Solar, Storage & Software with 3TI
Welcome to another episode of Tech TV. My name is Greg. Today, I'm gonna talk to Mark Potter from 3ti about 3ti and everything charging, and we're gonna geek out presumably some a little bit, so be warned. Tell us who you are. Tell us who 3TI is, and what do you guys do?
mark:Yeah. Good morning, Greg. 3TI stands for 3 technology infrastructure, and those technologies are solar, energy storage, solar generation, energy storage, and EV charging.
greg:Okay. And there's a there's a big canopy thing outside at virtually every fully charged show or everything electric show that I've ever been to lately. And, you know, so is the idea to have solar then battery in there? So the if I remember correctly, you basically stored the some of the energy from solar and some of the excess energy from the grids and then give that to people if they want to charge.
mark:Yeah. It was and that's kind of the kind of basis of the company. Right? This virtuous trio of of solar generation, storage, and EV charging. If you've got storage that supports EV charging, then you can use that storage to either offset the the cost or all time of electricity consumption from the grid.
mark:If you've got excess solar in the middle of the day, you can put that into the battery. And, actually, when you're using batteries and EV charging, then you can reduce the amount of grid energy you need at the kind of in terms of the infrastructure cost as well.
greg:Obviously, you're not gonna get all the energy to charge. How many cars can you put on those char is it, like, 6 or 8?
mark:Yeah. So so the the kind of 2 kind of key bits of our business are what what we call the big solar car parks, which are, like, megawatt scale solar car parks, which have which I can't say 80% about generating solar power and 20% about charging cars underneath them. And most of that solar power goes into the sites they're at. So we do things like NHS hospitals. We do things like, I mean, big industrial plants and data centers, where we take 500 or 1000 parking space car park, turn it over to solar generation, and and use that to decarbonize the site that we're on.
mark:The product you're talking about at the moment, the one that's here at Everything Electric, is a bit easier to, to move around than the than the big solar car parks. And that's a kind of a separate product line we started developing about 2 years ago. And that is a 12 charge points EV charging hub that has got around 20 kilowatt peak of solar on on the top of it. A battery in at one end and kind of some magic in the other end.
greg:Is it is it still grid tied or is it, like, free from
mark:the grid? Yeah. Still grid tied. So the kind of Papillio products where where the big solar car parks are kind of 80% solar, 20% EV charging, the the the Pipilio is more like 80% EV charging, 20% solar. So on a on a if you'd look at it as like an annual generation basis, depending on the utilization of the charge points, you could be getting anywhere between sort of 20 30, maybe 40 percent of the total energy goes into EVs comes from the solar.
mark:Whereas, obviously, in a big solar car park, well, when those cars are charging underneath and you've got megawatts of power being generated off the roof, then most of the most of the EV charging is solar.
greg:And is this, like, a permanent structure that you put in, or is it just for events?
mark:No. So events aren't really right, Mark. I know we bring them along here, you know, as a showpiece, but, really, it's kind of a kind of a 2, 3 year typical minimum period we'd expect one to be deployed for. Actually, we expect they'll they'll stay there for some time after that, but it it solves a particular problem. So if you take the big solar car parks, they can take, sort of 18 months, 2 years from kind of mission reduction to breaking ground and and maybe another 6 months beyond that to get them actually generating energy.
mark:And the nature of that kind of big installation, those million million pound installations, is that you need a long view for the future. So you needed to look at returns in in, you know, 4, 5, 8, 10, 15 years. And one of the challenges for a lot of businesses, first of all, they've got smaller car parks. The the economics don't work very well for small scale solar car parks. And secondly, a lot of businesses don't own the land that they're on.
mark:They're they're leasing, and they might have a 2 or 3 year lease left on the land and that that they've got. They want charging for their visitors or their guests or their or their employees. So what we have is a solution that doesn't have all the upfront costs, doesn't dig up the ground, doesn't need landlord support, or, you know, doesn't benefit the landlord ultimately if if they move out. And generally speaking, you know, I think there's very high probability that when a new tenant moves into that building or when that, tenant moves to a new building, they're gonna still want that solution. So, and if they don't, well, that's okay.
mark:We'll give it to the next customer.
greg:Yeah. So that that's why it's like semi is it semi mobile for for that reason, or is it just like convenience because shipping container gives you already a structure to put things in?
mark:Yeah. So it's just it's semi mobile in that sense. So, you know, it's it's not something you'd wanna move for a weekend. You know, it's not a Glastonbury kind of weekender, but it does make absolute sense if it's gonna be in a place for several months or or several years. It has some advantages in terms of, planning requirements, installation time, you know, only takes it takes less than a day to get it installed and and operating.
mark:And that gives that that kind of rapid deployment, doesn't have all the disruption. And also, you know, from a from an infrastructure cost perspective and from a project development cost perspective, there's big advantages as well. You know, it's a lot of EV charging installations. Pretty much all of them are bespoke to each individual site. Right?
mark:You have to go and work out where the trenches are gonna go and work out where the distribution's gonna go and there's a lot of legal shenanigans that go with that. With Papillio, it's kind of a, you know, one stop shop. It's a instant product in a box. You put it down, plug it in, turn it on, and it's ready to go, and it just does what it does. And you haven't got all that site specific complexity.
mark:So it's a, you know, one size fits all if you like.
greg:Is the is the 3TI solution, that's just 2 type 2. Right? The, the, or do you have a CCS charging there
mark:as well? So so the the product we've got outside is what we call the AC Fast Hub. That's the 12 22 kilowatt type 2 AC chargers. We're working on a project right now with with Desnez and and Innovate UK and some part of a UK consortium to develop a bidirectional charging version of that based on a DC microgrid. That sound great.
mark:It's kind of exciting. Yeah. I'm very excited. Well, I'm sure it's
greg:a subject for future episodes when it's out, and, you know, you can talk about it fully. But, yeah, every time I stand outside the 3 t, I stand and the demo sort of think, you know, I see either people asking questions about solar, like I mentioned, which we've both done like the 100 per I'll I'll put solar on the roof when giving me 100% energy and I just I faint, basically, when I hear that. Or they say, you know, oh, what is this? Like, this looks like, you know, like a makeshift car park. And I'm like, it's quite a clever solution, but I wanted you to explain it because I think it's a brilliant idea.
mark:Well, I mean, what what guides us is we're we're trying to be I I call it the 3 d's, which is decentralization, decarbonization, and democratization of energy. K? Or or or fairer, faster, and more flexible if you like.
greg:It's it's always good to have 3 things in threes. Right? And that's a 3 d I, so it go it goes, along with the, with the with the name of the company. Before actually we move on, I have to ask, is it just a UK product, or is it available in Europe and, you know, potentially in the US in the future or whatever?
mark:So at the moment, it's just in the UK, but obviously from the nature of the project it a product, it internationalizes quite well. So absolutely in the future, we'd look to internationalize the product. It solves the same problem in in lots of different territories. But it's not something that we would manufacture in the UK and then, you know, ship overseas. That doesn't really make sense, not least from a carbon perspective.
mark:But, you know, ultimately, the the technologies that go in there can get, you know, delivered anywhere in the world. The skills required to build it can exist anywhere in the world with no fabricators, machine shops to to do the physical part of it. And then essentially, we would put our magic in a box that makes it all work.
greg:Let's talk about CCS. I, you know, I I don't know how long you've been driving EVs yourself, but the, my first EV was a Nissan LEAF, and it had a chatter more plug, obviously. And I remember it being super easy. Just you just plug in. It worked flawlessly.
greg:There's no complexity in, like, negotiating stuff or whatever. It it never fails. And then I would hear from other people who have CCS cars like I3. What was the other one? The IONICS, the area I early IONICS.
greg:They had problems with, with the CCS. They would work about half the time. And I always wondered why why is that why is that there a problem? You know, the talking to other people in the past, I because I don't have access to the CCS spec, obviously. We have to pay for it and then, you know, it's they're trying to keep it secret for whatever reason.
greg:I don't know. Say say same thing with Chatham, but Chatham apparently is just a compass simple conversation. It's probably encrypted these days or, you know, there's some sort of a verification, but it's it's quick. There's no negotiations whatever. From what I've heard, and I I, again, I don't have a spec.
greg:I've never read it, so I have no idea exactly, like, the details. But the the multiple layers to it and multiple negotiations, loads of certificates sent back and forth, and some things about payment, obviously, that have to be verified and signed by an external API. And so you're waiting for all that to happen over, like, 4 g network that might not work all the time. And that's why it takes longer or sometimes cuts out. And, obviously, being an a spec, you know, a committee wrote it, and different people will implement it differently because there's some differences in there.
greg:I don't know if there's a reference. So when when you design a spec, sometimes you have a reference source code or, like, reference implementation. That's the word I was looking for. That makes it easier because you can just test it against reference code, you know, implementation. If it works for a reference implementation, that means you're good.
greg:And why do you think CCS is so complex? And is there a way to improve it? And, you know, are we should we should we be worried that it's so complex?
mark:So CHAdeMO uses a CAN bus, the same type of communication network that runs across the vehicle. It's well understood within the automotive industry for a start. It's quite robust, and it's quite simple. CCS essentially uses power on Ethernet. It's using a full IP stack.
mark:And the standards don't just define how it should work. It's got lots of different options, you know, and lots of different services. And some of those services aren't defined yet. Some of them are more been recently defined, like the the bidirectional capabilities within the the dash twenty spec. And so what you've got is an inherently much more sophisticated communication stack, and it's been developed by committee in a very, really frankly slow process, which has taken a very long time.
mark:And it has resulted arguably in a far superior specification. But, you know, I think you've probably hit the nail on the head, which is if you don't have, like, a reference design, a reference model, a kind of a clear test case of what it must do and how it must perform, then you're left with lots of people trying to work it out for themselves. And, you know, and what I was saying earlier about about, you know, a lot of standards are good at defining the language, but not necessarily the conversation. And some of the timing specifics and some of the kind of, you know, what if things go wrong characteristics. You know, this is something that kinda tends to dog a lot of standards is that they define how it should language it should speak.
mark:They don't define the conversation. And more specifically, when something does go wrong, how should either system respond? So everybody makes their own decisions. So then you end up with this compatibility problem where you've got different parties having to essentially test each charger implementation on each vehicle implementation, and it's a, you know, another n square problem that gets very complicated very, very quickly.
greg:You're a you're an engineer as well in the end that, you know, people think that complexities add, but they actually multiply. That's why when you say n squares I know. It's this is something that people don't realize that the, 2 problems actually is or 3 problems is not just 3 times. It's 9. 9 times.
greg:So but like I say, CCS has a lot of complexity because they were trying to be forward thinking. Right? It's it's more of a r s 232 versus USB, if you like that analogy. And, you know, USB allows you to have multiple types of hosts on the same connector. Right?
greg:That's why you have hubs and stuff, but that means that a mic a USB microphone can be also a headphone amplifier because you can have 2 functions, or a keyboard could be also a mouse controller. Right? Or whatever. With a with a there's a lot of complexity. But USB as a standard is open, and there's loads of reference implementations.
greg:So
mark:Yeah. Yeah. And and that but then, you know, we're early USB compatibility issues. But, you know, to me, CCS hasn't got that early excuse anymore. It's been going for such a long time that there shouldn't really be that excuse for that.
mark:Now one of the things which is also maybe complicated is is really motivations. Right? The people who are developing this the specifications, everybody wants a slice of the pie. You know, an OEM is a is a typical problem. You know, they used to get a lot of after sales service in combustion engine vehicles with with, you know, filter replacements and and and spare parts in the EV world.
mark:There isn't quite so much maintenance requirement, you know, pollen filter or something like that, but there's it hasn't got the same aftermarket kind of income. So OEMs have been looking at ways to potentially get more through life income from a vehicle. So they're absolutely dead keen to own some of the the money stacks of the whole 5118 dash 20. A lot of the delays getting that agreed was really OEMs want to own the payment processing. And things like grid services, they want to own that themselves.
mark:Some of the OEMs are actually setting up virtual power plants at the moment as a way to provide grid services flexing their customers' vehicles. And that's kind of planning ahead, if you want to call it. That land grab, really, is one of the things that's really slowed it down, and that's put things up bidirectional charging. With CCS vehicles, it's put it a decade behind where Chateau Mo vehicles are.
greg:I I always get get asked the not always, but I get off and ask about the vehicles to to load and vehicles to grid. And I'm in two minds about it personally, but CCS does have a provision for it now. Right? It's just the customers seem to be implemented. OEMs are dragging their feet.
greg:I don't know what's happening. Like, I have I have a Kia Niro EV, the new one, the facelift one, and it's got a plug in the back couch and it's got a, you know, a vehicle to load provisions. And I was told through back channels that they've designed these vehicles from ground up to actually be bidirectional. That's why they're putting plugs in them, all of them, because it already has that capability. It could power your house at, like, 32 amps apparently if they enabled it for the software.
greg:Like, the the hardware is there, but it's the lack of agreement or maybe political dragging of feet and, you know, land grabbing, like I say.
mark:Yeah. It's it's it's complicated, and and I don't know how much detail you want wanna go into. I know quite a lot about that. So there there are 2 first thing to to separate in your mind is the type of v two x. K?
mark:So we understand v two l, which is essentially grid forming. You're creating a little sort of, 50 Hertz signal that you can plug your cap into the back of your car. And that's quite different to being grid connected because grid forming versus grid syncing means that you've got to have hardware that synchronizes with the grid and can export AC to the grid. Now there's 2 ways of doing that. 1 is that you take the power out of the vehicle in AC directly using that v 2 l type function, but having it synchronizing with a live grid at the same time.
mark:Now there's lots of complexities in doing that, and you probably don't want me to go into them. But from from, you know, grid regulations, grid codes, safety, earthing systems, disconnects, islanding, the whole bunch of challenges making that safe, making it regulatory compliant. And it's absolutely the way that the mass market bidirectional capability needs to come out because it will work in residential with relatively low costs of all hardware. But it's immensely complicated having export. You know, the vehicle is actually controlling what exports to the grid.
mark:The ability, these things you may have heard of, g 98, g 99, or even g 100 export limitations to grid, which is there for safety and for lots of complicated reasons with distributed energy. These codes are very hard to meet if you've got a vehicle in control of it unless you've got specialist infrastructure. So the direction that I think happen needs to happen in in in the near term is that you look at DC export from the vehicle, which is what JADAMO and CCS do. Right? So you've taking DC out of the vehicle doesn't need anything extra on the vehicle.
mark:It doesn't need additional v two l hardware. It doesn't need isolation. It doesn't need lots of extra software that can work out where it is and whether that location's got an export agreement or or any of those sort of infrastructure level complexities because the infrastructure does it for you. So if you put a charger on the wall that takes DC out your car, that charger on the wall makes sure that the installation is compliant.
greg:And then you don't care as a as a OEM about the differences between regulations in in in each country as well. Right?
mark:Yeah. And and so it's very, very much simpler from the OEM's perspective. All they need to do is enable software to let you take power out of the battery, and nothing else is essentially free. There's no hardware upgrade cost. And, obviously, OEMs are very reluctant to invest in that hardware on the vehicle and the software to support that AC export from the vehicle because it's an uncertain market at the moment, and they can't sell upsell that to their customers, you know, pay an extra £500 and get this capability if they don't know that capability is going to work because those codes, those regulations, those complexities aren't resolved yet.
mark:And the business case for supporting that could still be a number of years away. Now to me, the only way to get the data to support the business case is to start doing it. So this is the kind of catch 22 we're in at the moment. You know, the OEMs, they wanna put the hardware on the vehicle because they don't know the business case is there. We can't get a business case because there's no hardware on the vehicle.
greg:Do do you think I I I often hear people like, oh, the market's gonna take care of itself. And I as much as I always like to be an optimist about marketplaces, I yeah. I'm I'm a I'm an engineer. I'm a pessimist and cynic by nature. Because you have to be when you're when you're working with hardware.
greg:Right? So I would say to people, yeah, the marketplace is great, but we have regulation because it doesn't work 100%. So do you think if I don't think it's gonna happen, but the if a country x said in their regulations, okay. All the new EVs with CCS plug have to have a DC vehicle to x ex you know, integration by standard, like, it's a requirement to sell your vehicles in this country to register them. Do you think that would help?
mark:Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. And and and that is absolutely something we must do. Okay?
mark:It is there is no excuse from the OEMs not to do it. Okay? OEMs love AC because they get to own a revenue stack, and they get to decide how much of the slice of the pie they take and how much to give to their customer with infrastructure side, the infrastructure chooses. So that the challenge for OEMs with DC is they don't get to control, you know, the the which slice of the cake people get to eat. Okay.
mark:And that's why they're one of the reasons they're probably quite reluctant to do it. But, actually, I would like to go even further. I'd like to make it mandatory to deploy DC v two x on all the existing CCS vehicles.
greg:Do you think they're all capable? Because some of I mean, at the end of the day, the 2 prongs are the bottom of your CCS, whether it's 1 or 2, you know, US versus Amer versus Europe.
mark:Right. There's a pair of contactors sat behind that that connects you to the battery.
greg:Yeah. Yeah. Unless you're Tesla, in which case you have 2 probably. I think they have a bit more complexity behind it for I don't know where what enough.
mark:Well, on the on the ones where they share the pins, they do. Yeah. But but but the the bottom line is that there are 2 pins which connect to the external charger, whether it's ShadowMail or CCS, that has got essentially a direct connection to the battery. The only thing required to enable DC export from those two pins is software from the BMS, from the battery management system, kind of configured from the vehicle that says you can have this much power. My minimum acceptable state of charge is this.
mark:My maximum desired state of charge is this. And in fact, the infrastructure can do a lot of that already. So we it's really just making sure you haven't got the the software in the vehicle. It's actually almost removing a piece of software from the vehicle. The piece of software in the vehicle says, hang on.
mark:If power is going the wrong way, shut off those contactors. Something's gone wrong. Okay? Now take that line of line of code out, and then you've got d c c a v two x. And now you've already got much higher market saturation of vehicles, because the only way that v two x is going to work is with a lot of vehicles with support for bidirectional.
mark:Making it a requirement for those to ex to enable export would instantly increase the number of available vehicles.
greg:Do you think we need a open source, like, Linux revolution in the OEM industry? I mean, I know for a fact because I I chaired a a conversation at a move conference last year where there were 2 ladies talking about, you know, experiences in in OEM as an OEM employee, essentially. And one of them is I can't remember exactly her title, but she works, for a startup called VEACLE, just funny spelled VEACLE, where they're doing essentially that. They're trying to develop an open source platform so that the OEMs could just take existing their existing software and, like, build up on it. I I think we I mean, not that that I don't like what they're doing, but the I I think we need more attempts at that.
greg:Obviously, Linux was easy because a a bloke just wrote his own kernel back in a day when operating systems were not weren't as complex as they are now. And, you know, that kind of sparked the the thing. Cars are way, way more complex. So you can't just have a bloke riding a a software for the old car in his garage. What I'm thinking about is basically once if there was a platform common platform that all OEMs had to adopt, that would give that, you know, everybody works talks to each other and it's a known entity.
mark:Yeah. And there is there have been attempts to do that in in automotive. So there's a organization called Autosar, which has essentially tried to create a common RTOS real time operating system on which at a vehicle level, if you choose to implement all the all the layers of it, at a vehicle level, you can kinda choose where your code lands. So it's gonna sound a bit strange, but you could have your, I don't know, your your cabin heater control software running on your win window winder motor embedded controller. It's like that.
mark:So they have had an attempt at doing that. Now that's a it's a proprietary organization. It's not quite open source, but it's common standards. And once you pay the license fees and once you're into the into the cool club, if you like, then you have the ability to to do that. Very few people have implemented that across the full stack because it's a very expensive thing to do, and it does create a lot of challenges.
mark:But another way to look at it is is what happens if you don't? So what happens if you don't is you end up spending a lot of time and lots of money developing something that, you know, client copies of somebody else has done, and that makes it very inefficient. So you've got these these, you know, that's those engineers are gonna be paid for somewhere somehow. So it becomes a very you know, going open source, going as we've seen with Linux, enables the industry to progress very, very much faster, but at the cost of how do I monetize this specifically for me if we're gonna put that engineering effort in? How are we gonna make this money work for me?
mark:So, you know, I kind of understand both sides of the argument. One one of the the things I would point out is that there are certain suppliers, like Bosch and Conti, are are kind of within the ABS market. If you want to use one of their systems, you have to work the way they want to work. If you're an OEM, you don't get to con you don't really get to control how that system works because they are the experts in that. You make your system work with them.
mark:So it's actually some of it's not even in the OEM's control. And one of the things I found really interesting I worked in China quite a lot. And one of the things I found really interesting in China is that the Chinese government have essentially put in place standards really quite early on to make Chinese vehicles, or more specifically Chinese the component manufacturers of Chinese vehicles, use a common protocol stack, which actually is part of the reason the automotive industry and especially the electric vehicle has accelerated so quickly over there because they have got common standards that other manufacturers are using. And now you've got an integration job, not develop the software, define the software, and everybody doing the same thing, which is just incredibly wasteful.
greg:Yeah. I mean, just go going back to the, you know, how do you monetize it? At the end of the day, software is harder to monetize than hardware. Right? Because you when you sell the car, you can put a price tag on it.
greg:Doesn't matter if parts of it are open source or not. You still have to sell that hardware. Right? And you differentiate yourself because it's a nice plush interior or whatever. You know?
greg:There's other things that people care about rather than other than just, geeky stuff like we do. Yeah.
mark:And I remember the OEMs, you know, what what they used to do was, you know, stamp metal and stick metal together. Okay. What they're doing now is they're becoming you know, these these vehicles are very sophisticated computers driving around with very sophisticated electronics on them, and the the the the bit of stamping metal and sticking it together is not really where the optimizations are anymore. You know? That and and that's where the REMs are coming from, of course.
mark:You know? They're coming from can they make it better quality, you know, or add and create those brand positions that that meet those driver experience needs, gonna get the right suspension, you know, kinda it's it's a very different world to being a software defined platform. Now as we've seen, you know, Hyundai, Kia, that we've seen consortiums, dentists, these consortiums now working together going, actually, we need to commonize this. So it's not quite to the point of open source, but it's not that far off in as much as you now got common platforms across multiple vehicles, which is why you've got this consolidation happening where, you know, vehicle you know, we've got 5 vehicles as your common platform behind them. The same the same software stack, the same communications that you've done with your testing, your validation.
mark:Once the soft you when you send a software update out, you're sending it to 5 different vehicle models at once. So we had it's kinda heading that way. It's not quite to the point of open
greg:source. I don't think it will ever be, but, you know, I think again, I mean, it's good to know that things are happening. It's not as, you know, it's not as, terrible as it seems from the outside. You know what I mean?
mark:No. Well, I mean, the, you know, the the Kias and the Hyundai, they're the same vehicle. Right? Yes. Yes.
mark:Yeah. Well but but, you know, a lot a lot of a lot of you know, you got Volkswagen and Audi Group. You got the Stellantis. These are got a lot of brands are, you know, owned by one company and that the platforms that they're running on are a common platform. So Volkswagen were doing this, you know, a decade ago where they realized that actually, you know, your your Golf, your Passat, these are the Polo these especially with the electric versions of them, having a common platform makes perfect sense for those, you know, to the point where even on mechanical engineering, you know, they're just putting a different body on it, but the wheels are the same distance apart and everything else fits.
mark:You know?
greg:You know, ICE cars are even more integrated. Right? The, There's fewer differences other than the shape on on the outside and interior between ice cars, even from different manufacturers, because they they take the same components from Bosch, Siemens, and well, there's probably like 3 of them in the whole world. Right? Absolutely.
greg:And and, you
mark:know, I remember having this going way back now with my my first car. The, the starter motor for the, the Ford Fiesta was the same starter motor that the Ford Mondeo had, and I remember breaking down in France one time with a with a Vauxhall I had. And we end up getting the, replacement part from Peugeot Garage because it was the same part. So so it's kind of it's been there in the metal metal bashing world, you know, and and obviously it makes sense when you're trying to you're putting tooling together to make an exhaust pipe a particular shape. Well, having to change the shape of your exhaust pipe for every different model you come out with is quite an expensive thing to do because you haven't got those economies of scale.
mark:So it's kind of existed at the mechanical level for quite some time, but scaling that up to the software level is kind of what's going on right now because the metal part of it become quite commoditized. So now you try and differentiate yourself in the software. And then you've got things like Android Auto and and CarPlay, which are actually taking some of the user interface, user experience elements away. And that's, you know so there's lots of complexities coming in the automotive world for sure.
greg:There's a lot of, you know, worry about people being charging at night and, you know, being assaulted or whatever or other problems, and they just wanna get away fast. And I not negating people's needs to have to feel safe because that's just the, you know I I think there's a lot of work that still needs to be done to ensure that the, charging points are safe. Unlike petrol stations, they don't have usually stuff on-site to call the police or CCS and massive canopy and loads of lights. You know, these things just are lit all night long sometimes, and it's crazy. But, you know, to me, it's it's also also quite crazy, the idea of being able to just drive away with the charger attached or the plug just snapping off if if you need it to escape because I mean, I just look up the videos of people driving away with the the pump still plugged into the thing, you know.
greg:I don't know. What what are view or your views on CCS safety and these sort of things and and solutions to that?
mark:Well, I mean, let's start with the the first bit there, which is about charging safety. Okay? So you'll you've probably heard of a company called ChargeSafe. Kate's here. In fact, she was here yesterday.
mark:I don't know if she's here today.
greg:Yes. Yeah. Kate. Yeah.
mark:It was actually my hometown, Farnham, where she had a terrible charging experience, which is why she kinda started that company. So I've I've been in touch with her. So we've made sure that our solutions are we've got CCTV. We've got lighting. In fact, we take it a bit further than that.
mark:Our lighting is battery backed. So even if the grid power goes out, we've still got battery backed lighting, making sure that you're not tripping over your cables or coming back to a a dark puddle in the car park. Okay? And I think the the the solution is to make your charging safer to start off with. The technical side of this kind of ability to drive off with your your car connected, you know, as an emergency thing.
mark:Well, first of all, there's regulatory requirements as you can't. UNEC R100 specifically tells you that your vehicle mustn't be able to drive while it's connected to the infrastructure. The safety concern associated with that, I think, is is probably a little bit misplaced. There are lots of other ways to disable a vehicle from driving, whether it's plugged into the infrastructure or not. K.
mark:Most EPEBs most most, EVs, in fact, most ICE vehicles now have got EPEBs in them. Just go and unplug the the EPB caliper at the back. That vehicle is not going anywhere. If you want to stop that vehicle from moving, go and park in front of it. Put its tires down.
mark:You know, you stick a pole through through the the alloy wheels. You know, there's a dozen ways to stop a vehicle from moving, and the charging infrastructure is just one of those ways that the vehicle doesn't move. In fact, you know, that you could even disable a vehicle by not having it plugged into the the charging infrastructure and and emulating a vehicle cable being plugged into it. K. It's that idea of being able to drive off with a cable connected as a safety thing.
mark:Well, make your charger safer to start off with and recognize that that is just one of many ways that a vehicle could be disabled for moving. You know, the charging infrastructure should be in a safe place to start off with. That's what, you know, Kate's campaign is about. Exactly. And that's exactly the right campaign.
greg:Yeah. I I think we were both in agreement by CCTV. And the if somebody wanted to attack you, they have other ways to stop you from driving or moving away. So so many other ways. And and it's not unique to EV.
mark:You know? It's it's to me, it's just it's a little bit of scaremongering. Okay? And you and you see this, like, with, I don't know, EV fires. Okay?
mark:You got and and you kinda get these companies creating solutions to problems that don't exist. And then the entire marketing campaign is really about creating the problem, the perception of a problem. Yeah.
greg:Yeah. It reiterates something that's not a problem really in the grand scheme of things, but actually people think, oh, because it's a solution. All of a sudden, there must be a real problem. Exactly. So you look
mark:at this EV fire, you know, stuff that you you see that the FUD the the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that's being cast. Okay? When you actually go and look at the sources of it, it's one of 2 sources. 1 is, you know, fossil fuel industry or, you know, papers or whatever sponsored by fossil fuel industry. And the other is people touting solutions for, you know, car park EV fire suppression or or or electric fire fire suppression blankets for electric vehicles.
mark:You know, these are creating the market, this perception of a need for something that actually there's no statistical evidence or even a burden of proof.
greg:What data do you know? Or somebody said to us, you know, we should do whatever. I was like, okay. But you're a professional. You should know more about these things than I do.
mark:And the sucks didn't support it. You know? And if you wanna ban ban ban vehicles from multi storey car parks, ban the ones that catch fire
greg:the most. That's the that's the combustion cars. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Dealer ones.
greg:Oh, yeah. Luton Fire was one of those examples where everyone's like, oh, I'm sure it's a battery powered vehicle. It was turned out with a Land Rover that, had a leaky diesel, you know, pipe or something.
mark:No. And it happens all the time, but it's not headline new news, is it? So and and and that's kind of what frustrates me a little bit is the is these companies, they're kind of is is a moral to go and create fear in the hearts of of people who feel vulnerable, to tout their solution to a problem which doesn't really exist or arguably exists in so many other forms, you know, that one solution isn't gonna solve it.
greg:Yep. I I fully agree. Mark, anything you wanna say on the way out? Well, thank I mean, thanks
mark:for having me here. It's, it's you know,
greg:I wasn't expecting it this morning, but it's nice very nice to do so. Thank you, Mark. And, everyone should check out the 3TI. I'll I'll put the the links in the down the description, and, and thank you for listening.
