- EO Charging provides a turnkey service for vehicle fleets, including all the hardware, software and service elements of the electrification stack. President and Chief Commercial Officer John Walsh told us that the software and maintenance layers of the stack are the keys to charger reliability.
- Fleets often overestimate the amount of power they’ll need to keep their EVs charged. Detailed modeling in the early stages of a project, along with good energy management, can help a fleet avoid the costs and delays involved with upgrading a utility connection.
- Different fleets have different infrastructure needs. EO charging offers monthly payment plans based on the number of chargers, kilowatt-hours delivered, or miles traveled, in order to address different customer needs.
Q&A with EO Charging’s John Walsh
How is providing charging infrastructure for EV fleets like running a web site or a cell phone network? All of these worthy endeavors (among others) depend on a stack, which is a hip way of describing a system of interrelated hardware and software products that function together.
Some layers of the stack may be simple, and others may be complex. Some may be seen as commodities, and others may depend on highly specialized proprietary technology. Some may be set-it-and-forget-it systems that are expected to work smoothly, and others may be—for want of a better term—a pain in the neck.
In an emerging field such as EV charging infrastructure, it may be hard for prospective customers to figure out how the different layers of the stack fit together, and which layers require special attention. To add to the confusion, the cast of characters is large, and the relationships among them can be complex—like the list of dramatis personae in a Victorian novel. Some companies specialize in one layer of the stack, and others offer a turnkey package, providing all the products and services themselves and/or subcontracting with other firms.
What’s the best course for a fleet operator to steer? Does it make sense to mix and match different companies for different layers of the stack, or is it better to contract with a turnkey provider, perhaps for a fixed monthly price? For some answers, Charged sat down with John Walsh, President and Chief Commercial Officer of EO Charging, who explained how the layers of the EV fleet charging infrastructure stack fit together, and offered some tips for customers.
Charged: What kind of customers does EO Charging serve?
John Walsh: We do all depot charging, so our target customers are transit authorities, school districts and fleets, such as Amazon, FedEx, UPS, DHL. Also, the truck OEMs that are starting to come online now—Daimler, Bollinger, Workhorse—we’re targeting those as well.
The problem in this industry is that everyone’s all about the cabinet and the hardware. That’s the biggest challenge with charging today—everyone thinks, “Man, if I could just get that wall box on the wall or get that charger in the ground, I’ve got what I need.” And it’s only the beginning.
Charged: You were formerly Chief Commercial Officer at Proterra, a company that we’ve written about a lot. I for one thought it was a great company, and I was shocked when things turned pear-shaped. What happened?
John Walsh: What happened to Proterra through the lens of John Walsh is very disappointing. I left the company over a year ago, a little bit before the storm hit, because I saw the ship sinking. We went public, we did a SPAC, we had a lot of capital that got burned through very fast, and…just mismanagement, I would say, more than anything.
But don’t give up on Proterra. The company was sold in three pieces—battery systems, chargers and buses—and there are three different owners now. Proterra had the best battery technology on the planet, and it’s still the best battery technology. There are a lot of companies that will use their battery systems and have a lot of success. I think the Volvo Group [which bought Proterra’s battery business] will prosper through the technology that was given birth by Proterra.
Sorting through the stack
Charged: For fleets, there are a lot of pieces to the charging puzzle. You have your own proprietary software, and you offer a full turnkey package for fleets.
John Walsh: We do. It’s called a stack, and it’s really six simple points.
The first part is consultation, where you sit down and understand the utility, understand the depot.
The second piece is your design and your installation—you dig up the ground and you put the chargers in.
The third bullet is the hardware—we do business with about six OEM hardware companies. And to us, it’s a customer’s choice. We’ll give them what we feel like are some good alternatives based on the power levels that they need. When you talk to EO Charging, you’re not talking to ABB, Heliox or Siemens—you’re talking to all of them because we’re hardware-agnostic.
The fourth piece is the software. And this is a part of the stack that’s really important that people forget. The software is your fourth bullet, then your fifth bullet is maintenance “Oh, wow. You mean you have to maintain the chargers?” Well, you need to maintain your car, right? So, absolutely.
And then the last piece, and probably the most important piece we have, is a technical operations center [TOC]. If you have a cell phone, there’s a technical operations center that’s resetting your phone all day long, and you don’t even know it. That’s what we’re able to do—we can see that charger in the ground.
We’ll do parts of the stack a la carte. The only thing we will not decouple is the software and the maintenance. If you pick a software provider and a separate maintenance provider, then it’s two different phone calls. That’s what customers are frustrated with. One phone call for that complete stack—design it for me, put it in the ground, give me the hardware, maintain it for me for 10 years—that’s the solution they’re looking for, and that’s what we do.
One of our original investors was a company called Amazon, and they demanded 99% uptime. And that’s what we offer customers. You could ask Amazon, “Tell me about EO, and tell me about your uptime,” and they’d say it’s 99.7. They will tell you that, not us—they’re a very demanding customer.
“We’ll do parts of the stack a la carte. The only thing we will not decouple is the software and the maintenance.”
Depot chargers are reliable, aren’t they?
Charged: Charger reliability is a scandal, and I strongly suspect that a lot of the problems are because there might be half a dozen companies and organizations involved with a project.
John Walsh: You’ve hit the nail on the head. We do partner with certain customers or certain companies. For engineering, we might partner with someone. I’ll partner at the top of the stack, but once it’s in the ground, it’s all me. It’s my software, it’s my maintenance, it’s my TOC, and that’s the key to reliability that everyone’s complaining about.
Charged: Now, I know you don’t do public charging, you only do fleet depot charging. I’m guessing the latter doesn’t have as many challenges with reliability. Am I right?
John Walsh: No.It’s just as bad. I’m sorry to report that reliability with depot chargers is about the same as with public. I was once at an APTA [American Public Transportation Association] meeting—all transit agencies—and I asked them, “Who has 90% reliability at your depots? Who has 80% reliability?” It was when I got to 70% and 60% that people started raising their hands. It’s not a number that we’re making up.
If we go to a customer and they say, “We’ve got three different brands of chargers in this massive depot because we bought them at different times, and we ended up buying ABB, Siemens and Heliox,” we say we don’t care. They may have to look at three screens. They have three different software packages and three different maintenance systems. With us, it’s all on one screen. I think that’s really what our secret sauce is, and that’s the biggest selling point of our company—the hardware is agnostic to the software, and we’re able to see everything in one spot from an operations center.
“I’m sorry to report that reliability with depot chargers is about the same as with public. I once asked a group of transit agencies about reliability at their depots, and it was only when I got to 70% and 60% that people started raising their hands.”
For those about to electrify
Charged: How about some handy-dandy tips for fleet operators? What are some of the things that can go wrong, and how can they avoid them?
John Walsh: The one you hear the most is “You need to get hold of your utility yesterday.” And to me, that’s a broad answer. What does that mean? When I reach the utility, what do I ask them? There’s so many fleet operators, big, big companies, that just don’t know what to do.
What’s the difference between a UPS facility and an Amazon facility? They’re probably 50 years apart. UPS, they’ve been around for a long, long time, so they have buildings that they never thought they would electrify. Then you have Amazon—most of their buildings are brand new, and they are preparing for electrification. So, the mistake I think gets made is, if you take UPS as an example, they’re going to say, “We got 100 vans. We have to charge them all. We’ve got one megawatt of power coming into the building. We need five.” And they will immediately contact that utility, because that’s what everyone tells them to do, and tell them, “I need four megawatts more power.” And that’s when you hear everybody busting out laughing in the back of the room.
Well, they don’t necessarily need as much power as they think. We do a lot of modeling for customers. “This is how many vehicles we have. This is the energy storage on board, and this is how much power we have at the depot.” We model for them the size charger they need, but we also help them manage the energy once it comes into the building. I send it in two different directions. I send it to the facility conveyor belts, and I send it to the chargers, but I’m not going to charge those EVs all day long. I’m going to charge them at specific times of night at a certain power level.
Don’t over-capitalize the project. Do your homework and think about how much power you really need into that facility. You can work with the utility on that, but also work with companies like EO to help you figure that piece out so you don’t spend a bunch of money—and I’m talking millions of dollars—to put power into a building that you’re never going to use. That’s probably the biggest mistake I’ve seen in doing 200 deployments on the depot side.
If we hear a customer say, “Well, we’re just doing a pilot,” we say, “Okay, but where do you go from there?” They say, “I’m going to do 10 buses, and I’m going to do 10 chargers, and let’s see how it goes.” That’s really not a good idea. What we are doing a lot of right now with customers that did that 10 years ago, we’re ripping everything out—rip and replace. Now, the technology’s changed, I’ll give you that. But at the same time, they really didn’t do a proper job of setting themselves up to scale.
There was a transit authority up in Canada that built a brand-new facility, 400 buses under one roof. They knew from the beginning they were going to charge 400 buses, but they only did 60 to begin with. But the facility, the lanes were set up so they could just add the chargers as they went along. Everything in the facility was ready to go. Planning for scale is something that’s super, super important.
“Fleets don’t necessarily need as much power as they think. Don’t over-capitalize the project. Work with companies like EO to help you figure that out so you don’t spend a bunch of money to put power into a building that you’re never going to use.”
Charged: I suspect (I have a suspicious mind about these things) that 10 years ago, some of these fleets thought, “We got a government grant, so we’ll do a pilot, and that’ll satisfy the greenies, and then we’ll go back to business as usual.”
John Walsh: That’s right. I think that’s exactly what they were thinking. Is it political? It can be in some cases where we have to deal with a government mandate. What I love about Florida, there’s so many customers that are going electric that don’t have to. One of the first electric fleets in the US was Star Metro, the transit authority in Tallahassee, and those buses operate on Florida State’s campus. Now, those buses, 14 years ago, they only went 30 miles on a single charge. How did they manage that? They used en route charging. Well, today, on an electric bus, you can go 250 miles. Now, their chargers are at the depot, like a regular fueling station. They fill up at night, and they run all day long.
Charge your fleet for one monthly fee
Charged: You offer a complete turnkey service for a monthly payment. How does that work?
John Walsh: We’ll package our Level 2 charger with the software, the maintenance, the technical operations center, and charge one monthly fee—it’s $59. That bundle is really attractive to a lot of fleet customers.
We offer a monthly payment by charger, by kilowatt-hour, or by mile. A customer can choose their program, because their needs vary. Some customers have a lot of idle time. Some customers are putting a lot of miles out there. Some are charging and discharging quite a bit as well. I have DHL in New York City, and they say, “We don’t need a lot of batteries on our vans, because, in the entire day, we might go 20 miles,” because they’re stuck in traffic in Manhattan. That’s different from somebody in Kansas that might be running a long way. So, we want to give those options to customers and let them choose.
Charged: Are there some situations where a customer assumes they’re going to need DC fast chargers, but they may be able to get by with the Level 2 and avoid some of the procurement bottlenecks?
John Walsh: Yeah, that’s exactly what happens. We have our own charger called the Genius Fleet, which is a Level 2 charger, 19.2 kilowatts. We feel like it fits with a lot of fleet customers because they’re going to use a Rivian van or a Ford E-Transit that has roughly 100 kWh of storage on board. The size of the charger is really attractive—you don’t have to get into a Level 3, which can be very expensive. And the neat thing about the Genius is we have them in inventory. There’s no waiting on switchgear or charger hardware. If a customer says, “I need 10 chargers,” we can ship them within 24 hours. We have them warehoused around the country.
We make our own Level 2 charger in Europe, but the one we have here in the US is made for us by IoTecha. And then on the DC charger side, ZEROVA, Kempower, ABB, several of these manufacturers, when you see our label on it, you have to walk around the back of the charger to see that it’s somebody else’s. We do that just from a branding standpoint, but again, we’re agnostic to the hardware. As long as it’s OCPP 1.6-compliant and we get good service from them, we’re happy.
The usual questions about trends
Charged: People are predicting a wave of consolidation in the EVSE hardware market. There’s a lot of companies, and a couple of them recently went belly-up: Tritium, Freewire.
John Walsh: I think it’s a trend. There’s absolutely going to be consolidation. With fleet, school bus and transit, that hardware has to meet Buy America standards. That means that that charger has to be built in the United States, and it has to have 70% US content. That shrinks down the number of companies. Recently, you probably saw that Siemens bought out Heliox. We think that’s a good thing because we think Heliox has a really good product and really good service.
Are there too many charger companies? I don’t know that there’s ever too much of anything. I would say we need the right number of charger manufacturers that build good products and can service their products. And that’s where EO comes in on the service and maintenance side. But I think consolidation is absolutely going to happen.
Charged: How far along are we with the Megawatt Charging System?
John Walsh: We have a bunch of them in the ground. We offer a 1.44-megawatt charging system, and I love it because it’s maybe half the size of a van, and it fits in the corner of the depot. I can charge 40 vehicles on one charger, and I can put in a 60 kW, a 150 kW output. I can mix and match it for a customer, which is really nice. It’s a cost-saver, it’s easier to maintain, and it allows a customer to really scale because they put that in the corner of a depot, and then they can add another one and another one, and they can really get their whole fleet electrified without chargers taking up space.
Charged: So, MCS allows you not only to charge one vehicle at a super-high rate, but it allows you to split that up. Is that something you can’t do with CCS?
John Walsh: You can, but you’re limited—let’s say you take a 150 kW charger, you can put two dispensers on it, but that’s all you can do. On this one MCS charger, I can put 40 dispensers, and I can charge simultaneously or sequentially. It really gives you versatility.
Charged: What about V2G? Is it still a pilot-stage technology, or do you know of some commercial applications?
John Walsh: We’re partnering with BorgWarner on V2G. I know them really well because they acquired Rhombus, which was one of our partners at Proterra. They do have the technology, but it’s still very much in a pilot stage. The school bus market really wants it, and they want it at scale. I think V2G will get pushed by the customer. Living here in Florida, if we have a storm and the electricity goes down, well, I’ve got a power station right here—we’ve got 1,000 school buses sitting there full of energy. I just have to have the capability to pull it off that bus and into another vehicle or a facility. But I still think it’s in pilot—I can’t give you an example of a commercial application where I’m seeing it at scale yet.