Zapmap, a key player in the electric vehicle ecosystem, is the focus of this episode of EV Musings. Host Gary discusses the evolution of ZapMap, its role in simplifying public charging, and the challenges it faces as the EV market grows. The episode features Ed Walsh, Head of Product at Zapmap, who provides insights into the app's development, its future roadmap, and how it balances user needs with business goals.

The episode also touches on ZapMap's collaboration with Field Dynamics to improve data accuracy and coverage for EV infrastructure.

What are the plans for Zapmap's app and general future) moving forward?

Guest Details:

Ed Walsh: Head of Product for Zapmap, helping accelerate the drive to low carbon mobility. Also working as a coach and mentor to folk within the product space.

Ed'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:

• The Flying Electric Ferry - Cool Thing
• Our new report reveals advancements in local authorities’ provision of electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions for households without off-street parking.   - Field Dynamics
• EV charging stations & electric vehicles - Zapmap

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:

Field Dynamics Sponsorship

This episode is sponsored by Field Dynamics, the data analytics consultancy whose mission is to lead the charge towards a net zero future by pioneering data-driven solutions that empower industries to navigate complex challenges with clarity and confidence

Field Dynamics Ep233

Zap Map

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 C:

Hi, I'm Gary and this is episode 233 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 Zapmap. Before we start, I wanted to quickly say hi to anyone who came up and chatted at the recent Everything Electric South event in Farnborough.

I did get a number of people introduce themselves to me as well as a couple who heard me talking to someone, stopped, listened for a while and finally said, are you Gary from EV Musings? It's really nice when you come up and introduce yourself. A specific hellos to Danita Brewer, who's working her way through the whole back catalogue and Sarah Wellstead who listens while she's washing her car, I think she said.

So hello to you. Our main topic of discussion today is Zapmap. As you know, Zapmap are the sponsors of this podcast and have supported us for many seasons now.

And one of the reasons I approached them for sponsorship earlier on was that I believe in their product and I use it regularly. We've had several people from Zapmap on the show, including joint CEOs, Melanie Shufflebottom and Ben Lane, and head of data insights, Jade Edwards. In fact, Jade's show in season 10, episode 192, was one of the more popular ones, especially amongst the data geeks like myself, as we got quite into the weeds.

In the big scheme of things, this means that a lot of the current charge point operators who like to use apps as a means of ensuring their customers can charge will likely lose out. Their passing trade, i. e. the ones who are not regular users, but who just want to charge their car on a long journey, should in theory be able to just pull up, flash a card and charge. But there will still be a wide ranging array of CPO only apps out there that some people will use. For example, I have apps on my phone for both Instavolt and Osprey charging.

These are really useful for things such as starting and stopping a charge when it's wet and windy outside. So just pop out, plug in and jump back in the car to sort out the start and stopping of it all. A grid serve has recently launched their own app, which is well designed and has some great functionality such as notifications, receipts and the ability to track your charge curve in the app.

There are CPOs who offer incentives to use their app. BEV offers reduced price charging if you use their app, for example. And grid serve ran a 20% discount across the summer if you use their app to start a charge.

So I don't think apps are going anywhere anytime soon. But there are additional apps out there that are part of the EV ecosystem, but which are not specific to a single charge point operator. One of these, of course, is Zapmap, sponsors of this season of the podcast.

For example, the ZapPay functionality now covers 10 different charge point operators, allowing you to use it just like you can with individual CPOs to pay for charges. But with a one app to rule them all sort of vibe. But it's not all sweetness and light.

The rapidly expanding number of charges in the UK and across Europe, remember we had a 43% increase in total public charges last year alone, has meant that large efforts need to be made to ensure that all the data is accurate and up to date. On top of that, Zapmap has updated the app with the CarPlay functionality, additional information screens, filters, and more and more charge point operators. So where can it go from here?

Well, to talk through what's happening with the app, and where it might go in the short to medium term, I'm joined by Ed Walsh, who is, well, I'll let him introduce himself.

Ed W:

So my name's Ed. I'm Head of Products here at Zapmap.

Gary C:

Head of Product. What's that then? It's a bit of a nebulous term sometimes.

Ed W:

So as Head of Products, my role really is to understand how we can serve the needs of our various users. So anyone that might be picking up the app, anyone that might be reading some research on our website, or anyone that might be thinking about getting an EV, trying to understand those needs, and then working out how we can build products and services that help them with those needs. So that might be from something very, very basic at the start of that journey, or it might be something quite complex further on in that journey.

And through doing so, the aim is to effectively be able to build a business on the back of it. So it's quite a user-focused role, helping to understand the users and the market, but then also quite a commercial and business-oriented role. So making sure that we are building something that allows us to exist in three to five years and continue to build out what we can do for our users.

Gary C:

You've basically got two aspects to the company. You've got the app side of things and the data side of things. One feeds the other.

But apart from some subscription users on the app, I think I'm right in saying that the majority of your income comes from selling the other sorts of data that you collect and distribute. So talk to me a little bit about the tension between these two aspects. You want a great app for users, but that's effectively something you're giving away versus the data, which is important for the industry.

Now, you're only a relatively smallish company. So what's the roadmap?

Ed W:

It's a never-ending question, that one, I would say. And we have a million things that we want to do. And that's the brilliant thing of working in a company like ours in a growing industry, which is changing all the time. And there's new entrants and there's new complexities and new opportunities.

So yeah, it's a continual prioritization exercise. The biggest things for us or where we start is, and you can talk about things like design thinking, you always start with empathizing and understanding the people that might need your service. So what is it that they need?

And of those things, what are the kind of core needs within that? So for instance, our example might be, yes, they do sometimes want to pay for charging on our service, but actually they need to start by being able to search and find the best possible charge points. Okay, well, we need to make sure that that fundamental work, you know, that fundamental journey works as well as possible before we layer on top of it with new things.

So we'll start with understanding the needs of the users, prioritizing those needs and working with them. So that could be sitting down with them in a conversation like this and getting them to talk us through what it is like for them to own an electric vehicle and what services they use on Zapmap and what other services they use and what they find easy and what they find difficult. And through that, we get an understanding of what are the most important things for our users.

So that helps with part of the prioritization, which is what's most important for our users. And then the other side of it is kind of the business side of it. So how does that help us with our overall strategic goals?

So some of those goals might be, we want to build really good data because we know that, you know, there's certain things we might not be able to do today that once we have that data set, we'd be able to do in the future. So there's an element of the business need as well. So you're kind of balancing those two things, the user needs and the value for them and the business needs and the value for them.

And then the third thing is actually the complexity of doing it. So there are certain things that might appear really, really simple, but actually they need some quite complex technology to put them in place. And other things that might be quite complicated, actually, we can say, oh, no, we can do that.

We've got that capability. So generally, it's using all of those inputs and continually checking those through and saying, OK, well, based on what users value, based on what the business is trying to do, based on the complexity, what are the right things, all the while making sure it aligns up to this mission and this vision that we've got as an organisation. So are we really working towards making charging simple? Are we ensuring it's accessible for people? Are we ensuring that we're helping people move to lower carbon mobility? And so that vision helps us bring this all together. And if we ever have this decision point of saying, well, we want to work on X and we want to work on Y and they're both super valid, it comes back to what's going to help us achieve our mission and take us towards that vision.

Gary C:

Now, I wanted to talk about the Zapmap app, and I think we'll get onto that shortly. But give me a quick rundown of the sort of things you're looking at or working on that you think the listeners would like to know, please.

Ed W:

So I think there's three things that I'm really excited about for Zapmap at the moment. The first is what we talked about of everything electric. So that is the announcement of our partnership with Hive. So we're going to be bringing an RFID solution to their new charger customers and also providing them with an amount of credit so that they can go out and they can pay on the public network. And what the partnership is really seeking to do is to give people that great first experience out there charging in public and to reduce those barriers or maybe mental blocks that they might have had to take those longer journeys. And that's really aligned to both of our missions, which is to make EV simple and seamless to own for more people and to give them the confidence that they can take it wherever they want without feeling any kind of limits.

So that's something I'm really excited about. To enable that, we are building out our payment coverage. So we're seeking to ensure that we've got market-leading payment coverage, and that gives people the most places that they can pay on Zapmap wherever they are across the country. And so there's a lot of work going on with working with charge point operators and getting those agreements in place. And also then behind the scenes, making sure that that payment experience is going to be as simple as possible for drivers when they reach those locations. And that obviously helps those new Hive customers as they come onto the road, because they're going to see more and more locations where they can pay on ZapPay, where they can pay with their RFID card. And again, it all aids towards that simplicity.

And the third piece that I'm really excited about going into the new year is ensuring that our payment is also backed by really good pricing information, and that pricing information is surfaced in a way within the user experience that allows people to understand where they can get really good value charging. And we do things like offer discounts for people that have subscribed to our premium service, but we will look to deepen those as well.

So hopefully, people can be coming in having a really simple way to pay on Zapmap, the widest range of locations for the best possible prices. And that ensures that more and more public charging is an accessible place for people, and it's delivering for them when they need it.

Gary C:

Three excellent topics there. I was actually going to ask you about the RFID card. ZapPay is great, but it suffers from the same sort of issue that other app-based solutions do, which is connectivity. An RFID card solves that. Talk a little more about that, please.

Ed W:

It's always been an interesting one for us. We want to ensure that we deliver the experience that people expect and will use and we absolutely understand that RFID is still an incredibly part of the overall ecosystem.

Gary C:

You also talked about pricing and one of the more recent updates to the app has been in the inclusion of that little interim screen that pops up when you select a location and this gives the site details, facilities, number and availability of charges etc. But what it also does for a large number of CPOs is provide a price for charging.

So what exactly is that price?

Ed W:

It's a really interesting area for us because we've got that balance between pay-as-you-go pricing and pricing that people might be able to access outside of application and then pricing within our application. So we took the decision there to display a price from what can you get charging at that location from and then it's up to you how you want to pay. We would in this instance prioritize a pay-as-you-go type price because that is the achievable price at that location. Now we would hope that you see the benefit of paying for charging via Zapmap, a simplified experience or you're charging in one place. But we understand obviously that there are certain people that might want to use contactless or they might use an RFID solution that they've had for a while.

Over time we do see it that we will be evolving our application so that pricing and payment will be coming more and more to the fore and we're hopeful that that ensures that we can continue to offer people the best information but convert more of those people through to paying via Zapmap.

Gary C:

Let's loop back to the actual app itself. Now I've done software development in the past and there's always two aspects to this. You want the best app full stop. It has to be the perfect app for the end user. But you've also got multiple different end users with different wants and needs. You've got new users, you've got experienced users, you've got fleet users etc. So how do you reconcile the functionality in these two different aspects?

Ed W:

We wouldn't want to just be an average app for everyone. We do want to be a brilliant app for the majority but maybe not necessarily everyone within that market. And I think it's also really important to tie it to what capabilities you've got as an organisation. So what routes to market have you got? How can you address a certain audience? What does your brand permission allow you to do? And people see us as generally they see us as a consumer in the consumer space.

They see us as someone that helps people on this journey. So an example might be someone that's looking to buy a car in the first place. We would play a key role in that. We might help them understand the charging network. We might break down some myths that they've read in the media. So we've got a really good way of talking to that user and then onboarding them onto our platform and then serving them well.

Historically there are other markets that are slightly more difficult for us to get into. So we've had lots of conversations with rental companies but actually they're generally going to manage the relationship with that customer. So we can provide them with services but it probably doesn't make sense for us to design our apps specifically for their users because they are going to manage that customer relationship.

So in those instances it might make more sense for us to give them a capability rather than actually target our experience towards those users. So there's a bit of prioritisation but a lot of it comes back down to what capabilities we have and how our brand is positioned within the market and where we see the opportunities for where we can play a really good role within that market.

Gary C:

I want to talk about data quality in the app. Now the last few years have seen some phenomenal growth in both the number of chargers available, the types of chargers and the number of people using those chargers. All three of those data points feed into Zapmap to provide the app's functionality. As we heard when we spoke with Jade Edwards back in episode 192, all that data needs to be cleaned and managed appropriately. Are you comfortable that what's going out in the app is accurate and up to date?

Ed W:

It's a really good question and a really good challenge and I think that is a challenge that all of us within the industry have been grappling with the entire time it's been evolving. It has been incredibly rapid expansion and many people design systems for much smaller amounts of charge points that have then, you know, it's grown so quickly which is brilliant.

So the thing that we're doing here is wherever possible we're seeking to automate and ensure that we are making use of technology to optimise that whole process of onboarding charge points and then also checking and assuring the quality of the data that we're getting for those charge points. So what we've got internally is a system that our head of data has developed with the help of our engineers which is termed the judge and the judge basically works out, okay we've got data coming in from charge point operators, let's do a bunch of checks on that data to say, well is that, you know, the right type of data in the first place? Okay, what do we know about the data that we've received from this charge point operator in the past?

Do they usually send us good data about this? Okay, when was it updated? So we've got all of these rules and all of these checks going on with no manual intervention that then tells us whether, okay, that actually looks really good, that can just go through and be displayed on the application and in our other systems or do you know what, that looks like it's a little bit out of keeping with what we might expect, let's push that out to a moderator who can then check that and say, okay, well that needs some level of secondary check on that.

That secondary check, again, increasingly we're trying to ensure that there's not too much manual intervention but we do see that as a really important role that we take within the ecosystem because historically the data that has been passed back and forth within this space has had gaps in the quality and so companies do need to work to continue to improve that and enhance that. So there is still a manual role there but as much as possible we're seeking to use technology to automate that process of making sure it's the best possible quality.

Gary C:

One key USP for Zapmap is the live status for the charges. I can check the app and I can see how many of the connectors are being used at any given time. Is there actually an SLA for the provision of that data to ensure that it's accurate and up-to-date? I mean, what are we talking, like 15 minutes maximum?

Ed W:

Yeah, I mean, generally with availability we're trying to make sure it's up to the second in many instances so historically we did have more kind of batch checks going on but increasingly it's all about those updates being pushed out to us and us ensuring that we have it, you know, within the last 10 seconds, within the last five seconds and that's what we will not stop trying to get is getting that as close as it can be to a very very live availability.

Gary C:

Let's talk about a couple of filters that might be useful. What about plug and charge? Can you see a time when we'll be able to filter for plug and charge available locations?

Ed W:

I would say overall things like that that allow people to find the right charge points are right in our, you know, right in the sweet spot for us so definitely we've had conversations with CPOs around that. It's often a case of prioritization of that versus other things that we think might help people like for instance recently focusing on a pricing filter where we felt like actually we need to give people a better way of interacting with the pricing data but definitely do agree then it's ensuring that okay if you knew the right price of charging you also want to know how you're going to pay for that charging or what's the simplest possible experience that you can get. So yes we've explored that and additional filters like that are very much on our future roadmap.

Gary C:

And are HGV filters on our roadmap so that people driving big electric heavy goods vehicles can find charges?

Ed W:

Yes, yes there are and there's actually a couple of CPOs that we've been speaking to about this specifically. It is obviously it's an evolving market and we're staying very close to how it does, you know, how it does change but I think over time what we would try to do in that space is just do some pilots with some specific partners so that we can start to say okay you've got some locations that you think may be suitable to get out. We could offer you a custom filter which we can target out to certain people. Let's see how people engage with that. Okay what additional information might what those people want to know about those locations? So we can kind of build it out in a pilot and partner model which is what we do for most kinds of new functionality that we bring through for the charge point operators.

Gary C:

With the increase in the number of charges across the country we've started to hit a situation which was until recently relatively unheard of. Multi-provider charge point operator sites. Solstice Park is a good example as is Markham Vale and Gretna Green. Now Solstice Park has Tesla BP two separate Instavolt installs and a set of grid server units. Markham Vale has Osprey charging Instavolt and EEG group. Gretna Green has Ionity, Apple Green, Tesla and GridServe. So multiple chargers with multiple charge point operators and multiple prices. Now if I'm new to this I want that map to be pointing these sites out because they give choice but here's the problem. I did a test earlier wanting to see the charges en route to my parents in Yorkshire. I selected multiple units as a filter with four or more. Now it ignored Markham Vale because despite the fact that there are three CPOs there with eight total connectors none of the individual CPOs had four or more that were available to me at the time. Now that's got to be something to consider moving forward right?

Ed W:

Yeah I mean I think it's a brilliant idea and as you say often a user just wants to know can they charge there and what options have they got. They're less worried about sort of boiling it down to which charge point operator that is. So we have obviously we talk a lot about hubs internally and we have been talking about you know multi-operator hubs as well and could we wrap that into a different map marker that allows someone to see oh okay this is a location with multiple charge point operators and multiple different devices so you have more of a kind of rolled up view because that's what they're interested in. So it's something we've discussed we've certainly talked about how we can make hubs more prominent within the experience and it is I think it'd be a brilliant idea to to bring this up and you know to bring this forward as well so really good feedback and a really good idea.

Gary C:

Now we've moved on quite nicely onto CarPlay so what are the constraints on the development of the app that are imposed on you by Apple for example?

Ed W:

They are first and foremost focused on safety and ensuring that their drivers aren't zooming in on applications that are difficult use and so the way you build an app for CarPlay is you get a set of templates that you can use, very clear templates and a set of colors you can use and a set of font sizes you can use and then you choose what information that you show within those templates. So for instance we might see a row in a table and we might be able to display five different things in that row with certain different fonts and colors but that's it you know we get no more control than that.

So then we need to think okay well based on the use case and the context and I guess the way that a user might be interacting with this what might they be looking for? Okay well probably they're on a journey, they might have stopped, they might have driven somewhere and been you know there's a queue and they need to go to another charge point so they're looking for what's near to them, what's available and the distance that they might need to travel to get there as well as the location name so that they know what type of location they're going to and the charge point operator and so very much we've tried to take it from a very contextual level of design for what that user might be trying to do within their car that might be different to when they're using their app sat at home or maybe you know planning a journey. So yeah to answer your question it's very template oriented from their side we get to show certain things within that template but it is quite restricted you that you certainly can't customize those templates or or fudge things in you've got to be very very strictly aligned to their guidelines or they just wouldn't accept it.

Gary C:

I am firmly of the opinion that if you were designing Zapmap for CarPlay from scratch without the constraints put forward by Apple you'd probably do certain things differently for example I can bring up a map with a list of pins showing me the nearest charges but I can't physically touch and select a pin and navigate there I can only select from a drop-down list of available locations but I don't know which of those locations relates to which pin. Intuitively the nearest pin should be the top of the list but in some cases the nearest pin by distance is actually behind you which isn't great if you're on a motorway and need to get off at a junction. Now I'm assuming that a lot of this is template related.

Ed W:

So the side that you mentioned around not being able to select those markers that is a limitation of the templates that you get within Apple CarPlay and we've always looked at that and said wouldn't it be great if it would be a much easier way to interact with it. Unfortunately Apple have taken a decision that that type of interaction is not safe within that environment and so they've not provided the functionality to allow us to do that unfortunately.

Gary C:

Well finally Ed I want to talk about a personal bugbear of mine which is one of the things we discussed earlier when we were talking about the pull between what the perfect solution for the perfect user is and the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect user and that is number of connectors. Now if I look at a site such as any given Osprey charging 50 kilowatt location with the circumferential units it will tell me on that map that there are three connectors available AC DC CCS and DC CHAdeMO. Now if I'm on CarPlay and all three are available it will show three of three available but if someone comes and uses the CHAdeMO connector it will show me two of three available. However in reality it's only one of three available because on certain units dual charging is not allowed but on others it is. I can go to an Alpatronic unit with CCS and CHAdeMO and both of these will be available at the same time. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Ed W:

Yeah I think it's absolutely fair that that could be improved and it does as you say require a lot of work with the individual charge point operators understanding the actual infrastructure itself and what's possible with that infrastructure and then ensuring that that's then wrapped up as you say in something that makes sense to users both when they're sat at home thinking about places they want to go and then actually when they're on the move and they need it in the next 15 minutes or so. So yeah I think that's absolutely fair feedback.

Gary C:

Of course no discussion on Zapmap will be complete without talking about the data they provide, the number of charges etc. Now as I mentioned earlier we had Jade Edwards on the show in season 10 to talk data and something Zapmap have been working very diligently on is a collaboration with Field Dynamics to produce a report called the On Street Households report. This is a way of showing the sort of data that's vital to understand when it comes to knowing how many charges are available in any given location. This is focused on those without home charging and it seeks to understand the sort of coverage that public charging has at the household level. Now there's lots of information in the report and to talk about it I want to welcome back Charlie Gilbert from Field Dynamics, sponsors of this specific episode of the show.

Charlie G:

I'm Charlie Gilbert, I'm a partner at Field Dynamics and I look after a number of our projects on delivering EV infrastructure for our clients.

Gary C:

Charlie you're here to talk about the On Street Households report. Can you give me the 30,000 foot view of this please?

Charlie G:

We don't put these reports together to name and shame areas that aren't being take up, where take up is being provided but it really helps to kind of provide that consistency in terms of let's look at the UK, let's look at regions, let's look at local authorities and compare and contrast how they're performing in terms of a number of different metrics that we cover off in terms of charger coverage and also introducing this year in our latest report charger density. Now that's all well and good but it does depend on the quality of the data right?

Gary C:

So what is your data source for mapping for example?

Charlie G:

It's called OS MasterMap, it is pretty much the the mainstay of how local authorities manage all their requirements in terms of planning, transport, looking at street naming and numbering. It's very very detailed polygon data so we know and can measure the space at the front, side or rear of every single household in the country. So it allows us to give that very granular household level view in terms of whether households are going to have the capability to park and charge on a driveway. So that's the kind of key source that we've worked with and we have made ongoing and continued improvements to the underlying data set that we work with, it's called EV map and in this iteration we've looked at these parkable spaces in complex areas like cul-de-sacs and refined that. We've looked at how we consider accessible routes i. e. when we're looking at things like alleyways, technically an alleyway might be able to fit a car in certain scenarios but in practice they're unusable so we discount them. We also have worked really hard on looking at larger properties that potentially set back from the road and provided that kind of analysis as well and as part of that we've now been able to surface up pavement widths. So actually looking at the pavement width outside everybody's household, all 28.6 million households as well. So what that has meant is that the number of on-street households has decreased slightly by just over 430,000 to 9. 3 million so that means that on balance across Great Britain 32.7% of households are on street so those households don't have capability to park and charge a car on your driveway.

Gary C:

That's interesting because the generally accepted stat is that only 60% of cars can park at home and what you've done is quantified the remaining with a serious level of accuracy and narrowed the figure down to a little over 30% without off-street parking which is quite fascinating. I mean it does also of course depend on vehicle size.

Charlie G:

Yes exactly it's parkable space that we look at so we don't measure people's driveways we just look at the footprint of a vehicle so that's a Ford Fiesta which we used at the time of our original report which is 20. 25 meter squared so if the space to park and charge a vehicle in that window then effectively we include it or discount it as appropriate and we also have an expansion where we look at whether the space to park one car or two plus as well but we focus our report on our on-street households.

Gary C:

So you've put together a load of data you've got some great visuals in a nice downloadable report who do you think is actually going to use this?

Charlie G:

It's really interesting when we look at who actually downloads the report and it's a very broad cross-section of organisations and people ranging from journalists academic research, business development, people who sit within charge point operators, people who are looking to understand broader energy trends and feed that data in the modelling side of things. We work with about 180 local authorities with data that we curate now, so CPOs, DNOs and local authorities would be our kind of core market, but the people who download the report are a very broad cross-section of the industry, and that's reassuring to us because as part of our philosophy as an organisation, I think it's really important that we give something back, and I know that a number of the CPOs absolutely love the on-street household report and online map and really use it as part of their initial opening conversations with local authorities or other organisations that are looking to engage with, because it's a trusted, reliable source and it's almost a point of conversation to build out, so okay, you're talking to a particular local authority, do you know how many on-street households are they, do you know how many households are within x or y distance of a charger or travel time, so I think it helps to kind of cite some of their own work that they're planning and correlate that with this national consistent data source.

Gary C:

Talk to me a little bit about using this report to determine where things like pavement charging solutions such as KerboCharge or Nodem will be used.

Charlie G:

I think in terms of tracking the installation of those, that's one thing, I think the other, the area that we're really focusing in is on pavement widths in terms of the capability to have a through pavement solution, so we've just actually undertaken a project with UK Power Network, Cenex, SatMap called ChargePoint Navigator and we've worked with 50 local authorities to surface up a whole range of data sets, some of the data on the report is in there, but the key focus relating to pavements is we've rag-rated all of the pavements outside all of the on-street households so that they have a red, amber or green category, so red would be a pavement width which is 0 to 1. 5 metres in width outside the household, so that's probably quite narrow and it would mean that certainly for on-street provision that would be a bit more of a challenge, whereas 1. 5 to 2 metres is amber, so you might want to go and check that and do some better checks and anything that is 2 metres or greater is green, so you're good to put that infrastructure in.

Those sorts of measurements and widths helps organisations like Mike and the team at Kerbocharge and others look at what the sizeable market is for this type of solution, but also more practically might help them to understand what type of solutions and products they need to bring to market based on that pavement data.

Gary C:

Finally Charlie, talk to me about some of the work that you've done with Zapmap on this.

Charlie G:

So without Zapmap this report wouldn't happen, so a massive shout out and thanks to Mel and Jade and the team at Zapmap for giving us their data to combine with ours to undertake the report.

Gary C:

It's always great to chat with Charlie and the guys from Field Dynamics, we spoke with Charlie last season on the geospatial planning episode, so check that out for more from him and there's a link in the show notes. This season we're looking at raising the awareness of carbon literacy with our listeners and one way we're doing that is with the carbon fact as read by carbon literacy trainer Anne Snelson.

Anne S:

UK households waste 7 million tons of food each year, that's equivalent to seven and a half billion pounds. It's also a kilo of food for every person on the planet and about 50% is probably still edible. The rest could be recycled or turned into fuel, so instead of wasting all that food and energy, why not plan more and throw away less?

Gary C:

It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with your listeners.

A new electric hydrofoil ferry in Stockholm will cut travel time in half for commuters traveling between City Hall and Ekerö. This ferry, called the P12, is faster and uses 80% less energy than the traditional diesel ferries, making it better for the environment. Candela, the company behind the ferry, aims to revolutionize city transportation by utilizing underused waterways and reducing pollution.

We've covered Candela on the One Cool Thing before, but that was for small attenders used to transport wealthy people from the shore to the yachts. This is more of a mass transit solution, which are always the best kind. I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show.

It was put together this week with the help of Ed Walsh from Zapmap and Charlie Gilbert from Field Dynamics. Many thanks to both of them for their time. Thanks also to Gregg Jaskiewicz from the Take It EV podcast for providing technical production assistance.

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

On the socials, I'm on Twitter, or X, at Musings EV. I'm also on Instagram at EV Musings, 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 slash EV Musings and you can do just that. ko-fi.com/EV Musings. 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. Now, I know you're probably driving or walking or jogging right now as you listen, but if you can remember and you enjoyed this episode, drop me a review in iTunes please.

It really helps me out.

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 "Say Zapmap App three times, quickly #ifyouknowyouknow" Nothing else.

Thanks as always to my co founder Simone. You know I often ask him what are his favourite quotes from classic literature. He’s very partial to a bit of Shakespeare and, often quotes to me from The Histories by Herodotus. But he’ll also quote a spider man comic at me. I asked him whether he thinks literature is a well defined concept. He told me:

Ed W:

it's a bit of a nebulous term sometimes.

Gary C:

Thanks for listening. Bye.