Episode 149: Liz Allan and Mark Potter – Driving on Sunshine: Inside 3ti’s Journey and Smart EV Charging Solutions

Episode 149: Liz Allan and Mark Potter – Driving on Sunshine: Inside 3ti’s Journey and Smart EV Charging Solutions.

It’s such a pleasure to have this episode of Electric Evolution sponsored by 3ti, known for “driving on sunshine” by combining solar, storage, and EV charging to deliver cleaner, smarter infrastructure with reduced reliance on the grid. 

In this special episode, Liz Allan speaks to Mark Potter, CTO of 3ti, for an inspiring conversation about the future of EV charging infrastructure.
They discuss the potential within our energy infrastructure. Mark shares how 3ti is transforming the way we think about EV charging by making it faster, fairer, and more accessible than ever before.
Learn how the Papilio 3 system can be deployed in just hours, and discover how your EV could become an asset in the energy transition through vehicle-to-grid technology. 

Quote of the episode:
"Every single electric vehicle that is capable of CCS or CHAdeMO DC charging could be a bi-directional vehicle. The only thing that stops all of those CCS vehicles from being bi-directional charging capable right now is software." - Mark Potter. 

Mark Potter Bio:
Mark Potter is the CTO at 3Ti, bringing over two decades of engineering expertise to the energy infrastructure sector. His career began in aerospace at BAE Systems, where he worked on flight safety-critical control systems and avionics for aircraft, including the Tornado. He then spent 13.5 years in the EV industry at Protean Electric, developing cutting-edge in-wheel motor technology and EV retrofit solutions long before Tesla became mainstream.
Mark's passion extends beyond his professional work; he's a qualified civilian gliding instructor and former Scout leader, embodying the motto "to teach is to learn." His deep technical knowledge spans batteries, inverters, charging standards, and energy management systems, making him one of the UK's leading voices on bi-directional charging and DC microgrids.

Mark Potter and 3ti Links:
Website: https://3ti.co.uk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/3tienergyhubs
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@3tievsolarcarparks801
LinkedIn: https://www.linked

Transcript

Liz Allan  [00:00:01]:
So on today's episode, I have with me Mark Potter, who is the chief technical officer of 3TI. And I've been wanting to get you on here, Mark, for I can't even tell you how long I needed. I've just not had the guts to actually ask you, which is silly, isn't it?

Mark Potter [00:00:18]:
Well, here I am and thank you very much for having me.

Liz Allan  [00:00:21]:
So just to warn everybody, and this might make you smile, poor Mark has had a, a kite, red kite. Not a flying kite as in it is, but it's got wings, landing on the roof of his office. So if you hear any noises, that'll be what that is. So it's true. You don't mind me saying that, do you? Hopefully. So, 3Ti is an exciting brand, an interesting company. And for those of you watching and listening who don't know about 3Ti, you really, really need to, need to.

Liz Allan  [00:00:59]:
And after this episode, I can tell you, you will know. So Mark, can you give me a little bit of your origin story? What was your background before joining 3ti, and what led you to your current role? Because you've been there a little while, haven't you?

Mark Potter [00:01:22]:
Yeah, I've been at 3 ti for about three, three and a half years or so now. And yes, probably the potted history is that I don't move around very much.  My first job was working in aerospace at BAE Systems.

Liz Allan  [00:01:37]:
You worked for Thales, didn't you?

Mark Potter [00:01:40]:
That was my sort of second job. That was my interim when I had worked as a contractor for a short time. But no, the main job was at BAE Systems for about five years. That was my sort of graduate position. Hardware, electronics, flight safety, critical control systems, fly-by-wire systems, that kind of stuff. Navigation displays, you know, really kind of high top high tech avionics, the aircraft electronics. I worked on autopilot and navigation displays, among other things, which was amazing high technology.

Mark Potter [00:02:13]:
But my goodness, is that a slow-moving industry? And I'm really impatient. So I moved into automotive. You know, things happen a lot quicker in automotive. And I joined what was then a very kind of young kind of series, a sort of company that when I first joined them, I thought they were kind of mad as a box of frogs in terms of like, you know, they weren't just trying to make electric cars, they're trying to make. This is 2008, pre-Tesla, pre-Leaf. You know, they weren't just trying to make electric cars, they're trying to make electric cars with in-wheel motors.

Liz Allan  [00:02:51]:
Blimey. Okay.

Mark Potter [00:02:53]:
Yeah. But you know, I was there for 13 and a half years. I still believe. They were very strong in the product they were developing. The company is called Protein Electric. Incredible technology, ahead of its time in many ways. But you know, I generally think that we will see that coming. But you know, my interest was in the electric vehicle world.

Mark Potter [00:03:12]:
So, in that environment, I was on the vehicle side rather than the motor side. So I was essentially strapping those motors to cars, getting those cars on the road. So, most of the retrofit at the time, you couldn't really go and buy a battery. So we were making our own battery. So, my expertise was in batteries, battery control systems, inverter control systems, DC-DC converters, air conditioning, and charging standards that make an electric vehicle an electric vehicle. We were retrofitting a Ford F150 truck for my first project in America in Detroit. I also spent a lot of time in Germany working on some Mercedes vehicles with a company called Brabus. So, you know, really kind of early stage electric vehicle world, you know, before any of these production cars are really out there. And of course over that 13 and a half years or so, you know, really the industry gets to the point where you've got so many good EVs out there now, you know.

Mark Potter [00:04:13]:
And so when I left that company, essentially what I said to in my leaving speech was, you know, it's been a hell of a journey. And from my perspective, EVs are done, okay. There are so many bloody good EVs out there. It's a natural evolution of technology that they'll have in wheel motors soon enough. But the infrastructure is holding it back. The structure is not yet good enough. And then I had the opportunity to move into an electric vehicle infrastructure job, where Tim Evans, the founder of 3TI, had a strong vision for 3ti stands for 3 Technology Infrastructure.

Mark Potter [00:04:53]:
So it was about solar storage and EV charging. So here's this opportunity. They've already got solar, they need storage and EV charging. He wanted me because I have extensive knowledge about batteries and EV charging. So that's really what landed me in 3ti. And yeah, it's really been quite an adventure since then, but it's a, you know. Yeah, I mean, what an extraordinary adventure. It's hard to believe it's been three and a half years sometimes.

Liz Allan  [00:05:16]:
I bet. I bet. Bless you. And I, I'm. I've noticed something else on your LinkedIn profile that I'd like to discuss, but I know I'll just go off on a tangent if I bring it up with you. But you've also been a civilian gliding instructor.

Mark Potter [00:05:35]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:05:35]:
And I, I'm just gonna. I think I'll have to underline it there because I'm just really excited to hear that. But we could come back to it. Maybe we can revisit this later when we've discussed it.

Mark Potter [00:05:49]:
I'll say one thing about it because it tells you a bit about my personality. I love the motto of the gliding squadron. I was at 615bgs at RAF Kenley near Croydon in London. I can't quite quote the Latin correctly. I'm sure I'll get it wrong if I try. But it says that to teach is to learn. And, you know, from, you know, my own past, whether it's been doing things like STEM activities with schools, I work as a, as a cub leader, Scout leader, the air cadets and the gliding instruction through to my role now in business. You know, you really learn a lot about a subject when you teach it.

Liz Allan  [00:06:28]:
You're not wrong. You're not wrong. Absolutely. And yeah, I kind of. I'm not a teacher, but I also do training, so. So yeah, it's very interesting and you always end up, like you say, gleaning more than you actually think you would. But let's.

Liz Allan  [00:06:48]:
Right, let's move into 3ti. Can you just explain a little bit about what 3ti provides? So you've said, you know, kind of the, three in the 3. What it is, but what are you actually providing?

Mark Potter [00:07:09]:
So, I mean, the foundation of the business was really big megawatt-scale solar car parks. So the kind of most famous ones you'd boast about are JP Morgan down on the south coast, and Bournemouth and Crewe. The Bentley Motors factory in Crewe, if you've seen the pictures of that place, it's got a huge solar car park and loads of solar rooftop. And the car park's all ours. The rooftop is mostly ours. I think it's. We've got Eastbourne Hospital and Five Rivers Leisure Centre down in Salisbury. That's an amazing glulam.

Mark Potter [00:07:44]:
That's a wooden solar car park that would buy.

Liz Allan  [00:07:46]:
Oh, wow.

Mark Potter [00:07:47]:
Beautiful place. That one we've got. So. So, the company's origin was in big megawatt-scale solar projects. And when I was asked to join the company, it was actually not for those solar, megawatt-scale solar projects because they had a fantastic team developing that already. What they needed was somebody who understood storage, EV charging, and energy management solutions.

Liz Allan  [00:08:15]:
Okay.

Mark Potter [00:08:16]:
It was all Secret Squirrel at the time, as you probably recognise from the timing, since we only announced Papilio about two and a half years ago. And I've been here three and a half years. That first year was kind of in stealth mode, developing the product that we now know as Papilio 3. And really, the story of the origin of Papilio3 is that it was whilst building one of those big solar construction projects, I think it was. It's actually JP Morgan. So, our sort of construction manager, and our founder, Tim Evans, and construction manager Richard were sitting in a muddy welfare unit, one of these shipping containers, in a muddy construction site on a cold, wet day, where nothing could happen because the ground was flooded. And they're sloshing around in their work boots, going, there's got to be a better way of doing this. It was during a coffee break that I actually got a copy of the picture, a photograph of the original sketch, which the two of them had just sketched out. This concept has since become Papilio3.

Mark Potter [00:09:17]:
And it was basically, you know, how about a shipping container with a solar roof on it and a bunch of charge points coming off of it?

Liz Allan  [00:09:26]:
Very clever.

Mark Potter [00:09:27]:
You know, wouldn't that be great? Yeah, and that's kind of where it came from. So, essentially, when I joined the business, they showed me this, well, barely worn sketch at this point. I'd turned that sketch into a CAD model of sorts. But it was, it was not engineered at all. And when they said, we're going to make one of these. I was like, yeah, sure. So we did, and you know, take that concept and you know, really it was about, you know, those construction projects take a long time. Okay, you're talking; typically, the fastest is around 18 months.

Mark Potter [00:10:04]:
Normally, they're like two or two and a half years from now. Yeah, kind of that initial engagement to that system being energised. And that's if you can get the connection. And that's when you've agreed terms, and it's a lot about, you know, business and finance, and you know, you've got bird surveys and ground surveys and drilling piling, and you know, so massive, massive, highly expensive solution. And of course, for a big solar project, it makes perfect sense to accelerate the rollout of EV charging and accelerate the rollout of energy storage to deal with the renewable generation and the peaks from solar, from wind and from EVs. It just takes too long. So this concept of Papilio3 was, you know, how do we make this faster? How can we accelerate the rollout of this EV charging solution? And the answer, drop it off the back of a lorry.

Liz Allan  [00:11:01]:
So going from that initial sketch to you doing your dodgy CAD and kind of to deciding that it can be lift, I. I call it lift and shift. You manufacture it, lift and shift it. So how when it's right, we're talking about a shipping container. We know that they can be massive anyway, can't they? And I've, I've seen the Papillo 3 and it is. And it's a sight to behold, really. But what does it, what does it look like? You know, if we're talking, you know that a shipping container is rectangular. It's a rectangular piece of metal. But we're talking about something where the sides will come down, and you can have the top. How the hell does it do that?

Liz Allan  [00:11:58]:
How did you manage that one?

Mark Potter [00:11:59]:
A little bit from the first one to the second one, I'll be honest, took a standard 40-foot container and took an angle grinder, took it to it.

Liz Allan  [00:12:08]:
Oh, good God.

Mark Potter [00:12:09]:
This cut out about 60% of the material, and we then use that material to fabricate other parts, including the foot plate and similar components. But clearly that's quite an expensive way to do it. It's time-consuming logistically, but once we've done it, we'll find a better way. So now we take a used 40-foot container. That's something that Tim Evans was keen on, which was that it wasn't new steel. Take a used 40-foot shipping container, and then we slice it like a loaf of bread.

Liz Allan  [00:12:44]:
Oh my God.

Mark Potter [00:12:47]:
And at the end of it, you get a bit of a shed container that goes off and is sold separately, and then the main container part becomes the pods, as we now call them on Papilio. So and then you know, any of the, any of the kind of spare materials we try and try and use in one way, shape or form.

Liz Allan  [00:13:10]:
I love that. Yeah, that is, that is kind of recycling. Yeah, yeah.

Mark Potter [00:13:16]:
I don't think of it as recycling. I think that is kind of like reusing because I like recycling, it's melting it down and doing it again.

Liz Allan  [00:13:22]:
True.

Mark Potter [00:13:22]:
You know, reduce is about, you know, reducing the amount of work, labour and raw material. And then reuse is, you know, reusing that 40-foot container that's gone from China to the UK. You've got fields and fields full of these things because, you know, we import way more than we export. So you've got all these empty containers that cost more money to ship back to China than it does if, you know, to make new ones in China. So they've got new containers being built in China. We pick them up and turn them into an EV charging solar hub.

Liz Allan  [00:13:57]:
That's amazing. And, it is at its heart what you've just said to me, there is continuous improvement. You know, you've gone from your initial and you know, your initial drawings to your first, you know, your, your kind of first pilot. Then you're iterating all the way through and tweaking it and making it better, aren't you?

Mark Potter [00:14:16]:
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Keep changing it, keep making it better and keep up with changes in the industry as well. You know, this is still a maturing industry, and technologies are changing. We're seeing everything from plug and charge and bi-directional to shadow mode CCS. You know, this is an evolving industry, and you've got to keep your product fresh, current, and look at where the market's going and where the market needs are. So, you know, I'm very strong, as you probably guessed from my background; I'm very technically inclined. So you know, there's a huge technical content which is really the magic of, is it's not just the concept and it's not just a bunch of charge points screwed to a box. You know, there's some, some pretty good magic inside, inside it, and it's that magic inside it that you know, is where the real value proposition comes from. Where the USP, if you like, comes from.

Liz Allan  [00:15:13]:
So, how many are in one of the units? Just remind me, how many chargers can you fit in, and what kind of power are we getting from them?

Mark Potter [00:15:28]:
Yeah, so it's in, it's 12 x 22 kilowatt 3-phase EV chargers. The AC style is the standard format. It has a roughly 20 kilowatt peak solar array on the top as well. So it's 42 solar panels. Essentially, those charge points will support charging speeds up to 22 kilowatts. You probably know that most vehicles don't actually take 22 kilowatts.

Liz Allan  [00:16:00]:
Yeah, found that to my own detriment.

Mark Potter [00:16:04]:
If you want to support both 7-kilowatt and 11-kilowatt vehicles, you must also support 22-kilowatt vehicles. It's a technical constraint. We set the output at 22 kilowatts to ensure every vehicle receives 7 or 11, unless it's a hybrid, in which case the output is typically limited to 3.6, depending on the specific hybrid model. So, yeah, you know, you've probably picked up. EV charging is a bit of a minefield of different standards and numbers, making it a bit of a muddle to work out exactly how fast your car will charge. But, you know, we try to manage our complexity so our drivers can get as much out of their vehicles as possible.

Liz Allan  [00:16:47]:
So, okay, so when you've got your Papilio3 unit and your transport. So you've manufactured it, done all the stuff that you need to do, you've got all the charge points in there, everything's ready, then you're taking it to the site. How long after taking it? I'm assuming you've got to put it on a low loader or something like that. How long does it take from getting off that low loader to being ready and able to charge a number of EVs, then?

Mark Potter [00:17:27]:
Well, officially, we say it's one day. The reality is it's actually somewhere between four and seven hours, depending on.

Liz Allan  [00:17:36]:
Blimey.

Mark Potter [00:17:37]:
So the very first one we ever did was the prototype. It was charging my car within seven hours of the truck arriving on site, and we've only improved it since then. And sometimes, you know, you get some challenges with, you know, connections or something, you know, some local issue that can put a spanner in the works. But, you know, the model is dropped off the back of the lorry, plug it in, turn it on, and drive away.

Liz Allan  [00:18:01]:
God. So what does that, what does that person or that organisation do? Because it's going to be. I'm assuming it's all B2B this.

Mark Potter [00:18:10]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:18:11]:
So, what do they need to have at their end for you to have it on? So I know you're saying there's a solar array, but we don't always have sunny days, do we, in the UK?

Mark Potter [00:18:23]:
No, you've got.

Liz Allan  [00:18:24]:
Yes, you've got your battery as well, haven't you?

Mark Potter [00:18:26]:
Yeah, it's got to work. Okay. It's got to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You know, it's got to work year-round. It's got to be reliable. So it is grid-connected. Typically, we get something like 30 to 40% of the total EV charging demand comes from solar, which is, you know, think of it as a 30 to 40% discount on your electricity bills. But absolutely, you know, in the darkest winter, foggiest day, it's still got to work, you know.

Mark Potter [00:18:58]:
So, essentially, the site preparation work is a wire from the grid. And some of the magic means that the wire is relatively small compared to what 12 charge points would ordinarily need. We also try to get an Internet connection from the site, if possible. If we can't, we'll install a satellite connection, as cellular communications is the number one issue with EV charging, and we use wraps and similar solutions. I don't need to tell you, you know, this. And so essentially site preparation has two wires poking out of the ground, Internet and electricity, and paint the lines, and then we drop it off the back of a lorry and plop it down. So we're not digging trenches, we're not running conduits or putting in concrete bases or anything like that. In fact, we don't always have to have that wire poking out of the ground from below ground.

Mark Potter [00:19:52]:
On some sites, we put in what's called a feeder pillar, which is an above-ground installation, maybe at the edge of the car park. And then we can run the wires through like a speed bump that sits on the surface. And we've done that in a couple of places. So, you know, it does vary. You know, quite often clients want the. Either it's a high traffic site or a traffic location, or it's, you know, for aesthetic readings. The client wants the conjure underground. But that's basically the only prep needed, you know, run that wire out to the ground.

Mark Potter [00:20:23]:
That's it.

Liz Allan  [00:20:24]:
It's amazing that people can do that. Everybody who's listened to this podcast for a while, you know, will know. I get really excited about innovation, and to me, that is just innovation, kind of in your face. It's just brilliant, you know.

Mark Potter [00:20:47]:
You know, a lot of it comes from my, you know, my background. You think back to what I just said about aerospace and automotive, again, both of those environments. You design it once, and then build it many times. You know, coming into the infrastructure industry, you know, it's, it's. It seems very alien to me, this concept of designing everything bespoke for every site, doing, you know, ground surveys and drainage surveys and looking at plans and all this kind of stuff. You know, in a world of electric cars, you know, you're trying to build millions of them exactly the same. And in aerospace as well, a lot of it's about reliability and resilience, as you might imagine. Now, I'm not going to pretend Papilio is as reliable as a.

Mark Potter [00:21:24]:
As a tornado, but I will say that we've, you know, taken that idea of resilience and reliability in as a business. And, you know, with a business hat on, it's not just about the EV driver experience, you know, making sure they get there and things are working. It's about business overheads. Right. If you've engineers on the ground driving around, especially in diesel vehicles, that's a good thing. Even worse, it's costing you time and money to send engineers to turn things off and on again to reset the SIM card or whatever the case may be. So, you know, resilience, reliability and repeatability have been built into Papilio design from the outset.

Liz Allan  [00:22:04]:
And I think it's. I think it's important for this. I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna say I do understand what you're saying about aerospace. I worked. I worked in defence myself for a while. So I worked for. I was having to write down because I was thinking, God, it's such a long time.

Liz Allan  [00:22:21]:
I worked for Lockheed Martin, Alenia Marconi, and Ultra Electronic. And there was another one. I think it's Graseby Dynamics as well. So, I kind of was around that. And. And you do have to.

Mark Potter [00:22:34]:
The one I was at.

Liz Allan  [00:22:35]:
Yeah, say again? Sorry.

Mark Potter [00:22:36]:
Old Marconi site. GEC Marconi was the site where I was, which became BAE.

Liz Allan  [00:22:42]:
Not. Not over there, not. Oh, my God. We're going to have a side conversation now. Not over at Borehamwood, were you?

Mark Potter [00:22:49]:
No. No.

Liz Allan  [00:22:49]:
Okay, that's all right. Then. I was. I was over at Alenia over in Borehamwood, and it was a weird building, but it's a long time ago. We'll have a separate conversation about that. Exactly. So you are. And I said this to you before we started recording.

Liz Allan  [00:23:08]:
And don't get this wrong. Or take this the wrong way. You are a geek when it comes to certain parts of charging, aren't you? You said some things that I'd not heard of. So, vehicle to grid, vehicle to X. You tell me all the other things that you told me earlier. But, this is kind of something that you're quite passionate about, isn't is?

Mark Potter [00:23:48]:
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I guess it's because, you know, I like looking at that whole picture, that whole system picture and if I, if actually yeah, if I do rewind a little bit to you know, Tim Evans, our founder's story. I mean Tim used the words democratisation of energy, decentralisation of power and decarbonisation the 3Ds with kind of more succinctly it's, it's fairer, faster, cleaner and it's not just about EV charging, it's not just about solar energy, it's about what that means for the energy transition. Tim was an absolute advocate for fairness, a fierce kind of advocate, and he believed strongly in things like strong employee share ownership in the company. He believed very strongly in rewarding people for doing a good job. But also, he wanted to make sure that in this energy transition, people don't get left behind. So the democratisation part of it is, you know, energy has been controlled very centrally by very few people who've amassed incredible wealth. You know the fossil fuel industry is, you know, unbelievable disparity in fairness that results in.

Mark Potter [00:25:16]:
And of course, we need to just open a gas bill at the moment to see just how painful that is at the moment, with these companies making record profits. And, Tim saw 3ti as an opportunity to decentralise that control of democracy, sanitise it and obviously decarbonise it. So if you take the situation as it stands right now, if have you got, I presume you've got EV charging on your drive at home with you or you publicly.

Liz Allan  [00:25:46]:
Yeah, we've got, yeah, we do.

Mark Potter [00:25:47]:
So if you're charging at home, you know you're probably paying about one-tenth of what it costs to charge publicly at the moment.

Liz Allan  [00:25:56]:
Yep.

Mark Potter [00:25:57]:
And yep, that makes it essentially the prerogative of the rich, and that's not okay in Tim's book. And I'm 100 with him on this.

Liz Allan  [00:26:07]:
I am, too. I agree.

Mark Potter [00:26:09]:
It's not fair. If you don't have your own driveway, you'll have to pay 10 times as much for the electricity. You know, Quenton Willson, the whole kind of VAT campaign, where even there's a VAT disparity. You know, if you can't charge on your own driveway, you pay more tax. What? You know, it's bonkers. So it really Papilio3 came into this environment of that fairer, faster, cleaner mindset. Get it out there quickly. Avoiding the rapid charging world, where inherently they have to be expensive because they're bringing in big network connections and batteries.

Mark Potter [00:26:45]:
God knows what else. Actually, charge when you stop; don't stop to charge. You know, if you're not parked at home on your driveway, where you're going to be parked, where you're going to be in a, in a council car park, you're going to be in a. Maybe you're in a hotel car park. More often than not, you're going to be in the work or an office car park. Okay. Charge when you stop. If that's where you're parked, plug in and charge there.

Mark Potter [00:27:06]:
Because it's going to be a lot cheaper than rapid charging. Yeah. And it's a lot more convenient, and it's a lot nicer, and it's more friendly for the environment, and it satisfies all those needs. So really, that's kind of where the foundation of the business was and the kind of ideology that goes behind it. And V2X for me is, you know, the natural continuation of that. Okay. Now, if you get a home solar system installed, you know, lots of people are getting them with batteries as well. 

Mark Potter [00:27:35]:
So I don't know, you get. What's it, what's the latest Tesla Powerwall? Something like 13, 13 and a half kilowatt hours.

Liz Allan  [00:27:40]:
Oh, God. We've not got that. We've. We've not got a big battery. So we've got nine solar panels. We've got a 4.5 kilowatt battery, and we also have a heat pump.

Mark Potter [00:27:53]:
Okay.

Liz Allan  [00:27:53]:
So.

Mark Potter [00:27:53]:
So a 4.5 kilowatt-hour battery that you've installed with a 9 kilowatt solar system. You know, your electric vehicle has got at least a 45-kilowatt-hour battery in it. If it's an Nissan Leaf, you know.

Liz Allan  [00:28:07]:
I've got, wait, where it's 38.5 on our Ioniq. So, yeah, it's just sat there, it's been sitting there for a few days, and it drives me mad thinking, oh my God, why can't we use it?

Mark Potter [00:28:18]:
It's 10 times the size of the home storage battery. And you spent, you know, probably six or eight grand getting a home storage battery put in. You've spent, you know, 30 grand, whatever, on a car, and you can't use its battery, and you know, especially in this world of working from home or in this world that we envisage, where you're charging at work off the sunshine. So, Tim Evans, one of the last things he did before he died was trademark "Driving on Sunshine". So that's ours.

Liz Allan  [00:28:50]:
Yeah, I love that, I love that he was such a force to be reckoned with.  I met him a couple of times, Mark, and what a man. Honest. He did not mince his words, did he?

Mark Potter [00:29:02]:
He really didn't. And I dare say I channel my inner Tim sometimes as well as I think of it. But, but anyway, so, so he, you know, his kind of view of the world is like, okay, so you've got your car at work, soak up some sunshine at work and take it home. All right. And run your house off of it.

Liz Allan  [00:29:20]:
Yes, yes.

Mark Potter [00:29:22]:
Right. So you know, that helps everybody. You're kind of, you're driving home anyway, you take the electricity with you and then charge up off cheap hydro and wind overnight, take it to the office in the morning and avoid these gas peaking plants which are turning on at 9:00 am and 4, you know, 4, 5, 6:00 pm that are running your electric showers and your office plants and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And your rapid chargers, you know, decarbonise the grid by putting more solar on it and soaking up when you don't need it and squirting it out, you know, when it is needed. So it's a really simple concept. That's all v2x is. You know, v2x is about bi-directional charging and using that expensive asset that is sitting on your drive gathering dust 95% of the time and making that an active asset on the grid. And you know, commercially for fleet operators, it's tremendously attractive.

Mark Potter [00:30:15]:
Fleets are very predictable, typically in the way that they're used by home users, you know, I risk it getting my soapbox. You know, those home users have full control over that asset. If they've bought that car, it's their car, their asset, they've funded it. I don't care whether they're leasing it, whatever, they've funded it, and if they want to use it, you know, as an alternative to installing a home storage battery, absolutely.

Liz Allan  [00:30:39]:
They should be allowed to, definitely. So it's. Right. Okay, so how do we make this possible then? Of course, I know that there are some. So I was just interviewing a guy from Renault, and I know that they have got in the Renault 5 because myself and Amy Carter from DAF Trucks, we went for a test drive a couple of months back in a Renault 5, which was amazing and turned so many people's heads, honestly, it was mental. But, you know, that's got vehicle-to-grid capacity capability. But not all EVs have that. I don't think our Ioniq is a 2021, so I don't think ours is either. Ours has got that.

Liz Allan  [00:31:25]:
But how do we make that possible?

Mark Potter [00:31:29]:
Well, I can't, I can't answer the question without getting a little bit geeky. I'll try not to get too geeky.

Liz Allan  [00:31:34]:
I don't mind you being geeky. Look, you've built. I said, well, it's like onion layers. You're. You've built up the layers of onions. So we get, we. Yeah, we're there.

Mark Potter [00:31:42]:
All right, well, hopefully most of your audience will be familiar with AC versus DC charging. Yeah, they know that, you know, AC charging is, is relatively speaking, quite slow, but you can do it at home, you can do it at the office. D.C. charging is, you know, much, much quicker. And it uses those extra two pins at the bottom of the CCS. Of type 2 connector. So the question with bi-directional is, how are you pulling the energy out of the car? Are you pulling it out on the type 2 connector in AC, or are you bringing it out on top of the CCS pins? The DC pins are at the bottom, the plus and the minus. And that's the key difference between AC and DC bi-directional.

Mark Potter [00:32:24]:
So with AC, bi-directional, as with AC charging, the conversion from the electrical grid AC to the battery DC is done on the car.

Liz Allan  [00:32:37]:
Yeah, Using.

Mark Potter [00:32:38]:
Yeah, obc, the onboard charger. So that, you know, the thing that decides it's 3.6 or 7 or 11 or 22 kilowatts, that's the onboard charger. And if you're AC exporting from a vehicle on those type 2 connectors, then it's the onboard charger that has to invert. It's called inverting the DC back into AC again. The Function is just like a solar inverter. It does essentially the same function. Take DC, make it into AC, right?

Liz Allan  [00:33:06]:
Okay.

Mark Potter [00:33:07]:
With DC export, just like CCS, the onboard charger doesn't get used. You're pumping DC from something outside the vehicle straight into the battery, and that means you can do it much, much faster. The limitation is not the onboard charger. The limitation now is the battery cells, the battery chemistry and how quickly you're willing or able to pump the energy in and out. One of the points I like to make, which I've shared with OFGEM, DESNES, and anyone who will listen, is that every electric vehicle capable of CCS or CHAdeMO DC charging could be a bi-directional vehicle.

Liz Allan  [00:33:55]:
Bloody hell, I didn't know that. Okay.

Mark Potter [00:33:57]:
Every single one of them. And it's not limited by onboard charger capabilities; it's only limited by software. The only thing that stops all of those CCS vehicles from being bi-directional charging capable right now is software.

Liz Allan  [00:34:17]:
And software as in software installed by the OEM.

Mark Potter [00:34:21]:
Software installed by the OEM which enables the communication on the CCS communication, the 5118 stack, that enables it to tell the charge point, it can have some power out of the battery. That's the only thing that's needed.

Liz Allan  [00:34:39]:
Bloody hell. I didn't know. Right, okay, see, I didn't, I didn't know that bit. Okay.

Mark Potter [00:34:44]:
And you know, the industry has been a bit disingenuous, primarily focusing on AC export from the vehicle, which Renault does. Many other Nissan's have similar projects in the works, and a few are already underway. And the reason it's disingenuous is that all those vehicles out there could be bidirectional; they just aren't because software doesn't allow it. The new rep, essentially a tranche of vehicles coming out now with bi-directional support, is doing so because the AC onboard charger has an inverter function and additional electronics required for its operation. Now if you put that into context, so if you're driving along with your foot down in, you know, you do a 060 in your car, you'll probably hit about 250 or maybe even 300 kilowatts of power coming out of your battery into your electric motors, which makes your vehicle move. Suppose you use an OBC onboard charger to export power from your vehicle to the grid. In that case, the maximum it's going to be able to DO is probably 11kW out of essentially the 250kW that the battery is capable of discharging. Now, of course, the battery can only do that for a few seconds.

Liz Allan  [00:36:05]:
Yeah.

Mark Potter [00:36:05]:
However, the reality is that onboard chargers, when using the AC export, require a large number of vehicles to be coupled together and connected to the grid simultaneously. So, millions of vehicles, at least hundreds of thousands of vehicles, are connected to the grid simultaneously, providing AC export to make a significant difference in renewable energy. With DC export for the vehicle, the number could be far fewer. So, to put that into context, if you take a typical example of the Renault 5, I think that will do 3.6kW single phase, 16 amps. On a G98 approval, you could do 30, 40, 50, 60kW, arguably from a DZX Pro. The limitation is what's on the wall that's pulling it out.

Liz Allan  [00:36:55]:
Good grief.

Mark Potter [00:36:57]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:36:57]:
So hang on, so are you saying that the manufacturers could stop limiting this? I mean, you're not going to get them to, you're not going to get them to kind of recall, are you? You know, unless it's mandated or anything like that, to make this argument.

Mark Potter [00:37:18]:
But I, I've called it out, okay? I used to work in the automotive industry. All right, it's, there's, I mean, first of all, Tesla can do OTAs, why can't others? Okay. And it is just software. Now the real question is, why won't they?

Liz Allan  [00:37:36]:
Have you got any thoughts on that one?

Mark Potter [00:37:38]:
Well, the next question is, why would they? Okay, because they're more interested in selling the next model and the next vehicle and more importantly, and sorry for getting on my soapbox over this, I don't care.

Liz Allan  [00:37:49]:
Soapboxes are good.

Mark Potter [00:37:50]:
Financial incentives are not there. There's no motivation at the moment for any of those OEMs to go and essentially retrofit OTA, or during a service, or even as a paid-for upgrade to enable those vehicles to work bi-directionally on DC. Why would they when they've got AC export from the vehicle. The vehicle is in control of the revenue stack, same as plug and charge. Why do you think they're so keen on plug and charge? Okay, because the vehicle controls the revenue stack. If the vehicle is managing the transaction, a financial transaction, they can cream a few per cent off it. It's not a coincidence that these OEMs have set up what's called a VPP virtual power plant in numerous countries. It's the OEMs that are in control of the revenue stack for the battery that you've bought and paid for.

Liz Allan  [00:38:44]:
Jesus. So, but okay, are there, this is gonna be a really naughty question. Are there companies out there that can do this? As in, that can.

Mark Potter [00:38:58]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we're one of them. But we're doing it. However, the issue is that V2X and V2G have been successfully implemented, with DC export from vehicles being demonstrated in 2018, notably through the UK trial. You know, this is, that's how long ago it was. This is Indra, this is, you know, Clare Miller, and I've got the name. What's it called? Paralute, wasn't it called? So that's.

Mark Potter [00:39:27]:
Yeah, know, this is a long time ago. And that's because Chademo, the protocol on Chademo, essentially enables bi-directional. So, the Nissan Leaf and Env 200 have been used in virtually every bi-directional trial since then. Forever. Because Chademo lets you do it. And it's ISO, it's CCS ISO 51182 now. That's required, and unfortunately, there's no mandatory compliance. This is what I hope Ofgem, and particularly Ofgem, is about: regulatory matters. DESNes should push for a mandate that requires supporting bi-directional AC charging also to support bi-directional DC charging. Okay.

Mark Potter [00:40:16]:
Because if they're going to put the software in that enables that AC charging to export, then there's no excuse for not enabling DC export from the vehicle. Actually. I'll take it a step further and say every one of those vehicles already has DC pins. Just make it a mandatory requirement. If they're supporting CCS 5118 and they're going to support plug and plug and charge on Dash 20, make them support bi-directional charging even if it's power limited. The Nissan Leaf, for example, won't export more than 15 kilowatts. But that's okay, you know, 15 kilowatts out of 250 kilowatts was all right, we'll take it. Okay. Because actually in the use cases that I envisage, 15kW export is very good and very appropriate, and we don't actually need to pull out, you know, tens or hundreds of kilowatts.

Mark Potter [00:41:06]:
Fifteen is Enough. And the way that we see it, where I see it is essentially, if you can put it out of 15 and jack it back in at something like 30 or 50, then you can get a lot of V2X benefits without any longer dwell time. Now, for daytime use in the office, where Papilio, you know, that's fleet office, you know, town centres, gyms, wherever, that. That opportunity window is quite short compared to overnight charging.

Liz Allan  [00:41:38]:
Yes.

Mark Potter [00:41:38]:
Being able to pull energy out and put it back in faster is the best way to make V2X commercially viable. And that's the project that we're working on at the moment with Innovate UK. It sounds like 30kW in.

Liz Allan  [00:41:52]:
It sounds amazing. Can I just ask you, I know, because we'll come back to Papio in a second, but what do you need at home? Like I said, we've got a home charger. What do you need? I'm assuming not all home chargers can take bi-directional, so what kind of charger are we looking at? To be able to take a bidirectional at home?

Mark Potter [00:42:19]:
The first question is AC or DC. So, you know, it's a shame that Indra aren't doing it public, you know, sort of commercially now, but if you've got a Nissan Leaf. You had an Indra chat charger, it just worked because you had a DC charger on the wall and unfortunately that's, that's not kind of how it's working now in, in the current world order, like with the Renault 5, essentially what they're, what they have created is a walled garden where you need a Renault charge point to work with a Renault car. No, you need a Nissan charge point to work with a Nissan car. Car.

Liz Allan  [00:42:56]:
Right.

Mark Potter [00:42:57]:
And it's really frustrating because if the vehicle's hardware is capable of bi-directional charging, consider a charge point you have at home. It's essentially a relay that turns it on and off. It's not doing anything clever. It's got communication and an off switch in it. It's really frustrating that. That interoperability is currently not happening. So, you know, when somebody changes their vehicle from, you know, a Renault 5 to a Nissan, they're gonna have to change the charge point on their wall if they want bi-directional.

Liz Allan  [00:43:27]:
And that's. And that's ridiculous, isn't it? I mean, unless they throw that in with the cost, you know, which. Because if you're buying it outright as car buyer, then you're looking at including fitting. It's around a grand, isn't it? £900 to a grand. But actually, why should you, why should you have to do that? Just to be able to get V2G seems a bit.

Mark Potter [00:43:58]:
But, you know, the control over it is still with the OEM in that environment as well. So, you know, what percentage of flexibility, grid flexibility, revenues you get? If they even tell you that they're creaming them off because that's, you know, even that's obfuscated at the moment. And I'll get my own rant about that as well if you're not careful. You know, it really is a bit of a wild west at the moment in the world of AC. And I think it's a real shame because, you know, it's a bit like, you know, the Betamax VHS war of the past. You know, it's going to result in electronics waste, it's going to result in consumer frustration. It has already resulted in a decade of delay getting this technology out there, and you know, it's going to be like the broadband miss-selling kind of saga.

Mark Potter [00:44:44]:
There are so many times that we have to learn this, this same lesson that, you know, eventually people are going to find out that you're creaming money off of this situation, that you've, you know, you're forcing them to do things which are completely unnecessary from a technical perspective. You know, and don't be wrong, this is not, this is not a new trick, right? You know, it's nothing to do with EVs that, you know, wasn't so long ago. In fact, I think it still is the case now. You try to take a wing mirror off a, you know, a car in the scrapyard and stick it on your car because yours got smashed. It won't work. Why not? Well, because the OEMs have coded that mirror to that car to make you buy a new mirror. It's not, it's not a new trick, you know, it's just OEMs doing what OEMs do, which is maximise their throughout-life product benefits. People are driven heavily by price when they buy a vehicle.

Mark Potter [00:45:37]:
You know, you've been in the EV world, the TCO case for EVs has been there for what, five years or more now, but people still complain they're too expensive to buy. And you know, when you're a Mercedes, when you're a Ford, people are buying your products based on the cheapest possible and they have to get through life at income in the OEM world, you have to get through life income from that vehicle, through, you know, parts and, and servicing to subsidise the cost of the vehicle in the first place. Now, EVs are significantly more reliable, with fewer replaceable parts. You know, you can't really create a sustainable business model based on occasional pollen filter and brake pad, you know, so, yeah, brake pads don't wear out as quickly in an EV. So, you know, this is the commercial reality of the OEMs. And they are finding revenue streams. All right, you know, you know those SOS buttons you get in the crash detection? You know that wonderful value-add feature? Well, that wonderful value-add feature also provides telemetry data, which seems to help them design better cars and better value cars.

Liz Allan  [00:46:47]:
Lovely jubbly.

Mark Potter [00:46:48]:
Now you tell me whether it's there for SOS schools or whether it's there for telemetry.

Liz Allan  [00:46:54]:
Yeah, it's not there for me to push, is it really?

Mark Potter [00:46:57]:
Not really. Explain why we've got communications equipment in the car by giving you that option. Yeah. Do you think they're really paying for those SIM cards, you know, for 10, 15 years of the vehicle's life out of the kindness of their hearts?

Liz Allan  [00:47:14]:
No. And they, you know, I suppose it's like anything, isn't it? Businesses want to make money, but like you say, if people, as. And when people realise that, that they're kind of being sort of tied up, you know, tied into a contract of something that's just. Yeah, that, like you say, it's, it's gonna, it's gonna kick off big time, isn't it, really?

Mark Potter [00:47:41]:
Frustration, annoyance. But you know, to present a balanced view here, it's still better than not. All right, so, you know, if somebody offered me a Renault 5, it's a great car to start off with. If somebody says, you know, you'll have to buy a new charge point to use bi-directional. Well, look, it's going to cost me £6,000 to put a battery in, or it's going to cost me a thousand pounds to buy a Renault-compatible charge point. And you know what, when I sell that vehicle on, I'm chucking. Oh no, I got 500 quid back by chucking in the charger. Assuming that I've not stuck with the Renault Charger.

Mark Potter [00:48:13]:
So, you know, whilst it's a bit annoying and it is kind of the way that, you know, free running, you know, economies work, at the same time, there's still more value in having it than not having it. And in time, you know, standardisation will occur, interoperability will occur, you know, and you know, these problems are transitionary issues. And I would. One of the expressions, I'm sure we've heard it before, that Tim used to say, it's one of our sort of corporate kind of intro slides, was the best time to plant a tree was yesterday. The second-best time to plant the tree is today. Yeah. So there's no, don't wait for that interoperable solution that, you know, you've got a thousand-pound charge point on the wall, you don't have to change. Okay, stick the one on the wall.

Mark Potter [00:49:01]:
That's doing the job now, because the value of that charge point and solution is higher than waiting 3, 4, or 5 years for those teething problems to be resolved. The cheapest solar panel to put on your roof is there. You know, put them on now. The benefits of the cost savings of the cheaper solar panels will be outweighed by the electricity savings you make by putting it in the first place.

Liz Allan  [00:49:27]:
Yeah, yeah, just. You got, you've got me thinking now, I'm going to be, I'm going to be tossing and turning tonight thinking about all of this going, oh my God. You know, it's really in. Interesting to recognise what could be, what is and what the future will entail. But let's go back to this project with Innovate UK. Ex. Can you explain again? Right, it's. So it's a V2X trial.

Liz Allan  [00:50:06]:
How did that, how did that come about? Because I know, I know Innovate UK, it's not a, it's not a quick overnight thing, is it really?

Mark Potter [00:50:13]:
No, no. And what's the best way of just saying how it came about? So first of all, you know, we've gone down the D.C. route. Why? For some of the reasons I've already mentioned. But also, there's a kind of engineering purist in me as well that says, look, solar generates DC energy. Storage batteries are DC. Car batteries are DC. Why would you move energy between them in any domain other than DC? So what we've done on the Innovate project is we formed a consortium of UK companies to create a DC-DC solar DC-DC battery.

Mark Potter [00:50:56]:
In fact, we call it direct DC battery and DC-DC EV charging, so that we can move energy within the micro grid, the DC micro grid, without converting it into AC except through a single grid-facing inverter. So this isn't, you know, 12 inverters sat on a, on a Papilio. This is a dedicated DC microgrid with a single grid-facing inverter. And that's got some technical and commercial advantages, efficiency, costs, and other things. It aligns with our version provision or Papilio in these kinds of workplaces and fleet environments, being used in this way. It's really fascinating from a control perspective. Bear in mind that it is used to develop electric vehicles, where everything is basically done the same way. It's all DC moving around inside the vehicle.

Mark Potter [00:51:50]:
DC is actually much easier to manage and work with. It makes the regulatory framework, the off gen type stuff, much, much easier as well, you know, so as a whole and actually enables what I call true V to V vehicle to vehicle energy transfer. So I know people have kind of said they've got vehicle-to-vehicle before. What they're really doing is they're running a vehicle to load and then, you know, turning it into AC and then putting the AC back into the vehicle, and the other vehicle is turning it back into DC again. Whereas that V2X unit that we're doing with Innovate funding is able to go directly DC to DC, vehicle to vehicle, through a DC-DC converter. So, essentially, you end up with much less hardware in there, far fewer NG conversions. The main inverter is a silicon carbide inverter that's super efficient. And when you're not putting 12 or 24 inverters in, you're putting a single inverter in; it becomes an awful lot more cost-effective to do something like silicon carbide.

Mark Potter [00:52:53]:
So we end up with this kind of super-duper, high-efficiency, bi-directional, incredibly flexible system. And ironically, it's actually much easier to control and manage than it is in the AC domain, where you're dealing with a lot of other kinds of regulatory and grid challenges. So that's the project we've been working on, and it's currently installed in Bedfordshire at the Millbrook Proving Ground.

Liz Allan  [00:53:18]:
Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Potter [00:53:20]:
Where they run the CENEX Expo, and yes, you know, a few other things, which is a perfect location for it. It's kind of weird for me going back there, considering I used to use that as a test track in my test driver days, and in the electric vehicle stuff I was doing. And then, yeah, you know, to be back up there with an EV charging infrastructure solution was pretty cool. And you know, it's to me it's a vision of what could be in every car park, in every fleet environment, in every office, where, you know, should the vehicle software actually enable it to work, you can do it. Now, sadly and predictably, it only works on Chademo at the moment.

Liz Allan  [00:54:08]:
Okay.

Mark Potter [00:54:09]:
There's always a risk on the projects from the very beginning. You want it to work on CCS, you'll find there's a whole other load of other consortium projects in the same kind of cohort that we're in, all of whom need and want bi-directional CCS. And in fact not just CCS but ISO 5118 20. And of course, OEMs got everything locked up. So, if you don't have an OEM in a programme, I don't think you can do it.

Liz Allan  [00:54:38]:
Your name's not down, you're not coming in. It's one of them, is it?

Mark Potter [00:54:40]:
Unfortunately, that's the case. But it'll come, you know, it'll come.

Liz Allan  [00:54:44]:
I mean, at some point, like you say about it coming, there's got to be. You need one or maybe two or three of the OEMs, don't you, to say, "Oh, that's a really good idea, let's get involved in this." Blimey.

Mark Potter [00:55:04]:
With AC export, that's happening. We're already seeing it, you know, okay, you know, Volkswagen, the ID series, you know, started leading the charge. So that's definitely happening on AC because of the revenue model. But dc, it's going to take, I think it's going to take, you know, a fleet, a big fleet, you know, Sky, BT, Royal Mail, a big fleet like that to turn around and say we're not buying your vans unless they're DC export in 5118 20. And at that point, I think it will force them into doing it. But unless we regulate and legislate, I don't think the OEMs will do it.

Liz Allan  [00:55:51]:
And actually, you'd think at some point that, that they would recognise that that's what's going to be the ultimate situation, wouldn't you, you know, that, that it's going to be regulated. Wouldn't it be better if you did it on your own accord now?

Mark Potter [00:56:10]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:56:10]:
So you've got time to get it.

Mark Potter [00:56:12]:
Right in every, they've got fingers in every pie they can find out when it's going to become a regulatory requirement. And then, about six months to a year before that statute is adopted, they will pretend that they've been planning on doing this all along, and it's the right thing for the environment and so on and so forth. But, you know, the reality is they could have done it, you know, 10 years ago, you know, as those first TVs were coming out, you know, V2G. Like, I know it's very exciting and people talk about it a lot, but it has been around for a long time. It is a natural and obvious way to maximise the utilisation of those assets and maximise the value of those assets. And that's why, you know, Chademo had it built in from the beginning. And, you know, it's just a crying shame.

Mark Potter [00:57:00]:
And remember that, you know, Chademo is really only mandated in Europe. Sorry, CCS really only mandated in Europe. So Chademo is widespread in Japan and reasonably so in America and in Australia. And so, you know, this is kind of like a bit of a local problem that's really hindering V2X here.

Liz Allan  [00:57:24]:
That's a real shame, then, isn't it? I mean, you know, looking at, looking at yours and Tim's vision of democracy, democratising. Oh, God, I'll get my teeth in. That word. That's what. But democratisation, darling, that's the word. You see. But how. Right, if we look at this now, we kind of.

Liz Allan  [00:57:52]:
You said to me, right, you're just saying it's been around. V2G's been around for a long time. And if they do this, this and this, or it's, you know, we've just said it's or otherwise.

Liz Allan  [00:58:04]:
It's going to be, you know, mandated. When, how, and how long do you reckon? If you put a finger in the air now, how long do you reckon before it gets mandated? Are we looking at 2030?

Mark Potter [00:58:18]:
I don't know. I'll get on another soapbox about government and policy setting. My, my exposure in the last three and a half years to government regulation in this sector and in the previous sector is that it tends to follow what the private sector does anyway. So, regulation is catching up with private sector reality because if they try to force the private sector into doing things they don't want to do, then, you know, there's a lot of pushback. So that's what I've seen so far in general, certainly the areas that impact what I'm doing and have been doing in the past. So, you know, I think the reality is, and not the reality I want, but the reality of the way the world is working at the moment is when the commercial case is strong and when, you know, a big fleet operator or, you know, enough impetus gets behind it becoming a kind of a standard thing, then everybody will start doing it and the government regulates, saying you've got to do it. And what it will do is pop up the.

Mark Potter [00:59:29]:
The laggards, rather than drive the industry forward as a whole. But, you know, we've seen that on credit card payments, contactless payments. We've seen it on, you know, I mean, where do you want to start? This is not. Again, this is not an EV industry-specific thing. You see this everywhere, don't you?

Liz Allan  [00:59:44]:
Yeah.

Mark Potter [00:59:45]:
Planning permission, you know, get me started on that.

Liz Allan  [00:59:48]:
Oh, don't. Chill. Come on, come on, chill, chill. Take a deep breath.

Mark Potter [00:59:53]:
I'm such a sceptic. Honestly. Honestly.

Liz Allan  [00:59:56]:
No, but I get it. I get it. I really do. And you know, it's. It's kind of. But. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back a step because one thing we've not talked about, and you are totally highlighting this. What you know, the USP of 3ti, you know, the way that you think is you are ahead of, you know, other people, other companies.

Liz Allan  [01:00:21]:
You. Listen, you know, we talked before we started recording about the things that you've actually, in fact, we need to talk about this. The things that you've got in your, you know, your Papilio3, the stuff that you do, the things that you're making sure that. Because you. So basically, I'm good. Just gonna step back a second. So Mark listened to the podcast episode with Gary, Gary Comerford, and if you've not listened to it, it's a recent one. I get Gary on quite regularly because we're a couple of Yorkies, and actually it's probably about three or four weeks ago, so I think it's a lot.

Liz Allan  [01:00:58]:
You'll. I'll try to put the link in.

Mark Potter [01:00:59]:
Anyway, it's been about three days for me.

Liz Allan  [01:01:04]:
It's quite long. It's quite an long episode. But we were talking about what we would like our EV. Charging experience to be. And you and I were talking about this before we started recording. About half the stuff that we said we wanted, you've got. Most of the stuff we said we wanted, you've got.

Mark Potter [01:01:25]:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So it's either. It's either already there or it's a roadmap to be there. And that's because I've been driving EVs long enough to know, you know, where the Challenge is, where the friction points are. And I guess probably the simplest way to look at it is that, so our customer, we're a B2B. So our customer is the business that wants the EV charging solution on their premises. Our simplistic way of looking at it is if the EV driver is happy, our customer is happy, our customer is happy. Okay, so the best way to have happy customers is to have happy EV drivers.

Mark Potter [01:02:05]:
Whether that is a fleet operator or whether that's a member of the public or whether it's an employee, or you know, or whether it's a, maybe a service office, and it's kind of, you know, it's a tenanted building, whatever that structure is. If the EV drivers are happy, our customer is going to be happy, and they're going to want more of them, and we're not going to get terrible ZapMap reviews. And you know, the other part is that our commercial model has been developed with Tim and with Ben really to make that possible. Because the way I look at it, there were essentially two ways to go into having EV charging on your site. One is what I call the fit and forget model, where you go to your electrical contractor and say, can I have some charge points? And they go, yeah, here's some charge points. And then you pay them to install them, and then it's your problem. And then you have issues with liability.

Mark Potter [01:03:02]:
You get an expensive grid connection upgrade, you get, you know, you've got all the headaches of, of how you're going to work out payments and terminals, and you've got maintenance issues, and you get O and M contracts, and you get, you know, it's a nightmare. And not to mention the civils work involved in digging up trick trenches and what, you know, I'm sure people have an idea what that looks like. And then the other business model is what people normally call CPOs, I try to call them networks, the charging networks. This is your IONITY's and your Pod Points and your Gridserve's, you know, big and essentially it's a commercial difference where they're operating the charge point, you're signing over your land to them. They're paying for all of that stuff mostly normally, and they then operate them, and then they're making profits, and then trying to repay the cost of that installation through their profits that they're making. And necessarily if you're a charge point network, you need something like at least a 10 year, probably a 15 or even longer year contract on that land because that's how long it's going to take you to get your money back if you're installing your own charge points that fit and forget model. Well, you know, certainly at this size business, where, you know, I think my last company, we were about 100 employees at one point. You know, you're in a leased building where you've typically got something like a three or four or five year lease in that building. It's going to take you 8, 10 or 12 years to make a return on the investment of putting charging infrastructure in, you know, so that way your landlord's going to benefit from the installation that you've paid for. It's only going to be a cost to your business.

Mark Potter [01:04:36]:
So that's why that workplace destination space is so hard to use, those two kinds of traditional business models that existed. So something that, you know, Tim and Ben as the COO worked on really hard is to get a commercial model that enables, because that, you know, faster isn't just about the technical bit. Dropping off the back of a lorry faster is about how you can make that commercial model fit for them. Well, the answer was, you know, the asset is ours. So 3ti can build that asset, drop it off the back of a lorry, the installation work, that kind of one wire sticking out of the ground, that is much, much lower cost from the infrastructure perspective. So the investment the site needs to make is much, much lower. The Papilio 3 and asset if essentially we can put it on a much shorter term contract because if that client moves out of that site. Well, first of all, if they, well, if they bought the unit, they can, we can transport it to their new site.

Mark Potter [01:05:38]:
If not, you know, if they're renting it, they can just give it back to us, right? And then we'll go and rent it to the next person. There's one less unit we need to build to satisfy a client. So that is like a really simple. It's no different to leasing cars, right? It's in that sense that it's a really simple business model, which means that you can have it within your lease terms or you can buy it and move it if you want to. And oh, by the way, it's a lot cheaper and a lot easier to install. So a big part of the USP is the business model that supports it, which Tim and Ben developed. The other big part of the USP is the uber geeky technical stuff. So I know I've geeked out on V2X already, but you know, Papilio itself is heavily geeked out, you know, and so what's in the box means that it's very much more reliable, lower RNM costs, it can go in.

Mark Potter [01:06:31]:
We can essentially get more charge points in for a given sort of supply capacity than others. The combination of that commercial model, where we're going in behind the meter, means essentially we don't need a new connection or new capacity from the grid. We can use or even upgrade existing capacity. And of course, having solar and storage effectively provides the ability to boost the available power on site, do things like peak shaving and, and, and load optimization that enables that facility to go in much more easily than you could if you just looked at solar or just looked at storage or just looked at EV charging. So that's really the vision of 3Ti, that three technology infrastructure, which I joke is because it's more about eight technologies, but anyway, technologies that make it possible. It's really about having smart control systems and software. My background is very heavily in software, electronics and electrical. So having that smart stuff in the box is actually what makes Papilio such a good value and able to be dropped off in that particular way and able to realise that, that value.

Mark Potter [01:07:38]:
And I'd love to tell you all its secrets, but then I'd have to kill you. So I can't.

Liz Allan  [01:07:41]:
No. And I don't want that really, because I've got other people to interview as well. Oh no, this is like I say, seeing I haven't actually, I don't think, I don't think I've seen Papilio 3 in situ in a, in a business, but I've seen it when I've been to kind of like Everything Electric and things like that. And it really is kind of just innovation in the making, you know, and the fact that you can, you can just move it on, and it just makes so much, so much sense. It really does, I think.

Mark Potter [01:08:22]:
Your description earlier. The onion is perfect, right? Right. You can take a look at it, and you get it. And then, actually, when you start peeling back the layers and you see what's beneath it, you'll find there's, you know, some really good stuff beneath it as well. And that's, you know, I think that really helps our customer journey. It helps our kind of our business and investment strategy as well, is that, you know, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's fully kitted out, you know, maxed out, it's full of tech.

Liz Allan  [01:08:47]:
So I'm going to ask you one, one final question. Okay. What message would you share with the listeners or people who are watching, whether they're energy geeks, whether they're EV drivers, whether, you know, wherever they are, about building a smarter, cleaner kind of future?

Mark Potter [01:09:14]:
Obviously. Come and buy Papilio 3.

Liz Allan  [01:09:16]:
Absolutely. Yeah. Come on now.

Mark Potter [01:09:19]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan  [01:09:19]:
Get your procurement contracts ready. You'll get it in five days, I can tell you that.

Mark Potter [01:09:32]:
What message would I give those people? It's just crack on. All right? I know this is a bit cliche, but this is a climate crisis. This is an emergency, okay? There is no time for pondering, there's no time for pontification, okay? We just need to get on with it, okay? The technology is there, and the TCO and EVs are there. The commercial structures are there. Whether it's Papilio and that works for you, or whether fit and forget works for you, or whether a charge network works for you, okay? They're great business models. There is no reason not to crash on and do it. Just do it.

Liz Allan  [01:10:11]:
Lack of. No procrastination, just. Yeah, like you say, we have to do this, and everybody can do something.

Mark Potter [01:10:19]:
One of my favourite musicians, Maxi Jazz, said inaction is a weapon of mass destruction.

Liz Allan  [01:10:27]:
Yes. And it. And it is. You know, people don't realise that actually there is a lot that you can do just as one person.

Mark Potter [01:10:35]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan  [01:10:37]:
But it's identifying those things. You don't have to be, you know, spending thousands of pounds. But actually, you know, if you're in a position to kind of be encouraging the businesses that you're working for to go this direction, just do it.

Mark Potter [01:10:54]:
The decision today is better than the best decision tomorrow. And yeah, genuinely, that is why we came out with this, this commercial model that we've got is, you know, you're making a decision for a few years, not for 15 years, and hopefully that can overcome the procrastination.

Liz Allan  [01:11:11]:
I think it's. I think it's brilliant. It's a really brilliant, innovative concept, and we want to see lots of these out in the wild. Love out in the wild.

Mark Potter [01:11:26]:
So do I. So do. I said I go like hotcakes at the moment, which is brilliant.

Liz Allan  [01:11:31]:
And that's good. Yeah, yeah. It's a good problem to have when you're kind of, you know, when lots of people are going for them. So. So listen, on that note, I'm just gonna say thank you. Just brilliant. And I did, I said to you, didn't I, before we were recording, please, just baby steps, because you know, it's not that. It's not that I don't get it.

Liz Allan  [01:11:51]:
I want to make sure that everybody else who might not know about, you know, kind of vehicle to grid, vehicle to load, vehicle to X, you know, we're building that knowledge base and making it so that it's consumable for everybody. So. And you've done that. And I really, really appreciate it. So, thank you ever so much. I really, really appreciate it, you know.

Mark Potter [01:12:13]:
Absolutely love being able to get the word out and get on my soapbox every now and again.

Liz Allan  [01:12:17]:
I like, hey, listen, I do plenty. We can both be on a soapbox to get together at some point soon.

Mark Potter [01:12:21]:
Yeah, Tim. Because he didn't hold back and, and I, I also don't hold back anymore.

Liz Allan  [01:12:29]:
But that's absolutely fine. You've got to speak your truth, so. I totally get you. So on that note, I'm going to say thank you to Mark. I want to say thank you to everybody for watching and listening. Please, like subscribe. You know, kind of share with your fellow friends, Romans, countrymen. No, that's wrong, isn't it? But anyway, share it, like our podcast page on LinkedIn.

Liz Allan  [01:12:53]:
All of that gubbins. But, and well, you're going to have. All your details are going to be in the show notes, so don't worry. So keep an eye out for it, have a look in the show notes, everybody. You'll get all the links to 3ti and to Mark's LinkedIn page and all of that kind of wonderful stuff. But on that note, I'm going to say thank you to everybody for watching and listening and, and I will see you later. Bye.