Hard Truths About EV Charging ROI: Rohan Puri on Making Sites Profitable

In this episode of Field Frequency, Rohan Puri, co-founder of Stable, breaks down how data and predictive analytics are transforming EV charging from guesswork into a disciplined, ROI-driven business.

The conversation explores how better site selection, utilization forecasting, and dynamic pricing are key to building profitable charging networks—and why the industry must move beyond early deployment habits toward financially sustainable strategies.

Guest: Rohan Puri, Co-Founder, Stable

Overview:

• Stable provides software to optimize EV charger placement, pricing, and performance
• Focus on maximizing utilization and accelerating ROI

Key Topics:

• Why early EV charging deployments missed the mark
• Importance of data-driven site selection
• Utilization as the key driver of profitability
• Dynamic pricing and its growing adoption
• Common misconceptions (traffic ≠ charging demand)

Industry Insights:

• High utilization is concentrated in a small number of sites
• Co-locating chargers can increase usage, not reduce it
• Private equity interest signals market maturation

Big Takeaway:

• EV charging success depends on treating infrastructure like a business—driven by data, pricing strategy, and disciplined investment decisions

Featured Guest Bio 

Rohan Puri is the Co-Founder and CEO of Stable Auto, an EV charging data analytics platform. He focuses on addressing one of the biggest barriers to widespread EV adoption—the lack of reliable and scalable charging infrastructure—by enabling more informed, data-driven decision-making.

To support this, Stable’s proprietary software leverages AI to analyze prospective charging sites and predict long-term profitability. Drawing on more than 70 million data points, the platform helps charging networks, infrastructure developers, and financial institutions forecast EV charging usage and costs over the lifecycle of a charger.

Prior to founding Stable, Rohan developed software and machine learning models at MIT Media Lab, where he contributed to the advancement of diagnostic devices and biometric sensors. In parallel with his work at MIT, he advised technology startups through Techstars and the Harvard Innovation Lab and has also spoken at TEDx event

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hardware is not the only reason EV charging sites fail. Some sites struggle because the economics behind them were wrong from the start. In this episode of Field Frequency, I'm joined by Rohan Puri, co founder and CEO of Stable, a company that helps operators figure out where chargers actually can make money. We talk about why most chargers underperform, why dynamic pricing is inevitable, and why some sites should be shut down entirely. We also talk about why private equity is quietly moving in while others are pulling back. This is a grounded conversation about EV charging as a viable business. Let's talk about it. Wanted to get you on for a little bit of time and glad we were able to finally align schedules and get this booked and happy to have you on Filled Frequency. Thank you so much for having me, Jason. Appreciate it. Yeah. Well, uh a lot of excitement watching the progress of Stable, watching your journey in the mobility space. But for the audience, I'd like to just kick things off with your background before Stable, before EV infrastructure analytics. Just take us back, give us give us your origin story and and the vision that led to Stable.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, uh, we actually started out, uh it was my co-founder and I, my co-founder is Jamie Scheel. We we both met in Boston at MIT's Media Lab. But we used to work in a group there that built all sorts of different sensing technologies and the everything from cameras to biometric sensors, et cetera. And we did a lot of math. A lot of math on the on that sensor signal. Okay. That helped us build, you know, the competencies that we eventually used at stable. And so we're both very technical. Um, there's a research group there that we worked at for a number of years. We spent a lot of late nights together. At the time, you know, we were starting to see the first emergence of self-driving electric cars coming out, and you know, Cruise was launching and Waymo was the thing, and there was Zooks and all sorts of things were happening. And actually, the the way that we originally started Stable was those companies did a lot of work with our research lab and the same with the OEMs. And one of the questions they had was, hey, we're about to deploy these massive self-driving electric fleets, but we actually don't know how we're gonna charge them when there's no driver up behind the wheel. And charging is gonna be a big part of how they operate and their operating behavior because we're gonna do small top-offs throughout the day to keep them on the road, keep the vehicle utilization as high as possible. So we need a way to charge the cars and to do a number of other tasks. So stable actually started as a robotic charging and services company. We built, we took these off-the-shelf robotic arms that were built to plug those cars in and do some basic tasks around calibrating cameras and stuff like that, and deployed the first the world's first robotically operated charging facility alongside Electrify America. And that was built in the mission in San Francisco. Uh, we had a big office warehouse space there. It was a wonderful space. But we deployed that office or that facility in February of 2020, which is absolutely probably the worst possible time to deploy anything with physical goods.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

Wow, what was going on? Was something going on then? Was that a not a good time?

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Just a little old, you know, global plant pandemic, and with which, you know, SF was one of the first cities in the US to close down. And, you know, obviously, like the self-driving fleets couldn't get into their drivers in their vehicles, they couldn't get riders in their vehicles. The rideshare companies had much bigger problems, the ridership was plummeting, we couldn't get to the office. Um, but thankfully, in that in that whole process of getting these fast chargers installed to Electrify America, we were, you know, we were trying to be very strategic about where did we put that charger so that these fleets could use them. And so maybe even next sites, the public can also use those sites to drive utilization as high as possible. And in that time, we sort of tried to understand, you know, where is the optimal location for these chargers and how do we want to run them so that they're running, you know, one charger is charging as many vehicles as possible. So that's what sort of started stable. After a you know pivot there in in 2021 time frame, we launched the stable that we have today, which is you know software company to help place and and operate your chargers to get to your IRR as quickly as possible. It turned out that was just a much bigger need, much more important need around that, right? It didn't matter if it was a robotic charger, it just mattered. I have hardware to deploy, I need and it's very expensive. I need to know where I should deploy it and how I should operate it so it pays back for itself as quickly as possible.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

You know, I know it's part of the origin story. I've got a tangential, just gotta ask it. Robotic arms charging the vehicles. I know that this is this is not where we're gonna go in this conversation, but for those that are listening, they probably want to know how does that open the car? How does it open the front door of the lid where the where the plug inlets are? How does that work?

SPEAKER_00 4:45

How does that work? Yeah, so we actually had so there's a couple different ways. It turns out different cars do different things, which made it a big pain to do. But you know, Tesla, you can actually just send a radio signal and it just pops open automatically. A lot of the self-driving fleets only use like one or two makes a model cars. So we had like the Chrysler Pacifica uh was one that was being used by Waymo quite a bit, and the Chevy Bolt was being used by GM crews. And with those, you can just push the lid, it pops open, and you swing it open and you plug it in. There's not much more to do. So you had a robot arm that would just push the lid at the right spot, swing it open, plug it in.

SPEAKER_03 5:17

Well, that's again a tangential question, but just for those listening and curious how that worked, because we know what's involved in the interconnection. All right, so so got the got the story on what the catalyst was and and what kind of the roadmap was to developing what stable's core product is. So I want to talk about product strategy. And I think also as as you're as you're leaning into that as we talk about what that means, maybe kick off with where stable sits in the EV slash EV charging infrastructure value chain. For those that don't understand, because I may, you know, we're gonna we're probably talking about software. They're gonna think, well, maybe they're they're a CPO. Well, you're not a CPO. So maybe tell where Stable sits in the EV value chain, and then let's get into product strategy. I I got a couple, I got a question about, you know, kind of uh some things related to the product.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Yeah, absolutely. So we are, yeah, we're not a CPO. We don't own and operate, you know, in uh our own charging network or anything like that. We provide software tools that CPOs and asset managers use to turn a profit as quickly as possible on that infrastructure. And so we think the two keys to it, we treat EV charging as like a commodity, right? And so what is gonna differentiate one set of fast chargers from another set of fast chargers? Well, it's probably not, you know, purely things like the brand and the software experience on the chargers, although those matter, right? It's it's probably not the most important thing. The most important thing for fast chargers, turns out, is you know, you put them in places that are convenient for most people or certain classes like rideshare drivers, and then you price and operate those chargers at the best possible margin, right? You try to maximize dollars in energy cost, minimize, maintenance minimize the set of operating tasks. So we provide software that sits on top of that. You can doesn't matter what hardware you're using, doesn't matter what software you're using on the chargers, you can still use our tools. And the core of everything that we do at stable is we attempt to predict what the utilization of a charger will be. So one tool we have called Stable Evaluate attempts to predict what the utilization of a new site will be, right? A net new location. We give you some ranges and expectations based on a machine learning model, et cetera, et cetera. Our stable operate platform takes assets that you already have in the ground that are already doing stuff, and it tries to predict utilization next week, next month, next quarter, right? And the purpose of that is is if you know, you know, for for site selection, of course, like higher utilization site, probably want to choose that over it, especially if the energy costs are likely to be low on that utility territory. But if you have a site that's already in the ground and I'm predicting that utilization is going to go uh you know down a ton next week because it's some holiday and nobody's driving that holiday, then you might make some decisions around your energy caps, your pricing for the site. Well, but it all comes down to how well can you predict demand. And if you think about it, for other sort of high volume, low margin commodities out there, like in airlines and energy and hotels and all these things, it's the same game. You're trying to predict what demand's gonna be over the Christmas holiday and price your airline tickets accordingly and optimize how many flights you're gonna go. And and and that's the entire game of building those few cents of margin on top of it. So that's where we sort of sit is we help make those business decisions. Where do you place it? How do you price it? How do you operate it? So that when you're going into your back end of your charging stack, you know what to do.

SPEAKER_03 8:29

These solutions uh that you've brought to market, man, they needed to have been been here early on. I mean, just the way you've you've outlined what stable evaluate does, what stable operate does. Early on, and I'm saying early on, pre-2020, there was put the chargers in where we can get them in. That was kind of the mindset. Put them in where we think they go, put them in where it's easiest or quickest pathway, least resistance in terms of info infrastructure that's existing, installation that's needed, et cetera. And so that created some faulty programs early on because again, what you've brought to market is a solution that says focus on ROI, and ROI is going to be driven by are these chargers where they need to be? If not, don't put them there, put them here. So siding tools. And then of course the optimization through uh stable operate. And so that's um those are game changers. And you know, you talked about ROI in your initial opening statement. Whenever I started asking about product, you started talking about profitability. Those are things that we need to be in to have a to get to that industry maturation we're in, we're so desperately in pursuit of, but we've been so far away from because the idea of of a profitable destination, charging destination. I can't tell you how many different CPOs have talked about, yeah, to be profitable at this side, I'd need to sell at, you know,$2 a kilowatt uh to to be to be not not just to just to be profitable, you know, not even to break to be profitable. So um, you know, utilization nuance. That's uh that's clearly a part of the goals and part of the solutions that you're bringing to the CPOs. Uh it would seem like CPOs would be clamoring for your solution. Your data suggests that a majority of usage is concentrated in a minority of sites. Wrong place. Wrong place. Are are there are there simple heuristics that you've learned through you know working with your customers about what separates a high utilization charger from a utilization one? In other words, where where's the don't you give away the secret sauce, but just fly over? How do you help the customer begin to understand that?

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Yeah, I mean, we so so we try to predict and forecast it, right? And of course the we're wrong sometimes, and but most of the time we're pretty close. And so the problem with a prediction is that it doesn't always line up to what your intuition says. Okay. So you think like intuitively, this is a mall. I know this area is a popular place, let's put a charger there. And we might say we don't think it's gonna be that well utilized, and you might ask why. And and what it comes down to is that it's not just a function of like how popular is the area. You have to look at a bunch of things, right? Like how many EVs are in the area, how many of those EVs are likely to drive by that area? And then are they gonna drive by when they actually have depleted battery? Or are they driving like five miles a day on average? Like they charge at home most of the time. So just because you got a lot of EVs and a lot of traffic doesn't mean it's a good site for a charger, especially if there's things like competition nearby and you can charge at home and or the prices are crazy. There's just so much to consider there when you try to understand like if this is a good site. I'll tell you what's up how the traps are. People tend to overfocus on, I mean, you're totally right, but people started to deploy charges where it was easiest, and then we had a generation of chargers deployed where the rebates were. Right. Where we're ever gonna get dollars in, that's the play we're gonna deploy. And there are networks whose entire strategy was just around rebates, right? Um, which is fine, right? It it has its own paradigm. You don't care as much about utilization in those cases. Neither is trying to look at long-term fundamentals. At some point, you know, the charge has got to be utilized enough. Um, or you're gonna end up shutting it down at some point, right? The maintenance won't be worth it. So that's why I focus so much on fundamental utilization. Here's here's one common trap I see, which is this like fear of competition. Pro Tesla at the site, cross the street, or UVGo or like Triamerica is gonna deploy there, or whoever, name your CPO. Let's not deploy there. Now, from one perspective, that's reasonable in the sense that maybe they took all the capacity and the you know, the transformer upgrade's gonna be crazy for you. But on the other hand, we actually find that when charging locations that pool together, everyone benefits from better utilization than they otherwise would have had most of the time. So what we tend to see is that you know you deploy and then your competitor gets better utilization and you get better utilization. Because there's probably because there's just more options and drivers say I have many alternatives, I'm not gonna be waiting. We don't know for sure why, but we see that effect. And we we've had to model that effect. And so that's that's not intuitive, right? People think of like gas stations eating, competing for fixed demand. But the problem with it with EVs, for example, is that it's not fixed demand. Like the EV market is growing. So it's not like there's the fixed number of EVs that you could charge every day. It's a fixed and growing number of EVs that you can charge every day. And the way that consumers pick sites now, there aren't that many. So you're kind of just picking the most convenient, closest one, like, and sometimes you're desperate and you'll go anywhere, right? For any price. And it's it's a very different dynamic than how people think about gas.

SPEAKER_03 13:12

Yeah, that's uh some so many good analogies came to mind as as you were you were explaining that so well. Obviously, the gas station model is is what we know because we're conditioned to a hundred plus years of of retail fueling and the gas station experience. But the you know, you mentioned the site. Well, I should I not put here because across the street is brand X. What do I do? And so it's not um you know, it's it's very good it's very interesting and and the solution that that you're working through and you and you the education that you're bringing through data, I think is is really imperative because like you said with the example of the of the mall, well, there's lots of traffic, lots of visibility, lots of activity. Yeah, but maybe no one's gonna charge there because they're passing through or they're charging at home because all of that. And so it's almost like you could be a contrarian to one that's all positive about a site, but then you could be really positive and say, no, you need to deploy here because and data is supporting all of that. So it's not it's not just gut. That's not what it's about in the gas station model. You got Exxon over here and across the street, you got shell. And it could be that upstream ownership owns both of those pieces of property and they just have different oil contracts, but they're still competing, they're still competing with customers and experience, amenities. When I talk about experience, the experience that the guest has there is all of that is competing for the amenities. And so it's it's it's an opportunity for the CPO that, hey, you have through data, provable data points that would support you having this a successful charging deployment here. If you want to differentiate yourself, amenities, amenities, amenities, canopy, et cetera. Yeah, that's so that's you know, I appreciate you you kind of laying out these these ROI realities and these these charging economics and even the misconceptions that are around that. Yeah, I think it's good that you double clicked on that. Maybe this is in the vein of of operate, the feature of dynamic pricing. I'm I'm assuming that's probably a a a value proposition within stable operating dynamic pricing. So how how rare is dynamic pricing in public charging?

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yeah. It actually turns out almost everybody is now all the major networks are have started at least some degree of dynamic pricing. And when I say dynamic pricing, people tend to think it's like minute to minute, second to second prices. That's not the case, you know, by and large. But for example, Tesla's already rolled this out in Europe, California, EVGo has it on almost all their chargers. You can see their prices change, right? Not every Wednesday are you gonna see the same exact price on Wednesdays at 2 p.m. And Lecture Fry America has done it as well. Like there's been now it's it's evolved from like little pilots and experiments to like, oh, we're doing this. And they've been public, they've been on record about it. So we're seeing it more and more, and it's it's fundamental. Like you have to do that. Like the the price from the utility is dynamic, right? You might say, oh no, it's fixed. It's not, it's a demand charge dependent. So if I had a bunch of Porsche takens charge at the same time at my site on the first day of my billing period, and I'm gonna have to pay this massive demand charge for that month, you damn sure I'm gonna change my pricing strategy going forward, right? Like I should, right? I have to do something about this, and yeah, I'm gonna lose money. So if the utility can do it when demand spikes, so can you. And likewise, if the utility tries to incentivize you using energy when demand is low, then so can you. And and the question is like, how much does that drive back and forth? So it's a natural extension of what needs to happen here, and you have to balance it with the driver's expectations because nobody wants to like know it, think it's one price and then it shows up and it's a different price. But you can get around that just like you get around with everything. Uber and you expect the price is gonna change if you check it five minutes later, right? So that we're used to it. We're used to it in airlines, we're used to it with hotels, concert tickets, everything is does works that way when it's like this type of thing.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

Well, there's even parity in the in the retail gas world with that, because okay, so the when the when the tanker leaves a refinery with that fuel in its tanker and it arrives at the gas station and drops it in that tank, obviously they they've procured that fuel, whether they were the refinery themselves and they're selling their own fuel or they bought it. They drop it in those tanks, and then the price goes up on the price sign. Well, the fuel that was in that original drop may not be depleted before that sign, the price on that sign goes up or goes down either way, because it's it's market influence. And so the idea of dynamic pricing to those that are in the EV space, it just makes sense. It makes sense to the operator. For those that are on the outside looking in that maybe don't drive an EV or don't understand the dynamics of the technology that that drives this, it could be like a barrier. It's not a barrier, it's actually helping them be competitive. Like you said, with the example of multiple tycons charging in the early part of the month, demand charges. Well, now your bill is astronomical, which could have been offset by by a proper pricing strategy. When it comes to dynamic pricing, are there any like, you know, for those listening, they may have this question are there technology barriers? Is there some operational process that affects that, that makes that easy, not easy to do? But maybe that's the perspective of the CPO. Maybe they don't understand how that works.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah, there are, there are definitely barriers. A lot of it tends to be, you know, getting the prices to propagate throughout everything. So you see you set a price, you know, typically what we're seeing is like the happy compromise of dynamic dynamic pricing. We tend to see is we let our customers, you know, they decide what they want, they decide their prices, everything, but the the the frequency is typically like once a week maximum. You know, you want you might update your pricing for the week ahead. More than that, like honestly, our systems can't really handle it yet. You want like the app to show the same thing, the credit card reader to build the same thing. You want all the you know, plug share and Google Maps and all those things to all stay the same thing. And so that's one of the challenges. In Europe, there's an even bigger challenge, which is all these EMSPs in the middle who are sort of like they charge their own fee on top of the fee from the CPO. So those tend to be like the bigger challenges and just the unification of how do you propagate price and then how you dis display price in places where there's regulations about displaying price correctly, like clearly and invisibly for everybody. Generally speaking, folks aren't super price sensitive to EV charging. Like when they need a charge on a fast charger, they need it pretty desperately most of the time. Or it's like the only option. And and second to that is the one exception to that is we tend to see like rideshare drivers being much more price sensitive. They will shop a lot more for what they need. And it's probably because when you're on a road trip, it's a one-off thing, it's not something you're over optimizing for. But when you're doing it every single day, all the time, then you're probably gonna choose the one with the best amenities and the bathroom and the cheaper price.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

Yeah. Yeah, well, and and to your point of the road trip, that that is a one-off. And probably from an aggregation standpoint, it's probably gonna be cheaper by the time you got from point A to point B in an EV versus with fuel, you know, in that whole vein of of price per kilowatt. This came up on a on a previous interview on an unreleased episode as yet, uh, but pricing came up. And you know, we were talking about ca and and this leads to deploying where the where it's easiest, deploying where the money's at, but then also that that that free money concept that helped offset the capital will then also as a probably not the best influencer for for progress towards a mature space, but the price per kilowatt. And so you know 25 cents, 30 cents per kilowatt, you're giving away energy, you're you're not helping your bottom line, you're not even driving towards an ROI with that. And so we've seen a shift. Um And you're setting core c expectations with customers that that's the price, that's the expected price. Yes, yes. And you don't want to set that expectation. No, it's the it's it's the free L2 at your site, you know, in 20, you know, 18, 19, 20, that's set a bad precedence for for those sites that need to buy and invest and put them in now. Well, you were given they they they were giving them away back then. Well, that's yeah, that wasn't the best thing. But anyways, the point being, I digress, going back to the price per kilowatt. We're we're seeing areas of the country where the average price is no longer 25, 30 cents, 40 cents. People are reacting to 55, 60 cents. Is that a fair reaction? I think it is. I mean, reacting, you mean reacting negatively? Negatively, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Like so the drivers, why why am I paying 60 cents per kilowatt? You know, that too. Well, listen, I want to say that when people are dynamically pricing things, they're pricing things both ways, right? Lower and high, right? So there's times when it's much lower than it would be otherwise that you're also getting as part of dynamic pricing. And it if it's not dynamically priced, you're overpaying at certain hours, right? So that's one thing to keep in mind. But but I think that reaction that you're seeing is reflective of the fact that in the early days of charging networks, we all felt some obligation to make sure that the cost of an EV charging an EV was lower than the cost of fueling a car, an equivalent car. And that's very admirable. And it's very reasonable. But the to me that was misread as in all situations, it should always be from here on out. Yeah. Yeah. From here on out in all situations. No, I I think the main thing that that's saying is that that everyone would agree on is yeah if you charge it at home every day, it's way, way cheaper, right? And that's what most people do. They charge it at home. But when you need the 350 kilowatt super fast charger at 5 p.m on your commute because your battery is busted, I mean, then you still expect to pay less than the price of gas. I don't know. You're paying for convenience, you're paying for speed, you're you're paying for that service, right? And and you know ideally you would never need it. But it's like a you know triple pop-up in that case. So I I think that's where the expectations are a little bit incorrect of like, no, these guys have to make money too. If you want the price of the charging to go down, the price of the electricity has to go down. And that's a utility problem.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

Right?

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Because people are just trying to break even. You know this is not a case where like you know it's like Apple overcharging for the next iPhone. Like they got plenty of money. Why are they being greedy? That kind of thing. Most CPOs are barely breaking even if that most CPOs are not even breaking even. So it's like you want EV charging to exist, then yeah you got to think about price.

SPEAKER_03 23:16

Yep. That's right. Let them charge the 75% 75 cents per kilowatt. People are going to spend it. People need it. They're traveling they're driving they're going to use it anyways like you said the the energy is low.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

And if I don't if you think it's too expensive, don't charge.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

Go somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

It's just like everyone goes somewhere else, right? It's it's just like any other business. It's the same thing. It give them the signal that it was too expensive.

SPEAKER_03 23:37

Yeah you're you're absolutely right it's it's time to move on as an industry from those mindsets early on that we we had to go along to get along it's time to move on and we want these CPOs to be profitable because we want them to put in more charging stations because we want higher util h higher availability to to drive EV adoption. Yeah so well you know stable clearly has some some great products and and great solutions for the CPO and the operators in in the space. Stable's also not alone in the EV infrastructure optimization. There's probably utilities that are somewhat of a competitor I might think or maybe some other analytic groups or maybe even OEMs that are all kind of just leaning in again without revealing any of the secret sauce where where's stable's competitive edge in this landscape of optimization of infrastructure?

SPEAKER_00 24:26

You know we're not super worried about a competitive edge because I think the market is big enough for multiple players most of the time what we're competing with is the company, the customers that own way of doing things that they didn't before. Maybe they do this sort of analysis in-house maybe they have an operations team who's been doing their pricing maybe you know and they're they're considering should I switch? And you know the math works out that like obviously my software subscription to you is going to be much cheaper than the team of analysts that you need to run this thing or to build these forecasts. And and when you use forecasts out of stable you're getting a nice mutual third party opinion. There's no bias in our we're not trying to tell you every site's great right um when you buy a charger you know say you're buying a charger from a charger OEM and you ask them for a forecast utilization and they tell you it's going to be good, wouldn't you be skeptical? Because you're buying charges from them.

SPEAKER_03 25:13

Of course it's going to be good. It's going to be great.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

It's perfect. Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 25:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

We actually people use us in addition to their own in-house models or if they're raising funding or if they're acquiring a bunch of charging assets, we're like the third party neutral, they got no skin in the game, you know, entity to do the thing. And that's it. So point being that the um like so so part of it is that there's there's like we have a natural place in the market. Our main most of our competition is that the customers themselves doing it themselves. In the case that it's a little bit more direct, I would say our differentiator is more that we're just very dollar focused. Like we're not trying to give you we're not going to give you a score out of 100 and tell you this is good, this is bad. We're going to tell you how many dollars you might make and on that in that specific area in the utility territory on the specific energy tariff for DC fast commercial charging in the month of March is what we expect. And here's an Excel-based pro forma that you can export out of our tool that gives you all the dollars and cents worked out. And you can take that forecast and you can discount it and say I think staples being too bullish. I think they're being too bearish. But the point is that I'm getting you to dollars and cents every time. And so to me that should be the ultimate decision. It's not just is this a good site of course this question is it got good capacity are there good stores and stuff nearby there's some qualitative things or the quantitative thing. We're trying to get you to like the most accurate take on expected utilization and growth and utilization as we possibly can give you trying to predict the feature. And we are very public about we publish our accuracy rates to all our customers they get quarterly updates on our models and we tell them here's where we're good, here's where we're not so good here's where we overpredict here's where we underpred right like that is available to our enterprise customers who use our software because they're dependent on it to make investment decisions. We're like open book we're like here's how it works here's our accuracy you take take with it's a grain of salt right take with it a grain of salt but here's our best possible take on it.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

Well that you know I I think my first four years in this space I was trying to like you said sell chargers. Oh yeah they're going to be profitable. Here you go put them in everybody's going to use them it's going to be great. Uh wasn't reality and then of course my my core demographic that I was going after when I first entered the EV space was the petroleum retail world and so they they had data they had decades of data on where the gasoline and diesel drivers were and where to build a gas you know gas station all of that and it was it was very easy but whenever it got down to the chargers you're absolutely right you know I was I was at that time a value added race reseller of a couple of brands of hardware and they would give me these spreadsheets about well the charger's going to do this and it's going to have all these capabilities and none of the data points was just around it was all just theoretical around well now you have a charger well now someone's going to buy an EV charge uh an EV and they're going to know they've got a place to charge at when they're not charging at home. And it was just it was a mess. It was a mess. And of course that was you know 2016 2017 20 I mean it was it was early on. But um man this this is a game changer. It's a game changer. To me it's a no-brainer for CPO to to not try not have to try to figure it out. Let data inform on this let data define where to go where to avoid maybe even where to expand. I'm sure there's some sites that that you've been able to to encourage to expand to just keep that utilization. Double click on the utilization and let's go, let's take it to the next level. I'm sure there's been probably examples of that.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

What what we tell CPOs to do is to focus on what they do best, which is typically like pulling the permit, getting the transform upgrade, developing the site, you know making sure there's no gas tanks and you know easements that are going to screw you later and lose all your money. Like that's the core competency that that is really strong. I mean a lot of these folks have come from telecom and moved into the space that's the core competency like focus on the viability the feasibility the qualitative things of like is there good lighting in here is this going to be an approachable place. When it comes to like the dollars and cents and the predictive models and the forecasting there's no point spending all that time in there. Like this is all we do all we do is try to predict utilization of DC fast chargers. Like that's literally all we've been doing for eight years, you know or I guess a little bit less now right five or six years. Straight just thinking about that. And so yes you could probably do it yourself but is it really worth it?

SPEAKER_03 29:28

Like we probably do it for much cheaper for you and and then you do the gut check on top right right well that's uh this this has been good good um good conversation appreciate all this the these insights I'd kind of like to zoom out and look at the industry you know kind of at a macro level and one area um of thought that I'm in is is market signals. We've talked about maturation of this industry and that's that's that's kind of been some of this uh this conversation already. What's what would you say just as as someone that's been in the space, have observed the changes, what's an underappreciated signal that you've seen or that you're watching that tells you that this market is maturing?

SPEAKER_00 30:05

I think the clearest one we've seen is because people are using us for diligence, we've gotten a lot of interest in the last let's say six to eight months from folks who are looking to acquire assets, EV charging stations that have been installed of course there's less capital available these days, especially in this market for this kind of thing and investors are generally generally bearish on it, right? But if you look at the fundamentals, I mean utilization rates are the same or better than they were this time last year. And so that means like the assets are still valuable. And so what we're seeing is like large roll-ups, PE firms, infrastructure investors move into the space to acquire assets ideally for cheap, right? Because they know there's money to be made and the market may be overreacting. And that's their bet, right? What's interesting about these groups is that you know candidly they care about the climate and they care about you know being green and all that stuff, but they're mil mainly in it for just to make money, right? They're they're in it for a return on investment. And that's their mandate of their capital is a return on investment, a specific target they need to hit. So the fact that we're seeing multiple players move into the market not only domestic players but also international groups who are looking to expand in the market the United States market right now at a at a moment of weakness to me is a really promising sign of the maturity of the market. Like those groups PE does not roll in when there's no money to be made they move in when they think there's money to be made and it's not valuations aren't overblown and everybody, you know, there's a way to be cost conscious is a way to make a return.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

So what if really problem I appreciate that what is the what if in your observations what have you seen the tolerance levels for ROI with with whether it's PE or or you know someone trying to get in the space what what what do you feel like you've noticed in terms of commonality as far as the tolerance for towards ROI? Are they looking at this they're trying to flip this in three years, five years, is a 10 year play I mean where are they coming in with rational or are they coming in irrational just out of my quite rational especially because they have the benefit of hindsight of like how much utilization did these charges get in the last few years.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

So what can we expect in terms of growth in the next few years? And what's our payback on that when we for our acquisition price? I mean they want to flip these ideally as low as possible. It does depend on the the capital provider like what the horizon is but they they won't shy away from an eight to ten year horizon. It's just it has to be a big enough dollar amount to deploy against right there a smaller return is okay if the they can deploy 500 million a billion dollars of capital right but if they get a small return they can only deploy a million dollars like who cares right it's not paying so that's kind of the balance that we have to see um one thing I'll tell you this commonality on these these a lot of these acquisitions is they they're not necessarily valuing the hardware type of the branding the app experience they're just looking at it as there's a plug in the ground there's this many plugs in the ground and this much capacity for power and that's it. So they're valuing that they're evaluating as an asset a standalone asset and not the business and the product and stuff around it as much.

SPEAKER_03 33:07

Yeah that's that's good appreciate the appreciate that insight looking at the technology side of things because obviously there's a fast DC charger six years ago was you know 50 kilowatts, 75 kilowatts, sub 100 definitely kilowatts was a fast charger. And so maybe some of these legacy sites um the the path to acquiring those sites and there's going to be an immediate need for upgrade to make them relevant in this space where somewhat the baseline of charging is at 150 maybe kilowatts. Even though that may not necessarily be the requirement for that area based on what others around. I mean again there's there's there's rethinking and retooling the thinking around what is required in terms of output but that's that's got to be a factor and it's got to be a part of the the conversation. Just I would think you know from from a future tech standpoint when when you you know when your company is is helping your customer look beyond beyond siding beyond pricing what what's what's where does innovation fall into that is are you is what's the next innovation maybe in that that charging is it is it the hardware is it the where where are you helping customers think about siding and pricing but then at a macro level the the site itself.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Yeah if we I think in hardware and stuff we're actually going to get to like more and more and more commoditized. They'll all roughly look the same and they'll all roughly be pretty reliable. And that will happen over time naturally. Now how long that will take who knows right but it it shouldn't like we don't even think about the hardware what gas pump you know is it Gilbarcos is it you know what's the other one? Patrice something else? Yeah Wayne like who we don't who like nobody knows. Nobody cares which pump you're pumping at right it doesn't matter. I think it's the same as it's gonna be the same with charging. We we barely care which gas station to fuel at do we really care if it's a shell site or a a BP site? No. It's like as long as it's roughly the same price maybe you care about the amenities that's it. So I actually think it's gonna be in I mean these are internet connected software defined IoT devices and and to me most of the innovation is going to be in how you find and book and reserve and and bid for them for different classes of drivers. And so I think that the charging experience will be most likely the vehicle is going to automatically find for you like it already kind of does right the most convenient cheapest charger en route and there will be sort of a background bidding war happening between computers of vehicles vying for sites and chargers buying for vehicles offering them different prices and just sort of trading happening you know until they make a reservation they book it and they they charge there and the driver just confirms. But maybe you can even incentivize behavior with with price maybe you can say for example that uh you know it's a 350 kilowatt charger right now we throttle those charges to manage our energy costs but you can say hey driver I will offer you the full speed fully rated speed of this charger but you got to pay 3x more. So if you're really desperate yeah I'll I'll give you this capability. You can charge a full speed right now but I'm instead of you know 30 cents I'm gonna charge you almost a dollar. Your choice if you're willing to do let me throttle you down to like 100 kilowatts or 50 or 75, I'll only charge you 30 cents. So it depends how long do you want to wait? Right? These are the more like sophisticated like sorts of behaviors, purchasing behaviors that I think we're going to start like we should start seeing in the next few years that I think people aren't really tapping into well enough. But it exists in every other you know similar class of product.

SPEAKER_03 36:29

Well Rohan I appreciate uh your time today it's been a been a good conversation I think as we get ready to to to land this plane just kind of some closing thoughts and and and parting shots of wisdom maybe um you spent a lot of time in the data if you were suddenly running a charging network to tomorrow maybe this is for a PE that's listening or an emerging CPO that's listening if you were if you were suddenly running a network tomorrow what's the what's the first thing you would start doing or stop doing you can answer that either way you want.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

So for if I was if I was running one charge that already existed or you're you're a CPO tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 37:06

You you've seen the data you've spent time in the data so you know where to go where not to go and way to think about which way uh that that's pointed. Or maybe you answer it this way what do CPOs need to stop doing or start doing today or doubling down on the can the sites that you know aren't going to make it that are they just never going to hit that utilization potential. Shut them shut them down.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

So shut them down shut them down there they're a drag brand harm that they will cause to you for being broken all the time or they're underutilized from a cost perspective or you're rolling trucks all the time just got to can them. Like you got to rip the band aid focus on the ones that are good and recapitalize with the you know liquidate them recapitalize and then reinvest again and don't be caught in this game of like you're trying to grow this metric of number of ports installed at any cost. Be willing to drop that metric of number of ports installed so that the number you should really be looking at is ROI.

SPEAKER_03 37:58

I imagine you've had to say that to an operator and they've probably not wanted to hear that they've probably been attached to the whole sunken cost theory and it's just double down, oh let's wait and see and yeah so I imagine that's a conversation you've you've had because you've had data to support that.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

Yeah I just gotta I mean it's it's just business right it's and we have to treat it like that. If you have if you own a chain of restaurants of like chilies locations and there's a chili location that not that's not turning a profit. How long are you going to wait for more people to come to that chili's before you turn it into you sell it to somebody else and turn it into a a Chick-fil-a right like that's that's the question.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

Yeah yeah good and good good comments good good good feedback uh and agreed well rohan thank you for for being on on filled frequency for those that want to connect with you directly want to learn more about stable learn what about what you're doing in the space reach out to you how how do they connect with you?

SPEAKER_00 38:50

Yeah just reach out directly LinkedIn uh is the best way to reach out to me I'm very responsive on LinkedIn I post all the time uh and I you know hear a lot of people that way so please reach out to me on LinkedIn that's the best way to reach out great thank you for being on Field Frequency.

SPEAKER_03 39:04

Thank you Jason appreciate it