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Smart Charge · 23 September 2025 · 1 hr 26 min

Ep. 27: Markus Bach, chargecloud CEO über CPMS‑Skalierung, Regulierung und die Zukunft des Ladens

Transcript

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

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

Welcome to Smart Charge. Today's guest is Markus Bach, CEO and CDO of Chargecloud, the Cologne-based SaaS provider for charge point management and billing. We are particularly pleased that Chargecloud is a RiDERgy partner. Together we connect advanced energy management with a strong CPMS ecosystem – Charge Point Management System. Markus' path led through Smart-L, Ladenetz.de, Estions.de and Rheinenergie Cologne Mobil to the project and founding history of Chargecloud. Today he leads a remote-first team and combines technology and business management in one person. In this episode, we talk about EU expansion, the backend history, issues and solutions in calibration law, billing, uptime and customer experience, the marketplace and partnerships, and the trend towards specialization including our partnership. We also look at the roadmap of the standards OCPP version, ISO et cetera, and navigate the regulatory jungle of AfB, credit card terminals and more. We compare CPO and fleet use cases, discuss blocking fees, reservations and dynamic pricing, and get Markus' assessments on smart charging and V2G. Headphones on, charge level checked – let's go. Hi Markus. Great to have you here. You're from Cologne, but you didn't travel today – you arrived yesterday evening. Yes, yesterday evening.

You're also based in Cologne, right? Yes. Tell us a bit about that: where are you originally from, and what's your background before you came to Chargecloud? I'd be happy to. Thanks first for the invitation, Claudio. This is my first podcast – let's see how it goes. My name is Markus. I got into e-mobility almost exactly 15 years ago. I studied in Aachen, business engineering mechanical engineering, and had to do my mandatory internship. I come from a small village, I didn't know any municipal utilities – there was only Eon or RWE or something like that. And a friend pointed out to me that municipal utilities in Aachen were starting e-mobility and had good internship positions available. And that's how I got into e-mobility, participated in the founding of Ladenetz.de and Smart-L, was there for the go-live. And in what year roughly? I think the go-live was early 2011, and I started at the end of October 2010. And I kept developing from the software side and stayed with that.

And from an accent perspective – Southern German, or? No, people always guess Franconia for me. There's a small district in Hesse where you roll the R a bit more. But 90 percent of people guess Franconia. Interesting. And you decided to move to Aachen – for your studies because of the university. RWTH has a very good reputation. Exactly, with mechanical engineering you go to RWTH; I specialized in energy engineering and energy economics. But in the end, e-mobility and software were more interesting. So the software part started around 2011 when I essentially developed the first Google Map for Ladenetz.de where you could also find the charging stations, because it didn't help to build charging stations – someone also had to find them, especially back then. It was really still the time of prototypes, so prototype charging stations. I think some of the first cars came on the market: the Peugeot iOn, I think, Citroën and Mitsubishi. But those were, I think, around 70,

80 kilometers range. Back then everyone was still laughing about e-mobility. Yes, I also have a Nissan Leaf, 24 kWh – in winter it looks really bad too. And that was a 2016 model, I think, or something. Yes, but it has developed well. Yes, fortunately. And that means you were at RWTH – was e-mobility already a topic in your studies back then, so early? Not in my studies. So in the energy economics courses, there was a bit of smart grid as a topic, then when I came from university and went to the municipal utilities, you could see the reality that we were still far away from smart grids or anything like that. But I already wrote my bachelor's thesis back in 2011, I think, really about roaming in e-mobility – that was kind of the start of it. Andreas Pfeiffer was my boss back then. He had this Ladenetz idea, then e-Clearing, and later went to Hubject. He actually wanted to fish me away from my master's degree and take me with him to Berlin for the Hubject founding. But I preferred to finish.

I took a small detour towards hydrogen – so power-to-gas was a big topic back then, and it's coming back a bit now. It was about whether you could make artificial natural gas from hydrogen with electrolyzers and use the natural gas network. My master's thesis then had more of the result: it's not economically worthwhile. The chemical industry also produces so much hydrogen – they consume it all themselves. And actually, if you want to save CO2 most cost-effectively in transport, cars with natural gas would be the most economical because you can just continue using gasoline engines and you already have a natural gas network anyway. So that would be the most cost-effective method. But ultimately I came back to e-mobility – that was always more interesting because you could always do everything. In the meantime, I started my own website, so I always stayed in the topic. And at the end of 2013, early 2014, I started at Rheinenergie in Cologne. And once more, how

did you get to know Chargecloud or how did Chargecloud come about? In 2013, I was at Rheinenergie and we had electric mobility, but we were searching for a CPMS. At that time, there weren't many solutions on the market, it was still quite pioneering. We had Hubject for roaming, we had a few operators, but the CPMS was completely underdeveloped. And at some point – I think this was around 2016 or 2017 – one of my colleagues came up with the idea of developing our own CPMS solution instead of buying one. And because I had the software background and the know-how in e-mobility, I was put in charge of that project. And then at some point, I was allowed to develop this further into a spin-off, which later became Chargecloud.

That's a great story. So Chargecloud emerged from Rheinenergie's need for a CPMS solution, and your team solved that problem. Let me ask you something about your current business: as a SaaS provider for CPMS and billing, what are your core offerings today? Our core offerings are the CPMS – so the charge point management and operation – and billing. Those are the two big pillars. With CPMS, we're talking about managing the charge points, the connectivity, integrations with different charge point hardware manufacturers – so we support all common protocols like OCPP, OCPI and so on. And on the billing side, we offer solutions for the different business models: CPO, B2B, B2C, membership models, dynamic pricing. We also cover the regulatory requirements – especially in Germany, the calibration law is a big topic.

That's really important. And you mentioned calibration law – that's one of these regulatory things that's been a huge pain point for many operators. How do you handle that? Calibration law compliance is indeed one of the most complex requirements for charge point operators in Germany. Basically, the German metrology authority demands that every kilowatt-hour dispensed through a public charging station is metrologically verified – so it must be certified. This has been a challenge for many operators because many of the older systems weren't built with this in mind. We built it into Chargecloud from the ground up. We work with certified hardware, we have the proper interfaces to the calibration authorities, and we make sure that all the data is logged correctly and can be audited. It's not a one-time thing either – you have to maintain compliance continuously.

That makes sense. I imagine that's something that becomes a real differentiator for operators. Beyond calibration law, what other regulatory challenges do you see? There are quite a few. In Germany, there's the anti-corruption law – AfB – that requires you to check your customers and business partners. Then there's the whole payment processing landscape: if you're accepting credit cards, you need to comply with PCI DSS standards. And if you're offering dynamic pricing, you have to deal with even more regulatory requirements around price transparency. And if you expand to other European countries, each one has its own set of rules. It's quite complex, but it's something we're actively solving for our customers.

That's clearly a competitive advantage for Chargecloud. Now, you mentioned the partnership with RiDERgy – can you tell us a bit about how that came about and what it means? We've been looking for a partner in the energy management space for a while. RiDERgy brings sophisticated algorithms and optimization capabilities for smart charging and load management. We realized that combining our CPMS with RiDERgy's energy management creates a really powerful solution for fleet operators and larger CPOs. The idea is that we handle the infrastructure and billing side, while RiDERgy optimizes when and how fast to charge, considering electricity prices, grid constraints, battery health – all these factors. So for our customers, it's a seamless integration that solves both the operational and the optimization problems.

was the origin of Ladenetz? How did that actually come about? I can't really say exactly, because I basically got on board when everything was already there. So the brand was finished. And then it was just the go-live. I understand. And that means: what was the transition like between EClearing and Ladenetz and then to Rheinenergie? It was basically after the bachelor's degree, after the master's. Exactly. I continued with software through my website eions.de.

I also developed this Google Map further, created a cost calculator. A small private project. Exactly, that was one of them. That ran privately on the side, and that was possible as a student. It was just super time-consuming to collect all those charging station data, because the formats were all different. Or new cars kept coming along, and then you always had to enter more technical data for the cost calculator and stuff like that. But I also tried to explain the basics a bit with a blog article, where it

explained the difference between kilowatts and kilowatt-hours, or test drove electric cars, or also explained the connectors: mode 2, mode 3 charging. What does charging power even mean and stuff like that? So basically explaining a bit of e-mobility knowledge out of passion. Or did you already have some idea of making money from it? I tried. Yes, I think never consistently enough. It was always just a side project. In the end it maybe brought in 1,000 euros a month or something. So already okay, but nothing that I

wanted to build my professional life on. And then came the opportunity at Rheinenergie. Rheinenergie had – it was the time of model regions and showcases, so really funding for everything related to research. There was battery technology and stuff like that, setting up the first charging stations. In Cologne, the second phase of the Cologne E-Mobile project was running at the time with Ford as the consortium leader. Rheinenergie was responsible for setting up the charging stations. We had the airport involved, the Cologne public transport company, and in

phase one of the project, it was recognized that there was no proper management software for charging stations on a larger scale. And for that, Rheinenergie had the work package to develop it. And actually, my career start was designed to basically introduce this system at Rheinenergie. I understand. And that was – how long before you came to Chargehout?

That was 2014 when I started. At that time, there was already a project and a partner at Rheinenergie with whom they wanted to found a company. So it was always planned to start a company for this system. But that got delayed because the original partner just wasn't reliable. And then I first took care of the setup in Cologne – so classic project management, including location scouting, small business case for the charging stations. We then went to something similar to contracting models. How

can I actually sell charging stations to companies on a B2B basis? Public was already relatively difficult back then with all the government agencies and stuff. That came later. But that way, I think we built about 100 charging stations or so. And that role then basically led me to Chargehout, because Rheinenergie was also the origin of Chargehout. Or how should you imagine the origin of Chargehout? Exactly. So I always had pretty good luck, being in the right place at the right time. That

then took two years. And in 2016, when we were almost – so, as I said, the partner was unreliable, and then we basically let it fail – we were in preparation. We actually wanted to select a software together with Stadtwerke Düsseldorf. Then we probably would have just bought Ladenetz or has·to·be back then or something. But we then randomly came across Power Cloud, who were also an up-and-coming startup in the energy world back then. And as it happened, my former boss and our

former managing director coincidentally met Volker Lazaro, the e-mobility manager at Mikes at the airport, who also said: "Hey, we're also looking for a software right now." You have to imagine: back then, many systems weren't particularly mature yet. There were a couple of players on the market. There was still the Inocchi system for example, they were very active. Everything that consolidated over the past few years, partly. But there were also some systems that were originally based on something like a socket management

system for campsites. And Mikes had the control station – that was like an industrial PC with touchscreen. And we had that in the basement at Rheinenergie. That meant if I wanted to connect a station or download a CSV Excel list, I had to go to the basement at Rheinenergie with a USB stick and download it there and could then evaluate it on the computer. And Mikes basically said back then, this is not the future now. We need a modern system for managing the charging stations. And

that needs to come with a holistic provider. That means they were also already searching the market. They didn't want to develop it themselves, but basically get involved. We then basically met at the airport. And then we had the three partners at the start to still get the system up and running relatively quickly by the end of the project phase. That's exciting. And then, how did you basically – what team setup was it then? How did it start? My bosses were

was unfortunately absent due to illness. So it was me again. I then handled all the contract negotiations and was able to design the product with Power Cloud and write the business case. And you have to imagine: such a Power Cloud was, I don't know, I think they had 13 people or so, really still operating in a start-up fashion. Rheinenergie as a municipal company, 100 years old, billions in revenue, over 3,000 employees, and then Miges as a typical German hidden champion, world market leader for connectors from the Sauerland, completely family-run – so three very different

partners. But we then worked very harmoniously together because everyone believed in e-mobility and that it would establish itself in the long term, had the same vision and in six months we developed an e-mobility module in Power Cloud's base system for charging station integration. For the developers that was quite nice because it wasn't just dry software all the time, but they could also actually work with a charging station. Yes, founded. You have to go through the district government in Düsseldorf – with municipal companies – to get approval

from the Federal Cartel Office. And then we started. And on day one I basically packed my laptop, moved over and got started. That was then a different office. And in the same team from the three companies? Or were most people hired externally? No, that didn't exist back then. I was alone, went to an old office, and got an apprentice from Rheinenergie added to the team. And the original idea was: Power Cloud develops, and Miges and Rheinenergie have all the contacts

and sales teams and handle sales. And the Charge Cloud was planned as a kind of umbrella where everything comes together. But the services were supposed to be provided by the shareholders. But Power Cloud also won large customers quite quickly and was very busy with that. And we quickly realized we had to do sales ourselves. That meant I did the sales and in 2017 with two freelancers we developed the roaming module and ad-hoc access so we had a comprehensive product. And then things

actually took off quite quickly. So in 2017 we already won customers who are still our most important and largest customers today. Fascinating. And was the initial vision and what you imagined for product features very different from what it became? Not really in terms of features. We still have functions we're implementing that were already in the rough plans back then. And that's also a bit tricky about e-mobility: there are topics – like autocharge, plug and

charge, vehicle-to-grid – we talked about those, I don't know, back in 2010, 2011, 2012. I think the metrology directive issue was solved in 2018. We still have VAT and electricity tax issues and then lots of European topics that are sometimes still not resolved. At the same time, the market sometimes develops faster than you'd think. That meant we always had a lot to do. Because we're a billing system, we also always deal a lot with VAT. Then the pandemic comes along with the VAT reduction and all that

– or this discussion: is a charging process now a power supply? Is it a service? Is it a parking transaction? All of that had to first be figured out. So some things in the industry move very quickly and some take longer than you'd think. That means there are dependencies. Yes, so the good thing with Rheinenergie was: we never limited ourselves to just the public sector, but said it should always include B2B business too. That meant we didn't just develop features for public infrastructure,

but also contracting products. So that I can bill them when I want to sell a charging station to a B2B company and then bill regularly with maintenance contracts – such revenue-sharing so I can involve partners. But we've also always had tariff flexibility. Unfortunately that only caught on in recent years, but the app we launched in 2017 – we've been showing live intermediate meter readings, prices and so on in the app since 2017 because we've always believed:

you don't have a fixed price for all of Europe or Germany, but depending on whether it's a regular customer or an ad-hoc customer or a subscription customer, or whether the customer also has a private electricity supplier contract with the city utilities or not – there should be special rates for that. And in Cologne it was clear: we had park-and-ride car parks where you'd typically park for nine or ten hours. I can't use the same tariff as in Cologne city centre

or at Cologne airport. That meant we always built the tariff logic so that I could design it very flexibly – whether purely public or in the B2B sector. What we don't do and never have done is purely private home wallboxes. That actually only came later when it comes to charging at home for business purposes. Exactly. And can you give some key figures for the company? KPIs, revenue, number of employees, how many countries? I already

said that some things move faster and some slower. We actually had a barbecue in the garden back in 2019 with our former managing director when we had 3,000 charging points in the system. And that was – I think three years later it was ten times that – 30,000. Now we're at over 80,000 charging points. We have major customers in the Netherlands, we're market leaders in the DACH region and we're just now embarking on European expansion, starting with Southern Europe, then France, the Netherlands and then towards Northern Europe. We have about 200 employees, but we're spread

across all of Germany and partly throughout Europe, because in 2020 during the pandemic we started hiring right across Germany, since everyone was working from home anyway. I took over management in 2021 and then fairly quickly said: we're staying with Remote First, that way I can find the specialists for the scaling we had planned.

Yes, and we have hired nationwide. Exactly. Yes, because finding skilled workers, I assume, wouldn't be so easy if you restricted yourself to just Cologne – your headquarters is there – right? What do you think? How easy would it be, or impossible, or? Yes. So, what I just said about the speeds in the industry: Charge Cloud grew as quickly as it did, we didn't have that in our business case in the first years. That is, it went much, much faster than

expected. I used to always say that with every crisis came some kind of subsidy for e-mobility. That started with the financial crisis. I don't know what all came after that, but even with the pandemic, the subsidies came and kind of the breakthrough. And it kept getting faster. In the old business case we still factored in office space that would need to be rented. That became pointless at some point. We're simply a software company, Software as a Service, in

Germany, in the cloud with AWS. Finding the right developers in Germany is sometimes quite challenging. We didn't have too much difficulty finding applicants, partly because our topics were always very interesting – software, sustainability, e-mobility, remote first – those are good recruiting themes. But I think finding those skilled workers just in Cologne wouldn't have been possible that quickly. You have to imagine, we had around 25 employees before the pandemic in 2020. And now over 200

People. Yes, that's definitely an insane scaling. And once more, to catch up with myself and the listeners: you started out alone, if I understood that correctly, and then at some point a manager came on board, and then you became a manager again. Can you sketch out a bit what that journey was like for you personally? And now you're CEO and CTO. Can you maybe also comment on how much this dual role, which isn't really that common,

of course not completely alone. We always had the support of the three shareholders with the teams behind them – always the full support of the shareholders, even now. Our former CEO was head of corporate development at RheinEnergie. He basically built the Charge Cloud in half-time. TankE is a sister company of ours, a classic CPO in Cologne. He had basically a dual role. When he went into retirement, I took it over in 2021, because I always saw it as my baby

that's just what has always fascinated me about e-mobility. Back in 2011 I already had all the freedom you could have during my internship. And in the industry there are always opportunities to develop, and plenty of work – if you invest enough, you're in the right place and you have the right support in the background, things go pretty well. That's exactly what I took on, with the dual role of CTO, which I still hold. There's a bit of a switch there: I still know many parts of the

code by heart. That means for me the challenge in everyday life is more about taking the CEO role a bit more strategically. What does the market look like in three to five years? And then stepping out of this operational day-to-day work, handing it off to people who know it better. Still, especially with the remote-first culture and the complexity of e-mobility, knowledge transfer remains very time-consuming for us. I still do "ask me anything" sessions internally, because you don't always find experts in

e-mobility who have been doing it for five to ten years. That means you often still have to start with: What is AC? What is DC? Kilowatt-hours, kilowatts – explain all the basics. I can think of few industries where I encounter such complexity as in e-mobility. We're basically the interface between the energy sector and the automotive industry. Now all the payment stuff comes on top of that with credit card terminals. And to be in this melting pot somehow, with a lot of pub talk knowledge and political changes of direction –

Over the years there's been the discussion: will it be hydrogen or battery? Earlier I had the discussion about whether we still support Internet Explorer or not. And it's just super time-consuming, always passing on all this knowledge again. Documentation doesn't help with that either, because sometimes you just have to know things or have experienced them in practice. So we promote a lot that employees actually drive an electric car themselves and try it out and go to a charging station. In addition to that

Still, right? You have to imagine the communication chain like this: you have the charging station, the cable, the car, a backend system, a roaming platform, somewhere a payment service provider, then the e-mobility provider and an app. You have at least two mobile connections across the entire chain, different car manufacturers and at least 40, 50 different hardware manufacturers where sometimes you have to plug in the connector first and then authorize yourself. Sometimes you have to authorize yourself first, then plug in the connector – via app, via RFID card, via Plug and Charge. What is the

difference between Plug and Charge and Autocharge, via QR code, via credit card terminal? That is the challenge for us as a CPMS. We map all use cases. That means we have QR code, credit cards, terminal, roaming, our own EMPs – everything. All of that white-label for a few hundred customers. That is enormous complexity. You can't lose focus and on one hand you have to transfer a lot of knowledge, but also say: how deep do we go into certain areas or how deep do we not? And which direction are we going

in? Yes, we'll come back to that in a moment to conclude and round it off. I myself also – we have a similar background there – mechanical engineering and energy technology. Although I haven't coded as much in my life as it seems you have. That's why I'm curious: how did you acquire that? In mechanical engineering studies you do have a few programming courses, but you don't become a programmer or CTO from that. How can we imagine that? With you, did you basically always code an app or games in parallel to

your studies, or even before your studies, or did the knowledge come through the work you then acquired for yourself as CTO? It was very much learning by doing. We always had either freelancers or in-house developers – they coded. So in rare cases did I code anything myself. The website was HTML, PHP, quite simple. Our base system was also PHP at some point. I find PHP relatively nice and easy to

understand. If I have a bit of logic understanding, I understand PHP too, I'd say. And then you also have to understand the database and the connections. I was able to acquire that relatively well, read up on it and learn as I went. But then more when fixing bugs or something like that, and not for new development – I left that to the professionals. What's important is, as I said, understanding this complexity and the logic behind it. I was more of a product owner, so to speak. And how do you handle that in everyday life? How many CTO tasks – how can

one imagine that? And CEO tasks?

In the early years it was completely a mix. You do sales, support and product development all at the same time. I gradually moved more towards product, which is why I got the CTO title later. Lately I've done a bit more sales again. We just reorganized our management team. Now I'm getting support, and then I can dive deeper into product. But it was always important to me to maintain the connection to the market and to customers. The customers from 2017 are still here. We

invite them to Cologne once a year to exchange ideas with them. I still enjoy doing sales from time to time, simply because I learn the most from customer conversations: What are the current challenges in the market? What drives customers? Where is it heading? We don't pursue growth at ChargeSoft as an end in itself. We have stable shareholders and we're pushing for sustainable growth. We deliberately never went into such a hyperscale mode, but we want – we're almost ten

years in – to be here for another ten years too.

And there are so many trends, and you just can't get scattered in e-mobility and develop too much in one direction or another – you have to know where it's going. The thesis is something like this: I think we still have less than four percent electric vehicles as a share of the total vehicle stock in Germany. That means this whole thing is a marathon. Growth will continue like this for another ten, twenty, thirty years. And I think we have around 150,000 public charging points in Germany right now.

For a software company, that's actually nothing. If I wanted to scale a classical software-as-a-service firm, I would do it B2B or B2C in a million unit range. In Germany, e-mobility is always this hype topic that everyone wants to jump into – lots of competition, but the market is super small. And that's why we have this strategy, because I said: We can't focus on a niche within a niche right now. E-mobility is still a niche. If I only did this for hotels or just for supermarkets

or something like that, I'd be even deeper in the niche. And eventually the global players come and replace all the local small software vendors. And we want to avoid that. That's why we're growing, that's why we're expanding in Europe too, but always sustainably, so that customers can rely on us. We'll be here in ten years and we won't be victims of consolidation or political escapades, I'd say. And yes, the issues that are on your mind now: So it's mainly this international expansion and

or what are also issues that customers are grappling with and then accordingly you're grappling with too. Yes, like I said, there are always various trend topics you have to stay current on. We've always had this philosophy of developing things, developing product features, when not the early adopters but the early majority need them. So when it's heading towards mass market, so to speak. That's why not V2G just yet, but Plug and Charge has really taken off in the premium segment

and is becoming very relevant for us now, but it took five to ten years. And timing is very important there. That means we always have a lot to do. But because electric vehicle subsidies were essentially cancelled overnight over the weekend at the end of 2023 in Germany, and we are market leaders in Germany, we suffered greatly from that. We still grew well last year, but certainly not like we did from 2022 to 2023, which were really the most successful years for e-mobility in Germany.

But we also saw that things are running significantly better abroad than in Germany, so last year we adjusted our strategy a bit to expand more across Europe, simply as risk diversification, because the market is still relatively dependent on political decisions. That makes sense. And if you look at the charging software market now – you've already touched on the fact that it's not such a large market – that means you're in competition. How do you differentiate yourselves? How do you try to

convince customers to work with you – so what are your USPs? The most important thing is still trust and reliability. We have a very low churn rate. At our core we're a billing system. We've developed a bit beyond that. But as I said, we were never just in the public sector, but also in the B2B sector, and that allowed us to always cover all use cases in e-mobility. And my thesis there is a bit that

every B2B company with a location actually has the same use cases. So: I have depot charging, I have my own fleet, I have company vehicles that also charge at home, I have guests and I have employees who want to charge their private vehicles with me. And that's new. If I were to say I'm only fleet software or something like that, then I wouldn't be able to bill those private vehicles. But employers don't want to give electricity to their employees for free forever. Cheap, yes, but not

free. That means, as a billing system, we can cover all use cases. We have the particular challenge that everything is always 100 percent white label – so both a challenge and a USP. And we then gradually expanded that business to full-service providers, then wholesale, electrical wholesale and manufacturers who basically want to sell charging stations with SIM cards and billing ready out of the box. All white label. Then we moved towards enterprise and fleets. And now logistics is coming into play a bit.

We can do all of that on one platform. For accountants and auditors it's always particularly interesting: we have all payment flows, all billing on one platform – as I said before, whether you're charging with a QR code, with a credit card terminal, via roaming, via your own app or similar – I have everything in one accounting system. With most of our customers and municipal utilities we then run as a subsidiary ledger, we have all the certifications needed for that. Compliance is becoming increasingly important. And we also burned our fingers a bit in the THG quota market back then.

At that time it was the hype, and then suddenly there were 70 startups that all wanted to trade THG quotas. And that was the moment when we said: no, they specialize in that, we can't do that too. We do our platform, our basics, all use cases – really well, but the basics, so I can cover everything. And for specialization we then founded the marketplace, where we have partners for THG quotas or things like RiDERgy

for you for Smart Charging. If I want to specialize in a vertical, I can do that through vetted marketplace partners. As a customer. Yes. And is there an outlook on that topic? What topics – so maybe on the marketplace: can you give a few more details? Who's involved there? You've already kindly mentioned RiDERgy. Maybe a few other topics – so THG quotas, and are there other topics that could come? Yes, well, recently it's been

Of course AI. That means we have it available on the marketplace. That was one of the first partners with predictive maintenance and reliability. We're just starting with Lemon Flow. That's an AI hotline as first-level support. Parking sensors we have on the marketplace. But we also have quasi non-tech partners for VAT consulting, which is not exactly straightforward. We have partners who automate VAT registration abroad, if I want to expand from Germany abroad as an EMP. That's just coming from the municipal utilities world, but also new for

many others. The charging point is always the place of consumption, and there I have to remit the tax as an EMP and essentially have to register for VAT in every country. You better not do that by hand, but with service providers. The marketplace is quite good for that. Where we're looking around now are more fleet and logistics topics, when it comes to connections to TMS systems, transport management systems for freight forwarders or similar.

We're also always looking at what trends are important right now and what matters for our clients. Interesting. And I think for those who have never built a product and especially haven't built software themselves, you think you build this software and then it just runs. Maybe you could also take our listeners along: What are topics that need to be continuously worked on, that this software needs to be maintained, whether it's standards like OCPP or other things, so that you

Complexity also deserves recognition, which you then have to deliver. I think everyone underestimates that – probably us too at the beginning. It's simply not enough to develop the product once, and then it's done, and then I can scale it, and it works forever. On the one hand, we're always in competition, then there are new features and things like that. I have the scaling I mentioned earlier, from 3,000 to 30,000 charging points, to 100,000, to 300,000. And that's the marathon that's ahead.

Regulation, new card payment terminals. We now have a special challenge with EU expansion in that there are EU directives, but each country implements them differently – like the connection to the National Access Points, where I have to report API data, accessibility, GDPR, e-invoicing and things like that. That comes on top for each country. Let's say habits change in terms of UX. When we started, Internet Explorer still existed. That has evolved. But especially with the maturity of e-

Mobility, the requirements for reliability and uptime also grow. You can no longer afford to shut down the system for an hour for some update or migration or anything like that. You already have to deliver high availability. Security-relevant topics are increasingly coming into play. Data quality.

And that's precisely this car-truck comparison. In logistics, it's simply demanded much, much more strongly. I need to have better data. Which truck can charge where? I pretty much have to guarantee 99.98% reliability – and topics like that. And there's always continuously enough to do. On top of that, there's always the connection to the hardware. It would be very nice if a standard like OCPP was really a standard, but unfortunately there's always a lot of room for interpretation, whether

in roaming with OCPI or towards charging stations with OCPP. That's why we eventually started – we have three people just for testing charging stations and firmware updates, to always ensure compatibility and reliable operation. One sends the measured values this way, another that way – or what I explained earlier with authorisation. And maybe one more thing: people always think there are new nice protocols. I still see new market participants coming to the market, taking the latest protocol version, developing it

and then realizing: nobody can do that, because everyone is still on OCPP 1.6 or on OCPI 2.1.1 or something like that. It takes years before a new protocol version catches on in the market. I think we still have thousands of charging points on our system that only speak OCPP 1.5. And because of the – let's say – wave of bankruptcies in recent years, most recently very large ones like ABB E-mobility, not every CPO can anymore ensure that the manufacturer of the charging station reliably delivers firmware updates for 10 to 15 years. Very interesting. This year

at a trade fair, my advisor said that when he advises companies on which manufacturers to choose, he always recommends paying attention to manufacturers that have a second leg to stand on – like Mennekes, for example, with industrial connectors or automotive suppliers – and not just manufacturers that only offer charging stations. And then the subsidies disappear and they go bankrupt. Then I have my hardware – the hardware should typically stand in the field for 10 to 15 years and then still get regular updates. And how can you imagine that with

OCPP? You've already mentioned a few versions. What's the incentive to move to the next level? And why does it always take so long? That's the big question. The switch from 1.5 to 1.6 was because of different communication protocols, so you could communicate better with charging stations. Previously, that was relatively asynchronous and I had to set up port forwarding and things like that so that the messages arrived where they were supposed to. That got better. 1.6 had a few other challenges, but then

the security profiles came along. I think for 2.0.1, smart charging was actually added, and we have this California Pricing Model. That's sometimes important for card payment terminals, but there's usually a backport for that, so that what would actually only be available from version 2 onwards is still available for 1.6. And everyone always has to participate. That means the CPOs have to participate so that the charging stations get the updates. The manufacturers have to provide the updates. That's sometimes a bit more difficult due to the metrology requirements certification.

Sometimes you need a new PTB test to ensure conformity remains intact when there's an update. In Germany, that delays the issue a bit more. With card payment terminals, the time pressure was very, very great. That means each manufacturer did it a bit differently, focused on one of the backend systems. Some said we'll do it this way, others that way. The market simply hasn't found itself yet, even though it would have to help everyone. But

there's no monopoly or anything like that. That means it's super hard to enforce a standard. And because I had that with the VAT earlier: back then, business consultants told us that it takes about 10 to 15 years before such new models are clarified in the EU. That was like the Amazon Marketplace, when all these importers from other European countries suddenly wanted to sell their goods in Europe via Amazon. I think that's only been automated and clarified in the last 2 or 3 years.

Extremely exciting. And how do you approach this now, especially in the context of internationalization, the regulatory aspects that are country-dependent, so you can ensure compliance? That's not trivial at all. There's no way around it – research, product management, talking to customers about what requirements exist. So we always have people on the ground, and as I said, we've been in the market for nine years now – exactly nine years in October. We've already gathered quite a bit of experience there. You can make a lot of mistakes

We've made mistakes too and learned from them. Eastern Europe is different from Southern Europe, or the UK with Brexit is completely different again, and the electricity market in Scandinavia works entirely differently. You learn that over time – research alone won't help. We're also too small for lobbying efforts. That means we adapt. As a software company, in my view it's usually easiest, though perhaps not the most economical, for the software to adapt to the market. But software

can be kept up to date remotely, hardware on site cannot. It was very good that plug standards now exist. But as I said, I think the Type 2 plug was standardized in 2013. That means in 2012 people didn't even know yet – there was no CCS plug or anything like that. People didn't even know if it would be AC or DC, what the plug would look like or anything. In our system we support everything from the Schuko plug to CEE. We also built e-bus charging stations – I think in 2017 – with

RheinEnergie, with a pantograph. We have shore power connections for ships, where each phase has its own plug – that's called Power Lock. Yes, you learn that, I'd say, over time. You read the standards, implement the standard, then you have to test with manufacturers or with interfaces. In Italy we tested the connection to the tax authorities, where I have to report my invoice. And what regulatory changes or standard changes concern you most? If you can think of one, or

are there too many? You mentioned AFIR a few times. I'd say there are too many. So at the beginning of the year I estimated that 40–50 percent of our development capacity goes into regulation. So as I said, this connection with live data from charging stations and static data from charging stations to these National Access Points – so in Germany the Mobility Data Platform, in Austria I think it's something like Ladestellen.at – reporting there: each country has slightly different standards. Isn't there some kind of aggregator you can rely on, or Eco Movement or something like that? Doesn't that make life easier?

Yes, but not for all countries, and sometimes the standards aren't even finished yet. So I think in Germany the law came into force in April, but the DATEX-II standard was only published in version 1.0 about 12 weeks ago. That means there was a legal requirement, but you couldn't implement it at all. And that happens quite often in e-mobility. We're still waiting for – I think it's the definition of who counts as a charging station operator or CPO under the EnWG and the electricity tax regulation – the last federal government wanted to do that. It was supposed to come into force on January 1st. And yes, then everything fell through, and I haven't heard anything about it since. We want to be a European software company, and it would be very nice if at least the software-side conditions of the EU could be reported and managed uniformly across Europe.

with one standard. That would make life easier for everyone. But it's a matter for individual countries. And you've also talked a lot about the EU. Do you see Charlot's journey going beyond Europe? We haven't planned anything concrete. We see the European market as large and interesting enough for now. Italy and Spain are catching up, developing very dynamically. And you just can't underestimate that. As I said, we want sustainable growth. That's why the USA or China would be too big a risk, one that could ultimately throw the entire company off balance. And my German customers don't benefit if I go to China or the USA. That means there's enough to do here. The market is big enough. Germany, the Netherlands, France are huge markets, then add the UK. That will continue for a few more years. And what do you think about that? I'm half Italian, half German. I always look at those two markets with particular interest, how they compare. For example, a market like Italy is also known for not being such a first-mover advantage or early adopter of e-mobility, in other words. And also structured quite differently, I think, in terms of number of energy suppliers and CPOs. How do you think about the differences between these two markets, for example?

We're mainly active in the DACH region. So far we have one large customer in the Netherlands, have customers in France, Italy, and the first charging points in Spain. That means we already have a very good overview from recent years and we've chosen our strategy very deliberately so that we're starting in Spain and Italy this year because we want to grow with those markets. We're not just going after the really big CPOs. We can also handle mass processes. That's also another feature requirement you asked about. There's a difference whether I'm now operating 50 charging points – I can still manage that somehow

too much of a risk, one that could ultimately throw the entire company off balance. And my German customers don't benefit if I go to China or the USA. That means there's enough to do here. The market is big enough. Germany, the Netherlands, France are huge markets, then add the UK. That will continue for a few more years. And what do you think about that? I'm half Italian, half German. I always look at those two markets with particular interest, how they compare. For example, a market like Italy is also known for not being such a first-mover advantage or early adopters of e-mobility, in other words.

always particularly enjoy looking at how they compare. For instance, a market like Italy is indeed known for not having the first-mover advantage or early adopters of e-mobility, so to speak. And it's also structured quite differently, I think, in terms of the number of energy suppliers and CPOs. How do you think about the differences between these two markets, for example? We're mainly active in the DACH region. So far we have one large customer in the Netherlands, have customers in France, Italy, and the first

charging points in Spain. That means we already have a very good overview from recent years and we've chosen our strategy very deliberately so that we're starting in Spain and Italy this year because we want to grow with those markets. We're not just approaching the really big CPOs. We can also handle mass processes. That's also another feature requirement you asked about. There's a difference whether I'm now operating 50 charging points – I can still manage that somehow

manually – or 5,000 or 50,000. Then I need automation, mass processes and that kind of thing. We already need that in Germany. This starts very small in Spain. I would estimate that in terms of market maturity, Spain and Italy are about four to six years behind Germany. That means people know us in Germany, they don't know us there. Now we first have to build the brand. We're building the sales team on-site because in my view you always need a personal relationship and ideally need to speak the local language.

speak. Get to know markets and grow along with them over 3, 5, 10 years. We're essentially preparing the product for the mature markets – we call those France and the Netherlands – next. There I have completely different challenges. In France I have GIREVE, its own roaming platform, special regulations. In Portugal I had something until recently where you basically had to dock on. And the Netherlands are completely different again. There I have a completely different electricity grid. I

believe there are only 2 percent DC charging points in the Netherlands. That's why they've always been ahead when it comes to smart charging because of the grid constraints. At the same time, a lot of AC charging points were built. But now that's the disadvantage: the Netherlands were always the pioneers. I think they still have the most charging points in all of Europe. But some of them are ten years old or older and a bit past their prime,

when it comes to protocol requirements sometimes. But there's also no central roaming platform like that. That means you have a lot more peer-to-peer connections or similar, a special economic structure when it comes to company cars or that sort of thing. Fastned was early with their charging parks. But the HPC DC ramp-up there, I think, is a bit slower than in other countries. It looks quite good already in Spain. As I said earlier, in Italy I have different regulations when it comes to tax and financial authorities that you

have to pay attention to. And after that come the Nordics and UK for us, which are completely different markets again, just from the electricity market design alone, if I already have a smart meter or can do smart charging quite differently. That comes next. But you have to say when talking about all this complaining about protocols: in e-mobility at least we have something like standards with OCPP or OCPI.

As far as I know, in logistics with TMS systems everything is pretty much individually developed, no standard interfaces. It's similar with banks. Electricity market regulations, so market communication between suppliers and grid operators, is probably slightly different in every European country. And with e-mobility, what you asked about earlier: you could also go to the USA and work with OCPP. At least that's already a standard. But in China it's different, as far as I know. Yeah, you're right.

In most countries OCPP has fortunately prevailed. We also had charging points in Australia for a while, and that ran on OCPP – not really a problem in itself. And the market is also changing in terms of structure. There are MSPs, through AFIR there's now credit card payment, there are CPOs. There's also speculation, particularly a lot in Germany compared to other countries, that there would be a consolidation wave. Charging backends – there are always new players popping up there.

or others that maybe don't exist anymore. How do you see the market developing? What's going to happen in the next, say, five years? I don't dare to say. I don't have a crystal ball. What I've learned – and I've been doing this for 15 years now – is that in e-mobility there isn't one big thing. And nobody can tell you that. Tomorrow everyone will charge one way or another. So I've moved a few times in recent years and have

always driven different electric cars. I think I've been driving only electric since 2017, or 2016. And it always depends on people's life situation, how and where they charge. That means everything has its place somewhere. My mother is over 70 and has been driving an e-Golf for years. But she lives in the countryside with a PV system. She charges at home 95 percent of the time. She doesn't go to EMPs or CPOs. She charges once on the motorway. And that's it. But even my

mother already drives without navigation and gets annoyed when a motorway sometimes doesn't have a charging station. I myself had – I don't know – in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, without a parking space, without a garage. Then I would charge at an AC charging station sometimes. Meanwhile I've moved, I have a charging station in front of my door where I can charge, but I usually charge at my employer's. My girlfriend has an electric car with limited range, has to drive to work every day. I have home office. But she likes to charge her car quickly

at the petrol station or shortly after. That means everything has its justification somewhere. No matter what charging speed, whether it's AC or DC or how I charge. It also depends on: am I driving on holiday right now, am I a sales rep on a business trip or something like that. There are occasionally trends or some fad that gets driven through the village. There have also been flat-rate models or something like that. Some ideas come back every two years or so, then disappear again.

For us, it's important that we can cover everything and continuously develop and stay on top of it. But in the passenger vehicle sector, I still have to find all of that first. As I said, trucks are coming faster than you think. That will have to be found too, but nobody can say what it will all look like in five years. Of course there are trends. But when will solid-state batteries come into series production? When will autonomous driving arrive? How will that affect charging behavior? I

think you can always make your plans in e-mobility for two, three years. But beyond that it gets pretty difficult. This podcast here is also a lot about fleets. How do your customers actually differ depending on whether they're a CPO for public charging or whether they're a fleet customer? For us relatively little. Simply depending on how deeply they use the platform or not. We have pure CPOs that only operate HPC networks, all the way to

quasi fully integrated full-service providers that are CPOs but at the same time also EMPs with their own app. All the way to the completely other end of the spectrum: really large EMPs that are only EMPs and don't have a single charging point bound to us. We have all of that. We started a startup program because we say the startups of today are the big CPOs of tomorrow. We already have some really good success stories where you really build four-digit

numbers of charging points in three years, even as a founder, if you sell well. You could start with us as a CPO or as an EMP and do the complete opposite in two years. We help you with that without having to switch systems or platforms, because migrations are always labour-intensive. Two interesting topics that also concern fleets a lot – in logistics in particular the whole subject of reservation and reservability for trucks, also for the topic of uptime and so that vehicles can do their routes. Is that

a topic for you? And also dynamic electricity tariffs – can you add whether you see that this will come, that it might also be very relevant for trucks, especially with such high power consumption? OCPP can already do reservations, I always think, or almost always, at least from 1.5 onwards. The problem with passenger vehicles was always: OCPP supports the reservation from now on for a period x. That means you have to create all sorts of workarounds to hold the spot for you in advance. But then I have illegally parked vehicles again,

or I also don't want to somehow show in the app that it's reserved. At some charging stations you see such a counter where the reservation runs out. That means I can stand there, wait until the time runs out, and then charge. That's why I've never seen it for passenger vehicles especially in the AC area. For HPC charging parks I would always say: If I want to operate economically as a CPO, a reservation should actually cost just as much as if I charge at 150 kW, because as a CPO it's basically irrelevant to me who charges there usually. If you come five minutes earlier – first come, first served – then you're allowed to charge. Why would I give away these five minutes for free? That means economically a reservation should actually cost about as much as a charging session. I haven't seen that offered that way on the market yet.

On the other hand, sure: if you're Mercedes now and build a Mercedes charging park, then you want to offer your customers this feature as a loyalty benefit. That's the use case I might see in the passenger vehicle sector. Now over the summer holidays there were sometimes queues, as far as I know, at charging parks because they're not designed for this peak load or could never be designed economically nowadays. For freight forwarders, for trucks, that will be something completely different. Then I'm dependent on being able to plan my route exactly when I drive from Munich to Berlin or something like that and being able to use the charging point at the right time. I don't know what it looks like economically, whether

there's the willingness to pay for it either. But there are projects out there. We're a member of the Secure project by Hubject, where it's about queuing and reservations, actually for passenger vehicles. But especially this queue management and reservations is coming on very strong for logistics now. That's the first time I really see the use case. But one more note: I also have to ensure that it works reliably. That means if I – I think ARAL just announced that no passenger vehicles are allowed to charge there anymore so it's also

reserved for the truck. And the, let's say, professional truck charging providers like Milence – they have such a closed-off ground quasi. I have a barrier at the entrance and exit. I know exactly: has the truck left the premises, or has it just been marked out and is still parked and blocking a charging station? Probably monitored by camera or similar. You can handle it completely differently with trucks than with an AC charging station for passenger vehicles in the city centre. And the topic of dynamic tariffs –

that particularly applies to public charging points. There too it always depends on the circumstances. In my view, a lot runs under the buzzword dynamic pricing. Four, five years ago we already developed a feature where a blocking fee only starts when the battery is full, for example. And with us you can combine it anyway so that it's suspended overnight or similar, so I can create flexible prices. And as I said before, I've built the tariff logic so that I can make it dependent

on location or customer groups.

and on customer groups.

I can't yet say how Dynamic Pricing will develop. We're working on being able to adjust the kilowatt-hour price on an hourly basis. But the problem is with the price labelling ordinance and things like that in Germany: what do you promise the customer? What does the customer understand by Dynamic Pricing? And how do you then implement it? And how do you explain it to the accountant in the annual statement, what you charged where, down to the cent? And in Germany it's the way it is with calibration law, that for most charging processes or almost all manufacturers, only

the start and end meter readings are signed. That means I'm not allowed to adjust the kilowatt-hour price between start and end. If you now show the customer in the app that electricity costs 0.60 euros per kilowatt-hour at 6 p.m. or something, and an hour later it's only 0.30 euros, 0.20 euros, 0.10 euros, whatever – but you're not allowed to change it while he's charging. That means if he plugs in a minute before eight and charges at 0.50 euros and could benefit a minute later from the

entire charging process at a discounted rate, the customer won't understand that. You'd have to explain it to him very, very well. I see that as still being a challenge – so more of a user experience issue. You had Felix Hamer on the podcast, didn't you? Yes, exactly. He said he had hoped that in Europe the tariffs would become more uniform. I think he said: in Rome you can pay 1 euro per kilowatt-hour and in Barcelona 0.40 euros or something. That would be my hope too. There were times when

Telekom, for example, was still active as an EMP – those were probably the cheapest times, I think, with a cent per minute or something. But there was also EnBW and Maingau for a long time, where I think you had one tariff across Europe. And that's actually what I would like to know as a customer. If I now drive off in Germany and drive to Rome, I'd like to know beforehand: what would it cost me? With refuelling, after 100 years people kind of have a feel for it. But

I still see dynamic prices as difficult in the public sector. Above all, you won't optimize them for electricity exchange prices or anything like that, but an economically operating CPO will always optimize for utilization. That means it goes in the direction of a petrol station model if I do it ad hoc. And it's most expensive at rush hour. And I would have hoped that we could move away from that, instead I could guarantee stable prices. And I see opposing trends there: everyone talks about Dynamic Pricing, while large CPOs like EnBW or Ionity introduce subscription models or something similar

where I can then charge for 0.99 euros per kilowatt-hour at an HPC charger, which is cheaper than AC – simply because I've taken out a subscription.

But in my view, it's still not entirely clear which direction things are going. Dynamic Pricing is of course very useful if I'm in a non-public area where I don't have to settle B2C or anything like that. But that's always something I classify as Smart Charging. Of course it makes sense if my employees charge their private vehicles during the day, or if I charge my fleet at night, or my buses and lorries, that I optimize that against the exchange. That works great. The cars are parked there for

a couple of hours. And I can save a lot of money. I can optimize it with my own PV system, with storage. That works really well in a local, non-public environment, also in the private sector. If I optimize my home with dynamic electricity tariffs, I'm absolutely on board. But when I'm in a public B2C area, I see it as difficult because on the one hand, utilization is the focus for the CPO and on the other hand mobility is the focus for the private user. That means only a fraction of people can

even be bothered to move their car if it happens to be cheap or something like that. I think you have to look at: Where are the real use cases? How will the market develop? And what is user acceptance like? I think we have a share of under 5 percent of ad-hoc charging processes. In Germany, most of it is still fleets. They have some kind of fuel card, no credit card with them, and they have instructions from their employer about where they have to charge

they have to charge. Do you mean they have to charge? Yes, exactly. And as a private customer, my wish would be to know beforehand what it would cost me. By "beforehand" I don't mean only when I'm at the charging station like at a petrol station and then see: you have to report ad-hoc prices now live. But I'm not going to drive through Cologne to where it's currently cheap because I'm restricted in my mobility. I have to work, I have to shop. And there

I see more of a tendency, for example: all the DIY stores, all the supermarkets have their programs. They're moving away from Payback, bringing their own apps because they want user data. And those will be the customers who get rewarded if you shop at an Aldi or an Obi or something like that, that you can also charge cheaply there. But you go to the supermarket because you have to shop – or to the DIY store or the swimming pool. And not because charging

is ten cents cheaper there. Sure, there's a part of people who will do that. But whether the masses will, I don't know yet. I see much more potential with all the fleet customers in the non-public sector. And as I said, that's Smart Charging for me and not Dynamic Pricing. Let's dig into that a bit more: Smart Charging in the fleet context in the non-public sector, at the company site or at the employee's home.

What other challenges do you see – besides exchange price optimization, and we've already mentioned PV – particularly with regard to this: you also mentioned V2G, that it's not an immediate topic for you. When do you see it coming? What are the biggest challenges until we finally get to this topic, which also holds a lot of potential? I think you're the better expert on this than I am, because we're relying on marketplace partners for Smart Charging, because there

are also enough energy management systems on the market. Because we're always B-to-B-to-B – I always say a bit exaggerated: half the mid-market is our customer – we have a multiplier model. The first B is the CPO, and the last one is the user of the CPO service. Yes, that's the classic model. At us it's called the location partner product. That means our customer is a municipal utility or a full-service provider,

and you as a mid-sized company or as a supermarket, bank or similar, you buy the charging station from the CPO including all services – so billing, maintenance, installation and so on. That's already handled. That would also be an interesting question: how many end users do you process with that? In Germany, that's thousands of end users. That's thousands. Yes. That's also very different depending on the market. In Italy, I think

you're at over 50 percent market share or so. But in the Netherlands you have a lot of small businesses that have all already installed their charging stations and wallboxes. And in Germany you have on the one hand all the mid-market. It always depends on it: with supermarkets, for example – is it a centrally managed chain like Aldi or a owner-operated one like Rewe or Edeka? Then they look for local partners. And quite often we're somewhere in the background. But because

we're 100 percent white label, nobody notices and nobody knows. That's why we're also relying on the marketplace, because no single player can cover all these B2B businesses on their own, each with their own energy management system or fleet management system or similar. That's always different and a special challenge. We cover the smart charging basics with a – in the future – small load shift. But we're not going into the details with storage, PV connection or

anything like that. We leave that to experts like RiDERgy and other marketplace partners. Bidirectional charging – if I understand correctly, the standard will be adopted around the end of next year, then it can slowly start. For us it will be interesting as a billing system: how do I do the billing? Because suddenly I'm also transporting electricity from A to B as an end user and can even import from abroad into the domestic market, quasi via my car. And there are the classic examples: I don't want

I don't know, to charge at 0.70 euros at the charging park and then accidentally feed that into the grid at home for 0.08 euros. That has to be controlled well, billed well. And I think the particular challenge will be again that, as I said, all of this works very, very well if I'm in a closed environment. B to B. I have my own fleet, my own electricity tariff. That doesn't all leave the premises and I only have to balance it internally. But as soon as VAT comes into play or your

income tax as a company car driver or similar, that gets really tricky. What do manufacturers even release? How many cycles are you allowed to use the batteries? And what are you allowed to do, for example, as an employer with your employees' private vehicles whose warranty comes from the manufacturer? The car is private. You use it. You can incentivize it. There will be lots and lots of ideas and models there, I think. Yes. We're of course also dealing very much with such topics, but from a tax law perspective. There are technical challenges with the

whole bidirectional topic. And then there are regulatory hurdles. And one of these regulatory hurdles is the whole tax law topic. Is that something you personally also – you said you're not doing lobbying work – but do you know who is trying, quasi, to solve this question? Because it's not rocket science, but still challenging, I understand the challenge. But it would ultimately be a shame for the world and for everyone if we failed to make V2G happen because of tax law

issues. Do you know, for example, who in Germany is currently dealing with this and who is trying to solve this topic? Because I've already heard the question and the objection frequently – you hear it often – that you don't want the employee to use it quasi at home. But actually you do want that, in my opinion. Actually you want him to drive to work during the day, then at noon bring the solar power from the employer into the car and then be able to use it again in the evening. And sure, you understand the challenges from a tax law perspective,

but from a physics perspective it would actually make a lot of sense, wouldn't it? If you think about it economically across all of Europe, it would probably make a lot of sense. But then it would also make sense to couple the grids more, balance Norway with Southern Europe or use the Sahara. In the end, something like that tends to fail due to bureaucracy or politics, I would say. I don't know anyone in Germany who is explicitly dealing with this. We're currently – we've just completed a white paper on VAT in roaming in Europe. That ultimately had to be clarified by the EU Court of Justice:

Is it now a service? Is it an electricity supply? Is parking a – is it a holistic service or not? If you're unlucky – there's the VAT system directive in Europe, which is actually supposed to standardize this. Electricity is already quite well standardized in Europe, so electricity supply, but for example building-related services are not. That means if it were now a parking process, it could also be classified as a building-related service and then it's different in every country again. As I said, we also have auditors as marketplace partners. We have

all the know-how and the consulting. It's not a nice topic. I don't know if I would have done it if someone had told me beforehand how much I'd have to talk to accountants, tax auditors and so on over all these years. Fortunately I'm not just an engineer, but a business engineer. That means I've studied all that at university too and can participate in the discussion a bit. But yes, it's a real shame that bureaucracy and digitalization – but everything takes 10, 15

years before you even have it. And then you usually only have it at country level and not yet in a European context. And I think that's where the challenge will be. But what you're already seeing now with balcony power plants, home storage, dynamic electricity tariffs at home – well, Germany is still lagging far behind with a smart meter – but optimizing something like that in a closed area works really well. It also makes total sense until it expands into the European system. I think a lot more discussions will be held there.

Yes. And now let's take a look ahead: What do you personally find most exciting in e-mobility – or also in the energy transition – the most? Topics that will come, where you can hardly wait for them to arrive. Doesn't have to be about charging, but can be if you want.

I'm in e-mobility because it has this diversity of topics, because you don't know exactly, but can dive really deep into all topics. Personally, I find the whole topic of e-trucks most exciting right now, because it's coming much faster than you think, and what is something completely new – or what do I mean by completely new – but it's different from just cars. Different requirements, different industry that you have to get up to speed on a bit. As I said, countries are very exciting for us right now.

Overall, I'm very curious how the next three to five years will develop. When I started, it was always this word "tipping point". When does the tipping point come? My former boss once said something good about autonomous driving. He said: When the insurance industry realizes that the computer, the AI, drives better than you as a human, then your insurance premium will eventually become so expensive that you can no longer afford to drive a private car. That means sometimes such things

can accelerate trends. And then it goes faster than you think. That's such a tipping point. And with electric cars it used to be – or e-mobility in general: The breakthrough comes in two years. In two years the cars come, the technology comes, all that and more comes.

You probably thought so in 2022, 2023, when the registration numbers skyrocketed: This is now the moment when it came. And then it came again: Subsidies stopped, the market collapsed again. And then you think: Now we had two years of stagnation, and now it takes another two years before it comes back. I think Mr. Dudenhöffer once said that cost us five years in market development – even now with the new depreciation allowances, until we're back to where we were. And now

the question is: When does the ID.2, the ID.1 come? When do the cheap cars come to the market? Is that the tipping point? Or because the EU has softened the regulations for CO2 limit values, the breakeven between combustion engines and electric cars is also conveniently delayed by two years. That's why: The future in e-mobility feels like it's always in two years. But with e-trucks I'm very confident that it will go faster than you think. Great. How could people reach you

if they had a point? And what's the last message you'd like to give to the listeners? I'm best reached on LinkedIn – just connect and write to me there. The last point for me is: E-mobility is here to stay. We don't need to discuss hydrogen or combustion engine bans if this tipping point comes, the cars become more economical and people have learned how much fun an electric car is, how good it

drives and that it's absolutely no problem today to drive across all of Europe with an electric car. Then e-mobility can't be stopped. And for that I just wish for stable framework conditions and no discussions about combustion engine bans or not, or should we do this now or not, or is hydrogen coming or not. Just do it – then it will go faster. And maintain one direction. Charge Cloud definitely moves the market forward.

Thanks for that. And thanks for the conversation. Thanks for the invitation, it was a lot of fun. You're welcome. And that was an exciting episode with Markus, the CTO and Co-CEO of Charge Cloud, one of the leading providers of charging software in the DACH region. I found it extremely interesting to learn how he, as a mechanical engineer and energy expert, got into the world of programming – with first positions and then within Charge Cloud and his projects before that with Rhein-Energie –, how he also experienced the charging network at the very beginning and

Above all, the origin story of Charge Cloud: this combination of Power Cloud, Manekes and Rhein-Energie, which brought various competencies, from software expertise to business development and customer access. And then especially to learn the key facts and what has driven Charge Cloud over the years and where the journey is heading. Keywords: European expansion and what it means: remote first for talent acquisition, and in particular what problems Charge Cloud solves, and how complex it is to build such software and in terms of compliance

the various regulatory changes to standards – OCPP and ISO and so on – to stay on top of. So that it's not as trivial as all that, and how he looks at the topic of dynamic pricing and reservability and smart charging, how he sees that very strongly in the private context, and how billing issues with V2G could be complex and the tax-related issues. And you can also sense his passion, how he's fired up about the topic and that he definitely wishes that e-mobility won't come in two years, but now, and is also convinced

that it is that way and that trucks in particular will come much faster than people think. Exciting! If you enjoyed the episode, please share it – that helps us enormously – and give us five stars. Until next time.

Episode notes

In dieser Folge von Smart Charge by RiDERgy sprechen wir mit Markus Bach, CEO und CTO von chargecloud, dem Kölner SaaS-Anbieter für Ladepunkt-Management und Abrechnung. Sein Weg führte von Smartlab und ladenetz.de über RheinEnergie bis hin zur Gründung von chargecloud, wo er seit fast 15 Jahren die Entwicklung der Ladesoftware in Europa prägt. Wir beleuchten, wie chargecloud vom Projekt zur führenden Plattform in der DACH-Region mit über 200 Mitarbeitenden gewachsen ist, warum Remote-First entscheidend für die Skalierung war und welche Rolle Regulierung und Standards dabei spielen. Markus gibt Einblicke in die Herausforderungen rund um Eichrecht, Abrechnung, OCPP- und ISO-Standards sowie die Komplexität, zuverlässige Software für eine fragmentierte Branche zu bauen. Er spricht über die Wichtigkeit eines partnerschaftlichen Ansatzes. Daher führte chargecloud den Marktplatz, wo auch RiDERgy in Sachen Energiemanagement Partner ist. - Die Gründungsgeschichte: Von RheinEnergie, Mennekes und Powercloud zu chargecloud - EU-Expansion und Unterschiede zwischen Märkten wie Deutschland, Italien, Spanien und den Niederlanden - Abrechnung, Eichrecht und die Hürden dynamischer Preismodelle - Smart Charging, Bidirektionalität und steuerrechtliche Fragen - Lehren aus 15 Jahren E-Mobilität und Aufbau einer skalierbaren CPMS-Plattform Zum Schluss teilt Markus, warum er überzeugt ist, dass E-Mobilität längst Realität ist, und weshalb er erwartet, dass die E-LKWs schneller kommen werden, als viele denken.