25. Navigating the Nuances of the Used EV Market: Insights and Innovations

Check out EV channel: https://igteev.buzzsprout.com/

This episode of the Insider's Guide to Energy Podcast delves deeply into the burgeoning second-hand market for electric vehicles (EVs), a critical factor in the widespread adoption of sustainable transportation. Patrick Cresswell, a key voice in the episode, articulates the pivotal role that consumer confidence and battery health play in the resale and longevity of used EVs.

As electric vehicles become more prevalent, the challenges and opportunities within the second-hand EV market become a significant focus. The podcast explores how the depreciation of battery health can affect vehicle performance and resale value, addressing common consumer concerns with expert analysis. The discussion covers how advanced diagnostic tools and new business models are being developed to ensure buyers can assess the health and efficiency of EV batteries, an essential aspect of purchasing a used electric car. Insights into how battery life impacts vehicle longevity provide listeners with valuable information to make informed decisions.

This episode is not just for EV enthusiasts but also for potential buyers, sellers, and business owners looking to understand the dynamics of the EV market better. With electric vehicles set to dominate the automotive industry, topics like battery health management, the economic implications of owning a used EV, and innovations in vehicle charging infrastructure are more relevant than ever. The podcast's rich dialogue underscores the importance of transparency and consumer education in fostering a robust second-hand EV market, paving the way for sustainable and economically viable transportation solutions.

Our Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-cresswell-629178a3/ 

Transcript

Transcript 

  NOTE: The Transcription is delayed by 40 seconds due to the intro.

00:00:00 Patrick Cresswell 

I don't think it's overstating it to say that the transition to electric vehicles will live or die by the success of the second hand market. 

00:00:07 Patrick Cresswell 

It's where 80% of all cars are bought and sold. It's where finance rates for new cars originate from and consumer confidence is critical to its stability and predictability, an area we are working to urgently address as used EVs begin to hit the market at volume. 

00:00:25 Speaker 1 

Broadcasting from Washington, DC, this is Insider's Guide to Energy. 

00:00:38 Chris Sass 

This episode of Insider's Guide to Energy EV miniseries Powered by Paua. 

00:00:43 Chris Sass 

Paua helps your business transition to electric vehicles by simplifying charging, managing payments, and optimizing your charging data. 

00:00:52 Niall Riddell 

That is a bold statement to start with Patrick, and we would love to understand more about the value and importance to the second hand car market. But can you tell us firstly what's different when you buy a second hand electric car to buying a second hand petrol or diesel car? 

00:01:09 Patrick Cresswell 

Certainly. Well, there's a number of things that are different. I think for consumers, this is all still very new and it's quite deeply ingrained in is all what it's like to buy or own or drive a petrol or a diesel car. And certainly the process of buying. 

00:01:29 Patrick Cresswell 

On I think people have. 

00:01:31 Patrick Cresswell 

Either I don't know family associated or some sort of osmosis gathered Intel on which makes a good manufacturer and a good model, and which doesn't. And when the car is electric, it's quite a different ball game altogether. All of a sudden you've got brand new. 

00:01:51 Patrick Cresswell 

Manufacturers brand new models you've never heard of and you've got people who, for example, have always been a Mercedes guy or a BMW guy. All of a sudden, considering one of the Korean entrants and and those types of players that they've never considered in the past. 

00:02:09 Patrick Cresswell 

And so it's kind of like a hard reset as has happened with with buying an EV more broadly and when the car is used specifically a number of those extra considerations are sort of cascading down. And I think confidence and really knowing what you're doing is, is is not in the same place as it would be for internal combustion. 

00:02:31 Patrick Cresswell 

And obviously the big topic that I'm sort of introducing here is, is is around the the key difference between a an electric vehicle and a petrol and diesel vehicle. And that is the battery pack that that powers it. 

00:02:47 Patrick Cresswell 

UM, so the price of battery packs is slowly coming down. It's not coming down as quickly as it might have done without COVID disrupting things. But roughly speaking, it's somewhere in the 3040% of the value of the car area and and consumers. 

00:03:07 Patrick Cresswell 

Have been, I think used to consumer electronics at this point. iPhones, tablets, laptops and what have you with quite limited shelf life in terms of battery health and people are used to devices lasting 345 years. 

00:03:26 Patrick Cresswell 

For the battery is usually the first component to give up and and so quite unfairly, I would say people are applying that lens to electric vehicles. I think because all of this uncertainty exists to begin with, you're kind of on quite unsolid. 

00:03:46 Patrick Cresswell 

Ground to begin with and so that twinned with Ohh it's got a battery in it. Things with battery in it, batteries in them don't last very long is is causing quite a degree of uncertainty. 

00:04:00 Niall Riddell 

So what you're basically saying is when it comes to buying a second hand electric car, most people don't know what they're. 

00:04:06 Niall Riddell 

Doing. 

00:04:06 Niall Riddell 

So I guess the question back to you is what can we do about that? 

00:04:11 Patrick Cresswell 

Yeah. So I'm not sure I'd put it in exactly those terms, but certainly I would say you have to do an awful lot of your own research and and so. 

00:04:20 Patrick Cresswell 

You know, I think the EV sector on the whole has benefited from the, the the sort of early adopters market being actually quite large. And so a lot of people have been happy to go and do their own research. But as we've moved beyond early adopters stimulated by tax incentives and things like that, that have found an awful lot of company car drivers and sort of non EV. 

00:04:42 Patrick Cresswell 

Dare I say it to your audience, nerds, getting behind the wheel? 

00:04:48 Patrick Cresswell 

We're yeah, we're sort of in a bit of a different place. And so the information that exists in, well, I think, EV's more broadly, but on the topic of battery health is very varied and you know, you can Google and find articles which will tell you don't worry about. 

00:05:07 Patrick Cresswell 

Battery health. You'll find others which will tell you do worry about battery health and you kind of end up somewhere in the middle where? 

00:05:15 Patrick Cresswell 

I think the general consensus is that nobody is disputing that lithium ion batteries do degrade, but there's a lack of understanding about what causes that and how it's some more extreme in some vehicles than others, but critically on. 

00:05:34 Patrick Cresswell 

A specific vehicle itself. I'm talking about, you know, a car by its VIN number and license plate or whatever data on that car will will leave you with very little information about its battery health. 

00:05:51 Patrick Cresswell 

You can in some cases plug diagnostic bits of kitting and try and understand from the the sort of messaging system that exists on on cars what the battery management system is saying. But even then, that's very unreliable in most cases, and So what people are kind of being expected to do. 

00:06:10 Patrick Cresswell 

Is look at the range estimate on the dashboard which most. 

00:06:14 Patrick Cresswell 

For no is, is is very much an estimate. You'll you'll know, Neil, that people in the industry call it the gasometer and it's it's, you know it it tries to be intelligent and and and and I guess it it does a good job of that in in in some cases where it recognises that you live in. 

00:06:35 Patrick Cresswell 

A cold place or it's a cold season and it recognises that you've got a heavy right foot or you don't. And so it tells you what you as an individual will get out of that car. 

00:06:46 Patrick Cresswell 

And so all of that noise really is being layered upon the actual condition of the battery. And it's not really giving you any kind of indication. So the current state of play is that consumers are having to take a bit of a flyer. And to me that's just never seemed sustainable or scalable in any way. 

00:07:08 Patrick Cresswell 

You know that a house is the most expensive thing you'll ever buy, quickly followed by a car. And so we we can just kind of expect people to park with, you know, 10s of thousands of pounds, dollars or or whatever to buy something which they don't feel confident in. 

00:07:23 Chris Sass 

So I I guess to to put it in terms that I can help me relate better, what kind of mistake are we talking about? So let's assume two EV's come off, at least they're three years old. They both look marvelous. So I go and I look and the carpets are clean. The interior doesn't have any wear and tear and. 

00:07:38 Chris Sass 

Neither have been in a major accident. 

00:07:40 Chris Sass 

What kind of mistake can I make by not understanding the battery health and what are the economic implications to me or range implications? 

00:07:47 

Well. 

00:07:48 Patrick Cresswell 

That's a good way of putting it, because you can be, you know, let's say you're stood on a on a dealership forecourt and you're you've got two cars in front of you that are the same make, model, variant colour, odometer reading. Everything about them seems identical. And yet one of those vehicles could have been treated. 

00:08:08 Patrick Cresswell 

In a totally different way to the other and. 

00:08:12 Patrick Cresswell 

When I say treated there are, you know, think of it as a list of dos and don'ts when it comes to battery health, and one of them could have had lots of big ticks in the dose pile and the other one lots of big ticks in the don'ts pile. And as things stand, you would have no visibility on that and the the ramifications of. 

00:08:33 Patrick Cresswell 

Of of choosing the wrong one could be enormous for you. 

00:08:38 Patrick Cresswell 

Because to to to to to put it into some kind of perspective, you know we have and we'll talk I guess, in a moment about what we're doing. But with our system, which is designed to provide transparency on this topic, we've tested some vehicles which are less than two years old, which haven't done huge amounts of. 

00:08:58 Patrick Cresswell 

Miles yet are performing way, way worse, like 20% worse than other identical vehicles that we've we've tested. 

00:09:07 Patrick Cresswell 

And and we're in a nice phase with our customer base. We're in beta testing and it's a very two way dialogue. And we're speaking to the users to really try and understand how that's happened. And as it transpires, the vehicle that I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm just picking out for this example has always been owned by a sales Rep who does not have a driveway. 

00:09:28 Patrick Cresswell 

And therefore is rapid charging that car all the time is charging it to 100% whenever she can do, because getting as many miles out of that car per charge is is her priority. 

00:09:41 Patrick Cresswell 

And and then I asked some other questions like do you use the built in navigation system or are you using like Waze or Google Maps or something else? And she's like, Oh yeah, absolutely. Waze and. And so then you understand well, you know, people listening to this who are a Tesla owner, for example. 

00:10:02 Patrick Cresswell 

Will know that when you use the navigation system in a Tesla, it knows when you're about to use the Supercharger network and it makes a kind of weird noise and preconditions the battery and get. 

00:10:12 Patrick Cresswell 

Is prepared for that fast state of charge, either by by adjusting the temperature to prepare for it, and so it's really nuanced. These are things that, that, that the user in question wouldn't have known is problematic. But back to your point, you know, with those two cars in front of you certainly wouldn't want to be buying hers. 

00:10:35 Patrick Cresswell 

And So what we're building is a way of identifying that and enabling you to make as a consumer a decent value judgment on on the vehicles and. 

00:10:44 Patrick Cresswell 

Point of view. 

00:10:45 Niall Riddell 

So I can see Chris is still stuck there going. Is it the left car or the right car? Can you take us through some of those dos and don'ts you referenced there? You've mentioned rapid charging, you've mentioned charging to 100%. If they're both, don't what else is sat in the don't bracket? What might we wanna consider to optimise battery health for our? 

00:11:03 Niall Riddell 

Vehicles. 

00:11:05 

Well, what what? 

00:11:05 Patrick Cresswell 

What batteries really don't like is heat, and so that's really why the guidance of of not rapid charging too regularly is there. It's because it causes excess heat in the battery pack and so do other things like. 

00:11:24 Patrick Cresswell 

Having a particularly heavy right foot, it's not as it's not as affecting as sort of poor charging behaviour, but it's it. It is in the list. Similarly, things like leaving the car in in in really hot environments. So if you live. 

00:11:43 Patrick Cresswell 

In California, let's say, and a lot of cars have been tested in California, not by us, but but. 

00:11:48 Patrick Cresswell 

By others and they show quite high rates of of degradation, sort of regardless of their of of the manufacturer and and so the advice for people in those sorts of climates is to try and keep cars in garages and and things like that. So yeah, they're they're probably softer things, but I think charging is is the really big. 

00:12:09 Patrick Cresswell 

Really big area and UM yeah, back to the example I mentioned before about using the in car navigation system as well as I say Tesla kind of forced you down that. 

00:12:18 Patrick Cresswell 

Food. But if you read OEM manuals about taking care of your battery in the way that sadly, I've spent quite a lot of time doing, you'll see that BMW and others advise exactly the same thing. You know, all manufacturers are very cognizant of this and and and how you ought to be. 

00:12:39 Patrick Cresswell 

Doing your bit to try and maintain decent battery health, but yeah, I guess it's it's tricky and and a lot of the the a lot of the things in the DOS pile are kind of the enemy of convenience. And so that makes things slightly. 

00:12:55 Patrick Cresswell 

Tricky. 

00:12:56 Chris Sass 

So Patrick, back to the original thought though that I had right, I haven't got my arms around. So I get that, that car that you just described maybe had 20% degradation to its battery compared to its pier. What does that mean to the driver? What what is the impact? So I I I shall it hard earned cash to buy this vehicle and it's got 20% less battery. What what did I just do? 

00:13:17 Chris Sass 

What is the impact to me? 

00:13:18 Patrick Cresswell 

Well, I think the range is the is the big topic and and the big thing that is affected by poor battery health. So you know to keep the numbers super simple, let's say the the good car has 100 miles range on a good day on a full charge, the one that you might buy could be in the 80 mile sort of. 

00:13:38 Patrick Cresswell 

Area and that that that 20 miles could be the difference between that car working for you or not. If you have a. 

00:13:49 Patrick Cresswell 

The if charging is not a headache to you, then maybe it doesn't matter to you that you will be charging that car way more regularly than the other one. But if if you don't have a driveway for example and charging is is not a convenience for you, then you're having a a, a, a higher degraded battery that requires. 

00:14:10 Patrick Cresswell 

More charge sessions and is less capable per per full charge is obviously obviously comes at a convenience cost. 

00:14:19 Chris Sass 

What happens if I change the behavior so we get rid of the sales Rep and I give it to Neil over here, who trickle charges every night and does everything in the do column? 

00:14:29 Chris Sass 

Is it like quitting smoking? Is there some benefit for doing it or is the is the car toast? Is that 20%? Is it going to continue to degradate and be a bad performer in the future? 

00:14:38 Patrick Cresswell 

So it's a good question and and unfortunately the car will not repair itself at that point. That unfortunately is out of the question. 

00:14:49 Patrick Cresswell 

But whether or not it continues on its downward slope when the behavior changes, that's that's unlikely that it it could be that early damage does persist in in in, in future performance. Regardless of that behaviour change. But generally speaking, if yeah, but by by curbing that sort of behaviour, you're likely to put a lid on. 

00:15:10 Patrick Cresswell 

On the problem getting much. 

00:15:12 

Yes. 

00:15:13 Niall Riddell 

And and Chris is right. I am a super well behaved electric vehicle charger. I behave myself and do all the right things. So I wanna make sure that I'm getting the best value for this vehicle cause mine's the one on the right, not the one on the left. What is the service that clear what offers to help and uninformed consumer pick the right of vehicle. 

00:15:32 Patrick Cresswell 

Sure. So so. 

00:15:34 Patrick Cresswell 

I should say that this. What? What? What we've what we've built with clear what has been in the making in in development for three years at this point. But I'm I've been in the sector for 10 years at this point. So a bit of an old timer really when it comes to electric vehicles and and have seen this problem coming from from quite a distance. 

00:15:54 Patrick Cresswell 

And and in with with my background in car sharing where we kind of got some quite high level understanding of on board telematics and onboard campus messaging systems and what is and is not possible in terms of data you can pull from a very. 

00:16:14 Patrick Cresswell 

We've embarked on a project to build something which is a software only methodology of of of measuring battery health, because a we need something that is vehicle agnostic such that we can launch into the market and. 

00:16:33 Patrick Cresswell 

Be able to service all of the market at once. 

00:16:36 Patrick Cresswell 

And B, what we've learned along the way is that the sort of data available from 1 manufacturer to another is very variable and variable in terms of quality, accessibility and all sorts of other things. And. And thirdly and critically to the clear what proposition is the use case needs. 

00:16:56 Patrick Cresswell 

To be slick and and free of barriers, and so how clear that works is as an individual that is motivated to test a vehicle, you would download our app, add your car to the app by its license plates. That creates a perfect match. 

00:17:17 Patrick Cresswell 

We know the make, model and model variant and critically usable battery capacity of that vehicle when it. 

00:17:23 Patrick Cresswell 

Was. 

00:17:23 Patrick Cresswell 

New we then ask you to complete three drives with the clear what app? 

00:17:28 Patrick Cresswell 

Running so each of those drives has a minimum distance, which we auto calculate and and and and inform you of in the app, but it will roughly equate to a 10% change in battery level. So let's say you've got a car that we predict on average would do 200 miles. We'll ask you to do 320 mile drive. 

00:17:48 Patrick Cresswell 

Types and and at the start and at the end of each of those drives, we will ask you to enter the charge level, which is a number from the dashboard. The state of charge. We actually take a photo of that. We can verify that that's in the right location in the right car at the right time and and you completing that trip having told us the state of charge at the beginning and at the end. 

00:18:10 Patrick Cresswell 

Tells us lots and lots of information about that trip, so we know exactly how many kilowatt hours of energy you've consumed, and we know exactly how far you've travelled, so that gives us miles per kWh. That's all very simple and high level, but the clever bit is that we're communicating with your. 

00:18:30 Patrick Cresswell 

Mobile phone in very high frequencies such that you do a let's say a 20-30 minute. 

00:18:36 Patrick Cresswell 

Wave, we're receiving thousands of heartbeats from that drive and drawing a highly granular speed trace of your journey. We understand acceleration profile. Exactly how you've driven it. We understand the elevation of the roads and the environmental conditions such that we're getting obviously ambient temperature, wind speed, wind direction. All of the things that. 

00:18:56 Patrick Cresswell 

Influence range and. 

00:18:59 Patrick Cresswell 

And so we, we take those thousands of heartbeats, we the system that the algorithm that sits underneath it looks for extremities. So let's say that your car, Neil, we would expect if there is no problem, we would expect for its year and its mileage to be able to achieve something like 3.9 miles per kWh. 

00:19:20 Patrick Cresswell 

If that car in fact is only achieving 3.22 miles per kWh, that would would flag from a raw data collection perspective that would. 

00:19:29 Patrick Cresswell 

Like a problem. But then we see you were doing 100 miles an hour the whole time. It was -5° outside. We can cancel and and and account for those extremities. Such that we're we're pulling your car back to. Actually what it's capable. 

00:19:43 Patrick Cresswell 

Of. 

00:19:44 Patrick Cresswell 

And then three drives is enough for us to get a really good handle on what your car is actually capable of. 

00:19:49 Patrick Cresswell 

And the next part of the process is we're then in in real. 

00:19:55 Patrick Cresswell 

I'm making a an assessment of whether that is good, bad or somewhere in the middle versus the brand new expectation for that car or and or other similar peer vehicles that we have in our system. So that then enables us to give you a a rating for your vehicle. 

00:20:15 Patrick Cresswell 

We've devised a highly simplified rating systems such that we can integrate into classified websites and other places on quite simple terms where it goes from A+ to D. 

00:20:28 Patrick Cresswell 

We have lots of information on our website about how we calculate that, what that means. If people want to read more, but it's it's quite critical for us to just have a really simple score and and from that we're able to provide the prospective buyer with the confidence that they need to know, you know, OK, that card. 

00:20:48 Patrick Cresswell 

A+ and and the one next to it is not. I know, I know where my where. My hard earned money is going. 

00:20:54 

How? 

00:20:55 Chris Sass 

Far are we along so in the US we have things like Kelly. 

00:20:57 Chris Sass 

Blue book value. 

00:20:59 Chris Sass 

Where a dealer or someone will look up the value of the vehicle on a book to tell you what a used vehicle is worth. 

00:21:06 Chris Sass 

How far is this software or this tool to embedding into something like that, where the actual quantifiable numbers? 

00:21:14 Chris Sass 

Or something that that a dealership or someone could say. OK, I've got, you know, these used vehicles coming in and your trade is going to be worth this or you're going to get this when we sell it so they can price the deal accordingly. Is that ABC almost there or is it within? 

00:21:28 Chris Sass 

Eyesight. 

00:21:29 Patrick Cresswell 

We're we're in the we're in the process of getting there. I think the the thing to consider here is that with with a proposition like ours, ultimately the person who cares is the person at the end of that resale process, the consumer that is buying a used vehicle. But that is not the person who's testing the car, right? 

00:21:49 Patrick Cresswell 

We're having to work way further back the chain to to get the clear what report assigned to a vehicle and so at the moment we have a number of very interesting commercial pilots underway. 

00:22:02 Patrick Cresswell 

One of which is with the the the largest fleet operator in the UK, who have currently got 50,000 EV's and that number is set to double pretty pretty soon and and so that's a a company that leases cars, right. What we're able to say to them is. 

00:22:22 Patrick Cresswell 

OK, so your customers who, let's say they've taken a three-year lease and a month before they're due to return the car when you're sending them emails to say? 

00:22:32 Patrick Cresswell 

Hey, Mr. X, you've got one month left. Go and get the car cleaned. Get those chips and scratches repaired. You're also asking them to to complete a clear what test? Such that. And you know, we can find ways of incentivising that. That client actually has has ways of ways of doing that. 

00:22:52 Patrick Cresswell 

Already built into the process. 

00:22:54 Patrick Cresswell 

And so, yeah, we're saying to to that customer do the test. And so the leasing company and then the next person in the chain to receive that car on on resale, which will be probably an auction house. And then the next person probably a dealership and then the next person, the end consumer, all of those people have had complete. 

00:23:14 Patrick Cresswell 

Stability of the condition of the car from day one and so. 

00:23:20 Patrick Cresswell 

That flow of getting the test done early is critical to ensuring that it comes out at the end with with all people having that full visibility and what we're working with those partners to do is is to initially provide confidence at auction such that when dealers are there. 

00:23:41 Patrick Cresswell 

And they see two EVs that are identical in the same example that we gave before. One of them has a clear what report, and one of them does. 

00:23:49 Patrick Cresswell 

Then in that competitive environment, they'll buy the the car with the extra documentation, and then what we're working towards then on the on the consumer side is is how do we measure the impact of of of what that customer will pay for it. There is some research out there on this topic. 

00:24:09 Patrick Cresswell 

Ranging from a yeah, like a £500 sort of uplift for a decent report all the way up to $3000. Some research out in the US that that, that, that, that suggests that. So obviously that depends on the the price of the car to begin with and whether it's premium and what have you. 

00:24:29 Patrick Cresswell 

But yeah, we're we're we're expecting something in the order of of of you know 500 to to sort of 1500 lbs on a on a on a on a mid 3 year old EV that being the sort of uplift. 

00:24:41 Patrick Cresswell 

That we could expect. 

00:24:42 Chris Sass 

Now. 

00:24:43 Chris Sass 

The the scary thing kind of when you mention. 

00:24:45 Chris Sass 

In this. 

00:24:46 Chris Sass 

Is I I get the value of it when I'm the buyer of the new car, but let's assume that I've leased a car from your leasing company before and I go to leasing new car and I scored rather poorly on that vehicle return. You know, I I almost see like a credit agency rates me that there be a driving score associated with an individual driver. So maybe I get better. 

00:25:07 Chris Sass 

These turns if I take better care of the the battery, put more and practically I'd be afraid of having that information floating around out there that it's gonna cost me money because I didn't charge well. 

00:25:19 Patrick Cresswell 

Well, I mean, you opened a, a, a whole fascinating topic here in that you know. 

00:25:25 Patrick Cresswell 

And. 

00:25:26 Patrick Cresswell 

Can the drivers of leased vehicles or any electric vehicles be have their charging behaviour and other battery health related behaviour used against them or or I and I I think I I really I I can tell you for sure that we're not there today whether we ever get there. 

00:25:47 Patrick Cresswell 

Is is actually quite an active discussion in the rental and leasing world. 

00:25:52 Patrick Cresswell 

But you know, I always say that the, the, the, the, the questions that you asked me a little while ago about what what are in the DOS pile, what are in the don'ts pile that is not common knowledge. You know people cannot be in my opinion punished for overly rapid charging a vehicle if that's the thing that's enabled them to electrify. 

00:26:12 Niall Riddell 

You've now got all this incredible data on how a driver performed last time and almost like the the way the health industry has moved towards tracking individuals, behaviour sets and then quoted their insurance slightly different. 

00:26:26 Niall Riddell 

Do we see a scenario whereby when you get your second or third lease vehicle, you might get quoted differently for your lease terms because we know, Neil, that you charge your battery very carefully on your driver overnight, whereas Chris is up and down the motorway rapid charging all the time and therefore he's going to degrade our vehicle more so a bit like you get a mileage limit. 

00:26:45 Niall Riddell 

Might you also get a charging behaviour characteristic to your leasing rate? 

00:26:50 Patrick Cresswell 

Yeah. All I can say is is I I I think we're, I know that we're not there today and we might get there one day. It sounds awfully Big Brother, but I think what you might see is you know when you as you know if you if you look to get a car insurance quote and it asks you where you store the car, a question there. 

00:27:10 Patrick Cresswell 

Would be. Do you have off roads? You know, off street parking and that and the sort of Intel that we're gathering could be used to make some assumptions about how that customer will interact with that car and what that will mean for its. 

00:27:23 Patrick Cresswell 

Long term health. 

00:27:25 Niall Riddell 

That makes complete sense. So I guess I guess where I'm coming from at the moment is your service creates value for the end purchaser of this vehicle. The the second hand car buyer, which I love because I'm a second hand car buyer. But the service you're actually selling is being sold today to big leasing companies or is it the individuals you sell to? 

00:27:44 Patrick Cresswell 

Two leasing companies, so our our primary targets today it's it's it's absolutely not exclusive but the, the, the, the big fish for us right now is leasing companies and their motivation is to maximise residual values at resale. 

00:27:59 Patrick Cresswell 

And so yeah, but it's on that basis that we are we are operating. 

00:28:06 Chris Sass 

Now I I I wonder why with all the technology in the car, why aren't the OEM's doing this? Why do we want a third party to come in and and rate the? 

00:28:16 Chris Sass 

Why can't this be in the software for the vehicle? 

00:28:19 Patrick Cresswell 

Yeah, it's a very good question. And I think really what it initially boils down to is misalignment of, well, misalignment of a few things. But the first is a misalignment of of motivation. Why would OEM's want? 

00:28:39 Patrick Cresswell 

To surface this data, unless all OEMs are forced to right like you get you, you wouldn't want to be the first to stick your head above the parapet and and and and categorically. 

00:28:52 Patrick Cresswell 

The outline the the the long term performance of your fleet. If none of your competitors are being forced to do so and so that move to expect consumers to do that, sorry to expect OEM's to do that is is something that the legislators and regulators. 

00:29:13 Patrick Cresswell 

Are discussing and have been discussing for some time? There was a suggestion. 

00:29:21 Patrick Cresswell 

That on on car state of health monitors would be legislated to be included on the dashboard as part of the Euro 7 emissions, but EUR 7 covers the EU only and those that that that, that legislation didn't align with other parts of the world. 

00:29:42 Patrick Cresswell 

As it happens, EUR 7 has been kicked down the road anyway, and so best case scenario is that here in the US. 

00:29:48 Patrick Cresswell 

You you would have a second hand car entering the market with one of those on the dashboard at the end of this decade. And and the problem is very much here and now in you know in the UK alone this year there will be more than 200,000 second hand EV sold and and that will continue to. 

00:30:08 Patrick Cresswell 

To accelerate into the 1,000,000 by way before any onboard devices that the OEMs might implement would would be available. So yeah, from a more technical perspective. 

00:30:26 Patrick Cresswell 

There's. 

00:30:27 Patrick Cresswell 

What there isn't today actually is a a consensus on how to measure battery health, and so there, there, there is no there is no standard from which OEM's could just easily apply to their vehicles. So you have all electric vehicles, have a battery management system on board which helps really it's, you know from safe. 

00:30:47 Patrick Cresswell 

From a safety perspective, primarily it helps to ensure that cars can't be overcharged and and running, you know thermal run away and things like that from a safety perspective, but. 

00:30:57 Patrick Cresswell 

The battery management system on board a car is is not sophisticated enough to accurately measure battery health. As things stand today, it lacks the computational power to do so, and a lot of large OEM's and in and and VC's actually are investing in advanced BMS's to be able to do that. 

00:31:17 Patrick Cresswell 

But the application of that is is currently being looked at beyond passenger EV's. This is, you know, the likes of huge. 

00:31:28 Patrick Cresswell 

Construction vehicles, let's say, where the the in some cases there might be millions of dollars worth of batteries on board. It's obviously critically important then to understand all this stuff, but the the, the from a scientific perspective, we're some way off that that standard being agreed. 

00:31:47 Patrick Cresswell 

And implemented in all cars. So it's not just about motivation. I think it's there isn't a the the the market is lacking standardisation to begin with. 

00:31:58 Niall Riddell 

So I I like the the business model and the presentation you've given us this idea that this is about the second life of the battery and how you ensure that a second hand car buyer has confidence. It feels to me like there's with this technology, there's a couple of other applications that could be really interesting to explore. The two that jumped to my mind are you've just bought brand new vehicles. 

00:32:17 Niall Riddell 

And you almost want to create a baseline characteristic for them. We worked with a fleet operator who had about 150 vehicles, all of the same type, and three of them he had to send back early because those vehicles just weren't performing as. 

00:32:29 Niall Riddell 

Selected and the second use case is you know how do you take that data? Maybe provide tips and guidance as to how to optimise battery health for the owner during life rather than telling them after their three-year lease that they've horribly degraded the battery. Is that something that's in the plan to develop? 

00:32:46 Patrick Cresswell 

Yeah. So on the first point, I should mention that as as I outlined before, our solution is is hardware free and app based and that's a very deliberate move that we've made with accessibility. 

00:32:58 Patrick Cresswell 

In mind, but we are still training the model from embedded telematics data, so we are also working with some fleets that are feeding us information about vehicles from new which is helping us to understand what it is that's that's causing those those differences as you mentioned and and secondly. 

00:33:18 Patrick Cresswell 

Yes, absolutely. This is probably a good opportunity for a plug, but for anybody who who's listening to to check out the clear what website clearwhat.co.uk where we are as well as this core technology, we're we're really positioning clear what as as. 

00:33:37 Patrick Cresswell 

The educators slash translators in this space. Translators are of complex information for the mass market because, as I always say, you could ask anybody on the street what is the, I don't know what could be one difference between A1 litre petrol car and A2 litre petrol car and and they would. 

00:33:57 Patrick Cresswell 

They might say the two litre car is probably a bit faster, but a bit thirstier. Let's say that that kind of knowledge is is is baked into people and but you ask that same person if a 40 kWh battery is going to be suitable for their everyday need. 

00:34:14 Patrick Cresswell 

You know, 9.9 times out of 10, they won't have a clue what you're talking about, right? And so even at a very basic level, clear what exists to translate that kind of information, such that we can help people along and help people navigate this very complex area. And. And in terms of insights. 

00:34:33 Patrick Cresswell 

In terms of how to keep batteries performing well, then yes, absolutely we we have, it's not actually launched yet on our website, but we have tools in the planning and and tools in development. 

00:34:47 Patrick Cresswell 

Which will enable people to tell us how they treat their car or how they intend to treat their car if they haven't bought it yet, and the output that we will give them is what they can do to optimise their their condition of that car in the end and and and and you know, perhaps if you do a bit less of this and a bit more of that then in three years time you'll get this many more miles on a charge. You know, we do have that data able to. 

00:35:10 Patrick Cresswell 

To to do that kind of modelling and finally we have. 

00:35:14 Patrick Cresswell 

I can't say too much on this, but we have a product evolution in our road map which will help demonstrate and prove that customers are are treating their vehicle or the vehicle that they're driving and not necessarily owning in a specific way. Yeah, which again I think. 

00:35:34 Patrick Cresswell 

People don't know what the what, the good and bad behaviour is at the moment. I think if we can make a really simple, slick, maybe even gamified way of of of enabling that customer to sort of, you know, to nudge them in the right direction. And I think that's better, best for everybody. 

00:35:50 Niall Riddell 

So I can hear that you've got something really cool that you've got today and that you're building really cool capabilities as we go forward. I'm going to hand you a crystal ball and ask you if I came back and had this conversation with you in a year's time, what would have changed? What would clear what have delivered between today's conversation and 365 days from now? 

00:36:10 Patrick Cresswell 

Well, 365 days from now. What? Where? Where? I think we will be end of Q1 next year is fully integrated into some of the major household name brands that that exist here in the UK in the process of. 

00:36:31 Patrick Cresswell 

Of of buying or selling a used car. Can't say too much on this. Obviously at this point, but these conversations are underway and have been for some time on our side and you know there's a lot of. 

00:36:46 Patrick Cresswell 

Of good will and  a lot of ambition in in, in the sector to to to help consumers, to help try and solve this confidence gap and. And so we're sort of in the right place at the right time. I think with these conversations and and we'll be looking for full integration by that time and and beyond that. 

00:37:07 Patrick Cresswell 

You know, obviously we're focusing right now on the UK market, but you know there could be scope for us to to expand beyond our our tech approach, facilitate scalability across borders in a way that you know makes that quite a realistic proposition. 

00:37:28 Chris Sass 

Patrick, I want to thank you so much for spending time with us today and sharing your. 

00:37:31 Chris Sass 

Expertise and knowledge with us. 

00:37:32 Chris Sass 

It's been exciting to hear about what you're doing to help folks understand the battery health and to help us better understand buying a used EV. I look forward to seeing your technology widely deployed across the UK and your crystal ball coming clear that we'll see a lot more of you and a lot more of your new programs in the near future. 

00:37:53 Chris Sass 

Thank you again. 

00:37:54 Patrick Cresswell 

Thanks guys. Been great chatting to you. 

00:37:56 Chris Sass 

For our audience, we hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Insiders Guide to Energy EV series. We tried to make it informative. We hope you've enjoyed the content as much as Neil and I did in making this episode. If you do, don't forget to like add comments, ask questions of our guests in the comments, and definitely follow us on YouTube by subscribing to our channel. You'll see content like this. 

00:38:17 Chris Sass 

And content that doesn't get released anywhere else. So we'll see you again next time on the Insider’s Guide To Energy EV series. Bye for now.