February 1, 2024 • 39 mins
Rick Wilmer CEO of ChargePoint
Chris Nihan, founder of EVready Energy and Rick Wilmer, CEO of ChargePoint discuss how ChargePoint views the future of EV charging, their driver-centric approach, and why educating electricians, dealerships, and drivers are key components to successful EV adoption. Rick highlights some unique characteristics of the EV community, and how the act of charging an EV creates a relationship with drivers in a way we've never seen before. www.evreadyenergy.com + www.chargepoint.com More about Rick Wilmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickwilmer More About Chris Nihan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-nihan-06541571
https://evreadyenergy.com/podcast/chargepoint-ceo-rick-wilmer-on-building-consumer-confidence-in-the-ev-charging-space/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the EV Ready podcast, featuring industry leaders and their perspectives on electrification, hosted by EV Ready Energy.
(00:12):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the EV Ready podcast, and I am grateful for Rick Wilmer to be our first podcast guest of 2024.
Thank you so much for joining. Really appreciate it.
And a long time no see.
Yeah, happy to be here, Chris. Good to see you. Happy New Year.
Yeah, yeah, 2024 will certainly be an interesting one in the industry and, and I'm excited to go on the ride with you and ChargePoint and you know, it'll be really interesting to see how this year ends up playing out across the industry.
(00:50):
So much so many things going on right now.
Yep, I can tell you for sure things that will happen that we're not expecting to happen.
There will be a year of change, no doubt. Hey, you know, obviously we used to work together and you came in as the COO of ChargePoint at a really tumultuous time it was during COVID.
It was, it was an interesting time for the obviously for the entire world but but, you know, for the industry for sure.
(01:17):
Talk to me a little bit about your, you know, when you came, the challenges that you faced when you got to ChargePoint and how you've been trying to evolve those challenges over the past couple of years.
Yeah, so when I got here the, you know, emergency number one was the supply chain crisis as a result of COVID and, you know, how do we get enough chargers built to meet the demand which was, you know, very hyper growth type mode of demand at that point in
(01:46):
time so you had kind of the confluence of the two worst case situations hyper hyper demand along with very constrained supply chains.
So, to get the supply chain piece sorted out, and the, the, the, you know, manufacturing piece if you get all the parts but you don't have enough manufacturing capacity or the right partners to build your product.
(02:10):
Since we outsource our manufacturing, getting all the parts isn't going to help.
So it was a, you know, it wasn't one single solution to the problem, it was a whole bunch of different solutions to the problem.
It had to do with rationalizing our supplier base our supply chain who we buy from.
And in that area what you really want to do is find suppliers that view you as a strategic account.
(02:38):
And if they view EV charging and charge point as a strategic account, you're going to tend to get preferential treatment, which means you get the majority of the supply allocation, you get, you know, MFN pricing, you generally get treated like a strategic account.
And so we really looked for suppliers that would treat us like a strategic account and that all starts with going and meeting with them and just explaining who we are. Right.
(03:07):
I met with executives from a bunch of our suppliers that knew our name but didn't really know what we did, or how big we were or how we were differentiated in the industry so laying all that groundwork was a priority.
And we did a similar thing with our manufacturing partners, you know, making sure they really understood what we represented to them in terms of potential future growth, and the scale of this business to make sure that we've got, you know, preferential treatment.
(03:34):
You know, that's commensurate with our size and scale and the amount of business we can drive to them.
And we were at the kind of the tail end of covered when I joined, even though it was still pretty bad. And we were able to get that turned around in a good you know three or four months we were starting to make it to a point where we weren't facing product
shortages any longer.
(03:55):
We were really now getting supply and demand and balance. The other big area that I wanted to work on or that I was asked to work on, which was important to us was the overall customer support customer service function, which is a much longer road,
much not harder but there's a lot of work that's required to build a true world class what I call enterprise support organization, where we really deliver world class support to all of our customers and what makes it interesting for charge point is that we're, you
(04:32):
know, dealing with everything from individual drivers that technically aren't even customers all the way through, you know, fortune 100 corporations that deploy hundreds if not thousands of our chargers and everything in between.
So building out a support organization that could take care of all that from the minute we get a PO until long after those stations are deployed energized and those customers are pleased that they made a charge point decision is a big journey we've been on since I
(05:02):
started I think we've made a lot of progress, it's much better than, than it was when I arrived but we still have a lot of work to do in that area.
What do you think some of the focuses are going to be related to customer support, going forward, that are going to that that station owners and customers are going to feel in 2024.
So just continuing to be more responsive, you know answering the phone every time someone calls and making sure that they know that their case is being handled and then driving time to resolution down.
(05:34):
So those are just obvious basic blocking and tackling things that we continue to improve on we've made a ton of progress but it's still not good enough there's more room to improve.
But the, the other area is around an initiative we've been working on for a while which I've talked about publicly which is our network operation center.
And this is really one of the three cornerstones of overall network uptime and network reliability.
(05:59):
The other two, just for just to forsake a completeness one is just building highly reliable highly durable hardware which we've invested, as you well know Chris a ton of money and time and effort and building reliable hardware that will last for, you know,
10 years and you know the ice cold winters of Minnesota or the boiling hot summers at Phoenix, Arizona and everything in between those two places.
(06:23):
The other big piece which we're also investing in, in a major way will be, you know, this will become a lot more public as we move into this into the into 2024 is training for electricians.
What we find today for example on support cases as many of our support cases today that are hardware related have to do with bad installation as opposed to a defective product.
(06:46):
The majority of hardware failures we have today are due to bad installation so getting the world's electricians trained on how to work with charging hardware install it and fix it properly is a big effort for us and that's going to be really spearheaded by a major
investment we're making in training.
That's the third cornerstone piece of the whole network hygiene effort which is, you know, we need to know when stations are down. Now these are IOT connected devices which a bunch of which about with a bunch of sensors they're talking to us all the time reporting
(07:20):
their health, how they're doing.
And that's fine but it's inadequate.
You typically with all of our remote monitoring can't detect physical damage there are other types of problems that we don't always detect, but that's the one that's common.
However, there are other ways to find out about physical damage that aren't relying on some station owner to call us and tell us about it.
(07:45):
And that really centers around the driver community which quite frankly is a very passionate community of people that is more than help be happy to tell us about broken stations.
It may do that through calling our driver support line they may do report that through our mobile app.
They may post on social media.
So, taking all those sources of data and complementing the data we're getting from the stations themselves, and then aggregating correlating using machine learning to sift through that data we can now determine a station is broken, with it still being green on the
(08:22):
And we're now creating proactive tickets on behalf of station owners where we're calling them and saying hey we know you've got a problem with the station.
And we're going to come out and repair that for you, and we're now creating quite a few of those proactive tickets so it's starting to pay off. The other thing we're doing there is a bunch of data analysis so for example, simple example.
(08:44):
We have a station that average 3.7 sessions a day for the last three months and all of a sudden it goes to zero sessions a day for three days in a row. That will cause us to open a proactive ticket so there's a lot of work that's gone on in the network
with the idea of essentially creating proactive tickets and letting our station owners know that we've got a problem we're going to come fix before they found out about it themselves.
(09:12):
It's funny. I've gone on LinkedIn before and I've seen you responding to individual customers who are frustrated with unique circumstance.
We're going to go out there and fix it but that's your DNA. I think that's a big challenge in the industry in general right now, consumer confidence just across the board.
(09:33):
And it's funny because one of the things I was going to ask you a little bit later was really about how we solve that problem and it sounds like you're on your way right now.
Yeah, well, just it starts with the DNA of caring about customers, and it runs in my blood there's nothing I care more about than customers if I walk in in the morning, and this is a real example I have, you know, a few emails in my inbox I get in
(09:56):
very early. If one is from a driver that never even paid us anything and one is from a board member. I'll deal with the driver question first, and I'll reply to that individual personally.
And then I will monitor that case after I passed it off internally to the right people to make sure it gets closed.
As I have experienced.
(10:19):
Customers are everything, and they've got to be well taken care of. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I guess that's a good segue obviously your CEO now.
And that probably comes with a new set of responsibilities. How's it going.
It's going, you know, I'm hitting my stride, it was, you know, not a plan change that came off a disappointing quarter that we reported publicly.
(10:43):
It wasn't, you know, exactly what I was planning to do.
But when the board approached me and offered the job and I sat back and thought about it.
There were a couple of things that went through my mind that led me to say yes one was just the opportunity that's in front of us as an industry and then specifically as charge point I think we're not.
(11:05):
It's ours to lose in a lot of ways, and we can't mess this up. And that got me really excited and then what got me even more excited was the team of people that we have here.
You know, especially my direct staff and other leadership in the company I've got such a strong, great team of people that I feel very confident that I had what I needed from a personnel standpoint, you know, to do this job well.
(11:31):
So, when it happened I, you know, obviously took on more responsibility this is a, I call this the loneliest job in some ways it's the easiest job because I have all the authority I never have to manage through influence.
On the other hand, you know, I've got a famous quote from a famous Silicon Valley CEO and it ends with when times get tough you're all alone you make the call, and that that's what makes the job hard is you got to make some tough decisions on your own.
(12:00):
But since I took the job a couple of months ago I feel like I've come up to speed in the areas that I wasn't managing previously I've become familiar with those areas I've obviously worked with those people in the CEO role.
So I was somewhat familiar with what they were doing anyways now I'm digging into the detail.
And I feel like I'm hitting or hitting my stride, you know, we're working on our, on our, our fiscal year starts on February 1 so we're finalizing our fiscal 25 plan as we speak.
(12:27):
And then we'll be getting that approved by our board and then talking about that publicly in our next earnings call so all that's coming together nicely I'm pleased with the way that works been going.
Good for you. I'm happy for you and in charge charge point is definitely.
They're lucky to have you at this moment in time, but that's for sure.
Yeah, yeah.
(12:50):
Yeah, I wanted to talk about I don't know, you know, I don't know how in how into EV you work.
Back in 2016 it was right around when I was learning about it as a, as a kid out of college.
But I remember back in 2016 when Trump was elected.
There was this big concern that EVs were going to go away because the federal government wasn't going to support it. And what happened at that time, at least from my perspective was the state governments almost rallied because they knew that that was happening.
(13:22):
Obviously, it's going to be a you know a fun election year, and not to delve into politics, necessarily.
But how do you think, you know, the potential outcome of the next election could impact the, we know if these are happening, there's no question about that but how do you think it's going to affect the acceleration of it.
I don't think it'll affect it much, you know, even if Trump gets elected and you know some of the funding, federal funding that Biden's put out in front of the charging, you know goes away, hypothetically, I again I don't think it'll change it much I think, as you
(13:55):
mentioned, Chris, the states have some strong initiatives to push it regardless of what the federal government is doing. But even more importantly, market forces are driving people towards electrification.
I think a lot of people care about the planet they realize this is a major, major piece of decarbonizing our planet is to get transportation off fossil fuels.
(14:20):
But I also think the electric drivetrain is just so superior to the internal combustion engine you know for those of us that have been able to afford it and have enjoyed it, I mean you'll never go back.
It's just so much better. And I think as more and more people experience, you know, an electrified drivetrain and a modern electric vehicle.
(14:42):
The market is going to move towards electrification just because it's better.
So, I don't think any government policy, whether it's supportive or ignores EV charging is going to change things at this point in time.
The penetration is now far enough along, or enough people have experienced it enough for the vehicle OEMs are converting over the factories and have clearly made major commitments to it.
(15:06):
It may have some slowdowns and some bumps in the road like we saw late last year, but overall this is happening as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, I just actually a couple hours ago I recorded another podcast with an automotive performance retail agency, and I think like what we always, what we always agree on is that it acceleration could be impacted by a few different things.
(15:32):
And we agree it's going to happen.
But from our perspective, educating the dealers is a huge thing.
Big right you hear this complaint all the time.
You know you walk into again I'm going to oversimplify this but you know you hear the stories where someone walks into a dealer and, you know, looks at an EV on the lot and says how do I charge that, or how long does it take to charge it and the dealer says let me show you
(15:58):
an ice vehicle over here that he's, you know that that dealer at salespersons very familiar with selling so there's no question that that's got to happen.
And I know charge point has a strategy around dealerships and dealer groups and creating a strategy that drives more vehicle sales for sure, obviously, was involved with it at some point at a certain point in time.
(16:19):
Yeah, I'm really curious to see as it relates as it relates to education.
How quickly that happens because I think so many times to your point, somebody will purchase an electric vehicle, or just not doing it because person that's selling them the car might not be confident in that that lifestyle change and I think once that transition occurs
(16:41):
I don't think it's necessarily a car issue, quite as much as the market says.
Yeah, I think the other near term.
And when we're facing is just high interest rates and the fact that he these are generally more expensive than ice vehicles and you know now your car loan is a lot more expensive and because it's more expensive vehicle it's a bigger loan I think that's created some
Well, so, you know, I'm happy to see Tesla reducing their prices. I thought it was interesting to see BYD overtake Tesla's the world's number one.
(17:11):
EV manufacturer with clearly you know much lower cost vehicles than what we've seen from the traditional auto AMS that we're familiar with but I think all of this is putting the right pressure on the industry.
You know to drive costs down to make EVs more affordable more comparable to ice vehicles and I think that that learning curve is going to happen.
(17:33):
Yeah, there's no doubt about it from as an old time operations guy I know the more you build, the better you get and the lower your costs get so as they continue to ramp up production, leverage their fixed costs.
Learn how to drive the cost out of these vehicles that are going to continue to get more cost competitive for consumers. Yep, yep.
(17:56):
My next question for you is this you know with gas cars obviously the the calculations easier. It's, it's a it's a simpler.
I shouldn't say it's a simpler experience but everybody knows what the experience is for electric there are so many other components to it you have energy companies that are involved that are running the world you have the auto manufacturers you have
(18:17):
And in some way with like with government they have to in technology companies, they'll have to converge converge together to build the right experience for consumers that piques their interest and, and all those things so my question for you is related to utility
companies like you know Avon grid in the northeast and auto manufacturers like Mercedes that that you're working so closely with an oil companies like British Petroleum. What's the role they're going to play over the next 10 years.
(18:46):
And how does charge point work with them.
Great question. You're probably on one of the topics I've been thinking most deeply about since I've become CEO, and what it looks like to me, now that I've spent a lot of time I've spent time with customers before but I'm spending a lot more time with customers
Now, in the grand scheme of things, this.
(19:09):
The way I'm thinking about this is charging creates a new touch point between somebody and the driver, which almost by definition is a consumer.
They may be a consumer when they're not driving their fleet vehicle for work and intimacy with the customer with the consumer is so critical.
(19:32):
In this digital world of omni channel sales that watching all these constituents battle for that relationship for this new opportunity to create intimacy with the driver that's a consumer is fascinating.
You know I'm a F 150 lightning owner, and I used to own F 150 ice vehicle. I have an ongoing relationship for now through my for pass up I never had that before when I owned an ice vehicle.
(20:01):
So, is Rick going to have a relationship with forward, or is he going to have a relationship with the retail store that he shops at quite often that he has the loyalty app for that he can pay for charging through that loyalty app and now stays a little bit longer when
he's in the store because his vehicle is going to take time to charge, then maybe buys a little bit more stuff, or is it going to be the hotel chain.
(20:24):
If I'm a frequent you know road warrior.
So, watching this play out to see who is going to use charging to build a strong relationship and that's loyalty, and, you know, enhance brand identity with drivers slash consumers to me is a fascinating battle.
The advantage that we have in the market is we build the tech stack that allows these companies these constituencies, these institutions to do that, whether it's someone that wants people to come, you know, work at their, at their company, because they
(20:59):
or stay at their hotel or park at their parking garage or whatever the case may be. We've got the tech stack that allows these institutions to use charging to create deeper loyalty with their drivers and consumers.
Now who wins that who ends up being the dominant player that builds those relationships is going to be fascinating to watch play out.
(21:20):
It's interesting because obviously for gas cars like there were loyalty programs that existed but they weren't, I don't know if this is too strong a term but they weren't weaponized by software.
And I don't think the world has fully understood how to use charging software yet in order to do that I think everybody's trying to, they're feeling their way through it and obviously charge points looking to enable it.
(21:41):
And I think that's like one of the big changes we'll see in the next five years is a lot of creative solutions out there. Beyond just, you know, an auto manufacturer offering free charging for a period of time, or whatever the case may be like once it hits retail and other
locations, or creative can you get how integrated can you get and curious to see how that plays out.
Yeah, when you look at all the loyalty stuff that's out there today whether it's airline points or credit card points or hotel points that you could, the sophistication that has been built into those programs to build consumer loyalty, you can see all this coming our way, because this is just
(22:16):
another opportunity to build a relationship with that consumer you care about.
Absolutely, absolutely.
So you mentioned you're a Ford lightning customer so I wanted to transition over to the, the Ford next discussion and obviously it's not just a Ford discussion anymore.
You know when it happened.
(22:37):
I personally thought that the next transition would occur, it was kind of crazy to me because I always thought Tesla had such a competitive advantage, owning their fast charging network and keeping it proprietary and then the auto manufacturers data and the other side
and not wanting to give that away.
It sort of blew my mind that the industry went over the next even though I personally believe it is a better experience I don't know how you feel about that but for me, that didn't feel like just a plug decision it felt like something bigger was happening in the
(23:06):
industry, and I don't know exactly what that is but it feels bigger. I was curious to see what your take on it was. Well, I think that from a perspective of charge point to me this is kind of a non event.
In fact, I think it's good news because in my mind it's going to make more charges available to more drivers which is going to make more people comfortable buying EVs which is just going to drive demand for what we build.
(23:30):
If I, you know, go to Europe with my laptop I don't need to take a different laptop to plug into a wall outlet in Europe and work. It's a plug. It's a connector. Right, we have them on chargers all over our parking lot as we speak today we're shipping them today.
So, it's just another connector it doesn't define the charging station by any stretch of the imagination. I think it's a much bigger deal for the auto OEMs.
(23:55):
Not for us right for us it's again pretty simple to switch over to a different connector type, but for the auto OEMs you know to agree on one way to go and I think the majority of them if not all of them for North America have now agreed on NACs.
It's good. It's going to make everything simpler it's going to make all the cars interoperate with all the charging stations which again in the end makes just the charging network that's available to all the EV drivers bigger which is good.
(24:24):
And that's what I talked about before. So, now you've got all these Tesla sites available to these drivers that aren't driving Teslas.
Is that because Tesla wants a relationship with those drivers so that when they buy their next TV they're going to buy a Tesla.
Again, you're back to who's going to, who's going to leverage charging to build that relationship with the consumer.
(24:46):
Who's in it. Who wants it. Yep. Yeah, yeah.
It's interesting I, I think the auto manufacturers I'm really curious how it plays out for them, just because, and I get your position from a charge point perspective I think on, as it relates to the automotive landscape, it just seems like there's, there
(25:09):
were advantages and there were risks tied to data and, and selling cars that the industry was very willing to trade off.
And I didn't expect that and I, you know, I, it made me feel like I didn't understand something.
Yeah, well, like I said I think in general it's good that we've gone to one standard. And Max, I mean, you know you think it's a better experience that's fine. My Ford's got a CCS one connector it works fine.
(25:35):
Right. So, as long as we get to one, and everybody can access everything. That's I think the benefit of this battle tipping the next direction.
Yep. And, look, charge points been around forever. Well, forever in the charging industry.
But so much has happened over the past few years, everybody kind of sees the, you know, the dollar signs in this industry. It's growing so fast it's exciting everybody wants to be in it.
(26:05):
But it's caused so many different market entrants that your team's dealing with all the time and trying to figure out how to remain as competitive as possible and so I want to ask you in 2024.
What differentiates charge point from everybody else.
We have a full stack solution for all use cases because they all tie together. Right. You go to the, you know, Metro bus authority and sell pantographs for charging buses behind the fence overnight.
(26:39):
Well, and then all of a sudden, that city's got light duty to the service vehicles that they want to electrify that fleet but they drive all over the city and they're going to park and use level two charging when the technicians are doing their work.
So now you're going to put a bunch of level two charges around the city, all part of the same account. Now they want to make those charges available to the general public because the service vehicles are using them every day.
(27:02):
So now you need to be able to provide charging to, you know, general public.
Now they let the service vehicle some of the technicians take those vehicles at home at night because it's more efficient to start their route from home than it is from a central truck yard.
So now you've got a home charger and you need to integrate with the utility and reimburse that that technician for the money spent on electricity at home.
(27:25):
Right. So the fact that all these use cases ultimately tie together around a great driver experience. If you're jumping from one solution to another as you go from work to the hotel, to the stadium, you know, and it's, it's not the same ad app, it's not the same experience, I think it's going to really be tough on drivers.
(27:51):
So even though somebody may have a great point solution for a specific use case, the sum of the parts is greater than, you know, than the whole when it comes to providing a full stack solution that covers all use cases.
And, you know, I hesitate to go to hardware, because software is so important, but the element of hardware that I think, you know, when you have like a large enterprise customer, and they're looking at installing charging stations and maybe they have 30 different sites
(28:22):
with 30 different decision makers and you know the risk there is they end up having 10 different types of hardware six different types of software it's a total nightmare they're going to have to they're going to have to reinvest in the future.
The way the, your, your newer products level two in DC have been have been developed, have a lot of modularity tied to them a lot of similarities tied to them you want to talk about like how how those products were developed why they were developed that way,
(28:49):
and how it will benefit station owners.
I think modularity from the perspective of a station owner it really enables faster lower cost service.
Because if something goes down you don't have to take out the whole station you take out the module that is defective or was installed incorrectly and thus damaged.
For us, the advantage is operational right we have a common compute module for example that goes across a variety of different stations and use cases.
(29:20):
Now that's a common part number, we have inventory flexibility to use that on which stations are selling today.
Right so for us from an inventory standpoint from the number of different parts we need to build and manufacturing it simplifies our product line for us internally but again, the real benefit for the customers is service ability in the field.
The parts are less expensive, they're easier and faster to replace.
(29:45):
They're not, it's less expensive for inventory to be positioned in the field close to stations because you don't have to invest a ton of money in a very expensive complete charger inventory.
So that's really the benefit that it brings to the customer.
I'm really interested to see over the next few years I think it's sometimes it's hard to predict the future, you know, you go to 3G to 4G, you're going to switch cables like how can you possibly predict these things.
(30:11):
But I think one of the challenges that a lot of folks that are buying charging stations right now are, they're trying to figure out how do I make sure that my charging stations don't become obsolete.
And you know things like non replaceable cables are so common in the industry I think that, or, or, you know, how do you keep the uptime of your station, you know, in a fleet situation obviously in many cases if you have a fast driver it's because you need it.
(30:38):
You probably need it too.
Like what's the redundancy built into these stations is such a critical piece. Can you just speak to the redundancy that's been built in some of the charge for my products.
Yeah, I mean there's a there's a lot of redundancy built in, generally speaking and you know you're familiar with what we do before we put a product into production and put it into the market I mean we, the amount of money we've invested in.
(31:03):
Not only building in redundancy but then testing it to make sure that it actually works that all the failovers work that it survives in.
You know, the coldest temperature you could experience in Minneapolis and the hottest temperature you could experience in Phoenix and it does that for 10 years in a dust storm or being pelted by rain or snow.
We do all that internally.
(31:26):
And that is what again back to the cornerstone of reliability.
That is one of the keys is building a highly reliable highly durable product. The analogy I use is imagine buying two new iPhones and taking one to Minneapolis and throwing it on the street and then take your other one to Phoenix and leave it on the street then come back 10 years later and see if they still work.
(31:49):
Yeah, that's what we're trying to do. It's a hard technical challenge, no doubt, but I think we're the leader in the market because of the time, the brilliance of our engineering work and the facilities that we've put in place to actually do these tests.
Yep, absolutely.
So, I will disclosure, people are listening this probably know this but I worked at ChargePoint I left ChargePoint I left ChargePoint to start my own company. And the premise, Rick was that EV charging in general is oversimplified.
(32:23):
So many components, I think, many times it's it's very, it's treated as a transaction it's treated as commoditized, but it's much more confusing and complex in so many different ways somebody installs a charger, their electric bill goes up by 10,000 $10,000 a month, they think they have an energy efficiency problem.
It can affect your reputation. If you install something, and the community has opinions, and how it performs is a factor and then does it actually solve the problem for you and is it the most efficient way to do the thing that you were trying to do all those different
(33:01):
things. And so, I was hoping you could talk about all the things outside of what makes ChargePoint revenue, and how you try and provide those solutions to your end users.
There's so much to it and again it's all software, right. And it's again tied back to having a driver.
(33:23):
Starting with a driver centric approach, where if you know Chris you're an EV driver I'm an EV driver whoever's an EV driver if I'm going to go from place to place to place to work to home to the hotel to the mall to the parking garage.
That's a seamless experience that I can rely on.
Right, so starting with that driver and making sure that experience is awesome is the foundational piece that everything we do is based on that.
(33:52):
And that's everything from ease of use to making sure that you can find use and pay for charging conveniently that it's as simple as possible.
That is just the core from which we build everything.
And let me amend my question a little bit. How do you make the station owner experience awesome.
Yeah, so I think there, you need to understand what the station owners trying to accomplish with EV charging.
(34:16):
Right, so again I think if it's commercial, you know, and all those subcategories I've rattled off have been many more that I haven't even mentioned.
Right, they're typically trying to get people to come to their place and stay there.
Right, whether it's an employee a shopper, whatever the case may be they want them to come there.
And there you want, you want to be able to allow that to happen and then as some of the leading edge retailers that are dealing with drivers that are consumers.
(34:46):
You want to now start to build technology that allows them to use that touch point to build a stronger relationship with that consumer.
Workplace is slightly different than that. I mean, again, you want to have enough charging there that works reliably, you know, to attract the kind of people to come work for you that you want to come work for you even charge point today with all the chargers in our parking lot.
(35:07):
I'm getting complaints that we don't have enough.
You show up after 830 on a come to work day and it's not easy to find a charger, even here with as many as we have in our parking lot.
So then I think in the in the fleet use case, right, they, you get into the mission critical use cases which is if that vehicle doesn't go when it's supposed to go it materially impacts their business whether they're delivering goods or people.
(35:36):
Their reliability is paramount, you have to charge that vehicle so it can do its route when it's supposed to do its route.
You know quickly followed by cost, right, how do I minimize the cost of the chargers, the construction, the make ready, and then obviously the ongoing use of energy. After that, all that comes into the equation.
(35:58):
That was, you know, my experience.
You know when I when I worked at charge point, and my experience now and I think it will continue to be this way for a while is the operational cost element of charging in for fleets for sure for fleets, it's a really big deal.
The, the way that the utility charges station owners, and I'm not, I'm not saying the utility doing anything wrong. It's just kind of the way that things work and there's where there's a problem there's a solution.
(36:27):
And that is generally I think like the most misunderstood element of charging that I see when I talk to station owners, where, you know, and sometimes the focus on cost is focused on the cost of a product, a service, and an installation and that's, I don't know, I would estimate 40% of their
five year total cost of ownership and it's just so critical to help customers understand that that piece of it as well.
(36:54):
Exactly, exactly. If you shop for the cheapest charger that you think meets your use case, you are not thinking about this right.
Yeah, yeah, there's other ways to make up costs and have a better experience. Yeah, you know, maybe there's a one off situation but in general, you know,
it's just, it's important to important to work with a quality product and a quality partner.
(37:21):
So, you know, you kind of already you already talked about a lot of this already but just to harp on it again like we hear about it in the news. There's articles about it.
There was an article that came out on elect I love electric I think they do a really good job kind of reporting on the news and the EV industry and they can, they reported on s&p global mobility who came out with a stat, it was that 50% of non Tesla
(37:48):
drivers are looking to either return their electric car, or they're looking to get their secondary car as a gas car, and private primarily it's due to, you know, station, station issues or actually it's really driver experience to your point.
It'd be all about the driver and so you know you've heard you shouldn't say harps but you've spoken a lot about about the driver experience and making sure that stations are up and running and all of those things would you consider that your number one focus in 2024 or is there anything
(38:24):
else that that rivals that topic.
With respect to everything we do that you know our customers enjoy. That is a huge priority and again I touched on, you know, the key things we're working on there continue to build very durable reliable hardware.
I'm big focus on training electricians and technicians going into next year, along with continuing to enhance that network operation center all that together will continue to drive up network reliability network uptime.
(38:56):
There's also a lot of work to do on just ease of use.
Right, we track a metric, you know called zero energy sessions where a driver goes to a station that's working and they still can't charge their vehicle.
And a lot of times it's just due to drivers not knowing how to do things what sequence in which to do things which is in my opinion, perhaps shame on us.
(39:17):
We need to make this an easier more intuitive thing for a driver to do if they're paying with a card or their phone or, or their, or their digital wallet or whatever the case may be we want to make sure that it's easy for them to do that and it's intuitive
so I think there's innovation to be had in that area as well. Yeah, yeah. And what's the, do you think what's the role ISO 15118. Do you think that will be widely adopted do you think they'll be used commonly what's the future that look like.
(39:45):
I sure hope so because it's an awesome experience when it works the way it's supposed to for anyone who listens to this podcast who happens to be in the Atlanta area.
Go visit the Mercedes fast charge site at their headquarters in Sandy Springs.
That is the penultimate charging experience from a driver perspective as far as I'm concerned it is what they did is amazing. I am so impressed with the ability to reserve a port to know which port that is when you pull into that place to be able to pull right up, plug in your
(40:21):
nothing you just play it's easier than filling up your car with gas. I mean it is a phenomenal experience. And if you're a Tesla driver, you know that you can just kind of plug in your car and the sessions initiated and so that's what ISO 15118 will assist with it'll allow the
the station to connect with the vehicle and automatically start the session as opposed to you know you're talking about ease of ease of charging where with a lot of other charging stations you have to initiate the station yourself and if you don't get educated from the dealer and how to do that.
(40:50):
It can be a little bit of a pain in the butt. Yeah, if you don't do it in the right sequence if you pay before you plug or plug before you pay or whatever you know you can end up not charging your car and it can be very frustrating.
Yep, yep. Well, my last question for you a little bit of optimism for everybody I generally tend to be an optimistic person.
What are you most excited about this year, it can be EV it can be anything.
(41:15):
Just to see this industry continue to evolve and grow.
I mean it's going to change there's things that are going to happen that none of us can anticipate at this moment and, you know, when that happens how we react to it or take advantage of it is going to determine you know who wins and loses but, you know, I've been
tech for my entire career and back in the early days I was part of, you know, NASA and industries like this when there were, you know, 80 competitors all trying to do something similar.
(41:46):
And, you know, 30 years later there's three, you know, and we're in those early innings we're watching, you know, different ideas succeed others fail companies run out of money companies go out of business companies getting bought so just being part of this, this exciting
nascent development of this market watching everything change and come together and some things not work. It's just exciting, just being part of it is exciting.
(42:13):
I always tell customers being of most conversations kind of in a joking way but in a very honest way is like, it is the Wild West right now.
In this industry it's it's a little bit chaotic everywhere. And, you know, some people don't like that I personally do.
No, I mean it's, you know, it's on us to help, you know, get that chaos mitigated but I think there's early adopters that enjoy that and then you get to the majority of the mainstream market they probably don't really enjoy that very much so it's up to us in this
(42:45):
industry to move through that early adopter chaotic phase and get things standardized and stabilized and easy to use.
So, everyone out there continues to get comfortable with electric electrified drive trains, and we decarbonize this planet, because that mission is really important.
Amen. Well, Rick, appreciate the time and talking about all these different things and I'm sure we'll be in touch again soon.
(43:14):
Yeah, it was great to see you, Chris. Congratulations on your new company and good luck with all that and I am sure we'll talk again soon.
Yes, thank you so much.
Welcome to the EV Ready podcast, featuring industry leaders and their perspectives on electrification, hosted by EV Ready Energy.
(00:12):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the EV Ready podcast, and I am grateful for Rick Wilmer to be our first podcast guest of 2024.
Thank you so much for joining. Really appreciate it.
And a long time no see.
Yeah, happy to be here, Chris. Good to see you. Happy New Year.
Yeah, yeah, 2024 will certainly be an interesting one in the industry and, and I'm excited to go on the ride with you and ChargePoint and you know, it'll be really interesting to see how this year ends up playing out across the industry.
(00:50):
So much so many things going on right now.
Yep, I can tell you for sure things that will happen that we're not expecting to happen.
There will be a year of change, no doubt. Hey, you know, obviously we used to work together and you came in as the COO of ChargePoint at a really tumultuous time it was during COVID.
It was, it was an interesting time for the obviously for the entire world but but, you know, for the industry for sure.
(01:17):
Talk to me a little bit about your, you know, when you came, the challenges that you faced when you got to ChargePoint and how you've been trying to evolve those challenges over the past couple of years.
Yeah, so when I got here the, you know, emergency number one was the supply chain crisis as a result of COVID and, you know, how do we get enough chargers built to meet the demand which was, you know, very hyper growth type mode of demand at that point in
(01:46):
time so you had kind of the confluence of the two worst case situations hyper hyper demand along with very constrained supply chains.
So, to get the supply chain piece sorted out, and the, the, the, you know, manufacturing piece if you get all the parts but you don't have enough manufacturing capacity or the right partners to build your product.
(02:10):
Since we outsource our manufacturing, getting all the parts isn't going to help.
So it was a, you know, it wasn't one single solution to the problem, it was a whole bunch of different solutions to the problem.
It had to do with rationalizing our supplier base our supply chain who we buy from.
And in that area what you really want to do is find suppliers that view you as a strategic account.
(02:38):
And if they view EV charging and charge point as a strategic account, you're going to tend to get preferential treatment, which means you get the majority of the supply allocation, you get, you know, MFN pricing, you generally get treated like a strategic account.
And so we really looked for suppliers that would treat us like a strategic account and that all starts with going and meeting with them and just explaining who we are. Right.
(03:07):
I met with executives from a bunch of our suppliers that knew our name but didn't really know what we did, or how big we were or how we were differentiated in the industry so laying all that groundwork was a priority.
And we did a similar thing with our manufacturing partners, you know, making sure they really understood what we represented to them in terms of potential future growth, and the scale of this business to make sure that we've got, you know, preferential treatment.
(03:34):
You know, that's commensurate with our size and scale and the amount of business we can drive to them.
And we were at the kind of the tail end of covered when I joined, even though it was still pretty bad. And we were able to get that turned around in a good you know three or four months we were starting to make it to a point where we weren't facing product
shortages any longer.
(03:55):
We were really now getting supply and demand and balance. The other big area that I wanted to work on or that I was asked to work on, which was important to us was the overall customer support customer service function, which is a much longer road,
much not harder but there's a lot of work that's required to build a true world class what I call enterprise support organization, where we really deliver world class support to all of our customers and what makes it interesting for charge point is that we're, you
(04:32):
know, dealing with everything from individual drivers that technically aren't even customers all the way through, you know, fortune 100 corporations that deploy hundreds if not thousands of our chargers and everything in between.
So building out a support organization that could take care of all that from the minute we get a PO until long after those stations are deployed energized and those customers are pleased that they made a charge point decision is a big journey we've been on since I
(05:02):
started I think we've made a lot of progress, it's much better than, than it was when I arrived but we still have a lot of work to do in that area.
What do you think some of the focuses are going to be related to customer support, going forward, that are going to that that station owners and customers are going to feel in 2024.
So just continuing to be more responsive, you know answering the phone every time someone calls and making sure that they know that their case is being handled and then driving time to resolution down.
(05:34):
So those are just obvious basic blocking and tackling things that we continue to improve on we've made a ton of progress but it's still not good enough there's more room to improve.
But the, the other area is around an initiative we've been working on for a while which I've talked about publicly which is our network operation center.
And this is really one of the three cornerstones of overall network uptime and network reliability.
(05:59):
The other two, just for just to forsake a completeness one is just building highly reliable highly durable hardware which we've invested, as you well know Chris a ton of money and time and effort and building reliable hardware that will last for, you know,
10 years and you know the ice cold winters of Minnesota or the boiling hot summers at Phoenix, Arizona and everything in between those two places.
(06:23):
The other big piece which we're also investing in, in a major way will be, you know, this will become a lot more public as we move into this into the into 2024 is training for electricians.
What we find today for example on support cases as many of our support cases today that are hardware related have to do with bad installation as opposed to a defective product.
(06:46):
The majority of hardware failures we have today are due to bad installation so getting the world's electricians trained on how to work with charging hardware install it and fix it properly is a big effort for us and that's going to be really spearheaded by a major
investment we're making in training.
That's the third cornerstone piece of the whole network hygiene effort which is, you know, we need to know when stations are down. Now these are IOT connected devices which a bunch of which about with a bunch of sensors they're talking to us all the time reporting
(07:20):
their health, how they're doing.
And that's fine but it's inadequate.
You typically with all of our remote monitoring can't detect physical damage there are other types of problems that we don't always detect, but that's the one that's common.
However, there are other ways to find out about physical damage that aren't relying on some station owner to call us and tell us about it.
(07:45):
And that really centers around the driver community which quite frankly is a very passionate community of people that is more than help be happy to tell us about broken stations.
It may do that through calling our driver support line they may do report that through our mobile app.
They may post on social media.
So, taking all those sources of data and complementing the data we're getting from the stations themselves, and then aggregating correlating using machine learning to sift through that data we can now determine a station is broken, with it still being green on the
(08:22):
And we're now creating proactive tickets on behalf of station owners where we're calling them and saying hey we know you've got a problem with the station.
And we're going to come out and repair that for you, and we're now creating quite a few of those proactive tickets so it's starting to pay off. The other thing we're doing there is a bunch of data analysis so for example, simple example.
(08:44):
We have a station that average 3.7 sessions a day for the last three months and all of a sudden it goes to zero sessions a day for three days in a row. That will cause us to open a proactive ticket so there's a lot of work that's gone on in the network
with the idea of essentially creating proactive tickets and letting our station owners know that we've got a problem we're going to come fix before they found out about it themselves.
(09:12):
It's funny. I've gone on LinkedIn before and I've seen you responding to individual customers who are frustrated with unique circumstance.
We're going to go out there and fix it but that's your DNA. I think that's a big challenge in the industry in general right now, consumer confidence just across the board.
(09:33):
And it's funny because one of the things I was going to ask you a little bit later was really about how we solve that problem and it sounds like you're on your way right now.
Yeah, well, just it starts with the DNA of caring about customers, and it runs in my blood there's nothing I care more about than customers if I walk in in the morning, and this is a real example I have, you know, a few emails in my inbox I get in
(09:56):
very early. If one is from a driver that never even paid us anything and one is from a board member. I'll deal with the driver question first, and I'll reply to that individual personally.
And then I will monitor that case after I passed it off internally to the right people to make sure it gets closed.
As I have experienced.
(10:19):
Customers are everything, and they've got to be well taken care of. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I guess that's a good segue obviously your CEO now.
And that probably comes with a new set of responsibilities. How's it going.
It's going, you know, I'm hitting my stride, it was, you know, not a plan change that came off a disappointing quarter that we reported publicly.
(10:43):
It wasn't, you know, exactly what I was planning to do.
But when the board approached me and offered the job and I sat back and thought about it.
There were a couple of things that went through my mind that led me to say yes one was just the opportunity that's in front of us as an industry and then specifically as charge point I think we're not.
(11:05):
It's ours to lose in a lot of ways, and we can't mess this up. And that got me really excited and then what got me even more excited was the team of people that we have here.
You know, especially my direct staff and other leadership in the company I've got such a strong, great team of people that I feel very confident that I had what I needed from a personnel standpoint, you know, to do this job well.
(11:31):
So, when it happened I, you know, obviously took on more responsibility this is a, I call this the loneliest job in some ways it's the easiest job because I have all the authority I never have to manage through influence.
On the other hand, you know, I've got a famous quote from a famous Silicon Valley CEO and it ends with when times get tough you're all alone you make the call, and that that's what makes the job hard is you got to make some tough decisions on your own.
(12:00):
But since I took the job a couple of months ago I feel like I've come up to speed in the areas that I wasn't managing previously I've become familiar with those areas I've obviously worked with those people in the CEO role.
So I was somewhat familiar with what they were doing anyways now I'm digging into the detail.
And I feel like I'm hitting or hitting my stride, you know, we're working on our, on our, our fiscal year starts on February 1 so we're finalizing our fiscal 25 plan as we speak.
(12:27):
And then we'll be getting that approved by our board and then talking about that publicly in our next earnings call so all that's coming together nicely I'm pleased with the way that works been going.
Good for you. I'm happy for you and in charge charge point is definitely.
They're lucky to have you at this moment in time, but that's for sure.
Yeah, yeah.
(12:50):
Yeah, I wanted to talk about I don't know, you know, I don't know how in how into EV you work.
Back in 2016 it was right around when I was learning about it as a, as a kid out of college.
But I remember back in 2016 when Trump was elected.
There was this big concern that EVs were going to go away because the federal government wasn't going to support it. And what happened at that time, at least from my perspective was the state governments almost rallied because they knew that that was happening.
(13:22):
Obviously, it's going to be a you know a fun election year, and not to delve into politics, necessarily.
But how do you think, you know, the potential outcome of the next election could impact the, we know if these are happening, there's no question about that but how do you think it's going to affect the acceleration of it.
I don't think it'll affect it much, you know, even if Trump gets elected and you know some of the funding, federal funding that Biden's put out in front of the charging, you know goes away, hypothetically, I again I don't think it'll change it much I think, as you
(13:55):
mentioned, Chris, the states have some strong initiatives to push it regardless of what the federal government is doing. But even more importantly, market forces are driving people towards electrification.
I think a lot of people care about the planet they realize this is a major, major piece of decarbonizing our planet is to get transportation off fossil fuels.
(14:20):
But I also think the electric drivetrain is just so superior to the internal combustion engine you know for those of us that have been able to afford it and have enjoyed it, I mean you'll never go back.
It's just so much better. And I think as more and more people experience, you know, an electrified drivetrain and a modern electric vehicle.
(14:42):
The market is going to move towards electrification just because it's better.
So, I don't think any government policy, whether it's supportive or ignores EV charging is going to change things at this point in time.
The penetration is now far enough along, or enough people have experienced it enough for the vehicle OEMs are converting over the factories and have clearly made major commitments to it.
(15:06):
It may have some slowdowns and some bumps in the road like we saw late last year, but overall this is happening as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, I just actually a couple hours ago I recorded another podcast with an automotive performance retail agency, and I think like what we always, what we always agree on is that it acceleration could be impacted by a few different things.
(15:32):
And we agree it's going to happen.
But from our perspective, educating the dealers is a huge thing.
Big right you hear this complaint all the time.
You know you walk into again I'm going to oversimplify this but you know you hear the stories where someone walks into a dealer and, you know, looks at an EV on the lot and says how do I charge that, or how long does it take to charge it and the dealer says let me show you
(15:58):
an ice vehicle over here that he's, you know that that dealer at salespersons very familiar with selling so there's no question that that's got to happen.
And I know charge point has a strategy around dealerships and dealer groups and creating a strategy that drives more vehicle sales for sure, obviously, was involved with it at some point at a certain point in time.
(16:19):
Yeah, I'm really curious to see as it relates as it relates to education.
How quickly that happens because I think so many times to your point, somebody will purchase an electric vehicle, or just not doing it because person that's selling them the car might not be confident in that that lifestyle change and I think once that transition occurs
(16:41):
I don't think it's necessarily a car issue, quite as much as the market says.
Yeah, I think the other near term.
And when we're facing is just high interest rates and the fact that he these are generally more expensive than ice vehicles and you know now your car loan is a lot more expensive and because it's more expensive vehicle it's a bigger loan I think that's created some
Well, so, you know, I'm happy to see Tesla reducing their prices. I thought it was interesting to see BYD overtake Tesla's the world's number one.
(17:11):
EV manufacturer with clearly you know much lower cost vehicles than what we've seen from the traditional auto AMS that we're familiar with but I think all of this is putting the right pressure on the industry.
You know to drive costs down to make EVs more affordable more comparable to ice vehicles and I think that that learning curve is going to happen.
(17:33):
Yeah, there's no doubt about it from as an old time operations guy I know the more you build, the better you get and the lower your costs get so as they continue to ramp up production, leverage their fixed costs.
Learn how to drive the cost out of these vehicles that are going to continue to get more cost competitive for consumers. Yep, yep.
(17:56):
My next question for you is this you know with gas cars obviously the the calculations easier. It's, it's a it's a simpler.
I shouldn't say it's a simpler experience but everybody knows what the experience is for electric there are so many other components to it you have energy companies that are involved that are running the world you have the auto manufacturers you have
(18:17):
And in some way with like with government they have to in technology companies, they'll have to converge converge together to build the right experience for consumers that piques their interest and, and all those things so my question for you is related to utility
companies like you know Avon grid in the northeast and auto manufacturers like Mercedes that that you're working so closely with an oil companies like British Petroleum. What's the role they're going to play over the next 10 years.
(18:46):
And how does charge point work with them.
Great question. You're probably on one of the topics I've been thinking most deeply about since I've become CEO, and what it looks like to me, now that I've spent a lot of time I've spent time with customers before but I'm spending a lot more time with customers
Now, in the grand scheme of things, this.
(19:09):
The way I'm thinking about this is charging creates a new touch point between somebody and the driver, which almost by definition is a consumer.
They may be a consumer when they're not driving their fleet vehicle for work and intimacy with the customer with the consumer is so critical.
(19:32):
In this digital world of omni channel sales that watching all these constituents battle for that relationship for this new opportunity to create intimacy with the driver that's a consumer is fascinating.
You know I'm a F 150 lightning owner, and I used to own F 150 ice vehicle. I have an ongoing relationship for now through my for pass up I never had that before when I owned an ice vehicle.
(20:01):
So, is Rick going to have a relationship with forward, or is he going to have a relationship with the retail store that he shops at quite often that he has the loyalty app for that he can pay for charging through that loyalty app and now stays a little bit longer when
he's in the store because his vehicle is going to take time to charge, then maybe buys a little bit more stuff, or is it going to be the hotel chain.
(20:24):
If I'm a frequent you know road warrior.
So, watching this play out to see who is going to use charging to build a strong relationship and that's loyalty, and, you know, enhance brand identity with drivers slash consumers to me is a fascinating battle.
The advantage that we have in the market is we build the tech stack that allows these companies these constituencies, these institutions to do that, whether it's someone that wants people to come, you know, work at their, at their company, because they
(20:59):
or stay at their hotel or park at their parking garage or whatever the case may be. We've got the tech stack that allows these institutions to use charging to create deeper loyalty with their drivers and consumers.
Now who wins that who ends up being the dominant player that builds those relationships is going to be fascinating to watch play out.
(21:20):
It's interesting because obviously for gas cars like there were loyalty programs that existed but they weren't, I don't know if this is too strong a term but they weren't weaponized by software.
And I don't think the world has fully understood how to use charging software yet in order to do that I think everybody's trying to, they're feeling their way through it and obviously charge points looking to enable it.
(21:41):
And I think that's like one of the big changes we'll see in the next five years is a lot of creative solutions out there. Beyond just, you know, an auto manufacturer offering free charging for a period of time, or whatever the case may be like once it hits retail and other
locations, or creative can you get how integrated can you get and curious to see how that plays out.
Yeah, when you look at all the loyalty stuff that's out there today whether it's airline points or credit card points or hotel points that you could, the sophistication that has been built into those programs to build consumer loyalty, you can see all this coming our way, because this is just
(22:16):
another opportunity to build a relationship with that consumer you care about.
Absolutely, absolutely.
So you mentioned you're a Ford lightning customer so I wanted to transition over to the, the Ford next discussion and obviously it's not just a Ford discussion anymore.
You know when it happened.
(22:37):
I personally thought that the next transition would occur, it was kind of crazy to me because I always thought Tesla had such a competitive advantage, owning their fast charging network and keeping it proprietary and then the auto manufacturers data and the other side
and not wanting to give that away.
It sort of blew my mind that the industry went over the next even though I personally believe it is a better experience I don't know how you feel about that but for me, that didn't feel like just a plug decision it felt like something bigger was happening in the
(23:06):
industry, and I don't know exactly what that is but it feels bigger. I was curious to see what your take on it was. Well, I think that from a perspective of charge point to me this is kind of a non event.
In fact, I think it's good news because in my mind it's going to make more charges available to more drivers which is going to make more people comfortable buying EVs which is just going to drive demand for what we build.
(23:30):
If I, you know, go to Europe with my laptop I don't need to take a different laptop to plug into a wall outlet in Europe and work. It's a plug. It's a connector. Right, we have them on chargers all over our parking lot as we speak today we're shipping them today.
So, it's just another connector it doesn't define the charging station by any stretch of the imagination. I think it's a much bigger deal for the auto OEMs.
(23:55):
Not for us right for us it's again pretty simple to switch over to a different connector type, but for the auto OEMs you know to agree on one way to go and I think the majority of them if not all of them for North America have now agreed on NACs.
It's good. It's going to make everything simpler it's going to make all the cars interoperate with all the charging stations which again in the end makes just the charging network that's available to all the EV drivers bigger which is good.
(24:24):
And that's what I talked about before. So, now you've got all these Tesla sites available to these drivers that aren't driving Teslas.
Is that because Tesla wants a relationship with those drivers so that when they buy their next TV they're going to buy a Tesla.
Again, you're back to who's going to, who's going to leverage charging to build that relationship with the consumer.
(24:46):
Who's in it. Who wants it. Yep. Yeah, yeah.
It's interesting I, I think the auto manufacturers I'm really curious how it plays out for them, just because, and I get your position from a charge point perspective I think on, as it relates to the automotive landscape, it just seems like there's, there
(25:09):
were advantages and there were risks tied to data and, and selling cars that the industry was very willing to trade off.
And I didn't expect that and I, you know, I, it made me feel like I didn't understand something.
Yeah, well, like I said I think in general it's good that we've gone to one standard. And Max, I mean, you know you think it's a better experience that's fine. My Ford's got a CCS one connector it works fine.
(25:35):
Right. So, as long as we get to one, and everybody can access everything. That's I think the benefit of this battle tipping the next direction.
Yep. And, look, charge points been around forever. Well, forever in the charging industry.
But so much has happened over the past few years, everybody kind of sees the, you know, the dollar signs in this industry. It's growing so fast it's exciting everybody wants to be in it.
(26:05):
But it's caused so many different market entrants that your team's dealing with all the time and trying to figure out how to remain as competitive as possible and so I want to ask you in 2024.
What differentiates charge point from everybody else.
We have a full stack solution for all use cases because they all tie together. Right. You go to the, you know, Metro bus authority and sell pantographs for charging buses behind the fence overnight.
(26:39):
Well, and then all of a sudden, that city's got light duty to the service vehicles that they want to electrify that fleet but they drive all over the city and they're going to park and use level two charging when the technicians are doing their work.
So now you're going to put a bunch of level two charges around the city, all part of the same account. Now they want to make those charges available to the general public because the service vehicles are using them every day.
(27:02):
So now you need to be able to provide charging to, you know, general public.
Now they let the service vehicle some of the technicians take those vehicles at home at night because it's more efficient to start their route from home than it is from a central truck yard.
So now you've got a home charger and you need to integrate with the utility and reimburse that that technician for the money spent on electricity at home.
(27:25):
Right. So the fact that all these use cases ultimately tie together around a great driver experience. If you're jumping from one solution to another as you go from work to the hotel, to the stadium, you know, and it's, it's not the same ad app, it's not the same experience, I think it's going to really be tough on drivers.
(27:51):
So even though somebody may have a great point solution for a specific use case, the sum of the parts is greater than, you know, than the whole when it comes to providing a full stack solution that covers all use cases.
And, you know, I hesitate to go to hardware, because software is so important, but the element of hardware that I think, you know, when you have like a large enterprise customer, and they're looking at installing charging stations and maybe they have 30 different sites
(28:22):
with 30 different decision makers and you know the risk there is they end up having 10 different types of hardware six different types of software it's a total nightmare they're going to have to they're going to have to reinvest in the future.
The way the, your, your newer products level two in DC have been have been developed, have a lot of modularity tied to them a lot of similarities tied to them you want to talk about like how how those products were developed why they were developed that way,
(28:49):
and how it will benefit station owners.
I think modularity from the perspective of a station owner it really enables faster lower cost service.
Because if something goes down you don't have to take out the whole station you take out the module that is defective or was installed incorrectly and thus damaged.
For us, the advantage is operational right we have a common compute module for example that goes across a variety of different stations and use cases.
(29:20):
Now that's a common part number, we have inventory flexibility to use that on which stations are selling today.
Right so for us from an inventory standpoint from the number of different parts we need to build and manufacturing it simplifies our product line for us internally but again, the real benefit for the customers is service ability in the field.
The parts are less expensive, they're easier and faster to replace.
(29:45):
They're not, it's less expensive for inventory to be positioned in the field close to stations because you don't have to invest a ton of money in a very expensive complete charger inventory.
So that's really the benefit that it brings to the customer.
I'm really interested to see over the next few years I think it's sometimes it's hard to predict the future, you know, you go to 3G to 4G, you're going to switch cables like how can you possibly predict these things.
(30:11):
But I think one of the challenges that a lot of folks that are buying charging stations right now are, they're trying to figure out how do I make sure that my charging stations don't become obsolete.
And you know things like non replaceable cables are so common in the industry I think that, or, or, you know, how do you keep the uptime of your station, you know, in a fleet situation obviously in many cases if you have a fast driver it's because you need it.
(30:38):
You probably need it too.
Like what's the redundancy built into these stations is such a critical piece. Can you just speak to the redundancy that's been built in some of the charge for my products.
Yeah, I mean there's a there's a lot of redundancy built in, generally speaking and you know you're familiar with what we do before we put a product into production and put it into the market I mean we, the amount of money we've invested in.
(31:03):
Not only building in redundancy but then testing it to make sure that it actually works that all the failovers work that it survives in.
You know, the coldest temperature you could experience in Minneapolis and the hottest temperature you could experience in Phoenix and it does that for 10 years in a dust storm or being pelted by rain or snow.
We do all that internally.
(31:26):
And that is what again back to the cornerstone of reliability.
That is one of the keys is building a highly reliable highly durable product. The analogy I use is imagine buying two new iPhones and taking one to Minneapolis and throwing it on the street and then take your other one to Phoenix and leave it on the street then come back 10 years later and see if they still work.
(31:49):
Yeah, that's what we're trying to do. It's a hard technical challenge, no doubt, but I think we're the leader in the market because of the time, the brilliance of our engineering work and the facilities that we've put in place to actually do these tests.
Yep, absolutely.
So, I will disclosure, people are listening this probably know this but I worked at ChargePoint I left ChargePoint I left ChargePoint to start my own company. And the premise, Rick was that EV charging in general is oversimplified.
(32:23):
So many components, I think, many times it's it's very, it's treated as a transaction it's treated as commoditized, but it's much more confusing and complex in so many different ways somebody installs a charger, their electric bill goes up by 10,000 $10,000 a month, they think they have an energy efficiency problem.
It can affect your reputation. If you install something, and the community has opinions, and how it performs is a factor and then does it actually solve the problem for you and is it the most efficient way to do the thing that you were trying to do all those different
(33:01):
things. And so, I was hoping you could talk about all the things outside of what makes ChargePoint revenue, and how you try and provide those solutions to your end users.
There's so much to it and again it's all software, right. And it's again tied back to having a driver.
(33:23):
Starting with a driver centric approach, where if you know Chris you're an EV driver I'm an EV driver whoever's an EV driver if I'm going to go from place to place to place to work to home to the hotel to the mall to the parking garage.
That's a seamless experience that I can rely on.
Right, so starting with that driver and making sure that experience is awesome is the foundational piece that everything we do is based on that.
(33:52):
And that's everything from ease of use to making sure that you can find use and pay for charging conveniently that it's as simple as possible.
That is just the core from which we build everything.
And let me amend my question a little bit. How do you make the station owner experience awesome.
Yeah, so I think there, you need to understand what the station owners trying to accomplish with EV charging.
(34:16):
Right, so again I think if it's commercial, you know, and all those subcategories I've rattled off have been many more that I haven't even mentioned.
Right, they're typically trying to get people to come to their place and stay there.
Right, whether it's an employee a shopper, whatever the case may be they want them to come there.
And there you want, you want to be able to allow that to happen and then as some of the leading edge retailers that are dealing with drivers that are consumers.
(34:46):
You want to now start to build technology that allows them to use that touch point to build a stronger relationship with that consumer.
Workplace is slightly different than that. I mean, again, you want to have enough charging there that works reliably, you know, to attract the kind of people to come work for you that you want to come work for you even charge point today with all the chargers in our parking lot.
(35:07):
I'm getting complaints that we don't have enough.
You show up after 830 on a come to work day and it's not easy to find a charger, even here with as many as we have in our parking lot.
So then I think in the in the fleet use case, right, they, you get into the mission critical use cases which is if that vehicle doesn't go when it's supposed to go it materially impacts their business whether they're delivering goods or people.
(35:36):
Their reliability is paramount, you have to charge that vehicle so it can do its route when it's supposed to do its route.
You know quickly followed by cost, right, how do I minimize the cost of the chargers, the construction, the make ready, and then obviously the ongoing use of energy. After that, all that comes into the equation.
(35:58):
That was, you know, my experience.
You know when I when I worked at charge point, and my experience now and I think it will continue to be this way for a while is the operational cost element of charging in for fleets for sure for fleets, it's a really big deal.
The, the way that the utility charges station owners, and I'm not, I'm not saying the utility doing anything wrong. It's just kind of the way that things work and there's where there's a problem there's a solution.
(36:27):
And that is generally I think like the most misunderstood element of charging that I see when I talk to station owners, where, you know, and sometimes the focus on cost is focused on the cost of a product, a service, and an installation and that's, I don't know, I would estimate 40% of their
five year total cost of ownership and it's just so critical to help customers understand that that piece of it as well.
(36:54):
Exactly, exactly. If you shop for the cheapest charger that you think meets your use case, you are not thinking about this right.
Yeah, yeah, there's other ways to make up costs and have a better experience. Yeah, you know, maybe there's a one off situation but in general, you know,
it's just, it's important to important to work with a quality product and a quality partner.
(37:21):
So, you know, you kind of already you already talked about a lot of this already but just to harp on it again like we hear about it in the news. There's articles about it.
There was an article that came out on elect I love electric I think they do a really good job kind of reporting on the news and the EV industry and they can, they reported on s&p global mobility who came out with a stat, it was that 50% of non Tesla
(37:48):
drivers are looking to either return their electric car, or they're looking to get their secondary car as a gas car, and private primarily it's due to, you know, station, station issues or actually it's really driver experience to your point.
It'd be all about the driver and so you know you've heard you shouldn't say harps but you've spoken a lot about about the driver experience and making sure that stations are up and running and all of those things would you consider that your number one focus in 2024 or is there anything
(38:24):
else that that rivals that topic.
With respect to everything we do that you know our customers enjoy. That is a huge priority and again I touched on, you know, the key things we're working on there continue to build very durable reliable hardware.
I'm big focus on training electricians and technicians going into next year, along with continuing to enhance that network operation center all that together will continue to drive up network reliability network uptime.
(38:56):
There's also a lot of work to do on just ease of use.
Right, we track a metric, you know called zero energy sessions where a driver goes to a station that's working and they still can't charge their vehicle.
And a lot of times it's just due to drivers not knowing how to do things what sequence in which to do things which is in my opinion, perhaps shame on us.
(39:17):
We need to make this an easier more intuitive thing for a driver to do if they're paying with a card or their phone or, or their, or their digital wallet or whatever the case may be we want to make sure that it's easy for them to do that and it's intuitive
so I think there's innovation to be had in that area as well. Yeah, yeah. And what's the, do you think what's the role ISO 15118. Do you think that will be widely adopted do you think they'll be used commonly what's the future that look like.
(39:45):
I sure hope so because it's an awesome experience when it works the way it's supposed to for anyone who listens to this podcast who happens to be in the Atlanta area.
Go visit the Mercedes fast charge site at their headquarters in Sandy Springs.
That is the penultimate charging experience from a driver perspective as far as I'm concerned it is what they did is amazing. I am so impressed with the ability to reserve a port to know which port that is when you pull into that place to be able to pull right up, plug in your
(40:21):
nothing you just play it's easier than filling up your car with gas. I mean it is a phenomenal experience. And if you're a Tesla driver, you know that you can just kind of plug in your car and the sessions initiated and so that's what ISO 15118 will assist with it'll allow the
the station to connect with the vehicle and automatically start the session as opposed to you know you're talking about ease of ease of charging where with a lot of other charging stations you have to initiate the station yourself and if you don't get educated from the dealer and how to do that.
(40:50):
It can be a little bit of a pain in the butt. Yeah, if you don't do it in the right sequence if you pay before you plug or plug before you pay or whatever you know you can end up not charging your car and it can be very frustrating.
Yep, yep. Well, my last question for you a little bit of optimism for everybody I generally tend to be an optimistic person.
What are you most excited about this year, it can be EV it can be anything.
(41:15):
Just to see this industry continue to evolve and grow.
I mean it's going to change there's things that are going to happen that none of us can anticipate at this moment and, you know, when that happens how we react to it or take advantage of it is going to determine you know who wins and loses but, you know, I've been
tech for my entire career and back in the early days I was part of, you know, NASA and industries like this when there were, you know, 80 competitors all trying to do something similar.
(41:46):
And, you know, 30 years later there's three, you know, and we're in those early innings we're watching, you know, different ideas succeed others fail companies run out of money companies go out of business companies getting bought so just being part of this, this exciting
nascent development of this market watching everything change and come together and some things not work. It's just exciting, just being part of it is exciting.
(42:13):
I always tell customers being of most conversations kind of in a joking way but in a very honest way is like, it is the Wild West right now.
In this industry it's it's a little bit chaotic everywhere. And, you know, some people don't like that I personally do.
No, I mean it's, you know, it's on us to help, you know, get that chaos mitigated but I think there's early adopters that enjoy that and then you get to the majority of the mainstream market they probably don't really enjoy that very much so it's up to us in this
(42:45):
industry to move through that early adopter chaotic phase and get things standardized and stabilized and easy to use.
So, everyone out there continues to get comfortable with electric electrified drive trains, and we decarbonize this planet, because that mission is really important.
Amen. Well, Rick, appreciate the time and talking about all these different things and I'm sure we'll be in touch again soon.
(43:14):
Yeah, it was great to see you, Chris. Congratulations on your new company and good luck with all that and I am sure we'll talk again soon.
Yes, thank you so much.
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