Episode 121: Liz Allan and Liz Warren - Building Sustainable and User-Friendly EV Charging Networks

Episode 121: Liz Allan and Liz Warren - Building Sustainable and User-Friendly EV Charging Networks.

Liz Allan speaks to Liz Warren, Director of Public Charging at Mer UK, to explore the challenges and triumphs of building a sustainable, customer-focused EV charging network. They delve into Liz's career journey from energy analytics to leading one of the UK's leading EV charging companies, her insights into customer satisfaction, and the importance of standardisation and communication in advancing EV adoption. Liz shares her perspective on the evolving landscape of EV infrastructure, reflecting on lessons learned from Mer’s operations in Norway and Germany, and the unique challenges faced in the UK.

Quote of the Episode:
"It’s not about what you know; it’s about learning from what you didn’t know, and putting those lessons into practice." – Liz Warren 

Liz Warren Bio:
Liz Warren is the Director of Public Charging at Mer UK, a leading EV charging network operator owned by Statkraft, Europe’s largest renewable energy generator. With over 12 years at Statkraft, Liz transitioned from energy analytics to the EV sector, where she has been instrumental in shaping Mer UK’s focus on sustainable, customer-centric charging solutions. Her dedication to improving the EV charging experience and commitment to reducing local pollution underscores her leadership in this dynamic industry. Liz is passionate about creating accessible and reliable charging networks, drawing on insights from Mer’s operations across Europe and her extensive expertise in energy markets.

Liz Warren Links:
Website: https://mer.eco
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-warren-50bb977/

Episode Keywords:
Cable management, EV charging safety, charge point operations, health and safety standards, legacy systems upgrade, increased utilization, commercial viability, EV industry communication, electric vehicle market, customer journey, network reliability, sustainable infrastructure, business improvement, ChargePoint Operators, industry standardization, customer service, charger accessibility, regulatory changes, EV charging preferences, faulty

Transcript

Liz Allan [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Electric Evolution with Liz Allan. This podcast is about the journey to a more sustainable future in order for us to be able to do our bit to achieve net zero. I'll be discussing a variety of topics with experts in their field in order to educate and increase our knowledge of clean energy, electric vehicles, and the electric vehicle infrastructure. So whether you're an individual wants to make a difference at home, a small business, or a corporate, this podcast is just for you. 

Today, I have Liz Warren with me; she is the director of public charging at Mer. And we've known each other a little now, Liz, haven't we? She's a wonderful person. You're going to enjoy listening to this, honestly. It's only your 2nd podcast, so you're not quite a podcast virgin.

Liz Allan [00:00:52]:
But we've been chatting for ages before this, and I've had comments. I was just saying to you, wasn't I, that you can usually tell on the podcast when I've been talking to somebody beforehand for a while, and this is because she's brilliant. So, Liz, thank you ever so much for joining me.

Liz Warren [00:01:09]:
Well, thank you very much for inviting me. It's an absolute pleasure to be here.

Liz Allan [00:01:14]:
So I wanna talk to you about it because you have just been made, so you were interim director of public charging at Mer, weren't you? And you've just been made, you've just been made for a full director, which is fantastic.

Liz Warren [00:01:28]:
Thank Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Liz Allan [00:01:29]:
You've been at Mare for some time, haven't you? And Strat Statcraft, which is kind of the company that owns Mare. I always talk to people about how they got to what they're doing now because you were kind of in an alley, you're an analyst to start off with, weren't you?

Liz Warren [00:01:45]:
Absolutely. So my history was in trade and analytics, and I worked on the trade floor for a couple of trading companies quite some time ago. I've always been in energy. So I started off in electricity, moved gas, and had a brief stint in fuel oil, which is, you know, a bit different compared to my new renewable space. And that's taken me on a bit of a journey on the analysis side and brought me into Statkraft, I don't know if you know much about Statkraft at all, but it's Europe's largest renewable energy generator. Lots of focus on hydro projects. They own all the hydro projects in Norway and build, you know, lots of wind, solar farms, and their route to market for the energy that's produced. And I've been in Stackcraft for quite some time now, so I think it's just over 12 years.

Liz Allan [00:02:43]:
Oh, wow.

Liz Warren [00:02:44]:
Yeah. I know.

Liz Allan [00:02:45]:
Feel like it was that long. It is a while, isn't it? It is me.

Liz Warren [00:02:48]:
Quite a while. Exactly. Maybe a bit longer than that. I'm entirely denying what year it is, if I'm honest. I'm still very much in 2014. I think I'm around there. But it's not. It's 10 years later.

Liz Warren [00:03:01]:
So, yeah, I started off in the PPA business in Statkraft, working for a guy called Duncan Dale as they expanded their their part of the business. Really exciting time, massive, part of the PPA world. And as a result of that, I had my sort of eyes open to other industries, renewable industries in the UK, and moved into biomass, where we were initially bringing wood pellets up into the UK and then wood chips. We were exporting from or still are from Norway to Denmark as a heat and power solution. And because I was in that kind of new business part of Stactkraft, I, was sort of recommended for a role within EV by my then-brilliant manager who's, Trudor Felstaedt. So I moved into the EV team. And this was before we'd set up Mer, as a total. 

Liz Warren [00:04:09]:
It just doesn't trip off the tongue. Does it? We thought we'd had GRON Contact in Norway, a fantastic charging company. And then, we purchased a company called Evald in Germany, EE Mobility in Germany, and decided to set up in the UK and grow organically. And I was the 2nd person in. So, yes, I was. Yeah. So it's quite exciting to join a brand new industry. I knew nothing about the EV industry. Obviously, my entire history is realistically the in the power industry, specifically in analytics.

Liz Warren [00:04:51]:
Mhmm. Mhmm. So, yeah, it's been an exciting journey then. It was a massive journey. And then coming into a new startup business where you're organically growing. Initially, we bought in the Vattenfall In Charge team, and they came in with some of the legacy network they built together. Then we became Grown Contact in more. I'm going to say, is it early 2020? We initially became Grown Contact, rebranded to MARE, and came back together with all our European counterparts. And we've grown since then.

Liz Warren [00:05:29]:
We've purchased Statkraft, a northern company offering a fleet solution, and we've merged to create Mer UK.

Liz Allan [00:05:41]:
The ability that you've got as a company to do all this is amazing, isn't it? You know? And you and I were gonna say, so you kind of so Mare is an EV charging company. So you've got that legacy network, haven't you?

Liz Warren [00:05:58]:
What kind of

Liz Allan [00:05:59]:
Where were you initially then, and where are you now with the kind of rollout of charging?

Liz Warren [00:06:05]:
Absolutely. So, initially, we had quite a lot of AC installations. We were on with various partnerships. We've been installing in council car parks. Jojo has been doing a lot of those installations. Over time, we've grown that network and focused more on installing the higher-powered DC chargers. And this is realistically from the learnings of our sister companies in Norway and in Germany who said, well, yeah, it's great to have that AC network, but actually where it is and where it's needed are DC ultra-rapid DC hubs. Right? One of the important things about this industry, which I think a lot of CPOs would probably agree with me, is that you need almost to find your lane and stay in your lane.

Liz Warren [00:07:02]:
So, being an AC provider and a DC provider can be difficult. You're you're trying to solve 2 quite different things. Right? There are some fantastic AC charging companies out there, and there are some great DC charging companies, of which Mer is really focused on being 1. Our fleet side of the business offers a different solution. So we're looking at depot workplace and that sort of thing. But we see that come together eventually because those guys that are charging at their depot workplace want to charge on the public network, too. And so it has that kind of joint joint, together strategy. And whilst we operate quite separately, we're very, very close at the same time.

Liz Warren [00:07:48]:
Yeah. So, ultimately, we're, you know, learning from the journey of the Norwegians, who, as we know, are extraordinarily successful when it comes to EV charging. Right? They kind of have done it. We are a little bit different in the UK, as you as you know. We have some other challenges, but a lot of them they've kind of seen before, and they know how it works. And they ultimately know what customers want and need from their charging locations.

Liz Allan [00:08:17]:
What we're really looking at is them developing best practices and passing them onto you guys, isn't it? Because, like I say, you don't know what you don't know when you start.

Liz Warren [00:08:30]:
Exactly. Exactly. So I think we can also take that learning from Norway in the UK, but we've also got what we know from operating the network that we've got at the moment. And the charges that, you know, the original, DC charges that we put in, you know, some years ago, we're going back to them now and revisiting them and thinking, oh, that was probably not quite the right solution. You know? As mentioned earlier, we've got a site over in Red Hill where we went back quite quickly and put in cable management because those cables are heavy. Right?

Liz Allan [00:09:03]:
They're heavy.

Liz Warren [00:09:04]:
And it's still an older site for us, so there's a little bit of a curve. So we try to do what we can to make that site better. So we put in some fantastic cable management under our then head of operations. Brilliant idea, quite frankly. And I can confirm that they hold up to a lot of weight because we did test them by hanging off them ourselves. So we know we know that they can take your heavy dig. They take my children there. You can swing off them.

Liz Warren [00:09:30]:
It takes quite some going to. This isn't a challenge, I hope.

Liz Allan [00:09:34]:
No. Please don't. If you're watching and listening, please don't go and try to hang off any of these chargers. No. Any of these cable management systems.

Liz Warren [00:09:42]:
That is not what they're for. But we want to know that they're strong, that they work. Right? And they can take some of the weight off because, you know, it's important for the customer. We're not all, we're not all, the kind of the really strong guys and ladies who are doing our installation. We are quite strong. I'm doing quite a lot of weights, but not everybody can can lift that. You've got, you know, situations if you've got something going on with your wrist or, you know, it just they're heavy things, so you want to be able to do as much for the customer to make them as easy to use as possible.

Liz Allan [00:10:16]:
Because I said to you, didn't I, before we started recording, that I hit myself in the face with a cable, which was fantastic. I thought I was going to see a customer with a fat lip because I had parked slightly not quite aligned, and there wasn't a cable management system. I'm not going to say who it was, the charge point operator, but it wasn't you. But literally, and it was about minus 2, and, yeah, it just it hit me in the gob.

Liz Warren [00:10:45]:
It's hard. It's painful. It's very painful. And, you know, as a charge warrant operator, we don't want that. We don't want our customers, you know, at risk of any form of injury. That's not what we're here for. We're focused on our HSE. It's one of the key parts of our organization.

Liz Warren [00:11:01]:
And, you know, we've we've got our ISOs. We keep update with all our policies, but you've got to put them into practice. Right? You've got to follow all of that through. So hitting yourself in the face with one of those cables, you know, I'm really glad you didn't get a bad, quite frankly, because it could be really awful for you. So, you know, we do what we can to ensure that these things don't happen. Right?

Liz Allan [00:11:26]:
But you are now, like you said, looking back at what the legacy systems and legacy charge points were that you put in. And you're looking at these now with a bit of a different lens, aren't you? This obviously means that you're looking at them more because you're aiming to be more customer-focused. But that also means you've to pay for these additional retrofits, haven't you? And it's not a cheap thing to do.

Liz Warren [00:11:52]:
Yeah. Absolutely. One of the things we did during the initial sort of work was to look at maybe some of our AC sites that we're seeing quite a lot of demand and upgrade them to DC. Chargers are brilliant for us, brilliant for the customer, and a much faster charging rate. And we get that increased utilisation, which is what it's all about. Absolutely. Where it's commercially viable to do so, we go back, we change things, we we put in cable management, We'll make things more access accessible and easier to use and so on. Unfortunately, there are times when it isn't commercially viable.

Liz Warren [00:12:26]:
And this is the difficult part of being a CPO right now is building a network for the future.

Liz Allan [00:12:32]:
Yeah.

Liz Warren [00:12:32]:
But the future isn't here yet in terms of utilization. So then we've got this kind of crossover: We really want to do these things, but without the utilization, it makes it quite difficult to do realistically. And that's why driving the demand for electric vehicles, you know, getting people into these cars, the secondhand EV market, is so important to us as a CPO.

Liz Allan [00:12:59]:
It's it's it is. I am a purchaser of a secondhand EV. Do you know? To me, like, actually Yeah. You know, that was a fascinating journey itself. And, you know, I've said it to other people, and I think we talked, you know, it's about that, understanding and increasing the understanding of what EVs are all about. But I've just written something this morning, and somebody commented on one of my posts on LinkedIn. And we are talking about the fact that we need everybody to be communicating, including CPOs. So it's gotta come from the manufacturers, car leasing companies, dealerships, CPOs, and anybody involved in this space.

Liz Allan [00:13:50]:
We have to talk to people and explain what EVs are all about. But, yes, they do drive a little bit differently, but they're blooming brilliant. And, yes, they do charge a little bit differently. But actually and this is kind of like the I said I basically said, what's and all on this post. We've got to tell people what's and all that things like this aren't perfect to start with. Yep. But, over time, like I said, you know, the whole you don't know what you don't know. Actually, you start learning this stuff, don't you? And, yes, you need to drive the utilisation to be able to afford to retrofit.

Liz Allan [00:14:27]:
So it's kind of always this chicken and egg thing, isn't it?

Liz Warren [00:14:31]:
It is. And I think this makes it so interesting to be part of. Right? Because we're still in a very new industry. I know for those of us in the industry, and there are people who've been working in it for years, you know, you feel like it's here. It's further, but it's not. And we were talking earlier. How many BEVs on the road? 

Liz Allan [00:14:53]:
Approximately 1.3 million, I think, at the moment.

Liz Warren [00:14:55]:
1.3 million? Yeah. How many petrol-diesel vehicles are on the road? Closer to 30,000,000. Yeah. Right? So this is a massive, massive difference. And I think as an EV driver, and you're an EV driver too, you consider how the charging market is now when there are only 1,300,000 on the road. It's pretty good. Right? It's alright at the moment. 15 times more than that.

Liz Warren [00:15:22]:
Right? Then it's a different world. And that's what Mer are here for. We're here. We're trying to build in the right location at the right size in a sensible, sustainable way so that it's there ready for the future. And it's that sensible, sustainable way, which I think is very difficult to get right personally.

Liz Allan [00:15:45]:
It just takes time to get that. I mean, you know, we were talking about this before before we started recording. So, for those who don't know what I do outside the podcast, I work in business improvement, and we're working with ChargePoint Operators. You know? The idea is that, basically, we took 220 EV drivers' feedback, asked some specific questions and some open text, and gave them an opportunity to give feedback about their thoughts about their charging journey. And it was interesting. I mean, god, it took ages to write. I've never written a white paper in my life, and that's what we came out with from the other side of the survey. And like you say, people don't realise what you guys have to put up with.

Liz Allan [00:16:36]:
And I did, I did try and didn't want it just to be all about moaning and groaning. This was why I kind of integrated recommendations; I wouldn't be me if it weren't from a business improvement point of view and then a bit of a road map. But I wanted to try to say, right, okay. There were certain things, for example, with regard to the speed of charges. You know, we talked about this earlier, didn't we? You know, there are certain times when it could be that you don't get the speed on the charger that you're on. There are a variety of reasons behind that. People don't understand that, do they? And it's things like that; I think, OEMs, you know, so the manufacturers, everybody needs to be giving that information so that people know what they're potentially going to get.

Liz Warren [00:17:25]:
I think you make a really good point in your white paper. One of your early points is that it needs to be standardised.

Liz Allan [00:17:32]:
Yeah.

Liz Warren [00:17:33]:
For standardisation to occur, some form of intervention and regulation are needed. It's very hard for a CPO to drive standardisation across a competitive landscape. It has to come from somewhere else. You've got instructions on charges. We talked earlier about loads of different manufacturers. They work in different ways. Yep. We've got CPOs, lots of different back offices, lots of different ways of operating the charges, and lots of different customer services.

Liz Warren [00:18:01]:
We have seen some great moves in regulation, so 24/7 customer service; again, you flagged that. That's brilliant. It's much, much needed. There have also been some changes in regulation, like 99% uptime reliability. Now, look, reliability is really important. We know that I'm an EV driver. You want to turn up. You want that charge point to be working.

Liz Warren [00:18:25]:
And if it's not working, you want to know before you arrive.

Liz Allan [00:18:28]:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Liz Warren [00:18:29]:
I would argue quite strongly that the regulation around that, the way that you do that, and the way that you penalise if the charge point operator hasn't done that, needs to be considered very, very carefully because there are things out of our control that we can't do to keep the units online. And then there are things in our control. I can tell you from a CPO point of view if it's in our control, we're trying to fix it. Yeah. Because our money, our income comes from the utilisation. If that charge point is not online, we don't get any money, and then there's a problem. Right? And that's so I think there are there there are things that could be done from a kind of more regulatory environment that I think you point towards the standardisation, towards making things easier for the customer in that respect, that are potentially the ones that we should be all getting behind as much as we can. The issue that I'm going to keep coming back to is that without utilization at a point where we can afford to do it all, it's difficult.

Liz Warren [00:19:35]:
Because, as I say, we're building a network for the future, which isn't quite here yet. So it comes around in that circle.

Liz Allan [00:19:43]:
And I was going to say the going back to the whole so that, obviously, the yeah. The 99% reliability stake now can, and I've seen it, and I've heard it in other places, can create bad behaviour from CPOs that aren't doing what you're trying to do and be more customer-focused. And to avoid being penalised, they're turning their charges off or stuff like that. And that doesn't do anything to anybody other than the EV driver at the other end plugging in and going; what's happening now? It's not on. It's not working. What's happening?

Liz Warren [00:20:20]:
Yeah, it defeats the point. Right? We want those charges online. I mean, our internal KPIs are to have charges online. Of course, they are. We want to get the energy to the customer. Right? So we have Statkraft as a backer. We've got the sustainable energy.

Liz Warren [00:20:38]:
The whole point is to make sustainable transport. Right? So we want to get the energy to the customer. Getting the infrastructure right and having it online is obviously fundamentally important. Having it in the right place for the customer, Yeah. Is important. Again, I enjoyed reading your white paper because I think your number one was the Which was it again? It was the actual user experience and the location, and the customers would potentially go somewhere where they know the charger will work.


Liz Warren [00:21:13]:
And the reason it resonates with me is that I have charging locations that I will actively go slightly further off route because I know that it's working. Right? And I and there's often a nice form of coffee shop or it's on a retail site where I wanna go to the right location, you know, the right shops, etcetera. So that's really important, isn't it? And even more so than price, which I always really interested because you think the price would always drive.

Liz Allan [00:21:44]:
But it doesn't always. Do you know what? My husband and I were talking about this yesterday, and he said that price is a big factor to him. But to me, I'm in the same mind as you. If I'm on a long journey, I'd rather there be something there that I can go to. I might need the loo. I might need a sandwich. I'm celiac as well. So for me, getting a sandwich, there are only certain places where I can pick them up.

Liz Allan [00:22:10]:
So everybody has their own requirements, don't they? But, you know, for him, it was price. But for me, it's that it's that location. It's where it is and what's there.

Liz Warren [00:22:20]:
So that's really interesting because I would say the same for myself and my husband. It's it's definitely we'll be going to the nice charging stop when I'm in control of the drive. Absolutely.

Liz Allan [00:22:30]:
Same here.

Liz Warren [00:22:31]:
Pretty much any time I'm in the car. To be clear, if I'm in the car, I'm in control. So but if he's in the car, yeah, he'll go sit wherever. And that's a difference in the experience. Right? That's kind of like, you know, I wish it wasn't the case, but I think that the men don't necessarily have to think about some of the things that maybe we think about a little bit more. You know? There are some charger stops I wouldn't go to on my own at night. Right?

Liz Allan [00:22:57]:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Liz Warren [00:22:59]:
Maybe some guys might think about it. Some potentially wouldn't. You know? Who knows? It's it's it's just a different way of thinking about how you solve the problem. And that's important. Because we, you know, represent half the market in the UK with lots of different women and lots of other lives. You know? We're working, we're moms, or we're not moms, or we're trying to solve many things simultaneously. And we've got to design solutions that work for us as well as they work for maybe a more sort of some chap driving across the UK to meetings. Right? He's he's going to want something different to what I would like if I'm, you know, driving. I went down to Cornwall a couple of weekends ago with the kids, just me and the kids.

Liz Warren [00:23:49]:
The location I want to charge at is a bit different. I want food, toilets, and something for them to do, you know?

Liz Allan [00:23:55]:
Exactly. Because you know that you need to keep them occupied, you know, and all that kind of stuff. You won't want to take your kids somewhere, you know because I'd said to you before we started recording, I turned up to a big charging hub. There was an outage. Long story. Read some of my blogs or posts and you'll see you'll have heard this. So I ended up going to a 22-kilowatt AC charger that had the wrong destination pinned.

Liz Warren [00:24:21]:
Mhmm.

Liz Allan [00:24:23]:
And as I said, I had. I had 24 miles left, and it was about 27 miles from where I was to where I was from to my home. It was in the back street, like I said. There's no way I would have gone there at night alone, absolutely no way, because I had to open my boot. It wasn't tethered.

Liz Allan [00:24:43]:
I had to get the cable out. We had bags. I was with a non-EV driver friend in the car. We had to get all the stuff out. Oh, god. It was just ridiculous to get the blooming cable out. Yeah. You know, but I just needed that top-up to get me home, and I got home with 9 miles of range left.

Liz Warren [00:24:57]:
And that's everything to me. Right? It's all for you. At that point, we failed you as a CPO industry because we didn't have the chargers in the right place. You were on the go. You wanted to stop, charge quickly, and get going again, ideally somewhere safe with some amenities. I think you say, in your paper, it's basically toilets and coffee, generally.

Liz Allan [00:25:27]:
Just somewhere. Yeah.

Liz Warren [00:25:29]:
Something to do.

Liz Allan [00:25:29]:
Because you don't want just to be sat, sometimes, you don't want to just be sat in the car because you know you've got a little while to wait. I usually find somewhere to buy a sandwich, typically gluten-free or some salad or something like that, that I can use the loo and have a little walk, come back into I don't want to sit down and eat in the place. You know? I'll come back and eat in the car, and then we can keep an eye on the charge, and then that's it. Go.

Liz Warren [00:25:54]:
Easy. Exactly. Exactly. And I've driven, you know, I've I've driven, honestly, thousands of miles in in my car, and it's consistent. This is what you want to do is stop you sometimes you have to stop for 50 minutes. If you're on a really long journey and have rocked up a charger with maybe a slightly slower speed, Yeah. Then you've got a proper stop to fulfil. You do want to be able to stretch your legs.

Liz Warren [00:26:17]:
Right? As great as it is to sit in your EV—and they are great cars—I love them. I never really had new cars before my EV, so it's a bit of a shocker having that. But you don't want to sit in it the whole time.

Liz Allan [00:26:30]:
Yeah. All the time. What reminds me of what you've got?

Liz Warren [00:26:33]:
I have. I mean, I have got a Tesla, I'm afraid.

Liz Allan [00:26:35]:
Tesla might. You've got the creme de la creme, haven't you?

Liz Warren [00:26:40]:
It is a good car. It is brilliant, and it's got so much space. I don't wanna be a salesperson for Tesla here, but wow, it's got some decent space, and it's got us all the way down to the south of France on three holidays now. And you can just it is a very easy experience. I try and get onto outside of the Tesla network, just so you know.

Liz Allan [00:27:02]:
Yeah. No. That because I always think, and I'm pleased to don't see this as criticism at all. I always think, why do people who work for CPOs actually have Teslas? Because they've experienced the non-Tesla experience, you can find out and feel what that looks like.

Liz Warren [00:27:21]:
I mean, I spent a day a couple of weeks ago with our our head of marketing, just going around, I'm in Surrey. We've picked her up, and we went around lots of different charging locations to make sure that we are, you know, we're staying relevant, that we know what's going on, and we understand what it means to be a customer in this space. It's important to have that understanding. Because if you don't, you build things that you think work in your head. But unfortunately, if you don't have a real-life connection, Yeah. And that understanding that everybody needs something different so you've got to appeal to a broad range of people. I've got to make these sites accessible. I need to ensure there's some form of lighting where I can.

Liz Warren [00:28:04]:
I don't think we try to avoid Kerbs as much as we can now. I think pretty much we don't do that. It is a part of the past. Legacy, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, especially in the kind of initial installs that we did where we were in those council car parks, you just can't get around it, unfortunately. Mhmm. But if we could go back, we'd change things.

Liz Warren [00:28:24]:
Right? We we would think a bit a bit more about our landscaping, which we do now. So you'll see them in our garden centres where we don't have that. We have the lovely Chem Power units.

Liz Allan [00:28:33]:
They are good. Yeah.

Liz Warren [00:28:34]:
They are good, and they've got great cable management. We thought a lot about signage. I told you that we changed some signage because I took my parents to a site and got them to test it for me. And that that drives a bit of change because there's a whole other market right out there. There's people that I don't behave. I don't behave like my parents. Not yet, love. Maybe soon.

Liz Warren [00:29:00]:
But not at this point in time, but they're a part of the market, a part of the customer base, and we need to respect that. So if the signage isn't quite right or the cables are heavy, we should do what we can to make sure that it works for them, too.

Liz Allan [00:29:14]:
Oh, totally right. And like you say, you know, going back to the hanging off of cable management system.

Liz Warren [00:29:21]:
Please don't do that.

Liz Allan [00:29:22]:
Yeah. Please don't do that. But actually having that ability to to take those really, really heavy cables and make them a bit that bit more manageable. The fact that you're going, like I said, I will go back to, you don't know what you don't know. You didn't know what you didn't know. You're learning. All the CPOs are learning, but it's about putting what you've learned into practice, into place, and creating best practices around it. And as you said about standardisation, I agree.

Liz Allan [00:29:54]:
I was going to ask you. We did talk about the regs. Because there are a number of things coming up on 24 November, there are a number of things that are actually happening. So we're recording this just a couple of weeks shy of that.

Liz Warren [00:30:10]:
Yep.

Liz Allan [00:30:11]:
What do you feel? Does it make the regulations? obviously, we're not looking at roaming until next year. But do the regulations fulfil what we need to what we currently need within the CPO sector? So

Liz Warren [00:30:31]:
From a very CPO perspective and a slightly, hopefully, neutral answer, I think that whilst it is great to have the focus on customer service and reliability, they are also very important things for CPOs as a baseline. And if you're not doing that properly, you're not; you'll find it difficult to succeed. Right? We know the broken charges. We know broken charges lose you customers. And as a business, you can't thrive. Right? So there is my argument on that side is it's kind of what we should be doing anyway. But then putting fines against it is a challenge. Right? I think the focus is needed to drive sales and utilization, making EVs accessible to everybody.

Liz Warren [00:31:27]:
These are not cheap cars. Even on the secondhand market, they are not cheap cars. Plenty of people do not have driveways, so they can't charge on the cheap rates overnight at home. So, is that accessible to everybody? It's not. Right? Those guys are forced onto the public network, which is difficult. So that's where I think there should be a level of focus, solving it for everybody across the board. These 1,300,000 cars, you know, I consider myself in a really lucky, fortunate, privileged position to drive the car I'm driving. And honestly, not if I hadn't been in the CPO industry if I wasn't in this industry, I probably wouldn't be driving that car right now.

Liz Warren [00:32:16]:
I probably would have got myself a second EV that I can use to run around. Yeah. These are expensive. So it would be best if you did something to ensure everybody can get in there and we can drive up the utilization. When you've driven up utilisation, that's when you start to see the really interesting things happen because we can we've got that kind of demand behind. We can get the energy to flow through, and then suddenly, you're in a competitive landscape where people are trying to attract customers. Then you can do more, can't you, to make it work for the customer. 

Liz Allan [00:32:51]:
And that's what I was going to say, I suppose in the meantime, it's about that level of communication. So if you can't, if there are certain things you can't do now, it's about communicating with the customer. You don't want to say that it's not a failure. Yeah. But it's you, so you're not admitting this failure exists. You are basically providing them with that information that if you can't, we can't afford to standardise things at the moment, but this is what we do. Actually, you can give the give EV driver information about their charger. We talked before, didn't we, before we start recording about the dance, the dance of the initiation.

Liz Allan [00:33:27]:
You know, because it is like a dance. And for you in a Tesla, it's a piece of cake because you know what you're getting. Yes. But for us, who are not and you when you're visiting non-Tesla, Yeah. Superchargers full face there. But, you know it is a dance. It's so what? Right. Okay. So I went to, and I said to you, I recently helped somebody on her first public charging session and a charger with no information on the screen.

Liz Allan [00:34:00]:
We were both in a bit of a rush. Well, no, we weren't in a rush. I was trying to make sure that I didn't, and I was supportive of her, really. The information wasn't on the screen, and we plugged in the wrong way around. You know, it was supposed to be tap, plug, initiate. And we did plug, tap, no initiate. Do you know what I mean? And so it's this. Come on.

Liz Allan [00:34:24]:
It's kind of like, right? And then we noticed that on the left-hand side above the charges, you know, so in between, I think there was a bank of 4. And in between it, above, were the instructions. Oh, bloody hell. That's what we should have done. But come on. Make it easy for us. We don't all have to look up to the left, above, or wherever.

Liz Allan [00:34:46]:
Can you make it easy so that it's on the charger? Or whatever you can do. I know that that's down, not down to you as a CPO. And I'm, and I'm not, by the way, I'm not venting at you specifically. I'm just saying that for somebody like me, the way my brain works means that I don't always look where everybody thinks would be obvious, and I'm sure many people like me don't.

Liz Warren [00:35:09]:
Well, I have to admit, I've been like I said, we went around, with my head of marketing and had a look at a lot of our a lot of local charging sites, and I couldn't help but help, some of the people who were on the sites too even though they were at competitive locations. So, I need that noted. I was even helpful even at the competitor's location. Of course,e I am. I love the EV Journey. Right? The instructions were there. We don't like reading instructions. A lot of people don't like reading instructions.

Liz Warren [00:35:36]:
No. I mean, you put them on the screen. Sometimes, the order changes. The dance changes. It doesn't always stay the same, and that's a real situation. And I think one of the points that you made about standardization is that we need to talk to the manufacturers and say, well, we need to make this easier. Contactless makes it easier. Roaming partnerships make it easier.

Liz Warren [00:35:58]:
Right? Those sorts of things are what we're very pro of in MARE, and I know other CPOs are too. It just means you can rock up to the charge point and get going. Right? Because that's what you want. And I see that, yes, I know I've got a Tesla, and I know it's very easy. But I see that as a massive bonus because that is a bit of a dream scenario, isn't it, that I just rock up, I plug in, and I go away, and then the app shouts at me, and I unplug it. That's how easy it is. Right? Exactly. That's, you know, that's that kind of direction of travel. That's that's what we've gotta be getting to the whole plug and charge, everything else that happens.

Liz Warren [00:36:40]:
Absolutely. And it is about making it easier because if you don't, you won't get the utilisation. You don't have the income. You want to be sustainable in all aspects, and that's not just the kind of renewable energy and the way of working. It's also ensuring you have a viable business in the long term.

Liz Allan [00:37:02]:
And being customer-focused in the meantime, in whatever way that is, is Mhmm. I think this is the right way to go. You know, listening and making sure that the EV driver is in your sights. Let's talk about feedback from those EV drivers. And so and because that was another thing that came up on the white paper and the survey that we wrote. EV drivers were saying that they didn't feel listened to. What methods can CPOs like yourselves integrate into what you've already got to make sure that that because, you know, yes, there's always going to be an EV driver who's going to have a bit of a moan about anything? Mhmm.

Liz Allan [00:37:52]:
But, actually, for those things that people go, god, this is winding me up, and it keeps happening at this place and la la la la. What do you do about that level of feedback coming to you?

Liz Warren [00:38:04]:
So customer feedback is really important to us, and I think, if it isn't working, we want to know quickly. I'd be I'd be surprised. I mean, we've got quite a strong focus within Mer. So we have an external frontline support, which is pretty normal just to make sure that charges are restarted if they need to and so on and so forth. But anything that needs to be escalated comes internally to Mer. We've combined our customer service across all of our businesses to get shared learning and experience. We've got business units in our function that are further down the EV journey than we are. So they really do know, and they have been here so they can help advise and ensure that we're going in the right direction.

Liz Warren [00:38:53]:
We have had a lot with well, not a lot, but we have dialogue with customers. So we have a team that is very focused on making sure that they take a concern through to the end. We've got quite a lot of things that can happen and that do repeat, happen, and occur for some people, whether it's the car or the charger or the location.

Liz Allan [00:39:16]:
Yeah.

Liz Warren [00:39:17]:
It's really important for us to know when these things are happening. There are times when the charger isn't giving the right output; we kinda need to we know we need to know that. And it's quite hard for us as a CPO to always know what exactly is going on across every single unit. So if we've got, you know, a bank of units and and most of them are working perfectly, but one just keeps consistently delivering under power, hearing from the customer is a joy. Right? And I think there's there are whole apps out there that are benefit that are using this as a kind of a business where you as a customer log onto the app and then you go to charge sites and you report on how that charge site is performing or if it isn't performing, and that goes off to the CPO. That's brilliant because you kinda need that real world experience to really know what the problem is and whether we can we can get it fixed.

Liz Allan [00:40:16]:
But how do you know where it is? And I don't know whether you know it. So at what point, if I came to a Merr charger and a DC hub, is there a point during that journey that I other than having to ring the support number, you know, if I because, you know, you're using Kempower DC units, which are very good. You know, they're very reliable. But if there was ever an issue like that, is there somewhere at that point where you can feed where you can give that feedback and kinda go, I've got it working, but this it's not doing it's not running at, you know. So I get we get a god for our eye on it. We only get a maximum. I think it's 46 kilowatts. But sometimes I've pulled on different charges about 36, and it's kinda like, right.

Liz Allan [00:40:59]:
Okay. It's alright, but it's not great. You know? Is there a place we can feed that back?

Liz Warren [00:41:06]:
So yeah. Absolutely. I mean, there's the phone line. We've got email inboxes where you can drop comments, and thoughts through email to us, and they'll get those go straight into our internal customer service team. We're looking into other solutions for that at the moment. So we've gone through, as everybody is, development cycles where we're trying to, you know, make sure that we're improving, improving, improving. We are looking at solutions that would mean you, as a customer, could give that feedback to us more easily. Right? Because that's valuable information.

Liz Warren [00:41:42]:
It's valuable information. So, this is a solution for the future. Absolutely. Right now, it's all about email and phone calls.

Liz Allan [00:41:50]:
It might be nice, for example, if you could have it on the Kempower unit when you're stopping the charge or something to actually ask you that kind of question, depending on where you've set it, you know, where you've initiated it from. It's like a CSAT question, isn't it? It's a customer satisfaction question. Was everything okay?

Liz Warren [00:42:10]:
And we send out a survey when we do for those customers who have registered with us. We send out an annual customer survey. I think we've looked at doing that a little bit more regularly. I hope I've not misquoted after checking for my other marketing. She might come back. But, yeah, she's. They send that annual survey, and we look at the details very, very closely. We're just going through that cycle right now. This is so important to us.

Liz Warren [00:42:34]:
Yeah. We wanted to know what the customer is saying. We want to know where the pain points are so we can solve them. Yeah. Again, it all comes back down to your need to solve the customer journey. You need strong customer satisfaction if you want the high utilisation. Because number 1, people will go to charge sites that are reliable, they know are working, and in decent locations even before price, which, you know, is interesting. I mean, I suspect they're very closely interlinked.

Liz Warren [00:43:05]:
That's my view: you can't have one way out of whack with the other.

Liz Allan [00:43:11]:
No. You're right. I think it has all got to pull together in the right direction. So, I mean, we've kind of talked about making the EV driver's journey more seamless, but in the long term, where do you see Mer being part where do you where would you like Mer to be part of the infrastructure? You know, because you're kinda leading, you're one of the CPOs, I would say, that are leading the way with that, the way that you're thinking about the customer experience. But where do you want to be long term?

Liz Warren [00:43:46]:
So the, our goal is to produce a network that is reliable and in the right location. And we're all about on the public side of the business, we are all about that on the go, that retail location. We're building into that that that sector. We want hubs. We don't want single sites and so on. We're we're looking at the hubs. We're trying to make sure that we're doing the right thing at the right place and time. We're a responsible CPO.

Liz Warren [00:44:17]:
Right? We don't want to go too little too far. We need to get it just right. Yeah. And that's hard. That's tough. It would be great. To you know, you look at all the brilliant CPOs out there who are doing fantastically. We've got our zone.

Liz Warren [00:44:35]:
Right? Its the reliability, the sustainability, the way the company operates. Like I say, yeah, it's just building the right play right thing at the right time. That's what I want to be known for. I spoke to a customer a few weeks ago. You know, they were at our chargimg site in Cirencester at Gateway Cafe. Beautiful, beautiful cafe. Highly recommend it. I was having a chat with a customer, and they said, oh, we're so pleased to see, you know, a Mer charger here because, you know, they, you  deliver, then we've got lots of sites down on the South Coast that they wanted to go to.

Liz Warren [00:45:10]:
That is amazing feedback. Oh, we saw it was there, so we came to it because we knew that you were going to be working for us. And that's that's what I want. I just, yeah. If we can get it right, that's that's perfect. And I think that's what we're doing. Right? That's why we're building at the locations we're building now, and you'll see us building over the next 12 or 18 months.

Liz Allan [00:45:32]:
I like it, I really do. I'm going to ask you one final question. Yep. If you could change one thing about the UK's approach to EV charging, what would it be?

Liz Warren [00:45:44]:
Oh.

Liz Allan [00:45:44]:
Me? I didn't tell you I was going to ask you this one, did I?

Liz Warren [00:45:47]:
From a customer perspective or a from a

Liz Allan [00:45:50]:
Generally. Organisation. Yeah. Wherever you want to take it from.

Liz Warren [00:45:54]:
Wow. Okay. I would work very hard on communication and really address the misconceptions that exist around this market. It isn't that difficult to drive an EV around the UK. Regardless of whether Tesla is or isn't, there are fantastic charging locations. There are reliable CPOs who are delivering what they've promised. It is not five years ago anymore.

Liz Warren [00:46:33]:
And 5 years ago, it was tough. Right? There were plenty of broken units, units in the wrong place. In that time, we've seen a dramatic change in the hardware, the reliability, and the types of sites. We did, but we weren't building hubs in those days. Right? It was just single-site locations. Now you rock up 6, 10, 12, and 14 bays available for you to charge at. I would address that because the 1,300,000 BEV drivers are the 1st wave of people to come into the market. The next few waves are people who, you know, they don't have time to plan and think, and they don't want to.

Liz Warren [00:47:18]:
And so when they hear, oh, the chargers don't work, the car ranges are rubbish, oh, you know, I can't be bothered. 

Liz Allan [00:47:28]:
Or, It's a faff as one of my friends called it.

Liz Warren [00:47:29]:
It's a faff. That is it. Exactly. It's a faff, And it's not a faff. And I know you had a bad experience. But I tell you what, if that first location had just been online, it was run luck unlucky. They probably had something that they needed to do on the grid. Totally.

Liz Warren [00:47:43]:
Unlucky. Right? Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:47:45]:
Yeah.

Liz Warren [00:47:46]:
But those things are going to get less and less, and they are less and less. Right? And even now, when I did that day and drove around Surrey looking at all those charging locations, we had really good experiences. Right? It's across the board, we had good experiences. The charges were working. You could generally work out how to complete the dance of starting it. It needs to be worked on. But, yeah, I would do a lot around the communication. I would change how we think and feel about driving an EV.

Liz Allan [00:48:22]:
There's, there's, there's so much that we can tell people about. And, I think as the number of EV drivers increases, we'll get to a tipping point where there'll be one point where you will know an EV driver. You see, you'll know somebody who drives an EV. Mhmm. Whether you agree about it or not. You know? But it's about having an opportunity to chat with that person, but it shouldn't be down to that driver. It should be down. We should all be singing hanging? Singing.

Liz Allan [00:48:59]:
That was hanging, singing from the same hymn sheet. You know what I mean? So we should all be singing the same song.

Liz Warren [00:49:07]:
It's a good environment out there. Right. And I think, my personal thoughts on it is, you know, and the reason I was attracted to this industry in the first place is because of the localised pollution. Right? And I know where I live, our high street that I walk my children to school on is a leafy Surrey, a polluted street because of the buildings along the side. And you think if those were all EVs going through there, we would not be breathing this in. Right? So this is this is a big thing we need. It needs to be done to push the pollution back to the source and let companies like Stackcraft deal with the problem there. Right? And then green up transport.

Liz Warren [00:49:52]:
So, it's much healthier for us all outside our houses, our kids' schools, the playground, and everything else. Right?

Liz Allan [00:49:59]:
Absolutely. Oh my god. I get you. And and I talked about this ages ago because my son's now gone to university. But when he was at school, he hated the fact that there was one time a mum behind me, and her car was running. And I was inside the vehicle just like, you're just polluting, and kids are walking past your car and breathing in that harmful PM 2.5.

Liz Warren [00:50:23]:
And they're at the head. That's what it always gets: height. Yeah. It's their height. Especially when you happen to be in a more affluent area, and those are big cars, that the exhausts are at your toddler's height and your little primary school child's height, That's, I mean, that's a horrible win it. And it's emotive for me. And that's why when I first got the opportunity to come in, that attracted me in the first place. And it was around the time of that, that really sad story about the girl in thank you. My my brain has gone I really I mean, that's just horrible. Right? She's just living her life.

Liz Allan [00:51:02]:
Yeah. 9 years old. It wasn't very good in Lewisham. And Lewisham is a busy commuter kind of place. I drove from Reading to Lewisham myself last year. I was doing it regularly, and it took me 3 hours to get there because of the congestion. But you've got, as you say, kids, families, old people, you name it.

Liz Allan [00:51:27]:
They're all walking on those roads past all of that congestion and pollution.

Liz Warren [00:51:33]:
Yep. And you think of it, it's not just me. Right? It's the cyclists and the runners and everyone else. You're taking this all in. You know, you're trying to be fit and healthy, and then you cycle down the main road, and you're like breathing all this stuff. And so, you know, I think it's really important that we change the communication. We can change the feeling around EVs, and then we can get that mass market buying into this. And then it's the CPO's job to ensure that as they're coming in, it's as easy as possible for them to get from A to B. Right? Well, if and if we don't, then we can't succeed.

Liz Allan [00:52:12]:
So, I will end on that because I think that is pertinent. So I'm going to say thank you, Liz, because I could talk to you, and we talked for ages beforehand anyway, didn't we? I hope all of you watching and listening have got so much out of this because Liz has put this across as just brilliant and highlighting what, you know, CPO customer journeys or the way that they can think about customer journeys can be. So I want to say thank you. Seriously, it's been a joy talking to you. Do you know what? I'm just going to finish off by saying to everybody watching and listening because I do say this now: the only way to get people, you know, to listen to this podcast or watch it is by sharing it. People want to get people to hear about, you know, what's in it all. You know? But, if you can share it, if you, you know if you've been listening to this if you can put comments on or just, you know, kind of a review or something like that or if you're subscribing, etcetera.

Liz Allan [00:53:21]:
But share it because once you share it, more people get to hear it and find out the truth about all of this stuff. And not just the stuff that the media has in, you know, the negative bits. But on that note, I will get off my orange box now or soapbox, whatever you want. Liz, I appreciate your time. It's been amazing. Thank you ever so much, my darling.

Liz Warren [00:53:44]:
Thank you.

Liz Allan [00:53:45]:
And to everybody else listening and watching, I will say, see you later. Bye bye.