate need at that point. Which is different on a highway, compared to a supermarket, compared to at home, but it should be there without me having to ... At the moment you have to research in the internet and to know where your charging stations are. You can travel everywhere, but you have to do that research, which is a worry, and which is uncomfortable. And it should be without worry. So you should be able to go anywhere and simply find what you need. And then of course, no thresholds in use, no payment, the whole topic of interoperability, which we're focusing a lot on in my team as well to make simply sure things work without the customer having to know anything, especially without having to prepare anything. It simply works without worry.

Ade Thomas:

Can you give us some examples of the technologies that might be coming down the track to assist in that interoperability piece?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

Yeah, so we are very active working together with car manufacturers on getting plug and charge work, which is a situation where the customer can simply plug in and doesn't need to do anything anymore on the charging station. And the charging session will start and will be sort of authenticated and just progress without the customer having to take care of anything else. And it's a little thing in the end that not having to do this additional step of authentication, but it's one that in the end reduces complexity and increases the comfort and reduces worries.

Ade Thomas:

So you're doing the hard work to make sure that there's much less work involved for customers? Because at the moment really, there is quite a lot of hard work to do, isn't there, when planning a journey of any distance as an EV driver.

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

Yes, it's always a big challenge, yes.

Ade Thomas:

And Maria, what do you see in terms of the business community doing in terms of reducing that hard work that is involved for drivers when they're out driving for any distance?

Maria Bengtsson:

No, I think it's a really key point. And I was just thinking about this as Susanne was talking that you go on LinkedIn or other social media and there's quite easy to find stories about people who are upset about the charging, chargers not working, or someone has parked with an ICE vehicle in a spot where there should have been an EV charging, et cetera. So really just that sort of looking from a charge point operators perspective perhaps around what they can do to improve that customer or consumer experience, especially because this is such a nascent market. We will have people coming into this market on a daily basis who are completely new. So, you mustn't get complacent and think that everyone knows exactly how it works. Effectively having clear instructions as Susanne said, interoperability, being able to perhaps use your credit card, reducing the reliance on apps, et cetera. There's so many things you can do, and it is very, very important to drive the uptake and the adoption of EVs.

Ade Thomas:

Do you see businesses coming into your world, solving these problems? And do you see those as being the most investible ones?

Maria Bengtsson:

Definitely. I mean, there's so many companies looking at how these interfaces between payments, both from a, for example, a fleet operator perspective, how do you make it easier for fleet operators? With the technology that we have today actually charging can be bundled up with other costs. So that fleet operators don't need to worry about lots of different payment streams, et cetera. And there are lots of companies looking at that. So, for sure any company that's looking at future proofing the business model and taking a lead in driving that forward is going to be very interesting.

Ade Thomas:

Very good. I think we've actually not used the dreaded term range anxiety, but essentially that is what we're talking about. I mean, one for both of you, do you think that range anxiety is currently perhaps weighted a little bit more towards the OEM side and battery capacity? Do you think maybe that range anxiety piece should be shifted more to infrastructure capacity? I mean, as someone who works in that sector, Susanne, what do you think of that question?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

We have seen a lot of development of car manufacturers addressing range anxiety. Car batteries now are much larger than they were two or three years ago if you look at the new models that come into the market. So I think I agree with your point that it should also be addressed on the infrastructure side, because essentially we have a solution now for long distance travels with all the different high power charging networks, but the actual day-to-day range anxiety of someone who does not have the possibility to charge at home, and does not have the comfort of having a full battery every morning, that does not really have a solution yet. So if you live in a city or simply a house that doesn't have the possibility to charge at home, range anxiety is going to be your daily problem, unless there's a lot of infrastructure around you. So I absolutely agree with you with the suggestion that range anxiety should actually be now moved into the responsibility of charging infrastructure.

Ade Thomas:

So perhaps it's charging infrastructure reassurance that will reduce battery range anxiety. Do you envisage a future where it might actually be the case that cars start to reduce in range because people are so secure with the idea of being able to charge and that the infrastructure is so good?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

I think so. Yes. I actually personally drive a car that was designed explicitly with a smaller battery because you don't need it for the daily commutes. And as batteries are a large part of the EV cost and the weight and the size in the end, once people realise charging is comfortable and you don't need to worry about it, smaller batteries will become attractive again.

Ade Thomas:

And a much more efficient proposition for the OEMs.

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

Yes. Obviously, yeah.

Ade Thomas:

Maria, from a business case perspective, have you done any modelling at EY on that, or do you have any personal thoughts on that realignment away from OEMs and onto charging infrastructure companies?

Maria Bengtsson:

Yeah, I do have a personal view and I totally agree with Susanne that I think unfortunately what's happening is a little bit the same as with where we say that the investment infrastructure needs to precede the uptake, it's the same with range I feel that to get consumers comfortable, you have to offer cars with a really long range. But as you say, from a cost perspective, environmental impact perspective, and weight perspective, it just doesn't make sense to kind of supersize the battery and sort of maximise the range.

Maria Bengtsson:

I do agree as well though that, if you don't have on-street charging or you don't have your own driveway, the anxiety is going to be more around, "When I need my car, will the closest charge points I have available, is that going to be available and working at that point in time?" Which is more around as you said, sort of charging anxiety rather than the battery itself. So that's probably the area where we need to focus. And I do think that the range, of ranges so to speak, the range of battery sizes will increase. There'll be a cheaper car segment with shorter ranges, and then there'll be sort of a super car range as well for those who really do want the long ranges or the big batteries.

Ade Thomas:

Interestingly, I mean, cars should be there for carrying goods and people, rather than for carrying batteries. So hopefully we can aim towards that more efficient future sometime very soon. I'd like to sort of widen the scope of the conversation around looking at the capabilities of grid capacity and connections. People often ask that question, what's your take on that Susanne?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

So the grid capacity is always a big problem when you start building up infrastructure. So sort of grid connection itself is one of the things that, yeah, have the largest impact on how fast we get a site up and running. But this is just only working in places where we have the grid capacity available in the medium voltage grid where we connect to. In many places this is not available. And we are coming at a time where we already are doing the energy transition to renewables, which is already a big challenge to our energy supply grids. And so from that perspective we are trying and investigating options also to work with local storages to reduce the impact that our sites have on the grid. We are doing a couple of pilot sites there. And interestingly from me as a technician, the experiences that these sites, the challenge lies much less in getting the technology up and running, but also getting this technology to be accepted in a specific medium voltage grid, which is then under the responsibility of one specific operator.

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

So with these flexible connections, we are still having a lot of work of convincing to do to get that running, which is surprising, given that storages are something that are being discussed in many places as the one solution to make also the transition to renewable energies work.

Ade Thomas:

So, what's the issue there around acceptance then? That's a human issue, I take it?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

It's a human issue, yes. I mean, grid operators are responsible to make their grid work and reliable under all conditions, under anything that can happen. And the easiest way is to not change a running system. We introduced something new. We introduced a battery storage, a flexible connection, and our battery storages are not even, they're not designed to feed back into the grid. So as such, they're simple consumers, but there's something new that brings in the risk. And so you need to convince the people who have the responsibility for the grid stability that this risk is worth taking.

Ade Thomas:

So, this is primarily an education task, is it?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

I would say so, yes.

Ade Thomas:

I mean, I suppose what underpins all of these big questions we're asking today is a fundamental 100-year shift in both the mobility and the energy sectors. And this needs people to shift their perspectives and their thinking and their understanding in a big way. Is that how you see it, Maria?

Maria Bengtsson:

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, the other thing that's interesting though is that clearly network operators operate in a regulated industry. And I think it's an interesting dynamic there where we've talked about how fast moving the mobility sector is, and it's full of entrepreneurs and full of people who want to move fast and who want to achieve things. It's not necessarily fully compatible with the world of a regulated entity that needs to be operating within certain parameters. I mean, I think from a UK perspective, the next price regulatory period for network operators in the UK will have a lot more content around both electric vehicle, but also as Susanne mentioned, storage applications, demand flexibility in those areas. So I think we will see a lot of change going forward, but I think it's fair to say that so far those areas have been somewhat lagging, and let's see how we go going forward. I think there is some catching up to be done though.

Ade Thomas:

Do you think the COVID crisis has, in some sense, facilitated a more rapid pace of change in agencies that would perhaps ordinarily have been less agile? What's your take on that?

Maria Bengtsson:

Possibly. I mean, it's definitely changed the way that we consume electricity and it's changed the pressure on our networks. And so this is another parameter that they need to include in their planning and their capacity build out. So it's probably put even more emphasis on the need to adapt and to look at what is our electricity consumption going to look like in the future.

Ade Thomas:

Thank you. So we looked at that sort of big grid capacity question to then shift our focus onto the software side of things. Susanne, a question about the software side working with the hardware side to make charging more efficient. What work are you doing on that? And if you could tell us a little bit more about the IONITY perspective on that side of things, please?

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

Software gives us a lot of flexibility. Hardware you installed it once, you hopefully never have to touch it again. And as Maria has also pointed out, it's a big investment in the beginning, and it's functionality that is once there. So we try to really keep flexibility or bring in flexibility and future developments over the software in our charging stations. For example, the plug and charge functionality, once it's there, it's a software that is developed and we can then roll it out to all our sites. Together, of course, with the manufacturers who actually develop hardware and software together. The same goes for everything we can do in the backend in the control mechanisms.

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

So electromobility is also on this third wave in parallel, which is the digitization world. Charging hardware from its background, its electrotechnical background, it's not a very highly digitised world yet. But it's progressing and we can develop things like load management algorithm to distribute and also to react to needs in the grid with software only, which then gives us the flexibility to actually improve the customer experience quite a lot, without having to change anything in what is installed.

Ade Thomas:

And from your perspective, Maria, I mean typically software businesses are more agile, are more flexible, more capable of adapting quickly. Do you see that that's the case in the EV sector, or do you see the hardware companies making some pretty impressive changes and being rapid in their response to the unfolding excitement of the sector?

Maria Bengtsson:

Yeah, it's I think I would agree that software companies are more agile and really are driving some of the capabilities. So from a point of view of the hardware, I suppose what it needs to do it needs to enable some of that software development to happen. And as long as that's there, then absolutely you can do a lot, make a lot more improvements with software to get more capacity out of your hardware, or to increase the flexibility, the interoperability, the integration, et cetera. And then I think there's lots of companies working across all of those issues, and that's really one of their key bits, which has been driving this sector forward really.

Ade Thomas:

Maria from EY, Susanne from IONITY, thank you very, very much indeed for that fascinating contribution to the debate and to delivering insights into the charging infrastructure sector.

Maria Bengtsson:

Yeah, thanks for me as well, Ade. I think infrastructure is clearly one of the key factors to really get consumers comfortable around moving to EV. So really happy to be part of this.

Dr. Susanne Koblitz:

Thank you also, my pleasure. I hope we could give some impressions on where things will go around charging.

Ade Thomas:

So every week on the EV Y podcast, we're joined by a super exciting startup in the e-mobility sector. And I'm absolutely delighted that we are joined this week by David Watson, the founder of Ohme. David, very, very many thanks indeed for joining us on this podcast. To start off, could you tell me a little bit about yourself, your personal journey in setting up Ohme?

David Watson:

Okay, well, first of all, I'd like to say thank you very much, Ade for having me on, before I start talking about myself and Ohme. So my personal journey, or Ohme's personal journey started in 2011 when myself and the business partner set up Temporis Capital, and that was an impact investor specialising in the renewable energy and clean tech space. And what that meant is we effectively built, owned and operated wind firms, solar firms, waste energy projects for our investors here in the UK.

David Watson:

And as we installed and built more and more of these projects, it became clear to us that as more and more renewables were on the grid, the price and the volatility and the price, volatility would increase, sorry, the price of electricity, the volatility of the electricity would increase. And so that became a big problem. And around the same place, this was probably around 2016 and '17. And we also began to, we persuade ourself and began to realise that battery prices were also dropping and EVs, which would become the mass form of transport. And so putting together the idea that EVs would be the mass form of transport, and they would be parked 90% of the time in people's houses or at work, then you could use those batteries to effectively balance the grid or balance so they could charge when there was too much wind or solar on the grid, they could charge, and then not charge when there was supply shortages. So that was the idea.

David Watson:

So in 2017 we set up Ohme with the idea of creating a smart charging and data platform. And as I said, at the heart of that we had a connected car, a connected driver, and a connected charge device and all of those would work inherit this reading price signals from energy suppliers, and it would effectively charge your car when it's cheapest. And the two main beneficiaries of that are effectively drivers who would get to charge their cars at the cheapest times. And look, well looking after their battery health. And then for fleet managers, we get to help them so that their fleet drivers can drive and charge at the cheapest time and they can manage their fleet platforms. I was already managing the admin and the billing associated with that, so they're the kind of two core aspects of Ohme.

Ade Thomas:

Thanks very much indeed, David, for that interesting opening gambit. I'm interested to know, why Ohme? I mean, I understand you came out of Cambridge University with a PhD in chemistry. Why Ohme of all the things you could have turned your prodigious talents to? Why this business in particular?

David Watson:

Well, I think, I mean, it was pretty obvious that EV, that renewable energy was going to be the, it was going to be the mass was going to be the newest form of energy and with climate change and energy security at the heart of it. But that price volatility and solving price volatility is effectively the biggest barrier. And when one looked to the, I would say, the EV revolution that was about to happen in the transport sector, that was this moment in time where I could see actually a big, huge paradigm shift. And I know that word is thrown around a lot, but actually there was two industries, the transport and the energy industry that effectively been relatively unchanged for a 100 years for both to come together to change the way that energy is used and consumed, and the way people are moved and consumed. And I think trying to solve that problem or working towards that to solve that problem was something that I really wanted to spend my time trying to work towards fixing.

Ade Thomas:

And you mentioned a paradigm shift there. I mean, as you've outlined, it really is a remarkable moment in history, isn't it, with the transition of the energy and transport sectors happening in parallel at one and the same time? I mean, what's it like being in a tech startup in the EV space at this moment?

David Watson:

I mean, well, it certainly changed a lot in the last 12 months. I mean, I think before that it was like a normal startup and a normal techie developer product and start to test it in the real world. But over the last 12 months things have changed massively. And I think that's largely driven by the technologies improving, but also massive policy shifts. I think everybody's aware of the Biden plan, the 174 billion that he's committing to this transition, and Boris or the UK government bringing the targets, the removal of internal combustion engines from 2035 back to 2030. So the two of those together had a profound impact on the industry and to kind of put that into monetary terms, I think in 2020, in 2019 there was 600,000 EVs, new EVs or plugins in Europe. And it was 1.4 million, in 2020 we've got about 16 million sales, you're more than double the amount of new EVs coming online, and that trend and that pattern is definitely accelerating.

David Watson:

So what does that mean for us? Well, I mean, it just means that I think the things that we've been doing and the problems we've been be solving are becoming more and more important. And the fact that we're a startup means that we can solve those problems quicker, at least adapt quicker to them than some larger organisations. So that means that lots of different people want to work with us and I'm sorry, large corporates that are used to maybe working with tier one suppliers can't afford to wait for those tier one suppliers to create solutions, so they come and they try and work with us. So that is a massive opportunity. I think that's on the opportunity side. I think the challenges are, is how do you simultaneously scale organisation, scale the business with build the teams and build the people while building new product and creating new markets. As I described, it's a paradigm shift. So where value is created to destroy it's actually moving. So we actually have to make new markets as well as new products. That can be quite a challenge.

Ade Thomas:

And what's your long-term plan? If you can have a long-term plan in such a dynamic sector where startups become scale ups and then SPACs in super quick time?

David Watson:

What's our long-term plan? I think it's quite difficult to think beyond the next couple of years, but I think certainly it is to expand internationally. That's definitely something that we will do quite aggressively over the next six to 12 months. So that's, and the reason we can do that, I think the UK has had some unique circumstances that allowed us to effectively incubate a very interesting business here. We've had a liberalised energy market, quite a large renewable community, and lots of imbalance in SRE, a lot of volatility in the energy markets, which has helped. We've had forward-thinking suppliers creating dynamic type of use tariffs, and actually quite a large number of EVs here in the UK. And all of those things have come together to allow us to effectively built and test them some interesting technology. And the rest of the world are now turning around and looking at the UK and saying, "How do we solve similar challenges?" And so we're, I think the real challenge is exporting what we have internationally.

Ade Thomas:

So, David, could you dive in a little deeper into the technology side of things? I understand you're both a software company and a hardware company, how do those two work together and what are you aiming to achieve with your technology?

David Watson:

Yeah, so we have, as you correctly said, we are a software company and a hardware company. I think on top of it we have, I guess we have three basic products. We have our home charging product, which allows homeowners to charge at the cheapest and greenest times. And they do that by using our hardware, which in some cases is our smart charging cable or our home charger and our app. And so that provides interesting solutions for them.

David Watson:

On the other side, the next product we have is what we call a fleet portal. And that portal is used to allow fleet managers to manage the energy usage of their fleet drivers. And what does that mean? Well, fleet drivers tend to charge at home, at work, and on the move. And so how does the fleet manager manage the billing and the reimbursement of employees for that? So, our platform puts that together, puts all that information together in a centralised place so they can manage and control it. And then we can do split billing with where the fleet manager then pays, Ohme normally pays each of the individual drivers.

David Watson:

And the last product we ultimately have, the last piece of tech we have is what we call our grid manager. And that grid manager is a tool that allows energy suppliers to manage the supply demand imbalance that's created from EV. So they manage their trading book. We have that, and then it allows grid operators to help manage the grid. So they have some, if there's too much supply and they do greater, or mapping then we help to ramp that up and down.

Ade Thomas:

So there's a lot of talk in the e-mobility sector about total cost of ownership, but the Ohme solution is helping to deliver some pretty interesting savings across the piece.

David Watson:

Yeah, you're correct. The total cost of ownership has got a number of components as you correctly identified. There's the cost of either buying the vehicle or in particular in the form of fleets is the least cost. Then you have the ongoing fuel costs. Then you have the maintenance costs. Well, Ohme's at the heart are the fuel cost. And what we try to do is ultimately reduce that or make it easier to reduce. And the cheapest place to charge is at home. And the cheapest places to charge and the cheapest times to charge are when there's too much renewables on the grid.

David Watson:

So actually by bringing that, bringing those two pieces together, we really can drive down the cost of driving. And some of our drivers have been paid to charge for periods of times over, when lockdown started and there was an oversupply of renewables on the grid and there wasn't demand, it dropped a bit, we hit negative prices, and our drivers benefited of that, benefited from that. So, that's a very different proposition than the traditional world. And as you correctly identified, the total cost of use is at the heart of accelerating EV transition.

Ade Thomas:

David, thank you very, very much, indeed for joining us on the EV Y podcast in partnership with EY. Your insights were powerful and highly interesting. Thank you very much, indeed.

David Watson:

Okay. Thank you very much, Ade.

Ade Thomas:

So that's it for episode one of EV Y. Thank you for joining us today. We've got five more episodes upcoming in the series. So please do subscribe and stay up to date with those. Our next episode will be about the importance of fleets in decarbonizing the transport system. If you have any burning questions about fleets that you'd like to pose to our guests, send them into evsummit@green.tv. And we look forward to welcoming you back next time for episode two.