Episode 140: Liz Allan and Gary Comerford - Driving Change: What Makes an Outstanding EV Charging Experience?

Episode 140: Liz Allan and Gary Comerford - Driving Change: What Makes an Outstanding EV Charging Experience?

Liz Allan is once again joined by Gary Comerford, host of the EV Musings Podcast. Together, they take a deep dive into the world of EV charging experiences, sharing personal anecdotes, lessons learned, and small but vital improvements that could transform EV adoption.

Gary brings his six years of EV driving experience into the conversation, offering brilliant insights into how the public charging network has evolved and where it still needs to develop. From memorable moments involving misaligned GPS pins to the essential elements that make or break a charging experience, Liz and Gary cover it all with their trademark warmth, humour, and constructive spirit.

They discuss the impact of good signage, payment reliability, canopy protection, proactive fault management, and why transparency around charging speeds is critical for drivers. This episode is a must-listen for CPOs, EV drivers, and anyone passionate about making EV journeys smoother, safer, and more satisfying.

Gary Comerford Bio:
Gary Comerford hosts the EV Musings podcast, where he shares practical advice, interviews, and real-world experiences from the front lines of electric vehicle adoption. An EV driver since 2018, Gary’s passion for demystifying the EV journey shines through. With a keen eye for what makes or breaks the charging experience, he’s become a trusted voice within the EV community, advocating for improvements that benefit drivers and infrastructure providers.

Gary Comerford Links:
Website: https://evmusings.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garycomerford

Quote of the Episode: 
"A lot of charge point operators think they're doing fine because they’re busy, but being used isn’t the same as being loved. True success comes from making the EV charging experience as seamless and intuitive as possible."
— Gary Comerford, EV Musings Podcast

Transcript

Liz Allan  [00:00:01]:
On today's episode, I have Gary Comerford from the EV Musings podcast with me. 

Gary Comerford [00:00:08]:
Afternoon. Evening. Another day gone.

Liz Allan  [00:00:12]:
Hello. Hello, fellow Yorkie.

Gary Comerford [00:00:14]:
Hi. How are you doing?

Gary Comerford [00:00:16]:
How's it going?

Liz Allan  [00:00:16]:
Alright, love. You got your flat cap and your whippet with you today.

Gary Comerford [00:00:23]:
Yeah. In the background here. Fast asleep. The whippet's asleep on top of the cap.

Liz Allan  [00:00:30]:
Keep it comfy then. Right. Yeah. Onto business now.

Gary Comerford [00:00:35]:
We're away from the stereotype, shall we?

Liz Allan  [00:00:37]:
Yeah. I know. I know. But everybody thinks we're just, yeah, whippet and flat cap lovers. I do have a flat cap, but I've got a big head, so it don't always they don't always fit. Anyway, I don't mean I'm a big head. I mean, I've just got a big cranium. Anyway, right.

Liz Allan  [00:00:51]:
What we're going to talk about today is EV charging experiences. Have you been driving an EV for how long, Gary?

Gary Comerford [00:01:01]:
Six years, nearly seven.

Liz Allan  [00:01:04]:
I've been nearly two, so you're a lot further ahead than I am. And I still don't know how you've had more good experiences than I have had bad experiences in the two years I've been driving. But hey, let's just move on. Tell you what, let's just step back a second. For those of you listening and watching who don't know you, tell us a little bit about yourself. Because we've been you've been on before, but, you know, tell us a bit about EV Musings, why you started it, and and kinda give us a little bit of a little bit of background.

Gary Comerford [00:01:38]:
Mhmm. Well, the first thing is, why don't you know me? I've been on here before. If you've been listening, you will know me. You know about my podcast. This is unacceptable. But having said that, I got into electric vehicles in 2018. I was basically looking for a replacement for a car I'd had for eleven years, one hundred and twenty thousand miles. Loved the car, but it needed a replacement.

Gary Comerford [00:02:00]:
And I started looking at hybrids. And as I'm looking at hybrids, I came across this channel called Fully Charged, which is a little YouTube channel at the time, and they were talking about the electric Golf. Now I'd driven a Golf back in the day, and I thought, electric? No. That's not gonna work, is it? So you know what you do? You follow the little rabbit hole with electric cars, and then there's a whole load of reviews about them and people talking about them. And then I found this thing called the Electric Vehicle Experience Centre in Milton Keynes, where you can go up there, and they'll give you a car for a couple of days.

Liz Allan  [00:02:35]:
Is it that long?

Gary Comerford [00:02:37]:
Oh, I had mine for about four days, a long weekend, something like that, for, like, £50. And I said, £50 a day? They went, no. £50 for the whole lot. We'll even give you a charge card so you don't have to pay. Oh my god. That's very good. And they came out with me to a charging station, showed me how to use the charger, gave me the keys, and said, Come back on Tuesday.

Gary Comerford [00:03:00]:
And I thought, well, that's fantastic. So I did all the running around that I normally do. I did, like, my work commute, that sort of thing. I found the charger in the area, and I thought it could work. So I then went and ordered the exact same car, which is the Kia Soul, from a lease company, and it turned up on the back of a low loader. It came off the back of the low loader, and I sat inside it. And then I thought, alright. This is great.

Gary Comerford [00:03:23]:
And then it started talking about, well, if you're doing AC charging, and I'm thinking, AC charging. And then I look into, well, this had a CHAdeMO connection. I'm thinking, CHAdeMO CCS, AC, charge curves. And I'm thinking, well, if I've got all these questions, other people are gonna have the same sort of questions.

Liz Allan  [00:03:41]:
Yeah.

Gary Comerford [00:03:42]:
So I thought, "Well, why not put together a little podcast?" because that was kind of the thing at the time.

Liz Allan  [00:03:47]:
Still is, love. Still is. Just so you know.

Gary Comerford [00:03:49]:
And I'm now 250 episodes in.

Liz Allan  [00:03:53]:
Yeah. You have seasons as well, don't you? I kind of just go straight through.

Gary Comerford [00:03:59]:
I wonder if I thought I had to put one out every week for the rest of my life, I wouldn't be able to do that. But if I break it down into seasons of twenty episodes, Mhmm. That gives me a, like, a firm target I can aim towards. And I go, right now, I've already got another five to go before the end of this season. And I always finish the season with a big round table episode where I get a number of different guests on and we talk about all sorts of different topics. And, I then take a week, six weeks off between each season, while I think about what I will do on the next 20 episodes.

Liz Allan  [00:04:32]:
We've never talked about this before. Maybe I need to think about that one. So that's great. I mean, and you've got a really, really good following. Bizarrely enough, for those of you who don't know, and I said we're fellow Yorkies, we actually lived in the towns next to one another, like, when we were younger and didn't even know each other then. So, Gary's from Huddersfield. Well, Holmfirth. It's kind of part of Huddersfield, isn't it? Parkirklees, and I'm from Halifax.

Liz Allan  [00:05:00]:
As you will know if you've been listening for a while, we didn't even know. So it is weird that we've gone down this direction, isn't it? Gone in this direction. But look. Let's get into these experiences. And I don't know whether you wanna talk about some of the things that you were doing around the Christmas period. And I know we're a few months into 2025 now, aren't we? But you were going around a number of charges, over Christmas, and you've had the whole charging experience, like you said, since 2018. So, do you wanna give me some examples of the kind of good experiences that you've had?

Gary Comerford [00:05:40]:
I will. But what I wanna do beforehand is just basically link the last part of the conversation up to this. Since 2018 I first started driving luxury vehicles, there were way, way, way fewer charges around the place. And basically, for all intents and purposes, you have ecotricity

Liz Allan  [00:06:01]:
Right.

Gary Comerford [00:06:02]:
Bit of shell, and a bit of BP pulse or chargemaster as it was then.

Gary Comerford [00:06:11]:
And with a subscription I had with Chargemaster, I was paying 7p a kilowatt hour.

Liz Allan  [00:06:17]:
Okay. That's good. God. 

Gary Comerford [00:06:20]:
Yes. 7p a kilowatt hour.

Liz Allan  [00:06:21]:
Public charging.

Gary Comerford [00:06:21]:
Yeah. I know. Oh, no. Sorry. I like 9p a kilowatt hour. Oh my god.

Gary Comerford [00:06:28]:
My bad.

Liz Allan  [00:06:28]:
Just that 2p. I know. What are you gonna do, Northerner?

Gary Comerford [00:06:31]:
Yeah, but there were far fewer charges around. So the majority of them that I would go to would be a single Chargemaster fifty-kilowatt charger, generally around the back of a Holiday Inn. And the reliability for the DC charges at that point was reasonably good.

Gary Comerford [00:06:54]:
You could almost guarantee that it would work, but you could guarantee it would be free because there were so few of them that if somebody else came on and sat on that for half an hour, like I used to go during my lunch hour and charge up. And

Gary Comerford [00:07:08]:
I go there 50% of the time, and somebody else on their lunch hour is charging up. So I'd end up not being able to charge, and I have to charge after work. So that's kind of my my baseline for what charging was

Liz Allan  [00:07:23]:
Okay.

Gary Comerford [00:07:24]:
Five, six, seven years ago. Mhmm. So if you bring it back up to date now, we've got way, way more charge point operations. I think there's about 70 at the last count. A lot of those are fairly localized. Dragon charging, for example. Mhmm. Wales, I believe.

Gary Comerford [00:07:39]:
Not much outside of there. So you've now got the situation where you have more charge way, way, way more charges. There are a lot more, fast charge, rapid, and ultra rapid charges, 50 kilowatt, 350 kilowatt chargers out there, and there are way more hubs. I remember when the very first hub in The UK opened, non Tesla because she couldn't actually use Tesla chargers then. It was the coach way at Milton Keynes, and it had eight fifty kilowatt charges in it. And it was fantastic until all the local council vans came and sat on there for twelve, fourteen hours at a time charging up on their AC charges there. But Oh, god. They host.

Gary Comerford [00:08:19]:
So things have got a lot better over, time. I mean, if you if you transplanted somebody today who's using an electric car back to 2018, their throw their arms have been despairing. Go, well, how

Liz Allan  [00:08:33]:
me then?

Gary Comerford [00:08:33]:
How on earth did this survive? Yeah. But what we've also got as a result of that is you've got a lot more people who are coming into the charging space who maybe aren't thinking about this in the way that you and I would like it to happen. Mhmm. And I said we're not gonna name

Liz Allan  [00:08:51]:
We're not we're not gonna name and shame anybody during this because that's not what we're here there to do, but we are gonna talk about various experiences.

Gary Comerford [00:09:00]:
So I don't want to talk about all the bad bits until a little bit later on. But because of people like you and podcasts like yours and some of the others that we work with, I think the Charge Point operators have recognised that they need to do better. Now, I've spoken to a lot of ChargePoint operators, and they don't deliberately set out to do a bad job.

Liz Allan  [00:09:24]:
No. Nobody does. Nobody does.

Gary Comerford [00:09:27]:
But there are a lot of external influences and constraints and things like that which cause issues, etc. But I think credit where credit is due, I've done quite a lot of charging. Let me rephrase that. I do 90% 95% of my charging at home. I tend to only do, public charging if I'm up to see my parents who, as we've already identified, are in Yorkshire. You and I are sitting down by the M4, so a couple of hundred miles to get up there.

Gary Comerford [00:09:57]:
So I have to stop and charge. Used to be twice when I had my Kia Soul with a hundred and five-mile range.

Liz Allan  [00:10:04]:
Oh, wow.

Gary Comerford [00:10:04]:
Now I've got a car with 230 mile range in summer. It's a little bit easier. I still end up, stopping because my mother doesn't have charging at home, so I like to have a little bit of a a buffer there when I get there. Yeah. So I've got a number of key charge point operators that I always go and visit, and I know which ones I like. I know where they are on the way up. I know where they are on the way down. So I don't tend to have as many bad charging experiences, although I have had them.

Gary Comerford [00:10:33]:
But looping back to what you said, over Christmas, I was working with a third party, and they wanted me to evaluate a number of charges as part of a project that they're running. Because I was up on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border, I was able to go on either side of the Pennines and try a few different ones. I went into Leicester.

Liz Allan  [00:10:54]:
It's still a thing. It's still a thing. Yeah. That's ridiculous, isn't it, really? But hey.

Gary Comerford [00:10:58]:
Yeah. So I got out alive. It was, yeah,

Liz Allan  [00:11:01]:
touch and

Gary Comerford [00:11:01]:
go at one point. But, and the the the most bizarre I'm jumping ahead a bit. The most bizarre issue that I actually hit in I think I went to eight different charge point operators

Liz Allan  [00:11:18]:
Mhmm.

Gary Comerford [00:11:19]:
Across 12 different locations. And the the stupidest thing was the location pin Oh. For one of these was five feet west of where it should

Liz Allan  [00:11:32]:
be. Five feet?

Gary Comerford [00:11:33]:
Five feet.

Liz Allan  [00:11:33]:
How bizarre is that? That is weird.

Gary Comerford [00:11:35]:
But that five feet included a pavement, a hedge, and a wooden fence.

Liz Allan  [00:11:41]:
Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, I've had one of them.

Gary Comerford [00:11:46]:
And it was on a one way street.

Liz Allan  [00:11:48]:
Oh, god. And you were coming

Gary Comerford [00:11:50]:
Yeah. Which meant that I had to take a nice big detour to actually get Oh. Back around and get into where I actually wanted to be. That was kind of

Liz Allan  [00:11:58]:
as odd. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad pin accuracy is a little less now. 

Gary Comerford [00:12:03]:
She says now I traced it back. That actually came back to what was the open charge points the open Charge Point database, the one that's the common one that's opened by everybody. 

Liz Allan  [00:12:13]:
OCPI. Yes. OCPI. Yeah. OCPP.

Gary Comerford [00:12:16]:
OCP.

Liz Allan  [00:12:19]:
If you're a CPO, and I got that wrong. I apologise.

Gary Comerford [00:12:23]:
That's the basic open one that all the charge point operators use as their source. They put it on there, and it propagates out to everyone. And I've traced it back, and that initial pin is in the wrong place. It just I mean, it's it's so close. It's that you can almost reach out and touch the charger. You just can't use the damn charger because you've gotta go over a pavement and I 

Liz Allan  [00:12:47]:
had one like that in Oxford, actually, where it was down a residential street. And the pin was wrong. And luckily, I saw a resident who kinda, oh, excuse me. And she pointed me in the other direction. And it was up just at the other end of the street. So it was probably similar to you. But maybe a quarter of a mile away.

Gary Comerford [00:13:11]:
Now, when I'm talking about some of the charges that I'm gonna talk about today, most of them are gonna be the big ultra-rapid and rapid DC charges. Although you and I do have experience with AC charges.

Liz Allan  [00:13:24]:
Oh, we do? Yeah. Oh, I've forgotten about that.

Gary Comerford [00:13:28]:
We'll talk about that when we come out a little bit later, I think. But the example of a really good charger experience that I had was when I was coming back over Christmas. I was coming down the M1, and I got off at Luton. I went to the Tesla Supercharger at Luton, which I think is a 12-stall one.

Gary Comerford [00:13:50]:
And I got there, and every single one of the stalls was occupied.

Liz Allan  [00:13:55]:
Right.

Gary Comerford [00:13:56]:
And I thought, I'm going to have to wait. So I pulled into a little parking space just opposite where the row of chargers was. There were no dolls at one end, so I thought, "Shall I go in?" And just as I was thinking, "Shall I go in?" The guy in front of me pulled out.

Liz Allan  [00:14:11]:
Okay.

Gary Comerford [00:14:11]:
So I reversed in, and I hooked up, and I hit the button. And despite the fact that every single one of these charges was being used, it ramped up immediately to the full 205 kilowatt charge speed. I was driving a Polestar 2 at the moment that the good people at Polestar had lent me over Christmas.

Liz Allan  [00:14:29]:
Nice car.

Gary Comerford [00:14:30]:
Yeah. It's a very nice car. So it worked, it worked first time, it worked quickly, and it worked to the full charge speed straight up. And I was literally waiting for thirty seconds.

Liz Allan  [00:14:42]:
Wow.

Gary Comerford [00:14:43]:
Yeah, that was fantastic. And, you know, I would take that any day of the week, yes, without any problem. Yeah? Did you have a good example?

Liz Allan  [00:14:56]:
I do have good examples. So, as people know, who've been listening and watching, our son James went to university in Exeter last September. So he's in year one of doing biology, down there. And there is, there's a charging hub in Bridgewater. So we've got a smaller range than you have. So this was September taking him in, you know, a whole a a god our car was so chocked. It was just untrue. And we've been to another charger recently, or sorry.

Liz Allan  [00:15:34]:
Before that, probably about a year before that, we've been to another CPO at a, I won't say it where it is actually because that'll give it away. Anyway, it wasn't a particularly good experience. So we found this one in Bridgewater. It's a little bit off the beep. It was maybe a mile off the M5, but the screen was clear. The charging experience was smooth. It was just it actually prompted you to kind of well, you could tell for a start off. Let's start off here.

Liz Allan  [00:16:08]:
You could tell which connector was which for a start, so it was really easy to understand. The screen was low as well. This is the one near you. This is one there. And it was more touchscreen. So I just felt that that was really good, really clear. Step one is this.

Liz Allan  [00:16:26]:
Step two is that. Step three is that. You know, we didn't have a problem at all. That, you know, and that, oh my god. I mean, you said about the Polestar and the kind of speed that you got or the, you know, kind of speed from the Tesla. We only get a maximum of 44 kilowatts through our wind knife. We got 46. I don't know how. We got 46 from that one.

Liz Allan  [00:16:54]:
I've never had anything like it, and it was just a really lovely charging experience.

Gary Comerford [00:17:01]:
Mhmm.

Liz Allan  [00:17:01]:
You know, there wasn't anybody else at the charger. You know, it was only a small hub. The only thing was I had to sorry everyone. Too much information here. But I had to use the men's loo because there wasn't a ladies loo at the time. There was brand new toilet block and there were two sets of toilets. Altogether. You went through the same door.

Liz Allan  [00:17:24]:
And I think what they've done is they've just not put women's on there. And it was all just under men's. And I was, right. Right. Okay. That men's is down there. I'm just yeah. When you gotta go, you gotta go.

Liz Allan  [00:17:34]:
I'm sorry. But overall, that was a really good experience, For sure.

Gary Comerford [00:17:42]:
Let me ask you a question because I had a similar one, and I suspect it was the same charge point operator we talked about. I was on my way up to my parents' SIM card, Polestar, pulled in. Brand new, I think five, six chargers there, double, double Connectors. Connectors. Thank you very much. Nice big screen, plugged in, very, very easy, started without any problem, no payment issues, the whole lot. Only gave me 55, 60 kilowatts. Okay.

Gary Comerford [00:18:14]:
Charge speed. And this is after I've been driving for two and a half hours.

Liz Allan  [00:18:19]:
Okay.

Gary Comerford [00:18:20]:
And to me, that kind of counts as a good charging experience because it all worked flawlessly.

Liz Allan  [00:18:28]:
But lower than

Gary Comerford [00:18:29]:
It's soured by the fact that this charger, in theory, could have got 300 kilowatts. If it split down the middle a 50 kilowatts, fair enough, I wasn't getting anywhere near that, and the car could have accepted it. And that's an issue that I have, and I know a lot of people have that same sort of issue. And there's a myriad of reasons why that actually happened. Oh, big word of the day there, Myriad. 

Gary Comerford [00:18:55]:
That might, that might happen. But it just it becomes annoying when it happens on that particular charger, and yet I take the same car under the same circumstances to a charger that is completely packed

Gary Comerford [00:19:10]:
And I get 250 Kilowatts

Liz Allan  [00:19:11]:
I know. I know. I mean, god, if it is the same CPO and so with the same hardware, I don't understand why we got more. So, you know, we got a good we got a good an excellent experience. You've got kind of, you know, power-wise, it's that's kind of weird, isn't it? Were there many people in the hub, or were you? 

Gary Comerford [00:19:31]:
I was the only one there. I was the only now it was it was a little bit cool. So whether the actual hardware, the power packs within the charger itself, were cool or whether that was having an impact, I don't know.

Liz Allan  [00:19:45]:
Because they've got kind of like little power units to the side. I don't know whether you've seen yeah. There are sorts of power units to the side, aren't they? And I know that they can add extra, additional, additional support, additional power, or to boost it in there. But yeah. I mean, but actually, this one, so the one that we're talking about, that was the, like I say, the best experience I've ever had. And there is a really brilliant CPO, sorry. There's some brilliant hardware that you and I always talk about, and we only ever get 35 kilowatts out of it. Interesting.

Liz Allan  [00:20:25]:
So it's kinda weird. And, somebody thinks that it might be the car, but I don't know. I need to get there's a little dongle. So for those of you who look, this is coming out very soon. But there's Dougie Blair, and he talks about this dongle that you can put into your car that'll tell you whether a problem with the charger, sorry. If you're charging and you're getting less speed, for example, this is maybe what you could have worked out, Gary, as well if you had it. You can put it into the same slot as you put telematics in under your dash, and it will actually give you an idea of whether the problem is from your car or from the charger. Mhmm.

Liz Allan  [00:21:04]:
So I can't, I don't know. I know, we don't know the answer for that specific manufacturer.

Gary Comerford [00:21:10]:
And it does bring up a good point, which is, hopefully, something we'll come on and talk about shortly, but we shouldn't have to go and buy a third-party dongle to find out. Yeah? At the end of the day it's saying.

Gary Comerford [00:21:21]:
You know, I'm gonna name names here. If you use the Chem Power units

Liz Allan  [00:21:25]:
It is that. Yeah.

Gary Comerford [00:21:26]:
It will tell you this charge is being limited by the car or the charge is being limited

Gary Comerford [00:21:32]:
By the way, the charger. 

Gary Comerford [00:21:35]:
So, the charger could be wanting to give you more, but the car's going, no. The battery's too cold, or I'm too high in the charge curve, or something like that. Or it could be that the char the car's going, give me more. Give me more. And the charger's going, no. Got no more to give you. But that's displayed on the screen, and it should be widespread across all of the charges. Anybody should be able to go and look at that and understand I'm expecting 205 kilowatts, but I'm only getting 60 kilowatts.

Gary Comerford [00:22:00]:
Why?

Liz Allan  [00:22:02]:
I need to have a yeah. I need to have a look at the screen again. Bizarrely enough, also around the Bridgewater area, coming back, not necessarily on the same visit, because we've obviously been to see James quite a few times. On a different visit, we actually visited another CPO with a Kempower charger. And I kid you not, we were on it and it was getting about 35 kilowatts, which I mean, for us, it's okay. We could sit and have our sunnies and, you know, get enough to get down to Exeter and what have you. Four, it was it was it was, levelling at 35 kilowatts, and I've no idea how or what or why. All of a sudden, it went up to 40 something for about ten seconds and then back down again.

Gary Comerford [00:22:51]:
Mhmm.

Liz Allan  [00:22:53]:
So, I probably did need to look at the screen to see because, yeah, we'll have a look next time. But that's the thing, isn't it?

Liz Allan [00:23:02]:
Yep. It needs to be obvious, doesn't it, really?

Gary Comerford [00:23:06]:
It does. And if I look at my notes from my trip over, the festive period, as I use chargers from eight different charge point operators, and a couple of Tesla units. Very few of those units actually provided the maximum power my vehicle was capable of. Yeah. Although one of those was have you ever heard of a company called Evivee, e v y v e?

Liz Allan  [00:23:31]:
Yes. Yeah.

Gary Comerford [00:23:32]:
They had a 50-kilowatt charger in a pub somewhere. So I plugged into that one straight up to, in fact, I think actually 51 kilowatts out of that because that was given the maximum power it could, and my vehicle at that point, the Polestar, could have taken a lot higher charging speed than that. So the one common thing that I found, even with a really, really good charging experience on many of the ones that I visited over Christmas, they weren't giving me anywhere near what I really would have liked to have come out of the charger at that point. And as I said, because very few of them were chem powers, it was difficult to understand what was the inhibiting factor.

Liz Allan  [00:24:11]:
Yeah. But, yeah, like you said, we shouldn't have to just be kind of going to page 21 of a dongle guide, you know, to try and work this stuff out. It needs to be obvious, doesn't it? Because and especially with new adopters coming along now, you know, like like we say, the whole oh god, you know, ultra rapid, never been as fast in my life. Is it gonna be, are we gonna get up to that? We need to just simplify it. And the words like Chademo and CCS. Yes. It's like your, I suppose, European plug and GB plug. You know, if you have to go abroad, you've got to understand the difference.

Liz Allan  [00:24:51]:
But I don't know their names of them. I just know what they look like. So I know what a Chaddamot looks like, and I know what a CCS looks like. But the people now, you know, coming into this as new EV drivers have got to do all this research theoretically because half the time they're not told when they get the car, you know. And that's where some of the negativity from people who've jumped into an EV comes from, don't you think? Because, you know, this language is very different to them. But I know that's not what we're supposed to talk about, charging experiences, but, you know, that was my little aside. What do you reckon on that one though?

Gary Comerford [00:25:32]:
It's difficult because I always come back to the statistic, which is, you know, something like 10,000 people a year put diesel in a petrol car or petrol in a diesel car. So the fact that there are two different quote-unquote " standards for wet fuel causes an issue. But I've never put the wrong electricity in my

Liz Allan  [00:25:55]:
No. It's very true.

Gary Comerford [00:25:56]:
I've had CHAdeMO and CCS. The main reason is that you can't use a CHAdeMO on a CCS vehicle, and you can't use CCS on a CHAdeMO vehicle. So while somebody may go in and go, oh, this has got a nice blue handle on it. I'll try it. Oh, no. It doesn't fit. I'll go back, and I'll use the one with the black handle on it. So Yeah.

Gary Comerford [00:26:13]:
Yeah. It would be nice for them to understand that you don't, unless you've got a LEAF or EMV 200 or an early key. So you probably wanna stay away from the blue handled one and leave it for those who do need it. And if you've got anything else, there's a really, really high probability that you'll be able to use the CCS. You may not understand why. You may not understand what the difference is.

Liz Allan  [00:26:38]:
You'll see it.

Gary Comerford [00:26:39]:
One fits and one doesn't.

Liz Allan  [00:26:41]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I suppose the first time I met you was when we were doing the London to Brighton EV rally, and you did the London to Brighton to Paris EV rally, didn't you?

Gary Comerford [00:26:53]:
Yes.

Liz Allan  [00:26:53]:
And that was the first time my husband and I had taken an EV for a period of time. I'd kind of been test-driving them in the run-up to that. And I remember going to a specific CPO on the way back. We didn't really know what we were doing then, you know, but you kinda go especially because you've kinda you you open you you open up the, the charging port and you're you're there. There's a top and a bottom, isn't there? You know? And like on an our wind knife, we've got a little top and a bottom, you know, you just flick them out. And we were kind of looking at the thing going, I'm assuming that's that that must go in there. Do you know? And I've seen enough. I'd seen enough at that stage to understand, but it's quite different once you've done it a couple of times, it's easy. Isn't it?

Gary Comerford [00:27:43]:
If you know, I mean, I have a distinct memory of, again, one of the charge point operators, but it was one of those that had both a single unit, Chatham OCCS, and an AC adapter, an AC connector at the side. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:27:58]:
But you

Gary Comerford [00:27:58]:
could only you could use either CHAdeMO or c CCS, but you could also use the AC at the same time. And I came up to charge, and there was, I think, an Audi e-tron that was plugged into the AC charger.

Liz Allan  [00:28:12]:
Okay. Mhmm.

Gary Comerford [00:28:13]:
So I went in. Got it. I was still in the Kia Soul this time, plugged in on the Chatham, and I sat there for a few minutes doing my, email and that. And the e tron owner came up and got in, and I just, look. Thanks a lot for not using the CCS unit. And he went, what? I said you were on the AC unit. It meant I could, he said, What are you talking about? Oh, no. And it turned out that he'd gone up and he'd opened the connector.

Gary Comerford [00:28:40]:
Nobody had told him that you have to put that little flap down at the bottom. Oh, bless. So he tried all three connectors, and the only one that worked was the AC.

Liz Allan  [00:28:47]:
That one.

Gary Comerford [00:28:48]:
So I unplugged him, and I amn't it? I flipped the little flap down underneath the cat. I went, what? You have to use the rapid charge stuff. It's not gonna take me eight hours to charge? Yep. There you go.

Liz Allan  [00:29:00]:
But who should have told him that, Gary? It shouldn't have had to be you, should it?

Gary Comerford [00:29:05]:
It shouldn't. It should have been the dealer. But, of course, as with most people, myself included, I've never visited a dealer. I've done all mine online. The car comes on the back of a low loader. The guy who drives a low loader has no idea about this kind of things, which is one of the reasons I set up the podcast so I could, you know, pass this information out. Because the irony is that instance of not having to educate somebody on, you know, the bung at the bottom, whether it's a rubber bung or a little flap, that's not the only time I've done that. I've done that more times than I think people should actually have to be taught about that.

Gary Comerford [00:29:41]:
It's it's scary.

Liz Allan  [00:29:44]:
But it's also, so it's to me, it's that information needs to be made available, not just at the dealership. But I think in some ways it, and I know we've not talked about what good looks like properly here. But but in some ways, there needs to be something, if possible, at the c you know, the charge point or the, you know, in the in the hub or something that it's visual and go, you know, actually going, this is what you're gonna see. If you're a new EV driver, this is what you're gonna see. It's that. It's either your, which is less likely because that's, you know, you're less there, so there's less now, isn't there in some ways? But for your CCS or your, you know, and actually, if you wanna do an ultra rapid, if you wanna, if you want, if you've got this much time, then you can use this. If you wanna use the time as well as that kind of information. Go on.

Liz Allan  [00:30:38]:
You're smiling. You're smiling at me. He's got a counterpoint here. I'm sure.

Gary Comerford [00:30:43]:
Give you a counterpoint. Yes.

Liz Allan  [00:30:46]:
Then we always talk about this, don't we? He's not playing devil's advocate today. He's got a counterpoint.

Gary Comerford [00:30:51]:
Your counterpoint. Name me an electric vehicle that doesn't have a screen inside it.

Liz Allan  [00:30:56]:
Yeah.

Gary Comerford [00:30:57]:
True. Why can the screen be when you can't say it.

Gary Comerford [00:31:01]:
To a charger, why can it not say right? This is the charge you the the connector you should be using. And don't forget to remove the little button.

Liz Allan  [00:31:08]:
Put the flap down.

Gary Comerford [00:31:09]:
It should be there.

Liz Allan  [00:31:10]:
I know.

Gary Comerford [00:31:11]:
Push it to the vehicle. It should not necessarily be the charge point operator that does that.

Liz Allan  [00:31:15]:
No. I know. And I get you. But I just think if you're gonna do a double whammy, because some people just don't take any notice of these things, you're right. But I just put it in multiple places.

Gary Comerford [00:31:25]:
If they're not prepared, you know, taking it

Liz Allan  [00:31:27]:
No. I know. But if you put it in multiple places, then at some point it's gonna go in, isn't it? And I'm not trying to say that people are stupid. I'm really not. I'm just saying, when you're in a rush, if you've got, if we're talking about people who are putting petrol in a diesel or diesel in a petrol or whatever, we are gonna have people who will do silly things. It's like there's some stats from the AA, aren't there, about but they're very similar to the number of people who let fuel go so far that they run out of fuel, wet fuel. Mhmm. And the same with the same number of people, the same percentage of people that would run out of, you know, run out of charge.

Gary Comerford [00:32:04]:
It's about 2%, I think, of all the calls that the AA receive.

Liz Allan  [00:32:08]:
So we know that we're gonna have people who are gonna do silly things. It's about mitigating it

Gary Comerford [00:32:14]:
Mhmm.

Liz Allan  [00:32:14]:
We're going to as many places as we can. Mhmm. You know, because we want some really good charging experiences. What were the good charging experiences you had then?

Gary Comerford [00:32:26]:
Well, I did as you say, I did the London, Brighton, Paris Rally, and this year, we went London, Brighton, Paris, Geneva.

Liz Allan  [00:32:39]:
Yes.

Gary Comerford [00:32:40]:
Again, this was one of those events where we didn't necessarily do a lot of planning. The rally organisers had said there were a certain number of points where we'd like to meet up to get everybody together for photos and things like that, and they happened to have charges there.

Gary Comerford [00:32:55]:
So if you wanna charge, then you can.

Liz Allan  [00:32:58]:
That's good. Yeah.

Gary Comerford [00:32:58]:
But we did pull into one that was a couple of hours south of Paris. Now, the thing to say, in my experience, all the roadside equivalents, the motorway service areas in Paris, all have charging hubs. And I'm saying hubs. Six, seven, eight, nine

Liz Allan  [00:33:19]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Gary Comerford [00:33:20]:
Big, rapid, very well-made charges with canopies and that sort of thing. And we pulled into one that was run ironically by a fossil fuel company, Total Energies. We all plugged in. It was nice Alpertronic hardware. We all flashed the payment cards. They all worked the first time, except for the one at the end, which had been working, pulled out, and a French guy in his BMW pulled in. And he looked at the charger, and he looked at his car, and he looked at his charger. And then he came across to us, knowing we were all English, and he said in French, This is the first time I've ever charged this car.

Gary Comerford [00:34:03]:
I have no idea what I'm doing.

Liz Allan  [00:34:05]:
He said it in French to you?

Gary Comerford [00:34:06]:
He said it in French to me.

Liz Allan  [00:34:08]:
Yes. Okay.

Gary Comerford [00:34:10]:
And I went, oh, oui, monsieur, bad problem? And I got a little bit of French. So I basically I plugged it back in and I said, where's your payment card? So he gave me the BMW card that had come with his vehicle. Mhmm. Slapped it on the Alpertronic Read Reader. It went, no. So we unplugged, plugged back in, and tried it again. He went, no. I asked if I could try a third time. He said, Yeah.

Gary Comerford [00:34:34]:
So we unplugged it, plugged it back in, and slapped it again. He said, "Yeah, okay. You can do it this time."

Liz Allan  [00:34:39]:
Oh, weird.

Gary Comerford [00:34:40]:
He's kind of yeah. I knew the charger worked because literally one of our group had just unplugged, so it wasn't a charger issue. I've got to assume that they'd given him a card that was working. If not, I would have asked him for a contactless card. But the fact that it was his first time charging

Liz Allan  [00:35:00]:
Oh, imagine.

Gary Comerford [00:35:00]:
It took three goes to get it started, Mhmm. I'm hearing a lot of that. I've experienced one or two of those myself. I'm not gonna say where they are, but they all tend to be with the same charge point operator.

Liz Allan  [00:35:17]:
And if it's so, if it's if it's who you talk about, have they been around for a while?
They're one of the old ones?

Gary Comerford [00:35:25]:
To one of the earlier, good ones. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:35:28]:
Okay. Yeah. If it's who I think you talk to, you've named a couple already, and I'm not naming them.

Gary Comerford [00:35:35]:
A couple of good ones, though, haven't I?

Liz Allan  [00:35:36]:
Haven't I? Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've managed if we're talking about one of them that lots of people kinda moan about, and it's not the fossil
Fuel version one, my husband managed to get that working three times. Three times. I know. But using Octopus Electraverse, I have to say, let's talk about this because we've talked about good experiences. And sometimes it's down to that that RFID card or whatever it is you're tapping with, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:36:16]:
But you have to remember that the payment process, you know, we know, sometimes they're combined RFID and contactless payment ports, and

Gary Comerford [00:36:27]:
Not enough in my experience.

Liz Allan  [00:36:29]:
No. I know. I know. But then you've got the ones that have a separate RFID. And it does, and it is, and it is confusing for people. But I have had fewer problems because I think maybe I'm right. I'm gonna put it this way: You know how I said to you at the beginning, how have you had fewer bad experiences? I think it's what you said right at the beginning that you charge 95% at home.

Gary Comerford [00:36:56]:
Mhmm.

Liz Allan  [00:36:57]:
So I've got we've got less range on our car. When I think about maybe a week after we've got it, I found out that I was gonna have to drive to Coventry and back, and I've told you this anyway, you personally before. And our, you know, I knew that I wouldn't have enough miles to get up there and back. So because I'm I'm driving, you know, around quite a lot. I'm having to use charges more regularly. And now, obviously, James has gone down to Exeter, which is 165 miles away from Reading. So, we are going to be charging more. We are going to be going to places and having different experiences.

Liz Allan  [00:37:37]:
But Octopus Electroverse, I've gotta say, we had a fantastic experience with it driving in Brittany last year. You know, same as you, kind of going abroad was really interesting because, you know, thinking, oh my god. Is it what's it gonna be like? How's it gonna work? And I think there was only one bad experience that we had, but that wasn't a bad experience of anything other than the fact that the guy, and it was the company that you've just mentioned earlier. I'm not gonna say them again. But, they had they actually did have somebody manning no. Stop it. I can see you're gonna say it. Stop it.

Liz Allan  [00:38:16]:
There was a guy actually manning that hub. He was sat on his phone. He was just doing it was doom scrolling. He wasn't really taking any notice of anybody. And we tried to use contactless initially because I'd started feeling unwell. So we needed to stop quite quickly. And of course I was driving, so that's the other thing. And I was like, right, let's come off here and we're just gonna, and luckily there was a decent-sized charging hub with probably about eight or 10 charges on there.

Liz Allan  [00:38:47]:
Brilliant. Perfect. Ultra Rapids. Perfect. But we needed to get to % because we knew we'd actually cut off. We'd come off the motorway earlier than we'd intended. So so, because it's quite a long way from where we were, it was we I can't remember the name of the place, but we like I say, we needed to have that charge to just even just to get to the just get to the ferry. What the guy didn't tell us was what we would have to pay if we went over 45 minutes.

Liz Allan  [00:39:21]:
He didn't say we would get fees per minute. So we came up with more fees because we'd stayed on for longer than forty I think forty five minutes, but I I was not feeling very well. I didn't look at this. We'd I didn't see the signs, and I don't know whether they were in French and English or whatever. But anyway, what we paid was probably more than the charge itself. So that's the only bad experience because we had to use it initially, we had to use contactless, and couldn't get that to work. Then he got us to download the app. Oh my good god.

Liz Allan  [00:39:55]:
And then we found out we could've used Electraverse afterwards because I hadn't had very much rain connectivity on my phone.

Gary Comerford [00:40:01]:
Mhmm.

Liz Allan  [00:40:02]:
So, the charging experience itself was a bit of a pain. Once it started, you know, once we started the charge, it was great. I had to go and kind of not quite lie down, but I was feeling really unwell. So, you know, there was kind of all that. But overall, that wasn't a bad experience using Electraverse all the way through the holiday.

Gary Comerford [00:40:24]:
The the whole area of roaming is one where I love it. I tend to use most of my charging via, a roaming service of some sort. The problem that I have is that you can't have just one. There is not one roaming service that covers all the charge points that that I particularly use, and that's a problem. So you've mentioned that Electroverse. Absolutely fine. You can't use that on BP pulse.

Gary Comerford [00:40:56]:
You can't use that on Gridserve.

Liz Allan  [00:40:58]:
No. True.

Liz Allan [00:41:00]:
Yeah. You won't get Gridserve out of Britain anyway, though.

Gary Comerford [00:41:05]:
No. But again, you know, there are others out there, and they all do similar things. Some are app-based, some are RFID-based, some are both. And if they suit the majority of the charges that you use or the charge point operators that you use, then that's an absolutely perfect solution because you don't have to mess around with contactless. You don't have to mess around with preauthorisation. You don't have to worry about, well, am I flagging this in front of the RFID reader, or am I putting this in front of the contactless terminal? Are they the same thing? Are they two different things? I mean, there's one charge point operator and I really rate them really, really well apart from one thing, which is all their stuff up here right in the eyeline, RFID reader, but the contactless payment is down near your knees.

Liz Allan  [00:41:52]:
Down there.

Gary Comerford [00:41:52]:
And you kind of, well, why am I gonna look down there?

Liz Allan  [00:41:56]:
Oh, it depends. I suppose it depends, Gary, if they've had to retrofit it. If they retrofitted it, then maybe that's the only place they could put it. But but actually, yeah, sometimes you just kind of think flipping heck. Come on.

Gary Comerford [00:42:12]:
Yeah. So roaming is it's got and I know that, Sebastian Flashhacker is probably listening in on this. He's a big, big fan of roaming. It's far more prevalent, on the European Mainland. The Public Charge Point Regulation 2023, which came into law last year, was it? Last November?

Liz Allan  [00:42:29]:
The year before. The year before. Yeah.

Gary Comerford [00:42:31]:
Yeah. But they

Liz Allan  [00:42:32]:
We're 25 now. That was 23.

Gary Comerford [00:42:34]:
Yeah. But there was a year after they only came into law last year, didn't they?

Liz Allan  [00:42:40]:
They started, so they came in certain categories, didn't they? Yeah. And then roaming will come in in November 2025 under the date.

Gary Comerford [00:42:49]:
The whole thing is, a, you've gotta have a roaming service, which is fine, but, b, every unit has to every unit over eight kilowatts has to have contactless.

Liz Allan  [00:42:58]:
Mhmm.

Gary Comerford [00:42:58]:
Yeah. Now I know Sebastian's gonna throw his hands up and go, Why? Why just get a good roaming service, and you don't need contactless? And from a European point of view, I totally understand that. And from me personally, I would love to be able to use one roaming service everywhere because I don't want six, seven, eight different pre-authorisations on there. No. At any given point. Whereas with a con with a roaming service, I don't have that. But I understand why a lot of the UK population is well, I don't wanna have 387 apps on my phone, and I don't wanna have to sign up for a roaming service or whatever. I'd rather just take out my iPhone or Android or whatever and just tap that on because that's what happens when I pay for my Costa Coffee.

Liz Allan  [00:43:46]:
Yeah. I don't need a separate app for that. Ironically, Costa does have an app, and Starbucks does, too. But, you know

Liz Allan  [00:43:51]:
That's the point, though.

Gary Comerford [00:43:53]:
I know.

Liz Allan  [00:43:53]:
Is that for your points?

Gary Comerford [00:43:54]:
It is. It is. Yeah. But it seems to be a convenience aspect. And in reality, it's not Mhmm. If it doesn't work as well as something like a roaming service.

Liz Allan  [00:44:07]:
What I do like or what I like and I don't know whether you actually get these triggers when you're over here for some reason. I've not I've not I can't remember but I liked the fact that when we were in Brittany, that if you chose a charger and you were looking at the app, for example, on it, it kind of you know you could see which charger was which, etc. It would tell you whether you had to initiate it with the RFID card or whether you could initiate it through the app. And I like that. It was, you know, it's very, very clear. I know what you're saying about it would be great to have one place where that aggregates them all together because it makes it so much easier, doesn't it? But, but actually, you know, just having that, oh, it's one or the other because at least it's kinda telling you. I don't wanna be using apps all the time because I can't always. You know, even in the UK, I've had situations where I've not had connectivity.

Liz Allan  [00:45:08]:
And because that's the other thing, isn't it? You know, if you haven't got that connectivity, it's less easy for you to use an app in the first place. Yeah, because you can't get the signal to do anything with it.

Gary Comerford [00:45:21]:
Yeah. I was in conversation with someone recently who has sold her electric car and gone back to petrol. The reason she gave was that her insurance tripled, which I don't know whether that's true or not. That's right. But as a, like, a snarky little comment at the end, she said, and now I can remove the 397 apps that I had to allow the charging. To which I said to her, Why have you got 397 apps? Why don't you use a roaming app from the CPO? And her reply was, What's a roaming app, and what's a CPO?

Liz Allan  [00:45:54]:
Oh, dear.

Gary Comerford [00:45:55]:
But she did have a point because you go up to any charge point, and they will go download her app. Download her app. Download her app. Pretty soon, you've got an app for every one of them, and 90% you don't need.

Gary Comerford [00:46:07]:
In fact, a percentage of them you don't need.

Liz Allan  [00:46:09]:
Oh, you wanna see I probably I probably have got about 30 apps on my phone

Gary Comerford [00:46:14]:
I've got three.

Liz Allan  [00:46:14]:
That I don't use them. Have you?

Gary Comerford [00:46:16]:
I've got three specific charge points. And the reason I've got that is because on some of them, you, and we'll we'll say, we'll name, GridSurf, for example. At least when they launched their app, they had a discount on the Yeah. Price. But you had to use the app to start and stop the charge to get the discount. So there is a use for having apps, but there isn't a need to have the app.

Liz Allan  [00:46:42]:
No.

Gary Comerford [00:46:43]:
No. You're in their ecosystem if you use the app. 

Liz Allan  [00:46:46]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Gary Comerford [00:46:48]:
If you're sort of narrowing it down to two or three, like I've done, and occasionally I'll use one versus the other for various reasons, you know? But it means that I don't have to use contactless.

Gary Comerford [00:47:01]:
And I can use roaming if I want.

Liz Allan  [00:47:03]:
Exactly. And, you know, I would just keep it. Now you're getting me thinking. I probably will delete a load of apps. Do you know what? At the time, I think it was because, like that lady you're talking about, I thought I needed that many apps. And, actually, part of it was, oh my god. I don't wanna be caught out. So I will download all the apps of the charge point operators that I think I will visit. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:47:30]:
Until they introduced, you know, kinda contactless. But but yeah. I mean, I suppose even now I'm using it like I said, we're using the Lectroverse more. It depends on where I am, whether I can, or whatever we're doing.

Gary Comerford [00:47:46]:
Well, it does loop back to the conversation of the part of the conversation we had a few minutes ago where where you and I had a not particularly pleasurable experience with a rather large charge point operator at one of their sites because it was a site that had lots and lots and lots of AC charges. And, of course, under the ChargePoint regulations 2023, if they're below eight kilowatts

Liz Allan  [00:48:10]:
They don't have to.

Gary Comerford [00:48:11]:
They don't have to have contactless. You can have contactless if you want, but you don't have to. And this particular site didn't, so you had to use the app to initiate the charge. And, of course, we went in, and we parked up at one of these units. And I looked at the unit, and I looked at the app, and I found the app, and it went, it found the charger on the app, and it went, no. This one's not working. It's a move.

Gary Comerford [00:48:40]:
And these are the ones next to it or the ones next to it. So we moved to the other side of the car park, and I found that particular charger, and I put it on. And then, of course, what's your password? Yeah. Reset the password. Or you need to have money in the account. So I then got to load the the damn thing up. But it was, like, twenty odd minutes before we managed to get this way. And even then, as I recall, we couldn't actually get that particular charger to initiate.

Gary Comerford [00:49:05]:
It just hung for a while.

Liz Allan  [00:49:08]:
We've got the spinning wheel of spinning wheel of doom.

Gary Comerford [00:49:10]:
The spinning wheel of doom, you know? And it's situations like that. I can fully understand why they do it. But if you're going to mandate that somebody has to use your app, at least put communication out there so that it can actually talk to the app and to the charger without getting the spinning wheel of doom.

Liz Allan  [00:49:28]:
I know. Know. And and a lot of it is because you've got that depend I don't even know whether we're in a bad signal area either, but it's that kind of ninety I think it's about ninety or a hundred and twenty seconds max that you get before that. And I I didn't know that until I was interviewing EnigmaNet recently. You know, you've got that period of time where if it's going backwards and forwards and it doesn't actually get that signal through, that's all you get, isn't it? You kinda just get it going round and round and round. But a driver doesn't know that.

Gary Comerford [00:49:55]:
No. And my question is that that particular location, not 10 yards from where we were, has a big Starbucks with Wi-Fi on board. Mhmm. So if you can get Wi-Fi there, surely you can get Wi-Fi or a signal out to the rest of the chargers that were in that particular car park and remove this issue of not being able to communicate.

Liz Allan  [00:50:14]:
It depends on whether those charges are only because they were only seven kilowatts, weren't they?

Gary Comerford [00:50:19]:
Well, they've done 11 kilowatts at some point. But

Liz Allan  [00:50:22]:
Well, if it were my car, it would have only got, like, seven anyway out of it. But it depends if they have actually upgraded it to to kind of because some of them I know this, not necessarily with that brand, but I know some have actually stuck with, like, three g. Mhmm. So if they've been in that, I don't, I can't remember how long ago that hub was put in for those those con those charges. But if they've not upgraded to ensure that they've got roaming SIMS in, then maybe that's the problem with the connectivity. Or I don't know. It could be something else, but yeah. That was a bit of an interesting day. Oh, that I'm just trying to get that charge initiated.

Liz Allan  [00:51:04]:
So, yeah. Let's, because we were supposed to be getting, let's look at what we see is needed as part of a good charging experience.

Gary Comerford [00:51:16]:
I have thoughts.

Liz Allan  [00:51:17]:
I know you do. Got it.

Gary Comerford [00:51:19]:
Can I start?

Liz Allan  [00:51:20]:
You can.

Gary Comerford [00:51:21]:
To me, there are 10 things that a perfect charging location has.

Gary Comerford [00:51:27]:
And I'm gonna go through them one at once and chime in wherever you want. And if you've got examples of where this has or hasn't happened, then I think it's a good discussion to have. First of all, it has to be well signposted. You've gotta be able to get there. You've gotta be able to identify where it is. You know as well as I do that every wet fuel station that you go to has a huge totem outside that tells you this is BP, this is Shell, this is Jet, this is Texaco, and it usually has the price on there as well. Yeah. How many of those do you know for charges? 

Liz Allan  [00:51:57]:
Well, if you take away the grid

Gary Comerford [00:51:58]:
If you take away the Gridserve

Liz Allan  [00:52:03]:
Electric forecourt and a bit of Fastned.

Gary Comerford [00:52:06]:
A bit of Fastned. And I was at the BP Pulse that opened on Cromwell Road, which was an old petrol station that had been upgraded

Liz Allan  [00:52:13]:
Yeah. I knew you had gone there.

Gary Comerford [00:52:15]:
That had a totem. But none of them has the price on it.

Liz Allan  [00:52:20]:
Yeah. Hello? Mhmm. Today's price might be Yeah. Finger in the air.

Gary Comerford [00:52:25]:
Yeah. But you might think, well, yeah, if they're a big hub, then it doesn't matter, you know, because she can see the hubs there, which is a valid point. But there are still new installs going in, in out-of-the-way places where there's no signposting at all. I don't know whether you know Molly Miller's Lane in Wokingham. There's a sugar gas storage there. It's an industrial estate. It's nowhere near any major trunk routes, and there is a new charger that they just put in there.

Liz Allan  [00:52:51]:
Is there? My goodness.

Gary Comerford [00:52:53]:
At the show, guard self-storage.

Liz Allan  [00:52:54]:
Just the one next to, Wembley or

Gary Comerford [00:52:56]:
Just the one next to Wembley and no signpost or anything about it. You know? So that's the first thing. Now the next thing I would like to see is good communication about the charger status. Now I wanna know before I get there, how many charges are there, how many are working as opposed to out of order, and how many of those that are working are actually available.

Liz Allan  [00:53:20]:
Yes.

Gary Comerford [00:53:21]:
Yeah? Now I know it may not be a % accurate as of that second. It might be a few minutes delayed, and I'm okay with that. But you look at an app like, you know, ZapMap, and it has that on there. But a lot of the data that is provided by the ChargePoint operators is a little bit inaccurate. So for example

Liz Allan  [00:53:41]:
It's not dead.

Gary Comerford [00:53:42]:
The example I talked to you earlier about where, there was the e tron that was plugged in on the AC charger Mhmm.

Liz Allan  [00:53:50]:
Mhmm.

Gary Comerford [00:53:50]:
That would have shown on an availability thing as having two charges available. It would have had the CCS charge available and the CHAdeMO charge available.

Liz Allan  [00:54:02]:
Yes.

Gary Comerford [00:54:03]:
So in theory, if I didn't know, I would go, right? I've got a CHAdeMO car. I can plug in there. Somebody with a CCS can use it as well. But, of course, you can't because this is one of those units where you can have an AC charger and one of the DC chargers.

Gary Comerford [00:54:20]:
And I've seen, because I checked a couple of days ago, there is a charger near me that is in that situation. And it said, the CCS charger is in use, but there's still a Chatham available. And I know for a fact that it isn't because you can't use both of them at the same time. No. So you have to have good communication about the charger status. Thirdly, I want the charger sites to be well-designed. I want canopies. Canopies.

Gary Comerford [00:54:44]:
Canopies.

Liz Allan  [00:54:45]:
Not canapes. Not canapes

Gary Comerford [00:54:46]:
Not the edible ones. No. Not darling. No.

Gary Comerford [00:54:48]:
Canopies. No. I have literally had conversations with senior Charge Point people who've said to me, Well, you're sitting in your car for most of the time while you're charging. Why do you need a canopy? And I'm thinking, yeah. But if it's the middle of the night and it's dark and it's wet, and I'm trying to load money onto my app because you've decided that that's how it's gonna be, and we don't have the communication from the discussion that we just had. And I'm having to work this in with my poor eyesight with the glasses, and it's tipping it down. And I'm thinking, I could really do with the canopy here.

Liz Allan  [00:55:28]:
Yeah. Yeah. And why would you have a petrol station that has a canopy for just fueling your car that takes five minutes, and not have it for a charging experience? You know, I, Theresa Swift, who works with us, took forty-five minutes to initiate a charge in the rain. Mhmm. While she was on the phone with customer support, she was trying to get that sorted. My husband and I, I'm not saying it would have made a difference with, you know, with this situation. We're standing in another place not far away from where you've been recently. And we were freeze absolutely freezing. It was about minus two, and we had to ring customer support and couldn't get them to get the charger to work.

Liz Allan  [00:56:16]:
So, so, yeah, I'm not because it was cold. It wasn't raining, but you do need cover.

Gary Comerford [00:56:22]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then when I get there, I want proper payment methods that don't lock you in. We've talked about this already. I want pet roaming service. I want them to be ubiquitous and varied. I wanna be able to use ZapPay, Electraverse, Power, Shell Recharge, Plugshare, Allstar.

Gary Comerford [00:56:42]:
I wanna be able to use any of those on all of the charges. And as we've already identified, there isn't one of them that you can do it on all of the charging point operators. Again, I spoke with a major CPO recently, and I said to them, You don't have a roaming service yet. And he said, don't we? And I said, no. And you need it for the Public Charge Point Regulation, 2023. And he went, oh, yeah. And I saw him wander off, and he got in a huddle with another couple of executives who were there. And he came back thirty seconds later, and he said, No.

Gary Comerford [00:57:15]:
We're with three char with three roaming services. And he named three roaming services that I had never heard of

Liz Allan  [00:57:22]:
Okay.

Gary Comerford [00:57:23]:
That worldwide spread in the UK. One of which was just, I believe, was just fleet-based. So it wouldn't apply to me anyway. And from their point of view

Liz Allan  [00:57:32]:
They fulfilled.

Gary Comerford [00:57:33]:
They complied with the regulations, and they're there with a number of roaming services. But I don't use any of them, and I'm pretty sure that most of the people who use roaming regularly don't use any of those. So are they really complying with the regulations?

Liz Allan  [00:57:48]:
Well if, if you leave regulations so and I always say this as well, if you leave regulations so they're open to interpretation, then that's what you get.

Gary Comerford [00:57:57]:
Yes.

Liz Allan  [00:57:58]:
You get an interpretation of whatever anybody wants, and they'll go, well, that's kind of what it

Gary Comerford [00:58:04]:
meant, didn't it? Yeah? Yeah. We're doing that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. We've

Liz Allan  [00:58:08]:
done it.

Gary Comerford [00:58:09]:
The benefits are for the company, not the user. Exactly. Yeah. 

Liz Allan  [00:58:16]:
And I know all this lot costs money. You know? I get it. I know it costs money. But actually, if you want utilisation, then just

Gary Comerford [00:58:28]:
There you go.

Liz Allan  [00:58:28]:
Move the move move the EV driver a little bit more up the pecking order.

Gary Comerford [00:58:33]:
Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Liz Allan  [00:58:34]:
Go on next.

Gary Comerford [00:58:36]:
This nicely brings me onto, and again, we talked about this briefly. I want contactless payment that works first time, every time. In forty years of driving a fossil fuel-powered car, I've never had a contactless payment refused at a petrol station.

Liz Allan  [00:58:58]:
Yeah. Me neither.

Gary Comerford [00:58:58]:
Let me rephrase that. I've had them where they said you haven't got sufficient funds, and we're not gonna allow you to charge. That's a different thing. They've always gone through. You know? Now I can pay for a credit using a credit card; I can pay for parking under a shelter in the corner of a car park. I can go in and pay for my coffee anywhere. There are a number of things that I can pay for using a contactless card, and it's not an issue. Why is it always an issue when I'm trying to get a charger to work?

Liz Allan  [00:59:26]:
I don't know whether that's I don't know whether there's any, issue well, back office maybe or banking systems because I know you know, I mean, I know banking have got a lot there's the banking systems themselves have they, there's a there's an issue with regards to the pre auth, isn't there? Because there isn't a full agreement with the banking sector about pre-authorisations, and that's why they're all a little bit all over the place.

Gary Comerford [00:59:56]:
Which brings us nicely onto pre-authorisations.

Liz Allan  [01:00:00]:
Cool. Go for it.

Gary Comerford [01:00:01]:
I want preauthorizations that don't take hundreds out of your bank account. If I'm at a charger, trying to get it working, and it preauthorizes £40 and the charger doesn't start, I don't want it to take another £40 from the same credit card on the same charger the next time I try. Surely, it should say, "Oh, I've already got that preauthorization."

Liz Allan  [01:00:24]:
Yeah. Intelligent systems.

Gary Comerford [01:00:26]:
If I use a different credit card, yes. If I go to a different charger, yes. But if I use the same card on the same charger, I should be able to use it as many times as possible. Yeah. With just using the initial preauthorization that went.

Liz Allan  [01:00:42]:
Because So holding those funds. Just one set of funds, please. There we go. Not three. I had that the first time I was charging, Gary. It took a hundred hang on a minute. So hundred 20 hundred and £35 worth of pre auth. And I got to that one, and I was like, no way.

Liz Allan  [01:00:59]:
I'm just gonna sod that for a game of soldiers.

Gary Comerford [01:01:01]:
And there are two other things I'd want to see here, and a shout out to Sarah Sloman who's a big fan of this. Sliding pre authorizations. Yes. So Yeah. It's preauthorizing 10 pounds. I put nine pounds worth of charge in, it then authorizes preauthorizes another 10 pounds. When I get to 19 pounds, it preauthorizes another 10 pounds. Yeah.

Gary Comerford [01:01:22]:
That's what I want. And another one, a shout out to Ben McDonald from Notre Dame on this, and this is something that he picked up. He's just come back from the South of France in a Renault. Was it the Megane or the Scenic that was loaned?

Liz Allan  [01:01:35]:
I don't remember.

Gary Comerford [01:01:36]:
And he said he had problems with preauthorizations. But what he'd like to be able to do is to go and say, I'm gonna put 45 kilowatt hours of energy in here. Take the money for those 45 kilowatt hours off my card now.

Liz Allan  [01:01:49]:
Now. Yeah.

Gary Comerford [01:01:49]:
And when I get to 45 kilowatt hours, stop the charge.

Liz Allan  [01:01:53]:
Yes. Yeah.

Gary Comerford [01:01:55]:
You could do it on petrol, pubs.

Liz Allan  [01:01:56]:
Absolutely. You could do it

Gary Comerford [01:01:58]:
Twenty-thirty years ago, when I used to work at a petrol station. Mhmm. God. Forty years ago, when I used to work at a petrol station.

Liz Allan  [01:02:05]:
Don't say it. Don't say it.

Gary Comerford [01:02:06]:
You used to be able to go in and say, I want 10 pounds. You'd hit the button.

Liz Allan  [01:02:09]:
You'd, Yeah.

Gary Comerford [01:02:09]:
You know, grip the thing like, I don't know what. It'll get to 10 pounds.

Liz Allan  [01:02:13]:
And then it switches off. Exactly. It's not difficult.

Gary Comerford [01:02:16]:
It's not difficult.

Liz Allan  [01:02:17]:
Theoretically, it's okay. Okay. Well, we're just assuming it's not difficult. And we're talking about lots and lots of different hardware manufacturers as well. Yes, there are lots of different back office systems and payment systems.

Liz Allan  [01:02:29]:
So please, if you're listening and watching and you're a CPO, don't think that we don't know that some of this stuff is out of your hands. It's this is just about what we see as good experiences.

Gary Comerford [01:02:40]:
Yep. And the ultimate one—I'll just check. Is it the ultimate one? The ultimate one on payments themselves, plug and charge. Yeah. Yes. Not all cars can do it at the moment. Yes. Not all devices can use it.

Gary Comerford [01:02:55]:
Not all charges itself. Yes. Not all charge point operators have implemented it. But if every charge point operator that could do it actually switched it on, it would make life much simpler for those people who have the right cars and can do it. And it would then act as a sort of building momentum so that they would then start to make it work for other vehicles or for other pieces of hardware or for other charge point operators. Question for you. Do you know how many UK Charge Point Operators have actually implemented plug and charge? I'll give you a clue. It's more than zero and it's fewer than 70.

Liz Allan  [01:03:34]:
One? No. Well, I suppose I know that this Tesla so Tesla's got plug and charge.

Gary Comerford [01:03:41]:
But only for Tesla you Tesla vehicles. If you don't have a Tesla car, you can't. Yep.

Liz Allan  [01:03:45]:
And I know that Fastned Nope. Got no. But it's not plug and charge, is it?

Gary Comerford [01:03:50]:
It's an auto-charge. Completely different thing.

Liz Allan  [01:03:52]:
That's it. Yep. Okay. So, is it just Tesla then?

Gary Comerford [01:03:55]:
No. Okay. It's two. It's IONITY?

Liz Allan  [01:03:59]:
That was it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Gary Comerford [01:04:01]:
And the Porsche charging network.

Liz Allan  [01:04:04]:
Okay.

Gary Comerford [01:04:05]:
Yeah. Because Porsche, despite the fact that Porsche are part of IONITY, they've also set up their own charging network. Okay. And you plug and charge on that. Mhmm. Mhmm. There are others that are thinking about it, but nobody's actually implemented. So I've got three more to go.

Gary Comerford [01:04:19]:
So number eight, I want

Liz Allan  [01:04:22]:
I want, don't get.

Gary Comerford [01:04:23]:
I would like, simple, ubiquitous, another big word of the day, receipts management.

Liz Allan  [01:04:31]:
Mhmm.

Gary Comerford [01:04:32]:
Now I can go to any petrol station, and there are 256 of them. Let me rephrase that. I can go to any petrol station, and I can get a receipt every time I charge. Doesn't matter which petrol station it is, doesn't matter whether it's manned or unmanned, whether I use the machine or whether I go into the kiosk. I can always get a receipt. But there are 256 different ways of getting a receipt if you're using the charger. I might have to scan a QR code on one of them. I might have to go into a website, enter the last four digits of my credit card, and the date of the charge to get a receipt.

Gary Comerford [01:05:11]:
Mhmm. I might go you have to go into an app for another charge point operator and get a receipt through that. I might have to light some incense and pray to Voltar, the god of public charging for one another charge point of there should be a simple way of doing it.

Liz Allan  [01:05:26]:
I haven't thought about that one. I'll have to try that one next time.

Gary Comerford [01:05:30]:
What? Lighting a a a stick of incense? Yeah. It works every time, but it's a bit of a hassle.

Liz Allan  [01:05:35]:
I know. And it might be a bit snide depending on your choice of incense.

Gary Comerford [01:05:38]:
There you go.

Liz Allan  [01:05:39]:
Gosh. No. I get you.

Gary Comerford [01:05:41]:
Yep. So number nine. And, again, we have talked about this already. Proper displays that let people know what the charge speed they're getting is and why they're getting it. Is it charger limited? Is it car limited? Is it because the battery temperature is too small, slow? Is it the power pack temperature within the charger?

Liz Allan  [01:05:58]:
Right? Just give people an indication, for goodness' sake, please.

Gary Comerford [01:06:02]:
There you go. There you go. It's called

Liz Allan  [01:06:03]:
education. That's all it needs. Knowledge transfer. If you don't like that word, you know, use knowledge transfer. It is just teaching people stuff. Literally.

Gary Comerford [01:06:15]:
And finally, I would like well located and well managed sites with good amenities and facilities. And as an example, again, going back to the Lundbright and Paris, Geneva thing, I was stopped at a Tesla Supercharger in France last year, and I am not exaggerating in any way, shape, or form. It was a corner of a field that they put concrete down and a dumpster. No. And that is all that was there?

Liz Allan  [01:06:45]:
That sounds like the one in Wokingham. 

Gary Comerford [01:06:48]:
Well, it's not far off, except the one in Wokingham has gravel.

Liz Allan  [01:06:52]:
Yeah. But it gets flooded as well, doesn't it? So, you know, you just 

Gary Comerford [01:06:54]:
But you try using that if you've got a wheelchair.

Liz Allan  [01:06:56]:
Well, oh my god. Don't even go there. Yeah. Shocking.

Gary Comerford [01:07:00]:
You know, there are a number of 50 kilowatt charges on the outskirts of London that are literally just stuck on the pavement edge outside people's houses.

Gary Comerford [01:07:12]:
No facilities. Nothing, you know, for a 50 kilowatt charge. Now, yeah, if you're using AC charges, lamppost charges, and you're leaving your car there overnight, That's fair enough. But a 50 kilowatt charger, which in theory is a fast a rapid charger, what are you gonna do? You gotta make sure that the the space is free. You gotta plug in and then, you know?

Liz Allan  [01:07:35]:
And then something. And is that outside somebody's house? Because they're gonna wanna park there. And whose choice was that?

Gary Comerford [01:07:41]:
Exactly. Exactly. You know? Now going back to my little, festive thing, there's a brand new charger that's opened a brand new hub that's opened in Bradford. Lovely hub. It has canopies. It's got lots of rapid charges there, but it's in a triangle. There are roads on three sides.

Liz Allan  [01:08:04]:
Yeah.

Gary Comerford [01:08:04]:
Yeah. It's literally right in the middle of that. One of the roads on this side is a dual carriageway with no crossing point.

Liz Allan  [01:08:12]:
Oh my god.

Gary Comerford [01:08:12]:
There are no facilities at the charger itself. The nearest coffee shop is a hundred yards down the dual carriageway, which, as I already said, has no crossing point. There are no toilets. Nothing. So you're stuck in the middle of a three-way road triangle.

Liz Allan  [01:08:32]:
Oh my god. Is there a portaloo?

Gary Comerford [01:08:34]:
No. Sorry.

Liz Allan  [01:08:36]:
Oh my god. Oh, that's not no. That's not really well thought out. Is it really somehow, somehow? I mean, is that your ten now?

Gary Comerford [01:08:46]:
It's got your ten now. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [01:08:47]:
We've passed an hour, and I've still not said my 10. I've done it. I've got something, well, I'm gonna do mine very quickly. Okay? Because, oh, stop it. It's so cheeky. Number one, we've talked about it. Connectivity. Let me have connectivity when I'm plugging in. It might not be that I need to actually use an app, but I might actually want to use my phone or something like that while I'm there and give me connectivity.

Liz Allan  [01:09:16]:
I'm I I this is the things I need. Same as you. I'm not gonna say canapes, darling. I'd like a canopy. I want rain, rain cover. I need to make sure that, yeah, that I actually have to go out and, in usual inclement weather conditions, as they usually are, and I'm gonna get absolutely drenched, give me some rain cover, please. You know? And I don't mean just hand out brollies while you're there. Facilities, I don't want this to b,e I don't want charges to be at the back of a car park.

Liz Allan  [01:09:48]:
We've got a in order for us to push adoption, we need to make charges more noticeable. Actually, having it in the back of a car park with no lights, for a start off, it's flipping dangerous and people will not not, you know, rock up to your charges if it's like that. But actually, you're not providing that level of, you're not highlighting the fact that the charges are there in the first place.

Gary Comerford [01:10:13]:
Mhmm.

Liz Allan  [01:10:15]:
Payment, I want easy payments to have the stuff that you were talking about with pre auths and things like that. That's the other reason why I use Octopus Electroverse. A, gives me a discount. B, I don't get pre auths. Thank you very much. Clear instructions. Oh, please just give me some clear instructions like I said about the one down in Bridgewater. Make it simple.

Liz Allan  [01:10:36]:
My brain works. It doesn't work through looking through piles of text. If I'm in a rush or it's peeing it down like we've said, I just wanna be able to plug, initiate, and pay what in whatever order that is. And actually, do you know what? Tell me what the flipping order is. Either make sure it's I mean, this isn't to do with the CPO, but, you know, I want to either see it in the car or or see it on the charger. I'd rather see it at the charger, to be honest. That's just me. Pin accuracy, as you've said, we've got to make sure we actually get those charge point pins right.

Liz Allan  [01:11:07]:
If you've got a hundred or 500 charges out there, please just check your PIN accuracy because there are so many times it's not accurate, then it's not accurate. And actually, do you know what I'd like to see? If a charge is broken down, and if it's got a fault, make the colour come upon us on the screen as red. You know? Give me a visual trigger. It's the red, amber, green. It's the rag status. Red red amber green. I know you don't want to be shouting that something's out, and if you've got your own, you're gonna say, if you've got three connectors, you can't always do it.

Liz Allan  [01:11:41]:
But actually, at least give me some kind of indicator that if if it's not set on ZapMap or whatever, that that charge is broken down, just give me an indicator so that I don't spend hours trying to get something get get a chat initiate a charge and it's not and it's not there.

Gary Comerford [01:11:57]:
If I might counter

Liz Allan  [01:11:58]:
Counterpoint. Here we go. He's got a counterpoint.

Gary Comerford [01:12:01]:
A lot of the times when a charge is out of order, it's been powered off. Now if it's powered off, they're not gonna be able to give you a red envelope in any way. So is it better to say, well, if the screen's blank, it's out of order?

Liz Allan  [01:12:14]:
But, I mean, like you said, like you, we've had these conversations before. And like I said, look, I did power through them, and that's all of them to be well, there is one I was gonna talk about, but that's separate. You know, if you've got three connectors and you've got one connector or two connectors that aren't working, Then how do you manage that? Because you're not gonna power the machine down. No.

Gary Comerford [01:12:34]:
And you can't be right. Actually, drag indicator either,

Liz Allan  [01:12:37]:
Can you? No. No. And, you know, but I am gonna mention very quickly why I said to you before we started recording proactive maintenance, fault detection, you know, fault detection before before people have to ring because people won't always ring. I didn't even think about it. I had an issue about three or four weeks ago, and I was just in a rush. I just wanted to get home. I just wanted to charge, and I didn't realise that the Uber driver in the bay next to me had already tried on this. Now, if somebody's tried to charge, if you've got evidence in your back office system that there's been two, three, four, you know, four EV drivers that have tried to charge, then there's something wrong with that.

Liz Allan  [01:13:23]:
Even if you've not had that phone call because if you're leaving it for that phone call with that EV driver, it's too late.

Gary Comerford [01:13:29]:
Mhmm.

Liz Allan  [01:13:30]:
That's what that's all I will I will say on that one. But I just think there's that level of being proactive rather than reactive, you know? So any other thoughts? No. Amazing. Amazing. I think there's, I think there's, you know, we've powered through a heck of a lot of stuff there. Yeah. We, I mean, and Gary know that when we were talking about this conversation, I was going off on many neurospicy tangents, wasn't I? We haven't even talked about the mild hybrid cheese car, and I won't even that's another story for another day, people. We'll come back and
chat about that on another podcast.

Liz Allan  [01:14:15]:
That was that we could probably make three podcasts out of the stuff that we were talking about, couldn't we, really, to be honest. But look, Gary, I like I say, hopefully, there will be they'll you know, we've we've given our thoughts on all of this. It's not just the good you know, the bad that we've talked about. We've tried to kinda be constructive in what we've come up with. There are so many charges on the ground at the moment, you know, and the numbers are just increasing. And a lot of the CPOS are doing a brilliant job, but, you know, we just need to kind of, like I say, move the EV driver up the pecking order a little bit. I know we know you, we know you've all got investment and you've got utilisation needed, you know, but you can only utilise if people are actually using your charges. So, so just up it a little bit.

Liz Allan  [01:15:06]:
Customer experience is so important. Don't just say it and leave it as a tick box exercise. Push it up the ranks because once you keep us happy, that's me and him, two northerners, you know, once you keep us happy, then actually the rest will come. It'll just start it'll people will start rolling because because then there's no reason for people to bitch or criticize is there? I should have sworn a couple of times today. Jacks, if you're listening, I'm sorry about that, and that's Pam Hanlon's son. My apologies.

Gary Comerford [01:15:40]:
I'm just gonna say something then, but I won't. No. I think that I had a really, really valid point there, but when you started talking about Jacks, it just kind of went straight out of my head. So Sorry. No. It's gone.

Liz Allan  [01:15:54]:
Has it gone? Oh, well, look. Don't worry about it. You can all I can always add it in the show notes. What Gary said was going to say was Was. Yes.

Gary Comerford [01:16:04]:
I've got it.

Liz Allan  [01:16:05]:
There's Remembered. Yeah.

Gary Comerford [01:16:06]:
Good. I think you and I are aware of this. A lot of what we talked about is the ideal situation. We've also said that a lot of the things that we're talking about, there are probably, possibly, maybe technical reasons why that's not as easy as we think it is. But Yeah. I know from discussions with ChargePoint that there are certain ChargePoint operators who believe that they are doing really, really well in the market because they've got a lot of customers, because they're dishing out a lot of power on a daily basis.

Liz Allan  [01:16:42]:
Mhmm.

Gary Comerford [01:16:43]:
And, you know, I've spoken to senior people at these ChargePoint operators, and they do have a little bit of an attitude of, well, no. We must be doing it right because we're very popular. We must be doing it right because we're one of the top x number of things on a,

Liz Allan  [01:16:58]:
a satellite.

Gary Comerford [01:17:00]:
Yeah. And I think that's a very slippery slope. There are a lot of

Liz Allan  [01:17:05]:
Yes.

Gary Comerford [01:17:06]:
Charge point operators out there who are being used because they are there, not because they are the best. And you've got to ask yourself, and they've got to ask themselves, if they went through an exercise with a company like yours to look at here's the customer experience, here's the points where you could improve. How much better could they be if they took that on board?

Liz Allan  [01:17:31]:
Oh, Gary. Honestly, totally totally agree. And, yeah, you know that you know the work that Full Circle does. And, actually, they could they can be better. They've just got to recognize that that, you know, it's not about it's not about admitting failure or anything like that. It's just about striving to be better because if you don't, there's gonna be a competitor that will come along and they'll swamp you. And you'll be you, you'll be there, and your utilisation rates will have dropped massively. Because, you know, competition is exactly that, you know, and you've just got to keep striving.

Liz Allan  [01:18:12]:
And actually, people don't didn't know when I first started this podcast what continuous improvement is. And yet I know it's one of those phrases that's a bit meh, you know, as my son would call it. It is about striving for improvement, though. That's a 19-year-old. They say meh. You know, it's about striving for improvement, and you know if you aren't trying to get better all the time, then you are gonna just fall behind, like you said. So I'm I'm so pleased that you've actually added that in, Gary. I really am.

Liz Allan  [01:18:45]:
Thank you. Okay.

Liz Allan  [01:18:46]:
And do you know what? On that note, I think I will finish there because that's the best place to finish. And it's been brilliant talking to you. I know, you only put a couple of counterpoints to me as well and didn't even say devil's advocate once. It was I that did, doesn't it, really?

Gary Comerford [01:19:08]:
Well, on that topic, I've only got one word. Meh.

Liz Allan  [01:19:15]:
So, to wrap up, thank you, everybody, for listening and watching. Thank you to Gary for joining me.

Gary Comerford [01:19:22]:
My pleasure. We have had him on here

Liz Allan  [01:19:23]:
a few times now, and it's been brilliant. Do check out the EV Musings podcast. You have got 200-odd episodes out there, and he gets some really, really good guests on, obviously. I do because he's on this, you know. But, but, yeah, please just I always say to you all as well, please try and, you know, like, subscribe, comment on all of our, you know, all of our posts that go out on LinkedIn and the various social media platforms because all this is we need to actually increase this kind of get the word out there, stop that negative those negative nellies that are out there. But look, Gary, thank you. I really, really appreciate it. And to everybody else, thank you for listening and watching.

Liz Allan  [01:20:09]:
I'll see you next time. Bye.