Gary chats with Dean Header from Vital EV about the complexities behind installing public EV chargers. They unpack Vital EV's role as an enabler working with charge point operators, hardware suppliers, and site owners to design, install, and maintain charging infrastructure. Dean highlights challenges like limited power capacity at sites, the lengthy process with distribution network operators, and the importance of future-proofing installations. They also discuss the evolving market, service contracts for reliability, and how Vital EV supports a range of charging solutions from workplace AC to megawatt DC chargers for commercial fleets.
Topics:ev charger installation processrole of vital evcharge point operatorspower capacity challengessite design and planningservice and maintenancemegawatt chargingfuture-proofing infrastructuremarket diversitysoftware for charge management
In Episode 195 Gary looks at one of those companies that works behind the scenes to actually get chargers in the ground - Vital EV. We talk to head of Business Development, Dean Hedger.
What do they actually do? How much influence do they have on charger design, and how do they decide on the hardware they use?
Guest Details: Dean Hedger
Dean has spent more than 30 years in the motor industry gaining experience across fleet management, leasing, breakdown and commercial vehicles. His electric vehicle knowledge and dedication to EVs allows him to advise on infrastructure, charging equipment, maintenance, and procurement. Dean has an innovative focus and has delivered new product and services innovation throughout his career. A regular contributor on industry webinars, podcasts and round table discussions.
The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence.
"Hello, Gary. This goes this goes back a bit actually my career spans back through many kind of automotive iterations, shall we say? No, I would say that it started off in the probably the, the 90s really when I joined what was a very small company called Elton vehicle contracts that turned into first national that ended up becoming the behemoth that his Lex but I was looking after the public sector customers in those days and there was early adoption towards electric vehicles, things like the Citroen, Berlingo electric and the Peugeot partner. And I was always involved in you know, helping customers understand innovations in the market. I remember going to see the modeC vehicle and riding in that. And it was all around those sort of, you know, the trough that sort of 90s in the 2000s. And then I think the jobs subsequently have seen me involved with alphabet with BMW and the Alpha electric products that we had there. The AA through the development side put in place around the call support for ChargePoint operators. And yeah, and then now obviously a Vital EV absolutely at the sharp end helping people build their EV charging infrastructure. So yeah, there's a bit of a backstory. And it leads me very nicely on to your work at Vital EV. Now, I must admit, I struggled to understand the different roles on the charger install universe. I mean, I look at someone like Osprey charging or Gridserve. And they have chargers at sites that they've built and they're charge point operators. Then I look at people like say, Craig Hibbert from EV civils. And they've put chargers at sites, but they're not CPOs. But then I look at companies like ABB, Kempower, Circontrol, Alpitronic. And they've got charges at sites, but they're just hardware supplies. And then in the middle of that there are these companies which is where I think Vital EV fits. Your you build the sites but you're not a CPO, you sell the hardware, but you're not a hardware manufacturer. Talk me through that whole process. So I know who sits where."
"... are these companies which is where I think Vital EV fits. Your you build the sites but you're not a CPO, y..."
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Hi, I'm Gary and this is episode 195 of EV musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles, and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today we'll be looking at what goes on when new chargers are installed.
This season of the podcast is sponsored by Zapmap the free to download app that helps Eevee drivers search plan and pay for their charging. Before we start, I want to let you know the plans are proceeding with my end of Season Roundtable. I'm still keeping things under wraps. But if you want a hint, here's a good one. There'll be a lack of 'Y', but lots and lots of 'X' in this episode. X. Just make sure you get that word right. Also, just to let you know if you want to contact me the new domain and everything is up and running. So I can be reached at info at EVmusings.com.
Our main topic of discussion today is installing public charging. Now most people think that the Instavolts, The Gridserves, the bp Pulses of this world just decide we'll put charges here snap their fingers and then magically appear. The reality is far, far different to that. Instalss can take a long time to complete for many reasons, not all of which are down to the charge point operators themselves. On top of that the CPOs rarely do the actual installs themselves, they design the site and hand it over to other companies. Now one such company is Vital EV and to talk to me about what they do. I'm joined by the head of business development. Dean Header. Welcome, Dean.
Hello, Gary.
This goes this goes back a bit actually my career spans back through many kind of automotive iterations, shall we say? No, I would say that it started off in the probably the, the 90s really when I joined what was a very small company called Elton vehicle contracts that turned into first national that ended up becoming the behemoth that his Lex but I was looking after the public sector customers in those days and there was early adoption towards electric vehicles, things like the Citroen, Berlingo electric and the Peugeot partner. And I was always involved in you know, helping customers understand innovations in the market. I remember going to see the modeC vehicle and riding in that. And it was all around those sort of, you know, the trough that sort of 90s in the 2000s. And then I think the jobs subsequently have seen me involved with alphabet with BMW and the Alpha electric products that we had there. The AA through the development side put in place around the call support for ChargePoint operators. And yeah, and then now obviously a Vital EV absolutely at the sharp end helping people build their EV charging infrastructure. So yeah, there's a bit of a backstory.
And it leads me very nicely on to your work at Vital EV. Now, I must admit, I struggled to understand the different roles on the charger install universe. I mean, I look at someone like Osprey charging or Gridserve. And they have chargers at sites that they've built and they're charge point operators. Then I look at people like say, Craig Hibbert from EV civils. And they've put chargers at sites, but they're not CPOs. But then I look at companies like ABB, Kempower, Circontrol, Alpitronic. And they've got charges at sites, but they're just hardware supplies. And then in the middle of that there are these companies which is where I think Vital EV fits. Your you build the sites but you're not a CPO, you sell the hardware, but you're not a hardware manufacturer. Talk me through that whole process. So I know who sits where.
It's difficult, isn't it? Because I know what you mean. There's lots of companies in this space with EV in the title and it doesn't enable people to differentiate what they do you know, it's not the it's not it's not really the Ronseal approach. Is it in the EV market with the does what it says on the tin? It should say it alludes to what we do on the tin but yeah, you're right Gary, let's let's let's clear the fog. Shall I now explain a little bit more about what what Vitals do. So we are, I suppose, an enabler to a lot of those organisations you mentioned. So we're an enabler for CPOs to become CPOs and operate their network. We're an enabler for hardware manufacturers to bring their products to market and we can do they can sell them through to us to end users. So the Vital journey and value proposition goes right from being able to help someone, do a site instal and survey, by understanding their power capability, we can then determine the right kind of charging equipment that they need, then instal the equipment for them, commissioned the equipment for them, and then service and maintain it after that. So I suppose in my automotive world, it's a kind of a whole life solution, where we'll help with the provision that you know, the sale of the item, the service of the item, and during the the in life operations of it. So does that kind of does that, clear it a bit for you?
It does, and then sort of picks up on to sort of follow up questions on that, which is, let's, let's put this into a couple of scenarios. So I'll give you a scenario you talk me through the kind of work that Vital EV would do in that specific scenario. So let's say somebody like an ESB charging or a BP pulse, or an Osprey came to you and said, they wanted to put a new rapid charging site in somewhere like, I don't know, mid-Wales? How would that work, from your point of view? ,
Well, to take you on the journey of what we could do, what we could do for them, is go and see the site and work with them to assess the power capability on the site. And then also understand kind of electrical designs and site requirements. So you can kind of scope out plan for the the aspirations that somebody might have around that site. Okay. And then from that, you can then build out a kind of time scaled plan of what's needed to make that site. Well, exactly what the end user wants, and we will help them create that. Now, we don't do the civils directly, that we have partners that we would work with, saying we'd like the you know, connections, you know, we've worked with partners to help us do that. But like I said, at the start the survey, the installation, the commissioning, the provision of the hardware, and the service or maintenance of it is very much all done by by the vital team.
So, a second scenario, and there may not be any difference on this. But let's take your old employee the AA. Supposing they came to you and said, we've got the big car park at the Fanum House in Basingstoke, we want to add a load of 11 kilowatt AC chargers, for workplace charging, would there be any difference in the work that you did on there?
Not really, because you still got go through the same process in terms of understanding power capability. We have AC charging equipment, whilst we're DC charging specialists, we do have an AC charger that we that we put in when somebody wants it. So yeah, I suppose not not. Not really, Gary, it's, it's a similar process just to kind of different end user case. That and I think one of the strengths of Vital is, we're able, because of the range of products and services that we provide. There's a there's a range of different solutions available for different end user cases. So it's quite flexible.
And are they, you talked to me about that flexibility? Do you have for example, this is our DC charging? sort of medium power offering this is our DC Ultra rapid charging, offering this is our AC seven kilowatt offering or what or is it? Is there a reasonable amount of flexibility in there?
Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's flexible in the sense that you know, from a seven kilowatt charger, right up to a 600 kilowatt power cabinet. We have got solutions in between. So we can introduce people into the DC world with the movable chargers that we have, moving through to 50 kilowatt wall mounted units, then you you know, into the standalone charges, then through into the hub and spoke systems that are built out from from from power cabinets into satellites that dispense the charge. Right, you know, with our DC focus that, you know, the markets we're focused on is very much the commercial operators. But at the same time, we have solutions for someone who just wants to charge cars as well. So like I said, it's all it's having the solutions for the different use cases, and that's what we're able to help people with, and also help people understand what's possible. We get a lot of inquiries into the business. And we're always very quick to try and understand with that person, that customer what's your power capability, because there's no good getting into a conversation with someone selling them the absolute charging dream when they've got no chance of being able to operate that on their on their site without some, you know, serious investment in power.
Yeah no, that makes sense. Now that does bring up the question of what would you classify as a customer now we've already said You know, if the AA came to you, fair enough, if bp Pulse, or one of the big CPOs came to you, but I got a scenario like for example, for my sins I've been roped in to be the local council Climate Champion, and they're making noises to me about, you know, can we get some EV charging in at various locations in the area. Now, if I was to come to Vital EV, and say, This is what I want, would you consider me a customer? Or is there sort of an intermediate person I would have to go to, who would then contact you and get you involved in all this?
No, you can come directly to us. The customer base for us is, is really B2B, Gary, any kind of B2B scenario. It can be from a kind of a retail store, to a bus, the commercial vehicle depot operator, and it's, it's very wide and varied. And we've got the right members of the team in place to deal with, you know, to deal with the right kind of organisations that need to service. And we don't do domestic installs. That's just one thing to, I suppose call out. To to save any confusion. We don't do chargers on people's houses. Okay, that's not our market.
At there's many out there that deal with that aren't there?. So yeah.
There is, um but we will do an AC wall box in a workplace scenario. Okay, we just wouldn't put one on the side of the house.
Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, talk to me a little bit about the design aspect of this. I mean, back in the day when, when it was still, you know, the wild west on charging, you could pretty much turn up anywhere, stick a charger in the ground connect it to the grid, and be gone. And those days, I would suggest are long gone, you now need to be looking at well designed chargers, connectivity, canopies, CCTV. How does that aspect play into the work that you do? Are you responsible for that? Or do you take what you're given?
No, we will give, we will, we will give advice and guidance on a site design. And I suppose more more, more importantly, what we're doing is we're giving an electrical design guidance. So you know, the aesthetics of a site, we are, we're obviously we're keen to ensure and we'll chip in where where necessary on whatever the client wants to do, and give advice and guidance on cases that we've worked on in the past, you know, where to run cables externally, internally, you know, all these kinds of questions come up. So, we are able to help give advice and guidance and make whatever the customer is trying to get into place as suitable for all the use cases and, you know, drivers and types of vehicles that they may want to be charging. But without being too dictatorial, if that makes sense. But it is important these days, as we know, and like you say that the literal land grab of the past and shoving charges anywhere. We do try and and understand from the customers, you know, why did they work with these chargers? Were they going to put them in, you know, how can we help ensure that it's the best charger? Based on the footfall? You know, the footfall the traffic that's going to be passing through
Our good friends at Ionity, are putting in a nice 10 Charger hub about two miles from where I live, which is great for me, and great for the local area. But they've obviously had to go through a planning process and send it through the local planning authority. Now I've had look at all the the plans up there, because obviously, they're available freely online. Ionity don't seem to have a lot of involvement, specifically in creating those plans. Would it be the company that Ionity to have engaged to do this who are similar to Vital EV who put those together or is there a third party that people like you would liaise with to get those plans put in place that that gets submitted to the planning application?
For the electrical for the electrical plans? Absolutely. That's something that we do. Exactly. It could be something similar to that. And this is where Like, you've got this scenario here where nobody does everything. But it's really important to understand exactly who does what, which is very much the kind of conversation that we said we were going to have. And we've got a preferred supplier kind of partnership list, where we try and ensure with the customers, the customer has one contact, as in Vital, and everything that needs to be managed to enable them to operate their, you know, their site. And we manage through through a project and the kind of an implementation delivery, which means we bring in the right partners to do the right things. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's that that's the kind of the model that we're trying to operate to. And we're building, we're building that list all the time, you know, because there's people coming to market and there's people doing more things and, and less things as, as this is, it's still so new, isn't it? It's still so new, I find that the danger, I think is we live in a bit of a bubble, don't we, we live in a bit of a social media bubble, especially I think, on our on our LinkedIn's and the like, where it's only showing you what it thinks you want to see in the kind of world that you exist in on in there. I know I talk about EV to friends and people outside the circles. And it's a very different conversation. Very, very different conversation.
A lot of glazing over eyes, I would imagine. Yeah. Wow.
Only this week, I was away in a hotel I parked up and as I walked into the guest house, right, so there's a couple of guys outside waiting for a taxi. They were heading off for a curry. And they said to me, "Oh, I'm glad you didn't park your Tesla next to my car. Because it'll set on fire". I was just like, Oh, really? Really?
That's so annoying. But I'm hearing more and more stories like that. And that's that is a topic for a whole different podcast. So
it is it is it is out digress? Absolutely. But uh, yeah, that's the world we're in.
Now, what sort of interaction would you have with a typical site landlord. Now, let me give you a little bit of background with this, I was speaking with Adrian Keane, CEO for Instavolt. And I like to pull him up a lot, because the instals that Instavolt do at places like McDonald's, they're very, very tight. You know, they're using small parking spaces. And I'm saying Why don't you take an extra parking space to allow a little bit more freedom for people to pull it in and get out. He's got wheelchairs and things like that. And he said that a lot of the layout is mandated by obviously, the parking bays that you need, but for some locations, the planning permission for the original site. So the original McDonald's site may have said you have to have 35 parking places. And if you then take two of those for charging, that's fine. But if you then take a third one, that's not available for charging and not available for parking, but it's just one to give you extra space, that invalidates the original planning permission on which the site was built. So do you have those kinds of conversations? Or is that one of the preferred suppliers that you were talking about a few minutes ago?
Well, yeah, you know, what? Not that I know of, okay. Because I've been in nine months. And I'm heavily involved in the business development side of what we do. If we have had conversations along those lines, it will have been done by the project management teams, but I don't know, Gary, do you know what, I wouldn't want to mislead anyone on that one? That's not that's not something I can give you give you a decent answer.
All right, that's no problem. And now big thing moving forward, especially with the Kempower hardware that you like to provide is megawatt charging or MCS. Talk to me about that and how that fits if anywhere with the Vital EV plans moving forward.
Yeah, I mean Kempower is is is is obviously one of the one of the companies that we whose equipment we distribute and our understanding is that there are mega watt charging systems coming down the line to you know, to enable that excuse me, the fast charging and ultra fast charging of I think primarily commercial fleets and kind of long haul, long haul truck operations. And as these products come to market, then you know, like you say with you can see the example there with Kempower, we are working alongside the right kind of suppliers, to be able to deliver the needs and the requirements of this to the customers that are that are moving in that direction. So I think with Vital having the suppliers that we do, you can rest assured that as you know, the innovations hit the market. We're at the front end of you know what those are. And are able to deliver them. Yes, through our partners.
Now in your role as a business development manager, are you focusing primarily on something like that? The the, what's the word I want to use? The personal transport? So the people who own the Tesla's the people who own the Eniros? Is that or are you trying to focus a little bit more towards the the last mile delivery type of solutions? Because there's a lot more bang for the buck in terms of reducing carbon footprints and climate impact if you decarbonize, for example, trucks, which brings us back to the MCS thing we've just the discussion we've just had. So what what's your focus in terms of business development at the moment,
There's three of us in the sales team. And obviously, we work for our general manager, who was also involved in the in the sales side of the business. And we've all got specialisms if you like in different sectors. And that can be across power providers, logistics companies, bus operators, vehicle manufacturers, vehicle dealerships, ChargePoint operators, direct fleets, there's a there's a, there's a mixed bag, Gary, of of who we engage with. And I think, I think it's going to stay that way for a while because I think, at the moment for businesses to put all their eggs in one basket is very, very risky. Because the market is still very new. And it's changing all the time. And people's power capabilities are completely varied. So you can deal with a lot and a retail site, for example, with with lots of power, and another one with next to nothing. There's very little consistency across the markets. So we kind of stay quite broad, to be able to deal with, you know, the differing needs across the sector's.
So what's the biggest challenge at the moment in installing something like a DC fast charger? Is it the DNOs and the power? Or, or what what's what's the thing?
I would say it's people having the power capability that they would like, I can't really go into names because obviously it's confidential, but I'm seeing people that would love to have a hub and spoke system on their site, because it would really enable them to then change their fleet of 100 vans over to electric as quickly as possible. And they would know they would have no problem charging. But they've only got a kind of like 100 amps into their site. And you know that gives them no chance of having that kind of power capability that they would they would love. So they are having to go back to the to the power providers to have the conversations about, you know, how much they want, and when could they have it and how much it's going to cost them. And that is quite a slow process.
Now that's interesting, because I I've got to admit my knowledge of how the DNOs operate and install is somewhat lacking, shall we say, but is it a case of, you've got to go to the DNO, say I want an upgrade to this. And it will go into their, their plan and their queue and you'll get it at some point? Or can you go and say, Look, I have got a million pounds that I'm willing to give you if you can come and focus on my site now and upgrade the power to what we want.
Yeah, I don't, I've not really heard of that Gary, either. I've not really heard of any queue jumpin or, you know what I mean? I think there's a process. And people go into that process with the organisation, they'd like to say they join the queue. And I don't think it really matters too much on how deep their pockets are at any given time. Just understand, it's all you know, it's in the queue. And and you have to wait
Adn do we know what's causing that queue to to extend out is it the DNO don't have enough people to do that? Or is it that there's too much internal planning that needs to take place? Or what what's what's their critical path that slowing them down, do you know?,
no, I don't I don't know personally exactly what that is. You know, is it is it? Is it simply down to resource and there's there's so much demand at the moment and interest. That is a massive shortage isn't there? I think is it substations and transformers. I've heard that talked about where there's a long lead time when getting equipment such as that, and you hear stories of people saying, you know, they were told by the DNO that they were not gonna be able to have anything like this for three or four years, and you think that's incredible how anything could be given such a long lead time. But there's obviously some basis of fact behind it. Exactly what that is, I don't know, that this is where we are, we are focusing on those people where, you know, if they haven't got the power, we will direct them to have the conversations with the people that can help them and sort of keep in contact for, for when they can to help them, you know, get delivered what they want, when they're ready.
And how many times have you gone back to a customer and said, right, look, you want this, it's gonna, it's going to require this amount of power, which you cannot have, at the moment, it will take two years for the DNO to bring that in. And when you when you talk to a customer and give them that information today come and go, right? Well, we'll wait, or how many of them come back and say, right, well, tell me what we can have with the power that we've got at the moment because they want something, even if it's not what they finally want.
Yeah, no, if it's, you know, it's varied, I've got, I've got a couple of good examples of exactly that going on, at the moment where I've got one organisation with, with 100 amps going into the site, they, they got agreement with the DNO to go to 300, which will give them much more capability. Now, that's going to take several months to happen. But they will be going down that route. So they are happy to wait. They're happy to wait. Someone else I've I've got in a site in London, was interested in in one of our movable chargers. Okay, that will give 40 kilowatts of charge and 63 amps of power into, plugged into a three phase socket. But again, they've only got 100 amps on their side. And they've decided to go for 10 AC chargers, with a dynamic load management system, that will then ensure that, you know, the charge is evenly distributed based on the power capability in the building. Because they've decided that will be good enough for them. So they're gonna go down that route. So this is what I'm talking about with the different end user cases, and being able to have the right products and services for what people want, and what we can advise them that they can have.
And if we have a scenario where somebody says, right, I need 300 amps, I've only got 100 amps, can we put 100 amps worth of things in at the moment that we can go live with and then cable up and do all the necessary groundwork so that when we do get the extra 200 amps, it's just a case of coming in and putting the extra units in?
Yeah you can, I mean, we're trying with trying to take an approach with someone of future proofing their operation as much as possible. So all that cabling and industrial work that needs to take place, if they've got the plans to go with more power in the future, then let's, let's create the infrastructure that can deliver that now. Albeit the power needs to come on later. We have chargers we can offer that are modular, you can have power, power packs, and power banks increased over time. So you can get people ready for the power that they don't have, you know, based on the power that they do have for the for the shorter term, the short, the medium and the long term. Yeah, yeah, no, we do we do. We do get involved in and we do advise around that. But it's ensuring that the customer is, has their eyes open to what those costs could be for them in the future. So it's it's all part of that consultative approach that we that we take.
What is the Vital EV business model? How do you make money?
We obviously make money on the theres, there's, the distribution of equipment. There is the the manpower. So we you know, we're selling our manpower, we're providing service contracts. So, you know, it's there's a few different areas, Gary, where yeah, we're, you know, Vital, Vitall keeps the lights on, shall we say.
But on a specific instal, are you, are you selling the hardware with a markup and providing personnel at a specific rate or is there an overall fixed price and you'll work internally to determine how much of that is profit?
D'you know, it varies. It varies depending on the operation. Yeah, depending on the operation.
What at the moment do you think's that biggest barrier to making a company more successful in the field?
Biggest barrier? It's difficult. Is it I suppose it's just what challenges are there in the market? Isn't it really than the making us successful? Because we've been successful, despite the challenges that we're facing at the moment. And I suppose it's I suppose not being able to go as as fast as we might want. Often, that's the challenge. And it really is, you know, down to the power capability on sites. I would say, that's the single biggest blocker in the conversations that I have, for organisations being able to to instal the infrastructure that they desire, you know, at that point in time. So I think it's just I think it's simply that, Gary, is that is that not not being enough power, you know, in localised organisations and situations, at this point in time, but it's, it's not really stopping us being successful, because we're still managing to do what we can. If there was more power, then we'd need 10 salespeople and 100 more engineers, you know, it enables the scale faster.
Indeed. What's the one thing about Vital EV that someone outside the company doesn't know. But if they did know, would make them go? Oh, that's interesting.
I think it's the fact that we can help them stay operational during the life of them operating there, their EV charging hardware. We, we're not install and walk away, there's a there's a there's this service support available on a range of different timeframes. That. I think it's that it's that kind of, we will we will help people stay operational during the life of their operating the chargers.
Now, that's interesting, because that that then comes on to the whole issue, which I know a number of ChargePoint operators and specific sites have, which is reliability of the hardware that's of the actual offering that's been put in there. So how many of your customers elect not to take that?
Not many. At all, actually, no, I certainly speaking from for me, in the business that I've written, everyone's taken service contracts with that basically protects the warranty on the equipment. And that's really important. So people are, they are covered against anything going wrong. And we provide a you know, 48 hour response series as standard, which gives them the comfort to keep everything operational.
So when somebody goes out to a unit there, try and plug in, and there's an issue of some sort, regardless of what it is, and they call the helpline. And the helpline determined that it's a hardware issue, then there's a process internally there where that gets escalated through to the people in your in Vital EV who manage that. And then that triggers a 48 hour turnaround.
There's a ticketing system, that that talks to our job booking system. And that notifies an engineer that yeah there's a job needs doing here. The networks that we provide is monitored, Gary 24/7. So if there are any issues, you know, that we see any fault codes that are, that are delivered by by the charges. And we're on them often before a customer even knows, and can sometimes rectify an issue online, before before they even know.
And those would be specific hardware errors, as opposed to because, you know, I had Edmond on Edmond King from teh AA on here. And he was saying that one of the major problems that people have is they can't get charges to work. So it's not that the charger doesn't work, it's that they they're not familiar with the payment processing, or the payment processing is broken. So if there's a payment issue on a charger, I assume that's not something that will get escalated to your people. Is that correct?
It Might. Initially, but then it's about what we do with the issue after that, you know, is about escalating to the right source of the problem. You know, if a vehicle is not charging, is it the vehicle, or is it the charger? Well, we're certainly able to tell if it's the charger and that's me that's me flipping hats, isn't it? Because in the AA, we could tell it there was the car. Now I'm saying we can tell if it's the charger But yeah, so So you know, we're able to tell if it's the charger and take and take the relevant action.
Now I know that this is probably not your area of expertise. But one of the things that I hear a lot of people talking about with chargers, even ones that work is 'Well it's not giving me the charging speed I was expecting' and we know that there are any number of reasons why, why that happens. But there are sometimes circumstances where it physically is the hardware in the charger that's that's causing the problem. So presumably, if one of the, is it power bank or power pack within a charger goes out, you will be notified about that. And you'll know pretty much before.
Yeah, power modules, power modules are the things that can go in them. And yeah, we'll get we'll get a full coder report that what's gone wrong, and can deal with a replacement.
And is there anything else within the hardware that will actually track the difference between? No, let me rephrase that I know, with some of the Kempower units, as a user, I can look at and say, right, the power has been limited because the car can't accept anymore, or the powers been limited because the system can't provide any more. Do you get sort of visibility of that, so if there's a number of circumstances where the system can't provide any more, you may look and go well, is that because the load balancing is working correctly and that's all it's available? Or is that because there's an internal error that we haven't quite caught at the moment?
It depends, really, I mean, like you say, with the with the Kempower equipment there that if a power module does go down in a unit, the other power modules will continue to work. So that's where you can see are the charge level isn't being delivered as fast as you think we can then identify if, if a power module has gone Then there's the reason why. Absolutely,
Is there a question that I haven't asked you that you thought I would ask you.
I thought you're gonna ask me about my 80's radio show, to be honest.
Do you want to plug in at radio show?
Yeah.Yeah, no, Nine o'clock, mid Sussex radio Thursday nights. There you go. 80s Radio Show? Tune in?
Oh, I've I've listened to leave. I've listened. Yeah,
I think you're right, to ask the questions on what is Vital do? You know, I think that was, that's valid, because when I joined the business, I was asking, I was asking the same, you know, when you see it from the outside, you don't realise the depth of the service that's available within? And I think so that's, it's been good to talk that through.
And how many other similar companies because you, you said, you know, we've got this situation where people don't know who we're in the gaps between the chargers and the the end customers. So how many other companies out there that sort of work in the same field as you do?
Well, you're asking someone who works in the business development team, Gary, so I'll say none, there's none,
I'm not gonna ask you for names. Is it a very small pond? Or is it actually quite, quite extensive?
I think no, no, genuinely, seriously, is quite small pond. It's quite a small pond. There's lots of people doing lots of stuff. But in terms of a robust sales and service proposition, I think we are certainly in it yet, in a small pond ay Vital definitely, definitely. But evolving all the time. You know, we haven't, we haven't talked about our software that we that we've got that that operates, the system's now because we are able to provide a range of different hardware solutions. We have a agnostic software solution called Oculus. And that provides, you know, everything that you would expect from a from a back office system, operating charge points, and we provide that to our so all of our customers with a service contract. We provide that as a matter of course, so they can see the operation of their charges. And this is my point about enabling a CPO to be a CPO. You know, it's it the whole, the tools are all there for them to, to use us in that way.
Well, I think that's all the questions I've got. Thanks a lot for your time. Really appreciate it. I think it's been excellent discussion. And I've certainly learned a lot. So Dean, thanks a lot for your time.
Thanks, Gary. That's brilliant.
A couple of takeaways from this discussion, I was surprised to learn the level of influence that companies like this have when it comes to charger design. I was always under the impression that it's the CPOs who decide what they want the site to look like, and how they want things laid out. But Dean intimated that is very much a discussion between the company that will be doing the development and the charge point operators. Of course, the planning authorities have some say in these too. Now, I was also intrigued by his comment about the EV bubble that we tend to live in. It is worth remembering that EVs is still only a small part of the whole vehicle ecosystem. Yes, the share's increasing everyday but at the end of the day, we need a lot more of movement before he becomes the majority. His comment about the guys thinking his Tesla would burst into flames is pretty much indicative of that. Anyway, many thanks to Dean for coming on and explaining one aspect of the infrastructure creation of which I was quite ignorant. I must admit, I learned a lot and I hope you did too.
It's time for Cool EV or renewable thing share with you listeners, Honda. I've just released the Moto compacto, which is an E bike with the difference. It's a suitcase. But actually it's not a suitcase, but it looks like a slim white suitcase with wheels, a seat and a set of handlebars. It'll do 50 miles an hour has a 12 mile range and costs a little under $1,000. For short distance trips, I have a fairly small services. It's reasonably practical for anything else. It's also completely impractical, but very cool looking.
And that's the show for today. Hope you enjoyed listening to it. If you want to contact me I can be emailed at the new email which is [email protected]. I'm also on Twitter at MusingsEV. If you want to support the podcast and newsletter, please consider contributing to becoming an EVmusings patron the link's in the show notes. Don’t want to sign up for something on a monthly basis? If you enjoyed this episode why not buy me a coffee? Go to Ko-fi.com/evmusings and you can do just that. Takes Apple Pay, too! I have a couple of ebooks out there if you want something to read on your Kindle. 'So, you've gone electric?' is available on Amazon worldwide for the measly sum of 99p or equivalent and it's a great little introduction to living with an electric car. ‘So you’ve gone renewable’ is also available on Amazon for the same 99p and it covers installing Solar Panels, a storage battery and a heat pump Why not check them both out? Links for everything we've talked about in the podcast today are in the description. If you enjoyed this podcast please subscribe it's available on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts If you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you. Why not let me know you've got this point by tweeting me @MusingsEV with the words 80’s music? Not ‘arf #ifyouknowyouknow Nothing else. Thanks as always to my co founder Simon You know he just learned to take his electric unicycle downstairs, which now opens up a whole new world for where he can go and what he can do. I asked him if he thought there was a way you could learn some more dangerous tricks, like clearing the line of people via a ramp.
Yeah, look, I have not really heard of that Gary, either. I've not really heard of any queue jumping or you know what I mean?
Thanks for listening. Bye
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