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Permits, Power, Price: The REAL Challenges For EV Charging | Fully Charged Show Podcast with Ian Johnston, CEO Osprey
00:55:20
n this episode of the Fully Charged Show Podcast, Imogen Bhogal sits down with Ian Johnston, CEO of Osprey Charging, to explore the pivotal factors shaping the future of EV charging. Together, they debunk myths about evenly distributed chargers,...
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Fully Charged show podcast, where today we're talking about the world of charging. Now, here in the UK, we have almost 1 million EV chargers with enough capacity to deliver 165 gigawatt hours of energy a day, which could allow each EV driver to drive 580 miles per day, or 933 kilometers per day, which is 21 times the average distance traveled by a driver each day. So there are some fun facts for you to share down the pub, but it has not been a straightforward road to get there, and there is certainly still so much more work to do in order to continue building the charging network. So very shortly I'm going to be joined by Ian Johnson, who is the CEO of Osprey Charging, a fast charging network here in the uk. And honestly, I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this conversation. You're in for such a treat. But first, a very quick ad break, love the Everything Electric show. Then join us live in Sydney in March, London in April, or in Vancouver, Farnborough and Melbourne in September, October and November 2025. Ian, thank you so much for giving up your Friday afternoon. I feel we should let the listeners know that we are recording this on Friday 6th December.
- [01:17]
B
Correct.
- [01:17]
A
And it's probably going to go out on Monday 13th January. And given the nature of the industry at the moment, actually quite a few things could change, despite the fact that we've got Christmas standing in the way of this podcast recording now and when it goes live. So let's see how we get on. But I wonder if we should just kick off with the most obvious question, and that being that often you hear the term there's no infrastructure, and for those just listening, I've done that in air quotes. So is that the reality? And how false is that statement?
- [01:50]
B
I think one of the great things about the world we live in today is that we live in a different world in terms of the provision of public charging infrastructure to the world we lived in. Even two years ago, there has been such an amazing change in the provision of charging in all the different areas of the sector. Today, in December, we find ourselves there's over 72,000 public charges across the UK. That's been. Much of that has been delivered in the last two years. Year on year, we're looking at somewhere between 35% and 40% growth every year now. And it's just been a huge effort by all the charging networks to deliver that infrastructure before the vehicles have arrived and in quite difficult circumstances. So Absolutely. It's not the case anymore that there's not enough infrastructure. I was fortunate to be in the meeting, the recent meeting between the car companies and the ft. And what was interesting is that both the car companies and the SMT were very quick to note the great progress that's been made in the infrastructure. So I think the real challenge that faces the charging industry, the oem, automotive sector now, and government, is the infrastructure's there. How do we communicate that to the public? How do we correct that misconception that there's not enough infrastructure? And I think if we'd had this conversation a year ago, we'd probably be talking a lot more about the fact that there's been a huge rollout in some parts of the sector, but not all. And the great news is that we've seen in recent times not just the private sector and private retailers delivering much of the rollout, but we've now seen a doubling of the infrastructure on the motorway network. And now with the Levi's scheme coming, we're going to see that rollout hitting the local authorities for on street charging too. So it's not an even distribution across the different sectors, but we are now seeing a rollout of thousands of chargers in every part of the charging infrastructure space.
- [03:50]
A
And I suppose that is part of the challenge, isn't it? Because when we say charging, that can mean all sorts of manner of things, private at home, on street, motorway, fast charging, etc. And it must be a bit of a frustration for you that you must get lumped into these other sectors which perhaps are a little bit further behind, for example, local authority deployment of on street charging. And anyone who is an EV driver will know that it's. You drive on a long journey and you will come across an Osprey charger or an Ionity one, or a fastned or obviously the Tesla Supercharger network. And so much of this concern seems to come from non EV drivers, which of course it does, because if you don't need to find a charger, you won't be looking out for them. So we're obviously at this point where, I mean, I can't, I can't even get over that number the fact. But it's doubled over the past year for the motorway network and UK. The number of EVs on the road. In the UK, it's around roughly 2% of all vehicles on the road. So how much bigger does the network have to become in order to sustain or in order to be able to meet kind of that future? 2030 demand, say.
- [04:59]
B
Yeah, I think, look, people always want to have a number like a target that everyone's stretching to. We in the sector find that number, which has been used previously by some government bodies, quite unhelpful because it really tries to oversimplify what we need on the ground here. We don't need a public charging infrastructure that is geographically evenly spread. We need more public charging and we need more en route and destination public charging in the areas of the country where there are more roads, where people are doing more journeys. So on the strategic road network, on the busy A roads up and down the country, we need more public charging in the areas where there are more vehicles that don't have off street parking. So some of Osprey's busiest charging hubs are those where we know there are thousands of people living with EVs living in apartment blocks or terraced houses. And we've seen some sites today where at the moment the adoption of vehicles is predominantly in people with driveways and home charging. And of course, the usage at this moment in time in 2024 is not so high. So it's frustrating for us in this space when we hear about this county is ahead of this county when we look at our data and we know that actually the county with the most charges may still need so much more. If you look at London, for example, which is often pointed to as there being so much charging already provided, there are simply not enough large public ultra rapid charging hubs in London for the number of electric vehicles and delivery vans, et cetera, that are here. So it shouldn't be geographically, even at all in terms of where are we on the journey? I think what has been an interesting development this year is that many of the commentators have started to look at this ratio between the number of new EVs hitting the road versus the number of public chargers hitting the streets. And what we've seen through this here is that the rollout of charging has overtaken, has switched the ratio in terms of the registration of new BEVs. Now, the great news for all of us is that in the last few months there's been this big uptick in the registration of electric vehicles as well, and that ratio has leveled out. So I think it's unhelpful to have one big number we're aiming for because it massively oversimplifies it. But this ratio of the rollout and the registration of BEVs keeping pace with each other is a very helpful and we think a balanced way of looking at the picture. So at the moment for the last few months that it's been both are on track, they're keeping pace with each other and we're, and we're not hearing horror stories of queues, we are seeing the networks rolling out these massive ultra rapid charging hubs of 1632 chargers. So the provision is ahead of where the bev provision is and that's a good place to be and that's where we'll stay going forward.
- [07:37]
A
I know that I've made this joke to you before, but I've always said, you know, charging, it's the chicken and egg question of our electrification time. What should come first, the chargers or the electric vehicles? And it would certainly seem that in this instance, actually the chargers should be leading that, not least as a way to drive confidence that EVs are going to be adequately supported. I also certainly have been guilty of saying, of picking up on that fact, that the distribution of charges aren't evenly distributed. And I think I've made that comment meaning that's a bad thing. But actually what you're saying is that it needn't be evenly geographically distributed because different places have different mobility types of needs. So you've touched on one or two criteria. But I wonder if we could get into this in a bit more detail. How on earth do you choose a location to deploy charges?
- [08:26]
B
I think the simplest way to think about it is where would you like to stop with your family when you're on a journey? Or where will you be already leaving your vehicle during your day to day routines? That's probably the simplest way to think about this. So, Osprey, over the last few years we've pivoted our strategy. We're now predominantly building large ultra rapid charging hubs. So we are looking for locations which are effortless for you to leave your journey. So these are en route on the major transport routes across the country where you will be driving anyway, we want to partner our charging provision with the amenities where you would like to stop anywhere you shouldn't be needing to make a second stop to get the refreshments you need. And that is really what great en route charging hubs look like. I think from a destination perspective. Some of our busiest hubs we've built over the last year have been in those top tier retail parks, the top tier supermarkets across the UK and again the local authority car parks where we're seeing great usage as well. Now, these are all places from a destination perspective where people are leaving their vehicles for 45, 5 minutes, 30 minutes anyway, and therefore it's a natural place for your car to charge, you're not having to go out your way and charge again. So, for us, it comes down to the user case. Is this a location where people will be going anyway? Because it's a great location and a great immunity. Is this a location on your route where you and I would want to stop and plover and spend our time? And that's really the major difference now, what we're seeing from how we refuel our vehicles today versus how we used to refuel. Clearly, from a technical perspective, we can find the best location in the country and the best retail partner. There's a lot we need to be able to make the investment. So, of course, we need the right grid power, we need to know that the site is safe. And again, that comes down to, is this a location people will be willing to come for the next 25, 30 years? And when you look at it that way, of course, we need the right legal terms for the landlord and we also need to know we can get the right security on the land going forward. So there's a huge technical part behind it, and there are some amazing locations across the UK which we tried to develop, which we couldn't. And that may be because of the landlord structure, it may be because of the technical structure of the grid in that area. But ultimately we should get to the point now where it's just second nature for you to put into this location, because it's so obviously natural on your route or in your routine, the amenities, what you want as a consumer in the UK in 2025 going forward. And it's an effortless and easy to use experience. So that's what we're going for. That's what should be being built going forward next year.
- [11:03]
A
And it is amazing that I'd say this year I've really noticed that the network is such that you are charging whilst you stop more and more. So rather than stopping to charge now, the Osprey Charger that I use the most frequently happens to be in a pub car park very near to my sister's house. And it is a 50 kilowatt charger, which I think is really smart. I want to touch on this in a little bit, but it's 50 kilowatts, which means that you're kind of forced to spend a little bit of time in the pub. And this is useful for me, certainly for two reasons, because whenever I go to that Osprey Charger near my sister's house, me and my husband can quite often run away to the charger to get away from our gazillions of nieces and nephews, have a moment of peace, share some chips whilst the car charges. And as we've been there, we've been like, this is really interesting because we are now spending money in this location in a way that we probably wouldn't have done previously. And it is, you know, the dwell time and how that corresponds to the speed of charging, I think is something that's, that's absolutely fascinating. So I wanted to sort of touch on the, on this idea of, with retailers and landlords and pubs and things like that, is there a sort of, like, revenue share scheme? How does a landlord or retailer benefit from having an Osprey charger on their site?
- [12:21]
B
I think the dwell time is a key point here and what we need to try and do is educate the retailers on what the right charging solution for their location is. So naturally, these retail parks and coffee shop chains, they are businesses too, and like everybody else, it's been a tough few years. So clearly in their interest, they just want the biggest insulation they can possibly get and the highest rent from the charging operators. But where, when you see a fantastic charging site, it's where the charging is linked to the natural dwell time of that site. So you don't want to see 300 kilowatt charges at a cinema complex. You don't want to see, you know, ultra rapid chargers that will charge a car in 10 minutes in a supermarket where you need to spend 45 minutes. So when, when a site is built correctly, you're matching that dwell time or the Osprey chargers we have, they have load balancing across the charges so that you can give the right charge for that location. Now, the way it works historically is there has been often a profit share. So we have many partners who are thinking about the long term. They see the huge growth opportunity that EV charging will give on their location and they will take a share of the profits that site will bring. But as more of the established retail park investment funds have come into the sector, they will view EV charging just as any other tenants on their site and therefore they will run a tender at a market rate. And you will literally pay a rent for the parking bay as you would do for the shop, as if you were boots or McDonald's. So it's become a lot more sophisticated over the last few years. It's become a lot more competitive between the many great networks out there. But yeah, I think in these times where there's pressure on the retailers, what they see as the opportunity for me to be charging is, this is not only a way to bring in additional revenue, this is another way to bring more people into our location if we can build the right site that people love. And this also goes towards their own individual ESG trustees too. So there's, I mean, part of that explosion of charge installations we've seen over the last two years has come from all of these retailers across the UK bringing their portfolios to the market for businesses like Osprey and our peers to deploy upon. Now the great news is there's been this massive rollout everywhere, but when you look at it, it's only really Sainsbury so far from a supermarket perspective that have delivered a big rapid rollout across their estate. You've still got the Asda, the Tesco's, the Morrisons, all these sites who will be doing more over the next few years. You've still got hundreds and hundreds of major retail parks and I guess the bigger the retail park gets then the harder it is to deliver the right solution for that park. So there's still so much more brilliant land where people like you and I would love to spend our time that doesn't yet have the right charging hub within it and that will be both long stay charging and ultra rapid charging on the edge of the estate. So we've really just started to scratch the surface in terms of the amount of land that we'll be deployed upon. So there's a lot of opportunity for the retailer to make money and to drive customer footfall from EV charging. And I think what's interesting is there are many, many businesses will look at their real estate portfolio and say, well, why don't we do this ourselves? And what's been interesting is you have players like Sainsbury's who of course already run fuel businesses and they're doing a great job of running their charging so far. But it is expensive, it's a massive investment and of course we're building ahead of demand. But 98% of the retail sector in the UK is investigating this and they're coming back to the market and saying the right thing to do is to contract with an expert charging operator. Because this is really complicated. And you know what? Our day job to run Boots or the supermarket is a hard enough job. We'll contract with the charging network to run the charging side and we're seeing a huge amount of activity in the space still today. So there's going to be that massive Rollout will continue. 3, 25, 26 and beyond.
- [16:15]
A
And this is going to be a phenomenal oversimplification. But I suppose people like Sainsbury's who are running a fuel side of their business, it is a, it's obviously reasonably complex, there's logistics involved, but it is kind of like an in and out transaction where this is more talking about, well, how do we maximize the amount of time that people spend in a space? Match that with the right kind of charging, balancing things like actually, do you want that high throughput with people having lots and lots of charging with very, very high fast charging or a slightly slower rate which encourages someone to spend more time in a space. Sainsbury's is also interesting because we were recently at a heat network in London and this was absolutely phenomenal because there is a huge heat network powered by ground source heat pumps that is hidden behind this Victorian building in central London and it distributes heat to things like the Barbican. But also it has this incredible sort of control center that shows you other heat networks and other ground source heat pumps across the uk. And Sainsbury's loads and loads of Sainsbury's in the UK are powered by ground source heat pumps. So they're doing many, many positive things.
- [17:25]
B
I think there's a huge push by the retailer and all the retailers are looking at their own Net Zero targets. And I think most of retailers we look with, you know, we are, when we build these hubs, we're bringing a lot more power into this site, which has lots of other benefits for them. So the EV rollout is normally part of their wider Net Zero strategies across the different types of retailers too.
- [17:45]
A
So we have so many things to talk about here, price being one, Zev mandate this slightly contentious thing being another. But before we get onto those, just because you've mentioned it there, I want to ask you about getting that power onto the site because it is something that we hear all the time that grid connections are a challenge, that there are grid bottlenecks, that getting an upgrade to the grid is costly and time consuming. How do you manage that process with retailers, for example, and how problematic is it actually? Are you experiencing those grid bottlenecks in a meaningful way?
- [18:20]
B
I think the first thing to clarify for the listeners is that when we talk about the grid being a challenge, it is not the case that there isn't enough power out there. That's not the problem we're facing. That isn't a problem for us. This is about building things in the uk. So when we hear the government say let's get Britain building again, this is exactly what we talk about. It's the permitting process. It's not electrons that are the problem, it's pieces of paper and processes. So we're not going to get political now, but that's the thing that holds us back. And this massive rollout we've seen, I mean, if you look at the Osprey Network, this time two years ago we had 350 charge points, today we have 1,300. So we've delivered that insane rollout across the UK, despite these problems. So let's but this conversation the right context, first off, which is that this is not preventing the rollout, but we could go so much quicker. And what really happens is that clearly we are securing enough power for the future, for 2035, for 2040, we're overbuilding and future proofing these sites and we secure the grid from the network. Now, the Osprey team, as is the case for many of the other charging NETWORKS in the UK, we've been doing this for 15, 20 years. Many of us came from the wind, the solar, the battery storage industry. So we're experts in how do you secure and deliver these grid connections? And when you've done that development work on the behalf of the retailer, the hard thing then is delivering the work. And it's not about is it physically, technically difficult to deliver this connection, because everyone's experts in doing this for years and years. It's about, when can we have the permit to open the road, to connect our cable to the cable? And we're in a queue behind the gas people, the water people, there's the school being upgraded, the new library being built. This is the problem we talk about, and what's been really interesting the last year or so is we've seen some real innovation from partners like National Grid at a district network level. They used to be called Western Power, who've literally just ripped up the rulebook on the hoops we have to jump through. Also some great work with UK power networks down in the southeast to literally take six months off the lead time on bringing these projects to market. So we have issues with planning. I mean, in Scotland, we don't need planning, we can just go and build. It's fantastic. We can't do that in England and Wales. So there's some really simple things we can change here to allow us to go even quicker. There are long delays on getting the permits to get into the high roads. None of us like roadworks, none of us like traffic lights. I'm afraid when you're delivering a High power charging hub. Quite often that large high voltage cable sits in the middle of the road, so we need to dig the roads up. That's a big delay as well. And then there's the legal documentation between the substation and it's interesting you mentioned earlier around how there might be 50 kilowatt charge points in some of the Osprey pubs and restaurants. To bring in a high power charging hub, you're also needing to build a substation equivalent to that that you would build for an entirely new housing estate. So this is a big infrastructure project and there's obviously a lot of legal work that goes behind it. So there's a huge focus right now on how can we remove these barriers. The grid networks are really with us. They're sat beside us talking to government about what we can do. The highways part and the planning part I think is going to take a little bit longer to change. But government understand this and you know, when we hear the Prime Minister talk about getting the country building, this is exactly what they mean. It's not just EV charging, it's everything else. But hopefully we're going to see that lead time for a project shrink today from the moment when the landlord has signed the contract with us and they say, please go, go, go. It Normally takes around 12 months to build a project. So as you can imagine, today there are probably another somewhere in the region between 25 and 50,000 charge points today sat in that pipeline that will come to market next year. And the networks like Osprey and our peers, we already have our pipelines secured for the next two, three years. We know what we're going to build. It's just getting it to that point where we can get it in the ground and get it live.
- [22:19]
A
How frustrating. And I love that phrase. The power's not the problem, it's the paper. But so if you, you know, you could wave a magic wand and a permitting process would take. Well, actually, I'm going to rephrase that question slightly differently. Let's say you were in charge and we won't make this political. This is purely thinking about this from a logistics perspective. If you were in charge and could streamline that process, how quick do you think it could be?
- [22:46]
B
We, we have delivered sites before in around 10, 10 to 12 weeks. So bear in mind the large hubs take six weeks to build. I mean, it really where we're going in with a retail partner we've worked with before, with a DNO we've worked with before, that removes all the legal part of it. If we don't require to dig a hole in the road, then we can literally get on and do the works ourselves with the dno. And then if it's in Scotland, we don't need planning. So that shows you how quick it could be done. This could be literally taken from a piece of paper being signed to a charging hub being live in two or three months. And that, that does happen in some cases, but it's not happening in England and Wales with our highway system and with our planning system. And again, the planning, let's be really clear, because we all used to build wind farms, which were controversial. Nobody is objecting to this stuff. Primarily 99.9% of projects, everybody wants them, the local authority wants them. It isn't that this is infrastructure no one wants, is that there's not enough human resource in the councils to just stamp the permits. That's all we need. So it's not controversial, it is frustrating. But again, this is stuff we can fix. We're not here Talking about needing 15 years of development of sub C cables for power. This is people and papers. That's all it is. And it will get better and it's getting better already.
- [24:05]
A
So I've just literally just shot our episode called Top Tech 2025 and it's really just talking about the big trends that we're going to see over 2025. And it always comes down to the same thing of the technology is there, it's the processes, it's the funding, it's the people that are required to kind of accelerate the deployment of these things. And on the one hand, that's obviously deeply frustrating. On the other hand, how reassuring is it that these are very solvable problems? They are not sort of. We're not talking about impossible physics that we need to try and bend. But yes, I can imagine when you have the option of doing 10 to 12 versus 12 months, that must be a bit of a source of frustration.
- [24:44]
B
Indeed.
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A
Okay, so I have. I think we should talk about the ZEV mandate, because this is a highly, highly contentious issue at the moment. So for our international listeners, and indeed our listeners in the uk, who might not be familiar, I am going to refer to my notes because I want to get this absolutely correct. So the. The UK government ZEV mandate, which is the measure that says manufacturers must sell a percentage of their cars and vans as zero emissions, that is undergoing a fresh consultation and in particular there is some debate about how much flexibility there should be around Those percentages of EVs that manufacturers need to sell and at the moment those, I think those percentages. So 2025, I think, is it 28%.
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B
Of right, yes, yeah.
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A
Should be electric and then that scales up to 100% by 2030 or 2035 by 2030.
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B
It depends on whether it's passenger cars, vans, it shifts. But yes, the headline is that there will be no new diesel or petrol passenger cars sold after 2030. And then there are flexibilities thereafter, as you say.
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A
Yeah. And I mean this is also just, it goes to show how contentious this has been and how slightly unclear it's been because I am someone who works in this industry, talks about it all the time and I'm like, oh, gosh, have I got that quite correct?
- [26:05]
B
Yeah.
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A
So I guess my question is why, what's been going on? What is Osprey stance and what is it that you need from the UK government?
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B
Yeah, and I think it's. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk about it because it's great to have the chance to clarify some facts because there have been so many headlines about it and there's a few different issues that kind of merged together. So the, the first big picture is that there was always going to be a consultation in December 2024 about the flexibilities of the ZEV mandate. So the consultation which is being ran now is not in any way a response to the job cuts that have been made by Ford or Nissan. Okay. So that's the very first important point to make. The second important point to make is that the consultation is around the flexibilities, around the targets, not the targets. So the targets will not change. And indeed, when the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak before, moved the date, he did not legally change anything. It was just a headline, it was just a comment around it. And what happened was that the comment of I'm not going to force people to drive an EV before they want to. This was politics, pre election politics, but unfortunately it had such a massive impact on consumer understanding. So the consultation was always going to happen now and the consultation will not be reviewing that. As you say, 28% target for 2025. Equally as important is the target does not require the OEMs, the car companies, to meet that 28% of every car they sell must be pure battery electric. They must achieve an equivalent to 28% and they can achieve credits by either selling a pure Bev or by selling a greater proportion of vehicles with lower emissions than they did a number of years ago. So if they sell more efficient vehicles, they can Also receive part credits now, not a whole credit. The easiest way to achieve your target is to sell the right number of pure battery electric vehicles. And it looks like people like BMW Mercedes are going to do that. They're going to do it anyway. Without any other flexibilities, other car companies will achieve the number. And based on yesterday's data, we believe that all the car companies will achieve the number this year by either those flexibilities around more efficient vehicles or by buying credits from those battery electric vehicles manufacturers like Tesla and the others. So there's a number of ways you can achieve the number. I think the main comment that's been made is that the government have the ZEV mandate, which is a bit of a stick, which is adding pressure to the car companies. But what the car companies are asking for is actually. But where's the carrots? Where's the incentive to help consumers want to move? We have a lot of incentives on the fleets and the leasing side and the salary sacrifice side. But what the OEMs are saying is that there has not been an equivalent level of support and encouragement to the retail consumer, who of course were affected by all of these negative headlines. And if I may continue, Imogen, then the next thing you have are the job cuts. And there's been some. I mean, no British person here wants to see any jobs going anywhere in the country. So the news in Luton and the Ford cuts, they're horrible to see. Much of this, though, is about global industrial strategy as opposed to the Z mandate. This is about what are the right locations in the world for the car companies to manufacture their vehicles. It's interesting to note that the Vauxhall plant that will be closed in Luton was not making electric cars. So these cuts are not happening because of a lack of demand for EVs. This is because the car companies globally are under pressure. There's an overcapacity in the other global factories, many in China, in Japan and other places. So this is about what is the right place to make our vehicles. Most vehicles manufactured in the UK are exported and any car company will want their factory to be located as closely as possible to the market that will buy those cars. So there's a lot going on here. It's all being conflated together. Where we will end up now is that there needs to be a really sensible conversation between industry in this consultation and what flexibilities are fair and what flexibilities are not. And clearly, as a charging business, we think there are some flexibilities that make A lot of sense to help the car companies at this moment in time, which is a difficult time, and we think there are those flexibilities which should not be entertained at all. So, of course, any flexibilities which allow more hybrids to be sold or more traditional ICE vehicles to be sold, we think not only will that just delay our transition to the electric future, but more importantly, it's going to really confuse the public. I think there are already members of my own family who have maybe picked a hybrid over recent years and they believe they're doing their bit towards the transition. And of course, all that's doing is deferring for three, four, five years to making the switch. So those flexibilities need a lot of thought and we've made it very clear to the government in the meeting that if they weaken in any way the number of electric vehicles that will hit the road, then that could have a knock on impact into the billions of pounds of investment coming into the charging sector. The flexibilities that do initially seem more sensible are if you have these companies investing billions of pounds in manufacturing EVs in the UK, as Stellantis are doing, as Nissan are doing, then surely they should have some kind of support and recognition for the great work they're doing because they're transitioning what's been a great British automotive industry into the future. But of course they're not getting any support for that and those vehicles are being sold overseas. So I think there are some flexibilities where you have to, as a British person, have natural sympathy for the claim. And there's so much could be really quite damaging. And this is the debate that's been had with government. I mean, the dialogue between the car companies and the charging industry and government has been very constructive, very balanced. And I think everybody wants the same outcome, which is we all want greater understanding in the British public about the benefits of driving EVs. We need to kill the myths that there's no infrastructure, that there's range anxiety. That's all gone. That's all very 20, 21, it's all gone. But how do we convince the public that this is the case? And of course we want to protect British manufacturing jobs where we can, wherever we can, and, you know, maintain these, these manufacturing bases in the uk. So there's a. It's, it's challenging, but I think if everyone works together and approaches it in a way it has been approached in recent weeks, then we can get there. Now, as you said earlier, we're recording this on the 6th of December, I imagine by the time the podcast goes out, we will be in the middle of a consultation and when the consultation is live, there are going to be all sorts of headlines going around. And I think what's interesting is two weeks ago, massive headlines around job cuts at Ford, job cuts at Stellantis, threats from Nissan. I think in the last two weeks we've seen a lot more conversation around, actually, this is about global industrial strategy. This is about the OEMs from Europe versus the OEMs from China. And of course, a massive factor in this will be what Trump does in terms of tariffs as well. So there's, there's quite a way to go. I imagine between now and when the podcast goes out, there's going to be five or six more twists and turns, but. But hopefully we're starting to explain and clarify what's really going on rather than what the headlines are portraying.
- [33:39]
A
God is absolutely fascinating and I also have to say, one of the clearest summaries I've heard to date of like, where are we? What is the challenge and what needs to happen next? And it's so fascinating to me because, you know, a lot of this has been driven by a lack of clarity in the headlines that have existed, the lack of clarity and information that's gone out beforehand, but also this sort of conflation as to what do consumers want or what they're being told that they want and the health of an industry and how that relates to global industrial strategy. And so these conversations are having to span how is Joe Bloggs down the road concerned about charging his electric vehicle and where that comes from, right up to how do we support the UK automotive industry when there is a lot of low cost EVs coming from China? There is a European automotive market slightly in crisis and Donald Trump is about to enter onto the scene and what could that do for these tabs? It is a hugely complex challenge and I do not envy anyone who is having to navigate all of these components to this debate. If in a dream scenario, what do you think should happen? How do you think the automotive industry in the UK should be supported?
- [34:58]
B
I think what we need, the two things we need, are not going to happen at the same time. So I think what we need is a firm communication to the public and to industry that the ZEV mandate is remaining intact, there is no change, there is no weakening, and that the ZEV mandate is not causing the difficulties that the manufacturing OEMs are having. There will be some flexibilities to help the OEMS because they too are spending billions of pounds to reach the ZEV targets one way or another. So there will be flexibilities to make this transition less painful for the OEMs. That will happen as part of the ZEV mandate consultation. But the second thing, which is the most important thing, is that we need more incentives or more communication to help drivers understand the benefits, to make the public want to walk into that dealer and order an ev, and when they do that, to make the dealer want to deliver and sell that EV as well. Now that second part is not going to be delivered in this ZEV mandate in the next four or five weeks, but there's a spending review in the first six months of next year with with labor. And that's where we're really looking forward to seeing what can be done to ensure there is huge demand. And again, let's be clear, 25% of every new car registered in November 2024 was battery electric. So there is already a staggering demand. The second biggest market for EVs in the whole of Europe, only behind Norway. So we are not saying there's a problem with demand. What we're saying is we would all love the OEMs to smash that 28% and beyond through natural demand. But we have this issue where because of the actions of the previous government, there's a concern about is it too soon for me to make the switch? And that's the bit we've got to fix. And it needs education, communication and in some places it's going to need incentives as well.
- [36:43]
A
I find it so fascinating because I think we're people who talk about this stuff day in, day out and we surround ourselves by a lot of people who are also doing the same sort of thing. And I think it can be easy for us to assume that surely this is obvious, like the reasons to go electric are so, so clear. And then and I'm really concerned that this is probably the sixth podcast in which I've referenced my brother in law Charlie, but here we go. My brother in law Charlie has recently purchased a BW ID buzz and he's there's been so much trepidation about that purchase decision, so much fear. Comments like you've already said of oh but what if this isn't the right technology? What if that battery is out of date in three years time, you know, what's the charging situation going to be? And then the most recent concern that he had was oh well, maybe I won't get a home charge point because I need to see if going electric is the right decision in the first place. And I was like, Charlie, if you can experience running a vehicle which you have charged for free from your solar panels, which you inherited on the house, so you haven't even had to pay for those solar panels, you will love going electric and being able to have a dramatically lower total cost of ownership. But until you've experienced it, it's. It's really hard to kind of visualize. And I just feel that, you know, and as an industry as a whole, we've got to be putting out why these vehicles are just so much more enjoyable and easy to own and especially if you can. If you can charge them for free.
- [38:08]
B
Yeah, because I think people like your brother, you know, this is the frustrating part. There's millions of people out there today who could charge at home, who maybe don't do eighty hundred thousand miles a year for whom this will be so simple and instantly better. There are challenges. We have to fix the millions of vans on the road. The van drivers, the infrastructure is a little bit behind for the vans. What do you do if you're driving thousands of miles a week for your work and you don't have a home charger? We need to make sure it's easy and accessible for everybody. Now, there have been huge steps forward, but I think you're right, that next sector of the market from people who can make this switch simply tomorrow, we have to give them the education, the confidence that this is easy. Honestly, you can do this with your eyes closed. This is so simple. And when we get them there, we're going to be past a tipping point of mass adoption then, and then the rest will follow thereafter. So, yeah, the communication and the education is key, but the headlines and the British media and really not helping it. Well, I've done some brilliant interviews with some brilliant journalists in recent weeks over things like the cost of charging, which we'll come on to in a second, I'm sure. And the story has been fantastic, but the headline has an agenda to it. And this is the problem we get to ultimately.
- [39:16]
A
And also that's the thing that I read some incredible statistic not so long ago about the proportion of people who only read the headline and the first sentence of an article and don't read the body of the text. And those headlines are so powerful and so dangerous. And I, I mean, this is at the risk of sounding very, very high and mighty, but I'm personally so grateful. I don't work for an organization in which we're forced to say things that don't quite square with my morals because, goodness me.
- [39:49]
B
I think you will see a change here because again, these businesses live and die on the advertising revenues. I think it's interesting, in the last few weeks we've seen Volkswagen come out with a global campaign about communication. Today, the BBC have ran a story about how 25% of sales were electric. Very positive headline. Spencer have been pushing the headline. So I do believe we are going to start to switch here. And the people that are spending millions every year on advertising, they want the public to be convinced. So I think we should see a change over the next few months.
- [40:18]
A
So there's something that I want to ask you about which I have absolutely no idea of. So I'm hoping, hoping that you can enlighten me. And this is the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation rtfo.
- [40:30]
B
Yes.
- [40:30]
A
Can you tell us what exactly is that and how does it impact your sphere?
- [40:37]
B
Absolutely. Could I explain it in the context of the cost of public charging?
- [40:42]
A
Yes, absolutely. Maybe we should start with the cost of charging and then we'll come on to that. Okay, perfect segue. So, right. Cost of charging. This is a contentious one as well. And I am so intrigued to find out more because one of the things that we see often debated in the media is that the cost of public charging is more expensive than charging at home. One of the things that impacts that charging, impacts that difference in price, is the amount of VAT that you pay. So 5% VAT on electricity at home, 20% on the public network. That then of course causes lots of debates around equity of if you don't have a driveway, you're being forced to pay more for charging, et cetera, et cetera. But at the same time, I know there must be this whole other layer of, well, if you're paying for fast charging, that should come at a premium because it is a greater amount of electricity in a short amount of time. But also, I'm fascinated to know how you procure electricity and how you're impacted by different mechanisms that impact the price that you can buy electricity and then obviously pass on that cost to consumers. So please do enlighten us.
- [41:48]
B
Okay, great. Thank you. So, firstly, as part of the transition, what we all want is for public charging to be affordable for everybody. Many of the fleets at the moment are looking at the cost, as you said, the total cost of ownership. So it's in all of our interest to get that price lower because it will allow more people to come into an ev, more people to live and enjoy and stay with an EV going forward. So this is a really, really important point and I think now we're over concerns of range anxiety, now we're over concerns that there's no infrastructure. I think this will be the next hot topic to talk about and there's a lot to explain, but there's some really good news that's coming as well on this. So the first thing is, of course, businesses like Osprey are spending literally hundreds of millions of pounds every year building this infrastructure. So it is expensive. So you're never going to charge on the public networks for the same price you can at home. There are teams and teams of human beings sat running the network, running the call centers, doing well. And that all has to be paid for as a given. But there are some concrete reasons why it costs more to charge publicly than it does at home. And what's been interesting is that this all comes off the back of the Ukraine energy crisis, where of course, all of our prices went up, but have now come down. And that's the key point is people are saying, my home energy bills have come down. Why has the cost of public charging not come down to the same extent? So I think that's actually the exam question here. Now, when you look at the time before the Ukraine crisis, you could assume that a charging network may have been buying electricity for around 15 pence a kilowatt world. Now, in the middle of the summer, when the war started, that price went from 15 pence roughly to around 80 pence. Okay? So absolutely rocketed. Now, the reason it went so high is because for any business, whether you're a charging network, a bakery, a library, there is no cap. So unlike you and I at home, there is no cap on that price. We literally have to pay the market price. Now, that price has come down globally, the cost of electricity, but it's come down to about 20 pence now as a guide. So it's still around 35% higher than it was pre Ukraine. And we all expect it to stay there. We don't expect to get back to the levels of pre Ukraine. There's a lot more volatility in the world today. So charging will be a bit more expensive than it used to be pre Ukraine anyway. But that isn't the real factor. What's changed here, the biggest thing that's changed, and this particularly impacts rapid charging publicly, is that there have been changes to how standing charges and capacity charges run that have fundamentally changed the economics of running a charging network. I'll try and keep this as simple and clear as I can, but if you take a typical site, so I'll pick one of our sites. We've got. It's a ultra rapid charging hub in The Midlands in 2022, we were previously paying around £99 a year as our standing charge. And in 2023, the way this ran across the UK has changed. It's got nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, but it's the way that the charges of maintaining and upgrading the network are distributed across connections. That charge has now changed from £99 a year in 2022 to £8,600 a year in 2024, as 87 times higher.
- [45:08]
A
Oh, my word.
- [45:10]
B
And this, this is in a world where, you know, I think, let's say, 3 or 4% of cars on the road are EVs and 80% of them charge at home. So this is infrastructure where we're massively overbuilding for the future and somehow now we have to cover those costs on every project across every charging hub in the uk. So that. That has been the fundamental biggest difference in what's happened over the last two years. Which means why. Which explains why the public charging prices are where they are. But it doesn't stop there. So next year, in April, we will see the capacity charges increase as well. Now, the capacity charge is something we like. The standing charge we pay every day, whether we have a single customer or a million customers. And this is determined by the size of your grid connection. And of course, what drivers want is vast charging hubs with chargers as far as the eye can see. Two megawatts, five megawatts, huge, huge connections. Even if we're only using a tiny part of that power today, on this same example site in the Midlands, we're currently paying around 9,000 pound a year in capacity charges. Next year, that will be 19,000 pound.
- [46:19]
A
Oh, my word.
- [46:21]
B
So, across the board, the cost of operating a charging network has fundamentally changed on top of Ukraine, on top of all the changes that have happened in the world we live in. So, I mean, you'd expect me to say it's absolutely not the case that the charging businesses are sat here profiteering from drivers. We are accommodating costs. And it's interesting when you look at, if you looked at the cost of public charging two years ago, there really hadn't been a lot of uplift in the market to where we are today. Yet the cost structure underneath it has changed fundamentally. So now that's the bad news, that's the problems that me and my peers and our teams are dealing with. The good news is that government are absolutely onto this and OfGem themselves and number 10 Downing street have been looking at how can we solve this, how can we protect these EV charging projects? So people like Osprey and our peers keep on building, building, building, so the public get the charging they want, but without these crazy costs. So there's a consultation going on with OFGEM and with government now where they're looking at what done we had. Ed Miliband was in touch with industry last week saying, I want to understand this more. What can we do? So there's absolutely a hope that that could be changed in the near term to fix it. So you have your cost of electricity, which is higher than you are ipay at home, because there's no cap part one, then we pay these huge standing and capacity charges for which the level is determined by the size of the project we're building. And we're building for 2040, not for 2024. So there's a huge cost there. And on top of that, as you say, we then add in the VAT as well, which is. And again, that doesn't really affect us as a company, but that's a massive impact for those drivers who can't charge at home. So there's obviously all the work going on with government around the vat. There's a huge piece of work being led by government and engaged with networks like Osprey and Charge UK on the standing and capacity charges. And then the final opportunity is the RTFO or the retail transport fee obligation. Now, why this is so exciting is because the challenge, of course, with any change to the grid code and the VAT is, well, where's the money going to come from? There's not a lot of money in the public purse right now, so how on earth are we now going to pay for this as well? So the RTFO is a, is an existing scheme administered in the UK, which was bought in, in 2008. And in effect, the easiest way to think of it is like a carbon credit for renewable based fuels. And it's primarily incentivizing the blending of biofuels for petrol and diesel to bring down the emissions. And it has done so over the last decade or so. Now in Europe, in nations like Germany, Austria, France, Denmark and now Belgium and Poland, they've bought electricity into this scheme, which means that the credits, when you deliver a unit of clean fuel, you receive a credit, which of course you can sell it in a trading market and that contributes towards your revenues and your cost base. So the rollout of charging infrastructure we've seen across these European nations has been heavily supported by the RTFOs in those nations. Homes now in Netherlands and Germany, that can range from as much as 5 to 10 pence, but every kilowatt hour that's delivered to a customer. Now, if you think about that, and that's a pre VAT level, the impact that would have in the cost structure of public charging in the UK would be overnight transformative. I mean, we all want to get to the level where any fleet manager in the UK does the analysis. What's my cost of ownership? EV versus petrol and diesel. And it's a no brainer. That's where we need to get to this overnight will probably get us pretty much there. Now the great news again is that the new labor government have announced this week there's a call for evidence on how can we bring electricity into the rtfo. So we're sat here, we're doing our best to manage these charges. We're still investing hundreds of millions on building infrastructure, but we're sat here today thinking there's a lot to be optimistic about if the government can deliver the changes on the standard charges. And we're not asking for freebies, we're asking for temporary relief until the projects get used at a high level. If they can bring in electricity into the rtfo, as is being done across Europe for the charging networks like Tesla and Ionity who operate there, they're enjoying this today over there. This will change the game in terms of the cost of public charging. And then of course there's VAT as well. So there's a lot that can be done. It can't be done by the charging networks in isolation. We are, if you look at anyone can download the accounts, we're all investing billions, we're losing millions. So these will make a massive difference to the cost of public charging because.
- [51:14]
A
Absolutely fascinating. And I just cannot get over the delta between 99 pound 99 per year from standing charge up to £8,600 on standing charge.
- [51:25]
B
Yeah.
- [51:25]
A
I am shocked that you still have hair. It must have been an incredibly change color. I also. It now makes complete sense why you formed Charge uk, the sort of body that brings the charging industry together and I think partly, obviously, so you can have that, you know, unified approach on this is what we need as an industry, but I think also so that you can all get together and have a G and T and share your woes. And that must have been a phenomenally supportive network of people in the industry that you manage. To cultivate as well.
- [51:58]
B
Yeah, I think it was, I think it really sat the government back in their chair when they saw the likes of Osprey and gridserve in complete agreement with BP and Shell, in complete agreement with Tesla and IoT. And we said, we all agree, we are all absolutely aligned on what needs to be done in terms of the grid deployment piece, in terms of the standing charges, in terms of the Consumer Regulations Act. And now the number one priority is a. As a public rapid charging CPO is just around, what can we do to get more EVs on the road? So I think it really surprised government that there was so much alignment, but it's because the things we're talking about fixing here are so basic. Again, we are not trying to solve technical problems of subsea cables in 2040. It's pieces of paper, it's regulation, it's legislation, it can be fixed and we've already started to see quite a bit of movement.
- [52:52]
A
Well, I think that is a perfect note to end on. I have learned so much from this podcast, so I am so grateful that we invited you on. And I was also trying to cast my mind back to the first time that we met, which I think was on a panel at an Everything Electric live show just post Pandemic. And it's, I mean, I was just about to join fully charged full time at that time. I think, you know, Osprey was, was, was quite early on in its journey, obviously compared to now. And what a, what a wild ride we've been on since then.
- [53:23]
B
Yeah, I think we had our record year. I think we, we deployed 140 charges that year, so we've done 900 in the last 23 months. So, yeah, it's been a, it's been a crazy journey. But I think the other thing, we talked a lot about the, the numbers, but I think for the listeners, the final point I'll make is it's not just about the number of charges. The quality of the infrastructure now is so important. So all this new infrastructure is easy to use, it's reliable, it's easy to pay. And I think that's, that's the key bit. The legacy infrastructure is the problem. That's where, you know, you may get a journalist going to a random site in the middle of nowhere, but much of this infrastructure, it is a different world of quality. From Osprey's perspective, we've been recommended by ZAPMAP for the fifth year running as being a recommended network. And so it's about delivering the number and the quality. And I think, you know, this year we've got there. So, yeah, another. It's been another big year.
- [54:12]
A
Another big Year. And I have to say I'm going to say this to the listeners because it, it is totally worth mentioning. You also have one of the first charges that really complied to accessibility requirements, which is an optional standard. And that means that your charges are not only much safer, much easier to use and much more accessible to people with a range of different mobility challenges. So, yeah, absolutely amazing stuff. Well, Ian, thank you so much. I should let you get on with the rest of your Friday afternoon. Thank you.
- [54:41]
B
Thank you. Thank you.
- [54:43]
A
That is all that we have time for today. Thank you so much to Ian for coming on the show and sharing all of his incredible insights. I for one, know that I learned so much from that particular episode. Before you go, if I could ask one teeny tiny favor. If you could give this episode a like a comment or a subscribe or tell a friend or all of the above, it is so hugely appreciated. It ensures that we can keep on telling the important and cool and interesting stuff in this clean energy transition. Thank you so much to you for listening. Thank you so much to Katie, who'll be editing this particular episode. And that's it. If you have been. Thank you for listening.