Ep24: Into the Electroverse, with Matt Davies and Ginny Buckley

Thanks for listening to Inside Octopus. My name is Russell Goldsmith and in this episode we are putting the spotlight on Octopus Electroverse which in just a few years since launch has become the largest consumer EV charging platform in Europe. Joining me online to help us find out more, I'm thrilled to welcome Broadcaster, Journalist and Founder and Editor of Electrifying.com, Ginny Buckley. Plus we also have the Founder and Director of Electroverse Matt Davis, so thank you both for taking the time to join me on the podcast. Matt, I'm going to come to you first. We've actually been producing this podcast now for five years, yet somehow, despite being Octopus Energy's second employee if I've got my facts right, we've never actually featured you as a guest. So I thought maybe we could start with you just giving us a quick introduction to kind of your journey through the business. Sure, thank you for having me. Yes, my very first introduction to Octopus. When it wasn't even actually cool Octopus yet that hadn't been decided was in a cafe in Hammersmith where I first met Greg or Founder. And as you can imagine it's been a great fun rollercoaster ride ever since over the last nearly ten years now since our first joint. Over that time of course I've done a wide range of different things within Octopus and for the last four years it's been focusing on Electroverse. Okay, well let's go there then. Tell us a little bit about Electroverse for any listeners unaware. What is the platform and yeah, why did you launch it? Well actually going back just beforehand I was helping set up our business energy side of Octopus, so supplying energy to businesses around the country. And we were working a lot with the charging companies themselves. They've been rolling out loads of charges across the UK and of course they were very interested in renewable energy, how they could roll out faster, how we could help them do so. And so we launched with a few charging companies this energy product that gave them access to great value renewable energy to help them grow with us quickly because that was the main thing we wanted to help them do, support the sector and roll it out. And as a result of that I ended up talking to the looes of these different charging companies and quite quickly became apparent that they need to be a bit of a simpler way for customers to go out and charge publicly regardless of where they are in the country. I actually first had a very interesting experience with it. Evie in 2019, so it was about five years ago and I first jumped in electric car and I took it on a journey to Wales, to rural Wales and along the way I had a mixture of experiences, some straightforward, some not nearly as easy as they could be and I had to download a huge range of apps and subscriptions and different cars to actually get access to them all. I also had one of the funniest charging experiences ever during that trip which was in the middle of rural Wales I found a charger attached to the town hall and in order to start that charger you had to park up, plug in and then walk a few minutes down the road to the post office to buy a physical token to then walk back to the charger and then slot it in that charger to charge out which was very entertaining but not exactly straightforward. So I think like a combo of some of those early experiences and having talked to and understood many of the charging companies around the UK, leds me to think I think there's something simpler that can be done here. Why don't we go around and connect up as many of these different charging companies as possible, these charging brands two octopus and then create one platform, one app, one experience for accessing as many of them as possible. How many charging points now do you have on there? Yeah so we're fast forward to today, we've actually now just passed 1.1 million charges on electricity as a whole. Right. So across Europe that's more than 85 and it was nearly 90% coverage of all the charges across Europe and we're working with a huge variety of charging brands. So it's been really about trying to regardless of what type of charging it is, bring them all together and make it as easy to access in one single place. Jenny, let's bring you in at this point but the same time that Matt was busy launching Electroverse, you were launching electrifying.com, saw you sniggering there at that experience he had at charging at the town hall. How much has the market, the EV market changed in those few years? Oh gosh yeah. I mean who would launch a brand and a business at the start of a global pandemic came out. That was an interesting challenge. Definitely not. Stephanie wasn't the idea with electrifying.com, we didn't plan to launch when all that happened, we were just ready to go and then this challenging time arrived. But I think just to rewind a little bit it was what gave me the idea to start electrifying was actually what Matt was exactly talking about that in his experience is back in 2019, or being overly complicated. At the time, so I do quite a lot of broadcasting work as well and I do a lot of work for programme called ITV Tonight which is a current affairs programme, it's on ITV on Thursday nights and you have to take current affairs subjects and make them accessible. We did a look in 2019 on are we ready for the electric car? That's what we were still calling it then right the electric car, like it's a different thing, it's just a car isn't it? That's really all it is. We put lots of ITV viewers into them for the first time and we talked to different charging providers as part of that and we looked at what was happening with the flow of new models coming to the market. At the end of that programme it just reiterated to me what I knew was a journalist anyway who I've been an automotive journalist for that stage like over 20 years, that the industry was getting ready and charging providers were starting to come along and there were people like Matt doing interesting things and the cars were definitely coming but the mainstream audience was mainstream car buyers were not ready for it yet at all. And I really wanted to do something to simplify the process again just like Matt's been saying and that was about not just having reviews of cars because of course that's important but it was about really helping to hold people's hands through which is we're asking people to make a really big change. If you've driven a petrol or diesel car all your life coming to electric can feel really challenging. So for us it was about simplifying that process. We actually our Strattline when we launched was we're here to clear the air and that's what we were there to do in the way that the electric us charge was aimed and has done a brilliant job actually of making the charging process more streamlined and just easier to get your head around. That's what we wanted to do. In terms of how things have changed over those five years it's been dramatic and I think we reviewed. I want to say 27 mainstream electric cars when we launched the website and there's now 150 mainstream electric cars. We reviewed 12 alone over a 10 day period at the start of September. New cars, concept cars, different things looking into new battery technology, new systems are charging. So the growth in the market has been absolutely phenomenal. The growth in charging has been absolutely phenomenal as well. There are still issues, there are still we do still have a way to go to really make sure everybody can embrace the electric revolution. But I think the growth that we've seen in five years has been remarkable and exciting. With that growth in the number of cars and the choice is the adoption rates increasing? Has that made it more accessible? This is quite often when I was first looking for my first electric car the prices can be quite or were quite expensive. We've been doing a big piece of work actually now for since 2021. We do it together with the AA and we survey well the last time we did it was in November 2024 and that was over 11,000 UK drivers. So it's a big spread. And what's been interesting is they're not EV drivers. So we're talking to the people really that to make the switch when we did that survey back in the end of 2024, 4% of people drove an EV, which is pretty much what we say with the overall car parks. So that's all the cars on the road at the moment at the time about 4% were electric. I think that figures gone to 6% now. But the big things that we say okay, what's stopping you from making the switch? If you're not ready yet, what's stopping you? And the first thing is that they're too expensive to buy. And the second thing is that they don't have confidence in the UK charging infrastructure. And those are overwhelming reasons. Three quarters of people will state those two reasons as the blockers. And I think a lot of that really is around lack of education and understanding because like we've said, this is a really, really big switch. You know, when it comes to EVs, we are seeing the prices come down. Yes, they still are still slightly more expensive upfront, you know, than buying a petrol equivalent. But we're seeing price parity in some models. In fact, Voxel was the first car brand to do that. They did it last August where the Voxel front air costs the same if you got electric or you got petrol. So we've seen much more of that come. So I think it's about people educating people now about the overall, this thing called total cost of ownership that I'm sure you've talked about on this podcast where you have to look at the savings that you can make when you use, you know, off-peak energy and you know, your, your, your, Harry, I, you know, charge my car up overnight for a few quid. It's amazing. But again, in that last survey that we did of those 11,000 drivers, it was incredible because 46% told us that they weren't aware of the low cost energy tariff that octopus is so brilliant at that make up honing an EV more affordable. So we know that we're still not getting those messages out there to the mainstream audience who are now the ones who are switching. We've done the earlier doctors, they're in, they're on the second or third EVs, they love their cars, they're big advocates. But we're not talking yet to that mainstream audience, and there's still a lot of questions there that people have got. Completely agree with that, because if you look at some of the new cars now to the market, I think you can get this new Renault 5 for about £23,000, and it's come out to amazing reviews. I'm driving one man. Are you driving one? You're one of the complete. I really want one. And it's interesting I was talking to the the UKMD of Rena the other day, and what that's done a really good job of for them, because they just talked about it as a car, as a fun car, and you do me to get it's blooming brilliant honestly. I love it. I love driving, it makes me so happy and gets great reactions. But they were saying what's shocked them and surprised them pleasantly is that it's by far the biggest model they've launched that is getting people out of petrol cars, because they're not even thinking of it in the electric car, they're thinking about it as a fun car. So yeah, I can see you in one of those man. It's good. So it's a totally, I was driven around in one of the other day. I would love to get one. But you're totally right about some of these, some of these perceived issues now actually being a matter of getting the information out there and educating. And this the other common one around, is there enough charging infrastructure out there? There's two really interesting facts around that. One is the UK is only one of four countries in Europe now that it's installed more than 100,000 charges across the country. So UK is doing really well on rollout. Not only that, but the actual speed of the rollout of charging is really astonishing now as well. So I think in the last year it's been 20,000 of those have been installed. So the rate of progress is incredible. There's now a charger roughly within four miles of anyone within the country and of course in certain areas, many, many more than that. So the rate of progress is huge. And we talk about this idea of range anxiety in a junior year and I've driven EVs for a while now. So I think after a while you start to, you start to become comfortable with that and realise that these days it is very easy to go on really long journeys. It's not perfect. We know it's not perfect yet, but it is getting increasing easy. And we have so many lovely customer stories of going on their first trip from say the south of England to Scotland and all the way back and actually finally it's completely hassle free all the way further. We've had a few drivers contact us from electricers they've been driven from Manchester to the south of Italy and back this summer and you know what it was complete breeze. It was really easy. My favourite one is actually we had a lovely conversation with an older couple who said they charge at home generally. They really wanted to take their electric car to visit friends in south of Isch of France and they were a bit worried about doing that journey and they came back to us a few days later and said you know what we didn't have a single problem. It was a complete breeze. It was really easy and thank you so much and that is the exact why, exactly what we need to be aiming for is actually what we need to be talking about and showing that it can be done quite easily now. Yeah and it's definitely things like the electric cars definitely unlock that. I mean we get lots of, we've got advice and explainers and guides and when people are wanting to the trepidation that you've just explained about driving a broad in an EV and we have guides about that and what it's definitely one of the things we recommend. It just simplifies the charging process so yeah it's definitely, it's actually I think almost a better experience charging in Europe in some ways. It's great it's absolutely brilliant. Well Matt should we go into a little bit more detail then on the lecture person exactly how it works. You mentioned the number of connected charges you've got. Tell us how it all comes together. Yeah so at its core, Electroversis all about technology right. It's a standardized way that we have built to go out and connect to all these amazing charging brands in UK, in Europe and now indeed further as well. It's really about getting globally easy charging in the end and the result of that is that we put in the power of people's hands in an app or indeed in their vehicle the ability to find all those charges and find charges that really suit what they want to drive a knees in the moment. So is it that you want super fast charging you need to get quickly to your destination then you can find that. Is it that you need certain amenities on your trip? You want to stop and go shopping or whatever it might be or is it that you want to find some on street charging to park near a family member that you're aiming to go and visit. So regardless of what it is you need in your charging journey will help you find it. You can then plan your route accordingly with our route planner and push any journey that you'd like to make out to your vehicle through Apple CarPlay or Android Auto or to Google or Waze or any other app that you use to make that sort of driving and navigation experience really easy. And of course when you get there we simplify the starting and the payment experience as well so you can go there start a charge either with your electric card or just simply through the app. And increasingly we're actually working with the car manufacturers as well to start thinking about how that experience becomes even more so deeply and naturally a part of your vehicle experience as well whilst driving. So we bring that all together to think about yeah that the discovery piece that perhaps you'll brand new to electric vehicle driving you just go I just don't know what's out there how can I find it what is there. There's in this routing piece I want to get that I've got a journey there's certain certain things I want to find on route we make that as easy as possible and then when you're there we make the the access the charging the powering up experience as straightforward as possible. Who are some of the brands that you're working with then? Nearly everyone right that's the idea so when I could list you off 1,300 different charging companies if you'd like but of course the main ones we hear about in the UK are everything from your huge brands you've got your Ion Tees your Ospreys total energies shells, InstaVolt, GridServes all the above and if they're not on yet generally speaking with we're talking to them and they may well be joining soon and then of course you've also got your more on-street partners you've got ubiquitricities and ones you might see on the lamp post for example or because of connected curbs and then a whole range of ones in between destination charges at shopping centres or in supermarket car parks or even perhaps if you're going on a walk to a national park we'll find some charges that hopefully fit your kind of use case when you're going and and recharging on your daily activity. But basically any charge point operator can plug in is that correct? Yeah absolutely anyone and we've been proving this recently as well we've we've started interesting to get coverage in all over the planet so we had our first charges in South Korea and Thailand join recently we've got our first ones joining in Turkey some in the US so that you can see this both as an industry in both as electroverse there is a big shift to trying to make this as simple as possible and connect up all this charging infrastructure wherever it might be growing around the world into one place and we can do that a huge speed through the systems we've built to octopus. So Matt I'm going to be in South Korea and we can oh wow wow we're going some new EVs so I can use my electros card that can I yeah you can indeed oh great we should sort of that out that's so crazy excellent and Matt did I read this right you're also helping anyone that's flying an electric plane as well yeah we had a with this right partnership with a company called Arrow Vault and so it'd been working with some electric plane manufacturers to look at some uses for example flying flying post or mail around the UK and electric planes as one of the use cases you looked at and so they've been building plane charges specifically for those like aircraft and we've integrated them as well our the team had great fun creating a new icon with a with a plane charger on it hey hopefully we can see see a bit more of that we also know there's electric boat charging company out there that we've been speaking to so at some point you'll be able to do a sort of very James Bond air land and sea electric charging experience brilliant Jenny I just want to come back to that research you mentioned earlier I was keen to maybe just dig a little deeper into some of the other misconceptions there are around EVs oh god we're to start really yeah I think I'm sorry we still are at a point where people are concerned about the energy consumption of electric cars so we know from that data and again you know we've been tracking this over four years that people really do believe that if we all switch to electric cars the national grid is not going to be able to cope and actually what what we know and of course what knows is that electric cars will be part of the solution because electric cars effectively they we are they are giant mobile batteries that can you know accept energy and discharge energy so they can help to balance the grid as we go along but that figure has been really constant over the last three or four years and it was still standing at 61% of people when we last surveyed them about that. So I think because this is such a big switch and because there is that old fashioned idea that you know everybody goes and plugs the car that the the the kettle on in the middle of the the outbreak and coronation straight and maybe I'm showing my age by saying that but you know there was a lot of flickered the light but I think you know there's a lot of education that we need to do to give people the confidence. So that's definitely one of the myths that you know really just seem to be sticking with people. Obviously I've talked about the cost. I think what's interesting for me is it's things like confidence that come up you know we still have roughly 50% of people that will tell us they don't feel as confident at the prospect of charging an electric car and that's both about the finding of a charger and you know what you have to do but it's also just about plugging it in and we did a video recently where we we asked if we could convert convert the EV haters so we took a group of people who were openly really anti electric car we took four of them we put them in an EV for the first time it's absolutely fascinating because just they they'd never seen one they'd never been in one and actually one of the things they'd never even held a charging cable and actually just that very thing of like picking up a charging cable and plugging it in and realizing that oh well this isn't really that different to filling up with fuel and we didn't convert them all I'm not going to give the video away in case you want to go and find it on a YouTube channel but we did we converted one so I have given it away but we did and that you just say well that's brilliant if giving people that experience of an EV so I think when you you know people again you know 45% of people say they're not as confident at the prospect of driving one and there are different things there's brilliant you know brake regeneration which is a which is one of my favorite things about an EV where you you know you actually you know gone of energy that it was going to to lose through braking and you put that back in the battery and it's fantastic to see if you can add a bit of extra range onto your car through that so I think this linking between between generally between energy you know your home energy and your car and that understanding of all of that is is something really exciting and something that we do need to do a lot more work on because we know people you know I just wary of the new technology and it still is new technology for loads of people it's interesting you saying about the same like it feels the same as charging your petrol car you know I've got a Tesla and where where I don't know if this is the same for all electric cars but where I plug my charger in it's where I would have expected the petrol cap to be so it does feel exactly the same but yeah yeah but but even just that it was really interesting just to see them like holding a cable and I think they thought it was going to be they've seen charred you've seen public chargers so you know they've seen these heavy things and they were like looking at the cable in the boot that they were used for their home charger and they just start a lot of penny started to drop and it's that kind of thing that I really think we need to do more of as well you know get people into the cars and what about things like the range of the car I mean some of the ones that you're reviewing now is the range getting bigger and and is the battery you know charge time getting shorter yeah I mean there's some fantastic stuff happening with that I mean the the average car the average range of an EV at the moment is 280 miles now it was only a few years ago two three years ago that we would be getting excited about a car that had a range of 280 miles that's the average now so I've just just been at looking at the new BMW iX3 which is their sort of you know sort of mid-sized SUV hugely popular car and they've completely revamped this car it's had a you know right every every detail on it has been redeveloped they're doing their own software they're doing their own hardware they're approaching it a bit like Apple does now you know where they they manage the whole thing rather than buying stuff in but it's got really interesting battery technology on that car they're using cylindrical shell cells so they what they've been able to do is reduce the cost on that but they've also made it more efficient and these cells charge quicker as well so you know the the BMW iX3 that you know where I'm saying it's got a range of 500 miles you know the base model has 421 miles now I don't know about you but I don't want to drive 500 miles without a break anyway and it's got a maximum charging rate of 400 kilowatts now okay there aren't a lot of charges out there that can deliver that level of power at the moment but this is a future proof car so I think you know what what we're seeing this car is a really interesting example because you get all of that but it's actually £7,000 cheaper than the outgoing model so I'm they're making a bit they're making they're told me they're making more money on it too so they're making more money on it which you know car makers have found making you know electric cars hard to make money on because the battery is such a big cost so the making more money on it they're passing on a big saving to the consumer you're getting more for your money and yes this is on a high end model but as we know technology filters down so seeing this actually made me very excited for where we'll get to in the next five years as we head to 2030 I think we are going to see it leaps and bounds now in the technology and in the you know the pricing coming down so I've got one of the cars that is now nearly five years old so I've got a pole star too and that's got a range of probably realistically low 200s and I have to say it not only have I found that that is sufficient we know that with some of these interesting models going down the line that that could be almost doubled in years to come it just really takes all the takes all the worry out a bit I when I first got it see I live for the reliant on public charging experience so I don't have a driveway I park my car in the road and so for the first year and a half I would drive around the corner and find a local charger but what really transformed it was when a lamp post charging company came around put these on street charges they put around three or four just within 50 meters of where I live and that was honestly transformational I can I've now had it where I've been driving home down to about 2% and I'm just not worried at all in fact fun fact if you drive if you drive below 4% on a pole star there's a little tortoise sign pops up on the dash which is quite entertaining. Get a second you just let me know yeah yeah is it the first time I said little worried but I have to say you you just get quite confident with this over the time once you have actually experienced the public charging network and we're seeing the rate of rollout particularly on on street charging for those say living in cities or don't have access to driveways is so important for getting people into cars so I've lived lived some of that experience and can say how how much of a change it does me yeah I was I was chatting to a brilliant lady who's now I can't remember who's been in charge of the charging rollout for Coventry Coventry Council and what they've done in Coventry is absolutely remarkable and yes they've got the rapid charges in there they actually leave the way for charging in the UK they're second only to Westminster in terms of numbers of charges but they put in something like close to about 2,600 of those on street charges more than any other area and it's absolutely brilliant because it's going to help all those people who as you said you know can't charge at home and that's we reckon that's the there's a lot of different figures around that but the figure we always go with is it's around 35% of drivers that can't charge at home that's the one that we think is closest to it the other part I'd love to pick up from you Matt is you made that great point that you've got 200 miles of range lots of people might think oh it's not enough we need to rethink what we need from our cars we're so used to I need a big battery because once a year I drive to Birmingham or Aberdeen to Drizzy Antiangular and I do a big journey the reality is we drive on average around 20 miles a day in the UK you really don't need big battery cars and with that confidence of driving an EV as you've just said Matt comes that reality that I probably don't need 400 miles of range because I don't actually use it that often I'm paying more money for the bigger battery charging's getting really good so I think I think it's also we've got to try and help car buyers rethink a little bit about what they need from their car and do they inquest you and do they need that big range absolutely I did a trip the other day where I drove to see my sister not far from Southampton and straight after that I needed to go and visit a friend who lives not far from Northampton by the way you'd expect if Southampton Northampton followed the same rules issue bit the opposite end of the country right but turns out Northampton is not actually that far away but the my journey there right I actually got from London to Southampton up to Northampton on one stop and that stop was we went to grab a bit of food from St James Bees and St James Bees as you may know have recently been doing an amazing job of rolling out a huge range of fast and ultra rapid charges at their at their supermarkets and by the time we've gone in bought the food and come back in our cars up at nearly 90% and you know magic I changed absolutely nothing about what I would have done on that journey and I even just out of interest of course working the sector I deliberately had it when and stopped at the new insta vault ultra rapid charging site with I think it's over 50 bays at absolutely amazing site and that would have been immensely easy to do for about 15 20 minutes as well and had a lovely facilities there too so I think you're right everyone wants to immediately go to the occasionally I might do a 500 mile journey we go well not only can you do that it's already a lot easier than you think and you also might only do it once a year anyway and as you say you're probably going to stop off and it will suit the way you do that journey regardless so I think that's An amazing thing you do, we're taking some people who are really anti-EV and putting them in cars and getting to experience it because even as someone who's very excited about EVs, it's only by driving it for a few months and living with it. Have I really relaxed into it and just realised that range anxiety is not really that much of a thing once you've lived with a vehicle. But the bit that I do think is important is that range anxiety does sometimes shift to am I going to get a good experience at the charger. And I think that's still fair. It's fair to say that charging industry is in the grand scheme of things, relatively new. The pace is amazing, the innovation is incredible and there's some amazing companies rolling infrastructure out across the UK. But actually the focus for a lot of the industry now is on quality of charging, it's reliability, great bass, great signage, facilities when you're there. And there's so much has improved just even in the last few years on that front as well. Yeah, it's interesting that just going back to that survey again from last year, two-thirds of the people we surveyed felt the perception was that public charging infrastructure was unreliable. So I think we've got to have that perception shift, but we also can't, we can't sugar coat it. There are times that all of us who drive EVs, maybe not you or us because you use the supercharging network, but we know that we go a couple of weeks ago and they're all called experience with the charger didn't work and it's a pain. So it does still happen, but it has improved so much, hasn't it over the last few years. Totally, and we took on a board some pieces of customer feedback to that extent. So one of the filters we introduced in the next first was actually minimum amount of charging points when you get there. Highly requested to say that that's more likely to have availability, it's more likely to ensure that one of the all the charges are up and running and working and that's proved to us in a very popular feature. Jenny, if we get the infrastructure right and encourage more people to switch to EVs, what's the what's the wide range impact that we'll see? Gosh, what's the wide range impact? I think we'll have a lot of happy drivers because really quite honestly, you know, once you've driven an EV, you don't want to go back. I mean, I drove, I've been doing this job now for 27 years. I've been a journalist. I've driven every EV there is, but I've also driven an awful lot of petrol and diesel cars over the years and I love the experience. I'd never go back. But I think the bigger picture in all of this is that we, you know, we need to decarbonize, we really do. We've got to reach those net zero targets and, you know, we're not going to get there quite simply unless we decarbonize transport. It's just not going to happen. You know, the big picture of that is the cars we drive. So if we all, you know, we carry on on this route and we keep making improvements and we're able to bring more and more people on that journey with us, we will stand a better chance of reaching our net zero targets, which we need to do as a country. The other thing that I think doesn't get talked about enough for me is the air quality. So I always say, you know, I know what I'd rather have driving past my son's school. I'd rather have an electric car, you know, and we know that we have deaths in, you know, in the UK and a little globally, of course, through poor air quality and electric vehicles massively improve that, that's just a fact. You know, so I think we can look forward, we can look towards cleaner air, we can look towards a great driving experience, we can look towards decarbonizing, which are all things that as a society, you doesn't want that. And Jenny, you mentioned earlier around the electric vehicles being some of the answer to the grid problems that are talked about sometimes, they're actually the answer, and not the problem. We launched about 18 months ago now our first trials of what we call plunge pricing. So when there are, when there's excess energy on the grid, say for example, the really sunny or really windy day, we can actually pass some of those savings onto consumers, onto drivers, new out and about in their vehicles. And we're saying around what does this shift to electric, you know, really achieve on the grand scare. What we've not really said is I had this amazing tweet from a driver who said, "When's the last time that your petrol station offered you 40% off your petrol and diesel, right?" And it's true, you go, there's a whole world of dynamic pricing and some of this magic that can be unlocked as we shift to electrons and refueling your car from electricity. So plunge pricing is quite a good example of that. The first one we ever did, full enough, we managed to get around 30% off for drivers late afternoon. But earlier that day, through Octopus Energy and Saving Sessions, we'd actually also been asking customers to use less energy and make savings because of it. And then just a couple of hours later, we put out a big application to hundreds of thousands of drivers going, "There's loads of excess energy, go use it now and save loads of money." And it was quite funny because if we had been more chained up that very first time, we would have said to customers, "You know what, this is actually such an amazing example of energy flexibility in action. You've got a moment where it is best to use a little less energy because maybe the grid is constrained and then suddenly a moment in which the grid is going to be brilliant, we just went and used those of energy at a cheaper time and what better way to do that than through, for example, rapid charging through your EV." Just on that note, of costs, Ginny, is there anything else for listeners to be aware of in terms of the actual cost of running an EV? I think, I mean obviously it makes more financial sense if you can run your electric car at home for all those reasons that we know about the great, you know, off-peaked tariffs and that you can take advantage of. And actually, I worked on a programme for dispatches for Channel 4 last year and we looked at that disparity between the cost of charging at home and charging on the go. And it's, unfortunately, it's not a great picture. I mean, the figures here are slightly out of date but they still are pretty close. So at the time, it's five, six pens per mile. It can be as little as a couple of pens per mile if you can use off-peaked charging running your EV. If you can't charge at home and at the time you were relying on rapid charging, which a lot of people are, it leaps to 22 pens a mile. At the time, petrol, the cost of driving a petrol car was 17 pens a mile. So we were in this ridiculous situation where it actually costs you more to run an EV if you can't charge at home than it does a petrol car. And quite clearly that's not great. We shouldn't be penalised by that. We've wanted for a very long time for the government to reduce the vat on charging, which is on network charging. So your home energy is 5% as talk that that may go. 20% vat on public charging. So things like that I think would be really helpful for those drivers who can't charge at home. I think one of the ways that I see that that is improving as Matt's been saying, there's been this fantastic rollout of on-street charging, lower charging in lamp posts, different ways of charging that are more affordable and where you can leave your car overnight. So that will help to balance off that off. And then also people are doing really interesting things with surge pricing as well. So rates coming down at off-peak time. So I think we will get there with that. But certainly at the moment it can be more of a challenge and it can be more expensive to run your EV if you can't take advantage of those home off-peak rates. I agree that on-street charging is a really important part of that puzzle. The rates that you mentioned that are high are actually right around some of the fastest forms of charging. And if you're entirely reliant on that it's kind of like always going and filling up your car at a motorway service station for petrol and you'd always trying to avoid that right. So there are a number of answers to that. One is this fantastic rollout of on-street charging which does bring the cost down a fair bit in comparison. The other one is you're right there are certain underlying cost pieces such as VAT such as the actual cost of business energy to charging companies that we know that we have been working in supporting some of the charging companies across the UK to engage your government and and have constructive conversations about how we can bring those costs down for customers who don't have access to a home driveway. So we hope that there's a little bit more done to help bring that cost in French all down. And of course it's also something very close to my heart as someone without a driveway that if we can do more intelligent things with flexible pricing. Where actually we're in the background we're working with some of the on-street providers to look at ways at bringing more dynamic forms of pricing out to on-street charging. You've seen what has been done in the home space with tariff-like intelligent octopus. You can charge there it's a fantastic value for sort of pants per mile driving. But there's some of the lot of the same opportunities are there on on-street as well. You leave your vehicle overnight when electricity is typically cheaper. And so I think there's a lot of this that is coming to address some of that gap. And we're of course doing as much to be able to work with the charging providers to do anything we can to anything intelligent around energy pricing to bring it down. And that's the really exciting thing for me is it's really easy to look at this you know these stats now but because I need to see the bigger picture and like you know get to talk to people like you Matt I kind of know what's coming and you kind of want to say it's just going to get there it'll all be great but obviously we all want it now. But I do think some of those innovations, you know, just that simple thing of being able to leave your car overnight and it costs you less the way you can at home. It's going to be game changing for those people who don't have access to home charging. So I have confidence because I do know that the solutions are coming, but we want them now. We want them now. Listen guys, we're coming towards the end of the podcast. So Matt, looking forward, what's next for electra us? Yeah, so two things I would say that are a big focus for us here at electra first. So on top of all the work we want to do to encourage private drivers that you and I, all of us here to switch to electric and make that really simple. The other part actually is helping businesses do the same. So of course, we've seen many new electric vans entering the market, which is fantastic. And we've been working a lot with fleets of vehicles to help them move over to electric and make that really simple. Of course, in the old world of getting a petrol van and a fuel card, you would say, here you go and off out and onto the road and have fun. But in the new, exciting world of electric, you've actually got to think about whether it is public charging, whether you're charging at a business premises or whether your driver is actually able to take their business vehicle and drive it at home. So we're really thinking about how you solve this whole decarbonisation picture for businesses and help them switch into EVs faster. The other one is a bit I touched on earlier around vehicle experiences. So I mean, Russ, you drive a Tesla at the moment, right? And I think you can probably say first hand how smooth it is to have a Tesla network inside a Tesla car and a Tesla experience, right? And in many ways, a lot of the industry has been aiming for a while to catch some of that up and make it such a simple experience. So we're working directly with a lot of the car manufacturers to say, look, we've we've now created this amazing tech platform that has more than 1.1 million charges on it. How about we do more with that inside the vehicle themselves? So actually when you buy a car, it just makes the sort of the charging experience that you're going to have, it almost just comes out of the box. And so we're now integrating some of the electroverse with a variety of car manufacturers in their apps in the actual vehicle infotainment systems and the sat nav, the guidance to let customers find charges actually inside the car itself. And when you get there, some of the technology coming down the line means that you will quite literally just plug in and walk off. Absolutely nothing else to do. We'll set it up already, plug in, walk off almost regardless of which charger around. So we recently announced a big partnership with Ford. And so in the coming months and into next year, we will be rolling out a lot more functionality for Ford drivers, both in the vehicle and the ability to plug in and walk off, which is really exciting. We're working with a lot of other car manufacturers on similar programs. So I'm very excited for this future where almost regardless of what car you buy, you can get access to almost any charger anywhere, any time. And it will feel just increasingly seamless. Sounds fantastic. Jenny, last one for you. Where do you see the EV market heading in the next 12 to 18 months? I mean, it's exciting. We're seeing more change now in six months than we probably saw in all the years since the heart, the horse and car first go way to the car. So the base change is really quick. Just to pick up on what Matt was saying about, you know, you plug in the car and it's seamless. I've seen a couple of cars recently where it recognizes it will know when you're pulling up either at home. If you need to charge or charge or even the charging flat will open automatically for you. So it's there's a lot of cool stuff coming. I think the key things for me are we're going to get huge leaps and bands in battery technology. So we're going to get batteries that are lighter, that are more affordable, the more energy dense, so they will go further on a charge and they will recharge much quicker that technology that I talked about on that BMW iX3, no class. That's going to start to filter down. So that's exciting. And then that will be coupled by more charges around the place as well. I think we'll see a lot more of that lower cost on street charging that Matt talked about, which is, you know, I'm talking to charging providers all the time. You know, I think there's a lot we're just going to start seeing that springing up in the areas that need it. I think what I'm excited about actually, which if you don't actually told me I'd be excited about things like this, because I'm not a tall, a geeky energy person. I don't know what I didn't think I was, but it's things like vehicle to grid, which is that that ability to help, you know, use your car's battery is energy storage and feed that back to the grid and potentially, you know, made money from that, which is utterly brilliant help bring your household energy cost down. You know, we already have brilliant vehicle to load on electric cars, which means you can use the battery to plug things in. I've got an awkward edge at the front, no plug there and I plug my head drummer into the car and use it is fantastic. So I think things like that, you the way that our energy, home energy and cars are going to be linked and we'll be able to save us money will be brilliant. And then I think the final point for me would be we've got 150 electric cars on sale at the moment, you know, everything you can think of, there were 30, maybe 27, 30, five years ago. That's going to happen, you know, increasingly we are seeing, you know, models will start to come become even more affordable, or be even more choice. And there'll be a lot of competition in the market. So I think we may well see a code act of the car industry for those of you who are old enough to remember what happened to code out. They didn't switch to digital quick enough and, you know, code act is a brand we don't know anymore. And I think there's some of the bigger brands are a couple of brands out there who are not. Perhaps switching to this technology quick enough. And our risk have been left behind in the race from brands coming out of career in China, who are doing great things. So I think there's going to be a lot of disruption. But I think there's a lot to be really excited about that. If listeners want to find out more about electros, where do they need to go either head to electrost.com or even better download the app of the app store and give it a go yourself. And just to say do give it a go because I was chatting to my team on a call the other day. Everyone was talking about the number of apps out there. And everyone was saying the only app they really have that they use is a letter of us. And this is from people that drive electric cars day in day out. So it you did a great job with it, Matt. Well done doing that in a pandemic. You must have been mad, but you did it. There's a sound right for you, Matt. Thanks, Jenny. Ask brilliant. Matt Davis, Ginny Buckley. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat to inside. Oxtaposed. Thanks also, obviously to everyone that's been listening. Don't forget if you liked what you heard, then please do follow the show wherever you get your podcasts ready for future episodes to drop. As always, if you've got any comments on anything we've discussed today, please do get in touch by the website at octopus.energy or by the usual social channels. But for now, for me, Russell Goldsmith. Thanks for listening. Hang good bye.