Shiri Levi-Laor is the CEO of Driivz, a smart EV charging and energy management platform. We spoke to Shiri to discover more about the future of the EV charging industry, and how software will play an increasingly pivotal role in boosting charging reliability.
You stepped into the CEO role at Driivz at a time when EV charging networks are scaling rapidly across the world. What do you believe will define the next phase of EV charging infrastructure over the next five years?
We’ve spent the last decade asking “where is the charger?”. The next five years are about three harder questions: does it work, is it smart, and does it pay?
The market is growing from $40 billion today to $238 billion by 2033 – that’s not a surprise anymore. What surprises people is that the winners won’t be the ones with the most chargers. They’ll be the ones with the best intelligence layer. Fleet electrification is changing the scale of the problem entirely. Grid constraints are forcing operators to be smarter about energy. And a software platform powered by cross-network, cross-market operational data is becoming the only real competitive moat. We’re moving from a deployment race to an intelligence race – and most of the industry hasn’t fully made that mental shift yet.
Charging hardware often gets the headlines, but software is increasingly the backbone of successful charging networks. How do you see software platforms transforming reliability, profitability, and scalability for charge point operators?
Without software you’ve got a load of iron without a brain. Hardware gets you on the map. Software keeps you in business.
Here’s a number that changes the conversation: energy and demand charges are 40 to 60% of a CPO’s total operating costs. That means every decision about when to charge, how to price, and how to manage load is a direct profit and loss decision, not a technical one. The operators who understand that are already shifting their KPI from utilization to profit per kWh. The ones who don’t are building networks that work at scale but bleed at scale. The platforms that win are the ones that make profitability visible and actionable using dynamic pricing, predictive maintenance and session intelligence. Not features. Fundamentals.
Your career includes leadership roles at companies like SAP and Salesforce. What lessons from enterprise software are proving most valuable in building the digital infrastructure for the EV ecosystem?
I spent years at SAP and Salesforce watching industries go through the same transition EV is going through right now. Point solutions give way to platforms. Fragmented data becomes operational intelligence. And the companies that try to build everything custom end up with systems no one can maintain at scale.
The lesson from SAP: complexity doesn’t scale without process. The lesson from Salesforce: data is only valuable when it changes behaviour. But the biggest lesson Salesforce taught me and the one I think about most in EV is the power of the ecosystem. Salesforce didn’t win because it had the best CRM. It won because it built a platform that thousands of partners, developers, and integrators could build on top of. That network effect became the moat. No competitor could replicate it by building a better product alone.
EV charging is at exactly that inflection point. The operators and platforms that open – that invest in partner ecosystems, open APIs, interoperability, and shared infrastructure – will compound their value in ways that closed, proprietary players simply can’t match. What I also learned is that this consolidation moment happens fast. PwC and Strategy& both see early market leaders starting to pull away right now. The window to be one of them is open, but it won’t stay open forever.
I spent more than ten years leading global strategy and operations across Salesforce’s customer success group. That taught me a lot about how you prioritize, segment, create smart actions and build a journey around the customer. This is a company effort, so everyone needs to come with that mindset and put the customer in the center. That’s the approach I’m bringing to Driivz
Driver confidence in public charging, a key issue for mainstream EV drivers, often comes down to reliability and uptime. From your perspective, what needs to change in the industry to ensure a consistently dependable charging experience?
The industry declared victory on uptime. Drivers didn’t get the memo.
One in three charging attempts still fails. Success rates fall from 85% at new stations to below 70% by year three – which means the infrastructure gets less reliable as it ages, exactly when we need it to get more reliable. And a 97% uptime standard which everyone celebrates still allows nearly 11 days of complete downtime per year. A charger can be technically “up” and still fail to serve a driver because of a payment glitch or a software error.
The fix isn’t just technical. It’s about changing the metric. Stop measuring uptime that’s an operator metric. Start measuring first-time charge success rate that’s a driver metric. Trust is built or broken in that first moment someone plugs in. Proactive maintenance, remote issue resolution and ease of payment are key to achieving this seamless charging experience.
As EV adoption grows, charging networks are becoming deeply connected to the energy system. How important will smart energy management and grid integration become in the success of large-scale charging networks?
I’d argue it’s already the defining factor and most operators are only just starting to feel it.
Grid connection timelines have tripled in many markets. Six months to get connected has become two years. In the Netherlands alone, over 10,000 projects are sitting in the queue. That means if you’re waiting for the grid to solve your capacity problem, you’re already behind. Smart energy management isn’t a nice-to-have anymore, it’s the only immediate lever operators have; they can charge up to six times as many EVs at a site without upgrading electrical infrastructure. And on the revenue side, V2G is moving from pilot to reality: EV batteries participating in grid services can generate $400 to $1,000 per vehicle per year. The operators who see their charging networks as distributed energy assets, not just charging infrastructure, are the ones building the most defensible businesses.
Many charging operators are still working towards sustainable business models. What strategies do you believe will help charging networks move from infrastructure rollout to long-term profitability?
Focus on utilization as a baseline. There are studies showing added-value services, such as WiFi, a coffee shop, or a will-lit site with a canopy, can all increase utilization rates. We have a customer in the Nordics that put saunas next to their charging areas, which helped attract drivers. These amenities need to be based on local needs and culture, and putting the right infrastructure around chargers can make a big difference.
Payments also help. We’ve seen that sites with a payment terminal that doesn’t require additional authentication can attract more drivers, because it’s much easier for them to charge, pay, and go, rather than downloading an app or going to a third-party website.
Then the third part is energy costs. This is becoming operators’ biggest expense after infrastructure, so having control of your energy costs is key to profitability.
The EV transition is happening at different speeds across regions. What opportunities do you see for greater collaboration between automakers, charging operators, utilities and software providers to accelerate global adoption?
This market won’t be controlled by one player. Salesforce started as a cloud-based CRM and the market started to evolve around them. The EV market is similar. It’s maturing and there are many players, so partnerships are key to building the right ecosystem and a better driver experience that improves profitability for CPOs.
The US, EU, and China will have 120 million EVs by 2030 each market with completely different infrastructure models, regulatory realities, and consumer behavior. There is no single global playbook. What there is, is a universal truth: no one in this value chain can succeed without the others. Automakers bring the driver relationship. Utilities bring the grid. Software platforms bring the intelligence layer. CPOs bring the operational expertise. The glue is interoperability by open standards and industry protocols like OCPP and OCPI, real roaming infrastructure, shared data. The companies doubling down on ecosystem thinking right now, instead of proprietary lock-in, are the ones who will still be standing in ten years.
The shift to electric mobility is one of the defining industrial transformations of our time. As a leader in the sector, what inspires you most about the role the EV ecosystem can play in shaping a more sustainable future?
I joined Driivz to help build a sustainable future. It’s our responsibility to leave a better planet for our children. I’ve been vegetarian for 16 years, vegan for 11 years, and I knew my next story move should be in climate tech, food tech, or energy. Driivz ticks the energy box.
What inspires me most is the compounding effect of getting this right. Every reliable charging session builds driver trust. Every percentage of improvements in time removes a barrier for someone who hasn’t gone electric yet. Every operator that achieves profitability proves the model is real and scalable. We are genuinely the missing link between the ambition of the energy transition and the everyday experience of millions of people. That’s not something I take lightly.
