Sites, Service, Scale: Universal EV’s Formula for Profitable Charging

In this episode of Field Frequency, Jason is joined by Brian Bradford, Commercial Lead at Universal EV Chargers, a Texas-based charge point operator with a rapidly expanding national footprint. Brian shares his journey from traditional energy and infrastructure, including early career experience during the Enron era, into the evolving EV charging landscape.

The conversation explores Universal EV’s evolution from Level 2 deployments to a focused DC fast charging strategy, emphasizing utilization, capital efficiency, and reliability as the core drivers of sustainable growth. Brian outlines Universal’s disciplined CPO-only model, its approach to hardware and software flexibility, the role of public funding such as NEVI, and how customer experience, uptime, and regionalized operations shape long-term success. The episode closes with a forward-looking discussion on policy headwinds, market maturation, and what “winning” looks like for Universal EV by 2030.

Show Notes

Guest:
Brian Bradford, CCO of Universal EV Chargers

Topics Covered:

• Brian’s career path from traditional energy and infrastructure into EV charging
• The origin of Universal EV and its roots in Universal Solar and Universal Green Group
• Transition from Level 2 charging to a DC fast charging–first strategy
• Current portfolio overview, including L2 and L3 port counts and multi-state expansion
• Universal EV’s CPO-only business model and focus on operations, maintenance, and service
• Balancing utilization and capital cost as the foundation of site profitability
• Site acquisition strategy, regionalized construction, and maintenance optimization
• Hardware and software selection in a fragmented, commoditized market
• Universal’s approach to uptime, reliability, and owning the customer experience
• Leveraging proprietary software, 24/7 service teams, and OEM partnerships
• Public funding strategy, including NEVI and state-level grant programs
• Lessons learned from early funding challenges and industry maturation
• Enhancing driver experience through loyalty programs, pricing models, and AI-driven tools
• Policy volatility, market headwinds, and long-term demand for EV infrastructure
• Universal EV’s five-year vision for growth, consolidation, and customer loyalty
• The future of EV charging stations as grid-edge energy assets
  
  

Transcript

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In today's episode of Field Frequency, I'm joined by Brian Bradford, Chief Commercial Officer of Universal EV Charging. In this episode, Brad unpacks for us what it really takes to scale a charging network, from site selection to service models to the economics that get a site pointed towards profitability. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of Field Frequency. On this day, I'm joined by Brian Bradford of Universal EV Chargers. Brian, so good to have you. Great to meet you as well. Appreciate you sharing some time with us and I know the audience will enjoy hearing about your story and hearing about the story of Universal EV Chargers, a CPO based in DFW Metro Picks of Texas and look forward to a good conversation. So before we get started, got several questions I'd like to talk to you about, but I think it makes sense to start with the origin story and you've had a long career in energy, infrastructure, you've been involved in EV adoption. Share your personal journey, tell your story about how you got into the EV charging space and what drew you to Universal EV. And then also give us the story of Universal as well, please. Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So, um, yeah, I've been in energy probably too long. My first job out of school was actually with Enron, uh, that company that was in Houston and all the drama that occurred with it. And so, uh, just to give you a sense of how long I've been in the industry, it has been a while, but it's been really exciting in the sense of, uh, the industry's gone through so many changes over the past, you know, 20, 25 years, uh, a lot of ups and a lot of downs and just been a very volatile ride, but it's been fun. uh And so I'm really excited about kind of where we're headed as an industry at this point. I've done infrastructure, I've done software, I've done utilities directly. But uh as of probably four or five years ago, I got into more of the energy efficiency and the specific uh EV charging space. And I see huge opportunities in the space. And um that's really what brought me to a bunch of different companies, but currently with Universal EV. I've been here about a year and a half focusing on all the commercial activities. And it's been interesting because Universal EV came about really from a bunch of different uh activities. Himal Doshi is our CEO and he pretty much was focusing about 20 years ago. He started focusing on solar and built a couple of solar plants in Texas. and then had been getting into EVs and he told me a story of one day he was driving to his son in college and he couldn't find a charging station to charge his EV. And from that moment on, about four or five years ago, he decided to move forward and look at the infrastructure problem, which is massive. It's a huge infrastructure problem we have right now with respect to charging infrastructure to... you know, satisfy the range and the needs of drivers. so Universal EV came out of Universal Solar, which is now under an umbrella of Universal Green Group. And so we really focused initially on a lot of level two charging in the Texas area. But as about a year and a half ago when I joined, sort of shifted our focus and really got into the level three space and are now fully focused on level three with a nice portfolio sort of being built in central US area. So with the shift to DC fast charging, obviously in the early days deploying L2, are the L2s still in operation today? Are they still publicly accessible? L2s are still in operation and it's a great portfolio. What we recognize is that obviously the opportunity on L3 side, just greater revenue, more revenue. And then as well with all of the incentive programs that are out there, we're leveraging those programs as best we can to take advantage of that capital to help us. so, yeah, we've really sort of made that shift with the mindset of you know, there's more revenue opportunities. You're going to get potentially higher utilization, more usage, more electrons flowing, therefore greater revenues as you move into level three space. without sharing specifics of dc l two mix what's your what's your port count across your your So across the L2 portfolio, we've got probably about 1200 ports. And then across the level three portfolio, we've probably got about 400 to 500 ports. And we're actively building. We're actually actively building in many different states right now to increase that. Great. Great. Well, that's a healthy port count for a CPO. yeah, it's good. So kind of drilling down into the identity of Universal as an operator, how does Universal EV define ownership of the driver experience? Where's the focus on that? Where does Universal's responsibilities begin and end compared to the OEM, compared to that whole experience? What's that framework look like? Yeah, no, that's a great question because I've obviously worked with other companies that, you know, maybe more of the OEM trying to do CPO. We are purely CPO and installation and construction and the software and O &MP. So that's really the place where we play. You know, I think there's a lot of pitfalls and challenges that you can fall into depending upon which of those, how you're looking at your sort of integration. across those things, and we've really focused our energies on the service of delivering the service of the electrons and the operation and the maintenance to the customer. And so we've been able to find a really nice sweet spot and that be our sweet spot versus, like I said, other folks I've worked with that were sort of OEMs and CPOs. That's a really challenging thing to do because you got to spend money on both and R &D on both and it's really tough. We're focusing on uh just that charge point operation and we're leveraging our uh capabilities on the construction side because as I said before, we've come out of this sort of solar construction business, but we're leveraging those resources to ensure we get essentially low cost uh installs for the projects that we work on. So we are ChargePoint operator focusing on service and the electron sale to customers. So within the business model, that's good. And a comment to your explanation there is everyone wants total vertical integration because of convenience and all that makes sense. But there's lanes that we can get in and do well. And there's other lanes that we may want to get into and try to do well. But the try is where the problem comes into play. so to your point of letting the OEMs manufacture their equipment, specialize there, and you operate. you know, of course you got to go through your, your selection process and there's a lot of, a lot of options out there and a lot of noise and distractions to sort through. But, but yeah, that, uh, that, that's a strong business model. And so how does universal balance, you know, it's, it's the nuances between working with the manufacturer, but then also what's that growth engine strategy look like? How, how do you, you know, maybe you want to, answer that from the framework of the perspective of the right hardware selection or the right features and benefits. Answer it based on what makes sense for you. At the end of the day, what we've learned is that it's a, not easy. It sounds easy. You just put up a and you're good to go. But at the end of the day, what we've learned is that we've got to do two things. One, we've got to find locations that have high utilization. That's pretty common and standard. But we've also got to find a way to provide the sites at the lowest capital cost. And that's really we spent a lot of time and energy working with the OEMs from pricing standpoint, leveraging our install teams from an installation standpoint. You know, at the end of the day, it really is that those two things, utilization and capital costs, will determine whether or not a site is successful. And so we've spent a lot of time sort of looking at those two things, working with folks to help us optimize around those two things. And as we think about our business model, that's it. If we do those well, we're good to go. If we do those poorly, then obviously we're challenged. Yeah, that's a site acquisition and assessment of the location is obviously a part of the secret sauce. to your point, success rises or falls in that area. course, within that framework is also the reliability and uptime aspect that speaks to the right hardware, the right features, et cetera. And driver confidence in this space hinges on utilization hinges on chargers working the first time that experience of pulling up credit card reader works, HMI works, all the interface and there's a charging session active. And so from CPO perspective, what are your systems in place and partnerships that are in place that helps drive that reliability? Yeah, yeah, we have a of a targeted uptime of 97%. That's sort of the number that we're where we target for all of our solutions. The thing that we realized, which I still challenge with because everybody every CPU has their own software. And it's interesting because they all do the same thing. We're kind of like, do our own software? But we have our own software because we want to own that piece. We want to make sure that the reliability and the maintenance and everything is sort of as tightly connected as we can so we can ensure that the customer experience is as best we can. And so that's literally why we have it. I think many other folks are doing the same, but it just kills me that we're all spending money on the same thing. But at the end of the day, our goal is to maintain a 97 % uptime. We've got partnerships with all the major players on the equipment and hardware side. with the goal of, you know, obviously working with them and volume discounting with them as best we can so that we can have that low capital cost. As I said, our own software, not only for a CMS, but as well for a portal that allows the users to communicate with us as necessary. We have our own service team 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond to any customer issues. And so at the end of the day, yeah, you're right. I mean, it is reliability. It is uptime. It is that customer satisfaction that will really determine whether or a customer comes back to the site or moves on to the next one. And so we put those resources in place to ensure that they are consistently coming back to Universal EV. So within the model of the deployments of the sites, are you working with site hosts or are they, and you're working with like easement into their locations or are you, you own the green space as well? is, or is it maybe it's a mix of both? Yeah, we're pretty flexible. mean, at end of the day, our goal is to, you know, find the right site host and then the relationship with them, whether it's a partnership, whether it's a fixed payment, you know, really depends upon the level of risk and interest of that site host. We've got various structures at different locations depending upon the need. And as I said, the site host wants. But we're pretty flexible with respect to that. And I think we need to be because, like I said, some folks are like, yeah, we'll take the risk with you and give us 10 % of the profits of whatever comes and it's a great thing. Or no, we want a $100 apartment space and you guys take the risk. But like I said, you got to be flexible whichever way that works. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, I could see that, you know, CPOs obviously focus obviously is on profitability and there's lots of complexities between deployment and profitability and getting out of the red end of the black on the deployment of the chargers. And so there's there's complexity of utility engagement. There's the maintenance costs. I know you mentioned that you probably self-perform on the service. I'm thinking probably also do tier one, so you're really self-sustaining, self-supporting inside. the struggle or maybe the balance in profitability and what that means for maintenance and OEM engagement and support, what's the universal strategy to kind of move from pilot site? Let's see if this is going to work. mean, know you talked about due diligence on the front end when it comes from a site acquisition standpoint, but. But what's that strategy to get from deployment and a pilot project or pilot site to a sustainable and profitable site? Yeah, like I said, there's a couple elements to that. know, obviously the first is just the location, location, location, looking for the best location, whether it's traffic cars that are passing, whether it's closeness to, you know, multifamily unit housing. You know, kind of at least first have to think about that as the primary thing. You know, then secondly, as I spoke about before, you know, is finding the right equipment at the lowest possible cost. and installing that equipment and ensuring that it's up to the standards that we would want for the organization. And back to that point of sort high utilization against low capital cost, that's really sort of our primary focus. Now, when it comes to maintenance, the other thing that we've really tried to do is instead of building a site in Maine and then building another site in Florida, we've tried to sort of... regionalize our construction so that we can have resources that are close, they're more connected and closer to each other because getting on flights is just, that just pulls you right there. I in certain cases that's your profit for the month if you've got to send someone on a plane to go fix something. And so what we've tried to do is really with respect to our installation is really kind of structured. and around regional focus versus trying to do everything for everybody all over the place. But those are ways to kind of keep your costs down and as well keep your customer satisfaction up because you're able to respond quicker to any maintenance issues in a regional structure. Yeah, makes sense. So a little background. My first connection to Universal obviously was in a previous life representing hardware, you know, working with Universal to potentially look at look at hardware from, you know, from brands that I previously represented. It's kind of fresh on my mind because just this week I was at touring a couple of different plants of manufacturers this week. so with all that, kind of teed up for this question. When you're looking at, Universal is looking at standardization and technology choices, whether it's hardware, software, both, there's so much out there. Chargers themselves have become commoditized in this industry. There's software fragmentation. How does Universal, because to your point of regional focus, maybe there is a standardization on the hardware focus or maybe not, I don't know. But how does Universal kind of sort through that noise to approach standardization? Whether you're looking at from the hardware, payment systems, how does that work for Universal? Yeah, I mean, the reality is every site is different. And so it's really tough to just completely standardize. mean, you've got, you know, and I say different from just the location, what the need is there versus, you know, utility rates and utility demand charges. mean, there's so many different things that impact that decision. Now, obviously, you know, if you can get volume discounts, you want to leverage those for sure. But in certain locations, you know, going to a battery buffered solution, might be the best solution considering the fact that it's got high demand charge and is going to have high utilization at the same time. And so there's at end of the day, it's important that you sort of take all those factors into consideration versus just saying, I'm going to pick this one manufacturer and just stick with them and only go with them. It's really tough to do that because as I said, every sort of site may have a different reason or different value that's needed there. You know, we obviously want to focus on those uh manufacturers that are the best and qualified, but it may not be necessarily the same every time. And what our software is able to do is sort of go across those different platforms and really be able to pull the data that's necessary to ensure we keep the operation uptime high. Yeah, well, that's good. You know, was tying into the regional comment and I guess my awareness of some awards that Universal got around Neve. When it comes to public funding and Neve, how is Universal approaching federal funding, state funding, maybe utility? Is it a nice to have? Is it a have to have from your vantage point? Do you pursue it or do you not? We are 100 % pursuing it. And it's interesting, we've won about 63 Nebby's to date, which is probably fifth in the sort of awardee category across the board. We have a full-time team that does nothing but sort of search for Nebby's and like state grant programs. You know, as I was saying before, getting that low capital cost is really know, dependent upon any incentives you can find. And so we really value having a team that's out there looking for those opportunities and mining all 50 states to really bring that value to us. So no, we're, it is, I won't say it's it's a hundred percent of every project we've done, but it's probably, you know, the majority of the projects we've done have leveraged some sort of capital from a grant provider because there's a lot out there. We were a little worried, obviously, with the new administration and where Nevy was sort of heading, but Nevy's back in full force right now. And so we're trying to capture as many of those as we can. And it's been very successful because of the team we have in place, truly going after that in full speed. Yeah, I know your portfolio extends outside of Texas, obviously, but, you know, Universal being a Texas based company. And it's interesting. I'm glad that you've applied for the money. I'm glad that you've taken the money because interesting it's, in fact, I was having this conversation with a, a EMSP provider just yesterday, where we talking about Texas, whether it's from the perspective of VW money that rolled out before Neve. And then of course, Neve, Texas. received the highest allocation of NEV funding. But there was a lot of VW money left on the table in the state of Texas. was amazing to me because I even actually had customers back then that would apply for money. They would be approved and then still not move forward with it. And some of that was obviously early on. Pretty much anything going on before 2020 was, there was a lot of hesitancy. Of course, EVs are... politicized and especially in the state like Texas. And so there was so many things that went into money being applied for approved and then left on the table. It's astounding to me, but I think we've kind of moved away and matured in our approach to that. So I'm glad Universal has been successful with public funding because sometimes that 100%. I mean, the challenge was you might get awarded, but then it would take you a year to contract. now that the contracts, and you have 50 different states, each state had their own contract. And so it's just like, just really challenging. We stayed focused. We really wanted to commit ourselves to that and are seeing now where the states are like, okay, we've got our contract done. It's just a matter of doing the application, moving through the process with a qualified site host. And I think things are actually picking up now that we've sort of progressed and matured from where we were to the point to the comments you were making in the past. things are good now. Better. They're good. Yeah. Yeah. You made the comment of maturation and so we've seen some maturation from deployments to hardware to funding all of that. We're moving forward and sometimes in this industry it feels like two or three steps forward, maybe two or three steps back. But looking at the future of the driver experience, uh Universal as a CPO, obviously your customers are those pulling up to the chargers. so beyond uptime, getting into that innovative kind of mindset like iterations of OCPP with plug and charge or loyalty program integrations, integrated apps, things like that. How is Universal trying to shape the UX aspect of your offering to your customers? Yeah, yeah, we're looking at a bunch of things. Obviously, some of the things you spoke about, you know, loyalty programs for sure, know, fixed rate programs, hey, you know, 25 bucks a month, and you can charge any of our chargers throughout the course of, you know, a month. And, you know, just go crazy. mean, so there are many different ways we can really sort of, you know, attract the customer. uh Obviously leveraging all of the AI capabilities as well to help them figure out the best locations for them. We're actively doing that in our software to ensure that we meet that customer need. there's a lot of activities around this. And at the end of the day, I think this is what's going to probably uh differentiate a lot of players in the CPO space. Obviously getting the sites installed. But then as well, of that customer management, know, customer relationship management, making sure you've got, you know, folks getting high utilizations at your sites. These tools are going to be critical to make sure that that happens. Yeah, absolutely. Kind of looking at headwinds and marketing, market rather, complexity. There's obviously we've alluded to it in our conversation, the instability and the market motions that are always going on. Our industry has obviously faced its fair share of bankruptcies and standardization protocol changes, policy swings to your to your comment about the administration shift, maybe kind of take out the crystal ball and what do you see as kind of the biggest headwinds, universal as a CPO, but all CPOs have got to kind of look at moving forward. Well, I'll just say this, policy has been a real challenge for the CPOs over the course of the past eight months. mean, you know, there were moments where people were like, are we just all gonna die? I mean, literally, we've had kind of a nice rise up and then a falling down. And sadly, it's kind of one of these things where it's like sad on one hand because, you know, a lot of people got out. And a lot of people, like the market breadth was no longer there because they were terrified because of the policies. I would argue that those that are in or those that are still here are those that are going to be able to weather the storm. But policy has been a real challenge for this industry. But I guess where I'm very hopeful for the industry is the fact that demand is there. And I think without question, uh The more we can flip the infrastructure in, the better we'll be with respect to a few years from now when policy sort of stabilizes and gets a little smoother. But there's so much demand that we're seeing now. You look at California, you look at the world, and we're talking about 20 and 30 % penetration of electric vehicles. I actually just, I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I just bought one. I bought a vehicle a month ago and my challenge was range and charging capabilities. And I've learned to sort of figure out how to manage through that. But I love the cars. I love the experience. And I think that the more people that try out the experience, the better we'll be. But you've got to get the infrastructure in there. And I think the CTO, this is a huge opportunity. While things are little shaky and while things aren't as clear, to get that infrastructure in there so that when the demand really sort of through, we can really take advantage of it and drive forward. So I think there's a lot of positives in the future. The headwinds are challenging. I think there's no question about that. But if you have a good capital position and are strong enough to fight through this, think if you can fight for the next couple of years, I think it's going to be manna from heaven, you know, a years from now. Well, that's good. I appreciate that commentary and has been a good conversation. Brian, I appreciate you sharing kind of the vision, the focus of Universal and where you're going. I think as we get ready to close out here, I'd like to hear your thoughts around Universal's vision as it relates to winning. We were to fast forward five years from now. We're at 2030. That's been a A date on the calendar as this milestone event as an industry. if you know, fast forward five years, what's winning for Universal look like as a CPO from the framework of footprint or utilization? What's that look like? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that we're focusing on. Obviously, it's growing our base, growing our level three base. You know, we are actively, as I said before, installing chargers throughout that central sort of US corridor on the numbers of, you know, hundreds and thousands of new ports over the course of the next four to five years. Most of them, least half of that number that I just described is contracted already. And so it's just a matter of us delivering. And so we're going to continue to push that. I think the other thing that we're seeing is there's going to be lots of consolidation, we think, with other CTOs. And so we're actively looking at expanding our size and scope, maybe inorganically. And so that's another sort of area. I will say that the overall... area though is to increase the customer and strengthen the customer experience and ensure that once you've gone to one of our stations, you want to go to the next station and always use us for your charging needs. And so we're going to spend all of our time and energy on those three things over the next five years. So that, as I said, as we sort of punch through this challenging time, I'll say, you know, we'll be a computer and a player. on the larger scale. Brian, I appreciate your time. It's been a good conversation. As we get ready to close out here, any parting comments, any wisdom to share with the group? then also, I'd like you to share how people can connect with you and kind of follow your journey, follow Universal's journey if you could share that as well. Sure, no, yeah, think bottom line, we're in a very interesting industry. um think, as I think about energy in general and think about where we've come, once again, back from my Enron days, we're talking about fundamental changes to the grid and the structures of the grid. And I think there's so much that having... You can call it, you know, EV charging station. My vision is an EV charging station, possibly with battery storage that's allowing us to do a whole bunch of things at the edge. I'm thinking about, you know, energy from the vehicles back into, you know, homes and back onto the grid. We're talking about a fundamentally changed market and grid operation, which is super, super exciting. And so. With respect to that, I think we've come a long, way, still a long way to go, but have come a long, long way. And uh it's going to be really, really exciting over the course of the next few years. As far as Universal EV, you know, we are uh active on a whole bunch of social media channels, whether it's LinkedIn, Facebook and so forth. You know, please keep watching out for us because we're growing. We are growing very, very quickly and are leveraging all the tools that we've spoken about today to help us get their government funding, public funding, low cost uh installation. But we are putting our foot on the pedal to really sort of move forward versus others that may be sort of hesitant in pulling back. We are 100 percent gung-ho about this market and are in a capital position to really sort of keep it going. So, yeah, keep looking out for us. Thank you. All right. Well, very good, Brian. Thank you for coming on Field Frequency. Appreciate your time. Thank you as well. a great day.