Fleet Auto News Caroline Falls talks with Marcelo Salgardo. He’s one of a trio of Tritium executives that broke away and started a company EVOS, to manage EV charging hardware and energy for fleets of Australia. Marcelo says he’d like to see bolder government policies to boost EV take-up.
FAN’s 2022 podcast has kicked off with a sponsor Sofico Services making production of it possible. Themes for selecting interviewees are future technologies for fleets, sustainability, and circular economy principles such as reuse, remanufacture and recycle. This interview is from a FAN podcast available on Spotify and the FAN website linked here.
Caroline: Firstly, tell us about EVOS — what it does, where it came from?
Marcelo: Well EVOS started about two years ago, it actually stands for Electric Vehicle Operating System so the three founders Seshan [Weeatunga] Chris [Crossman] and I spent a fair bit of time in the EV industry over the last six years.
With our previous employer, we were able to travel the world and meet some of the world’s largest utilities and OEMs, and also charging station operators. We started to see a very common problem that no-one was really focusing on: energy and businesses.
So we thought, we’d get together and design software and hardware that was designed for business fleets to help them manage energy, manage their cost. That’s where we’re at today. In the last 12 months we’ve been working in stealth mode, developing a software platform to allow businesses to actually manage fleets and their vehicles and their energy on the one platform, but also designing appropriate hardware to be able to deliver that energy to vehicles reliably, and also in the most cost effective manner.
Caroline: So you say it’s ideally suited for fleets? In what way? Is it for drivers to be able to charge their vehicles, or how is it going to actively monitor and manage costs? I’ll also add on a question about lead-times. People are waiting a year and more for EVs from order to delivery. Is there a lead time for your gear from order placement to delivery?
Marcelo: Taking the first part of your question, Caroline talking to fleet managers around the world, we started to understand that it’s a little bit more complicated now than just buying a vehicle and signing up for a fuel card. Fleet managers now are having to do all these new jobs that they’re not familiar with — choosing electric vehicle charging stations, choosing software to manage charging stations, dealing with the complexity of buying power from different retailers, having to deal with networks. What we wanted to do was make this simple and create the software and the hardware that make this effortless for them.
For starters, we wanted to create a single AC charger that would charge all the vehicles and also be installed in different locations. The AC charger which we’ve created, the EVOS Home22, can be installed on single-phase circuits, and three-phase circuits. They can do different vehicles; some will be only charging three kilowatts, some will be able to charge up to 22 kilowatts.
We wanted to make this simple so they didn’t have to buy multiple chargers. We wanted to create one charger that did everything, but also was able to be installed in multiple locations. We started to think about some of the other problems that fleets would have with charging stations so we wanted to make this reliable.
We designed the charger that can be fixed without the need of electrician. We wanted to minimise spare parts. We weren’t designing the cheapest charging station; we wanted to design the most reliable charging station and we added some cool little features.
The charging cable, for example can be fixed by a non technician so you don’t have to call out an electrician or technician to fix it, which saves you both money and downtime. We paid a lot of attention to the design of the charger both to minimise the cost of installation, and maintenance of the chargers.
We designed a smart charger that reduces all those costs. We also had controllability to allow fleets to manage energy costs. We start collecting data on how the energy gets to the site, how the energy gets delivered to the vehicle.Then we’ll also combine data from the vehicle to make smart decisions on reducing that cost of operating that vehicle.
Caroline: And the second part of the question, the lead time for your hardware?
Marcelo: So we started manufacturing the charger as we speak. Our first production line is being manufactured with one of our contract manufacturers and our manufacturing partner. The charger is being manufactured in Australia and we’re really excited to be working with lots of local suppliers.
We have our plastics manufacturer, only 10 kilometres away in Brisbane; We’ve got our PCBA [printed circuit board assembly] also in Brisbane and we’re putting it all together as well.
So it’s an Australian made product. And we should have lots of availability over the next couple of months. We’ve paid a lot of attention to our supply chain and worked really hard with our partners to overcome a lot of these COVID supply problems that we’re seeing around the world.
Caroline: Now you were formerly with the Brisbane-based Tritium that is making and supplying fast charging stations around the world. What did you learn in that role? And how are you different from them?
Marcelo: So we’re very fortunate, all three founders worked at Tritium. We were very lucky; we got to travel the world with some of the biggest operators —fleet network operators, utilities and OEMs. And we started to realise that while there is big demand for DC, for convenience and when doing those big trips, the reality is that most people were charging on AC infrastructure.
Whichever country you look at, it’s 80-90 percent of people charging on AC and the majority of charging is done at night. We saw this really big opportunity that we could actually work with businesses and design products for them to be able to charge at that lower rate overnight. That’s why we went down that path and decided to do an AC, 22-kilowatt charger.
Caroline: Now, although the latest news is that Australian EV registrations trebled in 2021 to about 21,000 I think from a year earlier, it’s from a pathetically low base. Are you concerned that supply chain problems, particularly the hitches in getting semiconductors into new vehicles is holding up delivery of EVs in Australia?
Marcelo: I don’t think it’s COVID that’s affecting them at the moment. As you know most vehicle manufacturers would have made commitments to purchase volume some time ago. I get really excited about the next couple of years.
So if you look at a lot of the market reports like Bloomberg, we’re really excited about the EV supply chain. If you look at 2025-2026 we’re going to have this parity where consumers and fleet managers are going to be able to go to a car dealership and have an EV at the same price as a combustion-engine vehicle.
We may see that a couple years later in Australia. I’m really excited about how the supply chain is starting to take care of a lot of these traditional EV problems like range, supply and choice of EVs. As we can see in the news all of the large car manufacturers are committed to EVs. And so we should start to see a lot more of these models arrive in Australia.
Caroline: Well, that’s true, and I hope you’re right, but I guess I’m just wondering if this trickling or this interrupted pipeline of EVs is inhibiting growth, which might inhibit growth in your own business?
Marcelo: Yes, most definitely. Look, it’s exciting but it’s also disappointing. I talk to a lot of people and a lot of people are quite sad they’ve missed out on some of the models that have been released like the Ionic. And so yes, it will slow down the growth but the exciting thing is there is a lot of awareness about electric vehicles now in the marketplace.
People are searching for electric vehicles. And it wasn’t that long ago that when you went to a dealership, they tried to convince you not to buy an EV. So we’re hoping that that gives a lot of encouragement to local importers of vehicles to Australia to increase the allocations and try to encourage their parent OEMs to bring more vehicles into the country.
Caroline: The positivity surrounding the EVS is very encouraging. I just wonder as well though, Australia’s emissions policies haven’t been updated for years despite expectations of European style lower emission fuels since at least 2015. And Australia is competing for new vehicles with bigger countries that have tighter emissions policies, and therefore less options for new vehicles. Are you concerned about what’s happening or not happening in the Australian policy space?
Marcelo: We’d all like to see more being done and we’ve had some encouraging news over the last year or so. And one of the great things I look at is that we’re finding more on grants when it comes to government. All levels of government agree that we need to do more with EV policy.
We’ve seen some great leadership when it comes to governments like New South Wales. I think, yes, vehicle-emissions policy is probably the easiest thing for us to actually amend and it won’t cost the government anything in tax revenue. And tidying up those emissions policies will encourage the large manufacturers to bring better vehicles to Australia and import more EVs.
Caroline: Well, we’re heading into a federal election in the next couple of months. As a business owner in the EV space, what policies do you want to see some action on ASAP?
Marcelo: Yeah, so I’d love to see more being done on Fringe Benefits Tax, it would encourage and make it easier for businesses to buy EVs. That’s a massive win for the industry. But I think the biggest one is that emissions policy.
We’ve also had a little bit of government support. We just got awarded an acceleration grant from the federal government to help us commercialise our EV technology. So a lot more of that would be great in the marketplace. The more people we have creating technology in the EV space and providing positive policy to encourage businesses to transition to EV would definitely help accelerate the marketplace and reach an EVOS goal. We should target to get to emissions-free transportation as soon as possible.
Caroline: I was going ask you a bit more about EVOS funding. So it’s good that you’ve got a government grant there. What other funding enabled you to get off the ground? And what relationships have you with big brands. You’ve got one with Ampol, and another with an ASX listed energy retailer, LPE. Can you talk about your relationships and funding?
Marcelo: Yeah, so we’ve been very fortunate that we’ve had some some great support from industry here in Australia. We’ve seen a massive shift in that everyone wants to do, and acknowledges we need to do something, when it comes to EVs. We’ve got a great partnership with Ampol, and they’ve also signed up as a distributor for the next couple of years of our fleet solutions We’ve also got that relationship with LPE, who are tackling this strata market.
There’s a huge problem to solve on how do we get EV charging stations to the strata community and we’ve been working closely with them to solve that.
Autostrada is our manufacturing partner. They’ve been manufacturing in the automotive space for over 30 years. When we had an automotive industry in Australia, they were manufacturing cruise controls, all sorts of electronics for the top manufacturers here. We were fortunate to find them as a manufacturing partner as that allows us to focus on the technology and work with a company that has a wealth of knowledge on how to manufacture so we can bring our customers the highest quality product as possible.
Caroline: I’m sure they’re excited to partner up with you as well given the loss of the automotive industry, a few years ago in Australia. I was also just curious, with your charger do you buy it or lease it?
Marcelo: Both. We want to make this simple and give our customers the flexibility. So at the moment you can buy the charger and we can help you organise installation and we’ll have a list of approved installers. But we also will be launching a product later this year which is called the distributed depot and EV energy as a service where we want to actually make this really simple for the fleets because once we’re talking to the fleet managers, one of their biggest concerns was now they’ve got more capital they need to spend as they need to buy chargers.
They also had trouble understanding the cost, or calculating the cost of running that fleet. We want to get to the stage where we can actually lease it to our customers. We’ll install the charger, we’ll maintain it and make sure that you’ve got a working reliable charger and can then turn that into an operational expense. Traditionally, how you might buy fuel right now. We’re transitioning into that business model over the next 12 months where we want our customers to be able to lease the charging stations and just pay for the energy that they’re using.
Caroline: That fits in with the whole circular economy model which is something I want to talk about this year, the circular economy principles — things like reuse, remanufacture, what will happen to it at the end of its life. Can you tell us what’s going to happen to the charger at the end of its useful life?
Marcelo: Having a charger that could be recycled was really important to us. We carefully selected the plastics we use for outside. We also wanted to create a charger that lasted a long time. We want it to be reliable. So we paid a lot of attention to the design to make sure that we built a charger that’s going to last for over seven years and deliver the electrons to vehicles efficiently, and reliably. Once we own those chargers in people’s businesses, it’s our responsibility to make sure they actually last and that we take care of the waste.
Caroline: Perfect. And just finally, as it’s the beginning of the year 2022, and you’re a new business. I’m wondering if you have any events you’re thinking of attending or what might be happening this year that’s got you excited.
Marcelo: We’re starting to get a little bit excited. COVID is starting to give us a little bit more confidence that we’re going to be able to move around more. We are looking towards starting travelling around Australia and also the globe, and starting to meet more people. We do have a few product launches towards the second half of next quarter. We’ll be launching our platform products, both the EVOS fleet platform and also the EVOS strata platform. They’re the two big events that we’re looking forward to.
Caroline: Okay, well please keep us at Fleet Auto News informed of those developments. I’m sure you will and I just want to say it’s been a treat to speak with you and we wish you and EVOS a great and prosperous 2022.
Marcelo: Thank you for the opportunity and we’ll definitely keep you posted as we bring out more products for the fleet world.
