February 25, 2026 • 40 mins
You’ve seen Woolworths’ electric delivery trucks driving silently through the suburbs.
But where do they charge — and how does that infrastructure actually work?
In this episode of the EV Charging Podcast, we’re joined by Gareth Ridge, Country Manager at Zenobē Australia, to go inside one of Australia’s most innovative commercial EV charging projects: an off-site, multi-user charging hub in Mascot powering last-mile Woolworths delivery trucks.
We break down:
- ⚡ Why space and grid constraints are shaping EV fleet charging
- 🏗️ How a 1MVA, 22-bay charging hub was built on an Ausgrid site
- 💰 The commercial model behind fleet electrification (Total Cost of Ownership explained)
- 🔋 What happens to EV batteries after 8–10 years (second-life storage use cases)
- 🚚 Why light and medium trucks are electrifying faster than prime movers
- 🔮 2026 predictions: megawatt charging, electric ferries, mining fleets & more
This is a behind-the-scenes look at the infrastructure quietly driving Australia’s transport transition.
If you’re interested in EVs, grid-scale batteries, commercial fleet electrification, or the future of energy — this episode is for you.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:11):
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
the EV Charging Podcast.
I'm Dan.
I'm Jeff.
And we're back in the studio.
How are you doing, Jeff?
SPEAKER_01 (00:20):
Doing great.
It's been a big start to theyear.
We're still chasing aroundbatteries in the battery market,
but hopefully we're also makingprogress towards some of those
bold predictions we made lastepisode.
SPEAKER_02 (00:33):
Yes, bold indeed.
Early days in 2026, but we'reinching towards some of our
predictions, I hope.
This show, of course, as always,brought to you by Solar Choice,
Australia's number one quotecomparison platform for solar
batteries, even charging, heatpumps, and aircon.
And today we're going back toour standard format, if you want
to call it that.
Last episode was just Jeff and Ihaving a chat.
(00:55):
Today we've got a guest here inthe studio, Gareth Ridge from
Zenobi.
Gareth is the country manager.
And Zenobi caught our eyebecause of a site that they
finished late last year forWoolworths, an EV charging hub
for all the last mile deliveryvehicles.
Which might not sound like thesexiest topic, but it's a really
important facility, and thereare going to be many more like
(01:17):
them springing up soon to helpelectrify the light and medium
commercial fleet.
And uh, if you're someone likeme who lives in the suburbs and
you see Woolley's trucksdelivering food pretty much
every day, we want to see moreof these vehicles as electric.
They're quiet, they're smaller,of course, there's no emissions.
So, yeah, we wanted to chat toGareth about that project in
Botany and Sydney and also hearabout some of the other exciting
(01:40):
things Zenobi is working on.
With no further ado, welcomeGareth.
So maybe just to kick thingsoff, can you give us a bit of
your own background?
You're here, you're working atZenobi at the moment.
Who are Zenobi?
What do they do?
SPEAKER_00 (01:57):
Yeah, sure.
Well, I'll start with my ownbackground and then I'll jump
into Zenobi.
So I started out actually in inbanking in my career, and then
soon realized that probablywasn't for me.
It was a little bit too archaic,a bit too bureaucratic, and then
slowly moved into the energysector with a focus on the grid
space, doing a bit of consultingwork and then moved into working
(02:18):
with Transgrid, one of the largetransmission operators.
And from there I saw there wasthere was an opportunity to work
with Zoobi as well whilst I wasthere.
So that was quite an excitingopportunity to see how Transgrid
could work with Zoobi.
And one of our first projectswas actually with Zenobi and
Transgrid, which was the projectat Lycart Bus Depot, where we
were one of the largest uhelectrified bus depot projects
(02:40):
there.
So Zenobi, though, as a as abusiness, how it started.
It was started about 2019,roughly, in the UK.
And then it started its form inAustralia in 2020.
It is a business that that'sfirst started out actually in
grid scale storage, batteries,large batteries on the grid, and
then quickly moved into uhproviding EV fleet services for
(03:02):
buses primarily, and now we'removing into trucks.
We also have a third businessarm, which is our Second Life
battery business.
So we repurpose old bus andtruck batteries and then put
them into second lifeapplications like uh displacing
diesel generators onconstruction sites, for example.
So we now have those threebusiness arms that that's been
driving Zenobi going forward.
And yeah, as I said, we've beenin in Australia for about five
(03:24):
or six years now.
SPEAKER_02 (03:25):
Okay, and I understand you've been with
Zenobi in Australia since theyarrived from the beginning.
SPEAKER_00 (03:30):
Yes, correct.
I was um number one in Australiafor the business, and now we're
a team of around 25 peoplelocally, but we've got a team of
circa 300 people globally thatwe leverage across most
continents around the world now.
But Australia is probably thesecond largest jurisdiction
outside of our main home countryof the UK.
SPEAKER_02 (03:50):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (03:52):
Interestingly, Gareth, you and I have some
history as well, dating back towhat I now realize is the early
days of Zenobi before we wejumped on.
I was checking my emails and wewere talking about that Lycart
bus depot in 2020, which I thinklooking at the website looks
about a couple of years beforeit actually got built.
But we were helping you sort ofthink about some solar and
(04:15):
battery sort of larger scaleoptions to help power the
chargers and refuel those busesin the depot.
SPEAKER_00 (04:21):
Yeah, that was great.
So yeah, thank you.
It's good to be back here and uhclosing that loop.
But yeah, that was a milestoneproject for the company, really
globally, to show that we canexpand internationally, but also
locally, to show how we can dobus depot electrification at
scale.
And then adding, as you said,the solar and the battery to try
and mitigate the cost, but toalso mitigate some of the peak
(04:42):
demand challenges and some ofthe redundancy uh risks that we
could put into the system.
So, yeah, that project's stillgoing as you would expect.
Um, it was a 15-year project.
We're now actually in theprocess or working with
Transport for New South Wales tomake that the full 240 bus depot
electrification.
So it'd be one of the largest inthe world.
SPEAKER_01 (04:59):
I remember at the time it feeling like it was, at
least to me, a project that wasahead of its time because at
that point solar choice didn'treally have much to do with EV
charging.
You really didn't see that manyEVs on the road in 2020,
certainly not electric buseslike you do now.
Yeah.
So I think you know, it wouldhave been very cool to be at the
(05:20):
forefront of a landmark projectfor Zenobi, but also probably a
landmark project for the NewSouth Wales government and for
the for Australia, really.
Yeah, it was.
SPEAKER_00 (05:31):
And it was really what kick started everything
that we're doing now.
And you know, we try to domarket first for everything that
we do, whether it's um, youknow, the first project we did
in the UK, even was one of thefirst e-bus projects in the UK
and likewise here.
So and we're doing first of itskind second life battery
projects, as we'll talk aboutlater, first of its kind you
know, off-site truck charginghub project.
(05:52):
So we like to sort of push theboundary, both in terms of the
types of projects we do, butalso the commercial models,
which, you know, that firstproject was one of its first of
its kind to have a 15-yearlifespan and contract link to
it, which is quite rare.
But it, you know, it's havingthat thinking, out-of-the-box
thinking on the commercialmodels, which actually makes
these things stack up.
And then we can start to thinkabout instead of worrying about
(06:15):
TCO, we can make the TCO workfor us by looking at the the
lives of the assets.
SPEAKER_01 (06:19):
TCO being total cost of ownership.
Correct.
Sorry.
And and the 15-year agreementjust give us that you're
providing maintenance servicesfor the charging for, or what's
the scope of what you'redelivering over 15 years?
SPEAKER_00 (06:33):
Yeah, so that covers all the operation and
maintenance services for thesole of the battery and the
buses themselves.
So we and we actually repurposeas replace the bus batteries at
their midlife, which is aroundeight years.
That's the life of a busbattery, roughly.
We'll replace that battery,repurpose it into a second life
application, as I said, and thenwe'll put a new battery into the
(06:54):
bus so that it can go for theremaining uh seven or eight
years.
Wow.
SPEAKER_01 (06:57):
And so is Zenobi providing the capital for all of
that upfront acquisition?
Correct.
SPEAKER_00 (07:02):
Yeah, so it's all fully funded by us.
And then the whole project,which is why it was quite
attractive to a lot ofstakeholders, is that it was no
more cost than what it costs fora diesel to run a diesel.
Right.
So all the costs that were goingthrough in the transport system,
you know, whether it's a if itwas a dollar for the diesel
system, it was a dollar forthis.
And so that was for everyone'sperspective, quite a game
(07:25):
changer.
Obviously, uh, I don't know ifyou recall, but we had some
arena grant funding in there tohelp plug that gap as well.
But to be honest, a lot of thatwent to lawyers and other costs.
SPEAKER_01 (07:35):
Yeah, which you probably don't need to expend at
the same level for futureprojects.
Exactly.
Which is where Arena likes todeposit their money for kind of
new novel projects to pave theway for it to happen cheaper and
more effectively in the future.
Yeah, correct.
SPEAKER_02 (07:50):
So essentially what you've done in that project is
for the client completelyde-risked the transitioning to
an electric fleet.
Yeah.
Take on the capital risk, youtake on the maintenance
headaches, everything that theydon't know about, they don't
understand the problems, theupkeep, you take that on.
Yeah.
You make sure that the businessmodel works in the long term.
And it seems like a reallyimportant part of the
(08:10):
transition.
But I mean, Zenobian, and ifthere are other companies doing
similar things, uh, they'recompanies that just don't make
it into the public consciousnessgenerally because you're not
branded on public charges thatpeople are pulling up to or home
charges they might buythemselves.
This is important for moving theneedle, but completely behind
the scenes for most people.
SPEAKER_00 (08:27):
Yeah, correct.
And we we love, we strive andlove to take on those technical
challenges or whatever thebarriers are to adoption for our
customers, whether it'sgovernments or or business
customers, and say, all right,what are your barriers, whether
it's technical, as you said, orcommercial or financial?
We love cracking that.
And then, yeah, as you said,working in the background to
make things happen.
I think a lot of people in wholive in Sydney would be riding
(08:49):
on a bus that's been, you know,funded or supported or charged
by Zenobi.
Um, and they probably don'trealize that.
SPEAKER_02 (08:55):
So, how much with a project like the Lycart bus
depot?
Is there Zenobi doing everythingin-house?
You've got the technical, you'vegot the engineering, the
commercial, it sort of all fallsunder your umbrella?
SPEAKER_00 (09:05):
Yeah, so we we would be seen, I guess, similar as a
prime contractor or or someonewho takes the overall arching
responsibility.
We don't make the buses or makethe charges.
So we go out to market to makesure we get best value for
money, which works forgovernments and our other
business customers.
So we go out, we'll source andwe'll make sure that because
we're independent of thetechnology, we can actually pick
(09:26):
the best technology to suit thecircumstance and the situation
for the customer.
So we're not wedded to a certaintype of technology.
And that's great because astechnology advances, we can
actually pick new technologyfrom the stack as well.
SPEAKER_02 (09:38):
I want to talk about the project that actually caught
my eye at the end of last year,which is the reason we reached
out to you.
There's some a bit of news, atleast news in the the renewable
space, about the Woolworthsoff-site charging hub for the
last mile vehicles.
And people are probably used toseeing them now chugging along
their streets or not chuggingalong, silently gliding along
their streets.
Uh, you know, the vehicles thatare doing those deliveries to
(09:59):
people's houses of the weeklygrocery shop.
You know, most of the time, ifyou see one of those trucks on
the street, you don't even thinkabout where it's charged and how
it's charged, but that's acritical thing, right?
Because these vehicles arespread everywhere.
They're not just based in oneplace, they are constantly
moving throughout the entirecity.
So yeah, I'd love to give us abit of an insight into how a
(10:19):
project like that one comes tobe.
Like how does it start?
How do you move through theprocess?
SPEAKER_00 (10:24):
Yeah, look, that's super exciting for project for
us locally and globally.
This is the first time Zenobi asa business has done anything
like this.
And we think it's, you know,there'sn't there's not many out
there that you'll find.
There might be some in the USand China.
But outside of that, it'sprobably not a lot.
This has been about two years inthe making.
We just had our launch, as yousaid, last year uh with some of
(10:45):
the key stakeholders and acouple of ministers.
And and when we looked back atthe timeline, yeah, it was, and
you forget about it when you'rein the middle of it, you just
work, work, work, and then youknow, all of a sudden at the end
it's done.
But yeah, about two years withWoolworths, we'd been working on
this.
And uh credit to Woolworths fortheir, I guess, out-of-the-box
thinking to think, okay, well,how do we the main driver of how
(11:06):
this came about was typicallyyou would have a site where a
fulfillment center for asupermarket company or any sort
of logistics company, they'dhave a fulfillment center where
they would have the trucks comein and then distribute the goods
out to their customers.
Now, the problem, as many of youknow and your um listeners would
know, is that the space it getslimited as you put in charging
infrastructure.
(11:26):
Obviously, you've got to put apiece of kit in there that was
just a car park before.
And so that will take up alittle bit of space.
And the more you do that, themore space it's taken up.
So space constraint was thefirst problem.
The next one was grid.
Obviously, you know, there's alot more draw on the meter and
on the grid from your standardlights and whatever you're
using.
So adding a whole bunch oftrucks is gonna suck a lot more
(11:47):
grid.
So there was a lot, there wassome grid constraints at that
particular site as well inmascot.
And then there were some thecommercial challenges to make it
work as well, and alsounderstanding if we did do a
site, who's gonna take on thismulti-user facility risk, which
I'll get into later.
But that's how it came about wasprimarily the grid and the space
constraints.
And then we worked together tocome up with a solution, which
(12:08):
is this multi-user off-sitecharging hub solution, which
basically gives, well, it doesgive Woolworths the ability to
now charge their trucks, nothave to put the capital out
there for a huge new site, nothave to worry about grid or
space constraint issues at theirown uh fulfillment center, and
enables us to try andcommercialize the additional
charges at that site to make itproperly multi-user.
(12:30):
And we think that whilst thiswon't be the model, the only
model for this, but we see thisas one of the models that the
industry will consider and areconsidering and actually rolling
out.
So yeah, very, very excitingbecause I think there's not a
lot of them, and I think it'sgreat to just show how something
different can be done.
And I can get into thecommercials of it later because
that's also a little bitinnovative as well.
SPEAKER_02 (12:51):
Okay.
Well, uh maybe you can justpaint a picture for us for what
it would actually look like, youknow, what it looks like there
on the ground.
Because off-site multi-vehiclecharging hub is you know, it
doesn't paint a picture on itsown.
SPEAKER_00 (13:01):
We only focus on a business model, so on almost a
subscription or a long-termlease arrangement for the site.
It's not a like a publiccharging uh model where any
trucks can just turn up.
So we're we're quite tight onmaking sure we know who's in,
who's out, because we want toprovide a very high level of
guarantee on those charges.
And our customers want to makesure that if they're in there
(13:22):
and they're charging, they'redefinitely going to be out in
the morning because it'scritical for them.
So yeah, it's open air.
There's as you would enter thesite, there's a large
switchboard, which is where theum, sorry, there's a there's a
large substation, which is wherethe grid upgrade is, one MVA
connection that we've got.
And then you'll see theinnovative design about this
from engineers is it's actuallyon an Osgrid site.
(13:44):
So we work closely with Osgridthroughout this project to
leverage a site that wasotherwise being completely
unused.
Uh it was just redundant becauseunderneath it there are
absolutely stacks of about 132kV cables and other and 11 kV,
etc.
And so this is an absolutespider web of cables underneath.
So you they couldn't do anythingon the site, but tutos to their
(14:06):
engineers and our engineers towork out a way to make it work.
And so what we did is a completeover-ground, above ground, I
should say, solution.
So it comes in, there's a gridconnection, and then the
perimeter has the cabling allaround it, and then cables go to
the charges all around theperimeter of the site.
So again, I don't think we'veseen many sites like that where
everything is above ground.
Switchboard again is on aplatform that's raised up,
(14:27):
again, which is good forflooding, but it's also um
needed for that particular site,which which has all these cables
underneath.
How many EV charges do you havethere?
So it's 22 dual gun charges, sothat'll that'll charge about 44.
Well, would charge 44 trucks,simultaneous trucks?
SPEAKER_01 (14:43):
And what's the charge rate?
There are 120 kilowatt chargers.
Okay.
And there they'd be speedlimited down to one MVA if
that's the site capacity.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (14:53):
So we have our own software that we've developed
that throttles the charging rateas needed.
Um we can also shift that ifthere's benefits in terms of
peak demand charges and and thelike.
And then also we're looking atlike not pure demand response
mechanisms, but demandresponse-like mechanisms where
we just where we see there'ssignals on the grid to say if
you throttle your power down,there's some incentive for that.
(15:15):
Then we can look at that as wellwith our software.
SPEAKER_01 (15:17):
So it's it sounds like Woolworths is um like a
primary client, but am I rightin understanding that you will
open that up to potentiallyother businesses and clients to
charge that?
SPEAKER_00 (15:28):
Yeah, so Woolworths take have 20, 20 trucks there.
So that's only about 10 of the22 charges.
Okay.
So there's about a little overhalf of the site is still
available for um others, whichwe're in you know quite a lot of
discussions with, given it'scentral proximity in mascot.
It's very hard to find spacethere that's not been primed for
development.
SPEAKER_01 (15:48):
So this is a little bit of a different business
model this time around than theLycart bus station, which
obviously was a long time ago,where as an Obi you're focusing
on basically being a chargepoint operator almost, but for a
specific use case of commercialfleets.
SPEAKER_00 (16:06):
Correct.
Yeah, I guess you could compareit like that.
Yeah.
And that's where we see we justsee that the trucking market is
a little bit more fragmented,it's not driven by a government
mandate to say you have to dothis and we'll pay you.
It all has to stack up on itsown and the um private sector
have to come up with solutions.
So yeah, and that works for usbecause it's B2B still, and it's
we're not set up for a lot ofthe the public charging as the
(16:27):
public charging system is.
Yeah, B2C is a headache.
Yeah, there's a lot of stuffthat like I was driving my I
have an EV and and driving overthe brake.
And even though I'm in thespace, there's you know, the
amount of I did come across alot of challenges um with
charging, and I know a lot aboutthese things, and I I can sort
of I'm not an engineer, but so Iit made me sort of realize what
(16:49):
it must be like for the averagepeople or even our you know, the
truck drivers and stuff pluggingthings in.
If there's warnings or thingsnot working, you know, how does
it work?
So we've still got a fair way togo.
SPEAKER_01 (16:59):
Yeah, I think me personally are very acquainted
with some of the issues with thepublic charging stations.
I'm sure some of the listenersare as well.
And so just give us an idea ofthe trucks we're talking about
here.
We're talking those uh, youknow, like 30-foot trucks, or
are we talking so uh four and ahalf ton, you would have seen
them probably buzzing around.
SPEAKER_00 (17:17):
They're so you can drive them on on a driver's
license.
Um so they're under the thatlimit.
SPEAKER_01 (17:22):
These are the ones that drop the delivery shopping
off to people's individualhomes, all the way to the homes,
yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (17:27):
So these are these aren't the middle mile or prime
movers, these are the smallertrucks.
We focused on that segmentbecause that is the market
that's sorry, the segment that'smoving quickest because the
economics are stacking up a lotbetter than the other, the
bigger end of the town.
It's also easier to do becauseyou can do this sort of
back-to-base model, you can getpretty good mileage out of them,
(17:47):
and you don't have to worryabout you know charging all
along the way for a large primemover.
SPEAKER_01 (17:52):
Yeah, and I know that Woolworths have a pretty
sophisticated energy team there,so they must have been looking
at the electrification and thetotal cost of ownership, some of
these things that you're reallygood at calculating for electric
vehicles and electrifying theirfleas.
Do you have any insights as to,you know, in like your example
(18:12):
earlier was that the Lycheartsite for the New South Wales
government was like a one-to-onefor diesel versus going for this
electric bus solution?
Is there any view that this isfor wars now a cheaper solution,
or is it the similar cost?
SPEAKER_00 (18:28):
Or yeah, I mean, obviously can't share what the
inner workings of of Woolies.
Um but I know look, what I cansay is they worked and have been
working quite hard on makingthis work uh an EV model.
And this wasn't they've they hadalready rolled out it might be
like roughly 10 or something EV.
So it wasn't their first, sothey had some data already that
(18:50):
they could leverage to do allthe analysis or as to around you
know, how does this stack up?
And then they obviously had ourcostings and everything.
So as you would expect,Woolworths being Woolworths know
how to do the numbers right, andthey're not in the business of
charging customers more for thatdelivery.
Yes.
So they have to look at how dowe make this work, how do we
make this stack up on our own.
(19:11):
And obviously, you know, thisproject wouldn't have happened
if it was completely out of therealm of making sense for them.
Yeah, but yeah, they have tolook at all options, whether
it's like and we did that onthis project, like different
sites.
The location was a huge one,which is actually quite
interesting.
It has to be super close to afulfillment standard for them,
or as it makes would be for anypartner, because they're dead
(19:32):
running on those, which theynormally dead running is only
concept usually in buses,because you know, trucks, I
mean, trucks do have some deadrunning, but at the same time
dead running being like how longthey're not in.
SPEAKER_01 (19:43):
Yeah, not being used.
Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00 (19:45):
Being used, but not for their primary functions.
Exactly.
They're just and so if we wehave a a site where now they
have to park the truck at thissite and then take that truck to
the fulfillment center to loadup rather than being already at
the fulfillment center, thatadds a cost which had to be
factored in as well.
Yeah.
The further we got away fromthat, very quickly the economics
fell off a cliff.
SPEAKER_02 (20:04):
Right.
Does that mean that you knowobviously most of Woolworths or
Coles or anyone like that who'sdoing these last mile
deliveries, they're doing themmostly in metro areas, which are
the locations where it's hardestto find sites because of the
cost of land, because of theavailability of suitable sites.
Yeah.
Do you think we're gonna seelike a bit of a land grab if you
know this model works?
Well, he's got a huge fleet thatthey're gonna electrify over the
(20:26):
coming years.
SPEAKER_00 (20:26):
You're not meant to be talking about that on this.
No, no, I'm joking.
It will there'll be a bit lookto a certain extent, but I think
as I said before, this won't bethe only model.
There'll be some sites, somefulfillment centers and other
sites for logistics companies dohave enough power, or at least
they have the capacity toupgrade to get enough power and
(20:48):
space.
So not every site will need anoff-site charging hub, but some
will.
And I don't know if you've hadthem on on your um pod, but
there's other companies who arelooking at charging hub models
in this space, but more on thelarger sort of prime mover
space, not fully getting therejust yet.
So I think there's peoplelooking at it, but it's not at
the point where there's you knowthe gold rush of of people
(21:09):
trying to lock up sites justbecause no one is sure whether
it's 100% needed.
SPEAKER_01 (21:15):
Well, it's really encouraging to hear from the
perspective of just the EVtransition, decarbonising
transport, because these fleets,you know, these thousands of
woolies and coals trucks, theyjust represent such a big
percentage of those emissions.
And like also encouraging tohear that that will, you know,
(21:35):
there's there's already workgoing on with the prime movers,
those big trucks.
Because once the I guess there'sprovable cases that it's going
to be profitable or in the bestinterest of these companies to
go in that way, then there'll bea mad rush to do it because
otherwise they'll they'll be ata cost disadvantage to their
(21:56):
their competitors.
SPEAKER_00 (21:57):
So yeah, 100%.
There's as soon as this PCOneedle, again, total cost of
ownership, switches just or getsto parity, you will see the
floodgates open.
And because the vehicles workbetter, the servicing is better,
the drivers like them better,then obviously the customers
like them better.
So once you solve the economicproblem, which is a primary
driver that's not, I mean,obviously, we talked about the
(22:19):
land and the grid, but that sortof is part of the economics of
it as well, right?
Once you get that, and that'swhy we're quite excited about
this sector, because it'shundreds of thousands of trucks,
so many people will electrifyand turn to electric trucks.
The only thing probably holdingit back will be, you know,
existing arrangements on leasesof newer trucks, where they
think, okay, we're just going tosee that lease through until we
(22:42):
move.
But there's this customer'sthinking, you know, looking at
their aging fleet and say, canwe hold out a little bit longer
and then we'll switch toelectric, which is again
reassuring.
SPEAKER_02 (22:50):
Yeah, which in a way mirrors the rest of the EV
transition, right?
For the the enthusiasts and thepeople who, you know, the first
ones to buy a Tesla Model S,they were driven by excitement
with technology andsustainability.
But over time, for most people,it just kind of gonna come down
to cost.
Yeah.
Upfront cost, of course, buttotal cost of ownership.
And we're seeing that changestart with smaller vehicles,
(23:11):
passenger vehicles, move intolight commercial, now move into
medium commercial, and not thelast hurdle will be the prime
movers, but there's work beingdone there too.
Yeah, there is.
Great.
And is there anything that's uhin the pipeline that you are
able to tell us about?
Any exciting projects coming up?
SPEAKER_00 (23:26):
Bus is still our uh one of our larger uh segments
that we're working on thatyou'll hear as well coming out,
both in New Zealand.
There's quite a lot of work thatwe've just won um in New Zealand
that we're building the depots.
So six depots over there we'rebuilding, which is quite big,
and a depot in Wellington.
So yeah, a lot of bus stuffhappening.
And then I think in Australiathere's going to be a lot of
(23:47):
truck, but there'll be somedifferent bus things popping up.
We're we're building a couple ofsites in which are they not
fully public, but they if youdig deep enough, they're public
in in Melbourne.
So a couple of bus depots therethat we're working on as well.
So we like to have a spread ofbus and truck, keeps us um
interesting, excited and true toour sort of core core market,
which was bus and and anybasically any heavy, heavy
(24:09):
commercial vehicle, to behonest.
So we're looking at specializedtrucks as well, like um BWPs,
like elevator work platforms anduh pump trucks and and cement
mixes, and uh those you willlikely see something this year
on the on some of them as wellfrom us.
SPEAKER_02 (24:24):
Okay, those some of those vehicles, especially
things like um you know cementmixers, are ones that I would
have expected the battery costsare so significant because of
how much weight they're pullingthat we'd be looking even
further into the future beforeseeing electric vehicles like
that.
SPEAKER_00 (24:37):
No, you'll be seeing some of them uh probably this
year, at least from our side.
The weights, yes, there are someweight challenges, but they're
already pretty like the axleloads and stuff, and and having
to add uh some of the additionalaxles on on some of the trucks.
So there is we're solving someof those problems, those um
weight problems, but they aresolvable and the economics is
(25:00):
getting very close.
SPEAKER_01 (25:02):
Is there any interest from your clients in,
you know, one of the buzz topicsin in our spaces is vehicle
degree and bidirectionalcharging?
It seems just listening to youthat they've got like a pretty
commercial purpose for chargingvehicles.
It would seem a little bit of aan aside or uh out of scope
potentially for thinking aboututilising batteries in some
(25:24):
other way in these vehicles.
But is that is that ever a topicthat you find gets discussed
with your clients?
SPEAKER_00 (25:31):
It is increasingly it's you know, it's come up back
in our days, 2020, it was it wasdiscussed, but it was always
there was so much limitedcapacity on the batteries of the
buses that we worked on in theearly days that why would you or
how could you use that batteryfor another purpose when you're
just getting enough juice out ofit to do its um run and then
you're just having enough timeto charge it up overnight.
(25:53):
If you add any more you knowdrain on that, then you're not
gonna be able to charge it up oror do the runs.
But now we're seeing improvedlike battery technology is
improving dramatically.
And I I don't know how much yousort of have talked about this,
but from our what we're seeingon the commercial vehicle side
is you know rates justcontinuing to plummet in terms
of costs and in terms of batterycapacity and weights continuing
(26:15):
to improve as well.
So that's great for us and thesector.
But yeah, back to vehicle togrid, we are looking at some
projects with that.
It's still early days, both interms of technology and warranty
on the batteries is a big one.
And then the commercial model ofit and the operational model,
and how does it work?
How do we make it work so thatas I said, you know, it's not
(26:36):
impacting the the actual primaryuse case of these vehicles.
But we, as I mentioned, we wehave operations in the US as
well, and they have a lot ofschool buses, like hundreds of
thousands, I think, schoolbuses, those yellow buses that
pop around.
School buses are a great usecase for vehicle to grid.
They just have this morning peakand an afternoon peak, and
there's not a lot they do in theday, and there's a lot of excess
(26:58):
capacity.
SPEAKER_01 (26:59):
Oh, I mean, you you face the same challenges as the
residential market in that OEMsaren't really forthcoming just
yet on the warranties.
And yeah, there's not a lot ofproof cases of it, but a school
bus is the complete perfectexample, really, because they're
just doing a few runs a day.
SPEAKER_00 (27:17):
Exactly.
And you know, at where we're at,Zenobi and and sort of the
industry is, and parts of theindustry, I should say, is the
not proof of concept, butmaturing phase where we're
making sure that people getcomfortable with the technology
and the use case and and reallybed down that the technology
risk and any commercial risk andeverything, it doesn't exist and
(27:37):
and get everyone comfortablewith that before we move to the
optimization level, which iswhere we can then start to look
at vehicle to grid, demandresponse, driver training, other
energy, energy optimizationtactics that we've got, using
software, using betterscheduling, putting different
weights on different trucks andall that stuff.
So that's the next level, whichwe'll get to, which play early
stage players like Woolworthsand that will probably get to
(27:59):
before others because they'rerolling out their fleet sooner.
So they're ahead on that curve.
But the bulk of the industry isstill at just like, I just want
to make sure this thing worksand does the core function, then
we'll move to the sort of fancybells and whistles to make a bit
of extra cash later.
SPEAKER_01 (28:12):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's probably a tough oneto throw into the business case
to take up to your ASX 200listed board or to say, well,
this project relies on usselling some power out of the
batteries on the market.
Yeah, but I mean that like it'syeah, in a few years that may be
a robust, approvable uh revenuestream.
SPEAKER_00 (28:35):
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that
plays because there may beothers in the market who want to
take a play on fleet, uh owningfleets who aren't you know the
worst of the world who can takemore risk on the energy side and
optimize those assets for theircustomers, uh, which is
something we're considering orlooking at.
Um that's where you sort of havepeople who are better placed to
look at how do you do vehicle togrid and then just basically
(28:58):
provide as a service, which iswhat we do to our customers.
So here's a vehicle as a serviceor a truck as a service or
whatever, yeah.
And you just know that you havethat truck available.
What happens in the background,how it's charged, is a vehicle
to grid, whatever, you don'tworry about it, you just know
you're paying a certain Yeah,yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (29:12):
We'll give you uh a Tesla model three and it'll be
at 100% at eight in the morning,and you give it back to us
whenever you want, and thenwe'll do what we do in the
background.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's happening as well.
Good interesting.
SPEAKER_02 (29:26):
I do want to touch on the the second life battery
stuff because I I think this isan incredibly interesting part
of the market.
And I also really love learningabout it because it solves one
of these myths, one of theseconcerns that a lot of people
have expressed over the last fewyears that you know EV batteries
are useless, you know, afterfive years, they're gonna have
terrible mileage, they're gonnaend up in landfill, yeah.
(29:48):
All these things that we knowaren't true.
Yeah, but I think more and moreI'm hearing these exciting uses
for EV batteries after they'vereached the end of their life in
their primary vehicle.
Yeah.
So did this sort of start as away, like yeah, tell us how this
started for Zenobi, how did youget into this space?
SPEAKER_00 (30:03):
Yeah, sure.
So we call ourselves abattery-based business.
So we're focused on batteries,whether it's stationary
batteries or moving batteries onvehicles.
So we had our first two businessarms, which was you know, large
grid scale storage, and then wehad our um moving batteries, if
you want to call it that, thethe bus batteries buzzing
around.
We saw as a business there wasan opportunity to try and lead
(30:24):
the market commercially to takestronger residual value
positions on those batteries,the moving batteries at their
end of life.
But to do that, we needed to getmore comfortable with what is
the value of that battery at itsend of life and what is a good,
better use case for it.
And when we started doing a bitof the digging, we realized,
hang on, luckily we had you knowsome smart engineers and
(30:45):
founders who sort of thought,well, there's an opportunity
here to try and why don't wecreate more value than just
selling it for scrap metal or orselling it to a um auction house
because not they're not puttingany value on it, especially you
know, six or seven years ago.
So we worked with a company inthe Netherlands who were already
starting to dabble in this andyou know, took them on as part
of the business as well, andthen said, all right, well,
(31:07):
let's start working with old busand truck batteries that were in
accidents and stuff, becausethere were no old sort of
naturally retired batteries atthat point in time.
So, how do we actually get thebusiness model working?
How do we actually set this allup before they all come off in
you know the the hundreds ineight years' time?
So we use, yeah, as I said,they're called first chance
(31:28):
batteries, I think, butbasically batteries that have
come off their first life earlybecause they've just been an
accident or whatever, to thenprove up the manufacturing
capability.
And we've started, we'veproduced you know about 50 of
those units.
That then made because we wehave now the know-how and the IP
around how to put the invertersin, how to retest them, how to
recalibrate the cells, and thenthe commercial side of it, how
(31:50):
where do we now sell thesethings to, um, which I'll get to
later.
But it it then enabled us to bequite sure on what our residual
value position is, which thenled to us being able to sell or
lease more more buses and trucksbecause we could say, all right,
here's your price, and we'regoing to take a pretty punchy
residual value at the end.
And everyone, you know, bankswould be like, What?
How do you, you know, how couldyou do that?
(32:11):
But because we have thisbusiness arm, that means that we
can take that stronger financialposition on it.
And that's where it sort of allcame about and it's just
continued to come from there.
You know, in the the grand ideawas, I guess we have hundreds,
we were rolling out this year.
We probably put a gigawatt ormore than a gigawatt of storage
on the grid in across the world.
(32:31):
The idea is, you know, we haveabout 2,000 electric vehicles
that we've funded.
Each vehicle, let's say anaverage uh size of battery on
them is around 300 kilowatts.
I'll let you two do the maths asto how many megawatts of storage
that is.
But that's a huge amount ofstorage that's going to be
coming off just on what we'vegot now.
And we're adding you knowhundreds of vehicles to our
(32:53):
portfolio.
So the idea is, you know, ifwe've got already a stationary
storage business rolling out youknow huge batteries on the grid,
why don't we see there's there'sa synergy to actually use our
all our old bus batteries andtruck batteries to go to that
business?
But that's where it all allstarted from.
Now we're using them.
We've got two in um one inAustralia, one in New Zealand.
One's been used at a petrolstation in New Zealand, was
(33:16):
being used for a couple of yearsthere to help with their EV
charging.
So they had two charges, not avery good grid connection.
And so it trickle charged upthrough the day and then would
provide boost power for thosecharges when customers would
come in and would just alwaystrickle charge up when it could,
but it would give you know ZEnergy, the company over there
in New Zealand, the ability tostill have fast charges, but
(33:39):
with having a pretty, pretty lowgrid connection.
Here we've got them at, as Isaid, the mascot.
We've got one at the mascotsite, but globally we're using
them.
The biggest use case for them ison the construction sites.
Yeah.
So there's there's a lot of umneeds to help with you know
cranes and and high energydrawing devices where we can
provide boost, like a bit ofboost power with those uh short
(34:00):
duration high power with thebatteries.
SPEAKER_01 (34:02):
And that saves them taking a generator out,
presumably, or exactly.
SPEAKER_00 (34:06):
And and we we have the smarts around pairing them
with a generator.
So sometimes we still will use agenerate diesel generator, but
it's like 50% less consumptionof that diesel because we can
throttle the power, right?
SPEAKER_01 (34:19):
Yeah, and so so those have if I'm riding
listening to you there, thoseare mostly batteries that have
that are still in their sort ofprime life, but have the bus has
been crashed.
Are there some of these now moreend-of-life batteries where the
degradation's kind of kicked inquite a lot?
SPEAKER_00 (34:37):
Yeah, so this we're starting now to get to those
ones that are end-of-life totalk a bit more about that.
So the batteries will aremodeled and are warranted to
roughly 70% state of charge.
So you think for the averageperson out there who's got an EV
or doesn't have an EV, you know,that's you can sort of think of
it as 70% of the battery isstill good, right?
(34:58):
So the first or the sort of uhuse case that we we also like to
explore, which probably has aneven better use case before we
get to the second liferepurposing, is putting it on
different applications.
So for trucks and buses, if youcan move, as I said, the school
bus runs, they're a lot lighter,and other you know, rail
replacement or other shuttleservices, charter, whatever, you
(35:19):
could take a bus that's can't doits primary maybe city routes
because it's down to 70% stateof charge, is it eight years?
You could then move it to asecond use or lighter um duty
application, maybe get it downto maybe 60%, and then we would
take it, we would repurpose itand we would get as much use
that as much as we can capacityout of that, and that's enough
(35:42):
for us for our battery for whatwe need for the purposes of you
know using it as a dieselgenerator offset or or
supporting the grid.
But I guess even though wehaven't we're not using a lot of
those batteries just now, we'vemodeled it all out and we know
how it would work because weknow the exact state of charge
on the batteries that we'rewe're taking off right now.
SPEAKER_01 (35:58):
And um, not sure if there's anything you can share
on that, but uh the a lot of thedata that I've seen, including
some testing done by a renewableenergy lab in Canberra, that the
degradation rate, of course, islike a warrantied 70% after 10
years.
That's the classic that you seein the residential market.
But when they did the testing, alot of the batteries they tested
(36:21):
were actually far above that.
Yes, particularly with thebetter brands.
So the that's like that's likethe minimum they'll guarantee.
But in reality, a lot ofbatteries might be at 80 or 90%
after that 10-year mark.
SPEAKER_00 (36:32):
100%.
We're seeing that and the OEMs,uh, sorry, OEMs being the
manufacturers of this kit, arestarting to get more confidence
because they've got more datareally to draw, and everything
is coming back with a lot morestate of health than what they
thought it would.
And that means warranties arebeing improved, going higher,
going longer, getting better.
We still think the second lifebattery thing is of use because
(36:55):
at some point they still willget to their end of life and you
still can use them.
It just might be in seven yearsor eight years, it might be now
in 10, 12, 15 years.
SPEAKER_02 (37:02):
Yeah, we're basically hearing that echoed
from every corner of the market,whether it's the first Model S
buyers who've now been runningtheir EVs for 10 years, saying,
you know, we had um Tom fromLucasfeed saying he had his his
battery tested in his10-year-old S, and um it was
what was it, something likeclose to 90.
It was way above what wasexpected.
Yeah.
We've spoken to some people onthe podcast who who run battery
(37:23):
health testing companies, andsame thing, with a couple of
very specific exceptions, yeah.
The vast majority of batteriesare just way outperforming the
expectations.
SPEAKER_00 (37:31):
Yeah, I think it's great to see because I just
think it'll just keep going likethat.
I I think one not caveat, butone thing to note is, and I
think one of you said isquality.
Like if you're going withsomeone who's you know
respectable quality outfit, thenthat's important.
I I think that the we see it alot in the heavy commercial
space because probably 95 pluspercent of all the batteries
(37:53):
coming on buses and trucks arefrom either BYD or CATL.
Yeah, and probably it's probablysimilar across other spaces.
But if you go for something elsethat's random and yeah, it might
not perform like that.
So I think yeah, still going forsomething quality, you've got
more chance of getting thatextension.
SPEAKER_02 (38:10):
Given that it's early in the year, um, something
that Jeff and I did on our lastepisode, which was for January,
um, with some predictions forfor 2026, some trends that you
expect to see might be in thevehicle market or in the
charging market.
Have you got anything in mindthat you want to want to share?
Something you think we're gonnasee in the next 12 months?
SPEAKER_00 (38:29):
Yeah, sure.
Well, I've let out a couple oflittle snippets of what I think.
So, you know, specialized heavyvehicles.
I think you'll see some new onescoming out there.
I think you're gonna see morecharging hub-style models, not
drastic amounts, but but somemore.
I think, don't know if it'll bethis year, but might just tip
into next year, but some more uhstuff happening in the electric
(38:50):
ferries.
Right.
Definitely New Zealand, buthopefully in Australia a little
bit more.
In terms of charging, I'm prettysure this year you will we
should see like a megawattcharger uh rollout, which is uh
you know huge and will be a gamechanger for certain use cases.
Obviously, you know, onemegawatt is massive.
You know, I was talking about120 kilowatts, so it's like you
(39:12):
know, eight times the size.
So, yeah, some really, reallylarge charges coming out, even
if it's one or two, if we canevidence that that works, we'll
be humongous for the primemovers and and for the heavy
vehicles.
I think you'll see morehappening this year, probably in
in the mining and ports and thatsort of space, there or like
right on the horizon, beinglooking at a lot of stuff.
SPEAKER_02 (39:31):
Yeah, exciting times ahead.
Yeah, definitely.
I think that brings us to theend of our time together.
Thank you so much, Gareth, forcoming in.
Really appreciated the look intoyour little corner of the
transition and theelectrification world.
So thanks for coming in.
SPEAKER_00 (39:44):
No, thank you for having us.
It was great.
Thanks, Gareth.
Great to have you on.
SPEAKER_02 (39:52):
That's it for today.
Thanks for listening.
And make sure you share anepisode with someone that you
think might enjoy it.
Leave us a review, leave us acomment.
It really does make a differencefor us.
And if you need a quote foranything related to home
electrification, solar,batteries, heat pumps, aircon,
and of course EV charging, headto solidchoice.net.au to get
instant quotes from pre vettedinstallers.
(40:14):
See you next month.
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
the EV Charging Podcast.
I'm Dan.
I'm Jeff.
And we're back in the studio.
How are you doing, Jeff?
SPEAKER_01 (00:20):
Doing great.
It's been a big start to theyear.
We're still chasing aroundbatteries in the battery market,
but hopefully we're also makingprogress towards some of those
bold predictions we made lastepisode.
SPEAKER_02 (00:33):
Yes, bold indeed.
Early days in 2026, but we'reinching towards some of our
predictions, I hope.
This show, of course, as always,brought to you by Solar Choice,
Australia's number one quotecomparison platform for solar
batteries, even charging, heatpumps, and aircon.
And today we're going back toour standard format, if you want
to call it that.
Last episode was just Jeff and Ihaving a chat.
(00:55):
Today we've got a guest here inthe studio, Gareth Ridge from
Zenobi.
Gareth is the country manager.
And Zenobi caught our eyebecause of a site that they
finished late last year forWoolworths, an EV charging hub
for all the last mile deliveryvehicles.
Which might not sound like thesexiest topic, but it's a really
important facility, and thereare going to be many more like
(01:17):
them springing up soon to helpelectrify the light and medium
commercial fleet.
And uh, if you're someone likeme who lives in the suburbs and
you see Woolley's trucksdelivering food pretty much
every day, we want to see moreof these vehicles as electric.
They're quiet, they're smaller,of course, there's no emissions.
So, yeah, we wanted to chat toGareth about that project in
Botany and Sydney and also hearabout some of the other exciting
(01:40):
things Zenobi is working on.
With no further ado, welcomeGareth.
So maybe just to kick thingsoff, can you give us a bit of
your own background?
You're here, you're working atZenobi at the moment.
Who are Zenobi?
What do they do?
SPEAKER_00 (01:57):
Yeah, sure.
Well, I'll start with my ownbackground and then I'll jump
into Zenobi.
So I started out actually in inbanking in my career, and then
soon realized that probablywasn't for me.
It was a little bit too archaic,a bit too bureaucratic, and then
slowly moved into the energysector with a focus on the grid
space, doing a bit of consultingwork and then moved into working
(02:18):
with Transgrid, one of the largetransmission operators.
And from there I saw there wasthere was an opportunity to work
with Zoobi as well whilst I wasthere.
So that was quite an excitingopportunity to see how Transgrid
could work with Zoobi.
And one of our first projectswas actually with Zenobi and
Transgrid, which was the projectat Lycart Bus Depot, where we
were one of the largest uhelectrified bus depot projects
(02:40):
there.
So Zenobi, though, as a as abusiness, how it started.
It was started about 2019,roughly, in the UK.
And then it started its form inAustralia in 2020.
It is a business that that'sfirst started out actually in
grid scale storage, batteries,large batteries on the grid, and
then quickly moved into uhproviding EV fleet services for
(03:02):
buses primarily, and now we'removing into trucks.
We also have a third businessarm, which is our Second Life
battery business.
So we repurpose old bus andtruck batteries and then put
them into second lifeapplications like uh displacing
diesel generators onconstruction sites, for example.
So we now have those threebusiness arms that that's been
driving Zenobi going forward.
And yeah, as I said, we've beenin in Australia for about five
(03:24):
or six years now.
SPEAKER_02 (03:25):
Okay, and I understand you've been with
Zenobi in Australia since theyarrived from the beginning.
SPEAKER_00 (03:30):
Yes, correct.
I was um number one in Australiafor the business, and now we're
a team of around 25 peoplelocally, but we've got a team of
circa 300 people globally thatwe leverage across most
continents around the world now.
But Australia is probably thesecond largest jurisdiction
outside of our main home countryof the UK.
SPEAKER_02 (03:50):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (03:52):
Interestingly, Gareth, you and I have some
history as well, dating back towhat I now realize is the early
days of Zenobi before we wejumped on.
I was checking my emails and wewere talking about that Lycart
bus depot in 2020, which I thinklooking at the website looks
about a couple of years beforeit actually got built.
But we were helping you sort ofthink about some solar and
(04:15):
battery sort of larger scaleoptions to help power the
chargers and refuel those busesin the depot.
SPEAKER_00 (04:21):
Yeah, that was great.
So yeah, thank you.
It's good to be back here and uhclosing that loop.
But yeah, that was a milestoneproject for the company, really
globally, to show that we canexpand internationally, but also
locally, to show how we can dobus depot electrification at
scale.
And then adding, as you said,the solar and the battery to try
and mitigate the cost, but toalso mitigate some of the peak
(04:42):
demand challenges and some ofthe redundancy uh risks that we
could put into the system.
So, yeah, that project's stillgoing as you would expect.
Um, it was a 15-year project.
We're now actually in theprocess or working with
Transport for New South Wales tomake that the full 240 bus depot
electrification.
So it'd be one of the largest inthe world.
SPEAKER_01 (04:59):
I remember at the time it feeling like it was, at
least to me, a project that wasahead of its time because at
that point solar choice didn'treally have much to do with EV
charging.
You really didn't see that manyEVs on the road in 2020,
certainly not electric buseslike you do now.
Yeah.
So I think you know, it wouldhave been very cool to be at the
(05:20):
forefront of a landmark projectfor Zenobi, but also probably a
landmark project for the NewSouth Wales government and for
the for Australia, really.
Yeah, it was.
SPEAKER_00 (05:31):
And it was really what kick started everything
that we're doing now.
And you know, we try to domarket first for everything that
we do, whether it's um, youknow, the first project we did
in the UK, even was one of thefirst e-bus projects in the UK
and likewise here.
So and we're doing first of itskind second life battery
projects, as we'll talk aboutlater, first of its kind you
know, off-site truck charginghub project.
(05:52):
So we like to sort of push theboundary, both in terms of the
types of projects we do, butalso the commercial models,
which, you know, that firstproject was one of its first of
its kind to have a 15-yearlifespan and contract link to
it, which is quite rare.
But it, you know, it's havingthat thinking, out-of-the-box
thinking on the commercialmodels, which actually makes
these things stack up.
And then we can start to thinkabout instead of worrying about
(06:15):
TCO, we can make the TCO workfor us by looking at the the
lives of the assets.
SPEAKER_01 (06:19):
TCO being total cost of ownership.
Correct.
Sorry.
And and the 15-year agreementjust give us that you're
providing maintenance servicesfor the charging for, or what's
the scope of what you'redelivering over 15 years?
SPEAKER_00 (06:33):
Yeah, so that covers all the operation and
maintenance services for thesole of the battery and the
buses themselves.
So we and we actually repurposeas replace the bus batteries at
their midlife, which is aroundeight years.
That's the life of a busbattery, roughly.
We'll replace that battery,repurpose it into a second life
application, as I said, and thenwe'll put a new battery into the
(06:54):
bus so that it can go for theremaining uh seven or eight
years.
Wow.
SPEAKER_01 (06:57):
And so is Zenobi providing the capital for all of
that upfront acquisition?
Correct.
SPEAKER_00 (07:02):
Yeah, so it's all fully funded by us.
And then the whole project,which is why it was quite
attractive to a lot ofstakeholders, is that it was no
more cost than what it costs fora diesel to run a diesel.
Right.
So all the costs that were goingthrough in the transport system,
you know, whether it's a if itwas a dollar for the diesel
system, it was a dollar forthis.
And so that was for everyone'sperspective, quite a game
(07:25):
changer.
Obviously, uh, I don't know ifyou recall, but we had some
arena grant funding in there tohelp plug that gap as well.
But to be honest, a lot of thatwent to lawyers and other costs.
SPEAKER_01 (07:35):
Yeah, which you probably don't need to expend at
the same level for futureprojects.
Exactly.
Which is where Arena likes todeposit their money for kind of
new novel projects to pave theway for it to happen cheaper and
more effectively in the future.
Yeah, correct.
SPEAKER_02 (07:50):
So essentially what you've done in that project is
for the client completelyde-risked the transitioning to
an electric fleet.
Yeah.
Take on the capital risk, youtake on the maintenance
headaches, everything that theydon't know about, they don't
understand the problems, theupkeep, you take that on.
Yeah.
You make sure that the businessmodel works in the long term.
And it seems like a reallyimportant part of the
(08:10):
transition.
But I mean, Zenobian, and ifthere are other companies doing
similar things, uh, they'recompanies that just don't make
it into the public consciousnessgenerally because you're not
branded on public charges thatpeople are pulling up to or home
charges they might buythemselves.
This is important for moving theneedle, but completely behind
the scenes for most people.
SPEAKER_00 (08:27):
Yeah, correct.
And we we love, we strive andlove to take on those technical
challenges or whatever thebarriers are to adoption for our
customers, whether it'sgovernments or or business
customers, and say, all right,what are your barriers, whether
it's technical, as you said, orcommercial or financial?
We love cracking that.
And then, yeah, as you said,working in the background to
make things happen.
I think a lot of people in wholive in Sydney would be riding
(08:49):
on a bus that's been, you know,funded or supported or charged
by Zenobi.
Um, and they probably don'trealize that.
SPEAKER_02 (08:55):
So, how much with a project like the Lycart bus
depot?
Is there Zenobi doing everythingin-house?
You've got the technical, you'vegot the engineering, the
commercial, it sort of all fallsunder your umbrella?
SPEAKER_00 (09:05):
Yeah, so we we would be seen, I guess, similar as a
prime contractor or or someonewho takes the overall arching
responsibility.
We don't make the buses or makethe charges.
So we go out to market to makesure we get best value for
money, which works forgovernments and our other
business customers.
So we go out, we'll source andwe'll make sure that because
we're independent of thetechnology, we can actually pick
(09:26):
the best technology to suit thecircumstance and the situation
for the customer.
So we're not wedded to a certaintype of technology.
And that's great because astechnology advances, we can
actually pick new technologyfrom the stack as well.
SPEAKER_02 (09:38):
I want to talk about the project that actually caught
my eye at the end of last year,which is the reason we reached
out to you.
There's some a bit of news, atleast news in the the renewable
space, about the Woolworthsoff-site charging hub for the
last mile vehicles.
And people are probably used toseeing them now chugging along
their streets or not chuggingalong, silently gliding along
their streets.
Uh, you know, the vehicles thatare doing those deliveries to
(09:59):
people's houses of the weeklygrocery shop.
You know, most of the time, ifyou see one of those trucks on
the street, you don't even thinkabout where it's charged and how
it's charged, but that's acritical thing, right?
Because these vehicles arespread everywhere.
They're not just based in oneplace, they are constantly
moving throughout the entirecity.
So yeah, I'd love to give us abit of an insight into how a
(10:19):
project like that one comes tobe.
Like how does it start?
How do you move through theprocess?
SPEAKER_00 (10:24):
Yeah, look, that's super exciting for project for
us locally and globally.
This is the first time Zenobi asa business has done anything
like this.
And we think it's, you know,there'sn't there's not many out
there that you'll find.
There might be some in the USand China.
But outside of that, it'sprobably not a lot.
This has been about two years inthe making.
We just had our launch, as yousaid, last year uh with some of
(10:45):
the key stakeholders and acouple of ministers.
And and when we looked back atthe timeline, yeah, it was, and
you forget about it when you'rein the middle of it, you just
work, work, work, and then youknow, all of a sudden at the end
it's done.
But yeah, about two years withWoolworths, we'd been working on
this.
And uh credit to Woolworths fortheir, I guess, out-of-the-box
thinking to think, okay, well,how do we the main driver of how
(11:06):
this came about was typicallyyou would have a site where a
fulfillment center for asupermarket company or any sort
of logistics company, they'dhave a fulfillment center where
they would have the trucks comein and then distribute the goods
out to their customers.
Now, the problem, as many of youknow and your um listeners would
know, is that the space it getslimited as you put in charging
infrastructure.
(11:26):
Obviously, you've got to put apiece of kit in there that was
just a car park before.
And so that will take up alittle bit of space.
And the more you do that, themore space it's taken up.
So space constraint was thefirst problem.
The next one was grid.
Obviously, you know, there's alot more draw on the meter and
on the grid from your standardlights and whatever you're
using.
So adding a whole bunch oftrucks is gonna suck a lot more
(11:47):
grid.
So there was a lot, there wassome grid constraints at that
particular site as well inmascot.
And then there were some thecommercial challenges to make it
work as well, and alsounderstanding if we did do a
site, who's gonna take on thismulti-user facility risk, which
I'll get into later.
But that's how it came about wasprimarily the grid and the space
constraints.
And then we worked together tocome up with a solution, which
(12:08):
is this multi-user off-sitecharging hub solution, which
basically gives, well, it doesgive Woolworths the ability to
now charge their trucks, nothave to put the capital out
there for a huge new site, nothave to worry about grid or
space constraint issues at theirown uh fulfillment center, and
enables us to try andcommercialize the additional
charges at that site to make itproperly multi-user.
(12:30):
And we think that whilst thiswon't be the model, the only
model for this, but we see thisas one of the models that the
industry will consider and areconsidering and actually rolling
out.
So yeah, very, very excitingbecause I think there's not a
lot of them, and I think it'sgreat to just show how something
different can be done.
And I can get into thecommercials of it later because
that's also a little bitinnovative as well.
SPEAKER_02 (12:51):
Okay.
Well, uh maybe you can justpaint a picture for us for what
it would actually look like, youknow, what it looks like there
on the ground.
Because off-site multi-vehiclecharging hub is you know, it
doesn't paint a picture on itsown.
SPEAKER_00 (13:01):
We only focus on a business model, so on almost a
subscription or a long-termlease arrangement for the site.
It's not a like a publiccharging uh model where any
trucks can just turn up.
So we're we're quite tight onmaking sure we know who's in,
who's out, because we want toprovide a very high level of
guarantee on those charges.
And our customers want to makesure that if they're in there
(13:22):
and they're charging, they'redefinitely going to be out in
the morning because it'scritical for them.
So yeah, it's open air.
There's as you would enter thesite, there's a large
switchboard, which is where theum, sorry, there's a there's a
large substation, which is wherethe grid upgrade is, one MVA
connection that we've got.
And then you'll see theinnovative design about this
from engineers is it's actuallyon an Osgrid site.
(13:44):
So we work closely with Osgridthroughout this project to
leverage a site that wasotherwise being completely
unused.
Uh it was just redundant becauseunderneath it there are
absolutely stacks of about 132kV cables and other and 11 kV,
etc.
And so this is an absolutespider web of cables underneath.
So you they couldn't do anythingon the site, but tutos to their
(14:06):
engineers and our engineers towork out a way to make it work.
And so what we did is a completeover-ground, above ground, I
should say, solution.
So it comes in, there's a gridconnection, and then the
perimeter has the cabling allaround it, and then cables go to
the charges all around theperimeter of the site.
So again, I don't think we'veseen many sites like that where
everything is above ground.
Switchboard again is on aplatform that's raised up,
(14:27):
again, which is good forflooding, but it's also um
needed for that particular site,which which has all these cables
underneath.
How many EV charges do you havethere?
So it's 22 dual gun charges, sothat'll that'll charge about 44.
Well, would charge 44 trucks,simultaneous trucks?
SPEAKER_01 (14:43):
And what's the charge rate?
There are 120 kilowatt chargers.
Okay.
And there they'd be speedlimited down to one MVA if
that's the site capacity.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (14:53):
So we have our own software that we've developed
that throttles the charging rateas needed.
Um we can also shift that ifthere's benefits in terms of
peak demand charges and and thelike.
And then also we're looking atlike not pure demand response
mechanisms, but demandresponse-like mechanisms where
we just where we see there'ssignals on the grid to say if
you throttle your power down,there's some incentive for that.
(15:15):
Then we can look at that as wellwith our software.
SPEAKER_01 (15:17):
So it's it sounds like Woolworths is um like a
primary client, but am I rightin understanding that you will
open that up to potentiallyother businesses and clients to
charge that?
SPEAKER_00 (15:28):
Yeah, so Woolworths take have 20, 20 trucks there.
So that's only about 10 of the22 charges.
Okay.
So there's about a little overhalf of the site is still
available for um others, whichwe're in you know quite a lot of
discussions with, given it'scentral proximity in mascot.
It's very hard to find spacethere that's not been primed for
development.
SPEAKER_01 (15:48):
So this is a little bit of a different business
model this time around than theLycart bus station, which
obviously was a long time ago,where as an Obi you're focusing
on basically being a chargepoint operator almost, but for a
specific use case of commercialfleets.
SPEAKER_00 (16:06):
Correct.
Yeah, I guess you could compareit like that.
Yeah.
And that's where we see we justsee that the trucking market is
a little bit more fragmented,it's not driven by a government
mandate to say you have to dothis and we'll pay you.
It all has to stack up on itsown and the um private sector
have to come up with solutions.
So yeah, and that works for usbecause it's B2B still, and it's
we're not set up for a lot ofthe the public charging as the
(16:27):
public charging system is.
Yeah, B2C is a headache.
Yeah, there's a lot of stuffthat like I was driving my I
have an EV and and driving overthe brake.
And even though I'm in thespace, there's you know, the
amount of I did come across alot of challenges um with
charging, and I know a lot aboutthese things, and I I can sort
of I'm not an engineer, but so Iit made me sort of realize what
(16:49):
it must be like for the averagepeople or even our you know, the
truck drivers and stuff pluggingthings in.
If there's warnings or thingsnot working, you know, how does
it work?
So we've still got a fair way togo.
SPEAKER_01 (16:59):
Yeah, I think me personally are very acquainted
with some of the issues with thepublic charging stations.
I'm sure some of the listenersare as well.
And so just give us an idea ofthe trucks we're talking about
here.
We're talking those uh, youknow, like 30-foot trucks, or
are we talking so uh four and ahalf ton, you would have seen
them probably buzzing around.
SPEAKER_00 (17:17):
They're so you can drive them on on a driver's
license.
Um so they're under the thatlimit.
SPEAKER_01 (17:22):
These are the ones that drop the delivery shopping
off to people's individualhomes, all the way to the homes,
yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (17:27):
So these are these aren't the middle mile or prime
movers, these are the smallertrucks.
We focused on that segmentbecause that is the market
that's sorry, the segment that'smoving quickest because the
economics are stacking up a lotbetter than the other, the
bigger end of the town.
It's also easier to do becauseyou can do this sort of
back-to-base model, you can getpretty good mileage out of them,
(17:47):
and you don't have to worryabout you know charging all
along the way for a large primemover.
SPEAKER_01 (17:52):
Yeah, and I know that Woolworths have a pretty
sophisticated energy team there,so they must have been looking
at the electrification and thetotal cost of ownership, some of
these things that you're reallygood at calculating for electric
vehicles and electrifying theirfleas.
Do you have any insights as to,you know, in like your example
(18:12):
earlier was that the Lycheartsite for the New South Wales
government was like a one-to-onefor diesel versus going for this
electric bus solution?
Is there any view that this isfor wars now a cheaper solution,
or is it the similar cost?
SPEAKER_00 (18:28):
Or yeah, I mean, obviously can't share what the
inner workings of of Woolies.
Um but I know look, what I cansay is they worked and have been
working quite hard on makingthis work uh an EV model.
And this wasn't they've they hadalready rolled out it might be
like roughly 10 or something EV.
So it wasn't their first, sothey had some data already that
(18:50):
they could leverage to do allthe analysis or as to around you
know, how does this stack up?
And then they obviously had ourcostings and everything.
So as you would expect,Woolworths being Woolworths know
how to do the numbers right, andthey're not in the business of
charging customers more for thatdelivery.
Yes.
So they have to look at how dowe make this work, how do we
make this stack up on our own.
(19:11):
And obviously, you know, thisproject wouldn't have happened
if it was completely out of therealm of making sense for them.
Yeah, but yeah, they have tolook at all options, whether
it's like and we did that onthis project, like different
sites.
The location was a huge one,which is actually quite
interesting.
It has to be super close to afulfillment standard for them,
or as it makes would be for anypartner, because they're dead
(19:32):
running on those, which theynormally dead running is only
concept usually in buses,because you know, trucks, I
mean, trucks do have some deadrunning, but at the same time
dead running being like how longthey're not in.
SPEAKER_01 (19:43):
Yeah, not being used.
Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00 (19:45):
Being used, but not for their primary functions.
Exactly.
They're just and so if we wehave a a site where now they
have to park the truck at thissite and then take that truck to
the fulfillment center to loadup rather than being already at
the fulfillment center, thatadds a cost which had to be
factored in as well.
Yeah.
The further we got away fromthat, very quickly the economics
fell off a cliff.
SPEAKER_02 (20:04):
Right.
Does that mean that you knowobviously most of Woolworths or
Coles or anyone like that who'sdoing these last mile
deliveries, they're doing themmostly in metro areas, which are
the locations where it's hardestto find sites because of the
cost of land, because of theavailability of suitable sites.
Yeah.
Do you think we're gonna seelike a bit of a land grab if you
know this model works?
Well, he's got a huge fleet thatthey're gonna electrify over the
(20:26):
coming years.
SPEAKER_00 (20:26):
You're not meant to be talking about that on this.
No, no, I'm joking.
It will there'll be a bit lookto a certain extent, but I think
as I said before, this won't bethe only model.
There'll be some sites, somefulfillment centers and other
sites for logistics companies dohave enough power, or at least
they have the capacity toupgrade to get enough power and
(20:48):
space.
So not every site will need anoff-site charging hub, but some
will.
And I don't know if you've hadthem on on your um pod, but
there's other companies who arelooking at charging hub models
in this space, but more on thelarger sort of prime mover
space, not fully getting therejust yet.
So I think there's peoplelooking at it, but it's not at
the point where there's you knowthe gold rush of of people
(21:09):
trying to lock up sites justbecause no one is sure whether
it's 100% needed.
SPEAKER_01 (21:15):
Well, it's really encouraging to hear from the
perspective of just the EVtransition, decarbonising
transport, because these fleets,you know, these thousands of
woolies and coals trucks, theyjust represent such a big
percentage of those emissions.
And like also encouraging tohear that that will, you know,
(21:35):
there's there's already workgoing on with the prime movers,
those big trucks.
Because once the I guess there'sprovable cases that it's going
to be profitable or in the bestinterest of these companies to
go in that way, then there'll bea mad rush to do it because
otherwise they'll they'll be ata cost disadvantage to their
(21:56):
their competitors.
SPEAKER_00 (21:57):
So yeah, 100%.
There's as soon as this PCOneedle, again, total cost of
ownership, switches just or getsto parity, you will see the
floodgates open.
And because the vehicles workbetter, the servicing is better,
the drivers like them better,then obviously the customers
like them better.
So once you solve the economicproblem, which is a primary
driver that's not, I mean,obviously, we talked about the
(22:19):
land and the grid, but that sortof is part of the economics of
it as well, right?
Once you get that, and that'swhy we're quite excited about
this sector, because it'shundreds of thousands of trucks,
so many people will electrifyand turn to electric trucks.
The only thing probably holdingit back will be, you know,
existing arrangements on leasesof newer trucks, where they
think, okay, we're just going tosee that lease through until we
(22:42):
move.
But there's this customer'sthinking, you know, looking at
their aging fleet and say, canwe hold out a little bit longer
and then we'll switch toelectric, which is again
reassuring.
SPEAKER_02 (22:50):
Yeah, which in a way mirrors the rest of the EV
transition, right?
For the the enthusiasts and thepeople who, you know, the first
ones to buy a Tesla Model S,they were driven by excitement
with technology andsustainability.
But over time, for most people,it just kind of gonna come down
to cost.
Yeah.
Upfront cost, of course, buttotal cost of ownership.
And we're seeing that changestart with smaller vehicles,
(23:11):
passenger vehicles, move intolight commercial, now move into
medium commercial, and not thelast hurdle will be the prime
movers, but there's work beingdone there too.
Yeah, there is.
Great.
And is there anything that's uhin the pipeline that you are
able to tell us about?
Any exciting projects coming up?
SPEAKER_00 (23:26):
Bus is still our uh one of our larger uh segments
that we're working on thatyou'll hear as well coming out,
both in New Zealand.
There's quite a lot of work thatwe've just won um in New Zealand
that we're building the depots.
So six depots over there we'rebuilding, which is quite big,
and a depot in Wellington.
So yeah, a lot of bus stuffhappening.
And then I think in Australiathere's going to be a lot of
(23:47):
truck, but there'll be somedifferent bus things popping up.
We're we're building a couple ofsites in which are they not
fully public, but they if youdig deep enough, they're public
in in Melbourne.
So a couple of bus depots therethat we're working on as well.
So we like to have a spread ofbus and truck, keeps us um
interesting, excited and true toour sort of core core market,
which was bus and and anybasically any heavy, heavy
(24:09):
commercial vehicle, to behonest.
So we're looking at specializedtrucks as well, like um BWPs,
like elevator work platforms anduh pump trucks and and cement
mixes, and uh those you willlikely see something this year
on the on some of them as wellfrom us.
SPEAKER_02 (24:24):
Okay, those some of those vehicles, especially
things like um you know cementmixers, are ones that I would
have expected the battery costsare so significant because of
how much weight they're pullingthat we'd be looking even
further into the future beforeseeing electric vehicles like
that.
SPEAKER_00 (24:37):
No, you'll be seeing some of them uh probably this
year, at least from our side.
The weights, yes, there are someweight challenges, but they're
already pretty like the axleloads and stuff, and and having
to add uh some of the additionalaxles on on some of the trucks.
So there is we're solving someof those problems, those um
weight problems, but they aresolvable and the economics is
(25:00):
getting very close.
SPEAKER_01 (25:02):
Is there any interest from your clients in,
you know, one of the buzz topicsin in our spaces is vehicle
degree and bidirectionalcharging?
It seems just listening to youthat they've got like a pretty
commercial purpose for chargingvehicles.
It would seem a little bit of aan aside or uh out of scope
potentially for thinking aboututilising batteries in some
(25:24):
other way in these vehicles.
But is that is that ever a topicthat you find gets discussed
with your clients?
SPEAKER_00 (25:31):
It is increasingly it's you know, it's come up back
in our days, 2020, it was it wasdiscussed, but it was always
there was so much limitedcapacity on the batteries of the
buses that we worked on in theearly days that why would you or
how could you use that batteryfor another purpose when you're
just getting enough juice out ofit to do its um run and then
you're just having enough timeto charge it up overnight.
(25:53):
If you add any more you knowdrain on that, then you're not
gonna be able to charge it up oror do the runs.
But now we're seeing improvedlike battery technology is
improving dramatically.
And I I don't know how much yousort of have talked about this,
but from our what we're seeingon the commercial vehicle side
is you know rates justcontinuing to plummet in terms
of costs and in terms of batterycapacity and weights continuing
(26:15):
to improve as well.
So that's great for us and thesector.
But yeah, back to vehicle togrid, we are looking at some
projects with that.
It's still early days, both interms of technology and warranty
on the batteries is a big one.
And then the commercial model ofit and the operational model,
and how does it work?
How do we make it work so thatas I said, you know, it's not
(26:36):
impacting the the actual primaryuse case of these vehicles.
But we, as I mentioned, we wehave operations in the US as
well, and they have a lot ofschool buses, like hundreds of
thousands, I think, schoolbuses, those yellow buses that
pop around.
School buses are a great usecase for vehicle to grid.
They just have this morning peakand an afternoon peak, and
there's not a lot they do in theday, and there's a lot of excess
(26:58):
capacity.
SPEAKER_01 (26:59):
Oh, I mean, you you face the same challenges as the
residential market in that OEMsaren't really forthcoming just
yet on the warranties.
And yeah, there's not a lot ofproof cases of it, but a school
bus is the complete perfectexample, really, because they're
just doing a few runs a day.
SPEAKER_00 (27:17):
Exactly.
And you know, at where we're at,Zenobi and and sort of the
industry is, and parts of theindustry, I should say, is the
not proof of concept, butmaturing phase where we're
making sure that people getcomfortable with the technology
and the use case and and reallybed down that the technology
risk and any commercial risk andeverything, it doesn't exist and
(27:37):
and get everyone comfortablewith that before we move to the
optimization level, which iswhere we can then start to look
at vehicle to grid, demandresponse, driver training, other
energy, energy optimizationtactics that we've got, using
software, using betterscheduling, putting different
weights on different trucks andall that stuff.
So that's the next level, whichwe'll get to, which play early
stage players like Woolworthsand that will probably get to
(27:59):
before others because they'rerolling out their fleet sooner.
So they're ahead on that curve.
But the bulk of the industry isstill at just like, I just want
to make sure this thing worksand does the core function, then
we'll move to the sort of fancybells and whistles to make a bit
of extra cash later.
SPEAKER_01 (28:12):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's probably a tough oneto throw into the business case
to take up to your ASX 200listed board or to say, well,
this project relies on usselling some power out of the
batteries on the market.
Yeah, but I mean that like it'syeah, in a few years that may be
a robust, approvable uh revenuestream.
SPEAKER_00 (28:35):
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that
plays because there may beothers in the market who want to
take a play on fleet, uh owningfleets who aren't you know the
worst of the world who can takemore risk on the energy side and
optimize those assets for theircustomers, uh, which is
something we're considering orlooking at.
Um that's where you sort of havepeople who are better placed to
look at how do you do vehicle togrid and then just basically
(28:58):
provide as a service, which iswhat we do to our customers.
So here's a vehicle as a serviceor a truck as a service or
whatever, yeah.
And you just know that you havethat truck available.
What happens in the background,how it's charged, is a vehicle
to grid, whatever, you don'tworry about it, you just know
you're paying a certain Yeah,yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (29:12):
We'll give you uh a Tesla model three and it'll be
at 100% at eight in the morning,and you give it back to us
whenever you want, and thenwe'll do what we do in the
background.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's happening as well.
Good interesting.
SPEAKER_02 (29:26):
I do want to touch on the the second life battery
stuff because I I think this isan incredibly interesting part
of the market.
And I also really love learningabout it because it solves one
of these myths, one of theseconcerns that a lot of people
have expressed over the last fewyears that you know EV batteries
are useless, you know, afterfive years, they're gonna have
terrible mileage, they're gonnaend up in landfill, yeah.
(29:48):
All these things that we knowaren't true.
Yeah, but I think more and moreI'm hearing these exciting uses
for EV batteries after they'vereached the end of their life in
their primary vehicle.
Yeah.
So did this sort of start as away, like yeah, tell us how this
started for Zenobi, how did youget into this space?
SPEAKER_00 (30:03):
Yeah, sure.
So we call ourselves abattery-based business.
So we're focused on batteries,whether it's stationary
batteries or moving batteries onvehicles.
So we had our first two businessarms, which was you know, large
grid scale storage, and then wehad our um moving batteries, if
you want to call it that, thethe bus batteries buzzing
around.
We saw as a business there wasan opportunity to try and lead
(30:24):
the market commercially to takestronger residual value
positions on those batteries,the moving batteries at their
end of life.
But to do that, we needed to getmore comfortable with what is
the value of that battery at itsend of life and what is a good,
better use case for it.
And when we started doing a bitof the digging, we realized,
hang on, luckily we had you knowsome smart engineers and
(30:45):
founders who sort of thought,well, there's an opportunity
here to try and why don't wecreate more value than just
selling it for scrap metal or orselling it to a um auction house
because not they're not puttingany value on it, especially you
know, six or seven years ago.
So we worked with a company inthe Netherlands who were already
starting to dabble in this andyou know, took them on as part
of the business as well, andthen said, all right, well,
(31:07):
let's start working with old busand truck batteries that were in
accidents and stuff, becausethere were no old sort of
naturally retired batteries atthat point in time.
So, how do we actually get thebusiness model working?
How do we actually set this allup before they all come off in
you know the the hundreds ineight years' time?
So we use, yeah, as I said,they're called first chance
(31:28):
batteries, I think, butbasically batteries that have
come off their first life earlybecause they've just been an
accident or whatever, to thenprove up the manufacturing
capability.
And we've started, we'veproduced you know about 50 of
those units.
That then made because we wehave now the know-how and the IP
around how to put the invertersin, how to retest them, how to
recalibrate the cells, and thenthe commercial side of it, how
(31:50):
where do we now sell thesethings to, um, which I'll get to
later.
But it it then enabled us to bequite sure on what our residual
value position is, which thenled to us being able to sell or
lease more more buses and trucksbecause we could say, all right,
here's your price, and we'regoing to take a pretty punchy
residual value at the end.
And everyone, you know, bankswould be like, What?
How do you, you know, how couldyou do that?
(32:11):
But because we have thisbusiness arm, that means that we
can take that stronger financialposition on it.
And that's where it sort of allcame about and it's just
continued to come from there.
You know, in the the grand ideawas, I guess we have hundreds,
we were rolling out this year.
We probably put a gigawatt ormore than a gigawatt of storage
on the grid in across the world.
(32:31):
The idea is, you know, we haveabout 2,000 electric vehicles
that we've funded.
Each vehicle, let's say anaverage uh size of battery on
them is around 300 kilowatts.
I'll let you two do the maths asto how many megawatts of storage
that is.
But that's a huge amount ofstorage that's going to be
coming off just on what we'vegot now.
And we're adding you knowhundreds of vehicles to our
(32:53):
portfolio.
So the idea is, you know, ifwe've got already a stationary
storage business rolling out youknow huge batteries on the grid,
why don't we see there's there'sa synergy to actually use our
all our old bus batteries andtruck batteries to go to that
business?
But that's where it all allstarted from.
Now we're using them.
We've got two in um one inAustralia, one in New Zealand.
One's been used at a petrolstation in New Zealand, was
(33:16):
being used for a couple of yearsthere to help with their EV
charging.
So they had two charges, not avery good grid connection.
And so it trickle charged upthrough the day and then would
provide boost power for thosecharges when customers would
come in and would just alwaystrickle charge up when it could,
but it would give you know ZEnergy, the company over there
in New Zealand, the ability tostill have fast charges, but
(33:39):
with having a pretty, pretty lowgrid connection.
Here we've got them at, as Isaid, the mascot.
We've got one at the mascotsite, but globally we're using
them.
The biggest use case for them ison the construction sites.
Yeah.
So there's there's a lot of umneeds to help with you know
cranes and and high energydrawing devices where we can
provide boost, like a bit ofboost power with those uh short
(34:00):
duration high power with thebatteries.
SPEAKER_01 (34:02):
And that saves them taking a generator out,
presumably, or exactly.
SPEAKER_00 (34:06):
And and we we have the smarts around pairing them
with a generator.
So sometimes we still will use agenerate diesel generator, but
it's like 50% less consumptionof that diesel because we can
throttle the power, right?
SPEAKER_01 (34:19):
Yeah, and so so those have if I'm riding
listening to you there, thoseare mostly batteries that have
that are still in their sort ofprime life, but have the bus has
been crashed.
Are there some of these now moreend-of-life batteries where the
degradation's kind of kicked inquite a lot?
SPEAKER_00 (34:37):
Yeah, so this we're starting now to get to those
ones that are end-of-life totalk a bit more about that.
So the batteries will aremodeled and are warranted to
roughly 70% state of charge.
So you think for the averageperson out there who's got an EV
or doesn't have an EV, you know,that's you can sort of think of
it as 70% of the battery isstill good, right?
(34:58):
So the first or the sort of uhuse case that we we also like to
explore, which probably has aneven better use case before we
get to the second liferepurposing, is putting it on
different applications.
So for trucks and buses, if youcan move, as I said, the school
bus runs, they're a lot lighter,and other you know, rail
replacement or other shuttleservices, charter, whatever, you
(35:19):
could take a bus that's can't doits primary maybe city routes
because it's down to 70% stateof charge, is it eight years?
You could then move it to asecond use or lighter um duty
application, maybe get it downto maybe 60%, and then we would
take it, we would repurpose itand we would get as much use
that as much as we can capacityout of that, and that's enough
(35:42):
for us for our battery for whatwe need for the purposes of you
know using it as a dieselgenerator offset or or
supporting the grid.
But I guess even though wehaven't we're not using a lot of
those batteries just now, we'vemodeled it all out and we know
how it would work because weknow the exact state of charge
on the batteries that we'rewe're taking off right now.
SPEAKER_01 (35:58):
And um, not sure if there's anything you can share
on that, but uh the a lot of thedata that I've seen, including
some testing done by a renewableenergy lab in Canberra, that the
degradation rate, of course, islike a warrantied 70% after 10
years.
That's the classic that you seein the residential market.
But when they did the testing, alot of the batteries they tested
(36:21):
were actually far above that.
Yes, particularly with thebetter brands.
So the that's like that's likethe minimum they'll guarantee.
But in reality, a lot ofbatteries might be at 80 or 90%
after that 10-year mark.
SPEAKER_00 (36:32):
100%.
We're seeing that and the OEMs,uh, sorry, OEMs being the
manufacturers of this kit, arestarting to get more confidence
because they've got more datareally to draw, and everything
is coming back with a lot morestate of health than what they
thought it would.
And that means warranties arebeing improved, going higher,
going longer, getting better.
We still think the second lifebattery thing is of use because
(36:55):
at some point they still willget to their end of life and you
still can use them.
It just might be in seven yearsor eight years, it might be now
in 10, 12, 15 years.
SPEAKER_02 (37:02):
Yeah, we're basically hearing that echoed
from every corner of the market,whether it's the first Model S
buyers who've now been runningtheir EVs for 10 years, saying,
you know, we had um Tom fromLucasfeed saying he had his his
battery tested in his10-year-old S, and um it was
what was it, something likeclose to 90.
It was way above what wasexpected.
Yeah.
We've spoken to some people onthe podcast who who run battery
(37:23):
health testing companies, andsame thing, with a couple of
very specific exceptions, yeah.
The vast majority of batteriesare just way outperforming the
expectations.
SPEAKER_00 (37:31):
Yeah, I think it's great to see because I just
think it'll just keep going likethat.
I I think one not caveat, butone thing to note is, and I
think one of you said isquality.
Like if you're going withsomeone who's you know
respectable quality outfit, thenthat's important.
I I think that the we see it alot in the heavy commercial
space because probably 95 pluspercent of all the batteries
(37:53):
coming on buses and trucks arefrom either BYD or CATL.
Yeah, and probably it's probablysimilar across other spaces.
But if you go for something elsethat's random and yeah, it might
not perform like that.
So I think yeah, still going forsomething quality, you've got
more chance of getting thatextension.
SPEAKER_02 (38:10):
Given that it's early in the year, um, something
that Jeff and I did on our lastepisode, which was for January,
um, with some predictions forfor 2026, some trends that you
expect to see might be in thevehicle market or in the
charging market.
Have you got anything in mindthat you want to want to share?
Something you think we're gonnasee in the next 12 months?
SPEAKER_00 (38:29):
Yeah, sure.
Well, I've let out a couple oflittle snippets of what I think.
So, you know, specialized heavyvehicles.
I think you'll see some new onescoming out there.
I think you're gonna see morecharging hub-style models, not
drastic amounts, but but somemore.
I think, don't know if it'll bethis year, but might just tip
into next year, but some more uhstuff happening in the electric
(38:50):
ferries.
Right.
Definitely New Zealand, buthopefully in Australia a little
bit more.
In terms of charging, I'm prettysure this year you will we
should see like a megawattcharger uh rollout, which is uh
you know huge and will be a gamechanger for certain use cases.
Obviously, you know, onemegawatt is massive.
You know, I was talking about120 kilowatts, so it's like you
(39:12):
know, eight times the size.
So, yeah, some really, reallylarge charges coming out, even
if it's one or two, if we canevidence that that works, we'll
be humongous for the primemovers and and for the heavy
vehicles.
I think you'll see morehappening this year, probably in
in the mining and ports and thatsort of space, there or like
right on the horizon, beinglooking at a lot of stuff.
SPEAKER_02 (39:31):
Yeah, exciting times ahead.
Yeah, definitely.
I think that brings us to theend of our time together.
Thank you so much, Gareth, forcoming in.
Really appreciated the look intoyour little corner of the
transition and theelectrification world.
So thanks for coming in.
SPEAKER_00 (39:44):
No, thank you for having us.
It was great.
Thanks, Gareth.
Great to have you on.
SPEAKER_02 (39:52):
That's it for today.
Thanks for listening.
And make sure you share anepisode with someone that you
think might enjoy it.
Leave us a review, leave us acomment.
It really does make a differencefor us.
And if you need a quote foranything related to home
electrification, solar,batteries, heat pumps, aircon,
and of course EV charging, headto solidchoice.net.au to get
instant quotes from pre vettedinstallers.
(40:14):
See you next month.
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