Episode 162: Liz Allan and Niall Riddell - Interoperability, EHGVs & Price

Episode 162: Liz Allan and Niall Riddell - Interoperability, EHGVs & Price

Liz Allan speaks to Niall Riddell, CEO and Co-Founder of Paua, to unpack what interoperability really means in the real world, and why the end goal is simple: charging that just works. They explore the driver-first view versus the technical layers behind the scenes, from networks and firmware to payments and pricing. Niall shares his “unpopular opinions” on utilisation, the rural rollout challenge, and how investment horizons and targeted subsidies could unlock equitable access outside urban hotspots.

Niall also discusses why comparing home tariffs to public pricing is like comparing apples to oranges, the compliance and service layers you pay for in public, and how fleets can fairly reimburse drivers across home, workplace, and public charging. They touch on EHGVs (and those all-important pins on the map), the policy journey on VAT and road-use charging, and the data “holy trinity” that will help fleets prove total cost-per-mile and accelerate adoption. Plus: Niall’s grin-inducing test drive of the Mercedes eActros, and why many drivers don’t want to go back to diesel once they've tried electric trucks.

Quote of the Episode

 “Interoperability sounds complex, but the driver's definition is simple: make charging just work, push the complexity into the background so they never see it.” — Niall Riddell

Niall Riddell Bio

Niall Riddell is the Co-Founder and CEO of Paua, the UK fleet charging platform connecting drivers to a nationwide roaming network while simplifying payment, policy and reimbursement for businesses. Before Paua, he led EV and smart-systems work at EDF and SSE, bringing a deep utility perspective to the fleet electrification challenge. Today, his team focuses on practical tools for business: public-network access, home-charging reimbursement, and opening up shared depot charging to trusted partners, all designed to make EV operations seamless for both drivers and finance teams.

Niall Riddell Links

Website: https://www.paua.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nialliriddell

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pauaev

Transcript

Liz Allan [00:00:01]:
So on today's episode, I have a wonderful person who's been on the podcast before. I have Niall Riddell. Not Niall Riddle or Neil Riddell or anything like that. It's Niall Riddell from Paua. There you are. And he's the founder and the CEO. If you've not seen him. Oh, my God, he was on so early on in the podcast, weren't you? And we told dad jokes.

Niall Riddell [00:00:24]:
Yeah, we did.

Liz Allan [00:00:25]:
Well, you did, because I'm not a dad, but you know what I mean.

Niall Riddell [00:00:28]:
I'm still doing animal jokes as a way to engage with some of my prospects. It seems to work.

Liz Allan [00:00:32]:
I love that. I love that. So let's start off. And I've had you on, and I've had Pam Hanlon on, and she was amazing. I love her to bits, but let's just do. So for those people who are watching and listening, who don't know very much or anything at all about power, tell us a little bit about you.

Niall Riddell [00:00:52]:
Cool. Hello, my name's Niall. I spent 15 years in large energy utilities. I did EDF and SSE, and before that, I spent some time with British Energy in RWE about, I don't know, five years ago. I realised that if I really wanted to make a difference, I probably should go and do it on my own. So we set up a business, Paua, back in 2020 during the Middle of COVID and that enables drivers to find charge and pay on public charges. But more recently, we spent a lot of time doing things like home energy reimbursement. So you can get fairly reimbursement for charging at home. And then we recently enabled the ability to share charges so a private site can share their chargers with another business.

Niall Riddell [00:01:33]:
So we're busy, busy, busy trying to make it easier and easier for more people to get more electric cars faster.

Liz Allan [00:01:39]:
And you're really innovative as well, aren't you?

Niall Riddell [00:01:41]:
Trying to be.

Liz Allan [00:01:42]:
And because you've got a good team called quite small, but you're quite agile as well, so you're able to kind of, you know, move and shape the business to what the market is wanting, aren't you?

Niall Riddell [00:01:55]:
Yeah. So we spend a lot of time speaking to customers, basically. Some of them give us a long list of things we're supposed to be doing. So we try and do as many of them as possible. And one of the great conversations I had recently was with Jamie Sands on electric HGVs. And he's like, Niall, what we need is just a bunch of pins on a map that show me where I can charge my HGV. So, that's part of what we're currently doing, putting pins on maps.

Liz Allan [00:02:16]:
And that's great because everybody needs to know where the chargers are. You're predominantly kind of business, aren't you? So you're B2B rather than B2C.

Niall Riddell [00:02:26]:
Yeah, lots of commercial vehicle drivers. So that's why the truck thing's very interesting to us, because we've got cars and vans, they fit in a regular charging bay. You've then got your sort of medium-sized Sprinters, your rigid vehicles, they can fit into our medium bays. And then we've got this large category for the EHGVs. So, splitting out that range of commercial vehicles, all of you are going electric, is really important when we're helping them find, charge and pay.

Liz Allan [00:02:52]:
And that is, you know, actually finding out about all of the EHGVs that are coming on the market and the need for charging for them. Like you say, having to think ahead and make sure you're future-proofing for when there's more on the roads. So it's really interesting. But I was going to talk about the fact that. So a couple of months back, we were both on a panel at Move, weren't we, the Excel? And it was my first panel session, so I, I was, I was slightly nervous, I can say that. But it went well. Yeah, it was a good panel.

Liz Allan [00:03:27]:
But we were talking about a thing called interoperability. I tried to say that before, didn't I? And I didn't manage it when, before we were talking, but I managed it. And, and it's, and it's something that people have got different opinions about and different knowledge, different areas of knowledge. So when I, I remember talking to you about interoperability and, and also talking to a couple of other people about it and everybody's opinion on interoperability was, was very different. Can you say start, start off? Because we're going to talk about a number of your unpopular opinions, which I love, let's actually start. Can you just explain a little bit about what interoperability is?

Niall Riddell [00:04:18]:
Yeah. So, I mean, there are two or three ways of thinking about interoperability, and we had a long panel session on interoperability, and towards the end of it, the conclusion was that it's when charging just works. And you know, that's kind of the consumer outcome that we're looking to get to. The driver outcome is that it just works. I can go anywhere, charge anywhere, you know, understand it, the price is obvious, and I'm aware of it. The reality is that when we look at this from a more technical standpoint, what we're basically looking at is about 120 different chargeback operators in the UK. So that's 120 brands, 120 different ways of presenting the asset to the customer, 120 different software platforms potentially behind them. And it's a layer of complexity that we don't need.

Niall Riddell [00:05:01]:
So as a consequence, a lot of what we think about with interoperability is making that problem, that complexity, go away. So sometimes we say that our job is to take all the complexity and push it into the background so the consumer doesn't see any of that. And therefore interoperability is really about making the consumer experience easier. But what it means from a technical standpoint depends on your role in the industry. So you remember we sat next to Rebecca from Gridserve, and a lot of her thinking on interoperability was Will this car work with this charger? And it's that physical interoperability between the car and the charger. A lot of my interoperability question is how do I create a common experience for a driver on a grid surf charger, an interval charge and an osprey charger? So how do I create a common harmonious layer of data and information and process price so they can see that experience, you know, and have that experience in a more unified manner? So a huge amount of interoperability depends on where you're sat. But it, you know, once you unpick it, there's lots of technical detail. Once you unpick it for the consumer, just make charging work.

Liz Allan [00:06:07]:
Yeah, but, yeah, and like you say from, from those different, from those different angles, as you say that if, if people don't understand about charging itself, there are lots of layers to it, aren't there? You know, some people come in from a, you know, from a hardware point of view. So the actual charger itself, and then you've got, you know, you've got the software inside it. So you've got the back office systems, you've got the payment systems, haven't you?

Niall Riddell [00:06:37]:
And you've got firmware. Yeah, the actual physical charger. So you've got layers in an onion, a peeled layer of software that sits inside this ecosystem. Ultimately, the consumer doesn't care and shouldn't care, but we've got to create that experience, which is simple, harmonised, and accessible for everybody.

Liz Allan [00:06:54]:
And the other thing was as well, it's the vehicle as well, isn't it? It's whether some vehicles can't. And people don't always know this: some vehicles can't always talk to the chargers.

Niall Riddell [00:07:05]:
Yep, that was one of my favourite experiences. We did the GBEV rally in 2022, and we drove around the north coast of Scotland, and of course, people have brought out their nice fancy cars. So we had a couple of Jaguar I-Pace, a couple of Mustangs, took them along the north coast of Scotland, and what was a relatively old, historically built network. Sometimes the car and the charger just don't communicate, and you know, it's constant upgrades. The technology is always moving, so we've got to keep everything updated to ensure everything works. But sometimes it doesn't.

Liz Allan [00:07:38]:
And that's kind of the concern, isn't it? And like you said, it's about removing the barriers to make sure that the driver plugging in doesn't know. And it's funny because the common theme of everybody that I've been talking to lately, or a lot of people I've been talking to, is just about it being, you know, it just works seamlessly, you know, you shouldn't have to actually think about it.

Niall Riddell [00:08:04]:
Boring.

Liz Allan [00:08:05]:
You know, it's, it's not something that. Because I was, I was talking to Dev Chana from, from, from EON Drive Infrastructure, the first Face to Face podcast I did, which is brilliant, but he was just kind of saying, you know, because he was basically saying, you know, what, what do you, I said to him, what would you want people to be able to say about your charging infrastructure? And he said, you know, it just works just like you said. And he said, you know, it just needs to be boring people. I mentioned that I brought my husband to show that I got over 200 miles on our Ioniq that day. Do you know what I mean? And it was just it. And he said, you know, people are still excited about getting diff, you know, different experiences and things like that, but at some point it is going to be just like going to, I don't want to say going to a petrol station because they're not the same, are they? They're stinking horrible.

Niall Riddell [00:09:05]:
It's. The idea is that most consumers or most drivers want to go from A to B. They might be doing a job or visiting their in-laws; whatever it is, they're going from A to B. They don't really care about that experience in the middle as long as it's not horribly wrong. They're happy just to go with it. So, you know, one of the things I always found fascinating was Instavort's position presented itself very much from the early days of A Very Simple Story. It's a charger. It works.

Niall Riddell [00:09:29]:
You can use multiple ways to pay, depending on how you want to do it. It's almost always the same price every place you go. It just works. And that very basic hygiene level, if we can meet that across the industry, everyone will be happy. I think then you can start getting all the sophisticated stuff with reservations and pricing and all the other cool stuff that comes with it. But at the beginning, let's just make it work.

Liz Allan [00:09:49]:
Right, so do you want to throw in a few of your unpopular opinions, then? Shall we start on that one?

Niall Riddell [00:09:58]:
Yeah. I recently presented eight unpopular opinions in an event for another corporation in this space, and some of them raised some eyebrows. I think one of the ones that I'm very, very aware of at the moment is this idea, and sorry if this sounds like a GCSE economics lesson, we have a supply and demand issue in our market. So when it comes to public chargers, you quite often get people going, there are not enough public chargers. I'd actually argue the contrary. I think we have built too many public chargers so far.

Liz Allan [00:10:27]:
You mean?

Niall Riddell [00:10:28]:
Yeah, and, you know, it's constant, constant evolution between where we are in the industry and where we've got to get to. But we probably overbuilt the number of chargers today for the number of vehicles on the road. And this is, you know, fairly simple economics. You need to make a return on investment, you put some cash in the ground, your business model goes underwater, you get some revenue flowing through that asset, and hey, presto, you make money on the other side. Most of the businesses that do that will do a nice little spreadsheet calculation. They'll work out they need a certain number of charging sessions a day. When I did it in the past, it was 6 to 8. So you need 6 to 8 20ish-kilowatt-hour sessions, and you fix a price.

Niall Riddell [00:11:05]:
That means you get a return on investment on your asset. I think from our data, we're probably seeing about three or maybe even fewer sessions per day on rapid, high-powered chargers. So that means they're all losing money. If they're all losing money, it's because there aren't enough charging sessions happening. If there aren't enough charging sessions happening, it's probably because there aren't enough vehicles. So I think we're in a territory where there are some sites that are incredibly well utilised. I always point at the ESB Charger and St. James's Square in central London, which probably has one of the highest utilisations of all the charges I'm aware of.

Niall Riddell [00:11:39]:
You know, motorway service areas, they get a lot of use, but there are other sites which are a bit more out of town, perhaps in a smaller town or, you know, more urban environment, less urban environment, which probably don't see those numbers. So my current view is that we've probably got too many public chargers in the UK for the number of vehicles you've got on the road. Now, that will correct itself over time, but it also means that it's a tricky balancing point for operators who are trying to make a return on investment.

Liz Allan [00:12:06]:
I've got a question for you then. So. Well, it's two questions. A, does that mean that the charger that you're talking about in the more rural areas has been put in the wrong place? Or B, are you? Well, and B, should I say, are you seeing certain. And I know you can't say who, and I would never ask you to say who. Certain networks are not gaining traction or utilisation, therefore, return on investment, because of the experience that they're providing. Like you've just said, you know, Instavolt just works.

Liz Allan [00:12:52]:
But we know that not all charges and not all networks are the same. So would you. I know that's kind of like a two. That's a two-pronged question. So, rural chargers, were they put in the wrong place in the first place or maybe the wrong speed? In the wrong speed in the right place.

Niall Riddell [00:13:13]:
Have we made some mistakes? Is perhaps a question, and I think the answer is easy. Yes, we've made some mistakes. Mistakes. Have we learned from those mistakes? Yes, I think generally we have. So a lot of the more recently installed infrastructure is meeting the expectations of what people want. I'm very nervous about the. The rural debate, because I always use the railways as an example here. There's only actually one railway line in this.

Niall Riddell [00:13:36]:
In this country, which makes money, and that's the northeast mainline. You know, the lineup towards. Yeah, line up towards Manchester's back break even. Pretty much every other railway line in the country loses money. So, as a consequence, we know that certain forms of transport need some form of public support. We also know that things like motorways and motorway chargers are used quite heavily because people are doing longer distances, doing longer trips, they pop in the charge and they move on again. So I think there's quite a strong differential between a charger located on the north coast of Scotland and A charger located on the M6. Your M6 charger is going to see traffic, a lot of traffic.

Niall Riddell [00:14:14]:
Your north coast Scotland charger will probably see traffic in the summer when people are doing the NC 500 and stuff. But realistically, it's probably going to get pretty low utilisation, and therefore we have to applaud what Charge Place Scotland did by putting that network of chargers in to support rural drivers. And they're not always the best; they are quite old, and you know, they need some work. But realistically, we need something, some consideration for placing some additional cash into more rural areas. One of my other unpopular opinions is that we're regulated as an industry now, and we're regulated because we failed, we failed to meet the expectations of the government and OZEV, and therefore, they turned around and regulated us. But I always count, for me it's a very personal failure because a big thing they wanted to do was get interoperability work working, and we just haven't gone fast enough. So become regulated. I counter that by saying there's a, there's a fabulous quote which is a Reagan quote, Reaganomics.

Niall Riddell [00:15:15]:
If it moves, tax it; if it keeps moving, regulate it; and if it stops moving, subsidise it. And I do feel like rural charters are probably going to sit in that subsidy arena. You know, it's difficult to justify as a private business the investment in a very rural location when it's probably not going to see the charging sessions. So if we get it wrong, we're going to have like a two-speed adoption. We're going to get the urban areas, the motorways are going to get boom, loads of infrastructure, lots of power going into them. But the urban areas, think Central Wales, think North Yorkshire, you know, those, those parts of the world are going to see less infrastructure, and if they see less infrastructure, there'll be less adoption. So I think it's a real thinking point in there around how we support, support more rural charges, more rural locations.

Liz Allan [00:15:59]:
And I mean that's just demonstrating. It's chicken and egg, isn't it? You know?

Niall Riddell [00:16:04]:
Yeah, yeah.

Liz Allan [00:16:04]:
You're kind of, it's, it's not, it's not, it's not easy. I mean, I know Laura, who works with you at Paua, she lives in North Yorkshire, doesn't she? And she kind of said, sorry, there are no chargers. 

Niall Riddell [00:16:18]:
No, exactly. She is literally is living in a charging desert.

Liz Allan [00:16:20]:
Yeah.

Niall Riddell [00:16:21]:
You know, we're bringing on another network partner at the moment, and it's, you know, predominantly down in the South Wwest, southeast, you know, and suddenly you go, well, great, more charges, but it doesn't help anyone who's living in North Yorkshire.

Liz Allan [00:16:32]:
So what? I don't know whether you can answer this question. What would entice a network to actually go to a rural area? Because I mean, depending on where it is, it depends. I know it's footfall. I get it, I totally get it. But at some point, has it got to be government intervention in order to force that to happen?

Niall Riddell [00:17:04]:
Maybe, maybe not. If I were going to make the maybe-not argument, what I would argue is that we need investors with perhaps a longer-term mindset. If you think long term as an investor and you go right, this transition's happening, it's going to take five or 10 years, but I want to secure the best sites in every small town in the UK. You could quite quickly see there's a really strong investment strategy to go, you know what, I'm going to find the best site in the town hall car park in every town or village of a population of 10,000 to 25,000. That right there is a straightforward investment strategy. You're probably going to see low utilisation, but you will be the go-to charger location in each of those towns across the country. And in many ways, that's what GeniePoint did. They had a network of charges that spanned the country, and the number of my customers who were like, Oh yeah, just on my first charge, it was at Genie point because they had a very thin, wide nationwide coverage.

Niall Riddell [00:18:00]:
I think that's actually a really smart move because you can then adapt your growth, you've secured your site and when we probably less so now, but we have been in a race to secure the best sites. When you think about it in that way, and you go, actually, I've got a 10 or 15-year return horizon, actually, having those best sites is probably a really good idea. So there is an argument there to say secure those really high-quality sites in more rural areas now, but expect a longer period of return. But ultimately, I think many of the private investors that are coming into the market to build this new asset class don't have that longevity. We've gone through a period of VC investment, we've seen some private equity come in, and more recently, we know that a bunch of companies have started to secure debt for charging, which is great. You know, these are, this is an indication of the financial health of the industry as we move from risk based capital to, you know, lower risk based capital. So it's great to see. But I also don't think you'll get secured debt to build charges on the north coast as code Scotland.

Niall Riddell [00:19:05]:
So I think there's a challenge there that the kind of financing that's coming in probably won't support that unless there's some form of part subsidy or full subsidy to secure certain locations.

Liz Allan [00:19:16]:
So wouldn't it be easier? I'm not saying easier. So we're talking about these little small towns and villages in rural areas, and we know that, say, Suffolk County Council has got various locations like that, and they've, they've managed to do it, haven't they? But wouldn't we be, would we be talking about kind of utilising a lower 7-kilowatt charge, you know, so that's some kind of destination charging. In my mind, we, you know, we know how expensive high-power charges are. So you're ultra rapid. We know that they're really expensive. So that's an asset that costs a pretty penny to install, isn't it? But I mean, if you're actually looking at kind of like some small destination charges. I know, yes, it's still an investment, but it's, it's a, I'm not saying it's lower risk, and it would still be a long-term return, but at least you're showing, you're showing willing, as the phrase goes. You know what I mean?

Niall Riddell [00:20:21]:
It's definitely a starting point, and there are a couple of things I want to raise in there. One thing I think we do have a variance across local authorities as to how forward-thinking they are. You pick Suffolk. Matthew Ling and the team over there are doing an incredible job. They are very forward-thinking; they're pushing the boundary of what they're doing. And there's a bunch of others like Ryan Robertson up in East Lothian, Paul over in Oxfordshire, the guys around Coventry, Shimala, I think it is. There are a couple of local authorities that are really pushing ahead, while others are perhaps still on the journey, trying to understand it. So, from a local authority perspective, we've got a divergence of speeds, and Levi would do a lot towards supporting more capability in some of those local authorities.

Niall Riddell [00:21:06]:
But I just wish they matchmates their experiences a bit more. Find your neighbouring county that's not doing such a good job. Partner up, share your learning, and see if you can't boost their capability as well.

Liz Allan [00:21:16]:
Some of them do, some of them, some of them are, are kind of helping one another. I mean, I've been talking to somebody locally in Berkshire recently, and I've kind of put her in contact with somebody that I've been working with, you know, so Gemma Robinson from HITRANS up in Scotland. So I've been doing some work with those, you know, and, and we've, we're coming out the other side with a load of lessons learned. So, I've put this lady in touch with Gemma because, you know, she needs it. And I don't know, Oxford do it as well, you know, lots, lots of, lots of local authorities have been speaking to Oxford and Suffolk.

Liz Allan [00:21:54]:
So it is about that, like you say, so it is about that knowledge, that level of knowledge sharing and actually being able to support one another with that, you know, because I know it's, I know it's not easy, but like you were saying earlier on, it has been very much of a land grab, hasn't it?

Niall Riddell [00:22:11]:
You know, a land grab has happened. But I think the other side of this that I'm really fascinated about is price. We have developed a bad habit as an industry of talking about price in the wrong kind of way. So we quite often go, well, I can charge at home for 7p, why should I pay 70p when I'm out in public? And what I try and remind people of is they're not comparing the same thing. No, they're comparing, comparing their marginal electricity cost at home with the total cost of charging in public. And that's not fair, it's not, it's not appropriate.

Liz Allan [00:22:43]:
There's so much, there's so many layers to that as well, isn't there?

Niall Riddell [00:22:47]:
And that unpicking those layers starts to go well. Actually, when you use a public charger, it's fully insured, it's entirely yours at the time you're paying back for the asset itself. You've got the bay, often you've got lighting and amenities and all that sort of stuff around it. And by the way, it's hard powered a lot of the time, which you're not going to get at home. So you're paying for a little bit more. And at home, people forget that they paid for the charger, they paid for the installation. They had the benefit of a grid connection and a driveway because they wouldn't have a home charger without a driveway. So there's a bunch of other characteristics that they just forget about, conveniently, when they go 7p vs 70p.

Niall Riddell [00:23:22]:
The reality is that over time, I think we're going to see some real fun happening on that total cost of charging, because that's where, you know, the fun and games begin. But if we don't compare apples with apples, then we're going to make a mistake from the start. And I think it's important that when public charge point operators talk about their costs, they should explain that, you know, obviously they're doing all of this service, 24/7 call centres, you know, ops and maintenance, all of that stuff, you get included in the price. Whereas when you think about your home charger, have you ever called out an electrician to fix your home charge point? I got quoted £165. I was like, Wow, in the end I replaced the charger rather than get it fixed.

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

Niall Riddell [00:24:01]:
But you know, you suddenly go, well, hang on. When you put that maths together and you do the economist, the GCSE economist view of what the total cost is, suddenly the 7p at home is no longer 7p, it's more like 50p.

Liz Allan [00:24:13]:
Fair enough. I'm going to ask you a provocative question now because I know I've got thoughts on it, and I know we've kind of gone away from the interoperability conversation, haven't we? But, but I think this is, this is something that's interesting, and I know that you'll be honest with it, you know about it. What are your thoughts on VAT, on public charging? Oh, oh, are you gonna hate me on. You're gonna hate me for asking that, aren't you?

Niall Riddell [00:24:41]:
I know I'm not gonna hate you. I'm not gonna hate you. So let's, let's start this properly by saying I'm not a tax advisor.

Liz Allan [00:24:48]:
No, no, no, no. This is just. Now, these, please don't quote us, everybody. These are just our opinions, you know, informed opinions.

Niall Riddell [00:24:57]:
I've spoken to a number of very capable financial advisors on this topic. So some of the guys in the big four around, what's actually going on here? If you can be bothered to read the regulations on this topic, it's surprisingly clear that you can get away with charging 5% on a public charge point. The guidance that has been published by HMRC appears to indicate the exact opposite. But at the end of the day, the law is the regulation, not the guidance. So if you're prepared to take the time and effort, it's possible that someone at some point will either go through a formal legal challenge with HMRC or just choose to charge 5%. So there is an option in there for charge plan operators to review. And please do go get formal advice before you do this, to look at the 5% route. And I think it will probably take some case law to actually move us into that scenario because I don't see the government budging on the 20% at the moment.

Niall Riddell [00:26:01]:
I think it's, you know, it's too easy for them. It's also, when you put it in the scheme of tax, it's not a particularly big issue for them. So where do I stand on it? I'm very much of the view that the 5% is something that could be done, but it's, you know, it's something that I think someone will have to take a certain amount of financial risk on in order to prove that point. And so far, I'm not aware of anyone having done that in a public stance. So it's one to watch. I think the secondary consideration to all of this is we often talk about the 5%, 20% in the sense of it's unfair. I pay 5% at home, but I have to pay 20% on the road. You also have to remember that the home energy bill includes a whole load of other stuff that's not VAT, like the various levies and grants that support energy efficiency at home.

Niall Riddell [00:26:50]:
So the warm home discount, ECO, CERT, SESP and whatever, whatever all those home energy measures are, they're all sat inside that home energy bill. So we've got to be careful that we don't suddenly turn around. It's unfair. The people who charge in public don't pay for these home energy grants. You could argue, well, it's, it's home, it's a levy at home because it's for home energy. But there are other factors that make up the electricity price that perhaps need to be considered we, as we look at pricing on networks.

Liz Allan [00:27:17]:
Okay.

Niall Riddell [00:27:18]:
I know we could geek out on the computer components of electricity price for a long time.

Liz Allan [00:27:22]:
No, no, that's, and because you're, you're, you've been work, you've worked in the energy industry before, it makes sense for you to, to have these conversations. I'm gonna just throw something out there that, that I've, I've, that's been bothering me for a little while, and I didn't know about this potential 5%. So that would be really, really interesting to see if any network does challenge it, especially because there are some big, big players attached to energy giants, you know, so, so that, that would make sense for them to kind of follow that route. My question and thoughts on VAT are, and, and I can imagine somebody's going to be puffing, going, oh my God, when, when we get to the point, say at 20, 30, when we're at 8, you know, we've, we've sold, we've sold or OEMs are selling 80, you know, of, of electric and it's going to take a long time for the UK to transition everybody over. But we, as we move over and, and as people are driving, I bet you know what I'm going to say here, don't you? As people are driving, driving petrol and diesel cars, less so we've got. And sorry, I'm waving my hands around if you're not watching. Yeah, so sorry, we're going in back.

Niall Riddell [00:28:47]:
We've gone in balance.

Liz Allan [00:28:47]:
Yeah. So, as petrol and diesel numbers come down and electric goes up, that means that all of that fuel duty and all of those, all of that, that tax taxation that's put on, on kind of petrol and diesel state, you know, petrol stations, etc. Etc. I don't know how it all works that is going to affect the government, isn't it? My concern, and I probably shouldn't even be saying this out loud, really, my concern is what will the government do then? Because they'll want the money from somewhere.

Niall Riddell [00:29:22]:
Yeah. So, fuel duties and fuel levies are a huge part of the government's tax take. And if you break it down, I can't even remember the exact numbers, but a very significant chunk, more than 20% of the cost of a litre of petrol, diesel is levied. So as a consequence, once you've broken that down, you're like, well, hang on, how do we replace that going forward? That's kind of like the elephant in the room. I think the one thing that has been going through my head for quite a while now is that there are perhaps more sophisticated ways to consider how we would tax the use of vehicles. We know that congestion is a problem in this country. We've got a lot of people living in a small area, you know, our population density is twice that of France. You know, it's really got half the land area, you know, similar size population.

Niall Riddell [00:30:06]:
So, you know, we do have a lot of people, particularly in, you know, down in the south of England, where we're all on the roads at the same time. I have this idea, and I have no idea whether anyone will ever execute it, but getting really high-quality road pricing is probably where we'll go. And you know, the long-term vision, vision might look something like this. Occupancy-based, time of day-based, road-based, perhaps weight of vehicle-based, you know, to reflect all of the characteristics associated with, you know, if you're driving your Range Rover Discovery with one person on the morning commute on the M25, should you pay more than someone in a, I don't know, a Renault Twizzy? Probably not on the M25, but you know, a smaller car which has got three people in it because you're car sharing, you know, and, and do you pay less if actually you travel not at 9:00 in the morning but at 6:00 in the morning? You know, that sort of sophistication is entirely possible. I know you and I talk about V2X as an energy vector, but actually, V2X in the car world is the vehicle communicating with the infrastructure structure around it. I could see a rise in Vita X telematics connected car to enable us to go. Actually, you know what, you were on the M25 at 9 o'clock this morning, you're going to pay one pound a mile. I don't know whatever it is.

Niall Riddell [00:31:26]:
And you can see that dynamic shifting, and I think we're starting to see elements of that, you know, road and time-based pricing emerging in different segments. So it's not beyond the wit of man to deliver that. But I, I suspect that's where we're more likely to go rather than trying to put all the price on fuel.

Liz Allan [00:31:43]:
And, when it. I get you. And that, that would be a long-term aim, wouldn't it, to solve because we do need to, you know, we do need to reduce the number of vehicles on the road and things.

Niall Riddell [00:31:56]:
Like use the vehicles on the road more efficiently.

Liz Allan [00:31:59]:
Yeah.

Niall Riddell [00:32:00]:
Rather than three cars, have one car. You know, it's those sorts of things. It's like, actually, how do we incentivise that behaviour? And money is a great incentive.

Liz Allan [00:32:07]:
I suppose if you think about the kind of future cities and things like that, where they've, you know, you talk about people not actually owning a car but just having a car as and when you need it. I mean the number of times that our cars are on the drive, you.

Niall Riddell [00:32:23]:
Know, a highly utilised autonomous car and actually by the way, a shared vehicle doing common routes against demand. There are some fabulous science fiction-type concepts emerging already. We're well off topic now, but you can see how we would basically create a digitised layer that says Hey, I'm Neil, I want to go to Westminster. Great. Neil, there's a pod going to be down the road in about 10 minutes. Can you go over here and pick it up, kind of Uber style, pick up points? But the pod comes in. There's no driver, so the marginal cost to run is quite low.

Niall Riddell [00:32:52]:
There are three other people who are all going on a route into Westminster, and we all jump out at the relevant points. And that tech exists today.

Niall Riddell [00:32:59]:
And with the autonomous bill coming into full force in October. Is it this year?

Liz Allan [00:33:04]:
Is it this year? Oh, my good God. Okay.

Niall Riddell [00:33:06]:
We're going to start to see more and more of this happening. And we went for a ride in an autonomous vehicle when we were down in Suffolk recently. No driver, you know, oh, where's the driver?

Liz Allan [00:33:16]:
Was that at EV? Evex. Linda Grave's EVEX. Oh, my goodness.

Niall Riddell [00:33:20]:
So we got, we got to ride in the future. And I, you know, there's, there's a lot of questions around autonomous, huge amounts of questions, but I think. And it will take time to mass penetrate the market, but I think that's where you could set a vision of the future.

Liz Allan [00:33:32]:
I mean, if we, if we kind of jump right back to the conversation, the interoperability conversation, that situation, you know, in order for, for everything to communicate with one another, that is holy interoperability in itself, isn't it?

Niall Riddell [00:33:54]:
Yeah. Yes. Always on connected devices optimised against the needs and movements of humans. Yeah. It feels like there's a massive AI challenge sat behind that as well. With the evolution, I know with the evolution of technology, the direction we're going at the moment seems entirely achievable.

Liz Allan [00:34:11]:
I mean, I was so before we went to Move, I was actually trying to, because I knew that Matt Adams, who was the, who was kind of moderating our session, I knew he was going to ask me the question about interoperability first. And it was funny because, you know, like we said, everybody's coming from different, different points of view. But I picked up on a YouTube video out in the States, and I think I might have mentioned this to you before we went to Move. It was literally about emergency services using interoperability to communicate. Sorry, communicate with each other in situations of danger and emergency, and things like that. So if we're looking at interoperability from, you know, kind of moving from what we've just been saying, but back to a whole system of different organisations coming into one central, you know, kind of one central segment, as it were, or system to work together. That blew my mind, that actually I hadn't even thought about it, you know, thinking that all of these, all of these organisations can just come together to provide that service. And they all know, fire brigade, you know, kind of police, and, you know, Ambulance and all this kind of paramedics, whatever they call it out there, you know, all of these, all of these having to pull together and highways and things like that, if it depends on where it is. And I suppose if we go into the real climate change side of things, we've seen all of those, all of the floods that have been happening and things like that and fires and stuff.

Liz Allan [00:35:57]:
We've got to, we've got to get there, haven't we?

Niall Riddell [00:36:01]:
We do, but you know, it's not always easy. I mean, one of the things that my former boss always used to say to me is, you know, all the systems are great, it's fine until you put a soft, squidgy human into it. As soon as you put the soft squid of human into it, they break all the rules because they do things differently. You know, we've got this really interesting balance between the evolution of systems and processes and technology and, you know, human behaviour and humans don't always do things logically.

Liz Allan [00:36:27]:
So would you say then, is it us humans that are slowing things down when it comes to pulling things together like interoperability, and I'm not just talking about charging here, I'm talking about everything?

Niall Riddell [00:36:43]:
Yeah, I mean, probably, yes. Wouldn't the world be a better place if it were all run by robots?

Liz Allan [00:36:49]:
No, I keep thinking of Terminator. Stop it.

Niall Riddell [00:36:54]:
Yeah, so I grew up on the Asimov series on robots, and you know that the semi-utopian vision and then all the weird stuff that happens around the edges is kind of like, you know, you can see it. We're kind of letting AI tech and robots sneak into our lives. You know, I have a robot that cleans my floor every day. I was chatting to a lady today, yesterday, about going to visit the Amazon distribution centres. Apparently, you can just sign up for a visit and go and see all the robots. Where's the.

Liz Allan [00:37:23]:
I did not know that you wanted.

Niall Riddell [00:37:25]:
 You want to go to the dispute centre. I do. But you know, the tech, A lot of this tech exists, it's just like hidden in little places, but you can't always get it out because there's regulation and red tape and you know, it's there to protect society, quite rightly, but the speed at which we can move that regulation, it has to go to the first sitting in the House of Commons and it goes to the House of Lords. And it's like the processes are so slow for the speed at which the technology evolves. There's a real danger that Technology is going to jump a step ahead of regulation so fast that regulation just can't keep up. So, yeah, it's going to be some fun and games to watch as we get more and more technically evolved, and unfortunately, humans get in the way.

Liz Allan [00:38:02]:
Slow things down, I was going to say, because they're talking about little, little robots like that and, and, and, and I don't know how this, I'm assuming this was a pilot. I think in Milton Keynes there were little robots that were taking shopping to people. Are they still there? See, I think I might have driven past one when I've gone through Milton Keynes, because it's all a bit like, you know, horizontal, vertical roads, isn't it? Or so I don't know whether it was on a V1V, V road or an H road, but I think I kind of drove past one and went, What the heck is that?

Niall Riddell [00:38:36]:
And, but that, you know, people have adapted to them. So, you know, there's tech all out there. It's how do we really make it work? So for me, this is a fascinating little evolution in that space. And, you know, the role we play as a business is so small compared to the massive sweep of technology that's coming out there. It's like, well, we just got to keep going, you know, can't do everything. So let's focus on the bit we can control and try and make sure it ties in with all the future, the other stuff that happens. You know, we've talked a bit in the past about plug and charge, you know, the ability to plug in and charge, you know, that's again, a kind of human issue. We technically do it, but we need all the humans to agree inside their businesses that they're going to do it, for all of the businesses to sign up to it, to enable it to happen, to get that better consumer experience.

Niall Riddell [00:39:19]:
So the tech's right there, but as humans, we're slowing down the process. So, yeah, I think there's a real fascinating dynamic between technology and humans.

Liz Allan [00:39:28]:
It's removing those world gardens, isn't it, really?

Niall Riddell [00:39:31]:
It is slowly, yeah. But I think, you know, that there's a whole journey in here around putting the consumer first, recognising that technology should be serving the consumer and trying to drive to the best outcome for those drivers, those businesses, that gives us all the outcome we need.

Liz Allan [00:39:46]:
So I'm going to ask you one final question. Where would you like to see power going in the next few years? Your business? All of the stuff that, you know, all of the things that you're interested in, and your ability to be able to kind of be like, you know, your agile ability. Where do you, where do you want to be? What's, what's your ultimate aim? It's, and it's not world domination, is it?

Niall Riddell [00:40:16]:
You know, I think one of the things that we've struggled with is that every business we work with wants to do something slightly differently. You know, we've got different classes of driver, different classes of business, and their purpose and their use of the solution we've built is very different. So great case study is we have companies that deliver vehicles from A to B. You know, they're in a different car every day because they're delivering it to someone. So there's a specific use case there, there's another use case where you've got a van, a van fleet, same driver, same van every day, does his rounds, does his work. You know, that's quite, quite a niche-specific use set we originally set out to deliver. You've then got use cases where people are just picking up and charging cars as part of their job. They pick a car up, they go charge it, they bring it back.

Niall Riddell [00:41:01]:
So there are all these complex use cases. Ultimately, we need as an industry to get to the point where we're selling the electric vehicle vision on the basis of the potential for cost savings, as well as obviously all the environmental, social benefits, etc. That comes from this. But we need to be thinking, thinking about how we bring all those cost layers together, and we have this expression that we use internally called the Holy Trinity, which is home, workplace and public. We need to get all of that data, the management and control of those electrons, into a common platform. And when you start doing that, you can do all the whizzy funky stuff like vehicle-to-grid trading, you can flex people against the supply and demand of the grid. You can optimise your renewables time, you can minimise your price, you can try and nudge consumer behaviour to go to cheaper locations, and all that cool stuff starts to make sense, so that ultimately the driver can turn around and go. It costs, I'm slightly making up numbers.

Niall Riddell [00:41:57]:
It costs me 16 pence a mile to drive my diesel. It cost me 10 pence a mile to drive my electric. And if we can give the fleets and the businesses the ability to have that kind of numerical control over the data and the price they pay, then we're in a place where the adoption will just click overnight. You know, as soon as you can start to see those cost savings flowing through into your business, you're gonna go, Why would I buy a diesel? You know what, I'm replacing 20 vehicles. There's just going to be electric because it's cheaper, it makes more sense. But we've got to surface all of that data to those decision makers in a harmonious way before we get too clever with moving stuff around. But let's get all the data in front of the decision makers. Once they get all the data, they can make the decisions a lot faster.

Niall Riddell [00:42:39]:
And once they can make those decisions, we're going to see the switch happen naturally.

Liz Allan [00:42:43]:
And that in itself is just, it's improvement, isn't it? To make improvements, people need to see cost savings through data. And then they marry up, and then they kind of go, all right, okay, I can see that I'm going to save X number of thousands or millions or whatever it is versus what I'm paying now. And then that's when you get, you get that move. I've got one little final question.

Niall Riddell [00:43:08]:
You, just a little sneaky one at the end.

Liz Allan [00:43:10]:
Because I think I know what the answer might be. What is the thing that you've done recently that's been the most fun in your business?

Niall Riddell [00:43:24]:
Technically, maybe not really officially business, but I got to drive the Mercedes E Actros truck the other day.

Liz Allan [00:43:31]:
I knew it was gonna be that one. I knew it was gonna be that one. I love it.

Niall Riddell [00:43:35]:
So this, I mean, people talk about cars and they go, oh, it's got this much horsepower, this much torque. I mean, this thing blows all of those stats out of the water. You know, this is a powerhouse of a machine. It's got an insane amount of energy stored in the batteries. And the thing that really pleases me the most about having had that experience is that we have customers driving those vehicles and charging on our network today. And these are 42-ton articulated vehicles. This was all on a private road with an instructor.

Liz Allan [00:44:05]:
I know, I know where it was.

Niall Riddell [00:44:06]:
I know I don't have a license to drive a truck, but damn well, I might be interested in getting one because, you know, the level of comfort, the refinement, the thinking process that's gone into making the in-cab experience the you know, the human behaviour, the emotional piece of it. You know, there's no charging gear around and stuff. It's quiet, it's refined. You know, I can see that drivers will enjoy those vehicles a lot more, and they're sceptical when you speak to them initially. But when you speak to a driver who's got an electric truck we spoke to one who had to hand it back as he was driving this big Renault truck and he had to hand it back because he was switching it to a different depot and he was pretty upset by it because he didn't want to go back to diesel because the experience is just so much better. So, yeah, there's a. There's a fascinating little conundrum there. But, yeah, that was the thing I've.

Liz Allan [00:44:52]:
Enjoyed most recently, and the video is actually on social media of Neil driving the. The E truck. In fact, I drove. Go on.

Niall Riddell [00:45:01]:
To be clear, the instructor did say, Put your foot down.

Liz Allan [00:45:03]:
Did he? You see? So I drove an E truck last year at EVECS in Suffolk as well, but I didn't get it over 18 miles an hour because I was too scared. But it was amazing. I've never driven anything that big in my life. So we were at the same. We were on the same circuit, but it was just amazing. I'm just going to finish on that note because it's been brilliant talking to you. You know that you and I could talk the hind legs off a donkey anyway, couldn't we?

Niall Riddell [00:45:26]:
And we do from time to time.

Liz Allan [00:45:27]:
And that's very true, absolutely. But listen, Neil, it's been brilliant talking to you. Thank you. I know we've gone across many tangents and many of your opinions and my opinions and everything, but it's. It's been brilliant. So I really, really appreciate your time. So, for you guys watching and listening, please do all the wonderful things that I ask you to do every week. Please, like, subscribe, share and check out our LinkedIn electric evolution page.

Liz Allan [00:45:54]:
And yeah, please, please, kind of keep, keep watching. And to Neil, thank you again.

Niall Riddell [00:46:01]:
Thank you. Thank you.

Liz Allan [00:46:02]:
I really appreciate it. Yeah, I know, I know I should have checked which episode it was before, but to anybody, everybody, anyway, get me teeth in. For everybody watching and listening, I'm going to say thank you, and I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.