Insider's Guide to Energy EV

29. The Three Waves of E-Mobility: Insights from Spirii’s Tore Harritshøj on the Future of EV Charging

• Chris Sass, Tore Harritshøj, Niall Riddell • Season 1 • Episode 29

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In this episode of the Insider's Guide to Energy EV series, hosts Chris Sass and Niall Riddell are joined by Tore Harritshøj, a founder of Spirii, to discuss the transformative stages of the e-mobility market. Tore introduces the concept of the three waves of  
e-mobility, explaining how the initial phase was driven by basic hardware development, leading to the introduction of simple, non-intelligent chargers. The conversation delves into how the market evolved with the integration of advanced software, making chargers smarter and more user-friendly, similar to the transition from basic mobile phones to smartphones. 

Tore elaborates on the significant role that intelligent software plays in the current phase of e-mobility, highlighting its potential to turn charging infrastructure into profitable ventures through innovative revenue streams such as grid balancing, carbon credits, and advanced demand load management. The discussion explores the analogy between the evolution of telecommunication technology and the e-mobility sector, emphasizing the future potential of electric vehicles (EVs) to serve as massive mobile batteries that support the power grid, ultimately making EV charging potentially free for consumers. 

The podcast also addresses the differing levels of e-mobility adoption across various regions, particularly comparing the advanced state of the market in Northern Europe with the developing landscape in North America. Tore predicts a rapid catch-up in the U.S. market within the next few years, driven by technological advancements and changing consumer behaviors. The episode wraps up with a forward-looking discussion on the future of commercial vehicle charging and the impact of shared infrastructure on fleet management, providing valuable insights for businesses looking to adapt to the evolving e-mobility ecosystem. Tune in to gain a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic shifts in the EV charging landscape and the exciting future of e-mobility. 

Transcript 

 

00:00:00 Tore Harritshøj 

Hi, I predict that the the future of mobility, which is not very distant charging your car is gonna be almost for free because of all the new revenue streams that we are digging into right now and the platform market. 

00:00:15 Speaker 1 

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

00:00:29 Chris Sass 

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

00:00:34 Chris Sass 

Paua helps your business transition to electric vehicles by simplifying charging, managing payments, and optimizing your charging data. Welcome to another edition of the Insider's Guide to Energy EV series. 

00:00:45 Chris Sass 

Niall, welcome back to the program, but what are we gonna talk about today, today. 

00:00:49 Niall Riddell 

Because we're going to explore some of the charge point management ecosystem and how this is affecting the transition to immobility and what are the services and capabilities it can provide for the energy system. 

00:01:02 Chris Sass 

Alright, that sounds like a fairly complex topic that we're gonna try to cover in 30 minutes, but I'm I'm game, so let's dive right in. Why don't you bring our guests on? 

00:01:10 Niall Riddell 

Today was speaking to one of the founders from Spirii. Spirii is a Danish company and we're speaking to Tore Harritshøj, who's going to talk to us a little bit more about some of these transitionary aspects of the market. Talk. One of the things that you raised before we spoke was this idea of three waves of immobility. It's kind of your your view on how we're transitioning into this. 

00:01:31 Niall Riddell 

Please can you tell us more about that? 

00:01:35 Tore Harritshøj 

Yeah, I would be glad to do. I think it's the whole foundation of this transition week going through and it's a wave going across the globe for us in different stages and we in Spiriit, but also me personally has. 

00:01:53 Tore Harritshøj 

The belief that this is coming in three stages and it's coming in three stages as we have seen in other transitions for new technologies coming, swiping across the world. 

00:02:05 Tore Harritshøj 

It's three stages with these different characteristic. For each one of those, and immobility is going through the same one right now. And what I sort of would like to talk about is how these historical swipe the waves can be used for predicting the future, for immobility and where to go and where not to. 

00:02:26 Tore Harritshøj 

As a sort of religion, and one can believe in it, and one can choose not to, but it is one way of interpretating where the future. 

00:02:35 Tore Harritshøj 

Is going and. 

00:02:36 Chris Sass 

So what are these these models? I mean, you're you're you're you're teasing us that there's there's these models. 

00:02:42 Tore Harritshøj 

Yeah, I know, but the free models are that the S in new technology enters the the world. The 1st wave is mainly driven by hardware, new invention within hardware. 

00:02:56 Tore Harritshøj 

And this was also the case with the. 

00:02:58 Tore Harritshøj 

Charges came on and the first charges were really dumb charges and you will see a lot of these legacy charges all around scattered around there as dinosaurs. Standing could do really nothing else but just providing electricity and some of them were even not controllable. So it was just a plug in. 

00:03:17 Tore Harritshøj 

Plug in your cable and it could provide energy. 

00:03:22 Tore Harritshøj 

The same you saw with the just to do a reflection back to another technology phase. It was with phones the old fashioned the first version of mobile phones you could do nothing else but just do a phone call to your mum and dad. Nothing else. 

00:03:36 Tore Harritshøj 

But then for a long time, innovation was made on that hardware part, and you saw that as well for charges all of a sudden, the charges could provide more power. You even had DCS and also for innovation on hardware. It kept on going. But the real second wave of transition came when you applied software. 

00:03:56 Tore Harritshøj 

To that technology software which made that intelligent, you had the same thing going on with mobile phones all of a sudden you had intelligent software coming on making. 

00:04:07 Tore Harritshøj 

Possible to do new things, have a much better user experience. You could text your mom for once. 

00:04:13 Tore Harritshøj 

And the people who applied that solution that make math better user experience from using the phone, but also made it possible to make money out of it. And that is what happening now in the second wave of immobility, is already here. It is that you apply intelligence or software to the charges, making them much more. 

00:04:33 Tore Harritshøj 

Sort of user friendly making and then able to do other. 

00:04:37 Tore Harritshøj 

Things and that is what we see now with this sort of modern phase of immobility being rolled out. But this is not the end. As for telephones, all of a sudden a smartphone like I carry, I don't want to sort of do commercials, but I carry an iPhone. But there's other phones. 

00:04:57 Tore Harritshøj 

They are the platform for a lot of new revenue streams, a lot of new integrations. 

00:05:02 Tore Harritshøj 

So even though the hardware was developed a bit, it's really the intelligence within it, this intelligence within the software, which carries a lot of new integrations to new profit pools which will allow the supplier of that solution of in this case mobility. But in my case in mobility. 

00:05:21 Tore Harritshøj 

To actually service a whole new market, a whole new profit pool, but also allowing this to turn into a whole new game. 

00:05:30 Tore Harritshøj 

And this is what is going on right now. This is what's going on when you have software applied to charters and all of a sudden we integrate into power grids, making money out of servicing, balancing agreement services and frequency regularization and maybe even carbon credit pools and demand response and. 

00:05:50 Tore Harritshøj 

Advanced demand load management. All of this is making E mobility into a new game, and you can also see that in. 

00:05:57 Tore Harritshøj 

Every consultant firm now says OK, one thing is charging or charges. That's a commodity now, right? Even you can get chargers from all around the world and making charges is quite easy. And you do still improve in hardware a bit, but where the real money is is on software. It's a software game like it is for telephones. 

00:06:17 Tore Harritshøj 

Or telco. 

00:06:19 Tore Harritshøj 

And now it's turning into a multi billion dollar game by being a platform platform for new revenue streams. And I would gladly also discuss what these are. This is a prediction for the future and also prediction that the charging industry is going from being a cost center into a revenue. 

00:06:40 Tore Harritshøj 

Generator and that is for all the ones who want to deploy charging. So my thing is be there with the right technology and be there with the right software and you are actually prepared for the future like no one else because I think. 

00:06:57 Tore Harritshøj 

Of course, one can discuss whether immobility is the only winning technology of the future. I personally don't believe. I think there will be multiple technologies for the future. Body mobility will be one of the true sort of winners and the majority of the sort of mobility sector for the future. 

00:07:16 Tore Harritshøj 

And why should we not sort of carry that big sort of portfolio of revenue and sort of expand it to the maximum in integration to other industries, which also happen for telephones and computers and stuff like that? 

00:07:32 Niall Riddell 

So. 

00:07:34 Tore Harritshøj 

So that's the short version, but I would gladly fail. 

00:07:37 Chris Sass 

You got both Neil and I waiting to ask follow up questions. So Neil, go ahead. 

00:07:41 Niall Riddell 

So the thing I'm immediately thinking is we've seen the hardware, you've talked about, the dump infrastructure, we've moved into smart infrastructure, 100% agree with you. We definitely see software plays on top of that charging infrastructure. Now, do you think we've quite reached the platform stage yet or is that still to come? 

00:07:59 Tore Harritshøj 

I think we are sort of, as I said in the beginning of my sort of statement here mobility and like a wave after a tsunami rolls across the world, but this time in a good thing as a good way it they do reach the different markets differently. But in the most mature. 

00:08:18 Tore Harritshøj 

Markets with who has applied the new technology of hardware, which is able to be controlled with the new technology of software. 

00:08:26 Tore Harritshøj 

Already here we see with the furthest CPMS platform, which is most developed that they are integrating a lot into new revenue streams. So they are integrating into making sure that they can participate in the power grid balancing market in carbon credit markets. And this is when you see into all the predictions for the future. 

00:08:46 Tore Harritshøj 

This is where the bigger revenue come. 

00:08:49 Tore Harritshøj 

Also saying that maybe even charging will be given for free in the future, because that is only going to be a small income stream for the charger owner or the vehicle owner because the other revenue pools we're looking into are the bigger ones. So my prediction and that's a bold one, is that the. 

00:09:09 Tore Harritshøj 

Charging is going to be almost for free in the future because the energy part of it is such a small part of the total revenue stream which is coming up. 

00:09:17 Chris Sass 

So having said that, my EV is gonna charge for free. I'm gonna hold you accountable for that. So I'm looking forward. 

00:09:24 Chris Sass 

That what is? 

00:09:25 Chris Sass 

The killer app? You think that's just on the horizon, that that changes the game, right? So if your analogy to the telco system, you know, we didn't know what the killer apps were. We just created the horsepower of the platforms and then industrious folks came along and developed killer apps. 

00:09:41 Chris Sass 

What are the killer apps? 

00:09:42 Chris Sass 

Possible or in your vision for? 

00:09:44 Chris Sass 

This kind of a platform. 

00:09:46 Tore Harritshøj 

Yeah. If I had the exact answer for that, it would be maybe I would share it. Maybe I'm not. But I think the apps is already there, some of them it's a platform app, it's an app where you from a user experience would not see all the complexity in what the revenue streams, which is generated for no in most instances. 

00:10:07 Tore Harritshøj 

These revenue streams are generated behind the scenes, so the killer app is the one which has a very good user experience, allows the user to participate without having any complexity in all the revenue streams versus applicable. 

00:10:22 Tore Harritshøj 

And that is happening behind the killer app. So behind every killer app there is a killer software and the killer software is the one which integrated into the revenue streams, allowing the user or the infrastructure owner to extract that value. And I actually see that in the market right now, the killer apps are the ones. 

00:10:42 Tore Harritshøj 

To attract the volume of both EV drivers, whether it's cars or it's vans or it's bus. 

00:10:50 Tore Harritshøj 

Blocks, but at the same times have a bagging system which allows them to provide these revenue streams into a competitive universe. So the killer app is mostly the one who can integrate. 

00:11:03 Tore Harritshøj 

Volume with that have owned the revenue streams which is behind that. And I do see some out there without name dropping any of those because I do think that many have already seen that this is going to be a very prosperous market across the world. But they are mainly driven out of the more mature markets as it is today. 

00:11:23 Tore Harritshøj 

And that is the northern part of Europe where you have the highest adoption rate of immobility. 

00:11:30 Tore Harritshøj 

But of course, software development also is carried out throughout the US, where they have a high sort of legacy of being able to to carry these. So it's mainly from these regions you should find the killer apps for the future and it's not only killer app, that's the last thing. The main conclusion here is the. 

00:11:50 Tore Harritshøj 

Sort of. The integration between the killer app and the killer software which integrates into the gold. 

00:11:57 Chris Sass 

All right, so you're sitting in Denmark, you're in a software region of the world where make great software. What is it specifically that your organization does and and where do you fit into this mode? 

00:12:09 Tore Harritshøj 

I have the I'm an old man already, so I have both. I've been driving and and EV car for a long time, ever since. It could drive 50 kilometers and I even tried to run out of of power. So I've I've been there and tried it. I've been there for. 

00:12:28 Tore Harritshøj 

15 years like like you guys, most of you sure you tried it some? 

00:12:32 Tore Harritshøj 

Beginning I've been here to what I do is actually to. I care about the market. I care about that the user experience is good, but I also know you can. You can actually do the best user experience, but if you don't have a product with this competitive because now this market, this market is now fully industrialized. 

00:12:52 Tore Harritshøj 

It's a market where it's about making not only the best user experience, it's about making the Better Business case for the ones using. 

00:13:00 Tore Harritshøj 

And and that means a lower price for powering your car. But equally and interesting, the lower payback time for the ones who want to deploy infrastructure and that is the area of market where I operate. It is in making sure that we can adapt sort of sustainable mobility to the market as fast as possible. 

00:13:20 Tore Harritshøj 

By lowering the cost of immobility and by raising the user experience of actually adopting it for the end users, this is the way I want to do it. And this is also. 

00:13:32 Tore Harritshøj 

Think where the highest sort of likelihood of getting success with this rollout of your mobility. 

00:13:39 Niall Riddell 

Is gonna have so so I can see the role you're playing and you've touched on this idea of the services that electric vehicle charging can play into the energy market. And I love the idea that the user has a beautiful experience. They plug themselves in and. 

00:13:53 Niall Riddell 

Everything happened in the background and hey Presto, revenue is generated. Can you talk to us a bit more about those areas that the electric vehicle charging ecosystem can provide services into the energy market and what kind of revenue opportunities exist behind that? 

00:14:10 Tore Harritshøj 

Yeah, we actually try to to elaborate and to enhance these products every day, but the the very blood profit pools right now where we can dig into that profit pool and make that to a sort of a good thing for both the infrastructure owner and the user of that infrastructure, which is the drivers. 

00:14:30 Tore Harritshøj 

It is that. 

00:14:32 Tore Harritshøj 

Basically, Ecas or EVs, whether it's buses, trucks or vans or cars you're is is one big battery and the batteries today is it's just batteries with wheels. And to be able to utilize these batteries by servicing the power grid. 

00:14:51 Tore Harritshøj 

What we actually see in the northern and European market is we have very few blackouts because there's a good TSO who is able to balance the grid of demand and response, demand and supply, and they do that by the demand and response markets where they ask for. 

00:15:13 Tore Harritshøj 

Either a reduction of a power outlet or an. 

00:15:16 Tore Harritshøj 

Reached and what is better than whenever more and more cars is coming out that we utilize the batteries by intelligent software on the charges to regulate the power outage of these charges to the cars. 

00:15:33 Tore Harritshøj 

In the future, the cars will be the largest battery available as a battery cloud and that will help the power grids and not lagging out, but also reducing their cost of enhancing the power. 

00:15:47 Tore Harritshøj 

And this is already something we do right today and multiple sort of players are doing it. It will not harm the user. It is so that it's only for a couple of seconds every day that the infrastructure owner via the software is called to sort of. 

00:16:06 Tore Harritshøj 

Well, turn down the power a bit for a few seconds. You should do it in milliseconds, so it's a very high, complex way to code it, but it's something that the user does. 

00:16:17 Tore Harritshøj 

Experience and doing that you actually can save a lot of money on the power grid and that money is being distributed to the one who helps the power grid. In this case the infrastructure owner and the battery supplier. And of course that is turning talking into the thing about well Chris is. 

00:16:36 Tore Harritshøj 

Driving with a 0 cost of energy in the future because this is what helps the infrastructure owner and this is only one case. This is the demand response market where already now there's a huge potential of doing it and I will not even talk about EU. 

00:16:53 Tore Harritshøj 

I think the US have an even more fragile power market in many regions. They for one, they experience more blackouts than we do in Denmark, but maybe that's that's normal. But this is because they also need sort of whenever immobility has been introduced in the US to an extent that we have. 

00:17:13 Tore Harritshøj 

In Scandinavia, where every second new car is EV. 

00:17:18 Tore Harritshøj 

Then of course the the the power grid will be even more challenged, but the response to this is to make sure that there's a demand response market where the cars are helping with the battery to service the power group. And it's not only to do, you know, the future vehicle to grid where it also can. 

00:17:39 Tore Harritshøj 

Push back power. It's just in the way they could control that the power they use as of today in A1 directional the charging mode is being controlled and this is one of the very large sort of revenue drivers which is already being sort of. 

00:17:56 Tore Harritshøj 

Addressed in the market. 

00:17:57 Chris Sass 

So you're speaking, I mean you, you did go where I was going to go because the markets are different. We we talked about EV's, you talked about the North America market. You're you're in, in, in Nordics where there's there's quite high penetration, pretty mature. 

00:18:12 Chris Sass 

Universally, you were saying the markets kind of mature. Is it really because in the US it doesn't feel that way? 

00:18:20 Tore Harritshøj 

Again, that's religion, right? So everybody has their sort of projection of the future. My projection of the future is this is going to happen, but my but I also know and I travel across many countries and also travel to the US to do my my presentations and I can just. 

00:18:39 Tore Harritshøj 

And it's not to be arrogant. It's not to say I know better than others because I don't know, but I can just see the same picture the same. 

00:18:46 

Sure. 

00:18:48 Tore Harritshøj 

Questions I got in Scandinavia, like in Norway, Denmark, Sweden five years ago when I traveled to Germany or Holland, Netherlands, three years ago, I got the same questions when I traveled to London actually recently they were asking the same questions about where. 

00:19:08 Tore Harritshøj 

This is not gonna happen, but I said well, it you might be right. But there's a high probability that this is gonna happen because the adoption rate of immobility, it's the same curve in every country. It's just sort of scaled to a different time. 

00:19:25 Tore Harritshøj 

OK, so I my projection is this is going to happen and immobility will be one of the winning technologies for the next period it will have an end like any technology it will have an end and then something else will come. But for the next 2025 thirty years, immobility will be the winning technology. And that's my prediction. 

00:19:46 Tore Harritshøj 

I think it's the same gonna happen in US and I I will come and charge the car with you, fris when it's for free. 

00:19:54 Niall Riddell 

Brilliant. I love this. I I like the analogy to this cloud of batteries. About two years ago, I. 

00:20:01 Niall Riddell 

Did a broad. 

00:20:02 Niall Riddell 

Brush calculation for how many electric vehicle batteries we had running around in the UK and it's stacked up to pretty much the same size as the largest pumped hydro storage unit in the UK. 

00:20:14 Niall Riddell 

But the crazy thing about these batteries is they're not always plugged in, you know, although these assets sit around all day, the the reality is they're not always plugged into the system. And to make this work, you need them plugged in. You need them to be at the right state of charge. You need them to be. 

00:20:30 Niall Riddell 

Accessible by a smart charging management platform, and there's a number of characteristics you need. So although you might have a big pool of batteries, there's only a small fraction that's ever available to provide these services. What needs to happen from like a behavioral change perspective to get consumers or drivers to support this smart energy? 

00:20:50 Niall Riddell 

Management process. 

00:20:54 Tore Harritshøj 

Of course, there will be. The technology needs to be scaled and rolled out, meaning the handshake, which is really between the car and the charger, needs to be adopted, right? So you need a lot of handshakes and that has to be rolled out. That will cost money. Then of course you need an incentive scheme, meaning that whenever. 

00:21:14 Tore Harritshøj 

Somebody it has sort of is parked where there is a charter or where in the net proximity of a charter they should go there and they should plug in for charging because that's the incentive scheme that will provide Chris to be able to get this zero cost of charging because he actually is servicing the grid alongside. 

00:21:34 Tore Harritshøj 

Or the other. The rest of the community have immobility at the moment. Charging is really old fashioned, you know. Yeah, that's a charger. There's a cable, you know, a cable is really old fashioned, right? It still is in the future. That will change. And it's not in the distant future. So in the future, you will have another kind of charging like you have with the phone. 

00:21:54 Tore Harritshøj 

May be inductive. Maybe something else, and that means you don't need have to do anything. You just have to go there with the car and park in the parking lot above it and already that. Then you're connected. So there will be a technology SWIFT which will allow this to happen more easily and agile. And in that case this will of course service. 

00:22:14 Tore Harritshøj 

That the whole community of immobility is better able to do it already. Now we're going there a bit, right? We have a plug plug and charge, meaning that already today and that's enabled in in many different. 

00:22:27 Tore Harritshøj 

They don't have to identify yourself, you just plug it in. Everybody knows this is, uh, Neil, trying to charge and you already have a charging agreement with someone. So the same will is simply the the way that will happen with the, with the inductive charging is that whenever your car is parked above this, you already know. 

00:22:47 Tore Harritshøj 

It's you. 

00:22:48 Tore Harritshøj 

When you have your preferred charging agreement with the roaming partner and that will happen and then you're already in the Community where you get the 0 cost, if that's the. 

00:22:58 Tore Harritshøj 

Case. 

00:22:58 Chris Sass 

So it's it's interesting as I listen to this and and you and I talked before because I used your telecom analogy quite a bit. And I said, well, you know the the technology is different here. I buy a new smartphone every couple of years, the horsepower change. 

00:23:10 Chris Sass 

There's. 

00:23:11 Chris Sass 

And and I kind of wonder because of the cost of the infrastructure and the speed, if the paradigm doesn't shift before we get to the vision you just described, right, because you're you're making, you're looking at the world as how we view cars today and how we use them today and how we park them and drive. But with the, the transition, things would change. And so there could be a leap of technology. 

00:23:32 Chris Sass 

In your your theory cause you're looking kind of analog it. This is the way you're you're progressing. Here is the way you're describing it. 

00:23:38 Chris Sass 

And and I wondered that there wouldn't be much slower adoption because of the technology being so long. You buy a car for 10/12/15 years or whatever. So it's not like a smartphone and and I know you said well, OK, Cloud takes care of this or whatever you know the the software can work around this. I think of some of the things you've you've told me. But then I wonder are we still going to use vehicles the way, are they going to be more of a shared asset, are we still going to buy them, are they going to be used? 

00:24:02 Chris Sass 

Differently and does this model even matter 10 years from now or 20 years from? 

00:24:07 Tore Harritshøj 

I actually agree on department just saying, Chris, but I don't think it's a problem, but I agree that this is the way it's gonna work because I have 3 kids. They all have a driver's license, so they are allowed to drive, but they will. I don't think any of those will ever own a car and they don't. Yet they will use. 

00:24:25 Tore Harritshøj 

The cars and whatever as a consumption, meaning that they will just call for it and at the moment they just call for a car sharing and later on they will call for a part. We will come by autonomous and drive them to wherever they want. 

00:24:41 Tore Harritshøj 

The analogy here is this. These parts or these the car sharing car still needs to be charged, but they will just happen in another way, and these cars still needs to have the low cost of charging 0 if if it's better case and then they will go to somewhere where they can contribute to the. 

00:25:01 Tore Harritshøj 

Power grids, as the one example, and then of course that will happen as well. So I fully agree technology will change, but also especially how you use mobility and that will happen right now because young people don't. 

00:25:16 Tore Harritshøj 

Use mobility the same way as I do, and they're already in that transition. So as I die and the rest of the dinosaurs die, will be that you will have a whole new face of a a facelift. But also, of course, of the technology lift from the OEM side or how how cars is actually being used as consumption. 

00:25:37 Tore Harritshøj 

And us as an ownership. 

00:25:39 Tore Harritshøj 

So I fully agree, Chris, but it's also maybe in my point of view it's also just contributing to it's going to be much easier to actually do the integration to all the new revenue. 

00:25:48 Tore Harritshøj 

Pools with the. 

00:25:49 Niall Riddell 

And that's where I am as well, which is as we transition to perhaps more shared use vehicles. So you're actually going to be able to more easily incentivise that plugging in recharging behaviour then lots of individuals parking on the street where actually there's only one charger for every three or four cars and you're not gonna get the value of them all being plugged in. Whereas when you get into this fleet of vehicles that provide a commercial service, then you can start to plug them in more regularly. 

00:26:13 Niall Riddell 

How? 

00:26:13 Niall Riddell 

However, the commercial vehicle space generally requires a much higher utilization rate of that vehicle to be a vehicle in order to make a return on investment. So you get a different dynamic emerging. I know you guys have done quite a bit of work in this commercial vehicle coaches type ecosystem. How do you see commercial vehicle charging being different to individual vehicle? 

00:26:34 Niall Riddell 

Touching. 

00:26:37 Tore Harritshøj 

I think they had. They had do have a different demand for for charging. Obviously it's also a it's much more a money game for commercial vehicles driving a bus company today. It's a low margin, having a fleet of cars is a low margin. 

00:26:55 Tore Harritshøj 

Having fleets of cars, it's the cost of having that car or the fleet of cars is very high on the agenda and that is also why new revenue pools or profit pools are being emerged. And what we see at the moment is also to. 

00:27:11 Tore Harritshøj 

Extend the usage of the investment in infrastructure. People tend now even for we have examples of bus companies where you say, OK, we have in this case 100 DC charges and they are just used for bus charging. But the buses comes in at at night. So at the rest of the time. 

00:27:31 Tore Harritshøj 

Is the cost pool of charges. Thus stands doing. 

00:27:35 Tore Harritshøj 

Nothing. They open up that for the public in specific hours because the platform is intelligent and you can turn those charges if they are at the right place, of course into a revenue stream, making sure that you can increase the uses of these charges. And again, turning that cost center into a revenue. 

00:27:55 Tore Harritshøj 

Driver for the fleet owner so they will use charging. 

00:28:00 Tore Harritshøj 

In the old days they only used diesel and that was a pure cost. Today they facilitate charging and of course the charging itself is a cost, but they can actually utilize that business line as a revenue driver and also turning it into a revenue pool. And also here again they can integrate into demand response. 

00:28:20 Tore Harritshøj 

Into carbon credits and making. 

00:28:22 Tore Harritshøj 

Sort of the. 

00:28:23 Tore Harritshøj 

Whole thing about operating a fleet into a total new business line. 

00:28:26 Niall Riddell 

Yeah. For for me, that's a really exciting area, this idea of shared infrastructure, shared depots cause not only do you create the revenue opportunity, but you also help other businesses who maybe can't afford that upfront capital cost to be able to access and use a charging location that they couldn't use otherwise. Have you got operational examples of that happening today? 

00:28:46 Chris Sass 

Yeah. 

00:28:48 Tore Harritshøj 

Actually we do and we have throughout both and Navy, but also in Central Europe. We have both logistic fleet owners with the bands, also taxi companies like with fleets and also now trucks, flowers who do that because of it is. 

00:29:08 Tore Harritshøj 

A technology which is available, it's a business model which is proven. 

00:29:13 Tore Harritshøj 

And it's actually the only way for them to be competitive in the tenders they go into because operating a fleet with a low margin area, if you are just there to make another sort of cent a pound on the every kilometer you do, then you can be competitive in in any of the tenders you go out. 

00:29:32 Tore Harritshøj 

So it's a, it's a business line of doing it and they. 

00:29:36 Tore Harritshøj 

I think the majority of bus companies, as we talked to in, in this region of Europe, they all know about this, they know this is something they need to do to be competitive for right now and. 

00:29:47 Chris Sass 

What kind of economies of scale does it take for that kind of, you know, I said in the chat to to Neil, you know, the brain damage of doing this, right? So because I can see a business owner saying, OK, you know, if it's. 

00:29:56 Chris Sass 

If it's 2%, yeah, probably not going to risk, you know, having our depot used by someone else. Do we need, like, a 50% uptake? Do we need? Like, what? What kind of magnitude are these these depots looking for to make it worth having people on their property and and and working through the? 

00:30:11 Tore Harritshøj 

They all have the same concern and I would say going into this area as a non mobility business line, I would have the same concern, but how they sort of go through that concern is they if they have and this examine is 100 DCS, OK, say they say that they operating manager says. 

00:30:31 Tore Harritshøj 

I don't dare to do that because I need my bosses to be operational 100% of the. 

00:30:36 Tore Harritshøj 

But OK, you said. Persuade them to. Why don't you just try, but making five of these DC's available for the public for a while and all of a sudden they find out this is no problem at all, because they still have 95% availability and that is the way. So I would say you can just do it stepwise. 

00:30:56 Tore Harritshøj 

But in the end you will for many of these fleet owners with charging, they will have like 50 sixty 70% availability where it's just stands there doing nothing. 

00:31:06 Tore Harritshøj 

And so it's not that you need to have a lot because what we provide or our our peers out there also provide is a system which can be scaled on one or on 100 charges and the cost is also in any of these cases just depending on how many charges you want to deploy. So it's actually deployable from one to many. 

00:31:27 Tore Harritshøj 

But I do agree that these fleet owners need to be persuaded that this is not going to cause any problem to their core operations, which is also their core concern. 

00:31:40 Niall Riddell 

So this this journey is really crucial then, isn't it? Enabling new business models, enabling return on investment and supporting commercial customers with the transition you mentioned trucks, trucks for me is is super interesting because it's it feels like it's an emerging marketplace which hasn't really got under speed yet. 

00:32:00 Niall Riddell 

Do you see trucks being all electric or do you see there being a blend with other technologies in there? I mean, we talked a little bit earlier about different competing non electric technologies for transport is trucks one where we see something different coming to market? 

00:32:16 Tore Harritshøj 

I would say I think trucks are you know it's a separate market, it's see it's even very separate for you can kind of sort of if if you take it towards buses or large vans, trucks is a separate market, it's. 

00:32:34 Tore Harritshøj 

There's of course a short haul and there's long haul and there's all different segments which needs to be served. 

00:32:40 Tore Harritshøj 

As technology improves on the OEM side with sort of trucks being developed and pricing wise, getting to a level where you can actually afford buying a truck not only out of greenwashing purposes but out of commercial reasons. Then I think it will mature. But until now it has been sort of delayed. 

00:33:00 Tore Harritshøj 

Adopter, but it's coming strongly. I do truly believe that this market is going sustainable like any other market, but I also truly believe that there will be different fuels where where immobility with power is one of them. 

00:33:15 Tore Harritshøj 

Biofuels could be another important segment for this and I am not here to say that immobility will be the only winner of this market because I truly believe the density of energy and the and the cost of batteries, it could be different sort of technologies taking different market segments because. 

00:33:35 Tore Harritshøj 

It's simply a different market than just driving an event in the in. 

00:33:39 Chris Sass 

The city. All right, we we've been all over the place. We're pressing up against time in, in, in all of the episodes I like to ask our guests kind of to take out their crystal ball and make a prediction based on what. 

00:33:49 Chris Sass 

We've been talking about. 

00:33:51 Chris Sass 

You mentioned earlier in our conversation that different countries are different. 

00:33:55 Chris Sass 

Points in the journey and they asked similar questions. 

00:33:59 Chris Sass 

So in your crystal ball version being American, I care. 

00:34:02 Chris Sass 

When do you see parity? For what you see today in Denmark to the the North American mark? 

00:34:10 Tore Harritshøj 

I actually think it will come sooner rather than later, and it's like this and I will come back to it just by 1 and analogy on how market developed. I was one of the first one also going to the Norwegian market and for a while it just seemed like nothing happened and all of a sudden it went to. 

00:34:29 Tore Harritshøj 

10% then it went to 25%. Then it went to 50 and all of a sudden it was 89. 

00:34:34 Tore Harritshøj 

The same happened. Translation happened for the rest of Scandinavia just a little later. The same happened for the central part of Europe and they are now adoption rate already at 20 ish at some of the core countries and even going before. I will say they will go to 50 next year because because this is just going to happen and when we come to the US. 

00:34:55 Tore Harritshøj 

It's the same thing. This will happen. They have longer distances, but really it's uh, it is manageable with the new technology being involved. So I will say that the US is. 

00:35:08 Tore Harritshøj 

From a perspective of being in a situation where 50% of cars is immobility, you should not go more than four or five years out in time and maybe even shorter while seeing. 

00:35:18 Chris Sass 

You, you you probably need to talk to the UAW and some of the the, the, the, the plants cause I'm not sure they're on capacity to do that in the next three to four years. 

00:35:26 Niall Riddell 

No. 

00:35:27 Tore Harritshøj 

No, but then you need to deal with the American consumers. I know the Chinese is just trying to put up factories in Mexico to flood the market. But of course, there will be a tendency to protect the market. But there has been no instances where protecting a market has been any good for the industry. 

00:35:47 Tore Harritshøj 

So let's see what's gonna happen. But I agree with you, Chris. There will be other one fighting for this Not to happen. 

00:35:53 Niall Riddell 

This has been a a fabulous little tour around the three waves of immobility and the support that the electric vehicle charging ecosystem can provide to the energy market tour. It's been a real pleasure to have you here. Thank you very much for your time today. 

00:36:08 Tore Harritshøj 

Thank you to. 

00:36:08 Chris Sass 

Both of you and for our audience, we hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you had, please take just a second subscribe like and follow us and we'll see you again next time on the Insider’s Guide to Energy EV Series bye for now.