Loren McDonald stops by Quick Charge to discuss EV charging, Paren, and more
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Welcome to quick charge. It's november thirteen, twenty twenty four and on your host, joe boris. Today's episode is sponsored by blue ei, a leading provider of sustainable energy solutions specializing in portable power solar generators and energy storage systems as a provider of dependable and portable energy solutions, bloody has become an industry leader with the presence of over a hundred countries that is trusted by millions of customers for what its portfolio of clean, portable energy solutions continues to grow, offering customers vidal options for all uses and budgets.

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Why now why are we talking about our sponsors at the beginning in the show? And that's because today is show is going to be a little bit different from most. We're doing a special interview today with some good friends buying, but I want to set the stage properly.

Tesla now has ready to deliver cybernetic inventory, which has fred labeled asking, are their demand issues overseas forwards? E, V strategies continuing to struggle as rapidly departed market conditions take at all. They're saying something similar here in the states where theyve shut down f one fifty lightning production for a number weeks.

Meanwhile, hondas prolog is selling like crazy. Yes, there are ton of incentives ves. There are discounts out there, but it's still one of the top selling fast to selling vehicles at hunger stores these days.

Handi amic five continues to defy expectations, even though there's a twenty twenty five models set to be released next year, they still set a new sales record last month. He is the same thing. Kia is smashing its U.

S. Sales records, and that is based on a surging demand for ebs, like the kia E, V nine and recently updated E D six. California has reached twenty two percent bave market share with tesla, which is down still.

Doing that nationwide, we're looking at nine percent market share for B E B S in october, and that's expected to cross over to ten percent either this month november or next month, december. That's on the back of hotly anticipated models like the new range rover, which has more than forty eight thousand buyers supposedly waiting in the wings. And it's really hard to say what's going on.

That's why I am so excited to have my good friend, lord mcDonalds evy adoption here on the show with me today. 摩尔 has been a contributor to a number of different outlets and magazines。 His E, Y, adoption dot com website has done a tremendous job compiling, processing, sorting all the E V.

Data that's out there in the marketplace from navy standards, navy rollout, E V charging roll out and of course, E V sales and projections. And recently, Lawrence company was acquired by parent, another software and data analysis company. And we've got both law, mcDonald's and of course, the C E. O of parent here on the show to day guys.

welcome ago. It's really an hour to to be on the show and look forward to catch him up with you. A lot, a lot to talk about. It's going on in the industry.

Yeah for sure. Now you know I never know how to introduce people, especially people that i've known for many years and quite fairly. And i'm fans up, right? You think I did IT justice there that I described.

I I think IT was pretty good. I'll take IT. You left out handsome a, you know, and generally funny and good natured uh of course one of those things are true but yeah no I appreciated IT was I was very kind and know we don't .

do truth here. That's a real .

journalist. Um I mean in in in all service as I mean I take pride in putting a lot of rigger uh and and thought in process and no deep analysis into Oliver E V charging data forecast over the years and not always been uh exactly correcting stuff。 But but by in large, I think we've done a really good job.

And you know one of things, joe, just to sort of pull back the the the curtains a little bit. And you know, i'm not sure how everybody else does their forecast, but one of things we do, we start from the ground up. We literally forecast EV sales for every model going out you know to twenty, thirty eight, thirty and beyond.

Now as we're getting closer to that um and are constantly a tweet updating and using the actual real time data to wake and update that, right? So we don't do this sort of like X L up into the right thing, right, that we think it's going to grow twenty seven percent or whatever. Now we literally added up from every single model that you know ah that's available for sailor will be and add IT up, and we don't always get those right. But um you know production hell and delays and and battery shortages and you know things like that getting the way and coit and stuff like that. But but yes, it's it's it's it's a lot of fun and and take pride in the work we do.

Oh, I want to get into the the news of the day here, but I definitely want to point out there have been comments made, especially when you are were both writing a to c at one point through some of the projections were overly optimistic and that turned out not to be the case. I think you know you've seen time and time again, if anything, the projections at least twenty twenty three into the first staff of twenty four have been slow and adoption has actually been faster than most people claim. I think historically, if I go back to twenty eighteen or so, I think you the closest guy, right?

yeah. I mean, there there was a couple years there back. You talk to an early days when I when I was contributing technical like A I I would like I was really close to il IT was a little bit easier, right? Like back then, I was you know I like to say one of the most important in early lessons I learned about forecasting EV sales.

Um is is all about tesla, right? Like if you don't get tesla right, you you're gonna a way off. You're going to really, really miss your numbers now that's less the case now as tesla share of the market.

And there's now now so many models available on the market. Um you know just like G M has seven E V models for Better elective vehicles on the market. Yeah nine on the market by the end of this year like that for more than tesla will have now they won't have the volume right. But yes, so it's um yes, like you used to be getting getting tesla right and you still have to get that right or you're gona miss IT. But but it's way more complicated now for sure.

Now evie, adoption has some big news earlier this week with the acquisition by parent. That brings me to my second guess. At the first time, we've ever had two guests simultaneously on quit charge bill fero CTO and founder a parent bill. Thank you for coming on the show.

Hey, joe, is is nice to meet you. I'm really broad a bit here and and talk about some of my favorite .

topics break now for listers who are unfamiliar or or host, Frankly, who are kind of unfamiliar with parent uh, can you give us a little bit of insight into what you guys do? What's the elevator pitch?

So I give me out of the thirty seconds or less pitch, right? Operatin neutral data aggregation platform centers around be charging. So we focus on what we call the five pillars of successful E V charging experiences and and always from a customer standpoint.

So these are these five pillars are availability, reliability, Price, amenity and safety. And we're building an A P, I that provides this data to route planners taking these data sets into account when you're trying to find or navigate to an evy charger. And our data sets also inform CPO utilities and other uh analytics companies um on market conditions, which is how I met Lauren about about two years ago.

If that's what you're trying to do, you're definitely talking to the right guy. So the acquisition makes perfect sense here to emerge that bring all that in house. You know one of the base ten partners I see base ten, if you read the pressure, will have that in the shower note.

Um base ten is one of the companies that funding this round of investment and funding part of this acquisition. And one of the partners in that pressure is calls ranging ing anxiety a crisis, right? Do you think that crisis is the right? Were there?

Yeah no it's it's uh thanks for pulling that random code out of the press release go. But um I .

like to zero and like the most and .

and speaking of accuracy, y will you on something the the the quote is actually not about range anxiety but actually about charger anxiety. But that's a really good way to sort of uh get at sort of the difference of that in. And really I think what what the the bed and investor and what what billion I sort strongly believe in.

And so you know your question is, is that a crisis? Um i'm not in a second guess investor in our company if if that if crisis is the right term but fundamentally where where IT I would agree with IT is and it's really White. Bill started his previous company eva session, emerged in and formed brand.

You know in that really what we have is we have a driver basically perception and and reliability crisis, right? Like the the expectation that you can get in an E V. And drive anywhere and put in and charges gonna working and available and the power level is promised and stuff.

And and you know we probably won't mention names of charging companies, but there are some that are not as good at delivering on those promises as as others. And that's really what would build in what our company is tracking, IT, IT literally down to the charger level and stuff. So is IT a crisis? I mean, that's a really strong word.

But fundamentally, you know, joe, when you think about where we were back when you and I were writing for clean staff years ago, I came up this framework called karma that looked at sort of five things that are going to either driver hinder um adoption evs. And I was everything from Price and awareness to availability of models to charging and range and self. And we've kind of knocked off.

You'd like a lot of those, right? There's now you have your choice of dozens of models Prices. Evs are still fairly expensive, but they're coming down.

They are getting more competitive. Um you arrange almost all competitive evs now three hundred plus miles of range. I mean, we're now some with four hundred and five hundred miles of range.

And so when you sort of peel back all of those things, what do we left with? We laugh was still charging issues, right? Not nessa ough of them where we need them and fast enough and reliable enough. So you know, that really is we sort of reach this point of where charging infrastructure and reliability and availability are sort of the last big hurdle to to getting people to adapt dvs.

It's having an overall impact on the adoption of E S, right? So the university of washington is part of the charges x consortium, which i'm a part of is doing a study or has completed a study, I think, around on the impact of charging both ranging xiety in charge of inie on on the whole E E ecosystem. Just the willingness of customers to make the leak right.

Um i've been driving N V for for twelve years uh thirteen years now I think right. So you know there there's a difference between the the early adopters and and what will accept versus you know what I typically call the soccer moment and and where I think we need to get to. And that's really what we look at is what's the view from the customer experience, right? So on the charges consortium, we talk about um measuring the matrix and is all from the CPU level and you know the navy hopeful, we will talk about navy in a bit, but navy you know you ve got to united seven percent of time.

There is a formula for that and and the the CPU s know how to calculate that formula. And there's other metrics that we're working on that are really CPU driver, but there isn't a metric around what i've termed as reliability. Reliability is different than up time, right? That's really where are archy focuses.

Um and and yes, so I think I think crisis is a as good as term as any I mean why else would um would the o to switch over the next next ports? Why else would they delay E V models and focus on hybrids? Because either the sales aren't there or the infrastructure isn't there yet and there's a cause in effect, and that's really where we are. So we absolutely think it's it's the right time in the right way.

Yeah a great point. Builds like joe yeah like why would every auto maker join forces basically with a competitor and elon musk, right? If IT wasn't crisis.

that's a really good tip, I think. Yeah right. Like an important storm and they're certainly a storm out there.

It's getting here on board room meetings I would have loved to set in and this just as a fly on the wall and listen to them, right? The the the ford and N. G, M. Switch over to axon and and you know that whole discussion just would have been fascinating and me just to listen in on .

yeah yeah hundred percent you know uh you made the comment about navy and max is a toll own mass because obviously the the north american charging standard, the tesla connector is still excluded, at least the last time I checked was excluded from the navy language. So there are some new on there and some things that need to be resolved. But the point of these infrastructure roll outs, like navy, like the different you know utility programs and bulk wagon money and all that that's been going on over the years is to build out that E V charging infrastructure. So kind of an opinion question.

I don't know how well we can ever hold you to something like this, but do you feel like they will ever be enough charges? And and what I mean that specifically is like I always tell people in chicago, you drive by two thousand and charges every day and you don't see them because there's not a gas station, there's not a big huge illuminated sign, there's not a convenient store next to IT. Do you have any data correlation that kind of sign age or or that kind of visibility towards, uh, usage and up time?

yes. So there's a lot impact there. I think you had four questions there.

So start guys you yeah .

will start in reverse order and build pick up where I I I forget and leave off. But on on your question around signage, um it's really actually a fascinating question.

You see Davis transportation studies uh department earlier this year did asked uh a really good study around the the role importance of syntax and and visibility of of charging stations and enjoy what they found um was both fascinating but to me also kind of not really surprising when you understand um like you know behavioral economics and how the brain itself like done and what they found is, is that if you are a current E V driver or somebody who was interested, right if you were somebody who was interested in buying an E V, you noticed E V stations, E V charging stations and signage ge, or the lack there of in other words, you know, because you are either driving one or or thinking about owning when you are out there as part of you are you know like research and stuff is you were sort of looking to see where the these word and so you notice them or the lack there of but the flip to that is is what they found is that people that had basically no interest in evs never even saw evy charging stations or signage. And so therefore, like the idea that signs and invisibility recharge stations is critical, the evy adoption is not necessarily the case. That is the case for people who are like in the buying stage, right, in that sort of research, and what a lot of the behavior convey.

Evy space called the intendance right, people that intended by for those people, it's fundamentally critical, right? Because there they're on that cusk. Do I get an ice, a hybrid, a plug in hybrid? And if I don't see charging stations around where I go, like this is going to be a problem, maybe i'm going to go with that. But if you're just and and not to get political and stereotypical here, but if you know if if you're the the guide drive in the jacked up around fifteen hundred, pick up right the lowing the out yeah you don't see the science in the train stations because you are looking for him.

But but I I think I agree you there long, I think it's of the questions gonna asked differently in in a few more years, will there ever be enough charges are more than likely. Yes, right. Mean, today, when you come to a street corner and you look left, you look right, you see at least to gas stations, right and in laugh.

And I think you had you have predicted, uh, about a year ago where you think the model, what you think the models gonna into one thirty for where the charge stations are going to be. An animal firm believer of that, they will come a day when you will drive up to that same traffic light. You look left and you'll look right and you won't see or in addition to seeing dolge for burgling, you will see, uh hopefully still sense for kiloton hour, right? I'll see those.

You're seeing that in europe already, right? So so I think I think we're going to get there when it's you know when it's when he gets the infrastructure gets more build out. That's not nevy funds, right? Navy generally isn't putting charges.

No, this stopped like that at the end of my road, right? It's stop anywhere near any kind of way of D C. cord. Or or is that just as forty a area? So no, that's all GTA come from the private enterprise, uh, which which we see a lot of in a variety of different ways, whether to barry back charges, bout put by circle k other convenient stores.

But again, I think the chAllenge there, you kind of spin IT to where we we're looking right now is again, you look left and you look a ride. You still don't know if the charges are working and and that infrastructure is more complex than a gas pump right now. Does that need to be yes.

Does that have to be as complex as IT is today? Probably not. Um but for today and and even into the future, we think that you're gonna wana know what's the best option for you to charge out. And that's why we are looking to build that A P I to fund all that data into one place that can uh that that can answer that question.

Yeah, I think that's a great response. And I think you know you talked about the five pillars of charging and we talked about carmo little. So when IT came to E V adoption, so we've got all these different metrics, all these different ratings and and I presume that each have different weight based on how you give that recommendation.

What are some of the factors that make some charging locations more successful than others? I was you're talking about up time and reliability. But you know, I can also imagine my wife driving somewhere or joseon milliner, who's one of our fellow out about of journalists out here in chicago. She's about four foot ten, ninety five pounds, soaking wet SHE was driving an E V at ten thirty and had to park in the far way back of a walmart parking SHE wasn't happy about that. Yeah, yeah.

yeah. That's our safety piller, and that is again and that safety is going to change over time. So when we look at safety, we look at safety at an hourly level, right? Because um know skids got to change of the mcDonald is open or not or the crossroad store that is next to is open or not.

Um but it's also the distance right I was at a charging station. It's a frequent one that I stopped at and it's about about three hundred yards from the back of a think it's a one days and and when I got there one time this woman got out of a car and that all thank you for showing up. I was afraid to get out of my vehicle and walk that distance to to use the restaurant.

And so I walked up there and and this was five o'clock in the afternoon so IT was no, it's not just it's not just about night charging. It's just about understanding all of that and anything. That's one of the that's one of the success factors.

But bill, I hope he bought you a chocolate frosty, right? I really because that's why you go to wed this, right but joke to you know to like answer your your question um you know when you think about sort of the economics of of of charging stations, I mean IT fundamentally it's really simple right IT comes down to utils ation, meaning traffic and sort of the market and and the old you know real state a success saying location, location, location right and so you know it's it's funny there is I won't mention the the uh the charging network CPO company's name.

But one of their topic executives a few years ago. Um said to like employees, if we had our brothers, we would only build charging stations in L A. And safe.

Cisco, right? Because the point being is you know this is where there are the most evs and the most ride share drivers and and know the population centers and the traffic and you know you I mean, it's the same with we would like mcDonald corporate real estate strategy, right? And in those four corners of of the intersection, right, you put IT where you know that people are gna be in and that's one of the, you know, interesting things.

Jae was a guy studied at the q one in q two E V. Go investor relations. Dex, and they had some fascinating numbers and metrics in there.

And they're now seeing about twenty five percent of their through put on average, across the entire country. IT comes from Wright show drivers. Think about that.

Wow, fascinating like a quarter of their you know the the power that they're delivering is with rigor drivers. What that means is in sanfords, isco, it's probably sixty, seventy percent right. And in aoa, it's now it's two percent right? And that fundamentally gives you sort of a lens into the economy, be higher .

and IO because you gotta a figure the density of housing is so much actually knows .

the answer to that question.

So so let's go. And so and basically about the customer that didn't believe our our numbers. And and so we dove deeper and basically the state of texas quarter over quarter their utilization and went up four percent across the whole state.

Now that's the center point, yes, focus on points. That's a big number, right? So we dove in and we found that there were four new charging stations that got opened, one in the dallas suburbs, one of the houston suburbs.

And I think two insane tell you, don't vote yond that. But four well, pace place suburb that hit the market at thirty plus percent. Utilization rose the entire state up, right? And texas is not a it's not as the biggest gala formia right from a charge report perspective.

So anybody in texas?

yes. So what laws? A small numbers. But but still that was the cause.

So I you know for me, I the two things that are that point that are pointed out, one is data helped cite those charging stations, right? And and that's really in in essence, where I started two and a half years ago is is data has to drive these decisions, right? Number one. Number two, to the point that can only be right here if you put in a charging station and you start seeing utilization and yet two three o'clock in the morning or or or in two in nine to three A M and then um I think the right show drivers typically sleep from three to five and then to get up about that, right? So so when you start to see that utilization, you start to see that you know those that kind of activity stations IT becomes pretty clear that this is a right here hub and and somebody made a great decision to put those nations there .

yeah until the other piece of IT is you know what is really you know going back to sort of the location, you know real state analogy is um you know successive charging stations in the variables that go into IT really very by by location as well.

So you know an example um you know some some of your listeners and and viewers if may have gone to the electrify america, uh indoor charging center in south of market in several cisco's got twenty stoles. It's got two lounges pretty while book bill and eyes separately have been there. And it's it's it's a really nice facility.

But like what he has is it's protected. It's it's in an area where there's a lot of high tech well to do people and White share drivers. So it's got the location.

It's got lounges, right? It's got high power, three fifty k charges. It's protected from the weather and stuff. To the point being is when I go on a road trip and drive, I decide where to stop in charge based on what food my family wants to eat, right to me.

It's and and you know and if it's at night, whenever can be the safety and and that type of thing. Meaning the future of charging stations is not just about having three fifty four hundred K W charges and and connector that works with your company and all those kinds of things, right? And convenience.

It's what do we do for the thirty minutes or whatever IT is that our car is charging, right? And it's like, okay, let's go get a nice meal, breakfast, lunch or dinner, whatever so many days are, are sort of really a big part of that when you're on the road where in an urban location, like you look at and you seem a lot of the people are just sitting in their cars, they're they are on their laptop. They're doing they're posted on facebook, linked in instagram, tiktok, whatever. IT is right. And so you know it's very sort of location driven about what drives success.

Well, let's talk about that for minute because, you know you mention a road trip and this is one that always kind of blows my mind. If you're going on on a road trip somewhere, you you got to need you, you get any one fifty, and you've got a cyber truck, even a model s or something like that, and you're doing some kind of trailer. You're taking the kid to college, you got A U hall behind IT or you've got a camper.

Now you ve got one of these new likeable E V R V things that are going behind you. Just about every charger that i've seen is a pull in parking spot, which means I have to now go find another place to park my trailer. disconnect.

Go charge up. It's a lightning with all the data that's out there and all the information that's out there. I feel like that kind of a common sense fAiling. And I see IT over and over and over again with all these charge spots. Are you guys starting to see in your data any kind of demand for a pull through style charging spot?

yes. So i'll answer IT slightly differently in that. In fact, I just published in our a navy news letter yesterday, joe, a data around this right as so when when you look at the and for the listeners that are not that familiar with navy, it's the national elective vehicle infrastructure program, the five billion dollars that goes out to the states to build out fast charging infrastructure on on initially on corners. And joe, most of the states have not required pull through lanes, but but like a half dozen or so have, and many of them provide extra points, meaning if if you include them, you can get extra points and increase your chance of of winning a sideward. But I was fascinating because the the state, the lousianner D, O, T, not exactly the hot bit of evs.

but the hot bed of innovation.

but they are a hot bed of sport fishing, right? Like, I forget what that is like state slogan, yeah, sport fishing capital of the country or so i'm i'm getting IT wrong. But they literally call that out in their their navy weapon are and and and everything that we are requiring pull through lanes because in their area, right of Louis ana, like everybody's got a truck in a boat, right? And so I made sense, but that doesn't necessarily make as much sense in, you know, downtown san Francisco, downtown lay or manhattan or downtown chicago, whatever IT is right.

Like i'm i'm not saying that people don't have trucks and trailers ers in those markets, but you know sort of the demand for IT in the real life need for IT um is again kind of somewhat location center like to see the RAM that that's coming out the plug in hybrid of the extended range one. What that does to sort of like the towing market because that's been that's been you know one of the whole backs of of people buying uh, B E V pickup, right, is because the range gets cut in like half and stuff. And so there's a sort of most like a chicken and egg, right?

We need a pick up that um that have sort of solutions to go a lot farther, whether its batteries and motors on the trailer or whatever. IT is right. But but until until we solve that range cutting issue of toing, you know there's going to probably be a lot less demand you know areas yeah, that makes perfect sense to me.

All right. So you know we're coming to the end of our time commitment here. I want to be sensitive of that. So uh, no, I want to ask kind of one last question before we get to wrap this up.

Now that you guys are together, you're Operating under one umbrella, what do you think is next? What are some of the anticipated outcomes of merging these two data sets and approaches? And later than .

I get a women talking for quite some time about um he am using my data. Me are using his data. And so we've we actually had A A summit recently in beautiful nota area of of charley um note CarOlina a and um and so we we are strategizing.

I think we get to focus on a navy a on on on a vy page, but we're going to continue to build on on lawn stock leadership um and and with some interesting twists on some of the joint data sets. And so we will make those available on a print data and of course, be publicly them might look in and and and and other air other sites, but that's that's one of our focuses. And then the other piece is to continue to build out uh.

this routing A P I. Yeah, that's really great. So you mentioned linked in, you know uh, a little bit, you mention facebook for people who want to follow along, for people who are listen to this, who want to be, uh, a part of IT, where do they go? How do they find you? Where what you know.

what's what's your tick talk and all give us the home. So most of your little probably already follow low.

And if they're not, they should be and orally agree .

with that. By the way, not following the, I mean, I mostly live on the Lawrence mcDonald handle and stuff, but yeah then were were gonna building out blog posts and stuff and White papers and a lot of stuff on the print side and a lot of free data and really cool indexes and maps and and and things like that. So we're gna have, uh, a lot of things to share going forward.

And awesome. Anytime you guys have something you, anna, talk about, you're looking in the data. You see something real weird.

And you're like, man, people need to know about this to let me know we'll do IT that you out. Good guys. My ticket once again, that was lord mcDonald's from evi.

Adoption and bill fero from parent. Thank so much for being on the show. Guys, that was really enjoyable. I hope you guys learn something. You should like and subscribes you don't miss the next interview will be back to the regular news again tomorrow.