1 00:00:05,125 --> 00:00:05,535 Good morning. 2 00:00:05,535 --> 00:00:06,647 Grid Connections listeners. 3 00:00:06,647 --> 00:00:14,925 Welcome back to Grid Connections, the podcast where we explore the intersection of clean energy, electric vehicles, and the evolving power grid. 4 00:00:14,966 --> 00:00:15,927 I'm your host, Chase. 5 00:00:15,927 --> 00:00:17,149 And in today's episode, 6 00:00:17,149 --> 00:00:27,975 We're joined by returning guests, Loren McDonald, the chief data analyst and Bill Ferro, the CTO of Paren We explore what they call charging 2.0 and the new era of EV charging 7 00:00:27,975 --> 00:00:32,988 where data reliability and customer experience are finally aligning with business reality. 8 00:00:32,988 --> 00:00:39,972 From Walmart's bold entrance into charging to the rise of rideshare utilization and the hard truth behind rural access. 9 00:00:39,972 --> 00:00:45,185 We unpack the latest quarter one insights from Paren's industry leading EV charging data platform. 10 00:00:45,309 --> 00:00:55,892 We also dive into why reliability is improving, how rideshare drivers are reshaping demand, what's driving high urban utilization and how the transition to J3400 or NACs is 11 00:00:55,892 --> 00:00:57,483 really playing out. 12 00:00:57,483 --> 00:01:06,706 If you're working electrification policy, CPO operations, or just want to better understand the forces behind charging network evolution, this is a must listen 13 00:01:06,706 --> 00:01:07,566 conversation. 14 00:01:07,566 --> 00:01:15,001 Before we get into that though, I also wanted to share again, the launch of grid connections consulting our new advisory service, helping companies and communities 15 00:01:15,001 --> 00:01:18,373 navigate the electric vehicle transition with clarity and confidence. 16 00:01:18,373 --> 00:01:26,646 Also, if you found value in today's episode, share with one colleague or friend who should hear this as well and leave us a quick review wherever you listen to podcasts. 17 00:01:26,646 --> 00:01:33,696 Plus sign up for our newsletter using the link in the show notes to stay ahead of the curve and clean transportation and energy with that. 18 00:01:33,696 --> 00:01:34,339 Enjoy. 19 00:01:39,464 --> 00:01:44,477 In the unlikely chance that anyone listening isn't familiar with what you guys do 20 00:01:44,583 --> 00:01:51,719 I can just give a quick recap of Paren and what your teams can bring into the market and then we'll get into some of today's great topics. 21 00:01:53,810 --> 00:01:54,473 Go ahead, Bill. 22 00:01:54,473 --> 00:01:54,997 Yeah. 23 00:01:54,997 --> 00:01:57,169 I'll tackle that as the co-founder, I guess. 24 00:01:57,169 --> 00:02:05,768 So what we're doing is working on building the largest EV charging data platform uh in the country and then expand that across the globe. 25 00:02:05,768 --> 00:02:08,951 And we look at charging across many different aspects. 26 00:02:08,951 --> 00:02:14,937 So we look at it at most infrastructure, pricing, reliability, utilization. 27 00:02:14,937 --> 00:02:21,380 all different kinds of aspects and our customers are sort of driving and pushing us in a variety of different ways. 28 00:02:21,380 --> 00:02:35,305 Our eventual goal as a company is to be embedded in the driving experience and take our reliability data, take our pricing data, take some of the other data sets that we have 29 00:02:35,305 --> 00:02:36,053 to... 30 00:02:36,053 --> 00:02:40,036 the driver experience so that no one has to ever visit a broken charger. 31 00:02:40,056 --> 00:02:41,197 That's our ultimate goal. 32 00:02:41,197 --> 00:02:46,481 And as we work towards that, we're building out this data set that our customers find extremely helpful. 33 00:02:47,637 --> 00:02:49,047 think that sums it up perfectly. 34 00:02:49,047 --> 00:02:54,169 And yeah, that's about as good of an end goal as anyone can have in the industry right now with what we're seeing. 35 00:02:54,169 --> 00:02:58,270 I mean, obviously it's going in the right direction in general, but yeah, we got a few different things. 36 00:02:58,270 --> 00:03:03,792 I know you guys just had your quarterly kind of report on uh what you're seeing in the industry. 37 00:03:03,912 --> 00:03:06,523 And I think we can definitely get into that. 38 00:03:06,523 --> 00:03:15,325 But first, one of the things I wanted to kind of talk about was one of the things I know both of you guys have talked a lot about and 39 00:03:15,403 --> 00:03:26,103 kind of came up at the EV charging summit recently that we were both, all three of us were at, around kind of like what you guys have come like charging 1.0 to charging 2.0. 40 00:03:26,110 --> 00:03:28,771 I think a lot of our listeners would find that really fascinating. 41 00:03:28,771 --> 00:03:36,606 So I don't know if Bill, Loren, if you both kind of want to give an idea of, or uh kind of synthesis of what this means to you guys. 42 00:03:36,606 --> 00:03:41,169 And then we can kind of get into what we're seeing in the industry right now with the state of charging. 43 00:03:41,384 --> 00:03:47,604 Yeah, I'll kick it off and then Bill can add some color maybe to some of my points. 44 00:03:48,524 --> 00:04:00,144 Yeah, mean, Bill and I have been using the term charging 2.0 for actually probably a couple of years now and then just with the report that we released, starting to take hold 45 00:04:00,144 --> 00:04:03,024 seeing a lot of articles using the term and stuff. 46 00:04:03,684 --> 00:04:06,952 But the core idea is that 47 00:04:06,952 --> 00:04:24,397 For the first 10, 12, 15 years of the industry, was driven by companies that were either selling hardware or their business model was a land grab and what I call uh not about 48 00:04:24,397 --> 00:04:34,196 making money, but about getting money, meaning incentives, whether it's federal, state, local, utility, et cetera, to offset the cost. 49 00:04:34,216 --> 00:04:39,780 cross your fingers and wait for the day when there was enough EVs on the road that you might actually break even. 50 00:04:39,780 --> 00:04:47,966 Unfortunately, uh sometimes the hardware actually fails by the time you would get to break even. 51 00:04:47,966 --> 00:04:52,489 And what's happened in the last couple of years is several things. 52 00:04:52,489 --> 00:04:56,748 One is um that day has arrived. 53 00:04:56,748 --> 00:04:58,979 of when there's enough EVs on the road. 54 00:04:58,979 --> 00:05:11,237 Like we are seeing, and we'll get into the data in a bit, but we're seeing like off the charts utilization rates in some of the large urban dense markets with a lot of rideshare 55 00:05:11,237 --> 00:05:14,568 drivers and apartment dwellers and stuff like that. 56 00:05:14,568 --> 00:05:18,181 And so it's actually become a business instead of a hope and a dream. 57 00:05:18,181 --> 00:05:23,664 um And so that, you know, one of the pivots, it's just, it's no longer about 58 00:05:24,040 --> 00:05:35,400 You know, that sort of the 1.0 was where can I get money, meaning incentives and things like that to now it's, oh, where can I make money? 59 00:05:35,400 --> 00:05:36,000 Right. 60 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:46,840 So it's this, it's sort of because, because it's now sort of data driven and there are markets where EV charging, you know, fast charging is actually becoming a business instead 61 00:05:46,840 --> 00:05:48,580 of a hope and a dream. 62 00:05:48,580 --> 00:05:54,352 And then the second part of it, Chase is as the players are changing. 63 00:05:54,352 --> 00:05:54,692 Right? 64 00:05:54,692 --> 00:06:05,218 Like we had initially, you know, putting Tesla aside, Tesla's like the big asterisk, et cetera, because they've been doing charging 2.0 since day one, but everybody else has sort 65 00:06:05,218 --> 00:06:06,339 of been different. 66 00:06:06,339 --> 00:06:10,040 But the second piece of it is, is the players are different, right? 67 00:06:10,040 --> 00:06:24,008 We now have major automakers and retailers, you know, everything from Iona, Mercedes, Rivian, uh GM, and all their partnerships to Walmart, to, you know, the, the, what, 68 00:06:24,008 --> 00:06:28,688 what the industry calls fuel and convenience players, right? 69 00:06:28,688 --> 00:06:32,288 The convenience store chains, the travel stops, and the oil companies. 70 00:06:32,288 --> 00:06:41,288 So you have everything from 7-Eleven, Circle K, Loves, Pilot, BP, Sheets, Wawa, these companies. 71 00:06:41,288 --> 00:06:47,048 And the difference for them is why they're in the business, right? 72 00:06:47,048 --> 00:06:51,828 Sort of like the pure play charging 1.0 players. 73 00:06:52,626 --> 00:07:02,240 We're in it to sell hardware or fees or eventually, hopefully to make money from utilization. 74 00:07:02,240 --> 00:07:05,921 The goal was to have it become a business. 75 00:07:05,922 --> 00:07:11,804 But for these 2.0 players, the automakers, it's to sell more EVs. 76 00:07:12,156 --> 00:07:21,448 I mean, they don't want to lose money, but their goal, just like Tesla and why Rivian got into this space, was they understood that 77 00:07:21,824 --> 00:07:27,797 We can't rely on the electric version of the gas station. 78 00:07:27,797 --> 00:07:30,658 It wasn't working. 79 00:07:30,658 --> 00:07:33,029 It was not a great experience, et cetera. 80 00:07:33,029 --> 00:07:41,953 So we had to enter the market, control that brand experience, that customer experience, and take it to another level. 81 00:07:41,953 --> 00:07:47,635 And then the retailers, whether it's the convenience store chains, the travel centers. 82 00:07:47,635 --> 00:07:49,572 uh 83 00:07:49,572 --> 00:07:53,765 and stuff like that, it's about incremental revenue, right? 84 00:07:53,765 --> 00:08:04,981 It's about our fueling revenue has probably peaked, especially in like markets like California, New York, and places like that where there's high EV adoption rate. 85 00:08:04,981 --> 00:08:13,426 So it's like, crap, our historical high volume fueling business is declining. 86 00:08:13,526 --> 00:08:17,348 EVs are the future, so we have to start building towards that. 87 00:08:17,672 --> 00:08:30,252 But secondly, all the executives at these companies woke up a couple years ago and went, oh my God, these people in EVs stop not for five minutes, but they stop for 15, 20, 30, 40 88 00:08:30,252 --> 00:08:31,392 minutes. 89 00:08:31,652 --> 00:08:42,012 And if we can get them to go inside the store and spend, you know, $15, $20 on a $5 latte that has like a $4 margin on it, right? 90 00:08:42,012 --> 00:08:42,848 Like. 91 00:08:43,250 --> 00:08:53,248 This is the business we know and understand because they already made that transition when they went from being gas and service stations to convenience store chains that, by the 92 00:08:53,248 --> 00:08:56,891 way, had gas pumps out front. 93 00:08:56,891 --> 00:08:57,982 I know that was a lot. 94 00:08:57,982 --> 00:09:03,096 There's sort of more to it, but I'll stop there and let Bill sort of chime in. 95 00:09:03,356 --> 00:09:04,853 let me just add one more thing. 96 00:09:04,853 --> 00:09:12,914 I think the announcement last week of Walmart entering the space big time, And don't think for a second that this was a simple decision, right? 97 00:09:12,914 --> 00:09:20,750 They actually had the perfect platform to watch and see what their customers were doing with the existing partnership they have with Electrify America. 98 00:09:20,750 --> 00:09:28,224 And there doesn't seem to be any changes in that partnership, except they've now discovered uh and I'm sure measured 99 00:09:28,224 --> 00:09:40,924 down to the minor detail that they can make a lot more money by branding their own stations, having it as a more integrated experience between their Walmart app, the visitor 100 00:09:40,924 --> 00:09:45,824 coming in the store again for that dwell time for 15 to 20 minutes. 101 00:09:45,984 --> 00:09:48,026 Walmart's aren't always. 102 00:09:48,026 --> 00:09:57,110 in the, you know, along the corridor, but they are in convenient places for folks to stop potentially on road trips or as a destination. 103 00:09:57,110 --> 00:09:59,801 I know on one of my road trips, there's a Walmart at the end of it. 104 00:09:59,801 --> 00:10:07,364 That means that I don't have to be fully charged when I get to my destination because I know that it's there and I can charge if I want to. 105 00:10:07,425 --> 00:10:15,120 So I think that to me is a perfect example of what we call charging 2.0, uh 106 00:10:15,120 --> 00:10:26,533 CPOs, which look differently than CPOs looked uh two years ago, five years ago, getting into the space to provide a better experience, overall experience for their customers. 107 00:10:27,395 --> 00:10:28,626 Driving sales. 108 00:10:28,673 --> 00:10:37,175 Yeah, and really a lot of it, you think about a company like Mercedes that's in the space. 109 00:10:37,555 --> 00:10:41,236 Mercedes has this incredible luxury brand. 110 00:10:41,917 --> 00:10:52,262 And if you're spending $100,000 on an electric Mercedes and you go to a charging station in the back corner parking lot, 111 00:10:52,262 --> 00:10:57,562 with no lights and no bathrooms and, you know, next to the trash cans and stuff. 112 00:10:57,562 --> 00:11:02,410 Like, that's not what your customers expect. 113 00:11:03,793 --> 00:11:05,264 Yeah, that's not a Mercedes. 114 00:11:05,264 --> 00:11:09,734 motto is the best or nothing and I can think of a lot of things that are much better than them. 115 00:11:10,578 --> 00:11:11,468 Yeah, yeah. 116 00:11:11,468 --> 00:11:21,884 so, so, you know, like every company has a slight different tweak to why they're entering, you know, the, the, the charging business, but, but, you know, Mercedes is like probably 117 00:11:21,884 --> 00:11:22,644 right at the top. 118 00:11:22,644 --> 00:11:30,979 It's about controlling and delivering on, you know, a superior luxury brand experience. 119 00:11:30,979 --> 00:11:40,624 And, know, I was always, you know, I had a chance a few years ago to spend a lot of time with the executives at, at Lucid, uh, both a couple of times at their headquarters. 120 00:11:40,624 --> 00:11:44,617 and down at the Casa Grande uh factory opening and stuff. 121 00:11:44,617 --> 00:12:00,158 And, you know, I talked to them about partnering with Electrify America, no offense to anyone, but it was sort of like, it just didn't feel like giving up that control, if you 122 00:12:00,158 --> 00:12:08,124 will, to Electrify America was what I would want if I was buying a loose, like it just seemed like they were. 123 00:12:08,624 --> 00:12:10,859 letting go of too much of that experience. 124 00:12:10,859 --> 00:12:19,282 Now I'm not necessarily saying Lucid needed to go the Rivian Tesla route and Mercedes and build their own network, but you know, it's like. 125 00:12:19,282 --> 00:12:29,462 was definitely kind of a product fit and kind of experience fit that I think you're talking about that makes a lot of sense and it surprised me that in some ways they didn't 126 00:12:29,462 --> 00:12:35,902 do that after pretty quickly seeing just what kind of the current state of that experience was. 127 00:12:36,222 --> 00:12:43,282 I'm kind of curious because you brought up lot of interesting things with everything you said so far but especially with kind of like the Walmart example. 128 00:12:43,282 --> 00:12:46,548 I know that they can be the 129 00:12:46,548 --> 00:12:50,061 To some people, maybe the bane of their EV road tripping experience. 130 00:12:50,061 --> 00:13:01,489 what I think is really interesting, like talking about this 2.0 charging, to me, what it really is more about is not necessarily the person who's on an EV road trip, but it 131 00:13:01,489 --> 00:13:09,935 addresses a lot of the multifamily home kind of experience, where you're doing your weekly shopping or something else that you can kind of be in there for half an hour to an hour 132 00:13:09,935 --> 00:13:13,962 anyway, doing whatever you need, and then the car's charging during that. 133 00:13:13,962 --> 00:13:22,098 I mean, I've got to imagine that's probably a large part of these conversations that your team is having around that about like trying to approach that from some of these new 134 00:13:22,098 --> 00:13:24,360 larger retailers that are in the space. 135 00:13:25,504 --> 00:13:33,012 Well, I think there's another thing about the Walmart that ties into kind of what's going on in the country today, right? 136 00:13:33,012 --> 00:13:43,902 With the pause on Nevi, we potentially have lost the government funding of charging stations where it may not be feasible, right, uh from a business standpoint. 137 00:13:43,902 --> 00:13:51,817 But when you look at the Walmart map and where the Walmarts are, they kind of fill some of those gaps that Neve was trying to fill. 138 00:13:51,817 --> 00:14:06,790 So I think that does bring another interesting uh dynamic into the picture as far as a place where having an EV becomes a better solution uh if I have a reliable charging spot 139 00:14:06,790 --> 00:14:09,252 that I can pick from. 140 00:14:09,532 --> 00:14:19,118 Yeah, mean, uh and, you know, Walmart's locations are sort of different around the country where I live out in the, you know, San Francisco Bay area and stuff. 141 00:14:19,118 --> 00:14:24,751 We, we're, you know, we're more target country than we all worry. 142 00:14:24,751 --> 00:14:30,872 are Walmart country just cause we're not like rural, you know, for lack of a better term. 143 00:14:30,872 --> 00:14:33,109 mean, there are some Walmarts in there. 144 00:14:33,109 --> 00:14:36,680 I mean, the closest one to where we live is like, you know, 145 00:14:36,680 --> 00:14:39,171 20, 15, 20 miles away, et cetera. 146 00:14:39,171 --> 00:14:52,569 But I think, you know, so in sort of the more suburban environments where they're all our Walmarts, it's probably less solving the apartment uh market to some extent. 147 00:14:52,569 --> 00:15:04,475 But I think to Bill's point, like when I think about where a lot of the Walmarts have been to like where my uh parents lived up in the mountains and down in the Central Valley and 148 00:15:04,475 --> 00:15:06,728 things like that, it actually 149 00:15:06,728 --> 00:15:15,748 could have an impact on EV adoption to a market that is not necessarily inclined towards buying an EVs. 150 00:15:15,748 --> 00:15:30,928 If they start seeing that Walmart is normalizing EVs by seeing these eight fast chargers out front and things out in these more rural areas, it's a stamp of approval, if you will. 151 00:15:30,928 --> 00:15:36,768 so I think in addition to your point about apartments, think it 152 00:15:36,968 --> 00:15:47,197 it could sort of democratize almost uh charging and make it seem sort of more normal uh out in the country. 153 00:15:47,197 --> 00:15:58,807 mean, one of the things, uh you know, there's a Midwest chain, community store chain called Quick Trip that's getting into the, you know, the charging business they already 154 00:15:58,807 --> 00:16:03,151 have, Bill, what, think four, I think uh four, you have three or four. 155 00:16:03,151 --> 00:16:04,183 uh 156 00:16:04,183 --> 00:16:05,086 stations, right. 157 00:16:05,086 --> 00:16:18,262 Navy stations open and stuff and they're out in very sort of rural areas where uh the nearest Walmart is like, you know, 40, 50, 60 miles away. 158 00:16:18,262 --> 00:16:24,874 So they're solving the problem of, you know, people can go and buy all their groceries and stuff, you know, during the week. 159 00:16:24,874 --> 00:16:32,738 And then every two weeks, you know, they drive an hour away to the nearest regional Walmart to do their shopping for like the month or whatever it is. 160 00:16:32,738 --> 00:16:33,098 Right. 161 00:16:33,098 --> 00:16:34,118 And so. 162 00:16:35,026 --> 00:16:47,672 For those people, like knowing they can go to that Walmart and park and charge up and make it back, you know, it's like that adds uh sort of additional level of confidence that um 163 00:16:47,672 --> 00:16:51,856 probably doesn't exist for people out in those more rural markets today. 164 00:16:52,870 --> 00:16:57,954 Yet I know one of the things we wanted to talk about today was around reliability improvements. 165 00:16:58,134 --> 00:17:02,658 And I think that's kind an interesting point to kind of make that segue because you're totally right. 166 00:17:02,658 --> 00:17:13,606 Like that, as you were talking about the stamp of approval for Walmart to have starting to EV chargers and some of these other larger, well-known brands that I think one, one of the 167 00:17:13,606 --> 00:17:19,050 other things also that just stood out to me so much from the EV charging summit was how 168 00:17:19,690 --> 00:17:30,490 people were having the realization that so many of the issues that were solved by visibility of EV chargers and getting butts in seats to experience EVs a decade ago is 169 00:17:30,490 --> 00:17:34,430 still probably one of the best things we need to do as an industry right now. 170 00:17:34,430 --> 00:17:44,770 And that visibility of having it at a Walmart is such a big kind of impact, I think for a lot of the country, like you're talking about, whether it be due to kind of location or 171 00:17:44,770 --> 00:17:49,296 just kind of exposure to electric vehicles and 172 00:17:49,296 --> 00:17:56,410 it's we just see so many times like if one person in a suburb or something or in a cul-de-sac gets one then you start seeing other people. 173 00:17:56,410 --> 00:18:01,072 Well if you're in a place where maybe your neighbor some mile down the road kind of like where I grew up. 174 00:18:01,072 --> 00:18:01,753 Yeah. 175 00:18:01,753 --> 00:18:03,524 That that's probably a more rare occurrence. 176 00:18:03,524 --> 00:18:16,301 So I'm kind of curious as we can I talk about that like is the reason the uh companies are making this pivot finally into electric vehicles or electric vehicle charging. 177 00:18:16,301 --> 00:18:17,371 Is that a big part. 178 00:18:17,371 --> 00:18:18,832 Is that due to the 179 00:18:18,832 --> 00:18:22,419 ability to buy reliable charging infrastructure? 180 00:18:22,419 --> 00:18:24,573 it business plan? 181 00:18:24,654 --> 00:18:28,892 all of our business models is just kind of all of the above that we're seeing with this change? 182 00:18:31,360 --> 00:18:34,520 I would put it more in the all of the above category. 183 00:18:34,520 --> 00:18:45,460 I do think that there certainly we know that there's new players coming into the space, know, Kemphower and Alpatronic specifically with a really good track record in Europe. 184 00:18:45,460 --> 00:18:51,180 And that tells us that they can, know, it becomes then more of a sales issue. 185 00:18:51,180 --> 00:18:53,400 How do they get into the pipeline? 186 00:18:53,600 --> 00:18:57,020 And a couple of them have done a very good job of doing that. 187 00:18:57,089 --> 00:19:07,169 And so if we can start to bring that better hardware, more reliable hardware into the picture, then it becomes more about an experience, right? 188 00:19:07,169 --> 00:19:14,169 And so that's really, you look at what IANA is doing and ensuring that the driver experience is there. 189 00:19:14,209 --> 00:19:15,329 Walmart's the same way. 190 00:19:15,329 --> 00:19:23,329 Walmart has said their goal is to get to no farther than 200 feet from the door of the store. 191 00:19:23,664 --> 00:19:32,248 That puts them out front, not back, not in the back, not far away from the parking lot where the trees are, you're getting close to the road. 192 00:19:32,248 --> 00:19:41,468 That puts them close to where you park if you don't have an EV and you might want to chat with somebody who pulls up with the latest Lucid Gravity and you think that's a cool car 193 00:19:41,468 --> 00:19:42,993 and you want to know what it is. 194 00:19:42,993 --> 00:19:45,795 And so that's, again, another way to build the adoption. 195 00:19:45,795 --> 00:19:53,218 it becomes uh more about the uh capabilities and amenities at the specific level. 196 00:19:53,218 --> 00:20:01,532 locations and the experience that they're going to give the driver, including the software experience, which I know that... 197 00:20:01,532 --> 00:20:04,956 all the new vendors are working so carefully on. 198 00:20:04,956 --> 00:20:09,341 I got invited, I'm missing that today for you, Chase. 199 00:20:09,341 --> 00:20:19,602 I got invited to another user experience test uh in my region and it's something that they're constantly doing in order to make sure that the latest versions of software will 200 00:20:19,602 --> 00:20:23,916 work for experienced and non-experienced EP drivers. 201 00:20:24,296 --> 00:20:28,496 You know, and Chase, you know, as Bill said, it's sort of all the above. 202 00:20:28,496 --> 00:20:37,516 There's probably, you know, a dozen reasons we're seeing reliability improve and, you know, and both gradually and significantly. 203 00:20:37,636 --> 00:20:45,716 And, you know, one of them is, as I mentioned, is that in many locations, it's actually becoming a business, right? 204 00:20:45,716 --> 00:20:54,496 So, you know, before, if you spent, you know, $800,000, a million dollars to build a fast charging station, 205 00:20:54,534 --> 00:20:57,227 and you had 5 % utilization, right? 206 00:20:57,227 --> 00:21:14,203 You weren't highly motivated to have a uh more expensive uh agreement with a hardware provider, maintenance contracts, have people getting truck rolls out there within 24 207 00:21:14,203 --> 00:21:14,694 hours. 208 00:21:14,694 --> 00:21:17,947 You're like, well, I'm going to build another station. 209 00:21:17,947 --> 00:21:19,808 uh 210 00:21:20,060 --> 00:21:21,780 you know, to get the money, et cetera. 211 00:21:21,780 --> 00:21:29,553 But why do I care if, you know, a charger is broken when, you know, it's not even being used, you know? 212 00:21:29,553 --> 00:21:43,506 And so when it started becoming actually economical in a viable business, then it's like, oh, if, you know, a charger or two are broken, we're actually losing money now because, 213 00:21:43,506 --> 00:21:48,758 you know, somebody can't charge or they're going to a competitor, it's hurting our brand long-term, they can't trust us. 214 00:21:48,758 --> 00:21:49,360 So... 215 00:21:49,360 --> 00:21:55,362 It sort of went from the old days where people were just happy to find a charging station. 216 00:21:55,362 --> 00:21:56,963 Now there's competition. 217 00:21:56,963 --> 00:21:58,093 Now there's brand. 218 00:21:58,093 --> 00:22:00,074 Now there's expectations. 219 00:22:00,074 --> 00:22:01,544 There's choice. 220 00:22:01,744 --> 00:22:13,408 And so we've talked to some of the executives at the hardware companies saying their customers are asking for and paying for higher levels of uh 221 00:22:14,104 --> 00:22:18,125 of maintenance contracts and SLAs. 222 00:22:18,125 --> 00:22:20,796 That was the acronym I was blanking on. 223 00:22:20,796 --> 00:22:30,278 But yeah, they're seeing a pivot into actually paying for and expecting higher service level agreements and things like that. 224 00:22:30,278 --> 00:22:38,361 So we're seeing this sort of move up for people caring more about uptime and reliability and things like that. 225 00:22:38,361 --> 00:22:41,892 So I think that's a piece of it. 226 00:22:41,892 --> 00:22:43,282 And as Bill said, 227 00:22:43,282 --> 00:22:48,053 They're also, we won't name names, but everybody knows who they are. 228 00:22:48,053 --> 00:22:55,555 There were, know, some of the major charging networks sort of ran through several hardware players. 229 00:22:56,196 --> 00:23:01,837 And, you know, they were new, they tried them out and some of them didn't work out so well. 230 00:23:02,177 --> 00:23:07,879 Some of the companies went bankrupt, some of the companies exited the US market, et cetera. 231 00:23:07,879 --> 00:23:13,032 you know, now, um you know, there's enough... 232 00:23:13,032 --> 00:23:19,720 players where people kind of know who produces a quality product, who stands behind it, et cetera. 233 00:23:19,720 --> 00:23:26,308 And so we're seeing, you know, again, a few players starting to sort of dominate, if you will. 234 00:23:26,944 --> 00:23:40,368 There was one more piece, if I could just add real quickly, to our infrastructure data, which is that the average number of ports per station has gone up from like 3.2 to 3.7 or 235 00:23:40,368 --> 00:23:41,574 3.9. 236 00:23:41,574 --> 00:23:47,067 And uh that is, I think, equally important from a reliability perspective. 237 00:23:47,067 --> 00:23:48,879 We know stuff happens. 238 00:23:48,879 --> 00:23:51,102 And so if one of one 239 00:23:51,102 --> 00:23:52,513 charger is not working, that's bad. 240 00:23:52,513 --> 00:23:54,615 If one of two is not working, that's not great. 241 00:23:54,615 --> 00:24:04,362 If one of four, one of six, one of 10 is not working, now you've got a shot at moving to a different stall or not waiting as long. 242 00:24:04,362 --> 00:24:06,453 uh And I think that's a big thing. 243 00:24:06,453 --> 00:24:17,831 And we're seeing that, again, it's one of our key features of charging 2.0 vendors is they're putting in stations typically of six or more simultaneous uh vehicle charging 244 00:24:17,831 --> 00:24:18,942 capability. 245 00:24:19,516 --> 00:24:21,441 Yeah Chase, Yeah, go ahead. 246 00:24:21,441 --> 00:24:23,196 I was just going to say that that's a great call out. 247 00:24:23,196 --> 00:24:25,480 But uh what were you going to add, Loren? 248 00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:32,240 I, yeah, I was just going to add, mean, the, the, port to station ratio was something I started tracking. 249 00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:37,400 Uh, you know, I don't know about eight, nine years ago, something like that. 250 00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:42,040 And, know, the, difference between Tesla and everybody else was, was crazy. 251 00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:43,280 It's still crazy. 252 00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:43,760 Right. 253 00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:51,460 But, but back in the, in the, in the day, you know, Tesla was averaging around eight or nine, uh, then moved up to 10. 254 00:24:51,460 --> 00:24:55,700 Now they're at about 13, uh, ports, ports per station. 255 00:24:55,816 --> 00:25:00,396 and everybody else was less than two, right? 256 00:25:00,436 --> 00:25:14,276 And, know, again, we won't necessarily name names, but there's some well-known names in the industry, you know, who are selling, you know, one low-power fast charger to, you 257 00:25:14,276 --> 00:25:22,076 know, a restaurant owner, you know, and putting in the back, or even convenience store chain, you know, one out front, right? 258 00:25:22,076 --> 00:25:25,336 And, you know, and then maybe some twos, right? 259 00:25:25,672 --> 00:25:35,852 And, and you know, this bill said the problem with that is yes, like if you have one charger and it's broken, right, you have no chargers, right? 260 00:25:35,852 --> 00:25:47,372 If you have two chargers and one, you know, it's like there was this story that this woman who went on a road trip several years ago in a, a, in a, uh, uh, in a Chevy Bolt and she 261 00:25:47,372 --> 00:25:54,092 planned like all these stops and she would get to a location that had two chargers and one would be full and the other would be broken. 262 00:25:54,092 --> 00:25:55,816 And she had like, you know, 263 00:25:55,816 --> 00:26:01,467 30 miles left and the next nearest charging station was 40 miles away. 264 00:26:01,862 --> 00:26:04,770 Yeah, it it creates such a bad experience. 265 00:26:04,770 --> 00:26:09,909 And then one person hears that story and they tell like 20 more people about how bad that was. 266 00:26:09,909 --> 00:26:20,113 And so just to put an exclamation point on it and, but so then when you get to like Bill said, when you get to four to six to eight, you know, then it's like, okay, if it's, if 267 00:26:20,113 --> 00:26:28,316 the station is full, you're probably only going to wait five minutes for it to churn and, and, know, and for you to get there. 268 00:26:28,316 --> 00:26:35,629 And if one or two charges are broken, right, you just, there's still six others or whatever um that, that are working. 269 00:26:35,629 --> 00:26:37,540 And so that, that. 270 00:26:38,018 --> 00:26:49,590 number of stalls per station growing is one of the most significant and important trends in the industry because it just improves everything that we just talked about. 271 00:26:50,602 --> 00:27:01,282 When I'm kind of curious I mean obviously software must be one of if not the largest kind of player into this right reliability thing because I had taken I guess it was about a 272 00:27:01,282 --> 00:27:17,882 year ago I did a road trip from Bend Oregon down to Phoenix Arizona didn't a day don't recommend it and I was in Battle Mountain Nevada which is very middle of nowhere and there 273 00:27:17,882 --> 00:27:20,668 was four chargers two of them 274 00:27:20,668 --> 00:27:25,381 One of them for sure was down and then a second one looked like it should work. 275 00:27:25,441 --> 00:27:33,286 But no matter what I did, no matter like there was something, even though the screen was telling me it was working, clearly it was just broken. 276 00:27:33,527 --> 00:27:36,349 And you go into the app and it says there's only one down. 277 00:27:36,349 --> 00:27:39,661 And in the end, obviously I love to tell the tale I'm here. 278 00:27:39,661 --> 00:27:46,156 But for those people like in that Chevy Bolt, in those kind of experiences who are new to it, I completely agree. 279 00:27:46,156 --> 00:27:49,798 Having more stalls there is great. 280 00:27:50,286 --> 00:27:55,121 And I just think even when you're at four, okay, you're on the second one that's failed. 281 00:27:55,121 --> 00:28:00,646 starts getting a little dicey and a little nervous even for someone who has like is experienced that. 282 00:28:00,646 --> 00:28:09,784 now it feels to me like the thing that is helping with this is just reliable, accurate software on the back end. 283 00:28:09,784 --> 00:28:16,680 That's really giving a lot of these CPOs and charging providers that clear data to say, Hey, this 284 00:28:16,874 --> 00:28:20,054 stall is malfunctioning it needs to be replaced. 285 00:28:20,054 --> 00:28:29,754 I is that in I'd be kind of curious if to you if both of you guys think that's probably the biggest thing just because it just seemed like we'd see such a long I mean only go 286 00:28:29,754 --> 00:28:40,974 back a couple of years you would see such a long time between a station being down and being replaced or even properly fixed and now we're starting to see that fine I mean 287 00:28:40,974 --> 00:28:45,854 obviously as you were mentioning like Tesla still kind of like the gold standard for that where they can do like 48 hours. 288 00:28:46,088 --> 00:28:49,959 but it seems like a lot more are really catching up in that space. 289 00:28:50,283 --> 00:28:57,200 So there's a lot to unpack in that statement, but let's start at the end there, which we started to call the mean time to repair, right? 290 00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:04,728 And which is a normal uh hardware type metric, but from a customer perspective, how long does it take? 291 00:29:04,728 --> 00:29:10,433 We've seen charging stations that have been down for weeks, months, many months. 292 00:29:10,433 --> 00:29:13,777 ah We've got stations that we've seen in. 293 00:29:13,777 --> 00:29:14,271 oh 294 00:29:14,271 --> 00:29:21,454 in the Pacific Northwest where cable cutting is a big challenge, where I'm pretty confident that the CPO or the site host has said, I'm done. 295 00:29:21,454 --> 00:29:24,985 I'm not replacing the cable again if it's just going to get cut the next day. 296 00:29:24,985 --> 00:29:25,513 I get it. 297 00:29:25,513 --> 00:29:28,086 That makes perfect business sense. 298 00:29:28,086 --> 00:29:32,708 we see, I told this example, I think at EBCS. 299 00:29:33,248 --> 00:29:38,888 where there is a Tesla charging station that is right behind where I used to work. 300 00:29:38,888 --> 00:29:42,348 And it was set on fire. 301 00:29:42,708 --> 00:29:43,908 This is in Massachusetts. 302 00:29:43,908 --> 00:29:47,548 So it set on fire, I don't back in early March, I think. 303 00:29:47,708 --> 00:29:51,868 And it set on fire probably around midnight on a Monday night. 304 00:29:53,008 --> 00:29:54,408 Power was cut. 305 00:29:54,528 --> 00:29:56,588 Five of the eight stalls were damaged. 306 00:29:56,688 --> 00:29:59,608 By Thursday afternoon, people were charging again. 307 00:30:00,212 --> 00:30:10,496 I don't know if all eight were replaced, but at least the five that were damaged, looked like someone poured gasoline or something and set them on fire, but they didn't damage the 308 00:30:10,496 --> 00:30:13,797 backend infrastructure, they just damaged the stalls. 309 00:30:13,838 --> 00:30:16,188 So that to me, that's the gold standard, right? 310 00:30:16,188 --> 00:30:30,117 That is you're out there shutting it down, digging, replacing and testing and validating, and they even put up uh one of those mobile cameras that's solar powered. 311 00:30:30,117 --> 00:30:37,916 So that's a great example of really matching what the customers are expecting from this location. 312 00:30:37,916 --> 00:30:40,057 Yeah, and chase the, you know, the. 313 00:30:41,044 --> 00:30:44,977 That's like the top tier experience from like a hardware standpoint. 314 00:30:44,977 --> 00:30:53,305 I think what's still in my experience using some of the other providers what's so cool was obviously Tesla does have like just the total number of stalls. 315 00:30:53,305 --> 00:30:56,068 So if one goes down in that area it's not a huge mess. 316 00:30:56,068 --> 00:31:00,722 But from the driver perspective in the OS it just kind of disappears. 317 00:31:00,722 --> 00:31:01,793 It's offline. 318 00:31:01,793 --> 00:31:06,237 So you're not still being routed to this one that's either down or offline. 319 00:31:06,237 --> 00:31:07,110 It just you. 320 00:31:07,110 --> 00:31:11,222 It figures out and you keep going on your road trip as if it was never there or never an issue. 321 00:31:11,222 --> 00:31:13,136 But I'm sorry, what were you going to say there, Loren? 322 00:31:15,996 --> 00:31:28,164 point was actually one of the original things that got me going to start this business about two years ago, which is that, there a way to tell that a station is down when it 323 00:31:28,164 --> 00:31:29,273 says it's not? 324 00:31:29,273 --> 00:31:38,391 When it says it's up, And so we actually worked with the original reliability, sort the original reliability. 325 00:31:38,391 --> 00:31:39,312 uh 326 00:31:39,312 --> 00:31:42,473 study that came out, which I still quote recently. 327 00:31:42,473 --> 00:31:44,113 It's now getting a little old in the tooth. 328 00:31:44,113 --> 00:31:45,737 This is about three years old, right? 329 00:31:45,737 --> 00:31:57,165 And this was from the Cool the Earth team in UC Berkeley, uh a team headed by a woman named Carleen Cullen that went out and physically tested 600 ports in uh the Oakland area, 330 00:31:57,165 --> 00:31:58,826 DC fast charging ports. 331 00:31:58,826 --> 00:32:02,769 And they found that some of them worked, some of them said they worked and they didn't. 332 00:32:02,769 --> 00:32:03,890 Some of them didn't work. 333 00:32:03,890 --> 00:32:06,051 They said they didn't work and they obviously didn't work. 334 00:32:06,051 --> 00:32:07,492 And then some worked. 335 00:32:07,508 --> 00:32:12,290 And so we got a hold of their data and matched it up against some of our data. 336 00:32:12,350 --> 00:32:22,615 And we were able to sort of train an algorithm to understand what it looks like when a station says it's up and it's really not capable of holding an EV charge. 337 00:32:22,615 --> 00:32:28,617 uh we're seeing, we don't see that as much anymore. 338 00:32:28,617 --> 00:32:33,179 We talked about reliability going up and that's one of the key reasons is that the... 339 00:32:33,179 --> 00:32:35,268 uh 340 00:32:35,268 --> 00:32:39,090 that there's a whole bunch of different pieces of software involved. 341 00:32:39,090 --> 00:32:40,401 There's the software in your vehicle. 342 00:32:40,401 --> 00:32:48,895 There's the software in the OS running the charger itself, charging unit, and then there's the software um for the payment terminal. 343 00:32:48,895 --> 00:32:50,115 They all have to be in sync. 344 00:32:50,115 --> 00:32:53,497 uh And when they're not, bad things happen. 345 00:32:53,497 --> 00:32:59,680 And so we're seeing a lot of improvements in that area, just in general, over the last two years. 346 00:33:00,146 --> 00:33:07,279 Yeah, Chase, software and Bill knows the of the numbers uh by heart, I think. 347 00:33:07,279 --> 00:33:10,170 But maybe it was the charger help study and stuff. 348 00:33:10,170 --> 00:33:17,353 think isn't software the number one cause of charger failures or is it cellular connectivity? 349 00:33:17,353 --> 00:33:19,376 I can't remember which one. 350 00:33:19,376 --> 00:33:20,454 Do you remember? 351 00:33:21,984 --> 00:33:24,028 um I think it's the cell. 352 00:33:24,028 --> 00:33:28,033 I think at the time of where that study was done, I think it was the cellular connectivity. 353 00:33:28,033 --> 00:33:30,525 And maybe that's evolved a bit. 354 00:33:30,525 --> 00:33:38,882 I know, um you know, Camille of Charger help, she always recommends to customers to use a wired backup and stuff like that. 355 00:33:38,882 --> 00:33:51,584 And I know there's some innovative solutions now where they sort of, uh if one cellular uh service goes down, it reconnects to a backup one and stuff. 356 00:33:51,584 --> 00:33:52,404 I think. 357 00:33:52,570 --> 00:33:59,984 You know, again, you go back to what we were talking about earlier is in the early days, it just, you know, they were learning while they were flying, right? 358 00:33:59,984 --> 00:34:06,118 And, um and the, the, you know, the, wasn't a business yet. 359 00:34:06,118 --> 00:34:07,409 So it didn't make sense. 360 00:34:07,409 --> 00:34:14,913 Now it's starting to make sense to, to spend the extra money to have these backups, to have teams that monitor the software. 361 00:34:14,913 --> 00:34:20,716 I monitored a moderated a session, not this year at EVCS, but 362 00:34:21,114 --> 00:34:28,619 a year ago on using like AI and machine learning and using like anomaly detection and stuff like that. 363 00:34:28,619 --> 00:34:39,738 It's still kind of early, but a lot of the companies and software providers are starting to build in intelligence to actually look for patterns before, you know, charging hardware 364 00:34:39,738 --> 00:34:41,119 or things go down, right? 365 00:34:41,119 --> 00:34:45,442 And so they can maybe be proactive and stuff. 366 00:34:45,442 --> 00:34:48,844 The reality is what Bill and I 367 00:34:49,172 --> 00:34:55,446 and Floran experienced a couple of months ago is that that dream is not quite real yet. 368 00:34:55,446 --> 00:35:08,746 So again, I won't mention the names, but uh we stopped off at a very well-known uh charging station in Marin County on the way back from a uh executive retreat. 369 00:35:08,746 --> 00:35:13,569 uh And uh we pulled up to a... 370 00:35:13,746 --> 00:35:21,923 three fast charger plus a level two charger stationed at a uh supermarket. 371 00:35:22,224 --> 00:35:32,974 And uh there were two stalls full and we go up to the third one and it says it's down or I forgot what the message was on it, right? 372 00:35:32,974 --> 00:35:39,784 So we literally sat there in the parking lot aisle for a little bit. 373 00:35:39,784 --> 00:35:50,980 Florenta and I went in and got sandwiches and stuff and then I came back and I walked up and I looked and there was a phone number and stuff so I pressed the button and called got 374 00:35:50,980 --> 00:36:05,078 hung up on after waiting five minutes called back then somebody answered within four minutes and the guy said what's the problem I said, you know the chargers down and He says 375 00:36:05,078 --> 00:36:06,249 what's the number on it. 376 00:36:06,249 --> 00:36:08,320 I told him the number he 377 00:36:08,444 --> 00:36:13,486 few seconds go by, oh yeah, we've already fixed that station. 378 00:36:13,526 --> 00:36:15,387 Here, let me reboot it. 379 00:36:16,087 --> 00:36:18,068 And he literally rebooted the charger. 380 00:36:18,068 --> 00:36:23,991 I watched it go dark, come back on it took, think maybe less than 60 seconds. 381 00:36:24,931 --> 00:36:27,392 And it was working and there was a car sitting there waiting. 382 00:36:27,392 --> 00:36:29,568 We'd already plugged in another one. 383 00:36:29,568 --> 00:36:30,904 That's why I waved the car over. 384 00:36:30,904 --> 00:36:35,196 But it was like, that was like this total head scratcher for us. 385 00:36:35,196 --> 00:36:36,386 Wait a minute. 386 00:36:37,170 --> 00:36:40,042 They knew it had been down. 387 00:36:40,322 --> 00:36:45,906 They somehow fixed it, but didn't bring it back online. 388 00:36:46,006 --> 00:36:46,987 And so it was down. 389 00:36:46,987 --> 00:36:49,979 think Bill went back and looked at the data when we got back to the office. 390 00:36:49,979 --> 00:36:53,131 It was down for, I think, an hour or two or something like that. 391 00:36:53,532 --> 00:36:57,355 But if I hadn't called, how long? 392 00:36:57,355 --> 00:36:58,976 It might have been down for days. 393 00:36:58,976 --> 00:37:04,559 ah But that's stuff that's just unacceptable. 394 00:37:06,716 --> 00:37:08,182 How does that happen? 395 00:37:09,426 --> 00:37:16,639 And I think I'm yeah, I know we've been kind of uh talking about the negative side of it. 396 00:37:16,639 --> 00:37:25,162 So I kind of to pivot to see talk about the things that we're optimistic about because you're totally right between I guess I've shared this before, but I'll share it real 397 00:37:25,162 --> 00:37:25,473 briefly. 398 00:37:25,473 --> 00:37:31,015 I recently went to a third party charger along the Oregon Coast. 399 00:37:31,015 --> 00:37:34,336 Beautiful area, but there really aren't many chargers around there. 400 00:37:34,336 --> 00:37:36,787 And fortunately, I didn't need to charge. 401 00:37:36,787 --> 00:37:39,018 It just would have been nice to charge. 402 00:37:39,018 --> 00:37:46,720 uh Given where we were staying and like on our trip we were doing something else like hey if this works that's kind of nice we don't have to stop later. 403 00:37:46,740 --> 00:38:02,155 We're already getting lunch and I go to use the card swiper and one it's a 50 kilowatt charger which yeah whatever but I go to use the card swipe and I have never had a car and 404 00:38:02,155 --> 00:38:06,366 I knew this was gonna happen I've never had a card swipe work with this. 405 00:38:06,366 --> 00:38:07,906 uh 406 00:38:08,828 --> 00:38:09,190 provider. 407 00:38:09,190 --> 00:38:11,131 don't want to say chain, but CPO. 408 00:38:11,131 --> 00:38:14,093 just literally they have they physically have them. 409 00:38:14,093 --> 00:38:18,795 I know that they were trying to add the software to make them work. 410 00:38:18,955 --> 00:38:23,017 And if they have ever actually done it, they're all broken. 411 00:38:23,218 --> 00:38:27,360 And I don't know that just unfortunately is just the sad state of affairs with them. 412 00:38:27,360 --> 00:38:33,343 Anyways, I go to the backup, which is to download the app, which should hopefully make it work. 413 00:38:33,343 --> 00:38:37,465 Well, where this is on the Oregon coast, I have no cell reception. 414 00:38:37,486 --> 00:38:38,436 And I had 415 00:38:38,436 --> 00:38:43,794 I downloaded the app and because I got some setting on my phone, it deletes apps I don't use for a while. 416 00:38:44,055 --> 00:38:45,537 And here I am. 417 00:38:45,537 --> 00:38:48,282 I mean, in some ways I'm getting like a sick satisfaction out of this. 418 00:38:48,282 --> 00:38:51,177 Like this is so unbelievably bad. 419 00:38:51,177 --> 00:38:54,162 you did have the RFID card, right? 420 00:38:54,162 --> 00:38:55,246 The little fob. 421 00:38:55,246 --> 00:38:56,046 right. 422 00:38:56,046 --> 00:39:03,626 mean, I mean, that was that was about about as pathetic and to the point that it was that I tried just about everything. 423 00:39:03,626 --> 00:39:05,126 And at that point, I was just like, you know what? 424 00:39:05,126 --> 00:39:05,906 This is pointless. 425 00:39:05,906 --> 00:39:07,646 I'm just going to drive away. 426 00:39:07,646 --> 00:39:16,286 But I can only imagine I'm far from I just kind of think like, OK, the the poor little grandma or just someone who's like trying this or doing this for the first time. 427 00:39:16,286 --> 00:39:19,926 What the hell are they going to do and how is this system going to work? 428 00:39:19,926 --> 00:39:21,576 So now that we've. 429 00:39:21,576 --> 00:39:25,368 gone through all the terrible experiences we've had and how sad we are with the industry. 430 00:39:25,368 --> 00:39:28,429 Let's talk about some of the things that make us optimistic. 431 00:39:28,429 --> 00:39:36,582 And because I do think that was actually a really funny thing talking to a lot of people uh coming from the charging somebody just it seemed like a lot of people were going into 432 00:39:36,582 --> 00:39:38,293 it were a little kind of downtrodden. 433 00:39:38,293 --> 00:39:42,135 Obviously, I think some of the news and stuff had happened like the week before. 434 00:39:42,135 --> 00:39:46,847 But then coming out of it, there does seem to be a pretty positive feeling from a lot of people. 435 00:39:46,847 --> 00:39:48,678 And maybe I'm just naturally optimistic. 436 00:39:48,678 --> 00:39:50,178 I was going and kind of. 437 00:39:50,366 --> 00:39:52,266 Excited to be there and everything else going on. 438 00:39:52,266 --> 00:40:00,202 I came out even happier out of it But what are like looking at utilization and some of those some of these other things we're starting to see what what are some of kind like the 439 00:40:00,202 --> 00:40:01,493 really positive? 440 00:40:01,973 --> 00:40:10,278 trend lines and things are showing like okay, this is growing and Reinforcing and rewarding those CPOs who are doing this well 441 00:40:10,481 --> 00:40:11,081 Yeah. 442 00:40:11,081 --> 00:40:21,208 And just to be clear, I think we started off really positive and they were saying, you know, different players, you know, they're bringing provenly brand experience reliability. 443 00:40:21,208 --> 00:40:23,180 We are seeing reliability go up and stuff. 444 00:40:23,180 --> 00:40:24,491 So I just want to be clear. 445 00:40:24,491 --> 00:40:26,511 We started off very positive. 446 00:40:26,511 --> 00:40:29,204 got to sandwich the bad news between like two good things, right? 447 00:40:29,204 --> 00:40:31,884 we ended with our negative experiences. 448 00:40:31,884 --> 00:40:42,944 yeah, mean, utilization is one of the things that Bill obviously tracks and we look at a lot. 449 00:40:42,944 --> 00:40:46,964 And I think there are a couple of things that really stood out. 450 00:40:46,964 --> 00:40:58,288 One is just that in many key markets, utilization is averaging 25%, 30 % on a 451 00:40:58,288 --> 00:41:03,192 either a 24 hour basis or however long that particular station is open. 452 00:41:03,192 --> 00:41:14,822 But one of the things that we did is we sliced the data um by what we either call sort of peak time or prime time charging. 453 00:41:14,822 --> 00:41:21,078 In this case, we sort of looked at a bell curve and stuff and picked the hours of 12 noon to 6 PM. 454 00:41:21,078 --> 00:41:26,480 In this particular data set, we were looking at across the largest MSAs that 455 00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:30,723 sort of was when we saw the sort of the bulk of the usage. 456 00:41:31,103 --> 00:41:39,569 And, you know, there are markets that are like averaging north of 40 % utilization during those six hours, right? 457 00:41:39,569 --> 00:41:55,608 And what that means is, is there are actually a number of charging stations in markets like San Francisco, LA, New York, Vegas, Miami, et cetera, where they're 80 to 100 % 458 00:41:55,608 --> 00:41:58,499 Utilized during during the middle of the day, right? 459 00:41:58,499 --> 00:42:07,213 Like they are literally tapped out as Bill and I talked about uh And we don't get no sort of what the magic number is. 460 00:42:07,213 --> 00:42:21,279 We're actually starting to work on that but It's it's sort of good news bad news for these CPOs in these markets one is, know utilization is off the chart, but You you can't you you 461 00:42:21,279 --> 00:42:24,230 know, if they're completely occupied 462 00:42:24,230 --> 00:42:27,842 in the middle of the day, you can't sell more, right? 463 00:42:27,842 --> 00:42:29,762 How do you grow? 464 00:42:30,263 --> 00:42:37,096 And again, this is maybe, I don't know what, build 20 or 30 markets or something like that where this is a problem. 465 00:42:37,096 --> 00:42:40,088 The rest of the country, it's not a problem yet, right? 466 00:42:40,608 --> 00:42:46,291 But in those markets, you really have roughly three options. 467 00:42:47,351 --> 00:42:48,352 One is, 468 00:42:48,860 --> 00:42:58,685 You know, you use time of use rates and different things like that to try to attract more people to charge at, you know, five o'clock in the morning, 11 o'clock at night, because 469 00:42:58,685 --> 00:43:00,266 rates are significantly cheaper. 470 00:43:00,266 --> 00:43:02,347 So you get them to change their behavior. 471 00:43:02,347 --> 00:43:07,931 ah Because, you know, if everybody just goes and waits or whatever it is, they're going to leave, right? 472 00:43:07,931 --> 00:43:11,092 You just you it extends those little bit of hours. 473 00:43:11,092 --> 00:43:15,615 So you want to move them to the to the lower utilized hours. 474 00:43:15,755 --> 00:43:16,715 B, maybe you. 475 00:43:16,715 --> 00:43:18,016 uh 476 00:43:18,124 --> 00:43:28,489 you do partnerships with fleets and rideshare companies and apartment complexes and stuff like that where you get people to come charge in the middle of the night and things like 477 00:43:28,489 --> 00:43:30,690 that and at a lower price. 478 00:43:31,290 --> 00:43:40,535 And thirdly is, and this is sort of Bill's favorite of the three is you add more ports and open new stations, right? 479 00:43:40,535 --> 00:43:43,624 But yeah, and so this is, know, 480 00:43:43,624 --> 00:43:47,384 Like two years ago, this was not a problem or an opportunity. 481 00:43:47,384 --> 00:43:55,504 Like we weren't talking about, you know, 100 % utilization, 80 % utilization. 482 00:43:55,519 --> 00:44:04,006 Well, I guess in those markets is it are you seeing the old adage if you build it they will come in that case when they are actually that maxed out. 483 00:44:04,916 --> 00:44:08,639 So not necessarily in those markets, but generally. 484 00:44:08,659 --> 00:44:11,772 But we also did a study with a bunch of NEVI data that we got. 485 00:44:11,772 --> 00:44:15,334 So Ohio leads the country in the number of NEVI stations. 486 00:44:15,334 --> 00:44:19,888 So it's a really good uh data source to look at. 487 00:44:19,888 --> 00:44:23,811 And so we looked at the holidays of the new NEVI stations. 488 00:44:23,811 --> 00:44:34,912 And it was really interesting around Thanksgiving and Christmas New Year's of 24, where those stations were like months old, some in cases weeks old. 489 00:44:34,912 --> 00:44:40,275 uh and they saw 20 % utilization during the peak travel times. 490 00:44:40,275 --> 00:44:49,340 to me, that said, and Ohio is very interesting because it has two or three east-west uh major highways that run through it and then two north and south, right? 491 00:44:49,340 --> 00:44:57,385 So it is, if you're going anywhere on the East Coast, generally, unless you're hugging the coast, you're gonna pass through Ohio, as I did during the holidays. 492 00:44:57,385 --> 00:45:02,937 And those stations, for being brand new, uh 493 00:45:02,937 --> 00:45:05,738 just saw a tremendous amount of activity. 494 00:45:06,078 --> 00:45:14,862 And I think that is one case where I think if you build it, they did build it and they came oh and they continue to come. 495 00:45:14,862 --> 00:45:21,064 that's in not necessarily specific urban populations. 496 00:45:21,064 --> 00:45:31,988 mean, the places, because Ohio is generally, well, at least the highways are generally all in major metro areas uh or at least in that region. 497 00:45:32,024 --> 00:45:33,325 That doesn't surprise me. 498 00:45:33,325 --> 00:45:42,993 But when we look at, in the broader sense, when we look at the big metro regions, uh to me, growth is the only way out. 499 00:45:42,993 --> 00:45:47,417 uh There's only so much you can do from a time of use pricing perspective. 500 00:45:47,417 --> 00:45:54,444 uh And you can incentivize a few folks, but it's really hard to move the needle. 501 00:45:54,444 --> 00:45:59,890 really just need to increase the capability, both of 502 00:45:59,890 --> 00:46:02,322 of the charger, put more high powered charging. 503 00:46:02,722 --> 00:46:13,531 As newer cars come out, they can accept that high power at better rates, leading to shorter charging times, leading to more folks being able to move through the cycle, 504 00:46:13,832 --> 00:46:14,532 through the system. 505 00:46:14,532 --> 00:46:20,777 to me, it's an opportunity for existing CPOs to expand their space. 506 00:46:20,777 --> 00:46:23,900 Again, easier said than done, much easier said than done. 507 00:46:23,900 --> 00:46:28,243 And an opportunity for other folks, whether they're the... 508 00:46:28,938 --> 00:46:40,699 you know, the sheets and the loves and the buckies that don't already have charging, to put uh more charging stations in places where they don't have to go find the land, like 509 00:46:40,699 --> 00:46:41,140 Walmart. 510 00:46:41,140 --> 00:46:48,377 Walmart just saved probably a third of the problem of landing EV charging, which is the land grab, right? 511 00:46:48,377 --> 00:46:50,318 They've already got it for the most part. 512 00:46:50,632 --> 00:47:06,700 Yeah, Chase, think one of the, and I think we talked about this on one of my previous uh appearances on the show was the thing that really has driven utilization in these major 513 00:47:06,700 --> 00:47:10,023 urban markets is rideshare drivers. 514 00:47:10,724 --> 00:47:11,704 And this, 515 00:47:12,307 --> 00:47:13,638 I'm sorry not to to catch up. 516 00:47:13,638 --> 00:47:15,009 I want to hear what you have to say. 517 00:47:15,009 --> 00:47:20,092 But one of the things I did want to ask you specifically about that is your time about time of use. 518 00:47:20,092 --> 00:47:27,477 And in my own anecdotal experience, I have seen time of use literally, albeit a charger that I am the only person at. 519 00:47:27,477 --> 00:47:29,379 And then it becomes 10 p.m. 520 00:47:29,379 --> 00:47:34,042 And it is then flooded with what appears to be mostly ride share drivers. 521 00:47:34,042 --> 00:47:40,407 So I wanted to ask you kind of like time of use does seem to have some impact specifically with 522 00:47:40,407 --> 00:47:45,148 that group that's so price sensitive for that return that they're trying to get on their rides. 523 00:47:45,274 --> 00:47:57,991 Yeah, you know, ride share drivers, for many of them, especially those that drive EVs and stuff, it might be their primary business, right? 524 00:47:57,991 --> 00:48:03,464 As opposed to the people that are like school teachers that are driving on weekends and nights and stuff like that, right? 525 00:48:03,464 --> 00:48:10,878 But yeah, mean, you know, we all, all three of us use uh Uber and Lyft when we travel and stuff like that. 526 00:48:10,878 --> 00:48:14,532 And I'm just, it's amazed at how many are 527 00:48:14,532 --> 00:48:17,824 know, Model Ys and Model 3s and other electric vehicles. 528 00:48:17,824 --> 00:48:19,516 I mean, it has just exploded. 529 00:48:19,516 --> 00:48:21,327 Uber and Lyft have incentivized. 530 00:48:21,327 --> 00:48:28,001 There's these leasing rental services that have emerged and partnered. 531 00:48:28,001 --> 00:48:36,067 I think the drivers get a few more pennies per mile or something if they drive an EV with a green rate and all these kinds of things. 532 00:48:36,372 --> 00:48:37,318 that's 533 00:48:37,318 --> 00:48:47,741 That has really taken off because these drivers who it's their like business have realized, especially when gas prices are high in markets like California and certain 534 00:48:47,741 --> 00:48:55,003 places on the coast that they can actually be more profitable driving an EV versus a gas car. 535 00:48:55,003 --> 00:49:07,208 But where this really first came onto my radar was about nine months ago when EVgo and one of their quarterly earnings uh investor presentations. 536 00:49:07,208 --> 00:49:17,828 said that 25 % of their throughput, meaning the amount of energy dispensed in the quarter was to one customer segment, rideshare drivers. 537 00:49:17,828 --> 00:49:25,028 25%, one quarter of their business is from this tiny percentage of drivers. 538 00:49:25,028 --> 00:49:29,788 They have something like now 1.3 million members. 539 00:49:30,608 --> 00:49:33,468 But so, know, like. 540 00:49:33,608 --> 00:49:39,290 uh a small percentage of that is driving one quarter of their business. 541 00:49:39,290 --> 00:49:50,432 And the analogy I like to use is somebody that was like a diamond uh status on Delta for many years. 542 00:49:51,313 --> 00:49:56,254 The industry is sort of, at least for a while, moving to a model like that, right? 543 00:49:56,534 --> 00:50:03,256 the upper tier, the top tier business, uh loyalty members of airlines, 544 00:50:03,536 --> 00:50:15,656 account for like 1 % of the customers, but like 80 % of the revenue and profits and that type of thing. 545 00:50:15,656 --> 00:50:26,304 And we're starting to see that now with RightShare that, you talk to some of these RightShare drivers, Chase, and some of them will charge two or three times a day, six days 546 00:50:26,304 --> 00:50:28,016 a week, right? 547 00:50:28,016 --> 00:50:28,690 So. 548 00:50:28,690 --> 00:50:39,248 you know, they might be charging 15 or 20 times a week versus an average EVgo customer apparently might charge a couple times a week or something like that, right? 549 00:50:39,248 --> 00:50:46,024 So that, you know, that just emerged like in the last two years or so. 550 00:50:46,024 --> 00:50:53,059 And that's what, that's, know, if you go back and we plotted the chart, you would see that that's really what seems to be driving. 551 00:50:53,059 --> 00:50:54,660 That and the fact that 552 00:50:54,834 --> 00:51:03,229 You know, we're almost about doubling the number of EVs on the road now, you know, because we're at, 1.3 million, right? 553 00:51:03,229 --> 00:51:14,915 And so if you're at 4 million, you add, uh you know, 1.3 million each year, even though, you know, the headlines say we're slowing from an actual numbers growth perspective, uh 554 00:51:14,915 --> 00:51:19,518 that's like 25 % VIO growth, you know, number of vehicles on the road in one year. 555 00:51:19,838 --> 00:51:23,580 That has also contributed, but the rideshare drivers are 556 00:51:24,572 --> 00:51:27,616 Really like the big mover. 557 00:51:27,677 --> 00:51:28,840 Yeah, go ahead, Bill. 558 00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:33,774 I think it's kind of interesting because I think I may have spoken with you about this in the past as well. 559 00:51:33,774 --> 00:51:43,302 Like if you look at the traditional rideshare taxi driving business, they have their own commercial charging and it does seem like there is kind of a bit of a business opportunity 560 00:51:43,302 --> 00:51:47,325 for one of these C.P.O.s to kind of either lean into that. 561 00:51:47,325 --> 00:51:54,690 I know you've got like Revel, which has their own cars and they kind of do that, but it seems like that would also alleviate a lot of this. 562 00:51:54,762 --> 00:51:56,963 pressure you see at these fast chargers. 563 00:51:56,963 --> 00:52:06,529 mean, and that seems to be where most of these negative headlines come from, because I think it was last winter when Chicago had that kind of big winter rollout and then all 564 00:52:06,529 --> 00:52:14,373 these, uh you saw the headlines of people waiting at chargers and the vast majority of them were rideshare drivers that were just trying to use that with this. 565 00:52:14,734 --> 00:52:23,016 And to me, it just seems like there does, there's a business opportunity and there's also an experience improvement that kind of needs to be made. 566 00:52:23,016 --> 00:52:34,380 with this optimization for who rides share drive, where and when rideshare drivers are charging on some of these charging networks so that the grandma who's taking that road 567 00:52:34,380 --> 00:52:42,630 trip across the country isn't kind of getting this horrible experience when they roll up to each charging or waiting like 20 minutes, just even plug in. 568 00:52:43,824 --> 00:52:48,398 So real quick on that, I Revel is doing more than just just fueling their own vehicles, right? 569 00:52:48,398 --> 00:52:57,316 They've opened up, I forget exactly where, was it LA or San Francisco, that they've opened up a hub uh specifically for rideshare. 570 00:52:57,316 --> 00:53:02,760 BP Pulse opened up probably the largest charging station in New England, including Tesla. 571 00:53:02,760 --> 00:53:12,457 uh I think they 48 or something stalls uh in the Boston area, and that's gonna primarily uh serve uh 572 00:53:12,457 --> 00:53:22,770 ride show drivers, because we've seen in certainly around Logan Airport, um where I've spent far too much time, is it's a charging desert. 573 00:53:22,770 --> 00:53:28,012 There's a couple of stations that more often than not are plowed in and not usable. 574 00:53:28,012 --> 00:53:30,603 So I think that's a great opportunity. 575 00:53:30,603 --> 00:53:34,624 The other quick thing to add is I read somewhere recently where Uber Green 576 00:53:34,936 --> 00:53:39,559 is no longer at some point going to allow hybrids. 577 00:53:39,559 --> 00:53:47,104 And I'll tell you, as an Uber customer, there's nothing more disappointing than going on Uber Green and getting a RAV4 hybrid. 578 00:53:47,104 --> 00:53:48,055 Nothing against the RAV4. 579 00:53:48,055 --> 00:53:49,506 I have one in my garage. 580 00:53:49,506 --> 00:53:53,269 But it's not what the expectation is. 581 00:53:53,269 --> 00:54:04,696 So that may actually drive more EVs into that green space, especially if uh you're getting a few cents more per mile out of it. 582 00:54:05,616 --> 00:54:10,056 Chase, think, yeah, we've all talked about this and stuff. 583 00:54:10,056 --> 00:54:21,256 And there's this expectation that Uber and Lyft fund or partner or whatever at some point, right, this charging infrastructure. 584 00:54:21,316 --> 00:54:22,756 But that may not happen. 585 00:54:22,756 --> 00:54:29,676 What they may do is just work with, like Bill mentioned, BP and Revel and companies like that and provide the data. 586 00:54:29,676 --> 00:54:30,752 It's sort of like. 587 00:54:30,856 --> 00:54:36,236 Look, if you'll build these things, we'll tell you where to build it, right? 588 00:54:36,236 --> 00:54:42,176 Because we know, when airports are in most obvious location, right? 589 00:54:42,176 --> 00:54:43,896 They go and they queue a while. 590 00:54:43,896 --> 00:54:45,216 It's a perfect thing. 591 00:54:45,696 --> 00:54:46,935 Go plug in. 592 00:54:46,935 --> 00:54:48,176 Use the restroom. 593 00:54:48,176 --> 00:54:50,216 Get a cup of coffee. 594 00:54:50,216 --> 00:54:51,956 Check your phone. 595 00:54:51,976 --> 00:54:56,356 Call your girlfriend, like whatever it is, for a little bit. 596 00:54:56,956 --> 00:54:58,696 Top up and go. 597 00:54:58,696 --> 00:55:04,496 get back in and get that, you know, that airport fair and head back into the downtown city or whatever it is, right? 598 00:55:04,496 --> 00:55:15,516 And so, you know, maybe we're going to see the BP's and the revels and, you know, and the EV goes and others sort of take that on with these sort of, you know, maybe they're 599 00:55:15,516 --> 00:55:16,376 exclusive, right? 600 00:55:16,376 --> 00:55:22,356 Like maybe they're only for rideshare drivers or maybe there's certain stalls that are dedicated or something like that. 601 00:55:22,356 --> 00:55:28,596 But, but I do think we need, we need to see Uber and Lyft kind of step up a little bit and 602 00:55:28,596 --> 00:55:29,093 Yeah. 603 00:55:29,093 --> 00:55:31,575 sure that that happens because you're right. 604 00:55:31,635 --> 00:55:46,100 Like as this explodes, there's nothing worse than as a normal driver pulling into a charging station that's got 12 Uber and Lyft drivers there. 605 00:55:46,100 --> 00:55:48,210 And you're like, what the hell, right? 606 00:55:48,210 --> 00:55:49,030 No. 607 00:55:49,671 --> 00:55:59,037 Well, and I think I think it is something that'll be self-encomic growing pain, but it just seems like it's a specific need that, like I said, traditional fueling, you have 608 00:55:59,037 --> 00:56:08,343 commercial fueling for businesses so they are not interfering, for the most part, with travel of kind of regular citizens. 609 00:56:08,644 --> 00:56:15,489 And I know we have been talking a lot kind of about more uh urban focus with a lot of this. 610 00:56:15,489 --> 00:56:17,790 I would be kind of curious since we got Loren. 611 00:56:18,056 --> 00:56:19,056 You're always kind of Mr. 612 00:56:19,056 --> 00:56:21,009 Nevy with the current state of Nevy. 613 00:56:21,009 --> 00:56:29,727 I would be curious to kind of hear your thoughts on kind of the rural market, the adoption and just overall adoption, how that's played or just any of these kind of trends you're 614 00:56:29,727 --> 00:56:36,188 seeing from that uh point of view as since we're kind of starting to come up on time here. 615 00:56:36,188 --> 00:56:37,969 Yeah, yeah. 616 00:56:38,029 --> 00:56:49,795 one of the things when we looked at the data, and there's one of my favorite charts in the report that shows, uh it's got the utilization percentages and sort of colors. 617 00:56:49,896 --> 00:56:59,881 And uh as you might expect, sort of the darker colors, meaning higher utilization tend to be on sort of the coasts things like that. 618 00:56:59,881 --> 00:57:05,576 And that upper Midwest, the North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, et cetera. 619 00:57:05,576 --> 00:57:07,256 are like white, right? 620 00:57:07,256 --> 00:57:13,576 Like they're 1%, 2%, 3 % utilization, whereas California is like 25%. 621 00:57:13,576 --> 00:57:20,636 And so yeah, there you go. 622 00:57:22,816 --> 00:57:26,596 so it's not surprising, right? 623 00:57:26,596 --> 00:57:30,196 There aren't a lot of EVs being purchased in those markets. 624 00:57:30,196 --> 00:57:31,756 It's very rural. 625 00:57:31,784 --> 00:57:37,449 People drive 13,000 miles a year versus 8,000 miles a year in California. 626 00:57:37,449 --> 00:57:40,672 They do long road trips just to go to that Walmart. 627 00:57:40,672 --> 00:57:43,013 They drive pickups. 628 00:57:43,034 --> 00:57:50,080 It's not necessarily where people are going to adopt uh EVs at a high level. 629 00:57:50,080 --> 00:58:00,048 so the reality is infrastructure has probably exceeded the need and demand, if you will. 630 00:58:00,048 --> 00:58:00,288 Right? 631 00:58:00,288 --> 00:58:02,380 Like that's why utilization is so low. 632 00:58:02,380 --> 00:58:02,770 Right? 633 00:58:02,770 --> 00:58:09,714 If you got four chargers and nobody's using them, you're going to have a 1 % uh utilization rate. 634 00:58:09,755 --> 00:58:27,407 the flip to this and the negative impact of the pause of Nevi is, you know, one of the drivers and hurdles uh of EV adoption is the fear that if I go on the road trip to 635 00:58:27,407 --> 00:58:29,640 Yellowstone, Yosemite, 636 00:58:29,640 --> 00:58:34,420 You know, Wyoming, you know, the, the, the, what is it? 637 00:58:34,420 --> 00:58:43,160 The, uh, in, South Dakota, the, the, know, with the presidents in the Hill, I'm blanking on what's, what's, what that's Not Rushmore. 638 00:58:43,160 --> 00:58:43,380 Thank you. 639 00:58:43,380 --> 00:58:45,340 This is what happens when you get old. 640 00:58:45,660 --> 00:58:51,600 Um, but yeah, I mean, there's people reading the headlines that, know, no chargers are being built. 641 00:58:51,600 --> 00:58:53,440 I can't go on a road trip. 642 00:58:53,440 --> 00:58:55,160 My, my brother in law has told me this. 643 00:58:55,160 --> 00:58:59,398 He wants to drive across Iowa and he's heard that there's no chargers and he. 644 00:58:59,398 --> 00:59:02,931 might run out of fuel so he's not going to get an EV, right? 645 00:59:02,931 --> 00:59:11,888 And so even though utilization is low in these regions, they're still not there where we need them. 646 00:59:11,888 --> 00:59:20,254 They're not the every 40, 50, 30, whatever miles uh on the way to Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore and things like that. 647 00:59:20,254 --> 00:59:24,968 So the pause of Nevi is really problematic. 648 00:59:24,968 --> 00:59:34,128 because it means not only are these chargers not going to be building, we're not bringing jobs, we're not giving the people that live there confidence that they can go to the 649 00:59:34,128 --> 00:59:37,428 Walmart 70 miles away and back and charge. 650 00:59:37,928 --> 00:59:49,528 It's that the hundreds of millions of people in America who want to go visit their grandma in Montana for Thanksgiving don't think they can, right? 651 00:59:49,528 --> 00:59:53,248 And that's the primary... 652 00:59:55,048 --> 00:59:58,050 hurdle that Nevi was designed to solve. 653 00:59:58,050 --> 01:00:09,276 A lot of people don't understand that, but that's it was to fix the lack of those chargers that, every 50 miles and give people confidence they can go there. 654 01:00:09,276 --> 01:00:15,279 So the Nevi pause is really not a good thing. 655 01:00:15,279 --> 01:00:23,084 And the flip to it, Chase, is that what it means is, is those purple states are only going to get more purple, right? 656 01:00:23,084 --> 01:00:23,912 Because 657 01:00:23,912 --> 01:00:34,332 Now because people, and again, we won't mention names, but Bill and I have had conversations with several customers, they're like, this is a fundamental pivot for them. 658 01:00:34,332 --> 01:00:38,932 They're like, yeah, when we can get incentives, we'll get them. 659 01:00:39,212 --> 01:00:48,000 But we're really now completely driven by data and where we can make the most money, which means they're not going to put them out on those. 660 01:00:48,308 --> 01:00:49,085 Bye. 661 01:00:49,085 --> 01:00:50,766 those northern plate states, right? 662 01:00:50,766 --> 01:00:53,358 Which means it's only making the matters worse. 663 01:00:53,358 --> 01:01:08,660 So we're truly having headed towards what I'm sort of calling a charger divide or a charger utilization divide where the CPOs are just gonna double down on those urban right 664 01:01:08,660 --> 01:01:14,544 share markets where they can make a ton of money uh and ignore those rural ones. 665 01:01:15,668 --> 01:01:26,304 I mean, that is kind of interesting because that does seem to put like, uh obviously, kind of Tesla having the, in my experience, probably the most universal rural exposure to 666 01:01:26,304 --> 01:01:28,345 charging locations as well. 667 01:01:28,345 --> 01:01:31,526 So that is kind of an interesting one where that is leaving. 668 01:01:32,078 --> 01:01:38,390 I get the argument like you're saying for it, but leaves a lot on the table kind of to them as a national provider. 669 01:01:38,592 --> 01:01:39,457 That's right. 670 01:01:40,201 --> 01:01:50,166 Yeah, but I was just going to say, because I got really negative there, but to go back to sort of be positive and connect it with some of the earlier players we talked about, 671 01:01:50,187 --> 01:02:03,134 though this is where the Walmarts and the Quick Trips and those providers that are out uh in the rural areas could help solve some of that. 672 01:02:03,134 --> 01:02:05,195 And so there is hope. 673 01:02:06,748 --> 01:02:16,550 But fundamentally, the Nevi pause is problematic from a number of levels. 674 01:02:16,956 --> 01:02:23,260 But you're right, Chase, it does put more pressure on Tesla to be that national provider. 675 01:02:23,761 --> 01:02:29,464 And we saw this time last year when they canned the entire charging team. 676 01:02:29,745 --> 01:02:37,860 And then we've seen them say that they're going to focus more on making existing stations larger to accommodate some of the need. 677 01:02:37,860 --> 01:02:39,431 it... 678 01:02:42,066 --> 01:02:50,059 That uncertainty of exactly what they're capable of doing, I think, is going to be uh something that we have to keep an eye on. 679 01:02:50,059 --> 01:02:53,863 It's not an issue today, but it could be an issue in the future. 680 01:02:54,366 --> 01:02:55,498 No, that's a good point. 681 01:02:55,498 --> 01:03:05,432 I guess this may be a good pivot since we're talking about Tesla is kind of the adoption of the J 3400 North American charging standard and kind of roll out. 682 01:03:05,432 --> 01:03:08,566 We're seeing with that uh nationally. 683 01:03:08,807 --> 01:03:10,785 I'm curious on both of your guys thoughts. 684 01:03:10,785 --> 01:03:18,265 Yeah, so we started counting ports, which is something that is not a lot to count right now. 685 01:03:18,265 --> 01:03:26,925 But we're counting the number of NAX ports that are out there and seeing how is that going to change over time. 686 01:03:27,465 --> 01:03:35,765 And we're looking at IANA, for example, when they put their stations out, generally they're putting them out in 6040, 60CCS 40. 687 01:03:37,165 --> 01:03:38,926 We saw BP Pulse doing 50-50. 688 01:03:38,926 --> 01:03:41,667 I think Walmart said they're going to do 50-50. 689 01:03:42,668 --> 01:03:53,875 And the hardware that they're using allows them to quickly change their mind if they're measuring the data correctly and they see things moving in a different direction. 690 01:03:53,875 --> 01:03:57,277 So that is something that we're watching. 691 01:03:57,277 --> 01:04:02,059 We know EVgo has always had either... 692 01:04:02,632 --> 01:04:06,053 has always had that third plug on some of their Delta City 100s. 693 01:04:06,053 --> 01:04:09,585 That was the Tesla plug. 694 01:04:09,585 --> 01:04:11,896 then, yes. 695 01:04:11,937 --> 01:04:19,230 And then, um we're seeing some folks, we're some folks in California, EVCS is another CPO. 696 01:04:19,230 --> 01:04:23,003 that has the plugs uh in, that has a mix. 697 01:04:23,003 --> 01:04:25,485 And so we're seeing that number grow. 698 01:04:25,485 --> 01:04:27,767 We're also seeing the hardware, different hardware come out. 699 01:04:27,767 --> 01:04:35,733 ChargePoint, I think, has sort of a magic dock-like solution for their customers. 700 01:04:35,733 --> 01:04:44,379 And so those are all good signs that as the vehicles come, and they will come with better charging experiences. 701 01:04:44,928 --> 01:04:49,696 just from a vehicle perspective, that there will be more than just Tesla options out there. 702 01:04:49,928 --> 01:05:02,988 Yeah, and Chase, just from kind of a numbers perspective, and correct me if I'm wrong, Bill, but I think right now it's about 10 to 1, sort of Tesla, sort of like Magic Dock 703 01:05:02,988 --> 01:05:06,568 capability versus all the other non-Tesla. 704 01:05:06,568 --> 01:05:08,308 How many it's like? 705 01:05:08,388 --> 01:05:14,988 It's just under about, I think, 1,000 for Tesla and about 100 for non-Tesla. 706 01:05:16,088 --> 01:05:16,808 New. 707 01:05:16,808 --> 01:05:19,308 Yeah, yeah, in the last quarter. 708 01:05:20,008 --> 01:05:21,788 We're still really early. 709 01:05:21,788 --> 01:05:30,588 so I think what we're going to see chase for a while is, and you know, I think the, lucid gravity, I think is the first. 710 01:05:30,588 --> 01:05:35,368 Evie that's going to be on the market with, with the J 3,400 standard. 711 01:05:35,368 --> 01:05:38,288 And then, you know, they're going to start to roll out after. 712 01:05:39,060 --> 01:05:41,904 has started rolling out some of their vehicles already with it. 713 01:05:41,904 --> 01:05:42,986 But you're right. 714 01:05:42,986 --> 01:05:46,510 It is pretty limited what vehicles are out in the market. 715 01:05:46,510 --> 01:05:50,154 And I know that that was one of the big things. 716 01:05:50,154 --> 01:05:53,448 Lucid was going to mentioning with the launch of it. 717 01:05:53,728 --> 01:06:06,248 think that the CPOs right now are sort of saying, okay, we're just going to depend on the adapters for the moment for our tens of thousands of ports that we have out there. 718 01:06:06,248 --> 01:06:14,368 And then when we open new stations, that's where we're going to add the, as Bill said, 50-50, 60-40, whatever it is. 719 01:06:14,368 --> 01:06:18,568 But until there are probably... 720 01:06:18,568 --> 01:06:33,479 40 or 50 BEVs on the market that have, uh you know, a standard J3400 port on the car, they're going to probably not do a lot of retrofitting, right? 721 01:06:33,479 --> 01:06:37,862 Or they'll do it when, you know, like in Seattle when the cable's cut, right? 722 01:06:37,862 --> 01:06:40,874 They might replace it with the, you know. 723 01:06:40,874 --> 01:06:42,116 of the wrong kind, yeah. 724 01:06:42,116 --> 01:06:50,136 J3 400 or just, you know, like we saw with Electify American EV go in the last year or two, they did a lot of rip and replace. 725 01:06:50,136 --> 01:06:53,716 They ripped out old hardware and replace it. 726 01:06:53,936 --> 01:07:02,696 you know, and a lot of these chargers have been in the ground, you know, for five, seven, 10 years now and have reached their end of life. 727 01:07:02,696 --> 01:07:07,556 And so that's, we might see a lot of that sort of where it makes sense, right? 728 01:07:07,556 --> 01:07:09,318 If we're going to replace the hardware, let's... 729 01:07:09,318 --> 01:07:12,001 let's replace the connector and stuff as well. 730 01:07:13,662 --> 01:07:15,323 That makes a lot of sense. 731 01:07:16,244 --> 01:07:28,671 I always thought that the rollout that a lot of people had shared around how quickly the turnover was going to be to J3400 seemed m optimistic at best, whether that be on the 732 01:07:28,671 --> 01:07:30,832 charging or the automaker side. 733 01:07:30,992 --> 01:07:31,933 I am curious. 734 01:07:31,933 --> 01:07:37,516 m A little tangential to that, I was talking to some of the electric era team. 735 01:07:37,696 --> 01:07:40,297 And they've been making a I mean, 736 01:07:41,354 --> 01:07:52,194 Quince even on LinkedIn has been posting about it quite a bit lately that Tesla is also kind of opening up their native OS to recommend highly ranked third party chargers. 737 01:07:52,194 --> 01:08:02,734 I'm just kind of curious if that's come up at all or much with any of the conversations of the CPOs you work with and any of the things that maybe are kind of going into the thought 738 01:08:02,734 --> 01:08:09,346 process if they're trying to be involved with that to make sure they do well and kind of get ranked high on it. 739 01:08:09,548 --> 01:08:11,269 We've had a couple of conversations. 740 01:08:11,269 --> 01:08:17,914 And basically, it's more for us to understand a little bit about what those requirements are. 741 01:08:17,914 --> 01:08:25,358 Is it this particular site has demonstrated over the last month that it is a reliable site? 742 01:08:25,358 --> 01:08:27,160 Is it at a CPO level? 743 01:08:27,160 --> 01:08:30,863 uh And how frequently is that data checked? 744 01:08:30,863 --> 01:08:37,792 Because as we talked about early on in the show here, if the charger says it's available but it can't hold a charge, uh 745 01:08:37,792 --> 01:08:40,612 The CPO says it's up, right? 746 01:08:41,112 --> 01:08:44,332 We don't, drivers don't, we don't consider that up. 747 01:08:44,332 --> 01:08:53,152 And that was actually a long conversation I had with the Charge X Consortium team when we were going with that a year and a half ago. 748 01:08:53,232 --> 01:09:05,112 And so I'm curious as to what the actual requirements are there and how they're going to be met because I think that it should be probably more stringent than it is. 749 01:09:05,392 --> 01:09:06,209 And... 750 01:09:06,209 --> 01:09:10,502 Maybe we'll have a chat with Quincy and see if he can share what some of those details are. 751 01:09:10,502 --> 01:09:15,556 But yeah, I'm curious as to how that's going to work, right? 752 01:09:15,556 --> 01:09:27,884 We know that Rivian has done something somewhat similar in that they're using their fleet as a way to measure reliability from an EV charging perspective. 753 01:09:28,345 --> 01:09:29,347 I like that idea. 754 01:09:29,347 --> 01:09:32,688 I consider it a step above plug share. 755 01:09:32,872 --> 01:09:35,113 Plug share is anecdotal, right? 756 01:09:35,533 --> 01:09:39,934 It's hit or miss, right, as to whether or not you're going to get data on any specific charger. 757 01:09:39,934 --> 01:09:52,049 uh But if you've got a bunch of a fleet of Rivians that are visiting the top 10 % of the chargers, then you're going to get some detail, but it's not going to be broad enough, 758 01:09:52,049 --> 01:09:52,379 right? 759 01:09:52,379 --> 01:09:56,340 uh So I'm curious as to how Tesla is going to handle that. 760 01:09:56,766 --> 01:10:08,151 Yeah, I remember when they announced it for Europe a long time ago, they had said that if a driver shows up and the success rate is 70 % or greater, they would show it. 761 01:10:08,191 --> 01:10:12,413 And to me, even 70 % seemed like a low bar for what should be. 762 01:10:12,413 --> 01:10:12,873 Yeah. 763 01:10:12,873 --> 01:10:15,155 And admittedly, this was a few years ago. 764 01:10:15,155 --> 01:10:20,337 So I'm curious to see what they're, I'm hoping it's closer to 90%. 765 01:10:20,337 --> 01:10:23,098 But I'll be interested to see how that is implemented. 766 01:10:23,580 --> 01:10:24,420 Yeah. 767 01:10:24,560 --> 01:10:36,535 But, but Chase, know, and this is this is ultimately the sort of the vision of, of, of Paren is, is to look not just at, um, you know, the ability to successfully charge, but, 768 01:10:36,535 --> 01:10:46,229 but all the other factors that go into the decision to pick, you know, station location A versus D, right? 769 01:10:46,229 --> 01:10:53,060 Because, as we've talked about, you know, one of the things that's really changed in this transition to charging 2.0, 770 01:10:53,060 --> 01:10:54,410 is choice, right? 771 01:10:54,410 --> 01:11:02,052 Like we've gone from, you you're driving down a highway and it's like, my God, there's a fast charger that I can charge at. 772 01:11:02,052 --> 01:11:10,365 I'm just happy to, you know, now we have these like, these sort of hubs, like, and we talked about this on a previous show, right? 773 01:11:10,365 --> 01:11:15,206 Where it's sort of like fast food and gas stations where there's one on every corner, right? 774 01:11:15,206 --> 01:11:22,208 And so it's like, you know, do we want Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonald's or, you know, Arby's or whatever it is, right? 775 01:11:23,932 --> 01:11:28,044 You know, it used to be there was just the McDonald's on that on one corner, right? 776 01:11:28,044 --> 01:11:36,337 So now we have optionality and that's emerging now, which means that, you know, Ben and Bill uses this example all the time. 777 01:11:36,337 --> 01:11:40,679 Like where he wants to stop is quite different from where his wife wants to stop, right? 778 01:11:40,679 --> 01:11:46,461 She cares about, you know, safety and amenities and clean, link bathroom and stuff. 779 01:11:46,461 --> 01:11:51,173 And Bill cares more about like state of charge and price and things like that. 780 01:11:51,173 --> 01:11:51,543 Right. 781 01:11:51,543 --> 01:11:53,000 um 782 01:11:53,000 --> 01:11:56,940 And so, you know, what does a rating mean? 783 01:11:57,000 --> 01:11:57,480 Right? 784 01:11:57,480 --> 01:12:08,780 Like, you know, like I don't know about the, you know, the two of you, but when my family and I go on a road trip, you know, my first care is like good food and a clean bathroom. 785 01:12:08,840 --> 01:12:09,379 Right. 786 01:12:09,379 --> 01:12:14,820 Is this a place I want to stop and hang out at for 20 to 30 to 40, 40 minutes? 787 01:12:14,820 --> 01:12:15,440 Right. 788 01:12:15,440 --> 01:12:21,416 I, I don't care if it costs me 50 or 55 or 60 cents a kilowatt hour. 789 01:12:21,416 --> 01:12:23,296 You know, I'm not everybody. 790 01:12:23,296 --> 01:12:25,076 A lot of people do care about that. 791 01:12:25,076 --> 01:12:38,016 But, you know, if I'm spending, you know, $40 on, you know, three burrito bowls and soft drinks and like, what do I care about, you know, a dollar 20 difference in price? 792 01:12:38,016 --> 01:12:40,116 I mean, that's just me, right? 793 01:12:40,456 --> 01:12:51,256 But, you know, one things we've talked a lot about is it's just not, it's not just amenities and clean bathrooms, but that charging station at two o'clock in the afternoon. 794 01:12:51,560 --> 01:12:55,984 um could be quite safe, right? 795 01:12:55,984 --> 01:13:07,643 But at 11 o'clock at night when the restaurant next door, the subway or Taco Bell or whatever it is, is closed and there's no bathroom, there's no lights, there's no humans 796 01:13:07,643 --> 01:13:12,478 around, it goes from being really safe to I ain't stopping, right? 797 01:13:12,478 --> 01:13:19,624 And so, you know, that's why, you know, not to pick on them, but you know, Plug Share or whatever these ratings. 798 01:13:20,648 --> 01:13:26,652 kind of may not mean much at the moment that you stop, right, or want to stop. 799 01:13:26,652 --> 01:13:34,626 And so we really need a more real time, comprehensive and personalized approach to helping figure out where to stop. 800 01:13:35,626 --> 01:13:40,806 Yeah, I've always kind of considered so many of these are open 24 7 and I kind of think every now and then. 801 01:13:40,806 --> 01:13:42,346 Well, should they be? 802 01:13:42,346 --> 01:13:44,586 Maybe this one shouldn't be open 24 7. 803 01:13:44,586 --> 01:13:46,566 It's good during the day. 804 01:13:46,986 --> 01:13:52,486 But right now it's at best. 805 01:13:52,486 --> 01:14:02,846 Yeah, but I mean, that's what I think there is a kind of there's a fun that comes out of it for some people such as myself when they are on a like they're trying to cover a 806 01:14:02,846 --> 01:14:03,786 thousand miles in a day. 807 01:14:03,786 --> 01:14:05,586 It's like, well, this is a fun twist. 808 01:14:05,610 --> 01:14:10,670 uh But yeah, kind of speaking to it, that's not for everyone, especially if you're traveling with a family. 809 01:14:10,670 --> 01:14:20,622 I don't think you want to have the experience like, well, I got held up at a uh charging station outside of Vegas and before I knew it. 810 01:14:20,963 --> 01:14:22,024 Great story. 811 01:14:22,024 --> 01:14:23,605 Terrible experience. 812 01:14:23,926 --> 01:14:28,089 And I think with that, I do realize we've gone over time. 813 01:14:28,089 --> 01:14:29,370 This has been great as always. 814 01:14:29,370 --> 01:14:31,952 Thank you, Loren and Bill so much for coming on today. 815 01:14:31,952 --> 01:14:34,404 Really great conversation, really great content. 816 01:14:34,430 --> 01:14:45,177 For those listening, we already have quite a few of the links in the show notes, but are there any upcoming events or what's the best way to connect with the PREN team and learn 817 01:14:45,177 --> 01:14:47,620 about more what your team's offering? 818 01:14:47,812 --> 01:14:53,897 Yeah, I mean, you can go to the parent app uh website and we've got the report there. 819 01:14:53,897 --> 01:14:55,995 Go to the reports uh section. 820 01:14:55,995 --> 01:15:00,323 You can read and download the new Q1 report blog. 821 01:15:00,323 --> 01:15:10,001 uh We actually um are, Bill and I are doing a webinar where we're going to walk through the highlights on Thursday, May 8th. 822 01:15:10,001 --> 01:15:10,751 So. 823 01:15:12,138 --> 01:15:21,577 That's maybe probably the key takeaway so you can actually hear us go through sort of in detail and actually see the charts as we talk to them. 824 01:15:21,577 --> 01:15:23,650 I don't know, Bill, do you have anything to add or? 825 01:15:24,000 --> 01:15:35,116 uh No, we're looking again at, we did an estimate around Thanksgiving and based on some AI tools that we're working with. 826 01:15:35,116 --> 01:15:40,523 And so we're gonna do some similar estimates around Memorial Day and sort of. 827 01:15:40,523 --> 01:15:41,300 oh 828 01:15:41,300 --> 01:15:42,821 predicting the best times to charge. 829 01:15:42,821 --> 01:15:52,065 It's a predictive algorithm that we're working on around major holidays as we look to kind of expand and build on what we call the routing companion, right? 830 01:15:52,065 --> 01:15:56,207 Kind of what we just talked about is routing is getting more complex. 831 01:15:56,207 --> 01:16:00,649 It's not just getting you from point A to point B, but that point B has to be working. 832 01:16:00,649 --> 01:16:02,169 It's got to meet all of your other needs. 833 01:16:02,169 --> 01:16:04,561 uh And that's really what our main focus is. 834 01:16:04,561 --> 01:16:06,912 So we're continuing to kind of push that envelope. 835 01:16:06,912 --> 01:16:07,954 uh 836 01:16:07,954 --> 01:16:08,615 and move forward. 837 01:16:08,615 --> 01:16:09,767 So follow us on LinkedIn. 838 01:16:09,767 --> 01:16:12,953 uh Most of your crew are probably already following Loren. 839 01:16:12,952 --> 01:16:13,464 Well, great. 840 01:16:13,464 --> 01:16:14,718 Thank you, Bill and Loren. 841 01:16:14,718 --> 01:16:18,358 We'll have to have you guys on again soon and great conversation. 842 01:16:18,728 --> 01:16:19,495 Thanks, Chase. 843 01:16:19,495 --> 01:16:20,336 All right, thanks, Jason. 844 01:16:25,461 --> 01:16:34,585 That wraps up today's conversation with Lauren McDonald and Bill Farrow from Perrin from rideshare driven utilization to Walmart's nationwide charging strategy and the evolving 845 01:16:34,585 --> 01:16:36,603 metrics that charging 2.0. 846 01:16:36,603 --> 01:16:44,380 This episode captured where the EV charging industry is headed and why real time data and reliability are now non-negotiable. 847 01:16:44,380 --> 01:16:51,465 If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to share it with one colleague or friend who's working in electrification, mobility, or infrastructure planning. 848 01:16:51,465 --> 01:16:53,267 And if you haven't yet, leave us a quick review. 849 01:16:53,267 --> 01:16:55,229 It helps others discover the show. 850 01:16:55,229 --> 01:17:04,036 Plus be sure to visit gridconnections.co to learn more about grid connections consulting, how we're helping startups, utilities, and agencies accelerate their electrification 851 01:17:04,036 --> 01:17:04,846 strategy. 852 01:17:04,846 --> 01:17:11,612 And don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter using the link in the show notes to stay informed on the latest electric vehicles, energy and transportation. 853 01:17:11,612 --> 01:17:14,914 Until next week, this is the Grid Connections podcast signing off.