Bill Loewenthal: Software Defined Electric Experience | Turn the Lens #11

>> Okay, so I will count us down two one. Hey, welcome everybody. Jeff Frick here with Turn The Lens coming to you from the home office. And I'm really excited about this next segment. This is a, this is a buddy of mine from a long time ago, full disclosure. We've been doing business together for more decades almost a handful of decades. Bill I'm excited, welcome below and thought he is the SVP of product now at ChargePoint. Bill great to see you.  >> Thank you for having us really excited to be here.

>> Yeah, absolutely so, ChargePoint, let's give a little quick breakdown before we get into it but I'm sure people have seen the signs. You've got the orange logos that are around. We're both in Silicon Valley. So there's a lot of electric vehicles here. Give us a quick overview on kind of what ChargePoint is just kind of the one-on-one.

>> Okay, great. So ChargePoint provides a platform to enable all goods and people to move on electric vehicles. And we provide solutions to site hosts include charging stations, software to manage that station a set of services. And we also have a free app for drivers that they can get in the Apple app store as well as the Android app store that provides them a map of where those chargers are. And then the ways of which the pricing that that site is offering for those chargers many of them are free. So you might find them at workplaces. And if you're an employee at that workplace, you get access same thing at a multifamily property. Maybe you're a member of a loyalty club at a retailer and that retailer extends certain privileges to their members. And so the charging app manages that whole experience for the drivers.

Where can I find the drivers? What are my access to those stations? Notifies them while they're charging when they're charging is done as an example and facilitates all the payment for that charging session.

>> So obviously a lot more than just the charger that that I'm driving by the parking lot. When I go to a meeting at at Google or Cloudera or whatever, and I see that charge I see that parking or excuse me the charging station and the parking lot. There's a lot more going on than just that physical that physical device in the parking lot.

>> Precisely what people think to solve. First of all, let's talk about electric vehicles, right?

>> Yeah absolutely.

>> Super exciting. Your listeners, if they're not driving electric today they don't know it, but they will be tomorrow. The exhilaration of driving an electric vehicle and all these various merits of trying to electric vehicle are really overwhelming, frankly from the climate impact to the cost profile. So the driving experience for those that love to drive. And the transition to electric vehicles is really critically important. We have so much going on in our environment that this is a big shift that really helps eliminate alleviate climate change and air quality issues. But there's a lot of things that are misunderstand about driving, misunderstood about driving electric. And the fueling model is different. And really what happens is it's much more like a cell phone.

>> Right.

>> People have these fears that, you know are these expectations. I'm going to drive to someplace with an empty battery fill up and drive on. Cause that's what we've been trained to for a hundred years driving electric or gas vehicles. That's not how it works with electric. The car fuels while it's parked, we don't drive to fuel. And what that means is it typically onboard all of its fuel at home and at work. So I drive home, I plug in, in the next morning I have a full battery. It's awesome. A drive to work and I'm just replacing the energy I used to get there.

>> Right

>> What ChargePoint's doing. Cause people think it's kind of, I need this hardware and I need this ability to fill it up on my way somewhere. That's not how it works. What ChargePoint's providing is this software layer as you pointed out that is governing the access control in a workplace as an example of who can access that station. And maybe it's only available to the employees of that workplace. And so our software and that understanding of who that driver is orchestrates all of that authentication. If you will, an access control.

>> Right.

>> Then the movement of money and the management to simplify the overall facility management for those site hosts like the workplace environment that has hundreds and hundreds of chargers.

>> Yeah. I mean, you just touched on like 18 different points. So let's, let's break some of those down, but let's stick let's stick to the to the consumer experience of driving electric vehicles because it's really interesting as you say, you know we're so used to driving someplace and filling up on the way, or, you know, once a week if you're doing your commute you have your, your regular pacing but we are all used to charging our phone overnight. So, so is the issue old people like you and me that, that have this other paradigm or do you see with kind of a younger generation that that's more kind of tuned into continuous charging of these devices and also, you know, arguably freedom was represented for our kids in their phone as opposed to when you and I got freedom when we got our driver's licenses, is that, is that something that's going to kind of go away in terms of behavior in terms of just topping off wherever you are whether that's overnight or at work because the other thing that strikes me as you say that is, is Silicon.

Valley's built on people finding, you know huge untapped resources of inefficiency. And as you said, cars park a lot of the time. So you know, why drive to, to fill it when it's parking like 95% of the time or whatever cars sit most of the time.

>> Well, there's a lot in what you just said that we have to unpack. So you're exactly right. And so people will ask me so how long does it take to fill up your car? I say 10 seconds. I park, I plug in, I move on. If it's at the end of the day at work, I unplug I drive home and I don't have to make any stops along the way. And so it is this paradigm, mind shift that those have who have not driven electric yet think it's this this thing that won't fit in their life. In reality, it is like the cell phone. If I live or work at a place that has charging my intention or consideration to buy an electric vehicle goes up six times. Cause I know what will fit in my life. And once you're in that mode, it's very, it's, it's it's very natural and you really don't even think about it.

Now people do have a concern. Hey, I want to go to the mountains for the weekend or I want to go to the lakes or the beaches. And we have high speed charging networks being built out all across the country. ChargePoints, across corridors. If you want to go to Lake Tahoe, you'll see many ChargePoints along the way that are what we call DC fast charging. So you can stop for lunch top off an empty battery and move on. And so there's a whole combination of solutions that enables the world to move on electric power and we're providing it all.

>> Right. Right. And the other thing, just to get your take, right? Because you know the conversation always is about the 300 mile, you know kind of this 300 mile range thing. When at the same time the average commute every day is something like 30 miles or whatever, whatever people drive per day. So there's this weird paradox where we want to buy for kind of our max usage. But in fact that the frequency of the max usage is so is so low and what's weird now is now. And I always go back to airplanes. I love airplanes cause it's such a great engineering trade-off all the time. And when you first learned that an airplane doesn't fill up, you know, when it flies from San Jose to Portland, cause it doesn't need a full tank of gas and yet we've got EVs now carrying batteries that weigh a ton to get you, you know that's 300 miles or whatever their max range is when 90% of the time they're going 30 miles. How do you, how do you think that's going to sort out and is is the future going to be provided by by battery powered planes, which are going to force this kind of atomization of the battery. So we're not carrying all this extra weight around Oh my goodness, how much more range will we get if we weren't carrying all this extra weight around.

>> So those are really good examples. I think that that's a paradigm shift that people don't don't process yet. We're going to see a lot of battery innovation coming in. We're going to see battery cost reductions that make that on parody with the petrol vehicles. So I think when people are making considerations the general consumer, they're making considerations over does this fit in my life? Can I do the things that I might do a few times a year? And so range does come into play. And we are seeing 250 to 300 range vehicles, many many exciting vehicles coming of all shapes and configurations that the American public wants to buy as well as in Europe. And so I think that that will be a real catalyst for people to really consider electric. And you see in the news every day, more and more about consumers consideration going way up on electric. The, the consumer calculus is really the range the cost points and the, and they haven't gotten into the behind the wheel to get the experience yet once they get the experience and it's really inexpensive to charge your electric vehicle the point you made about Silicon Valley finding more efficient ways electrons are everywhere and there's not a more expensive electron than another electron. So it is this universal providable solution.

>> Right?

>> And what's needed to distribute those electrons to vehicles is a broad charging network. And that's what ChargePoint's enabling for our site hosts. One myth I also want to break down that would be helpful for your audience is we're we're a technology provider. And actually the history of the company would probably be very interested, interesting to your, your viewership. We're a technology provider that's providing the software layer, a whole arrange of stations by the way from ideal things for single family homes to multi-family homes, to fleets, to like the environment behind me, which is our leading commercial station. A lot of people will see at workplaces and retailers and such, and then the high-speed charging and fleet solutions for high-speed charging. And so we have a whole array of hardware that supports this software that supports this. And then that driver experience that supports us.

And the myth is that people don't understand is we're selling these solutions to folks that want to operate and provide charging for the reasons to supplement their business model. So like I said, at the beginning of the broadcast a retailer may want to put charging in to attract a consumer to spend more time in their establishment. And to provide that as a free benefit. Same thing for a retailer for, for, for a restaurant as an example, if you provide charging in that consumer wants a nice experience for 45 to an hour and a half the odds are they're going to buy more desserts. And that is a good economic experience for that restaurant operator. And then they get more of a charging experience. So that's people are putting charging in to support their business model. Consumers may find other networks out there there's the ChargePoint network, but there's environments like Evgo, Electrify America and others. Those are charging network operators that are in the business of selling electrons.

>> Right, right.

>> And so they are establishing the price for that session. Their business model is about monetizing the driver and selling electrons to that driver. And the, the equipment is owned by them. We are actually providing equipment to people who want to to operate a network who want to then set the price for their particular business goals. So two big things that I think, unless you're really deep into the market are, are hard to pick apart from.

>> Yeah. And I want to, I want to get deeper into that but before we kind of go into some of the specifics I want to kind of go back to the electric electrification and mobility and kind of what has changed over the last several years. You know, congratulations, do you guys, you you hit the market this week, which is terrific. And watching some of the, the analyst stuff, you know you guys started the company when it was founded before there was, you know kind of retail electric vehicles running around. So I think the other piece I think that people don't get necessarily in a bringing up, you know, kind of your markets is that like you said, you have commercial and you have fleet and you have residential. And what I really want to highlight is fleet and commercial opportunities and how those are huge catalyst to help drive general adoption, you know to benefit these, these, these benefits where a single buyer or a single entity can go ahead and execute and get large-scale benefits across the whole fleet versus you know, just an individual consumer. And how have those really help move the market forward?

>> Yeah. So how crazy is this to go start an electric vehicle charging company before the electric vehicle right.

>> Someone had vision, as they say,

>> Yeah and so the heritage of this company, which is amazing. We're a 13 year old company in a seven-year-old industry, basically and the founders have an amazing story. So there's, there's four founders that came out of the network and industry. One of them happened to be in public service and was given an experimental electric vehicle and said this is going to be a thing. And so when they were out of their public life and past their prior networking lives, they started, they looked at this business and said, huh, how would you approach this? And what they really determined was what's needed to win in this market and to scale as ChargePoint has. And this is what we have today is very true to the vision they said 13 years ago. Is the first of all basic principles. The stations need to be connected to a network.

So these are networking guys and that's so that you can monitor the stations you can update the stations, but then you may need to make some particular decisions about do you want that station to be available to the public and visible in a map or not? Do you want to be able to charge station charge a fee for the session? Yes or no. It doesn't matter what the answer is but you need to have a network connection in order to facilitate all that. Do you want to be able to have an array of stations and understand the status of each and then manage energy across them? Well, you need network connectivity to do that. So the basis of the company, it was you need this network connected experience and that facilitates the consumer's ability to find them. It, it facilitates ChargePoint's, ability to on the behalf of our site, host create a great experience for both the consumer and the site hosts.

So we're monitoring these stations we're making sure they're pinpoint accurate. So you can actually make sure that GPS coordinates lead you to the right place and the hygiene of the network, all that is facilitated because it's a network connected experience. And that leads your questions about commercial and fleet.

>> Yeah It's just interesting, as you're saying that knowing that the founders came from a network centric world that they're leading with network, then connected devices versus just leading with a product and, and thinking of the connectivity as a secondary benefit versus really a foundational step for building everything else from the network.

>> Yeah. And you know, you and I go back a long time we've shipped products that were sealed in the box and you can never update them again. Right?

>> Right.

>> So now we're providing products that we constantly monitor and the status of that station is essential to the consumer experience of folks that may want to use it later in the day or just in an hour from now. And so, for example, you asked about commercial. When we think about commercial, the big segments there and really where ChargePoint from its founding has been pivotal. Public parking, municipal parking is in our commercial kind of definition as is workplace. The car fuels while it's parked. Most of the time it's parked at home and at work.

>> Right, right.

>> Multifamily properties are another place where overnight parking super important. And the take workplaces, as an example we've built certain capabilities in the product and the whole solution to manage a great driver experience and site host experience. And here's the thing I said that, you know your listeners today, if they're not driving electric they just don't know it yet but they will be. Folks that operate parking facilities at workplaces and other environments don't realize how fast their parking lots are going to change and require electrification. And so what we've built is a lot of capabilities to allow those site hosts to maximize utilization for the stations that they have but also to extend that installed base even further to satisfy more and more drivers as they arrive today and tomorrow.

So we have a capability called waitlist as an example you and I both show up to work. All those stations are full. I put myself in queue through the mobile app. I get notified four hours later that you went to lunch and that what you occupied is now vacant. And I can, it's being held for me kind of like our, you know, I pull up and it's like the Hertz number one club, you know this is for Bill Loewenthal. So, so that's the experience that we're facilitating to allow commercial properties to scale in a in a very efficient, easy to manage way.

>> Well, let's, yeah I was kind of wait for a little bit longer but I'll spring it up now. So there's a video on your site that talks about the five questions that people need to think about, right. As a site host. So you've kind of talked about it but we haven't really said specifically so site hosts are your customers because you're basically giving infrastructure with which they can do what they want. And I think what was really interesting in these questions is it really teases out that this is an asset that you now have the ability to to use and leverage. However you wish as a site host whether that be a company, whether it be a restaurant whether that be a big parking garage in downtown San Francisco by Moscone. I think it's really interesting in these questions really flushes out that this is an asset that you now have that you can bring to bear, to either make money give value, have a competitive edge over your competitors.

You know, whether you want to give public access or not. Do you want to charge a fee or not? It's not necessarily defined that's up to the site operator. Does it change over time based on some variables. And it really drives back to this thing that that we have gone back a long time and we used to ship boxes and you seal the boxes and you put taped on them and you sent them out to the distributor, never to see them again, never to know what the use case was. Maybe somebody filled out a registration form maybe a couple came back to service and you could investigate. But as an old time product guy to ability to have products that actually report home not only in what they're doing now so you can actually test your hypothesis for what they do and not only to, to see how they're operating and make changes, but even more importantly to have the ability to do an over the air software update and to be able to control, you know, this experience do the application on people's phone versus something that you've got to have baked in, you know burn it onto some chips stick it in the box and time to, to, to to time up with the instruction, manual printing and all the other crap that used to get in that bar. I mean, how, how from a pure, just product management point of view and, you know, freeing is that to know that you don't have to get it right, right away cause you're going to get data back on usage patterns that you you can make hypothesis about, but you never really know.

>> Yeah. So you're going back a long time. I mean, I've been shipping products that are network connected for now decades. And I think the exciting thing here is the experience can get better and better and better over time. Of course, when you ship it, it's great but life has more imagination than we do. So you can identify issues or opportunities to create more value for drivers for hosts, even for the internal groups that are, you know every day painlessly support is supporting these products. So it's the 360 value to the customer that really gets enhanced because of our ability to monitor these stations. And it is the network effect to the business without this ability to upgrade and know where the devices are.

There's no network effect. So what's so exciting about this business. Once you have a charging experience in one environment you want it and others. So ChargePoint's got a lot of drivers on our network and what's, what's where this goes even further is. So I have these charging stations me in the ground. I also have a whole variety of new vehicles arriving with ChargePoint building the dashboard. So we've put a lot of effort into the mobile app and working with folks like Apple CarPlay. If you have a car, a car outfitted with Apple CarPlay you can see that experience on your dashboard, Android Auto also. And the there's a whole nother component to that. So now I'm extending capabilities to new consumers coming in through different avenues to get the ChargePoint experience.

So that, that real-time aspect of the product. I know if it's busy or available the ability to create new value for drivers and hosts the ability to provide even better support every day because of more diagnostics, the ability to build better products because we know issues in the field and we can get much more data about what's happening in the field. It comes full, full circle. So it does create a level of complexity of planning from a product management standpoint but it also creates a great sense of opportunity in a very robust business model. And so we could think of a feature tomorrow or capability and deploy that on a station and activate that through more software and monetize that through a premium service.

So ChargePoint at it's heart is a software company, a networking company a system company with really great hardware and firmware through a cloud orchestration layer to the mobile app and that in-car experience. So that whole thing is, very compelling. It's we have approached it differently than others that have attacked the or pursued the charging markets place . In Europe a very dynamic market, very exciting. You're seeing a lot of electrification happening and throughout Europe. And oftentimes what you see there is a separate a very devolved structure. There's a separate mobile app supplier providing the consumer experience. There's a separate orchestration SAS platform.

There's a separate hardware vendor. And so it's up to the customer to integrate all those. We're actually bringing a very integrated but open and standards-based solution. So other hardware can sit on our network and can control that but we can create unique experiences when we can control the firmware and the software and the hardware. A good example. We pull up to a station maybe it's a station out in the public. I'm a ChargePoint driver. I have our RFID card embedded in the wallet on my Apple iPhone. I can just tap the charge on the front of the station. I don't have to pull out the alternative which is an RFID card. This may not show up well in the image there. And so I can authenticate that way. I can authenticate just with my tap to charges or even my Apple watch by the way. And so it's those experiences that we can create because of the, over the air of supportability of the end-to-end capabilities in terms of all the layers that we, that we innovate around.

>> Well, let's just touch base a little bit on interactivity, right? Cause I know there's like different and I don't have a electric car full disclosure. I want to get one. I don't have one yet. I do have a lot of electric vehicles which are going to work into the conversation a little bit. I know there's like different connectors and Tesla has like their own proprietary thing. What what's kind of the state of interoperability today and where's that going to go and I would imagine very sure to order?

>> Sure so, so let me give the audience some basics first. So you may hear in the market level one level, two level three charging or fast charging. There are different rates of speed that electrons can be delivered to a vehicle and the cars can absorb those electrons. "In the AC world," think about the dryer plug in your in your garage or in your laundry room. That's a 240 volt outlet. And that supports what we call level two charging and ChargePoint for home consumers offers what's called the ChargePoint home flex. And what's so cool about this product. This is an award-winning home charger. You can see it all your usual place with ChargePoint.com. You can see it as well. And you can select the rate of amperage based on what your panel, your electric panel capacity supports.

And you can set that up to 50 amps from 16, 32, 40, 48 50 amps. And you want that flexibility because the higher rate will charge a car faster but you may want the lower rate. A if your car can't absorb that much in many of them go up to 48 AMS, but or if your electrical infrastructure can't support it. But you want to buy the device that will then move with you as you move to another house. So in those examples of AC charging is typically what you'll see around town, like in behind me in this image . At work workplaces at multi-family properties in the single family homes, you'll see AC charging and there you're, you're charging, you know anywhere from 25 to 30 miles an hour per hour is what you're adding back in the in a charging session like that.

And the plug you asked about is very standardized. And in North America, I run what's called a J 1772. And so it's a standard plug. You'll see Tesla's work with them. Tesla's come with an adapter to plug in. So Tesla's charging our network all the time with no issue. When you go to fast charge it's a little bit different connector and depending on type of vehicle there's two predominant connectors in North America. And there's two predominant connectors in Europe. And, and so all the charging networks provide that in terms of support for those vehicles one's called CCS1 and one's called CHAdeMO. And it really depends on the flavor of your vehicle that you have. The with Tesla, Tesla has their own high-speed charging network uses a specific connector.

There are adapters for other charging networks to support Teslas. So you'll see that out there. And, but that's an issue that's sorting itself out pretty rapidly. You'll see Tesla in Europe shipping standardized adapters for DC charging as well.

>> Right, right. I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about fleets. And you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of noise in the marketplace. Now, at least at IC, you know with the new Rivian, you know, which is which is a cool company that's coming out and, you know they've built their foundation was we want to be able to drive to Tahoe in our, in our SUV, which, you know kind of set their range standards and this and that. But, you know, they didn't know EMDR with, with Amazon. And so now we all are going to have prime electric trucks driving around our neighborhoods which we'll all see, I, I want to one of your videos talked about electric garbage trucks. We actually have one in the fleet that services my house. It doesn't come every week, but it comes every so often. It is amazing to hear a quiet garbage truck roll up and down your street. But I wonder if you can talk a little bit about, you know how electrification changes fleet operations fleet economics, and you know the piece that we didn't talk about what dyno is a huge thing is maintenance.

And, and, you know, you think of this Rivian driving off road in Tahoe and you think, Oh my gosh, why didn't anyone think of this before it doesn't make smoke? It doesn't make noise. It doesn't drip oil all over the roads. I mean, there's there are so many benefits to electrification out of doors, but again, back to kind of fleets what are the economic changes when people make this shift either because the government mandates it they want to be duly eco-friendly but there's a whole lot of good economic benefits to go in electrification and the fleet.

>> You're exactly right. So it's super exciting. So the movement to electrification for fleets is game changing and they're the fleet operators. First of all, they're very, they have a mission to deliver. They need to make sure their vehicles leave on time to perform its whatever function it's in service to do. And typically that's even there to move people to move packages, to deliver services, or that work that vehicle could be a job function like a forklift. So it's mission critical to provide the right solution there. That what they're delighted about is the monitorability the cost profile, like you said, the low maintenance and the overall TCO of going electric is is super justifying to fleet operators that this is just a natural move to make.

Now there's a lot of catalysts for them to electrify. There's the government mandates and things that you see around the world. So we are seeing a push to electrification in fleet and it does require a very thoughtful planning on the fleet operator to make this transition. They fueled their vehicles for a hundred years, a particular way. They built their depots. If that's where they charge or fuel in a particular way they route those vehicles to clean to fill and to load in a particular way. So that does change a little bit when they go electric and we help them make that change. And then they think I just need chargers to make the solution work. And kind of back to the slides we talked about the solutions that fleet managers need is to make sure that A, my vehicles leave on time. I have a very clear understanding of what my fueling costs are,

>> Right?

>> And, and I have a, a very manageable, scalable solution. So what ChargePoint's providing is an end to end solution from very a wide range of software solutions that help them schedule, manage the energy, optimize across a set of vehicles, a set of schedules on a very adaptive and real-time basis based on tomorrow's weather conditions or road construction or traffic projections, to make sure those vehicles are are properly fueled and ready to go. On top of that, Sometimes what fleets need is the ability to charge on route. So when I talk about network effect with this business and what's so exciting is we have, you know hundreds of thousands of chargers in the market that fleet operators can also use for en-route fueling and fleets come in all different shapes and sizes.

So we may see service vehicles. We may see local delivery companies. We may see vehicles and we do have where the employees actually drive the vehicles home to continue to their job function the next day.

>> Right.

>> So what ChargePoint's doing is from that complex depo to kind of large scale motor pools that you see in big municipal fleets. And we've done this for years to enabling en-route charging with really simple billing administration. So the fleet operator just sees all that on Redfield billing, and it goes right back into their existing processes even to use in our home charger in enabling that employee to charge at home and have their company pay for that session.

>> Right.

>> So we're doing the whole swath around fleet.

>> I mean, this is IOT, right? Everybody wants to know where the IOT is in the software defined infrastructure you guys are doing. I'm just curious on the fleet vehicles cause you don't have I would imagine. And I don't know, but the inefficient economics working in your favor in terms of sitting around 95%, I would assume that the utilization challenges and finding the charging windows in a fleet are a little bit different than a residential vehicle, which sits so, so often

>> You'd be surprised actually. So, so there are certainly classes of vehicles that never stop and our jobs to fill them as fast as possible and yard tractors, which are used in shipping docks and things like that are a good example at the but there are vehicles that have long dwell times that they park they're there overnight and they resume the next day. And, and knowing that and it's not a one size fits all problem. The adaptation that we can do as a company because of the architecture of our hardware the ability to kind of route power intelligently and the architecture of our software working together with that creates the right solution for the fleet manager and many, you know here's kind of a couple of different things. Fleets are not all one shape and size either. And fleets are going to go through this continuum of their on liquid fuels today in the next couple of decades, there'll be fully electric the hard parts in the middle.

>> Right. The hard part is how do I operate both? And so what we're doing is making sure those fleet managers can make a simple transition by working with all the different ways they run their business today. And in the, in the solutions they use and our stuff plugs elegantly into that

>> Do they usually carve out some, some piece like any other kind of new IT type of a project where you carve out some small small piece that you can go like a hundred percent electrification on that little unit and test it, trial it. And so that you don't get stuck kind of halfway in between and then slowly increase the frequency.

>> We see various paths to it. You see pilots like you described that could be self-contained in a particular facility. And it may be a selected based on either available electrical infrastructure particularly favorable electricity, electricity rates or there could be strong incentives and incentives are a big catalyst to this market that are very exciting for fleet operators to, to help funding, to make their you know, to support their path through their projects. So we're seeing electric buses, you know a big transformation in the market, super exciting free municipal fleets. It makes sense for them from a TCO standpoint from a climate impact standpoint. And so you see a lot of great movement around their transportation and transit space.

>> Right.

>> Going electric.

>> So, so this is a fascinating place and there's a couple kind of looking to the future. I just want to get your opinion. So you you've been, you've been at charge finding out your LinkedIn pulled up here for three years. So you were there like before the Tesla three came out which arguably was, you know a pretty significant boost to the total market. We saw the GM announcement going full electric. I think it's 2035 was the date. I might have that wrong, but you know who would have imagined a couple of years ago that GM is going to say come out. So I wonder if you can just share your thoughts on you know, kind of what are some of the market dynamics that are really pushing, you know the general electrification along kind of the role of Regs. You know, there was a lot of incentives early on at least here in the States, those have gone away. I'm sure the international market is, is a hodgepodge of different things, but did you look at kind of reg and and some of these tailwinds, I wonder if you can reflect on a few that you're excited about, you know that are going to continue to move us off. Like you said, if we're not driving electric now we're going to be driving electric pretty soon.

>> Well, first of all, the car the auto industry has a whole range of exciting vehicles coming in. And that is essential to address the needs of different consumers have for their use cases as well as for fleet. So that's, that's been one thing that, you know these next several years are super excited with. What's coming really fun cars and trucks. So that's kind of one there are exciting catalysts that helped this market from a financial standpoint and you see different kind of elements of that around the world. And so that's certainly continues to help. I think the existence of the vehicles on the, on the in the public, in other people seeing other people doing it is a big catalyst, the garbage truck example. When, when folks see that electric bus driving by and the electric garbage truck and the electric delivery vehicle coming to their home I think that is a big mind shift change.

And as they understand more particularly through, you know an outlook like yours that the fueling pattern is different when they see chargers at work, when they see chargers at home, when they stop off at their favorite places to dine or to watch a game or to work out and there's, or watch a movie and there's charging there, it's like, Hey, this is simple. I'm going to plug in the economic benefits are huge. It's so fun to drive electric. I don't have to stop on the way home. It just makes my day, my life better. It's so liberating. And when they hear that from their friends and others, it's, it's going to happen so..

>> You know, it's funny you hear it from is the is people with hybrids who only are getting in a 10, 15 20 miles on their electric portion of their, of their piece but they, but they suddenly realize they haven't filled up their car in months and months. And it kind of like clues into them. And they're, they're only using a really small percentage of the electric capacity compared to, you know these full EV cars. So it is, I think that's going to go I don't think that'll be for a long time.

>> I think the hybrid vehicles and you see it in Europe as well. There's a lot of hybrids as well. They're a gateway. And so once you drive a hybrid, it's very logical. Your next vehicle is going to be an AV anyways. And, and then once you drive an AV it's very likely your second vehicle, if you happen to get a second vehicle will be an AV.

>> Right. So another kind of future is we touched on it briefly, but and I know this isn't your expertise but you're in the business. And I'm just curious, you know, battery technology, a lot of conversations about battery technology that, you know that this is now, we've got, we've got car scale. And as we've seen in so many industries, right as soon as you bring this massive scale to bear, now you've got the economics to drive innovation at a whole different level. And I don't think we've had any major battery, you know kind of step function advances in a while and correct me if I'm wrong. So I'm curious to kind of get your take there. And then that other piece that we talked about which to me is fascinating kind of this atomic version. And we hear, you know, people that can, you know can you swap out battery swap in, you know, say say for the long haul case. Cause I don't think the electrified roads are coming anytime soon, but you know some of these things that maybe people layman are thinking about that that are opportunities for again kind of whole step functions in the adoption of this much better technology.

>> Well, there's a lot of analysts that will tell you about the battery innovations that are going on and the cost curves as the volume increases. So I think that's well chronicled out there that your readers can Google on and your viewers. And so the better direction will make clear economic parody with an electric vehicle, with a petrol via our liquid fueled vehicle in the next several years. So that's kind of one component of it. The, the notion of do you need different things than just plugging in the car parks while it's the fuels while it's parked in its parks, 22 hours out of the day.

>> Right.

>> So trying to solve something that isn't a daily problem for users is a little bit of extreme there a lot in a lot of of thousands of chargers to satisfy those corridor needs. So I think that addresses that. I do think there's going to be a lot of excitement around long haul trucking and autonomous. And, and so autonomy is a big intersection with electric vehicles.

>> Right, right.

>> And the intersection of electric vehicles and autonomy with where the world is at and the world is going is also pretty interesting. And so when I met the CEO of ChargePoint several years ago, I said to him, you know the big problems in the world are, there's 7 billion people on the planet going to 10 billion people. And you go back for half a day, you know half a century and all the elections, no matter what country you're in, it's about housing, food security. And how do we, you know, how do we move these people? How do we feed these people and how do we house these people? And so he says, you're right Bill and electrification is the path to autonomy. And autonomy is the path to a much more of a shared car society.

>> Right

>> As we look at millennials typically, you know pre COVID and presumably post COVID there, their use of ride share versus owning a vehicle is, you know much different than our time right.

>> Right.

>> And so the notion that, you know, in the future personal car ownership will likely decline. We're going to have the fleet vacation of the world and there will be fleet solving how we move people from point A to point B autonomous fleets.

>> Right.

>> And here's, what's interesting about that. And you said it earlier, 22 hours a day we're devoting Ellisville to store and park cars. And if we could take cars off the road, replace them with autonomous, we can recapture that asphalt for higher and better uses like housing and farming whether it's indoor outdoor. And so there's a very network effect of the benefits of going electric to these future technologies. And we've only talked about things that role but there's things that float and there's things that fly and they will be electric too.

>> Right right. Well, if you've ever read any Janette Sadik-Khan stuff about you know, the, the incredible asset that cities have in the square footage of asphalt that they have take a place like Manhattan and, and how and how we use that to house cars most of which are just sitting still. It's just, it's just crazy. But we're running out of time. I got to get this in for all my all my PEV friends and aficionados. You not ride my electric bike all over the place. My electric skateboard, my electric, everything. What does it take to put a one 10 on these things, Bill you got to put that on the roadmap. You got to get a 10 charge on the I'll happily get my account and plug in and keep an eye on the cars. And I only need like, you know, 20 minutes 30 minutes to top off my machine but we got to get those out of there. Cause electric bikes, I think are a big part of this thing. They're not, you know they're not final mile vehicles anymore. And I think they're going to be an increasing the important piece of this, you know, get out of your your 3000 pound gas burning behemoth.

>> Yeah. So, so the micro mobility space, the intersection of transportation hubs. So you may take a train to a location that then you get picked up in a ride share platform or transportation network company, as we call it TNCs. And you may take your final mile on a scooter. So all that is in play here in the electrification of mobility

>> Good. So give you the last word. Anything that I should have asked you. I heard this from one of your other interviews. I'm like, this is the greatest, final question I've ever heard. You know, what, what didn't we cover that we should have covered that you want to make sure people know about

>> So they can learn more about ChargePoint at ChargePoint.com. The solutions that's needed to really satisfy drivers and hosts. They make this transition as a complete one. They need to understand the role of software and how it can help their business goals. The, the range of hardware that satisfies our stations that satisfied their particular parking lots and charging needs. And they can go look at ChargePoint cause they don't realize people will say, you know I don't see these charging stations because they're expecting it to be on a street corner, like a gas station. There's hundreds of thousands of charging stations out there. They just don't know where to look. So your favorite parking lot, it's in your library. It's, it's, it's at your, you know, stadium they're there around you. You don't know it because you haven't had a need to look for it. So if you want to know where they are you can look on our website, ChargePoint.com to see the map.

You can download the mobile app. It's free to drivers. It's free for folks to take a look and they can see what's around them. And they don't know it yet but there'll be driving electric in the near future.

>> But what you didn't say for the hosts specifically is this is an opportunity for if you run any type of an of a place that has that, that's a physical place. Whether that's a company that you run an employee, people whether it's a theater or a restaurant, you know whatever it is as an academic institution that this isn't this is an opportunity to bring another asset into your portfolio that you can choose to make money give away, make it a benefit, whatever. But just because you have space like behind you in this picture to put one of these things and then install it clearly, it's a lot more to it. But this is a new thing that you can offer to your constituents. Whether that's employees, customers, community, students whatever it is that you can do. And you guys make it really kind of a turnkey solution that I don't have to be an expert and it doesn't have to be my primary business.

>> Yeah. And you know many companies today have sustainability initiatives, sustainability leaders in their organizations and are publishing their results of their public to the shareholders about their sustainability impact this place directly into their sustainability goals which is important for all of us.

>> Well Bill great to great to catch up. I'm sorry it's been so long, but you're always up to interesting stuff and it looks like you, you jumped onto a winner here.

>> Yeah. Super exciting. Thanks for having us.

>> All right. He's bill, I'm Jeff. Thanks for watching. You're watching Turn The Lens with Jeff Frick. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. Check. That's a wrap.

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