Changing EV charging with Ian Johnston (CEO @ Osprey Charging)

If we're gonna increase the rate of rollout even quicker, we need to fix these small things in the way that projects are delivered in Britain at the moment. It isn't a lack of engineering resource, it will be one of two things. It will either be because someone somewhere has to sign a piece of paper or because there is a connection, electrical connection needs to be made, and it's waiting to get in the road and make those works happen. And it and it is a good news story because we've got the solutions there.

We're working with the DNS to make it quicker. And unlike How do we solve, you know, twenty fifty in terms of all the offshore wind we need and the transmission network? This is human beings stamping pieces of paper. This is stuff you can fix right now.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back for another installment of transmission.

In today's episode, guest host, Ed Porter, speaking to Osprey charging CEO, Ian John them. The conversation covers everything from common EV misconceptions to what the business model for charging providers might look like in the future. If you're enjoying transmission, please hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You never miss an episode. And with that, let's jump in.

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of transmission. Today, I'm joined by Ian Johnson, CEO of Osprey, Ian. Yeah. Great to see you.

Thank you. Thank you very much for coming on. So today, I've got I'm really excited about today because I've got a really good series of questions, but also you know your onions in the EV space, and I'm super excited to kind of to to run through them and and just actually, like, dig into a couple of these topics in a little more detail. But to start off with, I actually want to do something a little bit more like myth busting.

And so and so I think you will know the answer to all of these. Let's kick off with EV sales.

Are they going up? Are they going down? Well, the data tells the story that last year, twenty twenty three, the EV cells were up eighteen percent year on year on twenty twenty two. So, you know, we there there is huge growth in the sector both globally.

In UK market. There are a lot of gray clouds with even more myths that need to be busted, and there are some challenges without a doubt. But, no, the the the growth and the the the that the volume of the of the market is there for everyone to see. There's now a million plug in vehicles on the road, which is a great milestone.

I think we're we're approaching three percent, though. Adoption only three percent.

There's so much more to go, but, no, the the pace of adoption is increasing all the time.

Okay. So I think that myth firmly busted next myth, there are not enough charges. Okay.

So this one, I think the honest answer to this is that if you take two moments in time. If you look at maybe two and a half years ago versus where we are right now today, we're in a different universe in terms of where is the charging infrastructure in the UK. So last year, we we crossed over there being fifty thousand public charge points in the UK, and of course, yeah, that number needs some context around it. But that's a forty five percent increase on where we started the year.

And when the position now where of all the charge points out there in the UK, one in three of them were installed last year. So what we're seeing is that there's significantly more infrastructure than there was this time last year, and the rate of rollout is increasing all the time. Down to a number of reasons. So the the projects which are being built are larger.

There's a there are far larger number of operators building these projects, there's government funding coming through, and there's work being done by industry to make it quicker to deploy these projects. So I think there were people who quite fairly was saying, you know, there's not enough infrastructure two years ago. The headlines have continued, but the the story on the ground is very different today, and it's getting better. So by the end of this year, we're gonna look back at twenty three and say, well, that was quite quite a year because that ramp up is is just incredible at the moment.

And, actually, just to dig into that a little bit.

Right? So a forty five percent increase year on year for something that is kind of physical infrastructure being built. Yeah. That's actually quite difficult to to to kind of comprehend. Well, like, what's what's been the big release that's let you be able to kind of deploy an extra forty five percent?

I I look, it's it's still a a fairly new sector the I mean, if you look at it from an Oscar perspective, it at the start of last year, we had four hundred charges in the UK, and that had taken us five years to build up.

The experience, the expertise of how to do this, but also the credibility in securing the leases and the landlords to do it with. So you can only build, of course, where you can secure the right the grid and all those things. So we had four hundred after five years of work. Last year, we did it in twelve months.

We did it nine months, actually. So it there's an expertise. There's a professionalism. There's a scale, the investment.

And again, every site you would build is now much larger. We're giving drivers more availability of charges, which means whereas when we used to launch a site, it might have two charges in. Now it might have sixteen or thirty two. So there's a number of factors that are causing that ramp up, but it's just causing explosion of of EV charging rollout right across the UK and all all the different forms of of site location you might see.

And one thing you said there was we have a million, EVs on the road, and fifty thousand is public charge points right. Correct.

Is that the right ratio in terms of, like, twenty to one?

Really good question. So government and a few bodies use this figure, well, we need we need thirty thousand or three hundred thousand charge points in the UK. There is no one number or no one ratio which we should look at. And the reason is that around sixty five to seventy five percent of vehicle drivers in the UK have a private driveway.

So for those people, they will we used to say in the industry is they will charge their car in the same way you and I charge our mobile phone. So you wake up in the morning and the car will be full. That was a a phrase we used to try and make clear, a, how simple it is to live with an EV, but also how the people that will be using the public charger networks are those who don't have a private driveway at home or who are doing high mileage on the roads. So if you're if the average EV does say two hundred and fifty miles, when how often does the average person in the UK with a car do more than two hundred and fifty miles in a day, where they need to charge on the road.

But what we realize is by telling people that you can charge your car like your phone, it makes them think, I need plug my car in every night. That seems a hassle or it's gonna cost a lot of money. In reality, for most people with an EV, they've probably charged their car at home once every two weeks. And therefore, the people using the public charger networks are the, and it's a huge group of people, but it's though it's the fleet drivers, it's those doing long journeys, and and, of course, the huge commercial market as well.

So there there's no one simple answer of how many public charges should there be It's certainly not one for every vehicle. But again, it will depend on the user case, so you have fleet driver, a private driver, is it that once a year you drive to Cornwall, or is it every week because you're doing a thousand miles a week on on on the motorway? So there's no simple answer, but I think the point is that if you look at the ratio between new EV cells, and new public charges going in. This time last year, in January twenty three, a lot of headlines saying, look, the ratio is getting worse.

There's more evs. The charges can't keep up. The end of twenty twenty three, the ratio had been balanced, and you were now seeing a like for like rise both in charges and EV cells because that deployment rate has increased so quickly.

Okay. So starting to keep hold of that ratio. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. And one thing you mentioned there, and you explained this to me before we started recording, around fleet because I think people will will kind of fall into the same trap that I fell into thinking that that means, like, a commercial fleet in terms of say the raw males vans.

What what does a what does a fleet mean to someone who's kind of up to speed in the space? Yeah.

I think so for most people, if you think about private drivers, the mileage that we do is very low, and the car sits on the driver for most of the week. And if you do commute to work or to the station, you're probably doing five, ten miles a day. The the the fleet usage when we refer to it in that way is commercial mileage. So, of course, you have vehicles that are ran by companies for company work, but the fleet sector also includes people who have a vehicle through their employer as a benefit Right. It's registered by the company as a as a company car or as a salary sacrifice through that company, but fleet also includes all the leasing companies. Again, if anybody buys a current finance on PCP or higher purchase, that again can be included in a fleet registration.

So, again, many different user cases within there, but there there are huge different sectors of the market. And where you've seen, I think it's around ninety percent of EV registrations last year were in that fleet sector, either because there are large benefits there if you take an EV as a company car. There were some really attractive salary sacrifice schemes out there where you can pay through your payroll. But again, many people in the UK buy their car on monthly payments, not outright with cash, and that again will go through a leasing company via fleet deal. So again, you you may do one mile a week. You may do a thousand miles a week, but but you might sit within that fleet bracket as well. Okay.

I think that's cleared it up. Last myth, EV charging points are always busy or They're broken.

Yeah. So I think, again, when we go back to the state of the charging infrastructure two years ago, probably half of what was in the ground out there was what we would call legacy infrastructure. So there were some companies that went out there many, many years before us and tried to to change the world and change, you know, the state of UK road transport and built this infrastructure. It was only technology, the commercial arrangements were were, you know, ahead of their time, but probably not fit for purpose for today.

So there was a chance that if you picked a random EV charger, it may be one of those legacy bits of infrastructure. As I said earlier, one in three of all the charge points out there now are less than twelve months old. They're being installed by reputable, reliable professional nationwide networks, and we can't afford for a new driver to turn up to our sites and for it to not work. So we're in a different universe today.

What's helpful is that the government have launched the consumer regulations Act now. So we will now be mandated to achieve and maintain ninety nine percent uptime for drivers. And there'll be penalties and reports based upon that. The charging industry embraces that and supports it fully because we know we have to say to drivers there there is a reliable network out there for you as and when you need it.

So from an osprey perspective, we we, of course, but really harden it. We want the drivers to know they can rely on the network. We achieved nine times sent last year already. So now I I think there will always be horror stories on on Panorama, on the daily mail of people who wanna, like, wanna try and raise these issues, but not only is the infrastructure reliable, but as I said earlier, the sites we're building now are sixteen thirty two chargers.

So there will always be an available charger for you because we're building the infrastructure ahead of demand. Remember, there's not even three percent of cars on the road at EVs yet, but we're building hubs that are ready for twenty thirty five today.

I I wonder if this story will kind of always stick around, right, because you will sit with a commercial hat on and try and build an EV charging station.

Where you have, say, twenty or forty, EV charging points, and that will cater for ninety nine percent of the times. But on the one sort of hot bank holiday, that comes around, all of a sudden, everyone wants to drive from somewhere in, let's say, the midlands or London down to, say, Cornwall And all of a sudden, you'll have this one sort of pinch point. Let's call it fleet. Lovely service station, by the way.

Not not not meaning to sort of cause any any any disrespect to fleet services. But you might go to fleet. And all of a sudden, you see, like, this massive queue of EVs. And there's kind of no way that you would ever be able to build enough infrastructure to be able to deal with that.

And then you'll always get someone on their phone takes a takes a picture and goes, oh, look at this, EV charges.

They could they can't handle it.

On Christmas day, last year, there were headlines on the news and on news day about the queues of the services.

This year, there were no horror stories on the news at all, despite there being, you know, an an uplift in the EV cells I think the one thing that's interesting about charging an EV is that electricity is all around us, which means you can charge your vehicle anywhere. So whilst there will be, you know, huge provision of charging at the motorway services, but for many people doing that journey on that hot summer's day, many of them wanna charge their car at home before, and many of them can charge at many other points on the road where you couldn't previously refuel your vehicle.

So it might be at a supermarket. It might be at a retail park. It might be at the coffee shop you want to stop at. But EV charging can be anywhere where there's electricity.

And therefore, it means that the pinch points are gonna have less pressure than the fuel forecasts have done historically. Yep. So the the key here is to put EV charging in the places where you want to spend your time anyway. And actually, when we've achieved that, it means that you don't need to go out of your way to refuel.

Your car can refuel when you've stopped anyway. So I think, look, again, two years ago, there were queues. There were queues in in the place where people were going. And now that you you can choose to charge your car in many, many locations be a motorway service station, a coffee shop, a supermarket at retail park, town center car park.

It's gonna be everywhere.

Yeah. Let's and let's put a let's a pin in the in in that particular part about if you have a petrol station right now, what do you do in the future? Because I definitely wanna come back to that. I think there are some interesting tipping points and dynamics around how changes. Let's just cover a bit of the a bit of the groundwork. So can any EV work with any EV charger? How does that work?

So there are there are primarily on public rapid charging. Now there are two connectors, and the the decision has really been made by industry in in Europe to go with what call a CCS connector. There's another connector called the Chedema or Chadamo, which in I believe in Chinese means, a t break, Okay. It is when you stop to to use that one.

That was very popular a few years ago with the Nissan LEAF, another model from from the Far East, but what you're seeing today is all models coming in into the market now are using the CCS connector. But most charge points now do still offer both cables. The answer to your question to be really clear is that the market has made the decision in terms of, you know, the betamax versus VHS, CCS is the answer for Europe and every public charger can connect Okay. To those vehicles.

Now the reason there's a a question on this is that what's happened in the US is that many of the US public charger network have adopted the Tesla connector.

So people are saying, well, surely, then is that gonna happen in Europe? Will all the European charges have to change to a Tesla connector. Am I gonna have to change my connector? No. Because in Europe, Tesla is also using CCS. So for all of the listeners, in Europe, CCS is the answer, and you can use every charge point with a with a a CCS connector, which is great news. And in the US, there's a common answer again, which is the the Tesla standard.

K.

So that that that the if we were sat here four years ago, there'd be an interesting debate over Is it Chad Emma or CCS, but that decision's been made? And and you can see where the vehicle's coming out now, that that that is the case.

Yeah. Okay. So the the when this feels a little bit like the Apple Lightning charging cable moving to USBC, European standard, when you all need to kind of get to the same standard, so we have the same charging cables.

Yeah. Thank you a lot less painful than that because there was you know, we weren't already at a stage of mass adoption like we all were with our Apple cables where we're having to change now. So it's it's a lot simpler than that, thankfully.

Okay. Only bones pick CCS really is that's gonna that's another CCS in the energy space. As long as you don't rebrand to CCUS, we should have no problem. Yeah.

I think I I mean, ideally now that there's only one, you know, choice, we shouldn't need to use the phrase CCS.

It should just be a connector.

Just the commandment.

So over, that's not us. Another acronym, we we can forget about needs to describe to people.

Okay.

And and then and then kind of going from your Ospay world to home charges, like, how are home charges different to the CCS charges that you see?

So the the the key difference between the different types of charger is the amount of time it takes to charge the vehicle and therefore the amount of power that's passing through them. So typically in a in a home charging environment or an on street, like a lamppost charging environment, you're you're looking to charge that vehicle overnight.

And that's where you're gonna have a a charge with a power somewhere between three kilowatts and and maybe seven kilowatts. Mhmm.

And that that's where it's gonna take between, let's say, eight to twelve hours to charge that vehicle.

Okay. With a public rapid charge point, what you're really looking to do is to match the charge rate, the power, and the time to the length of time that you naturally want to spend there. Okay. So if it is a a a fuel forecourt where you traditionally will refuel your car, you'll go in. You might use the lube by a coffee. That's probably a fifteen to twenty minute stay. So in those en route pit stop locations, you're looking for a high power charger to deliver that charge that you want in around fifteen to twenty minutes.

If you are going to the supermarket and the weekly shop takes you forty five minutes, you need a less powerful charger so that when you leave the supermarket, your car has reached the desired charge level. And again, if you go into the cinema, you need a a lower power charger again for a three hour charge. Now what we don't have yet established is the right terminology across these different types of charges. And there's some work going on right now with UK government and with the industry around really defining these phrases So you'll hear people talk about fast charging, which in Europe means the very rapid charging, but in the UK, it means that the long stage are really confusing, really unhelpful, So what will be coming out later this year is some turf some clarification on the terminology that everybody will use from the the the car companies on the TV adverts through to the charging companies and all the mapping tools as well.

But the key difference from home to, supermarkets, to the on route pit stop sites is the rate of charge you're taking. Mhmm. Now, so you a a a rapid charge of starts at fifty kilowatts that might give you a charge in between forty five minutes to an hour. Again, the ultra rapid charge has given you a charge of fifteen minutes.

This opens another can of worms really, which is probably worth touching on, which is, of course, we can only provide as much power and as much electricity as the car can take. And I used to work in marketing for Volkswagen and Audi, and we spend millions of pounds trying to make you want the vehicle. And of course, what they're going to do is they're gonna say, you can charge this new eighty thousand pound Audi in nine minutes. So, of course, you will rock up to the charge point thinking, well, this is only gonna take nine minutes.

But what's quite interesting is that the the systems within the vehicle which protect the battery and control the battery and the temperature actually mean that the rate of charge changes through the state of the battery's charging profile. So the first twenty percent, the last twenty percent, the the the charging is slowed down to protect the battery. And again, the the you're getting into a level of detail here where the car dealers are not explaining this to drivers. So this is an area where there needs to be a load of education from industry, from government to explain how does EV charging work.

But the good news is there is a crude way to think about it, which is you really, when you're looking to charge in public, you're looking to charge your car from, say, twenty percent full to eighty percent full. It doesn't make sense to stay on the charger. Over eighty percent because it's gonna take ages because the car will will will slow the charge rate down to protect the battery. So we talk in the industry charging your vehicle to eighty percent, and then we get on your way.

Our job is to make sure we're in the right charger in. So what you don't want is an ultra rapid charger in a supermarket where you're gonna be forty five minutes anyway, buying your groceries. What you don't want is a slow charger in a fuel forecourt where you wanna get out of there as quick as you can. And and as I say, we've now got a nationwide network of, you know, professional networks who are doing it the right way, and and and it should be frictionless, and you shouldn't ever need to think about the rate you'll get to.

Okay.

I think that was a bit of a a bit of a we we actually touched on a load of really good topics in there. And for for people who kind of kilowatt a a foreign concept. Yeah. I always like to think of a kettle as being, like, three kilowatts ish.

So your lowest range would be, like, almost a kettle's worth type power. And then you're talking about a four hundred kilowatt charger that is essentially a hundred x that. So a hundred kettles imagine that going into your car. It's fascinating that we're starting to get to the level where we can start to see the kind of charge profiles of some of these of of different types of car model.

Wonder if some of that is also, in terms of stationary storage, a lot of it's linked to temperature for obvious reasons. Is that kind of a big driver in terms of if you're charging on a cold day, you might be able to charge more quickly than if you're charging on a hot day. Okay?

Yeah. That's definitely the case. I think and and also the vehicle range is affected by the temperature as well. So I drive an, an Audi e tron in the summer that when you get into the car, it probably says about two hundred and twenty miles.

The winter that might be as low as one eighty. Now I should say to the audience that, you know, that that's a very early EV. And, you know, most EVs today are doing, yeah, far far in excess of that, but the temperature does affect it. What's interesting if you read what what comes from the automotive sector There will always be a race for the the the furthest range, the the most powerful charge rate.

I think where the real developments will be from a technological perspective is the cooling of the batteries and the efficiency of that charge So, yeah, battery temperature is a is a key key focus for investment for the car companies. And, of course, our job is to make sure that we have the infrastructure that is matched the batteries in the vehicle. There's a lot of what they call eight hundred volt technology coming in now in the Porsche Tecans and and in, some of the Hyundai models, which means you can charge quicker. We're gonna get to the point really where, you know, the char the car might be charged quicker than you've been in to use the loo and to and to grab your mars bar.

So it's all about matching the right charge rate to the right location. Okay.

And let's let's go back to the EV charging side. So let's go back to this the the actual process of putting in, say, forty or fifty charge points into, say, a lay by wherever it may be. I what what what are the challenges for doing that?

I think one of the things that people find surprising is the amount of power that we're talking about here.

So When we first started out and we were putting in two two fifty kilowatt charge points into a retail site, we would work with many en route fast food locations and coffee shops. And the power that we were securing for these two parking bays was the same as the entire fast food restaurant. Okay. So you're not you're not plugging your chargers into the store.

You're bringing an entire new power connection here. And If you look at the small hubs today, that's a similar sized infrastructure as when I used to build wind farms before. And now we're building substations for these hubs, which are which are the same as housing estates. So there's a huge amount of power going in.

We're building, you know, bespoke substations to, to build this infrastructure. So the challenges are now that once we once we've worked with the landlord and and and agreed the commercial terms from which we will be their tenant or we bought the land, as Osprey now doing, to build these these sites.

Then, of course, the the steps we have to go through are we we need to work with the DNO for the grid connection, which is anything from, you know, two hundred KVA or two hundred kilowatts through to to two, three, four megawatts, so very large connections.

It was a lot easier to do that in renewables, when when we were building wind farms and solar farms to make those connections in rural areas, we were digging through farmer's fields. It was easy. There was nothing really in the way. Maybe the old dead Roman in in in the ground that you'd have to stay away from.

But now we're dealing through industrial areas. You're you're digging through A roads. You're digging under motorways. You're trying to go through the car park of instead of, you know, mister and mrs Jones's garden, it's the Halford's car park and and and, you know, three housing estates.

So this is, you know, built up areas. It's big infrastructure. The civil works are very complex. So getting the permits in place to do that, the highways permits, the planning permits takes a long, long time.

And when governments say to us, what can we do to help you guys build quicker. This is where we're focused. Okay. And there's a key point I wanna make, which is around the grid.

So Again, we've been building renewable infrastructure for, like, fifteen years now. The grid has always been a delay, and everyone always blames the grid, the grid, but When we talk about the grid in EV charging world, we're not talking about it in the same way. In most cases, so When you hear about the grid being a delay in in the national press, they they're talking about the delays of building offshore wind farms and new transmission network upgrades for we need for twenty fifty. But for us, when we talk about the grid, we're talking about the process we have to go through to build something in the UK right now.

And it's just how do we get that planning permit for something which everybody wants? No one here is objecting to EV charging. Everybody wants it. It's not like controversial wind farms in your back garden.

We had lots of problems with the planning before. So, you know, we're we're waiting months for planning. We're waiting months to get the highways permits and then the legal process to sign all the documents for the for the the substations is taking months and months and months. The great news here is this is all stuff we can solve.

Like, now, we can solve it this year. So we're working together with with the DNS and with government to try and remove these barriers and to just give us the permitted rights to come build, build, build. But it it is complicated. It does take time.

And it's interesting you raised fleet services, Alex. I think fleet is one of those locations where they've been charged installed and sat waiting for, I think, a a very long time, many, many months or even years to be flicked on. So it is it is complicated. There's a a huge amount of time a massive amount of investment going in.

And we're doing all of this years ahead of demand as well. So I think that's why you see a number of the businesses that selling in this space, like Osprey, like, the likes of grid serve and instabot and others, we all come from the renewable sector. We've been building solar farms and wind farms, battery projects, for many, many years because it's the same skill set required banning, grid, and permits like that.

And a and a couple of a couple of interesting things. So so those I I have to ask, the fleet be charging points that were there, but not flicked on. Is that just an absence of, like, a qualified person to come and approve it, or is it, is it DNO testing? What was the like, what was the final thing that meant that, actually, the millions of pounds that have gone into making this thing happen were just sat there idle. That must be super frustrating. Yeah.

I can't I can't talk for the the company that who who those charters are for, but there are many, many projects across the UK sat waiting to be switched on. It isn't a lack of engineering resource. It will be one of two things. It will either be because someone somewhere has to sign a piece of paper, you know, for a permit for the substation or otherwise.

Or because there is a connection, electrical connection that needs to be made in probably in a in a in a road somewhere, in an a road or god forbid in the motorway, and it's waiting to get in the road and make those works happen. And, of course, we're competing with the gas networks and everybody else. So this is the point around, look, if we're gonna increase the rate of rollout even quicker. We need to fix these small things in the way that projects are delivered in Britain at the moment.

And there are that and and it is a good news story because we've got the solutions there working with the demos to make it quicker. And unlike, correctly, how do we solve, you know, twenty fifty in terms of all the offshore wind we need and the transmission network? This is human beings stamping pieces of paper. This is stuff you can fix right now.

And then the other thing that's really nice about this, right, is that unlike a massive nuclear project, which is kind of very singular and kind of one of a kind type thing. The work that needs to be done here is an EV charger. There are lots of them. It's a transformer, it's a substation, it's cabling.

These are all very modular things. And if the wind and solar industry has taught us anything, it's that actually ramping up modular things is is actually relatively easy to do, and you can get cost benefits from doing it. So is is that something you're seeing in terms of the actual fundamental cost of the parts. Is that coming down or is it going up?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think it's interesting. If you look at the the cost of the solar components what's happened there.

I think we're gonna see the same thing happening here with EV charges. I mean, the the you're right. The technology we need to do this is here. We've got the technologies here, the expertise is here now, and the funding is there.

So all the all the pieces are there. And whilst I talk about the frustrations of the process we go through, let's remember the massive ramp up we saw last year. So we can go we all want to go even quicker. We all think there should be even more infrastructure.

But you're right. All the parts of the Jigsaw already exist there today, we're gonna see the cost come down. But there will be there will be developments in terms of the battery technology and the components inside that, but I think Unlike a wind farm, a solar farm, or a biomass plan, the difference here is there's a human being at the end of it. And what that means is where the real development will be will be in the UI.

It will be in the interface of that human, and and there's so much debate on you know, do we really want the human have to have to do anything? If you look at what Tesla have delivered here, where you literally just plug the car in it, does it all for you. There's a huge debate out there on, well, who will own the wallet? Is it the car company?

Is it the leasing company? Is it your home energy company? Load of an innovation to come. Probably less so on the electrical component piece because it's already kind of proven and working today.

So that's a great lead in actually to what does this space look like in five years time?

Well, I think for a site in five years time, there's gonna be EV charging absolutely everywhere. I wonder whether the the EV charger networks are going to look and feel more like mobile phone networks in terms of, you know, if if you if you approach a roundabout and I've I've used this example a few times, but if you imagine you have a an osprey charging herber, a grid surf charging herber, BP charging hub and Instabolic charging hub, what can I do to make you turn right into my site? If if all of the sites reliable if we're all offering you sixteen base to choose from. There's fantastic amenities with a great coffee shop and a toilet there and playground for your kids.

What will it take then to make you to write? And if you look at what the mobile phone company has done around, you know, historically orange Wednesdays and, you know, priority tickets to events, where will the sector go then? I think that's one interesting dynamic. I think ease of use in the in the chat in the parking bay is essential.

So Right now, certain companies, we in Australia, we spend a lot of time and money on trying to make the base as successful as we can and as easy to use as we can. That's gonna be really important to make sure that the charging infrastructure is accessible to everybody whether you have certain needs, whether you're just a van driver in any more space. We'll all be looking for different ways to compete with each other in that regard.

Oh, you said everything but price. So why why, like, price? If I look at petrol stations today, it's like people drive around they look at the numbers that are one one five two. Okay.

I've noted that right. Driving on the DX one one four eight. Oh, okay. I'll come up.

Might come back there later on. But surely price is gonna be a major a major impact here.

Well, I I think today, to be honest with you, whilst there's been this massive uplift in in EV charging rollout, I mean, there is still so much more deployment that needs to happen until you're at the point where you do have those four, you know, charging hubs next to each other.

But we we do we we there's a site banry today where we sit within, you know, meters of a Tesla site and and a few minutes of an interval site and all the sites are busy, you know, because we're at that point of of demand still. I think There probably aren't you're not you're not at a point yet today where every charging network is very reliable.

Not every charge in network today is very easy to use, and there there aren't eight sixteen charges in every site. So today, we we today, we don't see it. Clearly the cost of ownership and the cost of use is gonna be key for the fleets and all those those fleet cards and those roaming companies that those business models will grow and go into the space, but we talk to drivers today, of course, in this cost of living cry crisis, everybody would like to pay less as we all would do for coffee, for train tickets, for everything. But now, look, I think today there are it's really about the ease of experience and it's about the the the the reliability. And those networks that are getting that right, we're we they are the ones that are winning at the moment.

Okay. Price is interesting if if I may, because I think they're and we we get asked about this a lot, but of course, we've been through this energy crisis. So the cost of the average cost of a public rapid charger has gone from around forty p to about eighty p. Mhmm.

And the question that's being asked now is, but, you know, the the home energy price cap has come down. So why is public charging twice as expensive? And this is a really interesting thing which was quite hard to explain in the middle of the crisis. And I I when I saw Martin Lewis struggling to explain it on National TV, I felt that the industry was in trouble.

Yeah. I I thought I don't don't feel so bad that I can't explain this, to our customers either. So there is no price cap for commercial energy use, of course. So we are paying the raw price in the market.

And that whilst it's come down from the peak of of, you know, September two years ago, it it's still it's still about fifty to eighty percent more than it was. Okay. So the cost of electricity is a lot more, but the other thing that's changed significantly because of something called the the the the the code review, is that the standing charges we're all now paying are astronomically higher than they were before. Now the reason is good.

The reason is good is is because that money is going into upgrading transmission network and building more grid projects. We've had more EV charging projects being built because of that. So it's it's a good thing, but an unintended consequence is that where you have large connections, you're paying huge standing charges, astronomical.

In some cases, ten times more what they were two years ago.

Yeah.

And for people outside of the UK Sorry.

Yeah.

Standing charges, unit rates. Do you wanna do a quick?

So you basically when you when you secure a level of connection to the grid, you you pay every day, almost like an availability fee, okay, for for having that capacity. But of course, the EV charging is we're building let's say we've got a ten megawatt project that we know in twenty thirty five will be full with, you know, thirty two bays charging all day long. That is that's what everybody wants to see us build right now, and that's what we're building. And we are paying the standing charge, the monstrous standing charge, or that huge grid connection, but less than three percent of the cars on the road at EVs, and eighty percent of the EVs have a home charger.

So the issue is that that huge standing charge has been placed on the charging projects today. So Again, there's good news here. There's I'm not here to to bring horror stories. I'm here to bring great news, which is the government and off genre aware of this, and we're working together to work out what can be done to make it more affordable.

But the reality is to build the infrastructure that people want is significantly more expensive than it was two years ago. And that's why there's a lot of debate right now. And what could be done to bring down that cost of charging? You'll you'll see things in the press around what could we do with VAT in these things.

And that's because it's trying to get that to make sure that EV charging is affordable for everybody. Okay. There's a it's it's a complex subject, which I could talk for hours on.

Yeah. And and that's and let's just do it a little bit. Right? So let's talk a little bit about the the the business model that goes into this. So if I put my sort of finances hat on, the kind of key things are you're looking at number of vehicles coming through per year, you're thinking about the cost of procuring energy from the market, and then you're looking at essentially the price that is going into the vehicles at. Those are broadly the three kind of key areas that that Well, one is kind of the key revenue. The other is key cost, and then the the the cost to build the CapEx.

Are there other parts of the revenue stack?

So so I think there there will be new revenue streams, ancillary streams that come in to the models over time, but the the core base model here is that, of course, you are the critical pieces you're finding locations or you're you're able to secure locations where human beings want to spend their time in large numbers. Okay. This is why why it's in some ways quite different to fewer forecourt. So you're looking at where do people wanna spend their time where we can bring the power in to charge their vehicles whilst they're doing what they do if it's a toilet, store, if it's a a shopping break, etcetera.

So Then once you've secured those key locations, which give you the volume of people coming in, it's about can we achieve a viable grid connection here? So in some cases, they'll say, yes, you can have your your two, three megawatts in. It's gonna cost you half million pound. Fantastic.

That's great. In some cases where they might say, let you need to upgrade the network here, it's gonna cost you ten million pound and take three years to bring in, and that's where you might look for government schemes to intervene when it's not commercially viable to do so. So you're right. It's a volume of people, and a reasonable level of CapEx, where over the life of the project, over the fifteen, twenty, twenty five years, you're you're covering that CapEx you're covering refreshing the technology because the charges we put in today will not be the same charges that you'll see in ten years.

Because again, I I I want you to choose my site because it's the best interface, the best technology there for you.

So that was not great.

It'll expire. You're you're saying, and actually to get people to come in, I need to make sure that I've got the best kit.

Yeah. So so we so we we we at Australia presume we will be upgrading this all the time to make it better for you. So, of course, we need to cover that CapEx, cover the refresh, Mhmm. Breakeven and then make the return over the long term.

But let's be clear. We are investing millions of pounds and the sector is investing in the in the UK billions of pounds to build this infrastructure today for ten, fifteen years time. Okay. So it's certainly long term play.

And I think that's one of the reasons why the model which has been so successful in the UK is where you see charging networks being a tenant and taking a lease from a retailer because the retail owners look at the model and say, you know, and in many cases, they're working on, they need a three year payback for capital investment program. That's never gonna work for EV charging. So we we we spend lots of time talking to landlords and retailers who said, look, we we're we're interested. We may do this ourselves.

They look at the model and think, wow, crikey. We can't do But please, guys, come and come and show us how it's done, and and we'll we'll take a, a rent or a profit share from you instead.

Yeah. And I I feel like actually we put a pin in this earlier, which is Let's call it Tesco or same speech. Right? A lot of those supermarkets, which want you to come and stay for an hour, hour and a half, will have a petrol station because it's a natural draw.

So why do I go to Tesco's or why do I go to Sainsby's, oh, it's a petrol station as well. Just pull in. That makes my life easier. At some point, as kind of as time goes on, you see that three percent become ten percent, twenty percent, thirty percent.

All of a sudden, petrol stations start to see fewer number, a fewer number of cars coming through. And less petrol being put into vehicles. In terms of the economics of keeping this petrol station open, you will start to see people go, oh, actually, maybe this petrol station doesn't work, and I might decide to sort of take it offline and get rid of that. There becomes a bit of a tipping point here because if you then drive a petrol car, you're going, well, I used to be able to top up Tesco's, but now it's EV.

And I used to be able to top up at, just over there in fleet services, but now there aren't there isn't a petrol station there for me. Do you kind of see this kind of last, almost like the last twenty, last thirty percent of petrol stations going quite quickly because all of a sudden you have petrol vehicles where they're going I used to be able to top up everywhere in effect just because there are petrol stations everywhere, but now there are because the the numbers are going down and there's this kind of tipping point that's been reached, I now have to drive thirty minutes the wrong way to get petrol, which is now super expensive.

When actually, I could just be charging up overnight and I don't have to drive anywhere. Do you see that?

I I think if you look at the reasons as to why why a petrol four courts, great locations, freebie charging, and then why are they not great locations? So The many petrol forecasts are in fantastic strategic locations on major roundabouts. So there will be some great EV charging sites of some petrol forecalls, and we we've built some in the Osprey network.

But the practicalities of installing an electrical substation on top of a huge liquid fuel. Okay. Deposit are are, you know, quite significant. So think what we'll probably see is there'll be some there'll be some key strategic locations where you see some providers taking out the fuel pumps early to it to install EV charging hubs where they have the space to distance the electrical away from the the fuel.

But in many locations, I think you'll probably see different locations being formed. And we we're seeing this today with some of the four corporators who are just buying land and building new locations instead. And so I think it it it's like it's easier to build on Greenfield, Brownfield, or retail land than it is on a fuel fall But some of them are in fantastic, at least good locations. So I I think some of those will still be short for courts in twenty years time.

And let's remember The Zev mandate, the the zero emission vehicle mandate in the UK requires that eighty percent of vehicles sold will be electric by by twenty thirty five. There will still be millions of petrol and diesel cars on the road. There'll still be lots of vehicles out there buying liquid fuel. So there's still there will still be a four core industry out there.

My guess is that the men most of the charging sites will be on new locations.

Okay. So if you see the petrol forecourt and the EV charging very much being like a school disco being either side of the the the car park, that's what's going on. They don't wanna sort of they they don't mix very well.

I look, I can't talk to the business models in those businesses, but I I know that technically there's it it's not the simplest thing to do. I think, wait, there there are some, I mean, I've been to shell sites, BP sites, NFC sites where they have both collocated but it's normally in the larger sites where you can put distance between the two and and, of course, share the amenities between them.

And so the last question for me before I jump into your contrarian view and anything you'd like plug is about this is one for sort of the the power nerds. I'm I'm gonna say. So the thing that the when when we look at the the future of the power markets, we see power demand going up. So we see heat pumps going in, we see EV charging going in electrification of a lot of processes, which is all essential for reducing carbon emissions, and the shape of that, so so what so how spiky that demand is becomes really important for how you model that. And EV charging being one of those key points.

The future of that could go two ways in in my eyes. You've kind of got this theory that perhaps everyone will go past a four hundred kilowatt, charging point and will everyone will rapid charge between seven and nine in the morning and four and six when they drive home, and you'll see these two big spikes when people get in their cars and they want to charge immediately. Or this is the school of thought of majority of people will probably have a sort of domestic seven to eleven kilowatt charger. They'll plug it in overnight and they'll be flexible tariffs. And actually, demand won't get more spiky, but demand will be flat.

What do you think?

I think the shape will change over time because again, you gotta remember today The people that have EVs today predominantly have home charging as well. So we're probably not seeing the the true play out of the game at the moment, what we see today is that more than a spike, we see a hump through the day where it is it's busy at lunchtime, and it tells us through the afternoon. I think there will be we're stuck to see some innovations where you're trying to change people's behavior by offering discounts or certain promotions. So Oscar have a partnership with the octopus where we're offering cheaper charging between the hours of seven and eleven.

I think really, again, it's gonna be the fleet sector where we're gonna see a lot more of that going on where they will be more price sensitive or more interested in in those incentives, I it's it's really more interesting with, I think, the home charging sector where you're seeing the technology from providers like EV dot energy and Omi who are controlling when you charge to manage the grid situation. So I think they're ultimately public charging you will charge when you need to charge and where you want to charge. I think in the home charging game, there's a lot more scope here to shape the curve. Mhmm. The whole debate around vehicle to grid, you know, your vehicle being connected to your home. And when the when the price changes, your car is putting the power back into the home or back into the grid.

I think there's an entire industry that's gonna grow off that.

It's almost like split it into two things, like have your domestic where you think there'll be this smoothness and there'll be people who try and bring flexible pricing to it so you can shape that. And then you'll have this other sort of or almost more sort of they charge based on need, and then they hit the four hundred kilowatt charges and that that that will have some spikes in it. Yeah.

And and again, on just on the the the four hundred kilowatt piece, I think where we're seeing you know, the most demand today. Most of the charges that people are looking for between, you know, seventy five and and, you know, a hundred and fifty kilowatt charges. The charges can go up to three hundred three fifty. Mhmm. But predominantly with the charge rates of the vehicles, most of them are tapping out at about one fifty in the peak charge rates.

HTV, a heavy goods vehicle charging is is coming. And there, you may see a move towards one megawatt charging. But again, you're gonna hit those charges when you need and want to charge. And then you're you're not really gonna if you plug into a pit stop charging location, you're not interested in, you know, flexibility and going back to the grid there. You're interested in getting your charging going. Now the site it self might have a flexibility play, but as a as a car a vehicle driver, you want to charge and go or charge and go to the low and go.

For the home user, really interesting where you could go with Absolutely. Okay. That's been fascinating to run through all of that. I would like to give you the opportunity to to have a go at the final two questions. So one, is there anything you'd like to plug?

I think I I would say to anybody who, has never tried NEV or tried public charging, We we in the UK now, we're very lucky to have in in many cases, you know, some of the world's best examples of what public charging should be like. It's reliable. It's easy to pay with a tap of a credit card. Just don't believe the myth.

Try it yourself. You know, there are there are headlines around. You need fifty six apps to charge. There's no charging.

There's queues. It's simply not true out there today. And if you talk to your friends or colleagues who live with an EV, Many of them will say it's brilliant. It's easy.

I won't be going back. So and that but the key point is that is a fairly recent change in what we've built here in the UK. So go and try it. I think if you're asking me to plug, then I'm obviously gonna plug the osprey network.

We've we've worked tirelessly for for the last six years to build what we have. We've now got a thousand public rapid charge points across the UK from the top of Scotland to the bottom of Cornwall. Again, you can tap with the contactless bank card ease easy to use. And we have, you know, last year we were commended by Zapmap for being a a recommended network for the fourth year running, and we won a number of awards for for best network.

So if you're gonna try a network, go and try an Osprey network and, and give it a try. But it it what we've delivered here in the UK on the ground is is quite impressive in the last few years.

Despite all the the great clouds and the headlines. I mean, the industry became a political football last summer, which is really unhelpful. I don't think you know, the moving of the ban that wasn't a ban by the UK government back to twenty thirty five, it didn't make any difference in terms of any laws on the cars because the the the mandate for the car manufacturers is still there. The only thing it might have done is told the British public, you don't need to think about buying an EVA. And that that's really damaging in terms of the impact on consumer demand, and there's just no need for it because the situation's never been better.

Mhmm. And particularly as well, like, EV cost that we see, you know, you see frequent updates that EVs are getting down to cost parity with petrol, even beyond. So the that future is very much here now. So it's not a case of think about getting me via might wait five years. It really is. Okay.

You can actually go and do this now.

But there's and this this isn't great news for leasing companies, but you can go and buy an electric Porsche now for fifty grand. And I know not everyone's got fifty grand, but that flows right the way through. The the used EV prices now, there are some fantastic bargains out there. And whilst that's not for leasing companies and car companies for the public, there's no better time to get an EV. It's, yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah.

I think I think one thing that's come through in this conversation, actually, which is fascinating for me is that I think deep down you're a bit of a petrol head or maybe a bit of a car head, but you you you deeply love EVs as a as someone who drives it, and it it something that you are extremely passionate about. And I think that for lots of people will be a really interesting sort of thing to listen to and just see, actually, here's someone who Star Southern Volkswagen, who is now, you know, totally converted to the EV piece and couldn't be a more stronger advocate of it.

Yeah. I I'm I think we're all very conscious though that we have to we we live in a bubble. Right? We so many of us love this we'll we'll have everything we do and we believe in it so strongly, but our job now is to convince the mass market of vehicle drivers in the UK that this is the right thing to do.

And unfortunately, the challenge is quite steep on with us because of all the stuff that's going on with the media at the moment. Mhmm. And we've been spoilt in that the early adopter set who love the technology. They love what they're doing.

They'll they'll sit at home and they'll watch their kilowatt hours ticking away in the app. That isn't normal. That's not the British public. So how do we now take these quite complicated messages about kilowatt hours and charge rates and CCS and, you know, charging networks?

How do we just convince people like my mum to think this is the right thing to do? This is easy. There's charging everywhere. And actually, this is a better experience to drive an EV than it was a petrol and diesel car.

That's the challenge. And I think what what's what I'm excited about now is that we're seeing the charging industry, government, the car, and starting to work together to solve those problems. So look, that's the bit where we've gotta maintain a balanced outlook and professionalism because we we The danger is we get seen as tree huggers. And this is, you know, we are this is a mega industry, and we've now got to make the next leap to get to that mass adoption stage.

Agreed? Agreed. Okay. And final question, what is your contrarian view? What's something that you believe that ninety percent of the market out there don't believe?

So the controversial viewpoint, it's probably gonna be about the charging power point. I mean, there will always be a race to have the most powerful charge the biggest charge. I see these amazing headlines. So, you know, here's Europe's most powerful charges been launched.

No one's gonna use it. You know, we we have to play the game with the advertisers. We have to say, yes, we can charge your your Porsche take on. But we see the data, and the data is that most vehicles charge at around, I think the average for the vehicle sold last year is around just under a hundred kilowatts.

So, again, on your on your list of things you need to find a way to educate the public on, it's how on earth do we convince people that it'd create your your new hundred thousand pound Audi could charge for maybe a minute or two at three hundred kilowatts, but you only need a hundred kilowatt charger. And we're as you can tell, I'm quite passionate about this. What I my personal what I'd love to see is when you hire a car, abroad in the old days, and you'd open the the fuel cap, and it would tell you if it's petrol or diesel, and you knew, I just wish we could open the the the charging port on a vehicle, and it would say to you you know, max charge rate for any kilowatts.

Well, well done you. Yeah. Your average charge rate you should expect is ninety because your mindset changes overnight. You think, oh, wow.

Actually, so what you mean is There are forty thousand charge points out there, which are relevant for my vehicle. So I I know that there'll be people listening or watching who don't agree with this, and they say, no, no, no, this is all about the power. Let's get these four hundred kilowatt charges. It's not the real world and it won't be, you know, for hate for heavy goods vehicles, for formulary, awesome.

Let's have the Let's have the technology race, but for ninety percent of the UK car driving public, not relevant. Perfect.

In, thank you very much for coming on. You've been fantastic guests. You are hugely knowledgeable about the space, and I think that has really helped me understand what's going on in the EV space. But also I think our listeners as well.