Episode 135: Liz Allan and Patrick Cresswell - How ClearWatt is Revolutionising Battery Health Transparency

Episode 135: Liz Allan and Patrick Cresswell -  How ClearWatt is Revolutionising Battery Health Transparency.

Liz Allan is joined by Patrick Cresswell, Co-Founder and Managing Director of ClearWatt, an innovative platform bringing trust and transparency to the used electric vehicle market. With over a decade of experience in the EV sector, including his time leading the pioneering eCar Club, Patrick shares how ClearWatt emerged from a deep gap analysis of the second-hand EV space. ClearWatt’s mobile app and data services are designed to demystify EV battery health, offering both peace of mind for drivers and practical tools for dealerships, leasing companies, and fleet operators. From real-world range estimates to aggregated performance data across vehicle types, Patrick explains how ClearWatt helps users make confident decisions, whether buying, selling, or wanting to understand their EVs’ performance better.

Quote of the Episode
“Battery health is holding up fairly well; it’s not about degradation but confidence. We’re here to give people peace of mind.” — Patrick Cresswell

Patrick Cresswell Bio:
Patrick Cresswell is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of ClearWatt, a groundbreaking platform delivering accessible EV battery health checks and data services. With over 11 years in the electric vehicle sector, Patrick previously led eCar Club and contributed to Europcar’s urban mobility strategy. His mission with ClearWatt is to build confidence in the second-hand EV market through transparency, smart data, and better customer tools. 

Patrick Cresswell Links:
Website: https://clearwatt.co.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-cresswell-629178a3

Transcript

Liz Allan  [00:00:01]:
So on today's episode, I have with me Patrick Cresswell, who is the co-founder and managing director at Clear Watt. Patrick, thank you ever so much for joining me. It's absolutely lovely to have you on here.

Patrick Cresswell [00:00:13]:
Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here.

Liz Allan  [00:00:17]:
So we're going to talk about the Clear Watt app and the services that you offer as an organisation. But let's just start by delving a little bit into your past. I always talk about this anyway because it's good It gives people a little bit of context about you as a as a person. So before you co founded Clear Watt, what was it that you were doing? What was and what was the kind of the reason for you to to found the company?

Patrick Cresswell [00:00:46]:
Sure. Well, I should say that at this point, I've worked in the EV sector for eleven years, I think.

Liz Allan  [00:00:53]:
Okay.

Patrick Cresswell [00:00:54]:
So, yeah, Clear Watt is not my first, toe in the water in the EV space. Previously, I was the managing director of a business called E-Car Club, which was an entirely electric car sharing business, which was a tiny, tiny start up when I joined in 2014 and went on to become a nationwide car sharing outfit in lots of different settings, lots of different types of business model, both B2B, B2C, and B2B2C. And it caught the attention of the Europe Car Mobility Group, who were acquiring car sharing brands across Europe with some pace in the middle part of the last decade. And so they acquired e Car Club, and I, I took over as managing director at that point and, took responsibility for all of Europcar's electric and urban mobility strategy, from that point forward, which I did for a couple of years. And, I think I was kind of at the sharp end of the very early days of EV adoption, obviously from a more rental and super short-term sharing kind of perspective through that group. But I think noticing what was happening with the sector, particularly around the the sort of early twenty twenties where where, you know, the numbers went super high in terms of EV registrations, it it just occurred to me that everybody was very much focused on brand new EVs and the the the sort of newest, newest tech and and, you know, all of these extra range that's coming next year and all of these things which I completely understand from an emerging technology perspective, but it just became clear to me that very few people really have their eye on what happens when those vehicles finish that first ownership cycle of typically three or four years and end up on the second hand market. What does that sector look like? And so Clearwater was really born out of a very deep gap analysis as to what information is missing for that to be a healthy, sort of buoyant market. And yeah.

Patrick Cresswell [00:03:14]:
So so clear what was basically born out of that thinking and that experience.

Liz Allan  [00:03:19]:
Fantastic. I was gonna say, you're talking about the tech and how people were looking at the new vehicles. I kind of was thinking it's a bit like a four-wheeled iPhone, isn't it? You know, you'd be people kind of see see kind of EVs like that because the tech is so different and a lot of the cars look quite different. You know, I've looked at the new Renault T5 e that's coming in and I'm quite excited because I really wanna, you know, I wanna take that for a test drive because it just looks amazing. But but yeah, like you say, once they've gone through that first first owner cycle, whether that's part of a a fleet or whether that's somebody who goes to a, you know, a regular kind of three year cycle anyway, that's the really important bit, isn't it? So, so can you when it goes on to that secondhand market, then, what is it? If you can explain what ClearWatt is, what it does, and how it can help EV drivers who are buying into, you know, into that secondhand market.

Patrick Cresswell [00:04:23]:
Yes. Absolutely. So Clearwot is now a number of things. So it's not as simple to explain as maybe it was even six to twelve months ago, in that the business has evolved around technology that we have built, really in the journey of bringing transparency to secondhand EVs. So the core of our technology is our EV battery health analysis tool, which is delivered via our mobile app, and that's a very deliberate move that we made. So in the early days of Clearwater, we won some funding from the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles and the Department for Transport, who were very plugged into the story. No pun intended there.

Liz Allan  [00:05:16]:
I like it. It's good.

Patrick Cresswell [00:05:18]:
I was gonna say they're very switched on, but you could say that's a light bulb. I mean, I'm really not trying to do this, but they were very aware of the issues surrounding the secondhand market because the secondhand car market in general is incredibly important. Right? Where 80% of all car sales happen per year is on the secondhand market. And there is no current methodology for measuring battery health and no truly accessible services where you're able to do that. And so we want some funding to explore ways in which we could achieve that, and the core Clear What product was born out of that project. And, so, so what it is is a mobile app whereby a customer would download it and add their car to it, and then, they have the opportunity to connect their car to our app via their own first-person app that they will have for the vehicle. So, by that I mean, you know, the Tesla app if you're a Tesla driver and what have you. So within our app, when we open the login screen, you can connect to us and share that data with us.

Patrick Cresswell [00:06:35]:
But we also have a manual version of our app where you don't need to do that, which is more suitable for dealers and people involved in vehicle movements, for example, who will never have the companion app for that vehicle. But once you are connected, what ClearWatt is doing is pulling data from the car whilst pulling data from your mobile phone, and it's really the marrying of those two sets of information which is completely unique to ClearWatt. And the reason that's really important is if you're if you don't have the connection to the phone, let's say, and you're just communicating with the car, there is only so much data you can pull from the car, and there's only so much frequency from which you you can make that those calls for information. So Tesla, for example, is renowned for having the best data available, but it's a very different picture if you get into some of the different brands and certainly older vehicles. You can't communicate with the car very often. It's in minutes, not seconds. But what we are doing at the same time is communicating with the mobile phone of the customer every second, at its slowest. So what it essentially means is that we're able to draw your trip on a map every time you get into your car and drive it.

Patrick Cresswell [00:07:53]:
We detect that you're moving, you're in a car. We call your car and say, are you moving? Are you in the same location? And then, we start to draw out that trip within our back end. But, obviously, what we're doing there is by communicating with your phone and the GPS and accelerometer and all of the sensors in your phone in such high frequency, we're able to see how fast you're driving, how quickly you're accelerating, all of those things. We're also able to see what the weather is like where you are, whether you're driving into a headwind, the gradient of the elevation of the road, etcetera. And really, the ClearWatt system is accounting for those things such that whereas on on the one hand, we've pulled your, you know, your charge level information from the car directly, on the other hand, we've understood, okay, so if that means you've consumed x amount of energy on a journey, what are the, both driver and environmental conditions that will have influenced that energy consumption figure? Like, you know, were you driving like a lunatic in the freezing cold or, you know, and working back from extremities like that? And from that, we're able to get a really true sense of how efficient your car is and how many miles it will do on a full charge, from which we make assumptions about battery health. And so that's kind of the very highly accessible front end service that we provide. What then happens afterwards when we have when we spot a car that appears to have issues is we have almost an escalation flow from there, whereby we have a charging test routine that we ask people to to go through to validate what we found from the app, and one or two other one or two other things. So, I guess one of the key messages, I suppose, through all of that is to say, EV battery health is holding up fairly well, and we knew that when we started this.

Patrick Cresswell [00:09:46]:
And really, the key challenge is one of confidence and and and providing a really simple way for people to feel like, you know, they're not buying a dud or, you know, and so the app does that, and if there is cause for escalation, then we have, you know, we have things in our armory there. That's sort of one side of the business. And the other bits to mention are that at this point, we have tested an awful lot of cars. We've been in testing now for a couple of years. We're operational across four continents, and we're actually now live. We launched the app live in January, but prior to that we've been in beta testing mode for some time. And so, you know, millions and millions of data points have been through our algorithms and our sort of self learning engine. We're in a place where we're able to provide really kind of interesting data services as a as a as a byproduct of that because we've now tested, for example, enough, types of three year old, I don't know, Tesla Model three or whatever, whereby if you tell us the age of the car and how many miles it's done, we can feedback to you how many miles range you can expect from that car in different conditions.

Patrick Cresswell [00:11:08]:
And obviously, there's a pretty big caveat on that, which is to say that this car may have been, you know, had a bit poorly treated or whatever and it could fall outside of that. But the likelihood is it will fall within the range that we estimate. And so on the data services side of the business, we're in the process of launching product called EV Check Plus, where anybody is able to come to our website, give us the license plate number and the mileage of the car, and we will return to you three pages of information about that car. Many of those things are estimates, particularly around range and battery health, but they're substantiated estimates. And in addition to that, we have lots of other very black and white things like how many charge points are there in the UK that this car is compatible with, where is the charging port located, just simple things that would be quite different. And then we also have a full page of vehicle history data, which we pull in from Experian and other trusted third parties, which will tell that person whether the car's been in an accident or any outstanding finance and things like that. So, yeah, sorry it wasn't a short answer, but it's becoming a longer answer in that clear what is dot dot dot is. It's kind of really to be thought of as two pillars.

Patrick Cresswell [00:12:29]:
There's like battery health testing on one side and all of that data that we're gathering and learning from there is being aggregated into the other pillar, which is, like, data services.

Liz Allan  [00:12:41]:
I mean, that in itself is is excellent, and I have actually got your your, EVCheck Plus in front of me that I've kind of I've I've used because you kindly kindly sent sent me a link and actually yeah it's it's it's really really interesting because I gave the so it was a year of manufacture, the make and model of the vehicle, and how many how many miles were on the clock. So at the time submitting it, I was about 34,000, just over 34,000 miles. And it is really interesting because it's kinda it's even got remaining warranty mileage, so you get that. You know? So saying because people who've not bought a secondhand EV don't recognise or, you know, or an EV full stop, they don't recognize that the warranty is a lot longer, isn't it, for an EV than most combustion engine vehicles?

Patrick Cresswell [00:13:36]:
Yeah. Well, I I think what what a lot of people don't realize is that the the vehicle has a standard warranty, then it has an additional battery warranty. And, yeah. So of all of the things on that report, that's probably the simplest thing that we that we provide, but it's but it's it's one of the most valuable, I think, in that people don't don't realise that that that is even a thing.

Liz Allan  [00:13:55]:
And so, it's saying my remaining warranty time is four years and seven months, which is how long the MOT is valid for. There's all sorts of stuff in here. It's like you say, it's where the charging port is, that it'll take AC type two charging, DC charging, CCS, you know, and how what the what the yeah. So we've got, actually, it's interesting. I'll talk to you later about it, about the kind of type two charging. But the information that you provide on there, even if it's just basic, and it, you know, it's rarely in fact, no. It's not basic. The information you provide on there is so important for people who are buying used EVs.

Liz Allan  [00:14:40]:
And I said to you before we started recording, and everybody who's been listening for a while knows that we bought our Hyundai Ioniq, you know, that was a used EV. And we didn't have a clue. You know, we would not have known whether it didn't have a lot of miles. I think it was about 14,000 miles on the clock or 12,000 when I bought when we bought it. Yeah. But we wouldn't have had a clue about battery health, and people don't.

Patrick Cresswell [00:15:06]:
No. People don't. And also, I think with the way that we communicate Batchie Health and all of the stuff around it, we're sort of tackling other issues in the same way with the same product. And by that I mean that there's a general lack of information out there. I mean, there are lots and lots of dealer websites I could point you to, and I won't name names. But, you know, huge top 10 UK dealerships where if you're on you're looking at a listing for an electric vehicle and you click into tech specs or something like that, it, you know, it'll start with engine size zero seats. 

Liz Allan  [00:15:47]:
I know exactly what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that. Yeah. 

Patrick Cresswell [00:15:50]:
And so people say to me, with that product, you know, the EV Check Plus Report, who are your main competitors? And it's like, well, I don't I don't know really. I mean, certainly, we have competitors with the vehicle history and provenance stuff and surfacing things like Experian checks and stuff. That's quite an established business. Right? But, for just much, much, much better EV data, that is both completely objective and just a nice way of pulling together OEM data that's consumable and understandable. That's a lot of what we do. But then, yeah, the additional layer on top of that, which is very unique to Clearwater, is the aggregated estimates that we're able to provide from all of the testing that we've now done. So, yeah, it's an exciting time. You know, like, at the moment, in the UK, there are 25,000 used EV sales per month, on average.

Patrick Cresswell [00:16:42]:
That's set to just keep growing and growing, and with the EV Check Plus product, it's one where anybody can come to our website within a couple of minutes, retrieve that report. You don't have to test a car. So, yeah, there's a pretty big market there, I think, who are, in many ways, scratching their head, confused about all of the numbers and and and, yeah, requiring more information, and that's really where that comes in.

Liz Allan  [00:17:12]:
And like you say, the dealerships that have those missing sections or the sections that start engine size or whatever, you know, they're missing that trick, aren't they? What you know, and what you're doing is filling you're making it, it is easy, easily accessible information.

Patrick Cresswell [00:17:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think the other part of the challenge, and this is a really big challenge, is that, particularly on the topic of range, there are official figures available for every car, certainly sold in the last, I think. Eight years ago, WLTP was brought in, something like that. But the WLTP, the World Light Testing Protocol process, is a laboratory-based test which then results in often very optimistic range estimates. And so it's a pretty serious issue where you've got people taking a vehicle because they thought it was capable of, you know, 250 miles of range, and the best they ever get out of it is less than 200, and maybe you can half that in the winter. I don't know. Maybe that's exaggerating, but the sector needs to do so much more in terms of managing those types of expectations.

Patrick Cresswell [00:18:38]:
We work with some leasing clients, for example, who are suffering from early terminations because their customers have agreed to a contract for a vehicle on the basis of performance figures which are unachievable. And, so the real range figures that we, you know, we include on our reports therefore become really, really important. And the other thing that I should say about what, you know, what Clear What is and what Clear What does is that we provide that type of information available via API. So, we're working with partners to embed Clearwater range estimates on the pages of leasing vehicles. So, for example, I think by the time this goes live, this podcast will be up and running with Love Electric, obviously a big salary sacrifice broker, and, yeah, a number of others like it, where, yeah, I guess we're just improving the digital ecosystem where people are shopping for electric vehicles by providing that kind of better better data.

Liz Allan  [00:19:41]:
And actually just going back to what you said about early termination, if you're talking about early termination of a of a of a lease, the knock on effect of that, you know, it can be it can be massive throughout the second, you know, second end market or or maybe even lease companies can't afford to pass, you know, to get rid of that. They but therefore they end up increasing the lease cost, don't they? Because they've not made that money back. So this is quite a big knock-on effect with that inaccurate information at the beginning with regards to WLTP, you know, sort of the range finger in the air jobby.

Patrick Cresswell [00:20:22]:
Absolutely. Yeah. The ramifications are serious. You know, an early-terminated vehicle, obviously, is no longer brand new, so it can't be released as a brand new vehicle. It's depreciated an awful lot through that whole episode. And, yeah, I mean, the leasing costs are then they have to swallow that. That risk needs to be included and, yeah. So there we go.

Liz Allan  [00:20:48]:
I was gonna say, what then needs to change with regards to WLTP? Do they need to have the WLTP range and then actually get your product, for example, and then kind of look at it and change the WLTP? You know, basically saying right, okay, this is what we had, but this is what we know. Because WLTP was we didn't know I always say this you don't know what you don't know. So like you say, if it's kind of a bit more positive and a bit, I'm not saying massaged, that's not what I'm saying, but you know if it's not quite as accurate as it should be, then surely that needs to change.

Patrick Cresswell [00:21:30]:
Yeah. I mean, obviously, I completely agree with that. And, you know, when you ask the question, should it be side by side WLTP and then something more realistic? Well, that's where a lot of our business development focus is, but it's being decided on a company-by-company basis. It's not being legislated that more realistic range figures should be included, although there are murmurings in that direction. It's something that's, you know, fair charge and and and, you know, Quentin Wilson, I think, is a particular bugbear of his, and and there there there is some pressure, for that to become more realistic. Because of the WLTP test cycle, the one thing that you can say about it is that it is at least a fair test. So for people with, let's say, three EVs in mind that they're considering buying, it's useful to compare the three of them. But if you believe that that number is what you're likely to get, then you're likely to be sorely disappointed.

Patrick Cresswell [00:22:32]:
And that's especially true if it's a secondhand vehicle because the delta between the WLTP figure and what you actually get from that car obviously increases over time as battery degradation occurs, because even in the best case scenario, batteries do degrade. So it will only ever continue to get wider and wider. So you end up in a situation where if you're on a classified website and you're looking at a range displayed on that advert, it's sort of a double whammy almost. It's like it was not right when it was the car was new, and it's certainly not right anymore. Yeah. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:23:10]:
And and actually there are some vehicle makes and vehicles or EVs that are are not quite as efficient as as they make out to be, you know, the the manufacturers make out We're quite lucky with the ionic actually because it is quite an it's got a small battery but it's fairly efficient anyway so you know I mean we would have liked to have had something that could do two fifty miles to a full charge you know and and that was kind of something that if we'd have known a little bit more if we'd have you know had had your, your app then then it would have it's it's about still about taking those in making those informed choices isn't it? Having the information, I was actually thinking about going back to the dealership and the leasing companies. Education will help that and also help decrease the amount of negativity because as the person who's teaching you or passing that information on, then hopefully, more people understand that this is the realistic range, the real world. And it's meeting people's expectations, then, isn't it?

Patrick Cresswell [00:24:21]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, I know that that negative press is a book bearer of yours. I know everybody else in this sector, but with the current state of play, I I feel like we're just always going to go into wintertime and the tabloid press have the same story to run every single year, which is, you know, look, these EV drivers are only getting 60% of the quoted range for these cars. That will just happen in perpetuity until this gets sort of sorted in one way or the

Liz Allan  [00:24:51]:
other. It's it is, you know, it's just one of those things, isn't it? And because of batteries and cold weather and being in the UK, that's just kind of what we get, really. But it is to me, it's about honesty. It's about transparency and and actually not just making sure that that, that, you know, like the dealerships and the leasing companies, etcetera etcetera, actually are able to provide that that transparency so that you don't get people coming back, you know, two years into their lease or a year and a half into their lease, for example, and saying not having this, I need to be doing two fifty miles with, you know, to one charge and I'm only getting, you know, I'm getting a 195 or whatever, do you know what I mean? You know, hopefully it'll stop that. Absolutely. Yeah. So okay. So when we're talking about feedback from the customers that you've been working with already, whether they are, you know, people who've downloaded the app, etc.

Liz Allan  [00:25:58]:
And like you said, you've been testing for a couple of years, and I have had your app on my phone, and I'm just terrible with things. So I have actually I've done a little test but we had you had to do I think it was three tests didn't you? And I've got a memory, like I said, in certain cases. So I did it and I just thought, you know what? We've got to do this. But then when you and I got talking, as in and now it's gone live, right, okay. Well, I now know what I'm doing. Yeah.

Patrick Cresswell [00:26:25]:
Well, I mean, so so, that that's so the first thing to say is that we've had, like, really, really amazing feedback and we've had a huge spread across different territories that we weren't expecting. It's not been through any proactive kind of effort of ours. But we have a lot of users in Australia, for example, and increasingly in Mainland Europe as well, where people are really, I think, worried about this stuff. And a lot of the time so, yeah, it's probably worth just saying that we originally anticipated that the app would be primarily used at the point of resale. So the person selling car wants to, wants to improve the process of selling the car, whether that's through being able to ask for a bit more money because they can prove the battery's fine, or less people coming around to kick the tires at the weekend or whatever, because they've answered that question.

Liz Allan  [00:27:29]:
Yeah. What

Patrick Cresswell [00:27:29]:
We've actually had a lot of people who already have the car, and they don't intend to sell it anytime soon. But for the reasons we've just been talking about, particularly around range, they they're worried that they've got an issue with the vehicle and what what they're actually looking for is some peace of mind that they haven't or confirmation that they have and a means of escalating that and what have you. So we launched properly in January, and we have different ways of measuring the success of that. Obviously, there's a revenue component and and and commercial metrics, but in terms of actual, like customer satisfaction, we're we're I think we're at the time of recording this, we're at, like, 4.7 on the app stores and we have a net promoter score of 44, which we're incredibly proud of. Almost everyone who gives us that feedback is, we just see eights, nines and tens in terms of whether you'd recommend this to a friend. So, yeah, we're we're we're we're really, really happy about that. On the point that you made there about forgetting to do tests, it is probably a good moment to talk about what we have by means of the tech road map and where the product has evolved. So when we initially built the tech, the way that it works is that we ask the customer to complete a set of drives, and each of those drives needs to be of a minimum trip duration.

Patrick Cresswell [00:29:05]:
And that gives us basically, we've calculated it depends on the car itself, but we calculated what the minimum distance needs to be for us to be able to run our calculations. But we obviously were aware that asking customers to remember to start a trip and stop a trip is not the long-term goal. It was kind of what we needed to do with our real keen, beta testing community who were, you know, evangelists and sort of, you know, frankly a bit geeky about this stuff. Those guys do remember.

Liz Allan  [00:29:41]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I would say I'm a bit geeky, but I'm also neurospicy, which means that I can remember to put it on when I set off, but forgetting that when I get to the other end, I'm like, oh, flippin' heck.

Patrick Cresswell [00:29:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. So, the process you were doing there is what we know internally as the active flow. But what we have built since then and are in the process of rolling out now, again, it depends on which vehicle you drive, how quickly this will be rolled out, but we're already offering this to a number of vehicles in our database, whereby it is a completely passive process. And what you're asked to do is if you want a Clearwater battery health report, you download the Clearwater app and add your car to it and then just forget about it basically. You put your phone in your pocket, and when your report is ready, we'll send you an email to tell you it's ready. And we're able to do that via passive data collection from both your car and your phone, and marrying those two pieces of information together. So, you know, that to us is the scalable version of the ClearWatt app.

Patrick Cresswell [00:30:55]:
So, yeah, it's quite an exciting development that's happening as we speak in terms of the rollout.

Liz Allan  [00:31:03]:
So I am definitely, I promise you I will do that. If that's what I say, I was just thinking while we were talking earlier on, I thought maybe I should just put a post-it on my seat to remind me to start and stop. But if it's that easy, then, you know, everybody should be downloading your app and actually having a look. Because do you know what? To me, in some ways, it's about getting a house price for your house when you don't intend to, you know, sell it. Yeah. You know, it's kind of that midway point, isn't it? Or partway through because you want to know its value. You wanna know, you know, with the vehicle, you want to know what the battery health is or what, you know, if there's anything like you say, if there's anything that needs escalating because you might have missed something yourself. You don't get that in a house price, you know, when you get an estate agent round.

Liz Allan  [00:31:59]:
So, this information is invaluable, I think.

Patrick Cresswell [00:32:03]:
Yeah. And, you know, again, we have to be really careful about not naming names, but we have, like, there's a customer that springs to mind who has got an EV which is quite a premium car and it's done less than 10,000 miles. So, we don't believe that it's suffered from, calendar and cyclic battery degradation, which happens over time. But ever since he's had it, he has had a really, really poor range. It would probably achieve half of what we would expect for that car. And our expectations are not WRTP. You know, that's our realistic expectation. And he's been back and forth with the manufacturer and is actually in the process of taking them to court.

Patrick Cresswell [00:32:51]:
He's spent quite a lot of money on this because he won't sort of take what they're saying lying down really because every every time he goes in, it's the same story, which is you must have a really heavy right foot, you know, turn your heated seats off, those sorts of things. And, you know, he knows that that's not right. But without something in his hand, then it's very, very difficult to argue the toss with the quote unquote experts, I suppose. And so, you know, it's a real part of why we do what we do is to empower people in that situation. Not not not to turn this negative and say that suggest that that's a common experience. But definitely, enabling consumers to know the reality is, I think, absolutely essential to the adoption of electric vehicles.

Liz Allan  [00:33:49]:
I totally agree. And actually, people who have listened to me talk about our vehicle, and I don't know whether I've gone into it too much. Still, I have a bit, but with regards to the local dealership, I've been really disappointed with them and actually so much so that we are due for a service and I probably won't go there. I'd rather go north of Reading. We're we're in Caversham, which is north anyway, but I'd rather go up to Oxford just to avoid it, you know, because actually, I'm I don't know whether I'd I to be honest, I'm sorry that, you know, people don't like me saying this, but but, actually, I want to have an honest opinion. And like you say, you know, it's a bit like going to a doctor and saying I've had a headache for three weeks and them saying to you, no. It's alright. You can just take some paracetamol, it'll be fine. You know, you just imagine it, which is just you can't do this.

Liz Allan  [00:34:46]:
You need to be able to trust this information. If you can't trust what you're getting from the dealerships, it's partly because, especially with our local dealership, they don't have the technicians or the ability to do the deep diagnostics in the way that they should be able to.

Patrick Cresswell [00:35:03]:
Well, that's a segue that people are probably gonna think is planned, and it's just completely unplanned. But one of one of the other things on our road map is before very long, we're gonna have, like, a map on our website where we want to mark, who the dealerships are that are you who are interacting with us and using Clearwater products, like, in the showroom and on the fork. We're actually in the process of a very exciting partnership with the National Franchise Dealers Association, who run the EVA accreditation kitemark. So if you're a franchise dealer and you can demonstrate that you have met the minimum threshold of expertise in the dealership, and there's a whole list of things, then you reach the EVA accreditation. But, yeah, there are some some additional very exciting things that are coming with with Clear Watt Partnerships there such that, you know, we want to help people navigate the exact thing that you've just mentioned there and and, you know, find a diva who is being proactive about this stuff and the transfer and translation of complex information helped along by Clearwater, I think, is just an easy way for dealers to to show that they're that they care about this stuff really.

Liz Allan  [00:36:24]:
Oh, and that'd be do you know what, Patrick? That would be fantastic. And I've got to say just I'd actually, do you know what? I just wanna point out to everybody watching and listening that I know that it's not just EVs that this problem happens with for dealerships. I know that there aren't enough technicians around the country to actually, you know, kind of manage ICE vehicles never mind EVs, but it's about, you know, making sure that there are more more apprentices come in, you know, and and they're employed and they go up the ranks because they can start level two and upwards, You know? And actually, just like you say, to see that on a map for proactive dealerships would just be wonderful because to me, you just, I've learned so much from this podcast. If I hadn't been, you know, talking to people like yourself, and I was just, you know, had no information, you just kinda bumble around, don't you? And, talking about negativity as we said earlier, because there's so much negativity out there, you end up falling into a trap of reading this stuff. I've had friends who've read this kind of negative stuff, and they just believe it because they don't know anything different. But if they can't go into a reputable website like yours and you've got that information on there, that's kind of just gives that level of trust, doesn't it?

Patrick Cresswell [00:37:56]:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I use, like, on my phone, I use, like, the Apple News app and, you know, you tell it what your interests are. And I made the mistake of saying electric vehicles because, you know, it sifts through all of the broadsheets and everyone else. And that's you just end up with an absolute, like, a cauldron of bad press, basically. It's just that it makes looking at the news very depressing. I should probably just proactively remove it.

Liz Allan  [00:38:26]:
Yeah. Don't just do it. Don't do it. It. The YouTube channel, our YouTube channel for this podcast, because people who are quite sceptical about EVs, if they put something in about it, this YouTube channel, because we put quite a lot of shorts on YouTube, it gets promoted, oh my god. I have to stop my son's even said because he kind of monitors our YouTube channel, he said I've deleted some comments, mum, because you know you don't want to be reading that kind of stuff, and I'm saying right, fair enough. That's fine. Because it's hard not to kind of go, oh my god, where did that come from? You know? So yeah.

Patrick Cresswell [00:39:05]:
Yeah. Well, I think there's there's a lot of, there's a lot of people, I think, trying to tackle that at the moment. Obviously, there's EV UK and and and a really concerted proactive effort to, I guess, improve the news landscape in this arena. So, hopefully, we're over the worst of it, but we'll see.

Liz Allan  [00:39:25]:
Yeah. And, actually, having something like your products, I can only see that as a real benefit to everybody, you know. And because of this, I was going to ask you, and we did talk about this briefly before we started recording. What are your thoughts about integrating your product? Or I mean obviously this is slightly different, but we look at the MOT. So with the MOT for ICE vehicles, it's very specific. You know what you're getting. You know all the things that need to be ticked off. With an electric vehicle, there's a lot less, but there isn't anything at the moment, is there, on one kind of battery health? What are your thoughts on that?

Patrick Cresswell [00:40:08]:
My thoughts on that are it would be nice, wouldn't it?

Liz Allan  [00:40:13]:
Fabulous.

Patrick Cresswell [00:40:15]:
The issue is that, I guess what you're asking me here about is regulation because basically, there's no short answer to this, but I'll try and be succinct. Currently, there is no agreed standard for how battery health is measured from OEM to OEM. So if you were to get into, like, the guts of a vehicle, which you would typically do by plugging hardware into it, if you know where to look, you can often find a parameter there called SOH, right, state of health. And so you can retrieve that number which is presented as a percentage, and you know, hey, presto, you've got the battery health for that car, or so it would seem. The difficulty is that there is no, as I say, there is no agreed standard. So that the measurement that you'll pull from manufacturer x means something completely different to the measurement that you would pull from manufacturer y. And thrown into the mix of that, you've got competing, or rather not competing, but variable motivations behind what they're trying to do with that number. So this is probably a bit of a shock for you as a Hyundai owner.

Patrick Cresswell [00:41:37]:
But,

Liz Allan  [00:41:38]:
Oh, God. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.

Patrick Cresswell [00:41:41]:
Well, typically, you know, there are some manufacturers out there, Hyundai included, who provide a buffer and they keep that number at 100% for as long as possible. So you're reading, I would imagine, if you took it to a Hyundai garage and asked them to retrieve the state of health even at thirty, what did you say, 34,000 miles, it will say this vehicle has not degraded at all. Which, you know, from a chemistry perspective, isn't possible aside from the fact that what they've probably done is built a buffer on top of, like you have more than a % to start with. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:42:17]:
I understand. Yeah.

Patrick Cresswell [00:42:18]:
Which, therefore, you know, they're they're not doing anything underhand, so that's not the suggestion here, but you're not comparing apples with apples when you're looking at the OEM who doesn't engage with something like that. And so knowing all of this, the government here in The UK, over in Brussels, and then above that, like at the United Nations, are looking to implement a global standard for battery health, which forces manufacturers to provide a measurement for battery health, which can be compared from brand to brand and also is easily accessible. Like, you don't need an onboard diagnostic dongle to go and get the number. It's either on the dashboard or it's in the companion app. And so that's a piece of legislation called GTR number 22, global technical regulation. And that is so that was originally supposed to be included in the Euro seven new emissions legislation, which the EU were due to launch this year, although that's been kicked down the road now to 2027 at the earliest. Okay. And if it does come in in 2027, then that will mean that new brand new vehicles sold in the European Union will need to include that number on the car somewhere.

Patrick Cresswell [00:43:42]:
The UK still hasn't decided whether it's going to sign up to GCI number 22. But you can see that to your point about MOTs, it's not really possible to do that unless there is an agreed standard. Otherwise, you're gonna run into the issues like I've just mentioned there. So, yeah, it's a tricky area. And particularly when we think about used cars, let's say that the UK decide to follow Europe on the implementation of GTI number 22. What that'll mean is brand new cars sold here from 2027 will have that number on the dashboard. But, you know, three- to four-year ownership cycle, you're into the next decade before those cars end up on Autotrader. So it's like, what do you do between now and then? So that for us is why, you know, Clearwater's a really important, like, now thing, but will continue to be in the future as well because, you know, what we're really building is an enormous data set to be able to, a, read from cars, but, b, tell you whether that's good, bad, or somewhere in the middle for that car.

Patrick Cresswell [00:44:48]:
And I think long term, even if we do implement the GTR, I think we'll have a big role to play as the kind of, you know, a huge global database of how EVs are performing and where they should be for their age and mileage. Yeah. So, there's my long-winded answer to the MOT question, but, like a like, to reiterate my short answer to the question, it would be great. It would allow people to have real, like, simple clarity at the point of a three year sorry. It happens when the car becomes three years old, and then obviously it's annual after that. Being able to give people that during a, you know, how long is an MOT, couple of hours sort of thing would be great, but I think it's not realistic really for practical reasons, which is, again, why we exist. Probably this is a time for another plug as well because No.

Liz Allan  [00:45:42]:
Go for it. Go for it.

Patrick Cresswell [00:45:44]:
Road app, we are, you know, what we talked about with the Clearwater app, and the battery health certificate is something that somebody retrieves on a one-time basis, whether they are looking for peace of mind and reassurance today or whether they are selling their car tomorrow. Like, you know, that's kind of that's, like, one way of thinking about Clearwater. But what we've seen of the feedback that we've had, from a lot of our customers, has been, I want to dip into this on a monthly basis. You know, like, where's the version of the app that's a monthly subscription? And, you know, we can pull, we are pulling lots and lots of information that would be a really, really nice universal companion app for EV owners of all shapes and sizes, whether that's business company car drivers as well or private individuals. So, you know, that that will enable us to, if you connect your car up to Clearwater over the period that you own it, by the end of that period, we would be able to compile some insights about how the car has been treated, you know, how many times has it been rapid charged, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So, yeah, I mean, we can sort of coexist with annual MOTs in that, you know, a connected car to the Clear Watt system can tell you everything that you can't get at MOT, that that is EV specific.

Liz Allan  [00:47:12]:
Having that information available, Patrick, is is just is a bit to me, it's a bit of a a game changer because, you know, what you're like you like I said to you, I see a specific, I'm getting specific mileage in winter, you know, at, so far. I know, but if I know that I get probably around four miles per kilowatt hour for example driving in in like six degrees or something like that or maybe slightly more and then you know and I do try and make sure that I don't drive it like I stole it and but I know don't we don't we've got a home charger, we don't rapid charge it as often as I used to do when we first got it. So having that kind of information of the full picture, it's a bit like, I know I always keep giving these analogies today, but with my husband is is we've got like the, Give Energy app and we've got a heat pump, we've got solar panels, and we've got a battery. And and he I mean, he is a bit he loves looking at he's a bit obsessed with it, to be honest. I'm sorry, Rich, if you're listening. But but actually, that having it then provides you with that ability to see what your usage is over a twelve month period because actually you can look at it weekly monthly quarterly annually and and it's and this is what I see your app being you know kind of moving forward that ability to be able to have a look at the whole whole picture. And if you are selling it, you've got that whole picture to be able to go, ego. This is how it's performed on a yearly basis with this.

Patrick Cresswell [00:48:58]:
Yeah. I mean, there are a couple of things in that. The first thing to say is that there's a list of good things that you can do in terms of how you treat a person. 


Patrick Cresswell [00:49:07]:
A battery of an EV, and there's a list of bad things you can do. But I really don't think that that's common knowledge, and I'm careful not to criticise people who do rapid charge the car all the time because quite often they've got no idea that that's a bad thing to do. And so, you know, what we're talking about releasing here is, like, really simple sort of dos and don'ts and helping to educate people on that first thing. Yeah. I'll just end with an anecdote about all of this, really. I suppose, you know, my dad's an EV driver and he got his vehicle through a company car lease. And knowing what I do, knowing that he shouldn't rapid charge it, he never once rapid charge that car. And when it came to giving the car back, he just had no means of, like, passing that information back on to the leasing company and therefore the person who owned the car.

Patrick Cresswell [00:50:01]:
And it's it's quite sweet really, but he, like, hand wrote in the log book of the car, this car has never been on a rapid charger. And, but I think, you know, if that is in 2025 the current best best state of play that we can do to to transfer that important information over from owner one to owner two, then there's the gap. That's what we're feeling.

Liz Allan  [00:50:24]:
You're right. You're right. It's very important that we do know that. We have to remember that there are a lot of people who haven't got drives, who haven't got home charges, and they can't they have to rapid, they have to use a rapid because of how they, you know, because of how they work, they live, whatever they they have to do. So, I suppose my question is, what are you alluding to, the fact that it's really bad? Is it? Is my question.

Patrick Cresswell [00:50:55]:
Well, not in isolation, I would say. I mean, there's like a whole bunch of things that you could be doing in collaboration that, if you do regularly, would be bad for the vehicle. So it's not just rapid charging, but it's keeping the car above 80%, let's say. Most modern EVs will try to stop you from being able to do that, but you have the ability to override it. And for people that, again, I'm not criticizing here, but if you're a company car driver and all you care about is range and that you need to get from one side of the country to the other every day, then you're gonna do that. But it's things like that plus rapid charging plus, you know, letting it drop super low to a super low charge level and big depths of discharge. So there's a whole concoction of different things and it gets really complicated. And, again, you know, we we we just, like, we don't expect you know, Clearwater exists to help EVs hit the mainstream, particularly used EVs, and and we don't expect it to be a mainstream, in the mainstream consciousness that you could pick somebody off the high street and say, what's bad for an EV battery? Of course not.

Patrick Cresswell [00:52:16]:
You know? But we we just wanna make it really simple to nudge people kind of in the right in the right direction. So, yeah, we're we're we're on it basically.

Liz Allan  [00:52:25]:
Yeah. No. I was, and I was gonna say that actually if you think about combustion engine vehicles, people rev the hell out of them. They let you know, they let their right foot kind of lead the way. And also some, you know, people who run out of petrol and things like that. So so there are, it doesn't matter what vehicle you have, does it really? What I'm saying is, you know, there will be something that you'll do that will be bad for it, but it's about mitigating that. It's about doing the right things and going back to what you'd said. It's kind of your app providing that ability to see that information, isn't it?

Patrick Cresswell [00:53:07]:
Yeah. It's quite an interesting analogy there because, you know, if you're talking about a Vauxhall Corsa, I do suppose these things exist. But if you talk about more premium types of ICE vehicles, like if you bought a Porsche 911, for example, you can take it to Porsche and they will give you an over-rev report. Like, they can plug something in and see if it's been in the red line. So there is kind of a precedent here for what we're talking about because when the stakes are high, like, you know, the traction battery of an EV is worth about 40% of the value of the vehicle. When the stakes are high, there is precedent for that knowledge being surfaced and presented to the customer, and I guess that's exactly what we do.

Liz Allan  [00:53:49]:
Yeah. No. It's this it's really good. So final point, have you got any specific advice for for a non EV driver who is considering buying an EV second hand used or an EV driver who's maybe changing their lease or moving and they're considering buying a buying a used EV. Maybe they've gone from new and now they're buying, you know, that way.

Patrick Cresswell [00:54:17]:
Well, the first thing I would say is do it. I mean, there's some incredible value for money at the moment, and I don't know if it's gonna stay quite where it is in terms of residual value. So I think it's a good time to buy a used EV, and it's something I did myself last year and haven't looked back, really. And obviously, my recommendation is gonna be to, to to make sure you check out the vehicle with Clearwater's products. And, you know, we provide a really simple means of doing that whilst you're shopping. You know, what if you've got, let's say, you've got three or four tabs open and you're on AutoTrader and you're looking at different vehicles, we we have a report where from your phone, or, you know, from your sofa, we can provide a really, in-depth view of the proposition right in front of you. And then if you take delivery of that car and you wanna just double check it, then, you know, we've got that too. So, yeah, shameless plug there, but I feel like you really teed me up for that one this time.

Liz Allan  [00:55:21]:
Of course I did. Of course I did. And what's the next three to five years gonna look like for Clear Watt then? Just as a final question. 

Patrick Cresswell [00:55:31]:
I think we're just very much in go mode now. We launched in January, and you know, we're taking on lots and lots of new customers from all over the world on a daily basis. And, so we're just really on tech, road map delivery mode because we've got, you know, ideas and developments emerging all the time that I think are really gonna help further the cause here of Huesdv. So, yeah, just continual product development and expansion would be the two main things to know, I would say.

Liz Allan  [00:56:12]:
Fantastic. Oh, listen. It's been absolutely riveting listening to you. Thank you ever so much for your time. I really, really appreciate it. Just to everybody watching and listening, I'll just say to you as I always do now, please elevate this because, actually, what Patrick's just said, we need people to know about the Clear Watt app. You know, we're gonna get more people coming through the used EV market now than ever. So we really, really need people to actually be able to use Clearwater to actually make that informed decision.

Liz Allan  [00:56:47]:
So so please interact with the with the podcast, share it with people, just comment on our posts on LinkedIn and all of the other channels that we use. But, yeah, anything you can do, like, subscribe, share, the whole whammy. So thank you to Patrick. Really appreciate your time. And for everybody else watching and listening, I shall see you next time. Bye bye.

Patrick Cresswell [00:57:12]:
Thanks a lot. Bye.