Episode 129: Liz Allan and Arun Gopinath - Exploring CHRGR.io For Better EV Charging Locations

Episode 129: Liz Allan and Arun Gopinath - Exploring CHRGR.io For Better EV Charging Locations.

Liz Allan speaks with Arun Gopinath, CEO & Co-founder of Vahanomy, about tackling key challenges in EV charging. Arun shares how chrgr.io connects landowners with charge point operators and how Scoutia uses AI-driven insights to optimise site selection. They discuss the importance of site safety, accessibility, and a just transition to ensure EV charging works for everyone.

Quote of the Episode:
"If the user doesn’t feel safe, that’s half your customers gone." – Arun Gopinath

Arun Gopinath Bio:
Arun Gopinath is a dedicated advocate for environmental sustainability and transport decarbonisation. His passion extends into autonomous vehicles, with a vision to integrate them into a comprehensive suite of services. In 2019, recognising the emerging potential and crucial challenges of autonomous technology, Arun established a business that would pioneer this integration. He understood that the key to providing these innovative services lay in the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles, which he anticipated to be predominantly electric. Arun’s forward-thinking approach positions him at the forefront of a transformative era in transportation technology, aiming for complete implementation in the mid-2020s.

Arun Gopinath Links:
Websites: https://chrgr.io and https://www.vahanomy.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arungopinath

Episode Keywords:
EV Charging Infrastructure, Environmental Sustainability, Autonomous Vehicles Tech Entrepreneurship, Decarbonisation of Transport, Location Analysis, Electric Mobility.

Episode Hashtags:
#ElectricEvolutionPodcast #EVCharging #Sustainability #Decarbonisation
#AutonomousVehicles #TechEntrepreneurship #ChargingInfrastructure
#EnvironmentalSustainability #EVInfrastructure #SmartCharging

Transcript

Liz Allan [00:00:01]:

On today's episode, I have with me Arun Gopinath, the CEO and founder of Vahanomy. So, Arun, we've been trying to talk for ages, haven't we? Thank you ever so much for joining me.

 Arun Gopinath [00:00:15]:

Hi, Liz. It's good to be on the show finally, and it's my first podcast, so I hope you'll be kind.

Liz Allan [00:00:22]:

I'm always kind. You know, you know, I've talked plenty of podcast virgins before, so, yeah, don't worry about it, honestly. So, yes, thank you. You are the CEO and co-founder of Vahanomy. But underneath that, there are different layers, aren't there? And what we're gonna talk about today is chargr.io, which is spelt chrgr.io, and also Scoutia. So, let's go back into your past because from my, you know, kind of delving into your kind of LinkedIn profile and everything, you're quite tech-orientated, aren't you? So, what formulated this journey to where you are now with Vahanomy?

Arun Gopinath [00:01:19]:

Yeah. I am not a tech person, so I call myself a tech entrepreneur. And this and, you know, I use technology in my businesses. So, my first business was an Internet presence and service provision.

Arun Gopinath [00:01:38]:

And then I had another company where we did architectural and engineering services using building information modelling, which is today popularly known as digital twins in the built environment.

Liz Allan [00:01:52]:

Right. Okay.

Arun Gopinath [00:01:54]:

So, I sold that business in 2009 and then took a 10-year sabbatical. I worked in equality and human rights. I worked for a couple of charities over here in Scotland, working on equality and human rights, something I've been passionate about all my life and in 2019, the urge to be an entrepreneur returned. And this time I was like I have to do something that I now have children and young children and I was thinking about it has to be a business that's making the world better for them as well.

Liz Allan [00:02:30]:

Yes.

Arun Gopinath [00:02:30]:

I'm quite, passionate about the environment and decarbonization of transport. I mean, it seems very odd, but so and also about autonomous vehicles. So in 2019 when I was thinking about you know I have to start this business now and look at it there was not enough because with autonomous vehicles what we're looking at is providing a basket of services based on autonomous vehicles. Mhmm. And for that, you have to have the vehicles to actually be able to provide those services, and we Yeah. We'll put that off up to, you know, the mid-2000-2020s. And said what will take us from there to that point where we can work with autonomous vehicles and we looked at it and thought pretty much every autonomous vehicle will either be electric or have alternate fuels. Mhmm.

Arun Gopinath [00:03:27]:

So we then started looking at being a charging point operator.

Arun Gopinath [00:03:33]:

In 2019, we set up as a charging point operator.

Arun Gopinath [00:03:38]:

And we were trying to set up charging points in in the Northeast United States, and you would ask, as a UK-based company, why we're doing that. It's mainly because most of the infrastructure that was being set up in the UK at that time was being set up by public bodies and local authorities. Most of the infrastructure was free. Yes. Heavily subsidised, so it was not a kind of level playing field, and we were trying to kind of build models to see what kind of operating models would work and things like that we are looking for about 10 sites between Washington DC and Boston on the I-95 or the Interstate 95 Northeast United States. At that time, I think there were 43,000 charging points in the u in the US.

Arun Gopinath [00:04:31]:

28,000 of which were in California.

Arun Gopinath [00:04:34]:

It was skewed to so, and the Northeast corridor was quite densely populated and needed those things. But we started off looking for locations, and as all this happened, the pandemic also kicked in.

Liz Allan [00:04:52]:

Oh gosh, yeah, yeah.

Arun Gopinath [00:04:55]:

We were looking for sites during the pandemic, and then each of those sites to put an ultra-fast charger was going to cost about 100,000 each.

Liz Allan [00:05:05]:

Oh my God.

Arun Gopinath [00:05:06]:

And here we were trying to, you know, second-guessing ourselves, asking ourselves, are we putting selecting the right locations where we make money over here and all those things, and we were looking for data to kind of validate that decision. We just couldn't find enough data to give us the confidence to do that. We found that gap then one for location analysis because we tried to see what others were doing, and most people were working out kind of between 8 to 20 parameters to see what to choose for electrical charging points, and we found that gap, and we said you know we just pivoted in December 2020. We said there is a gap over here to do location analysis for EV charging points. So Scoutia came out of about 3 years of research working with different stakeholders in the EV charging infrastructure ecosystem. And then we also looked at it about, you know, when we were talking to land owners, there also was this gap about they didn't know who to contact if they wanted to set up EV charging infrastructure in their places who to who will have them operated most people thought it is quite simple you just a charger in there and it will work. So, a lot of things, so then out of that also came the need for chargers, so we set up chargers, a kind of marketplace for the charging infrastructure ecosystem. Today, we like to call it the collaboration platform infrastructure because it brings together different people in the ecosystem. So, to give you an example, just last week we had a landowner who decided to go with a particular charge point operator. They wanted to have the terms and conditions looked through via a law firm. They wanted to know, do you know any specialised people who are working on that and there are a couple of firms that are on the marketplace who they could then go and contact them rather than you know because it's a new place, it's a new space not everybody has the kind of things to look at you know what to watch out for in contact and stuff like that. So, it's bringing together different stakeholders. Just this afternoon, we spoke with an architectural firm doing a development plan for one of the landowners. So, different things are coming together.

Arun Gopinath [00:07:58]:

It's coming together now.

Liz Allan [00:08:00]:

Yeah. Because, for those of you who can look at the website, it's quite an interesting website, isn't it? Where, as you say, this is this kind of platform bringing different parties together and giving landowners that opportunity to have Charge Point operators approach you as the middle person, aren't you? You know, so they get the ability to choose the best, you know, kind of charge point operator or the best services that they want. Do you want to just kinda so can you explain how they find how all these people find you? So, do you find the sites, or do they find you?

Arun Gopinath [00:08:58]:

Right now, as we know, we are in the early stages of building the marketplace, so we are finding people because, to most people, it is a new space. Most people when you tell them EV, it does not even register for most people. You have to actually, and a lot of people tell me, make sure you are saying electric vehicle and you are not saying EV. Right. So, if you are not in the space, people don't know about it. I mean, for us, you know, for you and me, and I think other listeners on this podcast, EV will be something that is known, but to the person they don't know what it is, it could be anything.

 Arun Gopinath [00:09:43]:

And then they are not. There is so much negative stuff going on about EVs as well, so most people think I will just stay away from it and all that. What we do on charg.io is it can be a land owner who has got either parking spaces they have a greenfield site or a brownfield site is a plan that they want to offer so they can do it either for they can either rent it, they can do a revenue share, they can do a kind of mix like a fully funded rental fully funded model where they are just getting a rent or they can co-invest with the operator and do it, or some people want to invest fully and then just let an operator operate it for them for a fixed fee. And there are also lots of land owners or property owners who have electric vehicle charging infrastructure on their site and then now have realised that it's way too much work than they had anticipated. They want a charging point operator to come in and operate it for them, and also expand if needed. You know where they might have 2 spaces that are already electrified but have more charging infrastructure put into those places.

 Liz Allan [00:11:13]:

So they're recognising its benefit for them as a site.

Arun Gopinath [00:11:19]:

Yeah. But the problem is also that landlords and landowners don't know who they go to and who they approach, which are the charge point operators, because different operators have different strategies. So, you go to someone, and they'll say, you know, we only do have a look for sites where 50,000 cars are passing through. So if that doesn't align with that person's strategy or that company's strategy, then they think, oh, my site is no good. Still, there is a site for different types of operators, you know, someone might have clients in some places with fleets that need charging infrastructure, so they might think this location is great even if it doesn't meet those, you know, 50,000 vehicles per day target. So, it's to find on chargr.io what you can look at, you can list your site and then be found by different operators, but what we also do is we contact charge point operators as well, to let them know about the sites that are there. So it's not just an email that goes out, but we call them and say, you know, here's the site, and this is why it works, and most of it at the moment, we know most of the sites quite well. So, we can say you know what the advantages of that location are, how it might work and give some kind of additional information. So, for the landlord what it benefits, is they get multiple kind of offers from different charge point operators. So, duration of leases vary which can vary from about 8 years to 25 years, it depends on the landowner what they want to do with that, what their plans are for that particular piece of land or parking lot. Someone might want not too long a duration, they want to know, how much money is being offered and then also whether the charging point operator is financially sound. And I know that they have a decent reputation because they want equipment that is working, I mean the capacity point thing that is working and also that they are there 5 years down the line, and they are not left with a contract that is not giving them any income the operators folded and things like that.

Arun Gopinath [00:13:53]:

So it's a mix of different things, so we then tell the land owners to ask us, who do you recommend, and we like to do the due diligence. Also, if someone came to you as a land owner or a property owner to lease one of your properties, you would do your due diligence and do the same thing. And then they ask questions about what happens about power, who pays for power and all that. And I said, these are all things you put into your contract, and you discuss these things like, you know if you're leasing an industrial shed or an office space or whatever it is. You would discuss, you would know whose responsibility each of those things is, and it works exactly the same way.

Liz Allan [00:14:35]:

I was gonna say because when you're talking about landlords who haven't, like you say, you haven't got they haven't got a clue. They don't know what they don't know. I always say this on the podcast. You don't know what you don't know. And it's about learning. And if you can help them understand these things because putting in charge points, dependent on whether you're going for high speed or lower, you know, lower speed. And I'm not gonna quote all the different terminology for this because I think we need to provide a bit of simplicity for those who don't know any of this stuff. 

 Liz Allan [00:15:16]:

Either way, it's expensive, isn't it, to install charge points? So, and as you said, when you've got the different kind of profit sharing and things like that, you’re getting the different abilities to manage what the installation looks like, what they're getting out of it at the end. And if you're facilitating that, that's how I see you guys. It's kind of like facilitators in the middle, ensuring you're filling the gaps that those landowners don't know too much about. That's a really good thing, especially if you're being approached. They could have been approached. We've talked about this before we were recording, didn't we? Where, you know, some of these landowners are being approached by a multitude of CPOs. But if you're helping to facilitate that to help them, then that's a good thing, isn't it?

Arun Gopinath [00:16:16]:

Yeah. Most landowners are busy people. It tends not to be a priority for them to set up EV charging infrastructure, but they know that they have to do it. And, you know, how much time do they have to do all those things? So, we have one property owner. We should say they own about 50 different business properties, and that person is literally one person and maybe half a person in their office. They don't have the time or capacity to kind of deal with, you know, 4 or 5 enquiries from one; they want everything to be consolidated and sent to them, and then they can then look at it what is what, and then they can decide, whether they even want to do it or not and, whether it's worthwhile to do it. 

Liz Allan [00:17:17]:

I was going to say, and there's that, and a lot of this is word-of-mouth about your services, and actually how you can facilitate them for this because, you know, it feels like that kind of thing is important to them, you know. And, if it's good word-of-mouth, it will spread, won't it? With regards to what you said about the negativity about EVs and the charging network, actually, we always say bad word-of-mouth kind of spreads twice as bad as twice as quickly, should I say, which is sad in itself. I'm assuming that as people learn about you, the number of landowners joining the marketplace will increase, won't they? Because they trust you to be that facilitation tool.

Arun Gopinath [00:18:20]:

We're just about beginning to see land owners successfully conclude agreements with charging point operators. They are then saying, "You know, here is my friend. He has got 4 sites, someone has got, you know, we have got 1, and a landlord who has got about knows someone who has got 600 sites." 

Arun Gopinath [00:18:47]:

And if we have to really meet the numbers of, you know, the charging infrastructure, we have to have that exponential growth on our site, which we are beginning to, start seeing now where sites are coming on, and the network effect has to take place, and now it's taking place. Eventually, we hope that people will be registering on the site not because they know me but because they know the reputation of the organisation itself, the company, and, on the site, that we've done that. And it's an online platform. But right now, we're doing quite a lot of our work offline.

Liz Allan [00:19:27]:

You were saying that, weren't you? So, I hope you're okay. Can you explain what you're saying about offline so that people who are listening and watching can understand why that's important? I kind of alluded to this a few minutes ago when talking to you.

Arun Gopinath [00:19:47]:

Sure. I mean, a lot of sites are offline because landowners think that, if it's out there on a public site, they will be approached by lots of people selling them things. Whereas most landowners that we know of and property owners are looking to get a fully paid EV charging infrastructure. Simple things, where most people just prefer to get a fixed rent or lease rather than people approaching them. Someone else trying to sell them security equipment for EV charging, the payment methods, and other things. It's just too much for them, so they just don't want to be like I said, most of them are very busy people, and they don't have the time to be dealing with all this. So, they just give it back and say you speak to the right people. Right now, we've got about 27 charging point operators with us, who are who are looking at sites and it's, it's growing. That makes it easy for us to kind of consolidate it, compare all the offers and then give it to the landlord, so they can see what they want.

Liz Allan [00:21:08]:

We had an interesting conversation about the numbers that the government has actually put in place. The aim by the government to get 300,000 charges in the ground by 2030. And you pointed me to the Competition and Markets Authority. And this was a report that came out back in 2021, was it? So, they are talking about 980,000 public charging points, which is quite interesting, isn't it? Because you're looking at 2 different government bodies who are actually talking about, different numbers. And, I said to you that the Charge UK report that's that came out earlier on this year. I think it was out in July. They were talking about the number of charge points that were in the UK for at that point in time when the report came out.

Liz Allan [00:22:23]:

And that was 809,181 home charges, 57,510 workplace charges, and 64,632 public charges, which combined is 931,323 charge points in the UK. So, we are getting there. It's just, you know, we don't I don't personally feel that it should be a numbers game. I know we've got to achieve whatever this number looks like. You know, we've got to a point where I think there are 1,300,000 electric vehicles on the road currently. So that's quite a small percentage of people driving electric. The main thing to me is about when you said this, you didn't say about utilisation, but you basically said about, the number of vehicles that a charge point operator wants to come see coming through that land, don't you? Was it was it 50,000 cars?

Arun Gopinath [00:23:31]:

Yeah. I mean, quite a lot of the big ones, they want their strategy. I mean, depends on operators. So some people want 50,000 cars to be going by the road, beside which the charging point the infrastructure set up to have 50,000 cars per day that then eliminates a lot of roads and areas across the country and I mean the numbers we need numbers to guide us towards, to see how we are doing. But it has to be a mix of numbers; is it in the right geography, what kind of vehicles are there in different areas. I mean if you look at historic data that we have it's based on the more expensive cars that have got bigger batteries, bigger capacity, because what I mean are we looking at numbers that are kind of mirroring the existing types of cars owned in different areas?. If I have, say, I have a Nissan Micra, and I'm going to buy if I replace, I'll replace something with something similar. And then, if I have a car that's a £10s,000, I'm more likely to replace it with something similar again.

Arun Gopinath [00:24:47]:

Range and everything will vary. and also, it's only now that used cars are coming into play but who is able to afford those used cars?

Arun Gopinath [00:25:04]:

And so, it's a mix of looking at the spread, so I think what's also very important while setting up the charging infrastructure, is to make sure that there is just transition from when we decarbonise transport and go towards electrification, that it is there in in remote communities. Rural communities; not so well-to-do communities. So, otherwise we will end up with people having to drive distances just to charge and it's unlike a petrol station you're probably going to have to spend at least half an hour 45 minutes to get any basic type of charge, and it depends on localities like. There are lots of cities like, if you look at Glasgow, I think it's 73% of people don't have access to a driveway.

Arun Gopinath [00:26:01]:

They own a car. So, it's all good to say that, you know we will most people will have domestic charging, but a lot of people won't have that.

Liz Allan [00:26:12]:

In specific areas like you say, like Glasgow and places like that. Yeah. And I like how you put it with the just transition, because we talk about inclusivity, but like you say, when you've got you've got kind of second-hand EVs coming through, for a lot of them, the original price point was very high, wasn't it? You know, and like you say, people can't afford some of the high price points. I mean, when they're coming through second-hand, the prices are dropping quite a lot. But, again, can these people in general afford them? You know, those on lower incomes and things like that. So, we've got to make sure that these things are just transitions, and not everybody wants to drive a car that's as big as a tank, do they? You know?

Liz Allan [00:27:11]:

You know, our little Golf, our little VW Golf was a areasonable size for us, and the car that we've got now, the Hyundai Ioniq, is bigger. I would have preferred a smaller car, but the one that I would like to have, were outside our price range. It's one of those things that it's not just going to be us that are in that situation. We've got to think about everybody else who can't necessarily afford all these, not necessarily luxury or but, you know, the ones that are costing quite a lot. But then again, there are those that do cost a lot. But then again, new cars in general are very high prices, aren't they? I remember buying in 1995, the year that I moved down south, I bought, a Honda Civic. Oh god. I loved it so much.

Liz Allan [00:27:58]:

Honestly, it was brand new. And then, you know, you kind of drive off the forecourt and the price drops automatically, and I didn't know anything. I was in my twenties, you know. So it's those things, isn't it? It's that price drop that happens, no matter whether it's an EV, or whether it's a petrol or diesel vehicle. But it is that just transition though that we need to deal with. Yeah.

Arun Gopinath [00:28:22]:

I mean, not everybody has, a new vehicle as they you know, there are you find large numbers of people who always bought used cars. And, how is the transition going to include them all? So, in terms of numbers, you have to look into the mix of charging capacities. Sometimes you can have a lot of low power chargers, and that might meet the numbers, but is it meeting the need in terms of the number of kilowatts that need to be charged, in that particular place. It's more nuanced, I mean I don't think any of us have actually got that, because it's all kind of predictions and things like that. But strategy has to be kind of thought of carefully, and we have to learn lessons from what how things are emerging of people's experiences in different places as well. 

Arun Gopinath [00:29:41]:

Yeah. And also there's the opportunity to think afresh not to think of everything being like in a huge hub, I mean yes it is good to have some hubs, but infrastructure for electric vehicles should be spread out and be there at different places. If there is a way to kind of pick, you know not go from petrol and diesel vehicles and do the exact same thing in terms of strategy. So, think and see how it's going to work for people rather than you know, go to the old tried and tested models, like, not a one size. 

Liz Allan [00:30:22]:

And I think I think, actually, Arun, that the reason why people don't understand who say “we don’t have enough chargers. I haven't seen any chargers. It's, because they don't actually know what they look like. They sit in a car park. Sometimes, the earlier ones are back of a car park. And people don't always know what those things are, and they don't look like petrol stations. So, they look different.

Liz Allan [00:30:50]:

And I'm not saying we want them to look like petrol stations. And there are some brilliant charging hubs out there. We've got that ability to innovate, and provide amenities that are suitable for that location, and that kind of demographic of people.

Arun Gopinath [00:31:18]:

And as we move, I mean, even in terms of space, I mean, an EV charging, bay is much larger than, than the traditional one, traditional car park.

Liz Allan [00:31:31]:

It should be. Not always, is it?

Arun Gopinath [00:31:33]:

It should be at least because It's just the fact that, there's no standardisation in there, where the connection point is at, on the car. So, some of them have it in front, some of them have it inside, some of them have it, you know, at the back. So, you are having to take the cables around and things like that as well. Is there enough space for that, so that you know you are not scratching the car or scratching someone else's car when you are doing that. So, I mean there will be some amount of reduction in total number of spaces, and that needs to be taken into consideration as well, because right now what we are planning is for the first stage of it, but more and more infrastructure will need to be put in, unless technology changes drastically, which I hope it does. 

Liz Allan [00:32:31]:

And if we're going back to this the size of the bays, this has got to be something that, you know, obviously, the charge point operator understands. I'm quite passionate about this specific conversation that needs to be had at a business development level, from the charge point operator point of view, with the landowner. The landowner has got 10 spaces. Just explain that some you know, like you say, the sizing of the base for charging has to be bigger. But for multiple reasons. And a lot of that is, you know, you've got to make sure that we give more space to people who, you know, need have got accessibility needs because otherwise, we're not including those people in this journey. But it's also just think about, families with kids. Trying to get small kids out of the car. You don't want to be so close to a car when you want when you're trying to plug in and charge, it that you're so scared to get out the car, and whack the next one to you. And then get done for catching the paintwork. Because a lot of the spaces I mean, there's a Decathlon car park in Reading, and I caught a blooming Tesla next to me. I didn't know I'd done it seriously, you know, and this is probably a couple of years ago now.

Liz Allan [00:34:03]:

All these spaces are so tight. The cars are getting bigger. The spaces aren't changing size. So, the land owners have to realise, but they've got to be that it's about that knowledge transfer, isn't it? It's explaining it's the issue explaining about the sizes, but it's also the Charge Point operator, not just going with that landowner and going, oh, yeah. I just want those 10 spaces. Actually, let's get the sizes right so we can make it so that everybody can be included.

Arun Gopinath [00:34:36]:

Yeah. Especially with, I mean, with EV charging infrastructure where people are putting in only to start with 1 or 2 or, you know, 4 charging points, there is you know if all the standards are followed then you can include people with disability, people with family, young children other kind of mobility needs that it's you don't have to think about oh is that a disabled friendly charging point. There is an opportunity to have all of them as standard and then you can have them.

Arun Gopinath [00:35:12]:

So it has to be driven both by the land owners as well as charging point operators, because charging point operators should be saying this is our design standard. This is what we need to meet. 

Liz Allan [00:35:27]:

And, you know, it's about developing best practice really for all of this.

Arun Gopinath [00:35:31]:

Yeah. Because sometimes land owners will have to charge point operators will have to walk away from locations if the land owner is not willing to do that. Yeah. They can't just say that we've got 2 parking disabled parking bays, and we need the minimum requirement, but you know, and also, we have a kind of ageing population, more people will have greater needs. So it's better to build now for the future when there is a chance to do it. 

Liz Allan [00:36:01]:

And as you said, we've got this perfect opportunity now to change the way we're doing stuff, which is totally right. If we look at Scoutio then, what are you because, obviously, we've looked at charg.io, and but there’s Scoutio. How is working in conjunction with charg.io? How is that currently benefiting companies? Because I know you're using sort of AI location sort of insights for that aren't you?

Arun Gopinath [00:36:45]:

Yeah. So Scoutia, basically, like I said when we started looking at location analysis, we did a consultation with different stakeholders to see what things we are looking for, so the stakeholders, meaning EV users, charging point operators, land owners, other of you know, this company's electricity provider. We spoke with pretty much everyone in the industry. What are the things that they would need? And so we came up with about 110 parameters to kind of decide whether the location is suitable for EV charging, but what we say is at the same time is it's not a one-size-fits-all kind of solution. So when doing an analysis, we are saying to charge point operators, tell us your priorities. So, because not all operators have the same strategy, some may want to charge as a service provider. That means they have to have reach all over the country or geographic spread, so you can go anywhere and find them, including some sites that are not commercially viable for them. I mean, you know, because they have to have that spread, so if you are selling to fleets, and you are selling to consumers, and saying get on our network. And you can go anywhere and charge. So, it depends on different people's priorities, strategy, what it is. So, if you have a company that says we are only going to set up hubs that's fine I mean that's their strategy. 

Arun Gopinath [00:38:39]:

You have to find companies that say, "We want 50,000 cars going by," or some that say we want a minimum of 1,000 cars going by. That's not everything, so in that case, you know, we look at the risk. So, when we look at risk, we look at risk to the business model, risk to the physical infrastructure itself, and most importantly, risk to the end user.

Arun Gopinath [00:39:09]:

If the user doesn't feel safe for whatever reason, and I give a quite a simple example; and I say for lot of sites women are not going to feel safe in particular occasions. That's half your customers gone. Have you then built that into your business model to say what your customer base is, only so many people or you know, so many people, and some people might go. Women might feel safe to go during the day, but not at night, and you know, there are huge differences between summer and winter. 

Liz Allan [00:39:48]:

Yes.

Arun Gopinath [00:39:49]:

All those business models are kinds of modelling that change. All you need to do is mitigate factors. So we say these are the risk factors on this side; you need to put in mitigating factors, whether CCTV or adequate lighting. Those are all things that are going to cost, whether it's capital cost or operating cost. Those are all things that are going to cost the operator. Have they then built that into their finance model? Mhmm. To see that they're going to make money out of that site because otherwise, if they don't make money 2 years down the line, they might shut it down. And then what happens to that? I'll move it somewhere else.

Liz Allan [00:40:35]:

And I was gonna say I gave you that, I was giving you that example of me last week. So, I was, I said, didn't I? I went down to collect my son. My son started at Exeter Uni, and he was coming back. And we're recording this just before Christmas, by the way. So and so James is coming back for Christmas. So I had because we've got a small battery, I charged on the way down. The charging experience on the way down was excellent at the Pogo Charge site, which was good in Bridgwater.

Liz Allan [00:41:11]:

It's daylight. So different. But then, on the way back, I chose a different site. I'd never charged there before but wanted to use this charge point operator. I won't say who this one is, but it was at a garden centre and was fine. It was not a problem. Plugging in was fine.

Liz Allan [00:41:28]:

But then we returned to the car, and neither my son nor I could see the RFID slot because there were no lights in the car park. There was one. You could see lights in there, but it was either an error or something. I don't know. But, and whether they've been strong, whether they were strong enough because if they were the strength of the one that was on, couldn't see. So my son had to turn his torch on on his phone so I could see to tap the card. But as you said about safety, I would probably not have gone back to that site if it was nighttime, charging in the winter like now. So that would have been the case. I would have chosen a different site had I known.

Liz Allan [00:42:13]:

So there's those things, isn't there? You're not gonna get utilisation. So it's great to say, oh, you've got 50,000 cars going past. But if your site isn't safe, and I know Kate Terrell from Charge Safe is doing some fantastic work on a lot of this stuff. But, like I say, utilisation will not increase if you have a site that isn't safe.

 Arun Gopinath [00:42:33]:

It can also be like, let me say things to the infrastructure itself. You can have, you know, a couple of months back, there were, you know, news stories about the site stealing of the copper wire from the EV charging site.

Liz Allan [00:42:56]:

It's still happening.

Arun Gopinath [00:42:57]:

I know that that will be sorted out with time. One of the figures thrown out then was that, but for a big hub, that was a loss of about half a million.

Liz Allan [00:43:10]:

Yeah. Yeah? Yeah.

Arun Gopinath [00:43:12]:

The site being out of operation but the site being out of operation beyond the operator's control, I mean, there is a test step of that nature, but what it does is if you are then, you know, starting to rate sites consumers are starting to rate oh this site was down or you just have it like you know that site has been down for weeks now. Then, it takes a while for people to start thinking oh, that's back up now. Let's go there and do it. On the lower end of it you could have graffiti on the display of one of those charging points, and it costs, you know less than you know I don't know how much is gas you know can spray of graffiti spray costs, but it's quite low level in terms of what it caused to do that there's display on it. So it can be offensive graffiti, which may turn someone off, or it can just be graffiti that's kind of you think like I can't find the display, I don't know where the, you know, point is or whatever it is has been lost because of that. It's perfectly working charger. Mhmm. But, you know, it's been. You don't feel confident using it because you don't know whether it's operational, not operational, or things like that. So I

Liz Allan [00:44:33]:

I was going to say, theoretically, the new UK charge point regs; I'm saying not new. The UK ChargePoint regs came out in November 2023, but then there's been a number of additions that have been added on November 20, 2024, and then there will be roaming added on November 2025. But theoretically, we're looking at 99% reliability, which has been integrated into these regulations. You're smiling. There is that risk, and I know it's happening with some charge point operators for some reason. I know I know of 1. I'm saying some.

Liz Allan [00:45:21]:

I know where some are turning off the charge points. And I've had this conversation with somebody else who also runs a podcast about this. We don't want to encourage people to turn off chargers if they're unreliable. I want them to get to my background in improvement says, I want you to get to the root cause of that. If that's if you've got unreliable charges, is that the hardware? Is there a problem with the back office? What is it? Have you chosen the wrong equipment? Rather than leave that charger not working for months because that's the time when, as you say, when people see it and kinda go, I ain't got a clue what's going on here. There are 4 or 5 charges, and they're all out of service.

Arun Gopinath [00:46:10]:

So, yeah, I mean, you have to see what what what works. I mean, have you considered different risk factors? What are we talking about? I mean, there are 110 risk factors under that lie several other factors in the sense that when we say environmental environment, we can have a lot of subsections within them. Mhmm. What environmental factors are there that might have an effect on the charging point it's not just about looking at historical data. We are in, I mean, the whole reason why we have electric cars today is because of the climate emergency, and there are, I mean, you know, we have forest fires in the UK where we never had them before. Is that affecting whether the charger or access to the charger and are those things also built into the business model, you know that you're going to have so much downtime on it's great to have 99, per cent but it will be interesting to see what the actual figures are going to be on that and how many people are going to be able to actually meet them.

Liz Allan [00:47:29]:

Yes.

Arun Gopinath [00:47:30]:

Uptime is the maximum in the interest of a charging point operator, but what is realistic remains to be seen.

Liz Allan [00:47:40]:

Yeah. Yeah. And I know I know that I think that there are the regs and the reg the charge point regs, PAS 18 99 has been reviewed. I think the REA is actually renewing the not renewing. They're kind of looking at them to make all of these regs to make sure that they're, in fact, PAS 18 99 Isn't its guidance. It's not actually; it's not mandatory, not mandated. So that probably needs to change in order to again, is that when we go back to that just transition to include people because that's to do with accessibility to public charging and all sorts of things around that. But, I wanted to ask you.

Liz Allan [00:48:29]:

You seem really quite passionate about a lot of things, you know, kind of with regards to climate and everything else. What, out of all of this, what gets you out of bed every day? 

Arun Gopinath [00:48:44]:

mean, it's there's a lot of work to be done. I mean, you know, I mean, I think I think of the climate emergency as what kind of world are we going to leave for our children or are they going to have a proper, you know, safe environment for them to be living in itself. So the journey to I mean decarbonized electrification is just one part of it it's just part of the journey because I think in the future you should be looking at mobility as a service kind of driven by autonomous vehicles where you don't need to own that vehicle which in itself and then sort of in the future reduce the number of vehicles on the roads itself, we'll make sure that and the production of all these cars you know the carbon footprint from those itself you know will have a huge impact because we hardly use our vehicles, we hardly use our vehicles and share them and have mobility as a service but then again that whole thing has to be done in a way that it's just again that it's accessible to everyone and not just in certain areas in urban centres but you know so for me that I feel like I myself don't own or drive a car anymore I I haven't owned a car for the past 15 years. I live in the city centre, and I'm quite lucky that I can walk or take public transport to most places I want to go. But I think mobility as a service in the future will enable that, and autonomous vehicles, when they come, will be, I think, the syllable that if we can get over a lot of the concerns like people have this thing about car ownership. It's a very personal thing, but people don't think that they can go away from that and also trust autonomous vehicles and things like that. But there is like, you know, I live in Edinburgh. There's an autonomous bus service operating from Fife to Edinburgh.

 Liz Allan [00:50:58]:

Yes.

Arun Gopinath [00:51:00]:

We were also on the user design panel for that. If a bus can drive autonomously over the fourth bridge, I hope it will give people more confidence to do more with it.

Liz Allan [00:51:19]:

Interesting. And then, just as a final question, what are your future plans for Bahanami?

Arun Gopinath [00:51:25]:

So Bahanami, I mean, with just the EV charging infrastructure, there's so much to be done. If you look at the numbers, as you know, if you look at the CMA numbers 7 times, what we have we need by 2030 still needs to be set up EV charging infrastructure, and we've got to this point where it's taken about 15 years for us to set up what we have. There's a lot of work to be done. I mean, we want to expand to the US, we want to go to India, we want to go to places in East Asia and Australia, but the first move now would be to expand to the U. S. We are pretty much ready with chargr.io will expand in the US with a little bit of localization. We are raising money at the moment and need money to do a lot of marketing, especially since the US market environment is big, and you can't do it without marketing dollars. 

Arun Gopinath [00:52:31]:

Having that investment tied up would be good.

Liz Allan [00:52:36]:

Well, listen. Thank you for joining me on your first podcast. I really appreciate it. I hope you've had a pleasant journey.

Arun Gopinath [00:52:48]:

It has been. Thank you very much for having us on this, and, I'm not nervous at all. So that's that's good to

Liz Allan [00:52:55]:

That's good. That's good. But I will share all of the websites and all of your details when they are in the show notes and make sure that everybody can find you. And just as a final note to everybody else watching and listening, if you can, as I always say, share this podcast, make comments on LinkedIn or wherever you see us on social media, subscribe, you know, to YouTube, or just be a subscriber on kind of the audio platforms. We're on most of the audio platforms. Any of that is brilliant because we're a small podcast and just increasing our voice would be brilliant. And, actually, it's it's good for, you know, it hopefully you know, doing that will increase Aaron's voice. The more we talk about these things, the more we can fight against that negativity for sure.

Liz Allan [00:53:56]:

Thank you so much, Aaron. Thank you for joining me. It's been really, really lovely.

Arun Gopinath [00:54:02]:

Thank you. You have a great weekend. Thank you, and happy holidays to everyone.

Liz Allan [00:54:05]:

Thank you. And to everybody else listening and watching, I'm gonna see say see you next time. Bye.