Good morning, Grid Connections listeners and welcome back to Grid Connections where we explore how clean energy, electric vehicles and the grid all converge.
In this episode, we're joined by Rohan Puri.
He's the CEO of Stable to unpack one of the most critical and overlooked parts of the EV ecosystem, how to make charging profitable and predictable.
From the impact of ride-shared drivers and adaptive pricing to why the best charger locations aren't always intuitive, Rohan shares powerful insights into how stable is
helping networks optimize placement and pricing with data-driven precision.
We also dive into the future of EV charging, including vehicle-to-charger bidding, site intelligence, and the need to make charging as simple and seamless as tapping your phone.
This episode is must listen for anyone deploying, investing in, or even just curious about the economics behind EV charging.
Or if you're just another EV driver who is always wondering how can we make EV charging better, this episode is for you.
But don't forget Grid Connections Consulting is officially live.
We're helping clients from utilities to charging networks, navigate the future of electrified transportation.
Learn more at gridconnections.co.
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All of these and more can be found in today's show notes.
With that, enjoy.
thank you for coming on today, Rohan.
Thank you so much Chase, it's great to be here.
For those who are listening who may not be familiar with what stable auto does, can you just give us kind of like a high level background and maybe how they've interacted with
that and not even realized it.
Absolutely, yeah.
So Stable's mission is to make EV charging a profitable business.
It's always been our mission.
I think it's really resonated in the last couple of years especially.
The way we do it is we provide software that customers use to select strong locations or diligence potential charging locations and to change and adapt their pricing in real time.
So placement and pricing of EV chargers.
We think that's about 80 or 90 % of the way to profitability.
Have good locations that attract a lot of drivers and then
charge the right price at the right time and you'll be well on your way.
so we provide, basically we have software with some uh algorithms and AI that leverages data from thousands and thousands of operating charges across the country to help us
understand what makes good sites good and what makes bad sites bad and help our customers avoid those pitfalls.
And I know that sounds like it should be such a straightforward thing.
And I, it's such a common topic we talk about on the show, but I guess at a high level, let's start with maybe some of the probably top three pitfalls you see, and then maybe
we'll go into some more uh future looking trends.
Yeah.
Well, I think most charging infrastructure has been deployed with, uh, basically wherever is easiest.
It's which means like, where can we get permits?
Where is there enough power?
Um, and then where makes intuitive sense for people, which is like, okay, let's put them in like malls or grocery stores or things like that, that makes sense that match with the
dwell time.
And I think what we've seen with some of the more, the larger like DC fast charging companies, especially is that, know, that, strategy doesn't always work out well.
It turns out the best locations for EV chargers isn't very intuitive.
And the reason that stable exists is because many of those companies have run into that problem themselves where they're seeing, wow, some sites are totally underutilized and
some of the sites they didn't think would be winners are huge winners.
Um, and so what makes a good site is kind of a combination of things.
know, people tend to think like, okay, EV penetration matters a lot and traffic matters a lot.
Of course those matter, but it has to be taken in context.
We have a lot of EVs that are registered near the site that you're looking to deploy at.
Well, it depends how far those vehicles driving every day and where are they coming from?
Are they coming from a home, a single family home or a multi-unit dwelling?
And where are they headed?
Are they headed to a place with lots of infrastructure and office, you know, like that, that has charging there?
So it's not super intuitive to figure out where charges should go.
And that's why we've had to train a machine learning model that can predict what the utilization of a charging station will be.
So we predict, what would the last 12 months of utilization have been if you had deployed at this location.
And then you can use a bunch of algorithms to sort of forecast that out, calculate your energy costs, things like that.
We also expose a lot of really interesting insights around demographics and traffic and utilization rates of sites within your vicinity or within a region.
But the goal is to give them tools to diligence a site that they're about to spend upwards of close to a million dollars a capital for a given charging location.
You're doing some basic diligence to make sure the utilization and the costs and those kinds of things are expected.
So that was a long-winded way to say one is it's not very intuitive.
The second pitfall that we see is that just because a site has high utilization doesn't mean it will make money.
And that depends on your energy costs and things like demand charges.
So it's not enough to just know how many people are going to show up.
You must also know when those people are likely to show up and what the energy costs might be at those windows.
And then I think the third pitfall we see is that there's an over-focus on competition.
where you think you should not deploy where there's competitors and you avoid them at all costs.
uh When in fact, what we observe is that when you, a competitor deploys across the street, one from one of your charging locations, both you and the competitor benefit from better
utilization than you otherwise would have seen.
And it's kind of like the, you know, the dealership effect or the jewelry store effect or the QSR effect, right?
But we've seen this time and time again, it's, you see the whole location becomes more attractive.
Um, so maybe that's the third common pitfall.
I'll add a bonus one.
A fourth one is, you know, we do a lot of work on adaptive pricing of charging stations, about 5,000, almost 5,000 charges today are adaptively and dynamically being priced, um,
with the help of stable.
And that means like per location pricing and by time pricing, um, most customers today, or most people in charging today update their prices once a year or once a quarter.
Just by moving to once a week, you should see double digit impact and net margin.
And if you're doing those price changes, right.
So it's very significant.
And I think people are afraid to change their prices, but, really it's a big driver of demand.
And there are some places where people are sensitive and some people were much less sensitive to price and you need to be able to take advantage of those effects to drive the
right operating margin.
Yeah.
And I think it's really interesting because like, if you look at the EV industry and EV drivers, obviously we have the early adopters.
mean, go back a decade, supercharging and fast chargers really weren't even a thing.
It was level two.
And so we really seen a lot of evolution and changes.
So that has to kind of play into, especially when you're moving forward.
One thing I'm kind of curious that we talk a lot about that's had a huge impact with utilization, especially is ride share drivers.
And I'm kind of curious.
Are you seeing that in the modeling or are there ways you can kind of focus for sites that are probably more rideshare heavy than others?
Yeah, rideshare turns out in some locations, I do think it's been exaggerated a little bit.
It's, know, it's obviously EV adoption and rideshare is still on its way up.
Um, but there are locations where, there've been studies published where they've seen that rideshare driver use has been one of the dominant, if not the most dominant indication of
utilization in some areas.
Those areas tend to be, you know, like places where there have been programs for EVs, like in Colorado and California and things like that.
Um, but the point is the same is that they can be a dominant.
factor, it's, you know, it's harder to optimize for that.
And the reason for it is like you, you, your instincts might be to deploy where ride share drivers are doing a lot of pickups or drop-offs so that there's a dwell time advantage.
But then you also learn that there's a behavioral aspect that most ride share drivers don't want to charge when there's a lot of activity, right?
So they want to charge at their lunch break or when there's a lowland activity and they want to do something while they're charging.
they'll line up to like a restroom or a
some other facility and there are groups out there that are financing or deploying charging infrastructure to serve the rideshare segment.
you know, the amenities matter a lot more.
The other thing when we help customers with their pricing of charging infrastructure is that we notice there's a different sensitivity to price.
It's oftentimes higher sensitivity to price from the rideshare or return driver segment, or sometimes like members and subscribers.
Obviously they're a little more sensitive to that price, but they're also more in touch with price.
m
And so they might be more or less tolerant.
It really depends on price changes going up or down, but they also willing to push their charge to a cheaper time of day, whereas the average consumer is charging when it's most
convenient, not when it's cheapest most of the time.
I mean, my, totally agree with you that it is kind of hard to track these and have like specifics right now.
Cause it is still also just so early.
Um, but speaking from my own anecdotal experience, it does seem like if it's near a large airport, the charger, there's going to be a higher ride share, which.
What's going to end up, what makes sense.
And then the second is speaking exactly to your, um, the pricing I've had a couple of times where all roll into a charger.
And when I get there, maybe I'm on road trip and it's later in the evening.
I might be the only one there.
And then I looked down and it turns 10 PM or something.
And this happened to me once where I thought there was like some sort of car group show.
Like there was just like eight cars, just all the sudden just come out of nowhere.
And it was in this completely dead parking lot and all of them just plugged in.
And I was on the phone talking to my wife and I was like, it's kind of like, wait, what the hell's going on?
And I looked down and obviously it just shows that right at 10, it dropped from like 30 cents a kilowatt hour down to like 12.
And I was like, okay, that, mean,
Whether it's right share drive or not that that is such a big price delta I could see if you're definitely much more price focused that that's going to be when everyone just kind
of shows up to take advantage of it
Yeah, it does.
I think people maybe, I think there's big swings.
Obviously there's big swings in energy cost, right?
The price of your electricity can vary five to 15 X throughout the day, depending on the utility you're in.
uh So it makes sense that the CPOs, the charging networks, would try to match that at the very least.
But I think where I see this going much more broadly is uh I think the vehicle is going to start helping you make this decision for you.
So you're not going to be looking at prices and trying to find the cheapest time and place to charge.
This is an algorithm decision and it's going to be putting out bids to all the charges on route and finding the most convenient and cheapest charger on route and do that
optimization for you.
And maybe there's even bidding happening between the networks and the vehicles.
Sort of make sure everyone gets their, you know, the charge that they need at the best possible rate, at the best possible locations.
And you're trying to do this optimization.
But I think it's especially as the world gets to more self-driving, autonomous, shared, you know, the ACEs kind of things.
Um, we will see that who knows how far away that
future could be, but I think it's pretty obvious.
Your Tesla vehicle kind of already does that, right?
So I think it's an obvious and easy optimization to make.
Yeah, and I'm kind of curious about that because when you look at those kind of differences, obviously, especially in the price segment of it and kind of like what you're
talking about, the bidding, like is this happening?
I'm sure it's probably multi OS, but there's such a big difference between using a charred way or a plug share or a best route planner through CarPlay versus some of these native uh
infotainment OS's.
usually, especially if they're from the legacy.
They're getting better, but there's a pretty big night and day difference with the quality of these recommendations.
So I'm kind of curious.
I'm sure your business is probably going to try to go through all these difference, but are there ones that you're getting more traction with this kind of integration level with?
Yeah, so we don't actually know.
And the reason I say is that we typically work with a charging provider, the network itself.
And that network's responsibility is to make sure the prices are on all the apps and those kinds of things.
So we're just modifying their price, basically, helping them with that recommendation.
So most of this has just been with the charging network uh level.
And then they are the communicative layer between either the apps or the actual infotainment in the car to make these kind of route planning uh suggestions.
That's great.
Looking forward now, mean, kind of looking at some of these trends, like, are there any things really starting, we talk about ride share drivers, but are there anything starting
to really stand out between, as we go from the early adopter to like,
whether it be a multifamily home, uh, EV driver or something, or maybe the charging consistency, especially for like level two, maybe isn't as easy.
And are there things we're starting to see on your side from that for trends or what are kind of the new things standing out to you?
Yeah, you know, it's hard to say if there's sort of any major trends.
think a few things that we are starting to see, but it's very anecdotal.
So I don't have any, you know, great, know, stats to share with you or anything like that.
But, um, I will say that there is with the public markets, like the regulatory market, um, pulling back on grants and subsidies and different funding programs for EV charging
infrastructure, we're seeing more private folks deploy, um, in that space.
We're also seeing the fleet segment focus a lot more on light duty than medium and heavy duty.
think medium, medium duty definitely has the potential.
Heavy duty, of course, has a lot of potential, but we're still waiting for these vehicles to come out in big enough numbers and we're waiting for the customers who are eager to
electrify.
And so on the fleet side, definitely see a light duty focus on the charging infrastructure side.
We're seeing more private sector interest into fund financing infrastructure, which is a sign of maturity.
mean, we, we know this at stable because customers use us to diligence sites all the time, right?
We're like the diligence tool.
for predicting forecasting demand and ROI and IRR and driving up asset value.
uh And so we tend to see that.
And I think the last thing that we're seeing is a willingness to be more collaborative.
I think in the early days of EV charging here in the US, I think networks were a little bit more close with their access.
You could only access it through an app, their app, and it had to be a member or a subscriber or whatever.
But I think the economic pressure is so high about
getting utilization up, getting margins up, that they're now realizing they kind of have to do what we're seeing in Europe, which is just open up access on all the platforms,
especially with the pressure that Tesla has been providing in opening up their network to everybody uh in all the apps.
I you can now see live operating status of chargers on Google Maps, on Apple Maps.
You don't only have to go to specialty EV charging apps or your infotainment system to see that.
That's just, I think it's a good sign of the industry and where it's going.
But I think at the same time, the industry is sort of struggling to come to terms with the fact that one of the top goals I see constantly with these companies is we have to get to
breakeven or profitable as soon as we can.
And that wasn't the goal.
Like three or four years ago, even nobody was worried about that.
They were just trying to get new sites in the ground at an extremely high pace, but now it's different.
It's like fundamentals, economics, which is, know, the hand was forced, but I think it's a good thing overall.
No, that kind of makes sense.
I mean, you're even seeing, um, I think it was even Tesla the other day posted that they don't even do, uh, land lease exclusives.
So like if other charges want to be there and it kind of plays to your point, a little bit of just opening up among many different areas, whether it be in that case, like the actual
physical locations, but to also the backend and the software side of it.
with what you're seeing around kind of those changes when we just,
Our last podcast, had, uh, Lauren McDonald and Bill Farrow of Paranon, and there were kind of time about the changes in Nevi and how you're seeing this change in more private
investment.
And they've kind of had concerns that, well, Nevi part of the probe, it was, was to try and incentivize the places that weren't as necessarily profitable or straightforward to
increase EV, charging accessibility.
And with this change to privatization, are you kind of seeing those changes being implemented or are there ways that.
stable can help for these private investments.
Like, know, this isn't a more rural area, but this is going to be the best place to kind of get that optimization.
I am curious to see what you're seeing around that and how that figures into some of these conversations.
Yeah, you know, I think unfortunately what we are seeing is a refocus strategy where these trading networks are focused a lot more on utilization and profitability.
And the reality is, is that a site in the middle of North Dakota is just not going to do that well.
uh And so I, I do think that's the role of these programs and the tax credits, the incentive programs is to incentivize deploying charging infrastructure in those locations,
but we didn't deploy enough of it fast enough.
And.
new administration, the brakes on it.
And you have to put yourself in the shoes of these charging networks who are, you know, they're feeling the pressure of they're not, they might not make it right there.
They're feeling that like really big strain around like we might not survive.
We might get, you know, delisted or investors might, you know, drop out or we might have to sell ourselves or whatever.
And if you're in that mode, you know, are you really going to deploy charting infrastructure and take a risk on?
utilization when you know that if you deploy in California, Washington, New York, Florida, Virginia, you're going to get a lot better utilization.
Probably not.
So yeah, it's an unfortunate effect, you force the market's hand, right?
But what else are they supposed to, they can't just like take the L.
This is not a nonprofit, right?
They have to at least break even.
One of the encouraging signs though here is that clearly companies like EVgo have been able to show that charging is profitable, is a profitable business.
And then it's possible to do it.
I think that's really, you know, that goes to show like investor risk appetite is definitely low, but it's definitely better to see a real example of it for companies that
have been around for as long as EBGO has to be getting the utilization rates that they're seeing.
So I think it's kind of interesting because you look at, obviously Tesla has been around for a while.
They do kind of have that national coverage.
Electrify America was probably the first more public one to start trying to get that domestic coverage as well.
And yeah, you're right.
You start to see EV go, but it still kind of spotty in areas.
And I guess for me, I live on the West Coast.
I've done a lot of road trips.
And I do find when you look at all these different
fast charging maps.
There does seem to be this really interesting.
It kind of speaks to what you're talking about exactly.
Essentially divide like east of the Missouri river.
There's such higher density.
And of course you start getting to more and more kind of like the traditional East coast and even kind of East Midwest cities that there would be kind of the density to support
that.
And then you go west of that.
I mean, especially like to your town about going through North or South South Dakota or Wyoming.
It is a bit of a charging desert.
It's kind of lot better for sure than even just a couple of years ago, but it's still a bit of a desert.
So I'm kind of curious at least with, um, and I think that does make sense.
I mean, we are kind of getting to this point where we do need to see more competition and the competition has to be in a way that it leads to financially sustainable businesses.
Cause as we've kind of talked on this podcast, I think for a long time, it was like trying to find ways to get money versus now these companies are fully focused on how to make
money.
Um, and some of that has been the market and the changes from, uh, the, public investments.
So are there, I guess I'm kind of curious in the conversations and like when CERN, fast charger groups are thinking about trying to get that East to West coverage.
Are there any other kind of conversations you have around that or anything in the strategy of like how to help implement that to maybe, cause I mean, you have kind of like pilot and
flying J and they, they have their existing base and that's interesting too, because they do already have some of that coverage along the interstates.
And so kind of curious what you're seeing about.
Is it really kind of doubling down with regionalization right now with some of these fast charging?
Or are they kind of seeing those gaps and trying to make it so it is more national coverage?
I think there, I mean, it does seem like it's very regionalization, regionally focused.
uh There are folks that are doing broader strategies around covering gaps or major corridors, highway corridors and things like that, but it's certainly, it's quite, uh it's
less, I should say, than maybe a couple of years ago.
You know, there isn't really, and it's sad to see it, but it's just the reality of situation.
We just can't take as much risk now if they don't know if capital is coming.
And so they're going to focus where they know things are going to work or where they know they'll still do corridors and they'll still take advantage of their prime time real
estate, but they have to do it as a balanced portfolio approach.
and that's what people use, you know, stable to do is to figure out, okay, I'm going to have 80 % of my sites be in this category, 10 % super winners, 10 % might be losers, but
it'll be paid for by the remaining, you know, the winners and the, and the medium ones.
And they sort of take it, you know, just like investing, right?
You can't bet on a certain style.
a class of stock, but you want to hedge, you can, but you have to balance it out.
Yeah, and that totally makes sense.
guess looking to some of the things that other things that stable does kind of help with what can, cause I mean coverage has been one.
The other traditional issue has been reliability.
And I'm kind of curious with how stable with kind of the backend communication platform has maybe allowed providers to kind of help with that reliability and just kind of create
a better in, uh, kind of end experience for the average EV driver.
Yeah.
So we, we don't do as much on the reliability side, at least not directly.
We do help our customers understand when sites are broken, when they might not have seen it.
Um, because, and the reason we do that is because we're helping them with their price adjustments.
And so we, you know, there's, you can use a tool and stable to figure out, you know, what, what is a good price, apply that price across thousands of locations, and then go ahead
and set it and we'll handle the whole flow of doing that.
And then measuring like, what was the response to that price change?
And so if the price doesn't go through or we get like a lot less utilization than we would have expected on that price change, then it typically means the charger might be broken or
there's something else wrong, A road closure, like who knows.
uh So why we don't flag it directly and we don't really do anything about it, uh it is implicitly does show up in our dashboards.
Stable software is designed to be sort of independent of whatever hardware and software you're using.
So if you're using...
you know, charge point or drives or blink or EV connect, you know, it doesn't really matter.
can, we can help you adjust your prices on any platform.
we do have a partnership with EV connect where we have more native controls of things and a broader integration planned for this year.
Um, which gives, you know, EV connect customers access to the same capabilities, even if they're like a smaller site host.
Um, but, the point being is that we're very focused on the like CPO's financial.
oh
stability.
And I think the tricky part about focusing on reliability candidly is, you know, we have a lot of people are focused on reliability.
And I think, of course, it's a huge problem.
Don't get me wrong.
It's not, it's not like it's not a problem worth solving.
It's a huge problem.
Everyone knows it.
Um, but it seems to be an isolated problem in the sense that, um, it it's isolated in time and that naturally over time, charges will get more reliable, even if we don't do
anything.
Right.
Like
The hardware manufacturers are incentivized for their sales to make sure that the charges work better.
And there's some clear hardware winners already.
Like we know Tesla superchargers are better.
know, Alpatronic seems to be doing well.
I don't know what their reliability numbers are, but they, you people tend to choose them for reliability.
So there's already some winners.
And the other problem with solving reliability, and you have to be honest with yourself about your economics and your, company, right?
A company that, you know, we have to make a profit, right?
Um, is that in solving reliability, it's this weird incentive.
If I make fewer and fewer chargers or make more and chargers reliable, I have less people to sell to.
So it's like, I make the market smaller as I try and solve the problem.
And so don't think it's our job.
I think it's better to align it to somebody who is incentivized to make reliable chargers better.
that's the other incentive is born by the manufacturers, people who sell the hardware and the software.
They want reliable so that they have retention and more growth and they're known as the most reliable chargers.
Whereas if I do it, in solving this problem, my market shrinks.
No, I think that's a really good point.
It kind of a interesting dichotomy that is unique to kind of what your team's working on.
And I think I'm kind of curious with the pricing intelligence.
I think that's really cool and such an important thing that kind of highlights the change from going from combustion technology to EV where you do have just the strong software
layer and it's much more in said being reactive proactive when I need to go get a get gas in my car.
I go to probably whatever's closest or what I nearby and maybe I occasionally price shop, but it's just what I think of.
Whereas with the proactive layer of kind of this, especially when you're on longer road trip, it is really interesting to optimize for that.
And I'm kind of curious to get more into that.
One of the things you guys mentioned is just how that helps for a CPO to improve net margins.
And I'm kind of curious, one, just maybe unpack that a little bit.
That makes sense.
And I think a lot of people listening would be interested in that, but two,
What are some of the, I think when we look at current charging experiences, like let's use an EA for example, there's, you go up, you tap your car, that's a price.
Now, if you have a membership, you save a little bit of money and I'm sure that plays into it.
But something that I think would be really interesting that I'm kind of curious if your team is able to kind of help with is so many of the people who really got into electric
vehicles to begin with and still to some extent, I mean, was the environmental aspect.
And.
When we talk about pricing and time, a big part of that too is also where that energy is coming from.
And I'm kind of curious if your company has looked at it like leveraging a premium for either buying clean energy like you can from your utility anyway, paying extra for car, or
just how that kind of works.
And we'd just love to kind of get a little bit more unpacked of how it works today and maybe where you're looking to take that technology.
Yeah, absolutely.
mean, most, most in terms of how it works today.
Yes, it's typically there's a flat fee and then a membership fee.
And then there's some chargers today in a good number.
shouldn't say some that I have time of use fees.
So like in this hour, you know, this window is this price and this one knows this price.
It's not truly dynamic in the sense that it's not changing week over week or season over season.
and what I, what I think we need to see is we need to see variability based on demand, right?
If your site has a ton of lines and queuing, it's a high demand site.
It probably means you should raise your prices.
Of course, no driver wants a higher priced, you know, charging station.
We get it.
But in every other industry, when demand is high, we raise prices.
When demand is low, we lower prices.
It's how we do things.
you, I would rather pay a bit more.
Like it's not, it's a pretty small incremental.
And if that incremental means I don't have to wait in line, that premium is such a larger Delta in value that I'm sold.
100%.
And it's the same thing if your site is nobody's showing up, you know, lower your price.
Like this is an obvious thing to try.
And I think we're a little bit too quick to try things like throwing battery packs on site and solar and all these things was like, wow, that's an expensive solution to the same
problem, which is that your economics aren't very good.
And here are the other ways, much easier.
You just type in a new number and you click save and there you go.
Try that.
And as long as you're really measured about that and you understand what your price impacts are, which is, you know, what stable helps do is that.
run those, that constant experiment of, of pricing.
Um, you'll, you'll, you'll see that, um, that change now in terms of strategies, like other pricing strategies we've seen, or we could implement, haven't looked into anything
related to sort of emissions draw or, you know, climate impact.
But I think one of the things we have that I thought is somewhat interesting and it impacts the driver experience quite a bit is, you know, another thing that CPOs do to help
manage their costs.
Is they do load balancing, right?
So they, throttle your charge at certain times of the day, right?
They like throttle your power behind the scenes, uh, in, preserve their demand charges or to reduce their costs.
And actually what happens there is the driver suffers, right?
You get like a much slower charge because just cause other people are also using it right now.
And that sucks.
It's like an awful experience at the same time.
You understand why the charging networks are doing it.
What if instead you could have variable pricing by speed, meaning
I can pay to have the full 300 kilowatt charge.
I'll pay more.
I'll pay, you know, right now at peak, I'm desperate.
So I'm willing to spend a dollar kilowatt hour for this charge and that speed.
Um, but if I'm willing to charge and be throttled down to 50 kilowatts, I get passed down a discount and it's only cost me, let's say 25 cents a kilowatt hour.
Um, why don't instead of like forcing throttling and balancing on the background, you incentivize it.
So you say, yeah, listen, I will always give you the option to charge a full speed, but I have to charge you a lot right now.
It's very expensive for me.
Um, but if you're willing to charge slower and you're patient and you're willing to sit down for 45 minutes instead of 20 minutes, you know, I can pass on this.
It's up to you.
So give consumers and drivers the choice.
I would like to see more of those types of strategies.
do it in every, again, these are all things we do in every sector.
You go to Disneyland, you pay more to go in the fast lane, right?
It's, it's the same thing.
Right.
And that actually is a really interesting analogy of how to like the fast lane.
don't the vernacular works really well, of course, because we're talking about cars, but I'm trying to think of this like as myself and a lot of these listeners, probably we're
kind of EV nerds.
So like that clicks with us like, yeah, we'll pay the Delta or we'll be cheap, whatever.
How do you message that to someone who's coming from a gas world?
And that does kind of create a weird and possibly a bad experience.
But I do like that kind of clear and simple messaging of like
fat, fast lane charging versus that.
And you do traditionally have kind of like the premium fuel versus regular.
there, there is kind of that mindset, but that I think that is the challenges around the messaging of it and how do you make it?
like someone who just bought this electric vehicle does like, wait, you mean I have to pay now an extra premium to just charge what this car can do.
And yeah.
like you have to pay to do what it can do anyways.
like the default is the slow and the, you know, it's like paying for high speed internet.
You're like, wait, it could always do this.
I just had to call you.
You know, it's the same with, you know, when the Tesla vehicles had that like excess battery that you could tap into if you upgraded.
It's like, wait, the hardware is already here.
And I'm just, it totally makes sense.
think it's like maybe instead of fast lane or, or, you know, whatever, or premium, it's maybe you think of it more as like priority.
We're going to fill you up before we anyone else up.
for sure, for sure.
I totally get it.
And I mean, the way I'm thinking about it from the customer standpoint is if I have to charge at this one location, sure, that kind of makes sense.
And the fast lane premium get it.
And once again, if I'm at work or something and I'm just trying to charge my car, hell yeah, I'm to do like a slower charge and doesn't really inconvenience me.
I'm thinking of it more from like, if I'm going also on a road trip.
It's like, okay, why not?
And because I've kind of seen this happen.
And of course I've even hacked it.
It's like, why am I going to this chart?
I should go to this next one.
And that to me is where you can have that really smart thinking kind of software layer to just say, you're going, you don't really need to stop in the heart of San Francisco.
You're trying to go out to, uh, I don't know, let's say big bear or something anyway, and let's try and get you out of the city anyway.
And this part, this is cheaper and essentially remove some of this, um,
kind of busyness at this one location.
I guess that's why I'm, I know you get it.
It's just trying to figure out like, how do you do this in multiple ways to get that smart?
And it clearly we're working towards that, but it is really cool that that is kind of what your team is thinking about and how to approach it.
Exactly.
And I think that comes out, comes down to, again, I think if you create a bidding system between vehicles and chargers and chargers are just offering prices and vehicles are
offering, you know, driving or offering, you know, batteries essentially, then you naturally create this incentive where the vehicles say, you know, I'm not that desperate
for a charge in San Francisco because I'm going to big bear and I can wait 30 minutes.
So I'm only willing to pay this much.
And if anyone lets me reserve it and do it great.
If not.
I'm going to skip and wait and I'll try again later.
So I think this is an algorithm thing that we've seen in many other domains.
We're just going to see it again.
And one of the other things that I think is really interesting is like, we've talked about this a little bit is like measuring the performance of the site.
And then maybe see a site change where maybe it drops off and like you were saying, maybe it's construction.
I'm kind of curious.
Like one of the conversations we've had a lot too, is when you're going on a road trip, it's like, okay, there's an EV charging on Walmart, whatever during the day, plug in
charge, go some locations.
And I not to use the Walmart as the example, but some locations they're totally fine during the day.
But you roll up kind of at night or later in the night, like, this location is kind of sketchy.
Um, and I, know from my experience, I'm when I'm on like a road trip, I try like 800 to a thousand miles in a day.
I don't really care.
I just want to get the charge and go.
But I know for like my wife and other people, there is definitely that kind of security, um, concern sometimes at some of these locations.
And it goes to what you were talking about earlier where people were just kind of throwing them wherever they could get them.
Does, do you, are you able to kind of pull back, maybe not necessarily that it's the security feeling or the safety feeling.
But like kind of interesting things were saying like, wow, this charging location is packed from 8 a.m.
to 6 p.m.
But then as the sun goes down, you start seeing a drop off and maybe kind of it goes back to what you're talking about.
There's that almost implicit common for that.
There's maybe something.
It's not just the price.
There may be something else that's an issue with this charger.
Yeah, it's not something I have any direct evidence of, but anecdotally we've seen times when we're like, what's happening here?
What is this?
And you can see it in the data.
And it's a little bit unclear unless you're on site and you know that site, what might be the effect.
But there was a customer recently where we suspected they saw a big surge in utilization because of this March Madness.
Some March Madness game was happening and that's the only road in or something.
And we'd seen that.
We're like, that's...
That's the only thing that would explain this big spike, you know, and it's, it's the same, you know, on the, on the flip side, right?
Like what explains it?
Is it broken or something else happening?
You know, I think it's interesting, you know, a lot of our customers don't even have clarity on what is happening at their sites.
Like they know roughly how many kilowatt hours being dispensed, how many sessions per day, but they don't know if there's queuing happening.
They don't know if like how many charges failed unless they really dive into the data and figure out, this, this, this charge is broken all the time.
This one's not.
I think the queuing one is really interesting to me because that is something Tesla does know.
Cause the Tesla, Tesla knows where the cars are and they know if there's a bunch of cars, there's eight cars, but four chargers, they know there's four cars queuing probably in
that lot.
But everyone else doesn't know that they don't have that data advantage.
And so they have to infer it.
And so one of the things we've been to try and help folks think through is how do you infer that queuing is happening?
And one day without putting like a camera or something on site, one way you could do it theoretically is that you could just see if, if charging sessions are happening.
in rapid succession, like somebody charges and then five minutes later, another person charges five minutes later, another person charged.
Clearly there's a line and backup there, but you still don't really know for sure.
So there's a lot of, you know, back to your original question of like, when do you, you know, you see these other effects, there's not that much, unfortunately, that much data on
the sites.
Nobody wants to put cameras on the site and sensors and things like that.
It's weird.
It's creepy.
So we have to infer it from session data and usage and it's not always perfect, but it's, it's Tesla has a big advantage in that respect.
Yeah, that is kind of interesting, especially when you're talking about the automaker charging networks, because you're right.
They know, especially in Tesla's case, maybe like Rivian, where they have their own routing OS.
And so they know we're sending these cars here.
These cars are physically here and these ones are charging.
So it must mean there is a queue.
Do you?
And it's interesting.
also mentioned the fact about like, it seems expensive to put a camera and going back to our earlier conversation around like.
while there's good intention, there's value to it.
It is really expensive to put solar and to put batteries at these locations.
Do you think that there could be a greater Delta in value unlocked by putting a camera or what are some like site uh upgrades that you talk to your CPOs or others about like, you
know, honestly, in seven doing this huge capital expenditure at the site, you know, if you just did this, this, and this, you would unlock so much value, whether it be through
stable or just even like.
Maybe a camera.
I don't know.
just I'm kind of curious around that.
Yeah.
I mean, I would say there's two things that get brought up a lot.
One is internet connectivity is a big problem where, you know, a major network has signed a partnership with, say AT &T and because AT &T gave them a discount, but all their sites
don't have coverage in AT &T territory.
So they're like, oh, well, we made a mistake.
And so now a lot of people are shifting to like signing individual data agreements with Verizon in this location and you know, whatever T-Mobile in this one.
And that, that definitely helps.
The second thing we talk a lot about is just making it easier to pay.
plug and charge, think a lot of people know about and have talked about, but you know, one of Tesla's biggest advantages, you don't have to do anything.
You just plug the thing in and it goes.
And right now there's usually like, there's a card reader and then there's an app and then there's also plug and charge and it's confusing.
Which one do you get different prices with which one?
It's just so confusing.
And you don't have to think about that at all when you're fueling with gasoline.
So it's actually harder to pay for an EV charger, an EV charge than it is to play for gas session.
Um, which is sad to see.
one of the things we always ask them to do is just simplify.
think what we're seeing, to be honest, is this effect of like CPOs really holding onto their differentiation and their brand and saying, like, I want people to use my app and my
experience and my membership and my subscription.
I think the reality, you know, this is just my opinion, but the reality is, that I don't think long-term people really care which network they charge at.
They just want the most convenient location, the best price, just like we think about gas fueling.
And I'm talking about supercharging or fast charging, right?
em That's all you want.
And what that implies is that maybe charging will be a commoditized business, right?
The hardware and the software experience are all roughly the same.
And I think they're resistant to that effect.
But, if you look in Europe already, there's so much more, there's so many more CPOs.
Every CPO has a partnership with like Hubject or
There's even EMSP is like, they don't even have control, full control of their pricing anymore because there are all these apps you can use instead.
I think the sooner networks get comfortable with that idea and make progress towards that, knowing that it probably will come one day, um, the better.
so the networks, think that will be most successful are the most open, the easiest to charge on anything.
Don't need an app.
Don't need a subscription.
They're charging prices and their availability is available on every mapping platform.
Not just if you have their app, right.
It's available anywhere.
And it just maximizes for visibility and clarity versus anything else.
Yeah, I think that talks about like really two things that we discuss a lot here.
One is, I mean, whether we're talking about the electric vehicle space or not, the old kind of entrepreneurial innovation thought is for something to be, for a new technology to
take off, it doesn't have to be just as good.
It has to be better.
And right now gas isn't great, but I can just tap my card.
It works.
And I go on with my life.
And between the apps, I kind of get, I can get an argument for an app or something or the membership.
If it saves me money, cause that is actually something you have with gas, but that's where you really do need to see like the supercharging or the plug and charge experience, which
is put it in, walk away.
Sure.
You have to set up a card once, but I'll give it that.
And even then I've had an experience where I plug it in.
It charged me and then it let it send me a notification saying like, Hey, your card is expired.
We need a new card, which is totally fine.
But the, I kind of think for the experience to be good for a consumer, you kind of have to give the tie to the consumer.
So if there's a failure on that card running or something, no matter whose fault it is, just let them get charged because, uh, recently, um, and this is a network I have, it's
more on the West coast.
I cannot stand in general.
And also they just have terrible hardware.
Uh, recently I tested along the Oregon coast because it wasn't like I needed a charge.
just would have been convenient because we were going into a place anyway.
And even though it was only 50 kilowatt, all of them always have a card reader.
None of the card readers ever work when I try and use them.
And so they always force you to use the app.
And so was like, okay, I'll do that then.
And unfortunately on my iPhone, I've got some setting where if I don't use an app for a long time, it just deletes the app.
So I go to pull it up.
Yeah.
And because of where I was, there was no AT &T cell coverage.
So I couldn't even download the app to do this.
I like, at this point, I'm just going above and beyond any other person would have just been pissed off and walked away.
And it just highlights exactly what you're talking about about just like this terrible experience where at the very least just make the tap and pay function work.
It's got to be at least as good as a gas station.
And we're really getting to that point where, yeah, you can just plug it in and walk away.
That then unlocks a better experience that people will be more comfortable with and want to implement.
Um, so sorry.
Yeah, that's a rant on my side.
no, I mean, it just, I mean, the fact is that you make it easier.
It encourages better adoption.
Okay.
Like if you know that I, if you know that all, you know, whatever this network has, you know, tap and play, you know, Apple pay and you can just do that and it works.
And it's like, yeah, I'd rather just deal with that than have to deal with a card reader and all that nonsense of downloading an app.
I think a really good example of this is, uh know, analogy.
Have you ever written the, the New York city subway system?
Yeah.
Okay.
So, you know, they have this Apple pay Google pay thing now, right?
You can just put your phone down, whatever card you got.
There's no app, right?
There's no app.
You just put your phone on the reader and they've, it just charges you and you go on.
And they even do this thing where like, after you get to, I think it's beyond 12 rides or something, every ride from there on out in a week is free.
So first 12 rides cost you money.
And then after that, it's free for any subsequent ride.
So you're like incentivized to use it more and more after 12, but you don't have to handle it in the app.
There's no app.
It just automatically does that.
stuff in the background for you.
And so you don't have to think about anything.
just kind of, and just the adoption is just crazy, right?
Like even people who coming in from out of town, the fact that they don't have to download an app.
Yeah, they just, it's already there.
Just tap your phone.
And if I use it more than 12 times, it's automatically getting me a discount.
So I might as well try and use it as much as I can.
It increases that adoption.
So I would love to see strategies from networks like that, where it's just literally there's nothing.
You just tap your phone, it works.
And then yeah, you'll get like, there's a, there's no membership you have to sign up for to get a discount.
But if you use this,
our network more than whatever 20 times a month, yeah, we'll automatically start giving you discounts and promotions.
I was in the UK a couple of years ago, the underground had just implemented it and it's a slightly different, but more or less, yeah, you just tap it and it works.
You don't even have to think about it.
And I was just thinking like, as much as I love the New York Metro and it's I'm so happy they've adopted it.
It's such a pain in the butt when you're like in a rush or you're running behind for a meeting and then you go to put your Metro card and then you're like, crap, I'm out.
have to go reload it.
You get in line or the thing's busted.
And so just go into that like level of just.
Making the experience so much more convenient and just working for the users.
So great to see.
Um, I mean, obviously Ron, I think we could keep talking for quite a while, but I realized we're running up on time for you.
Uh, for those listening, are there any other things you'd like to share or just what's the best way for people to, uh, also engage with you and find out about any upcoming things
that stable auto is working on.
Yeah, absolutely.
mean, the best way is to find me on LinkedIn, Rohan Puri.
uh We post regularly like two, three times a week of data and insights about how to make a more profitable charging network.
It's totally free.
You can also check out our website, www.stable.auto.
We actually publish utilization rates of chargers in the United States publicly.
So you can actually access that information for free and get an idea for what usage rates look like in different states and locations today.
uh
You know, our mission, like I said before, is to make EV charging a profitable business.
know, 80 % of that problem is good locations and good prices.
So if, if, if there's anything we can do to help, you know, listeners who are deploying chargers, operating chargers, or even acquiring chargers, we're seeing a lot of that
activity of acquiring assets in the ground, uh, from private sector, you know, please let us know where we've been doing this sort of diligence now for at least five years of, of
work in diligence and charging locations.
and helping just make the money move in this space.
And it needs to, especially with this regulatory market.
Well, Rohan, thank you so much for coming on today.
This is a great conversation.
We'll have to have you on again soon.
And I think just so many of the themes you hit on today were really things that are just so important to the space right now around, especially making it just easier for people to
charge and having that better experience, but then also just kind of opening it up.
And I think just for anyone listening, you are so right.
Like think about it.
If people open up there, just make it easier to charge.
We're at such an early point.
that you could become if you're in a different CPO, you could become the next Tesla supercharger, next really BP or Shell gas station.
If everyone knows, okay, I don't really care about the price.
I just know it works.
They can get in, get out faster.
Those start using your service.
So with that, thanks so much for on and we'll have you on soon.
Thanks so much Chase, appreciate it.
Bye.
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Grid Connections and huge thanks again to Rohan Puri for joining us.
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