Ekoenergetyka: Charger Reliability Starts in the Lab, Not the Parking Lot

In this episode of Field Frequency, Galen Heyman of Ekoenergetica shares how his background in service and solar shaped his approach to building EV charging infrastructure. The conversation highlights Ecoenergetica’s entry into the North American market, backed by proven European technology and a vertically integrated model.

A key focus is the importance of designing service as a core strategy—not an afterthought—along with the need for better reliability metrics beyond “uptime.” Galen emphasizes proactive maintenance, strong feedback loops, and quality-driven growth as essential to delivering a seamless charging experience.

Inside the episode

Overview:

• Ekoenergetica enters North America with proven European EV charging technology
• Focus on quality, reliability, and long-term market growth

Key Topics:

• Service as a core strategy, not an afterthought
• Challenges of scaling across U.S. geography
• Vertically integrated model (hardware, software, service)
• Importance of in-house testing and quality control
• Supply chain planning and U.S.-based parts inventory

Performance & Metrics:

• Moving beyond “uptime”
• Focus on fault frequency, MTTR, and first-time charge success

Big Takeaway:

• Success in EV charging depends on proactive service, strong partnerships, and delivering a seamless end-user experience

About Galen Heyman

Galen Heyman, current Head of Service, Training, and Logistics at Ekoenergetyka, has a multifaceted career spanning operations, sales, technical, and customer service, with a proven track record of innovation and success in startup environments. He excels at providing vision and direction to implement strategies and processes that deliver a best-in-class customer experience while driving profitable revenue growth.

As a leader of customer success functions, he is adept at managing talent, resolving customer issues, and building operational excellence that results in high customer satisfaction. His expertise includes setting up network operating centers, developing training services, launching and integrating CRMs, establishing EPC branches, developing call centers, and delivering a broad range of project management and operational capabilities.

Transcript

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On today's episode of Field Frequency, I'm joined by Galen Heyman, Head of Service for Echo Integratica America. Echo Integratica has built a strong reputation in high-powered DC fast charging across Europe and has brought that same engineering DNA into the North American market. In this conversation, we impact what actually determines charger reliability from vertical integration and internal testing labs to the realities of supply chains, service infrastructure, and why uptime might be the most understood metric in the industry. We talk about it all, so let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of Field Frequency powered by Field Advantage, an IT field services company specializing in the deployment, maintenance, and operation of critical infrastructure, including EV charging networks. Today, I'm happy to have my friend Galen Heyman, head of service at Ecoenergetica. How you doing, Galen? Wonderful, wonderful Jason. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming on. It's going to be a good conversation and uh happy for the audience to get introduced to EcoInnergetica if they're not already familiar with that. So just kind of out the gate, if you could walk us through your personal origin story that led up to you serving in the role that you have at EcoInnergetica and talk to us about your background and how that has informed on what's going on in the world of DC fast charging over there. Absolutely. So, you know, I do not come from the world of easy fast charging. I come from the service world. So there's a lot of transferable skills. I've worked my entire career in customer service, more leaning towards tech and uh the service model. So I've also done a pretty good stint in sales, but I try to ignore that. So on the service side of the world, maybe even taking us a little bit step back further, my education is in management and management information systems. And then I got started in the world of customer service and learned how to run 400Z call centers. And so... then things change and adapt in the world. And I ended up doing uh some inside sales, more field sales business for a while, and then landed in solar. And solar was really where, you know, I got my experience in field service, maintenance, operations, logistics, return material processes, as well as building some like ad hoc sales things to help wrap around the service solution. So, solar was really where I kind of got the most relative experience to what we're doing today. And service is service, right? You're doing these different things and solving for problems. There's a lot of similarities when you build things out. There's some differences where you are at. in the life cycle of your product? Like, are you new to a market, right? Is it a new product to the market or a new uh entrant to the market? How are you going to build these things? I also have some experience in the startup world, in batteries, so doing everything from scratch. What I think is then kind of interesting, how did I end up at Echo Under Gettyco? Actually, I have some uh experience with Europe. Echo Energetica is a Polish company. I used to live in Poland and studied in Poland for a while. And being able to cross back over with my education and work experience back to a culture that I can kind of bridge some understandings back and forth. And it is... how I ended up here, right? So it's my entire life story, the little things that make a person grow professionally and personally. It kind of ended up putting me where I am today. so, you know, it's quite, quite enjoyable for me to be able to help bring our product to the US. And, you know, the most relatable thing here is not only that life experience, but you know, personally, but my experience is there, it was actually with Sun Power Corporation. And when Sun Power got started, they didn't really have a service group either. And I remember getting hired with them and there was a massive backlog of tickets. So you think, you know, everybody has it figured out. And it turns out in the real world, even big corporations don't always have it figured out. Sometimes service is an afterthought. so being able to help them scale that up and bring it to fruition and solve and work that ticket base down and implement new processes and just find all kinds of creative solutions is how I got to where I'm at. I love fixing things. That's my passion. So sure, I may not know it. Maybe I've never done it before, but it's a lot of fun to build things, fix things, and help make the overall process uh better. So that's a little bit about what got me here today. Thank you for sharing that. know, Eco Integratica is a new market player in the US, but certainly not new in the EV space, globally speaking. The company has built its reputation on power electronics in the European market. There's a strong representation of Eco Integratica products on the Ionity network. So to that end, uh if you could do two things for us, for those that are just learning about Eco Integratica, you know, just quick overview of the product lines that are available in terms of output, what that looks like, distributed all in one, et cetera, distributed EC or all in one. And then also talk about the technical DNA within the framework of Eco-Integrity because background in power electronics. How is that technical background differentiated as an OEM? So two part question, throwing a lot at you. Give us a product overview and talk about the differentiations of the product. Okay, so you know as we launch into the US and Canada, so in North America, you know as we're launching here, we're hitting the market with the Axon EZ180. It's our first product that's UL approved. I'll not get really far into depth with our product, right, but the first, the Axon EZ180, that's currently available. Next to launch will be the Axon EZ400. And then after that, we'll have our split system, which will be our Axon side 360 with our SAP 400 so that you can have that distributed. The latter two are targeted towards the end of this year to Q1, possibly Q2 of next year. I think as we kind of enter the market, right? we recognize that some things will take a little bit of time and there's a number of factors and we'll get into I'm sure later, right? That cause some challenges with entering the market. But that's the timeline on what we're planning. And then, you you mentioned... differentiation, know, the technical DNA piece of the product. yeah, so the technical DNA, know, what I think as people that are not familiar with Echo and Ergedica, we've been in Europe for a significant amount of time, right? We're not new to the market. Many people know us. Many of the customers here in the US know us. So this isn't really new for people in this industry. It's new that we're in North America. And what you know, our operational advantages kind of look like. These are existing platforms in Europe, right? And so they are modified to meet UL compliancy. So there are some differences, but it's built on the same platform. So, you know, what translates from Europe to the U.S. is you have a proven product, right? Built on the same platform. We know the data. We have service plans, warranties, maintenance. Training all the analytics on the back end. We have that date. So This isn't something new right? This is not a new product a new entry. This is a Modified product and you know, we're well situated for the market My heart is close to service, right? Not the sales guy, right? So this this entire conversation I'm not I'm not pitching anything about sales or trying to tell the product I'm painting the landscape of service. So operationally, we know what has worked and what hasn't worked. And one thing that's good to point out is in Europe, we're vertically integrated. We do a lot of this ourselves. When I say a lot, I mean most, right? And things will continuously adjust, but because of this, we know like spare parts. What kind of parts would I need to stock? Axon EZ180, I have everything that I need, right, in the US. And it's stored locally so I don't have delays. I know what I need. I can say that with pretty good confidence. So what translates is, you know, this knowledge. There's some architectural advantages, like we know the hardware, we know the software. On the software, we have our backend system. We have, which is our own monitoring platform. We have our own charger management console, which is how you're to do your configuration and integrate with the OCPP setup, right? When you're using someone else's software. We even have our own ChargePoint operating software. We are not introducing it to the U.S., but we do, for example, have a sister company called EchoM. And there are charging stations in Europe. If you land at Warsaw airport, for example, or headquarters in Shilinagora, we have our own CPL style software. We have that on our own business. what translate is translates, I think nicely from Europe is we're eating our own cake. We can very much see and know what our problems are. And it's on a similar platform. What don't I know? Like what's different, right? Let's face it. The US, geography. Biggest thing that is hard to get anybody to understand, and I'm not only just talking about chargers. Anybody wants to enter this market tackling geography, not having original density and scale. Coming from other countries into the US, I don't think that average people think about this, but how a product is supported. A lot of people like to come to the US because the requirements to come into US are less than some other countries. Warranty, for example. Warranty in most places, it's gotta be warranty and labor. Here it's only gotta be the part, right? Or part and labor. So like tackling and explaining to counterparts on how we need to service, maintain, and do this entire wraparound has some fundamental differences where one model you don't have labor included, one model you do. And bringing that together and how your product is priced and everything. So tackling that, think, is one thing. Training. Training in Europe is different. No problem getting folks to come in person, right, to our headquarters in Jalanda, Kura. No problem with that. Quite frankly, we all know that getting folks to travel across the US is a bit more costly to attend an in-person training. So how you tackle that will be a little bit different in our approach. spare parts. They're a manufacturing hub. So in our headquarters there. So they have everything, but I have to think about a fundamentally different, how do I min-max stocking and the planning. And then communications was maybe the last thing. We had to rethink the SIM card and cellular network. There was some technology differences there. It's almost like you can copy and paste, but the way that you put the ingredients together, they are different. In the sales game, you're putting numbers together in a different order. It ends with the same net result. And that, think, what I bring to the table is trying to piece that together and bridge the gap between one model and another and how to make it for what works in North America. not only today, but five years from now. And I think that's really important on how we kind of take our US market approach. What's good over here? What's working in the US now or Canada? And where do we need to be two to five years from now? And the market is so exciting. So it's a lot of fun. Well, and you packed a lot into that response as far as just its core DNA, the vertical integration, the historical data that you have from the distribution of systems throughout Europe. like you said, eco-integrated is not new to the global EV space. Well-known and even as you mentioned, US folks that know the here from its work in Europe. you know, to that end, you talked about geography a moment ago and the differences in geography as it relates to US versus European context. When you're looking at, you know, things from that perspective and then to your point about the geography and landscape of the US, in a lab you can't simulate a death storm in Arizona or... the technician in Chicago trying to swap out a board and inclement weather. Those are different geographical needs. And so how have you strategized from a service standpoint, how you're working and even how the unit is operating in different climates and what the service aspect entails in those different climates? Because you've got reference points in Europe. And so I think that's probably informing on on the path to success here in the US. Let's see. Yep, yep. you know, number one, I expect, I'm in service. I expect everything to not go as planned, right? You try to, you try to, you know, uh plan for the worst and do all that. But I mean, we certainly, you know, in my role, I certainly expect things not to go perfect. And sometimes it will go wrong. When it does go wrong, it's how you respond and learn from it. right, that matters to us internally and to the client and every customer and the user in between. So you get the client, you get the customer, you get yourself. So how you respond to these things, I will start off and kind of say that, you know, I think Europe doesn't have the heat, we got the cold cover, right, that's no problem. But, you know, I think I want to lead with, you know, We have a really good formal feedback loop and I actually just came back from Poland this last week, so got back on Sunday. And my meeting was sitting down with talking with the product folks, engineering, development, and manufacturing and quality. So every product kind of level. And so we have a total quality. quality management type approach to everything we do, how we submit feedback, how we resolve things, how we approach it from the quality aspect of it, how we look at it for the instance of maybe the Axon EZ180, right, for example, but then what does it mean for the next generation, the Axon 400 that's being built? Like, you have to think about it very, very broad and long-term. Mm-hmm. when we encounter a challenge, it's a learning experience. We can't test for everything. And it's going to come up. Now with that said, we have this loop to bring it back. And how we respond, I love it. I really love our capabilities. I can get results more quickly than any employer I've ever worked at in past. Because we do a lot more in in-house than one would possibly ever think is possible. So from that aspect, and I'm sure we'll get into it a little bit more later, but the next part of this question is I want to point out, we have our own labs. We have our own chambers, right? We can test things, and we don't have to send it away to another facility. and book a space and a time and hope that we cram everything in and get it right the first time. Right? So when you have this luxury of you have everything vertically integrated with your own labs, the amount that I can test for today far exceeds what I normally would anticipate. Right? So I have flexibility to come back to a test environment. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I can run things longer. I can try to break it in more extreme situations for longer. I don't just go, OK, here's, if I send something to UL testing, I'm not sitting here hoping it's going to pass. I know it's going to pass. That's not a question. And so some of these corner cases that exist, they're not actually corners. They're only corners if I didn't know to test for them. Right? So I think that's really cool to point out. And from a service aspect, so that's product development, and that's maybe fixing a reactive thing. But I like to squeeze things out so we don't even have to talk about it. uh Spare parts, parts, manufacturing. We do our diligence in checking parts. Parts as it meets its spec, awesome. We'll tell you if it does or doesn't. And you may or may not be selected as a result of that. There are certainly vendors that we choose that weren't selected, in the final configuration that could have been a like for like component because it didn't meet our standards because we're able to test that in-house. It's painful to hear about a product launch delay, but from an internal service minded perspective, if you tell me that we're delaying it because there's a problem with the quality of the component that's going to fail, I mean, it makes me kind of happy. Does it make me happy we're not launching it, right? On a guaranteed timetable? No, but like, you know, this approach on how we... you know, have our feedback loop and how we tackle things that can't be tested. You know, we do our best. We do our best to test everything. First, we've got to know the test. For those that aren't familiar with all that goes into being in an OEM environment, like what you're describing, you keyed in on something that I think is a major differentiator as far as it relates to the DNA of Echo Integric as product. The internal R &D... and the lab, the testing lab alone, like you say, if there is refinement needed around build of materials, it can be detected in-house in the lab environment before a product is developed and produced at scale and then deployed out into the market. And then there's these failures that could have been prevented on the front end. So it's not move fast and break things, it's be intentional in progress. And I think that's... That's what I'm hearing you describe as the intentionality that Echo Intergetica has in its core DNA. Because we've seen the island effect, how when there's a problem with a charger, manufacturers blaming software, software blaming either the manufacturer or how it was installed. And basically the site owner is captive to this whole experience. so Echo Intergetica has architected in a way to get ahead of that and to be in front of all that. And so to avoid that... that finger pointing culture. That's what I've heard you describe as a, as uh kind of a control point in the design of the products that you've brought to the U S market. any comments to that? So I think it's really important with that finger pointing culture that we look at ourselves internally. So number one, we're vertically integrated. So we've learned from ourselves, right? If you're running a charge point operating station and you're running your own software and you're doing your own service, you're doing your own installation, it's hard to ignore, right? because you also made the product. So as we look at this finger pointing culture, what I think is critical to it is the feedback loop, right? To have the data there, to be able to look inward off of your experience and understand the entire cycle of what's going on. So for me, what I think is really important is We're one piece of the solution, right? You have the ChargePoint operating software, you have a credit card terminal, you have other things that go into this, and you wanna be able to get the data, be confident with your data, know that it's not you, right? But also share that data with the service partner, with the customer, the ChargePoint operator. the credit card terminal, like it's great to say it's not me. But how do you help each other? And I think that's where, you know, sharing this information back and forth, it's not enough just to say it's not me, right? And knowing how it impacts us internally when we go the full cycle, I think that's really, really critical. So you alluded to it earlier when you were talking about your background and service, not as an afterthought, but built into your design of your go-to-market strategy. From a personal standpoint, yourself, core competency of yours has to do with service, execution, strategy behind developing, how services is even executed. That's all a part of your personal experience and core values. And so from your vantage point, what separates OEMs who treat services kind of like an afterthought or a checkbox instead of strategically as a part of how they go to market and how they even market their product to their customers, to their CPO customers. So I think what differentiates us or when you think of the service as an overarching strategy, it cannot just be a checkbox. You have to think of it in its entire. You have to think of it as an incident's entire landscape. So folks that come in and they want to do, you know, they're providing service and they're not thinking about how they're going to support it and how they're going to model it and how they're going to get the geography, how they're going to supply the parts, right? You can't really have this as an afterthought. It has to be planned for upfront. It's an entire experience. You can have the best product in the world. But if it's not installed correctly, if it's not sold correctly, if it's not designed correctly, then they're gonna point the finger at the product. So how you support this and how you tackle these things, you really, really have to go in with the strategy and you need to be prepared. For a lot of companies, think the barriers into the US market make it so that, you know, it's easier to enter than some other places. So they can enter and it's a checkbox. I sold you a service package. Will you ever get what was promised in that service package? Right? Did they plan for it? Do they have parts stocked? Do they have a strategy on how they'll support it? Right? Do they have the back end systems to provide you the data? Do they? And these are things that we think about and are very, very forward thinking. When I jumped on board with Heku and Hergetica, before I jumped on board, I actually went to our headquarters and checked them out. Because I've worked in different industries and in different industries, people enter a market. And they hired a service guy as an afterthought. It's viewed as an expense and you're reacting to things, but they're not intentional in nature. you know, being one of the first three employees that were hired, AquaNargetica is here to stay, right? We have a strategy for service. The service wraps around the entire experience. You can have the best product. to support it with an intentional service plan, the product is designed to last. I've seen it firsthand there and how we tackle it, all the way through manufacturing, through our own service to installation and from the following feedback loop. So it's real, it's what we do, we have the support. And for a product like a DC charger, they're They're not inexpensive, right? And you're investing in an asset that's going to work as a commercial machine that you're going to expect to live for a good amount of time, right? So, you know, as we look at this uh entire service and how we kind of wrap around it, you know, you have to be intentional. It's not just a checkbox. And you have to plan for it. you plan for it and you're there to support and it's truly a wraparound, then I think everything will follow. And for us entering the market, we recognize we're entering at a time when there's some, you know, fun market dynamics from tariffs to also lot of customers have that experience where they feel like they were burned by early entrance. where they bought a product at a middle or high cost, don't feel like they got what they should, and didn't think about that intentional wraparound service. I bought an industrial machine, and I never thought about maintaining it. And that's really a miss. But that happens all the time. It's not easy charging. It's any new product entering the US. You see a lot of people enter and with no intentionality of maybe being here for the long run. We're different. We're gonna be here for the long run, right? So slow and steady. Yeah. Well, and I personally can attest to the intentionality that you're speaking of, because I don't know when Echo Intergetica formally announced their entrance into the US market when that was formally known, but I know it's been well over a year ago that, or possibly more, it have been, was either late 23 or early 20, excuse me, late 24, early 25. As Echo Energetica was evaluating potential service partners, Field Advantage was privileged to be one of those for consideration. so, I know your team was interviewing our team around service structures and SLAs and staging of parts and warehousing. And so it was demonstrated very early on as a service provider becoming familiar with a new OEM or at least a new OEM to us. let me, let me correct that. Not a new OEM, a new OEM to us. was, it was refreshing to hear an OEM asking all the right questions and going through a discovery process that outlined and demonstrated core competencies around really how a product is supported. You said it a moment ago, it's a product wrapped in support, not wrapped in ribbons for, you know, for marketing, just another widget to buy, but a product that's, that's wrapped in support. And I think that that is a major differentiator to your point about those that have been burned by other providers and other hardware solutions in the market. CPOs are reticent. so the testing and evaluation criteria around evaluating a new hardware partner has changed. CPOs are looking at how they buy and who they buy from in different ways. And so I'm very proud to announce that Echo Integratica and FieldAdvantage do have formalized a service partnership and we appreciate that. the opportunity to support that. I know that Echo Energetica has other solutions in place just because of the due diligence on your part. yeah, I saw early on, early on, again, I don't know when, I do not remember when Echo Energetica. 2025. So I started at the very end of 2024. And so when we would have reached out and started communicating, it was early 2025. yeah, I think it definitely in the US market. And so this isn't the first time I've done something like this. I mean, I wanted to meet you, right? I wanted to, I didn't want to meet you at a trade show, just right. Like I wanted to see if it was real because Right? To me, it's very important with this intentionality, right? you're building a partnership, right? That's going to solve a problem for our customers. And I'm picking my words carefully here, right? Because it's our customer. It's our partnership. And it ends up with the combined experience. And this is irreplaceable, right? Like, you have to have the right people, the right... the right training. So, you know, I'm also very intentional with partnering with folks that actually directly hire their own people. Because how do you control quality? If you have 1099, there's ways to revenue stack and do things. But we have to be intentional about who is the end customer. Right? And so you have the charge point operator and then you have, it keeps on going down the chain to the consumer charging their car. So we want to be part of that entire positive experience. I want people to know that the hardware doesn't exist. Success to me looks like you don't even know that you have service. You have maintenance, right? We need to shift the conversation to a bad service experience to an intentional maintenance experience, right? Where it's a maintenance and it's an after- after thought when things do break, but we really need to shift this industry to being more forward thinking. And I want people to be talking about other things, not about service, right? Like service should just be a given, right? And maturity wise, I think we haven't gotten there yet as a whole, but I want us all to get there, right? Yeah. Well, in terms of support strategy, we all remember what the COVID era was like in terms of supply chain impact on supply chain and of course, manufacturing and when you were talking earlier about the core DNA about the R &D aspect, the testing lab environments, all of those things, all that's happening in Europe. where kind of the genesis of the product originates. But you knew going ahead that uh coming into the US market, there couldn't be units down here in the US if something was to happen to one of them. And parts staged in Poland, and you've got all the delays associated with getting parts out of there and into the US. You had to have structured things in the US a little bit different than of course what you've been doing as a vertically integrated organization in Europe. Things had to be done differently here. And so how have you thought about your US support systems to make sure, know, CPOs don't get left with a bricked charger and just stranded waiting for someone to save them. 100%. I like the reference to COVID era supply chain issues. I really don't think they're fundamentally different today. It's still very volatile, right? And today it's different reasons. It's tariffs. So you see supply chain shifting around the world. And so when you're looking at balancing out this logistics puzzle, source of materials matter from build and spares. The receipt of quality goods matter. The ability that they can actually deliver when they say they can deliver. Building a product with a UL approval chain of multiple things as a secondary supplier, right? Which is not something that's intuitive to everyone. Like there's an intentionality with this product design that we can adapt to secondary or third sources, even in the UL approval process. So number one, when we start building it, if I'm shipping a widget, which is an entire charger, if I'm shipping one part, right now the fun game is like, where did the copper come from? And then what's the weight of the copper and how much copper's in it? And these rules are changing daily. So you have to be able to adapt to this kind of stuff. And so coming into it, initially, we're hitting North America. We're not doing manufacturing here. Would it be nice? Yes. Can we talk about it in the future? 100%. Right. But let's focus on launching the market, getting the branding out there. And as we're coming through this, parts and inventory. We have a warehouse in Irvine, California. We will grow as the market grows, right? And we will be stocking some supply there of both units, chargers, and spare parts. Any unit that I have manufactured, I will have a stock of parts in the US. So there's a very specific number forecast by you know, a number of years so that I know if there's a market force, I'm good for a while. We'll just say that, right? I'm not, I'm, I'm, am stocking to the need of the product on the market. So if I get a product, I know it's going to last X amount of years. I stock for that. And then I have my min max to replenish it. So I will have the part, right? I will solve the problem and deal with long lead times going up to it. Fair amount of it's still going to come out of Europe. Simply, I can buy it in the US, but it will come out of Europe because I can better control the quality and I have a larger purchasing power parity. So I can keep our costs controlled for me and the customer. I can plan for it in advance. It's how we'll do it here. And, you know, in Europe, we've learned the same thing and they're doing a lot of the same thing there. One kind of interesting thing about all of this is we make some of our own parts. And we finish manufacturing of some components. The reason being is our data shows us that maybe a step in the manufacturing process of, say, the charging cable. We found a pattern from multiple suppliers where that could be a quality gap. So we now do that in-house. There are some things like communication devices. We actually manufacture those ourselves, partially because of your COVID era, because you couldn't get the components. And the components, couldn't build for you in the COVID area because they were missing components. So it was a component of a component problem. So we solved the problem by building in ourself. The other repercussion of the COVID era was, I think we all bought something. It's not even just charging, but we bought something, it was just garbage. And the reason was they swapped a chip or a part in it and then it had a premature fan. Same thing happened in... charger industry. So there were some really good lessons learned, right? Because everybody was on this awesome just-in-time philosophy, and then it kind of smacked us in the face, and it impacted us both with shortages and then over purchases, and then longer legacy as to quality. So this was also something we thought about for quality. So we do some really cool things by all means uh for people listening and partner and yourself, the opportunities to see our manufacturing and stuff in Poland. It's absolutely wonderful. It's best in class. It's really cool that we print our own computer boards and make some of these communication devices ourselves. And that's how we control it. Yeah, that's huge. Not only from a standpoint of controlling your supply chain in terms of need and in terms of predictive analysis of what you need to produce to get product into the market. It's also just from a refinement period. mean, it ties into what we were talking about earlier in the R &D context with the testing lab. There's the refinement around the materials that you're building yourselves. Not only do you control the supply supply chain flow, you also can control the integrity of that part and the design of that part. And you can pivot and control all that. And that's, that's huge because it gives you a full awareness. I, you know, leading up to COVID and even in the middle of it, at that time in my career, I was, I was a reseller of chargers. I was selling the hardware and, supply chain was not only a barrier in terms of what you can sell, lead times to acquire the product, but also pricing because it was like a roller coaster in terms of pricing because that's the supply chain. Oh, we got it. Oh, no, we don't got it. We got the chips. No, don't. Oh, we got the, no. And it was hard for me to even try to sell products because of the instability at that time. that's good insights that you're sharing around. how eco-energetics is differentiating itself in terms of design and so forth. I want to talk about reliability metrics. Uptime is something that gets kicked around. It's a word that sometimes means different things to different people. Chargers that are online but can't charge are sometimes falling into the positive uptime category and so forth. I would like your comments around Ekko Integritika's KPIs that you use, that you follow to support whether your hardware is performing at the level of your expectation, what's protecting your brand. How do you find those terms of KPIs, in terms of reliability? So this is a fun and kind of tricky topic, right? Because everyone has their own metric on what uptime means to them. And I'm not a big fan of the uptime metric in general, right? Because I'm an OEM manufacturer, right? And one thing that you have to look at is What is uptime defined as? I feel like the industry likes to all define it their own way. So if you know the formula, you can talk about it. I would prefer to measure it in the world of an OEM hardware provider, right? Being that's what I am. I can't control the data point, right? We have a very complex process. product that once it gets to the customer, you have an ad screen that could be controlled by a different vendor. You have a credit card terminal that's got its own proprietary. You have the charge point operator that's pulling all this together. And those three items could be somewhat related to the OEM software and hardware, right? Or they could be completely independent. So, you know, when you start talking uptime, that finger pointing game, this just comes back to the finger pointing game and how you shorten the finger pointing game. So for me, what I think is important metrics for me, it falls more along the physical, the technical hardware health. I like to see things like fault frequency indexes. how often something goes into a fault state. Was it a manual? Was it a remote reset? These are indicators. It's a statement of not necessarily health, but it'll point towards a root cause. So I'm looking at first and foremost, as an OEM, the physical, technical, hardware health, how can I measure that fault frequencies? I can look at component specific failure rates. I'm managing warranty, right? I know what happens the first year, two years, five years, 10 years, so on, right? What type of things are failing, right? And looping this back to the conversation about, you know, product and quality, like you can trace all this stuff back when you own the entire process. I can trace it back to the person, the hour, and the minute someone installed this in my device. We do Toyota total quality management stuff. there's like, take a picture of that final thing of when someone does it. We know everything, right? Who put this there wrong? Who forgot to put the nut on that bolt? But you're looking at these component-specific failure rates. you're looking at, it could be connectors, cables, displays, card readers. As I'm measuring these things, what is their failure rate? What is the OEM of that component? And tracing it back, should it have failed? What is the lifespan? How many cycles should something have? Component specific failure rates, that's important to me. And then operational performance, mean time to repair. If I'm sending you service, but I'm selling you service, how quickly am I resolving that from the point that it's identified? And on my side, I won't identify for you before you even know and fix it before you know, before it becomes a problem. How do we never use the word uh How do we predict these things? So and the last thing I'll throw in there is I got one or two more. Preventative maintenance completion rate. So if I'm providing you preventative maintenance, are my reports complete? Did I do everything I promised I was going to do? Did I do it on time? So I have me time to repair. have preventative maintenance. Another fun one, which doesn't necessarily be, is you can look at first time charge success rate. Because now I put a book end on it. I got a fault frequency index, and I got a first time charge success rate. Because some people look at a successful charging session as trying three times. Should you? Is that a good experience for the end consumer? It's debatable. If I go and try to charge at a station, maybe I had to try three times before it worked. Okay. Is that a win? It depends who you are, right? uh Was it my hardware? No, maybe not, maybe, right? So being in this bubble, right, I think you really gotta look at the data and you gotta measure what you can control and what you can't control. And then you have to look to see how can we help each other, right? and get more towards that predictive model and use the data. So it's the uptime metric is beautiful. That's the ideal. But you have at least two major players that contribute to that. At least two. Most likely three to. There's a lot of finger pointing opportunities there. And we, as an industry, we shouldn't do that. We should collaborate. Agreed. Well, Yalyn, it's been a great conversation. I've appreciated you sharing what EcoInnergetica is doing and what it's going to be doing in the US space. It's going to be exciting to see the units just distributed out throughout the US market and going to be cheering you guys on. I guess as we get ready to round out, five years from now, what has to be true for you to be able to say that you guys executed in the US correctly? Is it market share? it a service metric? What's that look like? straightforward, a little tricky, but I think the market forces will help us define this a little bit. There's been a lot of curves this year, last two years, however, you know, I think the strategy is more about for us, the quality of the sale and the installation, than the quantity. It's right now more about working with the right people and the right companies to help build the brand in North America, right? We have to have a focus on quality and service, right? Our differentiators as we enter the market is about quality of product and the service experience. Of course, financial durability will come with that. I'm okay with having slower growth if we do it right. Healthy incremental growth. right, alongside the right partnerships for long-term growth. I mean, five years from now, year over year growth in units and market share. And we need a best-in-class sustainable service model, right? And there'll be some cool things that happen in this concept, I believe, over the next three years. What is the norm today won't be the norm tomorrow, and I'm excited for that. And we will just continue to measure it by some of these key metrics, High NPS scores, first time charge success. you know, making sure that the bulk metrics and stuff like these things, I can establish a baseline and success to me from a service standpoint is driving them down. Not flat, not increasing, right? How do we drive these things down? So five years from now, yeah, there'll be, you know, financial durability. But, you know, I think we need to grow with the market and be sustainable, not overbuilt. and fall into that trap that some people do. It's a challenging investment market at the time. goal for me is to be high performance service where basically my hardware and me become invisible. good. Well, Galen, for those that have been listening and want to connect with you directly, you want to learn more about Echo and Egerica, how can they reach out? What's the best way? I think as always, just LinkedIn is a good way. There's no big secret emails out there. It's just going to be my first name dot last name at EchoInnergetica.com. It's nice and easy to spell. Good luck with that. me on LinkedIn. ah A little bit of a tongue twister. By all means, when you talk to me, you can just say Echo. That's cool. But reach out. I love talking to service business. how we can make this better for the industry and what's good for me is good for the industry. So it's universal. I love sharing the ideas and helping this product in this market. Yeah, well thank you for coming on Field Frequency, Galen. It was a pleasure having you. All right, thank you, Jason. Have a great day.