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EV Battery Health: ClearWatt's Game-Changer for Used Electric Vehicles! | Fully Charged Show Podcast
00:59:04
In this episode of the Fully Charged Show Podcast, Imogen is joined by Patrick Creswell, Managing Director and Co-founder of ClearWatt. Patrick explains how ClearWatt’s hardware-free solution provides electric vehicle drivers with a battery health...
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- [00:00]
Host 1
Foreign hello and welcome to another episode.
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Host 2
Of the Fully Charged show podcast where today we're delving into the world of battery health. Now we know that this is an absolutely vital component of the EV ecosystem, ensuring that drivers can confidently purchase a second hand EV, knowing precisely what kind of range reality they're buying into. And you know, here in the UK, 80% of car purchases are in the secondhand market.
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Host 1
So if we want EVs to be.
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Host 2
Truly mainstream, that battery health data absolutely needs to be extremely clearly available so we can extend the secondhand life of those electric vehicles and address affordability at.
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Host 1
The same time too. So very shortly I'm going to be.
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Host 2
Joined by Patrick Cresswell, who is the co founder and managing director of a company called Clearwatt now. Now, Clearwatt produced these really nifty, really, really clever battery health scorecards which go into all of the nitty gritty and everything that you need to know about the health of that battery.
- [01:03]
Sponsor
This episode of the Fully Charged podcast is brought to you by OVO's Charge Anywhere. Charge Anywhere helps you power your car wherever you are, plan your route and pay. You'll have access to over 34,000 chargers across the UK's largest charging networks and more than 400,000 chargers across Europe. Setup is easy. Just download the OVO Charge app, create your account, add payment details, hit the road and start charging. There's no need to be an OVO customer. Either simply pay as you go or benefit from up to 15% off your charging with monthly boost packages. OVO's Charge Anywhere power your next journey with peace of mind.
- [01:47]
Host 1
Patrick, thank you so much for giving up your afternoon to talk to us about the world of battery health. I wonder if you could kind of kick us off by describing what on earth is clearwatt? What are you trying to do?
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Patrick Cresswell
Sure. Well, our mission at Clearwatt is to provide transparency and confidence, particularly in the secondhand electric vehicle market, although not exclusively. I can come on to why that is, but we have products and services for new EVs as well. And so yeah, we're looking at really what are the key differences between the prospect of buying a secondhand electric vehicle versus perhaps leasing a brand new one or going through a finance product like salary sacrifice, which is obviously what is capturing a lot of people in terms of EV adoption. But also, how is the prospect of buying a secondhand EV different to buying a secondhand internal combustion engine vehicle? What are the key concerns? The areas where perhaps data is not forthcoming and clear enough for consumers to feel confident to make that switch. And we achieve that in a number of different ways. We have a suite of products here at Clearwatt. On the sort of one hand we have digital services where we're providing APIs and data out to third party websites to help perhaps provide more realistic views on things like range and charging times and cost and things like that. But on the other side, really the core business and the thing that I think we're best known for is the fact that we've developed a completely independent battery health check, which is a driving based check that is hardware free. It's a mobile app based solution really aimed at providing accessibility and the ability for anybody to complete a test on any electric vehicle, thus providing confidence in one of the key areas of concerns which comes out in research time and again and we hear from dealers is becoming an increasingly asked question which is all about battery health.
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Host 1
There are so many components of this that I know that we need to try and get into as much detail as we can in the time that we have available. Not least what on earth is going on in the secondhand EV market at the moment, how on earth you kind of assess battery health and also why is it even needed when we should have a reasonable sort of, you know, estimation of what should be going on from the OEMs. Before we get into all of that though, I want to ask a little bit about yourself because you've got, you've been in the EV world and the ecosystem for a little while and you've had quite an interesting journey through it. I wonder if you give us a little whistle stop tour.
- [04:34]
Patrick Cresswell
Sure. Well, the whistle stop tour I have to kind of start at the beginning to make it all make sense. But I won't take too long on my childhood. But it's relevant to say that I come from a very car heavy family, motorsport heavy. My mum and dad raced cars, my dad still does. I spent all of my weekends at Donington and Silverstone and Brands Hatch, et cetera. And my family actually has a mechanical engineering company and their biggest clients are in Formula one. And so I've kind of always grown up around the sort of sharp end of engineering and automotive technology. But for me, I went to university, I studied business and when I graduated, London was kind of calling for me. Early 2010s a really exciting moment for mobility as a general area. Back then it wasn't even called mobility really, it wasn't like a known term. But the all of these new types of services that became unlocked by everybody having a smartphone and IoT and GPS devices and you saw things like, you know, zip cargo, from strength to strength, Uber arrived, City Mapper arrived, all of those things. And kind of actually subconsciously at the time I, I knew that that was the place I needed to be. You know, it kind of ticked all of the boxes for me in terms of technology, smarter, more kind of equitable ways of moving around. And so moved to London before very I got a job at a very small startup called ECarClub. I was one of the first hires there and ECarClub's mission was to provide a car sharing service not dissimilar to Zipcar and others like it, but the clue is in the name. The entire fleet was electric, which back in those days, you know, early 2010s was quite an ambition. And so I joined a marketing and growth capacity, spent a lot of time on the kind of coal face of that and understanding what consumer attitudes were towards EVs which I can say back then wasn't entirely positive. You know the thing I would hear all the time was milk floats and golf buggies and, and you know, that very first gen of IMEV and gee whiz and things like that. I don't think we've really been taken that seriously. But then you got to sort of 201314 and the, you know, the Leaf arrived, Zoe arrived and then Tesla arrived and completely changed the game and all of a sudden people sat up and realized, well hang on, whilst range might be a problem, this will be a good second car for me, etc. And actually what we were selling was by the hour, remote access, so it made like a perfect sort of city option. And so yeah, kind of went through that journey of customer perceptions towards EVs sort of changing quite quickly and the business went from strength to strength. We caught the attention of the Europ Car Car Rental group who were on a mission to diversify into more technology focused areas. And so they acquired a handful of car sharing businesses across Europe and eCarClub was one of them. And so the acquisition went through, took a couple of years to fully integrate and at the time of that happening the founders of eCarClub moved to the side and a position became available to manage everything future and shared and urban mobility for Europe car. And that's a position that I took on. So I spent a few years leading that, that strategy and so yeah, that saw us do some really interesting things. We tried, you know, residential community car sharing in the Outer Hebrides in lots of weird and wonderful places. Powered by wind Farms. We also had a much more commercial focus down here in London and taking the business into lots more boroughs and a B2C proposition within that. And so that's kind of the potted history for me. So I've worked in the EV sector now for over a decade, which makes me quite an old timer really for the sector. But yeah, I think I've meandered through lots of changing attitudes towards EVs which has been very helpful. And also the experience of going from a tiny startup through to an acquired business that's integrating into a big corporate is also an incredibly eye opening one. And for me when we got to like 2020, 2021 was sort of climbing the ladder within the Eurocar ecosystem and realized that, you know, for me the corporate world wasn't exactly where I wanted to be at that time. The sort of entrepreneurial voice in the back of my head was getting louder and louder and I realized that I was, you know, under my belt was a lot of quite unique experience and knowledge and that could be applied for the sort of, you know, the betterment of the EV adoption story in the UK to begin with. And so I started to look at, you know, what was happening in the sector and where are the areas where products and services are required to help this transition along and I think what was happening at the beginning of this decade. So 2020 onwards, thanks to the way that tax incentives were set up here in the UK and similarly in other markets, we saw a huge adoption of electric vehicles and lots more bumps in seats and lots more people who, you know, we, we kind of went, moved on beyond early adopter into a place where perhaps people who, company car drivers who used to take a BMW 3 Series or a 5 Series, all of a sudden a Tesla Model 3 was, was sat there waiting with you know, 90% off the monthly tax liability and, and you know, incredibly attractive. And so you saw like a rapid uptick in EV registrations. Like in the UK in 2019 it was around 40,000, in 2020 it was well over 100,000. And that kind of hockey stick has broadly continued with a few bumps in the road. And so that is great. But I think what I realized from the amount of times that I've inflated and defleated electric vehicles and been in a position where we had quantities to sell and there's lots of questions that get thrown up at that point I realized that those vehicles are going to be on sale on a classified website in probably three or four years time. And what does that market look like? It's great that we had early adopters of people trying an EV for relatively low levels of commitments, but that is not the same thing as buying an ev. Whether or not it's with your own cash or financed, but you're still taking on that responsibility. And so that is the topic that we dived heavily into in terms of what is it that, what was it going to take for hundreds of thousands of ordinary members of the public to feel confident and comfortable buying a second hand ev. And it doesn't take very long before you get onto the topic of battery health, but associated data and information around that as well. So yeah, Clearwater is here to provide that and be that layer to give that confidence to consumers.
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Host 1
It's so interesting, isn't it, that you've been in the EV industry for 10 years and that makes you one of the OGs of the EV world. And it's ridiculous because you think just how much change has there been in the past decade? It's astonishing. And not just in terms of the uptake of EVs, but generally the amount of technology that's in cars. Anyway, I remember about 10 years ago, maybe a little bit more, let's say 12 years ago, I had a pocket A to Z of London to go to London. You know, you can imagine anyone under the age of 25 listening to this thinking, what on earth are you living in the Dark Ages? It's crazy to think of that rate of change.
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Patrick Cresswell
I always think of I'm really kind of showing my age now, but in the early days, my wife is from just outside London, so when we were dating I would come down to see her in, in London before I moved here and we'd be out on a night out and it was standard practice to give TFL a call before we got home to see how we would get.
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Host 1
Oh my word. I'm just going to say for those who are listening rather than watching this podcast, Patrick is not 100 years old. He is definitely under 40.
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Patrick Cresswell
40 is correct.
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Host 1
Yeah.
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Patrick Cresswell
He's also bright red.
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Host 1
But yeah, no, it's so great. And I also, again, we will get back on topic with talking about battery health. But you know, when were sort of not too dissimilar ages and there was so much magic in Harry Potter, which I now often wonder what it must be like to be, you know, 10 years old and reading Harry Potter for the first time and just thinking marauders map, well, let's find my friends. There's nothing magical about that. And you know, this has happened in Such a condensed period of time. Well, okay, so I am going to ask you questions as if I am my brother in law Charlie. And the reason that I'm going to do that is because he, you know, I think we have a tendency as people who sit within this electric vehicle industry to think that, you know, we have this huge amount of knowledge. Surely other people are on the same page as us. And anyone who is nervous or hate or you know, hates EVs and inverted commas, there is this tendency to assume, well, they don't know anything, what a ridiculous kind of opinion. But actually we also always have to take stock and consider that actually the vast majority of people don't really care about cars and they need all of the information that is going to give them the confidence to make that transaction, to shift to a new technology and feel really good about doing so. And my brother in law Charlie, I think he's a great example in that he is, I think he's an intelligent man, he's a business owner, he's going through a salary sacrifice scheme to get an EV and he's petrified. And it has been such a surprise to me experiencing or sort of hearing all of the questions that he has, not least around battery health. So the first one that he said, he was like, oh well, you know, if I get this I.D. buzz, it's, you know, the battery is going to be a load of rubbish in the next three years. And I'm like, okay, we've got some unpicking to do here. So I guess my first question is around what's happening in the secondhand EV market because there's a few components to this. There's first of all the fact that a huge amount of EV uptake has been driven by salary sacrifice cars, which means that they fit a profile of a more sort of slightly higher price point. So that's had some interesting impacts. We've had the impacts of COVID and how cars, the secondhand EV market. Well, secondhand market generally went a bit weird and a bit funky during that time as well. We've had the classic case of the Porsche Taycan, which is always cited as well, look at that one, that one's had a terrible residual value. And then of course we've got a wave of new technology which kind of slightly skews things as well. This is such a broad and open ended question, but I wonder, can you kind of describe what are some of those dynamics happening in the second hand EV market? What are those big trends and presently what's influencing that residual value, that secondhand value of an ev.
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Patrick Cresswell
Sure, there is a lot to, I think, let's start with, with market dynamics. I think there is, you know, a supply and demand component to this for sure, in that, you know, actually as a business we're in quite a fortunate position in that you can look at, you can look at the number of brand new EV registrations that happen in a year and roughly three years later that will be new stock that will be coming to the used market, give or take a bit. But, but you know, there's no question that we're now in a world that six figure volumes of used EVs are going to enter the used market, which is a direct reflection of what started to happen in 2020. By that I mean the massive increase in adoption of new vehicles. And so as with every market, supply and demand factors are at play and that supply has rapidly increased and you know, a question mark remains as to whether or not there are hundreds of thousands of consumers ready to take those vehicles. And then, then you have the added complexity of kind of distortions that have happened over the same period like you mentioned Covid happened, which obviously constrained the supply of new vehicles, which rapidly increased the value of used vehicles. And as that's eased that supplied downward pressure, then you have things like the ZEV mandate. So I'm sure your listeners are fully aware of what that is, but just in one sentence. All manufacturers selling brand new vehicles in the UK this year need to ensure that 22% of them are fully electric as a minimum or face fairly hefty fines. And so what we're finding in the second half of this year is some really big discounts being offered by dealerships because that's pressure coming directly from the manufacturer who's clearly trying to avoid 15,000 pound fines every time they miss that quota. And I think there's a general point here about salary sacrifice and those types of offering, which as you say can be a little bit expensive as a beginning, as a starting price, but then most people are getting 40% off that at least. And so with something like a take and 40% is a fairly huge amount of money. And actually probably we're talking about higher rate taxpayers probably taking that type of very premium EV anyway. So it's probably more than a 40% discount if they go through a salary sacrifice type arrangement. And I think what that does is the moment that car has 10 miles on the odometer, I think it immediately creates a ceiling for how much that car can ever be worth on the used market because the next person walking along is faced with the proposition of a slightly used car or a brand new car, which they're going to get a huge discount off the new price of. And so you've got all of these competing things. And I think, you know, where we come into it is that's a sort of macro view of what's happening with the market. If you consider the fact that we're, we're talking about such high volumes that we're going beyond early adopters. You know, these are not people who in those sorts of volumes will all be prepared or know where to look to sort of do their own research on things that are causing concern. And so the lack of available data about things like battery health, a realistic view on range, things like insurance being extremely high, there's so many factors at play there. And I think what it's done is, broadly speaking, driven the price down of used EVs, which has continued to happen. And I think most people would agree that it's stabilized for now, but it's stabilized in a place that an awful lot of people have lost an awful lot of money on those vehicles. And the used EV market in terms of volume is picking up and time to sell is improving for dealers. But who doesn't love a bargain, right? I mean, I think people are snapping up incredibly good value vehicles. But what we're, you know, what we're doing with Clearwater is preparing for a world where, you know, EVs aren't bargain basement and consumers are willing to prepare to pay a fair price because they have a fair transparent view of what the actual proposition is of buying that vehicle.
- [20:58]
Host 1
And I suppose that's the thing is that, you know, from what you've described that there are so many dynamics influencing the secondhand EV market and influencing that price point. And some of those will settle as there's a broader array of electric vehicles available at different price points that that should just happen over time. But I suppose what you're providing is that level of clarity of like here's this one thing that is potentially sometimes an irrational fear around kind of battery health or at least totally opaque, and there just isn't information about it. You're providing that information so at least that component can be eliminated from those sort of market forces to some degree.
- [21:36]
Patrick Cresswell
Yeah. Going back to your example of your brother in law Charlie, who may believe that batteries die after three years, I think there's an awful lot of generalization that happens with electronic products. I think a lot of people are used to having Mobile phones and laptops that don't stand the test of time and that lens kind of gets applied to vehicles where there's a big battery sitting underneath it. And yeah, I think the good news is that as a general rule, degradation isn't as bad as people once thought it was going to be. There's been a lot of concern in this area because of some of those really early sort of Gen 1 vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf, which didn't have an active cooling system throughout the battery pack. So that did cause high levels of degradation and prompt a lot of fears in this area. So, yeah, I think, you know, EV battery health in general is trending in a positive direction and I think that's a really great thing. What it's definitely also true to say it's a slightly nuanced point, is that there are absolutely outliers that do exist and, you know, it is possible to cause higher levels of degradation than the average. And the trend line doesn't contain every EV out there. I think we're in a world where, you know, manufacturers are competing on things like how fast a car can be charged and things like that. And that's seen as a big draw for consumers for obvious reasons. But there are behaviors that consumers might, might, might partake in during their ownership or keepership of a vehicle, which means that that vehicle is degraded, the battery in that vehicle is de quicker and the degradation therefore at resale is worse than other identical vehicles. And so with Clearwatt, what we're, you know, the situation we're solving is one where let's say Charlie or any other like non expert, let's say, is sitting on a classified website and they've shortlisted two or three vehicles, they've got a few tabs open and they're looking to make a purchasing decision. Well, currently we're in a world where you could be looking at two vehicles which appear to be absolutely identical, but under the hood are absolutely not. And we've seen some huge deviations within the same vehicle model of vehicles that have done similar mileage. But when we engage with the person who drives that car every day, it's very often a similar story in terms of why that vehicle appears to be in worse condition than others. And normally it boils down to that is somebody who prioritizes convenience over anything else. So, you know, we've had a few examples where we've spoken to people who are sales reps, for example, and they're up and down the motorway all day, every day. They're sometimes rapid charging the vehicle more than once a day. And you know, vehicles that try and stop you from charging over 80%, they're overriding that immediately to get, you know, as much into the battery as they possibly can. Even things like, you know, do they use the built in navigation system or do they use like CarPlay and Android Auto to access sort of Waze and Google Maps and stuff. And the reason that's important is that, you know, if you take vehicles where there's route planning built into the, the, the whole system, like a Tesla, for example, if I say I'm driving from London to Edinburgh, it will say, okay, well stop here for 15 minutes, stop there for 40 minutes or whatever. And as you start approaching those service stations, you know, it starts to make a weird noise. You see it's preconditioning the battery and the car is preparing itself for that level of charge. That is the sort of gold standard. But you know, a lot of vehicles don't force you to use their navigation and route planning system. And it's a selling point. You know, this car has Android Auto and CarPlay, but what that means is that people on a cold day could turn up to a rapid charger and be feeding that car a huge amount of power that it's not prepared for. And so there are so many combinations of behaviors that anyone could be doing over a three year period that it's kind of what we do with Clearwatt is provide an immediate snapshot of how that vehicle is today and such that the onward buyer has a view as to what it is that they're getting into and to go back avoiding a situation where, you know, they inadvertently buy a lemon.
- [26:14]
Host 1
Well, do you know, in preparation for this podcast, I realized that I'm probably not very good. And the reason being is, you know, I don't have a driveway, I don't have the ability to charge at home and I am very dependent on the public charging network. I also travel a lot with this job fully charged and end up, yeah, again, really doing a lot of rapid charging. And I think there's a metaphor there that rapid charging frequently is almost like relying on fast food. And actually what you want is a combination of fruits and vegetables and salad. You're slow trickle charging which is good for sort of that long term health. And every so often, you know, a McDonald's and a burger is absolutely fine, but you don't want to be eating that sort of every day and then putting it. Yeah, yeah, I've managed to wangle in another food analogy. So success. But Then when you, you sent me over an example of a report that Clearwatt makes, and obviously you sent the example that you sent me the the battery had health of A plus. And I am such a sucker for, for getting a good grade or a sticker or something like that. And you know, I do a lot of running. The only way I can motivate myself to run is by ticking off my my runs with like a stick or a star chance. Very, very tragic. Anyway, so I think there's this sort of this very, I guess, human behavior level of this, that if I knew I was going to be judged on my battery health, I would be working so much harder to make that as healthy as I possibly could make it. But I'm also acutely aware that we have got a little bit of a chunk into this podcast and I haven't yet asked you how on earth it works. So I think it's time to find out how on earth do you assess that health?
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Patrick Cresswell
Great. So the way that Clearwater, the easiest way to describe this is initially from the customer's perspective. And then I'll explain what's happening kind of underneath. So if you want to test your vehicle, which I would invite you to do, let's see how many Big Macs you've eaten by using the same analogy. Then you download the clearwall app and add your car to it via license plates. We then ask you to take a couple of photos to validate a few things. And we ask you whether you want to connect your vehicle up via API to our app, which is not essential, but enables us to pull data from your car directly without asking you for it. But we have a manual version that, that doesn't require that which is more suitable for car dealers and people like that who don't have the connection to the vehicle. And so really what Clearwatt does from that point forward is monitors the efficiency of that vehicle as you drive it by pulling the state of charge level at the beginning and at the end of a journey. And we can do that via the car either by pulling that directly from the API if you do connect to it. And if you don't, we ask you to take a photograph of the dashboard at the beginning and at the end of a trip. And we have some AI machine vision which can pick out the numbers that we need from that photograph, which is a bit more work than the passive approach where it's just in your pocket and you forget about it, but still fairly easy stuff. And we never say to a customer, we need you to do a motorway drive and then a rainy drive or whatever, it's very much designed to fit into your routine anyway. And so what we're doing is pulling that information from the car, but at the same time pulling information from your mobile phone. Because what we've done there is borrowed some thinking from the insurance tech world, which has moved on from putting black boxes into young drivers vehicles and realized that modern smartphones are now telematics devices really in their own right, if you ask them the right question. And so by marrying those data points, those being the state of charge at the beginning and the end of a trip, and therefore the kilowatt hours used during that trip, but also a very high frequency interaction with your mobile phone during that trip, how that all pulls in, what we see in our back office looks very much like we do have hardware installed in the car in that the, the trip is obviously drawn out on a map. We can see acceleration traces, we can see speed profiles, we're pulling in details about the weather, the elevation of the roads, all of those things. Because what that then gets us to is we know how many miles you've done and we know how many kilowatt hours you've used. Well, obviously that's miles per kilowatt hour. That's an efficiency figure that the industry acknowledges. It's like the electric equivalent of miles per gallon, obviously. But what we also get is external influences that will be, will have, will have had a bearing on how efficient your car is. Because if you've, you know, if we see that your car seems to be consuming a lot of energy, but we also see that you were flying down the roadway at 100 miles an hour or it was particularly cold outside, then what the clever bit, the clear watts algorithm that sits underneath that is accounting for those extremities. And we, you know, make it very public on our website. We kind of have a standardized set of trip conditions which we are, which, which basically mean 15 degrees C outside, flat roads, low winds, and a few other bits of criteria. And when a customer does a clear watt drive, we're adjusting for those extremities to pull it back to that standardized set of criteria such that we can truly understand how efficient your vehicle is. We're sort of creating a benchmark from which we can make comparisons. And so what we then do is compare the efficiency that you've managed to achieve with your vehicle over a set of trips to a benchmark. And that benchmark is a whole challenge in of itself and perhaps tips over into your, your world. A little bit in terms of aerodynamics and vehicle dynamics modeling. And you know, we, we started with a model built by trl, the Transport Research Laboratory. And we've had a number of academics working on it since. And we're partnering with a number of third party navigation and route planner type people who have made real progress in predicting energy over, over trips. And so that benchmarking model is a key part of all of this for us. And we've got that to a place that the error is negligible. And so when a customer then goes and completes a test, it's making that comparison spot in that delta and that being a pretty good indication. And so what this approach kind of piggybacks on is an agreed method of measuring battery health, which it depends which quarters you ask the question about how do you measure battery health? Some people will say like this, like this or it's not possible depending on who you're talking to. But you know, the United nations have defined two ways that you can measure battery health. One is an energy remaining battery capacity method and another is range. And what they, the UN talk about there is as a means of testing is if you can put a car on a rolling road and recreate like the WRTP testing cycle on, let's say a five year old car, then you can spot differences and that be used as a measure because you go straight to the effect of battery degradation rather than trying to get into the battery pack and claim to be a full diagnostic service to try and understand what's happening at that side. And what we're doing is that, but in the real world, which obviously opens us up to loads more variables. But as I said before, modern smartphone technology enables us to ingest those variables, which is kind of the beauty of it. So to give you a good example, I recently got myself a three year old Tesla Model 3 that had done 30,000 miles on it. And I said to the leasing company, can you tell me anything about the battery health? I sort of knew the answer no. And I know that a fully charged tester, when it gives you the range estimate is actually better than a lot of OEMs. It's not quite as dramatic a guess on the guessometer as some. So he sent me that and that was kind of enough for me to make the order. But I had a 14 day returns policy anyway under the Consumer Protection Act. So I took delivery of the car the next day I was up at a meeting in Leicester and I drove it from London to Leicester. And on that one journey completed what I needed to complete a full clear watt test and by the time I got there, had a report in my inbox which told me exactly what I can expect of this car to those standardized trip conditions and the rating that we give that car, which is a determiner of how it performs versus brand new, but also how it performs in context, like, you know, in terms of other 3 year old model 3s, is this good, bad or indifferent? So really what we're doing is empowering lots of different types of users to test any car and you don't need to be a technical person to do it and you don't need to take it to a rolling road or take it to a garage because there's no hardware or that kind of set procedure.
- [35:51]
Host 1
I mean, you mentioned variables there and it was something that I circled and underlined on my notes that there are so many variables and the ones that immediately spring to mind are, what about, you know, do you take the tire pressure at the start as well? Because that's going to have quite an impact on somebody's performance.
- [36:08]
Patrick Cresswell
So. Good question. Well, one of the, what you may have noticed on our report that I sent to you is that I should mention that the Clearwater report that we issue is very much a comprehensive pre sale report of which battery health and range estimation makes up one half of one page, but it's actually a three page report full of lots of very useful information about the car. And one of the things you may have noticed on I think page two is a photo of a wheel. And so what we're doing there is when you're in the add your car step, we ask for a photograph of one of the wheels and we have some AI built into that which can detect what the diameter and design of that wheel is, because that has a big bearing on range and therefore the benchmark that we're setting for that vehicle to begin with. That's an Innovate UK project that we're nearing completion on at the end, all about AI and machine vision. And within that we're, you know, phase two of that is tyre pressure. Now I'm not claiming that from a photograph you're going to get to psi level, but what's, you know, what we've tested so far is validation that a tyre seems to be suitably inflated. Also in the agile car process, where we have a photo of the dashboard, the AI kind of knows where to look, where there would be a tyre pressure, warning lights and things like that. So, you know, we're trying to, you know, this technology is moving at such a pace that, you know, we don't need direct access to hundreds or thousands of sensors on the car to pull this kind of information. There are some incredibly clever things that you're able to do to sort of. To navigate that.
- [37:48]
Host 1
I've got another question. So this is. I appreciate that I'm asking the kind of. Yeah, but what about this really niche situation? So have you ever come across Kevin, who is the hypermiler?
- [38:01]
Patrick Cresswell
I know about Kevin because I am in a shared office and one of the other tenants in this office is Enzo Tyres. So I know that they've done quite a lot of work together.
- [38:12]
Host 1
Yeah. I mean, he is an astonishing guy in that he somehow. So I think he is an Ioniq 6 driver. He has had an Ioniq 5 in the past. I also have an Ioniq 5. I tend to get, on average, I would say about 3.8 miles per kilowatt hour. He can get like 8. And so, I mean, I don't know what wizardry he's sort of, you know, managing to achieve, but would you be able to detect these extreme edge cases of he is somehow, you know, managing to drive super, super efficiently, or is that. Do we just kind of have to consider Kevin on his own a little bit?
- [38:48]
Patrick Cresswell
I would have to understand what the wizardry is or if Kevin would be prepared to share that. But I guess that's a separate podcast. But what we've built into our system, though, is a lot of clever stuff to prevent gaming. Right. So, you know, if somebody comes along to do one of our tests and then does, you know, five miles an hour for several hours to try and rack up some miles, then the system will just outright reject that. We see what those sorts of things are. So it depends exactly on what's happening there. So, yeah, in answer to your question, I think we could out him. And I think there's a challenge on here.
- [39:29]
Host 1
I think we need to get Kevin to trial this and to see if it can be detected in the test. And I do appreciate that I have asked the battery health equivalent of the question. Yeah. But once a year I drive all the way to Switzerland and I need to know that my EV can get me all the way there. So I do slightly apologize for that question.
- [39:47]
Patrick Cresswell
That's okay. I mean, I mean, to be honest, like, if a car really overperforms and is showing us that it's better than it could have possibly been when it was brand new, then that is obviously going to cause some red flags for.
- [39:59]
Host 1
Further investigation or, you know, because at the moment if your battery's in great health, you get an A plus. Maybe there needs to be. It unlocks you to this secret level where you get, you know, I don't know, inducted into the world of the super healthy battery club or something like that. But maybe that's too much of an insight into how I am motivated. Okay, so few things I want to touch on there as well because one of the things that we, we know about EVs is that there is an equity challenge, not least from a cost perspective. We see the prices are coming down. That is a really good thing. But we also see a lot of debate around the public charging network is much more expensive. It tends to be a more to feature more rapid charges and that disproportionately impacts people who don't have access to driveways and they're paying more for that charging. But then we also see that actually if everyone was to do a battery health report, a clearwatt report, that people who are overly dependent on fast charging public network, that they're also, you know, going to experience lower residual values. I know that sort of this isn't clear what's responsibility to fix, but it must be interesting that you will be pulling together this data to say this is a potential problem and it could potentially help sort of. I don't know. I don't really know I'm going with that. But it's an interesting unintended consequence perhaps.
- [41:20]
Patrick Cresswell
Yeah, I think so. I mean, on your initial point about the sort of equity point. Well, I, you know, we are driven by impact measures to some degree as a business. And you know, helping consumers make that purchasing decision is obviously at raison d'etre helping them do that confidently. One thing that's always kind of bugged me about the sector and the way that it's evolved is I guess it's a natural consequence of the technology moving so quickly. But there is a degree in some quarters of, you know, the newest, shiniest thing and you know, actually extended lifespans and you know, elongated product life cycle for EVs is part of the environmental argument.
- [42:11]
Sponsor
Right.
- [42:11]
Patrick Cresswell
I mean that should be what we're all hoping to achieve. And I think one thing that you hear in a lot of places is kind of the idea that when an EV dips below 80% battery health, however that's measured, that that car is not serviceable in use anymore. And obviously there's recycling, there is second life applications that could then be explored from that point forward. But it's something that I think needs to be challenged straight away, really. I think that as there is a market for EVs where the remaining capacity is 60, 50%, really it's just a case of seeing that and enabling the market to price that accordingly. And so I think, you know, in terms of bringing everyone along on this journey, I think not to say that, you know, people with less resources should necessarily get, you know, dirt cars, but I think there are, there are lots of, you know, if somebody said to me, here is a, I don't know, a renault Zoe, that's 3K because it will only do 30 miles or whatever, I wouldn't outright reject that as an idea. You know, that would be a pretty cheap way of getting to work and back. Right, you know, like. But it needs to be priced that way, you know, and, and so just on that equity point, I think, you know, just to clarify, I think increasing the attractiveness of secondhand vehicles is a really important thing, I think. And then, yeah, on the, on the rapid charging point, yes, I'm in the same boat. You know, I live in London. I live in a terraced house that doesn't have a driveway. And I'm therefore using the public network. Public network comes in different shapes and sizes, obviously. You know, actually the most convenient thing for me to do is use a 5 kilowatt lamppost charger and. But you know, on a trip, obviously that changes to a rapid charger. It doesn't. Public network has become synonymous with rapid chargers because I think it's progress in that sector is seen as the more rapid chargers we can get in the ground, the better. But I think, you know, with some of the product developments that we have on the roadmap, particularly things that will be unlocked by connecting to vehicles and being able to monitor charging behavior and things like that, where we are in a position to gather that up and send that to the user or send it to the person that owns the car, which may well be the business that owns the car, not in a Big Brother way, but in a positive nudge kind of way. Being able to, to, you know, accept that that customer can't plug in at home, but provide with, provide them with a suite of options as to what they can do in a healthy way to sort of run that vehicle.
- [44:57]
Host 1
Isn't that interesting that actually, if you have all of that data there exactly as you describe, if it is going to have a higher residual value, that installing a home charger could totally, you know, be offset by the fact that you've got a higher residual value at the end of its life if a business, if your employer for example, was to pay for that charger.
- [45:19]
Patrick Cresswell
Yeah, absolutely.
- [45:20]
Host 1
The other thing that I think I've sort of gone into my like, what's the domino effect of this sort of mode? And what I would want to see from car companies is that okay, in the second hand EV market, let's take, let's make the maths easy. You've got a car with a brand new. It has a 200 mile range that represents 100% of the battery. Many, many, many, many years later, it now only has a range of 100 miles, say which on the display would look like 50% of the battery. And you're only ever charging to 50%. There should be some nifty sort of software upgrade that it recalibrates 100 miles to look as 100% of the battery, such that psychologically you just feel more confident that you know what 100% means to you. Does that make sense?
- [46:09]
Patrick Cresswell
Yes, but from what we've seen, it's not as black and white as that. Some vehicles with serious issues with failing batteries will never let you charge beyond X percent, let's say. But generally speaking, customers think they're charging to 100% when the range is dropping, when battery degradation is occurring. And so, you know, yes, the holy grail for consumers would be a really reliable number on the dashboard, which shows you what's happening there in terms of battery degradation. And there is some work underway to make that the case. But the state of play today is absolutely not that manufacturers are not forced to surface that kind of information to the customer. And it will be some years until anything like that is available on vehicles, probably not in this decade in terms of secondhand vehicles.
- [47:06]
Host 1
I'm really aware of how long we've been talking so far and I have a gazillion other questions, but I'm going to try and limit myself to just two. So my first question I suppose is you've got all of this data and presumably if I was to get my Clearwatt report, I then have that PDF report. If I was to sell my car on a platform, I could also post that report and it's there in the public domain. But also you have so much access to all of these different tests that have, that have gone on. You've also got the test to sort of calibrate these as well. And you must see that there are some manufacturers who are consistently underperforming. And is there a plan or maybe you're already doing this to make some of this data publicly available so that you're not necessarily naming and shaming specific brands, but it's there for people to be able to make their own assessments. Is that, is something like that being considered?
- [48:02]
Patrick Cresswell
Well, actually I think there are manufacturers that definitely go out of their way to protect battery health. I mentioned before some of the measures that Tesla taken. There are others like it. It's, you know, it's not within our remit and our plan to out specific OEMs that might be problematic. And to be honest, I don't think that's where we will arrive anyway in terms of conclusions because really the way that you behave with the car is far more important than who made it. And you know, most OEMs are sharing the same battery manufacturers at the end of the day, right? There's only a handful of them. And so yeah, it's not so much about that you've mentioned a few times our grading system is probably worth me just clarifying with that. We're providing customers with a view of what they can expect of that vehicle versus brand new, but also other vehicles within its same category and manufacturer and what we'd expect from it. And that's really important because, you know, we want customers to know that a 2012 Nissan Leaf that has got 70% remaining capacity is a really positive thing, you know, and, and, and you know, because Most of the 2012 Nissan Leafs are probably faring quite a bit worse than that. And so depending on a few other inputs, that car could well get a clear A plus rating. You know, because what we hear from dealers often, and we have dealers using Clearwatt all the time, we have cars on autotrader right now where our results are being shown to customers to help them with these kind of questions. What we hear is that if they find some other way of plugging something into a car and they do a diagnostic report of some of the means and the output of that is a percentage on a page, they might say to a customer, great news, this car has got 92% battery health. Well, that's actually being used mostly as a stick to beat them with. You know, consumers quite rightly want to know where the other 8% has gone. You know, why would that be a positive message? You know, how is Mr. And Mrs. Sort of, you know, non expert in this space who doesn't do their own research supposed to understand that that might be good for that vehicle? And so, you know, we're providing a really simple letter based system as the one that, that we've been discussing to help take that confusion and that thinking kind of away from people who aren't expert in this area. So, yeah, it's a long winded answer, but I think at the end of the day, being able to provide that view on any car means that we're helping customers make informed purchasing decisions at the point of purchase. And yeah, as I said before, it's not going to be so much about specific manufacturers. It's more about the history of that vehicle than anything else.
- [51:08]
Host 1
Yeah. And I realized as I asked the question, actually, that is, it's quite a reductive way in which I did ask the question because so much comes down to the type of car, the type of driver, how you lived with it, a bit of, I guess, kind of.
- [51:21]
Patrick Cresswell
Where in the world you live can have a really big bearing. You know, we're currently, we have people over four continents using Clearwater and it's fascinating. We see, you know, we have a lot of support in Australia kind of out of nowhere this, this year. And yeah, it's really interesting in hotter climates to see what, what kind of impact that can have.
- [51:40]
Host 1
So my other question is around standardization because presently there isn't sort of a unified standard around measuring battery health. There's also been a lot of discussion around battery passports, which, whilst very different, often get conflated with, with battery health. Where do you see the industry heading?
- [52:01]
Patrick Cresswell
Well, the ambition is for nation states and trading blocs to implement what is known as the GTR number 22, Global Technical Regulation 22, which has been drawn up by the United Nations. And what that dictates is that if. So it's not legislative, it's advisory, but it enables nations and trading blocks like the EU to choose to implement that and turn it into legislation. And so if they do that, which in the European Union it's currently floated to be implemented from November 2027, which is a delay. It was supposedly being implemented next year as part of euro 7, but the kind of can has been kicked down the road a little bit. Then brand new vehicles that are sold from that point forward need to provide an easily accessible state of health number that the consumers can find. And it doesn't mandate where that is, but it gives some options, like on the dashboard, for example, or, or through a companion app, for example. And there are some, you know, if you read into that in lots of detail, you know, what they're aiming for is a plus minus 5% accuracy from that. But what they're not doing is mandating exactly how it's, what the algorithm is or what it's measuring, it's kind of impossible to do that when battery chemistry is developing all the time and, and people are using very different systems. But yeah, they're hoping to implement that such that brand new cars have at least a 5% tolerance of accuracy and a number that customers can draw from. And I guess what we always think about that is a, if that happens and the numbers are any good, then that is a good data set for us to include in. You know, in the report that we generate. We've been talking about the driving test and that is our core independent testing methodology. But we do have one or two other ways that we can provide snapshot sort of flash views on stationary vehicles and what have you, which suits certain use cases. And so if that data becomes better and more reliable, then that can only be a good thing. But the issue of timing can't really be gotten away from in that if brand new vehicles from November 27th include that, then you know, average three year ownership cycle, clearly we're into the 2000-30s before those vehicles start trickling down into the used car market. And you know, I think the problem is right now certainly, you know, that's, there's, there's half a decade to go out beforehand where consumers can't be in the dark on this stuff. And probably the, the second point there is to note that the European Union have committed to implementation there, but the UK currently haven't, although it's, you know, the Labour Party have made it clear that they want to do more stuff in this space. So that could well be that the move that they make is that implementation. And your second point about battery passports. Yeah, you're right. The two things often do get conflated and I think with battery passports, right, it's more about origins and tracing how that battery has been produced and there being a QR code that anyone can scan which pulls up like a fact sheet about that battery and where it's come from. And I think when there has been a, you know, when there is a fully agreed upon testing procedure and you know, perhaps an annual means of that happening, then I'm sure that information would be surfaced in that battery passport. But it's very much a tagged on ambition at the moment. I don't think those two initiatives have been joined together yet because there are just a few too many unknowns.
- [56:01]
Host 1
I totally lied. I have one last question.
- [56:04]
Patrick Cresswell
Fine.
- [56:05]
Host 1
So knowing everything that we know now about Clearwater, what would you recommend that I say to my brother in law Charlie, next time? He says, oh, My gosh, in three years time, my new ID buzz is going to be worth absolutely nothing. What would you say to him?
- [56:21]
Patrick Cresswell
Well, I think that, you know, great things are afoot to try and help this situation along. We're trying to do to play our part in lifting consumer attitudes towards the proposition of a secondhand ev. For sure, there are market forces that are, I think, going to remain a fairly continuous challenge for the second hand EV market. I'm aware that I missed one thing from my market dynamics analysis, but one thing there of course is new entrants and a whole load of brand new vehicles kind of coming in. And I think all of a sudden the selection of vehicles available on autotrader this year, next year will seem quite small compared to the vast array of vehicles you can get brand new and there's all that sort of stuff coming. So I think it's going to be a challenging space for some time. But I think, I hope we've sort of hit the floor and we can sort of build from here in terms of pricing because we're on a mission to get clear what front and center in all sorts of environment such that consumers feel like they know what they're buying and they're comfortable and confident to do so. And there are a number of very smart people in this sector working on adjacent initiatives to increase the total improve the total cost of ownership with things like V2G and all sorts of exciting developments. So I think we're hopefully in a position where things are looking up for the used market.
- [57:55]
Host 1
Well, honestly, thank you so much for sharing your insights today. I have learned a lot. I AM probably only 20% of the way through my questions. There's so many more things that we could have gone into, but we'll have to save it for another time. But in the meantime, thank you so much.
- [58:10]
Patrick Cresswell
Thank you very much. Take care.
- [58:12]
Host 2
Thank you so much to Patrick for joining us for this episode of the Fully Charged show podcast. I personally learned a lot. I had to remind myself not to get overly distracted because I was getting too excited in finding out all about the wonderful world of battery health. So no question, I need to go away and do that test on my.
- [58:30]
Host 1
Ionic 5, I think, but that's all that we have time for.
- [58:33]
Host 2
Thank you so much to you, our lovely listeners and viewers, for tuning into this podcast. Thank you to Andy from our team who'll be editing this one. Before you go, if I could just ask one teeny tiny favor. If you give this episode a like a comment, a subscribe or all of the above, it really, really helps to ensure that we can keep on sharing the cool and interesting stuff in the world of the clean energy transition. And if you can't do any of those things, please just tell a friend, because that also really helps as well. But that's it. If you have been, thank you for listening.