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Smart Charge · 21 March 2025 · 1 hr 11 min

Ep. 7: Wulf Schlachter - Gründer und Geschäftsführer von DXBE über IT, Ionity, E‑Mobilität, Laden, Beratung, Startups, Weltweite Trends

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.

Great to have you here, Wulf. How are you doing today? Hello. Greetings to you. Everything is good with me. I hope it is with you too. And then we can get started, right? Perfect. Let's start with this so our listeners can get to know you a bit: what your background is, maybe how you would normally describe yourself, and we'd like to hear a bit about your studies and other roles you've had so far, and what you're doing now. Thank you. My name is

Ulf Schlachter. I've been CEO of DXBE Management for 17 years. Before that, I worked in telecommunications for nearly 10 years with a large telco – the blue one from Munich, also well-known – and I was responsible for global business there. I had major customers, and these major customers had all sorts of special requests or whatever: from "I'm networking an entire car factory" to "I need a fibre optic connection to the Atacama Desert" for some big wind power plants or telescopes that were observing some nice stars or pulling data from

space. And historically, before that, I actually come from law. I'm a fully qualified lawyer. During my studies, I did quite a lot of IT. This was back in the Web 0.1 era, mid-nineties – very, very unusual. I was even asked to leave a lecture once, with the red card, you know, the kind of thing where having a laptop in a lecture was completely unacceptable. This was around 91, 92 when I started, and I had the first mobile tablet or the first laptop

and then during my studies I did quite a lot of IT. Among other things, I built large databases, content management systems, multimedia. At some point I also had responsibility for websites of major football clubs, including top names – FC Bayern, Real Madrid, Juventus Turin – and many, many more. The company was then sold in 1999, and then I happened to end up at an Internet Service Provider that was just being built by Bertelsmann and at the time by Debis Systemhaus, a subsidiary

of Daimler. That was the first real alternative to Deutsche Telekom, and I got in there relatively early and also saw the world from the telecom side. I became known, I'd say, when I came out of stealth mode in 2018 to push forward the topic of e-mobility. Stealth mode means: I was working in parallel on two projects in the early days of e-mobility – you could already say that – from 2015 to 2017, including at Ionity, also known as the European

CPO or Charge Point Operator, with now quite a lot of chargers from Finland to Portugal or from Sicily to the North Cape. At the same time, I was also building up an MMSP, a Mobility Service Provider – also known as Digital Charging Solutions or Charge Now, back then still in the BMW environment. I also did quite a lot of strategy work there, including looking for partners in China, or Japan, South Africa and the like. Wow. Yes, quite comprehensive. Maybe go back a bit, because as you said, it's not that typical to be a lawyer – how did you get into IT? How did you combine the two? Because usually either you have a passion for computer science – those tend to be engineers or you study computer science.

I think I had both. I had both a sense of justice and also recognised computer science relatively early on. And you can imagine what it was like back then: In the early nineties, the IT topic came up. You'd plot graphical data somehow, and it would take half an hour to print out the

A4 page. Things like that. And I saw: okay, you can also work pretty well with numbers. And so I coded accordingly, I also programmed things. Back then it was still a bit more difficult. But it was quite a bit more demanding than a legal degree – or so it felt: basically memorise the whole course, quite a lot, and on the other hand be quite creative. And that's such a balance where you eventually have to say

to yourself: okay, I don't know anyone who completed computer science in parallel with a law degree. That wouldn't even have been possible at the university where I studied, because the two faculties were too far apart in straight-line distance. So I had to decide at some point. I went to a good friend and said: listen, this is how it is. What should I do? Either A or B. And he said: okay, do law. That's secure –

if IT doesn't work out, you can always go back to the other industry. Okay, I was done. I looked at it from the legal side. And back then the offers weren't so attractive that I'd say: okay, public prosecutor's office in Stuttgart or Tübingen, the area where I grew up – wow, that really gets me excited. This was the time when there were a lot of, I'd say, neighbourhood disputes over the garden fence and things like that. And you as a lawyer then – I'd say you worked more in the night shift. And then I said: okay. Then I happened to meet someone on a flight from New York to London. And this was the CTO of the ATP Tour tennis organisation. And then we got into conversation. And after the flight, those six hours, he said: yes, come by in London. We have an idea. We want to build a media house. And yes, so I was responsible for broadcast, everything that involves IT, and databases, because

from that point we were handling all the data. So I was involved in building up the whole infrastructure for this media company, working with broadcasters and handling massive amounts of data that needed to be processed in real time for tennis broadcasts. It was quite an intense project, but it gave me my first real taste of how IT could be applied to solve complex business problems. And that's really where my career took off from there.

I was sure that you could make money with data in the future as well. So in other words: the first task was to collect everything you had in terms of game results from 1970 to back then 1993, 94, 95. And try to create some structure in that. And yes, that was the early days. For me it was at a lot of tennis tournaments with a lot of big names pretty much around the world. Whether it was Andre Agassi or Steffi Graf, whom I also happened to meet one time in Stuttgart in the

underground car park, where I almost drove into her. The liaison would have ended relatively quickly somehow, you could say, because it wasn't known yet. The Bild newspaper came along much later. I already knew about it two months before. So I was out and about with people who were writing contemporary history back then. Very cool. And the same thing with football. I operated FC Bayern fan pages, among other things. And those were the kinds of things. Well, you ended up in constant exchange with Hoeneß and Rummenigge

and Karl Hopfner, the CFO. Somehow exciting. So what that means is, if I understood correctly: you completed your law degree, but then you decided, okay, let's do something else. Exactly. Let's do something else. And then that was your first job with that. Exactly. I did tennis and sports – and yes, that was the first, also the first startup experience. We built a company, and it was eventually sold because the person who bought it

wanted to create a sports betting provider in Europe. It was an American company. And I said: no, that's too hot for me. As a lawyer you know that sports betting was still highly illegal in Europe at the end of the 90s. And accordingly I said: no, I'm going to do something else. Then I was walking down Leopoldstrasse in Munich and I happened to meet someone from Bertelsmann who said: hey, don't you fancy it? What are you doing? Well, I don't know. Yeah, something with IT

somehow. Yeah, do you want to stop by tomorrow? That's how I got my next job. It seems like a red thread is developing. But now you have to explain more precisely how you were walking down Leopoldstrasse and suddenly met someone. I met someone – we were working with what were called outdoor cases at the ATP Tour back then. An outdoor case: you had a modem in it to basically feed match data to headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach – that's in the north of Florida – onto a server. So all data,

any results, were then uploaded to the server daily, usually in the evening, once a day somehow. Whether you were in Moscow or Hong Kong or Shanghai, these cases worked everywhere. And they came from a Bertelsmann subsidiary back then. And that's exactly the person responsible that I met in Munich. And that's how I ended up in the IT world or in the ISP world, the internet service provider world. The company grew relatively quickly, it was called Media Ways back then, and was sold to Telefónica after about a year and a half in 2001

with 700 employees. And I suddenly found myself at Telefónica S.A. and then helped manage the large customer business on the consulting side. Those were customers like

the Volkswagen Group, or let's say Santander Bank, Volkswagen Group, everything that German companies were active in Latin America, all the big ones – ThyssenKrupp or Mercedes – with any locations that were networked. On the other hand, also already the first form of Voice over IP, which is standard today, or digital platforms built. That was my world. Cool. So you really got into the telecommunications world. And I also did quite a lot of M&A in the telco world. So it was the time when

the telcos grew big, 2000 to 2006, 2007. After that it was more of a downturn. But you could see that everyone kind of strengthened themselves and tried to redefine their territory or also go new ways accordingly. And so for me it was: I left O2 in 2007. O2 Telefónica, as it was already called back then. I did three merger and acquisition stories before that – and yes, actually it was four. We bought Czech telecom and Telecom Italia shares, then a Vivo deal in Brazil and last but not least O2 in Europe with three countries: Ireland, UK and Germany. And I looked at that and said: okay, I only ever bought consumer activities. I wanted to do business-to-business myself. So actually, what I actually did with my customers at Telefónica, I then did later as well with a different focus. I didn't just sell the connectivity piece that the customer wanted, but I also pushed the connected industry topic

forward. And then you said in 2015 that you had been working on e-mobility projects. That actually started earlier. It started earlier, 2007, or I was a bit behind. So I already had the first projects in 2007 in the direction of connectivity. We put sensors somewhere – in other words nothing other than connected industry in the smart city world on one hand, just as much as networked systems, networked machines. That was my world. And I built a taxonomy model there,

I was sure that you could make money with data in the future as well. So in other words: the first task was to collect everything you had in terms of game results from 1970 to back then 1993, 94, 95. And try to create some structure in that. And yes, that was the early days. For me it was at a lot of tennis tournaments with a lot of big names pretty much around the world. Whether it was Andre Agassi or Steffi Graf, whom I also happened to meet one time in Stuttgart in the

where you as a customer could essentially map everything from the sensor to artificial intelligence all from a single source. These were edge computing cloud solutions, which weren't standard back then. The term Industry 4.0 or IT 4.0 hadn't even been coined yet. So I was already fairly early into these topics. And how was the transition to e-mobility then? That was quite funny. I went through projects in the Middle East because I somehow needed proof of concepts. And I knew a few people

from my distant past. So I looked for all sorts of proof of concepts, and I thought Smart City was pretty good. There was hardly anyone who could interfere with it. I then set up various smart city projects in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And that's when major corporations like IBM, Cisco, Rockwell, ABB, Schneider Electric, Siemens and Bosch, among others, started noticing me. And Bosch thought it was so cool that they invited me to Stuttgart. That was

2010, when they started their own activities with Bosch Ventures in the IoT area. And I was the ramp-up CTO for a unit with – I have to say in retrospect – a terrible name: Bosch Connected Devices and Solutions. No one could remember it. Nowadays it's easier. The organization is now about 18,000 employees and is called Bosch AI, meaning everything in the field of artificial intelligence and similar areas. We were, so to speak, the first cross-industry arm that Bosch – I'd say – built up outside of the

large divisions, or silos as they still exist today. 2010. Exactly, 2010. That makes more sense. Yes, timing-wise. Okay. And those were the early phases where I also worked with Elon Musk, among others, because Elon needed components for the Tesla Model S back then – how shall I put it – everything related to lidar systems, radar systems, any kind of sensors. And Bosch was the preferred partner and also

came to a deal. So in the first Teslas. There was a lot of sensors in them. That's the big controversy in autonomous driving – exactly, whether you have to have lidar systems in them or not. I'm more of a lidar advocate. I think, even if you talk to some experts, they all say: okay, with radar technology there can definitely be problems. There are a few examples of that. Just recently there was a video

where a truck was standing crosswise at night somewhere, invisible, and someone drove straight into it – that wouldn't have happened with a lidar system in the context of object detection. But that was the early phase. I have to say, I found the e-mobility topic quite far away back then. To be honest, I didn't really believe in it. But I did believe that if it comes, it's not enough to just charge at home, you also need to have some kind of charging service in the fast charging range. So

beyond 100 kilowatts, which was the standard back then or wasn't even a standard yet. But from the technological side, that was the standard, to push it further. And that was around the time when I started dealing with charging infrastructure in 2015/16. Can you imagine, that wasn't exactly a time when everyone was running after it and thought the topic was cool. Actually, one has to say: the whole Dieselgate scandal actually

gave the push to advance the topic in Europe as well as in the US. Yes, absolutely. And one more thing here, because Elon Musk is of course already a well-known name: did you actually meet him in person? Yes, I met him several times, and then again later on, here and there repeatedly. Yes, he's quite a character. How do you view the Elon Musk topic? Tesla is currently very much discussed. I'd say this: I see his life's work,

what he built, sort of melting away. You can already tell that – and this isn't just for Tesla – I'd assume you've also heard that last week the second or third rocket in a row crashed at SpaceX. Let's say: Elon can build things. I don't know if he really has an interest now in continuing his life's work, because the identification is simply no longer there, and also his whole political stance, where he currently stands. The closeness to Trump of course

isn't going over well in Europe right now. Yes. So we've actually covered most of the history. One last thing: you mentioned that you're now managing director of DB XBE. Exactly, XBE. And how did it then come about, from the first tasks you mentioned – 2015 to 2018, I think – when you founded XBE. How did the founding come about? Well, we used XBE as a ramp-up vehicle, so to speak. So especially in the environment of – we

then received a commitment. I received a commitment that as a start-up CTO I could build a company with the name EHPC Beteiligung GmbH. That was quite a nice name, another four-letter code. EHPC stood for European High-power Charging. And it was nothing other than the vehicle that we needed or used to build up Ionity back then – until the 10th or 11th of November, 2017, until then, yes, a month later, so just before Christmas, the first charging park also in Ara on the German-Czech border

war. Those were the times. And you can imagine that it was simply about building everything from primary IT to secondary IT. So first: We got an office. It was empty. There were chairs in it, there were tables in it, but no internet connectivity, nothing, no server room, nothing. We didn't even have a doorbell outside. But great equipment, I have to say. So great lights on the ceiling, where you knew: oh wow, I'd like to have those in my living room too. So it was perfectly equipped, but content-wise

nothing. And accordingly, you just have to start taking care of everything. God, I can't believe how often I'd quickly pop into Media Markt to buy something that was urgently needed, also from the IT side. That was an exciting time. Yes, so basically CTO, if you will, for building up Ionity. And Ionity, for listeners who don't know – I think it's a consortium of energy suppliers as well as car manufacturers. Not quite, not quite. So the original form

of Ionity was four major OEMs. That was Mercedes-Benz, that was BMW, Volkswagen Group and Ford Europe. Over the years, Hyundai-Kia joined as well, that happened around 2019. And maybe you've also read that BlackRock as a financial investor entered Ionity for around 900 million US dollars. That's the story. And yes, over the years – I'd say – developed pretty well, active in 23 or 24 countries across Europe. So, as I said, from Finland to Portugal and everything in

between. Yeah, very cool. Is there actually something equivalent outside of Europe, for example in the USA? Yes, there is. There's Electrify America in the USA – it actually already existed before. You could say it's also – I don't want to say a knockoff, but – greetings to Giovanni Palazzo, the current Elli boss, who back then also basically did penance in parallel to me for Volkswagen. Accordingly, that's one candidate that already existed back then, whereas we at Ionity consistently

focused on 350 kW chargers. That was also a topic for me where I said, you have to be – how do you say it nicely – state of the art for five years. And back then Elon was still working with 75 kW or 70 kW and 120 kW Superchargers of the first generation. So you actually had a certain competitive advantage if you look at it that way time-wise. And differently. Yes, there are other providers developing in that space worldwide. I'd say, well, in the USA you might also know IONNA – so IONNA, North America. In China there's also a similar model, especially from Mercedes-Benz, they built Ionity Ski. Well, they were creative with the naming. And then there are similar models that position themselves purely as CPOs, even in Saudi Arabia or in other countries, in Malaysia Charge EV or whatever. There are also, I'd say, quite a few copycats, where I'm also frequently on the road with DXBE now. And how did you then move

from that role as CTO of Ionity to what you do now? I made an intermediate step. I was in between at BMW and helped build ChargeNow and kept running it in parallel. So we were already running projects in parallel in the e-mobility area. And yes, you learn a lot. We also did quite a bit of development back then and we looked at backend systems relatively early on, because, you can imagine, when you build a CPO and for all sorts of different requirements – then today you can say, there's no backend system that fits everything. There's always some special case, there's no one-size-fits-all model. And accordingly, over the years we've done backend audits or tenders for all kinds of large customers or also smaller startups that say: okay, we want to build our own charge point operator network now. And yes, there are quite a few projects from energy suppliers who have issued tenders in the USA, in Europe, in Asia, all the way

to major OEMs. So I think we've supported almost everyone in Europe who now operates their own infrastructure. Also in the USA, even in China we do tenders. In India we did three tenders last year for backend systems – also an interesting market. And then we have retailers, so I'd say the Aldis of the world or Woolworths and Co. We have petrol station operators we do this for, we even helped build a new CPO in Australia –

Ampol. That's ex-Texaco. So we only do the exotic ones. Europe is already simple. In Europe we're also very active with major energy suppliers, so basically all the big ones, you have to say – Enel, E.ON and Co. So that means quite a significant scope and range. Fleets also come into play. We also have various fleet customers and increasingly also – I'd say – not just in the electric vehicle space, but also in the truck sector. We've also done electrification of boats, we've done electrification of

air taxis. Holokoter and Lilium, sadly, sadly. So also in new models like swapping is necessary, so battery swapping and things like that we've already implemented. Test models and ferries are also in our portfolio, so larger activities. Exciting. Yes, one can barely see through it anymore. But if you go by, so to speak, this Pareto principle 80:20 – what would you say? What takes the most time? What are those 20% that consume 80% of your time, what do you

deal with primarily? I would say the backend systems themselves take up the most time, especially when it comes to the complexity and customization that different CPOs need. Each market has its own requirements, regulations are different, the infrastructure is different. So yes, backend systems are certainly the lion's share of the work. Followed by the consulting and the strategy work with the customers, because you have to understand what they want to achieve and then translate that into technical requirements. And then of course the project management and implementation. But I'd say the backend systems are really the 20% that eat up the 80%.

That makes sense. And when you look at RiDERgy now – how does RiDERgy fit into this whole picture? RiDERgy is actually the result of all these experiences. So we started RiDERgy to specifically address the smart charging and load management aspects that we saw were missing or not being done well in the market. Because at the end of the day, you can build the most beautiful charging infrastructure, but if you don't manage the load intelligently, you're going to have problems with grid stability and costs. So RiDERgy is really about bringing all of that expertise together and creating solutions specifically for smart charging, V2G, load management – all those things that are becoming increasingly important as EV penetration grows.

what occupies you the most? Well, I would say 80 per cent is the time you need for onboarding to realise such projects. You have to have the right people. We usually do. Otherwise we bring in external resources. And on the other hand, the 20 per cent is then actually keeping the projects on track. That's the typical world. Every now and then there are – I'd say – changes. The customer reorganises itself, brings in new staff of its own. And accordingly, that's just

the way things go. I meant more the type of projects, 80:20. The projects 80:20 have changed over the last few years, especially in Germany, in the DACH region. Five years ago, so let's say pre-Covid, you were active 99 per cent of your time on innovation projects and 1 per cent was optimisation – classically, whatever you optimise in a chargepoint operator or in a company that deals with e-mobility. Meanwhile it's actually the exact opposite. So it was in between,

in 2023 you still had roughly 80 per cent innovation and 20 per cent optimisation in Germany, so to speak operational excellence. And nowadays it's actually the exact opposite. 80 per cent operational excellence and maybe still 10 per cent innovation and 10 per cent other things. And that other stuff – that's then cooperations, partnerships and the like, where you simply notice: okay, the organisation is not able to build that itself or operate it itself. So you have to run such models with the customer where he then

manages it. And those are also the successful ones – I'd say what we've done over the last few years, there were some interesting ones too. Especially when you somehow bring together a large, ultra-large energy supplier with ultra-large OEMs, where per se nobody believed that such a model would work somehow. Then you say: okay, fine, it worked. Let's do it again. Yeah, exciting. And also on the subject of change and market trends – I think we also discussed that, that right now

a difficult time is underway and a lot of market consolidation is taking place. What sort of trends are you observing in that context? Yes, you mentioned market consolidation and trends. Currently you see very, very many sales processes of companies – from very large to mid-size to start-up. And especially with the start-ups it's really difficult to say: does it have a right to exist or not? Those are also things that maybe came to market too late. You have to be honest: if you tried to come to market with something innovative in 2022,

it automatically doesn't have the level anymore now. Okay, maybe a valuation of 10 million back then, nowadays only a million. So it's also a massive – I'd say – loss of capital or destruction of capital, or also a lack of interest in investing in the direction of e-mobility, you have to say too, from investors, VCs and so on. So if you look at VCs now, you could see that clearly in the last 12 months, that interest has declined. But there is also interest again,

to buy larger entities. So to speak, according to the motto: I'm now buying my world together. If I didn't manage it in earlier times, I'm now putting a lot of money on the table and I'm buying my ecosystem together. That's of course also a way you can grow. But you also have to be able to recognise synergies there, where you say: okay, I want to expand my market, I want to go to Germany, I want to go to France, or where I'm not yet active.

But I know that with the products I have on the market, or that I've already tested in other countries and that work, I can also somehow be successful in Germany. And why do you think that is? That's a typical hype cycle, what you're seeing. If you go back many years – I come from the telecom world and IT world – there were only such curves that rose steeply. And then you get such a – how do you say –

rollercoaster effect. Growth figures of 200, 500, 5,000 per cent. And eventually you always reach the top. And then you fall deep, and you don't know how deep you'll fall. And that's the world we're moving in right now. We haven't quite reached the peak yet. So I'm assuming that by mid-year we'll still hear quite a bit of negative news from the scene and industry, definitely from big players too. So one or two will definitely drop out, as I

suspect, because the financing rounds were simply too small to keep such companies going successfully somehow. You also notice it when you talk to investors. Then they don't feel like putting money in anymore, and they say: "Okay, we'd rather sell it" or "We're putting the company up for sale." But what you do then see: the sale cycles are relatively long. So if you want to sell something now, I'd say – previously you could say after three months, at the latest after six months: "Okay, company has now

landed in safe harbour somewhere." You don't have that today. Today you have to reckon with 12 months plus x, if things go badly. And what are the projects that bring you the most joy or pleasure, where you'd say you really flourish – maybe examples you'd like to mention? Well, the projects where I flourish the most, I'd say, are the ones that I – again in quotation marks – can do in stealth mode. So I love working under the radar and then at some point

One day to open Pandora's box, and something finished comes out that's immediately successful. Those are the kinds of things. That's when the entrepreneur's heart kicks in – probably something Elon has a bit of in that context too. Also: I'm also constantly trying to push the topic forward with my startups that I've co-founded in recent years, even if I don't always have to be in the foreground or in the spotlight. I try to

also help founders over the last eight years and support them in getting financing, driving the right strategy – and of course I also see it when it comes to hiring new staff or employees, as well as technological deployment, and pushing the whole thing from a sales perspective. In the worst case, then I handle everything myself. Those are the kinds of things. Of course it helps when you can pass on a contact to the CEO of XY to one person or another. Then you act as a door-opener, open the door, pass on the contact and say: "Here, go talk to that person, they could use that right now." And then you also see companies like Encharge, which were relatively successful – I helped them too. Just like inCharge – inCharge, the first loyalty program in the e-mobility sector, Simon Vogt and Eugen Letkemann. Exactly, helping those guys found a company coming out of the Porsche world – that's also a corresponding challenge. Or most recently FlexCharge, an energy management solution in Copenhagen, set up with

Robert Brehm and Max Brandt. Those are the kinds of projects I have now, where I try to fill the e-mobility ecosystem with new features, new functionalities, where I see something is missing. So I really try to find white spots, audit them and then say: "Hey, we need something there" – or also the right people for it, who may have approached me on the topic at some point, but I didn't see the need or the demand back then. Exciting.

How many such projects do you support? Well, I try to keep it as low as possible so that startups can have me available one day per week. Currently, I think it's eight projects. Exciting. And as a founder yourself – if you say that gives you the most joy, to lead such a project on its way: could you imagine founding a startup again yourself? Or do you prefer the consultant role? Well, I don't want to completely give up the consultant role in order to do something myself. Yes, well – I'm also not getting any younger, I'm no longer in my twenties. But sure, why not? If the right thing comes along and I also have the right idea, then yes, maybe we'll see. So I don't want to rule anything out, but the team also has to be right. You have to know exactly – I tell every one of my founders: You have to know when you become a burden to your company. And then at the latest

you have to get out. And to be honest: if you look at startups these days, especially with a lot of IT relevance or very specific requirements, especially in a ramp-up phase, you could actually say that you'd have to replace 75 percent of your employees after a year or eighteen months anyway, because the requirements have changed completely – so you have to take that kind of dynamics in such companies into account. And there – well, yes – I don't necessarily have to be involved with a startup until the end of my life.

Makes sense. And you have such good perspectives now. So what actually makes a good founder – in my view especially in the e-mobility sector – and what makes a good consultant? A founder, I'd say, must have a very, very good network. That's what I think is one of the prerequisites these days if you want to found something. You have to have a certain amount of technical and commercial knowledge. Plus – I'd say – a certain

network you can fall back on. And that's from my perspective – those are the two big blocks. On the other hand: These days it's important that you have a good board from the start. So when you found a company, you should already have – I'd say – at least three board members on board who can help you appropriately in difficult situations and complex topics. Those are topics like: How do I strategically align my company? Second, how do I get the sales issue sorted? And third,

how do I map the technological issue in such a way that I'm always state of the art or have a certain technological advantage over other competitors who might come along? And those are, I think, the three big blocks that you as a founder should somehow have in you. You also see that in company valuations. We also do M&A – I haven't mentioned that now – but we're also involved in some M&A processes, stemming from my telecommunications days,

too. And we get pitch decks on the table every day. And then you see what's successful and what's not successful. You can actually rule that out with an almost first glance. So on the basis of the criteria you just mentioned. We have a few other criteria, but overall: If the basic criteria don't fit and you're also not able to theoretically run your business completely from left to right from one day to the next

you really have to stop and think about whether this is going to work. Because if you can't describe your business model in a simple way, if you don't have the right team composition, or if your go-to-market strategy isn't clear – those are the deal-breakers. And we see that quite frequently in the pitch decks that land on our desk. The good founders are the ones who can simplify complexity. They know exactly what their core business is, they have the right people in the right positions, and they can explain their value proposition in a way that anyone can understand it. Those are the ones who usually make it.

And that's also what I look for in a good consultant: the ability to see through complex situations quickly, to know which levers to pull, and to have the network to open doors. A good consultant doesn't try to do everything himself; he enables the founder to do things better and faster. He brings pattern recognition from having seen many situations before, and he knows how to ask the right questions so that the founder finds his own answers. That's the difference between a good consultant and a mediocre one.

turn to the right, then you simply can't be successful. Let me give you an example. Maybe you've heard of Vigo – Vigo from Denmark. Vigo is a rider. Exactly. They operate lots of taxis in Copenhagen, Aarhus and other cities in Denmark, now also in Norway. And here's what happened: They started during Covid. And you can imagine what ride-hailing was doing during Covid. Exactly – zero traffic, nothing. So they chose the other path

instead. They first went into the energy sector and then set up about 30 by 300 kW HPC chargers, so fast chargers, next to each other in one of the main roads in Copenhagen on parking spaces that were available. You can imagine: that business model really saved them. Because when Covid was over, three months later they started their own taxi business or their bus and transport business and were already EBITDA-positive. So if you have a certain flexibility

and you're able to turn your main business into a side business and use that side business – selling or using energy – then you've actually done everything right. Otherwise you would have had to close your company on day one of Covid. And back to the second question: What makes a good consultant? A good consultant – oh boy, that's difficult. I'd say this: As a consultant you always have to listen a lot. You absolutely need to have open ears in a certain sense. That means you need extreme market knowledge. And I see that more or less in some consultants. It's always a question of whether you're a consultant who – let's say – produces nice PowerPoints, or someone who really engages intensively with the market and actual conditions. And what we've also seen: We've taken on projects – projects that had already been worked through three or four times by consulting firms. And it never really

worked. And then customers come to us and ask: "Hey, you're our last hope." So some call me "the Red Dare, the firefighter of e-mobility", others say "the Swiss Army knife of e-mobility" – I heard that from a Swiss customer – or "beacon of light" or "charging pope" and so on. So when you hear things like that, the advance laurels are already pretty high. But I think we've actually managed to date to always deliver to the customer what's right for them. And when

you then see PowerPoint slides that aren't implementable from an execution perspective, because you've noticed that the person who created them has no technical background whatsoever, then it's difficult to position yourself so that you're recognized by the customer as trustworthy, valuable or credible. Yes, then it goes that way. And what topics – when you get into e-mobility as a subject – concern you most? I saw a few posts on LinkedIn

with Alpitronic in them. I think you were invited to Bolzano for the inauguration of the new megawatt charging device, but also used electric cars. Do you have topics that are top of mind for you right now, that particularly concern you or that you find particularly exciting in the industry? Well, for me it's always like this: I can only post what I can make public. And when I'm at events like Alpitronic

in Bolzano – HK 1000, so a megawatt charger presentation – then it's good because everyone knows you there. Then you can write something about it. We also work on projects where, when it's done, I put something out. Otherwise yes, LinkedIn – you're also a follower of mine. I'm definitely controversial there. That means I express my opinion even if some people don't like it. But in that sense

I feel confirmed in what I say, because curiously almost everything I've predicted in my crystal ball has come true – including the problems in the e-mobility sector back at the beginning of last year, January or February, when I made a forecast: "We're going to have a bloody summer" or something like that, or bloody eighteen months or two years – that's exactly what happened. There were many insolvencies in that environment, and so I'm not too shy to present that openly

If something goes wrong, there's always the possibility to improve it. And I remember this charger that stood here in Berlin Grunewald at the highway, and they somehow tried for 11 months to bring it live – and then failed due to German bureaucracy, until eventually the N GmbH or the ministry called me: "Hey, Wulf, we'll take care of it." And three days later the charger had permission and charging was allowed.

Those are the kinds of things where you say: okay, why does someone have to make a fuss and make something like this public? Accordingly, I'm not too shy to point out where things aren't working yet and where you can optimize. And that doesn't matter whether it's an OEM, an energy supplier or a charge point operator who isn't doing their homework. Interesting. Yes, like for example, what you may have also seen: a garbage dump in front of a charger a

few weeks ago. Yes, that's right. That was in Stuttgart, wasn't it? No, where was that again? That was here at Pritzwalk, that area on the A24. No, was it the A24? Yes, I think it was the 27.

That were here at Pritzwalk, that area around the A24. No, was it the A24? Yes, I think it was the 27.

This is all about fleet management and charging optimization – how fleets can electrify – so any type of fleet, whether it's employee vehicles, company cars or staff charging on-site, but especially in logistics. What comes to mind for you? What are the biggest hurdles and tips you can give when a fleet is just in the process of converting or at the beginning – or even already quite far along, but it's still going to take a while to get to 100% electric vehicles? What

would you say? Well, we currently have quite a few projects in the truck sector and some projects in the bus sector. Those are the two topics that are interesting on the fleet side, because they are – let's say – 12 to 15 times more complex than building a CPO, a charge point operator, somewhere on the motorway. Because you have completely different requirements: they come from fleet management, from energy that isn't available or is hard to get, to the fact that you

can't interrupt supply chains, and parking space searches, reservation issues – and so on. Those are the things that are currently hitting us. Of course, the bidirectional charging topic is nice if it ever comes. We now have three countries in Europe that are active in this: France looks relatively good, lots of pilots like always and everywhere, Sweden too, and a little bit of the Netherlands. In Germany, it will certainly take another two years before the topic is regulated so that you can run it outside

of some pilot projects. That's one thing. On the other hand, we're currently dealing quite a lot with battery issues. Wherever grid capacity isn't available, you have to try to get energy some other way – and then only storage helps. Like in the Netherlands for example: 95, 98% of the grid not available anymore. Then there's nothing else to do but to think about battery storage solutions. In parallel with megawatt charging, that's of course a challenge when you have five, six

or eight chargers and you're trying to somehow charge large Mercedes-Benz Actros eActros with 600 kWh batteries. Those are the challenges that are now coming your way. Depot charging is complex, just as much as charging on the motorway – what Milens is currently doing. Those are the kind of CPO activities you see in Europe. Yes, and I would totally agree that this management of energy and limited power capacity at grid connections is a huge hurdle for

fleet operators too. What are there – are there rules of thumb you would give? Apply for grid connection upgrades with the distribution network operator as quickly as possible. There are differences depending on where you apply. So in Germany it usually takes – I'd say – six months. If you're in France, it can be that you get something like that in two weeks. If you're in the UK, it can take a year and a half. In the Netherlands you get – there you have to

bring something first. Exactly. But you also have to pay first in Germany. So you have to put the money on the table first, and then they start working. Then you realize: the money is tied up, but you still see nothing. And that's the evil thing that you then – especially when you're thinking about return on investment a bit – you feel every single day, when you have no grid and you have the charger standing ready, but haven't yet generated the connection

or it hasn't been generated yet. That hurts. What I see a lot is that fleet operators too, especially smaller ones, order the vehicles first. So actually you'd agree with me: chicken-and-egg problem, as I'd say. When you go to large depots for example, what we've seen over the years – even if you have mega-mega depots with 125,000 square meters, where you then have 30 loading ramps or 50 loading ramps or something like that, which does exist – then you might

still have a remainder of 100 kWh that you could get, which are there as an iron reserve. But if you then add five trucks, all eActros, then these 100 kWh are not enough at all. So that doesn't help you. Accordingly, you have to create alternative solutions. If you can't get it at the depot, then you have to try to find an alternative location. I also see a bit of collaborative models where freight forwarders or logistics hub operators also join together

and then accordingly – let's say in the area around the depot – install some charging points. Yes, that's an exciting topic. There's the Smart Freight Hub from the Netherlands on that too, I think they're leading. I would also strongly recommend positioning yourself in that direction if you have the opportunity. Exactly. And then you need reservation, because especially if you have refrigerated or cool chain goods, then there's nothing else to do but also offer reservation for parking spaces and so

on. Batteries – would you say as a rule of thumb that you almost always need them nowadays? Or can you get by without batteries? That depends on the energy supplier that provides it to you. There are – I'd claim now – even municipal utilities that are really good at this, and there are also municipal utilities that have no idea, still have no idea. Accordingly, it really is such a gamble, as I'd say. And on public charging: You mentioned Milins, and trucks, and everything very complex.

I don't know if you know the Electro Trucker. Yes, of course. Tobias Wagner. Exactly, he's showing right now how an electric truck can be driven in practice. How do you see this topic? What are the hurdles still, or the opportunities that already exist, where one shouldn't really have big fears as a fleet operator who doesn't have the option to maybe only charge at the depot, or doesn't have the option to charge at the depot at all?

I've exchanged with other electric truckers as well. I know Tobias Wagner from his time as CEO of Charge X, and at some point he came to me and said: "Wulf, I want to become an electric trucker." I was like: okay. Don't you have contacts with any OEMs? I say: yes, I can open that up for you – Scania, Volvo, whoever. Good. He's doing it now. I think that's good too. That's a good sign. What I've seen: I was at events from truck OEMs, and there

the CEOs always came, and they always brought their best trucker – kind of along the lines of: you can choose your truck. If you drive Scania, then he brought along the chief driver for Scania trucks. And they always used them as influencers, internally in the larger freight companies. He would then always tell how it was at the event, and they basically – how should I put it nicely – used him in a snowball system within the companies to transition from diesel or LNG to

electric trucks. It's already interesting how the companies do this themselves. And I'd say: if you talk to the drivers – I had one recently at Lehrtein on the A2 at the Ionity charging station, where I also charged – was a Dutchman who ran shuttles between Poznan in Poland and Rotterdam, and he was driving with the Volvo electric truck. And he told me that the effort he has per day is one hour more than with the diesel truck.

In terms of effort, you could say it's manageable more. But he said he never had so much relaxed time. So now for these charging times – and especially the truck he had was also fully charged in about an hour with almost 400 kWh battery. But that means – asking more concretely – is that realistic for you right now? You can already do it. We also have customers who drive from South Tyrol to Paderborn or wherever in

day mode and then back again. Yes, as I said: from Poland to Amsterdam, and car transporters from Barcelona to Switzerland with vehicles on top that come from SEAT, on the electric truck. It works, it functions. You have to do a bit of planning. I think that's similar to the electric car though: you learn with every vehicle, and you don't break into a cold sweat when you – let's say – have a remaining range of ten kilometers and you know: okay, in five kilometers the charging station comes, or in six.

That's what you keep hearing from people who are driving an electric truck for the first time: that eventually they themselves test their limits – how far does it go, how far doesn't it go? Are there fleets that come to mind for you that do this particularly well, that you could see as lighthouse projects? In Europe, Amazon is definitely relatively far ahead, and they also operate their own CPO. IKEA does it in a similar model too. They also have their own CPO.

built. Otherwise you notice that the big logistics companies DHL, Schenker and co. are also jumping on the train. But also the classic food retailers, so Lidl and co. The Schwarzgruppe also bought, I think, recently like 50 new e-trucks. Those are already large sums being invested there.

go. We've already had bidirectionality a bit

already mentioned as a topic. That means we could maybe talk about the other topics, what potential there already is, also for fleet operators, on the Smart Charging topic, where you maybe don't have to discharge the battery, but directly during charging. I'd say there are also protocols like ISO 15118. That's Plug and Charge. Then there's also Autocharge, which has been preferred by two larger providers in Europe in the past. That's Fastned and IONITY.

They used Autocharge. It was controversial because security-relevant topics weren't quite cleanly covered. So you can basically read out MAC addresses of vehicles and stuff like that. So Autocharge is currently rather on the decline. This ISO 15118 Plug and Charge is smart charging. That means you drive up to a charging station, the vehicle exchanges data, you don't need a card anymore with which you have to authenticate yourself with the backend. And the backend knows exactly: ah, that's – let's say – Wulf with his BMW. And he

has enabled Plug and Charge in the latest version as well. So things like that. You're talking about PKI public keys that are exchanged that make the whole thing easier, and you don't have to use various authentication methods anymore – credit card or whatever, RFID, QR code, payment processes. This complexity, especially in the area of payment models and systems, will be significantly reduced in the coming years. And on the energy topic, you also see that with larger fleets or larger activities you simply can't

without energy management and load management systems. Whether you operate a depot with two large trucks or – let's say – 50 vehicles, 30 vehicles, 20 vehicles from medical services, elderly care or something else. These are things where you can no longer avoid the topic of energy management system landscapes in order to drive optimization. And what are the challenges? The challenges are – let me say – primarily planning in the fleet area. So which vehicles are allowed to charge when? What does the prioritization

look like? And when do I need to start the energy flow and when not? When do I need to stop? Mapping this entire system in connection with route plans is, I think, the complex part of the whole topic. Yes, and now perhaps looking ahead a bit – we're getting towards the end. There are various forecasts from various institutions. There was once this target of 15 million electric vehicles, then the combustion engine ban in 2035. Recently I also got a forecast from DNV: only 3% combustion engines in 2050.

How do you see this topic? Then there's Trump in power in the USA. There are countries like Norway that already have the combustion engine ban. How do you see it now in the coming years: how will e-mobility develop in the world? As the CEO of Atlante, Stefano Terranova, said a few weeks ago at an event: "E-mobility is unstoppable." And I think that applies especially to the German automotive industry. If they

don't manage to assert themselves on the market in the e-mobility sector, then there is also no life after that in Germany. In other words, then there is no hydrogen or whatever – then the topic is done. Then we simply won't see any European vehicles in Europe anymore. That may also apply to Italy, the same topic as in Germany. But if we fail now, then things look pretty bleak, I'd say, for Germany as an automotive country. That's one thing. On the other hand, you currently see the development in the USA – I don't really know what will happen tomorrow. That's not calculable. On the other hand, you also see a certain uncertainty on the customer base, that is, on the buyer side of vehicles. Should I buy now or shouldn't I? Should I wait or not? Will a new federal government eventually bring new subsidies for electric vehicles or for wallboxes and other things – that could also still come, who knows, to push the whole thing forward. There are too many uncertainty factors and the industry still talks

about technology openness. And that's the topic that was actually discussed five, six, seven years ago and still hasn't been finally clarified to this day. There are always outliers. Did you see: BMW also announced a week ago that they want to bring hydrogen to the market. I don't see it, because the technology unfortunately – and if you also exchange ideas with renowned professors – hasn't developed in such a way that you could say: okay, from this efficiency of 30% or 36%, we've

already reached 50% or over 50%. Then you could say: okay, half of the energy I consume goes into producing the hydrogen. I don't see that at the moment. E-mobility and the topic of electrical energy are simply unbeatable with an efficiency of 97.5, 99%, whatever. At the end of the day, consequently, the energy that we don't have is something that we can't waste on such things unnecessarily. So, in terms of content: we need the energy, or rather hydrogen, for other topics, for example for industrial plants and so on, but not for cars – maybe still for trucks. I can imagine it for a few business models. But you can also see it right now in the bus and public transport sector: many companies have switched to hydrogen buses, which then couldn't drive for three months due to lack of hydrogen. Today there was such an incident somewhere in Poznan, in Poland. We also had it on the railway in Germany – same

topic. Hydrogen trains couldn't run either because a facility in Amsterdam somehow failed and thus the entire ecosystem came to a standstill. On the other hand, you also see many gas stations in the hydrogen environment that have closed – also very prominently in Hamburg: in the HafenCity, one of the first major hydrogen stations, there's nothing left anymore, just a parking lot. Accordingly, it comes down to e-mobility. And accordingly, I also don't believe that in the coming years there will be any other alternatives that bring us more efficiency

than what we currently have. I'm totally with you that hydrogen has mostly no future for me, at least not for mobility. However: how quickly do you think e-mobility will come? Is it faster than expected? We've seen how quickly you can build an ecosystem – let's take China. In China they started drawing up the master plan in 2007/2008, and in 2010 they realized the first charging infrastructure projects – so three years lead time and then ten years of pushing hard. Are you

then in 2020, I'd say, already one of the market leaders in terms of technology in the vehicles they brought to market and in terms of the number of vehicles – it developed into an e-mobility nation within just a few years. If you see it differently: people always talk about Norway or Holland – small markets. Switzerland is also a small market: 150 kilometers in one direction, 150 in the other, 300 kilometers in one direction, 300 in the other. That may work for

then in 2020, I'd say, already one of the market leaders in terms of the technology of the vehicles they brought to market and in terms of the number of vehicles – it developed into an e-mobility nation within just a few years. If you look at it differently: people always point to Norway or Holland – small markets. Switzerland is also a small market: 150 kilometers in one direction, 150 in the other, 300 kilometers in one direction, 300 in the other. That may work for

these countries. But when you look at the size of Germany or Europe – you have much greater distances, you have a much more distributed infrastructure that needs to be built up. That's a completely different dimension. China has done this systematically and very quickly. But I think that in Europe and especially in Germany, with the current uncertainty, we're losing time. We should actually be moving much faster. The infrastructure needs to be expanded much faster, and the framework conditions need to be clearer. Because right now, many investors don't know whether to invest or not.

it can be relatively easy to implement in small countries. But when you have large territorial nations like France, Germany, Spain, or Italy, then it becomes more difficult to implement such models one-to-one. And you can see it right now: after Covid and due to the unavailability of rare earths, supply chains were disrupted, the supply chain didn't work. The automotive industry suffered from that, and you can also see that the Chinese have simply done a better job. I've always said: if you control the battery, then it doesn't matter what the car looks like at the end of the day – technologically you can somehow piece it together. But the battery issue, at around 30 percent of the total cost of the car, is still one of the decisive factors. And if you then buy the battery expensively – let's say a price increase of 10 percent – then that immediately becomes difficult for your business model. You can't say I'll just make the car 10 percent or 30 percent more expensive, which

we've even seen with batteries before, to somehow maintain the margin. So what I'm hearing is: China moves extremely fast, and some smaller countries find it much easier than others. But the larger ones like Germany and France have a relatively high stock of existing vehicles. And you can also see after Covid: electric vehicles were indeed purchased massively, but we've only now reached a magnitude of about 15 percent. That's simply not enough to also implement the

remaining 85 percent. And that needs to happen relatively soon. People keep their vehicles longer, they drive them longer – these are just topics that, if they're not subsidized, are difficult to accelerate otherwise. So, without subsidies for a certain period, the way it went in Norway or in the countries that are now successful, it just goes a bit slower. Yes, thanks. So now I know that I'm not a supporter of subsidies – I'm actually just now, with China and tariffs and so on, what's happening there, someone who seeks competition. So I'm also an advocate of that: let's be competitive with China. I think you can have more fun with that in the end than if you now somehow bury your head in the sand. Totally with you. Yes, in that sense: do you have one last message for the listeners? And maybe also how one can reach you again, if you

are willing to do that?

in that direction.

If you want to stay in touch, what would I recommend? I have various activities coming up in the next few weeks, including at Electrif on 19.03 at 10:00 where I'm speaking about fast charging, high-power charging. What comes next? What does the ecosystem look like? And I have various events – just check me out on LinkedIn. And I have various events coming up, also in the next few days. A couple of podcasts like with you, Claudio – that was fun. And I hope we'll see each other again soon, with an update. Thanks for

being here. And let's stay in touch. Then happy electric driving. Thanks to you as well. Take care. That was exciting, to learn from Wulff from his consulting firm diexbe and his many years of experience in the e-mobility sector as well as telecommunications, innovation and IT, how he looks at the market, what experiences he's gathered. And I particularly found it exciting to hear his experiences with Elon Musk and other big names in the sports sector. Funny anecdotes that he told, how he also looks at the market in China

and what he sees there – global trends in e-mobility, particularly what needs he sees, when it comes to funding, and tips for fleet operators regarding grid connection capacities and the processes you then need to change. And especially also his perspective on innovations, start-ups, and what the various players in the industry are dealing with and how he supports them. I think that was a successful episode with someone who absolutely knows the industry inside and out. And I know that too, since I'm right in the middle of it

myself. So I hope you enjoyed it. Please leave a five-star rating and let us know what you thought of this episode, and feel free to reach out if you have any feedback. And as I said, feel free to get in touch with him on LinkedIn. I think what he posts is interesting. And the topics are really far-reaching – for example, how second-hand e-vehicles are doing on the market, and many other

insights. So we'll stay up to date on Smart Charging until the next episode.

Episode notes

In dieser Episode spreche ich mit Wulf, Berater bei DXBE und langjähriger Experte in E-Mobilität, Telekommunikation, Innovation und IT. Er teilt seine beeindruckenden Erfahrungen aus Projekten mit Branchengrößen wie Elon Musk und spannenden Persönlichkeiten aus dem Sportbereich. Mit unterhaltsamen Anekdoten und tiefen Einblicken beleuchtet Wulff aktuelle Marktchancen weltweit – von China bis Europa. Freut euch auf Praxistipps zu Fördermitteln und Flottenbetrieb, insbesondere zur Netzanschlusskapazität und Prozessoptimierung. Darüber hinaus erörtern wir Trends in Sachen Start-ups und Innovation, und wie man angesichts neuer Technologien vorne mitspielt. Eine kurzweilige Folge, die fundiertes Know-how mit spannenden Geschichten verbindet und allen, die in der E-Mobilität am Ball bleiben wollen, echten Mehrwert bietet. Lasst gern eine Fünf-Sterne-Bewertung da, gebt Feedback und meldet euch jederzeit, wenn ihr Fragen habt oder weitere Impulse sucht!