EV SUMMIT UK draws to a close
The final day of the EV SUMMIT has come to a close, and what a way to round off what represented the most significant two-day gathering of over 300 delegates from the EV industry, coming together to achieve decarbonisation outcomes. With the master narrative across the summit of driving EV sales and charging into the ‘early mainstream’, Tuesday discussed the agenda further.
Violinist Violeta Vicci once again kicked off the day with a fabulous performance, in front of a montage of several electric cars and stunning landscapes. This was followed by an introduction from Lindsay Brown, Green.TV Media’s Strategy Director.
Green.TV Founder Ade Thomas, alongside Zapmap co-founder Melanie Shufflebotham, were next to welcome both delegates continuing from yesterday and newcomers for Tuesday.
Ade said:
“I see the summit less as an event, and more of a process of decarbonisation. What you see here on stage is just the tip of the thought leadership iceberg. Below the water is an ongoing collaboration platform where we support businesses in their partnership engagement, in a process which we call Managed Introductions”.
Melanie added:
“The real thank you goes to every one of you, not just for being here today, but for the future ‘thank yous’, for the collaborations that start here today, and from the ongoing meetings that will flow from the summit”.
The welcome was followed by an opening virtual keynote from Roel Vissers, Chief Commercial Officer for Milence – the Europe-wide truck charging business, which is a relative newcomer to the scene, founded in July 2022. Roel highlighted the 5% of annual EU CO2 emissions that can be contributed to heavy goods vehicles, underlining the need to boost electrification in this industry. With over 5,000 electric HGVs in Europe right now, that number is set to rise to one million by 2033.
Before the first networking break came the first panel of the day, in partnership with Konect, discussing how EV infrastructure can be pushed to 24/7 reliability – ahead of UK regulations which include a requirement for 99% uptime on rapid EV charge points.
Chris Pateman-Jones, CEO of Connected Kerb and Chair of ChargeUK, commented:
“Every shareholder who’s invested into this market is probably more focussed in uptime than any government regulation is, because when you’re not running a network that can be accessed by people, you’re not making any money”.
Elizabeth Warren, Director of Public Charging at Mer UK, said:
“If we penalise the CPOs on this, when so much of it is out of our control, there’s only one net effect. It means we have to spend money to fix the problem. We have to spend money to get people to report on the problems, and ultimately that ends with a higher cost for the customer.”
Following on from a productive networking break and Oxford City Council side event, Green.TV Strategy Director, Lindsay Brown, returned to the stage to promote the business’s Top Women in EV campaign, now in its fifth year.
Lindsay said:
“Top Women in EV, from this year, is becoming a year long programme of its own. We’ve always had a week-long campaign as part of International Women’s Day, where we’ve celebrated 70 women across seven days, so far we’ve lifted up 350 women. But, we need more than a moment in time. Throughout the year we’re going to be sharing stories of women to inspire others through ElectricDrives and Top Women in EV’s own channels.”
Then came the second keynote speaker of the day: Aleksandra O’Donovan, Head of Electrified Transport at BloombergNEF, looking at the valuable insights gathered by the organisation on the rise of EV sales, and how policy plays a part in that.
Aleksandra said:
“We still have countries like India, China, France, and the UK where EVs are selling at quite a healthy growth rate. But then we have countries like Italy, Japan, and Germany, which are recording passenger EV sales declines. The reason for those declines is largely regulatory,
It’s worth mentioning how much investment the Inflation Reduction Act has been bringing into clean tech manufacturing. Since its introduction, over $100 billion has been announced, and most of that went into battery and EV manufacturing. However, this year there’s a lot of uncertainty around presidential elections in the US, and what the impact will be on EV adoption in the country.”
Then came the second panel of the day, in partnership with ChargeGuru, and moderated by Green.TV’s EV Campaign Manager, Daveena Saranna, to explore the answers to the 40% of UK drivers that said that where they live makes switching to an EV challenging, according to recent research undertaken by Censuswide.
Nicolas Banchet, Co-Founder of ChargeGuru, said:
“More than half of flat dwellers are hoping to switch to an EV in the next five years. It’s even 25% in two years. So the need is here, but the infrastructure is not ready yet to meet this demand. If accessibility to charging infrastructure, both public and private, does not continue to develop sufficiently, the ability to trigger a massive shift to EVs will be compromised.”
The issue raised on yesterday’s first panel, specifically the barriers to EV adoption, were raised again, with the knowledge gap between those who already own an EV and those who don’t.
Matthew Dale, Head of Transport Consulting at MITIE, said:
“Everybody in this room, probably, knows 100% about EV. Everybody that’s not got an EV yet probably knows about 10%. There is a massive gap we have to close. That’s with the vehicle manufacturers, the dealers selling them, the media writing about them. We’ve all got to take a step back and understand that, whilst we understand a lot about EV, other people don’t.”
The first half of the day was then rounded off by a keynote from Andrew Pilkington, Deputy CEO at VinFast UK, who explored the question of whether EV disruptors are shaking up the UK market, raising several valuable insights:
“The fact of the matter is that customers buying EVs today have to pay around 35% more for an EV than an ICE car. That is fundamentally one of the key stumbling blocks. For those who think that the Chinese are going to disrupt the market, we’re actually dependent on them to a certain extent to disrupt it, because they have a price positioning which is lower than the traditional manufacturers”.
“At a very high level, the disruptors are causing a huge amount of disruption in the boardrooms of the traditional OEMs across the world. They are frightened”.
“We have to embrace the Chinese. We have to embrace EVs coming from afar. The way we do it though, is through collaboration, and not tariffs or forcing them and putting barriers up”.
Andrew also highlighted the key factors giving Chinese manufacturers a competitive advantage. This included the high level of vertical integration, with BYD given as an example with 75% of parts manufactured in house, and local battery production.
After lunch and another networking break, the afternoon was kicked off with a keynote from Oxana Grishina, Head of Section, Business and Transformation at Hyundai. She outlined the OEM’s current strategy for amplifying EV awareness for those who are yet to switch, through a three-pronged approach: Exciting, engaging, and educating. The first includes promoting EVs as a solution to battery energy storage, and the ability to power appliances off the grid, while the second includes consumer facing content such as EV test drive events and EV testimonials. The final action, educating, includes communicating the different charging options available, and visualisation of the charging network.
Oxana’s insights included:
“Our retailers report that mainstream car buyers are very hard to even engage in the conversation around electric vehicles. People are as passionate about their current ICE vehicles as they are about football, religion, or politics”.
“We’re finding that extended test drives at retailers have a higher conversion rate for EVs. Longer duration test drives or having a loan car for a day provide an opportunity for people to experience living with EVs on their terms and get excited about them. So more test drives for more people”.
Next came the first panel of the afternoon, in partnership with Plug Me In, looking at the investments and technology developments needed to further drive EV adoption, moderated by Gill Nowell, Director of Emobility at Green.TV.
Andrew Stead, Commercial Director at Plug Me In, kicked off the conversation by looking at three key hurdles to overcome ahead of the ZEV mandate: with price remaining the biggest consumer barrier, the complexity surrounding business charging, and the market wanting support.
Caroline McCoy, Head of Network at British Gas Zero, commented:
If we want to make EVs available to every driver across the UK, we’ve got to tackle the inequality that exists between home and public charging. That’s only one piece of the puzzle, delivering at home and kerb side charging solutions with affordable charging costs would go a long way to convince drivers that an electric future can be achievable.
Arthur Mitchell, Head of Special Projects at Octopus EV, added:
What we’re talking about is moving from early adopters to a more pragmatic group of people, so we’ve got to understand what it is that will get them to make the switch. What that means is five or six million households sat around the kitchen having a conversation about whether they can live with an EV.
The penultimate panel of the summit came from Virta, discussing how to establish EV infrastructure as adoption grows globally, with an initial keynote speech from Virta’s GEO Director, Stuart Tolley.
Stuart said:
“In the UK market, the lack of inward governmental investment does need to change. The LEVI Fund has been talked about a lot. That will ultimately go out to many many companies, will it be enough to support each of those companies? That’s yet to be seen. If we’re now in a position of governmental change, we should be pushing for more investment. We need to understand that the market has to deliver, but that private investment and the cost of investment is not sustainable.”
Werner Bornman, Director of Technology at Jersey Electricity, commented:
“I think we tend to forget the lifestyle that people are buying. They’re not buying a car, they’re not buying freedom, they’re buying a lifestyle. Particularly when I drive in Europe, and I see what’s happening in the UK, I think there’s too many parallels with fuel stations, and we’re trying to mimic that in a new way, but maybe we should just look completely differently and say ‘what is the EV experience?’”.
This panel led through to the final keynote of the day, coming from Chery’s Executive Director – Program Management, Vehicle Concepts, Peter Matkin. Peter highlighted the three Chery branded electric cars that are headed to the UK, consisting of a luxury saloon, luxury SUV, and a more rugged 4×4 vehicle.
Peter commented:
“We’ve purchased our first manufacturing facility in Europe in Barcelona, and we should be starting production later this year. We’re looking for other plants in Europe and the UK, providing local jobs. But, we’re avoiding some of the new European tariffs which we’re all seeing more and more of”.
The final panel of the day came in partnership with Vauxhall, which discussed how the gap between customer expectations and real world charging infrastructure can be narrowed. The panel begun with James Taylor, Managing Director of Vauxhall:
“Vauxhall’s commitment is to make sure that everyone has easy access to charging and they feel that charging their electric car is going to be simple and convenient for them”.
“At Stellantis overall, we’ve committed to being net zero by 2038, so that’s 10+ years ahead of many of our competitors. That’s why that growth and accessibility to charging is really important because it’s great for us to have ambitious targets, but if we can’t bring customer demand along with us, whether that’s in the retail space or the fleet space, we won’t be able to deliver on those targets”.
Kim Royds, Mobility Director at Centrica, said:
“We know that one of the barriers is not knowing how much this car is going to cost to run once I have it. So what we’ve done is taken away that initial fear and said ‘look, we will give it to you free for the first year.’ Most of the customers who’ve taken it are first time EV drivers which is great. That means they can come into the EV ecosystem, they can understand energy consumption, they can see those credits back on the bill. So by the time they’ve reached the end of that first year, they’re well-primed energy experts”.
James Taylor added:
On Rishi Sunak’s move of the ban from 2030 to 35, we saw that had a bigger impact on lead mix than the removal of the plug-in car grant. If Keir Starmer is true to his word and puts it back to 2030, I think that’s one of the biggest single actions that could make the difference.
Ade Thomas, Founder of Green.TV and the EV SUMMIT, closed the theatre for the day, along with Green.TV’s Gill Nowell.
Ade said:
“Communication is absolutely key to explaining to the early mainstream how electric vehicles work, so we really need to work on the communications of EVs which are, frankly, more expensive, and more difficult to refuel than normal cars, so it’s a world of complexity that we need to communicate to the early mainstream,
The sense of collaboration has been palpable amongst you all in the room here, in the networking areas, people very positively, very creatively sharing ideas on how we might work together, how solutions might come together, who to work with, just a beautiful sense of a collaborative platform that is the EV SUMMIT”.
Gill added:
“I’ve said this to millions of people over the last two days, it’s less of an event, and more of a business development platform. We can work with you and continue to support you over the next 12 months, or however long you need us to work with you, to help you with your business needs.”
These are just some of the takeaway quotes and highlights from the day. In case you missed the EV SUMMIT or its livestreams, panels will be uploaded in the coming days. You can view the roundup of the first day of EV SUMMIT, here.
