Ep. 23: Michael Clarke eTrucker app founder on Driver-Built Tools, Truck-Ready Charging and Scaling e-Trucker

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.

Welcome back to Smart Charge. Today we're getting practical about heavy duty electrification with Michael Clarke, who co-created the eTrucker from Electro Trucker. Uh, driver-built app that helps e-trucker drivers find trucks suitable charging across Europe with filters to pull through the base, overnight parking, and realistic truck-specific routing. Before that, he worked at companies that are super interesting like Tesla, Porsche, and Neil, where we also dive deep into and learn of the differences and the interesting projects he worked on. For example, the smart charging NO app. The

team behind eTracker didn't build this from a desk. Co-founder Tobias Wagner logged 100,000 electric truck kilometers in a single year to shape the tool. At launch, the database covered 575 truck-ready charging parks and community contributions quickly added, 100 more, a driver verified data set the team describes as Europe's largest for truck capable sites. E-Tracker went live in 2024 with a three-person team and the app is now available on Android with a few 1000 installs. And iOS today, uh, Michael and I dig into how driver feedback

improves data quality, what truck suitable really means on the ground, and what's next for bookings and live data and truck e-truck innovation. Buckle up, let's roll. All right, Michael, nice that you're here today. How are you? Thank you. I'm wonderful today. You came from Munich all the way to Berlin to have some business meetings, right? And of course to record this. Yeah, looking forward to it. So before we start and talk about all the things around the Electro Tracker app, which is your current, uh, focus

Let's uh understand a bit who's the person, Michael, um, yeah, what's your background? Thank you. Yeah, so, um, I grew up, uh, mainly in Germany before that a little bit in America, but, uh, went to university in Munich, studied, uh, political science, um, then finished that and then decided I want to understand more of the world, so I started physics, uh, and then studied a bachelor in physics. That was a lot of fun. Very stressful time, um, and, uh, I enjoyed that. And then I, uh

had a great opportunity to do an internship with Tesla in Munich at the supercharger team and, uh, had a wonderful year there. Learned so much back in 2016 about, uh, immobility and Tesla was on a, a roll back then. And, uh, yeah, really, uh, grateful for, for that experience. And then I, uh, got an opportunity at Porsche in Stuttgart to, uh, launch their global destination charging program. So AC charters mainly at, uh, hotels and other luxury, um, locations. Uh, running that for 3 years was also

an awesome, uh, opportunity. And then I got into the, uh, vehicle product management at Porsche for all the, uh, electric vehicles and hybrids and also future vehicles specifying, you know, the charging performance, where the charge port is, the route planning, uh, all that fun stuff. Uh, so, yeah, really thankful for that. And after that I want to come back to Munich and found an opportunity with NIO, uh, where I, uh, also did product management but more on the ecosystem side, so wall box chargers, a high

powered charger, um, uh, we'll get maybe get into those stuff, uh, later and, um. That was a great 3 years of my life and now I'm off to new adventures, uh, and with the trucker. So. And so how, how, how much would you say are you American and to what extent are you? So you, you have a certain definition for yourself? Um, I feel German, even though I'm not German, I'm Austrian and American and Irish, so, um, but, uh, yeah, I feel, I feel, uh, German

uh, but, uh, yeah, my dad's from, from New York and, uh, I enjoy it there as well. Right. And the times at Tesla when you, you were there in 2016. Uh, can you elaborate how it was at that back then? What, what type of, uh, when you said it was, was really, um, before the Model 3, I understand, and what type of, what were the challenges at those days that if you remember. So getting the word out. So, um, one of my jobs was building the

destination charging network there as well, uh, and just, yeah, so very similar, um, but yeah, cold calling, uh, hotels, explaining to the front desk, you know, what Tesla is, we're electric cars and, and usually they were somewhere in the Alps and, and didn't, haven't heard about. You know, electric cars or Tesla at all and sort of explaining the story, you know, convincing people of, uh, electric, uh, mobility and that it's the future. Um, it kind of also convinced myself, uh, and, uh, yeah, I got good

at sort of, uh, pitching that and we, we really grew the, the destination charging network, but I also helped out with the supercharger network a little bit and just the amount of. Professional, uh, and optimization and, um, really, you know, cutting costs. That was really impressive and I think it's, it's awesome what, what the Tesla supercharger team has done over the last few years. Um, really an unmatched, uh, network. And uh yeah, great to have a front row seat to that. Did you meet Elon Musk

or Philip Schroeder?

No, some of the European leadership, but of course this ethos was there and Elon was sort of. Uh, in the back of everybody's mind and, um, the, the, um, spirit there was really infectious, uh, and uh was just a great part being as a team. I'm still friends with many of them, uh, and uh it's a great, great community. And what's the latest on the supercharger network? There was this period, I think it was last year, where it was Elon, I think, wanted to shut it

down somehow. Is there, do you know what's the status there or what happened exactly afterwards? So the way I understood it is that I guess Elon wanted to make an example of somebody, and it unfortunately was the supercharger team. In the end, I think actually it was a bigger story than Maybe what actually happened, especially in Europe, um, yeah, I guess there was downsizing but not to the extent, uh, that you heard about in the Ame in America. So, um, yeah, but it's, it's an interesting

question, you know, the role of an OEM in the charging industry, that's, I think one of the core questions that every carmaker is, um, battling with and, and. Many have sort of followed the same game plan. Many have come to similar conclusions and are now maybe changing their approach. Um, so yeah, that's always an interesting. What are you thinking about when you say changing their approach? So, you know, there was Ionity and, uh, that sort of coming together, building out infrastructure, getting the basics right. Um

then there's always the question of, OK, do you have your own MSP or mobility service provider or the charge card, essentially. What's the role of that or do you share those resources, um, and then, so we see in the premium segment, you know, more of these premium charging lounges, uh, popping up, uh, more and more from, I guess Porsche and Daimler, uh, and yeah. So, I, I don't think everybody's sure exactly, you know, what the long term, uh, role will be, but definitely a lot has

happened and it was a great time to experience and, uh, learn. And uh then talking Porsche, in those days you said you worked on route optimization, destination charging, and what was uh. Yeah, so, uh, I was a product manager for charging. Um, that means, uh, you know, on the vehicle, it's the Ticon was a very special car, of course. Uh, first car with 800 volts, first car with plug-in charge. Um, first car really was a, uh, in the beginning, not so much, but later on, then

a very good, uh, turbocharging planner is what we called it. Um, and getting that right, sort of understanding what the users' needs are, what they want to see, what is a good route, uh, the definition of that is, is sort of, um, yeah, very difficult to, to grasp or to define in software, and, uh, some of those learnings now also translate over to, to what I'm currently doing, so I, I really enjoyed that. But also back then we had to imagine what the future is like

you know, what charging speeds, uh, would be coming. The Taicon launch was 270 kilowatt peak power, and we couldn't imagine, you know, 300 or 400 kilowatts. And now some of the Chinese. These cars are just coming with 500 or more, uh, kilowatts. So it's imagining the future was really, um, challenging, uh, and fun, and, uh, but also looking into payments, you know, what role does plug and charge, uh, play, uh, those kind of questions, uh, yeah, were a lot of fun. And uh lastly, uh, the

whole topic of fast charging performance. So not just hitting that peak speed, but sort of preconditioning the battery, making sure, um, all the things are optimized that you can really charge quickly because, you know, everybody says, OK, it depends on so many factors. That's partly true. In the end, it's only battery temperature and SOC that's really going to determine how fast it charges at the appropriate charger. Yeah, we'll come back to that. And, and then, uh, finally, uh, uh, before today, so to say NO, uh

you said ecosystem, so can you elaborate it was especially working around charging aspects. I, I understand, yeah, what type of challenges or topics were you mostly looking at? Sure, so on the one hand, uh, just, you know, starting for from a very simple AC home charger, uh, getting that and, and NIO makes all their own chargers. Uh, in, uh, in China, in Wuhan, actually, there's a factory that, uh, makes, um, the chargers and, uh, getting those certified and, uh, ready for the European market, having the

appropriate app and the functions there, um, and I also decided early on actually to take the whole topic of smart charging sort of out of the wall box and more into the car itself. Uh, and then we developed a sort of neo-smart charging, uh, a vehicle function. And, uh, but NO is also one of the biggest charge point operators, uh, in the world, but, uh, in Europe we also had, uh, about 100 DC fast chargers up in the Nordics and operating those and, um, getting the

hardware right, integrating a credit card, uh, terminal, uh, that was a lot of, uh, fun and, uh, also on the. battery swapping station, um, you know, we're also charging batteries there and also the topic of calibration law, for example, is relevant and uh yeah, interesting. So you had to have a look at all these aspects that you're just referring to. Sure, and yeah, especially having sort of the role of, uh, you know, NIO has a battery swap technology, meaning that the cars can can swap their

batteries out quickly and Sort of how does that change what the needs of the vehicle are, um, that was quite fun. And, and when you say, um, that you prefer to look at the vehicle for smart charging instead of this charger, AC charger, what, what was your reasoning or, or the rationale behind it? Um, so the, the rationale behind neo-smart charging is that, uh, I saw a, a way for the vehicle to really use dynamic electricity prices to optimize the charging, uh, session. And with essentially

two clicks, uh, you just activate, uh, smart charging in the vehicle, you set a departure time or charge by time. And the vehicle automatically knows the day had prices, picks the cheapest hours of the day to charge, and that's when, uh, charging happens. We just send commands directly to the vehicle. No setup, uh, no login, no tokens that need to be handled for the user. They just need to make sure that their electricity tariff is dynamic, that they have a smart meter, but essentially it doesn't

matter which energy provider they have, uh, because the dynamic electricity prices mainly follow all the same day ahead signals. So it makes sense. But when you say specifically that you prefer to do via the vehicle instead of the charger that Neo is building. What did you mean with that? So essentially if we do it via the vehicle, it doesn't really matter what the charger can do. It can be a dumb charger or a non-connected, uh, charger from any manufacturer. Um, and doing it through the wall

box has the challenge that, um, the communication with AC charging is actually quite limited. For example, the charger doesn't know what the state of charge of the vehicle is. And therefore doesn't really know how much energy the car wants or needs, um, which kind of limits what you can do now with ISO 15118 and the mandate for that in the future also for AC home charging. That will partly change, but, uh, we said, OK, we can quickly here implement a function that has real value to

our users, especially in the Nordics that already have dynamic electricity tariffs and smart meters. Um, and we just went ahead and did it, um, didn't cost much, uh, to develop, uh, or make. The data is, uh, the prices are freely available. So it was really simple to do and solved sort of one of the core problems that, you know, many carmakers are battling with. Yeah, no, totally right. Interesting, and let's geek out a little bit. I think many people either don't know or if they know

they they don't probably don't know why. So, so the indeed the state of charge, which is the, how much battery you basically still have and how many kilometers you can still drive. Is not something that is communicated to the wall box in an AC, um, at the AC level, but in the DC it is. So why is that? Or do you, do you know, uh, the technical uh background behind it and when is ISO 15118 gonna be implemented in all the AC chargers if somebody doesn't

have a Neo and but wants or or wants to see his state of charge through his wall box that is listening, when can they expect to see it? Yeah. So AC charging today, um, works quite simply using pulse width modulation or PWM signal, and there's essentially only, um, sort of the state and the charging, uh, current that can be communicated from the wall box to the vehicle. Uh, so the vehicle as a charger, for example, says, OK, you can charge with, uh, 10 amps, for example

Um, and actually the number of phases that you charge on isn't also defined. The vehicle will just take how many, uh, phases 1 or 3, as they get. So actually, even the charging power doesn't explicitly get communicated during. AC charging because the only point of doing this is to protect the wires, either the wire from the charger to the vehicle or in the house, um, the cable from the distribution box to the charger. Uh, and that's what you're trying to protect. So you set a maximum

charging current. And then that is communicated to the vehicle, but the vehicle is actually the one in charge pulling the energy through the onboard charger. So the charger can't actually directly change how much power goes through it. It's just sort of monitoring what's going on and in case the vehicle is pulling too much power, it can shut down the charging session, but there is not much more going on and wall boxes are. Essentially just an adapter, uh, to the vehicle with, with some safety functions built

in. Um, so that's how it currently works. Um, the EU with a delegated act that was recently announced said that from 2027 onwards, uh, AC wall boxes at home, uh, need to support ISO 15118-20, um, which means that. Uh, you now have sort of a high level communication going on, so you can send data packets, uh, back and forth. You need, um, sort of, uh, an additional small, uh, modem in the, uh, charger that makes it also a little bit more expensive, um, and of course

then you need to implement this, uh, software stack and, uh, at NIO we, we, we experienced, you know, for us it was really easy to implement this AC charging protocol. We did it ourselves. Now with 15118, it's not something that an AC charger manufacturer can realistically do in-house. You need to rely on some of the software providers in the ecosystem to, uh, to give that to you, or you need to buy it actually from them. So, both on the hardware side and on the software side

it does make AC charging actually. Quite a bit more expensive. So I'm not a huge fan of, uh, this 15118 mandate for basic AC charging, especially considering that if you actually control the vehicle, you can do really cool smart charging features, uh, there as well. I guess the hope there is that, um, you know, essentially all home chargers become bi-directional in the future and all vehicles would be bidirectional and it solves all our energy, uh, problems. Uh, but that is an assumption, uh, and, and not

a, uh, fact, and it's, it's quite interesting that they decided to mandate, uh, that. Just on the, on the last point that you made, you say that you need to have the AC charger to be that smart, um, by implementing ISO 15118 just to make the bi-directional case, right? That's, you can do it only via the vehicle. So bidirectional charging, of course you need, um, a way for the. Uh, vehicle and charger to communicate with each other. So the charger, for example, needs to say, hey

now I want you to discharge this amount of power. Um, and that's a message that in the old, uh, communication protocol just didn't exist. Um, and so you need this high-level, uh, communication. And that's actually sort of the main issue about bidirectional charging. Nothing actually changes in the wall box. It's just, you know, a wire that's going through it. Um, so yeah, the magic happens in all the communication. You also want safety because, you know, if the power goes out and you have people working on

the power grid, you don't want vehicles to suddenly start discharging power into a grid where people are touching the wires. So a lot of safety standards and grid codes go into, uh, into that. Yeah, so just to be clear. And if I have an AC charger right now at home with a with a vehicle that is bidirectional, that could be discharging, there's a vehicle to load. I think there are plenty of vehicles out there that with AC can discharge, but to a certain only to us

to an appliance. If you want to discharge your home or if you want to discharge to the grid, the big hurdle is having this protection. Uh, on, on the, on the charger, the charger level that protects, so to say, yeah, the, the grid, uh, from, from flows that shouldn't be flowing if there is a blackout, as you say, and some people are working on the grid, right? That's all that's one big thing. But then the, the software stack for bidirectional charging could be actually only in

the vehicle, or am I wrong in that that you can, you could run the, the B2G or the, um, yeah, V2 home. Um, Algos and, and, um, and, and software only in the week you don't really need to upgrade the, the wall box, would you? The, I, I, I guess the way, uh, ISO 15118, uh, is currently, uh, set up is that the idea is that the charger is sort of, uh, centric to this uh smart charging, uh, approach and that, um, the charger from whatever

source, maybe a home energy manager or maybe from, uh, a grid operator, uh, gets a signal, uh, to please, uh, discharge energy into the grid. And when you do that, of course, the vehicle needs to exactly match the frequency of the grid. And uh so concerning the grid codes, you need to have defined behavior. What happens if that grid frequency, which 50 hertz in Europe, um, what happens if that deviates by, you know. 0.3 hertz for how many seconds? What are you supposed to do? Are

you supposed to, you know, lower the power? Are you supposed to completely shut off? Because that can sort of trigger, if multiple devices in the grid behave incorrectly, it can make blackouts worse. And these grid codes, are they only At the transmission grid level or also at the distribution grid level, um, mainly the, uh, TSO is in charge of maintaining, uh, the grid frequency, uh, uh, across his grid. Uh, so mainly they are responsible for, you know, buying and, uh, implementing grid services. Um, so in

that case, yes, uh, they would be, uh, in charge there. But also, I guess they delegate some of the responsibilities to the distribution system operator, um, and the distribution system operator sort of has additional, um, requirements, uh, of course, because they need to, they don't worry about the frequency, but they worry about sort of transformers being over, uh, loaded, uh, and, and similar things. And, and touching back on the smart charging that you did, did you also consider self-consumption of solar energy, or, or was it

purely focused on the day ahead um spot market optimization? So yes, the day ahead, uh, optimization is the first step, of course you can also do, um, solar optimized charging, and you can do solar optimized charging essentially in two ways. You can. Uh, have your house measure, um, your PV production and the house grid consumption and how much power you're exporting into the grid, and you can sort of increase or start charging, uh, to consume that. Um, but I also looked into, uh, alternative because this

of course requires a lot of integrations and a lot of knowledge sharing, uh, and I looked at also, uh, part of my master's thesis in can you actually get similarly good results by just looking at professional, uh, solar intensity forecasts. So, uh, big providers, uh, operators of, um, solar panels, they buy. High, uh, very accurate, um, solar forecasts, including sort of wind, uh, uh, wind and, and, um, cloud movements because, you know, their job is on the other hand, to bid on the day ahead market

and say, hey, I'm going to provide, you know, this many. Uh, there this much power at a certain time in the future, uh, so they need very good, uh, forecasts, and we can use those at home, uh, to also make a pretty good estimation of how much power the solar system will be consuming, and you can make certain assumptions about what, uh, your own house, uh, grid consumption will be and then you get like the 80 or 90% solution which is much better than nothing. And

actually for most people probably uh good enough and the question is sort of how much additional cost and work do you want to put into those last 10% of optimization. So is that um was that implemented? So as a new driver, can they activate that feature? The the the plans are ready for doing a solar optimized charging, but I didn't get around to implement it. OK, very nice indeed that you did the dynamic already spot feature because that's something also quite unique. No, I, I'm not

sure, I'm not familiar with many OEMs, all the OEMs out there, but it sounds like quite. I think what enabled us to do it is we took ourselves out of the equation. We didn't try to, you know, get value out of this. We didn't try to earn money through this function and sort of that clouds your vision if your primary focus is to try to earn money with each function. Uh, we just flipped it around and said, OK, what can we do for the, uh, user

to fix his problem? And, uh, we found a solution that's really cheap to implement, uh, works really reliable, and, uh, just does it. But of course, you know. It doesn't earn any money with it, but it solves a problem. And is it being used a lot? Yeah, we're super happy that in the Nordics, uh, you know, it's, it's, everybody has it. Of course, the price variations aren't as big as we experienced here in Germany, but still they save a lot of money, using it, and it's

as I said, super easy to set up. Anybody can do it. And it memorizes the location where you are, and every AC charging session inside of this bubble will then be smart charging optimized and everything outside, of course, will not. So yeah, it's really easy to manage. Can you also quantify how much they saved the driver. We, we calculated, uh, sort of what the earning potential was and, uh, we, we figured out that you can probably save around 30% of your electricity costs, but as I

said, it's in the Nordics, the, the variation in pricing because they have relatively consistent power generation isn't that big as the potential is in Germany, but here we don't have the smart meters, so that's the problem. The god damn smart meters in Germany, but let's not touch upon that topic, and there's plenty of others and more interesting, uh, things to touch upon and, and, and just the battery swapping is I find that as well, um, fascinating. I think NO is probably the number one company out

there doing this. And can you share a bit more about the usage that give me interestingly you said there's the AC wall boxes, there's also the HPC cables that NO, um. Fixed DC Yeah, we have a 500 kilowatt DC fast charger, which really, you know, is one of the fastest chargers in Europe, uh, and yeah, they work great and and so are the users using these swappable batteries more than the, the, the fixed HPC for example, and what do you also make of um Neo being

the only one really pushing that concept further and not other OEMs, for example. So, uh, NIO usually has, uh, battery swapping and high-powered charging at the same location, and the user usually has a choice, uh, which one to use. Um, and indeed they, if they, if both are available, they usually choose to, to swap just because it's that much faster. Uh, it's fun and, uh, it, it works. Works very well, so battery swapping really is, um, a great technology, uh, you know, it's a niche. I

don't expect every manufacturer or everybody to, to need it. Uh, there's a certain user group, for example, taxis, they really love it. Uh, for them it's, it's just, yeah, solves a lot of, uh, issues, and, uh, for them it's the right thing to do. I don't think every car in, in Europe needs to, to have it. But I also have been to China a few times and there, of course, you know, battery swapping is just a way of life. Uh, I know people there that, that

haven't charged their car at all. They, they just swap and, um, it's, there's so many, uh, swap stations, uh, there and, um, yeah, if you really have a good network, it, it just works. And what do you make of other OEMs not making and following suit. I completely understand. You know, it does limit yourself a little bit in sort of what kind of cars you can make, sort of the sizes of the vehicle, and it does add a little bit of cost, but it doesn't prevent

you from fast charging. So NO vehicles can charge with 240 kilowatts, even on a 400 volt system. Um, so, uh, that definitely, uh, you don't have to make compromises, uh, on the fast charging, uh, side as well. But, you know, for me, what made battery swapping so interesting is that actually after battery swap, you have an empty battery. And the question is, what do you do with that empty battery? Do you charge it immediately or you essentially use the same algorithm that we use for the

cars. You do smart charging. So you wait for the electricity price to go down, and then you charge your, your vehicle. So you can kind of offer a fast charging experience, but at sort of AC electricity prices. And that's, I think, really neat that you can just, you know, use the energy when it's good for the grid, when it's good for when it's cheap. So what's the price actually if I go as a Neo driver and want to swap my battery here in Germany, for example

Yeah, it depends also a bit on location and country, but I think we're under 45 cents in some areas. It's quite a competitive price. And talking, uh, you've worked at an American company, a market leader in EVs in the western world, and, um, so far, and then uh you worked at the Porsche that is definitely known for high performance and has built this Ticon with being an awesome EV and, and then yeah, Neo that we just discussed as well, um, standing for also an innovative Chinese

player that that uh. They're more around and given Xiaomi, given BYD and so on, but so what's your take on, uh, the future of the OEM, um, leadership board, so to say, and especially the EV, uh, world. Yeah, so you know they have been very different experiences. Um, the, the Tesla was sort of special. I think it was lightning in a bottle. I don't think it's easily recreated. Uh, I also don't think other American. Uh, OEMs are, are similar. Um, I guess the, the European model

uh, there are certain similarities between the, the German OEMs and the way they think, uh, the way, um, you know, it works internally. You have a lot of, um, assurance, you know sort of what the baseline is, you know what the decisions are, you can count on that to a certain extent. With a Chinese car company, the, uh, decisions are quicker. You, you, and, uh, they can change from day to day, and, um, that enables an awesome innovation, uh, pace, uh, something that, you know, is

also expensive to keep that innovation pace, but it's just. Each iteration makes the product better or cheaper, and, uh, that's really, really hard to compete with. Um, I don't expect all the Chinese OEMs to be the same. I think there's probably big differences between sort of startups and newcomers and sort of the more established players, but in general, um, having a country focused on immobility, uh, really unlocks a lot of potential, and the cars are really good. Yeah. So let's now switch gears and and talk

about the next phase uh where you're currently in. What, what drove you as well to change now from from Neo and I think what's it, what is it, 2 months, and start the electric trucker, um. App or company or is it it's officially what's the name of the company? Uh, it's Electra Trucker Media, uh, Gambaha, but um, yeah, the, the app is called eTrucker, uh, and what sort of fascinated me is that, yeah, charging. At some point is going to become normal. It's something actually I

I realized at Porsche is that we, we had a charging product manager, but we didn't have a refueling product manager. You know, gas stations are kind of, yeah, there's no need to have sort of, uh, expertise there and I don't know if charging will, will go down that road, you know, it's, it definitely seems complicated enough that, you know, there'll still be interesting things to do, and I don't think, uh, on the car side, we've, um, solved all the issues, uh, yet. But I saw an

opportunity to go into the heavy duty, uh, trucking, uh, area. Um, also, a little bit with the intention of maybe not recreating similar mistakes we did with passenger vehicles, sort of using those lessons learned to really, uh, get it right the first time. And, uh, that's why, um, I teamed up with, with, uh, Tobias Wagner, uh, who's the electric trucker, and, uh, I was, uh, fortunate enough to create the eTrucker app, uh, with him. Um, and Mathias Brands, who's our software, uh, engineer, and together we

um, yeah, decided what we wanted to do. We mainly made this in the first step to help, um, to be us in his day to day work, you know, he's still a, a truck driver, uh, you know, two weeks ago he went from Turkey to Portugal in, in essentially one go. Um, and there, the eTrucker app really helps his day to day, um, work. So, you know, it, the, the app tells you when you will arrive at a certain station, is it inside or outside your

remaining driving time. Uh, you can filter for specific, uh, CPOs, uh, and he can also see sort of which locations are actually suitable for overnight. Uh, charging because many of the infrastructure and uh high power chargers are built for trucks are actually built for that sort of 45 minute break, um, period, uh, during the day where you're sort of expected to leave after you charge. But actually truckers also have to do a 9 or 11 hour break, uh, later in the evening. And that's, I think

for me the more interesting, uh, charging sessions because that's actually where you charge more energy than, uh, during the short break, right? So one step back, um, what, what was the, the background story on how it all started? Like did, did you meet to be us at an event or yeah, we, we met at, uh, I think an Eon Drive summit, um, uh, a little bit over a year ago. And uh we hit it off, I guess, you know, I asked some of the right questions

I was interested in, in, uh, understanding how it works. Um, I had some, you know, experience with, um, you know, navigation systems and apps, uh, and, uh. Uh, the mobility service provider side of things, um, and yeah, we said, uh, OK, let's do this as a side project, um, see where it goes, and started to rate and evaluate, uh, high-powered charging sites on their suitability for trucks and, uh, brought that together, um, came up with, um, an app, uh, and, uh, yeah, just launched it. Yeah

and the, uh, company that's built, you are the three founders that uh you just mentioned and the, um, the, so I understand, yeah, Toby is still like in his uh trucker mode and obviously helps out with very practical experience and the other two, what was it Matias, uh, was the other co-founder you are like now fall in and um trying to bootstrap a bit. In living off your savings to make it work right, we, we, we don't have many expenses right now, of course we do

want to provide a premium experience. That's why we use sort of, you know, very good maps. We use Google Maps, for example, because they have very high quality satellite imagery which we find. Important for the truck driver to sort of visually confirm that yes, there is enough space there that I can charge or park there after my charging session compared to other map providers like OpenStreetMap, right? Yeah, and if you don't have that satellite view, you're, you're missing out on a lot of context that helps

increase the Um, confidence, uh, that you'll have a successful charging session there. So we also then, you know, use, um, uh, TomTom for, uh, very good, uh, truck specific, uh, routes, uh, so we can tell you exactly when you'll arrive there with a truck and you're only allowed to drive, you know, 80 or 90 kilometers per hour in, in certain countries, um, and we take that into consideration and also the route, uh, you have to take, uh, to make, uh, the best. Recommendation and visualization uh

possible. So that costs a little bit, but, um, it's worth it to us right and just to understand the problem in, in, in detail and, and well. If I'm a trucker right now and I want to drive an electric truck, what's the key problem that I'm facing that you're trying to address here? So the top 3 if you want to elaborate on. So trucking has gone down the road where actually now we have quite good electric trucks already, even though this from some of these companies

it's the 1st or 2nd iteration of their uh heavy duty truck. Um, they're actually quite capable and we see often that they're used on. Relatively boring routes, you know, point to point every day, the same, uh, route. That's also difficult, and you also need charging solutions for that. You need to either build depot chargers, uh, at the origin or destination, uh, or you have to find a charging site in between where you go every day, but it's very repeatable, very, um, predictable. There our app would

maybe help you, uh, determine if the charger you usually use is occupied or not. But what I think is more interesting and where, what Tobias is sort of trailblazing uh into is this whole, uh, long haul, uh, trucking area, which many people didn't think, uh, is, is ready for, for electric trucks yet, but, um, we actually believe that that's where, uh, they can best Uh, show their advantages, uh, have a lower operating costs, uh, and to, to get the payback period on a, um, slightly more

expensive, uh, electric truck, you need to drive a lot of kilometers, and the trucks that drive the most kilometers are long haul trucks. So, um, we want to sort of open up that space, make it possible, give truckers the right tools to succeed, and, uh, we believe the eTrucker app is sort of, uh, the tool they need to. Never have, uh, worries, uh, and always find the right charger for their, uh, situation. So just to be again very specific and sorry if I'm, if I'm trying

to really nail this, but like if you, if I'm a trucker and you're trying to pitch me your solution, so to say what's my problem that I, that I'm, why would you need you so to say, and if I'm not, if I have my, let's say my truck from MAN or any other OEM.

So we found actually that uh even for diesel trucks, many truckers don't really use the onboard navigation system of the truck. They have sort of either tablets or phones with sort of other navigation solutions, often also coming from the logistics company themselves or tablets built into the vehicle. Um, so, yeah, the, the, the, the onboard navigation system of most of these trucks don't have very good POI data on where the truck can charge. Uh, and that's the, the main pain point, uh, we're solving is by

giving, uh, him or her very clear instructions on where they can go, uh, to charge. And it's really easy to operate, you know, there, there's just one layer and, uh, really big buttons and, Uh, very good overview of, uh, where you are. So the way you answer my question, so to say, OK, if I need to deliver something from A to B, you answer my question, where should I charge? And that's sort of also one of the things we, we noticed is that uh there are

big differences in how autonomous or how much responsibility the, the driver has. Uh, we see some logistics companies that, um, define everything for the trucker exactly where they need to be, where they're going to charge, uh, what route they're going to take. Um, and maybe they optimize that and they have a good reason to, to recommend that. On the other hand, we see some, uh, logistics companies that sort of give roughly the time that you need to be here at this time, but how you get

there, uh, is kind of up to you and, uh, what, you know, we see and what, uh, it's great to have to be us on board is to show sort of how unpredictable. Uh, the day is, you know, if you have, you run into a traffic jam or you need to reroute, um, all the best plans, they just break down and having a good and robust, uh, e-trucker app to help you out in these situations, we believe brings a lot of value, uh, to this and

just unlocks long haul trucking for, uh, most logistics companies. And so, so one of the big issues you said, so when you want to help me understand where to charge. Is to understand which sites are truck friendly, so to say, right? So, so that's the kind of answer you're giving me. What are the best sites for me, which ones are truck friendly, right? Yeah, so we define truck friendly, uh, to be, have at least, uh, you know, enough space on site to park your trailer, decouple

and then, uh, go to the charging station to, to charge, um, that's sort of the bare minimum, uh, if you. You know, don't have, uh, a, a, a place to park your trailer, uh, in sight, we don't usually consider that. And also, of course, on the way to the charter, you're, you, you can't go through a, uh, road or something where it's prohibited for trucks. Uh, and often there is either a weight limit or a height limit, um, that prevents you from, from using specific charges

So we take all of that into consideration. We are also actually very conservative about what we include. So, um, we don't want to include any sites where, you know, there's potential for, uh, pedestrians or children, or, uh, you know, just a lot of traffic. Uh, we don't believe those sites. To be, uh, truck friendly and don't want to route, uh, any trucks, uh, there. But we found that actually, yeah, quite a number of, of, uh, sites is truck-friendly. We also, of course, include all the sites

where you don't have to decouple, sort of the pull-through, uh, locations. And, uh, even if you sort of activate the, the only pull-through location filter, you can still pretty much get from A to B, um, across Europe. Of course. The challenge for optimizing this is you want to find a charger that is as close as possible to the end of your driving time shift. So, uh, when you start driving, you can drive for 4.5 hours. You kind of want to find a charger that's between, you

know, 4 hours and 10 minutes and, and 4 hours and 30 minutes. Nothing over, but also nothing considerably less because then you're sort of losing time. So, um, really having those options helps truck drivers achieve the same performance as diesel trucks. So that, so the key dimensions are on the one hand, understanding which sites are, um, truck friendly, and the second is which sites are truck friendly along my route and are able to fit within this. Driving constraints, uh, that are these 4.5 hours that you

need to then take a break with and then daily limits and weekly limits, right? Yeah, so, um, that's the most important thing. We also, uh, have the long pause filter where you can then say, OK, this is a location where it can actually stay the night, can stay 9 or 11 hours, um, and charge up, uh, there and, and not worry about, uh, things, so. Um, these are the things we believe are most important. Um, this is sort of the data model we, we built around

it actually doesn't perfectly fit into this OCPI, uh, data model, uh, where you sort of describe charging locations, um, which is sort of the agreed upon standard to communicate, uh, charging locations that MSPs use to communicate with, with, uh, charge point operators. So, yeah. Alright, I think that that makes sense, yeah, and uh the solution you provide uh we touched upon already a bit, so it's a navigation tool, uh, a map, so TomTom and and Google Maps, and then we have also this for these charge

point data. Then I think I I read an article eco movement, right, so, so you get that and then you combine it all together and then as a driver I can easily say I need to go from A to B. And you tell me where I need to then charge best, and I can also set some more filters myself, right? Yeah, so currently we're not really, um, telling you, OK, this specific charger is the one you have to go to. Um, we're more about showing you

all the options along your route, uh, so you can make, um, the best decision. You know, truck drivers for us are professionals. Uh, they're experts at what they do. And, uh, we believe that giving them just the right tools to succeed is, um, the, the best way going forward. And, you know, for us, it's great that we can also rely on a community. So, um, we really take this POI data topic very seriously. We have a great partner in EcoMovement, uh, who just gives us a

great base layer, uh, of where the chargers are, uh, they give us live, uh, occupancy, uh, data and on top of that we. We put our attributes, um, and actually sort of thee trucker community is helping build that. So on each charger, if you open it up, you can sort of report an error, but you can also sort of upgrade a charger, uh, because we, we know where every DC charger is. You just click on it and say, hey, actually, I think this is a DC

uh, charger for trucks. And then we, uh, take a look at it and if, uh, Tobias and I agree that it's, uh, truck compatible, we add it to the, the main map. And we also point out a lot of locations where we believe truck charging might be possible, and then we have a community feedback mode that you can go into and say, hey, actually, I've been to the. Charger actually, no, it's not truck uh compatible. Let me um let them know that and then we take

it out or we add it as a truck charger. Interesting, and I also read something about a chip, um, what you call it chip e trucker chip, yeah, yeah, can you elaborate on, on that one? So the way. Um, payment for trucking currently works. It's, it's quite interesting space and, and we'd love to sort of play a part in, in enabling this is that, um, often a logistics company will. Um, make a deal with a specific point operator in exchange for a certain volume commitment in

kilowatt hours. And, you know, logistics companies, uh, if they have a few truck, they're actually talking about millions of kilowatt hours that they, uh, might be charging in public. And so, yeah, there is some sort of leverage there to, to negotiate prices. And, um, what that usually means is that from that charge point operator, you get a charge card, you put that into the truck. And the trucker, uh, will use that then to, to charge there. But if you do that with 2 or 3 different

CPOs, then you start to get 2 or 3, RFID cards, uh, then maybe add a few more for your depot chargers, uh, at your own, uh, home, uh, depot or also at, uh, some depot sharing opportunities. And then we get into a similar situation where we were with the cards where you have, you know, 10 different RFID cards, and each mistake of pulling the wrong card can actually be a really expensive mistake, uh, because you're charging, you know, up to 500 kilowatt hours, uh, and doing

that at the wrong price, uh, makes the whole route potentially unprofitable. Yeah, that's quite a big cost, yeah, yeah, and so what the e-trucker, uh, chip, uh, allows us is to maybe combine some of these, uh, cards together so you can tell, uh, the logistics company that we used uh often charge, hey, you don't need to give me, uh, another card, uh, here. He's the token for, uh, that I already have in the vehicle. Please just add that to your system and, uh, let me chart

that. And the same also works for, uh, you know, bigger CPOs where you can, uh, tell them, hey, this is the card I'm using, uh, please add it to, uh, your system and then send me the bill afterwards. It's just maybe it's a stupid question, isn't it like the MSP then? Model or or um, currently the e-trucker chip is not an MSP. Um, we're not part of the transaction. We just provide essentially the, the physical card that can be, um, registered in different, uh, systems, but

um, it's, that's an area we're looking into sort of what role does an MSP play in trucking. That's a really interesting question that we're sort of battling. With right now because we have these two extremes. On the one hand, um, logistics companies want the flexibility to pick the right charger exactly at the right spot to optimize their driving time. On the other hand, they're willing to give up a little bit of that flexibility and commit kilowatt hours to certain charge point operators in exchange for a

significantly lower price. And uh this interesting interplay is, is something where we're looking into uh what role an MSP or in general payment solutions uh might play. Makes sense and and your um intention is, is to be then um what type of players are so it's uh, uh, how, how would you call yourself? Is it like a, a route optimization, a navigation app, a, um, you want to eventually. Be a payment service, um, yeah, and what will be the business model. Yeah, so we look at

this from the driver's perspective and then an extension from the, uh, logistics company uh perspective, you know, what do they need to succeed with, with, uh, electric trucks and whatever they need and wherever we find an opportunity, that's what we're going to, uh, provide currently. It's, you know, the map with, with manually verified POI data for each individual charger that we believe has a lot of value right now, even though, uh, the app, uh, is free, and anybody can just go to the App Store, download

the e-Trucker app, even just, uh, you know, as a car driver and say, hey, I want to be part of the eTrucker community and verifying, uh, location. So that part will always be, uh, free. But then this interplay between sort of the flexibility you need and the flexibility you're willing to give up as a logistics company, um, to be, you know, break even or or profitable, that's where we want to help, uh, the logistics company in the future. It sounds interesting and um the stakeholders we

we've mentioned a few that you have to engage with, I think um in German Spidizion is freight forwarder, I think in in English, right? The is so driver of course is essential, but do you also need to coordinate with the freight forwarding company or is that not relevant for your, for your, um, yeah, app. Um, yes, so, uh, we, we do see different solutions coming from it, uh, from, from both sides. So, um, coming from the freight forwarder or the logistics company in general, um, you

know, really planning centrally, uh, the route for the driver and, and sort of recommending them where to charge. And right now we're coming a little bit from the other side and saying, OK, actually if the driver is responsible himself, um, and especially you always have problems, even the, the best plan, uh, and even if you have a backup plan, uh, things go wrong and, uh, that's where the. Everybody has a plan until he gets hit in the face. Yeah, absolutely, that's, uh, what we see and

that's, uh, sort of what, what Tobias shows us, uh, every week, um, in his, his videos, um, and, uh, yeah, that's just an exciting space to be in, yeah. OK, and the, the, the idea of, um, I think, um, so it's uh would be the customer, um, so the freight forwarder has a has a. Is to bring the something from A to B and so so there are different logistics companies or the customers of the logistics companies that could set up chargers. Is that a stakeholder

that is relevant for you or you purely now look at the public chargers, so more the charge point operators and public? No, we, we do see that, um, there is an opportunity for sort of private depot charging to be a little bit cheaper than public charging. And, uh, what we cannot forget ever is that, uh, logistics companies, they do care really about what the price of a kilowatt hour is. And if they can save a few cents, um, that's generally, uh, what's, what's going to happen

So, uh, if we can find, uh, depots where they can charge, uh, cheaper. Uh, that's, uh, where we'll go and, um, we currently, uh, we do include depot chargers in the app. We mark them to say, hey, you actually need to register before you go here and, and sort of make a contract with, with the depot. But, you know, if you drive past uh one of these depots every day, uh, it'd be nice to know that actually, yeah, there would be a good, uh, charging opportunity

there. So, uh, we want. To sort of be a platform for for logistics companies and charge point operators essentially or these depots with depot chargers to come together and find the optimal route because that's really what we're here for. We just want to make electric trucks a reality in Europe. Makes sense. And you built, I think the product quite quickly. I don't know how much it took you to build the app. So, uh, Matias is, uh, an awesome, uh, software developer, and, uh, he really, um

created, uh, yeah, quite quickly, um, and, uh, super high quality. It works, uh, very well, and, um, but also, of course, you know, we're not trying to overcomplicate things. Um, we, we focus on, you know, what's really adding value. We include that and cut out all the rest, so that enables us to, yeah, be quite nimble right now. And how many users do you have right now and how did they find you? So, uh, we have over 8000 downloads right now, which, uh, exceeded my expectations

uh, by a lot, um, and yeah, we probably have so many truck. No, uh, so, um, that's what's really awesome is that, uh, most of them are just part of the e trucker community. Um, also, you know, driving a normal trucks, but also we, we saw great interest from people, um, going with their, uh, trailer on vacation, uh, so normal cars, but with the, uh, Woundwagen, uh, yeah, they need similar chargers. So we have a lot of those on, on the app as well, um, and

uh, yeah, just people providing feedback to the different chargers and that's what we're so thankful for, um, how many feedbacks like we get, um, up to 20 feedbacks per day, um, and that's just verifying another charger, uh, showing us the new ones, um, and telling us which ones uh aren't really truck capable, so we're super thankful for that. And, and usually you want to uh grow by word of mouth or uh is the Tobias actually his videos I imagine also super good to to get new

users to find you or do you have also a strategy on how to get more users? Yeah, so we're now more focused on, on getting other logistics companies, um, on board, um, and you know, we, we, we want few users but you know, really high value, uh, users because, uh, you know, with, with the eTrcker app we're. Kind of controlling, uh, you know, flows of, you know, many thousands of kilowatt hours. Um, so, so each user or truck driver is, is, um, yeah, valuable to us

um, and we're super thankful for everybody. That uses it and they also have an opportunity to sort of give back by, you know, providing feedback and uh yeah that makes sense. Do you don't know if you know a new entrants like Juna uh from from Zenda? Would that be something interesting that it would be a partner for you or how do you look at. Um, we're absolutely open to, to any kind of, uh, partnerships, and, uh, we also, um, provide the POI data, um, through our

partner EcoMovement. So you can approach EcoMovement, uh, to ask for the e-Trucker, uh, data. And uh then you can use it sort of in your own uh front end or application, uh, and, um, yeah, that way we're sort of sharing uh that uh to anybody who might need it. OK. And the just zooming out a little bit on the market of, of long haul trucking. Uh, can you share some numbers like how many long haul trucks are there? How many are electrics, and, and, and maybe

distinguish them also by geography? Yeah, so that's always, uh, an interesting, uh, part of, uh, the job is. That sort of reality check. Of course, you know, if you only watch Tobias's videos and, and you think, you know, electric trucks are here, it works, everything's great, uh, why isn't everybody doing this? Um, but talking to the logistics companies, um. Yeah, that gives you a reality check, uh, to say, yeah, OK, um, there are some, um, considerations and some, um, you know, maybe imagined drawbacks, uh, of

electric trucks that need to be addressed and, and where education needs to happen and like for example, what, what kind of objections do you get to electric trucking? Well, the, the most common one is that they're not suitable for long haul trucking, uh, and only sort of uh. Uh, point to point, um, range, and, um, yeah, that's the, the, the main one in charging speed and, uh, you know, there are a lot of, um, players that are also calling for the, the megawatt charging system or

the MCS plug with, um, you know, much higher charging power. And they say, yeah, we need to get those chargers first in the ground before we can even consider, um, electric trucks. We don't believe that to be the case, and I think to be a shows it every week that it's, yeah, for us, yes, uh, and, um, you know, there might be some use cases for MCS, uh, megawatt charging, but, um, we really haven't found them yet, but, um, yeah, so we just debunking it. Why

do you think it's not needed to, to get started if some truck trucker or freight forwarder is listening to this. Yeah, so, you know, if, assuming you can charge overnight, um, a truck, uh, starts the day and can drive 4.5 hours, um, at, you know, 80 or 90 kilometers per hour. Uh, and that, you know, gets you around to maybe 40% SOC on one of these big trucks, you know, the, the, uh, Mercedes A Atra 6 600, uh, is a great example where, uh, yeah, they

just have, uh, they're not empty after these 4.5 hours. And if you plug into, let's say, you know, 250, 300, maybe even 400 kilowatts of power. You get back up to, you know, maybe 70% even, and then, uh, you're only allowed to drive 4.5 more hours. Um, and, uh, you just can't get, you can't empty a battery in a day. It just doesn't really happen. The only thing you need to do is you need to use the eTrucker app, activate the overnight parking filter and find

that place where you can charge overnight. Uh, and then you can do that every day, uh, and There really is no reason why, uh, it shouldn't work. So, yeah, as I said, 400 kilowatts of power is plenty, um, and, you know, what I do kind of would like to see is, um, in the e-truck app we also, uh, note down, you know, is the cable cooled or uncooled, uh, and that, uh, you know, doesn't really make a big difference for the logistics company, but. Uh, you

know, liquid cooled cables, they're really awesome. They can hold the power for, you know, the whole hour, uh, that, that a truck might charge. But of course they also produce a lot of heat waste because the cable is actually much thinner. Uh, the, the copper wire is, is much thinner and, uh, their, you know, uncooled cables are also quite good because they don't have these losses. Of course, after, you know, 1015 minutes, they might go into derating, uh, and you need to lower the charging power

but even those. Are perfectly fine for a 45 minute uh charging session in most cases. Um, yeah. So coming back to the initial uh question. How many trucks, long haul trucks are there in, in Europe, in in in electric ones? Yeah, so right now I don't know right now, but you know we see about, you know, a little bit over 100 truck drivers in the app, uh, that have sort of the usage, uh, profile of, uh, an electric truck driver. And, uh, but we see it

growing, uh, every day, and, um, the, uh, I think new truck sales, uh, are actually quite, uh, electric heavy. Uh, we hope that trend continues, um, and that these trucks, uh, will be. Uh, you know, given the full, uh, capability of being also long haul, uh, trucks, and you, you know, I think, uh, 2030, uh, I think 30% of new sales should of, uh, electric trucks will be electric. I'm not sure if you, if you, if you're familiar with that stat here in Germany that was

or in Europe was it? I, I'm, I, I'm blanking a little bit on the exact one, but something like that and then. I imagine it's they're broken down more on the first distribution trucks before having 30% long haul, or uh is it something that you're confident it will also happen in the long haul? So, you know, currently, maybe I'm living in this bubble, but I'm confident that, um, it will become. Apparent and clear that electric trucks are cheaper to operate, uh, you know, I think right

now, but, uh, that's numbers maybe for the one that doesn't, is not so familiar in which way is it cheaper today already. So of course the the truck costs a little more, but, um, electricity is just, uh, cheaper than, than, uh, diesel gasoline, even the, you know, highly subsidized, um, diesel. So, um, they're the the the the. The electric truck already has a slight edge, and now it all depends on how many kilometers you drive to really, um, you know, exploit that edge. Um, and yeah

Tobias has a few videos on, on breaking down exact, uh, the, the numbers in euros, but, um, And and we, we do believe that it's a tipping point. So as soon as you reach this point, and it might be different from each country, but, um, you know, if that tipping point is reached, there's no real reason for logistics companies to still be buying new diesel. And the, um, uh, electric trucks, they get turned over more, uh, if they only serve, uh, in their capacity, you know

a few years, and then it gets turned over. So, um, by 2030 or 20, you know, 32 or something, um, we'll have gone through almost one complete overhaul of the whole fleet. Uh, so the transition, uh, to fully electric could be much quicker than, uh, in passenger vehicles, um, because, yeah, and also, you know, emotional factors play less of a, an issue, um, and, you know, our job right now is just to clear. All the roadblocks, um, clear up with all the, the misconceptions, um, and

uh, let the economy do its thing. Yeah, in the long haul, as, as you define it or as it's defined, it would be not only one country, right? So you are immediately from day one already, um, using your app internationally, you know, yeah, so actually, um. This week we launched um the uh map also for Spain, Portugal, UK, Belgium, um, and Romania um. Yeah, in addition to, of course, uh, the network we, we already have, so we, we essentially cover the whole of Europe, uh, right

now, of course we wanted to do it step by step because as I said, we manually verify each location and, um, we don't wanna show any locations that haven't been manually verified so it just took some time to, to go through each and every one, but yeah, we're we're really happy that we finally covered, uh, Europe completely. And um there's, but we don't plan to go much beyond that for for now. And, and going back to the objections you hear, uh, when you talk to truckers

or companies freight forward, what you said the range is one topic that they bring in, uh, which we already talked about and how it can be solved. Are there other big Yeah, it's essentially the, the charging, uh, network. So range and, and charging network for go a little bit, uh, hand in hand, but, um, as I said, you, you need to find a location at the end of your driving time each day. So, uh, yes, you do quite need a, a, a, a quite tight, uh

network. And, uh, but you don't need, you know, fully dedicated, uh, truck sites. We're super happy that they're coming online. And of course, you know, if we get more and more electric trucks. Um, we need just bigger sites, and I'm, I'm much more a fan of having fewer but bigger sites. Uh, that's sort of also one of the lessons learned I took away from my time at Tesla is it's smarter to have fewer but bigger sites, uh, and I think they were really pioneers in sort

of understanding, I guess, waiting queue theory, uh, which sort of describes, you know, the average waiting time depending on, uh, how many servers or chargers. Uh, you have. So, uh, that's what I'd like to see, you know, these really big central hubs, and we don't need that many of them, but, um, yeah, uh, like that, of course. We also need to talk about, uh, prices. So, um, I want charging to be at some point profitable for the CPR that I, I think that's fair. We need

to give them, um, at least a chance to become profitable in a reasonable amount of time and, you know, just calling for, yeah, we want charging to be cheaper without sort of considering the, the cost behind that. Isn't really going to be a long term solution. So, um, I'm, I'm not a huge fan of these, these really price undercutting and, and, and think I am a big fan of sort of optimizing, uh, your costs, uh, making sure that you build cheaply and effectively and don't make

mistakes, and that's something, you know, Tesla did, uh, very, very well, and that's why, uh, today they can still offer some of the best prices out there. Unfortunately, none of the Tesla superchargers are truck compatible. No, they, so on the one hand, the cable is a little bit too short, and on the other hand, um, the supercharger cabinets only go up to 500 volts. And essentially all the trucks are 800 volt vehicles. And um that's sort of, yeah, preventing uh that but there are enough other

chargers uh that can go up to 1000 volts and I actually don't mind anymore. I think Mercedes uh now launched the CLA um without the 800 volt option, at least that's what they, uh, announced then they changed their mind again because of backlash, but, um, yeah, you can get through Europe on 1000 volts, no problem. Interesting, and in other like countries where even if you were to be the most optimistic e trucker, and you would say yeah that's not possible. So that's sort of uh one

of the biggest uh eye opening things is I got through at least virtually and also sometimes I visited them myself, but visit each of these countries and look at how they build high powered chargers and it, you're right, it's, there are huge differences, but it's actually not the countries that, you know, you kind of maybe expect, but. Uh, Tobias's trip, uh, two weeks ago to Turkey actually was mind boggling how good the infrastructure was and how many charters there was and, and how, how, how powerful

uh, they were. That was, uh, surprisingly good and also the Nordics, they, they have, uh, really good networks, um, but you also see, of course, the countries that have where space is a scarce resource, you know, Germany, Switzerland. Um, is they don't have that much space and it, it's much more, more difficult. Spain, of course, is, is my favorite country right now for, for trucking. I think they, they've got a great network. Uh, they got so much space. Um, it's, yeah, Spain's really, really good. Um

the UK surprisingly. Uh, not so much. Not that many good chargers, very narrow roads, very little space to, for the trucks. Um, I'm a little bit worried about the UK, uh, right now, but, um, also Netherlands, uh, also, again, you know, not that much space, a lot of older hardware. Um, going, uh, yeah, because, you know, they, they started a little bit earlier, uh, and that just means, yeah, you have a little bit, uh, older hardware legacy, yeah, it makes sense and talking, um, prices, you

already hinted upon that that's the key, the total cost of ownership. What's the, um, price difference from CPO to CPO in the range and or the average that you have encountered. So, um, we see, you know, you need to either include or exclude, um, value added taxes, but, um, the range of course goes, you know, from 39 cents to, to 80 cents, uh, in some cases, and, you know, 80 cents just doesn't make sense for, yes, sorry, gross, right, yeah, um, and. Uh, that just, you

know, doesn't really work and, uh, you know, it might work for, for passenger vehicles that just, you know, charge maybe 60 kilowatt hours. Um, but, you know, if you're charging 500 kilowatt hours, it's, it makes a huge difference. So, um, We haven't really found as an industry or ecosystem yet the, the, the perfect solution, but I think we have the right people at it, and, uh, the motivation right now is, is really great. We see a lot of, uh, interest from the charge point operators in

you know, making their sites more truck friendly, making maybe also, uh, business. Offers, uh, for trucks. Uh, so we see that as a very positive development, uh, and yeah, we want to help them, you know, make their payback times for the charging sites, uh, quicker. Yeah, that makes sense. And in terms of, uh, kilowatt hours in the battery, what, what size of batteries have you seen? Yeah, so, uh, long haul trucks, uh, go from, you know, 500 to, to 600 kilowatt hours, uh, some even a

little bit more, uh, of usable battery, uh, energy. Um, of course, actually, that's one of the, the, the fun, uh, topics is it's, it's actually not that easy to exactly say how much energy is in a battery. Um, it kind of depends on how you discharge it, how quickly, uh, at what temperature. Um, and actually when you stop discharging, um, that determines, uh, how many kilowatt hours exactly you can pull out faster. Yeah, um, yeah, but, uh, yeah, it, it doesn't really matter because, you know

these batteries are so huge, uh, and they have awesome range, yeah, and it's roughly 1 kilowatt-hour per kilometer, right? That's what we've been, uh, seeing, yep, uh, which makes calculating, uh, this stuff, uh, really easy. Um, we'll see maybe in the winter it goes back up a little bit, um, but, uh, that's what we're at. And, in focusing, uh, a bit on depot charging, do most of the then, uh, truckers that you currently are monitoring, like you can see from Toby and his videos and the

Nano Jansen, they have lots of charging infrastructure at the depots. Is it a very commonplace now that the electric truckers today, they can always have rely on a own depot at their company where they can charge, or? Yeah, that's usually, uh, one of the places, um, logistics companies start is to ask the question, OK, how can I add chargers to my depot? And they're, of course, uh, very quickly they'll hit into, uh, the, the wall of the grid capacity, uh, that's probably going to be an

issue. Um, and then, yeah, you see some companies that say, OK, let's do this anyway. Let's try it with maybe also lower grid capacity. Like how much is a typical grid capacity at these logistics companies, you know? It really depends on sort of the history of the site, and you know, uh, if it has historically been a great big industrial area, they might have a lot of excess capacity, but usually. Not so much, and you can probably in many cases only add maybe 100 or 200

kilowatts of power. And then the question is, OK, what role does battery buffer, uh, play, and I assume others are, are probably more, more an expert on that, but, um, it doesn't, it's not a 1 to 1 replacement for, uh, grid capacity. And, and it's mostly DC charging, right, even at depot, it's not AC. Yeah, AC, uh, we don't see much AC charging, uh, for trucks anymore. Um, I guess that's fine. Um, I don't expect that trend to, you know, jump over to, to passenger vehicles

but for trucks it kind of makes sense. And in terms of chargers, is there like a hardware, and we see the albatronic being everywhere, Is that the, the preferred also depots are often with Camp Power, I think it's a very known brand, yeah, so. That's what was also really interesting is going through sort of also historical videos, uh, pictures of, of sites, you know, I, I, I, I look at every individual charting site and usually also on, on Google you can see sort of historic uh

pictures from, you know, 34 years ago and you see all kinds of chargers, uh, being used there. But if you then look to the most recent picture, often you do see an alpetronic hypercharger, uh, there, and it, it scares me almost how, how many sort of, um, other charging hardware they have replaced and, and charger hardware that, you know, I thought at least was, was fine, uh, even those got replaced in many cases and I guess that's OK, um. I also do see a big trend

towards these sort of, uh, distributed systems where you have one central, uh, power cabinet and multiple dispensers, uh, kind of what Kemp Power has been doing. Uh, I think the, the electronic, uh, version of that will also do really well, um, but we also see that we, we, as a trucker, we would like to have some predictability and, you know, for, for a truck, it does make a difference if you're going to a. Hook 400 or a hypercharger with 400 kilowatts. You don't really know, am

I gonna get the 400, or is somebody going to plug in next to me and I'm only going to get the 200. And when you only get the 200, maybe you need to charge a few minutes longer, uh, and sort of extend your break beyond the sort of legally mandated 45 minute break, uh, to really get to an SOC that you're comfortable with, with continuing with. So, That's one of the, the issues, but on the other hand, you know, I'm happy to see a lot of

patronics out there because they have been shown to be quite reliable. Um, and that's, of course, the, the worst case is, you know, if you, as a trucker go to a charger, it doesn't work, but you don't have any remaining driving time left. You're kind of stuck there. You need to wait 45 minutes and then you can start finding a charger and then you need to charge for 45 minutes again. So that's the worst case we're trying to avoid with the app. Yeah, I don't know

if you know, but um it's while we are at it in the industry charging industry. Also it's very aware of this, and I think some of the drivers as well, and there there's a bit of an issue with, uh, reliability is in in and that's why also electronic has won so much market share because they were known to be very reliable. What made what made their reliability? What, what were they doing better than others? Uh, actually, coming back to, uh, what I mentioned earlier, this, um

software, so, um, they're one of the few manufacturers that actually make a lot of the, uh, software stack in-house, um, also this 15118, uh, ISO 15118, um, software stack. Um, they do have expertise, uh, in that. They also have a huge team, of course, uh, that's what you need to, um, be able to, to do this in-house, but it apparently translates a little bit into. higher reliability. Even though I have to say I'm not a huge fan of the user interface, I still don't understand why

as a user I need to select the plug I'm currently using that I already plugged in. That's something the charger could recognize automatically. Um, I don't know why they don't change that. OK. And in terms of charge point operators, is there like, uh, in all the analysis so far some that you like to prefer or that you find are better than others? So in particular, yeah, I mean we're, we're really excited about all the ionity chargers because we know, OK, they all have, you know, 300

or 350 kilowatts. They all have liquid cooled cables. Um, it's a little bit interesting, um, because now, uh, IAT also has these mixed sites with like, um, ABB liquid-cooled, uh, charger with 350 kilowatts, and, um, uh, hypercharger 400, uh, usually without liquid-cooled cables. And for the truck driver, you know, they, they need to make a decision which one do I use, and I'd mostly recommend them actually sticking to the, the, the 350 liquid cooled, um, charger and not go to the slightly more powerful 400 kilowatt

charger because the drops. The power will drop and there's a big risk that, um, somebody plugs in next to you, uh, and you only get 200 kilowatts. Yeah, the, the load management, that's something that many people maybe don't know or not as familiar with and that are wondering why they don't get them the full power that they were expecting is because maybe to to explain to the to the listeners, there's always a a load management on site, right? And maybe you can elaborate what what type

of strategies you have discovered so far. So this is something we take very, very seriously. This is, uh, something we've been adding to the database from day one is sort of what is the load management at site. So this peak charging power. How much can I rely on it? And we sort of have three levels, um, of sort of high load management that means that there is a high probability that you'll get significantly less power, uh, or we have low, uh, load management, that means, uh

you're almost guaranteed to get, uh, that power. And, um, high powered charging sites are usually load managed, um, if it's a. Centrally, um, managed, uh, one power cabinet with multiple, uh, uh, dispensers, uh, yeah, the, the power of the power cabinets defines what the maximum charging speed is and the more people plug into the same power cabinet. Uh, the lower the power and the grid connection usually matches, um, the power of the central power cabinet. If you have multiple of these central power cabinets and multiple

systems, there probably is sort of a load management going on between them as well, where they cannot actually operate every power cabinet at full capacity at the same time. Similar to when you have these all in one systems from uh Albutronic, for example, uh, there, if you have, you know, 10 chargers with 400 kilowatts each, um, they cannot all operate at that power at the same time. Which is kind of a little bit wasteful because you have sort of AC to DC power converters there on

site that can't be fully utilized. That's why these satellite systems where it's one central power cabinet. have some advantages because you only have exactly as many ACDC converters as you have grid connection. Yeah, and there's also peak shaving going on sometimes by the charge point operator, not only to protect the circuit breaker limit at the grid connection point, but also to save some money on the peak they have to pay for this DSL, right? That's. Yeah, if they, if they're smart, uh, they have, uh, a

peak shaving, um, limiter in there as well. But the, the question, of course, for the CPO is, OK, where do I actually set the limit? Because, um, you know, if I expect actually a lot, the site to be at full, uh, uh, occupancy regularly, I should probably be willing to pay for the full, um, grid fees. Um, if I think it was a fluke, and I actually don't think the rest of the year there'll be, uh, ever a situation where everything is in use at the

same time, then it doesn't make sense to give, uh, the user the power, uh, even though I could, even though the grid connection is there, even though, you know, everything's ready, but if you do peak shaving. You're not giving the user as much power as you could because you're trying to save money, uh, yeah, and, and one thing also, also that is interesting, I think is the difference between trucks and passenger vehicles. So the EV driver that knows the charging peak it can get from a

350 kilowatt Ionity or whatever other, um, charger charging operator, they rarely reach or never reach at the at this point in time. Still, uh, most of the vehicles are are capped. Because of the onboard electronics, right, so you have a 400 volt system and it mostly can get, I think Porsche, Porsche was 4, was 400 or 8, Porsche, the T Titan was the 1st, 800 volt, um, vehicle, but actually the, the voltage of the battery doesn't play.

Any role in, in, in sort of, uh, how fast the car can can charge. Um, the only thing that matters is battery temperature and SLC um, and, uh, the, the voltage only means essentially if the charging cable going from the charger to the vehicle, if that's a limiting factor or not. Um, because these cables can typically, if they're uncooled, only be boosted up to 500 amps for a short amount of, uh, time. Um, and, uh, that's just the advantage of an 800 volt system is that

you can, uh, with the right, uh, charger, then do 500 amps continuously. And that's sort of what we, we see happening. Uh, and that gets you to almost 400 kilowatts, and that's what most trucks are actually pulling. But isn't the power, the multiplication of the of the current and the and the voltage? So, so if you have an 800 volt, you would have double as much as a 400 volt. So if you have 800 volts, you can get the same charging power with half the charging

current. And the limiting factor, the current would have double, yeah, sure, yeah, um, and the limiting factor, uh, is usually the charging cable, uh, from the charger to the vehicle, and, uh, there, if you, yeah, have an uncooled cable, it helps a lot to have an 800 volt, uh, trucks have a bigger cable than passenger vehicles. That's the, the reason they can charge at those high level of power. Um, so trucks can go up to 400 kg. They can actually go much higher. So 400 kilowatts

doesn't really tickle, uh, a truck battery because, you know, if it's 600 kilowatts of total energy capacity, um, the C rate is what you call the, the sort of relation between charging power and, and battery capacity isn't very high. So, Uh, they could probably charge, you know, also with 800 kilowatts. Uh, that would be then starting to be interesting, which is great because that means you don't really need to precondition the batteries, uh, before the truck charges. Passenger vehicle cars, they need to be very carefully

uh, usually brought up to temperature, um, so you need to preheat the battery. Uh, which actually wastes quite a lot of energy, um, and then you plug in and then it can charge really fast, but if it charges really fast, it means that also there are a lot of losses and then you need to cool down the battery again. So everything you, you warm up the battery, you later have to cool down, uh, again. So that's great with trucks, um, you don't need to really precondition

and you always charge quite quick. Because what happens if you charge a battery at a low temperature. Um, the battery management system will simply not allow a high current, and you'll be stuck with the low charging power because the battery gets damaged. The battery would get damaged if the battery management system wouldn't limit the power. Yes, yeah, so that's the whole game with preconditioning that you avoid. Damaging on the one hand and even just in in the empower the battery to charge at higher currents and

higher, therefore our higher power, um which is a big topic. I think in one of the videos, the last videos I was watching the the the the to be to be also really was. Looking at how each OEM has made the logic of the preconditioning work, right, that's something that the OEM decides on how it also works, right? You don't as a user, you don't have so much flexibility or do the truckers, um, and I think it affects the trucker. In his day to day as

well, how this preconditioning works right in the planning, yeah, as I said, the trucks don't need that much because the charging power isn't that big compared to the total battery capacity, but what I did find very Interesting is that, uh, most trucks have sort of a way to limit the charging power, um, and, uh, even the default is usually to charge at a lower power and you need to individually, uh, click a button. To, uh, unlock the full, uh, power. Um, I'm not quite sure if

it's due to battery, uh, longevity, uh, or, yeah, because of load management they may think it's, it's easier, but yeah, that's something. If your truck isn't charging as quickly as you were hoping, check if that's not an issue. Yeah, and, and talking about the tours of each trucker, how can I imagine, is it like very fixed for each week or also, I mean, in the week sometimes you see these changes, uh, of, of Toby in the, in the videos, uh, so how frequent is this plan

disrupted in terms of oh there's a new order coming in. So, um, the, what Toby does is relatively representative of what the typical long haul, uh, trucker does, um, meaning that, uh, yes, you're, you're constantly. Uh, looking for, uh, stuff to transport from A to B and you're always trying to find a return, um, um, thing to, to bring when you go somewhere you're trying to get something on the way back, um, that's very, yeah, there's uh different, uh, markets where you can sort of, uh

get that, but, um, those usually don't pay as well, so you're, you probably earn more money on the way there and, and try to just, um, cover your costs on the way back. That's typical for a long haul, uh, trucker, but as I said, there are also a lot of trucks just doing the same route every day, uh, or having sort of a weekly schedule that's, uh, looks the same every day. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's a tough job. It's not sleeping at home, uh

many times, uh, and, uh, being in all kinds of situations. It's, it's a hard life. Uh, and I, I greatly respect, uh, the service they do. Everything we own. Um, he was in a trunk at some point and, uh, we need to, you know, help them decarbonize and, and, um, go electric, but, uh, it's, it's not a given and, uh, we need to be thankful. And talking a bit about the trucker life behind the curtain, so everybody who's watched the videos and Who hasn't uh recommended

uh to watch the Electrohocker videos? What's the, the, the behind the curtains that you get to, to know, uh, of, of Toby, and, you know, he's, he's great. He's super honest. He tells, says it like it is, and, uh, so it's not that much different, uh, behind, uh, the, the curtains. Um, but it, it is, uh, a, a hard life and he makes it look easy, uh, and I think that's, um. Yeah, something we, we need to keep in, in, in mind is that, OK, we

need to support our truckers, uh, with the right tools to, to make it happen because not everybody is sort of coming from the charging industry and has all this knowledge also, uh, we just talked about sort of charging power and, and how to use all the, uh, payment, uh, devices and. Um, do all the settings. That's, you know, hard stuff, and, and that's also a role for us where we can educate, um, truck drivers on, on how to drive an electric truck. But will, will eventually

truckers also use a credit card just to pay or to make it easy or, um. So for trucks, typically, uh, not, um, truck drivers, uh, so far don't really get issued a company credit card, um, you know, it's something that wouldn't be a huge issue and in other markets in America, for example, it's, it's normal to sort of Issue, a credit card. You can even have, um, uh, something called a merchant category code restricted credit card, uh, which means you can only use this credit card

for specific, uh, services. So, for example, just for charging or just for charging and washing your car. Um, and, uh, for passenger vehicles, I had some hope for this kind of card to become more, um, uh, common. But right now, the, I think we, we all agree the system's kind of broken, the, the, the credit, the price you pay per kilowatt-hour with the credit card. I, uh, more of a price signal to the other players in the ecosystem, hey, this is sort of my initial offer

Come to me, let's negotiate a better price and, and, and find that. And sort of, if you pay with credit card, you're kind of the, the loser and, uh, not really getting the, the, the, the price you deserve. Um, I think that's a tragedy and it's, it's really sad. Um, I would love to see, you know, more dynamic pricing as well. I love on peak and off-peak pricing. I think, uh, You know, our infrastructure is very valuable. Uh, soon we'll have more, uh, cars and trucks

on the road, uh, than infrastructure, and we need to balance things out. And the best way we can do that, and the best we can fairly do it is by making it more expensive, uh, when we have high demand and less expensive during off-peak hours and spreading out, um, the, the load. And it's Not great that we don't really have the systems because I think CPOs are willing to, to go this way, but the way we currently have it set up with um MSPs in the

middle, they can't really forward those uh dynamic prices so well, uh, to the end customers. So we're in a system we're kind of like in this Nash equilibrium or or prisoner's dilemma where everybody's behaving according to their own best interest. But we're not at the system optimal, uh, and we need some sort of jolt or change in the rules, even though I'm not a big fan of regulation. I think we sort of over-regulated the, the charging ecosystem, uh, by quite a lot, um, right now. Um

but we need some shock to the system to get us into a better equilibrium. So yeah, one going in that direction, the having a spot market, for example, orientation also in the dynamic prices for a trucker would enable to even charge even lower price, right at the noon when there's lots of sun. Yeah, I mean, the, the question is sort of what you want to optimize for. Do you wanna optimize for, um, the congestion at the charting site, sort of when you have a lot of

demand and you, you wanna avoid waiting lines, or do you want to optimize for the energy purchase, uh, and sort of enable to offer the lowest prices, uh, by, you know, going really low when the price is negative, uh, for example. Um, historically, I've been more, uh, sort of a fan of this on-peak and off-peak pricing to manage congestion, but I'm warming up more and more also because it, it's just more, um, predictable and you know exactly, OK, next week, what the price will be at

a certain time, uh, but it's still time variable, um, and still spreads out the, the demand. But more and more I'm warming up to the idea of having the the day ahead prices or the spot market prices go straight to the vehicle, um, that, you know, if you make it transparent, it seems like a fine idea. And when the truckers have these long hours and during the night, do you even see bidirectional charging. Where it's what was it 9 hours or 10 hours. So yeah, what

we, what we have is flexibility. The question is how do we use that flexibility? Do we use that flexibility that, you know, they, they're there for 9 hours to lower the charging power to maybe 100 kilowatts and just charge for, you know, 567 hours, or do we say, OK, let's install actually a fast charger, get's put a 300 kilowatt charger there. And delay charging until sort of the electricity is really cheap in the night, and then you, you charge that up. Um, and then you can

go one step further and say, OK, actually, let's put a, maybe a little bit even higher power, uh, charger and then And during that one hour where it's, uh, really cheap, we, we, we load up on energy, uh, and then we discharge it later in the night, uh, when, uh, it may be, uh, more expensive. But then we need to recharge it really quickly before we go. So then you have more, uh, demands on, on the infrastructure. Um. Unfortunately, and what I see is that the

nighttime when most of these cars are or trucks are stationary. In the energy market isn't the most interesting time of the day, um, so I'm a little bit concerned that the, the sort of, um, charging losses that you have to a certain extent. Don't fully compensate, um, that if the truck is, you know, stationary, uh, over the day, and, you know, that might be a trend we see. Maybe, you know, at some point, a logistics company say, hey, let's flip this around, let's drive at night

Um, because also, uh, on the Brenner, for example, now, uh, electric trucks are allowed to drive at night. Um, and that might flip everything and we say, OK, actually, during the day, we can charge really cheaply on solar energy. Uh, but then for the truck driver, of course, it's not so nice because then they need to drive at night, but Um, if it makes economic sense, yeah, that might also thinking of like, um, longer time periods at night, but then during the weekend or think about

stuff like autom autonomous vehicles that might also affect actually your business model eventually. So talking about that and getting also towards uh the end of the podcast and what what in the future what are trends that you are particularly uh excited about in in the electric trucker world and in and in in macro trends and how it would affect your um your business. So right now I'm, I'm mostly worried about AI and how that's gonna affect, uh, you know, all our jobs. Um, the, for trucking

in particular, um, you know, autonomous, uh, driving, you know, has gone through, uh, a few hype cycles now. Um, you know, it should be possible at some point. Uh, but the question then is, you know, how does recharging actually work, and that was kind of fun at NEO, you know, we already had a system that was fully automated, so you could, you know, battery swap is, is, you can do it, uh, without anybody inside, and, uh, the, the car can sort of replenish itself. Um, when

we have autonomous cars or trucks, we also need to think of autonomous and automatic charging solutions. Um, and I, yeah, I saw a lot of also failed projects with, with charging robots that, that sort of plug in from the side and inductive charging isn't going to be relevant for trucks, uh, at all, um. Uh, you just have, in general, inductive charging, of course, you have even more charging losses. Um, you kind of need to have something similar to a, um, onboard charger inside of the vehicle

um, because, you know, the AC, uh, waves need to be converted into DC power for the battery. So you're As much power as you want to have, uh, inductively, you need to have, uh, a, a pretty big, um, AC to DC converter. In the car, um, so I don't believe that will be happening, but you could also have an underbody, uh, device, uh, that sort of, you know, touches the vehicle and, and, um, gives power through that. But that's, of course, also on the underside of

the vehicle is very delicate and, uh, I don't know how robust such a system must be, so. For trucks, I haven't really found a better automatic, uh, replenishing system than actually battery swapping. And I think battery swapping for trucks could be booming in China, uh, a game changer. It perfectly works in China. CATL is betting on it now. CATL has a system, um, you know, we, we were at a company called e-Haul, uh, which in Germany near Berlin has a demonstrator for, uh, a great, um

Uh, battery swap, uh, system for trucks. You just go in from the side. It's even much more simpler than for passenger vehicles. Like, uh, a NO power swap station is, is a marvel of technology and super complex. Uh, for trucks, you can make it much simpler. Also, because you don't need to worry about sort of ride comfort, uh, you know, the NO power substation is, uh, made super smooth that as a, um, you don't feel scared or anything while you're inside the vehicle. But for trucks

you don't need all of that and you can make it super simple, super fast. Um, so if autonomous trucks comes, I, I, I bet, um, truck, uh, battery swapping will also be around the corner. Alright, yeah, and um is there any last few messages or um also ways people can contact you? Yeah, so, uh, please, you know, go ahead, uh, download the, the eTrucker app, uh, check it out for yourself. Um, we'd, we'd love some feedback on, on certain sites you might have visited, uh, before

Um, you know, if you work for a charge point operator and, and wanna sort of learn more about how to, uh, make your sites more truck friendly, uh, we, we'd love to, to help out and, um, help you also with, with site designs because we've seen all kinds of, uh, layouts and, uh, some are better than others and the charge port position is, is a. Uh, big topic, um, there as well, but, um, yeah, have, have fun and, uh, let's get, uh, heavy duty trucking, uh

electric. Thanks a lot and best of luck. Thank you. And this was the episode with Michael Clarke from the Electric Trucker. Impressive background, multicultural, and especially working at so many interesting companies and so varied roles starting from Tesla, where he had to convince hotel owners to install chargers, but also at Porsche in interesting aspects really to route planning and how to integrate into the vehicles and. Different voltage, high voltage levels in the Taikan, which was the most impressive EV of the first EV history, and then

of course NO on uh charging in the ecosystem there for swapping and, and what we learned on er swapping experiences, prices and especially the dynamic tariff for the EV drivers at home, being one of the first smart charging apps in the market. I also liked how he compared the different pace of innovation and especially the Chinese one and what we can learn from there. Just pace of innovation and maybe sometimes you just launch a feature for free. And at least the features there, and finally, of

course, in the most important bit of the interview with the electric trucker, even though it's in the infancy still the market, it's will be probably as fast as. He anticipated in my view too, considering that the long haul trucks and generally the logistics companies really care about total cost of ownership and the prices of these trucks have fallen dramatically and the operational costs are very, very low compared to diesel, and there are more and more restrictions as well and indeed the feasibility which is the main

counter objection. To using them is er as it's been displayed by Toby, which, again, the videos are super entertaining, uh uh for the geeks among us that like these topics, I would recommend to watch. It is possible today, and not only in some select countries but even all over Europe to drive these electric trucks. I found the details and the technicalities of charging power levels that we have been exploring with him, but also how charge point operator and chargers differ from one another and the differences

in prices in particular and where the whole industry is going to go to, and of course all the features that the Electric trucker app has and will have. Particularly interesting and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and if you did, share it with those in your network that you think will like it and let's participate in this transition towards e-trucks by sharing it and commenting on it and uh see you soon.

Ep. 23: Michael Clarke eTrucker app founder on Driver-Built Tools, Truck-Ready Charging and Scaling e-Trucker

Transcript