Episode 134: Liz Allan and Gary Kinzett - Bridging the Gap: Cross Pavement Charging Solutions for Terraced Streets.

Episode 134: Liz Allan and Gary Kinzett - Bridging the Gap: Cross Pavement Charging Solutions for Terraced Streets.

Liz Allan chats with Gary Kinzett, Business Development Manager at Gul-e, a pioneering cross-pavement EV charging solutions provider. Gary shares his journey from the corporate IT world to a purpose-led role helping decarbonise transport and improve accessibility to EV charging, particularly for people living in terraced homes without driveways. Together, Liz and Gary explore the growing demand for home EV charging infrastructure where residents don't have driveways. Gary explains how Gul-e's innovative, robust underground cable channels enable safe, low-cost charging directly outside homes. They discuss the challenges of local authority compliance, the disparity in public charging costs versus home tariffs, and the urgent need for a more standardised and inclusive approach to pavement access for EV charging.

Gary Kinzett Bio:
Gary Kinzett is the Business Development Manager at Gul-e, which provides cross pavement charging solutions for EV owners without driveways. After a successful 25-year career at IBM, Gary pivoted to a more purpose-driven path, focusing on decarbonisation and climate-positive impact. His work with Gul-e enables safe, affordable home charging by bridging the pavement access gap, supporting local authorities, and helping residents take meaningful steps toward net zero.

Quote of the Episode
“Every mickle makes a muckle. If individuals can make small changes, we can create community-level impact that truly drives decarbonisation.” — Gary Kinzett

Gary Kinzett Links:
Website: https://gul-e.co.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garykinzett

Episode Keywords:
EV charging, cross pavement solutions, net zero, electric vehicles, sustainable transport, decarbonisation, terraced housing, local authorities, affordable EV charging, public charging infrastructure. 

Episode Hashtags
#EVCharging #NetZero #ElectricVehicles #SustainableTra

Transcript

Liz Allan  [00:00:01]:
Okay. So today, I have got Gary Kinzett, the business development manager for Gu-e. Thank you, Gary, for joining me. We've been chatting for a bit before we started recording, haven't we? So we've got to know each other. It's always good to get to know who I'm talking to if I've not met you before. So thank you for joining me.

Gary Kinzett [00:00:18]:
Thank you for the invite, Liz.

Liz Allan  [00:00:19]:
Thank you. So, your business, which you're working with, is Gul-e. They are a cross-pavement solutions organisation, aren't they? This is a really big topic, and it's essential. Let's just kind of. You talked to me a little bit about this before we started recording. Let's have a little bit of your background. What brought you to this stage of working for an organizing organization like Gully?

Gary Kinzett [00:00:51]:
Yeah, so it's a lot of people talk about their journey, but it's something that I'm particularly proud about because it's a conscious decision that I made, and I think I'm probably not alone. I know I'm not alone because on LinkedIn, you read about all sorts of people, such as those finishing careers and stopping doing stuff, and I was one of those. Been in IT, worked for IBM for twenty-five years as a corporate salesman, delivering shareholder value from memory. She was sitting in my office, working on the single account I had, looking out the window, thinking This is COVID. I've not seen anyone apart from my family for days, and there's got to be more to working life than this. I'm not getting the same buzz and looking out at the at the time there were there were no planes in the sky, everything was seized, the weather was fantastic, we were going out for walks as a family and it was a very calm existence at that time and I made my mind up then that I was going to not not work in IT anymore and I was going to do good. I didn't know what good looked like, but I just wanted to do good stuff. Good stuff for the planet, for my kids, for my neighbors, reducing carbon emissions, helping climate change wherever I could, and trying to make a positive impact on whatever it was I was doing. So I ended up selling solar panels. I left IBM and they were fantastic.

Gary Kinzett [00:02:33]:
I had six months' notice to make sure everything was in order because I wasn't leaving any, I wasn't going to a competition or anything. I think it was Coldplay who said a conscious uncoupling. So I did that and I sold solar panels commercially, residentially, and to residents who were particularly able to pay and those who were not. We talked about those, we'll come back to them, I'm sure. And I've been involved in a broad umbrella as decarbonisation, and this role with Oxford Direct Services, who own Gully, who sell Gully. They, when I went for the interview, asked me, because of my background, whether I would go for an interview, so I went to Oxford, and as I walked in through the gates, the council vans all had Doing Good plastered down the side of their van. So it was kind of like they'd already known I was coming, so they painted me particularly. So that's my background, and that's why I'm choosing to do this.

Gary Kinzett [00:03:36]:
So this isn't really work this is just what I happen to do during the day.

Liz Allan  [00:03:41]:
Fantastic. And actually, you're so right. I think probably a lot of people whom I know in this kind of way through the podcast, actually over the last couple of years, and are just starting to sort of wake up to that. What can I do to make a difference? And that's part of the reason why I set the podcast up, and partly because I've been living with a climate change professor for over twenty years now. So, you know, it's kind of that. It was about time, really. You know? And and you get and you get to an age I always talk about my age, but you kinda get to an age, don't you, that that you kinda just think, do you know what? I need you know, let's just let's just cut the crap and get on with this now. We need to make a difference.

Gary Kinzett [00:04:32]:
My kids have gone to university now. There's just me and my wife in the house. You've got a lot more focus on, you know, the world around you, you know, looking at the floods, you know, if there was somehow we could coordinate the forest fires and the floods to cover one after the other, one could put the other one out and then you know it wouldn't be so bad would it? So you look around the world and you think we've got to and if every individual was able to make a change together, you know every nickel makes a muckle, you can just have a group mentality and then become a community, then a region, then a country. You know and I think unless we all get coordinated I think, I use the analogy over the weekend of it's like going on a skiing slope and then we're at the point now where as a species we're going to lean back on our skis and take off out of control if we're not careful. And it feels very much it feels very much like that without being overly dramatic. But

Liz Allan  [00:05:36]:
No. No. I get you.

Gary Kinzett [00:05:37]:
We've got solutions out there to help minimize all of these things.

Liz Allan  [00:05:41]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm still thinking of Mickle and the Muckle. I can't I like that one. I've not heard of Mickle Mickle, Mickle, Mickle, Mickle, Mickle, Mickle, Mickle. Yes. Yeah. That's actually a very good saying.

Liz Allan  [00:05:52]:
So, so I do like that. Let's talk. 

Gary Kinzett [00:05:55]:
Small steps.

Liz Allan  [00:05:57]:
Yeah. Absolutely. 

Gary Kinzett [00:05:58]:
Well, journey, don't they?

Liz Allan  [00:05:59]:
Yeah. Yep. What I stand for is incremental changes. So so yeah. And just before I ask you some more questions, I was gonna say that there are lots of people out there who don't feel that they can, they've got the ability to make a change. Yeah. But everybody has. You just have to make that conscious decision, don't you?

Gary Kinzett [00:06:20]:
And security as well.

Liz Allan  [00:06:21]:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. One hour a day.

Gary Kinzett [00:06:24]:
It has to be repeatable and embedded. You have to make a lifestyle. So we didn't buy coal. We didn't buy coal. We shut our front fireplace. We had an open fire down. I've been burning coal and logs and stuff and had a diesel car and, again, I had a bit of an argument with my wife saying we're not going to be toasty warm and put the marshmallows on anymore because we're blocking that up. And, it's well apart from the money, again, it's not burning fossil fuels.

Gary Kinzett [00:06:55]:
So little things like that.

Liz Allan  [00:06:57]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So let's let's talk about what cross pavement solutions are because there might be people who don't know what they're they are. There're probably gonna be quite a few people who do. But let's just explain for those people who are unfamiliar with what a cross pavement solution is. And actually, I'll let you talk about it. But they've been around for a while, haven't they?

Gary Kinzett [00:07:24]:
They have. I mean on the face of it they are fairly uninteresting piece of technology. So cross pavement solutions are, as the name suggests, if you have an EV charger, if you have a driveway you can have an EV charger as permitted development, no charge, just wave through, pay your electrician to install it, buy your EV car, reverse onto your drive and away you go. You're getting the advantage. If you live in a terraced house or a house without a driveway or a flat, again, within there are some specifics around the length of cables, the length of EV cables. So if you're on the Third Floor of a flat, you won't drape a cable outside because it's illegal. And, two, you'll run into problems where the charge won't carry through the seven metres or eight metres of technical limit of that. So for terraced houses, streets without any driveways, you have your EV charger on and particularly in Oxford where Gully started there were cables being draped across the pavement, some right across the pavement like two foot off the ground because you'd have to go under it and and and there are other pictures of frameworks that have been built out of wood that go up and over and then come down the other side.

Gary Kinzett [00:08:56]:
It's just all of it completely unsafe and unsatisfactory. What the cross pavement market is is that it is an underground conduit, it is a channel, it is an EV channel that you thread a cable into, you push a cable into. So there are four or five suppliers in the market today. We are one of them. We were the first ones, and ours were based on the drainage channels that you'll see around major cities. So, the downpipe, from the house, through the drainage channel and then the water would go into the kerb and away. And we took that in Oxford when the fleet for Oxford Direct Services moved from diesel to electric. There weren't enough charges in the compound for all the vehicles to be charged overnight.

Gary Kinzett [00:09:52]:
So some of the operatives were taking them home and installing EV charging at home, but they had no way of getting across the pavement. And it was then that the highways team looked up what was in the pavement right next door and could see the drainage channels. So they took that concept and they updated it. It's an industrial design anyway because they've been in the ground for ten, twenty, thirty years and in cast iron format longer than that. So we knew that they were resilient, and we just upgraded them to be a modern design with some checker plates for anti-slip. They were all tested for weight because you get lorries and cars and vans and all sorts of things over a ten or twenty-year period going up onto the pavement. So they needed to be really resilient. Yeah.

Gary Kinzett [00:10:45]:
Fit them once and forget them. But essentially that's the concept is that they go under the pavement. They allow cables to go under the pavement or through the pavement pavement to the other side and then when you plug it into your car which is outside your house and when you're finished you just remove them and then you you coil it up again. And at that's a high level, that's that's what we all do as as cross pavement solution providers.

Liz Allan  [00:11:10]:
And that and that makes sense. I mean, I was, I can't remember where we went. We went somewhere last year, and I remember seeing the channels, you know, kind of like you say, the aluminium channels cut through the pavement that had been there for war, you know, for kind of getting water off the pavement for a long, long time. I remembered from, you know, many years ago that they were there. So, it makes sense. But what have the count or the local authors because you originally did this in Oxford, haven't you? You've kind of used Oxford as your trial. How was the trial?

Gary Kinzett [00:11:51]:
Oxford were involved in all of the design and all of the, compliance questions around, highways regulation. They were at the table with us making sure that the product was compliant from all angles not just a fabrication point of view but also from a highways and liability point of view. So little things like I have a slot is 18 millimeters wide which is the same width as the drainage channel because it's compliant. So we stick to what is compliant. So, yeah, they were at the table.

Liz Allan  [00:12:27]:
So if we're talking about a fact, the fact that a local authority or a specific local authority was involved in the kind of putting this together and making sure that it's safe and secure, etc. That there's no slip slippage, etc. You know, nobody can trip, nobody can slip on it. What kind of feedback have you received? Because I've seen this, but I want you to talk about this from other local authorities, because I know it's been you've had trials across different local authorities, haven't you?

Gary Kinzett [00:13:04]:
Yeah, we have. Yeah. From South Wales, Oxford, we've been in the ground since '21. So we've been three and a half years now, late twenty-one. So they've been our longest under trial, and we've got a couple of London boroughs. Bromley, Richmond, Stoke, and Suffolk are coming through; again, these are not just gullies. Some of them are just Gul-e because they're just happy with it, and it works, so we're going to use it, and others are looking at the range. We'll probably offer the range to the residents who can choose what style or what design they want to go for.

Gary Kinzett [00:13:52]:
So each of us as a product has our own different use cases where we have a sweet spot in design, where you say, well, I just want something that's really industrial, something that's really robust, and it's going to last twenty years. I don't want any other bells and whistles that may or may not come with the other product. So the local authorities

Liz Allan  [00:14:15]:
are all

Gary Kinzett [00:14:17]:
different. They all have different background issues on funding, on staffing, on how much they want to charge, if they want to charge. The Government has helped with the levy funding for funding, providing funding at a level to run pilots, to run cross pavement pilots. So that has been a big enabler for them because otherwise you are looking at the cost of an EV charger, the cost of install, cost of cross pavement, cost of install, all the permits, all the permissions and you come to a figure and sometimes that figure is not accessible to the residents who live in those houses. So it was a passion of mine when I was sat in my garden room looking out at the clear blue skies of the able to pay market who wouldn't blink an eye at a couple of thousand and the not able to pay market where that's a significant investment that may well be a barrier to entry for them. I've summarised it because obviously I knew I was coming on today with you, Liz, so I put together a little catchy something for my own benefit so I can remember my thought process. It's about four P's. Planning, lots of different local authorities have different views.

Gary Kinzett [00:15:45]:
There are some local authorities that can't do it as permitted development, and I agree with that. I think that having an electrical device in a house needs to be recorded somewhere. So I am an advocate of having some sort of application. So there is a Northern councilor running what is called a, I have to read it because I can never get it right, it is Latin, 'de minimis', and that's a very cut down. It's like planning light. It's cut down. It's repeatable because it's just an EV charger or another one, tick box tick box. Low cost, but it records the make, the model, the picture, and it gets an electrical certificate.

Gary Kinzett [00:16:30]:
So we start off with a robust audit process. Then you go to the pavement, so the second P. Most councils require what is known as an S50 to open the highway. So if you wanted to drop a curb, you would have to apply for an S50. In the same way, we're cutting the pavement to make a trench to embed the cross-gully solution in it, and then we're cementing it in, and then we're dressing it and making it all good, so any pavement is cut to size so it looks neat and tidy. Mhmm. Because it's one, it's not got to be a trip hazard from being unfinished at the wrong level, but also it needs to be done to a high standard so that people take a bit of pride in it. If they take pride in it, they will sweep it out and keep it clean as part of their subscription.

Gary Kinzett [00:17:19]:
Pricing: we have to look at the cost of some local authorities that don't charge for permits, some do. Some don't charge for S50s, some do. So there's no uniformity to say, well, here's just a single price, let's call it a cross pavement permit, and this is £50 for admin. We'll spread it over a year or something like that. And that leads me on to payments. Like I said before, the cost of these things, yes, it's important, but the benefits far outweigh the cost. We should be enabling as many people as possible. And if we could and we're working on that. We're working on that.

Gary Kinzett [00:17:57]:
And we're, you know, we're not alone. I don't want this to necessarily be just about Gully. It's just that I can only talk about Gully because that's how I spend my days, promoting Gully and working with installers and working with residents to coordinate these things. So, you know, I'm I'm aware that I've got a couple of residents who don't have that money available and they're asking for ways that we can spread the payments and we are working with an EV charging partner, EVEC, to work out some terms where we can build it all together and build it over a year. And again, we work with all the councils because some of them want to make it a revenue stream for them, and they want to own it. So Oxford own the Gul-e and we sell to them. We sell the install and they own it, and then they offer it back to the resident on a subscription basis, whereas other councils don't.

Gary Kinzett [00:18:48]:
They don't want to know anything. And again I was at two calls on Friday. Both of them wanted a managed service where they had no, they said we haven't got enough people to do what we do now. All of a sudden, you are going to say 6,600,000 houses don't have a driveway. How many of those 100,000 are in our borough? We haven't got the people to do it. We will need a managed service. Now that's where we can come in because we are used to dealing with civil installs from Oxford, and we are working with partners on a nationwide basis. So the next level is to have a range of financial models that local authorities can say Well, we'll have Model A because that fits us or We'll have Model C, please' and then it's an engagement model that's flexible and has got the resident at the end.

Gary Kinzett [00:19:40]:
The outcome is to enable them to charge at 7p a kilowatt. We talked earlier.

Liz Allan  [00:19:46]:
Yeah. We did.

Gary Kinzett [00:19:48]:
7p and 70p on the motorway, or you know, at the Asda first charge hub, or the Shell, or BP. It's it's it's it's a game changer for the wrong reasons. If you have an EV car that is 3.5 pounds, I use the analogy that 50 kilowatts at home is 3.5 pounds, 50 kilowatts at 70 pounds is 35 pounds. If you are doing a lot of miles, then it mounts up and stops becoming financially as attractive as it could be. Again, going back to the people who are not able to pay, they are typically the people where that difference between 35 and 3.5 will be way more important than the able to pay, who that's just a round of drinks at the pub. For these people, it's a priority that the £35 or £30 savings they could use elsewhere and it makes such a difference.

Liz Allan  [00:20:46]:
I think that's important, actually thinking about those residents, anyway, isn't it? Because we were talking about this before we started recording, you know, how can't it seem unfair to penalise people just because they haven't got a drive, you know. I like that I like your word enabling because I feel that that's a positive, proactive, you know, phrase. After all, if there are people out there who probably want to do this. They've maybe managed to change to an EV, or they want to change to an EV. Still, they live on a street where there's no, you know, where it's all terraced housing or whatever and actually they they can't afford to charge a public charger that's 79 p per kilowatt hour or 89 p per kilowatt hour depending on where it is and that just seems really unfair. So, so, actually having the ability to not just allow them to have a channel cut in the pavement for, you know, for them to use their EV that they want, but actually to be able to use that cheap overnight tariff. Why shouldn't we be able to do this? So I was gonna say, what is that? So you kinda said that there, that some councils charge and some councils don't charge. So there's no kind of standardisation for the councils then?

Gary Kinzett [00:22:26]:
No. No. Because they again, I think they know their demographic better than I do, for instance. Mhmm. Yeah. I don't want to be too sort of general, but you know, London and the home counties where, you know, a terraced house could be a million pounds.

Liz Allan  [00:22:47]:
I know.

Gary Kinzett [00:22:49]:
But you could also have it at a hundred thousand pounds. Those are the different ends of the market, and I think that because there is no centralized approval for the products. I mean my product is a two-metre metal. It's three millimeters of galvanized steel and has no moving parts. It's got this little dust preventer like a draft excluder that's on its side and feeds the cable through. That is it. Like I say, it's not intellectually stimulating, but what it does is enable the route from the EV charger to the car. And that gap is a significant gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Gary Kinzett [00:23:39]:
The benefit in terms of real money is going to stay in the tank, but it's not in the tank, it's in the battery. But it's that purpose. If you didn't have this, I've got local authorities who just say no, we're not doing it, and that's it. And it's frustrating because with ICE cars being withdrawn for sale as new 02/1930, '2 thousand and '30 '5, net €06,600,000.0 there is only going to go one way and we are, you know, we are five years away from that and ten years away from from net zero. You have to do things now. We have to start building now. If you want to do a trial and a user evaluation, these things take six months to eight months. You've got vetting procedures to do and all those sorts of things.

Gary Kinzett [00:24:31]:
Before you know it, we're in '26, then it's four years and then three years, and we're going to be caught, we are going to be caught again a little bit behind the curve on so many things. So what would be handy would be some centralised system, and we are working on a solution to that, having a cross pavement permit that satisfies, that's all four of the documents pushed together, take out all the duplication. Yeah. How many times do you want to put the address down? We don't. We do it once. And then compress, you know? But it's because there's silos of engagement, you you have to repeat the process three or four. You only need one part of that process to say, no. We don't know, we were talking earlier about a particular London borough.

Gary Kinzett [00:25:16]:
We don't believe we've got room in the pavement because we're a Central London borough and we've got utilities, telecoms and other services that are buried in the pavement, and there's too much risk in going in and cutting it and then burying these things. There are too many things nearby. You could list a whole raft of reasons. Now I need to look at it in greater detail. I think if there was the central government, some sort of approval process, streamlining the documentation so instead of it being end-to-end 50 pages, you make it 10 pages, make it five. So long as everyone has an audit process with photographic evidence of correct installation, a point in time where you say 'here's my baseline'. It's good. It's an enhancement.

Gary Kinzett [00:26:02]:
It's a bit of street furniture that enhances the lives of the residents, and I think a lot of local authorities are disconnected from the residents and the money they pay, the taxpayers and the type of services that are traditionally offered, such as bins, parks, streets, cleaning and things like that. This is another opportunity to really deliver significant resident satisfaction. How nice would it be? I mean not where I live. They don't have the resources to do this, and I'm engaging directly with them, and I live in the Authority, and it's my money that's going into the pot for them. They know they're going to have to do this, and they're talking to me, and I've got a vested interest. I mean, I've got to drive, but I also, you know, live very, very close to places that have virtually no drives. It's a market town that's got lots of you know very narrow streets, cobbled streets, and that's where our solutions are going to make a difference, and everyone will be driving EV cars or paying £12 a gallon, you choose. Is that

Liz Allan  [00:27:12]:
Well, there's that there's that as well. So so, okay, so you've actually brought me to another question then. What are the what is the feedback from the residents then? The ones that you've actually kind of run this you're you're kind of installing the channels. What has been the feedback so far?

Gary Kinzett [00:27:29]:
So we get we get two two types of feedback. No feedback because it's such an insignificant and integrated part of their system, there's not a lot to go wrong. It's an open slot. It's a drainage channel by another name that you put an EV cable that is narrower than the slot you're putting it in. It goes through the little brush and it comes out the other end. It is as complex as that. You finish charging, you reel it back, it pulls out through soft brushes, it pulls back, and then you reel it up, and then you wait two days until you run out of charge again, or you can park outside your house. So it is no feedback, it is good feedback.

Gary Kinzett [00:28:11]:
We also get good feedback, and you mentioned, I think I can't remember if we did it on this session or before when we were chatting, around mobility users.

Liz Allan  [00:28:21]:
No. I haven't asked you that question, but no talk talk about

Gary Kinzett [00:28:24]:
yeah. So well we talked about disabled drivers and so general mobility is that we do well on surveys from those users because we have no moving parts. So even if you are seated, we have a small tool, I haven't got one with me, I have got one in the car but if you push the cable down and you just need a little bit more push to get down through it because your hands you might have some arthritis, you might have some movement issues in your fingers, then we just we supply a little cable pusher that just pushes it down. Essentially, you can roll it through there. You don't have to hold a lid open to thread it in. You don't need two hands to do that, which is important if you've got limited mobility and it's raining, and you'd rather be inside in the warmth, then, you know, you want something that's quick and easy to install. So, again, like I said, we all all of the cross pavement solution providers have different design features. Obviously, really simple, really industrial, really strong, and it has no lid and it has no moving parts.

Gary Kinzett [00:29:30]:
So we score quite well.

Liz Allan  [00:29:32]:
That's cool. So, actually talking of rain, so what happens, so obviously you've got the channel and originally like we said, these channels were built for water, so for you know, kind of rain seepage back onto the road. So if somebody, whether they have mobility problems or not, is actually trying to charge when it's absolutely peeing it down or trying to take the cable out because most of the time it is raining a lot, isn't it? Because we're in the UK and that's what happens, but how much of that rain can get into the channel? I'm assuming the brushes aren't actually stopping, or they'll probably stop an amount, won't they? Because you were saying earlier on about cleaning channels out, weren't you?

Gary Kinzett [00:30:19]:
Yes I was. So the the gullies are installed at a slight inclination from the which is in general for pavements as well. They're at a slight inclination.

Liz Allan  [00:30:30]:
Yeah. Get you.

Gary Kinzett [00:30:31]:
Drilled in towards the curb, and that's exactly the same for the gullies, is that they are installed from the boundary to the curb at a slight angle for that same purpose that it runs out of the gully. And you mentioned, you know, maintenance. It's just a sweeping, literally going through the gap, just sweeping out any debris that's come through the brushes. Again, for some of the local authorities where we're running trials, that's in their user agreement that the local authority has with the resident, that they have an element of upkeep within that.

Liz Allan  [00:31:06]:
And that makes sense, doesn't it? Because actually, you do want that, you know, you want that channel to be kept clean, but I understand what you're saying with regards to the runoff now. That totally makes sense that it's at that angle. But you know, you know what people think about EVs? They think that there's going to be electricity, and you know, and there is going to be, you know, and you're going to get somebody you know, and they're going to get a shock and all. That's why I just thought you know if we say that on here then actually the fact that the drainage channel is doing exactly that, it's draining but it's also giving you the ability to put the cable down there and there's there's gonna be the runoff then then hopefully it'll kind of reduce that level of worry of people, you know, because they hear this they hear this negative rubbish that comes out about, you know, how unsafe all these things are. I mean, you know, it's ridiculous. Would they let an EV or a charger actually be installed or on the road or whatever without proper safety checks? It's just not

Gary Kinzett [00:32:09]:
Exactly. And I was gonna make the point about the cables. The charging cables are all shielded anyway. They're made to a completely different safety standard and British industrial standards. We don't have any stipulation that cables must be because it's all done at the EV installation end, and they're all kite marked and CEs, and British standard seven six seven one, I think, is the electrical one. And we're on, you know, British standard EM fourteen thirty-three for the highway. So everything is compliance led, for safety.

Liz Allan  [00:32:45]:
And that's and that's the most important thing but but it's it's actually getting that word out isn't it to for kind of general public to understand that actually all of those kite marks are involved and you know and all the highest standards have actually been been used and integrated into the into the solution itself and the EV and the charger and everything. You know, yours is just a small part of that.

Gary Kinzett [00:33:14]:
Exactly that. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:33:15]:
But you're giving people the ability to be able to charge on their street. So I suppose my thinking is that because we've got a terrace street that's not far away from us. I was talking to you about this before we started recording. And it's really crowded. It's always very cramped on the street. It's got humps kind of going down this down the road itself to keep the stop blaming boy racers or even girl races. Kinda there is that. We were talking about that earlier, weren't we? We're not going to go into that conversation.

Liz Allan  [00:33:52]:
But, actually, you know, just to keep the speed down. But there's always that issue where, and I've seen this, you know, on this street, where they can't always park outside their house. So what are they, what are the options for that, as you know, for those people? For a start off, they can they share the Gul-e between neighbors

Gary Kinzett [00:34:17]:
for

Liz Allan  [00:34:17]:
a start off? They get permission from each other, you know kind of

Gary Kinzett [00:34:21]:
The permissions are not at the Gul-e level. The permission is at the charger level.

Liz Allan  [00:34:25]:
So Yeah. You're right. Well, they might all have their individual charges, might they? But they might just wanna share the gully.

Gary Kinzett [00:34:31]:
Exactly. Oh, well, they would share the charger and then they would charge the charger, just because the charger needs to be enabled to have another account on it. And I think it's co-charging. I think there are apps. I've got

Liz Allan  [00:34:45]:
Yeah. Co yeah. Co-charger has got that. But I was Yeah.

Gary Kinzett [00:34:48]:
The resident who owns the charger sets up another account for his or her neighbor, and then they just tap on like we do, we're talking about Electraverse. You just tap on like that and your account is charged. And I think there are schemes where the resident who owns the charge and the infrastructure gets a small commission, a kickback for allowing that charging to take place. And I've got one local authority that is going to start a pilot in August, that is their stipulation for all the EV charging that they entertain is that they must all be co-charge enabled. So that makes good sense. It makes particularly if you're not guaranteed to be outside your house all the time. I think you know having a gully just enables the charge point to go to the pavement, to the curb. In a car, maybe.

Gary Kinzett [00:35:44]:
Yeah. If you haven't got access to the charger through a little RF, you know, co charging RFID card tapping on it, then you're not it, doesn't make any, you're not going to be able to use that charger anyway. We found that not having a gully doesn't give you exclusivity to park outside your house.

Liz Allan  [00:36:04]:
No. No.

Gary Kinzett [00:36:05]:
And I've lived in South West London for a good while, and I pretty much people get used to, oh that's Gary's, he lives there, so I'll go on one. I'll go on to the next one. And I'm not saying that particularly London, but there is a settling down where people tend to recognize the car, and again we're charging with EV charging, as you know. I charge my car if I'm going on a long journey, I'll charge it big the night before I go, and then I will go as far as I can, and then I'll use the public infrastructure. But if I'm just at home, I'm not charging every night.

Liz Allan  [00:36:43]:
I'm charging

Gary Kinzett [00:36:44]:
every three or four nights.

Liz Allan  [00:36:46]:
Yeah.

Gary Kinzett [00:36:48]:
So again part of that selection for pilots for use, you know, have you got double yellow lines outside your house? It's a bit of a stopper. Single yellow lines with parking restrictions, loading bays, you know, there are all of these factors. It's that the gully provides a solution, but that solution might not be valid for all residents because of other circumstances. You might have trees, other pavement, you know, installations, water boxes, grids, manhole covers, and things like that that just make it not practically feasible to have not just Gully, but any of the other solutions. We all have the same trench done.

Liz Allan  [00:37:25]:
And you were saying about if you've got wonky pavements as well when before we were recording you were set you know, because that that's it. That's an issue. The pavement has got to be right, hasn't it?

Gary Kinzett [00:37:36]:
Yeah. And again, we're we're pretty we're pretty inclusive. Gul-e doesn't want to rule the world. You know we recognise, you know, out of the four or five main vendors, at least three of us are reliant on having straight flat pavements because we are straight flat chassis cable conduit in our houses. It doesn't bend. However, cables don't get rubbed if they're laid flat. You have to again, if it was a very undulating pavement we wouldn't we would reject that as a potential site, but there may be another solution that does it. So that's why I think that what what the landscape will look like in a year to two years' time is that there may be a choice to the resident of three and dependent on the type of pavement they have whether it's undulating or not undulating that will give them a decision tree about which way they go.

Liz Allan  [00:38:34]:
Very true.

Gary Kinzett [00:38:34]:
It's probably going to be similar but you know there are other factors you know if you've got a if you've got a pavement that you've got lots of undulations and curves in it that's not going to be good for the cable going being pulled in and out and being rubbed you know two or three, four, five times a week every month, every year for ten years, sooner or later the, you know, the Eel comes through on the cable. So you need to take all of these factors into consideration, but I don't think you know every pavement's different, and you know 80% of them will be absolutely fine for us and the other flat pavement providers, and the other 20% would be for another.

Liz Allan  [00:39:18]:
So, at least like you say, there are a number of different providers that will, you know, look at all of these things. Because I I do I do think that this they're the only the whole thing about EV charging in general is it's not a one size fits all is it? You know, so for example if you've got an undulate undulating pavement but actually you've got lampposts, well possibly, you know, lamppost charging might be a good idea or, you know, all of these things you've got to take it into account because we can't just think as if everybody is actually driving a Tesla with a beautiful house and drive, you know, and it's all wonderful. But because it, you know, we have to think about everybody, their finances, and, like, you know, being able to kinda provide people with that subscription service that you were talking about. I really, really hope that some of the councils, you know, some of the local authorities start or more of them start offering that because, like you say, we've got this period of time and, you know, we're gonna say, you know, time flies. Actually, it isn't gonna be long before it's gonna be upon us. You know? So, looking at all of the things that we need to do, this is just one part of it, isn't it, really?

Gary Kinzett [00:40:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. And, I'm being asked more and more now about the models, the different types of models, because largely it's not a technical discussion anymore. You know the Gully product has been tested in the ground for three and a half years. We've got twelve, thirteen, 14 live sites around the country. We've got another five in the can waiting for their funding to arrive so they can place an order and then we're shipping those. Momentum is a lot of EVs are coming onto the market now after having been on a business lease or a personal lease for three years and now entering the market. So you mentioned Teslas were like $45 K to $50k dollars three years ago.

Gary Kinzett [00:41:28]:
Now you can pick one up for like £13,000 14 thousand pounds Still a lot of money. Yeah. When you take it into the roundabout, how much diesel you would be paying with car tax, with servicing, and you add it up, you can make it. And this is where it's so key at 7p a kilowatt you've got a compelling argument. You have 70p a kilowatt that argument is kind of diluted a lot just on financial costs basis. You know you've still got the climate change, you've still got clean air, you've still got road tax although again you know road tax is going to change and how EV owners and drivers pay for things. So government needs to get joined up to make it super compelling for home charged EV ownership should be the mantra for this Government particularly to get going quickly. We are part of the solution.

Gary Kinzett [00:42:29]:
We need a hand in having the gates opened for us so we don't always have to keep tapping on the door of the keeper, but we get some of these gates that are just pass-throughs where, you know, oh, it's you guys again. You know? There are four or five of us. We are the same people knocking on the same doors. Just give us all blanket tick in the box that we're, you know, our products are tested. We're 25 tonne tested, c two fifty. We've been salt and spray tested within an inch of our lives. You know, us of galvanised steel, we warranty it for twenty years. You know, we warranty our product for twenty years.

Gary Kinzett [00:43:07]:
Wow. So there's not a lot to go wrong with it, and if anything does go wrong with it, we'll fix it. So if we take that as being read let's let's then move on to the permits and the payment plans and the usage models where we can help people. We're being more rather than just worrying about repeating the same test process on the product, let's switch our emphasis to try and provide joined up solutions with the local authority. We can't do anything without them. Residents are overwhelmingly, we've got probably three and a half thousand expressions of interest from around the country on our website saying we want a gully. They know they want a gully because they've come to our site. I'm sure the other vendors have equal amounts of their name as well, which is why they don't want to get bogged down in " ours is better than theirs etcetera etcetera use cases.

Gary Kinzett [00:43:57]:
There will be two or three vendors on every local authority website that says these are the characteristics of this one, these are the characteristics of that one, these are the prices and all the rest of it, you choose. And they shouldn't care about that. It should be enabling the resident to help the climate, help the clean air, help their pocket. You know, the more money they have in their pocket, the more they can spend on whatever, and then everything goes around. You see it's all cyclical.

Liz Allan  [00:44:24]:
Yes. Yeah. So so I can see I'm just I've got your website in front of me and I will share this in the show notes. So you can as a as a resident, you can register interest on the website, can't you?

Gary Kinzett [00:44:40]:
You can. You can.

Liz Allan  [00:44:41]:
And then, what are the next steps, and how much does it cost a resident then? I mean, I know you said that some councils charge and some don't, but on average, what's the kind of thing you said about the four p's as well, didn't you? But on average, how long does it take? What are once they put an expression of interest in, what happens next?

Gary Kinzett [00:45:04]:
So then the hard yards start after the expression of interest is put in. They get a courtesy email from us saying we appreciate your interest, and we will work with your local authority. At the same time, we have all of the local authorities on a regular email database, which we've collated over a number of years now, purchased and collated, and it's updated, and then we will send them, saying we have residents in your area who are interested in that. We would like to take part in any EV strategy, cross pavement solution type pilots or evaluations that you're undertaking and then we will wait for them to come back to us to say yes or no. My role is then to follow up with a telephone call or a personalized email and attempt to get through to the right person at the right time and present my credentials, as my dad would say. Present your credentials, and explain what you can help them with, and most of them are aware of cross-payment solutions now. It has moved tremendously in the last year. It is a common turn of phrase, so people know what you're calling for, and then we try and help them with I was with the South Wales Council on Friday, which had no idea, had no paperwork, no nothing, no planning or anything.

Gary Kinzett [00:46:32]:
So I'm linking them in to our live, it's on social media, so I'm not betraying any sort of confidences with Suffolk and with Bromley, because I have got some very good paperwork from their side. So again, the pavement element of the four Ps was they have got some in my speak S50, S178s, but they are specific forms for a specific utilization of the payment. And again, this is what we're taking into our joined-up cross pavement permit, and we're taking their version of that and then giving it back. So, payment-wise, well-planning, you can go on to your local planning, it's still subject to local planning. So I think for where I live in Cheshire it's about £260

Gary Kinzett [00:47:23]:
For planning permission. Well, I had some solar panels that were about ten weeks old, which was scary. Then you've got permits to go into the pavement. They're normally again, some are waiving them depending on if they're gonna own the gully and provide it as a service, subscription price. Mhmm. And they don't they don't need planning for the cross pavement and they don't need an S50, so they'll just do it because they're owning the responsibility for it. Yes. But there are some councils that charge £2 or £300 for that as well.

Gary Kinzett [00:48:00]:
So before you know it, you're up to £500 for your permits. Our gullies on our website, all the other cross payment providers publish theirs, we're at £499 and it's probably about another £400 to install it. Your your EV charger and the install is probably about £850 So you're kind of looking around about that £22,200 but there are the government is providing funding for cross payment solutions and also for, I think, the EV you can use £350 So there are some rebates but again they're finishing in the March so we wait with bated breath to see what other funding has been such a roaring success and it's really kicked off a lot of good pilots across the country. On the one hand, you can maybe feel my frustration at times, but I have to say, on the other end, and there is a spectrum, that at the other end, there are some very innovative local authorities that are grasping the nettle and owning their own destiny. And now we are looking at all of the versions, and they understand the planning, and they're looking at this deminimus type of planning where it's much, much cut down. So we're, you know, we're working with them to try and get this cross payment permit put together.

Liz Allan  [00:49:15]:
And that's the main thing, isn't it? It's about reducing the amount of red tape that goes with all of this stuff. Yep. You know? So yeah. And because if people suppose it's reducing the red tape and making it affordable for everybody.

Gary Kinzett [00:49:31]:
Retaining that compliance and audit because we've had the discussion internally and also with residents who say I don't understand why it's taking so long. Well you have to have the planning. Why do I need planning? Well, we need a record. There are other ways of getting an EV charger that don't require planning, but then there is no audit, there is no record, and that is fine. But if you want to do something on the pavement in five years' time or seven years' time, and you have got no record of what electrical equipment is on the outside of the house within two metres of where you are working, that might be significant. And I just think rather than trying to replace the planning is to work with it to make it smaller, lighter, nimbler because the information contained in it might be really, really useful to someone to do their job in future years. And for the and, you know, get it quicker, absolutely. Get it shorter, all those good things.

Gary Kinzett [00:50:29]:
But don't just get rid of it completely. We need an audit and an electrical certificate.

Liz Allan  [00:50:35]:
I agree. But this is about standardizing what you know, making sure that the local authorities are actually standardizing, and possibly best practice, you know, across all of the local authorities. That's a longer-term thing, isn't it? But I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna finish off by asking you one final question. So what would you like to see happen with Gul-e, Cross Payment Solutions, or just in general over the next five years? What would you like to see happen?

Gary Kinzett [00:51:15]:
So I go back to my four Ps. I really think that if there was a four-point plan that I had a magic wand and I was rolled forward two years, not even two years, Liz, I reckon a year. We need to do this in a year. In a year, we need to have a diminimus. I keep looking down at it. I don't know when I'm going to remember it. Diminimus planning that's light, that's maybe £20, so part of it. So it's vastly reduced, it's repeatable, and it might be a tick box of here's our four main EV charges that we authorize. There's a tick box that says here's our photographic evidence of the install and the certificate, job done.

Gary Kinzett [00:52:00]:
And that takes a week and includes someone to go out and test that it's there. I think the pavement we could minimise that to an S50 light or an 178 light, but a sort of cross pavement part of this pavement permit. Pricing, I think if we can carry on the subsidies from the Government for Levi funding to get the local authorities to keep trialing it, keep buying in bulk of each of the vendors' products to test them, create a catalogue portfolio of what we do for different use cases of the pavement, that would be really, really good. I think having some sort of payment mechanism where either the local authority owns it. All local authorities are equal but some are more equal than others. So they have more resources, they have more availability. We were talking earlier about one London borough that didn't have any web building capabilities. They had to find smaller companies who would do it on a free basis for reference or whatever.

Gary Kinzett [00:53:12]:
We need to have maybe some sort of standardised cross pavement website that you can give and feed it to them. Maybe part of a managed service that a lot of them are looking for is to say well here it is, you just put your logo at the top and it will capture all of the information that's required and then it would manage the purchasing of the EV charger and the cross payment at the same time. Wrap it all up and then give them a three-year term where they're paying £10 a month for all of it put together. And again we're working with a couple of charge well one particular charge point operator to offer a no capital outlay slightly higher rate per kilowatt hour as a service. So that's my magic wand, four p's going forward.

Liz Allan  [00:54:17]:
I think that's great. Actually, I think that's a really good place to end on, to be honest, because I think that putting those into practice, that's another one, isn't it, Pee? Yes. Put it into practice. You might know we'll see some different things happening over the next twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four months. And I'll keep my fingers crossed that things will start moving in the right direction and, you know, direction. And look, the local authorities that are a bit more reticent actually start sitting up and listening to the ones that are doing something and, like you say, using the case studies. But on that point, Gary, I just want to say thank you ever so much for your time. It's been interesting and yeah. Thank you.

Liz Allan  [00:55:05]:
It's just a matter of letting's get this, letting's get these solutions in because we do. We need several different types of solutions for all of this. But thank you.

Gary Kinzett [00:55:19]:
Thank you.

Liz Allan  [00:55:20]:
I'm going to say to everybody, as I say at the end of every podcast episode, please like, share, and subscribe. We're on YouTube. We're on all of the different audio channels, so Apple, Spotify, Amazon, you name it. Mostly, we're on there. Please elevate this message and share it with people who have never watched it or listened to it. That's all I ask of you.

Liz Allan  [00:55:47]:
But on that point, I'm going to say thank you for listening and watching, and I'll see you next time. Thanks Gary.

Gary Kinzett [00:55:52]:
 See you later. Thank you.