#2 Brendan Wheeler: The Keys To EV Infrastructure & Scaling in Australia

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Brendan Wheeler, co-founder of EVSE, joins the EV Charging Podcast to share his entrepreneurial journey in the electric vehicle (EV) charging industry. From humble beginnings in a Sydney garage to becoming a major force in Australia’s EV infrastructure, Brendan discusses the challenges, successes, and future of EV charging.

Transcript

Welcome to the second episode of the EV Charging podcast, a new series that's taking you behind the scenes of the EV charging industry in Australia and around the world. I'm Jeff Sykes. And I'm Daniel Carson. And we're your hosts from Solar Choice. This is episode two in our 10 part series on EV charging. If you missed the first one with Tim Washington, you can go back and find it on your favorite podcast app. Still to come in the series, we have interviews from energy visionary, Stefan Grosjean from Belgium, serial entrepreneur, and co-founder of OMI, David Watson, and a leading voice of reason from the EV Council, Ross Durango.

We've got another exciting interview to share with you this week from Australian industry leader, Brendan Wheeler of EVSE. Brendan sat down with us at the end of 2024 in EVSE's Western Sydney headquarters to tell us about his experience starting the company with his co-founder, Sam Corky's.

Brendan takes us back to Sam's parents' garage and some pretty funny stories from the early days of EVSE. He gives us a reality check on some of the issues facing public charging in Australia and we discuss what the future of the industry might look like as pretty much everything with wheels goes electric. And now, here's our interview with Brendan Wheeler. So you grew up in Sydney? Yes.

Was there something like early in your life that made you think that you might go down an entrepreneurial route? Did you have business owners in family or friends or anything like that? The short answer is no, not really. I've always been interested in business to a degree, but I've never sort of had that exposure probably up until more recently. But yeah, I think for us, for Sam and myself who started the business, we always interested in doing something but couldn't quite find a business to start like, you know, ideas,

What about this? What about that? And this whole business really came about after we traveled to Europe in 2014 and we saw EVs for the first time, knew nothing about them, had never read about them or saw them in real life. seeing them plastered all over the streets of Amsterdam, seeing charging stations there and electric taxis and all sorts of things, it really sparked curiosity in us. And it was sort of that moment that we had

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a glimpse of the future, which was really exciting. that stimulated us to sort of race back and start the business. Sam's initial idea, and he convinced me it was gonna be really easy and we could just set up this website and we could keep working our full-time jobs, but just have this thing on the side. Anyway, so it wasn't easy and it didn't take off. And year after year, he'd keep telling me that this is the year it's gonna happen this year. But you can see from the numbers across Australia, the EV uptake was really slow.

2014 2015 it was really a an enthusiast market right you know there was and I think a Nissan Leaf was Was probably the only option at the time and maybe a plug-in hybrid so the vehicle market was almost non-existent The cars 100k plus for that glorified golf carts right? The cars didn't look appealing they actually were designed to look a little bit different versus today's EVs where they're designed to look normal So the mass market appeal wasn't there was they looked sort of quite bubbly

and funky and not to everyone's taste, the range was pretty average. Charging infrastructure was obviously non-existent. at that time it was really, there wasn't a market, because we'd seen that in the future, was like you'd seen it, seen it coming. And then as you started to dig into the research, other parts of the world that were making that transition were starting to put in.

into legislation that they were going to head this way, different OEMs starting to signal that they're phasing these vehicles out and they're changing their whole production philosophies around it. So you could kind of see that that was happening and whether we liked it or not, it was coming. But it certainly took a lot of belief and...

conviction that that vision was gonna come to truth, particularly during the first four or five years. That's interesting because it certainly feels inevitable today in 2024 that every vehicle on the road eventually will be electric, but 10 years ago there was probably less than a couple of thousand EVs on the road, so it sounds like you were in that same mindset that from that observation of European markets that were firehead of Australia that this was an inevitable journey that Australia was heading down and that you had an opportunity to get in at sort of grassroots level. Yeah, but look on the other hand, it was a good thing because it meant we could start from scratch with basically no resources, right? I think if we had that approach today, it wouldn't be viable. Like the market's already established, you've got, you know, big credible players with plenty of resources behind them, experience, you know, it allowed us to make some of those mistakes, sort of refine what we're doing and how

we went to market, but also build some really good partnerships that have actually carried on through the course of that time. some of the local governments we've worked with, for instance, you know, they were just getting their first vehicles at the time. And since that point, we've actually gone on a journey with them as they've electrified their fleet. And, know, they might be up to 60 or 70 vehicles and we've done multiple depots for them. So that's been cool to actually see that and be able to share that with people that are starting that journey now. Yeah, it's a huge competitive advantage.

where we saw this all energy last week, like there are new competitors in the EV charging space, whether it's resi public, whatever, that are entering the market now. You've just got this first mover advantage and you've got so many runs on the board with so many different stakeholders that you set yourselves up for what's coming next. Yeah, and I think the key difference is, right, when you think about EV charging, a lot of people fixate on the charging hardware itself, but that's the only really one component of a bigger picture. What I talk to the

about and what our mission at EVSE is, it's all about powering people. That could be your livelihood, be it a work vehicle, a fleet vehicle, a truck, or your lifestyle. So the way you get to work, the way you get to and from to pick the kids up and go on holidays. So at the end of this is someone's life and we're powering people. So the hardware is one element of that, but you've got to wrap in the sort of feasibility and design of the

like are we designing something that can scale and grow with that company that's fit for purpose, that's within their budget, or are you just whacking in sort of the cheapest, nastiest solution? The hardware, is it supported, is it reliable, is it tried and tested, is it designed to have longevity, it open standard, OCPP protocols, those sorts of things. And then the software element, so how do we support a customer to minimise the cost of charging, to optimise their operation. and provide the data that they need for their ESG reporting. And then operations and maintenance. It's something that most people don't think about, but the reality is you've invested a lot of capital into this infrastructure. The last thing you want is for this thing not to work when you wake up the next day and that work vehicle or truck isn't charged. So it's wrapping all that together and providing a solution versus just a product. I think that's the differentiator.

pretty easy for people to do and you'll see that at All Energy. There's 40, 50 different boxes there all claiming to do much the same thing. So that's actually not the hard bit. It's wrapping it all together and giving that customer or that person confidence that they can make the transition and that if something goes wrong, you don't have three or four different parties pointing the finger at each other and you stuck in the middle. So I think that's the key with EVSE. It's about being a solutions provider and being the point of responsibility for that customer.

Yeah, I think it's a good point and one we've seen play out in an interesting way in the solar industry over the last 15, 16 years. It's natural for a consumer to look.

first and foremost at the products because you get a data sheet, that's the physical, tangible element that's gonna hit your home or business. So people tend to zoom in that and then they zoom more on the solar panels than they do on the other components. But really the satisfaction and outcomes that we see usually tie back to picking the right installation company, picking the right service provider rather than picking the right product, if you know what I mean.

We're getting a snapshot of where if yes, he has has grown to and evolved to at this point in time But actually want to throw back to the early days. Yes When you and Sam corkies started it, what did that actually look like? What were the first year or two? Was it you know in someone's parents basement? Yeah, so it was his parents garage and I think we you know at the time we were a bit younger no kids no sort of mortgages or anything like that and Chucked in sort of ten grand each and built a website basically

We modeled it bit off realestate.com, so EVSE is an industry term which basically...

symbolises electric vehicle supply equipment. like, that should rank well on Google. That was pretty much it. His wife made a logo. We got some products from Europe and whacked them on the website. Interestingly, the first customer we ever had was Optus. And they bought a stencil from us that we didn't even have. So we had to find somewhere that made this stencil. It was actually in the US. Ship it over here. Sam hand delivered it in his car. And we lost money.

Funnily enough Optus then came back to us maybe four years later and since that point we've gone on to deploy maybe 70 chargers across their campus at Macquarie Park, a full stack of installation hardware, the software piece and the management all wrapped together. So that was sort of the first shift of our business was to go from just sort of selling a product to delivering a service. So, you know, we started to work with a subcontractor network and our first employee was actually an electrical engineer.

So neither Sam or myself had any knowledge at all. He was a pharmacist and I was a chiropractor, zero knowledge, but it probably speaks to the fact that these days on the internet you can almost teach yourself anything. And when you're passionate and interested about things, you can really learn anything. Also at the time there wasn't that much knowledge anyway, so if you read a couple of pages and listened to a few podcasts, you're probably ahead of

You're one of the experts. Exactly, so the bar was very low at that time so it worked in our favour but that was sort of the first shift of the business was into looking at delivering more of solution versus just a product.

And that's kind of going from an e-commerce business that really only exists online to having staff and action in the real world. How far into the journey was that? So that was probably three years in. So it took a while. So we sort of went through the process. We were actively just like not avoiding doing installation at that time. We actually hadn't even driven an EV at that point. Like there was a couple of meetings we had to go to with customers and we would have to rent an EV as a company.

EVEE, they're still around and they do electric vehicle rentals. So we would sort of have to park down the road and sort of walk or hire an EV just to sort of attend meetings so we looked like we knew what we talking about. So there was a lot of that. There was obviously just a lot of, you know, the unglamorous side of it, packing boxes, getting shipments in, printing off labels, dropping it to Australia Post.

So that was really, you know, the first three years was out of the garage. We moved to Sam's garage when he finally got a place and that was a bit bigger until his wife kicked us out and we sort of got our first property. But yeah, he'll tell you himself, his dad told him this was a stupid idea. You know, what are you doing? You're wasting your time. It must have been interesting, as you mentioned, moving into installations. You know, nowadays,

electricians who have experience installing EV chargers, a dime a dozen. Also the products come with much clearer manuals. It's a much simpler task, but in those...

early days you would have been dealing with electricians who were learning how to install an EV charger for the first time I assume. So what was that process like? I imagine you've been on a similar journey. Absolutely. think we lent a lot on Europe and some of our European partners who maybe had a bit more of that experience so we could understand from them what worked and what didn't work. yeah, was a lot of trial and error. Luckily, earlier on the volume was pretty low. And at that

everyone was quite forgiving as well. It new technology, you were dealing with people that were very passionate and enthusiastic and early adopters, so they're not expecting stuff to work perfectly. They bought into that idea that they're part of that sort tip of the spear and this is all evolving and new versus now where it's that early majority phase and maybe people that aren't as tech savvy that need to have things simple and work straight away out of the box. So yeah, I'd say there were more forgiving times.

lower. No one knew anything. I imagine the next big shift would have been going from building out an install network to then making the decision to have your own branded products or develop your own products. How far in was that? So that was probably a couple of years after we started sort of providing the services. I think a real shift from us came from, you know, just

A couple of points, one was the user experience. By that point we had more experience as EV drivers and we were just sort of confused that this was future technology but felt like it was, the user experience was like from the 90s. It was really clunky. The sort of analogy I'd often say is.

how often do you turn up to a petrol pump and rely on a flashing LED light to tell you what's going on? The idea of intuitiveness and seamlessness and just users being able to pick it up and work things out just felt off.

So we were sort of motivated to find a better way to make it easier for customers. Because at that time, we were selling it, we were sort coordinating it, and we were dealing with the support. So people that were complaining about things, we were hearing that firsthand. So in the early days, was things like just getting a screen on the front of a charger so that people knew what was happening. Because day after day, you're getting calls, what does this yellow flashing line three times mean? If there was a screen that just told you, that would solve that, and we wouldn't have to deal with that call.

So the user experience was a big one for us, which sort of pushed us down that path. And we just felt like we wanted that to be better. And then the support and service piece was also a frustrating part. We were often stuck in the middle waiting for someone else to come back to us. They didn't think it was a problem. Customers annoyed at us. We were in the situation a few times where we had to loop customers into that sort of communication just to say, hey, we're doing what we can here. But XYZ's

causing us all sorts of problems and then we have to fix it out of our pocket. So it was quite frustrating and unlike solar where most people are on grid, right? Like you can get by if your solar system stopped working. It's inconvenient but it's not the end of the world. But if your EV charger doesn't work, you've invested a lot of money in a truck or that's your way to get to and from work or pick up the kids. That's a problem. And it's not a problem that people are willing to weeks and months to fix. So that's really what sort of pushed us into needing

to have more control over the outcome, needing to be able to move quicker and provide customers with a better experience. So that really facilitated that shift. think had we have been getting what we needed from the start, we probably wouldn't have ever got there. So it was really born out of frustration from us. And just for, I guess, the benefit of the audience, the

brand name of EVSC's charger is Ocula. Many of you people would know it. We've got an independent review on our website and YouTube channel. And as you mentioned, one of the point of differences is that there is an LCD screen. It also is very compatible with solar. So for customers that have solar installed, it's a good option. Something that we see through our network is that

Obviously a lot of the EV market are Teslas and Tesla have their wall connector that is seemingly at a very cheap price point at around $700 but also doesn't have a lot of the bells and whistles that really make the charger valuable to a customer. it sort of creates a hard dynamic in the market where someone that you'd expect to provide more of a premium solution is offering more of a cost

solution so how does that sort of play into your strategy in terms of what you guys are designing through Ocula? Yeah look I mean we understand that you know there's different budgets and different customers out there so the whole philosophy at EVSE is we want to have a range of products so that the product can suit the customer rather than the customer having to suit the product. So the idea of just having one box that we put in your home and on the side of a street and call it a public charger like just doesn't

well with us. Fit for form, this is infrastructure, people rely on it. So we sell the Tesla Charge and we have sort of a comparable product at or below that price point for people that just want something a bit more basic, cost effective. And then we sort of scale up from there with the IQ Home product, which integrates load balancing, solar, tariff integration, all the billing and reporting, that more sort of feature rich product that not everyone needs,

but some people might want it. That could be both in a pure residential proposition or for a B2B2C customer. So we're starting to see a bigger market for corporate customers that have tool of trade vehicles that go home or linking workplace and home charging together. So that's where that type of product has a role because it can work in with our Explorant platform. So that's our OCP software platform. We manage over 4,000

and charges on behalf of fleets, councils, public and multi-res apartments and that sort of ties the whole ecosystem together. So earlier when I was talking about that solution, the idea that we're vertically integrated means that we're not pointing the finger at the software provider or the CPO, we're pointing the finger at the hardware provider or the installer because it's us. And for a customer, there's enough complexity when it comes to

that transition to EVs, let alone having to become an expert in all these different elements and be the person in the middle. So yeah, for us that value stack's really important because it allows us to control the outcome better and provide a high level of service and support. Yeah, I mean it's where you want to be when customer service is a focus for your business. It's a customer service nightmare to be responsible for a product or a solution that you don't have full control over. Absolutely. It's just recipe for disaster. Yeah, but at the same time you have to invest the resource

behind it to actually be able to do what you say you can do. at AVSE, a third of our team are engineers. We've got electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, people involved in the pre-sales sort of support, post-sale. We've got a full technical support team that handle all those different channels of customers coming through. And a quite advanced and sophisticated ticketing system to capture all that, create data packets for our R &D team who then feed that back into future.

design so everyone thinks it's just get a box and sell it but you know and that's how we thought and it was probably a good thing we didn't realise what we had to do because we probably wouldn't have done it.

So I guess going from the early days in the the garage, the side hustle all the way through to last year, obviously it came out as an announcement that you brought on a new partner, Pacific Equity Partners, obviously a huge private equity firm invested 250 mil. So it seems like a huge journey to have come across in the short span of I guess just less than 10 years. Can you tell us a little bit about that deal? And I'm sure with a

private equity fund of that scale must have been an enormous outcome for you. At the time, the EV industry was certainly very hot, I would say, and there was a lot of interest and intrigue, I guess, as far as all these different industry players and...

financing companies who wanted to be in the space because they saw what we knew. So yeah, on the back of that, Pacific Equity Partners and Intellihub have come in and really...

helped us to realise some of the ambitions we had around starting to scale the business and also starting to open up some of the newer business models. So things like charging as a service more sort of, you know, requires a lot of capital. Like you just can't bootstrap charging as a service. Like you've to have big deep pockets to be able to deploy that. that's been really helpful. Obviously the scale that Intellihub and Pacific Equity Partners has around the

metering side of the business and you know they're out there deploying 30 odd meters a month into people's homes across Australia and New Zealand like that sort of understanding of how to scale a solution the processes the systems behind that is really something that we're leaning into and then the technology piece as well so how do we integrate the EV charging you know systems into the broader energy ecosystem so how do we participate in VPPs how can we you know make the the metering and billing

of EV charging better, how can we aggregate and link the charging with other behind the meter devices such as your pool pumps, the hot water, the solar, the batteries. So that idea and ability to lean into that, which was not our strength, has really opened a lot of channels and opportunities for us. Congratulations on bringing them on. It sounds like there's some really exciting things coming.

Just to zoom in on one thing that you mentioned there around charging as a service.

and you know that's something I think we're seeing emerging as a a popular business model. Can you give us a bit of a rundown of how that plays out? assume it means EVSE owning and operating charges, paying the upfront costs of putting them in and then recovering those costs through the actual charging and the utilisation of those charges. Can you tell us a bit more about that and what the specific target markets are? Yeah so I think charging as a service for the most part is a product that's focused on fleet operators and that B2B2C space. it's not there to sort of replace like a bright financing for a home owner or anything like that. What it really is about is for a corporate, the ability to spread that cost rather than a big upfront capex and not have that on their balance sheet.

which is important, but probably more importantly the feedback we're getting is the idea of this technology risk that a company's taking, the idea that they can hand that off to us is really appealing to them, and the operational aspect, like this is not their core job, they've got something better to do rather than have to deal with employees or know, charges not working and operating, so it really combines those three elements, so the capital cost, the technology and the operational risk,

taking that on for the customer. yeah, for the most part it's focused on fleets and depots and then sort of that business home customer or the employee at home charging piece. And that's where we would basically bundle all of that sort of stacked together for them, know, run it over a three or five year period and it might work out to be say $70 a month.

Right. And an employee might leave, we can go there to the home, take that charger off the wall and redeploy it to another employee's home. So it gives a lot more operational flexibility and just gives everyone a lot more peace of mind that they're not going to be stuck with an asset that doesn't work or it's out of warranty now and they don't know what to do with it. So that's something that we've obviously launched recently. Getting really good feedback, we should have a sort of an anchor sort of launch sort of customer

very soon. But that's a new model. There's a fair bit of it overseas in Europe. Like it's a common model. yeah, to date in Australia, been, it's pretty early days there. And then yeah, we've also recently got some funding for some own and operate charges, predominantly around the inner west of Sydney, 63 charge points, which we will, EVC will own and operate. So we'll deploy those, we'll take on the utilisation risk and the energy price exposure. But you know, that's something that we're

investigating how to link that home, workplace and on-the-go charging together to provide our partners even more value and a more seamless experience. That's, you know, they're starting to talk about the public charging space there. I think like what we've seen in Australia is largely what has played out in other countries in that the government's

funded the majority of the public charging networks that exist in the world today.

You mentioned obviously there's a grant scheme that underpinned that curbside one and we've seen huge grant schemes across the different states and federally to roll out the big DC fast charging stations that you see in service stations and things like that. As things play out, that public charging network can inevitably become the bottleneck that slows the EV transition because people want to see that there's enough charges available in the country towns and the

the places on the long distance trips that they probably only do very rarely but they want to see that it's there before they make the switch to an EV.

So how important do you see the government role in that playing out in the future? Is the government just going to be putting out rounds and rounds of these public charger rollouts for the next 10 or 15 years? Or do you think at some point the economics will shift and actually it'll make sense for companies like EVSE or the other companies out there just to invest and operate those on their own?

Look, I think the government's played a very important role to seed the market and also sort of fill in some of the black spots where it doesn't make sense. I think ultimately any good industry can stand on its own. And if you can't make public charging viable, then no amount of government subsidies and funding is going to change that. So I think the initial phases that ARENA and the New Swales government and others have provided has been really good. They've really looked at it quite strategically.

and looked at the areas where potentially could become black spots, areas where, you know, on paper wouldn't make sense. And they've sort of focused on subsidizing those, which I think is really smart to give people confidence. And I'm sure it turns into a opportunity once the economics and there are probably in some places they already are. I'm sure there's like many country pubs and clubs that would love to have someone pop in for 45 minutes and charge their car.

because probably means they're also gonna go in and buy a steak lunch and maybe a beer while they're away. There must be a whole range of businesses that buying this and potentially already talking to you about how they can capitalize on some of this traffic basically to extend their customer base. Yeah, well the recent destination charging grant put up by the New South Wales government really sort of lent into that thematic. So it was looking at regional locations, so pubs, clubs,

wineries, hotels, versus what you might not ordinarily think about. And a lot of interest from those types of companies because they see the benefit of it.

As an EV owner, I will specifically look for a hotel or accommodation that has EV charging, for instance. And that theme is there, so if you can get ahead of that, potentially it's a way to differentiate your business. And you're right, we see the data that clearly shows EV charging drives benefits beyond just the...

20 cents a kilowatt hour that you're charging, right? It's the idea that someone's gonna visit more frequently, stay longer, and seek out your place of business. I think that's a really good point about one of the added benefits of EV ownership. If I think back to my last public charge, it was...

at the Byron Bay Wildlife Center of all places. although I only needed the charging there is really fast. So I only needed a 10 minute top up, but I used that 10 minutes to pop in with my one and a half year old son and look at a koala and look at a bird. It's such a stark difference to sticking a nozzle into the car and walking around a highway service station with a coffee or something for five minutes.

to take a break, it's actually quite exciting to think what these long trips could actually turn into in the future where you may be doing an eight hour drive with a few 20 minute or hour stops and it could actually be a much more pleasant experience. Yeah, absolutely. think we've just got to look at it a little differently. I think everyone sort of looks at it through the lens of like a petrol mentality.

You know if I if I told you you could you know plug your phone in at home and go to sleep and charge it You know it'll take all night, but you wake up at its for in the morning Or you could take your phone to a certain place and will charge in 10 seconds But you had to drive to this place to do it like everyone's gonna take that plug it in go to sleep You know option and that's what Evie is right plug it in get home plug it in go to sleep wake up. It's full

For people that have the luxury of off-street parking and being able to put a charger in at home, it is so convenient. It just goes to show how important the education piece is because as EV owners and drivers, you know the convenience, you know that it opens up these different ways of getting around and different ways of conveniently always having a car that's ready to go. But for someone who doesn't have an EV or doesn't know anyone who drives an EV, the way they get their information is probably the news or social media. And so they're hearing about

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We still need more public charging stations or they're unreliable on the school holidays You might be waiting 20 minutes and if that's the only source of information then of course they're gonna be hesitant So I think we're getting close to that point now like you're saying the early majority phase of EV uptake where we're soon gonna see people educating friends and family because everyone soon will know someone who owns an EV and that's in the next few years and that will really tip the scales in terms of the the flowing of information about what it's actually like

Look, there's some truth to some of that as well, right? Like I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it's perfect and it's simple and it's easy for everyone, right? Like if you live in an apartment, it's a challenge. We know that. Yes, there are cues at certain public charges during holiday periods. Yes, there is a problem with reliability in the industry. So as an industry, we need to do better and we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard because ultimately, you know, we are all working towards this ambition of accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles. look,

Look, there are challenges, the petrol infrastructure has been here for 100 odd years. This EV infrastructure has maybe been here for five or six years. we're at a very early stage. It's probably not at the point that you can just thoughtlessly hop in your car and drive where you feel like, when you feel like, and think that everything's going to be perfect. It does require bit of planning. yeah, it still has some way to go to make it better. I know a lot of the people in the industry are working very hard.

to improve that, but it is a journey as well. I think, you know, it needs to be realistic and the views need to be balanced, but I think a lot of the fear out there is probably a little bit overhyped. And yeah, the data shows that most people are driving about 40 Ks a day. And if you've got a vehicle with a range of 400 Ks or 450, that might be charging once or twice a week at the most, right?

So yeah, it's an education piece and we spoke to it earlier, but a lot of our time is spent talking to people, educating them. Once I actually get behind the wheel, it's...

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it's still got a steering wheel, it's still got four tyres, it's got a brake accelerator, it's not that different, it's just the way that it's powered has changed and some of your behaviour changes but once you get comfortable with that and you build it into your own routine and so forth, it becomes really simple and I must admit I don't know too many people that have gone back.

Like it's very rare. sure there's the odd person here or there, very, very few people would ever go back.

which I think is really the sign of technology that is proven and is really gonna sort of pave the way forward. consumers are in a similar position, perhaps less educated than people who are working in it every day, but at the moment I think we're limited to maybe the sustainability nerds and maybe the real tech savvy who see and understand the potential of all devices that you just mentioned being able to communicate with each other.

We're not that far off and different people have different opinions as to how long it's gonna be before vehicle to grid is open to the mass consumer market. And it's gonna be a huge drive when people don't just think about how much can I save in terms of energy or in terms of money, but how much money can I make by having all these devices talking to each other and communicating with the grid? Is that a space that you think EVSE will grow into as vehicle to grid becomes closer to reality? So we're in the process of doing trials now. So working with a few OEMs to do some testing.

There's always been a long held fear that EVs are going to crash the grid. Everyone comes home at 6 o'clock and plugs in at the exact same time and all of sudden the grid shuts down. But we've also got the ability to control and manage that.

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times of the day where people are getting penalised for exporting solar. You've got a vehicle with a huge battery that could soak that up and then also dispatch it back to the grid at those peak times. So what it opens up is that vehicle becoming even more of an asset. Because for the most part, sit idle for 80, 90 % of the time. They're actually not that productive when you really think about how long that car's driving for. So it adds a lot of additional value that people aren't thinking about at the moment.

moment and they can actually help to enhance the grid and add a lot more stability into it. So yeah, I know a lot of people are really keen on vehicle to home, know, probably at its first priority and then vehicle to grid following on from that. yeah, we're involved in some beta sort of testing now. There's some updated standards sort of coming through and some changes in the regulatory side which will help facilitate that. But yeah, we're excited.

by that and I think the sooner that becomes available the better. Yeah definitely and as someone on the inside what's your best guess as to when vehicle to home or vehicle to grid might be reality for people in East Coast states?

Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit of a finger in the air kind of guess, but yeah, I suspect, I mean, you've seen a lot of trials and pilots overseas. think in homes, it's probably still a couple of years away, maybe sort of three years or so would be sort of my educated guess, but potentially sooner if things fall in our favour. But yeah, I think the use case of it and the price point of vehicle to grid charges needs to be there.

you a lot of the early models were

Solar Choice Communications (37:58.03)
quite expensive, you're of talking like 10, 15 grand to put a V2D charger, it was using the Chattamo plug standard, which is largely redundant in Australia. So it wasn't really something we were confident to get too far behind, because we didn't feel right selling people something that we knew just wasn't really gonna be there in a few years time to stand behind. But yeah, the future's looking bright as it starts to focus around the type two plug standard, that's really what the industry's gonna carry on forever.

think two to three years will start to see things flowing through, hopefully not too much longer. And I think it could trigger a big tipping point in the uptake of EVs once the stories start getting out there of how an average punter has earned 10 or 15 grand by having their car trading on the grid for them as they were sleeping overnight or whatever the story might be. It's things like that that hit the front page of the news and really drive a lot of interest.

because it is such a dynamic shift in the way that we think about a vehicle. And like you said, I've seen numbers up to 95 % in terms of the time a car sits idle and not in use. And if we think about the business models that have been really successful in terms of Airbnb utilizing vacant properties, there's various car share things that have taken advantage of these petrol cars.

while they're not in use, this feels like a business model that is destined to be successful.

once the regulatory and the, I guess, OEMs and the charging companies all kind of find the right balance. Yeah, look, I mean, there's a few different stakeholders that need to get behind it. Obviously, the OEMs, right, the warranties on the battery and the vehicle probably might need to evolve into maybe a cycle warranty or factors in usage and discharging and things like that. So I think there's a bit to go.

Solar Choice Communications (40:05.04)
But yeah, some of the more challenging compliance and regulatory elements are starting to get solved, which is good. Those are always big ones to move out of the way. But yeah, I think customers are going to start demanding it and definitely the OEMs that sort of push early and kind of start leaning into it will probably stimulate everyone else having to play catch up. So I'll be interested to see who really looks to lead the market in that space. I know there's a bit of sort of vehicle to load adapters and stuff out

there to allow you to power your phone or your kettle when you're camping and so forth, which is cool. But really the next sort of step from that is vehicle to grid. And I think like the business model is already there, right? We see all these virtual power plants with, you know, solar batteries.

being deployed at grid scale through a conjoined network. And really, an EV is just a bigger solar battery. So it's...

It feels like the economics have already been solved. It is already valuable to customers. We've seen many stories of people hitting quite big wins with their solar batteries in certain events on the network. And there is a whole competitive landscape out there of people trying to attract solar battery owners into their virtual power plants. So I think as soon as we can solve these technical sides and regulatory

sides, the companies will be waiting there in the sidelines waiting to sign up all these EVs. Absolutely and I think Australia's traditionally been pretty tech savvy and lent into new technology. Obviously we lead the way in solar and there's a big push for renewables so yeah I suspect once V2G technology becomes available Australian consumers will really like that idea. think having the power and the certainty know black out

Solar Choice Communications (42:05.296)
and so forth being able to power your home and yeah just get more value from that vehicle I think is really interesting. But we've seen the vehicle price point come down as well like you can now get electric vehicles for 30 grand which just a couple years ago was not an option. I think that historically there were sort of three things that were really holding us back. There was the price of the EV, there was the range of the EV and there was a charging infrastructure and to me the price is pretty good these days.

of choice. I think the range is pretty good, like at a base level most EVs come with about 400k's which I think is pretty reasonable. And then it's just the charging infrastructure piece that we really need to start, know, lean into to sort of solve that problem to make the three elements stack up. Well, I think what's really interesting to me is that particularly, you know, in the last six months we've seen some pretty crazy prices come out for EVs. But once you work backwards on what the price per kilo

what our purely looking at the battery is, is actually cheaper than solar batteries. That are just dumb batteries sitting there, all they can do is power a load. So because electric vehicles are at such greater scale, I assume they're able to hit a better price point and also give a customer a vehicle. it's, it,

hopefully puts a bit more pressure on the solar battery market to sharpen the pencil in terms of what they're offering as well.

the value already sits there waiting to be unlocked. Let's jump even further ahead into the future then. mean, we've talked about vehicle to load, to home, vehicle to grid, which will probably be the next big wave in the next 10 years as EV adoption really increases. 20, 30 years into the future, what do see the landscape being and what role does a company like EVSE play at that point in time? Yeah, mean, look, it's hard to predict that far ahead in the future. You've your crystal ball out of your

Solar Choice Communications (44:08.57)
don't know, is probably the short answer. I think you'll probably see charging speeds equivalent to petrol in 10 years time. think that sort of replication of a couple of minutes at a bowser would be absolutely achievable. I think you'll see electrification of lot more heavier vehicles, the ones right now that feel just really hard and challenging. You've seen Fortescue Metals and BHP leaning into these large mining trucks and things.

that they're looking to electrify. So you'll see it more in different places than you do see now, not just passenger cars, trucks, heavier vehicles, even smaller boats and so forth. think some of the ferries are potentially electric here in Australia. I saw that. Bodie McBoakface. I don't know what they'll call that one. But I think you'll just see that sort of thematic of electrification in transport evolve, which will

be exciting. Potentially things like wireless charging as well will happen, which makes a lot more sense if vehicle autonomous driving becomes a thing, right? You don't need someone to plug it in. just can charge via inductive over a pad. Those sorts of technologies hopefully make everything just far more integrated and seamless. But yeah, I don't know. mean, maybe a 1,000 kilometer range battery.

You know technology moves so fast these days like that ten years is such a long time You know I think two or three like a couple of years is a long time the industry changes so much and Technology is evolving and changing so rapidly so all I know is would be better than it is now Well, I might be a bit more crazy verse in

20 or 30 years thinking how much we've come already and that there's even prototypes of flying cars out there today. Maybe it'll, we'll be looking at a future that's more like, you know, the Jetsons, the futuristic cartoon with traffic jams in the sky. maybe, maybe you, so maybe you should be working on floating chargers that hover in the sky. And mid air refueling. Who knows, right? All I know is our business has always had a

Solar Choice Communications (46:26.736)
a future looking lens to it and also a long term view. So we will always endeavor to sort of stay ahead of the curve and look to lead the market. So wherever the industry goes, wherever technology is heading, we want to be on the forefront. that's probably the only thing I can say with 100 % confidence is we'll always be at the front of that trend. I think that is all we have time for. So Brendan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. It's been great. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. I'm to have to go and do some real work now. Just talk to you guys.

And we'll definitely be keeping a close eye on everything that the EVSE has got coming up over the next little while. Fantastic. Thanks for having us.

Solar Choice Communications (47:08.878)
Thanks for listening to episode 2 of the EV charging podcast brought to you by Solar Choice, Australia's only instant-quant comparison service for solar, EV chargers, heat pumps and batteries. We also provide independent consultation and tender management for clean energy projects in commercial and strata buildings with over 17 years of experience and a host of in-house expertise. To find out more, visit www.solarchoice.net.au and make sure you stay tuned for the next episode of this podcast in

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