As EV adoption scales, the conversation around EV charging infrastructure is evolving from 'are there enough chargers?', to commercial readiness, operating costs, energy management and long-term market confidence. This episode of Talk Auto explores what the next phase of EV charging means for the automotive market. From the role of smart charging, vehicle-to-grid technology and future partnerships between automotive, energy and charging providers.
In this episode of Talk Auto, we discuss:
Guests:
00:29 Holly Mottram
Hello, and welcome to the Talk Auto podcast, where every month we welcome industry experts on to the podcast to talk about all things automotive. Now, in this month's episode, we have a topic which I find particularly interesting. We're gonna be talking about how conversations around charging is changing from purely infrastructure-based to a wider rollout and an energy opportunity.
00:55 Holly Mottram
And as ever, I'm joined by two fantastic guests. So I'm delighted to welcome Sam Clarke, head of EHGV at GRIDSERVE and also part of the EV Café, and Olga Spence, strategy manager at Cox Automotive Europe. How are you both? Excited to be on the podcast today. Interesting topic for us. Yeah, fantastic. Well, just before we dive in, do you want to just give us a really quick overview of your time in automotive, why you're on the podcast today? Sam, I you've been in EVs for very long time. So do want to start us off?
01:21 Sam Clarke
Yeah, sure. I mean, I'll try and keep this short then. Yeah, EV driver for 23 years, I think. Used to own my own logistics company in central London for 10 years with a fully electric fleet. And then the last decade or so, I've been working at GRIDSERVE building out public charging infrastructure. So I've been involved in all walks of EV life from two wheels all the way through to trucks now. And for my sins, I've got four Guinness World Records for EV driving as well. So yeah, done quite a lot in the industry.
01:53 Olga Spence
Eight years in the automotive, all of them with Cox Automotive, part of the European strategy team. And in my role, I help our business and our customers navigate the change. And you can't think of a bigger change in the automotive right now than electrification. So really excited to dive into this topic.
02:13 Holly Mottram
I mean, if there's one thing that characterises the industry at the moment is change, isn't it? Especially when we're talking about electrification and especially when we're talking about charging infrastructure and what that means for a wider commercial and consumer conversation. So the reason I say this is the topic which really interests me is because we had Nick Thomas from Changan on episode two and he mentioned vehicle-to-grid charging, which just piqued my interest. So when this topic came up, I was very excited to talk about it, but I guess just to set the context, we are currently looking at, I think it's 120,000 chargers in the UK, with a target in 2030 of 300,000. So, you know, we're quite a long way off that at the moment. We've got quite a big shortfall to make up. But in saying that, the industry's kind of rallied together, haven't they? And they've really accepted and embraced this need for charging infrastructure. So Sam, as you say, you've been in the industry for a long time, and especially in EVs, which is rare for, as you say, 23 years, was it?
So, you know, given your experience, what do you view as the current state of charging infrastructure in the UK right now?
03:19 Sam Clarke
Well, it's definitely growing and I think that the numbers you mentioned, at beginning, there are 120,000 chargers today. You know, it's a really, really commendable number given that five years ago it was 25,000 chargers. So we've come a long, long way in a short period of time. And the high-powered stuff was a few thousand five years ago and now it's 25,000, I think, high-powered chargers across the UK. So I'm less fixated on that 300,000 number myself. I think that it's very evident that we're moving at a pace.
and I'm more concerned about the right chargers, right place, right time than the actual end number. So I think what's really important is that we can see that growth not necessarily be transfixed on trying to hit what might not be the right number at the end of the day anyway. It might be that 200,000 chargers is enough, providing they're placed in appropriate hubs around the country to support all the different types of vehicle use.
04:09 Holly Mottram
Yeah, that's a really good point actually that it's location based as much as it is numbers based, you know I was interested to hear actually there's loads of chargers in Scotland Actually, isn't there like a really good network in Scotland, which I was surprised at but I guess you're driving much longer distances over there Aren't you so you need those kind of those charging networks? But yeah, absolutely It's definitely based on location and I guess given this progress that you're talking about of you know, even in the past few years It's growing by about a hundred thousand chargers
I there's been a bit of a discussion in the industry about what that means in terms of wider infrastructure and what that means in terms of developing that charging infrastructure and is it about moving it or kind of embracing the commercial aspect as well as the consumer aspect? You know, what do you think about that? Do you agree that that's the direction that we should be going in? Olga?
04:56 Olga Spence
Absolutely. I completely agree with some point. It's all about the right chargers at the right time, in the right place. And for commercial vehicles, it's even more important because it's all about uptime in the van world, in the fleet world. It's all about not spending too much time charging the vehicle. So when we're talking about rapid and ultra-rapid chargers that currently around 23% of the...
of the all charge points that we've got in the UK. It's not, back to some points, it's not necessarily about the numbers because when you look at the density in the urban areas and London, for example, it's very dense. There's a lot of chargers, but if you go more into the rural areas, Northern Ireland is a good example, not as many. So if we look at the overall picture, the progress is massive, but it's a lot more to do in the areas when the density is not that high.
05:58 Holly Mottram
And so I guess from a, you know, making it commercial perspective, what do you think? Do you think discussions are going towards or the industry is going towards, you know, having a really big network of commercial-use chargers or less?
06:12 Sam Clarke
No, absolutely it has to. I mean, I had a little look on the numbers last night, around 42 million vehicles on the roads in the UK, about five and a half million of those are vans and trucks. So as a proportion, it's reasonably small from a vehicle count. But emissions wise, that's nearly 40% of all emissions. So 13% of the total, but 40% of the emissions. So it's very evident that that is a sector that whilst it might be one of the smaller proportions, it has a huge impact which needs to be resolved and therefore the smaller vans and the bigger vans and the trucks that we're putting into the road now as electrified options are really, really important because that's going to make a really material difference to the overall emissions targets. So yeah, it has to be part of the mix and it affects us all, right? That's one thing I'm always telling people is that we're all getting packages delivered every day at our door sets. How does it get there?
They start somewhere in a depot with a lorry and then probably another truck and then a smaller van that delivers it to your door. All that stuff needs to be electrified because we're all contributing to that, the movement of freight around the UK. So if we can do that, but do it emission free, then we're winning. So it's an incredibly important part of the mix.
07:24 Olga Spence
And we won't achieve decarbonisation targets without these commercial vans. Cars, vans, trucks. Back to a very good point, the 5 million vans on the road, 85% of the new vans sales are diesel sales still. And we are way behind the ZEV mandate targets for vans, for example. So if we refer back to the numbers in 2024 percentage of new vans sales were expected to be when the ZEV mandate got introduced 10%. It went from 5.5% in 2023 to 5.8. So, hardly moved and it's still year to date, 2026 with 24% percentage of green vans to be as a percentage of the new vans sales. We're still under 10%.
So year to date it's 9.5%. So we're far behind the targets and the situation is completely different. I know we're behind in terms of the cars, but in terms of the vans, we're further behind. So it's definitely something that needs to be addressed.
08:34 Holly Mottram
Absolutely, and it's that commercial space where we're really going to see the change, isn't it? Whether it's getting a package delivered or it's transportation or whatever it might be. From a fleet perspective as well, electrifying that and what that means for the charging network will be really interesting. Now, Sam, in your experience and with what you're doing now in the industry, how do you think that the industry is looking to address the challenge of commercialising EV charging and addressing that fleet issue as well?
09:07 Sam Clarke
I think the general market recognises the need to do this and in fact it's a differentiator for winning business now so everyone recognises that they need to electrify where they can. It's not always easy.
But the analysis we've done for many years in many different projects demonstrates that almost all fleets have an ability to electrify a proportion. That might just be 10% to begin with, but it's a start. And with that start is how you learn. And then you can start to push it further. Which is what we're doing with the eHGV traffic as well at the moment. We've seen my project that I've been running for two, three years now, we've put 161 44-tonne eHGV trucks on the road. That's quite a large proportion of the total in the UK right now.
But what's really interesting is the data that it's showing. And what it's showing is that there's a definite and understandable conservative approach to using these vehicles. But then over time, the mileage is keep creeping up. So people are gathering confidence in this new technology and then starting to push the trucks further. And all of that data, I think, is really valuable because then it helps to showcase or show the rest of the industry that it can be done. And as I said, it will become a differentiator to winning business.
So it's gonna be really, really important that people make this step. It's not easy. There's a lot of complexity to it. It's not just about the vehicle anymore. You might be lucky enough to have bunkered fuel at your depot or you go to the local garage to refuel with diesel. Now these industries are needing to relearn. I was at a Logistics UK conference last year, last week, sorry, speaking for the first time in a few years. And I got there in the morning and all the conversation at Logistics UK event was about AI, data, charging infrastructure, eHGVs, grid connections. None of those things were discussion points four or five years ago. None of them. So the whole industry needs to change and needs to learn all these different affiliated markets in order to progress.
11:01 Holly Mottram
Absolutely. And I think, you know, the fact that even those topics being mentioned, well, of course they're being mentioned actually every conference I've gone to about automotive in the past, even I think two years, probably a lot of those have been brought up, but hopefully is indicative of that change. Now, I guess from a consumer point of view, having those commercial chargers in place now, fleets is one thing obviously, but whether it's, you know, businesses that are putting charging facilities in their car parks for customers, for employees, et cetera.
With this shift, do you think that can aid EV adoption? And I think that's probably accessibility of the chargers. You go to work every day. I can speak from actual experience, actually. I said on the podcast a few months ago that I was debating getting an EV, and I had it with Sarah, actually, Sarah Sloteman. And I don't live in a house with a driveway. There were certain barriers to adoption, and my company have installed chargers, and that's where I charge.
I could access that five days a week. I can just have it on charge, it's slow charger. It's relatively, well, it's very accessible. It's relatively cheap, not quite as cheap as home charging, mind you, but I think from a consumer point of view, it's probably, well, I think it should be driving that adoption. What about you, Olga?
12:17 Olga Spence
It adds to the total number of chargers, but if we come back to the fleet operators, some of the drivers of these vans, because when not necessarily got the driveway in, it's not necessarily that the van will go back to the depot to charge overnight. An ideal case scenario, it might be the case, but it might not be enough capacity in that depot for the driver to drop that van off overnight to charge. So that causes issues as well.
So when we talk about commercial charging infrastructure and fleet operators, they do operate cars, they do operate vans. HGVs is a bit different stories, but they're using the same infrastructure that consumers do. So it would help, but going back to fleet operators, they need predictability. They need really to understand the cost of that charger to plan the business, they run the business and that's the biggest difference. If you look at the underlying challenges and questions that fleet operators ask about the whole transition to the EV, they are similar. You need to source the van or the vehicle, you need to charge the vehicle, maintain the vehicle. It's just the friction amplifies when it exists right now. So they feel this friction points much more than consumers do.
So, yeah, it will help and we need to invest more in the alternative charging infrastructure. If depot charging is slow, complicated, expensive as well.
13:59 Holly Mottram
And from your perspective Sam, I mean I guess from a consumer point of view do you think that this commercial angle will be useful for EV adoption?
14:08 Sam Clarke
It has to be. An easy phrase to say is there's no silver bullet, but it's true. If we can apply the right infrastructure, again, the right place, right time, whether that be at your place of work or more high-powered hubs where they need to be and get all of this spread across, it's just going to help everybody. I've been working on the eHGV for a few years, but it's actually commercial charging is the way that I see it, because that's an opportunity to put quite a few different types of vehicle, the vans that Olga speaks of and the and things that being towed and other stuff, how do we get as many things charging in as many appropriate places as possible? So the big numbers is all well and good, but it's underneath that. We're trying to work out if we've put the right application in the right place for everyone, for as many people as possible to be able to use it. And it is a challenge that I think is about half of the general public don't have access to a driveway. And there is a differentiation or a disparity between home charging and your workplace charging.
and the public domain. So we've got to find a way of bridging that gap a bit because those that are not privileged enough to have a driveway have the joy of higher prices as a result because they're having to use the more expensive infrastructure. So we've got to find a way of bridging that gap somehow. And certainly neutralising VAT would be one good way of doing that. So 5% at home, but you pay 20% if you're charging a public site those sort of disparities and trying to level that would be a huge help.
15:37 Holly Mottram
Absolutely, I think I found it very, a lot easier as an EV driver who doesn't have a driveway to have those chargers at work. And I actually don't really charge anywhere else unless I'm going on a long journey, ever. I access to that charger five days a week and yeah, it's brilliant. So yeah, I'm a very big proponent of it.
15:55 Olga Spence
But that's the big difference between consumer use of vehicles and fleet use of vehicles because they vehicles, fleet operators sweat the assets. If the wheels are not turning, the vehicles are not earning. So it's all about making the most of the vehicles. So that's why the rapid chargers and the charging overnight is so beneficial for fleet operators because if vehicle is not on the road, if the driver is not on the road.
You know, it's a massive, massive losses for the fleet operators. They use their vehicles a lot. That's why they need the predictability and electrification fleet electrification is already happening. As Sam mentioned, there's a certain percentage of it's not the question anymore whether to electrify your fleet, but how to overcome the obstacles, how and when. Some fleet operators see a lot of benefits because of their operating models. For example, if it's delivery truck that operate in the specific area, they know their delivery drop-offs, they can plan the route, it really works for them. And if the range is right, they can plan around charging their delivery trucks overnight in the depot hub.
The question is, they have, as the fleet grows, as the scale, do they have enough capacity? Do they have enough infrastructure at their depots?
to charge those trucks and that's a big issue that the industry facing right now and that's what's been understood and government is listening and we've seen the recent measures put in place to address some of these issues which is good sign.
17:42 Holly Mottram
Absolutely. I guess, Sam, it's a lot more in your world, this, isn't it? Kind of the fleet and the eHGV side of it as well. Now, obviously, we know that there's some consideration of different fuel types for eHGVs. I know they're a little bit different. But focusing on electric, kind of where does this discussion lead for that industry?
18:01 Sam Clarke
Where does it lead? Hopefully it leads to the majority of trucks being electrified in the UK by 2040. We've just got to find the right mechanisms by which to do that. The project I've been running now for three years is a is a mechanism, Innovate UK funded mechanism to help be a catalyst for change in that particular market that otherwise probably wouldn't have had the stimulus to get going. So the government in fairness has put some reasonable amount of money behind trying to help with that total cost of ownership modelling for the initial fleets that willing to make that commitment. So that they're by and large on cost parity on a running total cost of ownership model to the diesel counterparts, which takes away one of the commercial financial worries or headaches of taking that leap. And as I said before, my hope is that 160 vehicles odd from us, about 1,000 eHGVs in the UK, that's just less than a percent of the total rates. It's tiny.
19:00 Olga Spence
I generate 18 to 20 percent of all the road side emissions.
19:04 Sam Clarke
Yes. So if those first thousand vehicles can help showcase what the other 599,000 need to do then we're on the journey of starting somewhere. And that's, with a lot of these things, just got to get going. And I was thinking back to what Olga was saying a minute ago, my logistics company I used to own, I had 120 electric vans in central London and they were all charged on three pin plugs on the walls of my arches in central London. I had nowhere near enough power to charge all the vehicles every day. But we just got clever with clock timers on the walls and balanced it all out and it was the dumbest smart charging solution ever known. But it worked and that's the evolution and I'm not suggesting everyone goes and plugs into three pin sockets on the wall anymore. That era is gone. But the principle of being smart about what you do with your energy and smart with the way you operate your vehicles will be a difference to what's today in the diesel world. But it works. It will work. You just got to just think outside the box a little bit.
So all these initiatives and all these directives and fiscal incentives, I'm confident will make a difference in the long term. It will help push people along on this journey and then more people join as we go.
20:14 Holly Mottram
Yeah, absolutely. Now, when we talk about this kind of these commercial chargers, are there any examples of companies that you can think that have been doing it really well recently, like electrified fleets or anything that you think is a really good example of this shift?
20:31 Olga Spence
Ikea is a good one. I think the global fleet, 60% are electrified and they invested millions into their charging infrastructure, including in the UK as well. A lot of businesses got decarbonisation targets. They're quite ambitious and they do see the value of these vehicles. They do see the economics working for them. But because of the recent challenges, it's still more expensive, upfront costs are still more expensive because total cost of ownership, insurance, all other challenges are stopping them. It's not just infrastructure. Infrastructure is the common theme that we hear from the fleet operators is still one of the biggest constraints. But there are other constraints, for example, the accessibility of the vehicles. For fleet operators, they know how many miles they do a day. They know what the vehicle needs to be doing. And if its performance less than the diesel or petrol alternative is just not good enough. So the availability of cars, we've got about 160 different EVs on the market. With vans, for example, more than half of them got plugs in it. But for some fleets like utilities, local authority, the specific kind of vehicles that they use. So not every manufacturer can provide to them that type of vehicle. So that's a massive constraint.
We hear a lot of 4x4 heavy duty trucks, for example, in green version, not available and fleet operators working directly with the manufacturers. Unless there is a pipeline of the orders, manufacturers are not necessarily going to jump on it and create a vehicle specifically for those needs. There's a lot of obstacles right now to scaling. So a lot of them companies, they're trialing, especially e-HGVs, like Amazon. In the recent news, all of those 160 of those trucks. And it's interesting that you mentioned 160 because overall, I think it's less than 600 HGVs registered in the year in the UK. So it's a massive proportion. If you look at the year to year growth, it's like 170%. But actually, it's just a very small amount. It's really in its infancy.
22:54 Olga Spence
Exciting, it's going to make a massive difference. But we are, if you compare where we are with the cars and where we are with the trucks, it's a completely different stage of life of the adoption of this vehicle. It's almost you can do the parallel with the first adopters of the electric cars, the same of the fleets who adopted electric vans. A lot of them are almost like that. They're excited about making the difference in terms of the green energy, heating decarbonisation standards early, but they also got
facilities and money to invest into those, so they spend millions. It's not as accessible to smaller fleet operators, for example. As Sam mentioned, his example, I've got, I've spoken recently to a driver for electrical, local electrical wholesale distributor. And I was asking him, how many vans you've got in your company? And he was saying two. But it's plugged in.
two plugged in and we've got like 40 diesel vans. And so that's the reality. They're just only starting and ramping up and they see all these obstacles and they're figuring out, like Sam mentioned, kind of trying clever, being smart, trying not to spend millions when they can't afford it because they're the businesses. It needs to work for them in terms of their economics as well.
24:15 Sam Clarke
Yeah, I think one good example I can give you Holly is from Nissan. So we put some chargers in the factory, right smack bang in the middle of the factory in one of their plots up in Sunderland. And that's being used by not by them, but by three of their contractors. So one of them is moving actual vehicles around. The other one is moving parts locally and the other one is moving parts nationally. So there's three contractors within that plant that are using eHGVs and the charging infrastructure on a daily basis and just showing that it can be done both locally.
moving awkward things like vehicles and then also doing the long distance up and down the country. So, and the project's got a good few examples of that. United Utilities, a waste company, so that's moving a lot of waste, it's heavy, it's wet, it's difficult, but they're managing it, they're doing it, they're making it happen. And Royal Mail and Amazon Olga mentioned, et cetera, we've got all of those in our consortium all doing different things but with the same technology, which I think is encouraging to see that it's not niche in that respect. These vehicles can be applied in a multitude of different ways.
25:18 Holly Mottram
Yeah, we're definitely getting there with proving that it works And I think that's probably as you say from a consumer perspective for the cars. We've got that We know it works But now we need to move that to the commercial and the eHGV space which you are doing so we're guessing there with it Now Sam earlier you mentioned smart charging. and it's something that I want to touch on which is you know Smart charging and vehicle-to-grid charging as well just before we dive into those all good you want to just
Quickly give us an overview of both of those terms just for those who may not be familiar.
25:52 Olga Spence
Of course, so vehicle-to-grid, it's an exciting technology that allows electric vehicles not just charge from the grid, but also feed the energy already stored in the battery of the car back into the grid. So pretty much turning your EV into mobile battery. So first question, why would the grid need the energy from your EV? First of all, the grid is becoming increasingly renewable.
And with a fuel plant, you can turn it on, turn it off, almost manage the supply based on the demand. As we've got increasingly renewable energy, you know, the wind blows and then the wind doesn't blow, shining and then it doesn't. So we need to tweak the demand in order to support the supply. So you pretty much...
use the energy stored in your electric vehicle battery to support the grid. So you take some risks with that, as you can imagine, but then you get the rewards from it as well. So either you can get discounts on the energy that you feed into your EV or you can get money back. So that's the whole point of it. So it's quite early. It's not science fiction. It's already used, it's already implemented in the UK, but more...
like a couple of thousand people doing it right now. The big obstacle to that is compatibility. Is your car got the technical capabilities to do that? And if you go on Octopus website, I think there's only three models listed there right now, which is Nissan Leaf, who actually pioneered this technology in terms of the commercial adoption back quite a few years ago. Then you've got Mitsubishi Outlander, actually.
And another one I don't remember which one.
27:48 Holly Mottram
Racking our brains.
27:51 Olga Spence
Just three models right now. So that's a big barrier, that's a big limitation, but the idea is great. Yeah, yeah. We've got two million of electric vehicles on the road. We can turn them into batteries and that can support the grid, not just with balancing the grid, but also putting less copper on the ground. Also, grid would not have to, in theory, have that many stationary batteries, grid-level batteries.
as well. So it's something that we're actually, as a country, pioneering. There's something that's been tested in Europe, in Norway, smart charging. Smart charging is something different, and not to confuse two things, smart charging is when you plug in and benefit with cheaper rates when it's aligned with the grid. So for example, right now, a lot of people
plug in off peak at one o'clock in the morning and get the cheap energy because everybody else is sleeping and between four and eight o'clock that's where the peak is. Again as the energy becoming more renewable this peaks is going to vary quite significantly so if you've got the ability to plug in your car for 12 hours or less then you can really benefit from smart charging and in the future vehicle-to-grid is something that if we're able to scale it
is something to be a game-changing to the whole grid infrastructure.
29:23 Sam Clarke
I'll give a couple of real-world examples of it. So on the commercial side, about how long, it's going to be longer than I dare to think, but seven or eight years ago now when I ran my logistics company, I had seven vehicle-to-grid chargers in the depot, the biggest network in the country at the time, and that was a Nissan e-NV200 van, so the equivalent of the Leaf, but van version. So vehicle-to-grid is one thing, but vehicle-to-X is the sort of phraseology which covers...
29:25 Holly Mottram
Always, please.
29:49 Sam Clarke
anything from the vehicle and energy back somewhere. So in my case, it was vehicle-to-building, vehicle-to-building. So those vans were powering the building every night, but also charging back up again, using smart technology in of the timing. So they were ready to go the next morning. So we powered the building off the vans every night and still charged them before the next duty cycle in the morning. And that, again, was many, many years ago now, but it was working and just demonstrates that.
that it can be done and then on a personal level I have a Nissan Leaf, it's plugged in at home right now and it's powering my house. So that Leaf powers my house all day long, covers all of my electricity needs and then recharges itself in the middle of the night as Olga mentioned. So I have a peak and off-peak tariff but I only ever consume off-peak energy 24 hours a day because the car is doing all the heavy lifting. Whenever I turn the kettle on or anything like that the Leaf is what kicks in and becomes a mobile battery and a vehicle.
And if we're all doing that sort of stuff in the future, that's going to make a tremendous difference to our energy needs, our energy mapping. And so it's exciting technology, which is not something in the future, because I did it commercially many years ago and my house is powered by Nissan Leaf as I'm speaking to you right now. So this stuff is real world. But there are a lot of vehicles on the AC side rather than DC side of the electrics that are coming through now.
the vehicle-to-grid technology in that space will become a lot more prevalent over the next few years with more and more manufacturers including it within the construct of the vehicle.
31:20 Holly Mottram
Yeah, absolutely. I was actually explaining vehicle-to-X to somebody recently and they said, surely that won't, that won't, that's not got enough electricity to power a house. That's why I was thinking. And so I did some Googling, more than enough, isn't it?
31:30 Olga Spence
Several days, isn't it? Yeah.
31:35 Sam Clarke
Yeah.
31:36 Holly Mottram
So, I mean, very accessible and not, as you say, not futuristic at all. It's happening now, isn't it? And, you know, we touched on, well, you gave a fantastic example of your previous business and how smart charging has benefited you there. But I guess for wider businesses, drivers and fleets, how do you think smart charging will benefit those people?
32:01 Sam Clarke
I think one of the key things is that one of the challenges in the industry is always grid capability whether that be putting big public sites like GRIDSERVE does and into the ground across the country or at depot level one of the constraints is the grid.
whether you have it, whether it's available, how far away it might be to reach, what it might cost, and the timeframe by which you can do it. And these are all additional costs to running your own business. So that's one of the constraints that is very evident in the marketplace. However, being intelligent in the way that you manage your energy means that those concerns might be mitigated a little bit by the smartness of the technology which enables more people.
whether that be a vehicle with a good charger at home or a depot like mine that had 50, 60 vehicles in each one of the sheds, being smart with the energy means that those grid constraints would be less. So I think it's really important.
that all of these elements are part of the collective because that means that people don't need to be quite so horrified about potential high cost of grid connections and grid infrastructure if the smart ways have been able to mitigate that. And we had, in my depot for example, we had lifts and shutter doors. Now they were big things that needed power but only for very short periods of time. So if you look at the maths in a sort of linear fashion then we couldn't have any vehicle charging because we need to park that energy for the lift to go up and down.
But if you get smart about it, then every time the lift went up, the charging momentarily dipped on the vehicles. So the lift could function and then when it was done, the charging went back up again. So that meant that we didn't need anywhere near as much of a grid connection by just being smart with the way in which we use the energy. So if more of that is developed, we'll be all right.
33:47 Olga Spence
I agree with that, but I was thinking it adds so much more complexity as well. And with the technology, with the smart technology that supports the smart charging, the future is definitely using the technology to help you utilise the smart charging to reduce your costs as a fleet operator. Because if you look at the fleet operators, what was before electrification?
you just pay at the pump for fuel. You know, your fuel cost, you know, your mileage fuel cost is quite predictable. Of course, there's macroeconomic conditions that you can go down, go up and down, but now it's a challenge, but it's also a massive opportunity for fleets as well, because you can significantly not just become greener and hit your decarbonisation targets, which are very important, but you can also significantly decrease your costs and economics would work in your favour and decrease your reliance on fossil fuels as well that currently fluctuate a lot because of the macroeconomic conditions.
34:52 Holly Mottram
Exactly, the pricing at the moment is, you know, a lot of people struggling with it, whether that be fleet operators or consumers, drivers in general. So I think, yeah, it's a really interesting way to kind of explore what the options are for the future. Now, going back to EV adoption, we've discussed, you know, how expanding the charging infrastructure, having commercial chargers, etc. might help that. How do you think that this will kind of help the EV industry as a whole. So whether that be a consumer, fleet, business, or everything, how do you think that's going to affect? And how are these advancements in charging going to the automotive industry and EV industry?
35:41 Sam Clarke
That's a broad question. I think on the one hand it's interesting that this market is still nascent and there are a lot of players in it from different walks of life, whether it be Cox Automotive or a utility company or an OEM, that we're all moving into this electrification space from different angles. I think what's quite interesting is how it all settles down over time because there are so many different elements to the marketplace now that we've discussed already. And I think there's a huge amount of learning we can get out of that. And it's going to evolve. It's going to keep evolving. All the technology we've talked about today, I think it's all pretty exciting stuff. And it will ultimately just help everybody advance more quickly once we share all of this learning across a wider mix. But it's interesting to me that some different industries are coming in to this sort of new space, really, with new ideas. So I think we'll see quite a lot of change over the next few years as a result of that.
36:40 Olga Spence
I completely agree and it becomes such an integral part of all automotive businesses as we transition fleets to electrified fleet. It's probably not something that fleet managers would think about back 15-20 years ago, but now it's a real part of their life, knowing where to routing and planning around.
where to charge vehicles, what their costs and what their processes look like. Because if you think about it, sometimes they have to rethink the whole operational process around that. Because now the routes you need to think about charging the vehicle, you need to think about how do you charge it smartly so to benefit from the cost savings. It's changing the whole landscape.
Every automotive business, starting from dealer to manufacturer, is affected by it. And a lot of the change for the go, both in terms of the environment and for the cost operating model, it's expensive to begin with, but then it pays off eventually and becomes part of normal. And with all the future exciting technology, I don't think it's going to be one way or the other.
heard about battery swaps, for example, technology, vehicle-to-grid, smart charging. In the future, the software, the technology will just be guiding the fleet operators what to use, when to get the energy from the grid, when to feed it back in, when to use stationary battery, when to use all the mobile batteries, when to do the battery swap. it's the amount of innovation happening in the industry is enormous, is absolutely enormous.
And if we think it's not just the decarbonisation targets that we've got in automotive industry, quite ambitious, we've also got renewable grid targets as well. So on the grid side is happening a lot already and the automotive side is happening a lot. Therefore collaboration and the really rising innovation and new technologies that we're observing right now, that's what's happening and that's what's really, really exciting.
39:03 Holly Mottram
I was going to say, it's very exciting. Now, I guess the last question before I let you guys go would be, what is one takeaway that our listeners could have? Or what would you recommend? What do you want them to take away from this episode if you just pick just one thing? I think we've discussed a lot of, I would say really interesting things about the future of electrification and the future of infrastructure actually. So one thing that you think our listeners should take away from this.
39:33 Sam Clarke
If I could think of one thing listeners could take away, would be of all the things we discussed, if there's anything in there that relates to you or your ambitions, whether that just be being an EV driver or your fleet operator, just do it. Like just start, start the journey. If you're not sure, then you know, dip your toe in, trial some vehicles, drive some vehicles, learn from some of the stuff maybe that we've talked about in the rest of the series.
shares in terms of the stuff that we're learning in this industry and use that to test because once you get going it gets exciting, it gets interesting, it gets challenging, gets... All these things start to become impassioned in people because they just love the journey. So yeah, think it would be, whatever it is that's in here that is of interest to you, go off and do it yourself and see how you get on and you'll enjoy the journey.
40:21 Holly Mottram
Very inspirational. You all go.
40:24 Olga Spence
Yeah, I'd say see this as an opportunity and the next stage, the future of electrification. It's not about just the vehicle and changing the vehicle from ICE to electric. It's about integrating the vehicles into energy system and operating your fleet and energy system as a whole holistic process to get the maximum benefit out of it.
40:53 Holly Mottram
Amazing. Both two great points and I do think we've covered some really interesting stuff today. So thank you very much both of you for joining. I hope you've enjoyed it. We're going to catch up about your Guinness World Records after. So thank you very much for joining
41:07 Sam Clarke
Thank you.
41:14 Holly Mottram
Thank you very much for watching this episode of Talk Auto. We have, as ever, an email in our show notes if you'd like to get in touch to be on the podcast or recommend a topic. As ever, you can follow us on all our social media channels or on YouTube. And remember to like, follow, and subscribe. And I'll see you next month for another episode of Talk Auto.