Chargeway: Translating Electricity Into Fuel

In this episode of Field Frequency, Jason Cortes sits down with Matt Teske, Founder and CEO of Chargeway, to talk about one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption: confusion. From his roots in automotive culture to building a platform designed to simplify EV charging, Matt shares why the industry’s challenge is not just technology, but communication. Together, they explore consumer friction, charging anxiety, infrastructure visibility, OEM strategy, and what it may take to build greater confidence in electrification.

In this conversation, Jason and Matt unpack the gap between EV innovation and EV understanding. Matt shares how a real-world charging mishap helped spark the idea for Chargeway and explains why he believes EV adoption is being slowed less by range and more by friction, messaging, and fuel confidence.

The episode explores how Chargeway helps simplify the charging experience by translating complex charging data into a more intuitive, driver-friendly format. Jason and Matt also discuss how automakers, charging networks, dealers, and utilities each play a role in shaping the EV customer experience.

In this episode, they discuss:

• Matt Teske’s automotive background and the origin story behind Chargeway
• Why EV charging is still too complicated for the average driver
• How Chargeway simplifies charging with color-coded plugs and power levels
• The difference between range anxiety and fuel confidence
• Why consumer education may be one of the biggest missing pieces in EV adoption
• The role of OEMs, dealers, charging networks, and utilities in the EV ecosystem
• How inconsistent messaging may be creating more friction in the market
• Why Tesla’s charging network changed the conversation for legacy automakers
• The opportunity for the EV industry to improve clarity, consistency, and trust

About Matt Teske

Matt Teske is a storyteller and brand builder whose work has focused primarily on the automotive and energy industries. He believes that for any product or service to succeed, it needs a compelling story that connects with its audience. Those stories are rarely accidental. They are built through thoughtful planning, creative collaboration, and innovative execution.

Throughout his career, Matt has led projects for some of the world’s most recognizable brands. Through his own business and as a consultant, he has served in roles including Chief Strategy Officer, creative director, brand strategist, producer, and PR manager. His work has spanned brand development for startups, concept car design, action sports apparel launches, NCAA football helmet design, international editorial writing, and even stand-up comedy.

Today, Matt is focused on the growth of Chargeway, a software platform designed to simplify the electric fueling experience for EV drivers and the broader electric vehicle industry. When time allows, he also provides branding and strategy consulting across a range of industries, with a particular focus on transportation and clean energy.

Transcript

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Today, the process of fueling at a gas station is obvious, but it didn't start that way. The fuel retail experience had to mature into something people could understand, trust, and repeat without thinking. charging hasn't reached that point yet. And so in this episode, I sit down with Matt Teske, founder and CEO of Chargeway. We talk about why EV adoption isn't being held back by the cars themselves, but by how poorly electricity has been translated as a fuel. This is a conversation about clarity, friction points, and why explaining charging may matter just as much as building more of it. Let's talk about it. Welcome to another episode of Field Frequency. Today I'm joined by Matt Teske, founder and CEO of Chargeway. Matt, good to see you again. Good to see you, Jason. I was gonna say it feels like it was just the day we were hanging out. shared a stage recently at Electrify Expo for, what was it, about eight hours times two or something like that. I was gonna say two very full days, nonstop talking. But the cool part is we expose, you cover a lot, but again, with your podcast too, part of that is to kind of take the conversation we had there and where can we expand? How can we chat about it further, get into more rabbit holes and kind of break things open to see what we can talk about. well bring that same energy you brought to Electrify Expo, because you were a live wire that day, pun intended. Well, it's a combination of I enjoy doing that. I mean, I really enjoy chatting with people, especially when it's kind of this collection of different types of backgrounds and stakeholder groups. And also it's a consumer facing event. It's not what a lot of us in industry have been used to over the years where it's like just us in a conference room or a ballroom talking to each other again. It's nice to have the interjection of, know, every now and then somebody walks up after a discussion or during and says, can I ask you what? you just said or what that means or how I would care about that. It adds a really fun level of perspective. Yeah. You know, this space has got enough talking heads. think, you know, those that got something to say need to, need to be talking. And those that don't have something to say need to probably be quiet or, take, take a seat. You were one of those that have something to say because you've been around for, for quite some time. I, know, for those that don't know it, for the audience, those listening, I'd, I'd like for you to one kind of tell your story and you come back from a strong automotive background. But kind of, you know, just give us the background, but then I want to, you know, tell us the background of Chargeway. Where did Chargeway come Yeah. Well, mean, background wise, I mean, I've been working in the automotive sector for about 25 years. I'm actually over that now. Uh, started out in the mid to late nineties, grew up in Southern California, got into the tuner car world for the fast and furious world for those who just want to have it simple. That's what it was. And that's where I started. And it was all about modifying cars and tuning cars. And that was everything from the aesthetic to, you know, to the suspension, to under the hood. And, and I've always been a car guy. I loved cars as a kid. And so I was saw myself being a part of the automotive industry. so, as starting out in my career, it really turned into, what can I do to tell stories around a new vehicle type or a particular vehicle type? So that meant building project cars and specialty vehicles for the SEMA show in Las Vegas every year. Did that for about 15, 16 straight years I went to that show. Worked with brands like GM and Toyota and Scion and Lexus and others. Got a chance to work with some really awesome uh partner companies. Over the years, really great design studios like Five Axis out of Huntington Beach. were doing a lot of really cool Scion and Lexus stuff for a long time, but also just building products on my own too. And so that's where it was. It was about a passion being a car guy. But also part of that was working with brands like GM, Toad and others and OEMs, dealer training around this new vehicle that's coming out. What's the compelling story we're going to create around why someone would want to buy this car. And then how do you train dealers to talk about those compelling, you know, talking points and you bring those moments together to create a sale. I mean, that's part of the strategy of what happens in automotive. And so I did a lot of that over the years. And I just threw that lens when I really wanted to look at starting getting into EVs, that's now 15, over 15 years ago. And it really was about how do I take part in this next step of what's happening in automotive? And my wife and I got our first EV 13 years ago. I convinced her I wanted it. We went on a road trip after having it for about a month and I called the place we're staying and then they said they had charging. said, great, no need to worry. We'll just plug in. And it turned out they had a just an electrical 110 outlet. And I didn't bring our charger with us. And fortunately it was a plug-in hybrid, so it had gas backup. But I was pretty embarrassed and also just like, gosh, is this really what this is? But my wife asked me a very candid question that night when we were at that resort. She said, you're a car guy. So if you couldn't do this, how would I do this? And I thought, that's a great question. And that was really kind of the inception for what did I get wrong and what led to the inevitably realizing It's not about buying a new car with an EV, it's about buying a new fuel type and trusting that new fuel type to make the car useful. so Chargeway was born out of that because the way that we explain electricity, it's just too complicated for everyday people. They need it to be easier to understand and visualize for the things they might encounter. And so Chargeway is designed to solve all that using simple visualizations, colors for plugs, simple numbers for power. You download the app, tell us the car you have, we do all the math for you. And that's what it's designed to be. that's, mean, kind of... really quick synopsis of just being a car guy, but getting through the process of understanding how to create storytelling around cars and how that turns into storytelling honestly about a new fuel type. And that's really what Chargerweight really provides. Well, I like the way you frame that as a story because I think there is a story that needs to be addressed. mean, think about the first gasoline station early 1900s and the modern fuel retail experience began to crystallize in the, in the 1920s, the roaring twenties. then basically from then until today, the experience has been gas and diesel and what type of gas or octane rather on the gasoline side. And then there's a nozzle that's probably either red or green. And there's some ancillary and kind of hit medium to heavy duty and fueling that that that's in addition to that, but that's pretty much it. You're done. So we've got a hundred years of a retail fueling model. It's self-explanatory. It's repeatable. It's scalable. Consumers get it. Most kids know how to fuel their car just from riding in the back seat and watching mom or dad fuel their car. And so we're at a transition now and, and, and Chargeway and kind of what your experience led up to you founding Chargeway was let's get some translation involved in here. And so Chargeway, look at Chargeway is like a translation, translation layer. You're building a translation layer between drivers, hardware, and infrastructure. Did I, did I, do I convey that the right way? Yeah, I mean, honestly, that's is it is what it's doing is taking the engineering of what's happening on infrastructure and the engineering what's happening on each vehicle. And it's really tailoring it to the use case of every driver and saying, if you tell us what you're driving, we will show a personalized visualization and use case for your car. And that's taking all that math about what's happening with charge curve, amperage, voltage, kilowatt, kilowatt hour, all those different details that are wildly complex. And we just distill it down into you can go here because the color matches. And if you're at the green six, it's going to take you 40 minutes. If you're at the green seven, it's going to take you 20 minutes. If you're at the green four, it's going to take you two hours. mean, so it's all about having people have a glance at a map and saying, oh, this thing that I otherwise can't visualize, this visualizes what I need to know, which is, I connect? How long will I wait? And for example, what's available? We have real time status of that. And also what does it cost real time pricing for people? So It's meant to give people what they want in a very simple way that at a glance they can have all the info they need at one station just by looking at it. And that's really fundamental. Yeah, it is. Technology is able to take this new form of transportation, if that's what we can call it, new form of transportation and simplify it. For those that haven't been driving an EV, those that aren't in the industry, they don't understand, and there's so many unknowns. But when, so would you say Chargeway is for the EV driver, it's for the charging operators or the industry as a whole, or is it for just one of those three examples or is it for everybody? Yes, yes. All right. No. Yeah. you know, but it really it is meant to be a an end to end solution for the industry as well as for drivers and the way of saying, okay, if you're developing an electric vehicle product, whether that's the vehicle itself or a hardware for charging or software that's going to manage it, all those things, how can you translate what that product is in the ecosystem in a way that matches up with the other products? That's really the end game and By doing that in a harmonious way with stakeholders. that could be the automaker, then how they translate that to what the dealers are explaining, what happens inside the vehicle, what happens in automotive mobile apps, what happens when you arrive at a station, all that has to be far more harmonious than it's been. And what we do is we just take all that information from all those stakeholders and provide it back out then to a driver in a way that helps them navigate all of that disconnected chaos where they can say, I'm really in love with the Ford Mustang Mach-E or I love the IONIQ 5 or whatever it might be for vehicle type. And then once they choose it, we then look at that landscape of chaos. by, like you said, translating it, we run it through what we've built with our software to create an experience that is again, simple. So it is for both, both industry and for individual drivers in that respect. And we've applied our solution in both markets for we've got B2B relationships where we work with industry that uses our software to visualize charging. Explain it more easily. That could be a showroom for auto sales. It could be with a utility at an event explaining how they provide fuel now. But either way, those people are working with consumers that then have to have the ability to leave that moment and say, how do I take this information with me? And that's where our mobile app comes in. And it's all the same exact user experience and user interface. So it's consistent. And that's the point. I've thought of Chargeway as a gas buddy for the electric vehicle industry, which is functional shorthand probably, but also probably incomplete. I don't know. Where does that analogy hold or fall apart? Wait, I guess, wait, do you still buy gas? I haven't purchased gas for a vehicle that I've owned in over eight years. But I know GasBuddy. Of course, yeah, I mean, I know what GasBuddy is. I again, I'm in the car world, so I'm familiar. And I think that that's, I mean, that's an analogy I think most people can understand in a sense of like, well, what's the value that GasBuddy brings to people that use it? it's, well, most people shop for gas based on price because they really couldn't care less. about I mean, some people do where they're like, I want to have that brand because I think my car runs better on that brand. And frankly, those fossil fuel companies go out of their way to make it seem that way. we've got V power. We have tech Ron. Yeah, it makes your engine run better like new. mean, so that's marketing. And that's the marketing of fuel that's your point. It's been reinforced for a century. And people are very accustomed to that. So the analogy I think works. I think that what chargeway has done You know, our goal was to say, well, what else do we know people need to know? Which is, can I connect? We know there's plug types of and variation around it. So we got to make that simple to see. And then, well, how long am I going to wait for this fill up? And then that's where the number system comes into play, where you can start to learn. If I take my car to a, again, green four or a green five or green six, I know my experience at that is going to be X amount of time. And as you go up in number, it is a faster fill up. That's a very easy way to convey charge curve and plug type and amps and volts and kilowatt and all the ways that we've made it too complex for people. Chargeway is the Sesame Street of explaining it. And that is where Gas Buddy is great is like, yeah, it's just simple. It's just pricing the brand of the station. Chargeway is meant to be that simple at a glance as you just know what you need to know. Yeah. So you're talking about colors and you're talking about assigning kilowatts and et cetera, plug in your vehicle. I guess for the listeners, if you don't have Chargeway, you need to go to your app store and you need to take out your phone. Obviously, if you're not driving, don't do that, but take out your phone, download Chargeway and you'll see what Matt is talking about. The simplicity that's brought together into a simple platform that shows you the information and it's tailored to your vehicle. So, and you've got other information plugged in there about local. you know, what's there, what's at the site. not just a, this app is not just a price sign. It's more than. Right. It's very dynamic for what it offers for information. once you've added your car, we remind you of your car's plug color at the bottom of the map. We tell you the fastest number your car can request. So each car has a rating to it. So a Mach-E would be a green six. An IONIQ five that is older would be a green seven. But now that they've switched over to the new Max connector, it would be a red seven because the color of the plug changed. So that's always reminded on the map. And then when you look at the map of the stations themselves, it's just color and numbers. If you can natively connect, if you turn on your adapter, it just changes the color of the station on the pin on the map. So you know that, that's a green pin. I have to use my green adapter there because I have a red plug. mean, really just rudimentary stuff. But then once you tap on a pin, it has a lot of dynamic data, which is it translates your charging time for you based on your state of charge and the station you're at. So you see a charge time listed and that takes into consideration your vehicle's charging curve and all of that. But then it also has real time pricing. So if you are at 5 % you want to go to 80, it'll calculate your total cost of charge and show you right above the pin on the map, which is a big deal because you can then tap around and if you're at a shopping center and they've got four networks there, tap around one might be 10 bucks cheaper. And that's that's something that's not visible to people. So or even if it's not cheaper, if you're going to spend 40 bucks to charge your car and you want to get some shopping in or some eating in while you're doing that, the map is there to help you make the decision that's right for you in that moment. Yeah. we list amenities with every station. So you can tap on amenities and it tells you how many feet away from the station a Starbucks is, or a Carl's Jr is or a Bucky's is I mean, so these are things that the the average consumer who's just like, okay, I need to know the basics that make me not have to think that hard, but I still get what I want, which is filled up and back on the road. And that's what we have not done well as an industry, we have made it far too complicated. And in the ways we have tried to simplify, we've just glossed over the complexities and people still have to figure out these things, you know, underneath that layer of we'll see it's easy. It's like, no, actually we're not being transparent. So those are two ways. think the industry is just, we've just done the public at a service and we've done ourselves at a service because we've dug ourselves into a hole of perception that is not one that makes people feel comfortable and confident. And that's what our goal is to take all that. again, the anxiety away and say, no, no, no, it's actually easier than you think. But unfortunately, the information that you've probably seen didn't make it that way. But hey, that's what charge that's a charge result. exactly. Information. That's where it's at about that education. mean, that's where this industry rises or falls on is in, is in the messages and the narratives and the information and it being conveyed in the right way. you know, kind of, kind of looking at the industry, got some industry kind of thoughts that I wanted to get into with you from, from the perspective of charging, but from the perspective of cars, if EV adoption stalls, I don't think it will be range. I don't think it will be price. I think it's friction. think that's where it's at. And that's really what I'm hearing you talk about in an address through Chargeway is all those friction points. And so what's the most invisible friction point people don't even realize is blocking mass adoption. Well, the thing that we always speak about is the fact that, you we always hear the phrase range anxiety, for example, and that's kind of changed into charging anxiety. And people are concerned about range and finding a charger. And I always look at that and say, OK, but let's unpack what all those things are related to when it comes to consumer psychology. Those are not related to the physical car itself, because the car itself can go 300 miles. It has a go pedal, a stop pedal, a steering wheel. It's got doors. This is not fear about the car. It's fear about a new fuel type. And to me, that friction point is the fact that we've already been talking about it is there is advertising and marketing and consumer conditioning around gas is important to have a car and those two things go together. And we have ingrained that into society, especially here in the US. It's a big part of Americana. We've taken gas and said, okay, it's gone now. Now you just got to go plug in somewhere. And we've done nothing to create visibility of that as a product. Yes, we have charging stations, sure. But UC Davis did a study years ago where they had X amount of chargers in the ground. And they did a study with people and said, okay, how confident are you to buy an EV today and drive it? And a certain amount of people said, I'm confident or I'm not confident. You fast forward three or four years and they did the study again. This was done in California. They doubled the amount of public chargers in that time period. And when they asked the exact same question, exact same survey, the amount of people said, no, I'm not confident to drive a V also doubled. So what that says is, it's not if you build it, they will come it's, you know, that's a waste, actually. So it's about people aren't looking for electricity as a fuel. So if they're not thinking about that, naturally, they're not going to go into a showroom and demand a car that runs on a fuel they don't trust. And so that's the end game. Tesla solved that problem by making it like an encompassed ecosystem, a top-down ecosystem. And that's why legacy auto brands, Ford, GM and others just finally said, forget it. We will just ask and beg for access to that network so that we can just have our cars have reliable fueling sources because they didn't trust the other networks. And that to me is an example of, yeah, you built these cars with big batteries in them and threw them at dealerships and then said, sell them. And the dealer people went, how? Mm-hmm. Like, how do we explain these things? And we've been trying to address that now for years. And I think it's finally gotten to a point where the industry can't keep denying that that is a fundamental problem for consumer psychology about EV adoption. Okay, so Chargeway is succeeding at that education piece, information piece. With Chargeway, say, succeeding at rapid scale, who's getting exposed in that scaled success? Is it the OEMs of the charging hardware? Is it the CPOs, the operators, is it the utilities? What's going on? within those sectors or maybe there's folks pretending everything's just fine or we're doing what we're supposed to do. Well, mean, the winners that come out of getting it right are, of course, the automakers because their vehicles will be enjoyed more by more people. The dealers will have the ability to close sales on a car that they previously didn't know how to sell. And now they can say, we know how to sell it. The other winners are going to be the networks that they're desperate to get more utilization. I think that the challenge within the network side of it is the business models that have existed for a long time for some networks. It hasn't been really related to how are we giving people access to electricity. Their business models have been related to how many software subscriptions can we get for our chargers that allow people to check in on them and see what kind of money they're making for them. And that to me was a huge flaw in how we rolled out a lot of infrastructure. We're getting away from that now, thankfully, but I think that created a lot of issues because we had a lot of products that were out there for charging that people would pull up and they wouldn't work. And then you'd look at the charger and go, okay, who do I call? And it'd have a custom wrap with like a utility logo on it. And you do I call the utility? It's like, well, they installed it, but it's actually managed by this other company. And it's just like, come on, what, we did this to, we did this to the public and we need to take it like ownership of that mistake. So. returning to kind of the, the analogy around, well, when I was talking about the gas, the gas station, how gas makes it into the market, the retail fueling experience. When, when we, when we think about upstream and midstream petroleum, we're thinking about fuel terminals and refineries and everything that gets it in the 18 Wheeler that's headed towards the gas station. I would say everything up until you get to the gas station. and it goes out of the trucker, out of the tanker, into the fuel tanks underground. I look at everything from the delivery truck upstream from that as almost like the utility. that an oversimplification? But that's how I look at it, almost. I would say, I think that's a, mean, again, it's, it's a simplification of it, but I think it's, I think it's a fair simplification because at the end of the day, so long as the power is being produced and it's being brought to a physical location, the next step after that is what transformers are on site to translate that into a station that can be built out, you know, uh, where do you need trenching done to make the charters not be behind the building, but in front of it, like all of that kind of stuff. But I think you're making a solid analogy around it really is the utility that. makes this happen and gets it to the physical place where the chargers need to be. Yeah, I would agree with that. uh the reason why I'm kind of leading the witness here. The reason why I'm saying that is because where's the utility responsibility in this? Because it would seem that there's, depending on where you're at in the country, there's some ambivalence in some sectors and others it's, it's like, no, we see it. yeah, comments on that. I think the utility, I always say the utility is the new fuel provider. That's what I say. And I think, so to your analogy, that's what makes the most sense. And I think I agree a hundred percent to that. The challenge frankly that exists within that is in the U S we've got about 3,300 or so utilities, some of which are massive IOUs, investment on utilities that manage millions of people's power needs. Some of them are small co-ops and munis that manage thousands of people's power needs. And in each of those examples, each of those, regardless of the size and their customer base, they have to embrace that reality of, okay, this is something we actually need to be thinking about in those terms. We now provide fuel for cars. But then how do they get that message out in a uniform fashion? And we've worked with, I don't know how many, mean, dozens of utilities now nationwide, and many of them are embracing that message. I think the challenge has been, some of them have said, well, we'll just do what we've always done. We'll just treat... EVs like they're an appliance and we'll just tell people, here's how your energy savings can work. It's like, no, no, no, no. You are now competing against fossil fuel marketing and branding. And as you point out a hundred years of ingrained consumer psychology, you need to bring your A game on marketing and messaging here. This is not repeat what we've done with other products we've helped market. This is different. It's a different animal. There's a lot that goes into that. And I think that's where we've seen some failures with outbound messaging that have occurred. And the other issue I think that the utilities faces. the public utility commissions that manage what they can actually say. if they, you know, again, if there's a filing for, um, you know, a new tariff related to something that's going to happen on, a managed program for charging public charging, something along those lines, we've, we've definitely seen, I've seen that public utility commissions have shot down engagement efforts around EV programs because it doesn't, you know, it doesn't, you know, abide by certain parameters they have for meeting all rate payer needs. And they will then say, yeah, this isn't going to work. So you have to reframe what you're going to do. so really, really well designed programs coming out of the utility get watered down into these just ineffective, you know, programs. And it's like, well, yeah, what did you expect? You went from having, you went from cutting with a scalpel to cutting with a butcher knife on this messaging and it made a mess. And so yeah. You, you, you use the term outbound messaging. And I think that's important in other conversations, you and I've had it. We've, you know, I've made you call out the, uh, the idea of the great reset as it relates to our, our industry, our space. Um, are we in a great reset? not in the way that I think people think. I think that, I mean, EVs now, especially in the last, you know, if you really look at the last 20 years, we've had the opportunity to paint the picture for what these will be as products in the modern world. And it's in the last five years, especially, I mean, coming into COVID and coming out of COVID, there was a strong push, obviously, finally, by automakers, you know, that have been building gas cars forever to say, okay, we got a really bring our A game with making EVs and making this happen. And in the United States, was driven predominantly by Tesla was just ramping up in value and the height behind the brand and what they were building was real. And they were selling more cars than anybody ever anticipated they ever could. that led these, know, legacy automakers to say, okay, we're going to get the game. But I think what occurred in the last five years was a lot of just reactive product program designs that yes, these are cars with big batteries in them. that were then delivered to consumers. But the end game of how well does the software work inside the car to make it a really well functioning EV. And then also, what does that mean for the underlying technology around the battery and how it relates to charging? What does the infrastructure engagement look like? And we already hit on that, but that's why we saw legacy brands go from their typical strategy of, mean, Ford and GM to me were the best examples of, we have the Blue Oval Network. Mm-hmm. I looked at that and I thought, that's okay. That's marketing. And it makes it sound like you have something, but in reality, that's not a thing that you actually have. It's just a way to position to say, we've got a lot of data from these charging networks and we're deciding to call it this other thing. And again, that's how they, that's just how they know how to do marketing. They're just like, let's find information. Let's package it. So it makes us look really competent. And I don't, mean, in fairness, I just don't think a lot of people, these legacy brands really, I don't, it's not that I don't think that this happened. There's evidence that it happened, that a lot of people working on these programs were not living with EVs in way that they understood the ownership experience. And that's an example of a very, very big company multiplied by many of them having a lot of moving parts and getting people that had to make something happen, get it out, get it going. And what happened? We, we saw a lot of issues occur with respect to. product rollout, user experience, sales training at the dealerships, go down the list of things we've seen happen that went wrong. And the cliche of you never get a second chance to make a first impression is very real right now. And this isn't a reset in way of like, well, we just got to try again. It's like, no, no. If you think that we can try the same tactics as before, whether that's product development or outbound messaging, you are mistaken. Consumers have now been inundated with this for over half a decade and The ones that are skeptical are now becoming more skeptical and we're seeing OEMs pull back on certain programs. This is a different game now and we have to be very serious as an industry for EV stakeholders to say, what do we need to do to improve where we can to make sure we maintain momentum and also gain more credibility? That's got to happen. I think the legacy automakers that were looking at the landscape and then spun up a solution to your point, the blue oval network, et cetera, it was, Hey, we got something. got something. think some of that legacy OEM narrative was really looking at Tesla and what they did and how hard it was for them to get to where they were. And they knew how hard it was. And then looking at emerging OEMs like Rivian who brought to market a truck and an SUV, and then also was trying to stand up the waypoints or excuse me, the adventure network and then the waypoints network. And then, you know, the waypoints network shuttered and got scrapped. And so it's like, yeah, we gotta, we gotta outsource this. We gotta let someone else do this. And so it's, it's amazing to me, like with, with Rivian, I've, was seeing some stats and data around the used EV car market and the amount of Rivians that were on the most recent list that I saw, I was pretty I was pretty surprised by, I think maybe some of that was upstream from probably Tesla opening up its network to Rivian. But yeah, I think probably, you know, to have something, just to have something going back to the point of, you know, what you were saying just a moment ago is, is, is not necessarily the path forward, but then also if you're Rivian trying to stand up, your own network, that's tough too. my God. that's, mean, that's, have to give credit where credit is due to what Tesla built. I mean, they really, as a company, they were so far ahead of the curve understanding what the user experience needed to be to make people feel seamlessly happy. You know, that was a big deal. not to say they don't have their pain points within that either. I mean, that's why they keep rolling out more superchargers on a, weekly basis. but I mean, all that to be said, you know, I think that what we're seeing is, especially like with, you know, with every automaker saying, okay, we're switching over to the Tesla plug type. we want access to Tesla superchargers because we're waving the white flag on that one. um I think that frankly was a good thing because the connector design is more elegant. It's the same as at home, as away from home basically. It's just easier to use for everybody. You can tell it wasn't designed by a committee. It was designed with intent. that's OK, the best product design won there. It's like, But ironically, I don't think that was the reason why Ford and GM and others decided to say we're switching to the Tesla connector. It wasn't because they were even thinking about the connector type. They just wanted to have access to reliable fueling. That was it. And it just so happens that it is also a better plug design. I think what we're again, in that respect, I think what the challenge that is going to maintain being real moving forward is that we now have political headwinds, obviously, as an industry that is the narrative around Is the federal government supporting EVs and EV infrastructure? The answer is no. And in turn, a lot of legacy auto brands have gotten right back into line saying, oh, let's, let's reduce submission standards. Let's start the language they're using about, we're focused on affordability. We're focused on right sizing for market, all these different, you know, kind of code words for we're just going to pivot because that's where the political landscape looks that benefits us. And I get it. That's business, but that's where I just, take issue with the fact of just how much weight we put behind these types of announcements we've seen the last five years. I think there was so much hype and excitement that, know, GM's EV battery day that happened right before COVID hit. And I remember when, I mean, a lot of people I know that are, you know, journalists were there and I was like, what's your take? And they're like, it all sounded great, but like, where is it at? And GM is still, again, I mean, I'm beating up on them a little bit, but they're still producing, I mean, they got Blazer in market, they've got Equinox in market, they've got... I'm not a huge fan of the Hummer Silverado approaches because I just don't know if that's ever going to really pan out until we get better energy-densing the battery packs. But Cadillac is now over 50 % electric in their sales volume. So they've got some strong evidence to show that they were in the right direction. But then you see what Ford's been announcing even today about how much they're peeling back and canceling. for me, I just got to go, OK, at what point do we just say, OK, how much of this is reality or how much of this is always just PR in the moment? I mean, again, I'm just asking that question openly. Well, and then it's almost like we've seen Ford say we're drawing back. No, we're going forward. No, we're drawing back. I feel like we've almost heard that message, especially around the lightning more than once. We're going to do it. No. Yeah. today, it seems like it's totally done. I mean, from what from what they announced. so, yeah, I I got to be honest, it's just the global landscape of transportation is going electric. I mean, look at the sales numbers in India. I mean, as a country, I mean, and look at what's happened in China, obviously, with all the advancements that they've made, that's hyper saturated. I mean, there's going to be some shakeout there. But again, you look at brands like BYD, they're now selling in Mexico. And I had lunch with a family friend today who said, yeah, I saw BYD when I was down in Mexico recently. That was a really cool car. said, yeah, when's it going to be here? I don't know. But if it comes here, that's the competition and that's the challenge. And I think what's concerning to me about the legacy auto brands, especially the ones we have here in the US, is that they have to compete globally. And unless they are truly innovating and not being reactive, there's a very big concern that I have for what that means for their future. Is it they're just going to say, sell in the United States? I I was chatting with John Volcker today about some of his take on what the Ford announcements and even some comments he had made publicly about, does this mean for the future of these companies? Is it that they're just going to say that's who we are? And yeah, I think it's a big concern. I really, really do. Well, the mess, the inconsistent messaging isn't going to help mass adoption by any hand, by any means. It's, it's just, it keeps it's that two steps forward, three steps back. However you want to frame that it's, it's not good. doesn't look good. And there's options out there. I, you know, I think, and again, you felt like you're beating up on GM. feel like maybe I'm beating up on Ford, not intending to, but I remember they were going to, they were going to let Rivian design the Lincoln EV. which somehow got scrapped and they invested in Rivian and then they backed out. Maybe because Ford was planning to do it, do it on their own the whole time. I don't really know, but it's that, that two steps forward, three steps back. That's not, that's not helping move this industry towards maturation. But then, like you said, GM's growth, I'm seeing lyrics, the Cadillac lyric, I'm seeing those pretty frequently now. So the products are out there. think that that's the thing is the products are out there. And again, you think about like the amount of plug-in cars on the market today, it's over a hundred models you can choose from now. It's the variety that people were desperate for seven, 10 years ago. Hey, we got it. I think that it still comes back to the fact that I don't like the excuse I'm hearing that when we made all these EVs, I think it's what five models. um Of all the CD sales are happening only five models have more than 10,000 units per year sold It's something it's some crazy number like that. Oh I mean Tesla Y Tesla 3 I mean I I mean I Then you look at what some of the the newer comers and like that they were getting some really decent numbers a year ago like when the Honda Pro log came out people were like Whoa, like this came out of nowhere and I'm people that buy Honda's like Honda's and they were probably waiting to buy the Honda EV that they wanted it doesn't Again, under the skin of that thing, it's just a GM vehicle. It's got a Honda badge on it. Not that anybody that's buying that knows it, but all that to be said, there's a lot of just constraints around the fact that we've got five models that are super high volume and then dozens and dozens and dozens of models that are just kind of like, meh, they're there. And I'm already hearing the grumblings of like, well, yeah, see, that's the evidence that people didn't want these things. And I look at it I go, no, consumers are not going to rush into showrooms to buy cars that run on a fuel they don't trust. It's not going happen. the, and the brand that's got the most hype around what they've done is Tesla. And the damage that's been done to that brand in the last 12 months is another thing it's really the EV industry has to, in the United States has to contend with is that a lot of Tesla coattail riding is what was happening in the last five to 10 years for just EV hype and EV excitement. And you now have an issue with a brand that has a lot of tarnish on it because of what's happened this year, just through Elon's actions and people's response to what he was doing on the political front and things like that. And that doesn't get solved overnight. And, you know, Tesla introduced a super cheap model Y and a super cheap model three, and we're 45, almost 60 days into those realities. And from what we're seeing on data, it didn't move the needle much to get more people to come in and buy their brand. They've got some other issues to contend with. And now I really am so concerned that the rest of the industry is going to, because Tesla's got, you know, some issues right now for perception and things along those lines is they're just going to use as a reason to say, Oh, we don't have to worry anymore. Hmm. is not a major threat anymore because of these other issues. And I'm concerned that that will happen. But at the end of the day, EV sales are still up this year. Amidst all that crap and chaos, it's still up. Yeah, yeah, you're right. And then of course, you know, brand image, notwithstanding, the network is still in place and the growth of that set of said network is still moving forward and it's there and you know, the OEMs are there getting a piece of that. I don't know. was, you know, you were talking about that a moment ago and I didn't want to disrupt your train of thought, but the, you know, I was thinking about the opening of the Tesla network. One of the things, I mean, that's been good for, I guess, the broader mass adoption goals, but at the same time from an experience, I don't know, I'm just thinking of whenever I go to Buc-E's and there's 24 stalls and yet they're all full, and then in most, 90 % are Tesla models, but at the same time as other vehicles come to market and they're getting access to it, the experience of the Tesla driver is impacted. There's that, that's certainly I think is an issue going forward. And we already seeing that there's, you know, certain test owners that are just not happy about the fact that they're having to deal with that. And partly too is because of the opening of the supercharger network, the experience that you have at a brand new supercharger, which they often refer to as V4 version four, it has the longer cables. You can basically park in the parking spot in front of the charger and doesn't matter where your charge port is. It just works. like you see some cars doing. Well, that's the problem is in the older supercharger stall designs, the cable length is designed for a Tesla vehicle. So if you're pulling up in a non-Tesla, depending on where your charge door is, you have to, and again, Tesla says, Hey, if you're driving this vehicle, this is how we'd like you to park. So you're not blocking too much, but they are acknowledging like, yeah, you're technically blocking a charger because you don't have a Tesla. And that, so on one hand, it's like, great, we have access to reliable charging, but there's this asterisk of If you're not driving a Tesla and you're at this particular station layout, it might actually be a bummer because you're going to block one, two, maybe more than three people because of how it's laid out. That's not a good thing. So yeah. Matt, this has been a good conversation. It's always good to chat with you. Appreciate what you've said thus far as we get ready to land this plane. Any closing thoughts, any words of wisdom you'd like to impart to our audience? Well, I mean, I think oftentimes when I when I'm getting a chance to chat about this, I mean, I'm critical of the industry because I want it to be a successful industry. uh And I know that that can sometimes come across as just poo pooing so much, but it's because I care. And so to that point, I think at end of the day, if you do look at the numbers, I mentioned before is is EV sales numbers are still going up, whether that's US or globally and globally, especially. And the reality of it is We, in America, in the US, we can't as a, an, as an industry, we can't act like this isn't something that's happening. It is happening. And at the end of the day, it does result in what happens as it relates to careers and jobs, you know, in the US and these longstanding businesses that have been part of industry for a long time that are important, uh, that we need to have as major players in this space. So that's why I'm critical. I want to see them succeed. Um, and. At the same time, just as someone who's in this industry, I want to make sure that the other stakeholders that are involved are the beneficiaries of the better decision-making for the players that can move the needle. And I think the OEMs play big part in that. And I think that, you know, new efforts on the network side as it relates to brands like IANA, which is again, funded by seven OEMs, Walmart, BP Pulse, Mercedes Benz, high power charging. These are all newer networks that are showcasing. We're creating a an experience that we know is more in line with what the consumer is looking for. And the networks have been around for a long time that are improving upon what they've got out there. That's all still very true as well. I think at the end of the day, we're at a very interesting part of all of our lives. We're living through a very tumultuous moment that's disrupting energy and automotive in the way that the humans have known for generations. And again, you rewind 150 years. We were still riding horses. And so it's amazing what we've done as a species to right now, but the way that we can create a better path forward for technological innovation, creating jobs, what does that mean for the, know, for the U S I think it's just really important that we don't lose sight of that. And so that's why I'm critical of anything that sounds like, we're taking a step back because we just want to right size for market demand. I just look at that and say, I think the public is still just not fully informed on they do have a fuel choice. And as an industry, we have not made that clear when it comes to electrification with that kind of confidence. It's not just build it. They will come either. You have to make it clear as a product for how works for them individually. They will then have a better understanding of the benefit of owning those cars that run on electricity. And to me, that's an opportunity right now that we can harness. And I hope we do. So. Good stuff. Yeah, it does. It's not negative at all. Everything, everything you're saying, no one can take exception to you because it's just, it's just aligned with reality and it's, you know, it's coming from institutional knowledge from being in this space. But Matt, thank you for, for coming on field frequency for those that want to connect with you directly. What's the best way to reach out to you? Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. But for Chargeway itself, download the Chargeway mobile app on iOS and Android. Please give it a shot. You can message us directly through the app if you have any questions. But obviously, you can use it for trip planning. your car. Add as many cars as you want if you're shopping for EVs. Give it a whirl. But can find Chargeway on every social media platform out there. It's just Chargeway. And also, Chargeway.net is our website if you want to check out some more information there. But I do invite anybody who's hearing this. It's from this space, whether it's energy or auto or advocacy. please reach out to me. I I love hearing from people. I'd love to know what others are thinking. I think we can continue to just improve upon where we've got gaps. And that comes from these type of conversations. Jason, I appreciate the time to just come out and have a chat. it's great. Thank you, Matt. Thank you for being on Field Frequency.