240: Konect-ing the Dots

This is the WhatCarEV podcast for Thursday, September 18th, 2025, Episode 240, Connecting the Dats.

So we have had a few repeat guests in our history.

We have.

And it's always a fun time.

It's always a fun time to have guests on this podcast.

Yes.

So this is something, you know, I think I've teased it over the last couple of weeks.

It's been on the works for a while, and sometimes it's tough to coordinate schedules, but we

finally got it.

So if you remember Episode 181, I believe, we had Merrick Glass of Connect join us, and

he's back.

So Merrick, welcome back.

Thanks, guys.

Great to be back.

Yeah, I know.

And as you said, it's been a long time coming, but I'm thrilled to be back with you guys.

It's good to chat again.

And you have some news about your new role within the company.

And so if you'd like to share some of that.

Whoa, Ed.

And I also, wait a minute, am I getting too excited?

Yeah.

We've got to introduce ourselves first.

I don't know who you are, Ed.

Okay.

I know.

Ed Sanchez.

I'm a very enthusiastic podcaster of four plus years, as you might have gathered

from my spontaneous introduction.

Been doing various things in the automotive world for over two decades.

I'll just leave it at that.

And yeah, driving headfirst in the big, brave world of EVs.

And I'm Phil Royal.

I've got, as I said last week, I've got a microphone and a headset, so I'm a professional.

So this, to set the stage for us before we jump too far into this, Ed, there was

a story that led to where we are today.

Yes.

Would you like me to?

Yeah.

Can you remind me?

Because I've got the memory of a sieve.

Well, so this is, gosh, I think a couple of months ago, I got an email from basically

Merrick and one of his assistants saying, oh, we just, you know, connect and go bark

of eater.

You volunteer, the parent company conducted the survey of EV owners, kind of their wants

and kind of a wish list.

And when I first read it, I was like, honestly, this isn't too exciting because these, not

not kind of to paraphrase the declaration of independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

You know, drivers want convenience.

They want amenities.

They want, you know, charging close to them, reliable charging.

I'm like, of course, you know, everyone wants that.

So I didn't really think much of it and I'm like, well, you know, yeah, I would like

to have them on at some point in the future.

But I didn't feel a great sense of urgency at the time.

But then I visited a friend who had her car in the shop and I guess at the time,

the rental company, the only car they had available was the Nissan Leaf.

Of course, we know, you know, EV nerds would know this is not the new 2026

miles, the older style.

So the DC fast charging on that was a Chatham-O plug, which is becoming

more and more rare.

So that narrows the field even from CCS, NACS, Chatham-O is like, so to try

to find an operational Chatham-O charger, we spent over an hour

looking for a charger that worked.

And I was like, this is miserable.

This is not convenient or close or convenient.

No. And, you know, I've said this more than once.

I'm spoiled as a Tesla owner because regardless of what you think of

Elan or Tesla as a brand, they're the supercharger network is really top

notch in terms of availability, reliability, ease of use.

So it was really an eyeopening moment for me.

And I was like, you know what, if other EV drivers,

if this is what they have to go through to charge, I understand the

frustration and I understand the hesitation I'm part of consumers,

like, you know, I don't want to deal with this.

So that was really the light bulb moment for me.

And I reached immediately after that, reached out to Mary said,

let's let's talk about this because this is really a big deal.

So enter Merrick finally after now we'll get to your

brief introduction.

I know we went through it before, but let's let's set the stage as well for you.

Yeah, sure. No. And again, thanks.

Thanks for having me back, Congress.

So I'm Merrick Glass and I am now the president of Kinect.

I know the the last time that I was on here chatting with you guys,

I was our global head of strategy and marketing.

But back in back in April of this year, I actually took on the president role.

So now I'm leading the business globally. Wow, congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you.

You know, it's a very, very exciting and and just as a reminder, right?

So I mean, connect.

I know you mentioned it, right?

But connect is part of Gilbarco Vita Root,

which is part of our parent company, Volunteer.

Volunteer is a mobility technology conglomerate, essentially,

that trades publicly on the New York Stock Exchange.

And then Gilbarco Vita Root is actually a business

that's been providing traditional fueling solutions for the last

160 years, right?

And so essentially all of our all of our biggest customers

would be those fuel retailers that everybody's familiar with.

The Sheets, the Wawa's, the BP's, the XR's, all of those guys.

And essentially, we ended up launching Kinect

because all of those customers were becoming increasingly

and increasingly interested in EV as they started to see the pickup.

And so we felt that it was our duty as one of the providers

and one of their partners to make sure that we had a fantastic

EV offering to bring them as well.

And so connect is now the e-mobility focused provider

within that within Gilbarco Vita Root that helps bring electrification

to more and more convenient stores across North America and the world.

I just want to interject real quickly again, like I did in the beginning.

What kind of initially sparked my desire to reach out to to connect into Merrick?

And you thought, how do you even put this together?

Is I noticed I recognize the Gilbarco Vita Root name from gas pumps

and like, oh, they're doing an EV initiative.

This is really interesting.

I want to dive into that.

And at first, you were like, what?

Yeah. And then you you you lost me at the beginning.

But then you fueled up your car and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah.

It makes gas pumps.

Turns out you're right.

So anyway, well, so let's get to the kind of the heart of the issue today.

You guys did a survey of EV drivers

and sort of their wants, needs, pain points, wishes, so forth.

I'm going to go over kind of the top line.

I kind of pulled it out said.

So these are some of the top points of the of the find the findings of the survey.

Said 32 percent of EV drivers

say said they would favor sites close to their location.

Close to major routes.

Drivers don't want to make big detours.

Twenty one percent would avoid sites with 10 to 20 minute detour.

And 37 percent said they would not go to one more than 20 minutes off their route.

Twenty a percent of drivers say they would be more like to visit

Charger with the Loyalty Rewards Program.

Seventeen and this is something Philip and I have discussed before.

Seventeen percent of drivers wanted to pay for charging in store.

So that was kind of interesting.

I wonder if that's got more to do with just apt fatigue than anything.

Well, I think we'll get into that.

That's another thing to 93 percent of drivers would pay more

for the convenience of being, you know, closer on the route.

And let's see where we also uptime.

It says, I guess, governments are starting to mandate uptime.

Ninety nine percent in the UK, which is pretty ambitious.

Ninety 98 percent in Australia and 97 percent for Nevi funded fast chargers.

Wifi was a big want.

Yeah, refreshments, food, restrooms.

And yeah, it's and finally,

99 percent of drivers said they were willing to make a five minute detour

to get the amenities they're looking for.

So anyway, I'm going to hand it over to you to kind of unpack this a little

and kind of what was the kind of the genesis of this

and what how this is influenced connects business strategy in terms of

you know, the B2Bs or kind of the consumer facing proposition.

Yeah, sure. So happy to have to unpack it, right?

And there's there's a lot in there, right?

And I mean, it's I think that the interesting piece that I would say, right,

it's like, as you read through the first time,

and I think you rightly said, right, you read through these things and you think,

hey, I mean, like it doesn't sound like rocket science, right?

Like drivers want something obvious, they want amenities, they want all these things.

But the interesting piece, and I know we chatted about this a little bit last time

is to date, many of the CPOs have not actually been able to give consumers that.

Like you're still running into chargers

that are in the back of a parking lot that are unlit, not covered.

People are standing there in the rain trying to get the charger fired up.

Reliability remains a key issue, right?

And I think this was a really interesting way for us to just solidify

some of that and really get some data behind it.

And again, part of it is, look, I think for all of us within the space, right?

We want to see that adoption continue.

We want to see more and more sites come online and pick this up.

And so interesting for us is we're speaking to our core customer base.

It's a really good way of showing them, hey, the sites that you guys have,

the knowledge that you guys have, the experience that you've already been able

to bring to drivers is truly differentiating within this space.

And so, again, I can unpack a couple of those pieces, right?

Because I think some of them are very important to hit on.

But I think a lot of it just comes back to,

even though those things sound obvious,

I think given where the EV space was a few years ago,

with most of the new drivers being like very dedicated early adopters,

a lot of those pieces were nice to have, right?

In the sense that you still had drivers that were willing to go to the back

of that dark parking lot and sit in the rain or stand in the rain

as they're trying to get the charger going or walk the 500 feet

to the nearest bathroom or whatever it was, right?

But as we've continued to see EVs adopt,

and look, just last year, I think there was one and a half million

plug-in vehicles that were sold in the US and everything that we've seen

in terms of kind of new studies and new releases coming out in terms of adoption.

Despite all the turbulence and noise around the market in the first half of this year,

that adoption is continuing to pick up, right?

And so with that, I think comes a couple of things.

I think one is, look, it's new drivers, right?

And there's new drivers that are coming online

that probably have less patience than those early adopters, right?

And so I think all of these pieces that we're talking about here,

in terms of reliability, amenities, convenience, all of those things,

we're really starting to see really shift towards being table stakes, right?

Whereas before, they were kind of really things that were fantastic.

Nice to have you.

Yeah, exactly, right?

And I mean, again, I think it's a really exciting time to be in the space given,

look, that presents significant challenges to some ChargePoint operators,

but it also presents significant opportunities, right?

And I think kind of being able to take this data and then really craft both our strategy, right?

But also for our core customers who are typically the side hosts who are going to be doing this,

for them to be able to have this kind of data and look through that

and really have an understanding for what good looks like,

I think it's hopefully going to drive just the industry to be better for EV drivers, right?

And make sure that all those things continue to come through.

But I mean, look, I think you said it, right?

And I think it is one of those things that is a limiter for

people who are looking to adopt EVs today, right?

Is they want that same level of convenience,

and they want that exact same feeling as they have when they fill up an ICE car, right?

And in that, it's all those things that you mentioned, right?

It's location.

And again, that one was, I mean, some of those stats were pretty interesting, right?

Where you see 93% of drivers are willing to pay extra to avoid a 20-minute detour, right?

And I mean, even on top of that, right, it's you see like one in five

are going to avoid sites that are 10 to 20-minute detour, right?

And so that location piece starts to become very, very important.

And what I think you're seeing, right, is like as you get that wider adoption,

one drivers expect convenience, but they're also willing to pay for it, right?

And so I think in that sense, like for charge point operators,

it's a very interesting time to be thinking about how they're deploying their sites

and deploying those strategies.

I think the other pieces that I did find interesting, I mean, back to the amenity side

of things is just how strongly that came through, right?

I mean, you mentioned that Wi-Fi was the highest ranked, right?

I found that fascinating in the sense that Wi-Fi was ranked as higher than restrooms,

as something that people want at their charging sites, right?

And so I think it is those pieces as you're starting to see more and more people come on,

they're looking for ways to make that dwell time, essentially, I mean,

whether it's productive or comfortable or whatever, right?

But they're really looking for ways to not just sit in their car on their phone

while their car charges, right?

And so I think starting to take some of that in and hopefully as we continue to see sites

deploy with that kind of message is going to be critical, right?

And look, I mean, you asked in terms of, hey, how has that impacted our strategy?

Look, I know we tried it last time, right?

And obviously, given our heritage, we've got these great relationships with these fuel retailers.

And the great thing for fuel retailers is they're in a very strong natural position

to take advantage of the shift towards EV, right?

You think about convenience and you think about the locations.

I mean, a lot of our customers have spent the last 100 years fine-tuning their networks

to make sure that they're in those bi-traffic locations, that they're by the highways,

that they're in places where people are going to want to stop.

And on top of that, I mean, we chatted last time again, right?

In terms of this whole outdoor fueling experience is something that they've taken years and years

to perfect, right?

So they know that people want well-loved locations.

They know that people want to be able to stand underneath the canopy.

They understand that things like clean bathrooms and Wi-Fi are important, right?

And then on top of that, they've got all of the, I mean, essentially kind of the

food offerings, the coffee, all those pieces that people want to be able to take advantage of.

And so for us, I think the biggest pieces that we've taken away from it are, hey,

now more than ever, we truly believe that is an interesting time for fuel retailers

to be taking a look at EV and thinking, how can they really get in the mix here

and start taking advantage?

Because they truly do have a really strong position here as the market continues to evolve.

Well, one, and I think we touched on this last time too, is I think, and of course,

this is changing.

This is kind of a dynamic thing with EVs right now.

But the longer-dwell time compared to ICE currently now, I'll get into how that's

kind of changing.

But traditionally for ICE vehicles, it's I'd say like three to five minutes

to top off the tank, right?

Whereas even with the best commercially available fast charging, at least in North America,

you're looking at probably 20, 30, 45 minutes.

So, and maybe your research bears this out, is that's a real prime opportunity

for these side owners that offer more compelling amenities like food, like a lounge

Wi-Fi to really kind of capitalize on that.

Because that's something that, you know, traditional fuel retailers, people are in

and out, okay, thank you, by, you know, they don't, they can't, the time isn't sticky enough

for them to really make something of it.

And of course, there are a lot of constraints on this.

I mean, I've been to some gas stations where I'm amazed that they even fit it on the lot.

So, obviously, for a traditional fuel, for traditional gas station, it's all about throughput.

You know, traffic, the frequency and density of traffic going through there,

that's flipped a little bit with EVs and that the opportunity, and correct me if I'm wrong,

but it seems to me would be more with the dwell time and the stickiness

of engaging the customer as much as possible.

With the time they're spending there, rather than just throughput.

And I wonder if you could kind of speak to how, I guess, how your partners are kind of

managing that transition and if it's even possible to do both at the same time.

And if there are any kind of case studies or examples, you can think of

where that's been done successfully.

Yeah, absolutely.

I know that's really a loaded question.

No, but it's the right question to ask.

And look, I think there's a couple of things to touch on there.

The interesting piece that I would say is if you look back historically,

at least within the fuel retail space, essentially there's been a tremendous

amount of the land lease model that's been deployed, where effectively they'll run to

parking space and XYZ, CPO is going to come in, they'll put the chargers on, it's their network,

and effectively then the site host is offering EV charging to their customers,

but they're kind of out of the loop for their business.

And so what we've seen, and I mean, we've seen it a lot over in Europe,

and the shift is continuing to happen more aggressively in the US now,

is for all of those reasons that you just mentioned, the site host are starting to get

much more involved in terms of the fuel retailer starting to say,

hey, we actually want to make sure that we're owning this.

And I think that's driven by a couple of key pieces.

I think the one is just consumer experience and control over that consumer experience.

Look, I think we all know, even as I said, the EVs are adopting fast,

but we remain a minority in terms of the driving population within the US.

That said, we are a very loud minority, right?

There's a very big social element to being an EV driver, right?

You look on things like PlugShare and you see those as big forums where people

are having big discussions.

And what you see is that the reliability and the consumer experience that you offer at your site

gets talked about, right?

And truly what that means is that those forums can really make or break the reputation of those

sites. And again, I think many of the drivers, as we spoke about, are very nervous about going

to an unreliable charger. They're very nervous about having exactly what you said to happen,

where it says, hey, you pull up to a charger and it doesn't work, right?

And now you're on a battery and you're stressed about your car dying, right?

And so people take those reviews very, very seriously.

And some of the challenges that we've seen with our core customers being the fuel retailers

is if you go down that land lease model, you don't control that experience, right?

And so if the charger is down, it's not actually yours to service.

It's not yours to fix.

But you still have to deal with the angry customers coming in and saying,

how come this doesn't work? Blah, blah, blah.

And they're like, we can't do anything about it, you know?

That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

And that's the interesting thing is if you look on those forums,

it's actually, it's very rarely the CPO getting blasted, right?

It's the flag that sits on top of the site, right?

And so it's that C store owner that's getting off the cat grass.

Yeah, the CPO, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. When they don't really have control over it, right?

So they're really pushing to try to integrate some of that in now

to make sure that they're controlling that consumer experience

and offering a positive experience at their sites.

The other piece that you mentioned there, right,

which is interesting that we're starting to see a lot of,

and it's actually a core piece of what we believe Connect brings to the market is

there's starting to be a much heavier tie-in to existing fuel retail loyalty programs,

right? I think that they've seen on the traditional side of the business

that those loyalty programs are exceptionally effective, right?

In terms of being able to get repeat customers

and to be able to make that consumer experience better.

And so what they're trying to do is effectively tie that loyalty

from the EV driver into those in-store purchases.

And exactly to separate, really take advantage of the fact

that, hey, there is additional dwell time here.

And so if you can then push that loyalty program to tie into,

just as an example, hey, charge 10 times, get a free coffee, right?

Like something like that.

You start to really drive that consistent experience for the customer as well.

And again, something that they're familiar with.

The challenge that our customers have had to land these models,

you can't, right? Because the two systems don't actually integrate in with each other.

But effectively through some of the technology that we bring to market,

we're actually able to integrate those systems so that EV

just becomes another portion of the convenience store business, right?

And that's starting to really strongly differentiate there.

And then the last thing that I'll say, which is interesting, Ed,

is you mentioned essentially, it's, hey, there are some of these sites that are,

let's call them challenging, right? Like they're small.

But the benefit for the convenience store, as a customer said is,

they've been making those space trade-offs forever, right?

I mean, they've had to think through, hey, how many dispensers do I want

versus how much C store space do I want?

What does that throughput look like?

And how do I need to change my offering to mix that?

And so certainly what I'd say is we're starting to see a trend towards

effectively kind of much more amenity focused sites.

Rather than just fueling.

Exactly, right? And specifically in Europe, we've got an increasing number of just

charging only sites, right? So essentially, I mean, right by me, there was an older BP

site that got taken down, that's now being put up as a BP pulse kind of full just EV hub,

right? Where they're then really gearing that amenity set that they've got there

towards that EV driver. So we're seeing these transitions happen in real time.

But I think you're right. I mean, it's going to be that transitionary phase, right?

And I think it'll take a while for everybody to get it, right?

But I mean, certainly, I would say there's a number of our customers that are doing it

exceptionally well. And again, comes back to just then it's a much better experience for

the driver. They're driving that in store, that in store engagement as well,

which is great for the customer and great for them, right?

Mm hmm. Yeah, I am a few months ago, I had an experience. I was on a road trip to Southern

California. And I don't know if you've heard of them. It's right now, I think they only have

like, I think one or two active sites, but this this kind of regional network called Rove.

True. Yeah. And so I actually stopped by, I guess, their first or their flagship store.

And it was, it was really nice. I mean, lots of chargers. Now, granted, it was a pretty big lot

size. So, you know, they have the luxury of kind of spreading out a little bit.

But like a really high end convenience store. It was affiliate with the Gelsons, which

I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's kind of more of a premium supermarket

kind of brand in Southern California. But, you know, very well staffed.

They were very polite. They were, you know, oh, sir, can you know, is there anything we can

do for you? Or, you know, they were even having a barbecue cookout on the patio. And I'm like,

oh, wow, that's really nice. So, yeah, it's definitely not a traditional fueling experience

like you get at a gas station where, you know, right, pull in, fill up and, you know, you

got to got to get the key to the bathroom with like the PVC pipe hanging off of it.

Yeah. You know, anyway. No, and I mean, the interesting piece is that I have to imagine

after that experience, if you're ever back in that area, you go back to that site again.

Right. And I think if I'm in the area and, you know, I don't know, I mean, I kind of went

out of my way the first time just because I was curious about it. I don't know if I'd

necessarily go out of my way to visit it again. But if I was going by and I was in the area,

I'd definitely visit it again. So would you say there's a 21% chance that, oh wait, no, what was

the number? That you would take a five minute detour to? For clean restrooms and Wi-Fi?

No, but it's, you know, if that's what the future looks like, I mean, that's,

I mean, it's pretty promising. Now, obviously in Southern California, at least by US standards,

they have a pretty high density of EV ownership. So, you know, I think they, assuming they kind of

calculated the throughput and, you know, the revenue from that. But, you know, there are other,

I mean, Phil just got back from a trip from Nebraska, he said it was. Yeah. And he saw

like what, one or two EVs during your whole trip or something? Yeah, I saw almost no EVs,

saw a lot of those Amazon Rivian vans. But yeah, it's always shocking when I leave this state

and leave my little bubble of Southern California as to what the rest of America does in the middle.

Like, it's very different. I'm very aware that what I see in my neighborhood is not

representative of the majority of the country. Yeah. And like I said, we discussed this

before, but you know how regional this is, you know, imagine if you go to like Wyoming or,

you know, Montana, if you try to pitch this, they'll probably be like,

you know, we hardly see any of you, you know, why should I spend, you know, six figures to,

you know, put all this in when no one's going to use it? But, you know, I mean, I don't know,

I mean, in your experience, what's been the tipping point where like former skeptics

start to be interested in, they're like, oh, maybe there's an opportunity in this.

Yeah, it's that's an interesting question.

I mean, the piece that I would say is I haven't necessarily seen a specific tipping point, right?

And I think part of that comes down to, look, I think we're doing a better and better job

as an industry of being able to answer some of those questions, right? I mean, look, I think

some of it is taking the excuses away from drivers as well, right? I mean, we talked a lot about

reliability. One of the downsides of some of the EV forums that I spoke about is, if you're an ice

driver and you're looking at that and you're thinking about trying to get an EV, and all you're

seeing is commentary around, hey, this charger doesn't work, this charger doesn't work,

I have to go 10 minutes out of my way here, you're going to look at that and you're going

to think, like, why would I do this, right? Yeah. And so I think, look, as we,

as we, and I mean, I say we, I mean, as us as connect, I mean, one of the biggest pieces that

we try to push is, hey, we can really help drive that high reliability, right? And I think

as that starts to come through, drivers start to have less excuses, you start to see the

adoption there. And then really, as soon as that adoption starts to kick through is when

you start to see the site hosts pivot around, right? And look, there's obviously a little

bit of a chicken and egg there, right? Because the site hosts are saying, oh, I want to see more

drivers and the drivers are saying, I want to see more chargers before I make the leap.

But look, I think, still, right, that's where, that's where some of the funding

aspects can come into play, right? And so, I mean, like, obviously,

Nevi has been all over the press and Nevi essentially kind of kicking back off here

and getting moving again. I do believe that that'll continue to go a long way to helping

get that initial infrastructure in place and start to solve that chicken and egg problem.

But even in addition to Nevi, right? And one of the things that I find interesting is a lot of

the focus gets placed on that federal funding. But if you look at state level grants, utility

programs, like essentially, there's a whole bunch of these other funding pools that exist for site

hosts to be able to go out. And in some cases, actually get even more funding than they would

through Nevi and admittedly with probably less red tape to sort through, right? And so,

that's where I would say, I mean, we've been able to convince some of those customers who've

looked at this and said, oh, I'm never going to see a return on this. I don't think this makes

sense. But really just taking a detailed look at what they're doing and saying, hey, look, you've

got of your, whatever, X number of sites, 25 that are available within your area, that takes

that upfront cost significantly down with the utilization rates that are in whatever

state you're in. This becomes a really viable opportunity. But I spoke a lot about kind of connect

specifically last time, but I come back to the three pieces that we see, right, in terms of,

hey, what does tip the scales for our customers to want to take a leap into electrification?

And it's, look, it's got to be easy, right? So our customers don't want to be out trying to

source 18 different pieces to pull together what is an EV ecosystem. It's got to be seamless.

And that comes back to, hey, they want to integrate with loyalty. They want to integrate

with the media platforms that they've already got running. But the most important one is it's

got to be profitable. But they've got to be able to make money out of this as the business, right?

And so I think by being able to get in there and help them figure out what that upfront cost

looks like and help them take that down and really drive that ROI up. I mean, at the end

of the day, that's, that's really what gets our customers excited and moving forward.

I guess that's one area. I mean, as much as possible in kind of a summary fashion,

that's one area I'm not super familiar with is like the revenue model of

traditional gas stations and convenience stores in terms of financing upgrades.

How does that typically work?

Yeah, in the traditional fueling side of the world?

Yeah, or specifically how it does today with if they want to install chargers.

Yeah, sure. So, look, I mean, essentially, for us, right, there's a number of different

options that we bring to customers when they're thinking about installing chargers, right? So

depending on kind of where they are, how big they are, what level of financial capacity they

have, we've got a whole bunch of different programs that we could put in place. So for

us, I mean, as a first brush, right, kind of regardless of what path they're going down,

we help out with that funding analysis, right? And that's where I say, I mean, obviously,

Nevi gets a lot of the headlines because of the times of the federal government. But

I think a lot of our customers are amazed at just how much money actually does want

to go to work in the space, right? And just how many of these programs are out there

and available. So that's one path. But then in addition to that, I mean, we partner

with a whole bunch of essentially kind of other players within our ecosystem to bring,

whether it's financing options to our customers so that they can essentially get that financing

package up front, take down that upfront cost and then take that on as more of an operating model.

Or we do partner with essentially kind of some complete third party use cases where if

one of our customers says, hey, I really want to take on EV, not willing to take any

bit of a financial leap on it, we can't introduce them essentially to a third party

operator who will come on, go down that that leasing path and then effectively allow that

to still offer EV charging to their customers. So it's a very wide gamut. And to be honest,

it works in a pretty similar way on the traditional side of things, just

probably without that third party piece. So you mentioned earlier on about plug share,

which I'm well aware of and how influential that's become in kind of getting the word out

about charging stations, reliability, pricing, that sort of thing. I wanted to touch on this

and I know this might be kind of a sensitive subject, especially from the B2B context. But

pricing can really be all over the place with charging, either state to state or

I mean, I made the mistake once of charging, not even a DC fast charger,

but level two, where it was 78 cents a kilowatt hour, which is insane. But I didn't read the

fine print before I plugged in. I'm like, oh, look, charger and oh, nobody's parked here.

I wonder why? I wonder why. Found out. And then just the other day, I went to a government

building near my house here and it was actually a charge point. But then I looked online,

I said, what's the rate for this? It was nearly $5 for 15 minutes, which if you break that down

on a kilowatt hour level, that's insane. And it's like, I think, I guess, you mentioned the survey

findings that drivers are willing to pay more for convenience for charging. But at what point,

I guess, and I know my guess is you probably take kind of a laissez-faire approach to a lot of your

customers like, hey, you do what works for you. We're not going to tell you how to run your

business. But I'm wondering if you do though, generally have some guidelines in terms of

pricing, in terms of best practices like, look, yes, you can set the price with whatever you

want. But it gets to a certain level where customers will actually avoid your charger

because of the high prices. And how that's communicated, managed, like I said, recommendations.

Yeah. So to be totally honest with you, it's more of the first for us in the sense that we let

our customers go out and run their business. We certainly have a whole ton of pricing expertise

and pricing analysis that we can help customers with. And essentially, if they pull us in to do

that, we're more than happy to provide that. But more than anything, what we find is,

well, a couple of things. I think one, we really push to make sure that our customers

do understand pricing in their local markets. I think that's one of the big pieces. Obviously,

prices fluctuate dramatically across the markets. And so we need to have a good

understanding for what is competitive and what good looks like. I think, again, that in some ways,

the interesting piece for us is our customers have been working in a dynamic, competitive

pricing environment for 100 years. When you think about how often fuel prices are changing,

you think about how often they need to take that through. And so they're actually normally

very good at making those essentially price versus quantity decisions. And so typically,

what we find is they've got their own very heavily staffed pricing teams that go out and look at this

stuff very aggressively. And so typically, I think what we find is they're normally pretty close

to the mark. Based on their experience with gasoline and diesel, so in terms of

I guess competitive pricing, just both the guy across the street or down the street.

And so they're also applying that logic to charging as well.

Correct. Correct. I mean, as we said, they look in a lot of ways. The

convenience for owners, they're looking for what we talked about before. They're looking

for that consumer connection where they can then drive that consumer in store, be able to

kind of have that in store relationship and then that loyalty and all those pieces with the

customers. And so they're not really going to benefit by putting a price out there that is

so egregious that customers are not going to come anymore. And self-defeating, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Right. So typically what we see is they are normally very good at

yeah, taking into account, hey, what is the competitive pricing around my area and then

making sure that they push that through. One of the other things that's interesting,

right? And I mean, we see this a lot in Norway where obviously the EV adoption is very, very high.

But we actually also allow for our customers to essentially integrate with the price pull signs

that they've got on site. And so now what you're starting to see is in a lot of these locations

in Norway, it's not only the fueling prices that are up on those price pulls,

but the per kilowatt price as well. Right. And so in that, I think it's great for consumers

in that you're not going to pull in and get surprised. But it's also, I think, just good for

those, essentially those customers who are willing to go out and be aggressive and stand

behind the pricing to draw in the right level of engagement from drivers. But I think that's the

piece that I think is very key, right? I mean, you need to have visibility into that pricing

for consumers. Right. I think to your point, the worst thing that happens is you charge up

and all of a sudden you realize 10 minutes after that you've charged up at a rate that you never

would have agreed to had you known what it was. Right. And so I think we really try to take advantage

of A, those times as pulls, but B, the connect chargers, the screen is 32 inches. And so we make

sure that that pricing is provided on that screen so that consumers know what it is they're

getting into. So I kind of want to get into that a little more in terms of like, I'm more

on the data side. So retailers that are within the connect network, how can they kind of

broadcast or make that data available to drivers where if they have connected navigation system

in their car that you do a charging point search and that get the kilowatt hour pricing.

How, I mean, I imagine you've kind of worked that into your model, but I'm just wondering if

you could talk a little bit about that. Yeah, sure. So I mean, essentially, that's exactly right.

So through the software that we provide, effectively we offer integrations into what

would be kind of all of the big charger finders, right? You think of things like ZAPMAP,

like we would have integrations into that. So that one, you can post your pricing and

you can make sure that that's visible. But two, even just getting those sites onto ZAPMAP so that

they're available for consumers, you can then go and see and figure out where they want to stop.

The auto one is an interesting one, right? Because what I would say is auto manufacturers are

starting to be more cooperative there. But for a large part, they do hold those systems pretty

tight, right? And so we are trying to work with some of the auto OEMs to make sure that

those integrations are available and that we can actually get that to get that pricing pushed

out to them. But I've seen, I mean, so my day job, I cover infotainment and telematics.

And what I'm seeing is a fairly large scale adoption among a lot of the OEMs of Google Maps.

It's kind of their navigation platform. So I imagine if you have an integration with that,

that'll address a big part of the market. And then the other ones,

there's some various different providers like Tom Tom, for instance, or whatnot.

If you make that data available to them, that would kind of get it out, I'd say to the most drivers.

Yeah. And so, I mean, Google Maps is one that we tie into, right? And so I think to your

point, I mean, we are, look, we're aggressively trying to get integrations with as many of

those as we can, right? I think that the piece for us comes back to pay for our customers

and for drivers, right? The morbidity that they can have into what sites are available,

what's the utilization at, like at those sites, okay, if they've got six chargers,

are three of them being used right now. What's the pricing at that site? I think all of those

things are beneficial for both our customers and for the consumers. And so we're pushing to get

as many of those as we can. But yeah, I mean, today, exactly. I mean, Google Maps, ZAP map,

I mean, effectively all like the major ones we've got ready to go.

Great. So this just actually was announced a couple of days ago. And I don't know if you

heard about this or what your thoughts are on this, but I guess Tesla has just launched a

white label supercharger program. So I'm just kind of interested is if you see them as competition

or a potential partner with Connect and how you kind of view that.

Yeah, sure. So I mean, look, Tesla has always been a competitor to us in one way or another, right?

Look, it's a bit of a different model that they typically offer, right? Where essentially

they will control all of the backend, all of the software, all of those pieces

versus we tend to allow our customers to do that. But look, at the end of the day,

I mean, I remain steadfast in what I said before, which is, hey, for this industry to

continue to evolve, which is, I mean, hey, it's good for Tesla. It's good for us. It's good

for drivers, right? But we need that driver adoption to come, right? And so really when I

look at it, it's, hey, if that leads to more sites deploying chargers, and that leads

to more EV adoption, that's fantastic, right? I think for all of us in this industry,

it's, hey, like what we really want is for the industry to keep growing, right? And to grow

at a pace that allows driver adoption to take up. And so in that sense, it's great news.

Yeah. But I think from your standpoint though, you have kind of a built-in advantage with

your traditional customer base of fuel retailers and convenience stores,

and that you can have the system integration into their onsite system so they'd have

greater control over it, greater visibility in terms of the utilization and revenue.

And I don't know what Tesla offers on that level. And maybe they can't even compete. Maybe,

you know, I know they said they're going to handle the maintenance and so forth, but

you know, for your traditional customer, they're like, no, we want the visibility,

we want the control over the experience. So, you know, I guess for the customers you're going after,

you kind of have an inherent advantage for that. So.

Yeah. I mean, well, look, we like to think so, Ed.

Well, awesome. I really appreciate your time. I know you're a busy guy, but

yeah, I'm kind of with you. The more the better, you know, competition improves the breed.

You know, I think the better, I honestly feel charging is for better, for worse, the number one

kind of obstacle preventing greater EV adoption is the, you know, frustrating customer

experience. And some people just saying, I don't even want to deal with this.

So, I think the more we can improve that, the more EV adoption we'll see.

So. Totally agreed. Totally agreed. No, and hey, thanks. Thanks again for having me on, guys.

Happy to be back and hopefully back again in the future.

So, how do people find out more about Connect? Yes.

We'll just wrap up with social media plugs and website plugs.

Yeah, sure. So, essentially, if you just go to, I think it's gobarcovederoot.com

slash connect, you can find everything there. We've also got Thursday,

gobarcovederoot linked in page where we're consistently posting updates on Connect.

And that's where you can find most of the pieces on us.

Now, does that have, from a consumer standpoint, does that also have a site finder or how is that

handled? So, that does not today, Ed. Again, typically it's because we...

We'll have you on for the third time.

Yeah, but it's essentially today our customer has got to control where they

want their sites to be visible. But, hey, as we said, I think in this industry,

life is going to be about partnerships for a long time and making sure that we

give drivers that visibility, right? So, it's one for us to pick up and have that conversation

with them. All right. Thanks again. Great. Thanks a lot, guys.

240: Konect-ing the Dots

Nissan Leaf

Dodge Charger

EDV Rivian Vans

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