Good morning Grid Connections listeners.
Welcome back to Grid Connections, the podcast where we explore all things transportation, clean energy, and our power grid connecting all of these systems together.
Today we find out what's really behind the EV charger downtime that too many of us have been experiencing and how do we more importantly fix it.
In this episode of Grid Connections, we sit down with Kameale Terry, CEO and co-founder of ChargerHelp.
for a powerful look at the real world challenges plaguing EV charging reliability, especially in fleet and public charging infrastructure.
Kameale
unpacks the hidden software interoperability issues that drive 90 % of charger failures, the limitations of OCPP 1.6, and why early EV infrastructure business models
unintentionally left reliability behind.
She also reveals how ChargerHelp is using field service data to proactively solve these problems, delivering performance guarantees for the nation's most complex charging
networks.
You'll hear about how poor contract structures and bundled software costs
broke early charge reliability, why fleets, not public stations, are driving innovation in uptime and service, what standards and accountability the industry urgently needs in 2025,
along with the huge opportunity for parking operators and rideshare platforms to fill reliability gaps.
If you're interested in fleet electrification, EV infrastructure, or the business model shaping our clean transportation future, this episode is a must listen.
Don't forget to share this episode with at least one colleague or friend who's curious about the future of electric vehicle charging.
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform.
It really does help others discover grid connections and help us continue to bring on more guests like you will be listening to today and sign up for our new newsletter using the
link in the show notes to stay ahead of the curve on electric vehicle trends and insights
As a reminder, this week kicks off the Electric Vehicle Charging Summit and Expo in Las Vegas, which I will be at along with many others in the space.
Please reach out to us either on our social media or you can even send me an email at chase at connectingthegrid.com.
Plus our new consultant website just went live, which we'll have much more about in the coming weeks, but you can check that out at Gridconnections.co.
with that.
Enjoy.
Kameale, thank you so much for coming on today.
I've heard a lot about what you and your program is doing, and so really excited to be speaking with you today.
But for anyone that might not be familiar, you can just share a little bit about yourself, how you got involved with the space, and what ChargerHelp is aiming to do.
Sure, well one, thanks for having me.
So I mean, know, at Charger Hope, I tell folks we fix charging stations because they break, it's a thing.
And then the part that's, you know, they say about 30 % of the current infrastructure can be found broken at any given time.
We see about 90 % of those issues being like software interoperability issues.
And so I kind of like cut my teeth in this industry about 10 years ago at a company that was making software for charging stations.
and I was EV driver support.
And so how I was introduced really to the EV charging space was through that driver's experience where oftentimes, you know, it could have been met with confusion or not
clarity.
And, you know, I would be looking at log data and not being able to actually essentially verify what drivers were experiencing in the field.
And so,
Peaked my interest.
come from a household of an entrepreneur that used to build out server rooms here in Los Angeles.
And so it's been really nerdy my entire life.
And so, yeah, that's like, kind of like the foundation of who I am and, and, you know, a little bit about charger help, which I know we're going to get into right now.
That well, that's great.
And that, is kind of like the perfect background, honestly, having that, because that is, I mean, I've been playing around driving, building EVs for over two decades now, which
sounds just crazy to me.
Every time I say it, just even most people think EVs are only a couple of years old, but I go back, you go back like a decade or a little more in that first round of.
They always have these massive touchscreens and all these other kinds of chargers and they looked great when they went in.
And then maybe there were some, wouldn't even last a month.
I know.
And then that screen would be down, unfortunately.
And it's one of those things that, it's still obviously an issue with chargers, making sure they're reliable, but was really a big issue back then.
So I would kind of love to hear since your time about like that experience, like maybe some of those learnings.
And then we can kind of go into like what you saw, what you learned from that and how that was maybe the Genesis for charger help.
Sure, I think the biggest, you know.
I think the biggest learning is around business models, which is very interesting, right?
So you think early on, most of the funding that was being used to deploy infrastructure was coming through utility programs, get a little bit of federal funding, but it was a lot
of like utility and state programs.
And when the utility folks were put in for these programs, one, they would have installation and O &M all on the same line item.
Also, most companies were bundling software fees with hardware.
So you could bundle 10 years, five years of software fees into the cost of the hardware.
And so when, know, and on top of that, wasn't, no one was really making money off of, you know, charging people to use the station.
A lot of folks were deploying the stations for free, you know, and wasn't charging drivers.
And so, sure.
we actually expand on that a little bit?
Because those are like the three things you just said are huge, especially around the O &M.
Can you just give a little detail of why that's so important and what those impacts were for drivers?
absolutely.
I mean, this the biggest reason was that one when there was an issue with the charging station, there wasn't usually any funding left for O right?
Or there was only a parts warranty.
The other piece is that if a site host and this is a person that got this asset for free, if they wanted to stop
the software payments or whatever happened to the software, it didn't matter because everybody was paid for five years of software fees.
So there was a misalignment from the structure of how these agreements were put forth.
And so with that, right, you ended up with drivers, lot of early adopters that, you know, they were the ones that took the brunt of it.
And then on my end, you know, I would talk about like, this driver's having this experience.
lot of people are like, well, no, that's a driver user error.
But I was always just so curious to just like, man, like there's something, there's something up here.
So I think like that is kind of like the, that was the biggest problem.
It's like, it was the business model.
It was how funding was put forth.
It was also the structure of these contracts that was not in alignment with reliability.
And then on top of that, this is an early market with a, you know, early adopters.
So all of that compounded on itself to not create the bet it the best.
right, consumer experience because it was not aligned with the consumer, right?
It wasn't aligned with the consumer.
No, thank you.
That's, that's, that's a great kind of breakdown of that.
Um, but yeah, if you can kind of keep just going from there and then jumping into the charge rail.
Yeah, sure.
and so that's why, you know, that's why the problem existed.
And so for me, being at my prior, that prior company, I did a lot of deployment, got super interested in what we call open charge plane protocol.
It's open standard.
Um, was actually created by the open charge Alliance out of Europe.
Interestingly enough though, in the U S there were companies that had already deployed software before OCP even existed.
And so some of the things that we started to see in regards to like interoperability issues, software issues more, more than likely was due to the fact that people tried to,
you know, bandaid a protocol on top of a proprietary protocol.
And so you kind of just keep building on top of things that, you know,
break or aren't working well.
And so that's why today when we talk about 30 % of the infrastructure being inoperable or when we talk about the software saying that it's available when it's actually not usable,
a lot of it goes back into the architecture of the software, right?
And then also the implementation of the open charge point protocol.
So nonetheless, at Charger Health, you what I was really interested in is that we used to get so much information from field service technicians, but no one ever...
wrote it down, right?
Like people would text you information back or email you information back.
But you think about, sometimes nobody had been to this site before, but you have this human in front of a site, you know, testing a car, they're seeing the behavior of the car,
the behavior of the station.
And then you're tracking that against your log data set.
And sometimes these things didn't align up.
And so was so fascinating to me.
So in 2020, I essentially kind of stood up a field service organization.
And so, you know, every time a software provider couldn't figure something out, they would dispatch my technicians.
But what we did is we created a field service app.
And so I was just downloading all of the just stuff that we understood and discovered.
We had structured texts, know, free form texts.
So much so that last year we had 19 million unique data points from just troubleshooting software issues.
in the field.
And so at Charger, we utilize that data set, you know, to essentially offer, we're moving into performance guarantees.
So I can look at a software hardware and I can tell you a breakage rate off of it more than likely.
And I can also price, give you a fixed fee, three years, including labor.
And then, you know, we're starting to move into this place where I actually have teeth against that product.
And I say, if I don't hit this performance, you can, you know, you can bill me, right?
So yeah, that's one.
is so fascinating because I think especially from the consumer side or like the EV driver side, we always talk about the software in the vehicle.
Why isn't this working?
like you only kind of see if you actually get to a site to charge, especially if it's level two, I mean, you just take it out and plug it in, right?
Maybe there's like a QR code side of it.
Maybe you start getting into all the kind of the funkiness with having to have an app for level two.
But especially once you start to get like DC fast charging, there will be these touch screens and all this stuff.
And that unto itself is its own kind of like, as you're talking about, like, it seems like it can be easy to blame the user for the error versus the actual hardware design and
implementation of how the software plays into it.
But what most of you drivers, so they might go in and I'll just throw one out there.
You go out there, you plug in, it shows that it's derated.
Well, as an EV driver, that's a terrible experience and you don't really know why.
But when you have so much of this data on the back, mean, that's why I so excited to talk to you.
It's like finding out this other side of it and the area where these improvements can be made.
And at the end of the day, the driver doesn't really care why it's derated.
They don't need to know.
They just want it to work.
And I think a service with what you guys are providing is so crucial to kind of put in that serious link to really remove that friction.
Yeah.
And I'm kind of curious like with what your team works on like what are Okay, I've got like a thousand questions But I'm kind of curious of like the breakdown what you see
between like level two If there's any unique things you see between like level two charger breakdown rates and issues versus like DC fast charge
Yeah, I would say,
One, you know, a lot of the level twos today are modular units, right?
So a lot of folks are kind of like, if it stops working, they swap it and put another one in there.
But, you know, but, that's more of a, I think we've seen more modular units probably in the last four years, but there's a lot of level twos that are deployed that are not
modular, right?
That you do have to go in and change out specific components and that modems and all of that, right?
So there is a level of complexity there.
And then other thing is whether it's a level two or a DC fast charger, it's all operating on OCPP, right?
So open charge point protocol.
And a lot of the infrastructure that's deployed today is on OCPP 1.6J, or I've even seen some stuff on 1.5.
And so you still find the issues.
I think that the difference between the level 2s and the DC fast chargers ends up coming to be the complexity of the components.
So DC fast chargers typically have way more components.
And once again, we're getting more DC fast chargers today that are also modular, but you still have a whole suite of things out there in the field.
that are not modular.
You know, there was one DC fast charger provider where there was about 15 screws of going around the top of the station.
And I have to have a tech out there to come apart all those things.
And then the inside unit of all those parts are so compacted and you think you're switching on one thing and then that's not the thing.
So there is definitely a desire to design improvement, which I think we're starting to see, but the other stuff still exists.
But what I wanted to tell you too, is like,
Interestingly enough, know, public stuff is interesting.
And of course it's frustrating for the EV driver, but most of my customers are fleet operators.
And so you have these people where, you know, they're investing in electric vehicles because they're banking on, you know, this reduction in the total cost of ownership from a
gas petroleum vehicle, but then come to find out they can't roll their truck or whatever have you, because they have a software interoperability issue.
And then you couple load management software on top of that.
It gets real funky, real fast.
And so.
That's really where, you know, I think that's really where we've sat more.
Cause I tried to do so much stuff with the public charging, but nobody wants to pay, right?
There's no funding for it.
And usually a site host would just rip out the station before they would try to put a warranty on it.
That, it pains me to hear that, that is unfortunately the world we still live in is so true.
yeah, you just brought a lot more, really interesting things to cover, but I guess kind of just to follow up on that, like, let's say if someone's listening and they want to be a
site host or w what if, cause I want to get into the fleet stuff, but what if they are looking to have a charger spiral?
Like what, what are recommendations you have for those kinds of people to make sure to avoid?
Or to best guarantee the most successful and like longest, best chance for these level two chargers or even a DC fast charger to go in if they're like a business or something.
Absolutely.
I mean, the first thing, we have, we, last year I put out a, a report called the EV charging reliability report.
So I anonymize all my data, all my data against the recommendation of my investors, but I did it.
So I would actually start with that report just so you could get an understanding what has been the lay of the land, because that will allow you to ask the right questions when
you're chatting with software providers and hardware providers.
Right.
So that's one.
The other piece that I would make sure that you really understand is your master's service agreement and what type of warranty you're actually getting.
So oftentimes with a lot of the programs, they'll give you parts warranty, right?
But we see that so much of the issues is not necessarily directly related to parts, it's more software comms issue.
So I would really ask that software provider, whoever is the reseller, whoever you're buying the infrastructure from.
You know, how do you deal when there's a software problem?
Do you software provider have a service level agreement with the hardware provider?
Cause what a lot of folks may not know is that most of this infrastructure is not vertically integrated, right?
The person you're buying the station from could by chance not make the software that your customers are interacting with or even the hardware.
And recently, recently I've actually found out that there's hardware people out there that don't make their own firmware.
So you have like
three lines of people that technically have to like properly work together in order to ensure reliability.
So I would just get very clear on that.
And then the last piece is really having, I've been telling like industry and folks too, like I think we need teeth.
Like, okay, you're going to promise me 97 % of time if you don't hit it, then what?
Put some penalties in those master service agreements because you're putting up capital in order to deploy this infrastructure and folks need to start, you
acting accordingly and really putting the consumer first.
No, that's great.
And I think that, that's, I think that's a great way to look at it.
Cause I've seen this, not just in the electric vehicle space.
There's a truth to this also like in, solar where people are just so excited to have the technology.
They're just like, okay, whatever.
They just want it in.
And then you kind of run into these unfortunate, like long-term kind of long tail problems that could have been solved upfront with like a strong MSA to make sure you have not only
the technology one, but it.
insurers that I'll be successful for a long time.
So let's, let's kind of flip over to the fleet side of stuff and the TCO around that.
So what, let's say I'm a fleet operator and I'm coming to you, Kameale, and I'm just like, okay, I'm going to do it.
I have a mandate from my boss or whatever, whether the person's bought in or not.
need to flip over to EVs.
I guess maybe one part would be just, I think probably most of our listeners know already, but maybe we should just start with,
the advantages of going to an electrified fleet and then kind of step into like what that ideal process looks like to implement.
diversification of like energy sources is very hopeful.
I look, I mean, that I don't think we're ever gonna get to a day where everything is easy.
And I don't think we have to write.
But I do think like right there, need more advancement in petroleum, like we can't continue to operate petroleum that we are today with the level of emissions and
efficiencies there, like, we're gonna die from pollution.
So there has to be a I think that we have to start looking at a balance.
So I think like that's one.
Right?
Like whether you believe in climate change or whatever, it's very clear that this type of, you know, this type of energy source causes emissions.
So why not find one that doesn't?
Right?
And you can balance it out.
So I think that that's one thing.
I think the other piece too, is that we find time and time again, that electric vehicles are just a superior experience, point blank period, you know, like from
whether it is the technology that you're able to integrate in now into this like vehicle, whether it is switching over to autonomous, you know, at some point and just overall total
cost of ownership.
It's just a better experience, especially as battery, you know, pricing and things like that come down and make cheaper.
So that's my, you know, that's that.
No, totally.
I think like, there's even like a dark side to it where I'm just like, even if you don't want to believe about the climate change or the environmental thing, let's say hell, they
even polluted more for some reason.
The total cost of ownership and the financials of it are so hard to ignore that it does.
And I agree with you.
I think there's probably some extreme cases where some things may still be like even natural run on natural gas or something.
But yeah, that TCO just is so
hard to ignore that it just seems like long-term.
And I think that's where we're seeing just the largest and most consistent adoption is around fleet operators.
But let's get into that part now and like talk about what that ideal implementation looks like.
And maybe someone who's trying to do a fleet change or what they really need to be thinking about.
Absolutely.
Yeah, look, there's so many companies out there now that's hoping on the fleet side.
So usually when we come in is that you've already deployed, you have a whole bunch of different hardware manufacturers.
It's very chaotic.
We're your friends, right?
If not, if you're looking to start, you know, there's people like Volterra, there's people like Electraera, Terrawatt, you know, they have different solutions, you know, for fleets
and they'll manage the whole thing for you.
So I advocate for either, you know, either or.
My customer is typically the one that, know, they don't want a Volterra, Terrawatt, whatever, right?
They want to have somebody that's managing an all-site, whatever, you know, but they still need a single plane, a glass.
And so that we would be your people where we would say,
You have multiple hardware providers, multiple software providers.
You have a load management system.
You don't have to operate in all of those different systems.
We'll give you a single plane of gas.
And then we're also offering this performance guarantee.
So that's where we would come in.
But I think it is important for people to know there are these alternatives out there where there's like charging as a service or fleet as a service where they'll just bring
the whole thing in, which I think is helpful.
It's a helpful solution.
We have to have multiple solutions in this industry.
And we can't think that just one thing is gonna rule all things, you know?
Like people should have choice.
For sure.
And I think that's a great call out because there are some industries that a capex versus op ex have different kinds of business models in that place into their balancing the own
way.
So I think that's a great call out.
Having these different models is beneficial to get to the same end goal.
With would you say kind of the ideal like it sounds like from what you're saying versus like a large company going to one of those companies you mentioned.
Versus like charger help.
you seeing like majority of the businesses and fleets you're kind of working with are kind of like smaller to medium.
And so you're a good service that they can kind of, since they don't maybe have the ability or they don't want to have all of this internally, they might have like one
maintenance or some sort of like fleet person.
And then you're kind of the level of having that glass, having that visibility into it to kind of help support them and give them the tools and knowledge they need to execute and
make the decisions.
Or for those listening, how would you think, how should they think of how charger help kind of fits into their day to day at these fleets?
Yeah, so we've seen more like medium and larger businesses where they don't want to put all their eggs in one basket, right?
And so yeah, they put out an RFP for multiple hard, you know, I don't know if we have any customers, small fleets, but I'll take them.
But not today, huh?
Yeah.
I know you had a right, a wide range and I didn't mean it like that was, but it sounds, it's an interesting model to what you're talking about where it's like, maybe they're
starting at a pilot program level or something.
It doesn't, do you see many of they're just like, we're going all in.
It seems like they're probably going to phase it in at least.
Well, so I mean, like for our customer base, they're usually folks that went all in early.
And now it's pain, right?
So we have one customer where they have 110 charging stations, DC fast charger charging stations and about a crazy amount of buses, because they move workers around about three
different very large campuses in Sunnyvale.
And so, but they had...
three different hardware manufacturers, like two different software providers, and then on top of that, a load management system on top of all of it.
And they were getting over a hundred alerts a day from all those different platforms and nothing really talked with it.
It was, was chaos.
so, yeah.
not, not to cut you off.
That's super fascinating because sometimes I find the more fascinating case studies are sometimes the ones that are not going well or are like the, the, absolutely wrong way.
And then how do you kind of untangle that to kind of like fix it?
So, I don't know if that's the count one example, but could you kind of share a little bit about that?
If like, this is, for those listening, like this is what you really shouldn't do.
Yeah.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, I mean, I think the problem here is like a lot of folks just didn't think the stations will break.
So I think you had a lot of and then when folks are selling you stuff, you know, they're not really selling like, there's a lot of things we're trying, we're trying, industry is
trying.
We're doing the best we can.
But I mean, if you end up in this spot where it's just like, you know, this level of chaos.
we could come in, can plug into all of those systems, bring it into one place and then get filter all of that, right?
So, but I think it is hard to, I don't know how beneficial it is to have so many different hardware folks and so many different software.
And I know a lot of companies go that route because like, they're like, well, if we go with one and it fails, then, you we're in trouble.
But then it's kind of like, okay, but if you go with three and they all fail, what do you do?
I mean, have you seen that where all three fail?
And what caused them to fail?
Was it different reasons or was it the inability to communicate together?
All the above.
yes, I mean, it was definitely different reasons because every hardware operates a little different.
We don't have a ton of standardization in regards to even like the physical units of the hardware, right?
Which is something that I've been really trying to work on with industry.
It's like, how do we standardize even the components or when you source components post-warranty?
Because that's something that has not been standardized in our industry.
so that's one thing.
The other thing is, is that sometimes they fail to connect and talk with one another, because especially if you're doing load management, you're managing the load of all of
those assets, no matter the hardware.
And the idea of OCPP is that it is an open standard, right?
And protocol that you should be able to.
But I think because we're still a little early in the industry, you're seeing that that doesn't really exist yet.
But the industry is improving.
guess that's the other thing I just want to say is like, everything doesn't suck, right?
But in order for us to get to a place of like high impact and to really allow these fleet operators to take advantage of total TCO reduction, because you save money on the total
cost until you have to roll a truck 1500 times because the station doesn't work.
Well, we have, know, we have, it's not horrible.
And I know that the industry is doing its best to try to get it together.
Um, but we, we, we do, we do have problems.
We do have problems that we need to fix with, you know, all industries.
and I think what's really fascinating to add to that is also the EVs themselves.
Cause you're talking about like in 2017, 2018, well back then the only options would have been pretty much sedans.
And now we've got vans and now we've actually got trucks and now semis are becoming a thing.
So it's really interesting to think about how, especially if you have a system that's five to six years old, lot of this alone with the software side hadn't been designed or set up.
potentially to be covering such a wide range of vehicles.
No, not at all.
And we're starting to see that now some manufacturers are going all the way to like actually rip out old stations and put in new ones just because there's so many different
types of vehicles out there now and the stations, you know, there's software on the stations wasn't made for it, you know, so we're like, I always tell people the good thing
to look at is like the transition between the horse and buggy and cars and automobiles.
And there's like this time period where you have both on the roads.
There's all these pictures.
I think Henry Ford Museum has it where it's like,
people literally typing their car through like horse manure.
so we're kind of there.
Like that's where we're at right now.
We're like driving our electric vehicle charging stations through horse manure and we're gonna figure it out.
that's something I like to remind people.
like, it is kind of crazy to think about where that is such a, um, I was going to say beautiful, but maybe not beautiful analogy, but, um, accurate analogy.
Cause if you look at all these transformations of disruptive technologies, especially for transportation, takes decades.
And even then the fact that we can talk about how much this industry has already changed between like 2018, 2019 and now shows that it's going to take a while, but it's happening
at a very impressive rate.
absolutely.
Yeah.
And I think the part that I've been like so proud to see is like the car OEMs and US based car OEMs commitment to building beautiful products.
Right?
Like I chatted with the guy the other day, he was like talking about how like he hated electric vehicles and he just thought it was so annoying.
And so but he like works at this car company.
So he's like, I went and like got an electric vehicle.
He's like, I've had it for two weeks.
And it's the greatest experience.
I was like,
Yeah.
like at the end of the day, people like a great experience.
If you remove the politics, if you remove the noise, a lot of these electric vehicles are just like delightful experiences.
Well, no, and I, hundred percent agree with you and it's such a weird time and I really don't want to go on a political side of it, but I feel like a lot of early EV adopters
like, know, this is all about is like butts in seats.
We gotta get butts in seats.
And I think that still remain, but a lot of people start thinking, well, now the vehicles are sold.
can be figured out.
The dealerships will figure this out.
And this will be like the one political thing I'll say is like, now you have like Sean Hannity who just bought a test and he's telling all these people who's been telling for
like decades.
how terrible EVs are like, this thing's really fat.
It's like, he's saying all the things we've known and I'm more and more convinced.
It's like, yeah, you just need butts in seats.
just, it doesn't matter how like the only way that my perception changes, especially in any sort of left or right echo chamber, just get a butt in a seat and then they're going
to be the biggest advocates for just exactly that.
Just like, this thing's awesome.
which is, mean, goes back to all this stuff with consumer choice.
Fine.
Let the consumer choose.
And when they do, like a better experience and Americans love spending money.
That's one thing we are really good at.
So.
That is unfortunately true.
But no, totally.
But yeah, I guess let's take a little bit step back and go to, I guess that example you were talking about where like, okay, all these these three different systems weren't
working.
And then how did you guys kind of come in and like, what was the recommendation to clean and fix all that up?
Yeah, so one of the things that was really interesting to us was that there wasn't really anyone on site to watch the behavior of the stations as they were pushing off these
alerts.
And so we found that about maybe, I want to say at least 60 % of the alerts actually did not have any issues with deploying electricity.
And so what we ended up finding out was that like the integrations were off.
And so technically what was happening is that every time for a subset of those alerts,
It was misfiring that there was a problem, but it was actually that the charge was just complete.
And so it's just stuff like that.
But then you learn the system, but it's just because it's an integration.
And you think about these people are integrating with so many different hardware, so many different softwares.
And maybe you threw a firmware update for whatever reason, maybe fat fingers that threw something off, but it becomes so confusing if you're only listening to what is coming off
of the station and you don't have human eyes there.
So for us, we usually do about three months of having a technician that is going out every time, every time and validating the actual visibility, the behavior, collecting a data.
And we're getting, we have a proxy service so we can get the data from the station in real time, but we are mirroring it against what is actually happening.
What are the actual behaviors against what is the log data stating?
Most of the time what we'll do is we'll end up finding a pattern of when things are misbehaving.
And then we can validate, is this a true issue or not?
If it's not, now that pattern will no longer be recognized as an issue because we know it's not an issue, right?
Or yes, this is a true issue.
Let's figure out how to solve it.
And then now you have a pattern like, okay, every time I see this pattern, this is the solution.
And so we pull that into our backend system.
And so the next time what ends up happening, we don't have to roll trucks anymore.
because you've been able to essentially add a bigger viewpoint to the data set that's coming off of that station.
So yeah, so with them, we were with them for, know, spent a lot of capital the first three months of having a human on site.
But since then, that site is up 98%, and that's 100 or something stations with buses.
It's very impressive.
And it's not that the stations don't break anymore, right?
But it's more things that we can do over the air and solve.
than having to roll a truck out.
But I think that that's how, you know, if you bring software into the built environment that has multiple different, like, software connections, we have to figure out a way to
consistently learn.
that like if you start the more variables you put into it, you're inherently going to just have more issues.
I guess you mentioned it.
So I'm curious, like, with that implementation, cause it is a buses, are they doing like a vehicle to grid thing at all?
Or is that kind of, that's a little too early for that or.
I don't think they're doing anything with, don't, I'm not, look, I, cause, I don't even know if that utility is doing or anything like that yet.
I mean, it's so many buses, which I'm just like.
There's potential for it at least someday.
So, that that's, that's really cool.
So when you go through, in that example, you're, you're making these changes.
You're seeing the updates.
One of the things we kind of talk about in the more general automotive space is like software defined vehicles and making that difference and how electric vehicles are kind of
naturally just easier for that transformation.
And when it comes to fleets, you kind of have the conversation about like.
with this level of software in the vehicles themselves and now obviously the chargers, you're going from what traditionally was more reactive maintenance and that kind of stuff
to being more proactive.
And that's kind like the crawl walk run when you do these fleet electrification.
So I'm kind of curious what you could share to give that perspective to our listeners as like, okay, a lot of like traditional fleet operators are doing like, okay, we have to do,
they're used to more the reactive set.
And now with electrification, what does a proactive with especially the software layer unlock for a fleet?
I mean, at least from like a preventative maintenance perspective, it's really, it's a couple of things that are really cool.
Like one, because a lot of stuff is starting to have sensors.
And so you can really start knowing what your maintenance cost is going to be for the year.
And like, what's kind of like, they kind of like a whisper before it breaks, right?
So you can study things enough to know like, okay, I'm going to have to, you know, swap this thing out at this time period.
And there's some things that we've gotten really, really good at.
So I think like,
That's like really helpful.
And then the other part, the same thing too, in regards to like behavioral issues, you can start picking up like, oh, I think there's something going on with the station.
Most of the time it's like post a firmware update.
You can get a little, you know, a little bit preventative there, but I think there's more data to be collected from the field.
But I think that the sensors and even OCPP 2.0 is gonna be very helpful to that, where you have these assets that are connected to a computer and you can learn so much from them and
plan better.
I think that's the other part about that being proactive is being able to plan your cost.
Right.
I think that's a great call up because like that is what it's unlocking is like, like you're saying, well, if you know, there's this upcoming maintenance.
Now you can bring that system down proactively work on it versus like it's supposed to be doing its thing.
And now it's actually, bringing down more resources or at least not allowing them to do what they need to do during the work time.
And that has the additional cost overruns and unexpected costs associated with that.
So I think that into itself is a pretty cool.
layer and one of the things that I try to talk to you with a lot of fleets like this is like, know it's probably going to be some short term pain, but this is the end goal.
And this is actually a pretty realistic end goal.
And, and I think, I don't want to like poo poo on vehicle to grid and stuff, but I think sometimes people get like really, they sell the vision of like, you can have all this
stuff.
And I think that's really cool, but that's such a far advanced thing.
And there's so many of these like lower, more immediate wins that you can unlock with fleet electrification to really focus on.
that are pretty easy to accomplish.
I think is really what a lot of people are interested in.
I want to go back to a couple of things you said though, just around the industry and things that could be improved.
So one was like standard.
So I'd love to hear what you kind of think about that, but just in general, what, are some of the things, especially maybe I'm more on the charger hardware side that you would like
to kind of just see become more, common or like.
Be more universal and then maybe we can get into the standard specifically.
Yeah, mean, look, at the end, I'm tread lightly here because I understand everybody's running their own business.
And a lot of these guys that run these companies, I know them, they're good friends of mine.
But the thing that I wonder, like, do we ever get to a place where there's just like a, you know, a standard store that we can get like parts from.
And today, like I was saying earlier, it gets so frustrating with DC fast charges, we're like,
We have some of our customers that have four or five different DC fast chargers that are out of warranty, out of parts warranty.
And these units are so expensive.
So are we supposed to swap all of them out?
But there's nowhere you can go to get like a transmission or a brake pad, right?
Like these things do not exist in the EV charging space.
And I wonder, the question to the industry is like, can we scale like that?
Right?
And help me to understand how we scale like that, because if you show me the way, I will be bought in.
But my thought is that we can't.
And so with that, you know, what are we going to do right now in regards to the components, the hardware components in order to allow for scalability, right?
And then that opens up a whole business opportunity.
Then who sells those, you know, aftermarket components?
That's one.
The other part is certification.
Like today, you know, I spend so much, I have, you know, have 17 W2 technicians and then we
partner with OWL and SPACCO, and we have to pay to get their technicians and our technicians certified on every different hardware.
You know, like how is that scalable, right?
Like every time you do something new to the hardware, I'm paying a fee for every different hardware.
I just ask again, like, you think it's scalable, then explain to me how, right?
But I don't think it is.
So.
Those things.
then the last piece, we've seen this a lot with OCPP 1.6 right now with, know, shell recharge and now it's like their disinvestment in some areas.
had NLX fail the other day or get bought or whatever have you.
And you can't actually switch things over the air, right?
Like it's very hard.
It is not easy, right?
Because of either the implementation of OCPP or because the hardware provider won't allow you to do it on your own, whatever it is, like.
how do we wanna approach this as an industry?
Or if you think that the way that we're doing it is fine, explain to me how.
Like, all of these people.
Yeah, right.
I mean, just like, so those are kinda like the things that have been really, really big to me because here, like at Charge Your Hope, we sit at the end of this essentially
connection of rivers.
And so all the junk, you know, ends up on us and other companies like us.
And so I'm saying like, okay, let me take this junk and help you to understand because it doesn't, I don't think it has to be like this.
And I think the reason why this is important is it's the customers that feel the pain.
It's not charger.
It's the customers that's annoyed.
They're annoyed with me and they're annoyed with you too.
So like, how do we, how do we fix this?
Yeah.
it's just those kinds of things.
I mean, I think NLX that example is a great point where it's just like, kind of takes the industry a step back because then there's all these negative headlines about it.
And it just creates a really bad experience for those who have made that investment.
but that's really interesting about the parts too, because I think you're totally right that it's not like you can go to a plant electric and just get a spare CCS handle or
something to just like swap it in like that.
And that's really what it needs to get to.
Yeah, or a, I'm talking about like those core components and stuff that breaks like all the time.
true.
Yeah, the actual you're right.
The actual things that break but no totally and I think I want to get a little bit more still into standards, but I mean, who are the industry groups or are there any that you're
seeing as like maybe you charger help and the other manufacturers really need to kind of work with or get together to kind of help push this to be these kind of more
interchangeable ways to go about building.
or figuring out how this supply chain builds to meet those issues.
No, I think we really need one.
We had one with the ChargxX Consortium that was put on by the joint office.
I know that they, John Smart, I believe ran that.
And I know they did some incredible things there.
They came up.
So one of the biggest issues in our industry, first was that we didn't have standardization around error codes.
In OCPB, there was only like 10 required error codes.
The others were optional.
But then the industry got together and they came up with additional air calls.
They produced a white paper, but they didn't produce the white paper, but no one agreed that they were going to implement what was in the white paper.
So we don't really have it.
I I sit on the board with the Alliance for Transportation Electrification and that's led by Phil Jones.
And I think ATE could be that, right?
And I've been chatting a lot with the Open Charge Alliance if they could be that.
But what would be really cool if we had a private entity that was a
Funding was put together by the private entities, right?
That did something that the Charge X Consortium did, which was bringing industry together to actually underneath the technical house to solve real problems.
I think the next step would be is like, yeah, white paper is great, but like if the industry is all contributing to this one organization and they put in the capital, could
they then say, all right, we're all the green, we're all implementing this by X state?
I feel like that's what we're missing here.
Yeah.
And the wifi association did stuff like that for themselves.
know computing is that it's like, isn't, I know that it's just our timing.
The timing is now.
And so it's just like finding CEOs that are that feel the conviction that they believe that, you know, rising tides lift all boats, you know, and that we shouldn't compete on
reliability.
We shouldn't compete on so many things that we're competing on.
We should be competing on cool stuff like vehicle to grid and like, I don't know, doing cool stuff with software, not
that my station works 100 % of the time.
Like I paid you.
It's shit.
yeah.
These are kind of assumed.
Right.
No, I really appreciate that.
And I, I agree with you.
It's, and it goes to your point.
We're definitely still in the Model T driving through manure days, unfortunately, but it's changing quickly.
Yeah, no, I think we have to figure it out this year.
There's no way we can go into next year with the problems of today.
It's just Yeah.
With, I guess, following up on that, are there any other kind of standards you'd like to see that kind of go around this?
Yeah.
I mean, I think I've really been pushing the open charge Alliance.
know that there's like self certification and like, I know they have tools and stuff, but I just think that we probably need to be a little bit more stringent or even figure out
what are we going to do about 1.6?
Because most RFPs, right?
They say that you have to be 2.0 capable.
There's no requirement of 2.0.
Nobody's forcing people to go to 2.0, but we're feeling pains of 1.6 right now.
And so we're feeling pains of 1.6 right now.
how do we solve that?
Like what is the mechanism?
can't, cause I keep, cause people would just be like, they just need to switch to 2.0.
And I'm just like, the they just in the word of just, it's not happening.
Yeah.
So like how, yeah.
So it's not happening.
So what do we do with what we have right now?
And that's the part that I would love more thought leadership on is like, or are we going to force everyone to go to 2.0?
People have already paid for these stations.
Some of the stations you would have to swap out, you know, in order to go to 2.0.
like,
how do we solve the problem that we have right now understanding that yes, 2.0 is supposed to be better, which I don't, you I'm a believer of many things.
I could believe, but it's just like, we're in 1.6 right now.
reality is, yeah, I guess, it is really fascinating this conversation because these are all things you've seen in other industries, especially like the tech realm where it's like
the API one versus API two.
And you just, at some point you have to kind of like make it uncomfortable people and push them to go to that version too.
but going, I guess for just in case anyone's listening and they're not, familiar with obviously the 1.6 versus two, I think we have normally a techie listener group.
but they may not know this tech.
if there's just at a high level, like some of the things as to what the issue is one with 1.6 and then what you're so excited with 2.0 is.
Sure.
And then I guess it levels it, you know, open charge frame protocol.
It's just, it's a messaging, it's a messaging protocol, right?
And so it helps it's communication protocol.
And so how I've heard it best explained, and I don't know who to give credit to this, but I've heard it a lot is that the implementation of 1.6 is kind of like when people say hi
in different parts of the world and parts of the United States.
So like I say, I'm saying hi.
hi versus yeah.
might say howdy, you know, this person might say, what's up?
This person might say, what's going on?
Even though like technically we are all giving a greeting of how all of us do it.
We're not in our industry in 1.6 at least.
No one said that, no, you can't say howdy.
You can't say what's up.
You got to say hi.
and so that's what we've seen that, that, even though there is a protocol and like a standard per se.
There's not specification.
There's different dialects.
And when we find these problems, you know, stuff failing, it becomes a needle in the haystack because it's like, technically you are doing a greeting, but the way that you did
that greeting for whatever reason, person over here don't understand it.
Right.
Yes.
So apparently OCPP 2.0
This all goes away in this, you know, everything in sunshine, green flowers, but I have not found in this.
keep telling people I was on a podcast yesterday.
I was like, look, if you have a 2.0 station that's deployed out there right now, let me know.
will personally go because I personally don't know if any deployed in the ground turned on energized 2.0 stations today to prove me wrong.
Give me up on the LinkedIn.
Send me the address.
I would love to go.
I know a of people are getting certified, I don't know if anybody's actually having it in the ground.
People are using it because I want to see is it actually better.
Or do we need 2.1?
that yeah, no, I think that's a great call out because there have been a lot of hopes around Right, right Yeah I Really appreciate that but I guess Going to all of what you're
talking about and like the charge X consortium I know you're going to EV charging summit Are there any other events you're kind of going to this year?
Like I know there's the ACT Expo, which is kind of more fleet focused
Obviously it's not just electric vehicles, but I am kind of curious.
was like, where, what is the, cause I think that's a great call out.
It's like, this is something that needs to be solved this year and there obviously needs to be some sort of consortium, but is there like some sort of place or event we can think
of that we're all going to be at anyway, that maybe can be that helped to be that forcing function.
You know, I don't know.
I I've been working with, like I said, the Alliance for Transportation and Electrification, they just had their event and they have like a working committee on OCPP.
And so I've been working with Phil to figure out, you know, maybe we can join up at an event to have this, you know, initial discussion with some of the C-suite folks.
But I don't really know.
you know, I'm, I don't know.
What I'm doing right now though is I'm doing a meeting.
you're plenty busy as it is.
But I'm curious since I have you on here, I just want to ask.
But right, it is like one of those things that everyone needs.
But it's like, who has the time really to really force it?
Yeah.
the way that I'm going about it right now is like I'm having individual conversation with CEOs to see like who is very interested.
And then I'm hoping, you know, that maybe whether ATE or someone that, you know, did the work with the Charged Ex Consortium, if they would be interested in putting together this
group.
But the first thing I'm doing is individually chatting with some CEOs, just being like, hey, would you be interested in putting capital towards this?
And so that's been like my first step.
but i'm super open that if there's more people out there that want to help with my little effort, you know,
No, that's great.
And I think we do have a lot of people in the industry who listen to this.
And so your contact info for LinkedIn and everything will be in today's show notes.
So please let's make this happen.
Um, but so we've talked about this a little bit where now a few years ago, uh, EV charging hardware infrastructure was a lot more basic.
The evening you say that you could charge in a fleet were pretty narrow.
Now that's all expanded.
So like what, mean, this can depend, but let's, let's say we're
a larger corporation that has a mixed fleet of even maybe a few or a couple like electric semis.
Like what would be like the ideal setup for a depot?
Is it like mostly level two and ones and then like a couple DC fast chargers or what do you guys see and what do recommend usually?
it's really gonna come down to the business use case, interestingly enough.
I think what some folks are having just as level twos, because they'll have overnight dwell time makes the most sense, right?
And then you have some folks that that's just not the reality.
Yeah, I'm super interested in a lot of these solutions where people can pay, I think.
I feel like Volterra, Terrawide, what's the other one, Electra, they all kind of blend in my head a bit.
whatever ones, there's some of these ones where you have a shared depot.
And I thought that was really interesting, like using existing infrastructure.
And if you have a smaller fleet, you can use some of the level twos or the DC fast chargers.
And it's like a part of their service.
I think that's really cool.
But yeah, I think, yeah, everything's going to come down to business use case.
Gotcha.
So, that, that, that's great though.
Can you share like a few examples of like this?
Cause I think the 12 times a great call out, like what makes those differences, but for those listening, like just give a few examples of what, what those different ones are.
Yeah, I know like, like Highland Fleet, I know they do a ton with school buses, right?
As we electrify a ton of school buses.
And so I think like, of course, like that's level twos.
I don't, I wouldn't really put DC fast charge on that because you have the folks that are coming in at the end of the day, plug in the buses, they could pick it up and you know,
go.
Then I think about, you know, I know that Uber and some of these other folks are looking to electrify their fleets, you know, are, are incentivizing their drivers to drive
electric.
Then things like that, like, absolutely.
You're going to want to have like fast, easy, chargers because folks are going to need to go in between the route or even folks that are doing route planning.
So even if you think about like the Amazon cars or UPS, that's how I think about it's really just like, comes out to dwell time.
Like, do you have enough time to sit overnight and then battery range, right?
If you're doing a lot of city stuff, probably makes sense to maybe you have, you're doing a lot of city driving.
Yeah, maybe you could just do some level twos or maybe you do a DC fast charger here and there.
But that's what I'm so excited for us to just think more strategically about mobility.
period.
think that that's not more strategic.
Like it's like thinking differently about, I'm sure people were very strategic.
So yeah.
and the fact is, is they could have been strategic, but this it's just changing so quickly that the inputs and those things are changing.
But not every, yeah.
mean, let's play the devil's advocate and I'll just say the opposite, but, needless to say, I've also had my gripes with them, but, you know, one of the things you mentioned,
and this is a common thing we talk about a lot of episodes or something I try to share with a lot of people is
ride share drivers.
Like if you look at a lot of like the big kind of negative media headlines over the last year about like how all these chargers are down during storms.
Well, all the time and you're even seeing this from other day from like I believe is EV go shared like 25 % of their DC fast charging now is ride share drivers.
And that totally makes sense.
And you start getting into some of the dynamics around like, okay, you're having a lot more people adopt EVs that might not have actually
the easiest access to overnight charging or something where they live if they're multifamily houses and all that.
And so one of the things I kind of bring up is like, this isn't an issue for taxis, traditional combustion taxis.
not, mean, occasionally some of them, they might have a gas car, they might go to like some gas stations.
And obviously filling up a gas for charging, still a dealt in time, but a lot of the time you go to like the Pacific, there are specific commercial gas stations.
that they go to majority of the time, whether it's owned by the taxi operator or it's just like, like I said, think Pacific gas or whatever it's called.
That's purely for commercial vehicles.
And have you seen, are you seeing any conversations?
I know like there's been rumblings about Uber and some of these others about having their own for ride sure drivers.
Like have you had conversations around that and what that kind of framing of the conversation has been?
not heard anything about that.
it's so funny because I feel like Uber specifically, I feel like they've been peeking into the industry for a long period of time.
It's been kind of like a, you know, and one of the guys from Uber that I used to, you know, connect with, he actually went and started his own company now.
So, but you know, I know that they're doing some more.
They've been doing some, I know that they've been doing some investments, but I mean, like, that's really interesting.
The other thing that's kind of tied to that is a little interesting.
that came out the other day was LAZ, the parking folks, believe, announced like 60,000 charging stations with Epic charging.
And so even with these parking stations, it would be interesting to see like, there collaboration in that, right?
With the Uber and like a parking lot, like could a parking, because Revel was kind of like that, where I know that they were.
Yeah.
revel and then what's really interesting is the autonomous EV car companies like Waymo do have their own more or less like part or lots that these cars go back to charge for a
little bit.
And then they go back and do more runs.
so mean, between the, the alleged autonomous vehicles that will be flooding our, roads over the next couple of years and, traditional rideshare drivers, it just seems like there
is still, and I don't know if that's a
who plays into that real estate and capital investment to start making these more commercial electric charging more common.
think it could be a very interesting play for the parking folks.
You know what I mean?
Like it could be, we're part of the International Parking Association and so much of what they're doing this year is around O reliability.
And you just think about how much more capital, if we could really get reliability and charging down and people really adopt, like that's an interesting play for parking folks.
Well, there's, there's actually, I mean, yeah, that is huge.
That could be podcast unto itself because you have some really interesting things that start happening, especially if you have a good reliable, not just charging infrastructure,
but software layer.
So it's like, I've got parking garage a it's actually max out for the day, but, which is people come in the city working, but I own parking garage B and it's at like 70%.
And you can send people there to kind of increase that, stay put closer to a hundred.
Look, I've never used it.
So I do like a lot of like date.
I live in LA and I do a lot of like day trips, like SF or whatever.
And I used to like just catch an Uber, but now because the LAX, they have charging.
I don't have charging at my house.
And so now I'm paying and it's kind of crazy because I'm paying for parking at LAX, but I'm also charging my car, which I appreciate for on a day trip, but I would have never
parked my car in there if they didn't have charging stations.
Yeah.
which is so in those parking spots for charging at LAX, there's like two floors, they're always full with cars.
And I'm interested to understand like what people have parked their car there, know, people that are doing these day trips up like if it didn't have charging.
Yeah.
And I, I'm also, no, that, that, is a really interesting point.
Cause, I live up in Oregon, so I'm flying out of PDX quite a bit and they, they don't have that many chargers yet at least, but they have a good chunk of them, especially in the
short-term, kind of day trip area.
And even then they are always, I've never been able to use it and, majority of the time, it's not like I need to, but it just, that also kind of goes back to the difference of
like, you know, honestly, in a lot of, even a level one would be something.
especially if you get to like a multi-day thing.
Yeah.
yeah, I think that's a really interesting thing to think about, especially if you are in the parking space anyway.
mean, your whole business model is just to have people parking.
And the way you can maximize that is sure it'd be an upfront cost, but sometimes it doesn't even need to be, especially if you can make a deal with like a Waymo or someone
else, you already have the real estate.
Maybe they chip in some of the capex for that upgrade, but.
for the uber drivers like you were saying like is it just like this yeah location is just for uber chargers drivers to charge like i think that's so smart somebody's gonna come up
with that business idea they should you guys should all give chase 10 if you execute
you.
No, I know the more I think about it, was like, maybe I should do this.
but no Kameale, this, this has been great.
I guess for recording on Friday, but you'll be at the EV charging summit and expo this week for those listening.
So, for anyone that is either at the event or just curious in general, what's the best way to, get in contact with you and charger help.
Yeah, so we'll have a booth at the EV charging summit.
We're at booth 1701.
And then I'm actually on two panels at the EV charging summit.
So March 26th, I'm doing shop talk, the state of EV charging reliability and standardization.
And then on the 27th, we're doing the critical role of data with EV charging operators panel.
So any one of those, you check me out.
And then on LinkedIn, I like to like, you know, give my sporadic thoughts on things from time to time.
So if you want to just know the random things that are in my head.
Check me out on LinkedIn.
You want well-structured marketing?
Go to Charger House.
It's LinkedIn where I'm not allowed to touch.
So yeah.
Well, that's great.
And Kameale, thank you so much.
This has been a really fascinating conversation.
Thank
That's a wrap on today's conversation with Kameale Terry, CEO of ChargerHelp.
Her insights into electric vehicle charger reliability, fleet electrification, and the urgent need for better software
and service as standard shine a light on what it'll really take to build a dependable charging network.
If you learned something new today or had a few aha moments, help us keep the conversation going.
Please share this episode with one person who cares about the future of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure as well.
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And until next week, this is the grid connections podcast signing off.