#13 Rohan Smith: Chargefox: The Software Powering Australia’s Public EV Charging

Chargefox Head of Partner Success Rohan Smith joins us to unpack how Australia’s largest EV charging app turns a fragmented hardware landscape into a simple, reliable driver experience.

We trace Rohan’s journey (AGL → DNSP trials → RACV → Chargefox) and dig into the platform choices behind public charging that just works: OCPP-based interoperability, first-attempt start success, clear pricing (kWh, time-based and idle fees), payments, and the data that guides new site builds. Rohan shares usage trends—300k+ app users, ~5,000 plugs across public and private networks, sessions doubling YoY—and why “driver-first” means better maps, accessibility, and integrations (e.g., in-car systems and retail partners).

We also explore:

• Roaming to reduce “app fatigue” and lift utilisation
• Why charge to ~80% on DC keeps trips moving
• Strata & fleets: RFID, workplace billing and load limits
• V2G/V2L: dynamic pricing, grid support events, and resilience during outages

Whether you’re planning a road trip, operating a site, or mapping the future of the grid, this episode translates EV charging buzzwords into practical decisions drivers actually feel—uptime, speed to charge, and confidence to go electric.

Transcript

Solar Choice Communications (01:39.531)
All right. Welcome Rowan. Thank you so much for joining us. It's a bit of an interesting episode today. We've got three guests in three different places all recording remotely. Jeff joining us from the USA and Rowan in Melbourne, myself in Sydney. Thanks for being here with us.

Rohan Smith (01:55.261)
Thanks Dan, thanks Geoff, great to be on the show.

Jeff (01:58.754)
Nice to you here, Ron.

Solar Choice Communications (01:59.127)
Maybe just to get things started, could give us a little bit of background. How have you found yourself at Charge Fox, and what was your journey to get here?

Rohan Smith (02:10.065)
Yeah, it's a bit of a long story. I'm in my midlife crisis almost, five years off 50. But I've actually been passionate about cars and technology since I was a kid. In my early 20s, I imported a Toyota MR2 Turbo from Japan, which I highly modified for track days, put roll cage in bucket seats and even a set of track tires. I actually lived in Tokyo for two years after that to try and experience the future.

wasn't disappointed. Their mobile phones back in the early 2000s were incredible, made us look pretty archaic. But after the iPhone came out in 2007 and I moved back to Australia, I started working in the telco industry actually, and witnessed the demise of Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, being pushed out by Apple and Samsung. After that though, I moved into the energy industry, probably in the early 2010s, in my 30s and joined Simply Energy, which is now called Engie, a French company.

It was also undergoing massive technological disruption from rooftop solar coming into market back then. So it was really interesting seeing that come into Australia in a big way. But I joined AGL probably about seven years after that in 2017, managing their first electric car plan. It was called a dollar a day for unlimited home charging. It was a bit of a captain's call from the previous CEO. And that was my first experience working with electric vehicles. I ended up buying one.

year later at BMW i3 in 2018, which my wife still drives today. She loves that car, told me we can't sell it. And we mostly charge that from rooftop solar at home and the Tesla Powerwall that we chucked in in 2017. But after realizing that this EV disruption, if you like, was going to have a big impact in Australia, I realized a lot of that impact was going to be in the distribution space with the DNSP. So I joined Gemina, which is actually my local

Jeff (03:41.313)
Awesome.

Rohan Smith (04:03.227)
energy distributor in Victoria here. And I helped work on an arena funded trial called EV Grid that was in partnership with a bunch of other DNSPs. Also got to work with Jet Charge, which were our technology partner, and really understand some home charging behaviors. But after that trial finished, working for a regulator monopoly was probably not the best place for a long term career for me personally. So I moved into the RACV EV team.

and started to learn a lot about the auto clubs. It was a more competitive market, but they do have inter-club relationships, which is awesome. And I got a second car, which actually got rid of our diesel SUV. I replaced that with a Tesla Model 3 Performance at the end of last year. So we became an EV-only household. Also got the latest update the other week from software over there with FSD, which said the car now drives itself, which is unbelievable.

And then a few months ago, I joined Charge Fox as the head of partner success, essentially to manage the relationship back with the auto clubs and also who are shareholders and also work closely with the hardware partners and installation partners like Jet Charge.

Solar Choice Communications (05:17.785)
Okay, a lot to take in there. gonna go way back to the beginning there. You started off by basically telling us that you're a petrol head. I think if you were importing your own car, you're modifying your cars, spending time on the track, that actually takes me back to my late teenage years where that was my dream and then budgets in my early 20s meant that I never went down that path. But I don't know, it sounds like you've had a about-faced turn going from

Rohan Smith (05:25.949)
Correct.

Jeff (05:26.091)
Yeah.

Jeff (05:40.429)
you

Solar Choice Communications (05:47.085)
being passionate about turbo cars and track days to fast forward to now being passionate about EVs.

Rohan Smith (05:53.918)
It's absolutely correct. I was definitely a petrolhead. I guess you can't say that now driving an AV but my wife Thought it was quite ironic because I told her I'd never sell their MR2 turbo when we got married back in 2013 and then after joining AGL and buying that I3 it just changed my life. I said this is the future I need to get rid of this this petrol car and yeah, it was getting a bit old anyway the MR2 but

Yeah, I think experiencing an EV for the first time back then, that silent acceleration, instant torque, yeah, just the clean sort of, I guess, experience of driving an EV, no gear changing, that sort of thing. was like being in something completely different. And the regenerative braking was probably the main one actually. Just felt amazing.

Jeff (06:46.377)
And so give us an idea, the i3's got seven years on it now. What's the battery look like? Any degradation to speak of?

Rohan Smith (06:55.709)
Yeah, it's a really good question. I guess this is one of those myths that a lot of people have on EVs. I've been asked many over the last few years, many times around how long do they last? Do you have to replace the battery after five years when the warranty runs out or eight years, whatever it is? And the batteries cost more than the car's worth, et cetera. But with the BMW i3, it's actually a 2017 model. We bought it as next demo with 3,000 Ks on it.

and that's only got a 30 kilowatt hour battery. So it's equivalent to a modern day FEV effectively. I did a test on the battery the other week and it's got about 14 % battery degradation, which is actually pretty good. So its range was about 200 kilometers brand new. And so now it's dropped about 14%. And I guess what I've been researching with EVs more broadly, especially the ones today with modern batteries, they generally have about 2 % battery degradation per year.

So if you work it out that way, after 25 years, you're going to lose half the battery's original capacity, which if you look at car ownership in Australia, you're lucky to have a car for seven years. The average might go up to maybe 15 years if you really want to hold onto it. But people keeping cars for 25 years is probably not much of a thing anymore. And the battery generally today will outlast the car.

Jeff (08:17.581)
Yeah, well usually if they're keeping it for 25 years, they're rebuilding the engine once or twice in that time.

Solar Choice Communications (08:17.675)
Yeah, and you think about

Rohan Smith (08:25.757)
Although having said that, my parents do still have their 1992 80 series Land Cruiser, which does blow a bit of smoke and I'm trying to get them to buy an EV.

Jeff (08:35.189)
Hey

Solar Choice Communications (08:37.433)
if you think about the range on, not even the top of the line EVs that are out at the moment, but pretty mass consumer market cars, 400, 450 kilometres range in 10 years time, those are still gonna be valuable runabouts for a secondhand driver or a thirdhand driver. Or of course, even more likely is that those batteries will have found their way into grid scale batteries or portable batteries for events.

By the time that that happens, there's probably applications that we can't even think of right now that would be very, very useful and also that will provide good return when those batteries are purchased by someone who's gonna repurpose it.

Rohan Smith (09:16.829)
Yeah, there's a good second life applications coming through for EVs. Also recycling, I've heard you can recycle up to 95 % of lithium ion batteries. that's pretty incredible. You can't recycle the petrol, it gets burnt through your tank. So yeah, it's amazing tech.

Jeff (09:34.51)
to hear your backstory there on some of the biggest names in the retail space, a network provider, now a DC fuss charging company. It sounds like you've kind of hit a multiple different aspects, so you're great person for us to have on the pods. Can you give us a bit of an overview of ChargeFox for someone listening who may not be familiar with their services?

Rohan Smith (10:03.463)
Yeah, sure. So ChargeFox was a startup back in 2017, which isn't that long ago. It was effectively pioneered to be a fast charging network in Australia to connect capital cities together. It was actually acquired by the AutoClubs, who were early investors in ChargeFox. They purchased ChargeFox via Australian Motor & Services, which is an entity on behalf of all the clubs. That was back in 2022.

But effectively, it's a charge boxes market aggregation platform. So as part of that sale to the auto clubs, they sold all the hardware that they originally installed in site locations that RACB and Remain and others now own and operate. So we're effectively today, we're like an Airbnb, the same way people look for accommodation on that platform. And we connect effectively people who are driving EVs with people who own and operate EV charging.

both public and private. So we've got about 5,000 plugs on our network, about 50-50 public and private. But we're 100 % Australian owned, which is great. We love that. We have an in-house software development team. We have a contact center located in Melbourne that's 24-7 for drivers who get stuck with a cable plugged into a charger or whatever they might be experiencing. So we've got that local support, which is really...

really amazing, but it still feels like a bit of a startup or a scale up, which is great. Coming from a lot of large corporates with many layers in organizations. It's a small nimble team at ChargeFox still, which is fantastic. So it's still got that original core.

Solar Choice Communications (11:40.685)
Maybe you give us a bit of an idea. said about 5,000 plugs and about 50-50 split public and private. I think anyone who drives an EV in Australia probably knows of ChargeFox and probably even has the app on their phone. So those are public charges. People might see them at petrol stations, side of the M1. But what are the applications for private charges?

Rohan Smith (12:01.479)
Yeah, so private charges is more for your fleets. So we also have a lot of fleet customers we work with and it basically allows them to use their fleet vehicle for both public and private charging, like at workplace, for example. So for that product, we have RFID cards primarily that we use and we issue them that get aligned with the vehicle. So as soon as they tap on for a public charging session, it gets attributed back to that organization and they can even track it from a

private workstation at their workplace so they can really monitor the utilization of that vehicle almost like an original petrol diesel car with the fleet card kind of thing.

Solar Choice Communications (12:43.393)
Right, like a petrol card that you could go to different servos or the same brand of servo, but this is just a lot more versatile and gives yourselves and also the employer a lot more data to use to understand where their money's going and how they can optimize it.

Rohan Smith (12:59.293)
And I think that's the best part that companies can be their own bowser. They can have their own charging outside their workplace in the front or back and basically optimize their own fleet through charging on site, which is fantastic.

Jeff (13:15.607)
So I read here Rowan that there's 300,000 users on ChargeFox or maybe more than that since that figure was written which is a pretty staggering number. I think that can't be too far off the number of EVs on the road. ChargeFox must have such a close eye on...

driver behaviour, even the sign up rate or the amount of users joining ChargeFox each month is probably a good pulse check on the EV adoption in Australia. Have you found that to be the case and are there any trends there that you're seeing in terms of uptake that you're able to share?

Rohan Smith (14:02.429)
Yeah, sure. So it's a great call out. the number of people that have downloaded the ChargeFox mobile app, which is our primary interface for all drivers to find and use charging in Australia, is well over 300,000 now, which is almost on par with how many EVs have been sold in Australia. So we'd like to say that almost 95 % of people who have bought an EV in Australia have downloaded the ChargeFox app, which is incredible. So we are the largest.

I guess, mobile app in Australia for EV charging that people use. And we're onboarding, I guess, at a rate of around 10,000 new users every month downloading the app, which kind of aligns with new EV sales in Australia, incrementally going up. And we've got lots of active users, of course. We've got amazing partners like Woolworths, who have EV charging in their local stores, like the local one in my

Jeff (14:43.403)
Yep.

Rohan Smith (14:58.913)
Heidelberg Woolworths has 16 parking bays and they're on ChargeFox that people that arrive at Woolies, might not be looking for EV charging but they suddenly come across it and to use it they need to download the app or use an RFID card etc. So they become quickly aware that this is how you use the EV charging infrastructure.

Solar Choice Communications (15:21.463)
Yeah, so it wouldn't be uncommon for maybe people who find themselves in an EV for the first time, whether it's rented or borrowed or they've got a brand new car, that ChargeFox is their entryway into understanding how public charging works, how this whole ecosystem, which can at times be quite confusing with lots of different apps and platforms and places to find information. This is the front door for them.

Rohan Smith (15:43.977)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other interesting one is when I was back at RACB, they were developing out their mobile app. And one of the features in the RACB app was a fuel finder feature, which was their most popular use. I guess a piece of their app was driving a lot of traffic effectively for people that wanted to shop around on price, which isn't really the same for EV because the price generally doesn't change on a weekly basis like petrol.

However, they also introduce an EV finder feature in their app, which integrates with Chargebox so that it can surface EV charging. And that had really high utilization, but it's from a segment that guess we'd call EV curious. So people that may not have an EV yet, but they're looking at what is this about and where are these charges and how does it work? So there is another segment there of people downloading the app who are just EV curious.

Solar Choice Communications (16:37.017)
Maybe people who see headlines about how hard it is to find a charger on a long weekend and they're wondering where their local charges actually are to maybe inform a purchasing decision.

Rohan Smith (16:47.134)
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, if you were doing a trip, like I did a trip from Melbourne to Sydney at the start of this year and you know, you have to sort of do a little bit of trip planning depending on the vehicle you're in and the charging you want to use and speeds and where you want to stop. So there is that element of having a look ahead. There's obviously other apps you can download as well, but we love to say that our app has the most pins on the map so that you've got a high chance of finding a charger near you. But you know, we're all in an industry together.

People use a range of apps, which is great, to make sure their needs are met.

Jeff (17:23.446)
It's interesting if I reflect on my own personal experience with ChargeFox and the initial times were kind of very similar to what you said about the Heidelberg charges. There was the local supermarket that had free charging and it was operated by ChargeFox. I'd go and plug in every week almost. You would see my user coming in and charging up on every Sunday afternoon at about two o'clock.

But now I do most, I would say most 99 % of my charging in the garage at home. And I probably would come across a ChargeFox station here and there on longer trips, which might be once every couple of months. Are you seeing these types of user behaviors?

becoming more prominent from, you know, there must be thousands and thousands of charging sessions every month that you guys can now analyse.

Rohan Smith (18:29.8)
Yeah, it's a wealth of data and it also that data, I guess, can be really helpful to our install partners and site hosts or what they call ChargePoint operators, CPOs, acronyms in the energy and EV space. So those CPOs are always looking for where to put another charger next. And I guess our data set is incredible in terms of we can see with the highest utilized sites, like for example, the RACV site at Airport West is one of the highest utilized sites in Australia.

It's in a prime location near a shopping center. It's near the airport, near main roads, and yeah, it gets a lot of utilization at that site, which is fantastic. So I guess we can help with some of those data and insights to find out where some, I guess, black spots are in EV charging in terms of that could be filled by additional, ideally fast DC charging, which is where public charging really needs to go more towards.

They're still a really good place for destination charging when you arrive somewhere having an AC charger to plug into overnight, if you're staying at hotel or somewhere. That's fantastic. I went up to Falls Creek over winter and plugged in at the top of Falls Creek and charged up my car while I was out in the mountains. So that was fantastic. Getting back to the car, it was even defrosted and had sentry mode turned on, which uses a bit of power. So there's some really good use cases for

having different types of charging at different locations. And we do get, I guess, data-wise, we've seen last year, I'm just looking at the data here, 150,000 charging sessions in June last year. This year, June, we've just gone by, we've had 300,000. So it's doubled in terms of number of charging sessions last year versus this year.

Solar Choice Communications (20:15.459)
Wow, are there any other stats you can tell us like that where you can compare a year ago to now or start of the year to now because you know what, we're adding 10, 12, 13,000 EVs a month or somewhere in that vicinity. It really adds up, right, and does change the figures.

Rohan Smith (20:32.007)
Yeah, does. think the only one I shared before was that we're adding about 10,000 per month on average of new people downloading the ChargeFox app, which is in line with the growth of EVs as well, which we naturally see. And just more utilization. We're also seeing a lot of use of the member benefits that we have in the app. So being owned by the auto clubs with Australian Motoring Services, we've got benefits there for club members. If you put your membership number into the ChargeFox app like RACB or

NMA, you get 10 % off using their EV charging stations, which is a really good value add for members in different states. RAA are also on that. And there's other partners like Woolies with everyday rewards. When you charge at Woolies, you can then get everyday reward points via charging, which is also amazing. So we've got a really strong focus on these extra benefits and rewards for people that use.

Charge box as well as looking at the local amenities and making sure that they have all the necessities in place for when they go to a charging site We're trying to make it easy to find things like that as well and integrations with you Google Maps even in the car So we actually integrate directly with Mercedes-Benz. You can find a charger within their their onboard screen in the car the infotainment screen And even I think start and stop a charging session from within the vehicle itself. So you don't even need to open the app, which is pretty cool

Solar Choice Communications (21:59.19)
So as long as we have the the robotic arms coming who are going to plug the charger into the vehicle for you soon You won't have to get up at all

Rohan Smith (22:05.617)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, I think who knows where Elon will take things with Tesla, but yeah, I think we'll see how things go. I did hear that induction charging or wireless charging was becoming a bit of a thing in China, but I haven't seen that that has really taken off. mean, they had roads that had charging on them, probably more for buses, that sort of thing. But as we all know with, I guess, our mobile phones, it generally takes a lot longer to charge from a wireless pad than it does to plug in with a

hardwired connections, so my gut feel, not being an engineer, would be that plugging in is the quickest way to charge.

Solar Choice Communications (22:41.369)
Yeah, my instincts tell me that it would be very expensive type of charging to roll out. So people are unlikely to see it on public roads, but perhaps on some sort of routes that heavy vehicles are doing, whether it's shuttle buses or maybe some sites where other heavy vehicles are just shuttling back and forth. Maybe we'll see it there, but I can imagine people...

the general punter thinking, can't wait till I never have to charge, never have to think about charging because the road does it for me. I think that's probably not a reality anytime soon, if at all.

Rohan Smith (23:15.901)
Well, one of the ones that is becoming a reality for the heavy truck side of things is battery swapping. there's companies in China doing this. They're looking to bring it to Australia as well, where you effectively pull over on the Hume Highway, for example, and might take five or 10 minutes and a crane lifts out the battery pack from behind the cabin, drops in a new battery and off they go again. And then that battery can charge using that local charging station in its own time and the truck goes on its journey. So

Having that technology with battery swapping, I think is a really good use case for heavy vehicles. I think there's other companies like NIO that do it in China for personal, I guess, private vehicles. But yeah, it's pretty quick. But I still think charging at home is the most convenient and probably the lowest cost.

Jeff (24:06.958)
All right, I want to throw, yeah, just some thinking, like obviously on this podcast before we've had EV on here, EVX, who have taken, I would say, a different strategic path than ChargeFox in the public charging space because they've decided to build, own, and operate the charging stations along with providing the software.

Solar Choice Communications (24:07.353)
Yeah, I think.

Jeff (24:36.352)
And I guess the thing that makes ChargeFox different is that you've really focused on providing that platform software and being able to enable a whole range of charges. So I imagine the team at ChargeFox is probably heavy on the tech side and people building all of those kind of features and things to make sure that you guys have the best app, the most user-friendly app. Is that a fair summation, Rowan?

Rohan Smith (25:05.617)
Yeah, absolutely. So Driver First is our, I guess, focus that we want to make sure the driver experience is well-cated for. It starts with the mobile app with finding where charges are. We love that we're agnostic to, I guess, location hardware, even vehicle to some extent. So we're a platform where we can make it easier for drivers to find and use charges. We...

also been going into this, what they call roaming space, which is where all the chargers historically on ChargeFox we have had hosted directly. So those chargers point straight to our platform. However, with the other ones you mentioned like other companies, other networks, like EVX being an example, they have their own platform and their own systems. But if we could point traffic to other CPOs and other networks like that, then that's a form of roaming, which we actually do already do that for NMA.

So obviously we've worked with NRA very closely on roaming and you can access charges that are not on ChargeFox per se, but they're managed by NMA directly, but we send, I guess, roaming traffic to those charges, basically just to make them visible on our maps so that people can find them and use them. And we'd love to, I guess our North Star, to be honest, is around making all public charging accessible via one app. That would be amazing to offer drivers that you don't need to be

bouncing between different apps, you can just load up ChargeFox and see every charger that you can get access to. And being an agnostic player in the market hardware-wise and site-wise, we can enable that. So we're having some really good conversations with some of the key players in the market at the moment. And hopefully we'll be able to announce some news fairly soon on that.

Jeff (26:52.802)
That's really exciting to hear because that was my very first pain point after buying the BYD 803 is on the drive home. I was driving it back from the dealership in Sydney up to Northern New South Wales and I think I needed to download by the end of the trip, five different apps and you almost need a little army of apps to keep you going on those long trips. And yeah, in the long run, that's just not.

that's just not user friendly. And so I could see that, you know, if I was.

I mean, it's great that you've used NRMA as the example as a part owner, there's obviously easier to collaborate with them. But if you can demonstrate success, then I can't see any reason why some of those other public charging companies wouldn't wanna take traffic from you if they can. A lot of these stations sit there dormant for a long period of time. So I think any chance to improve the utilization rate is...

must seem attractive to those companies.

Rohan Smith (27:58.322)
Yeah, absolutely. It's incremental traffic effectively that we can drive to their charging stations. So it's good conversations to have and we already see that it's been fairly successful in Europe as well. In fact, they have a bunch of different methods over there as well. So yeah, think having an app that is really easy to use for drivers and has the most plugs on the map just makes sense. And yeah, that's our really strong focus is that driver.

Drive aside.

Solar Choice Communications (28:31.737)
So it sounds like the data is pretty useful for picking up on changes in behavior for tracking trends. You've given us an example of how that sort of influences decision making for the present, how you can add more value to CPOs and obviously increase the value for Charge Fox as well. What does it tell us about the slightly more distant future? What do the trends predict in one to five years?

Rohan Smith (28:58.751)
it's such a moving market, isn't it? I think, yeah, in terms of EV charging a bit more broadly and integration back with the grid and that sort of thing, it's ultimately trying to reduce the cost of charge, even though charging is a lot cheaper than refueling a petrol tank these days. It's something that we're focused on is how do we really make sure that EV drivers are getting the best price for

charging and incentivize for the right behaviors. So pricing strategy is really important. And something we did introduce, I think it was early this year or maybe late last was idle fees, which is, know, adding a new fee to a service is not necessarily something people jump up and down about and get excited and applaud you for. But to be honest, when we added idle fees, drivers thanked us. They said, this is amazing to have idle fees on particular DC charges.

people want to use for fast charging on a road trip. Because ultimately what EV drivers want is accessible, reliable EV charging infrastructure. And if people are filling up their EV, so to speak, and it's fully charged, but they're in at the cafe for another half an hour or something, and that charger becomes unusable. They want that car to be moved as quick as possible so the next driver can then move in line and charge their vehicle. So idle fees does exactly that. It puts

a cost on once your car is completely full. It gives you a maybe a five or 10 minute warning. And then it could charge up to like a dollar a minute if you don't move your car. And the app tells them that. So they get a push notification saying your car is fully charged and it gives you a warning as well prior to that. Please move your vehicle or you might incur an idle fee. And a lot of the drivers when we put this in said, this is fantastic. Like, thank you. The charges are now more accessible.

It's great for our CPOs and side hosts who want a better return from their investment. And ChargeFox providing a good service. So all three parties win in that scenario. idle fees is just something that we thought people might actually push back on, actually it's incentivizing the right behavior.

Solar Choice Communications (31:12.183)
could be the only example ever of an additional fee for a service based business being well received by your users.

Rohan Smith (31:19.227)
Yeah, it's a good one. mean, we can't fix the icing issues if people park an internal combustion engine car over the top of an EV dedicated spot. Yeah, we can't do a lot about that. yeah, in terms of overstaying as they sort of call it. But I guess the other fundamental thing, it's bit of maybe unknown to people that don't drive an EV, but charging up to 80 % at a DC charger is really important. And if you can then move on that

That would be a lot better for everyone, including yourself, because charging from, let's say, 10 or 20 % up to 80 takes about the same time to go from 80 to 100 % even on a DC charger. Because what the cars do is they derate the charging cycle at the end of that final 20 % fill up. And the analogy, think Elon Musk want to use this one, is that if you go into a car park like your Bunnings or your Woolies or something, and you try and find a parking spot and the car park's empty, it's super easy to park your car. You just park anywhere you want.

But as soon as you go into a car park and it's 95 % full, you've got to drive around, navigate through the lanes to find that spot that you can park in. That's exactly the same way the electrons work in a battery and they're trying to find a parking spot. So generally they say charge up to 80 % at a DC charger and then go to the next DC charger and it'll be a quicker road trip for the driver. It'll also free up that EV charger for other people to use as well.

Jeff (32:24.032)
Yep.

Jeff (32:42.529)
Particularly, think that's true for the Teslas on the lithium NMC batteries, the lithium ion phosphate batteries seem to charge a bit quicker up to 90%, but certainly slow down in that last hurdle. And so I'm interested to know, Rowan, if you have any data that you can share in the Strata apartment space. It's an area that's pretty...

A big focus for us here at Solar Choice, we do a lot of feasibility studies. We know obviously there's a very small number of apartment buildings in Australia that have level two charging forced off. But those that do, a high percentage of them have a solution like ChargeFox to enable the billing back to the body corporate account to reimburse for particular owners usage, also load management solutions and things like that.

So is that something that you guys keep an eye on?

Rohan Smith (33:46.31)
Yeah, we have done a bit of that. It's not our core, but certainly we have provided services like that to Strata and owners corporations where they want to enable EV charging. Generally, the parking bay is a dedicated bay for the owner. That can be installed by the owner and that's sort of their, obviously their cost to put a charger in. But then we can add that to, because the energy would come out of the building, know, corporate energy.

accounts so we can then provide that billing service effectively to enable that cost to be recouped and passed back through to the owners corporation. And yeah, we can provide services like that, which is really good. And there's companies that are really leaning into that, which is great to try and make it easier to install EV charging in buildings. I've even seen people using smart PowerPoints effectively rather than putting in a seven kilowatt charger, for example.

It might just be a 2 kilowatt charger or 1.8, whatever it is, a PowerPoint one, 10 amps. And that just has less impact on the infrastructure of that building. Because the last thing a building wants to have to do is upgrade their grid connection, which is the expensive part, to allow for high speed AC charging across all their parking bays, which can be challenging. we find that, I mean, the average Aussie does about 35 Ks a day.

So the myth here is that you can actually charge from a PowerPoint at home. And I did this for the first three or four years of that i3. You can charge at home overnight when you're sleeping for eight or 10 hours, if six hours, if you don't have much sleep. And the next day your car is pretty much full from that 35 Ks a day from a PowerPoint. So the fast charger at home, or when I say fast AC charger, I mean like a seven kilowatt single phase or maybe up to 22 kilowatt three phase.

They're really good if you wanted to upgrade your home charger to charge off solar in a shorter window or an overnight off peak, you know, if you had a shorter time period to charge that that's when it really works well.

Jeff (35:42.198)
Yes.

Jeff (35:48.558)
Yeah, I think I'm glad you said that because I've been through that journey myself. I initially charged off a wall plug and you're right. Like there's more than enough power when people get home after work until the next morning for 95 % of people to recharge back to 100 % if they want to before they set off the next morning. The challenge is when you plug into the wall is that you're probably gonna get home at 5.30 or 6 and you're gonna be charging off peak rates.

until 9 or 10 p.m. depending on where you are in Australia and you don't have the ability to take advantage of some of these more dynamic EV plans for example to some where you can get free power between 11 and 2 p.m. or you might have solar where you're generating free power anyway and usually that is for that short window in the middle of the day.

So although my car's not in the carport during the day, I can pretty much charge it back to 100 % on the weekends in those free windows and that's more than recoup the cost to know, spend a couple of grand on an EV charger already. So there is a good case to get fast charging and it's my belief that most EV owners should get there and although it's pretty common not to at the beginning.

But yeah, you're right. It's to take advantage of charging in much shorter windows that that's required.

Rohan Smith (37:17.073)
think the other one I did early on with the home charging from a PowerPoint was just buying a $30 smart plug that I could time base to turn on and off, cetera. And that was able to then map out the off-peak period and only charge through in that window. But the issue I had there was charging at only two kilowatts per hour. Sometimes I wanted to have more than that for that shorter time window. So I did end up upgrading to a Zappi charger, which is amazing from the UK.

It can automatically detect any excess solar that your house might be feeding back to the grid. So it has a little sensor on your grid connection and any of that excess solar that you'd only get maybe three cents a kilowatt hour these days for, or maybe one and a half. I don't know what the rate is, but it's pretty low next to nothing. That can then redirect that excess solar from your house straight to the car, which is a set and forget way of solar charging, which is really good.

Solar Choice Communications (38:12.685)
Yeah, I think what you described is, I guess, the ideal model for those who have solar or in a home that is able to have solar. But there's a full spectrum, of course, of different types of home ownership, renters, and then of course, apartments where we started this point is a whole different kettle of fish altogether where, yeah, having solar and EV charging in your apartment building for many.

may never be a reality, so you gotta figure out what the best solution is for your specific application, which is often the conversations that we're having with apartment owners.

Rohan Smith (38:44.891)
Yeah, and I think getting on board those owners corporation conversations and making sure they have it in their roadmap and planning to solve some of those things going forward. That's where the conversation really needs to start at those owners corporations.

Jeff (39:01.325)
Great Rowan, I might throw some rapid fire questions at you. just to get your initial thoughts on. Yeah, so don't think about it too much, but starting with what's your favorite EV myth to bust?

Rohan Smith (39:20.007)
Favorite EV myth? mean range anxiety used to be the myth. I think nowadays with batteries and testers, new long range, real drive one doing 750k WLTP, that's not really a myth anymore. So I probably don't need to carry on about range anxiety. Charger anxiety was the next phase. That's probably also a myth because the chargers these days are far more reliable than the first generation DC stuff that went in the ground. A lot of that stuff has now been replaced.

There's been major upgrades around Australia on that. What else? The battery one. Probably the battery one is the main one I'd flag. People think that the battery warranty is when the battery dies. So if they see battery warranty eight years, they think, oh, in eight years time that car is dead. That is a complete myth. It's like any warranty. You get a warranty on any product for 12 months or two years and you keep it for 20 years and it's still going.

Jeff (40:15.085)
Yeah, that's a good one. And it's also like a natural observation to look at a warranty length and assume and make that false assumption that it would die thereafter. But you're right, there's lots of other examples out there in the market. If something's well looked after that it will last for a long time. So next one of the recently launched EVs as a...

As a former petrolhead and also massive geek, caught your eye?

Rohan Smith (40:47.71)
I actually really liked the Polestar 4, a bit weird how it didn't have a rear window. Really nice car. think that technology was really good. They had a lot of integration with third parties to build that car. But I ended up coming back to Tesla, to be honest. think Tesla definitely don't want to sound like a fanboy. I'm not Elon Musk on his camp and have nothing to with politics. But I think the car's software is so important.

Jeff (40:53.732)
Hey

Rohan Smith (41:17.758)
And this is where when you're looking at a car these days, it's not just the car, it's how it interfaces with charging, it's how it interfaces with the mobile app to lock and unlock the car. I've had some EVs where you've got that phone key and you walk up to it and it takes like five seconds to realize you're there and why not lock? It's got to be seamless. You've got to be frictionless with this new technology between hardware and software.

Jeff (41:40.481)
Yeah, that's a good one. And of the future EV technology that is out there in the news, that's on the way, what gets you the most excited?

Rohan Smith (41:55.006)
I think I would have said FSD would be something that I know a lot of Tesla owners have been waiting for years on and I really feel for the people out there who were very early adopters and got hardware three but hopefully that gets solved fairly soon or they get upgraded to hardware four. Vita G is probably the biggest one I keep hearing coming from the energy background as well when I was over in that land but even now in the EV space on the other side vehicle to grid is kind of the saviour of

enabling you to not just buy a car but buy a huge battery on wheels that you can use for multiple things and get a cost benefit from. So I think vehicle to grid now there's a standard as of December last year is great. We're going to see a bit of a catch up on that one because it involves the vehicles, the manufacturers and the technology in the car. It involves DNSPs and how that's integrated to the grid. It involves energy retailers of how you bill it and price it and how that's structured.

And it could have warranty implications on the battery as well, potentially for some. And then the chargers. So you've then got the hardware to do V to G and whether that's AC charging or DC. I think in my personal view, V to G DC would be the way I would go because it's kind of the conversion happens on the wall on your charger rather than in the car, which is where a lot of the current limitations are on output from the vehicle. yeah, vehicle to grid, think.

could be really interesting.

Jeff (43:24.033)
Yeah, that's so exciting. There's a topic we always cover on this podcast and we can talk more about it. But your first comment there on FSD or full self-driving is a topical one as I'm here in the States at the moment. You just go past so many of the Jaguar...

Rohan Smith (43:47.643)
I pace.

Jeff (43:48.546)
Waymo cars, yeah, the I-Pace, they've got the cameras everywhere and there's no one in the driver's seat. I think a lot of Australians don't realize that self-driving cars are basically a thing and they're driving all around the states at the moment. You can get what's called a Waymo, which is about 20, 30 % cheaper than an Uber because there's no driver in it. And you can get driven around in a Jaguar I-Pace with no driver, it's very exciting.

Rohan Smith (44:18.605)
It's incredible technology and it is very safe. I think that's the main message. It's not flawless that there'll never be a fatality from an autonomous vehicle. That's not possible. There's always going to be things that happen with any technology. ultimately, if it's safer than a human driver by a long shot, then I think that's absolutely moving in the right direction. The funny bit I saw actually recently in Waymo was a police car in the US pulled over a Waymo because it didn't legal U-turn.

And they tried ticketing the driver, but there wasn't one. So, and I didn't, don't think it had a passenger at the time either, but it did pull over when it got flagged by the police. But yeah, the police couldn't interact with the vehicle at all and struggled to ticket it. And there was a bit of backlash around they should find the company and how does that work when there's no driver? How do you lose demerit points? Who's responsible for that? So it's a new world when you think about driverless vehicles.

Jeff (45:16.973)
What an interesting dilemma.

Solar Choice Communications (45:19.513)
Yeah, these are the problems that need to be solved, We're seeing it happen live. I also saw that coverage and I think that the response basically was that the regulatory changes are already in the works. It's things like the operator's being given a one to two minute window to be able to tell the car to change behaviour if it's in an area it's not allowed to be or they have to have a 24 seven line.

being manned so that if there are complaints or problems from law enforcement that they can respond accordingly. So it's hard to prepare for every possible challenge before it happens, but quick responses for such quickly emerging technology is what we need.

Jeff (46:00.91)
And to run to loop back to your comments on V2G, and we're all very excited about that and we share your sentiment. Do you see Charge Fox, the platform playing a big role in V2G? I think some of the early pilot studies have been within people's homes where the cars are parked overnight and parked for longer periods.

Rohan Smith (46:01.435)
It was a good story, that one.

Jeff (46:30.781)
which seems natural, but do you think that will evolve into that public charging sphere? And I guess you guys also have a big exposure to that fleet, business fleet space as well.

Rohan Smith (46:45.937)
Yeah, I mean, it's on our roadmap, absolutely. And it's a sort of bit of a watch and see at the minute because there's nothing really available just yet for us to get into. But I think going forward in the future, you'll see some incentives from V2G. And so I could imagine a future where you could find out on ChargeFox that there's a charger that's gone into almost negative pricing because that area of the network needs more capacity.

And if you've got a car that you can plug in and either charge if there's excess solar on the grid and they need to absorb that or discharge and go back to the grid to help that grid, you know, um, and get paid for that. There could be a price premium attached to that. So you might plug in your car at let's use airport West again, for example, that might be grid constrained and it's at risk of a blackout or a brown out. And you get a bunch of babies that go over there going, there's a high price for feeding your energy back to the grid. If you've got access.

capacity in your EV, then you could plug in and get paid to discharge your car at whatever rate and then go and charge it back at home again for a far lower cost. And that would then help stabilize the grid. It people get rewarded for that behavior. So I think there'll be price incentives like that in the future where you will be able to use V2G in its true form for getting paid to charge or discharge to support the network.

Jeff (48:10.421)
And I also think, I always think back to an application and this is just me thinking laterally and probably a bit demonstrating my lack of knowledge. But in a recent cyclone we had up in the Gold Coast, Northern New South Wales area, well, we lost power for like two or three days in a row. And because the BYD has a PowerPoint plugin, I run a

a long extension cable down to the kitchen so I could at least plug the fridge in so all the food didn't go off. And then my neighbor saw what I was doing and asked if they could plug in as well. And there was enough power there that we could both run our fridges probably for a couple of weeks without the battery going dead. And it makes me think that maybe in some of these more isolated areas, maybe there is, you

hundreds in the future thousands of EVs parked in garages in these areas that have lost power. So maybe there's a possibility for all of those EVs to come to the rescue and power local networks. Obviously they don't want the power going through the lines while they're trying to fix it, but maybe they can isolate certain areas.

Yeah, maybe that's something that is going to be possible in the future when we have all this battery capacity, you know, sort of localised to people's homes.

Rohan Smith (49:39.486)
I'd say that's a really good call out and that's obviously a great example of V2L, vehicle to load, which is I guess a bit different from the V2G, V2H, the other acronyms that keep bouncing around. So vehicle to load is what we'd call a standalone power system where you've got the battery like in your car and you've got an external appliance or device like you said that you're connecting like your fridge and you have a direct connection to that that has nothing to do with the grid connection.

Technology as you are well aware exists today not in every car unfortunately I did hear Tesla are gonna add that to the new Model Y performance in the US and they might roll it out to others going forward which would be amazing I know Tesla owners have been crying out for V8L for some time BYD and Polestar and others have it today which is almost a reason to buy some of those cars is that capability

If you go camping, especially with some of these plug-in hybrid utes that coming out, the B-Body Shark, that one's a great car. They're just some amazing use cases using your car to power your campsite or power through a blackout. And when I was at Gemina, we actually used to send out portable batteries, like a generator, but not a petrol and a battery one. And they used to be distributed for people that had a planned outage.

power might have gone off for six hours for some planned maintenance and they were flagged as a life support customer. So they needed electricity for critical things at home. so we, or Gemina, would offer them a portable battery pack that they could use to power their fridge and their life support systems and whatnot. And now these days you've got this massive battery with an EV that we could, you know, a distributor could send out EVs into a straight and power multiple houses like you, your example just before, which is amazing.

Jeff (51:29.037)
Or even just offer the neighbor who has a Tesla anyway, I don't know, a dollar a kilowatt hour to send a cable across the fence. you know, there could be a quick win there.

Rohan Smith (51:43.142)
Yeah, there's the other acronym just to throw another one in is V2V, which is vehicle to vehicle. And that one is not widely available today, but the Tesla Cybertruck has that built in. We can basically charge one EV, the Tesla Cybertruck, plugging into another EV. I think coming from RACV with the roadside assistance, where nowadays with EVs, people can occasionally get a flat battery, pretty rare, but some people really push it to the limit to get zero.

Jeff (52:04.748)
Yeah.

Rohan Smith (52:11.929)
And if you can charge from another EV rather than getting towed to a charging station, I think that's another great use case with V2V.

Solar Choice Communications (52:20.931)
Definitely.

We're getting pretty close to the end of our time. think we've covered some great topics here. Is there anything else we want to touch on before we wrap up?

Rohan Smith (52:33.277)
It's been a great chat. Thank you very much for all the questions and conversation. I think it's a very fast moving industry in the EV space and the charging space. yeah, I could probably talk about it all day. So I don't want to bore your audience.

Solar Choice Communications (52:50.265)
That's right, that's we're all in these jobs so we can talk about it all day.

Rohan Smith (52:55.119)
I appreciate your time guys. Thank you so much, Jeff. Thanks, Dan.

Solar Choice Communications (52:59.097)
Thanks for coming on, appreciate your time.

Rohan Smith (53:01.585)
No worries,

Jeff (53:03.361)
Thanks, Ron.

Rohan Smith (53:05.415)
See ya