188 - The EV Mindset Episode

Hi. I'm Gary and this is episode 188 of EV Musings a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners.

On the show today we'll be looking at the different mindset you need to drive an EV.

This season of the podcast is sponsored by ZapMap, the free to download app that helps EV drivers search, plan, and pay for their charging.

This particular episode is in partnership with EVA England, the body representing electric vehicle owners in England. See the show notes for membership details and links to their website.

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Our main topic of discussion today is the EV Mindset.

I hear a lot of talk on the socials about how EVs are complicated. About how they need particular education to be used right. About how people won’t change unless something is easier than what they’re moving away from.

Today I wanted to examine this a little.

There’s a school of thought which says EVs should be just as easy to use as ICE cars.

I contend that they are easier. There’s no gears, the braking is easier, you don’t even need to start and stop many of them as it happens automatically when you get in or out of the car. Most of them don’t even have a manual handbrake - how much easier can you get??

But one area where there is a stark difference is charging. This is because everyone has years and years of experience fuelling an ICE car and very little experience charging an EV.

So I want to talk a little bit about the mindset you need to own an EV and why ICE isn’t quite as ‘easy’ as you might think it is.

There’s a perception that fuelling a petrol car is simple. Pull up at the pump, swipe your card, stick the nozzle in the tank, pull the trigger until it clicks, replace the nozzle. Done.

Easy peasy, right?

However, there’s quite a lot of rose-tinted spectacles about that utopian situation.

It hides a multitude of aspects that are conveniently ignored with regards to petrol pumps and highlighted when it comes to car chargers.

Because that sequence of events is just one possible combination. Sure, it’s the one that most people encounter on a regular basis. But it’s one of several. It’s also the one that we have had more experience of doing than anything else.

A question I often ask people (and, indeed I asked the same question of Liz Allan in episode 184 a few weeks back) is ‘When you first filled a car with petrol at a petrol station (or diesel if that was your choice) how did you know what to do? Who taught you?’

Because the fact is nobody is born knowing intuitively how to fill a petrol tank.

Did you know which side of the car your fuel cap was on? Did you pull up at the right pump at the petrol station - nowadays we have pumps that do diesel and petrol at the same unit, but it wasn’t always like that.

Did you know how to get the pump to start working? Were you at a place where you could pay cash, or did you have to present some other method of payment?

If you had to present some method of payment was it obvious how this worked? Did you know where to put the payment card? Did you know which part of the unit handled that part of the process?

Did you know how much of a prepayment amount was taken from your card prior to pumping?

I would contend that the first time you did this you probably didn’t. Maybe the second or third time you did.

Then you went to another petrol station with another company. Their pumps were different. Their payment processing was different. Their layout was different. Maybe they didn’t have card readers on the pump at that location and you had to pay inside the booth.

So given all the variables above - and the unfamiliarity of using a petrol pump for the first time, let’s take a look at the statement that filling with petrol is easier.

Petrol stations are generally manned (there are exceptions, but this is usually the rule). The reason for this is because some people pay by cash. But furthermore the person manning the tills is also the one monitoring the forecourt for issues.

I know, I used to work at a petrol station in my youth.

Things they have to look out for are: people allowing children to use the pumps (16 is the minimum age), People trying to ‘lock’ the nozzles in an open position so they don’t have to continually hold it (this is considered a fire risk in the UK), people spilling flammable fluids on the floor (it happens more often than you would imagine), people being confused about what to do to start the actual pump.

That’s why petrol stations have both tannoy systems and emergency pump stops - to manage and monitor this.

his can be in the region of £: 5000

This can NEVER happen with an electric car.

On top of that there are local differences with fuelling. Let’s take an American example. When I first went to the US you could fuel and pay. In certain cases - after a certain time of day - you had to pay then fuel. This involved going into the kiosk or store, paying up front for your fuel, and then actually pumping the fuel into your vehicle. This stopped people doing a runner without paying.

In certain parts of the US this is now the default - pay before you pump. This means you need to know how much you can put in before you pay. It’s no good looking to say ‘I’ll put in enough to fill it but I don’t know how much that is until it’s done’ because that doesn’t work.

So you end up guessing what you’ll need and paying in advance for that. As the price of fuel varies so much (and in the last few years in the US it has tripled in price in some places.) it becomes difficult.

Then let’s look at those drivers who have a special fuel card. Allstar is an example. This is mainly for fleets and allows the cost of the fuel to be paid centrally every month by recording the transaction against a card and settling everything on account.

This can only be done in the kiosk by an individual who needs a signature. Another reason why you need someone manning the pumps.

Finally we have the pumps themselves. There is a perception that pumps are infallible and that they always work. Well, they are mechanical, heavily used in certain places and, believe me they break down. Far more often than you would imagine. When I delivered groceries for Morrisons during lockdown we had to fill the vans at the end of each shift. The store had an attached petrol station with 6 double-sided pumps that could - in theory - accommodate 12 vehicles at the same time. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I went into that forecourt in 12 months and ALL the pumps were working. The upshot of this is queues as people have to wait for others to finish filling on the reduced number of pumps.

All these factors play into the statement that petrol fuelling isn’t actually easy and straightforward. It’s just that we’re used to it. Yes, when everything works its simple. But so is EV charging. I was in France recently, stopped at a charger I’d never used before for a CPO I didn’t know, plugged in, flashed my roaming card and it worked. From stopping the car to getting power from the charger - around 20 seconds.

It’s all about the mindset.

Fossil fuel delivery systems have had a hundred years to evolve and develop, yet we’re still in a situation where the majority of pumps need live bodies to monitor what’s happening, people need to go into kiosks to pay and get signatures for certain transactions, 150,000 people a year put the wrong fuel in their vehicle, and what works for someone in one part of the country with 1 petrol station, might be completely different in another part of the country with a different petrol station.

But EV charging is complex?

And let’s also remember that hydrogen fuelling is subject to limitations etc. I’ll link a video in the show notes about a guy in California (Where there are more hydrogen stations per capita than anywhere else in the world) who travelled 20 minutes each way to find a station with supplies, waited 1hr and 20 minutes in a queue with 10 cars (so much for the 3 minute refill, eh?) had to try 5 times to get the system to work and ended up putting $130 worth of hydrogen in which gave him an A/C-on range of just 300 miles.

I also read someone saying that nobody will move to a tech that’s more complex and expensive than something they already have.

On the face of it that seems to make sense. I have a solution that works for me. Why would I pay more to find a more complex solution?

Well, let’s consider the smartphone.

r to the iPhone coming out in: 2007

Then came the iPhone. The interface was different, the form factor was different, the user experience was different. It had apps you needed to download, it had screens you needed to format. It couldn’t cut and paste - and it cost well over double what existing phones cost and you needed a completely different phone plan to accommodate the data aspect of it.

Steve Ballmer from Microsoft is on record as saying:

“$500 dollars fully subsidised with a plan? That is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a good email machine.” End quote.

Steve Ballmer from Microsoft. Remember him?

So the statement that nobody will move to a tech that’s more complex and expensive than something they already have is clearly wrong. The iPhone proved that in a most emphatic manner. That form factor and user experience is now the dominant one when it comes to phones globally. All in pretty much a decade or so.

People won’t move to a tech that’s more complex and expensive than what they’ve got if it doesn’t offer them a benefit. Who needs to record off the TV? Nobody. Oh, let’s get VCRs in there. So now you’ve got VCRs. Who needs higher quality, crisper picture, better audio versions of their movies? Let’s get DVDs in there. Now who needs even better quality? Let’s get Blu-Ray in there.

Now you’ve spent your money on VCR, DVD and Blu-Ray let’s get rid of all of that and stick everything on your computer using expensive Wi-fi and streaming.

Who would have imagined - 20 years ago - having to pay a broadband fee every month? An additional cost that is generally pretty necessary to do just about everything today?

The list goes on.

It’s all about the mindset.

The ding that’s always thrown at EV charging is ‘The infrastructure isn’t there’

This is a general catch-all that covers a multitude of sins such as ’There aren’t enough chargers’ to ‘There are enough chargers but they don’t work’, to ‘There are enough chargers, they do work, but there’s a queue to get to them’

As we’ve already identified with petrol stations two out of the three of these issues also apply to them. There are pumps that break down and there are queues (remember when the supposed fuel shortage occurred? Queues, amiright?)

So let’s address the issue that there aren’t enough chargers.

There are - per Zapmap - 70,000 connectors across 24,000 locations in the UK at the time of recording. Even if 20% of them are not working that’s 56,000 connectors available. But statistics also show that chargers are only used on average about 16% of the time. So the statement ‘There aren’t enough chargers’ is not entirely accurate. The issue is that newbies are going to the wrong locations or that chargers are being put in the wrong locations.

There are key differences at the moment between EV chargers and petrol stations. As a general rule your petrol station has the big, well-lit totem outside, with the branding, the price, and details of other facilities they may have (Wild Bean Cafe, anyone?)

With very few exceptions charging locations don’t have those. I was chatting with a rp from one of the big five CPOs recently and we talked about why this is. It all comes down - in the UK, at least - to planning consent. As soon as you put something in site over a certain height it delays the planning permission - often for quite a considerable time - so CPOs are reluctant to do this if they don’t have to.

The Gridserve Electric Forecourts have adopted that standard for their Braintree and Norwich sites. And the Shell Recharge site at Fulham has done that - although, in fairness it used to be a petrol station anyway so there’s that. The planning issue was probably moot in that case.

Which means that a lot of new EV owners don’t know where the chargers are. Which is where podcast sponsors Zapmap come in. Their app identifies and locates every public charger in the country (England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales) and allows you to navigate there. For most of the larger CPOs it gives you live status information so that you can tell if the charger is working or not (something that no app can currently provide for petrol stations, by the way), which means finding working chargers is relatively easy.

I’m also constantly surprised at the number of people who drive petrol or diesel cars and stop on long journeys for a coffee, a pee, some food, some email time, a stretch and a walk, but who think that 'having to wait for a charge' is a bad thing.

They don't seem to realise that most EV drivers don't 'stop for a charge' they stop for something else - just like ICE car divers do - and they charge at the same time.

Whereas with fossil fuels you HAVE to stop for a refill and you can't do anything else while you do it. So their mindset is ‘fuelling is a singular activity that needs 100% of your time and attention so needs to be done as quickly as possible’. They think that charging is the same and they can’t appreciate that this isn’t the case. That’s another reason Fuel Cell Vehicle supporters like that method: it aligns with the same mindset.

But, in reality, given the fact that you can ONLY fill an internal combustion engine car at a petrol station but you can charge an EV at home, at work, on the motorway, at your local Starbucks, at a restaurant, in the Park & Ride, at the supermarket, and in your local council car park, which one do you think ends up being easier and more convenient?

Well I suppose that all depends on your mindset.

It's time for a cool ev or renewable thing to share with you listeners.

AI predicts where to put charging stations.

BP-backed FreeWire Technologies has just released Mobilyze Pro, an AI platform designed with charge point operators in mind. The tools are to able predict the best locations to deploy fast charging stations and forecast operational costs and best returns.

It leverages AI to combine public and proprietary datasets, which feed into tools to predict site utilisation, recommend tariffs, and calculate profitability for CPOs.

It analyses charging activity from thousands of public charging locations and correlate it with EV drivers’ travel patterns, demographics, and vehicle ownership. This data then helps to predict how many sessions per day will likely occur at new charging locations and at which price.

Anyone else find this both cool and scary, or is that just me?

The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers in the UK, which helps EV drivers search, plan, and pay for their charging. Zap-Map is free to download and use, with subscription plans for enhanced features such as using Zap-Map in-car on CarPlay or Android Auto

And that's the show for today. Hope you enjoyed listening to it.

If you want to contact me, I can be emailed at evmusings@gmail.com. I’m also on twitter @musingsev

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I have a couple of ebooks out there if you want something to read on your Kindle.

'So, you've gone electric?' is available on Amazon worldwide for the measly sum of 99p or equivalent and it's a great little introduction to living with an electric car.

‘So you’ve gone renewable’ is also available on Amazon for the same 99p and it covers installing Solar Panels, a storage battery and a heat pump

Why not check them both out?

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If you’ve reached this part of the podcast and are still listening - thank you. Why not let me know you’ve got to this point by tweeting me @musingsev with the words [Mind games, mind set, mind match #ifyouknowyouknow] Nothing else.

Thanks as always to my co founder Simon. You know he’s found a good use for the old Red phone boxes that used to dot the countryside across the UK. Many people use them as showers, or storage sheds, or similar.

He’s decided he’s going to have one transported to his holiday home in The Maldives, installed on the beach and fitted with a diamond-encrusted phone that allows him to call his waiter directly to order whatever exotic dish he wants for dinner.

That is the most expensive phone in the world

Thanks for listening. Bye!