Insider's Guide to Energy
The Energy Industry is uniquely evolving as traders are under increasing pressure to manage costs, cash, limits, and risks. The Insider’s Guide to Energy Podcast addresses current and emerging challenges business executives face daily through stories shared from peers and industry experts while covering topics such as innovation, disruptive technologies, and emerging trends.
Insider's Guide to Energy
37 - The Future of Wireless EV Charging: Insights from Electreon’s Charlie Levine
Discover the transformative potential of wireless EV charging in this insightful episode of the Insider’s Guide to Energy. Join hosts Chris Sass and Niall Riddell as they delve into the future of electric vehicle infrastructure with Charlie Levine from Electreon. Explore the fundamentals of wireless charging technology, from inductive coupling to dynamic charging solutions, and learn how this innovative approach is set to revolutionize EV fleets, public transit, and personal vehicles.
This episode offers an in-depth discussion on the technical and practical aspects of wireless charging, including its efficiency, use cases, and integration challenges. Understand the benefits it brings, such as reducing reliance on large batteries, minimizing grid constraints, and enabling seamless charging in urban centers, busy traffic routes, and even at home. Charlie also shares real-world insights from pioneering projects across Europe, the US, and beyond, highlighting their impact and scalability.
As we look toward a future where EVs dominate mobility, wireless charging is poised to become a game-changer. Don’t miss this engaging conversation that sheds light on the partnerships, innovations, and strategies shaping this breakthrough technology. Follow us to stay ahead in the energy transition!
Visit our website: https://insidersguidetoenergy.com/
We were pleased to host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlie-levine-171a444a/?originalSubdomain=il
Transcript
00:00:00 Charlie Levine
I predict that wireless charging is no longer a question of if it's a question of when, and I think we're going to see it roll out in the next three to five years across Europe and the US.
00:00:13 Chris Sass
Your trusted source for information on the energy transition.
00:00:16 Chris Sass
This is the Insider’s Guide to Energy podcast.
00:00:25 Chris Sass
Welcome to another edition of the Insider’s Guide to Energy EV series.
00:00:29 Chris Sass
I'm your host Chris Sass, with me is
00:00:31 Chris Sass
Niall Riddell Niall, we are going back to charging and charging in a way we.
00:00:35 Chris Sass
Seen.
00:00:36 Chris Sass
What is this episode about?
00:00:39 Niall Riddell
So we're going to talk a little bit about wireless charging and wireless charging comes in a variety of shapes and.
00:00:45 Niall Riddell
Obviously it doesn't have wires, but understanding exactly how we do that and whether it's something that's going to be on the roads tomorrow or whether it's something we need to wait a little bit longer for.
00:00:56 Niall Riddell
Going to be the topic of today's show.
00:00:58 Niall Riddell
I'm delighted that we have Charlie Levine from electron with us.
00:01:01 Niall Riddell
Charlie, why don't you tell us a bit more about wireless?
00:01:04 Niall Riddell
Charging.
00:01:06 Charlie Levine
Sure. Thanks for having.
00:01:08 Charlie Levine
Festival. Both of you. Nice to be here. And so wireless charging is just that. And I think you touched upon it pretty well.
00:01:15 Charlie Levine
The absence of cables, wires anything that connects physically to the vehicle to to charge, so it's using inductive technology.
00:01:19
Replay.
00:01:23 Charlie Levine
It works similarly to your stove that you might have at home or your wireless charging.
00:01:31 Charlie Levine
Electric toothbrush, where we're looking for magnetic coupling between 2:00.
00:01:37 Charlie Levine
2 receivers 1 is underneath the ground, either under the parked area or under the road, and then the other one is a receiver that's attached to the vehicle. The chassis of the vehicle.
00:01:49 Charlie Levine
And then when the two match up, there's coupling between them and energy is transferred between the two.
00:01:54 Niall Riddell
And and for my benefit, one of the things that we traditionally talk about is sort of static wireless charging. You drive over a pad and you have to line it up perfectly. And after that you start a wireless charging session.
00:02:06 Niall Riddell
But I believe you guys are doing quite a lot of work looking at dynamic wireless charging as well.
00:02:11 Niall Riddell
Can you explain a bit more about the pros and cons of those two approaches?
00:02:16 Charlie Levine
I'm sure.
00:02:17 Charlie Levine
So starting with the stationary wireless charging or the static charging like you mentioned, there is a question about the misalignment tolerance.
00:02:26 Charlie Levine
How far can you move in either direction, either to the side or backward and forwards?
00:02:31 Charlie Levine
Before you have an issue with charging, our system is pretty robust to misalignment and so you've constantly got this up to 40 centimeters in either direction.
00:02:43 Charlie Levine
It's quite a lot, quite a lot.
00:02:44 Niall Riddell
Yeah, it's got a lot.
00:02:45 Charlie Levine
You think about it.
00:02:47 Charlie Levine
And it also depends on the vehicle itself that's charging.
00:02:48 Niall Riddell
Then.
00:02:51 Charlie Levine
So.
00:02:51 Charlie Levine
Go.
00:02:52 Charlie Levine
Ahead.
00:02:52 Niall Riddell
And do you therefore have to have some specific?
00:02:56 Niall Riddell
Camera underneath or some alignment technology? Or do you just go us roughly in the parking spot?
00:03:02 Charlie Levine
Roughly in the parking spot, I'm afraid we're pretty old.
00:03:04 Charlie Levine
Where for the parking spot we're using painted strips on the floor.
00:03:10
Now.
00:03:10 Chris Sass
I know that most vehicles have.
00:03:12 Chris Sass
Height restrictions and.
00:03:14 Chris Sass
So how does the gap from the bottom of the vehicle to the charging plate work?
00:03:14
Yeah.
00:03:20 Chris Sass
You need to do something.
00:03:21 Chris Sass
Does it need to drop down or can it handle the this blank space between it?
00:03:26 Charlie Levine
So it depends on the on the vehicle itself.
00:03:28 Charlie Levine
With the passenger vehicle.
00:03:29 Charlie Levine
Required. We're looking at directly under the the chassis attached or built in depending on the vehicle itself.
00:03:36 Charlie Levine
And with the with the larger vehicles, the heavy duty trucks, the buses, we are in some cases looking at a drop down system like you described where there's hydraulic disturbance lowers down to initiate the charging so.
00:03:51 Niall Riddell
And clearly this then varies when you do something dynamically, because all of a sudden you've got moving, moving vehicle over a static wireless transmitter.
00:04:02 Niall Riddell
How?
00:04:02 Niall Riddell
How do you manage?
00:04:03 Niall Riddell
You know, is it all about getting perfect?
00:04:05 Niall Riddell
You need autonomous vehicles, or is this just drive down the middle of the road and everything happens like magic?
00:04:11 Charlie Levine
Pretty much described it in an excellent marketing way. Umm.
00:04:16 Charlie Levine
So just driving straight in a straight enough line as we described with the stationary wireless charging, we do have pretty high tolerance to to misalignment and it's pretty much the same.
00:04:18
Replay.
00:04:26 Charlie Levine
When we think about it, it's an ideal use case with AUT.
00:04:29 Charlie Levine
Echoes that because they're easier to control, but it's not entirely necessary.
00:04:34 Chris Sass
When I think you talk about magnetic fields and stuff, I think of electromagnetic pulses and things in an EV is pretty much a computer on wheels for lack of a better term with a couple of electric motors.
00:04:46 Chris Sass
I guess what I want to know is, does it impact the electronics or if I'm on my cell phone next to where charging, am I still going to be on my cell phone right at the charging station while I'm refueling?
00:04:56 Charlie Levine
So we've done a lot of electromagnetic compatibility testing and making sure we adhere to the strictest standards. Of course, it's a huge topic.
00:05:05 Charlie Levine
Not the first to ask.
00:05:06 Charlie Levine
Comes up quite.
00:05:07 Charlie Levine
A lot.
00:05:07 Charlie Levine
And we make sure that there's no impacts to the surrounding environment. In fact, we have one project it's in, in Gotland and Sweden on an island there. And it was right next to an airport.
00:05:22 Charlie Levine
And there they have a particular worry about EMC.
00:05:25 Charlie Levine
And so we made sure that everything did to the highest standards there and with the army as well.
00:05:32 Charlie Levine
They also had a base right next door and they did some testing so.
00:05:35 Niall Riddell
So if I can ask the naive question, what's the point?
00:05:39 Niall Riddell
It feels like you can plug in a cable in like under 30 seconds.
00:05:44 Niall Riddell
Surely wireless charging is just for lazy.
00:05:46 Niall Riddell
Or is there some additional hidden benefit that we've not covered?
00:05:49 Charlie Levine
So now you, Chris and myself can all charge in one vehicle by ourselves. That doesn't seem like too much of A.
00:05:57 Charlie Levine
But when we think about, first of all, what's been up until now, it's been a transition between anything that was plug in like the Ethernet cables for the Internet back in the day and then the transition slowly to wireless when the technology was good, stable and could en.
00:06:12 Charlie Levine
Such a transition.
00:06:12 Charlie Levine
So when we think about fleets, for examples, for example, when we think about fleets, for example.
00:06:19 Charlie Levine
We have an issue with needing to have many many people to charge the vehicles to plug in the vehicles simultaneously and we have an issue around the overnight charging and the grid connection required.
00:06:34 Charlie Levine
Large does the.
00:06:35 Charlie Levine
How long does it take to bring the energy to the site?
00:06:38 Charlie Levine
Of course, the the size, weight, environmental impacts and cost of the vehicle batteries at scale.
00:06:46 Charlie Levine
So there's just huge issues that wireless charging solves.
00:06:46 Niall Riddell
So then.
00:06:50 Niall Riddell
So then you can take the cables out of the depot.
00:06:52 Niall Riddell
Can make it easier for.
00:06:54 Niall Riddell
Your bus, truck, bus.
00:06:55 Niall Riddell
You'd probably just forget to plug in to be able to, you know, drive over there, allocated parking slot, plug in at night, charge up or while they're out on the road, pick up a charge so you can start to see there's a use case in here around partic.
00:07:08 Niall Riddell
Commercial vehicles.
00:07:09 Niall Riddell
But then the question that obviously follows is how efficient is that energy transfer between, you know, a pad and the vehicle you know? Are we in a place where we actually get?
00:07:18 Niall Riddell
Reasonable level of efficiency.
00:07:21 Charlie Levine
Oh, absolutely.
00:07:22 Charlie Levine
So when we're in stationary wireless charging, we can get up to 9293% efficiency, which is pretty comparable.
00:07:30 Charlie Levine
To plug in charging with long cables and around 85% to 87% with dynamic wireless charging when the vehicle's driving.
00:07:40 Chris Sass
Technology.
00:07:43 Chris Sass
Change or something that happened to make this interesting. Now. I mean EVs, although they've been all the rage in the news and getting more mainstream, and we've had battery tech and electric vehicles for some period of time now.
00:07:56 Chris Sass
Why are we talking wireless charging today?
00:07:58 Chris Sass
A.
00:08:00 Charlie Levine
Great question, Chris.
00:08:02 Charlie Levine
I think that when we think about this technology, it's definitely an evolution rather than a revolution. Whenever you talk about anything to do with infrastructure, you were not saying something is going to happen tomorrow and then it's going to be everywhere all at once.
00:08:18 Charlie Levine
We're thinking about a roll out that makes sense and I think that there's more and more interest through a few of the projects that we're doing and some of the competitors in the industry are doing as well.
00:08:29 Niall Riddell
So we can see that this technology is coming.
00:08:32 Niall Riddell
Have you got live projects today?
00:08:34 Niall Riddell
Is it rolled out widely or is it limited trials that were still scaling up?
00:08:39 Charlie Levine
So we've got around 20 different projects around Sweden, the Nordics, Germany, France, we have a project coming.
00:08:49 Charlie Levine
It's in the middle of being deployed now, actually, so it will be operational by the middle of this year.
00:08:55 Charlie Levine
And we have projects in Israel and several operational projects in the US too, all with a variety of use cases.
00:09:03 Charlie Levine
And vehicles.
00:09:06 Chris Sass
These projects, as you've gone in there early, I don't know if they're alpha or beta type projects.
00:09:11 Chris Sass
What was the permitting project like process like? Because it's a new technology. So are the communities ready to install this kind of technology and other requirements?
00:09:23 Chris Sass
In the regulation, keeping up with the technology.
00:09:26 Charlie Levine
That's a good point.
00:09:27 Charlie Levine
I think that's probably the area that's trickiest for us, not necessarily the development of the technology at this phase. The stage when we see that it's ready for market and it's in its commercialization phase.
00:09:40 Charlie Levine
I think that the the challenge here is about getting the the authorities on board and of course that differs not only from country to country, but state to state and sometimes local to local, depending on who's who's the commissioning body there.
00:09:56 Charlie Levine
And we couldn't do that without the relationship with our partners that we.
00:09:59 Charlie Levine
So you know, we're the technology provider, but when we're thinking about an ecosystem change like this or such a dramatic change to the infrastructure we're working.
00:10:08 Charlie Levine
With dozens of partners, including energy companies and providers.
00:10:13 Charlie Levine
Construction engineering.
00:10:15 Charlie Levine
So it's really a group effort required, especially on the on the automotive side we're seeing today.
00:10:22 Chris Sass
Who are the?
00:10:23 Chris Sass
Users willing to take this.
00:10:24 Chris Sass
Are energy companies looking to try it and prove a concept it or where?
00:10:28 Chris Sass
Are the kind of users who want to be.
00:10:30 Chris Sass
Be your alphas.
00:10:32 Charlie Levine
So on the energy side, yes, the energy providers, they're super interested to see how does it work, especially when we look at.
00:10:40 Charlie Levine
Battery and energy storage as.
00:10:42 Charlie Levine
How does that work together and how does it all couple with?
00:10:47 Charlie Levine
Because we've done several projects like the one I was beginning to tell you about in Gotland and Sweden, where we showed solar panels.
00:10:55 Charlie Levine
On site there that was charging the system directly with battery storage device.
00:11:02 Charlie Levine
And.
00:11:04 Charlie Levine
We're seeing also on the vehicle side a lot of interest and from fleets, commercial and public transit fleets.
00:11:07
Repl.
00:11:11 Charlie Levine
So together, the sort of the three prongs are all pushing towards the same direction.
00:11:17 Niall Riddell
And that godliness project as an example, how?
00:11:20 Niall Riddell
Is.
00:11:21 Niall Riddell
Is it one small 7 kilowatt charger or is it multiple locations, multiple bays, multiple vehicles?
00:11:29 Niall Riddell
How big are these projects now becoming?
00:11:33 Charlie Levine
So Godlan was the first the world's first wireless electric Rd. on a public Rd.
00:11:38 Charlie Levine
It was just over a mile long.
00:11:39
Replay.
00:11:42
Repl.
00:11:42 Charlie Levine
With also stationary wireless charging and there we wanted to demonstrate 12 metre electric bus and a 40 ton electric truck charging from the same system simultaneously with reduced battery capacity.
00:11:55 Charlie Levine
Uh, so that's on the small side.
00:11:57 Charlie Levine
We have a few other small projects on that scale and then it's scaling up to commercial fully commercial projects like in Israel for example, where we have.
00:12:05
Replay.
00:12:08 Charlie Levine
A charging of up to 30 buses at a bus deeper, all happening simultaneously.
00:12:13 Chris Sass
What are the economics of doing?
00:12:15 Chris Sass
You just talked about a mile of.
00:12:16 Chris Sass
What? What does that do compared to a charging network as we think of?
00:12:21 Chris Sass
What are the economics of building this into the infrastructure as opposed to putting in a charging station as we know?
00:12:28 Charlie Levine
So when you.
00:12:29 Charlie Levine
100 meters of wireless electric Rd. You get up to.
00:12:36 Charlie Levine
15 charging spots depending on the vehicles.
00:12:38 Charlie Levine
So if you and say we're targeting the price of around 750 to $800,000 per kilometer, then when you compare it like the cost of fast charging or even less depending on where you're putting the the infrastructure.
00:12:53 Charlie Levine
So.
00:12:53 Charlie Levine
We're working really hard with our.
00:12:54 Charlie Levine
Today is how do we make the system even more cost efficient and scale up?
00:13:01 Charlie Levine
And reduce costs in manufacturing.
00:13:04 Chris Sass
But if you're traveling at 60 miles an hour, I assume there's some speed that this is optimal at that that it works better in 100 meters.
00:13:11 Chris Sass
I mean you need a whole lot of road to get a full, you know, a 20 minute quick charge or whatever, right?
00:13:16 Chris Sass
I mean, you're going.
00:13:17 Chris Sass
Need.
00:13:18 Chris Sass
A lot of Rd. so it is that math really a direct correlation because I mean you can have 15 vehicles but for very like a blip.
00:13:25 Charlie Levine
Right. And that's a good point. You know and there is an optimum point at which travelling speed and how many vehicles you've got bumper to bumper on the on the system really makes a lot of sense.
00:13:29
Replay.
00:13:38 Charlie Levine
What we look at to begin with is.
00:13:41 Charlie Levine
Use cases where the vehicle drives the same route or fixed route and they're driving slowly. So in busy areas.
00:13:46
Replay.
00:13:50 Charlie Levine
Where urban centres, for example, or if we were looking at traffic lights, where they stop and that's ideal for us because it isn't an issue of how much energy we can transfer. Right, right now we're working on 70 kilowatts per receiver and you know, a passenger vehicle has.
00:14:05
I.
00:14:05 Charlie Levine
Receiver A van has 2.
00:14:07 Charlie Levine
And other vehicles can have 3-4 or five depending on the the length of the vehicle.
00:14:11 Charlie Levine
That's not the issue. It's about where's the sweet spot in terms of location?
00:14:16 Charlie Levine
Strategically put, these wireless charging stations.
00:14:20 Charlie Levine
And how much time are the vehicles going to spend on those systems that we deploy?
00:14:25 Chris Sass
I was gonna say are you leaning more towards than the the road like?
00:14:29 Chris Sass
The Buck Rogers kind of future where we're just driving along in our car automatically charges or are the pad solutions more of an early interest where I have a fleet and I know that you know that.
00:14:39 Chris Sass
Example Neil gave, you know, bring my boss.
00:14:40 Chris Sass
The depot.
00:14:42 Chris Sass
It's got a few hours down time and it just pulls in and it just happens to charge.
00:14:46 Chris Sass
No intervention needed.
00:14:48 Charlie Levine
So I think we're.
00:14:49 Charlie Levine
We're looking at all of the use cases simultaneously to make sure that we understand exactly where is the greatest benefit for the greatest number of users.
00:14:59 Charlie Levine
So the bus, we've pretty much got down the bus use case, whether it's a BRT, an urban bus or a vehicle.
00:15:06 Charlie Levine
Drives a bus that drives for longer distances.
00:15:09 Charlie Levine
We've got a good sense about how to deploy the technology for those vehicles. For example, we've got a system operational where we've got end terminal or end station and 1st station wireless charging station. So static charging and then we've got around 14% of the line.
00:15:27 Charlie Levine
Electrical.
00:15:28 Charlie Levine
And that's enough to provide 24 hour power for the vehicle to drive without stopping.
00:15:33 Charlie Levine
Mean it has.
00:15:33 Charlie Levine
The driver has to stop eventually, but he need not.
00:15:37 Charlie Levine
Or she need not.
00:15:38 Charlie Levine
And then the other, any use case where it's clear where the vehicle drives and how long the vehicle drives for, it's pretty easy for us.
00:15:46 Charlie Levine
But what we're working on in parallel with Toyota.
00:15:49 Charlie Levine
Home wireless charging case.
00:15:52 Charlie Levine
So what we think we're going to see is slowly through 2025 and 2026 as more and more users who are interested in using the systems at home and then in the geographies where we have projects being able to not only have the wireless char.
00:16:06 Charlie Levine
Home but be able to use the station. The dynamic be able to use the dynamic wireless charging.
00:16:13 Charlie Levine
Along their routes on their daily routes.
00:16:19 Niall Riddell
So if I was to bring this together when we started this conversation, I mentally had this idea of a BMW because they rolled one out very early on pulling up on a driveway and charging at home at 7 kilowatts overnight.
00:16:31 Niall Riddell
We've actually just described is the ability for large commercial vehicles.
00:16:36 Niall Riddell
To deploy multiple receivers onto the vehicle.
00:16:40 Niall Riddell
And to pull up into slow moving traffic at a roundabout or a traffic light and dwell as they approach, that that slow moving traffic chunk of Rd. they travel over it slowly with three or four receivers at 70 kilowatts each.
00:16:55 Niall Riddell
They might be on that for a couple of minutes as they pull through that section of Rd. but with four receivers they could be pulling what, 100 and 42180 kilowatts, which is a sizeable chunk of load.
00:17:05 Niall Riddell
You put two or three of those traffic lights on their regular route and before you know it.
00:17:10 Niall Riddell
Like you say, they might not need.
00:17:11 Niall Riddell
Stop.
00:17:12 Charlie Levine
That's pretty much.
00:17:13 Charlie Levine
And of course, there's a sweet.
00:17:14 Charlie Levine
The only limiting factor then becomes grid capacity that's available. So we might look at where is that and I think it depends on the location what in terms of energy is available and B what the specific use case for the vehicle that's driving, how much energy does it.
00:17:30 Charlie Levine
Need.
00:17:32 Niall Riddell
For me, that grid question is much easier now because if you correlate spare grid capacity.
00:17:38 Niall Riddell
To truck stops, it's probably quite limited, whereas if you correlate roundabouts, that trucks drive through to spare group capacity, there's a lot more opportunities to charge.
00:17:49 Niall Riddell
Actually this gives a lot more flexibility to grid operators around where they put hypad connections for charging electric vehicles.
00:17:56 Charlie Levine
Yeah, exactly.
00:17:58 Niall Riddell
So that neatly moves us to the next question, which is why electron?
00:18:03 Niall Riddell
You.
00:18:03 Niall Riddell
What's made you special and what's enabled you to get a front foot on this marketplace?
00:18:09 Charlie Levine
Um, I think the other companies that are involved in wireless charging for electric vehicles started with stationary wireless charging first.
00:18:18 Charlie Levine
Electron started with dynamic wireless charging and then work backwards and it looks like from what we're seeing on the market that it's easier to do that than it is to go the other way around.
00:18:29 Charlie Levine
I think also the company was founded by two guys that came from the aerospace industries with a specific vision.
00:18:37 Charlie Levine
Back in 2011, 2012, to try to do something about the fact that we were heading towards high power charging and and massive.
00:18:47 Charlie Levine
Batteries.
00:18:49 Charlie Levine
And you.
00:18:49 Charlie Levine
Their ultimate goal is to reduce the size of the batteries.
00:18:52 Charlie Levine
Reduce the power required and keep the vehicle stock in operation for as long as possible.
00:18:58 Charlie Levine
So big sustainability element to that then.
00:19:01 Chris Sass
And where is the company today?
00:19:03 Chris Sass
How many employees and how big are you?
00:19:05 Charlie Levine
Today, we're 135 employees with plans to grow quite significantly.
00:19:12 Charlie Levine
In the next few years, I think the partnerships that we briefly touched on earlier are incredibly important to.
00:19:18 Charlie Levine
So we're working with automotives like Toyota, Ford, Dealantis, Iveco and many others. And I think that's crucial to our roll out plan and strategy.
00:19:29 Charlie Levine
And I think you know the the mentality that we have of still being a start up even though it's publicly traded company at this point on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange allows us to move fast and break things.
00:19:41
Repl.
00:19:42 Charlie Levine
Quickly go back to the drawing board so.
00:19:44 Charlie Levine
I think some of the other companies who have been maybe more intertwined with the automotive from the beginning or from the get go or from the larger industry players haven't been able to move as quickly as we have.
00:19:57 Chris Sass
And I didn't notice Tesla mentioned in your conversation. What is Tesla strategy for for this? Obviously, if you're looking at the market, you kind of a good feel what people are doing, what are they appear to be doing at least from the outside.
00:20:08 Charlie Levine
So it looks like they're looking at stationary wireless charging.
00:20:10
Replay.
00:20:13 Charlie Levine
For home, the home use case or the home charger market, it looks like they'll be targeting the high end of the passenger vehicles.
00:20:22 Charlie Levine
And other than that, your guess is as good as mine.
00:20:25 Charlie Levine
Only know what we.
00:20:27 Charlie Levine
On.
00:20:28 Charlie Levine
The in the.
00:20:29 Charlie Levine
Who knows?
00:20:30 Chris Sass
How about?
00:20:31 Chris Sass
Are they embracing this technology?
00:20:34 Charlie Levine
I think BYD is an excellent example of a company that's moving incredibly fast.
00:20:39 Charlie Levine
And they're looking at and exploring a whole range of technologies that could power it. But ultimately it comes from it comes from the place of what's desired on the market.
00:20:51 Charlie Levine
I think as there's more and more awareness of this technology.
00:20:55 Charlie Levine
More end users, more fleet customers are going to want it and that's going to drive demand.
00:21:00 Chris Sass
And I'm going to, you know, I'm.
00:21:01 Chris Sass
I'm gonna steal the mic for one more.
00:21:03 Chris Sass
I know Neil's dying to get in here, but you know, as I'm listening to this, you and you said something interesting. Is the initial concept was to have smaller batteries.
00:21:11 Chris Sass
I'm thinking less resources, less worried about resources around the.
00:21:16 Chris Sass
World, but I guess what is that trade?
00:21:19 Chris Sass
So if I want to make miles and miles of highway.
00:21:22 Chris Sass
Charging capable.
00:21:24 Chris Sass
What kind of technology or what resources go into that as opposed to going into the batteries so.
00:21:29 Chris Sass
Where's the saving and Neil saying less wait in the chat as well, he's he's pointing out there you have smaller batteries, you're moving things around that are are lighter.
00:21:38 Chris Sass
If you're continually recharging.
00:21:40 Chris Sass
But I I guess I just look at, you know the mining or getting the resources to make all these batteries.
00:21:45 Chris Sass
How big a trade off is that compared to electrifying roads?
00:21:50 Charlie Levine
So as I mentioned earlier, I don't think we're looking at a use case where we electrify thousands upon thousands of kilometers or miles of of roads.
00:21:59 Charlie Levine
Think that that won't make sense because of the trade off we're talking about with.
00:22:04 Charlie Levine
With the assets that required for it, but the system itself is pretty simple when we're thinking about what goes under the road or under the paved area, it's just a proper.
00:22:15 Charlie Levine
Other so when you look at that, there's no.
00:22:19 Charlie Levine
Other minerals that are rare.
00:22:23 Charlie Levine
There are no requirements on that.
00:22:24 Charlie Levine
So you see the the massive reduction and many studies have been conducted on wireless electric roads that are independent of.
00:22:31 Charlie Levine
And they're all coming back with the same results from their analysis that when you look at the sustainability element, you are seeing a much better.
00:22:36
Replay.
00:22:40 Charlie Levine
A much better result.
00:22:42 Niall Riddell
So one of the key pieces in this is going to be your partnerships with vehicles because obviously each of those vehicles needs to be modified with some kind of receiver. And I can see that for the commercial vehicle world modification is a fairly standard part of practice you.
00:22:56 Niall Riddell
You change the body shape or whatever layout you've got for your vehicle.
00:23:00 Niall Riddell
And set it up.
00:23:01 Niall Riddell
Want so you know from that angle, you know, do we see that this is going to be something easier to achieve with commercial vehicles than with passenger cars for example, where people might not want to modify a passenger car?
00:23:14 Charlie Levine
So we're not forcing this on anyone in any sense of the.
00:23:19 Charlie Levine
So I think you know what we're going to see first on the passenger vehicle side is a select group of people that specifically want that technology. And so to retrofit a vehicle is a pretty simple process.
00:23:30 Charlie Levine
Once we've worked with one vehicle, one mode model. So once we've worked with one model, it takes a few hours to to retrofit that vehicle and I'm sure as we do more, we can get much quicker at that, especially as we see the automation of.
00:23:44
Replay.
00:23:47 Charlie Levine
The A more robotics on on that side.
00:23:51 Charlie Levine
And I think.
00:23:53 Charlie Levine
It's not a process that is.
00:23:57 Charlie Levine
Too scary for for the automotive side that that part looks interesting to them.
00:24:00 Charlie Levine
But we're also working with Toyota on having vehicles come off the manufacturing line with the technology already embedded in.
00:24:09 Niall Riddell
Which feels like a really tidy solution because you then go. Yes, I want my my silver paint finish and I want my wireless electric module and you buy your your new vehicle with both of those things integrated. But I'm assuming the way you described it, it feels like.
00:24:22
Nature.
00:24:24 Niall Riddell
Retrofit is still quite straightforward, it's some screws.
00:24:28 Niall Riddell
A dedicated plate and some sort of DC wireless hook up inside the car.
00:24:32 Charlie Levine
Sure. So there's a mechanical electrical canvas connection. So we have those and it's something we've done dozens upon dozens of Times Now, so.
00:24:44
Replay.
00:24:44 Charlie Levine
So every time.
00:24:47 Niall Riddell
And then for something like an electric truck, because that's where I think this use case could get really exciting. You are doing very similar.
00:24:55 Niall Riddell
You presumably use the tractor units rather than the trailer, and you integrate them.
00:24:59 Charlie Levine
Now we're looking at the trailer.
00:25:02 Niall Riddell
You put them on the trailer as well, so you can do pick up for the full sort of 151617 meters or length of a vehicle.
00:25:04 Charlie Levine
Yeah.
00:25:10 Charlie Levine
Yeah. So when we look at articulated vehicles, for example, technically there'd be no limitation to that.
00:25:12
Repl.
00:25:17 Niall Riddell
And given the challenges there are in configuring batteries inside the axle arrangements of vehicles, because what you find is as soon as you've got 3 axles through a tractor unit, you've got less space for batteries. If you can replace the the additional battery capacity with some receivers.
00:25:34 Niall Riddell
To enable you to extend the range of that vehicle, it suddenly makes the idea of a an electric tractor unit really doing decent ranges quite viable.
00:25:44 Charlie Levine
Absolutely. And then we've got less weight on the vehicle side and less damage to the road able to carry more payload.
00:25:52 Charlie Levine
It's win, win, win.
00:25:53 Niall Riddell
We can start to see this use case really coming together quite nicely.
00:25:58
You briefly briefly.
00:25:58 Chris Sass
Discovered a number of projects where you're at where this is. So in the prelude to this call, I mentioned that we hadn't done a lot on wireless 'cause.
00:26:07 Chris Sass
People don't think it's real. They think it's a pipe dream and it's really far away.
00:26:11 Chris Sass
You know, we've done episodes in battery swapping.
00:26:13 Chris Sass
Again, people are.
00:26:15 Chris Sass
So whenever there's new technology, people are skeptical.
00:26:19 Chris Sass
Where is this in?
00:26:21 Chris Sass
So I know you talked specifically as a company about some early projects.
00:26:25 Chris Sass
What's the rollout going to look?
00:26:27 Chris Sass
Is and where are we going with this over the next little while?
00:26:32 Charlie Levine
Sure. So I think that throughout this year, I think this year and next year, we're going to be pretty pivotal for for the company and of course other wireless charging providers are also available on the market and we welcome competition as much as possible because the market's.
00:26:46 Charlie Levine
It's endless.
00:26:47 Charlie Levine
Everyone can get a piece of it. You know there's plenty to go.
00:26:50 Charlie Levine
Around I think I think we're going to see more and more projects roll out and expand.
00:26:57 Charlie Levine
And I think you know, up until 2030, we could see a slow evolution.
00:27:04 Charlie Levine
Specifically in in the countries that we mentioned earlier, Germany being a hub, Norway, Sweden, the US, Israel.
00:27:13 Charlie Levine
Potentially China. We have some relationships and projects going on there too. And Japan especially with the support of Toyota and Denso.
00:27:19
Repl.
00:27:21 Niall Riddell
This is very real and this is coming.
00:27:24 Niall Riddell
You haven't mentioned the.
00:27:25 Niall Riddell
I'm feeling very left out at the moment. Do you think you we could see something in the UK as well?
00:27:30 Charlie Levine
So I think 2 two major challenges with the UK.
00:27:34 Charlie Levine
It's an island and two.
00:27:37 Charlie Levine
I don't know if you knew this about the UK, but turns out it's an island.
00:27:40 Charlie Levine
And second of all, I think since Brexit, the relationship has been pretty challenging and we've done some studies together with.
00:27:44
Replay.
00:27:50 Charlie Levine
Coventry, for example, the Coventry City Council, was incredibly interested in this technology.
00:27:56 Charlie Levine
And then there were too many.
00:27:58 Charlie Levine
This was back in 20/21/2020.
00:28:01 Charlie Levine
There are too many questions about what was going to happen with Brexit.
00:28:05 Charlie Levine
And how we were going to match up the technology with the rest of the European Union if we were going to match up. And I think we're going to see some challenges there.
00:28:12 Charlie Levine
You know, not only do we have.
00:28:16 Charlie Levine
The project.
00:28:17 Charlie Levine
Partners or needing to come together in a line? We also have the government support that we need. And so we're seeing a lot of government support in Europe coming out of Germany, France, Sweden and we're not seeing as much support coming out of the UK. So you know.
00:28:33 Charlie Levine
Have.
00:28:34 Charlie Levine
Limited resources as a company and we have to focus on where the the support is to begin with. So.
00:28:41 Chris Sass
All right. Did to take that a little.
00:28:44 Chris Sass
I'm just curious, is this a licensing model or are you owning and building this infrastructure?
00:28:49 Charlie Levine
Owning and building the infrastructure for now.
00:28:52 Chris Sass
So you come into a municipality, you talked about talking to one in 2122 and you basically partner with them.
00:29:00 Chris Sass
That is, there a revenue share with municipalities or folks or how does that work?
00:29:05 Charlie Levine
So let's look at a really easy youth case to see how that could work.
00:29:09 Charlie Levine
So let's look at a toll road operator.
00:29:11 Charlie Levine
So there we might look at a Rev.
00:29:13 Charlie Levine
You know you're already consuming the road as the acid itself or as the resource.
00:29:18 Charlie Levine
You come in, you look.
00:29:20 Charlie Levine
At adding wireless charging, there for vehicles to use and then you're adding an additional value that's created.
00:29:28 Charlie Levine
And you you can.
00:29:29 Charlie Levine
Charge for that, by the way. We're looking at cost point similar to fast charging today.
00:29:35 Charlie Levine
Not.
00:29:36 Charlie Levine
Not too much of a difference for the end user and then for the municipalities we have Rev shares or sometimes they're the end customer paying for the service. So. And as we think about rolling out further and further, we might look at build, operate and transfer.
00:29:51 Charlie Levine
You know, these private Public Partnerships that seem to be working for different infrastructures in a lot of locations.
00:29:57 Niall Riddell
I love this.
00:29:58 Niall Riddell
So you're pulling down the toll?
00:29:59 Niall Riddell
You always try and go to the shortest.
00:30:00 Niall Riddell
But suddenly you're going to go to the longest queue because you want to sit there and actually get a little bit of a charge while you're coming up to the toll booth.
00:30:07 Niall Riddell
It's nice, slow moving vehicles.
00:30:08 Niall Riddell
Ready to do it?
00:30:09 Niall Riddell
You charge up and then you back out the other side and you've got a little bit of extra range on that journey.
00:30:14 Niall Riddell
But let's talk a bit about payment.
00:30:17 Niall Riddell
I'm assuming everything has to be automated because you're driving down the road.
00:30:22 Niall Riddell
You know, if a company has installed your receivers and they've got a relationship with you.
00:30:27 Niall Riddell
Presumably it goes hey I'm I'm an electron truck.
00:30:30 Niall Riddell
Can I charge on the electric on bitter road, whereas a competitor might be in the lane next to you and you take your electric on truck down it?
00:30:37 Niall Riddell
It wouldn't work.
00:30:38 Niall Riddell
How do?
00:30:39 Niall Riddell
How do you recognise vehicles and enable that sort of like start and stop charging session to take place?
00:30:45 Charlie Levine
OK, so I think the first point is in the future. If you now allow you, Chris, have.
00:30:53 Charlie Levine
Your technology, whether or not it's a receiver provided by White Trinity at the Tesla receiver or an electron receiver in the future, you'll be able to charge from any infrastructure that's embedded.
00:31:04 Charlie Levine
I think that will be a.
00:31:06 Charlie Levine
We're seeing it coming out now as a requirement from the authorities, and rightly so. Ultimately, the value needs to be for the end users and you don't need to, you know, very similarly to how we work with Ocpi and ocpp.
00:31:19 Charlie Levine
You know you use roaming and you can use any of the operators that are available and.
00:31:25 Charlie Levine
Build at the end by your provider.
00:31:27 Niall Riddell
And that is my dream scenario because suddenly you can give your driver the opportunity to plug in and charge when they go to a certain location or drive down the road and pick up a wireless charge depending on where they're going.
00:31:37 Niall Riddell
So it's great to hear that that standardization is in your thinking.
00:31:42 Niall Riddell
Charlie, you've taken us on quite a nice little journey.
00:31:45 Niall Riddell
What is wireless?
00:31:46 Niall Riddell
And like we said, this is the first time we've had an opportunity to dig into it through some of the real world projects that you've rolled right out there and now into this like Axel, you know this is coming guys.
00:31:57 Niall Riddell
Right there.
00:31:57 Niall Riddell
Could I take the opportunity for one final question and ask you?
00:32:01 Niall Riddell
You know what?
00:32:02 Niall Riddell
Be your prediction for the future for this.
00:32:04 Niall Riddell
Where do you see this going and how? How quickly do you see that driver behaviour changing as a consequence of this new technology?
00:32:13 Niall Riddell
Driving.
00:32:14 Charlie Levine
I would say that the next five years are critical. I think by 20-30 we'll be in a completely different place.
00:32:23 Charlie Levine
I think that we won't be having a conversation about if, when and how it will be becoming more, more accepted both by fleets, commercial and public transit fleets and both by the end user and I think.
00:32:38 Charlie Levine
A few more years after that, people will come to expect it as standard within the system, you know, think about how mobility world has changed.
00:32:47 Charlie Levine
I just came back from from Shanghai and I.
00:32:51 Charlie Levine
Absolutely amazed by.
00:32:53 Charlie Levine
The amount of electric vehicles that are on the roads and the different experience and then just the standard that you come to expect when you order a DD taxi.
00:33:03
Replay.
00:33:03 Charlie Levine
So I think you know we get used to change pretty quickly and I think this is going to be the same.
00:33:10 Niall Riddell
Charlie, thank you ever so much for your time.
00:33:12 Niall Riddell
I appreciate this and I'm very much looking forward to my electric wireless charging future.
00:33:16 Charlie Levine
Thank you very much for having me both.
00:33:18 Chris Sass
Audience, we hope you've enjoyed this content.
00:33:20 Chris Sass
It's been an interesting journey to find out what's on the horizon for wireless charging and what's about to come down. If you've enjoyed this content, please don't forget to share it with your friends. Do us a huge favor and subscribe, add comment and like that helps the podcast.
00:33:33 Chris Sass
And helps you get more amazing content like this.
00:33:35 Chris Sass
We'll see you next time on the Insider's Guide to Energy podcast. Bye for now.