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Smart Charge · 6 February 2025 · 42 min

Ep. 1: Simon Herzog – Hintergrund, Unternehmertum und die Zukunft der Energie- & Mobilitätswende

Transcript

Cleaned up from a machine transcript. Translations are machine-generated and may contain errors.

Welcome to the Smart Charge by RiDERgy Podcast. This is Claudio Geyken, founder and CEO of RiDERgy. This is your show to learn about all things energy management and smart charging innovation for electric vehicles and fleets.

Hello, Simon. Great to have you here in the Smart Charge Podcast. Hello, Claudio. How are you today? I'm doing well, thanks. Thanks for the invitation. Yes, happy to have you. Great that it worked out on such short notice. You're normally based in Munich and you're visiting us here in Berlin – you organised a wonderful event yesterday. I don't know if you'd like to say a few words about that. Well, basically I always like to come to Berlin and of course I took the opportunity. Yesterday there was an event

together with French Tech Berlin, Via Idee and the Young Mobility Network – primarily to bring together Berlin's startup scene, but especially to talk about European unity in an entrepreneurial and technological sense. A good platform that we also promoted yesterday is the European Startup Prize for Mobility, where startups can still apply until February seventh. To make this great opportunity – to get a big European stage – known in the Berlin scene, we held this event yesterday at the

SAP Dataspace on Rosenthaler Straße. Yes, very cool. I was allowed to be there yesterday too. Thanks for being there. Thanks for the invitation. Maybe we can come back to that at some point. In the interest of time, let's start with you and your background. How did you get to where you are now? You're welcome to go back a bit – at least start with your studies, but if you want to start even earlier, with primary school and all that, I don't think I need to jump in. Well, okay,

I'm originally from Nuremberg. I studied energy technology as a focus area in mechanical engineering business engineering at RWTH Aachen. I dealt a lot with thermodynamics and similar topics, then I was a research assistant at TU Munich at the chair for renewable energy systems. I gave several lectures there in the area of sustainable mobility, building energy supply, supply of industrial facilities, and I also spent half a year in Brazil – I wrote my doctoral thesis on the future of the energy system and its potential. There are very significant potential there – excellent conditions for renewable energy. Yes,

not just because of my work, but there's currently also a very strong, steep increase in photovoltaics in particular, but also wind power. Traditionally, hydropower has already been used extremely intensively in Brazil and is actually much more economical than anything else. Of course, the mobility sector is an important consumer of energy, and that was always a big topic during my research work. In the course of that, I then moved into the mobility sector at the entrepreneurship hub. Entrepreneurship is the entrepreneurship and innovation centre in Munich. And what do I do

there now? I deal with project management, with startup support in the energy and mobility sector. Yes, I also saw that you were at TUM. How much TUM and how much RWTH is in you, to put it that way? Well, I've basically stayed in the same field thematically. And I would say, science, engineering science, doesn't really know any region or political stance. I would say the technology is basically the same in Aachen and in Munich.

And I think that no matter where you study physics, you should basically learn the same physics everywhere. Of course, one university might have a different focus or different standards. But I think RWTH Aachen and TU Munich don't differ much. And out of curiosity – because I myself, as a Berliner, decided to move to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe for my studies – what made you, as a Bavarian so to speak, go to RWTH and not stay in Munich?

Well, I don't want to call it foreign experience, going to North Rhine-Westphalia, but basically I found it interesting to get away a bit. Even in school, energy fascinated me enormously, and simply put, RWTH Aachen had an enormous number of electives and specialisation options. When I then applied there – you had to apply, so my programme was subject to admission restrictions – and when I got an acceptance letter, I signed on. After that I also got

acceptances from some other universities. But well, I had already signed a rental contract. And what's there to say against RWTH? Good reputation. Yes, I went through with it. Makes total sense. Yes. And I also saw you're involved with the Bavarian State Parliament. Maybe you'd like to comment on how you got into that. Sure. Mobility has always concerned me as well, the quality of mobility too. And of course, because mobility, as I mentioned before, is an important

component in energy consumption. And what did I do there? In the context of an event, the then state representative and later education minister of Bavaria, Michael Piazzolo, approached me. And he had the question: how could you fundamentally improve the traffic situation in north Munich? Because north Munich feels somewhat cut off. Especially in the east-west direction there aren't very good connections. The radially oriented public transport network of Munich basically always goes via the main station, via Sendlinger Tor or the

Marienplatz. Good. And ultimately we – I then teamed up with a former colleague from the faculty – and came to it freelance to write a study about what would essentially, based on the Berlin model, bring a ring railway to Munich. So we essentially proposed a ring railway. There are already essentially three ring roads in Munich: the old town ring, the middle ring, the Frankfurt ring and also a partially closed A99. So that's really just a three-quarter ring in Munich, this motorway ring on the outside. But on the rail network there is none at all.

Munich actually already has a ring line that is largely, partially or exclusively used by freight traffic. And our proposal, simplified, was that we expand this ring line and use it for passenger traffic, so that Munich would have a ring railway like Berlin has had since 1870 or so. The Berlin ring railway has existed for quite a while. And something like that was proposed for Munich. It went over very well. It also achieved an extreme media echo, which we didn't expect at all. So in the local newspapers the day after publication – we also held a press conference – it was on the front page. I thought that was quite a bombshell and also very surprising. But on the other hand, of course: paper is patient, especially when it comes to railway construction projects. It will take quite a while before a complete ring goes into operation. Although I still believe that this kind of thing is enormously important, despite all the high-tech, despite all the hyperloop and passenger drones – classic rail expansion is still enormously important because

it is a reliable, environmentally friendly, sustainable means of transport – particularly because you can move a large number of people relatively quickly without needing parking spaces, and I can't think of any other means of transport that can do that off the top of my head. An advocacy for rail, yes. That's exciting. I also saw: on LinkedIn one of your main profile pictures is with a train station like that. Yes, that's London St. Pancras, so Kings Cross, where the Eurostar trains depart for Paris. Ah, cool. Yes, I took that picture myself.

So it's not an AI image or anything like that. That means you're a fan of rail. And you've also already mentioned hyperloop. I think there's one of the leading projects from TUM, the Hyperloop projects internationally. How do you feel about that topic? Well, there was a student team – TUM Hyperloop Team – who achieved great things. The Hyperloop Pod Challenge, which was announced four times, was won each time by the team from TU Munich. And Gabriele Semino was the head of this student project TUM

Hyperloop. And they've now spun out a company. It's called Neowise, and their goal is to commercialize a hyperloop for passenger transport. Fundamentally, I think it makes a lot of sense to think about rail in a completely new way. And I mean, from a purely technological point of view, there's a lot to be said for putting a magnetic rail in a vacuum tube. You avoid mechanical friction, you avoid air friction, so you have a lot of advantages. On the other hand, to my knowledge, no person has ever traveled in this system. So

that means it will take a bit longer before it influences everyday transport planning. But fundamentally: we talked about it yesterday at our evening – the ICE that now runs continuously from Berlin to Paris takes over eight hours. With Neowise's system by Gabriele Semino, to my knowledge, that would be possible in just over two hours. And two hours from Berlin to Paris – if you consider that check-in times would probably be considerably shorter than at an airport, that would of course be incredible.

Yes, or in 40, 50 minutes to Cologne. I mean, then Cologne becomes a suburb of Berlin, you could say. So in that sense it has a lot of potential. On the other hand, you have to see: if we, the way the French did it between Paris and Marseille, developed conventional rail to the French level, you could also get to Paris in roughly half today's time. So that means you don't have to say that's only possible if we have the hyperloop – there's still a lot of potential in today's existing rail technology. Yes, and here in this podcast a lot of it is about forward-looking visions. You're now an expert in energy and mobility. And we'll come back to talk about the energy vision. But it's very much connected to this – because it also drives us here in the podcast and RiDERgy – this sector coupling. Since we're just talking about mobility: What would, in your view, be visions

for the mobility of the future? What are – we've just mentioned hyperloop – but what will change, in your view, that we perhaps don't quite have on our radar yet? To what extent will we have, for example, more rail or less rail, more aircraft? What are trends you see and visions where you think things will go? Well, I personally believe in a renaissance of rail, because I would say: even with electrification of conventional cars I won't avoid problems like traffic jams and parking space needs. And

there's a lot of potential in today's existing rail technology. Yes, and here in this podcast a lot of it is about forward-looking visions. You're now an expert in energy and mobility. And we'll come back to talk about the energy vision. But it's very much connected to this – because it also drives us here in the podcast and RiDERgy – this sector coupling. Since we're just talking about mobility: What would, in your view, be visions for the mobility of the future? What are – we've just mentioned hyperloop – but what will change, in your view, that we perhaps don't quite have on our radar yet? To what extent will we have, for example, more rail or less rail, more aircraft? What are trends you see and visions where you think things will go?

for the mobility of the future? What are – we've just mentioned hyperloop – but what will change, in your view, that we perhaps don't quite have on our radar yet? To what extent will we have, for example, more rail or less rail, more aircraft? What are trends you see and visions where you think things will go? Well, I personally believe in a renaissance of rail, because I would say: even with electrification of conventional cars I won't avoid problems like traffic jams and parking space needs. And

You can already see that in California, from LA to Las Vegas, a new high-speed rail line is supposed to go into operation in 2028. We can only hope that this is the starting signal for a network of high-speed trains in the USA. The USA is, I believe, the only leading industrialized nation that really doesn't have true penetration of high-speed trains. And if you just consider what potential would be available there. And it's not as if there are no traffic jams in the USA – quite the opposite.

There's certainly still huge potential in that, and I think sometimes that's not seen that way. The USA certainly has its incredible challenges for why implementing a rail system there isn't so easy – for example, the extreme urban sprawl. In the USA, you don't have the kind of city center where you can immediately walk into the pedestrian zone with your suitcase, like we have here, or a main train station that in turn is connected in all directions

with public transport. So let me put it this way: the main train station in Austin, Texas – there's more going on at the S-Bahn in Obermenzing in Munich, or here in Hinterwandsee, than at the main train station in Austin, Texas. And Austin, Texas is an emerging tech metropolis, roughly the same population as Munich, with a strong growth trend. So there's still a lot in its infancy there. Yes, the renaissance of rail – I do see that – or rather, I also hope that

we take this topic seriously where we are. I also find it encouraging that some start-ups are active in that area, whether that's driverless trains like Future Rail, or yesterday Mina from Panto Health was here, who do predictive maintenance for pantographs. So there's definitely something happening. On the other hand, of course – but that's no secret – electromobility in passenger cars will achieve significant penetration. The big question is, particularly in a country characterized by

strong seasonality like Germany: How do we get enough electricity for millions of electric vehicles and maybe also for millions of heat pumps during periods of dark doldrums to supply everything? We'll get to that. But that's also a point that should be considered in my view – so not saying: now the electric car is here and everything is good – rather, from an energy system perspective, you'll face major challenges, both on the consumer side and the generation side. For example, a blind expansion of photovoltaics also causes all kinds of

challenges. Of course, intelligent producers and demand can often complement each other very well, but basically you have to keep these challenges in mind to develop sensible solutions in time. And before we get into the energy world, maybe some rapid-fire questions to break down your world in quick dimensions. So cars electric 100 percent – yes or no? For new cars I'd say: nearly 100 percent. For vans – well, it depends. So a motorhome that drives around in the Canadian hinterland, where not even the

toilet at the campground has a light – I find it very challenging to electrify that. If you're naturally in a country like Norway, you might be able to get along well with an electric motorhome. Yes, but regions like Brazil have energy in surplus, so efficiency doesn't play such a big role there either, and most of the traffic runs on ethanol from sugarcane. That's extremely land-intensive, and where it's grown, you're in competition with nature and agriculture. And

perhaps in a country like Brazil, some cars will also be replaced by synthetic fuel at some point. So as I said: because of these enormous potentials in renewables, the question is whether the efficiency argument always plays such a significant role there. Yes, we'll get into that shortly too. And electric trucks – yes, certainly sensible for medium distances, especially given the increasing energy density and durability and fast-charging capability of batteries. But there too it's like this: if you imagine the hinterland of the USA, a highway rest stop, and ten electric trucks come to fast charge while the electricity grids in the USA are relatively weak and already having their difficulties under today's loads – I'm somewhat lacking the imagination that it will work smoothly without more with fast chargers. Whether it's hydrogen or synthetic fuel – in my view, the decision hasn't been made yet. And I find

one shouldn't block any technological paths. For buses, in my view, there are regional differences. A city bus in our latitudes is certainly excellently supplied with electricity, so battery electric. For long-distance buses that drive over the Alps, that operate in winter regions, or Greyhound in the USA, which incidentally was taken over by the Munich-based company Flixbus, you naturally have similar challenges as with trucks. In the hinterland and with ships – well, Norway already has

several dozen electric ferries. That works quite well. But Norway also has electrical energy in surplus. For ocean-going ships or inland waterway vessels, I'm pretty sure – especially for ocean-going ships: There isn't some fast-charging option somewhere out on the Atlantic. You need energy carriers with high energy density. At the same time, ships live for decades. There are – I researched this recently – I believe 90,000 ships on Earth. Many? 90,000,000? I don't have that information in my head right now,

but the point is: there's an enormous fleet out there. So electrifying all of that – I see that as very challenging. Aviation – well, that's even more challenging. Short-haul flights under 500 kilometers might work with battery electric at some point, but long-haul aviation – I think there you'll need synthetic fuels or hydrogen. So my overall assessment is: we need a diversified portfolio of technologies. Not everything can be solved by batteries alone.

whether every small boat is counted or whether it's more just the caliber of container ships, frigates and the like or cruise ships. But I saw that figure recently in a publication from the German Environmental Protection Agency. Due to the longevity of ships, I achieve decarbonization there more through the fuel than through changing the propulsion technology. That means, for example, that I retrofit diesel engines to methanol, to ammonia or to methane – all of that has already been done, methanol and methane have already been done – and robust two-stroke diesel engines can tolerate such things quite

well. And that's how I achieve decarbonization more through the fuel than through the propulsion system. Certainly you could also think about hydrogen ships and so on. But of course you have to completely change the drive, have to install gas tanks, cryo tanks and so on. Then I might as well just buy a new ship. For a retrofit, that's not an option. But I can operate existing ships with renewable fuels. And we won't be able to replace the whole world just like that because of the decarbonization goal. And

finally, aircraft. With short-haul aircraft, there will certainly soon be battery-powered aircraft – short-haul aircraft that connect, for example, small towns in Norway to each other, where there might not even be a road connection, the same in Canada. For transatlantic flights, for intercontinental flights, there is – as you can show quite easily from a calculation perspective – no option that such a thing will work with batteries. The energy density is simply too low. Unless you go back to a system where you might have to make stops in Iceland and Canada,

the way it was in the 1960s in the era of piston propeller aircraft. But I don't think passengers will go along with that. Then let's close the topic of mobility briefly and move on to energy. How do you see autonomous trends and also shared mobility trends developing, and how will that then also influence energy – how will autonomous driving influence energy demand? Yes, that's very difficult to say. There are some arguments suggesting that less energy would be needed. For example, that an autonomous vehicle

of course doesn't have so much gasoline in its blood, so doesn't drive so emotionally, doesn't accelerate and brake hard at the traffic light. If I have a smoother driving pattern, then I generally need less energy. An autonomous vehicle drives more predictively – that saves everything. At the same time, if autonomous driving makes car-sharing fleets extremely attractive – meaning that I get picked up at my door and dropped off at my destination, comfortably, perhaps even more comfortably than a taxi, but at the same time at prices barely above the variable costs

of my own car – then of course there will be fewer private cars, and fewer cars means less energy consumption for manufacturing. And that's also a quite considerable block. These are certainly aspects that could lead to declining demand through autonomous driving. The question is of course: the computers that enable autonomous driving – how much electricity do they consume? I've heard very different figures on this, that some have to install an extra air conditioning unit in the back where the computer sits, so that

the vehicle doesn't overheat. And the driving computer also reduces the range of an autonomous vehicle so significantly that in some cases you might as well drive with an internal combustion engine again. That's of course bad. At the same time – I just mentioned that in principle autonomous electric sharing could become so cheap, barely more expensive than the variable costs of your own car, which would also be cheaper than public transport, meaning local transit. Someone calculated that once, and everyone could follow the calculation – there are also a number of publications on this – that

in principle I can take a high-quality robotaxi here to Berlin Brandenburg airport for six, seven euros. I don't know the exact price here now, but in any case it would be cheaper in Munich than the train ticket with the S-Bahn. And if then of course a major switch from public transport to cars takes place – or if I say, up to now I've used the train because I didn't have to drive myself, and now autonomous vehicles also allow me this possibility, and then people in droves

don't take the train anymore, so hundreds of thousands, millions of times. So in countries like ours, where you actually have quite a good rail system, or in Europe in general, if there's a reverse development from rail traffic to autonomous vehicles, then of course the demand for car traffic could explode and energy consumption could rise with it. So how that develops is dynamic. Hard for me to say. So there are, as mentioned, some effects and also others. Then we also saw just a few days ago, sort of at the margins, how a

company like DeepSeek simply throws many assumptions overboard by using far fewer GPUs to train models. And it remains exciting. So that's why I try to present the effects and show both possible developments. But yes, as they often say: forecasts are particularly difficult when they concern the future. Exactly. We're trying it anyway with energy – and energy not just as electricity. We've already reached 60 percent renewables for electricity in Germany last year. However

we need to observe or view energy together with mobility, heating, and industrial processes as a whole. How do you see that? How does Germany achieve 100 percent renewable energy? What are the biggest challenges that remain for us, or perhaps are underestimated, where you think we need to look more closely? Well, you've already said it quite correctly. With electricity, we have a good half from renewables. And because people often confuse an energy transition with a power transition, it sounds to many as if

half of the energy transition was already accomplished. But we produce in Germany – I don't want to go into the details, but rather into each year – roughly 600 TWh of electricity. And Germany's entire energy demand – that is, so-called primary energy – is roughly around 3,000 TWh, so five times as much. And if we now look at the entire pie of energy demand, that is, where especially heating oil for heating systems, for the production of fuels is included, natural gas for residential heating, for industrial processes, coal for electricity generation

and so on – when we look at this entire primary energy pie, then renewables make up just under 20 percent of it. And accordingly, 80 percent of the journey toward an energy transition still lies ahead of us. And I think that's a point one must keep in mind, and that ultimately there must be no either-or in solutions, but rather a both-and. So we must pull out all the stops. We must carry out an energy transition locally. But against the background that roughly 70 percent of primary energy

is imported, we also need to build import infrastructure for renewables, that is, for renewable energy sources, whether it's electricity via wind farms from the North Sea, perhaps from solar installations from southern regions, but of course also hydrogen pipelines. And yes, you just asked which aspect of the energy transition is not yet being considered so much. So indirectly, of course, many people talk about the question of whether they find wind turbines or solar installations beautiful or not. But the whole thing is basically a consequence of the fact that renewable energies require quite a lot of land. And if

we now consider that we currently have only 20 percent renewables in Germany and we need to reach 100 percent, then quite simply calculated, that means: we must multiply renewable generation capacity by at least five. And with these 20 percent renewables, it's also important to know that a significant share of biogenic energy sources is included in that, that is, energy sources that never come into contact with electricity, so wood processing, biogenic portion of waste, residual material recycling and compost gases and so on. And the

enormous land consumption in a comparatively small country like Germany – sure, Germany is bigger than the Netherlands, but Brazil is 24 times as large as Germany, or Europe fits into the Sahara without even touching the edges. So I'm saying, we're not exactly blessed with land area. But lots of land is precisely what renewables need. Globally, on the other hand, there's no shortage of land. So that's why the energy transition also depends heavily on international agreements. But that's not entirely a different future either. That's already the case today.

Today as well, we already import 70 percent of our energy sources. What coal comes from Germany? Well, maybe lignite, but hard coal mining was shut down a good ten years ago. I think hard coal was extracted until 2017, if I'm correctly informed. But that's a while back now. And oil and gas are not extracted in Germany in any significant quantities. So that means if we now import electricity and hydrogen from other countries, it's not fundamentally different from today. Which of course doesn't mean at all that it would be bad to put solar panels on roofs or to build wind turbines at suitable locations. All good, it's just that it won't be enough. Yes. Interesting. I think that's definitely a topic that's not discussed enough, that doesn't get much attention. Now, there are also good network development plans, I believe, from the Federal Network Agency. There are good simulations there. Although the population isn't quite aware yet that it will still require so

much effort. Yes, but I'd say in many expert circles it's quite clear. I mean, a European Hydrogen Backbone has been developed, where a pipeline network for Europe has been defined, where you can direct enormous quantities from different regions to us. I just spoke with a competent gentleman about this, Manuel Löw from Dena, a few days ago – actually today during my visit to Berlin. And he ultimately works for the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Technology. People are already working on the right topics, but you have to keep the whole picture in view. Many things need to move much faster, and it's not either-or. Especially now when we convert heating power plants that run on natural gas to hydrogen, then we have very large hydrogen consumers. When hydrogen basically becomes a mass product, then it's also not like – if perhaps a truck that's difficult to electrify runs on hydrogen, then that's also not a vehicle that consumes the champagne of the energy transition. Yes, because –

much effort will still be required. Yes, but I'd say in many expert circles it's quite clear. I mean, a European Hydrogen Backbone has been developed, where a pipeline network for Europe has been defined, where you can direct enormous quantities from different regions to us. I just spoke with a competent gentleman about this, Manuel Löw from Dena, a few days ago – actually today during my visit to Berlin. And he ultimately works for the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Technology. People are already working on the right topics, but you have to keep the whole picture in view. Many things need to move much faster, and it's not either-or. Especially now when we convert heating power plants that run on natural gas to hydrogen, then we have very large hydrogen consumers. When hydrogen basically becomes a mass product, then it's also not like – if perhaps a truck that's difficult to electrify runs on hydrogen, then that's also not a vehicle that consumes the champagne of the energy transition. Yes, because –

already working on the right topics, only you have to have the whole picture in mind. Many things need to move much faster, and it's not either-or. Especially now when we convert heating power plants that run on natural gas to hydrogen, then we have very large hydrogen consumers. When hydrogen basically becomes a mass product, then it's also not like – if perhaps a truck that's difficult to electrify runs on hydrogen, then that's also not a vehicle that consumes the champagne of the energy transition. Yes, because –

Let me put it differently. Champagne is only allowed to come from the Champagne region, whereas I have the Sahara, all the deserts on this earth, and practically the entire ocean, and many rooftops to produce renewables. So it's not the case that this can only come from one region. In that respect, the comparison to champagne doesn't quite hold up for me. And you can see a bit of criticism around the energy transition these days. I think we're both supporters of the project and this future vision – perhaps also to give listeners a better sense of the opportunities

of this whole transformation: So what do you see as an opportunity, ultimately for Germany, if we take on this effort and then actually achieve this vision? Well, fundamentally: already today, when the wind blows and the sun shines, wind and solar energy are the cheapest electricity suppliers. That's one point. Electricity supply can be cheap with renewables, which of course poses a challenge for wind and solar here

because wind and sun are quite irregular – you can't rely on them the way you can with a hydroelectric plant on a river or a nuclear power plant or a coal power plant, which basically run on demand. But fundamentally, the possibility exists to produce electricity very cheaply. I mean, a single-family home owner or a large parking lot covered with photovoltaics, or a photovoltaic system on the house – you can already produce electricity today with rooftop photovoltaics for 10, 12 cents, with a very

large system even for less than 5 cents. That means in other words: I can drive an electric car for less than 2 euros per 100 kilometers. And where can you refuel for 2 euros per 100 kilometers? Not even in Saudi Arabia. And of course that's a huge opportunity. Especially when in hot summers the air conditioning demand continues to rise, it naturally makes sense to air-condition with photovoltaic electricity, because very often there's a simultaneity between solar radiation and heat and warmth. And that fits

perfectly together of course. You have to do the energy transition intelligently – that means always including the system perspective. Because if you don't do it intelligently, you create such high infrastructure costs for integration, grid expansion and much more, or you promote some pointless projects that are expensive but bring little benefit. And then all the costs are passed on to end consumers. Then perhaps the generated electricity initially comes cheaply from the wind turbine or solar system, but if you have enormous grid usage fees or promote pointless things and

pass that on to all consumers, then the whole thing becomes very expensive. And unfortunately, that hasn't always been done right in the past. We have some of the highest electricity prices in Europe in Germany. And when you keep statements in the back of your mind like "The sun doesn't send an invoice" or "The energy transition costs households an ice cream cone a month," then many people naturally think, that wasn't quite an accurate forecast, when they now compare the electricity bills of France and Germany. Yes, and speaking of opportunities and system aspects

that should be considered – and opportunities in charging. The podcast is called Smart Charge by RiDERgy, after all. How do you view the topic of intelligent charging of electric vehicles? What are the opportunities and challenges, and in particular what should end consumers in households or also businesses pay attention to? There are increasingly variable electricity tariffs – Tibber and many others are providers here. And of course it makes a lot of sense that flexible consumers like electric cars and heat pumps are not operated or charged according to a fixed schedule, especially since a

house doesn't cool down immediately if the heat pump isn't running, and a car that typically stands around 23 hours a day or more, with its battery offers a flexible load. So it absolutely makes sense to use excess electricity and thereby avoid other storage capacity – to use the flexibility of cars, just like heat pumps. And cars have the outstanding property that you can basically also operate them in the other direction, namely feeding power back into the grid. And something like that is of course –

I've heard that in the US some people think that's great because there are somewhat more frequent power outages there than here. Then you can essentially use your car as an emergency power supply. You can even supply a US household with power for several days from a fully charged car. The large battery of a car is enough for a household for several days. My parents, for example, have recently switched entirely to electricity, particularly for heating, but don't have an electric car yet.

But they need about 30 kWh on a January day, for everything. And if you consider that a car has 100 kWh in its battery, that would be enough for about three days to power the house. Then of course power-to-heat, that is heat generation during excess electricity, is a super important topic that is already being practiced heavily by many energy suppliers. So you can of course achieve grid relief, save peak loads and much more. And there, digital solutions like the ones you

develop to orchestrate consumption sensibly are a very important point. On the other hand, it's not everything either. If for 14 days neither wind nor sun supplies electricity, then I can't reach my goal by discharging electric cars. Exciting. We've now considered your aspects in terms of mobility and energy. And finally, I wanted to examine your experiences in terms of startups and entrepreneurship. I think entrepreneurship has both startups

as well as corporates as one of the core focuses. What's your perspective on innovative players? Are there any corporates or start-ups that come to mind where you think they're doing this particularly well? Maybe you can give a few examples, but you don't have to. What have you observed about what makes such players stand out? What makes successful innovative mobility and energy start-ups or corporates tick? The first step is of course already having the openness to engage with new ideas and with founders, with people who come up with these

ideas. So when you show up at an institution like the Future Energy Lab here or in the entrepreneurial scene – that's already the first important step. And companies like Deutsche Bahn, BMW, SAP and many others are already doing this really well by being present in these startup centres and of course discovering future suppliers or acquisition targets along the way, where they might be able to bring the startup into the company and thus

integrate a good solution into the organisation. And ideally the founder then has a successful exit.

Yes, thank you for that. Maybe as a final question, in terms of time – we could have gone deeper into many things, and I'd be happy to have you back on the podcast. If you'd like to point people to something, how they can get in touch with you or learn more about your activities. LinkedIn, Simon Herzog – you can find me pretty easily there and I'm quite active. I think that's a good way to go. And for getting to know each other in person, people can write to me, or I also write

especially on LinkedIn from time to time when I'm at events, like yesterday at the SAP Dataspaces in Berlin. Thank you so much, Simon. It's fascinating what you're all involved in – and hopefully see you again soon. Thank you. Thanks for the invitation.

Episode notes

In der ersten Episode von Smart Charge mit RiDERgy sprechen wir mit Simon Herzog über seinen Werdegang, seine Erfahrungen mit Unternehmern insbesondere in seiner Rolle bei der Unternehmertum und seine Vision für die Energiewende und Mobilitätswende. Wir diskutieren, welche Rolle Startups und Innovationen in der Transformation des Energiesektors spielen, welche Herausforderungen die Branche bewältigen muss und wie Theorie und Praxis in der nachhaltigen Mobilität zusammenkommen. Tauche mit uns ein in spannende Einblicke, praxisnahe Lösungen und die Zukunft der smarten Energie- und Mobilitätslandschaft! 🚀 🔋