Episode 164: Liz Allan and Ralf Kernchen - Making EV Charging Predictable with Reserve and Charge

Episode 164: Liz Allan and Ralf Kernchen -  Making EV Charging Predictable with Reserve and Charge. 

Liz Allan speaks to Ralf Kernchen, Founder and CEO of Reserve and Charge. Together, they explore how predictability and planning can reshape the EV charging experience for drivers, fleets, and cities alike.

Ralf shares the journey behind Reserve and Charge, a platform designed to give drivers peace of mind by allowing them to book charge points in advance, while helping Charge Point Operators optimise utilisation and reliability. From commuter car parks in the West Midlands to complex fleet logistics, Ralf explains how data, design, and human behaviour intersect to make charging more efficient for everyone.

Liz and Ralf discuss what “good user behaviour” looks like in public charging, how reservation systems can encourage fairness and accessibility, and why collaboration between operators and local authorities is essential for achieving Net Zero goals.

They cover the psychology of planning, the technical challenges of managing infrastructure, and the customer-first principles that make innovation truly meaningful.

Quote of the Episode:
"Reservations aren’t about restriction, they’re about encouraging good habits and making charging fair for everyone.”  — Ralf Kernchen, Founder & CEO, Reserve and Charge. 

Ralf Kernchen Bio:
Ralf Kernchen is the Founder and CEO of Reserve and Charge, a UK-based technology company enabling EV drivers to reserve charge points in advance. With a background in computer science and smart mobility research at the University of Surrey, Ralf has spent over two decades developing user-centric digital solutions across Europe. His work bridges innovation and practicality — from connected-vehicle communication to parking and EV charging platforms — all with a focus on creating seamless, stress-free experiences for end users. 

Ralf Kernchen Links:
Website: https://reserveandcharge.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralfkernchen

Transcript

Liz Allan [00:00:00]:
Hi, everyone. So on today's episode, I have with me Ralf Kernchen from Reserve In Charge, and he's the founder and CEO. So Ralph, thank you ever so much for joining me.

Ralf Kernchen [00:01:36]:
Yeah, thanks, Liz. Great to be here today. Looking forward.

Liz Allan [00:01:41]:
So we're going to be attending a variety of events because, at the time of recording, we are starting to go into event season for the EV sector, aren't we? So. And you've. We'll be talking a bit about one of the events you've been to in Europe and related topics. But let's start off by going into a little bit of your background and what brought you to starting up Reserve In Charge.

Ralf Kernchen [00:02:07]:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Liz. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a while ago basically when, when we started thinking about Reserve In Charge, basically. But if you ask me about my background, you know, I'm a tech person, I'm a tech founder, you know, I'm a big believer in making simple and easy experiences for end users. And yeah, I just came to the UK sort of 20 years ago, basically, you know, fresh from my computer science degree, started working here at the University of Surrey, where our company is also based. Yeah. And yeah, Reserve a Charge itself started like two years ago, but it has a. As a background, which we will talk about, you know, how we got there.

Ralf Kernchen [00:02:59]:
Yeah, so, so I'm, you know, you know, happy to be here, so.

Liz Allan [00:03:03]:
Fantastic. So. And you've also, you're, you've also kind of. Because you've been involved in this, in sort of the tech sector for quite some time, haven't you? You've been involved in sort of app development and things like that for a long time. So was that, was that kind of where you really kind of. You, you know, you stuck at it and you wanted to, that's, that's the area that you wanted to kind of open up and develop?

Ralf Kernchen [00:03:28]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I, I was dreaming of helping people again, you know, to have good experiences and different, different areas. You know, when I, When I was here at university doing my PhD, I was involved in European research projects. Different areas, all sorts of different areas. But it always has a software aspect, an application aspect. So I've been working in smart home environments. I've been working in a sort of vehicle communication applications. So things like, you can imagine, sort of things like, you know, how do you optimise car traffic, you know, approaching a traffic light at what speed to optimally hit the green phase and these kinds of things.

Ralf Kernchen [00:04:13]:
Yes. And then that was working with big European car manufacturers, you know, deploying those communication technologies into their cars. It was quite complicated. So big computers in the back of the cars and then developing those applications and then testing them in big European test beds, basically. So it was great fun for me at the time and, you know, always, always user-focused on how we can improve their experience, you know, in any formal way. So.

Liz Allan [00:04:44]:
Sounds, sounds great. Honestly, that's, that's a. Yeah, I'm, I'm getting to know more and more about, about kind of where tech people come from and all of the things that they're really interested in. But let's, let's kind of talk about things we're interested in. Let's talk about Reserve and charge, then and what that's all about. I mean, it kind of says it on the tin, doesn't it, that it says the name on the tin. But let's talk about what, where it is, you know, when you decided that was the important thing that you wanted to kind of bring into the EV sector.

Ralf Kernchen [00:05:21]:
Yeah. So I Mean, obviously over my time I created possibly several solutions, but sort of the striking one we had is an OP that we built before COVID which is called Save a Space, which is a sort of parking reservation service at park and ride car parks. We'll get more to that in a minute. And then based on that experience, we thought, okay, wouldn't it be great for EV drivers to reserve an EV charge point in advance? So Reserve and Charge, in essence, is a cutting-edge, we call it a cutting-edge EV charge point demand management platform, which smartly manages EV charge point reservations. And we really want to provide the crucial missing link between the end users and the infrastructure to deliver a really seamless end-user charging experience. And we think so. Reservations will play a crucial part in that one because people do planning when they go on journeys, they do plan when they want to go to work, like park and ride car parks, but also residents who don't have off-street parking and they need to charge overnight some point, and they're relying on public charging infrastructure. So what better way is there than giving them the assurance to get access to a charge point by being able to make an advanced reservation? So yeah, Reserve and Charge essentially empower those EV users to make advanced Charge Point reservations.

Ralf Kernchen [00:06:52]:
And obviously it's a two-way game. We have charge point operators who want to get their charge points used, and what we want to do is efficiently manage those reservations for the charge point operators ' end-to-end users to optimise their network's usage. So it's a game about demand, end-user experience, and bringing those things together and leveraging the synergies you can get from that approach, basically.

Liz Allan [00:07:20]:
So when you're doing something like this, where do you even start? Do you know, to me it's kind of like thinking about, you know, how, how did you, how did you start? Do you, do you have to? Because we talked about it a little bit, didn't we? Kind of. You've got, you know, you've, you were working on various projects and with Innovate UK and things like that. But how did, how did it develop over time?

Ralf Kernchen [00:07:49]:
Yeah, I mean, generally we start with the end user. You know, we look at, you know, there's a problem. Is there a pain that end users experience? It's the same for parking or for EV charging, basically. So it's, it's a physical space somebody has to get to, you know, to either in the parking industry park their car there or in the EV industry charge their car. Right. And essentially one thing which always came up, you know, the user is not there to sort of, you know, park or charge the car. Not there. It's not their purpose. They're on the journey, they want to get to the office, you know, they want to get to a leisure destination or in the case of more industry relevant use cases like, you know, a lorry driver, they want to get to their destination to deliver a, you know, a package or you know, obviously in a logistic sense.

Ralf Kernchen [00:08:41]:
And you know, and, and, and everybody does some level of planning in their mind basically on how they're going about the journey, you know, so use Google to plan the journey or you check, you know, your office calendar when to go to the office or you check, you know, when is your train to go to the, you know, to the train station. So there's always a level of planning involved, some, something, some more conscious, some less conscious, basically. And that produces a certain level of what I call sort of cognitive overload or load, at least not always overload, but load, you know, and we want to make it as, as simple as possible from an end user so we want to understand their pains, they want to understand their current experiences and you know, in the EV industry sort of pain points are being discussed quite a lot. So we can have a bit of a chat about that one. But yeah, we start from an end user, look at how many people have that problem or report certain types of problems basically. And then we go about looking, you know, what's the opposite side. So what, what's the problem of the charge point operator delivering their service to the user or the user using the infrastructure and then we're trying to find the synergies between them, and that's how we got to sort of reserve and charge because there is a need from people who want to reserve charge points basically. And even if it's not 100% in all the cases, it's a significant percentage of users who want to do that.

Ralf Kernchen [00:10:14]:
So typically, we say around 40% of users would be, you know, or not. Not just 40% of users, actually 60% want to make reservations, but 40% would be actually willing to pay for them as well. So, so, and, and, and that's where I come from. It feels like, you know, if the user already puts a value in that one, you know, there must be a pain and there is a desire to get a better or a more suitable experience to what they want to achieve basically.

Liz Allan [00:10:41]:
So yeah, I suppose if so, that's.

Ralf Kernchen [00:10:43]:
That's where we start, you know.

Liz Allan [00:10:44]:
Yeah, I suppose if you've got that say, like a lot of the delivery drivers, you know, they've got a route to follow, haven't they? They've got their EV van, and they have to get to all of these different delivery spots, don't they? And they're trying to build in that, building that time to charge as well, because bands don't always have the same ranges as a car. So, how are you kind of finding that? When is it the fleet manager or somebody who's our fleet coordinator that would book that, book that space, or would it be that driver? I'm assuming it's not the driver because all they want to do is just think about, you know, if you're working for a business, you just want to get to where you want to get to, don't you?

Ralf Kernchen [00:11:40]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we don't have a direct fleet solution out there at the moment, but we know that obviously, you know, in the case of the EHGV or light good vehicle sort of sector, it is actually the operator who is quite interested to get the vehicles charged up, you know, and help the drivers to, you know, deliver that route or whatever it is. Right. So, and then depending on the bigger, the sort of, you know, delivery, what is it like, you know, pallets of things or size of the of the lorry, you know, and, and depending on what goods are loaded on there, you know, they are time sensitive. Right. So.

Liz Allan [00:12:22]:
Yes, yeah.

Ralf Kernchen [00:12:23]:
And, you know, and if you look into that type of industry, you will see that they have already, like, solutions where they can plan their logistics and dispatches and so on. And I think I just read an article recently, I can't remember where it was from, but those people who have bought like electric lorries, they're currently sort of just planning routes around the depot, basically, so that they can ensure that when the lorry is finished, they can charge it in the depot because the infrastructure there is not quite, quite there. So. But just the EHGV sector, ELGV is a bit more, you know, differentiated. I think what we kind of learned speaking to cities is that, you know, they want to make sure that fleets get green, that they're getting it, you know, that they get net zero, basically, and they're providing incentives. I remember speaking to Oxfordshire County Council, specifically Oxford City as well, you know, who run programs for taxi drivers to replace their taxis. But then they need to charge somewhere. Right.

Ralf Kernchen [00:13:30]:
So, if they don't get on the charger, they want to start driving around, they lose Time, they lose business basically. And the same goes for sort of delivery drivers, obviously. Again, it depends on what route you have, because maybe some of them can charge in the depot, others are more suitable to charge on the road or even overnight at the house, depending on what the policies are. Right. So.

Liz Allan [00:13:54]:
Yeah, yeah, and that's, and that's really important, isn't it? I mean, we've just been thinking about it. We're just about to take. In a few days' time, we're just about to take our son back to Exeter University for his second year. And we went down there in May, and literally, there was. So we went to a charging hub, and I won't say who it was. They are, they are really good. But literally, I think we had. There were either four or five Royal Mail vans turned up at this hub because they don't.

Liz Allan [00:14:30]:
They didn't have depot charging. Yeah, it's great because it's great utilisation for, for the, for the c. You know, the charge point operator. We were kind of. It was funny because like, our car was so sandwiched between a variety of red vans, you know, but, you know.

Ralf Kernchen [00:14:47]:
Yeah, I can see that one there.

Liz Allan [00:14:48]:
Yeah. They have to kind of work it, work it their, into their schedule on a, on a, on a. On a daily basis, don't they, these things?

Ralf Kernchen [00:14:56]:
Yeah, quite, yeah, quite right. Yeah. And then. And they need a certain speed and, you know, a certain size of the spaces just set. So it's important. So I mean, there are various scenarios obviously where reservations can, can kind of help. You know, everybody can relate to end users and what they want to do. But there are also commercial scenarios like EHGV, LGB turbocharging, you know, where you want to have some reliability on access.

Ralf Kernchen [00:15:22]:
And I think there's a huge sort of late, late group, you know, that, you know, you have to crack in order to, you know, deliver the Net zero targets that everybody is, you know, looking for to deliver and that these are the people who cannot charge at home, you know, and the government run a big project, so a big funding, you know, where the local authorities were applying for a chunk of money to install residential charging infrastructure. But equally they're asking kind of questions how we can make that usable to the, to the residents and how can we get the assurance that. To even buy an electric car, you know, because they're really concerned. If you ask anyone, it's like, I don't buy an electric car because why do I charge it, Basically, you know, overnight.

Liz Allan [00:16:08]:
So, yeah, if you've not got A drive, then it does, it does kind of in certain cases just make it a little bit, a little bit trickier, you know, and it's about the, it's about the affordability of it as well, isn't it? You know. Yeah, you know, because home charging for us it's 7p per kilowatt hour, you know, so overnight that is. But, but actually. So if you haven't got a drive, then it can make it a little bit trickier. Unless you've kind of got any of the gully solutions and things like that, you know.

Ralf Kernchen [00:16:44]:
Yeah, all of that helps. Right, so it's, you know, if you, if you can put your car in front of the pathway, then that works. Right? So yeah, and I think it's the second biggest big concern that the cities usually come up with when they, when they, because the, you know, the infrastructure is a bit fragmented really, because there's lots of different CPOs, lots of different kind of locations and obviously they're chosen for their, you know, potential of users turning, turning up there. Right. So, but you know, different locations, even a sort of demand for different charging speeds. You know, with hubs you need to have very quick chargers, but if you have an on-street charger, they don't need to all be quick because you can charge, you know, overnight basically. Or in our case, like the park and ride car park we're working on at the moment. And it was the Midlands, you know, where commuters would stay typically for 12 hours, you know, and that's the time where the car stands somewhere.

Ralf Kernchen [00:17:41]:
Where can it do that charging and be ready when you're kind of, kind of back, you know what I mean? So, but yeah, equally so, you know, so you need to be able to cater for this fragmented infrastructure. So we thought instead of sort of providing yet another app, basically our platform, you know, provides, which we would call like APIs that several different, you know, operators could integrate MSPs, CPOs, although we have a parking up, you know, obviously. But Reserve in Charge really is focused on trying to provide a horizontal platform to the market to provide, you know,a  consistent reservation experience across different CPOs, charge points, speeds, whatever you can think about.

Liz Allan [00:18:29]:
So yeah, so do you, do you want to talk a little bit about the, about the park and Ride, you know, kind of, yeah, the, this, you know, what you're, what you're doing in the West Midlands and how, how it's working, who you kind of typical customers would be, you know, because there is a real benefit to knowing like you Just said knowing that you can stay on a charger for 12 hours while you're working, you know, unable to come back to that car park and no, you're not going to get a fine for being there, you know, if you're doing a trickle charge or something like that. But you know, you've got plenty of charge to get home, et cetera, et cetera. Just tell us a bit about that.

Ralf Kernchen [00:19:10]:
Yeah, so I mean, I think I would say, you know, park and ride car parks, that's where we sort of started because we, we've been able to sort of work with Transport for the Midlands as a regional partner since a while, even before, before co and you know, I've sort of touched on problems before. Right. So it's like, you know, people still have to find parking spaces although they don't charge, you know, and, but, but equally we, we sort of experienced that, you know, where the pain in the parking has a certain level. That's what I talked about earlier, the pain of users. Right. We've done the same kind of research into the EV drivers, and we found that their pain is actually much higher because of limited infrastructure, limited reliability and that kind of stuff. So Transport for West Midlands sort of provided us a platform very early on to develop these kind of end user focused solutions and they can also see a practical benefit on using their infrastructure in a, in a good way and influencing sort of good user behavior, sort of, you know, so you know, if you have a really, you know, busy site or even charging site or like park and ride car parks, you will, we will see, depending on how you provide a service, like sort of a rock up service, then people start coming earlier and earlier and then other user groups are sort of a little bit sort of left out. And as we know, some cities are really inclusive and want to provide solutions to all citizens when they need it.

Ralf Kernchen [00:20:54]:
So in that case, it was about how we can provide a service that they can make, everybody can make use of basically, in the first instance, and then obviously from a charge point operator point of view, again, lots of different, you know, targets, you know, there's also the revenue aspect for them. So if they install the charge point in a location, whether it's a slow charger or a more rapid charger, basically, then they're only installing a location where it can provide the biggest return on investment. So you have park and ride car parks which are close to business locations, you know, at the train stations or residents who don't have access to off-street parking. So that essentially can provide a combination of, okay, that can be used by a commuter, it can be used by logistics or like a van-type user, or it could be used by a resident overnight, because that's where you then make your infrastructure, you know, sweat the best. Basically, you would say so. And that's, that's where we kind of started this kind of commuter experience at first. Okay, I want to have the assurance that I can get to my train on time and when I rock up to the car park, that I get my parking space or EV charger, you know, ready for me to receive me. So we are talking about, you know, a numbered parking or charging bay and reserving and charging obviously is about the charging bay.

Ralf Kernchen [00:22:33]:
So if you would make a reservation wire at the moment to save a space up, essentially you get a numbered charger, you know, numbers are quite clear on the charger to make it user-friendly, drive into your space, plug in and then just press one button to start your charging. Basically, because the you know, the chargers are prepared for you, they know that you're coming. So you, it's not like that. You have to wait for the charger. The charger is waiting for you. That's how we say it.

Liz Allan [00:23:05]:
That's always good. But what. Right, so I've got a question for you then, because there's something I want to kind of come back to in a minute, but there's something that you just got me thinking about. So, so you've got, you've got a charger that's reserved. I had this, we had this in France when we were on holiday, and we rocked up to a charger, and it was allowing us, you know, we had an issue with, we couldn't initiate it. There was an error on the charger. But if you've got somebody else who rocks up to that charger.

Ralf Kernchen [00:23:44]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:23:45]:
How do they know that? That person, you know, has. So they might come two minutes earlier. But how does that, how do they know that that charge is reserved? Because you've only got a space, haven't you? And they're going to get out of the car and they're going to plug theirs in. Or will they get that far?

Ralf Kernchen [00:24:02]:
Yeah, so don't want to get too technical right now.

Liz Allan [00:24:07]:
No, that's fine. Yeah, I get you.

Ralf Kernchen [00:24:08]:
Yeah. I'm trying to. From a user experience, from a user experience point of view. So we're taking care of locking the charger for the user who made the reservation. Basically. Now there are all sorts of questions. You come around that one. But we sort of developed it in a way that the charger speed is configurable.

Ralf Kernchen [00:24:28]:
You know, we work it out with the client, what the locking times are. You know, there are things like, you know, what happens when people don't arrive at the charging space, you know, you know. But I had a very interesting discussion with a German influencer, EV driver influencer in, in, in the, in one of the events in Berlin. And, and, and there are, there are some obviously reservation solutions out there, mostly something called reserved now at the moment. So, where are you on the press of the button to get the charger locked for 15 minutes, and you know where this is enabled, there's not a lot of signage sometimes at the charger. So he found it quite annoying that as a non-reservation user, you rock up and then it looks like the charger is out of service basically. So, so he quit, you know, he, he said, you know, obviously it needs to go along with some signage that this charger is reservable.

Liz Allan [00:25:23]:
Yes.

Ralf Kernchen [00:25:23]:
And then from, from our experience if the user learns about that service then they could actually decide to also, you know, make, make a reservation which is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy where it's not so common at the moment. If it were available, we could actually convert users quite easily if they wanted to make reservations, basically. So it's a combination of locking the charger for the specific user at the right time which fits to the scenario in that case configuring that in the platform and then managing it from, from our side for the kind of edge cases like where maybe a charger is iced or you know, somebody stays longer than they're supposed to be and then helping people to find alternatives basically. So, that's how our parking reservation service has worked for more than two years. And so we know how often that might happen, and we know how to help the user. And yeah, if you look carefully around, any type of reservation solution will not technically guarantee a space. It will guarantee you, you know, to get the money back if the reservation fails, basically.

Liz Allan [00:26:43]:
I mean, that kind of makes sense. And I like what you said earlier on as well. This is what comes back to encouraging good user behaviour. Because of that, that is one of the things, isn't it? And I'm not just saying it's about this, it's not just for charging, you know, even just parking and things like that. And because I've reserved parking spaces myself, not to do with charging, but I reserve parking before, just so that I know that I've got a space. Because like, you say that that kind of level of, oh, my God, I'm gonna go to this place and it's going to be ridiculous. It was like Wednesday. I was going.

Liz Allan [00:27:25]:
We were thinking about driving up to Oxford, which to me is only 35 minutes away. But I know what the parking's like in Oxford, you know, so. But the train is dead easy. So I'm going, going up on the, on, on the train. It's. But it's things like that, isn't it? You kind of like, right, you go through various. I do go through various scenarios. Do we do that? How will it work? Blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and my husband suggested the, the kind of the, the park and ride up in Oxford.

Liz Allan [00:27:58]:
But even, even I, I've kind of just said, no, look, we're going on the train. I don't know what time I'm going to be coming back. I don't really want, you know, I don't know whether it'll be dark. It's getting darker earlier, isn't it? Now it's just those things, it's just like flipping an egg, you know, so you have to kind of think about it that way. But I do like the fact that you are using the good user behaviour ideas as part of this, because this is what it's about, isn't it? It's about encouraging people to do the right, the right thing and behave in that way. Not to ice, not to do this, not to do that, you know?

Ralf Kernchen [00:28:35]:
Yeah, yeah. And as you mentioned it, I mean, it was quite prevalent as well from the, you know, Transport for West Midlands. Like, again, you know, you want people to think, how long do I stay on a charger? You know, sort of. And, there's obviously a scenario where people, you know, might plug in the car, charge for two hours and then stay in the space for 10 hours. Right. And they're not charging for eight hours. And that's a bit sort of, let's call it a bit extreme. What I'm just saying right now, because looking, looking at the actual charging data in, in the West Midlands, you can see quite a good correlation between the length of the, of the, of the charge and, and, and the amount of charge they've been.

Ralf Kernchen [00:29:20]:
Been, been taken. Right? So. And you know, again, really complex again, because, you know, you could have a car with 40 kilowatt batteries and the car with 60 or 80 kilowatt batteries and depending on that, you charge more or less also. What is the battery charging status? But what's important is that you provide some incentives to the user, some support of the user on how to use that infrastructure well and help the charge point operator to kind of incentivise that one. So in the West Midlands, we came up with a scenario now specifically, obviously tailored to that park and ride, where you would have a time-based reservation fee, like you would pay a time-based parking fee. So. Yeah, and they would need to pay it up front basically.

Ralf Kernchen [00:30:07]:
So they would think a moment, you know, how long am I staying on the charger? And try to book the optimal time. And if they were not charging the full reservation session, you know, they're kind of allowed to be on there again, you know, it's a slow charger. So other, you know, rapid chargers, my different types of, you know, configurations where you really just allowed to stay there for an hour and then some sort of overstay type scenario starts, starts working. But in that case, basically, you know, if this were to stop charging, a time-based fee would keep going basically. Right, so, and just to make sure we're not there to penalise people, you know, it's about, you know, good charging behaviour. And in the case of transport forward to the Midlands, they're also not in the spirit of penalising people, you know what I mean? So it's been set up in a way that there's an incentive for people to use it in the right way, basically.

Liz Allan [00:31:09]:
But that's the best thing, isn't it? Because you know, unless you, I suppose, right, in my mind that's about ground rules. You know, it's with anything. It's like having children, isn't it? You know, you have to put your ground rules down. And I'm not saying that all public, general public children. I'm just saying, you know, putting those ground rules down and this is how this works is, is the best way to start. Because actually, you are setting a standard then, aren't you? Yeah, so you've got your standard, this is what we want, you know, we're not here to penalise you, as you're saying. But, but the, these are, these are the things that, that we expect as part of the use of this, you know, service. So, so to me that's that setting, setting a standard, setting those kind of ground rules.

Liz Allan [00:31:57]:
And people understand, don't they?

Ralf Kernchen [00:31:59]:
They do understand, you know, and we could see it on our sort of more than 7,000 reservations on the park and ride car parks. Well, actually, overall it was more than 20,000, but since we started the commercial part of that one, it was more than 7,000 on the parking side. We're ramping up the EV site right now. So, you can see that the way we designed this service is also being sort of user-friendly. So if people have problems, they can report a problem like a blocked space or a blocked charger. We'll try to help them already in the app, basically. But if that doesn't work and they have another problem, they can write to someone or speak to someone in that case. And all the conversations that we had with users when there are problems are usually quite positive, and when they're being helped, basically.

Ralf Kernchen [00:32:58]:
So if they know there is someone, it's another sort of cognitive load off your mind, you know, it's like, you know, there's someone there who can help me. Normally, I rock up to this place and then I'm in the middle of nowhere and, you know, I don't know what to do. You know what I mean? So obviously, why can't we help with Internet connectivity? That's not the thing. But on the sites that we are deployed, you know, in the city, you know, people are hugely appreciative of, you know, help offered, you know, so it's really good.

Liz Allan [00:33:29]:
You know, sometimes that's all people want, isn't it? You know, they don't just want to be left, you know, on their own. And kind of gone are the days of sort of like having people in car parks actually going around and helping people. So, so if you, you know, if there's a little bit of help, that's all. To me, that's a really good thing because that helps you with your reputation. Because that's, that's the other thing, isn't it? It's about building your reputation as an organisation that's supportive.

Ralf Kernchen [00:34:05]:
Yeah. And, and, and you know, if you, if you work with cities, I mean, you know, their focus is the citizen and the experience of the services provided, and that really helps, you know, to provide something that, you know, cities can support, you know, you know that they're very sensitive. You know, I just, this morning I read completely unrelated still mobility, but the shutdown of the lime scooters in London. Borrow. Right. So, you know, again, you know, it seemed like that consul deemed that that wasn't so customer-friendly, you know, so, so yeah, if you, you know, it needs to be provided in the right way that citizens can use services basically. And again, infrastructure or charging infrastructure is maybe not as easy to use. Yet as it's supposed to be.

Ralf Kernchen [00:34:56]:
So.

Liz Allan [00:34:56]:
And I do like the fact that you started with the customer first, you know.

Ralf Kernchen [00:35:01]:
Yeah, we always did. So we kept that. But you do have to, you have to be clear. I mean, the solution we provide is obviously for the customer; the direct customer is a CPO, you know, is an EMSP. Although EMSPs actually understand the aspect of user experience quite well because they kind of own the groups of users on their apps, which we talked earlier about a little bit. But yeah, it needs to work for the CPO. It needs to have the effects of, you know, you know, are the users using my infrastructure in the best possible way? Can I guarantee my return on investment, you know, you know, people not turning up for 10 hours is not, you know, not conducive to a good charging infrastructure basically. So yeah, because you have to manage that one for all sites involved.

Liz Allan [00:35:54]:
You know, So I mean the CPO wants their return on investment, you say they want an increase in utilisation, you know, so, and that's, that's, that's, we, we all know that like I say that the stuff, the thing that I like about yours is the, is how you are supporting the, the end user, you know, so you've thought about the customer, but you've also thought about the end user. Because I've got to point out, you are an EV driver as well, aren't you?

Ralf Kernchen [00:36:21]:
I am, yes, for sure. You know, tested the ins and outs of everywhere like many people do in the industry and you can see on LinkedIn, LinkedIn, you know, so whether I go to Cornwall, up to the Midlands and due to my, you know, background, well, my history or whatever, my up upbringing, I'm obviously from Germany, so there's still family over there. And at least once per year, we tend to drive the whole way to Berlin. So it gives a great, great opportunity to test the whole European charging infrastructure. And so yeah, it's whatever I can test in the cities and things like that. I do. And it's quite funny some of the things which been mentioned in the conference a couple of weeks ago in Berlin, like sort of restrictions in the city centre. If we go to a 22-kilowatt charger, you know, and it says you have to be back in four hours, but you're like, well, I need more than four hours, you know, you know, so if you could make a reservation there for the time that you need it, you know what I mean? So then that would be a manageable but flexible user-centred, you know, situation basically.

Ralf Kernchen [00:37:34]:
So those are the kind of things I'm trying to look at and to learn from another really funny experience when we last set off in the summer to holiday in Austria. And I do like Tesla chargers, I have to admit, you know, because they're usually, you know, accessible, available and functioning, and it's quite easy to use as well. But, you know, navigating the different locations of the chargers is not always easy. And we had a roof box on, on the car and, you know, came somewhere in France, I think around Lille or whatever it was, and, you know, at a sort of shopping mall where the, where chargers were installed, not just Tesla, all sorts of charges, but they had a height restriction with sort of metal barriers over the top. You couldn't get to the chargers because, you know, with the roof blocks on top, you couldn't actually go in, you know, although it's a huge area with lots of car parking and so on, you know, so, yeah, so you still get these kind of, you know, experiences because, you know, a petrol station looks always everywhere the same. But, but the chargers, they're all different, fragmented, different locations. Well, I'm not saying that's a negative thing, I'm just, I'm saying it provides, actually. It's quite nice.

Ralf Kernchen [00:38:53]:
Instead of going to a smelly petrol station, you know, driving up to a shopping centre, you know, with the whole family, get the people out of the car, walk around while the car is charging. I think that's one of the, you know, best experiences I can get from EV charging, you know, so we had.

Liz Allan [00:39:11]:
Our very first underground EV charging experience while we were in northern Spain for a holiday and, and it was a, it was a charging hub in an underground car park. And I can't remember, I think there was some, there was some. There was a car rental firm, so there were two. Lots of chargers, and they were all. I think they were either. I think they were 22 kilowatt, but we knew we were going to be there a little while because we're going to see some friends in the city. But that was an interesting one because you just kind of. I don't know why I.

Liz Allan [00:39:49]:
We. Maybe it's because we don't tend to have them. I haven't seen them in the uk, but that was really, that was really interesting. And just, you know, we always use octopus electroverse because it works for us, but it, it did, it worked the first time. It was just a different place to have the chargers, and there were quite a few places there, and it was funny where we went to different locations to charge because we need to charge our car more often than some people. You know, even though we had decent temperatures. But, you know, it was. Sometimes we couldn't.

Liz Allan [00:40:28]:
We both, my husband and I, said our bladders gave up before our car, you know, so actually it was one. I'm just saying, you know, gave up like that. But it was just one of, it was one of those, one of those things. But this, we had lots and lots of different experiences this time. The underground one was great. In fact, most of the ex. Most of the charging experiences were, were really, really good. I think there was one that we had that was in a remote location, and we were next to a Tesla on a separate one, a slower charger, because we were going to be there for some time, and it wouldn't initiate.

Liz Allan [00:41:06]:
So that was it. That was the only kind of issue that we had. But yeah, you do have to plan, and you do want to do these things. And yes, we didn't and we didn't reserve the chargers, but actually if we hadn't, if we'd have been going into a, in a really, really busy city center because we could kind of see which ones were available and because I suppose sometimes when it's, when there's two of you in the car, it makes it a little bit easier because you can kind of see which ones are available. They're all available. But sometimes it doesn't always, it depends on how quickly the back office updates to see whether they are.

Ralf Kernchen [00:41:42]:
Yeah, yeah.

Liz Allan [00:41:45]:
I totally get it with regards to reserving because you do want to know that that charge is available. You know, it's a massive difference, doesn't it?

Ralf Kernchen [00:41:54]:
But yeah, or even if it. Then, you know, if there's really a problem, which we think is sort of a low percentage really, then, you know, having, having a channel where you can get the help to find an alternative one.

Liz Allan [00:42:08]:
Yes.

Ralf Kernchen [00:42:09]:
You know, peace of mind, basically, that's what we think sort of helps. We've, we've seen it, we've seen it with the cyberspace user and how that works for them, basically. And one thing which is quite important, what I was speaking to some of our EMSP partners, hopefully going forward, is that, you know, when we see people making reservations, they do it again and again, basically. So there are those scenarios, as you said, park and white car parks or city centres, where people travel regularly. If they have an experience that works for them, they will repeat the behaviour, basically. So from our early parking reservations, basically we've seen that we've got a user who's done over a year, more than 200 reservations.

Liz Allan [00:43:03]:
That level of comfort for that person, isn't it? For those users who use it regularly, it's that level of comfort, like you said right at the beginning, it's taking that stress away from that person and that, that in itself, you don't want additional stress, do you? You know, so that person's coming back again and again because they know that they can use you, and it works. So that's good.

Ralf Kernchen [00:43:28]:
Yeah, because it starts to become a reliable experience rather than sort of thinking if I get there, you know, it's the space for me or arrive five minutes later. And again, it depends on how the operator wants to set up the service. Some might be more towards stronger incentives for users to behave or to reuse the infrastructure in the right way, but then some are more like transport. I'm not saying that they don't want to provide an incentive, but they make sure. So if our users come five minutes earlier, they charge us there for them. If they come five minutes later, the charger is there for them. You know what I mean? So it's also how to design the service that, you know, this kind of conscious load is as low as possible, the stress is as low, low, low as possible, basically. So, and listening to some of the industry research which starts happening now around reservations, we had the Energy Saving Trust, I think, presentations a few weeks ago, basically where one of the chargeburn operators kind of mentioned how complicated it could be to implement a reservation service on the street, which I kind of agree with.

Ralf Kernchen [00:44:43]:
It's complex. Maybe not complicated, but complex. And you have to work with the city around enforcement, you know, making sure that you have the signage and that kind of stuff. But exactly that's what we've done in the Westerns to provide this type of complete setup, basically. So yes, you have a technical solution and we have it as an API, which can be integrated into every app, but there are still different scenarios that need to be looked at from end to end. Customer experience.

Liz Allan [00:45:19]:
Nice. You know, like you say that level of comfort is, is good and you're getting good, good feedback from people.

Ralf Kernchen [00:45:27]:
Oh yeah.

Liz Allan [00:45:28]:
Anyway, aren't you?

Ralf Kernchen [00:45:29]:
Yeah. So I mean I, I think it's funny because you think about those services and you know, what your commercial impact is you're aiming at basically, but then seeing how people use it and you know, how you have to then sort of iteratively potentially adapt it, you know, but you know, it provides you with a solution which then works for everybody involved, which is really nice to see it need to listen to the user feedback, you know, so, and the industry has been, you know, has been preaching that one, so for sure, you know.

Liz Allan [00:46:02]:
So, I'm going to finish on one, on a question, final question.

Ralf Kernchen [00:46:06]:
Yeah, that's all right.

Liz Allan [00:46:07]:
So what would you like the EV charging experience to be like in the next 10 years? And where would you like to see reserve and charge in that future?

Ralf Kernchen [00:46:25]:
Yeah, so I, I think I would like to see the sort of potential of all those kind of technical solutions are realized. You know, we're not just talking about reservations, you know, we're talking about vehicle to grid scenarios which are now also, you know, already sort of coming live at the home, but that needs to roll out to everywhere so that again, people are not, you know, disincentivized or I don't know the English term right now, but sort of, you know, that they cannot use this type of services because they don't have a home charger basically, you know, so, and so I like those technical things to come through to the user in, in a way that makes it easy, easy to use for them. So I, I, I, I'm hoping that our reserve in charge, well, our vision is that reserve in charge, you know, play plays a part in that one. And with this notion of a reservation for, for an end user and the knowledge for the operator that when people come and then sort of the link into the energy providers, you can come up with scenarios where users can charge for a reasonable fee, possibly take a home contract to a charger of their choice or in some formal way provided by the city or whatever, so that this kind of inequality is not a thing for people who don't have off street parking. And if I wanted to paint a little picture, sort of like where reserve in charge would want to go. Obviously, with all the advances of AI and these types of things, you know, there are huge opportunities to even further reduce that cognitive load. So instead of me deciding when I need to charge the car, you know, something could tell you, you know, like on Friday is really busy, you know, you know, why don't you charge on Thursday? You know, and by the way, you know, it's sustainable energy, so you can get like 20 off. And I, I know that those similar types of scenarios can exist with octopus electroverse, but I don't think it's yet as integrated and Easy for the user to kind of forget about the charging experience or be helped to make those kind of planning decisions.

Ralf Kernchen [00:48:59]:
So that's where I hope this is going.

Liz Allan [00:49:02]:
Like it. Well, I look forward to kind of meeting you at one of these very many future events that we're both going to.

Ralf Kernchen [00:49:11]:
So plentiful many.

Liz Allan [00:49:14]:
It is. It is event season, isn't it, for the sector? But look, it's been lovely to talk to you. It really has.

Ralf Kernchen [00:49:20]:
Yes. Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:49:21]:
I hope everybody's kind of who's watching and listening. I hope you've got a lot out of this because, you know, he's Ralph and the team are looking at it from a really good angle, and I, I kind of, I like this. It's, you know, it kind of calls to my customer experience, you know, sort of my. That side of me. So. So, yeah. Thank you.

Liz Allan [00:49:43]:
Thank you, thank you.

Ralf Kernchen [00:49:44]:
Thanks. Listen, and you can hold us accountable in the future, then if we.

Liz Allan [00:49:49]:
Oh, we'll give you 20 lashes. No, we will do that.

Ralf Kernchen [00:49:52]:
Yes. This customer experience is not how we.

Liz Allan [00:49:55]:
Hey, I just. No, it'd be good. It's good to see how it all starts, you know, when you start moving. Moving forward with things. So. So on that note, I'm going to say thank you. I'm going to say to everybody watching and listening, please, like, subscribe, subscribe and share. Go to our LinkedIn podcast page.

Liz Allan [00:50:12]:
So Electric Evolution on. On LinkedIn, we'll share all of these, but please just share the story. It'd be great.

Ralf Kernchen [00:50:20]:
Yes. Yeah. And if you want to try it out, give us a shout. We'll be happy to demonstrate in the West Midlands.

Liz Allan [00:50:25]:
Exactly. And I was going to say he's a poet and he doesn't know it. All right, on that note, I'm going to say thank you for watching and listening, and I will see you next time. Bye. Bye.

Ralf Kernchen [00:50:37]:
Bye.Hi, everyone. So on today's episode, I have with me Ralf Kernchen from Reserve In Charge, and he's the founder and CEO. So Ralph, thank you ever so much for joining me.

Ralf Kernchen [00:01:36]:
Yeah, thanks, Liz. Great to be here today. Looking forward.

Liz Allan [00:01:41]:
So we're going to be attending a variety of events because, at the time of recording, we are starting to go into event season for the EV sector, aren't we? So. And you've. We'll be talking a bit about one of the events you've been to in Europe and related topics. But let's start off by going into a little bit of your background and what brought you to starting up Reserve In Charge.

Ralf Kernchen [00:02:07]:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Liz. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a while ago basically when, when we started thinking about Reserve In Charge, basically. But if you ask me about my background, you know, I'm a tech person, I'm a tech founder, you know, I'm a big believer in making simple and easy experiences for end users. And yeah, I just came to the UK sort of 20 years ago, basically, you know, fresh from my computer science degree, started working here at the University of Surrey, where our company is also based. Yeah. And yeah, Reserve a Charge itself started like two years ago, but it has a. As a background, which we will talk about, you know, how we got there.

Ralf Kernchen [00:02:59]:
Yeah, so, so I'm, you know, you know, happy to be here, so.

Liz Allan [00:03:03]:
Fantastic. So. And you've also, you're, you've also kind of. Because you've been involved in this, in sort of the tech sector for quite some time, haven't you? You've been involved in sort of app development and things like that for a long time. So was that, was that kind of where you really kind of. You, you know, you stuck at it and you wanted to, that's, that's the area that you wanted to kind of open up and develop?

Ralf Kernchen [00:03:28]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I, I was dreaming of helping people again, you know, to have good experiences and different, different areas. You know, when I, When I was here at university doing my PhD, I was involved in European research projects. Different areas, all sorts of different areas. But it always has a software aspect, an application aspect. So I've been working in smart home environments. I've been working in a sort of vehicle communication applications. So things like, you can imagine, sort of things like, you know, how do you optimise car traffic, you know, approaching a traffic light at what speed to optimally hit the green phase and these kinds of things.

Ralf Kernchen [00:04:13]:
Yes. And then that was working with big European car manufacturers, you know, deploying those communication technologies into their cars. It was quite complicated. So big computers in the back of the cars and then developing those applications and then testing them in big European test beds, basically. So it was great fun for me at the time and, you know, always, always user-focused on how we can improve their experience, you know, in any formal way. So.

Liz Allan [00:04:44]:
Sounds, sounds great. Honestly, that's, that's a. Yeah, I'm, I'm getting to know more and more about, about kind of where tech people come from and all of the things that they're really interested in. But let's, let's kind of talk about things we're interested in. Let's talk about Reserve and charge, then and what that's all about. I mean, it kind of says it on the tin, doesn't it, that it says the name on the tin. But let's talk about what, where it is, you know, when you decided that was the important thing that you wanted to kind of bring into the EV sector.

Ralf Kernchen [00:05:21]:
Yeah. So I Mean, obviously over my time I created possibly several solutions, but sort of the striking one we had is an OP that we built before COVID which is called Save a Space, which is a sort of parking reservation service at park and ride car parks. We'll get more to that in a minute. And then based on that experience, we thought, okay, wouldn't it be great for EV drivers to reserve an EV charge point in advance? So Reserve and Charge, in essence, is a cutting-edge, we call it a cutting-edge EV charge point demand management platform, which smartly manages EV charge point reservations. And we really want to provide the crucial missing link between the end users and the infrastructure to deliver a really seamless end-user charging experience. And we think so. Reservations will play a crucial part in that one because people do planning when they go on journeys, they do plan when they want to go to work, like park and ride car parks, but also residents who don't have off-street parking and they need to charge overnight some point, and they're relying on public charging infrastructure. So what better way is there than giving them the assurance to get access to a charge point by being able to make an advanced reservation? So yeah, Reserve and Charge essentially empower those EV users to make advanced Charge Point reservations.

Ralf Kernchen [00:06:52]:
And obviously it's a two-way game. We have charge point operators who want to get their charge points used, and what we want to do is efficiently manage those reservations for the charge point operators ' end-to-end users to optimise their network's usage. So it's a game about demand, end-user experience, and bringing those things together and leveraging the synergies you can get from that approach, basically.

Liz Allan [00:07:20]:
So when you're doing something like this, where do you even start? Do you know, to me it's kind of like thinking about, you know, how, how did you, how did you start? Do you, do you have to? Because we talked about it a little bit, didn't we? Kind of. You've got, you know, you've, you were working on various projects and with Innovate UK and things like that. But how did, how did it develop over time?

Ralf Kernchen [00:07:49]:
Yeah, I mean, generally we start with the end user. You know, we look at, you know, there's a problem. Is there a pain that end users experience? It's the same for parking or for EV charging, basically. So it's, it's a physical space somebody has to get to, you know, to either in the parking industry park their car there or in the EV industry charge their car. Right. And essentially one thing which always came up, you know, the user is not there to sort of, you know, park or charge the car. Not there. It's not their purpose. They're on the journey, they want to get to the office, you know, they want to get to a leisure destination or in the case of more industry relevant use cases like, you know, a lorry driver, they want to get to their destination to deliver a, you know, a package or you know, obviously in a logistic sense.

Ralf Kernchen [00:08:41]:
And you know, and, and, and everybody does some level of planning in their mind basically on how they're going about the journey, you know, so use Google to plan the journey or you check, you know, your office calendar when to go to the office or you check, you know, when is your train to go to the, you know, to the train station. So there's always a level of planning involved, some, something, some more conscious, some less conscious, basically. And that produces a certain level of what I call sort of cognitive overload or load, at least not always overload, but load, you know, and we want to make it as, as simple as possible from an end user so we want to understand their pains, they want to understand their current experiences and you know, in the EV industry sort of pain points are being discussed quite a lot. So we can have a bit of a chat about that one. But yeah, we start from an end user, look at how many people have that problem or report certain types of problems basically. And then we go about looking, you know, what's the opposite side. So what, what's the problem of the charge point operator delivering their service to the user or the user using the infrastructure and then we're trying to find the synergies between them, and that's how we got to sort of reserve and charge because there is a need from people who want to reserve charge points basically. And even if it's not 100% in all the cases, it's a significant percentage of users who want to do that.

Ralf Kernchen [00:10:14]:
So typically, we say around 40% of users would be, you know, or not. Not just 40% of users, actually 60% want to make reservations, but 40% would be actually willing to pay for them as well. So, so, and, and, and that's where I come from. It feels like, you know, if the user already puts a value in that one, you know, there must be a pain and there is a desire to get a better or a more suitable experience to what they want to achieve basically.

Liz Allan [00:10:41]:
So yeah, I suppose if so, that's.

Ralf Kernchen [00:10:43]:
That's where we start, you know.

Liz Allan [00:10:44]:
Yeah, I suppose if you've got that say, like a lot of the delivery drivers, you know, they've got a route to follow, haven't they? They've got their EV van, and they have to get to all of these different delivery spots, don't they? And they're trying to build in that, building that time to charge as well, because bands don't always have the same ranges as a car. So, how are you kind of finding that? When is it the fleet manager or somebody who's our fleet coordinator that would book that, book that space, or would it be that driver? I'm assuming it's not the driver because all they want to do is just think about, you know, if you're working for a business, you just want to get to where you want to get to, don't you?

Ralf Kernchen [00:11:40]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we don't have a direct fleet solution out there at the moment, but we know that obviously, you know, in the case of the EHGV or light good vehicle sort of sector, it is actually the operator who is quite interested to get the vehicles charged up, you know, and help the drivers to, you know, deliver that route or whatever it is. Right. So, and then depending on the bigger, the sort of, you know, delivery, what is it like, you know, pallets of things or size of the of the lorry, you know, and, and depending on what goods are loaded on there, you know, they are time sensitive. Right. So.

Liz Allan [00:12:22]:
Yes, yeah.

Ralf Kernchen [00:12:23]:
And, you know, and if you look into that type of industry, you will see that they have already, like, solutions where they can plan their logistics and dispatches and so on. And I think I just read an article recently, I can't remember where it was from, but those people who have bought like electric lorries, they're currently sort of just planning routes around the depot, basically, so that they can ensure that when the lorry is finished, they can charge it in the depot because the infrastructure there is not quite, quite there. So. But just the EHGV sector, ELGV is a bit more, you know, differentiated. I think what we kind of learned speaking to cities is that, you know, they want to make sure that fleets get green, that they're getting it, you know, that they get net zero, basically, and they're providing incentives. I remember speaking to Oxfordshire County Council, specifically Oxford City as well, you know, who run programs for taxi drivers to replace their taxis. But then they need to charge somewhere. Right.

Ralf Kernchen [00:13:30]:
So, if they don't get on the charger, they want to start driving around, they lose Time, they lose business basically. And the same goes for sort of delivery drivers, obviously. Again, it depends on what route you have, because maybe some of them can charge in the depot, others are more suitable to charge on the road or even overnight at the house, depending on what the policies are. Right. So.

Liz Allan [00:13:54]:
Yeah, yeah, and that's, and that's really important, isn't it? I mean, we've just been thinking about it. We're just about to take. In a few days' time, we're just about to take our son back to Exeter University for his second year. And we went down there in May, and literally, there was. So we went to a charging hub, and I won't say who it was. They are, they are really good. But literally, I think we had. There were either four or five Royal Mail vans turned up at this hub because they don't.

Liz Allan [00:14:30]:
They didn't have depot charging. Yeah, it's great because it's great utilisation for, for the, for the c. You know, the charge point operator. We were kind of. It was funny because like, our car was so sandwiched between a variety of red vans, you know, but, you know.

Ralf Kernchen [00:14:47]:
Yeah, I can see that one there.

Liz Allan [00:14:48]:
Yeah. They have to kind of work it, work it their, into their schedule on a, on a, on a. On a daily basis, don't they, these things?

Ralf Kernchen [00:14:56]:
Yeah, quite, yeah, quite right. Yeah. And then. And they need a certain speed and, you know, a certain size of the spaces just set. So it's important. So I mean, there are various scenarios obviously where reservations can, can kind of help. You know, everybody can relate to end users and what they want to do. But there are also commercial scenarios like EHGV, LGB turbocharging, you know, where you want to have some reliability on access.

Ralf Kernchen [00:15:22]:
And I think there's a huge sort of late, late group, you know, that, you know, you have to crack in order to, you know, deliver the Net zero targets that everybody is, you know, looking for to deliver and that these are the people who cannot charge at home, you know, and the government run a big project, so a big funding, you know, where the local authorities were applying for a chunk of money to install residential charging infrastructure. But equally they're asking kind of questions how we can make that usable to the, to the residents and how can we get the assurance that. To even buy an electric car, you know, because they're really concerned. If you ask anyone, it's like, I don't buy an electric car because why do I charge it, Basically, you know, overnight.

Liz Allan [00:16:08]:
So, yeah, if you've not got A drive, then it does, it does kind of in certain cases just make it a little bit, a little bit trickier, you know, and it's about the, it's about the affordability of it as well, isn't it? You know. Yeah, you know, because home charging for us it's 7p per kilowatt hour, you know, so overnight that is. But, but actually. So if you haven't got a drive, then it can make it a little bit trickier. Unless you've kind of got any of the gully solutions and things like that, you know.

Ralf Kernchen [00:16:44]:
Yeah, all of that helps. Right, so it's, you know, if you, if you can put your car in front of the pathway, then that works. Right? So yeah, and I think it's the second biggest big concern that the cities usually come up with when they, when they, because the, you know, the infrastructure is a bit fragmented really, because there's lots of different CPOs, lots of different kind of locations and obviously they're chosen for their, you know, potential of users turning, turning up there. Right. So, but you know, different locations, even a sort of demand for different charging speeds. You know, with hubs you need to have very quick chargers, but if you have an on-street charger, they don't need to all be quick because you can charge, you know, overnight basically. Or in our case, like the park and ride car park we're working on at the moment. And it was the Midlands, you know, where commuters would stay typically for 12 hours, you know, and that's the time where the car stands somewhere.

Ralf Kernchen [00:17:41]:
Where can it do that charging and be ready when you're kind of, kind of back, you know what I mean? So, but yeah, equally so, you know, so you need to be able to cater for this fragmented infrastructure. So we thought instead of sort of providing yet another app, basically our platform, you know, provides, which we would call like APIs that several different, you know, operators could integrate MSPs, CPOs, although we have a parking up, you know, obviously. But Reserve in Charge really is focused on trying to provide a horizontal platform to the market to provide, you know,a  consistent reservation experience across different CPOs, charge points, speeds, whatever you can think about.

Liz Allan [00:18:29]:
So yeah, so do you, do you want to talk a little bit about the, about the park and Ride, you know, kind of, yeah, the, this, you know, what you're, what you're doing in the West Midlands and how, how it's working, who you kind of typical customers would be, you know, because there is a real benefit to knowing like you Just said knowing that you can stay on a charger for 12 hours while you're working, you know, unable to come back to that car park and no, you're not going to get a fine for being there, you know, if you're doing a trickle charge or something like that. But you know, you've got plenty of charge to get home, et cetera, et cetera. Just tell us a bit about that.

Ralf Kernchen [00:19:10]:
Yeah, so I mean, I think I would say, you know, park and ride car parks, that's where we sort of started because we, we've been able to sort of work with Transport for the Midlands as a regional partner since a while, even before, before co and you know, I've sort of touched on problems before. Right. So it's like, you know, people still have to find parking spaces although they don't charge, you know, and, but, but equally we, we sort of experienced that, you know, where the pain in the parking has a certain level. That's what I talked about earlier, the pain of users. Right. We've done the same kind of research into the EV drivers, and we found that their pain is actually much higher because of limited infrastructure, limited reliability and that kind of stuff. So Transport for West Midlands sort of provided us a platform very early on to develop these kind of end user focused solutions and they can also see a practical benefit on using their infrastructure in a, in a good way and influencing sort of good user behavior, sort of, you know, so you know, if you have a really, you know, busy site or even charging site or like park and ride car parks, you will, we will see, depending on how you provide a service, like sort of a rock up service, then people start coming earlier and earlier and then other user groups are sort of a little bit sort of left out. And as we know, some cities are really inclusive and want to provide solutions to all citizens when they need it.

Ralf Kernchen [00:20:54]:
So in that case, it was about how we can provide a service that they can make, everybody can make use of basically, in the first instance, and then obviously from a charge point operator point of view, again, lots of different, you know, targets, you know, there's also the revenue aspect for them. So if they install the charge point in a location, whether it's a slow charger or a more rapid charger, basically, then they're only installing a location where it can provide the biggest return on investment. So you have park and ride car parks which are close to business locations, you know, at the train stations or residents who don't have access to off-street parking. So that essentially can provide a combination of, okay, that can be used by a commuter, it can be used by logistics or like a van-type user, or it could be used by a resident overnight, because that's where you then make your infrastructure, you know, sweat the best. Basically, you would say so. And that's, that's where we kind of started this kind of commuter experience at first. Okay, I want to have the assurance that I can get to my train on time and when I rock up to the car park, that I get my parking space or EV charger, you know, ready for me to receive me. So we are talking about, you know, a numbered parking or charging bay and reserving and charging obviously is about the charging bay.

Ralf Kernchen [00:22:33]:
So if you would make a reservation wire at the moment to save a space up, essentially you get a numbered charger, you know, numbers are quite clear on the charger to make it user-friendly, drive into your space, plug in and then just press one button to start your charging. Basically, because the you know, the chargers are prepared for you, they know that you're coming. So you, it's not like that. You have to wait for the charger. The charger is waiting for you. That's how we say it.

Liz Allan [00:23:05]:
That's always good. But what. Right, so I've got a question for you then, because there's something I want to kind of come back to in a minute, but there's something that you just got me thinking about. So, so you've got, you've got a charger that's reserved. I had this, we had this in France when we were on holiday, and we rocked up to a charger, and it was allowing us, you know, we had an issue with, we couldn't initiate it. There was an error on the charger. But if you've got somebody else who rocks up to that charger.

Ralf Kernchen [00:23:44]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:23:45]:
How do they know that? That person, you know, has. So they might come two minutes earlier. But how does that, how do they know that that charge is reserved? Because you've only got a space, haven't you? And they're going to get out of the car and they're going to plug theirs in. Or will they get that far?

Ralf Kernchen [00:24:02]:
Yeah, so don't want to get too technical right now.

Liz Allan [00:24:07]:
No, that's fine. Yeah, I get you.

Ralf Kernchen [00:24:08]:
Yeah. I'm trying to. From a user experience, from a user experience point of view. So we're taking care of locking the charger for the user who made the reservation. Basically. Now there are all sorts of questions. You come around that one. But we sort of developed it in a way that the charger speed is configurable.

Ralf Kernchen [00:24:28]:
You know, we work it out with the client, what the locking times are. You know, there are things like, you know, what happens when people don't arrive at the charging space, you know, you know. But I had a very interesting discussion with a German influencer, EV driver influencer in, in, in the, in one of the events in Berlin. And, and, and there are, there are some obviously reservation solutions out there, mostly something called reserved now at the moment. So, where are you on the press of the button to get the charger locked for 15 minutes, and you know where this is enabled, there's not a lot of signage sometimes at the charger. So he found it quite annoying that as a non-reservation user, you rock up and then it looks like the charger is out of service basically. So, so he quit, you know, he, he said, you know, obviously it needs to go along with some signage that this charger is reservable.

Liz Allan [00:25:23]:
Yes.

Ralf Kernchen [00:25:23]:
And then from, from our experience if the user learns about that service then they could actually decide to also, you know, make, make a reservation which is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy where it's not so common at the moment. If it were available, we could actually convert users quite easily if they wanted to make reservations, basically. So it's a combination of locking the charger for the specific user at the right time which fits to the scenario in that case configuring that in the platform and then managing it from, from our side for the kind of edge cases like where maybe a charger is iced or you know, somebody stays longer than they're supposed to be and then helping people to find alternatives basically. So, that's how our parking reservation service has worked for more than two years. And so we know how often that might happen, and we know how to help the user. And yeah, if you look carefully around, any type of reservation solution will not technically guarantee a space. It will guarantee you, you know, to get the money back if the reservation fails, basically.

Liz Allan [00:26:43]:
I mean, that kind of makes sense. And I like what you said earlier on as well. This is what comes back to encouraging good user behaviour. Because of that, that is one of the things, isn't it? And I'm not just saying it's about this, it's not just for charging, you know, even just parking and things like that. And because I've reserved parking spaces myself, not to do with charging, but I reserve parking before, just so that I know that I've got a space. Because like, you say that that kind of level of, oh, my God, I'm gonna go to this place and it's going to be ridiculous. It was like Wednesday. I was going.

Liz Allan [00:27:25]:
We were thinking about driving up to Oxford, which to me is only 35 minutes away. But I know what the parking's like in Oxford, you know, so. But the train is dead easy. So I'm going, going up on the, on, on the train. It's. But it's things like that, isn't it? You kind of like, right, you go through various. I do go through various scenarios. Do we do that? How will it work? Blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and my husband suggested the, the kind of the, the park and ride up in Oxford.

Liz Allan [00:27:58]:
But even, even I, I've kind of just said, no, look, we're going on the train. I don't know what time I'm going to be coming back. I don't really want, you know, I don't know whether it'll be dark. It's getting darker earlier, isn't it? Now it's just those things, it's just like flipping an egg, you know, so you have to kind of think about it that way. But I do like the fact that you are using the good user behaviour ideas as part of this, because this is what it's about, isn't it? It's about encouraging people to do the right, the right thing and behave in that way. Not to ice, not to do this, not to do that, you know?

Ralf Kernchen [00:28:35]:
Yeah, yeah. And as you mentioned it, I mean, it was quite prevalent as well from the, you know, Transport for West Midlands. Like, again, you know, you want people to think, how long do I stay on a charger? You know, sort of. And, there's obviously a scenario where people, you know, might plug in the car, charge for two hours and then stay in the space for 10 hours. Right. And they're not charging for eight hours. And that's a bit sort of, let's call it a bit extreme. What I'm just saying right now, because looking, looking at the actual charging data in, in the West Midlands, you can see quite a good correlation between the length of the, of the, of the charge and, and, and the amount of charge they've been.

Ralf Kernchen [00:29:20]:
Been, been taken. Right? So. And you know, again, really complex again, because, you know, you could have a car with 40 kilowatt batteries and the car with 60 or 80 kilowatt batteries and depending on that, you charge more or less also. What is the battery charging status? But what's important is that you provide some incentives to the user, some support of the user on how to use that infrastructure well and help the charge point operator to kind of incentivise that one. So in the West Midlands, we came up with a scenario now specifically, obviously tailored to that park and ride, where you would have a time-based reservation fee, like you would pay a time-based parking fee. So. Yeah, and they would need to pay it up front basically.

Ralf Kernchen [00:30:07]:
So they would think a moment, you know, how long am I staying on the charger? And try to book the optimal time. And if they were not charging the full reservation session, you know, they're kind of allowed to be on there again, you know, it's a slow charger. So other, you know, rapid chargers, my different types of, you know, configurations where you really just allowed to stay there for an hour and then some sort of overstay type scenario starts, starts working. But in that case, basically, you know, if this were to stop charging, a time-based fee would keep going basically. Right, so, and just to make sure we're not there to penalise people, you know, it's about, you know, good charging behaviour. And in the case of transport forward to the Midlands, they're also not in the spirit of penalising people, you know what I mean? So it's been set up in a way that there's an incentive for people to use it in the right way, basically.

Liz Allan [00:31:09]:
But that's the best thing, isn't it? Because you know, unless you, I suppose, right, in my mind that's about ground rules. You know, it's with anything. It's like having children, isn't it? You know, you have to put your ground rules down. And I'm not saying that all public, general public children. I'm just saying, you know, putting those ground rules down and this is how this works is, is the best way to start. Because actually, you are setting a standard then, aren't you? Yeah, so you've got your standard, this is what we want, you know, we're not here to penalise you, as you're saying. But, but the, these are, these are the things that, that we expect as part of the use of this, you know, service. So, so to me that's that setting, setting a standard, setting those kind of ground rules.

Liz Allan [00:31:57]:
And people understand, don't they?

Ralf Kernchen [00:31:59]:
They do understand, you know, and we could see it on our sort of more than 7,000 reservations on the park and ride car parks. Well, actually, overall it was more than 20,000, but since we started the commercial part of that one, it was more than 7,000 on the parking side. We're ramping up the EV site right now. So, you can see that the way we designed this service is also being sort of user-friendly. So if people have problems, they can report a problem like a blocked space or a blocked charger. We'll try to help them already in the app, basically. But if that doesn't work and they have another problem, they can write to someone or speak to someone in that case. And all the conversations that we had with users when there are problems are usually quite positive, and when they're being helped, basically.

Ralf Kernchen [00:32:58]:
So if they know there is someone, it's another sort of cognitive load off your mind, you know, it's like, you know, there's someone there who can help me. Normally, I rock up to this place and then I'm in the middle of nowhere and, you know, I don't know what to do. You know what I mean? So obviously, why can't we help with Internet connectivity? That's not the thing. But on the sites that we are deployed, you know, in the city, you know, people are hugely appreciative of, you know, help offered, you know, so it's really good.

Liz Allan [00:33:29]:
You know, sometimes that's all people want, isn't it? You know, they don't just want to be left, you know, on their own. And kind of gone are the days of sort of like having people in car parks actually going around and helping people. So, so if you, you know, if there's a little bit of help, that's all. To me, that's a really good thing because that helps you with your reputation. Because that's, that's the other thing, isn't it? It's about building your reputation as an organisation that's supportive.

Ralf Kernchen [00:34:05]:
Yeah. And, and, and you know, if you, if you work with cities, I mean, you know, their focus is the citizen and the experience of the services provided, and that really helps, you know, to provide something that, you know, cities can support, you know, you know that they're very sensitive. You know, I just, this morning I read completely unrelated still mobility, but the shutdown of the lime scooters in London. Borrow. Right. So, you know, again, you know, it seemed like that consul deemed that that wasn't so customer-friendly, you know, so, so yeah, if you, you know, it needs to be provided in the right way that citizens can use services basically. And again, infrastructure or charging infrastructure is maybe not as easy to use. Yet as it's supposed to be.

Ralf Kernchen [00:34:56]:
So.

Liz Allan [00:34:56]:
And I do like the fact that you started with the customer first, you know.

Ralf Kernchen [00:35:01]:
Yeah, we always did. So we kept that. But you do have to, you have to be clear. I mean, the solution we provide is obviously for the customer; the direct customer is a CPO, you know, is an EMSP. Although EMSPs actually understand the aspect of user experience quite well because they kind of own the groups of users on their apps, which we talked earlier about a little bit. But yeah, it needs to work for the CPO. It needs to have the effects of, you know, you know, are the users using my infrastructure in the best possible way? Can I guarantee my return on investment, you know, you know, people not turning up for 10 hours is not, you know, not conducive to a good charging infrastructure basically. So yeah, because you have to manage that one for all sites involved.

Liz Allan [00:35:54]:
You know, So I mean the CPO wants their return on investment, you say they want an increase in utilisation, you know, so, and that's, that's, that's, we, we all know that like I say that the stuff, the thing that I like about yours is the, is how you are supporting the, the end user, you know, so you've thought about the customer, but you've also thought about the end user. Because I've got to point out, you are an EV driver as well, aren't you?

Ralf Kernchen [00:36:21]:
I am, yes, for sure. You know, tested the ins and outs of everywhere like many people do in the industry and you can see on LinkedIn, LinkedIn, you know, so whether I go to Cornwall, up to the Midlands and due to my, you know, background, well, my history or whatever, my up upbringing, I'm obviously from Germany, so there's still family over there. And at least once per year, we tend to drive the whole way to Berlin. So it gives a great, great opportunity to test the whole European charging infrastructure. And so yeah, it's whatever I can test in the cities and things like that. I do. And it's quite funny some of the things which been mentioned in the conference a couple of weeks ago in Berlin, like sort of restrictions in the city centre. If we go to a 22-kilowatt charger, you know, and it says you have to be back in four hours, but you're like, well, I need more than four hours, you know, you know, so if you could make a reservation there for the time that you need it, you know what I mean? So then that would be a manageable but flexible user-centred, you know, situation basically.

Ralf Kernchen [00:37:34]:
So those are the kind of things I'm trying to look at and to learn from another really funny experience when we last set off in the summer to holiday in Austria. And I do like Tesla chargers, I have to admit, you know, because they're usually, you know, accessible, available and functioning, and it's quite easy to use as well. But, you know, navigating the different locations of the chargers is not always easy. And we had a roof box on, on the car and, you know, came somewhere in France, I think around Lille or whatever it was, and, you know, at a sort of shopping mall where the, where chargers were installed, not just Tesla, all sorts of charges, but they had a height restriction with sort of metal barriers over the top. You couldn't get to the chargers because, you know, with the roof blocks on top, you couldn't actually go in, you know, although it's a huge area with lots of car parking and so on, you know, so, yeah, so you still get these kind of, you know, experiences because, you know, a petrol station looks always everywhere the same. But, but the chargers, they're all different, fragmented, different locations. Well, I'm not saying that's a negative thing, I'm just, I'm saying it provides, actually. It's quite nice.

Ralf Kernchen [00:38:53]:
Instead of going to a smelly petrol station, you know, driving up to a shopping centre, you know, with the whole family, get the people out of the car, walk around while the car is charging. I think that's one of the, you know, best experiences I can get from EV charging, you know, so we had.

Liz Allan [00:39:11]:
Our very first underground EV charging experience while we were in northern Spain for a holiday and, and it was a, it was a charging hub in an underground car park. And I can't remember, I think there was some, there was some. There was a car rental firm, so there were two. Lots of chargers, and they were all. I think they were either. I think they were 22 kilowatt, but we knew we were going to be there a little while because we're going to see some friends in the city. But that was an interesting one because you just kind of. I don't know why I.

Liz Allan [00:39:49]:
We. Maybe it's because we don't tend to have them. I haven't seen them in the uk, but that was really, that was really interesting. And just, you know, we always use octopus electroverse because it works for us, but it, it did, it worked the first time. It was just a different place to have the chargers, and there were quite a few places there, and it was funny where we went to different locations to charge because we need to charge our car more often than some people. You know, even though we had decent temperatures. But, you know, it was. Sometimes we couldn't.

Liz Allan [00:40:28]:
We both, my husband and I, said our bladders gave up before our car, you know, so actually it was one. I'm just saying, you know, gave up like that. But it was just one of, it was one of those, one of those things. But this, we had lots and lots of different experiences this time. The underground one was great. In fact, most of the ex. Most of the charging experiences were, were really, really good. I think there was one that we had that was in a remote location, and we were next to a Tesla on a separate one, a slower charger, because we were going to be there for some time, and it wouldn't initiate.

Liz Allan [00:41:06]:
So that was it. That was the only kind of issue that we had. But yeah, you do have to plan, and you do want to do these things. And yes, we didn't and we didn't reserve the chargers, but actually if we hadn't, if we'd have been going into a, in a really, really busy city center because we could kind of see which ones were available and because I suppose sometimes when it's, when there's two of you in the car, it makes it a little bit easier because you can kind of see which ones are available. They're all available. But sometimes it doesn't always, it depends on how quickly the back office updates to see whether they are.

Ralf Kernchen [00:41:42]:
Yeah, yeah.

Liz Allan [00:41:45]:
I totally get it with regards to reserving because you do want to know that that charge is available. You know, it's a massive difference, doesn't it?

Ralf Kernchen [00:41:54]:
But yeah, or even if it. Then, you know, if there's really a problem, which we think is sort of a low percentage really, then, you know, having, having a channel where you can get the help to find an alternative one.

Liz Allan [00:42:08]:
Yes.

Ralf Kernchen [00:42:09]:
You know, peace of mind, basically, that's what we think sort of helps. We've, we've seen it, we've seen it with the cyberspace user and how that works for them, basically. And one thing which is quite important, what I was speaking to some of our EMSP partners, hopefully going forward, is that, you know, when we see people making reservations, they do it again and again, basically. So there are those scenarios, as you said, park and white car parks or city centres, where people travel regularly. If they have an experience that works for them, they will repeat the behaviour, basically. So from our early parking reservations, basically we've seen that we've got a user who's done over a year, more than 200 reservations.

Liz Allan [00:43:03]:
That level of comfort for that person, isn't it? For those users who use it regularly, it's that level of comfort, like you said right at the beginning, it's taking that stress away from that person and that, that in itself, you don't want additional stress, do you? You know, so that person's coming back again and again because they know that they can use you, and it works. So that's good.

Ralf Kernchen [00:43:28]:
Yeah, because it starts to become a reliable experience rather than sort of thinking if I get there, you know, it's the space for me or arrive five minutes later. And again, it depends on how the operator wants to set up the service. Some might be more towards stronger incentives for users to behave or to reuse the infrastructure in the right way, but then some are more like transport. I'm not saying that they don't want to provide an incentive, but they make sure. So if our users come five minutes earlier, they charge us there for them. If they come five minutes later, the charger is there for them. You know what I mean? So it's also how to design the service that, you know, this kind of conscious load is as low as possible, the stress is as low, low, low as possible, basically. So, and listening to some of the industry research which starts happening now around reservations, we had the Energy Saving Trust, I think, presentations a few weeks ago, basically where one of the chargeburn operators kind of mentioned how complicated it could be to implement a reservation service on the street, which I kind of agree with.

Ralf Kernchen [00:44:43]:
It's complex. Maybe not complicated, but complex. And you have to work with the city around enforcement, you know, making sure that you have the signage and that kind of stuff. But exactly that's what we've done in the Westerns to provide this type of complete setup, basically. So yes, you have a technical solution and we have it as an API, which can be integrated into every app, but there are still different scenarios that need to be looked at from end to end. Customer experience.

Liz Allan [00:45:19]:
Nice. You know, like you say that level of comfort is, is good and you're getting good, good feedback from people.

Ralf Kernchen [00:45:27]:
Oh yeah.

Liz Allan [00:45:28]:
Anyway, aren't you?

Ralf Kernchen [00:45:29]:
Yeah. So I mean I, I think it's funny because you think about those services and you know, what your commercial impact is you're aiming at basically, but then seeing how people use it and you know, how you have to then sort of iteratively potentially adapt it, you know, but you know, it provides you with a solution which then works for everybody involved, which is really nice to see it need to listen to the user feedback, you know, so, and the industry has been, you know, has been preaching that one, so for sure, you know.

Liz Allan [00:46:02]:
So, I'm going to finish on one, on a question, final question.

Ralf Kernchen [00:46:06]:
Yeah, that's all right.

Liz Allan [00:46:07]:
So what would you like the EV charging experience to be like in the next 10 years? And where would you like to see reserve and charge in that future?

Ralf Kernchen [00:46:25]:
Yeah, so I, I think I would like to see the sort of potential of all those kind of technical solutions are realized. You know, we're not just talking about reservations, you know, we're talking about vehicle to grid scenarios which are now also, you know, already sort of coming live at the home, but that needs to roll out to everywhere so that again, people are not, you know, disincentivized or I don't know the English term right now, but sort of, you know, that they cannot use this type of services because they don't have a home charger basically, you know, so, and so I like those technical things to come through to the user in, in a way that makes it easy, easy to use for them. So I, I, I, I'm hoping that our reserve in charge, well, our vision is that reserve in charge, you know, play plays a part in that one. And with this notion of a reservation for, for an end user and the knowledge for the operator that when people come and then sort of the link into the energy providers, you can come up with scenarios where users can charge for a reasonable fee, possibly take a home contract to a charger of their choice or in some formal way provided by the city or whatever, so that this kind of inequality is not a thing for people who don't have off street parking. And if I wanted to paint a little picture, sort of like where reserve in charge would want to go. Obviously, with all the advances of AI and these types of things, you know, there are huge opportunities to even further reduce that cognitive load. So instead of me deciding when I need to charge the car, you know, something could tell you, you know, like on Friday is really busy, you know, you know, why don't you charge on Thursday? You know, and by the way, you know, it's sustainable energy, so you can get like 20 off. And I, I know that those similar types of scenarios can exist with octopus electroverse, but I don't think it's yet as integrated and Easy for the user to kind of forget about the charging experience or be helped to make those kind of planning decisions.

Ralf Kernchen [00:48:59]:
So that's where I hope this is going.

Liz Allan [00:49:02]:
Like it. Well, I look forward to kind of meeting you at one of these very many future events that we're both going to.

Ralf Kernchen [00:49:11]:
So plentiful many.

Liz Allan [00:49:14]:
It is. It is event season, isn't it, for the sector? But look, it's been lovely to talk to you. It really has.

Ralf Kernchen [00:49:20]:
Yes. Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:49:21]:
I hope everybody's kind of who's watching and listening. I hope you've got a lot out of this because, you know, he's Ralph and the team are looking at it from a really good angle, and I, I kind of, I like this. It's, you know, it kind of calls to my customer experience, you know, sort of my. That side of me. So. So, yeah. Thank you.

Liz Allan [00:49:43]:
Thank you, thank you.

Ralf Kernchen [00:49:44]:
Thanks. Listen, and you can hold us accountable in the future, then if we.

Liz Allan [00:49:49]:
Oh, we'll give you 20 lashes. No, we will do that.

Ralf Kernchen [00:49:52]:
Yes. This customer experience is not how we.

Liz Allan [00:49:55]:
Hey, I just. No, it'd be good. It's good to see how it all starts, you know, when you start moving. Moving forward with things. So. So on that note, I'm going to say thank you. I'm going to say to everybody watching and listening, please, like, subscribe, subscribe and share. Go to our LinkedIn podcast page.

Liz Allan [00:50:12]:
So Electric Evolution on. On LinkedIn, we'll share all of these, but please just share the story. It'd be great.

Ralf Kernchen [00:50:20]:
Yes. Yeah. And if you want to try it out, give us a shout. We'll be happy to demonstrate in the West Midlands.

Liz Allan [00:50:25]:
Exactly. And I was going to say he's a poet and he doesn't know it. All right, on that note, I'm going to say thank you for watching and listening, and I will see you next time. Bye. Bye.

Ralf Kernchen [00:50:37]:
Bye.