In this episode of EV Musings, Gary interviews Adrian Fielden-Gray, co-founder and COO of Be.EV, a national charge point operator. The discussion covers Be.EV's strategic expansion from Manchester to other parts of the UK, focusing on partnerships with existing car parks and garden centres like Dobbies. Adrian explains Be.EV's approach to hardware, pricing models, and customer experience, emphasizing the importance of well-maintained and accessible charging stations. The episode also touches on Be.EV’s commitment to partnerships, customer-focused pricing, and the challenges of power availability at new sites.

Guest Details: Adrian Fielden-Gray

Adrian co-founded Be.EV in 2021, which is now Greater Manchester's largest EV charging network, with over 700 live charge points and 1,000 scheduled to be live by the end of 2024.

Adrian is responsible for the growth and operations of the network, and covers the entire life cycle of the project, from design to installation and ongoing asset management.

Be.EV's focus is on what EV drivers of today and tomorrow want: publicly accessible, rapid and ultra-rapid Charging Hubs conveniently located on busy routes, at dwell destinations and in the hearts of communities nationwide.

Be.EV is uniquely focused on community over kit – engaging with their 33,000+ members who play an active role in shaping their cleaner and greener neighbourhoods of the future.

Adrian's Website

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the free to download app that helps EV drivers search, plan, and pay for their charging.

Links in the show notes:

• Chargetrip GO - Cool EV Thing

Episode produced by Arran Sheppard at Urban Podcasts: https://www.urbanpodcasts.co.uk

(C) 2019-2024 Gary Comerford

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Mentioned in this episode:

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The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers in the UK, which helps EV drivers search, plan, and pay for their charging. Zapmap is free to download and use, with Zapmap Premium providing enhanced features which include using Zapmap in-car on CarPlay or Android Auto and help with charging costs with both a pricing filter and 5% discount*"

Gary: Hi. I'm Gary and this is episode 229 of EV Musings a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners.

On the show today we'll be looking at BE.ev .

Before we start I wanted to bring your attention to my ebooks.

I’ve got two out there. One’s called ‘So you’ve gone electric’ and the other’s called ‘So you’ve gone renewable’. If you’re thinking of getting an EV, OR you’re looking into solar panels, a heat pump and a home battery you can pick these up form amazon for 99p or equivalent.

Or - if you’re in the kindle lending library - you can read them for absolutely free. Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you.

Our main topic of discussion today is BE.ev

Listeners to the podcast will know that over the 200+ episodes of this show I’ve had the opportunity to talk with numerous members of the Charge Point Operator community.

In terms of the rapid chargers I’ve spoken with Ian Johnston from Osprey Charging, Adrian Keen from Instavolt, Sam Clarke from Gridserve, Tom Hurst from Fastned, Dee Humphries from Geniepoint and James McKemmey from Podpoint.

I also spoke with Patrick Dunne from Smart Charge earlier this season.

In my quest to chat with all the major charge put providers I have managed to snag another one.

Adrian:So Adrian Fielden-Grey, I'm the co -founder and chief operating officer at BEV.

Gary :BE.EV are a national charge point operator. They were initially formed in the Manchester area and are expanding out from there quite rapidly - nationally, I believe.

Adrian: So yes, national rollout I think is the number one point to make but...

Obviously, more of our legacy and existing network is lot more Northwest focused because that's where it all began. big part of the original genesis of this was the Transport for Greater Manchester contract where we upgraded and refreshed and then operate a network on their behalf effectively. But then therefore the natural growth out, we always wanted to go for quite a regional strategy and concentration. So kind of built out more around Greater Manchester, then built out in the Northwest. And then now we're building out then across kind of strategic places across the UK. yeah, now we do have sites from kind of Cymbran in Wales to the Mendips to London, the Northeast. So yeah, we're kind of spreading, kind of it's a strategic kind of expansion rather than just a scatter gun approach because what we always wanted to avoid was having you know two chargers in Bournemouth and two chargers in Inverness and then not really been able to properly maintain them because what we've always wanted to make sure is we've got a really high available and well maintained and serviced network we don't want there to be some white elephants as we've seen somewhere else of perfectly abandoned charges we always wanted to make sure we kind of we expanded sensibly strategically and make sure that we really are able to kind of offer the best customer experience through the network as we go.

Gary: So how is the rollout going in terms of finding sites. Be Ev are partnered with Dobbie’s the garden centre chain and are leveraging those site.s Anything else?

Adrian: Yeah, Our preferred approach is very much partnering and then just effectively leasing a number of bays in an existing car park. That's the majority of our pipeline and the majority of our rollout. But we do have some sites where either it could be a green field where there's a developer building something there and then we kind of go alongside them. We have bought one bit of land in Manchester where we're rolling out our first charging green and that's had some really interesting work because it's a former petrol station but it's been abandoned for over 10 years and we had to decontaminate the site take out the old fuel tanks it's really interesting kind of story within there of like going from the old to the new but actually yeah the the general that's kind of a bit of a That's more of the smaller side of the future pipeline. The majority of it going forward is actually, I say, partners, existing car parks and us partnering with them to offer EV charging to both their existing client base and visitors, but also then hopefully attracting new footfall to the sites as well.

Gary: But, as we all know, one key constraint is always power at new sites

Adrian: Yeah. And, you know, as you know, and, you know, the power available on a site is a large defining factor of the ultimate solution. But where our strategy now is, is very heavily on the ultra rapid rollouts where we can use load balancing like the Kempower solutions, then Yeah, that's always great to try and do. But every site's specific, as you know, but we'll do anything from two bays to 16 bays. But yeah, the focus is on the ultra rapid and obviously trying to find the right solution for the right sites. But yeah, we do have some where we're still putting in just a couple of bays and then you might hopefully expand it in the future if the demand is there. But yeah, as you know, a lot of the time it can often be a bit power dependent where we'd like to do one thing but there's just not the power available there to do that.

Gary: Be EV have a range of different chargers according to the power available. But they re one of the newer CPos who seem to have attached themselves very much to Kempower as a hardware supplier. Why is that?

Adrian: So as a business, we've always wanted to be very kind of true to partnerships. So there's some people that have been there since the very start when me and Asa first set up and, know, they maybe helped us back then. And, you know, we always like to return on loyalty. So we're not in the business of chopping and changing every five minutes just to save a pound an hour, whether it's subcontractors installing the charges or whether it's agencies or contractors working with us. We always want to try and build deep partnerships. So I that's a kind of really key thing to stay first of In terms of the hardware, again, ultimately it's we've... did reviews of the market and we landed on at the time the Raptions and the Kempowers and we again wanted to make sure that we're trying to provide a kind of fairly consistent customer experience. We obviously keep our ear to the ground and we're always testing new charges as well. So we are technology agnostic but we always want to make sure that anything we put in the ground has been very well tested. know it's going to give a good customer experience experience. And so that's kind of a key thing for us. So rather than kind of continually turning and changing what we're installing, it's actually making sure it's done kind of the right way. Then we're committing for a period and then we then re -review with what's on the market at the moment.

Gary: Of course a network is only as good as its maintenance and support. Talk to me about that.

Adrian: SYeah, so largely outsourced, again, kind of in line with our general business model building and forging deep partnerships, but we can do certain things in -house as well. So... general maintenance, got a couple of providers that are doing that for us. In troubleshooting, So earlier this year, we transitioned with Fuuse, Manchester -based. So they now do the app, the back office, the customer call center. But within all of that, gives us a greater ability ourselves as well. our network team are able to, you know, kind of directly resolve any issues that might might be coming up. But ultimately what we really want to get to is you want to, we want to be getting there before the customer. So actually if there is an issue with the charger we know about it already and we're already solving it rather than it getting to a point where a customer is getting to site trying the charger and finding an issue it needs to become the other way and that's where again having really good partnerships with our supply chain that they are actively monitoring the network and then also our team are also actively monitoring the network as well so that is saying we can hopefully be ahead of the curve and resolve any issues before anyone even knows this happened.

Gary: As with bp Pulse in a recent episode the pricing model for BE EV is a little complicated. You run a 3 by 3 matrix which gives a different price depending on the power of the charger, the payment method and time of day. At the time wee recorded this interview you’ve also got a promotion with a subset of chargers near the M60 with a completely different price.

Isn’t this confusing?

Adrian: okay, two parts of this, think, as well is obviously it's always gonna be more expensive charging on the public network than at home, mainly because of the cost to put the kit in the ground in the first place. But for that, hopefully you get a better experience, faster charging and the rest. And obviously trying to make it more accessible to everyone, EV charging. In terms of our pricing, so earlier this year, we actually dropped our prices, which not that many

CPOs had done. So I like to think that we were one of the kind of the early leaders on that perspective because obviously we had the big spike of electricity pricing following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and so and you know we've had a very volatile electricity market and then as that started to come back down, okay, maybe not to the original levels, but at least stabilize a bit, then we wanted to make sure that we passed on any then subsequent reduction in our supply tariff. We wanted to pass it on to our customers because that's the right thing to do in terms of what we had, we were listening to our customers as well, and because we've got effectively fast, rapid and ultra rapid charges, previously rapid and ultra rapid were priced the same, but we were hearing from our customers that actually that's not what they thought was right, and they wanted to be paying a bit less for the rapid compared to the ultra rapid. So we did separate those pricings. So we've ended up effectively three fast, rapid and ultra rapid, but it's based on what the customers wanted got a member program where people get discount of 5p per kilowatt hour. It's free to sign up to So that's where you then get the next layer. the customers also wanted to be able to benefit from off peak pricing. And again, our supply tariff was cheaper at night than it was at the day. So we wanted to pass that on to the customer. So then again, on certain charges, it's 5p cheaper again, if you're at nighttime. So I know it sounds like a nine price grid. It's actually three prices, but there's two types of discounts. You can get 5p off if you're a member, another 5p off if you're a member at night time it's a way to kind of go about it and then we also say sometimes there are promotions for specific sites as well but ultimately it came back to what does the customer want and also passing on the savings that we were getting to the customer

Gary: We spoke with Sara Sloman from Paythru last week about payment anxiety and he white paper they’ve released on this. One thing the Paythru report identified is that people want to know exactly what they’re going to pay for a charge. When a customer rocks up at your charger how do they know what price they re going to pay?

Adrian: Basically, it's not like the nine grid is available to everyone. If you're charging through your app, it will tell you the price you get on the app at that charger. If you're charging through Electroverse or Zappay, it will tell you the price you're getting for that. Whereas if you're just paying at the charger by contactless, then on the charger it will tell you the price you're paying for the contactless. So it's not like people are always seeing the different pricing. It's actually the mode you are using, it tells you the price. But then we're also trying to highlight whether it's the signage on the charger that says, actually you can also charge cheaper if download the app or charge at night time. So we're trying to make people aware that there are ways to charge cheaper, but when they are interacting with the charger, actually it should be quite clear that the method they are doing at that specific charger, the price is X. So it's hopefully clear at the point of sale.

Gary: One more thing on pricing. As someone who worked with a taxi company I am acutely aware of the fact that taxi drivers like cheap charging. I notice that you ahve a specific rate for taxi drivers in Manchester - 50p/ kWh. The pragmatist in me is asking: if you can afford 50p/kWh for taxis rivers why can’t you afford 50p/kWh for everyone?

Adrian: this one in particular is actually a transport for Greater Manchester initiative that we support them with. So there is some grant funding for a number of taxi chargers which we help to install and we operate as part of the network. So it's only on those chargers that there is this beneficial price and ultimately there's a cleared ambition for the region to try and help more taxi drivers convert to electric you know say we're supporting them with that but yeah it's actually it's more through the Transport for Greater Manchester partnership and there was some OZEV funding that helped support the actual install of those charges the capital outlay for them was a bit different but yeah say there's a therefore there is a very specific taxi scheme going on where it's on taxi specific charges with a taxi specific tariff whereas the rest of our network is whether you're a taxi driver, a van driver, fleet, personal, anything else, actually for the rest of the network, it's all the same to all users.

Gary: Let’s talk preauthorisations. You charge £5 on rapids and fast chargers an £25 on ultra rapids. That’s relatively low in the industry. How do you make the risk calculation to arrive at those figures?

Adrian: Realistically, the reason for that, you know, we know that pre -authorizations can sometimes be a headache for customers, but it's getting that balance correct between, you know, pre -authorization is there for a reason. In terms of you want to make sure that you're not having fraudulent activity, you want to make sure that people have the funds there. There's also a whole bunch of extra technical bits that go into it in terms of actually making sure you can then take the full amount later but I'm not going to go into that, I'm glad to know. But therefore what it is is actually just doing it for different types of charge just because of actually the expected total Bill if you like total amount of charge on a fast charger a it's cheaper in the first place the the tariff we're charging and the average Charge amount is generally lower Compared to the ultra rapid so we have we just separated it between the two of them more to try and get that balance between What the customer wants because what customer doesn't want is to have lots and lots of pre - held up on their card and you know that had happened in the past and we wanted to make sure we try and help rectify that but on flip side you also want to make sure that the pre -auth is of the correct amount such that we don't then have issues at the end of the charge where the bank suddenly goes wait a minute the pre -auth wasn't the correct amount so yeah it's one of those things that I didn't know much about before going into this industry and then actually now you're starting to find out about these pieces that come up and you have to kind of address them

Gary: Any listener to this show will know that I’m not a fan of the third-party add-on credit card readers that a lot of CPOs use. Talk to me about what you’ve done with the Kempwower units and adding readers in there.

Adrian: We've generally approached it through collaboration with the Chargepoint manufacturer. being honest, it continues to evolve, I think is what I would say with this. so what may have been how things started doesn't necessarily always mean that's where it finishes. So again, it's just working with them, working out the the best solutions and which ones work. But yeah, we do use third party card readers. It's another party in the chain, should we say. I think customers probably often think it's as simple as you plug in and you tap your card and that's going straight to through BEV but actually the number of parties that are actually in the middle of that. You've got the reader, you've got the merchant, you've got all these other parties that it has to go through and you have to set it all up correctly in the first place to make sure it doesn't fall down on the way.

Gary: When it comes to payment the holy grail is plug and charge. No cards, no apps, no readers. Just plug the connector in and off you go.

How close are you to that?

Adrian: Something we're actively looking at, I think is what I would say. There are...

I'd say almost as seems typical these days, not in just this industry, but there's more than one option. think is the piece is not just a case of actually there's one version of it that's going to be the future and you either say yes or no of whether you want to do it. Actually, there's a number of options out there and both from a customer experience but also for an implementation perspective. Some needs updates to the actual site themselves. Some need updates to your back office or your app So again, all of these need a full review, but yeah, it is something we're actively looking at at the moment. there's also kind of which partners doing it best. Tesla's a bit of a different word, think, isn't it? that Tesla start with a car and then they start building charges to support their car sales. Whereas we're coming from this slightly opposite direction of building charges and then trying to make sure we offer the best customer experience to all electric vehicles. yeah, got to make sure that we're thinking about it in the correct way before we don't roll out something and then find out it's not giving a good customer experience. That's the key for us We want to make sure that what we do decide to go with is really what people want and also it's going to work well.

Adrian: I think the accessibility piece, you know, it's crucial we get this right. I think a big part of it is also making sure that the site owners actually understand it as well. I think you'll find, you know, as I know you've picked up on some of your other episodes that actually sometimes there's, can have these two bays or these four bays for charging, but you can't take any more space because there might be restrictions under their leases or anything else. So that gets quite difficult when you're trying to the conversation where actually you've got one party that's 'I want you to use as little space as possible'. And we're saying, well, we want to make sure that bays accessible, wide enough, cetera, or have like one PAS compliant, et cetera. Being honest, I think actually now this is starting to come around now. And I think that education piece site owners and other parties is now coming up and that thought process is maturing and they're recognizing that actually it's better for them to actually assign a bit of that extra space and make sure that you are factoring in accessibility to the sites. We can also try and be as creative as we can try to be. We've got a great new site in Derbyshire Saltergate where actually we had a bit of a quirky space, should we say. But what we've tried to make sure we do is actually really maximise what space we have to make sure we can get as accessible as possible. We've got four, well, one fully accessible and then three accessible bays. And it's because we worked with our designers to really try and maximise it rather than just go and, just put in the standard solution there, which would have actually ended up being a bit cramped. Actually, we're trying to be as creative where we can be. as I say, I think the good thing is that the market's maturing and And it's not just us, it's also the site owners also need to be really attuned into this.

Gary: Last question for you now Adrian- there is a perception that a lot of the CPOs are ripping people off with the rates they levy for public charging.

Are you doing that? Are you making a profit?

Adrian: If you look on a site by site basis, some sites, yes, and other sites that they're only new, you say, you're starting to build up that utilization. The other way to have to think about this as well is there's a large upfront investment that is required to put these charges in the ground, which is why we have the likes of Octopus Energy Generation and NatWest and KfW supporting us in the rollout of that. when you start to factor in, that's why it's kind of, it's a heavy upfront capital intensive industry, but the models work over 20 plus years that we're looking at this. It's not a case of you're expecting to get all that back in the first two years like you might in some other industries. So actually, are we on track? Yeah, we're on track. And that's the key thing. And that is what helps to give the confidence to continue rolling out more and more charges to secure more funding as we go forward.

Gary: A couple of things to discuss here

Firstly on the subject of pricing I see the logic behind having multiple pricing levels depending on speed of the charger etc. But - just as when bp Pulse come on the show and discussed this I’ll say what I said to them: This is potentially complex and confusing. Especially when taken into consideration the Paythru White Paper that Sara Sloman discussed on a recent episode of the show.

I asked Be.EV for their official position on subscriptions (following the subscription model and episode we did a week or two back) and they replied ‘Be.EV has over 40,000 members across the country. These members benefit from exclusive offers and discounted pricing tariffs, all for no added cost.’ So, I guess that means no subscriptions specifically.

So what do we think about Be EV? A good model? Anyone used them on a trip? What was your experience?

Let me know info@evmusings.com. Which is also the place to write if there’s a CPO you want me to chat with. We’ve done 2 this season already. Who else should I be approaching?

This season we’re looking at raising the awareness of carbon literacy with our listeners. One way we’re doing that is with a Carbon Fact as read by Carbon Literacy trainer Anne Snelson

Anne: Two and a half billion single use plastic and paper cups are used in the UK each year, only one in 400 of which are recycled. The rest go straight to landfill.

So please use your own beaker or bottle whenever you can. And if possible, avoid using single use plastic bottles.

Gary: It's time for a cool ev or renewable thing to share with you listeners.

If you speak to a lot of non EV drives they always tend to quote range when it comes to one reason they won’t consider an electric car.

Most people respond by saying ‘But it can do 200 miles. The problem for a lot of people is that 200 miles don’t really mean a great deal to many people. They don’t tend to think in terms of how far 200 miles is. What they do tend to think in terms of is where they can get to from a given point.

Chargetrip is a company that has created a mapping web page using what they call a range spider. With a starting position, a car, and some information about the weather it can draw a realistic map showing exactly how far that car can drive from that point view things like the road network and terrain.

It’s quite a good and a very useful way of illustrating what can and can’t be achieved with a vehicle.

I hope you enjoyed listening to today’s show.

It was put together this week with the help of Adrian Fielden-Gray and his team at Be.EV. Many thanks for their help and participation.

If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages to pass on to me I can be reached at info@EVMusings.com

On the socials I’m on Twitter @musingsev

I’m also on Instagram at EVMusings where I post short videos and podcast extracts regularly. Why not follow me there?

Thanks to everyone who supports me through patreon on a monthly basis, and through Ko-fi.com on an ad-hoc one.

If you enjoyed this episode why not buy me a coffee? Go to Ko-fi.com/evmusings and you can do just that. Takes Apple Pay, too!

Regular listeners will know about my two ebooks- ‘So, you’ve gone electric’ and ‘So you’ve gone renewable’.

They’re 99p each (or equivalent) and you can get them on Amazon

Check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my regular EV Musings newsletter and associated articles.

I know you’re probably driving or walking or jogging now. But if you can remember- and you enjoyed this episode drop a review in iTunes, please. It really helps me out. Thanks.

If you’ve reached this part of the podcast and are still listening - thank you. Why not let me know you’ve got to this point by tweeting me @musingsev with the words Mancunian power mad-fer-it #ifyouknowyouknow Nothing else.

Thanks as always to my co founder Simone. You know he’s quite the entrepreneur, you know. Always looking to get into the latest and greatest moneymaking thing. His next venture is a housing development where everyone lives on a row with two neighbours either side in exclusive developments of small clusters like this. It’ll cost a fortune to make but he’s very selective about who gets in

Adrian: Basically, it's not like the nine grid is available to everyone.

Thanks for listening. Bye!