31. Revolutionizing Urban EV Charging: Innovative Solutions for City Streets with Itselectric's Nathan King

Follow our EV Channel: https://igteev.buzzsprout.com/

In this episode of the Insider's Guide to Energy EV series, hosts Chris Sass and Niall Riddell dive deep into the future of urban electric vehicle (EV) charging with Nathan King, co-founder and CEO of itselectric. Nathan shares insights on how itselectric is tackling the unique challenges of providing scalable EV charging solutions in dense urban environments. By focusing on curbside charging infrastructure, itselectric aims to make EV charging as accessible and convenient for city dwellers as it is for suburban residents. 

Nathan explains the innovative business model and hardware design that sets itselectric apart from traditional charging solutions. With a focus on behind-the-meter connections and durable, street-friendly hardware, itselectric addresses the limitations of existing infrastructure while minimizing the need for extensive utility upgrades. This approach not only simplifies the installation process but also engages building owners and communities, creating a collaborative solution for the growing demand for EV charging in cities. 

Listeners will also learn about the significant differences between the EV charging landscapes in the U.S. and Europe, and how itselectric is leveraging lessons learned from European markets to innovate in American cities. With real-world deployments already underway in locations like Brooklyn and Detroit, itselectric is poised to revolutionize urban EV charging, making it a key player in the sustainable transportation movement. Tune in to discover how this groundbreaking approach could reshape the future of city living and electric mobility.

We were pleased to host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-l-king/

Visit our website: https://insidersguidetoenergy.com/

Chapters

• 1:07 Charging Infrastructure for Cities
• 3:44 Hardware and Business Model Overview
• 5:13 Comparison with European Charging Infrastructure
• 10:35 Behind-the-Meter Connection Approach
• 14:42 City-Level and Building-Level Coordination
• 19:43 Utilization and Charging Network Business Model
• 25:16 Regulatory and Policy Considerations
• 29:52 Deployment and Future Plans
• 31:22 Closing Remarks and Future Prospects

Transcript

Transcript 

00:00:00 Nathan King 

If you are one of the 40 million drivers in the US that park their cars on city streets, getting an electric vehicle is out of the question. Today we are going to talk about new ways to scale up our EV charging infrastructure in U.S. cities. 

00:00:16 Chris Sass 

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

00:00:21 Chris Sass 

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

00:00:27 Chris Sass 

Welcome to another edition of the Insider's Guide to Energy EV series. I'm your host, Chris Sass with me as my co-host Niall Riddell. Neil another episode on charging and I think we have a different take today. 

00:00:38 Niall Riddell 

And you know what I think are charging? Absolutely love it. So hopefully we're going to dig into some of the gory details of how we can improve the drivers experience with different kinds of electric vehicle charging. 

00:00:49 Chris Sass 

Well, I I think it's important because one of the concerns we have from the grid is you know, how do we get enough capacity and it's everybody gonna need you know, what level of charging do people need and how do you get charging when you live in the city and multifamily, how is that all going to take place? And I think this episode is going to. 

00:01:03 Chris Sass 

Do a lot to explain one approach to maybe solve that problem. 

00:01:07 Chris Sass 

So what I'm going to do is bring on Nathan King. Nathan. Welcome to insider's guide. 

00:01:12 Nathan King 

Hey, Chris. Hey, Neil. Nice to meet you Both. 

00:01:14 Chris Sass 

Well, it's a pleasure to have you here today. I know we've had some conversations in the past, but as I always like to start out with, why don't you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and what it is you do? 

00:01:25 Nathan King 

So I am co-founder and CEO here at its electric, a company that I started with my cofounder about 2 1/2 years ago. 

00:01:34 Nathan King 

And we are EV charging that's purpose built for cities. So what we've done is developed a business model and a hardware configuration that we believe is going to make it possible to scale up the number of EV chargers that we need in our urban areas over the next 10 years. 

00:01:51 Chris Sass 

Right, so you're charging infrastructure for cities. What are some of the unique challenges of charging in the city? 

00:01:58 Nathan King 

Well, it's. It's like anything in working in cities. It's space, right? We we don't have space to locate charging stations to meet the demand that we have. And so curbside charging as a a sector of the larger charging industry is really important for urban areas. 

00:02:18 Nathan King 

Because we're not adding additional space to fuel vehicles, we're allowing drivers to park their cars where they normally do in cities. 

00:02:28 Nathan King 

And charge overnight. The way that people that that live in the suburbs do you know for for a little bit of context here, about 85% of EV charging in the United States happens in people's driveways and garages. And so your typical use case that we see is somebody buys an electric car and they'll have an electrician. 

00:02:48 Nathan King 

Install a relatively good level 2 charger, or if they don't have a long commute, they just use the 120 Volt charger that comes with the vehicle and they charge overnight like you do with your cell phone. 

00:02:59 Nathan King 

But if you live in a city, and if you live in a townhouse or an apartment building, or maybe or a renter that has a driveway, being able to install your own charger and use the charger off of your own grid is is a challenge. And So what we're trying to emphasize here is that we need to make EV charging experience for drivers as easy and convenient and affordable. 

00:03:19 Nathan King 

As our counterparts in the in the suburbs. 

00:03:23 Niall Riddell 

So I'm 100% behind your thesis for many years now, I have lived without a home charger and charged in a whole range of different scenarios, and we're I'm here in London, but across the UK and across Europe we have challenges with where people can park their car, let alone where they can charge their car. So what we've started to see is a proliferation of. 

00:03:44 Niall Riddell 

Different approaches and that has, as you might have already highlighted, different hardware and different business model implications. Could you take us into the hardware to start with, what is it that you've built and how does it work? 

00:03:58 Nathan King 

Sure. And and the the hardware and our business model are very complementary, but just really quickly the the first thing that we did was when we started the company a few years ago, as we said, well, we've got about 40 million cars in the United States that park on city streets. What would be the the best way to charge those vehicles? And when we looked at curbside, we thought, well, this makes sense. 

00:04:19 Nathan King 

Because people are storing their cars on the street long. 

00:04:21 Nathan King 

Term and they can do this overnight charging and so then the conclusion was well we need to find a hardware that can really be situated on that curbside. And when we looked out in the North American market, we didn't see anything that really suited that use case. Chargers in this country are, you know, really designed for. 

00:04:42 Nathan King 

Being installed in driveways, garages, commercial parking lots, we didn't really see a piece of what we call St. Furniture. We need something that's very durable, very simple. 

00:04:53 Nathan King 

Able to withstand abuse. My background is in architecture and I'm I'm I'm currently a licensed architect so I'm happy to kind of talk about how we think about things from a a design perspective and when we looked over the on the other side of the pond we saw wow, this actually quite a number of different solutions for charging at the curbside. So here in North America, we have 0. 

00:05:13 Nathan King 

But over in Europe and UK, there are quite a lot of different configurations that are really kind of designed and purpose built for that curbside configuration. And so our hardware is very similar to what we see deployed. And you know I I believe London has about 20,000 or so curbside chargers. 

00:05:31 Nathan King 

They look like bollards. You know, we call them bollards or charging posts. They're they're very they're made out of metal components. They're very durable. Our charger is, is built the same way, and it features, crucially, a detachable charging cable that's one of the big differentiators that we have here at its electric that the. 

00:05:51 Nathan King 

Cable that connects to the the Charger to the car is not permanently attached, and actually the driver keeps the cable. 

00:05:57 Nathan King 

With them. So when you unplug your car and you drive away, the all you're left with on the street, that piece of St. Furniture is it's a very slim metal post that kind of blends in with the rest of the urban context. And we're not taking up space with, you know, cable management systems or looping capes over hooks or anything like that. 

00:06:18 Niall Riddell 

So on that basis, do you have to have a unique cable that works for you with this solution or is it a generic, you know, the standard vehicle cable that gets delivered when your car? 

00:06:29 Niall Riddell 

Arrives. 

00:06:31 Nathan King 

So it's here's what I'll. 

00:06:32 Nathan King 

Tell. 

00:06:32 Nathan King 

You we are using the same we call it on the charger poster on the charging bollard, there's a port. It's the the same charge port we are using that is being used. 

00:06:43 Nathan King 

In the EU in the UK. 

00:06:45 Nathan King 

We we think that there will be some of the companies on your side of the pond coming over to the US and deploying. 

00:06:52 Nathan King 

Our cables will be fully interoperable with those charge ports. 

00:06:57 Nathan King 

This is a nice, maybe moment to maybe get a little bit more in the weeds too is the one of the big advantages that we have as a company is we don't have to decide what connector to put on the end of our chargers. You folks have the luxury of having this all standardized in this country, it's not standardized. So there's the J, 1772. 

00:07:17 Nathan King 

Standard, which is currently everybody, but Tesla. 

00:07:21 Nathan King 

And then there's the Tesla Connect connector or the next connector or the J 3400 connector. Starting next year, though, everybody the industry, even though regulatory agencies have been pushing for the J1772, nonetheless, the industry has decided they're going with the Tesla connector. But still in this country, we're going to have millions of cars. 

00:07:41 Nathan King 

The older version with the beta, you know, like the VHS versus beta. We're still going to have a lot of people with beta. 

00:07:48 Nathan King 

VCR. 

00:07:49 Nathan King 

'S. 

00:07:50 Nathan King 

But that the advantage that we have is we can give drivers the detachable cable that has the correct charging port, the correct charging connector for their charge port on their vehicle. 

00:08:00 Chris Sass 

So a silly question. A lot of people drive EVs because of the environment, and that's they're they're making an impact. If everybody has to carry their own cable around, aren't we producing a whole lot more cable and using more copper and resources to sustain the CV ecosystem? Neil's shaking his head. No, no. If you're for you listening, just like I said, it's a silly question, but that's what I was hearing when you were talking about this. 

00:08:23 Nathan King 

What? What I'll tell you is when we diligence our decision to go with the detachable cable, we thought about a lot of things. One thing that we saw being a problem in this country is cable theft and damage damaged cables. 

00:08:41 Nathan King 

Tables will sort of wear out on their own, especially in the curbside condition where there's things like Rd. salt. 

00:08:49 Nathan King 

Curbside Chargers will never have a canopy over them like you will have in a a gas station where the pumps are protected. So wear and tear is a big issue, especially when they're just sort of left out and exposed. And then of course, cable theft like you may have read some articles, it's it's a big problem in places like Colorado and in California. 

00:09:09 Nathan King 

We we've talked to property managers that are replacing their cables multiple times a year. So for us we avoid those problems. We we can't, we don't avoid them completely, but we we can definitely mitigate them because first of all the cable is left. 

00:09:27 Nathan King 

Out of the elements or it's kept out of the elements most of the time, and so that wear and tear just from the exposure to the elements in use is reduced, and then also it's not exposed to theft and vandalism. And if those things happen and and they inevitably will, it's it's quite easy for us to replace that. 

00:09:46 Nathan King 

Table. 

00:09:48 Nathan King 

We just have a driver replace their cable and there's no need to call an electrician and roll roll a truck, so I I don't really think that over the lifetime of the charger it's that much of a difference in copper. It might be more, but the operational advantages that were sort of unlocking sort of cancel that out. 

00:10:08 Chris Sass 

And I didn't want to get hang up on it. Like I said, it just was something that kind of face value came up. I do have a question on we we talked about the UK and Neil's can attest his stuff there. 

00:10:08 Nathan King 

Question. 

00:10:17 Chris Sass 

And the US, what are some of the differences on the city architecture of putting power to the curb? I mean, are the cities wired for this? I I'm not aware of utilities having a lot of extra capacity throughout the city. How are you handling actually installing this somewhere? 

00:10:35 Nathan King 

Yeah. And and I, I love talking about it this way because usually I kind of talk about our our business model approach and how we connect our hardware and then we kind of talk about the differences between the UK and the and the US. 

00:10:47 Nathan King 

One big difference that we have here and this is getting into the weeds, but the most of the electrical distribution in the EU and the UK is a 220 Volt fee. And so you, what we call the accessory utility fee. So these are the. 

00:11:07 Nathan King 

These are the conduits that feed lamp posts and traffic signals and parking meters and other kinds of electrified St. furniture. That's all 2. 

00:11:16 Nathan King 

20 in many cases also three phase, so it's relatively simple for folks in the in Europe to install what we call here in the United States at level 2 charger. So a a 220 Volt charger, something that will get you a full battery. 

00:11:36 Nathan King 

On a fairly big battery pack overnight here in the US, and there's a couple of exceptions that prove the rule, but generally speaking, all of our accessory utility feeds are 120. 

00:11:48 Nathan King 

So what we can't do is easily go to like say, an existing lamp post or a connect through a subgrade connection to the existing accessory utility feed and get that 220. Or that 240 Volt connection. It's just not there. Everything is 120 Volt in this country, and so upgrading those service lines requires. 

00:12:08 Nathan King 

Extensive coordination with utilities. 

00:12:12 Nathan King 

What our business model does is kind of avoid the that that utility interconnection problem. Generally speaking where where we do have curbside chargers in this country, they're all more or less kind of generalizing here, but they're generally pilot programs that are sponsored by utilities. 

00:12:32 Nathan King 

So utilities are interconnecting directly to their mains in the roadway and that's how they power the curbside charger. That's a very complicated and expensive process, and in some cases, because of our great constraints, we don't we're not able to put any additional load on those utility conduit. 

00:12:49 

But. 

00:12:50 Nathan King 

So what we do? 

00:12:50 Nathan King 

Instead, not to bury the lead. Here is what we call a behind the meter connection or or a behind the property line. We let buildings power our chargers and which is great in cities, because that same problem around density and lack of space actually becomes our Ala. Most buildings have enough spare capacity to power. 

00:13:10 Nathan King 

Level 2 charger, particularly the commercial buildings that we're looking to. 

00:13:14 Nathan King 

With and once, once we find that spare capacity, it's it's slightly more complicated, but not much more complicated than a driver in the suburbs. Having an electrician connect a Level 2 charger to their electrical supply. So we've removed that sort of interconnection coordination. 

00:13:34 Nathan King 

Process that is currently the way that we're trying to do curbside charging in this country by just connecting to existing capacity that's already at the correct voltage that we need through the buildings that we have in our cities. 

00:13:48 Niall Riddell 

Nathan, that's a a fabulous rundown. I'm super conscious that you've clearly studied some of the UK market because sat here, the idea of taking your cable with you everywhere is completely normal. The range of different St. side furniture is varied. We've seen bollards, we've seen lamp posts. We've seen through curb, we've seen under curb. 

00:14:08 Niall Riddell 

This connection to the building becomes really interesting because like you say, it overcomes this big question of a grid connection. However, it does now mean you've got civil work into a building. You've got a relationship with a building manager and you've got civil work out onto. 

00:14:23 Niall Riddell 

Street, can you tell us a bit more about the the the challenges that you have to overcome with the various bodies involved in putting infrastructure in place when you've got, you know, local regulatory metropolitan authorities for the cities level? And then obviously a building or a building owner on the building level? 

00:14:42 Nathan King 

Yeah, and. And and there's a bunch of different ways that I can answer this question, but the the first maybe larger point that. 

00:14:47 Nathan King 

I'll. 

00:14:47 Nathan King 

Say is installing a curbside charger. No matter how you do it is is complicated and so we're not saying that, you know what, we're what our approach is solves all the problem. 

00:14:59 Nathan King 

All we are saying is that we think we've found the easiest way to do it the the path of least resistance to get that charger installed. If you are connecting directly to the utility, you know you mentioned civil work and road work versus sidewalk work. Those are two different categories. Roadway work is. 

00:15:18 Nathan King 

Exponentially more expensive once you go past the curb out into the street. 

00:15:23 Nathan King 

You're talking about repaving certain portions of the street. You're talking about partial St. closures. It's a different set of permits. There's way more utilities out in the roadway than you have under the sidewalk. What we do instead is we're keeping everything between the building and the curb, and that's a different set of civil problems. It's not completely straightforward. There is some complexity there. 

00:15:43 Nathan King 

But it's less complex than going out into the road. 

00:15:47 Nathan King 

And from a technical standpoint, again, it it really isn't that much different than let's say I have a garage. I have a driveway, I live in the suburbs, I have an electrician do some low grade work to run a power line to connect to the charger. It really isn't that much different. 

00:16:04 Niall Riddell 

No, I was just thinking the challenge you have when you install a home charger is often around things like the length of the cable run, ensuring you've got right earthing in place. Do you have some of these regulatory issues to consider around earthing and safety when you're bringing power out of a a private building into a public space? 

00:16:23 Nathan King 

Ohh, of course, of course. And you know, again, I'm gonna reference back my experience as an architect. You know, we we have, we have the National electric code here. We have building codes, the utilities themselves sometimes have requirements for how we install things. We we understand all of that. 

00:16:43 Nathan King 

And the the the installations that we're bringing from building to curb are in keeping with those codes and regulations. 

00:16:54 Nathan King 

It's it is isn't that much different than, again, going out into the street, digging up the street and and running a connection between the utility and the roadway. But again that's that's it, it's it's trading off one set of complexities for a different one and I don't want to say that what we're doing is. 

00:17:13 Nathan King 

Eliminates all complexity, it's just less complex. 

00:17:17 Niall Riddell 

It it's quite a fascinating space because we've started to see the emergence in the UK of of various solutions called Curbe and Gully, where they take power out of the building and bring it into a private location for an individual to charge. Now you also mentioned that you have a a different business model. How does your business model work around this solution? 

00:17:27 Nathan King 

Yeah. 

00:17:39 Nathan King 

So there's a lot of things that I I do want to try to talk about around our business model, which again as I said before, is is sort of supported by our hardware configuration. So we designed our charger to be easily connectable behind the meter, working with building owners instead of the utilities. 

00:17:59 Nathan King 

Has certain advantages. I'm just going to mention a couple of them. One advantage is that we're skipping the utility process, but I want to also just talk about our Community approach. When you go to a city and you ask them to set aside a parking space for EV charge. 

00:18:17 Nathan King 

They're going to be very concerned about the community reaction. So what we have instead, when we go to the city and ask permission is we have, you know, by definition permission from that property owner who has the frontage along that parking space. And so it's just a different sort of ask to the city. We're not saying we're taking away that parking spot. 

00:18:38 Nathan King 

From that property owner, we're saying actually that parking spot is not only OK with us taking that parking spot for your charging, they want us to do it. That's a feature, not a bug. 

00:18:48 Nathan King 

We we think that community buy in Community involvement with this transition of vehicle fueling is is necessary. 

00:18:58 Nathan King 

The the other thing that I'll say about our hardware configuration is that what one of the advantages of our particular configuration is that we can locate some of our equipment inside the building and keep it safe from. 

00:19:10 Nathan King 

Developments. So the hardware that's on the curbside is, is is mostly just sort of a hollow box with the connector on it. But inside the building is where we keep our our more sensitive equipment and that protects it from you know, swings and temperature and things like Rd. salt and temperature differentials. 

00:19:30 Nathan King 

So the this again is the hardware configuration supported by the business model. 

00:19:37 Nathan King 

I I I know you guys have other questions, but the other thing I want to point out about. 

00:19:43 Nathan King 

Our business model and I and I can pause, but just is this question around utilization and whether or not we're selling charging hardware or whether or not we are a charging network. 

00:19:53 Chris Sass 

Well, I think that's a valid point to to answer, right. I mean I I think from our previous conversations, I'm assuming you're a charging network. 

00:20:02 Nathan King 

Yes. 

00:20:03 Chris Sass 

And and that's where you're going. What? What I'd like to do is transition to a different question because as, as we've talked, I've had more time to digest and I listen to you speak about. 

00:20:12 Chris Sass 

The business. 

00:20:13 Chris Sass 

Model I'm wondering what the utilities think because there. Isn't there a separate rate for commercial use energy as opposed to a home? What I get is my home, so if you're now putting this. 

00:20:23 Chris Sass 

In into and you're the building owner. Are you falling at a commercial rate with the utility? Is the utility happy about this, or are you falling under the same regulations of the regular ratepayer? 

00:20:35 Nathan King 

So it's a good question. And in this country it's a big it depends. We are looking at two different ways of of doing this right now. 

00:20:46 Nathan King 

In one case, what we can do is tap into the building's power supply behind the meter, right? So that power is being fed into the building. It goes to a panel we're tapping into that. 

00:20:57 Nathan King 

Panel. 

00:20:59 Nathan King 

And then we just negotiate with the property owner how much they're paying for power and we reimburse them for the power. 

00:21:05 Nathan King 

That we use. 

00:21:06 Nathan King 

This is actually how it's being done in commercial context, right? So if you go to a Whole Foods and there's a charging network installed there, EV drivers are paying the the the charging network for the use of the charger, the charging network figures out how much power they're using. They reimburse the host property like this. This is being done. 

00:21:25 Nathan King 

We're not proposing to do anything different. 

00:21:29 Nathan King 

We're also looking at if it's possible to have a established meter in the Co located in the property in the building itself that has that different. 

00:21:39 Chris Sass 

But then you're going back to the utility, right? So the problem statement you said earlier was it's easier to deal with the building owner is in some way, right? So if you go for a meeting meter, you're you need the utilities buy in. 

00:21:39 Nathan King 

Rate and when we come up. 

00:21:53 Nathan King 

Well, getting a meter is very different than doing an interconnection. So what we're doing is if the service has that spare capacity, so most most of the time the service that's brought to a building is oversized because the utility expects future expansion. So we're tapping into the spare capacity in that service that's brought to the building and putting a meter on that. 

00:22:12 Nathan King 

That's very different than saying I need to interconnect a brand new thing into your utility main in the roadway. We can do it either. 

00:22:21 Nathan King 

Way. 

00:22:22 Nathan King 

In cases where we think it goes faster. 

00:22:26 Nathan King 

To do the behind the meter connection then that's our preference and in cases where the utility is able to get that dedicated sub meter for us, then we do it that way. And in either event the property owner does not pay for the power that we're using. We're always going to reimburse the cost of the power and we figure out what that is before we install the. 

00:22:46 Nathan King 

Larger the you know for the just making it very clear for the the property owner, there's no cost. We are installing the charger ourselves. We own and operate it. We reimburse the property owner for any costs associated with using their power. We've already paid the contractors to do the installation. What we like to say. 

00:23:05 Nathan King 

The only thing. 

00:23:06 Nathan King 

We need from the property owners's permission and access to their building wants to make that interconnect. 

00:23:13 Niall Riddell 

So I I love a bit of tax. Do you guys have different tax rates for domestic properties versus you know business rates? So we in the UK face a challenge, we get 20% tax on business electricity but only 5% on domestic. So this would cause all sorts of weird tax headaches. I'm sure when you start cross selling out of a building. 

00:23:33 Niall Riddell 

Into a public domain. 

00:23:38 Chris Sass 

It it won't. 

00:23:38 Nathan King 

Be that complicated for us, EV charging is just a standard sales tax, so our drivers are going to pay a standard sales tax. And what what like I said before, what we do when we work with the property owners is we either get our own commercial meter and they don't have to worry about it or we negotiate in advance what we're going to reimburse them. 

00:23:57 Nathan King 

Per hour. 

00:23:58 Niall Riddell 

So you can then enable a standard rate for anyone who arrives at a charge point in public, and they can find an it's electric charge point and they pay the same rate. 

00:24:07 Niall Riddell 

Everywhere they go. 

00:24:09 Nathan King 

That's right, because we're doing like an average, we're we're going to make a prediction on what the average cost to the utility is going to be for our different installation configurations, we'll say, OK, well that's, that's where we'll set the floor. We'll put an adder on it. That's how we earn income and that's what drivers will pay. 

00:24:26 Niall Riddell 

Which then leads to a scenario whereby you've basically combined two or three different business models together with a piece of smart hardware to deliver a network that is fundamentally different. So I think anything that I've discussed or seen before. 

00:24:41 Nathan King 

Yeah. I mean the business model is working in partnership with the property owners to make the electrical connection and then within that, there's different technical ways that we can power the charger. But we're always going to be working with that property. And I don't think yet, I've, I haven't mentioned too that there's a revenue share aspect with it. 

00:25:01 Nathan King 

As well. 

00:25:02 Nathan King 

So the the building owners that we're working with earn a small portion of the charging fees as passive income. 

00:25:09 Nathan King 

That sort of incentivizes them to work with us, and it's a way that that they can sort of lease out that spare capacity that they. 

00:25:15 Nathan King 

Have in their electric. 

00:25:16 Chris Sass 

So So what I'm hearing is you have to work with the cities as well, right? Because if I if I live on a street and parking is limited in most of our inner cities, it's hard to park. There must be some scheduling or software or some way to dictate who gets the space where my charger cable can reach. So, you know, in front of my building, maybe there's four or five spaces and maybe I have the ability to charge a car to or several. 

00:25:21 

Yes. 

00:25:37 Chris Sass 

Does policy at the city level need to change then? Or is there some other regulation that changes to make this available so that someone just doesn't park there for a week? You know, if I got my parking space, it's not a snow emergency. My car is staying. I don't want to have to go. 

00:25:50 Chris Sass 

Hike and get my car and I, you know, take public transit. Turn the week I walk to work. 

00:25:56 Nathan King 

So absolutely we need to work with cities on parking enforcement. The good news for us as a company is like even before we started this, many cities had these regulations. 

00:26:08 Nathan King 

Place. So for example here in New York City, the way that it works is if you park next to an EV charger, you have to be plugged into it. 

00:26:19 Nathan King 

So you can't be a gas car and you can't just be an EV that's parking there. You've got to be actively using the charger. And when when you see the signage, the signage will say something like reserved for EV charging only. 

00:26:31 Nathan King 

And then there are different ways to price the charging service to incentivize the driver to clear out the spot once their battery. 

00:26:39 Nathan King 

Is full. 

00:26:41 Nathan King 

There's other things too, and and I can get into the weeds here. There's other things too, where we set a lower rate overnight than during the day. So drivers feel comfortable plugging in and going to bed and not having to worry about waking up at 4:00 in the morning and moving their car. And during the day, a higher rate to incentivize the driver to move the car and. 

00:27:01 Nathan King 

Open it up for a different driver. The traffic enforcement in these cities enforces that, so you get a ticket if you're not charging or. 

00:27:09 Nathan King 

If you're a gas. 

00:27:09 Nathan King 

Car. Definitely icing out is a problem in our cities, but it's it's one that we see kind of slowly being solved. 

00:27:16 Niall Riddell 

This this is a really, really interesting to hear because you have some quite progressive policies that support the the transition into electric here in the UK. We don't tend to do dedicated bays for AC or low power on street charging. We we do see some overstay fees to encourage people to move off the charger. 

00:27:36 Niall Riddell 

After they've they filled up the vehicle, so the charging speed drops and they're encouraged to move on. 

00:27:41 Niall Riddell 

But what you're describing is something that is really quite progressive, because you've got a commercial incentive for people to OfferUp their power on the street. You've got a a restrictive environment for who can use the Bay. You've got the ability to nudge a driver out of the Bay with a financial penalty, meaning that finding an on street chart, you're overcoming a lot of the challenges that I think. 

00:28:03 Niall Riddell 

On street charging solutions, as seen here in the UK, I'm very impressed. It sounds quite unique. Do you have any competitors? 

00:28:10 

Yeah. 

00:28:12 Nathan King 

Well, the people that were most interested in and are the UK companies, I think you had a a company called Chargee on more recently they do lamp post retrofits. There's a company called Uber Tricky that was bought by Shell. I don't think they're called utility anymore I think. 

00:28:29 Nathan King 

They're called shell recharge. 

00:28:29 Niall Riddell 

And I think they're still utility utility by shell recharger thing. 

00:28:33 Niall Riddell 

Now. 

00:28:33 Nathan King 

Oh, there's still lubricity by Shell. OK, there's a company called connected curb. Yeah, by the way, I'm. I'm a admirer of all of these companies. Connected curve, I think is one of the larger networks. There's a there's a few others. 

00:28:46 Nathan King 

Well, I I think that those companies are very interested in breaking into the market. You know, rough, very rough math, but just in the Northeast US we we think there's about 6 to 8 million drivers that park on city streets. You know I I don't know, I I I can't remember exactly how many cars there are in the UK. 

00:29:08 Nathan King 

But I think it's about a third of the number of cars that we have. So like the the total market in the UK is probably one of our you know sort of geographic regions. So if if the UK is large enough to support you know about a dozen different curbside charging networks. 

00:29:24 Nathan King 

The fact that we only have, you know, a couple here in the US, I I think there's a lot of room to grow. 

00:29:32 Niall Riddell 

There's a huge space to grow. I mean, here in the UK, we're seeing some of these networks. You talked about Uber. Trista is probably heading on towards 10,000 connectors connected curb charge you both 34000 each. You know, where are you in terms of deployment in the US and you know where do you see that growth coming from city by? 

00:29:50 Niall Riddell 

See. 

00:29:52 Nathan King 

Well, we're, we're, we're still breaking into the double digits here. So right now, as I said, we're we're about 2 1/2 years old as a company. Yeah, what we managed to do is to design and build our charging hardware. That was the first challenge that we had and get into place all of the different certifications that are required in the. 

00:30:13 Nathan King 

We've run small pilots and deployments. At the moment we have 7 chargers installed in Detroit and in in Brooklyn. But these are chargers that are revenue generated. These are commercialized chargers. We've completed a manufacturing run and at the moment what we're doing is sending chargers to where they're going and I can sort of talk about our pipeline and. 

00:30:33 Nathan King 

What we're doing next, we we also just closed our seed fundraising round. So we've raised about six and a half million. So that's really something that is going to help us sort of higher up and get some of the bandwidth. 

00:30:38 Niall Riddell 

Congrats. 

00:30:47 Nathan King 

To actually run so that these, you know, hiring project managers and getting the the the Chargers installed, I can tell you kind of like the competitions and the grants that we've won, but I'll just sort of pause and see if you wanted to follow on that. 

00:31:02 Chris Sass 

Yeah, I think that's fantastic. It helps give an idea. Early stage company got some real world deployments going with some revenue going, which is usually helps the investors, helps close that seed round and then it sounds like once you get some more you'll you'll go to around to scale this thing up. 

00:31:22 Chris Sass 

It sound it sounds pretty interesting. I want to thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation from my point of view. For those of you listening, not watching the video, you could just see Neil's ears perking up every time we went there. This is such a unique model compared to what we had on the program so far that that we we're interested to watch this and see how this goes and hope to follow up with you in the near future. 

00:31:42 Chris Sass 

To when you have a little bit larger deployments and have some more real world data to feedback, we'd love to have you back to talk about it. 

00:31:49 Chris Sass 

Nathan, thank you so much. 

00:31:50 Nathan King 

I'd love to come back. 

00:31:52 Nathan King 

Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. 

00:31:55 Chris Sass 

For audience, this has been a great episode of Insider’s Guide to Energy EV. If you wanna do us a favor, if you like the content, make sure you like and comment do that on our YouTube channel. Do it wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe. We'll see you again next time on the insiders guide to Energy EV series. Bye for now.