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Car
Dodge Charger
The Dodge Charger is a car that’s built for performance, meaning it’s designed to feel quick and powerful when you drive. It’s a sedan, so it has four doors and a trunk, and it’s been popular with drivers who want a sporty feel. In podcasts, it may be mentioned when people talk about how performance cars are changing with new technology.
Term
kilowatt hour
A kilowatt hour (kWh) is a way to measure how much electricity you’re getting. EV chargers often show kWh-related info so you can understand what you’ll be paying for and how much energy you’re taking in.
Term
tariffs
Tariffs are the charging price rules. They can change depending on things like the time of day, so the same charger might cost more or less at different times.
Concept
charging infrastructure
Charging infrastructure refers to the network of EV charging points and how they’re presented and managed for drivers. The discussion here is about how visible signage and information can make that infrastructure feel “real” and usable, even if drivers don’t notice chargers without prompts.
Term
traffic signs regulations and general directions rules
These are the UK rules that control how road signs should look and where they should go. If local councils follow the same rules, EV charging signs are more consistent and easier for drivers to understand.
Term
EV hub sign
It’s a special road sign that tells drivers where EV charging is. The episode explains that getting these signs approved and installed involves rules and paperwork, especially on major roads.
Term
CPO
A CPO is the organization that runs EV charging points. They’re the ones who handle the charging site and, in this case, the process and cost for getting certain EV signs approved.
Term
SRN
SRN means the UK’s main road network—motorways and big A roads. The hosts say rules for signs are tougher there because they’re focused on safety.
Term
national highways
National Highways is the organization responsible for the UK’s major roads. In the episode, they’re mentioned to explain why the rules for signs are stricter on those roads.
Term
topography
Topography is the study of land shape and elevation, and it matters for road signage because it affects visibility and placement. The hosts mention it as part of the process for approving and installing EV signage.
Term
surveys
Surveys are checks done on-site to understand what’s there and what changes are safe and allowed. Here, they’re part of the paperwork and planning for EV signs.
Term
purpose built hub
A purpose-built hub is a charging area that was designed specifically for EVs. The episode is saying these can be expensive and take a lot of effort to create.
Concept
co-location
“Co-location” here means multiple charging companies put their chargers at the same location. That can help because if one charger is busy or broken, there are other options nearby.
Term
rapid charge points
“Rapid charge points” are faster public EV chargers. They’re meant to get you charging quickly so you can add range in less time than slower home-style chargers.
Term
EBCI
EBCI is an acronym mentioned by the speaker, but they don’t explain it in this clip. It likely refers to a specific group or role connected to EV charging, but we’d need the full episode or surrounding context to be sure.
Term
power delivery
Power delivery refers to how much electrical power a charger actually provides to the vehicle over time. The discussion frames “underperformance of the power delivery” as the next step beyond site design and safety—meaning the charger must deliver the promised charging rate reliably.
Concept
wet fuel markets
“Wet fuel markets” means normal petrol/diesel fuel stations. They’re using that as an example of how those stations are regulated for accurate measurements, and how EV charging should be held to a similar standard.
Term
metrology inspections
“Metrology inspections” means official testing to make sure measurements are accurate. In EV charging, it’s about confirming the charger is delivering the right amount of energy so you’re not overcharged.
Term
margin for error
A “margin for error” is the small amount of inaccuracy that’s still considered acceptable. The point is that the system shouldn’t be meaningfully off when it measures what you’re paying for.
Term
four port
“Four port” means the charger has four separate charging connectors. The example is that if one connector’s measurements are wrong, the whole station might be taken offline until it’s fixed.
Term
kilowatts per pound
“Kilowatts per pound” is a way of saying “how much charging you get for the price.” The concern is that if measurements are off, you could pay more but get less charging than you should.
Term
canopies
A canopy is a roof built over an EV charging station. It keeps the charger and people more comfortable in bad weather, but it can cost a lot to install.
Term
planning permission
Planning permission is official approval from the local council for building something. A charging-station canopy may need it before construction can happen.
Concept
case by case basis
“Case by case” means they decide based on the specific location. Some sites can justify a canopy, while others can’t because of cost or approvals.
Term
range anxiety
Range anxiety is the worry that your EV battery won’t last long enough to get to a charger. It’s especially common when you’re new to EVs and aren’t sure how far you can really go.
Term
public charging
Public charging is charging your EV at chargers you don’t own—like chargers in towns or at public locations. It matters because it’s different from plugging in at home.
Term
third party advertising on charges
This is when EV chargers show ads on their screens while you’re charging. The hope is that those ads help pay for the charging, so the electricity cost could be cheaper.
Term
three-pin charging cable
It’s the common type of EV charging lead that plugs into a regular wall outlet using a standard three-prong plug. It’s usually for slower charging compared with dedicated public chargers.
Term
QR code
A QR code is a little square you scan with your phone camera. Here, it’s used to quickly take you to a website or deal related to charging.
Concept
pricing hurdle
A “pricing hurdle” is the minimum price/cost barrier you need to get over before a discount really matters. In this case, it’s like: you have to do something (like watch an ad) before the cheaper charging price kicks in.
Term
landing page
A landing page is the specific webpage you end up on after you click a link or scan a QR code. It’s usually set up so the page matches the offer you were promised.
LIVE
Hi, I'm Gary. This is episode 300 of EV Musings, a podcast about renewables,
electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners.
And on the show today, it's our season ending round table episode.
Today's episode, it's a bit of a milestone in that it's both the season ending round table for
season 15 and it's episode 300 of the podcast. I'll include a graphic of Gerard Butler from
the movie shouting, this is Sparta. Now, to be honest, if you told me seven years back when
I started this podcast that A, I'll still be doing it all these years later and B,
I'll be up to 300 episodes, I've probably have said you were mad. Yet here we are.
So thank you to everyone who listens, watches and supports the podcast. A like, a comment and a
subscribe always helps in these circumstances. The EV Musings podcast is sponsored by Zatmap,
the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence.
This is the regular end of season show and as usual on these episodes, I invite a number of
different people on. Each one presents a topic of interest which they introduce up to the panel
for discussion. We all talk about it. When we set the world to rights without topic,
we move on to another topic. So as usual, I'll start by introducing the guests. My first guest
is Dora Clark. Dora is the head of marketing at ChargePoint operator Osprey Charging. Welcome,
Dora. Thank you, Gary. My second guest is Kate Tyrell, Kate is the director of strategic partnerships
and communication at Charger Evaluation Company, EVCI Global and she was the founder of Charger
Safety Organization. Char safe. Welcome, Kate. I'm an EV Musings repeat offender, by the way.
Yeah, we weren't going to say that, but my final guest is T-Swift. No, not that one.
Our T-Swift has a slightly smaller carbon footprint than that one. I'm talking about
Teresa Swift. Teresa's been working in business development in the EV field for several years
and she's currently helping Stark Charge build their business. Welcome, Teresa.
Thank you, Gary. Lovely to see you.
So now we know who everyone is. Let's get down to the business in hand. I want to pass the
podcast over to my first guest, Dora, to introduce their topic. Over to you, Dora.
Thank you, Gary. So I want to talk today about EV road signage. And I think EV drivers like
yourselves are probably aware that there is a lack of signage on our roads for EV charging.
And this is due to different factors. For example, different roads have different rules
around which signs can go up and who those need to be approved by. And as you can imagine,
motorways and the A road, the very big A roads require quite stringent rules to make sure that
our roads are safe and that there's not too many signs on them. And then there's also local roads
and those ones, if those signs are approved by local authorities and different local authorities
follow slightly different rules. So the problem is at the moment that there's
a set of regulations. It has a symbol for EV charging. It has a couple of different types
of wording that we might have for EV charging, but it's very limited. It's quite strict about
what can be approved. And so what we know government doing at the moment are having a review of that
and they're looking at, can there be better signage and can we, I guess, given the total
sort of transformation of switch to electric vehicles, we need to have signs that provide
safety for drivers, provide information for drivers. We need an overhaul of the signs.
And I guess my, my interesting conversation that I'd love to have with you guys today
is what should be on the signs? What do drivers need? What do they look for?
What is going to give them the information that they're looking for at that moment in time?
On those different types of roads, perhaps it's different types of EV charging, different speeds,
different numbers of charging. And so I guess there's lots of different elements that come into it,
but from the driver perspective, what do we think needs to happen? What would be the best outcome?
I'm going to go straight in. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Dora knows from our previous relationship
with ChargeSafe and Osprey, I'm a big advocate for clear signage on approach to a charging site.
And I have seen many varieties of this in practice and Osprey, I have to say, I'll probably want
the best CPUs for it because there will be smaller signs that simply say, you know, Osprey
EV charging this way on the approach, which I think is, is relevant. It's not too clunky.
It's not too much information. It's what you need. And then as you're entering the charge site,
there's a tow term or something nearby that will state the kilowatt hour that's available,
the speed of the charging, the price per kilowatt hour. And I don't know how easy it is to change
that based on the different tariffs, the rate, the time of day that you're charging, because of
course those energy prices will change. So that's, I guess, kind of a separate, slightly separate
tangent from the overall conversation. But for me, it's interesting to hear how those conversations
have moved with the different local authorities across the country in that which ones have been,
and you don't have to name a channel, of course, but which Gary wants you to absolutely,
but which ones have been, you know, the most proactive in saying, yes, absolutely, this is
really positive information for drivers to have. And it works in two ways. It works for the drivers
to have clarity of, oh, there's a charger there. I can go and use that if they're not using an
application to map them to one. And it gives visibility to our lovely internal combustion
engine drivers and kind of creates that confidence, oh, you know, every time I'm driving down this
road, I can see this sign on the left here, the sign up here on the right, which is for another
provider. And it just builds this big visual impact that the charging infrastructure is here,
where they may not necessarily see it. And I've actually found myself recently driving around.
And every time I see a charger, I will point it out to whoever is in the vehicle with me,
I'm like, oh, look, there's another charger. And I'm doing it because I'm a nerd. But I feel like
it's actually helping them see it. Because if you don't need a charger, you don't necessarily see
them. But the signage is going to stop that from happening for us and say, you know, there's chargers
here, come and use it. Yeah, I think local roads is a really interesting one, talking about local
authorities a little bit more, because they do broadly adopt that kind of wider, it's called the
something very long, the traffic signs regulations and general directions rules, which are what
applies to the major roads. And they do kind of adopt it. But like you say, they do have a bit
more flexibility in terms of what they can authorize. The interesting problem is they actually
have to if they want to really go hard in on getting a lot of good EV road signs. And this is
non branded, we're talking about as well. So there's really great informational ones that you're
talking about where you'd love to be able to point point them out to drivers. At the moment,
they have to actually apply for DFT or Department of Transport Secretary of State sign off to
authorize or permit those. And I think that's a real barrier. I do feel more of them would be
keen to do so. It's a bit of a hurdle at the moment, a couple of councils that have a
like a area wide permission to approve EV signage, which is obviously brilliant. But more
of that would be great, because then you just you do you get that confidence,
visibility of the of the charging sites everywhere on those local roads.
Yeah, I think I used to work for Formula Space, so I know I'll spray signage very, very well.
And is one of the best CPOs, as Kate Rowley says, regarding signage. I think part of the issue
really is when you're actually driving down the road and you can't find it. It's on that map,
it's on electroverse, you know, I mean, you've got the brand signage, but then I suppose in some
respects, the the local councils, there is so much street furniture, and so many signs that
like, we'll hang on, which do we approve, not approve. But I think the main thing
is if it is on octopus electroverse and sat map and the other, you know, apps, it's when you
actually get on site. So you drive onto a site, and it's a big car park, and you're like, we'll
hang on, where are they? You know, they're there. And because it's private land, predominantly,
you can actually put, I think it's a certain size sign that doesn't get involved or you don't
then need to worry about planning. And if it's not permanent either, I don't know if the regulations
have changed on that. But it then gives that initial until people realise that actually
there is charging there. And then you get the, oh, there is charging here. And then you can get the
banners and things like that. So it is a difficult one. But I think the main one is when you land
on site, I mean, even when you are arriving at server stations, it says that the CPOs are there,
but you still got to look for it. And the charges are lit, which then goes in with the charge safe
option to make sure that you've got that lighting so that people can see not just from a safety
point of view, but so they can see the charges as well. So it is key. And it's key to people
realising that the infrastructure is there and it is growing all the time and they're popping up
all the time. Can I ask a stupid question? Because I genuinely don't know the answer to this. I feel
like in smaller on private land situations, and on the approach that the cost of putting up a sign
would belong to the network operator or the person, the business, installing the infrastructure,
right? But do server stations pay for their their approach signs and do theme parks pay to have,
you know, the brown signage around the UK? There are so many different styles of road signs, some
which are completely mandatory and are required. Some that could be seen as, you know, what's the
you know, why are they optional could be, you know, an option. So why is this not considered
a substantial infrastructure? Because it is infrastructure. And I think it's paying for it.
I think that's exactly why. Yeah, Brian, once you have to apply for, if you're a hotel or you're a
and you then have to pay for it as well for it to go up, it's three. So yeah, the interesting
example is the EV hub sign, which is a new EV specific sign for the A roads for major A roads
that was given the green light last year. And that is that requires as a CPO us to apply for it,
we would pay for it all ourselves. And because it's on the SRN, which is national highways
managed as opposed to the local authority road, it's where it's a little bit more freefall,
depending on what they want to permit. But on SRN, which is motorways and major major A roads,
they're incredibly strict about it because of the safety aspects. And so yes, it's everything
is paid for yourself. And it is quite a process. It's things like all sorts of surveys, topography,
like will you add extra weight to the existing signs, such as the topples over, and you can
understand why that's the case. But it is incredibly frustrating when you just want to say
there's an amazing hub of 16 charges at the next services or not even at the services,
you know, there's a purpose built hub that we've spent, you know, upwards of a million pounds
building and yet just getting a sign have many tens of thousands. So I think that's the bit that
that's still kind of in development. And I'd love to see more as just a bit of a structure,
a bit of rules. And then it means that that all of us can can kind of have confidence,
but also expectation setting, like if you see this sign, it means this. And I'd be interested
to know if you guys think there's a threshold, like what size, speed, number of charges,
do you feel is enough to get yourselves a roadside sign as drivers?
For me personally, I used to live locally to the Primrose Vowel farm shop, right? And there was
four or six there. And that has a little bit of signage just coming off of the roundabout and
then leading into the farm shop. And I would not have known that those offspray charges were there
if I hadn't have seen the sign. And I was like, oh, and I went in and I was like,
am I there that Ken Bow was? That's even better. So I think anything that's four plus
should have a sign because you've got a higher chance of being able to plug in and get charged
without having to queue and stuff, which is better. And from a, I guess, an investment
perspective from a CPO's eyes, if you're paying that much to put in the four charges, you want
to make sure they're going to get a high utilization. If it's just a loan charger on its own, having
that available on a mapping application is great. Locals will probably be aware of it,
but way of putting in four plus charges really does need a good sign to demonstrate.
Yeah. And it'll also show local areas and also people who are thinking of going EV,
that the infrastructure is there. Whereas at the moment, if they don't see signs,
they'll still listen to those people that are saying the infrastructure is not there,
there's not enough charges. But that's because they're not necessarily being promoted or
people can't see them. I think if the more people see them, the more confident they'll get.
Come on, Gary. I know you're itching to do it. Yes.
Well, I think it's been great listening to you talk about this. I think to my mind,
I think we need to separate the types of signage. So let's give it an example. And I'm not going
to be partisan here. In fact, I'm going to be the opposite of that. I'm not far from the Winchester
Super Hub that Instavolt have run. I go there quite regularly. It's a nice site. A little bit
overpriced sometimes, but we'll bypass that. When you go down the A34, which is part of the,
I believe, part of the strategic road network, there is no signage there that tells you that it's
there. Instavolt have had to actually put up a banner sign in a field next to the A34 to say
get off at the next junction. When you get off at the junction, there's a couple of roundabouts
that you have to negotiate. And I think there might be one sign attached to one tree at one point
telling you get off the roundabout at this point. Totally insufficient for the size of the next
charger that's there or the site that's there. But it does bring up an issue of,
and you've already talked about it, we need to be able to identify at the strategic road network
level. There is a charger or a site at the next exit. Then when you get off, you need to be able
to say, this is the way to that site from this exit. But also, and I think this comes back to
motorway service areas, if I'm going up the M1, every time I go past a sign that said motorway
services, it tells me generally the price of petrol there, although that's sort of been reduced more
or less over the years. But it also tells me the additional facilities that are there. Is this
a Starbucks site? Is this a coffee site, a Costa site? Is this a BP site? Is it a Shell site?
And I think we need something there. So if I'm going to an Osprey site and there is coffee there,
is it Costa? Is it Starbucks? Are you a KFC site? Is it a Masters Pub? And I think there's that kind
of signage that also needs to be considered when we're looking at the whole area of what to include
on the signs and where to should be put. I feel like I've been an absolute snob about the coffee
thing as well, Gary, because we'll see motorway services and it'll be like 15 miles and then 40
miles. So if the one coming up in 15 miles is a certain coffee chain, I won't use it. I will drive
an extra 25 miles because I really want a very specific coffee from an alternative coffee chain.
So for me, that information absolutely is important. And I really like your point about the Winchester
services hub because the first time I went to visit it, I really, I had to put it into my sat-nav
and on the blind hopes that I was going to make it. I didn't know exactly where it was and it's
just worth noting, I guess, for all the listeners who haven't had the pleasure of attending the site
yet because it is a really wonderful site and they do have the exact specific coffee that I'm
always looking for. It's the turning to get onto the road where you come off to go into the
service station. It is like the fifth exit on the roundabout and I almost always slightly miss it
when I'm doing it. So it's worth mentioning if you're going and you think that you need to come
off at a certain, at the fourth time, it's the next one, which has been signposted since, but on my
first visit it wasn't there. Yeah, just a little help, really. There's also an additional thing on
that and this comes back to the last time I saw you in person, Dora, was it the opening of the
Evesham Hub, I think? The services on the 86. Did you struggle to leave because I couldn't leave?
That's what we want. What I was going to say is the problem is you come off the main roundabout
there and it says EV charging, which is fine, but the very first sign that you see for EV charging
is not for Osprey, it's for one of your competitors. No. Now, A, that's a problem for you, but B,
the other related issue to this is we are getting more and more sites where CPOs are
co-located and the prime example I always think of is, I think it's Gretna Green or the services
up around there, I think there are either three or four CPOs co-located there. So there has to be
some way of identifying, yes, there are chargers, these are potentially the CPOs that are there
and if you want Tesla and WhatsApp, you've got to go this way. If you want GridServe,
you've got to go that way. If you want, I honestly, you've got to go that way and I think that's also
a level of signage that we need. That's a beautiful segue into something I want to discuss, but
firstly, what I'll just touch on there is this is going to come down to how charge point network
operators differentiate themselves from their competition. We've already mentioned price per
interval hour, there is a CPO that very quietly set prices much to their disappointment, I'm sure
everybody noticed and for that reason, I think Osprey will stand out. It's a much larger site,
a site that we both visit too, so I struggled to leave because there was no exit this way.
I made it to the chargers absolutely fine and in fact, I parked across two bays because I
entitled what you call it. I do think with the multiple charging networks in the same place,
there's actually a bit of a hub advantage in a way, whilst it seems like fierce competition,
I think in time, having co-location is not the worst thing in the world because it increases the
availability, so it increases the, I guess, the reassurance for drivers that there will be a
charger there. I do think of your national highways, for example, looking at that site,
that services, you're not actually looking at individual networks, you're just saying,
okay, in total, there are 40, 50 rapid charge points there for this merits, a non-branded
EV hub sign on the main A road and that's really powerful and we would obviously definitely want
that even if it's mutual benefit, isn't it? It's going to be unbranded on those roads,
but at this point, we can't even get that, so hopefully that to come.
Do we have anything else we want to say on this because I'm conscious we're running a little
bit behind schedule at the moment? Any final thoughts before we move on?
I shall take the silences as agreement and say thank you for that, Dora. I think that's a,
it's one of those topics that we're going to come back to. I can guarantee,
as things move forward and the regulations crystallize, I think we're definitely going
to come back to that, so thank you for that. Hey, over to you now, please.
Hello, everybody. For my topic, I really want to touch on the driver experience and as we've
just briefly touched on, what is going to make a driver turn left and right if they
enter a site, there are several operators that are all there at the same time.
I think there's also a misperception out there in our industry, but also the wider general public,
that CPOs are making money hand over fist. I guess my question to you guys is,
are CPOs putting profit over people versus when we think about people and talking about the
driver experience and talking about the speed of the charge, the reliability of the charge,
the safety and accessibility that user experience, and now recently with my EBCI hat on,
the accuracy of the charge, so the price of the service, are you getting every kind of what to
have? Hey, what's your experience been of? I can go first. Yeah. I think it's a really,
I think the, it's a really interesting element of the charging experience that EBCI is analyzing
at the moment. And I think it's almost, I guess it feels like a good sign of a maturing industry
in that there's elements of site design, accessibility, safety, the kind of the power and
speed of the charge points that over the years have been developed and improved. And people
like yourselves, Kate, have really held the industry to account to ensure that all new
sites are up to a standard that really benefits the driver and differentiates us. You know,
it's absolutely in our interests to do it. I think coming to that point about the overall
underperformance of then the power delivery is really, is kind of that next step. And I'd love
to hear a bit more, because I think it would be useful to talk about the analogy with petrol
stations, because I think they already have a calibration, don't they? They do. Maybe going
into that, can it sort of, because that was, I think for me, what really made it clear as to
what we're, what is being tested? Absolutely. So in, we would call it the wet fuel markets.
So in the wet fuel market, they have, they are subject to inspections,
metrology inspections, to ensure that the accuracy of the fuel per litre is, you know,
on the nose. I think there's like a 0.5% margin for error within that. And if a single pump on a
four port fails that accuracy test, they'll shut the whole thing down until it's been recalibrated.
In terms of the losses to the likes of BP and Shell, that would be catastrophic to shut down
an entire four port for the day. And whilst we're not 100% there as the electric vehicle industry,
it's important that we start to hold ourselves to this standard, because, you know, this mandatory
requirement is coming. It's going to be here. So how do we ensure that the margin for error and
delivering kilowatts per pound is accurate and that people aren't paying more for less? Does that,
does that help? Yeah, no, I think that's really useful. And it's, and I think it's great to have
a, another industry in this that's got a similar setup and to then as operators as networks, but
also I think as hardware manufacturers as well, start to build in, you know, this is coming in a
more regulatory form, then that's a great thing because it just means it builds it right through
the whole supply chain and, and I guess the maintenance processes as well to make sure that,
that those charges are all within the bounds. I guess I don't know if this is getting too technical,
but what sorts of things might need to be fixed in your experience?
No, strategic partnerships and comms, or I'm not an engineer, but yes, you're absolutely right.
So we, we are actually actively working with the OEM's original equipment manufacturers for
anyone who doesn't know what that means to understand how accurate the hardware is that's
coming off of the production line. So it's, it's really important to nurture these relationships
at every single level because, you know, I don't know if you guys are aware, there was a recent
law that was passed over in Paris, which I just think is phenomenal where products have been built
historically to only last a certain amount of time. So it could be, you know, three years for
your mobile phone or whatever, and they naturally set to deplete over time or to just die a horrible
death, give you the, what is it, the, the X-box ring of death or something like that one. And,
and much the same, it's holding the hardware manufacturers accountable for the quality of
their product and to know that if you, as an operator, are going to go and spend millions
pounds on hardware that you want to just spread out all over the UK, you're really putting your
trust in this one. I mean, I know you wouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, but if you were
going to go with one launch partner who is a hardware manufacturer, you would want to know
that they're delivering that accuracy off of the line. But then it does change when it goes into
the ground. It's, it's kind of that, that double, it's, Californian standard is 1% off of the line,
and they give that little bit of leeway to 2% once it's in the ground because of things like
environment and the power supply town have that very subtle difference. And that's something
the fact of it as well. I mean, it's, it's hugely technical and happened to have some information
with me at some point, but it's, it's a little bit above my pay grade, I think, actually.
But it's interesting to know, did you say California has brought this in?
Yes, so they're working to it now.
Nice. For me, I think it's, it's making sure about the infrastructure itself being maintained
there and the longer the charger is in the ground, does it lose a certain amount of its
accuracy? And with the new chargers that coming online, with the new manufacturing,
that should then create a stability, hopefully. Kate kindly came to Stark Charge offices and
ours was a pass, which is fantastic news. So we were really pleased with that. I was panicking
for a minute. But, and especially where you're looking at the customer, the customer needs to know.
They haven't even, going back, they probably haven't even thought about it. And, you know,
from a wet fuel point of view, there is that fair, you know, fair price or whatever,
and people know about it. But it's making sure that we're doing it before the customer realises,
because it just gives them another excuse to say, I'm not going to, you know, transition
to an electric vehicle. That's exactly it.
Come on, even deliver. I'm paying 89 people per kilowatt hour,
when in actual fact, I'm only getting 50%.
I think the last thing any of us want is to give the naysayers
any further reason to, to put out posts on social media or the daily fail to print more
daily fail. So, so for us, we're very much, we're very much an extra arm, a tool of support in
a toolbox of the CPOs to say, you know, we're on your side, we want to help you. For me, as you
know, passionate about the driver experience, I want to make sure the drivers taken care of,
that they're well lit, that they're seen, that they can find the charges to signage,
as Dora mentioned earlier, you know, that's really important to me, the accessibility
of the disabled community being able to charge just the same as everyone else can.
Women who've got get buggies out of their boot and maneuver a toddler out of a
baby seat have got that little bit of extra wiggle room to do. So, it all combines. So,
that does increase the output of site delivery. I know that we've previously touched on this
very, very gently ahead of the podcast, where we talked about profit, is it profit over the
customer experience. And there is this misperception, again, where I said, you know, CPOs are
making a handle best. Would you mind just expanding a little bit on that, because I think it needs
to be addressed. It feels like it's the elephant in the room. And I would like to understand a
little bit more about, you know, how long is it going to be until CPOs are truly profitable.
I think there's two sort of elements without trying to get too financial about the way
CPO businesses are working. And one of them is capital expenditure, so investment in building
sites. And the funding that most networks have, either debt or equity funding, goes into building
sites. So very, very expensive, whether it's the hardware, the symbols, the grid connection,
those sites are hundreds of thousands of pounds, especially the larger hubs. So,
it's a capital intensive business, as most infrastructure is. And what we're talking about
when it comes to the sort of profitability idea and where we and others will be setting our
tariffs in order to make money back, you might think we are trying to pay back, obviously,
that investment. But actually, before we start paying back that investment, we have to cover our
costs. And that's the operating costs of running the network. And so that covers things like, well,
it covers the cost of the energy that's provided to the customer and that we have bought and sell
on to the driver. But it also covers the grid charges. So you probably heard these talked
about their standing capacity charges, they are fixed network charges. They're a favorite of us
to talk about because they're incredibly high. If you have a large connection, you run a big
charging hub, you actually pay tens of thousands of pounds per site per year, just to have that
connection. And those have been going up in recent years. And funnily enough, as those go up,
you'll have seen the public charging prices of many networks and our peers go up as well.
And that's not a coincidence. So there's those sorts of charges. So it's all the energy stuff.
And then there's also things like, you know, covering all the operating costs of the business.
So the call center, the maintenance, which we've just talked about is incredibly important,
the cleaning, the site, whether it's sort of landscaping or other types of maintenance,
and the overheads of having staff and an office. So the idea, the profitability that maybe you
were talking about is, are we, you know, absolutely raking in the revenue, covering all those costs
and then making profit on top of that? And the answer to that is no. And the reason I can say
that here, open these on the podcast is because we will publish public accounts. And you can
look at all the CPOs who publish those public accounts, and they're all posting losses,
certainly up to the most recent financial year. And the reason for that is partially those grid
costs are high and partially because of that high capital investment, expenditure investment into
the sites. And we are at a very, very early stage for the market. So that is forecast to change and
hopefully will be the next few years. And if things, certain things like some of those costs,
which we're working to try and kind of either keep the same or reduce even, especially some of those
grid and electricity costs, which are forecast to continue to go up. So if we can keep those at a
level or keep, or even find some way of bringing them down, then that could then translate into
the prices coming down for customers. At some point, we would make them, you know, all of us as a
sector would love to see that sort of operation of profit grow simply because, you know, it's good,
it's good growth. It's good for the, for the UK to have a sector that's new high potential really
kind of growing over time. Back to your original point of profiteering, I guess the impression that
the rising, the rising tariffs have had over time is that maybe CPOs are taking
this a bit, you know, like, oh, we'll just keep pushing it up and on, seems to care, there's not
enough infrastructure, people will still use it. And that's, I mean, you know, I can only speak
for us, but that's absolutely not the case. And it is these, it's really the fixed network
charges that have been rising. And over the past three or four years, it's been, you know,
400% or more in some cases. Yeah, that's the, that's the kind of, hopefully,
in a nutshell situation. One thing I would say is that obviously you could,
we could cut some costs, maybe it's something like maintenance and
do it, right? Don't want to do that.
Yeah, we have to do it. We have at least, and as Osprey, you know, we hold ourselves to a minimum
standard of driver experience. And that's non-negotiable. And at the moment, we have to,
that has to stay in the cost stack. So, yes, it is, it's a balancing act at the moment. But I
think, I think the future is definitely looking bright. But as you say, it's always, always got
to be customer first. It's always got to be user experience first. And we can never sacrifice
that for the financials. Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. I can see Gary's absolutely
chomping at the big end bar. He's wriggling around in his seat. He's like, please, please let me go.
But one thing I do just want to add on to the end of that, and thank you for explaining that,
I really appreciate it, is that this industry has mostly been funded privately. It's not been
given huge government handouts. It's, you know, it is something that requires a boardroom and
investors and presentations. And being able to demonstrate we're going to be profitable when
X1 is there, yes. And those prices, you know, will even out, though, as the
the initial install has been taken care of, there's drivers increase in numbers and the
utilisation figures rise. So that's that, that is understandable. I think it's more of a case of
if you can absorb the risk of biggest spends at this point in time by taking care of the
driver experience and doing things like that maintenance that you're talking about for me,
that that shouldn't even be optional. And I know it's not for us right, but it is
critical infrastructure. It needs to be, you know, on the nose every time it needs to be working,
it needs to be safe and accessible when it should be exactly what you're paying for.
It's that simple. And yet, there are still operators who are getting it wrong. But I do,
I do emphasise that it has largely been privately funded and it's come up against
barrier after barrier. Sorry, Gary, I'm literally just taking your podcast away from you.
It only needs to be 5% VAT. So the other one reduces the VAT, then all customers will be happy.
If I might play devil's advocate here, how can I put this? One of the things that
I know Kate, if you had your charge safe hat on, would be pushing for and I've been pushing for
a lot with particularly hubs is canopies. Now, if we look at, if we split the charge point operators
who are out there sort of down the middle, there are a number who will always put canopies in
at every site, MFG, Fastnet or example. There are those who will put canopies in at some sites and
there are those who won't put canopies in. Now, I understand that there are a number of reasons
why this could happen. But I, you know, if I was playing devil's advocate, I would say those that
aren't putting canopies in are doing it because they want to decrease their costs. I increase their
potential profit at the expense of the customer. How would you address that statement?
That's a really, it is a very good question, a good statement. I think there's a few things going
on. There is, I can't speak from MFG because they are a huge network. Fastnet are very selective
and they will only build where they can get the permission for a canopy. So one of the barriers,
as I know you know, is that there's things like planning permission and other kind of
reasons and restrictions why canopies might not work. But your point is really about cost.
And I think without being too blunt about it, there is, at the moment, because of those other
and growing costs that are putting pressure on a site and the site's ability to perform straight
away, putting a canopy in on day one sets you back to not even making profit, to breaking even
on that site. This moment in time, it is a case by case basis. I was always subject to those other
things. It's a retail, you know, we operate quite a lot in retail car parks. Everyone in your life
are they going to give you a permission for a canopy. But places like Tyford where you visited
recently, you know, it's an existing service station, you're looking at upwards of 10,
15,000 pounds per bay to put in a canopy of the sort of caliber that we as a brand, as a brand in
the physical space would like to do. And it is, it's just a question at this point in time.
It doesn't stack up for us economically and it's not. And you say that's because we are trying to
get to the potential profit break even absolutely. And they're very expensive. I guess it's not
saying that we would never do it. And we do have this conversation a lot about canopies.
There's a huge kind of debate backs and forwards. Does it, you know, is the upside or that worth
the cost? We spend a lot on other stuff that's quite expensive, but enhances the customer
experience. Yeah, it's, I think it's an ongoing debate that I'm not sure I can answer in one way,
but that's the sort of stuff that's going on. Does that help?
Can I ask another stupid question? When it comes to plan and permission, do you have to make a
payment per application? And if that is or is not the case, are you able to make plan and permissions
across your entire network and then look at retrofitting in future? Once you're back in the
black, are you able to expand the network and jazz up your sites a little bit more?
Yeah, I think that would be a great route. And certainly, I mean, you do have to pay to put in
the permission or the application, sorry, in the first place. But yes, that sort of thing.
And I think more and more networks are, we've been in a period of very high growth and a lot
of networks been built, built, built. And now many of us are saying, okay, we've got this pretty
decent size of state now. There are sites we're proud of. There are sites we should improve. There
are sites that maybe we need to go back and revisit. And we've been expanding a lot of sites. So
where we might have had one to two sort of 50 kilowatt chargers, we're replacing those with
higher power and more chargers, which is a great sign of the demand in those places. And obviously,
that's the first step, improving the speed that people can get and the number of chargers that
people have access to is the first step. And then I think you'll write the next step is then, okay,
where can we, where can we then improve that in built environment around the charger?
It is a bit of a battle with it's not just planning and councils, but also landlords. So
because we partner with private landlords from leases on most of those sites, it's a conversation
with them. And you'd be surprised at how difficult it is sometimes just to get up a branded
sign that says, yeah, spread the charge in the car park. And it's a battle, but you're right.
Yeah, that'd be a great thing to do. Does anyone think that the charge points would be used more
often or be more popular if they did have those kind of piece like wet fuel stations where,
you know, because you are stood there for sometimes a little bit longer than you are,
you know, to actually charge the car and get it all plugged in. Would people use it more?
We do ask people relatively regularly and I know that map and people do sort of surveys
about these things. Obviously, if you could snap your fingers and you could have a kind of,
of course, I think people would always wear it, but it comes quite low down the list versus
other things that they'd, they want. Yeah, I think that's, but no, absolutely. It's,
it's an R10A usually. I think it's a nice point though as well, T, because it's,
it's that familiarity, isn't it? It's when we're looking at mass scalability off the market,
there's a lot of drivers out there who are not yet in an electric vehicle who don't really understand
the experience of using a charger for the first time. If they see a 4-4, much that's similar to
that they've been delivering, it feels like that petrol experience you can pop inside,
you can use the facilities, you can grab a coffee, you know, get new soap or whatever.
And I think that those will become more popular in the future. Yeah, I feel like that's something
to get into there. There you go, Gary. Once again, time is creeping. So unless we've got anything
else on that, I would like to say thank you, Kate, for that topic and move on to Theresa.
Okay, thank you very much, Gary. Hi everybody. So leading into the customer experience and
myself just mentioning ladies actually are here and things like that. I'm just wondering at the
moment when we purchase an electric vehicle, the locations where we get them, so the dealerships,
we are predominantly dealing with gentlemen and gentlemen selling us our vehicles.
Females are 49% of the collective having a driving license.
My thought would be how do we try and work in getting more ladies selling vehicles,
especially electric vehicles, to the 49 collective and then also providing that customer trust
because is it we're just so used to having being sold a vehicle by a gentleman?
Would we be more likely to buy a car from somebody that we trusted more such as ladies?
So for me, it's definitely looking at that customer service right from the beginning. So
we can have the signage, we can have the accessibility, we can have the base slightly
wider because we've got to get push chairs out and things like that and that isn't necessarily
taken into consideration. The EV vehicles are also a lot bigger as well, so the spaces do need
to be bigger. So yeah, for me, I would just love to see more females selling us 49%
our EV vehicles in the future. What's everyone's thoughts?
I love it. want to see it. I want to experience it. I recently started filming
an EV review series for the Women's Drive Electricity and I got to the very first
fund that we had was a Volvo from Weyland's Egring Robster and it was really cool and I
went and got the Volvo and this lovely lady came out. She must have been in her early 20s.
She was fanatic about electric vehicles. She was telling me all about all the different EVs that
Volvo produced. There was nothing this woman did not know about this car. She was telling me about
all of the safety features on it, the in-car tech, the specs of the external and I was like,
don't worry about that. I don't care about that. I need to know if you can get buggies and dogs and
stuff in this car. So please don't worry about too much about the detail, but she was undermoded
with all of that information and I absolutely would have bought a vehicle from her if I had money.
I don't, but I feel like the way that she took herself very seriously, she carried herself extremely
professionally. She wasn't hard selling. She didn't need to. I was there to pick up a car that I was
going to borrow for a few days and do a review on and it felt authentic. It didn't feel like,
oh, you know, I just need to flog 10 cars by the end of this week. I need to meet my quota and I'd
like to get you out of the door as quickly as possible with a new pair of keys in your hands
and possibly a finance agreement so I can make even more money on top of that. I do not enjoy that
experience. I hate the experience of buying a car, but if I was talking to a dealership and she was
there, I think it would be very different, different ones. Yeah. I mean, just a little statistic to
throw, there is only 20% of the automotive industry are actually females. So yes, from a dealership
point of view, but also from the higher levels as well. I mean, within the EV industry and the
infrastructure, I do think there are more ladies, which is fantastic. So I think that is going in
the right direction and I wouldn't want to take anything away from gentlemen. You know, they're
very good at selling cars. They're very good at what they do and there are so many male advocates
out there, but it would just be nice to have more of that, yeah, that female input. What were your
thoughts, Doris? Sorry, I have a habit of babbling sometimes as these two know really, really well.
I'd be interested. I think we should expand this, not just for dealerships, but beyond that as well.
I think it's, you know, depending on whether you maybe you lease or you buy through, I don't know,
secondhand through a third party website, or you are buying direct from a dealership, all of those
interactions, not just in person, but on the phone or the person who drops it off or the sort of
advice that you get, maybe tend to be male as well. So I think it's, it isn't just that in person
experience. It's the sort of full end to end feeling of interacting only with someone maybe who
isn't, you don't feel as related to in that way. So yeah, I guess I don't, I don't really have an
answer or a solution, but maybe it's people like AutoTrader, for example, as well, looking at how
they're selling. I know that there's really, really interesting and great analysis that's done on
whether it's like job adverts or websites or the way that people browse and read things and
interpret things is can be different depending on your gender. So we're trying to make the way that
things are sold and the elements of those things that are emphasized more gender neutral is a good
place to start. And again, you know, having the opportunity to, when you are, if it's a lease,
for example, talking on the phone to almost like having a choice of salespeople, who do you want
to talk to about this, your lease with us, something like that could be, could even just be a good
start. Because I imagine there are, you know, there's probably women out there who aren't first,
don't mind, maybe it's not impacting them, and they don't mind, but then some of us who would love
to have a bit more of a kind of bit more tailored or like you say, a sort of more relatable experience
when we do that. I have many, many thoughts on this. I'm really sorry. I have so many thoughts on
this. Exactly, exactly that Dora, the delivery partner that's used to drop off the vehicles,
because I have had many subscriptions or leasing or company cards that have been handed over. I
literally took delivery of a trang in yesterday. So excited for a week. It's just
wheeled it off the back, just didn't, couldn't shut up about his V12 engine. And I was like,
yeah, cool. So I feel like every time I take delivery of a car now, I have to educate the
person because they drop off the car and they're like, oh, would you think about this then? They're
kicking the tires on it. And I'm like, must I always be working? And then with my family,
when they're like, women's shop differently. And I would love to see the dealership experience
change the third party subscription channels change the used vehicles, because I like to go
into a shop. I hate online shopping, but that is my personal preference and other people might
go differently. I want to go in. I want to touch things. I want to feel things. I want to sit in
the car. I want to open the doors. I want to know how quietly things shut, especially if I'm having
to get my niece out of the car and she's sleeping, you know, is it going to slam shut? Is it going
to shut quietly? How loud can I get my music for those days where I'm roaring up the M1 and I just
want to, you know, chill out to my face if I cast Gary or bang out some tunes. It's such a personal
thing buying a car. I do not want somebody to come over and be condescending or patronising or even
ask me, you know, where's your husband? I don't have one.
There's nine times out of 10, right? If there is a male or a female, I don't know where the
statistics are, but mostly, right, you're going to a dealership, right, the wife and the girlfriend
or whatever, the male and the female are there. Nine times out of 10, it will be the female
that says yes or no. And the man will say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanted this. I want this and
da, da, da. But the female will go, well, no, because I can't get do this with it and I can't do
that with it. And I'm the one that's driving it most of the time and all this kind of thing.
So it is, and I don't think they, they realise that statistic. I mean, whenever I've bought a new car,
I've gone to my husband, oh, I like that. And he said, well, you know, you're the one that's going
to be driving it most of the time, the dealership will go, Mr Swift, what do you think of the vehicle
and will not look at me? You know, it's education as well for the gentlemen. Yeah,
it'd be lovely to have more women in, but the education as well.
But all the advertisement is aimed at men as well, which is so, so stupid to me. It's such a backwards
thing because when the women are, you know, the majority of decision makers in a family household,
why wouldn't we be targeting the advertisement towards women who are driving because they are
49% of driving registered holders and we're most likely to sit and watch an advert. Whereas the men
do enjoy a review. So I do think that that does factor into it. But if we're doing the majority
of the driving on a local scale, or even, you know, the younger professionals who are legging it up and
done the country over five minutes, we want to understand what that driving experience feels
like. And we're generally more curious. So do you want to be sold to by a woman? Or do you want to
be sold to as a woman? That's a very good question. I would, I would rather be sold to
as a person. So actually look at me as a person, not a woman, just as a person. And for somebody to
come to me and say, what are you looking for? What's important to you? What would you like your
vehicle to do? Yeah, and to actually talk to me. And you know, those ladies will feel comfortable
talking to another lady, whereas a gentleman will sometimes come in and they have these preconceptions.
Whereas I don't think when a woman is selling, even, you know, me being in business development,
I look at the person and I try and find out and solve their issues. Whereas a car dealership,
they want to try and get that across the line as quick as possible. And they think potentially
generalizing here, but they potentially feel that, oh, well, if I talk to the man, I'm going to get a
quicker decision when in actual fact, that's not the case. So long and short of it, no, I want to
be spoken to as a person, by a person. Ideally, sorry. My needs as a driver have changed as well.
So like my needs and Teresa's needs and Dora's needs will be vastly different. Dora, I do believe
you've got very young ones. Teresa's got an older one and some dogs. I don't have any kids. I drive
solo quite often. And in the Volvo that I actually did a review on, there was two cup holders, but
you could push a button. So it just became one cup holder and gave you extra room in the cabin,
which for me is really cool. There was a place that I could put my handbag. The in-car tech was
really intuitive. So I could switch between my music and phone calls really quickly. So I'm
constantly making calls on the go. When you run any road business or you're working off the road,
you need to be able to do that. And we are all on the road anyway. But my needs are vastly different
as if you guys went into a dealership, you would be looking at very different things. So I think
Teresa's whole process of who are you as a person, what would you prioritize as part of your driving
experience is really important. I would love to be sold to buy a woman because I feel like she
would nurture that conversation a little bit more. I don't care about torque. I don't really even care
about range as long as it's above 240 miles because that's just my need. But no, I don't care how
quickly it gets from zero to 60. I really couldn't care about things like alloys or whatever. It just
doesn't bother me. But if I have a conversation with someone who looks like me as a bit relatable,
I'm going to ease into that conversation so much more. But yeah, I think
T's point on being sold to as a person. Yeah, I love that. What about you, Gary? You'd rather
be sold to buy. Yeah, come on, come on. I could kind of encapsulate everything we've talked about.
I've been sold to lease vehicles by women. I've been sold one secondhand vehicle by EVs. I mean,
a man. The interactions were very, very similar from my point of view. But I don't know how much
of that was related to the individuals knew how to sell to me as a male rather than it was a woman
selling to a man versus a man selling to a man. Every vehicle I've had is turned up on the back
of a low loader driven by a man. But I do do a lot of test drives. And in a large proportion of the
test drives, it's usually a female from the dealership who is sitting next to me. And
this is not a slight on females. It's a slight on dealerships. The knowledge at the moment
isn't there for me as a man. I will ask the questions about the dealership. I will ask the
questions about the car. Often I don't get the answers back that are accurate. But then again,
I'm not looking at that and saying, you know, will I be able to fit? Have I got isophics in the back
here for two cars? It's because again, I don't have any kids. I don't, I could care less about
isophics in the back. I could care less about whether I could fit two dogs in the back because
I don't have dogs. But I appreciate that there are people who would have that. The other part of
this is I was waiting for a test drive with the Suzuki Evitara. I had no idea Suzuki had an
electric version. There was a young lady sat there waiting and I said, are you with the dealership?
She says, yes, I am. I said, what are you driving? And she said, this car here is my car, the Suzuki
Evitara. That's fantastic. So you do drive electric? She said, yes. I said, and what were the problems
that you had when you first went to electric? She said, well, it was obviously range anxiety.
And I said, and how did you solve that? She said, well, I live in Brighton,
my son's in Plymouth at university. I took the car to Plymouth one weekend.
Nice. I said, and had you ever driven long distance and charged in public? She said,
no. I said, how was it? She said, not a problem. I turned back up at the dealership with six miles
on the clock. And everyone went six miles. I love that this is kind of getting to a point
where people are like, it's so boring to talk about. Why do I even have to talk about whether
I charge on the road or not even anymore? Because it is a simple price. And that's great.
Absolutely. Cool. Once again, time has sort of caught up with us. So unless there's anything
else on that, I think I might like to have a quick session now. So in the UK, and we talked
about this already, we do have some of the most expensive public charging prices in Europe. And
there are many ways in which these prices can be brought down. We're talking about time of day,
tariffs, subscriptions, apps, et cetera. And I've talked about this numerous times on the podcast.
But one thing we're starting to see now is the use of third party advertising on charges.
Some of the more recent designs allow, for example, videos to be displayed as you're charging. Now,
in every other medium, advertising is used to decrease the cost you pay for a product. You
get Google for free because they advertise to you. Your streaming is cheaper if you opt for the
version that serves you ads. Even podcast sponsors at Mac put advertising in their free version
of the app. To remove it, you need to pay for a subscription, but not apparently in public
charging. So should we be forced to watch adverts serve to us while we charge if we aren't getting
any financial benefit for this? And furthermore, what would that financial benefit be? Would it
be a reduced price per kilowatt hour? Would it be a free coffee at the nearest Starbucks cost to
choose your supplier of choice? Or would it be something else? Who has thoughts on this and
like to weigh in? I'm going to disagree with you straight off the bat. Wait, so I didn't
think the word, but I will disagree with you. And the reason for, you're not being forced,
if you're talking about advertisements on a charge point, right? Okay, you're not being forced.
Much like you're not being forced to read what's on the handle of a petrol pump as you put the
pump into your vehicle. You don't get pence off of your fuel because they've whacked an
advertisement on your petrol pump. I think it's wise for CPOs to take advantage of this
advertisement opportunity that is available to them where they've invested in the larger units,
like the Siemens or the Alpetronics, where they've got big screens and they're able to do so.
I think that's part of the reason why they would spend more for those charges to have that
facility and that additional revenue stream available to them. And I kind of applaud it
as a previous business owner. For me, it's like, yeah, why wouldn't you explore additional revenue
opportunities? As a driver, when I'm sat there, if I don't want to look at it, guess what I'm
looking at? My mobile phone, guess who's advertising to me? Everyone. I have been influenced time
and time again by the device in my hand. If I don't want to look at it, I look away.
So the counter to that is, if advertising didn't work, they wouldn't do it, right? Therefore,
they must be receiving some sort of financial benefit from that. So if they're receiving that
financial benefit by the fact that I'm there using their product, why am I not receiving
a proportion of that money back in the form of a free coffee or two or three pence a kilowatt hour
reduction? Do you expect that when you're filling up your car with wet fuel? How do I know that
that's not happening? Well, you don't get a free coffee if you plug your car or you put your car
into to fill it up with diesel. And there's that lovely little advert there. Usually can be spec
savers. I think are quite a big one that do it, right? You're not getting a free cup of coffee
or a discount from specs. Well, there might be a discount code on there from spec savers. So,
you know, but not from the actual service station. I actually provide that. I feel like
on that point, T, it made such a good point where the petrol stations have the advertisements on
the handles. That's an additional income stream for that petrol station because it's divvied up
between the actual petrol stations. Petrol stations themselves don't make much money at all
because they've got to pay for their electricity bill, they pay for the land rental, like their
costs are actually huge. What you do get, Gary, as a result of going to a petrol station where
they've successfully sold that advertisement revenue on the pump handle is most likely really nice
clean toilet, nice staff, better facilities, and just a better experience if you go into
the actual station, right? So, my counter-counter argument to you would be,
because I know that they do this at Instavel at the Winchester services, how much more pleasant
is your charging experience when you need to pop out and use the facilities, which are lovely,
or go in and grab yourself a coffee, which is lovely, or for me, when I've had the dog with
me, Odin, shout out to Odin, he's had access to fresh drinking water and somewhere to use
his own doggy facilities. Like, you get what you pay for. If you are being sold to by some
advertisement screen, you're most likely going to be at a little bit more of a nicer site.
Dora, you've been remarkably quiet throughout all of this.
Yeah, I'm listening because I haven't thought about it in that much depth before. I guess
there's the point about an additional revenue stream, which you made, Kate, which is valid,
I think, as I said earlier, we are such an early stage of this sector, of this market,
and in the early days, it is providing a service. It's a relatively transactional buying fuel,
hard to differentiate, not the wildest of services, but you've got to get it right,
and you've got to get the user experience right, and you've got to make sure it's reliable
and priced accordingly for people to continue to use you and to cover your costs. But I think,
I'm not going to say whether I had to find it, whether it's a good or bad, or what should be
the quid pro quo of having to see advertising. I think it's, again, an interesting point at
which we've got to where CPOs are starting to look at their estates and say, hang on, I've got
something which is valuable above and beyond selling kilowatt hours to drivers. Obviously,
that's my core focus, but now I have this big out-of-home advertising estate. What more can I
do? When we first looked at ours, when we had slightly larger charges, we ran some campaigns
with local artists and artwork, and perhaps we weren't focused enough on the profit at that point,
but you then get a greater scale and you think, actually, this is an opportunity,
and I think seeing it in isolation is maybe unhelpful because you get a discount for barriers or
friction. Some people or some networks will give a discount for a subscription, like a monthly thing,
but also maybe for using an app. For giving your data, for signing up to something, you
get something in return. That's kind of an understood mechanism of the way membership
works in this type of world. Similarly, maybe, Gary, your point that if you are forced to watch
something, maybe if there's a screen where you have to consume an ad before you get to charge,
then you should get some discount or something for that. Or maybe in app, if you use the app to
charge, but you see something before you charge, there's an element there which I agree with you
on. If there's an added barrier and added friction and giving data or something like that,
the customer, the user, should expect something. But I think otherwise, maybe it is just a case
of it is of the next step and the sort of slightly more commercialization of this sector,
and the retail heads are getting involved rather than the infrastructure heads who are like,
let's just build, build, build, and then suddenly the retailer guys are like,
we can operate this like a McDonald's, guys, let's crack up the advertising.
So yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see how it develops. We don't have huge screens,
so it's not something we've looked at just yet, but it's absolutely the right kind of thing to
be looking at. And it's ultimately, it comes back to how just don't annoy your customers,
basically, can you do it without sending them packing because you've added extra dilution to
the brand or friction that they don't want. And I think what's interesting is you've got to then
differentiate between the types of advertising, because I think there was a charger once,
not too long ago, at a Holiday Inn, big screen there, you plugged in, and then it's put a thing
up saying, you are at the Holiday Inn, why not head in and grab yourself a coffee?
And it's kind of, well, that's sort of advertising, but it's not offering anything free,
but it is just sort of giving information.
What's the suggestion?
Yeah, and I'm kind of okay with that. But if it said, for example,
do you need a new three-pin charging cable, go to evcables.co.uk for a wide range of options,
that's a different kind of advertising. And, you know, if there's a QR code saying,
scan here and get a discount on your evcables, I think that's, from my point of view, acceptable.
And I do take your point there about if you've got to, if there's, I did an episode of
weeks ago where I talked about the pricing hurdle, which is a hurdle that you have to cross
or go over to be able to get a discount. And in your case, Dora, when you were talking about,
you know, something comes up on the app and you've got to watch
an ad to get to, to start your charge. And as a result, you get a discount.
I think that's a valid pricing hurdle to go over. So I'm not sure whether I've
taught myself into or out of my position there.
The other thing to bear in mind is any good marketer that's, you know, spending thousands
and thousands of pounds on a nationwide advertisement campaign on charges would have
a call to action so that they could monitor the success of that campaign.
So you're right in that if you were going to go and buy, you know, some cabling
and you wanted to scan a QR code, it should take you to a separate landing page for that
marketing manager to be able to follow that transaction. So yeah, I think you have talked
yourself out of it. You knew you were going to anywhere, I think, Gary, didn't you?
I know, I know. I thought it was a conversation we needed to have. And it's interesting to get
at least a CPO point of view on this. And I suspect that what you're saying there, Dora,
is something that a lot of other CPOs have had that discussion, whether they've come to
the same conclusion as you or whether they've come to a different one. I think that that
discussion has definitely taken place. Well, I think that's about it. I hope you enjoyed
listening to today's show. It was put together this week with the help of Dora Clark,
Teresa Swift and Kate Tyrell. Thank you, ladies, for your time.
The EV Musings podcast is sponsored by ZapMap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and
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About this episode
Episode 300’s season-ending round table digs into why EV charging road signage is inconsistent and what drivers need to see—like kWh, speed, and price—especially on the SRN where approvals are strict. Guests discuss co-located CPOs, how signage affects confidence and utilization, and the economics behind reliability, maintenance, and pricing. The conversation then broadens to measurement accuracy (kilowatts per pound), ad-supported charging screens, and how incentives could offset friction. It closes with sponsor reads for ZapMap.
Original notes
This was a milestone episode to wrap up the season - episode 300 of EV Musings.
In this special roundtable, I'm joined by Dora Clarke (Osprey Charging), Kate Tyrrell (EVCI Global / ChargeSafe), and Teresa Swift (Stark Charge) for an honest discussion on the real-world driver experience, from signage and infrastructure to advertising, pricing, and making EVs more accessible.
What You’ll Discover
- The State of EV Road Signage: Why current signage is lacking, what drivers actually need to see, and how better signs could boost confidence and utilisation.
- Profit vs People in Public Charging: The real economics facing CPOs, the pressures on pricing, and whether operators are prioritising the driver experience.
- Advertising on Chargers: Should drivers see ads while charging, and what (if anything) they should get in return - discounts, freebies, or better facilities?
What really stood out is how much of the conversation came back to trust and practicality. Whether it’s clearer signage so people can actually find chargers, maintaining sites properly, or making the whole experience feel welcoming (especially for women and new EV drivers), the panel agreed that getting the fundamentals right will matter far more than flashy gimmicks as the market matures.
A brilliant, wide-ranging discussion to close out Season 15 and hit a huge milestone for EV Musings.
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.
Episode produced by Arran Sheppard at Urban Podcasts: https://www.urbanpodcasts.co.uk
(C) 2019-2026 Gary Comerford
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Mentioned in this episode:
Zapmap
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. Zapmap is free to download and use, with subscription plans for enhanced features such as using Zapmap in-car on CarPlay or Android Auto, and discounted charging across thousands of charge points. Download the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store or find out more at www.zapmap.com.
The EV Musings Podcast
Gary Comerford
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65:01