311 The bp Pulse Returns Episode

st intro (: 00:00

We first spoke with BP Pulse quite a few seasons back, just after they'd taken over the Polar Chargemaster Network. And at the time they were focused on rolling out AC Chargers and putting Rapids and Ultra Rapids in at some of their petrol stations.

nd Intro (: 00:15

I think it's fair to say at the time that the general impression was they were not particularly reliable and not particularly cheap.

Gary Comerford (: 00:25

Now that might have been the case a few years ago, especially when we spoke with BP Pulse last time on the podcast.

But what's the deal with them right now?

Hi, I'm Gary, and this is EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles, and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. Back in whatever season it was, we spoke with Dan McLaren from BP Pulse. He talked about what they're doing with hub rollouts, fleets, etc. You can check the previous episode out. I'll put the link in the show notes. Unfortunately, that was an audio only episode, so there's no video to go with it. Now I think it's fair to say at the time that I was.

Slightly unimpressed with the way things were going with BP Pulse. They had a reputation, deserved or otherwise, for being unreliable and poor value for money. Since then, the market has moved on. The number of large hubs that BP Pulse have installed in the UK has increased. In fact, the most recent hub was opened in Tingley, near Leeds, on the M62 in July this year. But there are still weak areas of the network.

I'm a big fan of the large AC charging hub they have installed at the NEC, but I rarely, if ever, have been able to start a charge successfully first time every time I've been there. And I've heard horror stories from colleagues who spent upwards of an hour trying to get charges started at that site. With these things in mind, I thought it might be a good time to get Dan McLaren back on the podcast and update things.

Daniel Mclaren (: 01:43

Yeah, my name is Daniel McLaren. I work for BP Pulse and I am an asset optimization lead. So effectively my job is there is two people at BP Pulse to this role and we split the public network pretty much down the middle and manage the various partnerships and hosts we have. So for example, I will look after all of our sites that are on &S food halls, Q Park car parks, some of our retail store.

car parks, so in big shopping centers and any of our standalone hubs. like our new Tingley site, for example, launched. And it's my job to drive as many kilowatt hours at those sites as possible.

Gary C (: 02:24

It's been a couple of years since we last spoke on the podcast and and back then you were probably more at the start of your rollout of some of the larger hubs. I think the NEC Rapid Hub was one of the first that went in there. So talk to me a little bit about that rollout, where you are and what's what's sort of happening with the bigger hubs.

Daniel Mclaren (: 02:41

yes, so good question. So I'd say over the last three or four years, it has evolved. We have seen sort of what we think a great hub is has changed. I think the opinion and I remember the last time we spoke, Gary, you said to me, Dan, build it and they will come. And at the time I was probably a bit naive and I was like, well, I won't challenge that. We're now a bit more.

bit more miles in the tank, I can sit here and go, no, that doesn't quite work in EV. So now we're very strategic around it's the right hub, right speed in the right place. That's the big one. So we're really focused on six or more bays for a hub. But again, not just everywhere. and recently people have sort of seen, you know, we have a lot of stuff in London. It's, know, do you do stuff outside London? Absolutely, we do.

but it's got to be keen, it's got to work from day one. So the plan is now, so for example, recently, Tingley, right on the motorway, big hub, 19 bays, pull-through bay, accessible bay, Starbucks. It's a perfect fit. So now it's my job effectively to drive as many people to those sites as possible and let them know that they're there and available.

Gary C (: 03:53

you and I sat for about an hour at the NEC the A C hub, the big car park there with all the the AC charges at a recent conference, watching people attempting to start charges there. now since then I've visited

twice, I've had issues, even with an RFID card. I also have a colleague who spent over an hour trying to get things started there. So what is the issue with AC charging and why is it so fraught with difficulty for the end user? Speci I mean in general, but specifically at that site.

Daniel Mclaren (: 04:25

I think what we've had before is people will be going there to use that for an event and it's the first time they're maybe charging with us. So.

download the app on the day and create an account. What we've had to do in the past is, and you know, we could have been better at communicating, we've really changed where we've done it is, unfortunately, we used to have a lot of issues with fraud. So what we had to do with people creating fraudulent accounts, starting charges and running debts. So what we've had to do in some cases is create a 24 hour buffer where our call center, our end would almost review the account being set up. We would try and get it turned around quicker than that, but sometimes...

as you say, customers turn up, they want to start a charge immediately and it's quite a challenge through the app. So that has been issues with it, completely own that. What we did alongside that to try and speed up because, you know, someone shouldn't have to wait that long to get a charge if they need to, we then created a web shop. So basically someone could just go on straight to the website, not through the app and start a charge there, a bit of an old school transaction as you would do online sort of thing to get a charge going.

We sort of had to do that. Frauds played a massive part in it, say though, because it's sort of, we've had to react to what's going on. You know, it's a whole different conversation around pre-authorization tariffs and things like that. Because again, that's heavily impacted by what we've experienced. I think for what me and you saw that day and what some people have experienced, a lot of cases would be new customers, first time turning up, trying to start the Charge Friday app and having that blocker.

Gary C (: 05:52

Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm I'm I don't disagree with you there. I've had the app for a while. I've had our RFID card for a year. I've always had I've never been able to go and just slap the card and and it worked first time. Last time I was there, I had to go to three different chargers to use it. It kept telling me my RFID card was invalid. I ended up having to use the app to start it.

I know that RFID card is not invalid because I've used it before. I used it on the day that you and I sat there. It's these kind of little inconsistencies that I think cause an issue. What what's do we know what's behind that? How how can we sort of eliminate remove or eliminate those?

Daniel Mclaren (: 06:30

We'd have to look at individual, we can look at individual cases if we had dates and times and you could have a look,

whether or not the charger's just having a bit of a moment with it. But we own it and we understand that, you know, there is, we do have these issues, like most CPOs will have issues at time's time.

Gary C (: 06:46

Okay. Well I'm back up at the NEC later this month, so we'll I'll I'll track what happens there and I'll I'll report back to you here.

Daniel Mclaren (: 06:50

Cool. Call me. You've got my number.

Gary C (: 06:54

Right, now when you were on previously we talked about the the pricing structure that you have. Now I was of the opinion and I still am having four prices for charging depending on speed and method of payment and

time of day, et cetera, et cetera, was a little bit confusing. Now you haven't moved away from that, but you have moved away from being one of the more expensive CPOs to being around the same as many others. I think the market's kind of caught up with you. And you're cheaper than some of them. So talk to me a little bit about the actual definition or the the creation of what the pricing structure is and and why you've why you're still staying with your little matrix for, you know

Daniel Mclaren (: 07:33

Yeah,

Gary C (: 07:33

how you're paying and

Daniel Mclaren (: 07:34

so

Gary C (: 07:34

and speed and all that sort of stuff.

Daniel Mclaren (: 07:36

So we're going through a big thing with pricing here, really trying to understand what does the future look like? So.

depending on location, different types of pricing. think pricing is something that is inevitably going to evolve over time.

I'm confident for the better. But I think as CPOs, we're all going to have to be very, let's use the word dynamic on the way we do things.

Because there's more sites going up all over the place, right? So you need to go, right, okay, well, this CPO has built a hub next to us. So naturally now we now think about the way we price this particular site compared to that, where before it was a little bit like you had your hub and there wasn't too many people about it. Now, I challenge most CPOs where you build a hub, there's someone within a stone's throw away from you. And actually we have to be a bit more competitive with them. yeah.

Gary C (: 08:24

And I know you and I have discussed this, sort of offline previously. And I think you did tell me at one point that was it Reading Westbound or something like that. You had a really, really cheap price on that and nobody came to use it. And I think the challenge I said was yes, because nobody knew that it was at that cheap price. They all assumed it was at your your normal price.

Daniel Mclaren (: 08:42

Yeah

Gary C (: 08:42

And I love the idea or the concept of you saying, right, there are gonna be certain locations where we're gonna modify the price, it might be cheaper here or more. It's I'm I'm

Daniel Mclaren (: 08:50

and then

Gary C (: 08:51

Totally

fine with that, because at the end of the day, the same happens with wet fuel. The challenge is how do you communicate that to the user base?

Daniel Mclaren (: 08:57

100%.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So obviously, look, in our app, it will say the price. What we find is sometimes if you, I know we've got to get better at it as well, but depending on where we are, so we'll showcase on Zapmap, we'll showcase on Google, and various different platforms. To update stuff sometimes is on our app relatively straightforward, it's, you know, we manage it.

Gary C (: 09:20

Having said all that, there are at least two CPOs that we both know who have put prices in place which are considerably cheaper than anyone else on the market. I mean, we've got BEV

Daniel Mclaren (: 09:31

Yep.

Gary C (: 09:32

who are down at 39 pence a kilowatt hour with their with their subscription in their app. But we also have MFG who at least I think still at the time that we're recording are still offering something in the region of what is it, 59 pence a kilowatt hour.

Daniel Mclaren (: 09:46

Yeah, yeah,

please. 59p,

Gary C (: 09:47

Just basic ad hoc

turn up and and slap your credit card on that. So talk to me a little bit about that. I know when you and I first talked about this, it was a case of how are they doing that? Do we still have that same kind of question?

Daniel Mclaren (: 10:00

I can't see how it could, but if they can manage to do it, then credit to them. And actually that just means the rest of us have to find ways to do it as well and look through. mean, everything that kilowatt hour Price says, there's a whole rafter of things that go into it. And like with sites, do you own the site? Do you not own the site? Do you lease it? What are your outgoings of that site need to be to, we sit in...

and something I'm heavily involved in. We'll sit and look at new sites and our real estate guys will bring a site, do like this site, we could have this site, we can have it on an X amount a year lease. And instantly what's going to my head is how many sessions a day does that site need to do, how much margin for it to work? And I'll be really honest with you, I think I could count on one hand how many sites have come and I could do that at 59p. It's not realistic for the long term, but...

Let's see, and actually, I think there is an end date for it, I think I've seen, or it might be for the summer or a period of time. But yeah, I can't comment on how we're

Gary C (: 11:03

Yeah.

Daniel Mclaren (: 11:05

doing it, but watch this space and at the minute for an EV customer, it's a benefit.

Gary C (: 11:10

Good. I'm gonna move on to something else in a second, but one final sort of question on pricing. Talk to me about subscriptions, because you're one of the few CPOs that have subscriptions. And I think you've had them almost from day one. I remember back in 2019 having a subscription with what I think was either Pol or Charge Master at that time. Now, some people have done it, some people haven't. I've had conversations with CPOs of who said I can't make subscriptions work.

What's the secret source with them?

Daniel Mclaren (: 11:39

To be with you, it's the one thing that, as you say, we've always done it. The price has always been relatively flat in terms of the, is it 7.85 a month, 69 per kilowatt hour. I think we've, I've had this conversation before, I'm a believer with subscription is it has to fit the individual because the benefit to a subscription is someone who charges multiple times a month on the network.

I know and I'm very open and honest with people. I say is hey, if you're going to use our network three, four times a month, absolutely benefit and you'll see quite a significant saving. If you're going to use this once a month, probably doesn't suit your, suit you. So, know, by all means, yes, we want you to have an account with us so we can send you offers and all of that, but, but actually it's probably not beneficial for you to pay that. Our subscription has always held relatively well. We've always got a core base people. Now, again, there is

you've got the other side of it where we have like fuel and charge cards and something like that where businesses are paying for a slightly different rate. But yeah, for my B2C subscription rate, it's going to have to evolve and change because this industry is, it evolves unbelievably quick all the time. So I dare say we'll be looking at sort of how we evolve that. Because again, if we're going to talk about tiered pricing, it has to still be the benefit to the subscription. You can't do a subscription and actually go,

There's some units out there that are already that price. So we've got to do it in the right way. But at the minute, it's generally something, I don't think there's a huge ambition to change it too much at the minute. We've got a fairly solid customer base that use it and get the benefit of it, right? Because how many places out there at a minute can you get 69p charging? Not a huge amount. I know we've literally just spoke about a CPI who are lower than that, but on the whole, generally, you can't. And it's a good benefit.

Gary C (: 13:34

Moving on, my next big topic that you and I like to talk about all the time. Consolidation in the CPO market.

Now Insivault sold off their foreign business and acquired Genie Point. B V have acquired MERD. There's been a couple of other ones out there. Who've who've BP Pull's got their eye on then?

Daniel Mclaren (: 13:49

I don't know, I'm not sure I could answer that, if I'm honest. Consolidation, it's always the common...

Gary C (: 13:55

Also, you do have your eye on somebody then.

Daniel Mclaren (: 13:57

No, no, no, honestly, again,

Gary C (: 14:00

Ha ha.

Daniel Mclaren (: 14:00

with respect, that's way beyond me if we are. But from a, I to think, obviously I've keep my finger on the pulse, pardon the pun, a little bit. It's weird, like we spoke about consolidation when we did this three years ago, and not too much has happened.

and I still hold my personal opinion is we'll end up with like a big six. There's not been a massive amount of movement and I think...

My honest thought is, when anyone looks at acquiring another CCO business, there's so much behind it. What hardware do they use? What's their back office? How does that work? How would that integrate? And I know there's people out there that go, well, we run a business that would help you integrate it. It's more of like, what's the long-term value of it? And actually, what are you inheriting? You might be buying a massive network, but does half of need to be upgraded in the next two years? And then you go, there's a huge cost to doing that.

And the market, right? The market constantly does this. like we see, you know, there's periods of time where EV sales are down and you go, actually, you we shouldn't be rolling out all the time. You're having to sort of adapt to move to the market. We're not going to go to political, but you know, all the stuff that goes on in government incentives and all of that. I think a lot of CPOs are probably in their lane, focusing on their strategy, their rollout plan. And then when we start seeing more consistent

EV growth, then I think it's having to react to that. yeah, I've said it for ages, there'll be a consolidation, but there hasn't been too much movement. You always hear rumors in this industry, right? You always hear, so and so and no, it hasn't come to it. But we'll see. We'll see over a period of time. We're our ambition is still we're very much in it for the long run. You know, we've got a future plan of how we grow the business. Does that mean

requiring another business future? I honestly can't say. I'm not certainly privy to his conversations. yeah, we will see how things evolve. But yeah, my personal opinion is in the future we'll still see a consolidation at some point. Or unfortunately, situations where businesses, they haven't made it work and actually you end up with hardware that has to be removed and things like that. And that will happen as well.

Gary C (: 16:12

Hm.

Yeah. Yeah, I kind of agree with you. I think I think we're gonna end up with ten, not six. We may end up with six major,

Daniel Mclaren (: 16:18

Yeah.

Gary C (: 16:19

major ones and then sort of a handful of little ones, like dragon charging out in whales or things like that. I think they're gonna be okay. But yeah, gonna be

Daniel Mclaren (: 16:24

Yeah, to be honest, I always use big six

as a football term, but I don't know why six is the number I pick, but yeah, you're right. think that they'll just be a

Gary C (: 16:32

Ha ha ha.

Gary C (: 16:35

little bit about utilization. Now I recently shared on an episode that despite having the highest number of charges and the lowest price, Apple Green along the M1 corridor have quite a bit lower utilization than GridServ who are the incumbent. So

Daniel Mclaren (: 16:50

Thank

Gary C (: 16:50

talk to me a little bit about the kind of utilization because you mentioned it earlier on. What's, I mean, you have responsibility for making sure you've got the peak utilization. And, you know, we talked to

Daniel Mclaren (: 17:01

It's okay.

Gary C (: 17:03

a tingly, you you've got something in your own mind about what sort of utilization you'd expect.

But I know from discussions we've had that if you put a place up in London, the chances are you're going to have some really good utilization figures. And I think that's mostly because of Uber and correct me if I'm wrong, but just give the viewers and listeners a little bit of sort of insight about

utilization figures and what that means to BP

Daniel Mclaren (: 17:29

Thank

Gary C (: 17:32

pulse and how you can track that.

Daniel Mclaren (: 17:35

so firstly, yeah, I every site as much utilization as physically possible that generally means that the site is doing really, really well. However, what I would say is, and again, I can't talk to the Apple Green and GridServs situation, but what can sometimes slightly skew it, because bear in mind, you could have two sites that both do 100 sessions a day, but the utilization numbers are different because of how many units are there and how many bays are there.

So that obviously massively comes into it. And that's why we have really detailed conversations around when we're looking at a site is, well, how big do you want the site to be? How many bays do you want? So, and again, we'll have sites in our network that the utilization figure will look really low, but actually it might just be a site that's got loads of bays. It's actually compared to the area performing all right and doing okay, but because we've got 20 bays at the site, it looks like it's only doing two sessions a bay per day or something like that.

For me, I'm looking more around the kilowatt hours sold than I am. I look at utilization and obviously it goes hand in hand, but it depends on the site size. When I look at my portfolio of all the sites I've got, I vary from sites that have got two charges, two bays, to sites that have got my biggest now. I think it would be tingly on my portfolio. It would be like 19, 20 bays. And actually, you

We've got one site where we're actually upgrading it where, I won't give you proper numbers, but let's say extremely high, but it's one charger, one bay. So it tells us if we make that site bigger, it should perform. But they're sort of a conversation you've got to have. So yeah, I would focus more on kilowatt hours sold. Sessions are fairly reliable. What you sort of see is on an ultra-fast charger, give or take roughly.

30 kilowatt hours a session roughly on there. But again, that's changing because I think people's charging habits are changing. The old days of, again, purely my opinion here, the unplug at 80 % and move on. You're seeing cars can take more power for longer. actually, I drive a car and at the minute, at 80%, I'm still taking over 100 kilowatts. So actually, you're seeing people charge a little bit longer. So I do think that number will get bigger, but on the whole, if we were to take a big snapshot.

It's one session, 30 kilowatt hours.

Gary C (: 19:52

how's Tingley doing at the moment? Because, I mean, obviously, I don't want exact figures, but you've, you've in your mind, you've, you're looking at a certain amount of throughput from energy at this stage. It's

Daniel Mclaren (: 20:00

Yeah. Yeah.

Gary C (: 20:02

what three weeks, four weeks old or something like that. So how's it, how's

Daniel Mclaren (: 20:05

Since the launch

Gary C (: 20:06

it operating against Plan?

Daniel Mclaren (: 20:07

So since the launch it's Performed better since the launch so tingly was actually live a little while before it but the convenience offer wasn't So it was almost live, but we didn't talk about it if that makes sense because you know the site was there Tingly will be and I'm adding I'll put my hat on it tingly is gonna be a massive performer because of just the location It's right on the motorway

pretty much anyone going north or south, east or west, it's sort of on a really good corridor. But ultimately, you can have the best site in the world, but if people don't know it's there, then it's going to struggle. for me, next sort of crucial part is the next two or three months with that site of hammering it home. Now I've already talked to Martin, how can I get better signage? So when you come down on Flat Junction to Roundabout, you know where you're going, you know how you're accessing the site, all of those little things.

Those sort of things are always perfect on the motorway. If you're driving on the motorway, unfortunately, as much so I'd love to, I can't have a big sign on the motorway that says, charging hub down here, not allowed that. So it's, okay, well, how do I be a bit different with the way I do it? And they're the challenges because now as an EV driver, and I completely understand it, your mindset is motorway service station will have charging, right? So I've got to try and get people to go, hey, but I know there's actually a really big hub with a Starbucks here.

So they're gonna be challenged. it's performing, it's doing really well. Always wanted to do better, of course. But yeah, for me, it's a difficult one to answer is give me another couple of months and we'll sort of have a good picture of right. It's had a solid three months of being fully live, fully functional, what are the daily numbers we're looking at? And then we'll go from there and see. But so far, so good.

Gary C (: 21:48

deserves to do well because it's an excellent hub. It's located as you've said, it's more or less where the M1 and the M62 sort of join. It's a little bit in there. It's got a huge totem there.

Daniel Mclaren (: 21:55

Yes.

Gary C (: 21:58

It's got the 19 sites, one of which is the drive-through. So if you towed a trailer caravan or anything like that, you can get in there. Canopies over every one of them apart from the pull-through one. Absolutely fantastic. You've got the high-power chargers there.

You've got great accessibility and a fantastic Starbucks. So it really does deserve to do well. And as we've already identified, you're cheaper than GridServ at the moment. excellent. hope it does fantastic on that. I was at the launch of BYD's flash charging technology in the UK a couple of months ago. I believe your CEO was there at the time, although I could have been.

mistaken about that, but are you thinking potentially about in future sites, maybe bringing on a couple of flash charging units and putting them in? that something that you, you would do or are you

Daniel Mclaren (: 22:45

Alright.

Gary C (: 22:45

dismissing that out of hand?

Daniel Mclaren (: 22:47

It was because of how new that is. If there was anything going on, I certainly wouldn't know at this point, but it'd be more of a product and tech thing. What's going on? What's the future? We're pretty confident with the hardware choice we have at the minute. So Alpetronic chargers at the minute. And again, like we can go down the power route. Power's a really interesting one. I always had in my vision four in this role.

300 kilowatt, 400 kilowatt charging, faster the better. And when you actually start to look at even high performing sites, the powers the cars are actually taking, you then go, well actually, do you need all of this power? actually could, 150 kilowatt charging almost feels like slower now compared to what you're seeing. But when you actually look at the power the cars are taking, that's still actually more than what most cars will take and do.

So then you have to go to the businesses. Well, actually, when we talk about, and it could be make things cheaper, actually, well, if you bring the power down, then actually the cost to run the site is less. And so I'm not saying that's what we're doing, but they're the little things we've got to think about. People think about faster, faster, faster, faster, faster. Well, all of that comes at a massive cost because you've got to get that power and you've got to get that power to site and do it all. So I know I've sort of gone around it, but no immediate look at doing anything like that. But again,

this industry evolves so quickly, right? So we're, no one will rule out the future of us looking into it, but for the minute, not as far as I'm aware of.

Gary C (: 24:12

topic of sort of the industry moving, where do you see things going? I mean, if we if we look back, we've seen the move towards bigger hubs, and people sort of contributed to that as well. We've seen the move towards more amenities, charging. And if you look at the Winchester Super Hub, for example, all the things that they've got there. What's next? Is the is the petrol station model the way forward for rapid charging? Or is there something else out there?

Daniel Mclaren (: 24:38

Yeah, think that is, you know, I don't think it's any surprise to say if you were looking across our portfolio, some of the best performing sites to the sites are on Petrol Four Courts. And for us, obviously, a lot of those, that's land that we already own, or we already have a strong base there. It does bring more complexities, because obviously, you've got wet fuels and electrons and how does that work?

there's safety things you have to think about. You can't just have a rapid charger right next to a fuel pump. That's not the way it works. But we have a plan, a strategy of rolling out more more four cores and growing on our four cores. So we've already seen you come to the Cromwell launch a year or so ago where we completely removed all the pumps. We've got other projects at the minute where we had one charger, one bay, but we're now upgrading to either two, three, four, five, six, in some cases eight bays. So it's a

It's a portfolio we've got that performs really well. We very much see the continued rollout of it. And again, over time, we can start to really look at the fuel sites and go, well, actually, do we take it more to a 50-50 mix, where it's almost 50 % of the site is wet fuel, 50 % of the site is EV, compared to at the minute where you would sort of say it's like 90-10 or whatever it is. But again, the right sites, because as much as we get pushed every day, you

Just convert them all. It's not the way the world works and that's not the right thing. There's still a massive demand for fuel out there and we need to provide that and we're one of the big players in doing that. But it's actually growing the EV business alongside it and it's the perfect location for people because where fuel sites are, we're generally where good EV sites would be as well on the major roads and you've got everything you need there. So you've got your convenience, you've got your toilets, you've got everything you need. So yeah, for us that will still play a massive part in the future.

That is where lot of attention is focused at.

Gary C (: 26:31

As we come to the end of our time together, is there anything that we haven't discussed today that you'd like the viewers and listeners to know about?

Daniel Mclaren (: 26:39

can we talk about cable theft and how important that is that we get people more involved to support and help with it? Because that for me, it's one of the biggest projects I took on this year, one of the biggest headaches. with like many CPOs, we've been massively hurt with cable theft and the frustration. I get the customer frustration with it. Now we get people all the time. And actually, because so massive now.

that every CPO is having to act. also, because we're all using similar hardware now, getting replacement stuff is becoming difficult and it's a really challenging time for the industry. Now we've found our preferred solution for the time being, but I'd love to see more of the amount of times I've reported a cable theft. As you do, go for the process, report to police. And obviously there's not a lot they can do. And we've got CCTV, we've got...

We've got trackers in these new cable protection we're using, but it's a massive challenge for our industry. And I would love to see us all come together more to go, okay, well, how do we combat this together as one? Because we're all trying to do the same thing, right? We're all trying to build an infrastructure that allows people to charge their cars across the UK. And it seems to be a really big problem for us all at the minute.

Gary C (: 27:52

Is there a case to say that maybe the hardware manufacturers, the chem powers and the Alpatronics of the world should be installing cable protectors as a matter of course, rather than companies like yourself having to go to third party organizations to get those put on?

Daniel Mclaren (: 28:07

I wouldn't put the blame on their door because this is something that's sort of come out of blue and I know that all again I can't talk for all of them and even now you know I'm not someone who holds a relationship with Alpetronic in our business but my understanding is they're all looking at what they can do you know for example I know now for example if someone cuts one of our cables at an Alpetronic site it's not protected there's particular things the unit does

but it still needs to evolve. yeah, and I think we'll get there. I think we'll ultimately have a point where you'll buy whatever charger you'll buy. Because again, most of them, it's a bit like a pick and mix where you can pick the hardware, you pick the cables, pick the cable length, you pick the connector you want, you pick the power stacks you want, and you can sort of mix and match it together. I can imagine we will be at a point, probably in the very, this future is what level of protection do you want? Do you want an alarm of it? Do you want it to come with sleeves? Do you want, and all these sort of things gone on, you know, we're, you know, we've got sleeves.

We're trialing alarms very soon. We spoke to other CPOs who have sort of, and again, a couple of CPOs we've got together with and had conversations and have shared their findings with shared ours. On the whole, touchwood, the cable protection we've chosen at the minute, we're rolling out cable guard on lot of our sites. We've had sites attacked, but unsuccessfully attacked because of what cable guards done. although...

it caused damage to those cables, actually it stopped all the others being stolen and the site is still operational following day. So that's a big win. But as my leader constantly tells me is they're going to get smarter, they're going to clue up to it and they're going to find another way to get around it. So it's, you know, when I pitched this project to cable theft, I was very adamant from the get go, it's not a silver bullet. It's not going to, but actually it's more of a

repellent to slow them down and stop them. But what we have started to see is I think these thieves are coming wise. Actually, these things are quite challenge to get off. So we'll go to the next one. But it's going to come a point where we're all protected. So then again, it's okay, you well, what's the next thing they try. But yeah, it's a constant battle every day because car charges with no cables mean no kilowatt hours. mean, people can't charge their car. It's a massive threat to the industry and one we need to get a handle on.

Gary C (: 30:21

totally agree excellent right very thank you very much Damoclown appreciate your time thanks for coming on

Daniel Mclaren (: 30:27

Thank you. Thank you.

Gary Comerford (: 30:28

So, what do we learn from this discussion? Well, to my mind, there are a couple of things that jump out. Firstly, is the fact that B people's are moving away from the AC side of things. They still have the large up at the NEC, which I'll be using sometimes this month, but they're pulling back from installing AC charges anywhere else. Secondly, is the fact that pricing is going to become key as we move forward.

We've talked before about a lot of the factors that go into public rapid charging tariffs and the fact that they're outside the control of individual CPO, but these factors that are within the control can allow them to make some different changes where necessary.

It looks like B peoplePles are going to start doing some selective pricing changes at various sites to try and load customers away from competitors. Now I'm all for that. I'm comfortable using their Alpatronic units that they install as standard nowadays. And in fact, if their hubs are like the one at Tingley, I'd be happy to give them more business with a competitive tariffs. Now I've used their rapid charging hubs at the NEC, Cromwell Road, and Tingley, as well as the odd older hub here and there on my journeys. And they seem to be moving in the right direction when it comes to things like

Canopies accessibility and amenities. So well done.

I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show. It was put together this week with the help of Dan McLaren from BP Pilts. Many thanks for his time.

Gary Comerford Zapmap Outro (: 31:48

The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers to find and pay for public charging with confidence. Zapmap is free to download and use, with thousands of public charge points to choose from, live pricing and availability information, and a range of filters to find the right charge for you. Plus, choose subscription models for enhanced features such as using Zapmap in car, on CarPlay, or Android Auto, and discounted charging across thousands of charge points.

Gary Comerford Boilerplate (: 32:16

If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms, or other general messages to pass on to me, I can be reached at info at evmusings.com. On the socials, I'm on BlueSky at evmusings.bsky.social. I'm also on Instagram at EV Musings where I post short videos and podcast extracts regularly. Why not follow me there? Many thanks to everyone who supports me through Patreon, on a monthly basis, and through coffee.com on an ad hoc one. Regular listeners will know about my two ebooks.

So you've gone electric and so you've gone renewable. They're 99p each or equivalent, and you can get them on Amazon. Check out the links in the show notes for more information, as well as the link to my regular EV Musings newsletter and associated articles. Now my stats show that a lot of people watch this on YouTube, but they're not subscribers. So if you're one of those, why not hit that button and the notification bell so you don't miss out? Thank you very much.

Gary Comerford (: 33:11

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 messaging me at musingzv.bskide at social with the words a finger on the pulse, hashtag if you know you know nothing else. And thanks as always to my co-founder Simon. You know, I asked him if he's ever had to assist with an electric unicycle accident, someone falling off or running into a wall. He said he's fully qualified as a paramedic and knows exactly how to treat a patient suffering from trauma.

Daniel Mclaren (: 33:37

I to think, obviously I've keep my finger on the pulse, pardon the pun, a little bit.

Gary Comerford (: 33:41

Thanks for listening. Bye bye now.