← Everything Electric Podcast
Everything Electric Podcast
Behind The Scenes & The Turmoil of Covering the EV Industry!
00:49:24
In this episode, Imogen Bhogal is joined in Robert's studio by Fully Charged Show CEO Dan Caesar to delve into the mechanics of how the Fully Charged Show and Everything Electric Show works, what's next and the rollercoaster of covering the electric...
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- [00:00]
Robert Llewellyn
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Fully Charged show podcast. Very different this one because we thought it was worth having a little look behind the scenes of how we operate on the Fully Charged Show. For those of you who don't know, this show's been going for 14 years, since 2010. The first sort of eight years of that, seven or eight years of that was me kind of stumbling along on my own in the dark, really haphazard, shooting episodes when I got the chance, trying to keep it going gradually, very, very slowly building it. And then when I met Dan Caesar, who is now the CEO of the Fully Charged Show Limited, things got a little bit more professional, which was just as well because if they didn't, this was at a fairly critical time, there wouldn't be a Fully Charged show. Now it's very simple to say because I just would not have managed to run it. The one thing you have to learn with years, as the years pass, is where your skills are. And one of my skills is definitely not running a business. I am uniquely hopeless at it. So Dan has really saved the day from that point of view. And I think it's important to acknowledge the team that really make the Fully Charged show possible. The fact that we can still film things, that we can run the live shows, and that is down to Joe, Sophie, Carlo and Imogen, who are kind of the core backbone of the business alongside Dan. And that is a critically important part of why we're here, how we're here. So we're going to have a little chat. I'm not doing it because I wouldn't ask the questions well enough, but our vicious, hard hitting investigative journalist Imogen Bogle is going to be interviewing Dan Caesar right here on the Fully Charged show podcast. Enjoy.
- [01:48]
Imogen Bogle
We've not done one of these for a little while. It's quite nice to sit down and have a little catch up, I suppose. First things first, how are you generally, and I guess I mean that you personally and things generally with regards to.
- [02:01]
Dan Caesar
All things clean tech, really well, I'm really optimistic at the moment. You catch us in a, in a good moment. It's a real treadmill running YouTube channels, it's a real treadmill doing the events. I'm just a bit nervous because Robert's over there as well, so he's watching every move. Now the reality for us is that I think it's really interesting. We're quite a small business. We get a lot of focus, there's a lot of eyeballs, watch the channel, come to the events a lot of interest in what we're doing and we don't get to communicate how it's going behind the scenes often enough because we're so, so busy, typically. So as it stands in early October 2024, I'm really positive about the future of the fully charged show, everything electric and all those things. But I'm also fascinated by what's going on with the wider energy transition. And I think we have to acknowledge that the last two years in the UK have been really, really tough for the sectors as a whole and for us as a business. And we, we know it's a UK issue because we run events in Canada, for example. We've just recently done a very successful event in Vancouver. Our Sydney event that comes up next March is probably going to be our biggest event ever. And actually what we find when we're talking to Canadians and Australians about electric vehicles and clean energy is those markets are going gangbusters. The UK has not been the same. So there's been a huge knock on our customers that we deal with, people who exhibit with us, people we film with. They're not customers, but people we film and do editorial with. All the companies in the UK have really, really had a hard time and that really can be traced back to about two years ago. Obviously not everyone who will be watching this will be familiar with the UK economy, but particularly we had a, we had a Prime Minister for a very short period of time. I don't if you remember her name, I've forgotten her name or I've put it, but it's lettuce, Liz Truss, I think her name was, and she was, I think, in power for about 49 days. And that was the beginning of quite a tricky time economically. The, you know, there's some economic issues in the UK that are still ongoing, but there are some, you know, brighter times ahead, I think, and also some political opposition, I think, to electric vehicles and to clean energy, which really had a big knock on effect. And of course there's been lots of misinformation as well. So as we speak right now, I'm really, really positive, looking forward to our Everything Electric south show, which is coming up this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but also looking forward to Sydney next year and the other shows as well. So really, really positive at the moment. But it has been a pretty tricky time, I think, for the industry as a whole now, our business as well.
- [04:53]
Imogen Bogle
God, when you kind of put it in that summary, you're so right. It's sort of, you know, we're recording this on the Wednesday, 25th September. So almost precisely two years ago was when it really felt like that chaos really was catapulted. And it kickstarted that chain of events that we've been observers too, in our sort of benefit of being in that helicopter position, looking at the industry and looking at what's going on in different geographies. And it has been interesting. It's been really, really interesting. Not least because, you know, lots of people will see our episodes when the cameras are rolling, but we have lots of conversations and get a real litmus test of how people are feeling. And it's not been overly positive in the uk, but then when we go to Canada and we go to Australia, culturally it feels totally different. There's a different kind of excitement and momentum and it's, it's a huge privilege to be able to see that, you know, what's going on different geographies. But it really hammers home that it's been challenging here, I think.
- [05:48]
Dan Caesar
Well, it's kept, it's kept us sane because if you, if you look at the adoption of electric vehicles, and obviously we're about the whole energy transition, not just about electric cars, but if you look at that as a bellwether, you know, electric vehicle sales were sort of at 15, 16, 17% and growing. And then really they've just stuck around that point for two years for a whole range of reasons. You know, subsidies have been pulled, people have got less money to spend. You know, things like the zero emission vehicle mandate. The date of 2030 was pushed back to 2035. So all of those things have had quite a significant impact. Now, thankfully, EV sales are growing again. And as of August it was over 22% of new car sales were pure electric. I think that the used EV sales were up 52% year on year in August as well. So you could see that growth beginning again. But what happens is when the signal is that the market is flat, it doesn't just affect the electric vehicle market, but it was also all those adjacencies as well. If you are making EV chargers, for example, you've probably planned for a future where 30% of new car sales are electric in 2024. And if that's not happened, that could give you a problem. And then that also relates to heat pumps and solar and batteries and all the things that we cover. It's been a tough time for most of the companies that we have grown up with.
- [07:09]
Imogen Bogle
You recently did a really, really fantastic green screen episode called Electric Car Cliff, which was kind of going into some of those things you've just described in that much more detail. It's a brilliant episode. Anyone who's listening to this should go and have a look at that after this episode. But you spend a lot of your time tackling misinformation both in the UK and beyond. Talk to us about that as a kind of a personal challenge and I guess also as one that occupies your day to day working life as well.
- [07:38]
Dan Caesar
Well, I think the scourge of the modern world is misinformation. I guess we could call ourselves experts on electric vehicles, for example, and clean energy. And I read and see so much that has no basis in fact and is accepted as a reality. And that is really, really tough. That's tough at the best of times. But when it also starts to hurt and, you know, harm your business and other businesses around you, you know, you feel you have to do something about that. So for us, yeah, our mission, you know, to help people stop burning stuff is obviously core, but misinformation really is become a big issue in the last couple of years, I think. I think as oil and gas and the incumbent businesses, and you know, a lot of those businesses have their tentacles in government and in politics, have realized that actually what's happening with the energy transition to electrification is extremely consequential. And you imagine the value that's tied up in combustion as a business is going to, you know, move over to electrification over a period of time. You can understand why people would fight tooth and nail to, to slow that down. So Robert talks a lot about Merchants of Doubt, which is a book of about how the nicotine industry effectively tried to, you know, so, so fear and uncertainty and doubt into the market. And that's exactly the playbook that's being used again. So I think it's, it really is the scourge of the modern world. What is true and what is not true now is really, really hard. And we have a real, really huge job and responsibility to correct some of that misinformation. And yeah, we're doing more in that area more than ever before. And I think it is really important.
- [09:26]
Imogen Bogle
And it's so interesting because one of the things that I often find surprising is that we are immersed in this world. We understand a lot of the things, a lot of the benefits that exist around clean energy technologies and electric vehicles. So it's easy to assume that a lot of this misinformation is targeting people who are maybe less well informed and maybe, dare I say, a little bit ignorant. And then you have conversations like my most recent one was with my brother in law and they're thinking about getting a new car. And some of the sort of questions that he came out with, I was like, oh my goodness, this is so pervasive. This extent of the misinformation is so pervasive that people who I think of as extremely intelligent, well read people are sort of vulnerable to believing some of those myths and sowing in that sort of fear and uncertainty and doubtless. But the degree of that misinformation is aggressive, it's sensationalist. And I wonder what is the right response to combat it? Because do you fight fire with fire or do we continue on our. Well, let's be pragmatic, let's be positive, let's paint the pros and cons of all of this technology. What do you think is the right approach?
- [10:32]
Dan Caesar
That's a great question which we've wrestled with over the last two years. And I think it has to be a mix of all. I think that's a fairly bland statement, but that's the reality. You know, from our perspective, you know, we have to correct myths in real time. We have to work more with EV drivers and with industry to, you know, counter stories that are out there that are false and incorrect. We can't do that with everything. So we've also got to get on the front foot and start selling the benefits of battery electric vehicles and start selling the benefits of the clean technologies that we represent as well. We've got to do so in a balanced way. We have made the mistake over the years. Looking at Robert and think about myself, we've evangelized about the technologies we love. We can't believe sometimes that something so simple and something so good is actually demonized from time to time. So that makes us probably get a little bit more incredulous and perhaps a bit shrill sometimes in our defense of those technologies. But the reality is that us evangelizing will take a certain group of people with us, but us being balanced will win more, more people over. That's, that's the reality. So everything we need now needs to be balanced and based on proof points.
- [11:43]
Imogen Bogle
Which I suppose is a perfect segue to talk about. Electric Vehicles uk, you've been a busy man in the past month, recent months. Well, actually ever since you've been involved in fully charged, but particularly in these past few months, what is Electric Vehicles uk? What is it hoping to achieve? And tell us about the launch event you had a couple of weeks ago.
- [12:01]
Dan Caesar
Well, I mean, about a year ago we launched Stop Burning Stuff. So Robert and I sat in the garden just outside this studio a few years ago and I said to him, what's the reason for fully charged? What does it mean? And he sort of said, stop burning stuff straight away. And that's been the kind of the mission, really. You know, is it possible to get the world off of combustion? Maybe, but it's a great ambition to have. It will take time. I think more than anything else, it's a communication challenge. We've got the technologies, it's the psychology that's, that's the issue. So we did see the rise in misinformation over from the beginning of 2023, really. And we said, we've got to, we've got to get involved in this. We can't sit and watch as all these kind of mistruths are kind of spread around. We did some great work, I think, with Quentin Wilson, who we love dearly, close friend of the business, runs Faircharge in the uk, ex Top Gear. And we launched Stop Burning Stuff together a year or so ago. And actually we got EV drivers very kindly contribute to something called Patreon. They give a little, little bit of money each month, which has enabled us to start to get in the trenches and to fight the misinformation. The honest truth is that it, you know, there's so much misinformation that, you know, it's, you know, it's, it's tough to, to fight. It's very much a David versus Goliath struggle. So we felt for a long time we need to get industry involved in this as well. To that end, we were very kindly approached by Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy here in the uk, who, despite only being nine years old as a company, are an absolute Goliath themselves. Now, to say that actually we want to help you in this endeavor. So we've been working for a few months to develop a new initiative called Electric Vehicles uk. It's taken a bit of time because personal life and other stuff has kind of intervened, but a couple of weeks ago we launched Electric Vehicles UK in London to a room that I can only describe as EV royalty in the uk. And the whole premise is that rising tide lifts all boats and we need to work better as an industry. There is some phenomenal work going on by people who are lobbying politicians, people who are countering stories in the press. People are coming out with positive examples of why EVs are great, but there's no real coordination to that effort. And so from our standpoint, what we are doing is starting Electric Vehicles UK to help industry join up and to help them kind of coordinate, coordinate how we communicate with the marketplace. I'll give you one example quickly of how I think it could work. There's lots of things we'll be doing and I'll be announcing exactly what we're doing at Everything Electric south in Farnborough shortly. But as we speak here, there was a story just last week which the headline basically was, charging an electric vehicle is much more expensive than fueling a car with petrol or diesel. Now, if you're an EV driver, that would probably infuriate you because you're probably living with an EV for a long time and knowing it's much, much cheaper. And the reason the headline writer wrote that is because he was focusing in on a particular type of charging, which is high powered rapid charging. And what we were unable to do as an industry is respond to that piece. And what I wanted to do and what we will be able to do is have like a rapid response unit that takes stories like that and very, very quickly, in a matter of a few hours, actually creates an alternative version of that story. The alternative headline would be, on average, electric vehicle driving is considerably cheaper than driving an internal combustion engine car. And here's the reason why. But to do that, you've got to pull together the whole story, which is hard for an industry to do because you've got to a. You've got to find out about the cost of rapid charging, what's going on. There are all people who are providing that service charging the same, for example. There's some differentiation even in that space alone. What would it cost if you were using, I don't know, the best OCTOPUS overnight tariff possible at home? What would it cost if you weren't using one of those tariffs and you were charging during the day? What would it cost if you're using a 22 kilowatt charger, a destination, for example, and all those different nuances. But as an industry, we're kind of unable to. To respond to those stories. So what I want to do is create a rapid response unit that as soon as a story like that comes out, I can actually get that information and we can produce something as an industry and we can respond strongly as a unified group. So there'll be more information about Electric Vehicles UK that will come out in the next few weeks and what we're doing. But the reality is that we are leading it for a year. We volunteered to lead it thanks to octopus. They've effectively partnering with us and they are investing in this, so it gives me the time and bandwidth to lead this. I have a great management team now at Fully Charged, so I can give up some time to do that. But ultimately we want to do it for industry. We're not looking to do it fully Charged, we want to do it for industry and create an independent entity, probably something like a not for profit or a charity. And that is our gift to industry, something that's self sustaining and could not only fight misinformation, but get on the front foot and start talking about the benefits of battery electric vehicles, of which there are many.
- [17:39]
Imogen Bogle
Yeah, it's phenomenal really, because, you know, it's very easy to take any kind of data and to tell the story that you want to tell. The data. For example, in the example you've just given, oh, let's find the most expensive chargers that you can find and then let's make a headline that people can share very, very easily. And I think, you know, looking at the guest list of people who came to Electric Vehicles UK launch event, the amount of knowledge in that room, the amount of sort of different pools of knowledge that you can pull on to bring that story together really, really cohesively. I recently interviewed Fiona Howth, who's CEO of Octopus Electric Vehicles, and she was like, you know, let's start by talking about why do we talk about total cost of ownership? That is such a dumb and unintuitive term. And then immediately the YouTube community starts talking and they're like lifecycle cost or girl math or, you know, all these sorts of terms. And I think it's so exciting to see that community of people come together and yeah, it's going to be a busy year. Well, it's exciting.
- [18:36]
Dan Caesar
It's a marriage of the industry and the EV drivers as well. So we think there's a big disconnect between what the media reporting and the EV drivers general experience. We know well over 9 out of 10 EV drivers will never go back to ICE. What is the reason for that? So we want to give voice to those EV drivers as well. So the industry is playing its part. There will be a strong role for EV drivers to play. We'll be announcing that soon as well. But if you want to contribute via the Patreon website, you can do so. Or if you want to join the Patreon site as a member without paying, that's also possible. You know, the reality is we're not doing this to profit, we're doing it for the, for the betterment of industry. So it has been extraordinarily well received that we're leading this. And from my point of view, I'm very keen to. To make some impact very, very quickly.
- [19:27]
Imogen Bogle
I just want to pick up quickly on Greg Jackson, who I think safe to say, in fact. So Robert and I were driving back from a shoot yesterday and we were talking about celebrities we wouldn't be cool in front of if we met them. And I would put Greg Jackson in my list of people I will not be cool around because he is a bit of a celeb in our, in, you know, electric vehicle, clean energy world. But he's going to be in Farnborough.
- [19:51]
Dan Caesar
He is going to be there. I mean I had the. It was quite humbling. He, he kind of introduced me at the launch of Electric Vehicles uk, which was slightly surreal. I still haven't processed that, but actually Robert's gonna be doing a fireside chat with him at Everything Electric south soon and I'd be fascinated to hear that. I think we are going to record that. I think this might be news to you, but for a podcast as well.
- [20:12]
Imogen Bogle
No, no, it's going out two weeks after the show.
- [20:15]
Dan Caesar
Internal Comms is obviously really strong within the team. And you know, from my perspective, you know, he has been, you know, a real, you know, a really influential figure of a few. But obviously, you know, octopuses have done is very interesting. I mean, actually I've seen our friend Dale Vince in the news quite a lot recently, both politically and from an energy standpoint and he again, you know, has done an awful lot. And I could rattle off the names of quite a few pioneers in the UK industry that have been really, really powerful advocates for electric vehicles and clean energy. But yeah, it's very humbling to be around those people.
- [20:52]
Imogen Bogle
I should also say that the other people that featured on mine and Robert's list were equally nerdy people. We both obviously were like, well, JB Straube materials. Sorry. To my husband. Deeper. There we go. Okay. I want to ask you about money. Yeah, I obviously sit on the editorial side. We make wonderful episodes or I think they're wonderful. You're sort of overseeing the whole machine. That is fully charged us as the production team, we turn up at the events and we help with obviously shooting and filming and moderating panels. But we're less involved with understanding how the machine makes money. So how do we make money?
- [21:30]
Dan Caesar
Well, that's a good question. We're on the path to making ourselves a self sustaining business. So when I first met Robert, I think he poured his own time and reputation and investment into it. But it's fair to say that, you know, YouTube itself doesn't pay the bills. So you get some money, money from Google AdSense, which is the advertising you'll see before episodes. You also, Robert, very wisely set up a patron for the Fully Charged show, which still exists to this day, where people contribute to that as well. And we are extremely grateful for that money. But the reality is it doesn't help us run a business of this scale. So we actually announced Fully Charged Live as it was back in 2017. We ran the first one in 2018. Farnborough Everything Electric south in October is going to be our 17th exhibition around the world, believe it or not.
- [22:25]
Imogen Bogle
MAD is totally MAD.
- [22:27]
Dan Caesar
We're now running five a year and they have been commercially successful and that's enabled us to put us on a path towards being financially sustainable. But more than that, the ability for a YouTube digital audience and us connect, it's probably my favorite thing that we get to do. Even if it's just five times a year, 15 days a year, we actually get to meet with industry and the people who watch the channel. And that's an extraordinarily positive experience, I think, for all of us, you know, to feel the sort of positive energy that comes back from that group and then inspires us to go off and make new episodes. But the filming element is relatively expensive. We film all around the world. We've got an amazing network now of presenters all across the world and we.
- [23:16]
Imogen Bogle
Have to accommodate Robert's Rider, of course.
- [23:18]
Dan Caesar
Robert's rider, Yeah. I mean, I'd love to say Robert is a real diva and he's hard to work with and, you know, et cetera, but I. Well, he's looking at me, so I can't.
- [23:27]
Imogen Bogle
No, you just need to just give him a good sandwich and we're sorted.
- [23:30]
Dan Caesar
No, he's very happy. I mean, it's quite funny because when we do the events, actually the events team always, always remark on the fact he just, he'll happily just help out and sit in the event operations room. So, you know, he's really, really good in that respect. But, yeah, I mean, that's, that's what has enabled us to pay the bills. Running the events, not without risk. It's been, you know, it's been a relatively risky undertaking, I think. Which younger me made that calculation, Older me probably wouldn't, wouldn't necessarily do the same thing, but it's been an extraordinary success story, I think. And what's interesting is by doing Five events a year. We start to iterate really quickly. Not saying we're a machine, but we certainly every show we come out with new learnings. We'll do another five shows next year. So we'll be up to 22 and the plan is to go up to 10 shows a year by 2030. So that has been a huge positive for us. As I say, it's not without risk. It depends what's going on economically in each of the countries at any given time. So the UK market has been tougher for us in the last couple of years. But that's been counterweighted by the fact that the Australian show, for example, is growing very, very fast. So next year we'll return to Sydney in March, we'll be back in London in April, we will be back in Vancouver in September, back in Farnborough in October and then we're looking at adding a fifth show in Melbourne in November 2025. So that's new news, I guess, and that's something that's really exciting. We are going to Skip Harrogate for one year and bring everything electric north back in 2026 we think. We do have some plans to do something else in the north of England next year as well. So don't feel we're neglecting you. But sometimes we can't run these shows every single year and then we are always looking, where else could we go? We are watching what's going on in America, for example, with real interest to see, you know, what the politics is going to be like there and how supportive that's going to be of electric vehicles in 2025, 2026 for example. We've done shows in Europe, Amsterdam specifically. We definitely want to do that again. So that's really, really exciting. And you know, from my point of view the events have been amazing. But also if we have the YouTube AdSense and the Patreon contributions and the events, it still feels like a plane. That's because the events are such a large part of our revenue. It feels like a plane with one engine sometimes. So what we're actually looking to do now is do more other projects that can also bring revenue in. This is not just so we can grow commercially, but just so we can be a resilient, self sustaining business and we can secure the future for fully charged long into the future.
- [26:21]
Imogen Bogle
So couple of things I want to pick up on. You're so right about the atmosphere of the events because one of the things that we find sitting on the production side is that we make these episodes and we see some fantastic people and we feel so lucky to be able to tell their stories. You know, just last week we were filming an electric fishing boat with this amazing man called Hans up in a tavialic in near Glasgow. And you kind of make these beautiful things. And then you do. Even though you see the number of views, you almost don't believe that real people are watching them. And then you speak to people at the shows and they're like, oh, I watched this, this and this episode and I had the question about this, this and this and could you do an episode on xyz? And it really helps keep that momentum and feed the machine and definitely helps to inspire us. But you're absolutely right. We also see the number from Google AdSense of how much we make from each video and it's. It's not a lot. It definitely couldn't sustain us. And you mentioned that there are a couple of other sources of revenue that you're considering. The one that I get asked about all the time is merchandise. Will there be merchandise?
- [27:27]
Dan Caesar
I mean, that's. So we're currently evaluating other revenue streams that we can, we can bring in. And I'm sorry for making fully charged sound so corporate. I mean, that's the reality. We've been around 14 years now. You know, turning us from pirates into Navy is just part of the process. It may seem to some that we're becoming more of an establishment organization and I think we have to be to a degree. But what we never want to lose is that innate Robertness of the business. We've said that all along. We want to still be fun. I love making content. I love making video content. I love social media content. I love the events. Very, very content driven. It's not just you turn up to see a bunch of stands. There's tons of different visitor attractions. So we are really, really focused on the mission. I've been in the industry promoting this sort of stuff for 20 years now. It's much more than just a job to me. It is absolutely a mission to get more people into these technologies. But we do have to look at other ways in which we can kind of build other engines onto this electric plane. And the, the reality is that merchandise is one of those things that we haven't done for a while, but we are likely to bring back in the not too distant future. So I'm working on that. And then slightly wider than that, there is a sort of e commerce element which we're also looking to dabble in. I think in 2025. Robert and the fully charged show and everything electric. The exhibitions have inspired a huge amount of people to switch over to cleaner technologies. At no point have we ever sought to monetize that. And that's actually how a lot of other platforms exist, by doing that. But I think it, you know, as long as we do it in the right way, I think we can do that. We were always a little bit scared of doing the E commerce business because we didn't want to be a car sales business. You've heard us say, I'm sure there should be fewer cars in the world, not more. So if we do do E commerce, we want to be able to offer batteries and heat pumps and chargers and solar and bikes and all those things, you know, so it's, it's not just about cars. So working through that process, I think you can expect to see something from us in 2025 on that.
- [29:36]
Imogen Bogle
But I suppose the more immediate thing that we've got in the pipeline is some quite exciting partnerships and we've had to work.
- [29:43]
Dan Caesar
How do we, how do we do, how do we do that? I have been asked many, many times by other YouTubers who I think are fascinated by our model because our model's unique. There are some other amazing YouTubers out there. We work with a lot of them really fantastic. But as an exhibition YouTube crossover, I think we're pretty, pretty unique.
- [30:04]
Imogen Bogle
100.
- [30:04]
Dan Caesar
So a lot of other YouTubers find our kind of business model kind of fascinating. And one of the questions I get asked by the YouTubers is, why do you not do sponsorship on the channel? And I think the reality is that we haven't done it until this point because I feel what we built is kind of a little bit, and it comes from Robert's broadcasting background is a little bit BBC ask, you know, why ruin the content with, with any form of advertising, with any form of promotion? I think in recent years I've probably been the one in the businesses who's actually resisted that, that move the most. But having Talked to other YouTubers, you know, we can see that we are actually, you know, if we don't, if we don't have all these other different revenue streams, we're quite vulnerable. And the last two years have been, as I say, quite turbulent in the uk. So from our point view, we want to be more resilient as a business. So we have kind of relooked at that again and we are in the coming weeks going to have an in episode sponsor for a period of time. The first time we've ever done that. And we'll be working with Duracell Energy to do that. We've been looking closely at their business, at the quality of their, the technologies they provide, which is, you know, batteries tied to solar, EV chargers. We've looked at the quality of the business. We've also looked at how they do the installs and we're convinced they're a good organization to have on the channel. They will have no editorial say whatsoever on the channel. I think it's really, really important they won't be involved in that. And I think we've created a creative treatment. You can judge us when it comes out shortly. That I think there's something in it for the audience and I think it's very unobtrusive and I think it really, really works. But we've had to look at that. We also just about to recommence with, with podcast sponsorship for the first time in a little while as well. And we are now starting to look at also being able to shoot commercial episodes for people to, you know, these are the things that we, we want to do to make sure the business is more resilient going into the future. The reality is that for us, the exhibitions business is a little bit higher risk and we need to make sure that we can map the business forward financially and we can plan ahead. Also the reality is exhibitions just see the most enormous inflows and outflows of cash, which has always been a challenge. We work with some of the best venues in the world and they obviously want their money before we run the exhibition quite rightly. And we work with some of the biggest companies in the world, particularly the car companies, who typically, with no offense meant, like to hold on to their money right until the last minute. So that, that creates some cash flow challenges for a business that is, you know, only about 25 people strong. So we want to make sure we're in a position to grow in a sustainable way. So, yeah, you will see some different things from us over the coming weeks and months. But we thought through these things very, very carefully. We're very, very sensitive to, you know, how fond people are of fully charged. We don't want to mess with a winning formula. We want it to be unique, to be fun, to be able to be a critical friend of the industry as well. And so those things won't change. But yeah, there are a few, I think, improvements on the way and you.
- [33:35]
Imogen Bogle
Know, I think it possibly helps with that complete transparency with the audience because, you know, sometimes when we're very positive about brand, we Get a couple of comments saying, oh, they've paid you to say this. And I want to say, no, they haven't. I just genuinely felt really positive and actually in having these sort of quite clear cut sponsorship packages, it shows that, yes, this episode is brought to you by insert name, a sponsor. And I think it helps people to see that our opinion about any other brand that we're talking about is completely just how we are feeling. So I think it will help with that sort of transparency of communication.
- [34:10]
Dan Caesar
I mean, what people aren't probably aware of is if you are doing something that is promoting, promoting a brand and you're being paid to promote it, you have to disclose that on the YouTube platform. And so if you watch episodes from most of the channels you watch, you might see a small thing that pops up in the corner of the screen includes paid promotion. Yeah, and the reason we don't turn that on is because no one pays to, to appear on the channel. But you might see that occasionally going, going forward and you might see that in relation to the, to the Duracell Energy sponsorship that we've got coming through. But no, we, we just don't approach it in that way. There is a church and state separation. I oversee the business as a whole. But you'll know it's your responsibility in terms of the content part of it. That, that chap who's in charge of commercial, I'm not even going to mention his name here because he would love it too much. You two don't talk. It's very, very separate. So we really, really value that. We want Robert to be, to go on a car review or Jack to go on a car review. If they don't like it, we want them to be able to say that. So yes, we love the technologies and we probably are positive leaning in most of our reports, but the reality is we're not paid to promote the products. We can be honest as we see.
- [35:25]
Imogen Bogle
Each different technology and I think actually safe to say, and I wonder if this will make the edit. We'll see. It depends on your response. But actually I would say we tend to avoid companies or topics that we would end up being overly negative about because it's not fair to that business. And it's a tricky situation. And actually we kind of get ourselves out of that tricky situation by saying we, you know, we might not cover it.
- [35:49]
Dan Caesar
I mean, I think that's the real, that's the reality. I mean if you, the amount of times we've been approached for sponsorship, like I get an email about it about every three hours.
- [35:59]
Imogen Bogle
Yeah.
- [35:59]
Dan Caesar
And we have consistently turned things down, often because they're not a good fit for us or they're not the right technology. I think from an editorial standpoint, you know, really, you'll know me well enough to say, you know, if it comes to hydrogen for cars, like, I think that's probably not going to happen, for example. So to use that, you know, if someone comes to us and we think actually that's not the right fit for us, we won't cover it. So that is fair to say. We pick things that we think our audience wants to see as opposed to, you know, creating hate content that people want to love to hate. You know, we don't do that. That's not our way. In fact, I think we're often too positive for YouTube's algorithm. I think it wants something a bit more negative sometimes. But, you know, that's. That's who we are. You know, being positive is very much part of our DNA.
- [36:45]
Imogen Bogle
I've got to tell you something about Duracell before we move on. We shot an episode there a few months ago now and we were waiting for the. Whilst the cameras were being set up and I was about to do the interview and he said, oh, what's your first question going to be? And I never want to say that the question, because they're going to give a really brilliant answer. Then you think, damn, why didn't we have that on camera? So I said, if you're on Stars In Their Eyes, what song would you sing? And then their PR person just went, yeah, I was in the semi final back in 2000. It was unbelievable. I think it was, you know, goes in my sort of top 10 fully charged moments there. Okay, so we've spoken a little bit about sponsorship, we've spoken a little bit about how we make money, we've spoken about our events. We've got one this weekend. Do you want to give it a little plug?
- [37:33]
Dan Caesar
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, from our perspective, we feel this is a big moment actually for the uk. We had a general election in the UK in the summer. I think it's fair to say, now that they're no longer in power, that the last government was somewhat regressive around the technologies that we love. I know that the new government is going to unban. I heard someone say that's a word, but unban onshore wind. They're actually likely to change the zero emission vehicle mandate deadlines to 2030. You know, we're certainly feeling strong narrative around green growth from the new Government. But as of yet, you know, the EV market is starting to pick up in the UK as of yet, we think it will be spring probably before some of these changes start to actually kind of improve the industry. So it's been a tough time for the industry as a whole. So we're seeing everything. Electric south at Farnborough. Our first event at Farnborough for 18 months is a really good opportunity for the whole industry to come together and all of our audience as well. Almost like a reboot for the, for the UK industry as well. So we're really, really excited about that. We have been at real pains, I think, to make sure that the content at the show is as balanced as possible. I think it's fair to say that in the previous Show in spring 2023 at Farnborough, the market was starting to creak a little bit and starting to suffer. And we had, for example, a lot of EV charging companies at that show. And actually that was something that from our point of view wasn't ideal. We want a really balanced range of different technologies, if that makes sense. And we've got a really, really good balance there for this show that's coming up. We've got some fantastic cars, as you would expect.
- [39:24]
Imogen Bogle
Oh my God. Some amazing cars.
- [39:26]
Dan Caesar
Some incredible cars. I mean, I think Renault 5 is going to be their Tesla Cybertruck, MG Cyberster, Hyundai's Insta. That's the beginning of the affordable EVs is starting to happen. You'll see that at Farnborough and London next year. Test drives galore. The test drives has been a phenomenal success story for us at our events around the world. It's, you know, getting someone in a car is just they sell themselves, I think, largely. So that's been huge for us. We have a great home energy advice zone. We have the Zero Carbon Kitchen, an EV live arena where our presenters are going to kind of do live reviews of cars, which has been very, very popular. Kids area, you know, we want to make it a family friendly event. We have a business day on the first day. I'm forgetting stuff. Well, there's two theaters worth of expert talks which are amazing. Greg Jackson, you mentioned is going to be on stage talking to Robert. We also got a big fireside chat with BYD as well. If you're in our audience, you've probably heard of byd, but if you've stumbled upon this podcast by accident, BYD is, we think, going to be the biggest car company in the world in time. It's already pretty much the biggest new energy vehicles company in the world. So, yeah, it's an amazing, amazing three days and we can't wait to do it again, especially I didn't go to Canada, so I'm really looking forward to connecting with our people again and seeing that show.
- [40:58]
Imogen Bogle
You did very well. Whilst we were all in Vancouver having. I mean, I hate to say it, but a fantastic time, you did very well. Not to make your FOMO too obvious.
- [41:09]
Dan Caesar
Yeah, I was too busy being dad, you know, trying to do what my superwoman of a wife does well, and I take for granted. And I was just trying to not have the kids, you know, be ill or unfed, malnourished on my watch. So I did. I did get to see some of the Vancouver stuff. I know it was a huge success and I'm grateful. I mean, one of the things we have to do as a business, we have to. We have to send less people to these overseas events as well. We never really plan to do that, but it's just the way it's worked out. So from our point of view, we're taking steps to lessen that impact as well.
- [41:45]
Imogen Bogle
I'm going to do the plug here, and this is going to really embarrass her. But Jo is your wife. But she's also COO of Fully Charged show and actually, hang on. Fully Charged Show Limited is our Fully Charged Show Limited. Yeah.
- [41:57]
Dan Caesar
Yeah.
- [41:58]
Imogen Bogle
And she is a powerhouse.
- [42:01]
Dan Caesar
Yeah.
- [42:01]
Imogen Bogle
And what was really phenomenal about our Vancouver show, which was our 16th show, is that we all came away and we're like, we just know what we're doing. It just works. So even though we are this teeny, tiny team, this huge behemoth, eventually just works. And I think so much of that is, a, you know, obviously down to you, but B, so much is down to her and how she, you know, manages her team. Just, it's like. It's like a military operation. It's incredible, but also really fun. She is fun. That is the other thing.
- [42:31]
Dan Caesar
Well, I couldn't possibly comment, but I mean, the reality is, you know, everything we do is. Does the YouTube channels, including the podcasts, the events, the whole thing is really run by 25 sort of core employees. Obviously, it takes more than that. And there are freelancers and, you know, when we do events, there's lots of different contractors that help us with that as well. But it's a very, very small team. And that was probably the hardest thing that I've ever had to experience in the last year. We actually had to get a little bit smaller as A business and let a few people go. Which is. Which is. Which is heartbreaking. But the reality is our team of people is just extraordinary. Extremely high quality. Yes, Joe is very good, but actually everyone who works on the episodes, everyone who works on the event production side, everyone who works on making it work commercially, our designers, you know, all those people are just absolutely phenomenal. So I, I'm. I'm very, very proud of what we're able to do. The output per person from our businesses, I think. Extraordinary.
- [43:36]
Imogen Bogle
Oh, my God, it's mad. And Rob and I, we were doing a shoot on Monday and Tuesday this week.
- [43:41]
Dan Caesar
Robert's quite good as well.
- [43:42]
Imogen Bogle
Robert's all right. We'll give him at least an 8 out of 10. But we were doing a shoot in Rye and we were there with two of our production team, so Katie and George. And it is work. But every so often you have these moments of like. But it also feels. It's very. Oh, if you can hear a noise. Teddy has made herself known. She is my very, very old Jack Russell. But it does have that real family feel because you'll be in work mode during the day or whilst you're doing the shoot or running the event, and then we spend so much time together that it does have that family feel still, which is phenomenal.
- [44:20]
Dan Caesar
I mean, it is a family. And my kids will come to the events and very much consider themselves sort of, you know, extras. They've even tried to charge me from time to time. But then we have, you know, we have Helen Chersky.
- [44:31]
Imogen Bogle
Yeah.
- [44:32]
Dan Caesar
Who hasn't been on the channel enough recently and will rectify that. I mean, she always says it's like family. We have the amazing Jack Scarlet, who's just been a breath of fresh air on the channel in recent years. Ricky Roy in California, who's an extraordinary guy. Elliot Richards in. In China. We have Simone Annan in Australia, DK Kim in. In Korea. Forget people. Roland, we've got Roland in the Netherlands. You know, we have this just extraordinary group of people who are all in it, really, to. To. To communicate and to spread the word. So, yeah, it's. It's been a, you know, absolute pleasure for me for the. For the last eight years to work on this. And Robert's given me a huge amount of latitude or rope, whichever way you look at it. And, you know, for me, I would, you know, I would. I hope I'm doing it again for another eight years and hopefully longer. It's a really important thing. But I think for us, moving to do the electric vehicles UK thing is a sign of the times that actually we really want to be industry leaders and we really want to help industry cut through some of this misinformation and start to get on the front foot. Because all of the technologies we, you know, we advocate for, they're really, really good.
- [45:45]
Imogen Bogle
Yeah, they are genuine.
- [45:47]
Dan Caesar
You know, that's, you know, that's. If you're, if you're not, if you're outside of our bubble and you think we're just saying it, probably me saying that might put you off. The reality is that's why we say come to live events, talk to EV drivers who've got less skin in the game. They just happen to have a car or talk to someone who's got a heat pump. Because actually, what you're seeing in the, in the press and online is awfully, totally unrepresentative of the reality.
- [46:11]
Imogen Bogle
I'm sure we've been rabbiting on for far too long. So I'm going to ask you one last question. What's your sort of hope and ambition or wish for the next year to five years?
- [46:25]
Dan Caesar
Well, we're certainly looking to get the, to go to more places globally with the exhibitions. We certainly want to get a much bigger audience on YouTube and that's both channels as well. We definitely want to make the business more resilient and self sustaining from a financial point of view. We want to help the industry come together. But I think the bottom line is we want to take these technologies into the mainstream. We've been talking about that for quite a few years and it feels quite elusive. The mainstream doesn't happen overnight, but we are so passionate about it. We will keep advocating for and promoting these technologies and I think we're quite close in some ways. But the future is here. It's not evenly distributed. So in Norway at the moment, they think they might go to 100% pure electric vehicle new car sales by the end of next year. We're not there yet in the uk, but we will get there in time and we want to play a pivotal role in doing that. And the same goes for all of the countries where we're watched. I think from my point of view, as far as I'm concerned, it's going to be. I've been doing this and promoting heat pumps and Solar for 20 years, EVS for well over 10 years. For me, it's going to be the same period of time again, I think. But in that time frame I think we will win. But also it is going to be choppy. We've seen. You know, I watch what's going on with some of the incumbent car companies, what's going on with political ties to fossil fuels, and it's not going to be straightforward. So from our perspective, you know, I think we need to be patient and I just like to express my gratitude to the people who watch the channel, the people who attend the events, the people who contribute via Patreon. We just simply wouldn't exist. To people who have invested in fully charged show limited in recent years, it's been a pleasure. Hopefully we make it look relatively good in front of the camera, behind the camera. We are working extraordinarily hard and together I think the next 10 years can be even better.
- [48:48]
Imogen Bogle
Well, I think that is a fantastic note to end on. Thank you so much for sharing that today. I mean, I've learned a lot there, which is great. I'm sure our audience have as well. Thank you to you, our lovely listeners and viewers for watching or listening. Thank you to Louis, who will be editing this episode. And you heard it from Dan. If you can, you know, spare the time to like, comment or subscribe, it would really help us to continue growing our audience, to continue growing that resiliency and hopefully to weather that slightly choppy storm as we head in the right direction. But that's it. If you have been, thank you for listening.