Ep. 19: Felix Hamer, AKA “Electric Felix” on Incentives, Smart Charging Pilots and EV Adoption Across The World

Welcome to the Smart Charge by RiDERgy podcast. This is Claudio Geyken, founder and CEO of RiDERgy. This is your show to learn about all things, energy management and smart charging innovation for electric vehicles and fleets.

Hello and welcome to the Smart Charge podcast. I'm your host, Claudio, and we're plugging in with Felix Hamer, better known as Electric Felix. Felix is one of Europe's most recognizable EV storyteller, a Dutch-based creator who's logged countless real-world kilometers across the continent and also even in China. Stress testing charging networks from Ionity to mom and pop, AC posts. And turning those road trips into brutally honest breakdowns, deep dive newsletters and data-driven. Social media threats. What sets Felix apart isn't just the range tests or

charger reviews, it's the way he translates kilowatts, tariffs, and route planners into human decisions. Will this charger work at 2 a.m. Through I trust that RFID card? How does a family road trip feel when the SOC hits 7%, the next DC is 40 kilometers away? In this EPOs we'll unpack some of these aspects and much more geographical differences and what makes some countries' EV adoption better than others, and especially this experience in China, in Germany, and the Netherlands, and Denmark. And also smart charging, his experiences

with that and and pilots and his perfect view of how it should be, and many more things. Let's dive in. Hello Felix, thanks for joining me today. How was your trip to Berlin? Very smooth actually, thank you uh for inviting me. Uh, yeah, we, we traveled yesterday from Amsterdam to here in a very casual, uh, tiny battery Tesla, and yeah, it's just a matter of, I, I, I focus on affordable chargers, uh, which unfortunately doesn't leave that many options, but yeah, it's, uh, driving electric to

Berlin. For years it has been fairly easy, but the pricing is a different point. Alright, yeah, but at least you made it. That's uh 11 thing and we'll definitely talk about all the challenges and difficulties uh related to EV charging and to your personal uh setup. Before we dive into that, to have the users understand a little bit who is talking, can you introduce yourself? What's your background? How did you get to what you're doing today? Yeah, yeah, thank you. I, uh, I'm Felix Hamer and

some people might know me as Electric Felix, uh, because it was about 8 years ago that I tried an electric motorbike for the first time and even though I'm an IT guy in Amsterdam, yeah, I, I like to try new things and this motorbike really surprised me. Uh, which, yeah, it showed me, yeah, fast charging as a sort of ultimate opportunity to, to electrify anything. Like I suddenly realized if this motorbike can be electric. I had a petrol motorbike at the time, then I guess anything

could, but these fast chargers, they sort of create any possibility. Like you, you can have a slow charger and it's fine, but the fast charger creates this opportunity that you can just keep going. And that is, I think, yeah, because I'm a I'm a road tripper by heart as well. I've been traveling around Europe for many years and I just used to do that with diesel cars because I don't I never owned a car because I'm, I live in Amsterdam and the diesel rental was simply

always the best deal to go far from home. And this is what I noticed with the fast charging that I tried with the motorbike, that if you looked for the right deal, especially 7 years ago, it was super easy to charge cheaply in many places, even though it was less fast than today. Which created this opportunity for me to travel a lot on a very affordable level and for an electric motorbike. That's the one. Yeah, but I mean that the motorbike unlocked me to look for

car rentals as well, and I took this BMW i3 to Paris, for example, and it was actually a full disaster, but my, my best friend was in the car and he. Still went EV after that experience because on the way back, as soon as we entered the Netherlands again, we were in this fastnet heaven where they had a nationwide network that made everything easy so he immediately realized that he needed to get rid of his petrol car because he was making a lot of kilometers in

the Netherlands and by going EV he could do that at half the price. So yeah, many things happened in the past decade and. I created a blog to simply share my travel experience and it all escalated a bit, so by now, especially on LinkedIn, I have thousands of followers and Yeah, just try to keep people updated on what is going on in the charging scene, and I was mainly also surprised by the differences when, you know, this first trip to France, it really showed that even

going 500 kilometers from home, Paris isn't far from Amsterdam, but the electric landscape changed several times over in that tiny trip and even today you can still see that, you know, traveling to Italy is completely different from traveling to Spain. And while I see that as fun because I can write about it, I also think that, yeah, for mass adoption, yeah, things need to be easy and affordable and not like this puzzle that you need to find the right deal to go left or right like

this. Right. Thanks for that, yeah, that already gives us quite some points to touch upon. First, what got you so excited about electric motorbikes, you coming from your experience with the, with the diesel? What, what were the, the core elements, if you remember? Yeah, the, the motorbike surprised me so much because I, I just had my license for I think it was about a year and I just had my petrol motorbike for, for that time. And just the experience of this electric motorbike, you immediately get

this feeling of, you know, the, the power that just keeps pushing and this, that, that you're on this machine that has no gear shift that can just go, there's a certain fluidity to it that is, yeah, it is just, you don't know it from the fossil age because it isn't. It, it is something completely new. And yeah, I think just the combination of that, it really puts tech into the mobility space. So I always, I even like biking around. I still love to bike around because

it gives me so much freedom and an e-bike just sort of adds to this freedom because you can simply go further in the same time and. And the e-bike really shows you in, in a country like the Netherlands that, yeah, massive amounts of people take e-bikes to work. And yeah, I think that half of them would never take the bike to work because then you get all sweaty and you would never go very far every day. Like if you can afford it, you would just upgrade

And yeah, I think that here is really this sort of this, the secret sauce where there's this opportunity to do things that we didn't do because EVs, yeah, create an opportunity that that wasn't there before and also the combination of like an electric motorbike isn't that silent, so people think that EVs are sort of dull because there's no engine roar, but the inertica that I tried is this bike from. Italy, and actually the company is in a lot of trouble, but back then they were really

pushing the boundaries and the thing is that. Yeah, it's really, it's actually, it, it makes a lot of when you go full speed, it actually makes a lot of sound and clearly it's like this high pitched uh electric it's very different, but yeah, it really uh pushes you to go crazy and the thing is also that I had friends on the back in, in Amsterdam and they, they still talk about those rides because it is just so unbelievable that this, this tour comes from nowhere. And

yeah, if you then think about what you can do with that bike and then how easy it is to find affordable charging, so that you can actually rinse and repeat this every day at Easily half the price that you could ever think of doing such things with petrol stuff and at the same time it also shows you that you know if you have a big inside space you can also ride it there because the fumes aren't there like there's there's just all these things that happen

but. Um, yeah, it was the, the fast charging that that motorbike could do that made it so, uh, special, special for me. Um, like it could just DC charge, um, it, it needed a 50 kilowatt charger, but the thing is that it could DC charge at 20 kilowatts or something, so that's absolute, but the thing is that the battery was 11 kilowatt hours, so just very small. By now they doubled it to 20, um, and that is it like how much range. It, it had a

realistic range of a bit over 100 kilometers uh if you used it normally and then yeah, you could hyper mile it to get a bit more and I drove it in summer so you could eke a bit more out but yeah, it was also this combination of the infrastructure that was just so exciting that you know I, I took the motorbike to Switzerland. And I found out that the chargers I would need in the north of France, they were only at the supermarkets that had the

chargers only open while the shop was open because it was a service for customers and you couldn't pay for it. It was free, which was amazing, but at the same time it meant that I couldn't ride the the actual trip on a Sunday because the shops would close and the chargers would shut down and in that area of France there was simply no alternative. So, um, yeah, that it really shows you that, you know, that to me this, this element of the plugs unlocking everything is

sort of this biggest secret for me and yeah, that is also where I think that, yeah, in Europe we're, we're doing pretty well and expanding the infrastructure but the thing is that. If the plugs aren't where they need to be, which is in front of people's faces and houses, uh, yeah, things will just go too slow. And could you use the same plugs with motorbikes as you can with cars? Yes, interestingly enough, um, everything revolves around the CCS plug in Europe. Luckily, the EU decided on

that very early on, uh, so you can actually use the same infrastructure, and this is, I think it's also one of these. Key elements why for example the EU is doing better than the US because in the US even today there's just this mess of plugs and as soon as you go fast charging compared to slow charging you need different cables, different converters. It really depends on your vehicle and your house and a lot of uh things what you need and in Europe it's fairly simple

where we have an AC standard that is just the same for everyone. Uh, and the DC standard that apart from the old Nissan story is simply CCS, uh, so that's completely unified. And, and so I got now the understanding of how you got to, to the immobility as a topic and what led you then to start sharing it in a blog. Yeah, so what I, what I found was so strange about this motorbike is that it was so I couldn't believe what the motorbike could do

Um, but I also didn't understand that I didn't know about it because the thing is I, I won a ride on the motorbike and then I rented it to try it out, uh, several times, and the thing is that what I, what surprised me the most was simply that I didn't know that it existed. And I think this is to a point, uh, is even, uh, sort of true today that many people, if, if, if you were to go around Europe and ask people in the

streets of a random European city and you would just interview them and ask them if they ever tried an EV. I expect most people to say no, and I expect most people to not know many things about EVs, and you know even today I, I, I almost faint when I see an electric motorbike in Amsterdam because of how little I. See them and this is 8 years after me trying the motorbike and after trying it for 1 afternoon I realized any Dutchman that that that works

in the Netherlands and rides to work maybe with a motorbike, maybe with a car or whatever they can take that motorbike to work, no problem. Um, because of the infrastructure that we already had and today even crazier, but, but most people will not even know it's out there, so that triggered me to start my blog first, even just an Instagram page and just share my charging experience, my road trips. To simply show people, if, if you were to Google for something electric, then maybe you'll find

the story. Uh, and it's also why I, I wrote in English because I, I ran into a lot of people. Imagine taking that motorbike to France. French people love motorbikes. So many people came up to me when I was charging, walking around the thing, and everybody would ask me that. Every French person talking with me about the motorbike, they always thought it was a hybrid because they could not believe it would not be. And I think that is, you know, even true today that most people

will not believe you when they show them that this stuff is out there. Um, yeah, which is just one of these reasons for me to keep going and just writing about as if it's normal because I think it should be, uh, but we're, yeah, not there yet, I guess. Right, and you hinted upon the differences in different countries and, and especially one thing that. Captured my curiosity most was the difference between Spain and Italy, which I'm not so familiar with. Can you elaborate a bit on

on those geographical aspects and challenge differences? Yeah, so what is just so odd to me in Europe is this, this difference in, I I guess it has to do with, you know, it even has to do with the road network. Italy has more toll roads than Spain, I think. Um, and they, they do things very differently with um who owns the roads and, and the, the, the places where you could go for fuel and stuff, but um, yeah, I think the energy markets of Europe are

just, yeah, a complete, everybody does their own thing and even though Europe is sort of well connected. Um, that doesn't create, yeah, we don't have one kilowatt hour price for Europe at all, um, and yeah, you really see this when, yeah, if let's say you live in Rome and you do go out of the city a lot and you want to do that with an EV charging in in Rome is is sort of easily double the price of charging in Madrid. And yeah, when I say

this out loud, I just feel like that, that how can this be? Like on the one hand, I totally understand that, you know, they aren't close to each other, but they're both sunny big cities in places where it would be so easy to put solar everywhere, they, you know, they both, yeah, they both have enough space to build big stations in whatever kind of like clearly um. Yes, Spain has more area maybe with less people, so maybe even easier to install solar, but, uh, yeah, the

thing is that charging right now in Spain can be sort of easily done at half the price compared to in Italy. What are we talking about? Yeah, we're really talking about charging in Italy is is completely normal to find any type of charger at 80 cents per kilowatt hour and in, in Spain it's fairly easy to find chargers at 40 cents, um, so. Yeah, in my opinion, you know, clearly, uh, it's as soon as you can charge at home things change, but there you can already

see a big difference again in that, uh, a lot of people at home in Italy, they, they cannot charge at home because the, the home connection actually doesn't allow it. And yeah, this is again the stuff even if we look at the Netherlands, uh, the Netherlands has certain laws for the electricity market that slow down our AC chargers like we, we limit our AC chargers to less than 19 kilowatts because that creates a much cheaper connection to the grid. But that means that as soon as

you're in Amsterdam and you plug into a charger that looks like an 11 kilowatt charger, which is already slow, but anyway, for most vehicles this is simply the onboard charger that they have, so it doesn't matter. But as soon as two cars plug in there, you, you don't even get 11 kilowatts, and that's already little and this. has to do with, in my opinion, like this Dutch law that was never, you know, it was written when charging didn't exist, and I just don't understand why we

don't upgrade these things, why we don't take this seriously, because we need a million of public chargers in the Netherlands yesterday that run at 11 kilowatts whenever people need it, and we're just not doing this. And even though we have the most amazing AC network of Europe. Maybe of the world, but let's just keep it to Europe. Then we're still doing a lot of things wrong in my opinion, that we could do better. And yeah, and it's just to understand what's the typical if two charge

points are occupied, what would you get? Yeah, so then both would get 8.5 kilowatts and of course you could say it's close enough to 11. It isn't, you know, people drive German EVs with 100 kilowatt hour batteries today. You can get Chinese EVs with bigger batteries than that and just and then. It's also depending on your onboard, like the Netherlands had a lot of jokes in the past because we were so early with some EV uptake because we had very good tax regulation when it comes

to EVs. So we had some EVs like the Jaguar which I tried a lot because it was an affordable rental car at the time. This Jaguar had a 1 phase onboard charger, which then means if you plug it in in Amsterdam to a 3-phase public charger, you actually get less than 4 kilowatts. So it means that you can be there all day and you can simply not fill the thing and that's why it made a lot of fun for my road trips when I took the

Jaguar to Germany. Then I could finally charge at 11 kilowatts and I was like, yeah, AC charging is amazing. Um, but yeah, it's just one of these old stories that, uh, yeah, if you, if you buy them secondhand today, they're pretty popular secondhand cars then. In the Netherlands on the public network, it absolutely sucks to charge a car like that, and that has to do with the onboard charger as well, but it's also this, yeah, we even slow it down by not offering um in Germany

because you can charge 22 kilowatts at an AC charger that creates this opportunity for the Jaguar to go to 11, which in the Netherlands it will just never get. Yeah, so there are so many points here to discuss in, in the Netherlands still maybe. We can take it from there. What are things that, uh, you think in the Netherlands are particularly good and, and you can boast even though we all know you're a Dutchman, and then, and then let's see, let's say all the things that

could be improved in the, in the Netherlands because I think out of all the countries and you, you have been in quite some countries, maybe you also you can elaborate, uh, uh, and feel free to do some level of details of all the countries where you have experienced EV charging. And then, and then, and then even if we know you're biased, we can, you can say which is the number one in your ranking in terms of EV uh EV heaven. Yeah, yeah, so one of these

things in, in the Netherlands is that we had, uh, AC charging for a long time. So even if you go back 5 years, then Amsterdam already had thousands of public plugs, and by now I think we're, uh, we, we crossed the 8000 mark now, but yeah, 5 years ago we already had 4000 if I'm not mistaken, so. Uh, we're already halfway and that, for example, like the AC charging network of Amsterdam was probably bigger 5 years ago than Berlin's AC charging network today. Um, and then

yeah, that's not even regarding pricing and, yeah, so that, and, and that's pretty wild because Amsterdam is much smaller than Berlin and also we have way less cars so it is absolutely not a car focused, uh, city at all and here when I walk the streets just the amount of cars that I see is mind blowing to me, uh, but which I also understand because it's so much bigger and of course people work outside of the city, etc. But um yeah, the thing is in, in

the Netherlands. Uh, if we look at AC charging, you can see that we, we come from the situation where we started very early in rolling out these plugs and we made it very easy for people to get a public charger nearby their house or at least nearby where they needed the charger, so that is something people were asking for it or or the government would. Proactively, No, you, you could, uh, you could, as soon as you had an EV, so that was the, the only, um

sort of the, the, yeah, the condition, and, and what in my opinion was sort of the wrong part about it was that while you were waiting for your EV you could sort of not get the plug, so. There would be a stage that you wouldn't have it, but anyway, you could, as soon as you there was an EV, then you could, um, just use the government website to, um, to say that you were interested, and they would actually in a city like Amsterdam they would actually

measure from a certain distance of your house if the plugs that were there when, when you wanted to use it, would it be available on the average day, uh, that you wanted to. And then they would install a new one nearby if if it was proven that that plug would not be available when you needed it most and nowadays this has changed and places like Amsterdam but also many other locations have just started rolling out plugs based on, yeah, all kinds of them predicting where the

growth will be because they can just see that this fleet just keeps getting bigger. Chargers keep getting used more. Does a distance, minimum or maximum, is that a criterion as well that you cannot have to walk? Exactly. So, yeah, I think in Amsterdam, if I'm not mistaken, it was like 300 m, something like that. Last week I actually had an interview right here on your spot with the head of the German. Um, so it's a Nazionale Leittele for electro mobility, yes, Johannes Pala, and, and then

we were discussing the, the distance that should be realistic in terms of any citizen in, in Germany, and I think it was quite a bit more. So still, uh, 300 m sounds like quite generous and, quite cool. Yeah, yeah, and this is just where, where you can see that the Netherlands. If, if we were to take an EV from Berlin to somewhere in the Netherlands, then probably if you end up in anything that looks like a village or bigger, um, the chances are very high that

there is public infrastructure nearby where you stay or where you need to go for work or whatever. Like even if you go to Dutch beach, it's probably just an AC charter nearby where you're parking. And then, yeah, clearly on a summer day they might be in use because um peak demand is still a bit of an issue, but the thing is just that in the Netherlands I, I would dare to say that it's just fairly easy to plug in when you park because also if you

use parking. Garages a lot and in the Netherlands, yeah, it's, it's becoming, I think, close to impossible to find a parking garage where you could not charge at the same time I find myself if I'm driving around the Netherlands, which I don't do that often but I do do it and then. I would not plug in in many parking garages because I don't like the price of the chargers that they install because many chargers in parking garages have some deals that in my opinion just don't

make any sense for an AC charger, but so this is where it becomes interesting to me that. First, uh, since I grew up in Amsterdam and I saw a lot of shared cars already over 10 years ago that I also used a lot and that they, they could electrify because the charging network was there. So Amsterdam was trying to get these companies to invest in going EV early like from day one, like the, the. The smart cars from a network called Car to go at the

time, they were all EVs, and if I would go to Hamburg in that time, the same car would have a petrol engine because they didn't have enough chargers to charge them. And in Amsterdam, the whole fleet was EV from 2013 because they could charge at the public network and this was one of the first times that I went EV in my personal life because actually if you plug them in when they had a low state of charge, then you got bonus minutes and it created this

opportunity for me to try EVs in Amsterdam for many years, paying very little. Money and even sort of helping the network and nowadays this is not necessary anymore because people will plug them in anyway and there's so many plugs around that it's also like in the old days it was sort of you still needed to look for a plug and now in Amsterdam if if you're walking in the average street you will just see a plug, but here is one of these things where. I still

feel that we have this, we have a network that is sort of old and it's based on this in the Netherlands, um, because we started so early, the RFID badge, the charging card that people are probably aware of if they if they drive EV or if they've tried it then. It was true that every Dutch charging card worked at every Dutch charter. Like for a long time that was simply the world what it was. And nowadays you can see that we came to a place where

it's just not that, first of all, it's not that obvious like it will probably work, but the price might be. Off and nowadays because these networks have grown older in places like Rotterdam or Amsterdam there might have been 3 tenders by now that put in public charters and they might all have their own tariff deals. So it's completely normal if we were to visit places like Rotterdam and Amsterdam today that we could walk around the street where we could literally see left and right in the

street public chargers that look the same. But then they would have a different price and sometimes it would be easy to see because the price would be on the machine or maybe use an app that shows it well, but um yeah it's. It's still like the average app will not show it well. Uh, you might not be warned if it's not what you expect, uh, if you live there and you use the charger every week, you might not notice that the price actually changes. So there's

still so many things that in my opinion we just have to improve and this is what is so cool about coming to Berlin today is that for example in the, in the old day I was, I was driving here 7 years ago and then. Yeah, the chances of me finding a charger late at night were practically 0, and now if I drive to a random Berlin neighborhood, there will be a charger there, but then. Yeah, the pricing will vary wildly across there. There's, I, I, I

feel like there's at least 5 operators now in the city that run a decent amount of AC chargers, and it's funny because the chargers also look very different. They behave differently, um, so. Uh, some come with their own cable, which I think is super cool. These tethered, uh, AC chargers are amazing to me, but yeah, they're completely not norm, so my, my dad would definitely get out of the car, take his cable, and then run into this cable on the street that he wouldn't expect. So

it's also funny. Um, but anyway, like, yeah, if we just this, this information thing where it's just not that easy to understand where to go, where to find the best price, or where it's easy to stay longer, uh, yeah, uh, we could just go on for and this is just. It, it is, it is wild to me that I, I really started my blog because of the charging jungle that I found in Europe and then I always expected it sort of to become less and I

sort of feel like it's become more like today we have more jungle than 5 years ago. Which is not exactly what I hoped for. More jungle, that's a good uh also statement. What, one thing I would be curious, maybe we can do it like in a, you know, rapid fire question style, uh, to, to really have a, because I, I'm, I'm pretty sure you're unique in that sense, er er in the world. To understand which countries you have so far experienced in terms of EV charging

so let's go, let's go through EU countries. Have you been to all of them or or batch wise Western Europe, Eastern Europe? Yeah, more, more Western Europe because, um, yeah, I've I've traveled to places like Italy and Spain and Sweden and Norway and the UK. Um, but, uh, but far east, I still have to go, so yeah, east from Poland, east from Romania, like, yeah, it's still one of my goals to drive to Istanbul because, yeah, then you really, yeah, as soon as you sort of

leave Hungary, yeah, then, then most Western European charging apps just get completely lost and it's still a bit of exciting. Um, yeah, to find these chargers that you don't know and you might find way more Chinese chargers and stuff like this, right, and then the UK. Yeah, the UK, I haven't been in years, uh, but I did go in the beginning several times. Uh, by now they're doing much better in the sense that there's really sort of 10 networks out there that are really pushing, but

at the same time you notice that pricing is a huge thing in the UK where, yeah, people with home charging, they can easily charge overnight for, well, next to nothing. And public charging can be sort of €1 per kilowatt hour, sort of easy to find. And yeah, these, these things are just wild to me, like how, how can these things just escalate so madly because yeah, €1 for a kilowatt hour, I don't think is very sensible. Then I know you have been in in China and

we'll have a deep dive in China, but other countries in Asia you've been? I have been to other countries in Asia but not in my EV time, so I definitely, because places like Indonesia and Thailand and stuff, they're developing very fast, but I, I have been to Thailand but way before EVs. And then the America. The Americas, I never visited in the EV time, so the last time was 2018, uh, and I still did a petrol road trip with a friend. And I assume nothing in

Africa either. No, exactly. So we had a recent episode, by the way uh uh about Ethiopia which you might be aware is the first country that has banned uh petrol cars from being sold in the country. That's why we had a deep dive in and somebody who who really understood and and it was an interesting, so if I encourage you if you you next uh if you, if you want to share your experience, I would be very curious to. To see your experience there, uh, and

and so let's have a little bit of a, we I think we had a bit of a deep dive in, in the Netherlands one, but one thing that I'm particularly interested in, uh, or two aspects of actually of the Dutch is, um, that I would love to have your opinion on this one. The grids are known to be very congested, so that's one of the reasons I think there's such strict and also limitations on the power levels that can be, how, how do you, do you

see all this congestion, grid congestion is a, is a phenomenon. Yeah, as a phenomenon it's sort of fascinating because I think it, it kinda has to do with this, yeah, the, the Dutch pride themselves on efficiency, I think, and that has this. Extreme effect today that we had an efficient power network for what we did and yeah because of our gas bubble in Groning everybody thinks that heating with gas is amazing and cheap and nowadays it isn't uh so finally people are installing heat pumps. Luckily

we have a lot of smart metering at home, but the thing is that just a lot of things in the Netherlands weren't electric. Uh, now of course many companies and people will want to go electric for all kinds of reasons and then suddenly we pretend to find out, uh, yesterday that the network isn't capable to grow overnight by whatever margin we need. So, and this, this actually gets us into serious trouble because yeah, let's say that you were that you run a logistics company and let's

say that you have 50 trucks and that you just want to electrify ASAP, then yeah, you would need a serious charging plaza to do 50 trucks uh overnight. Charging or or whatever way you wanna do it depends on on how you run your business but yeah when you now let's say that you would find this out today and today you would go to the energy company and you would request a couple of megawatts to to do this well they would just laugh in your face and

and literally tell you yeah we can deliver in 2032 and that's sort of if you're lucky, um, so yeah we're we're in um. We're in a place where I, I wonder how, how fast we'll get out of it because clearly a lot of expansion is planned and it will come, etc. but yeah, right now it really puts us in a certain gridlock and yeah in, in a city like Utrecht it has already the effect that the law.

throttle charging in Utrecht, I, I think if you plug in at 7 at night you get very little or nothing because the neighborhood just has so much power needs from just people getting home from work. Um, and, and this is also where, yeah, the public charging network is a bit stupid how it is today because all of these people drive their cars to work, they all come home at sort of the same time, they all plug into this public charger at the same time and then

at home they also plug everything in, start cooking, and etc. So yeah, and, and there's absolutely no need so 90% of the cars that get plugged in at 6 p.m. Absolutely have zero power need at that moment when they plug in so um this is of course where where I think we can probably for many years the Netherlands can sort of solve uh their issue in simply doing things smarter because in in in many cases it's also that. As soon as a company, let's say that

this company builds a charging plaza and they do this with a couple of megawatts, then the DSO will always, uh, if you request 5 megawatts, then, then that will be reserved for you at all times, and this is completely nonsense because half of these trucks will be away most of the day, so your connection will actually be close to zero when these trucks are not there. Uh, so of course all the neighbors should be able to use that right then and there. So I think in

many cases we'll just have to arrange things way smarter and then we can probably, uh, go on for years and even expand and. I think also in a certain sense it just shows you uh in my opinion the importance of public charging because imagine that there's 5 logistic companies nearby each other yeah if there's in the middle a big charging hub then not everybody needs to build this behind the gate and all request their own connection that most of the day. Nobody will use in all

of these occasions, so I think it's also just a matter of, uh, yeah, doing things well and then talking smarter and this this podcast is called smart charging, uh, what, what I experiences I think you, you have, I've seen it uh on LinkedIn as well. You experience things like um that you have a quite a few initiatives related to smart charging in the Netherlands already. Can you maybe share your experience? And how it fits within what you just said. Yeah, I'm, I'm lucky because in uh

in Amsterdam is actually the first sort of real public trial where you can now use the AC chargers that were already there in the city. Some of them have been enabled to do what they call smart charging. And unfortunately, you need one charging app um to, to do it and then um yeah, I think it's really this case where, yeah, they're, they're trying something cool but for me it was, yeah, very the. I thought that let's say the first time I tried, I thought it would

be smart to, you know, plug during the daytime is when I am nearby the house a lot and it's easy to plug in my dad's car if I feel like it and then we have a lot of sunny days, especially in the weekend where the energy price is close to zero or even negative. Um, so I thought it would make sense for my first try to plug it in, let's say at 11 when there's so many public chargerss in Amsterdam not in use anyway, so it's

sort of this optimal combination, but the thing is that they did this, this, uh, test. They are running it only rewards you when they can actually delay the session, so it has nothing to do with energy prices or the actual load. It is just that if you sort of plug in at this moment that they don't want you to plug in and they can delay it for you because you say in the app when you need your car again, so then they, they will calculate because

they know your vehicle, um, you have to log in. Uh, through the API, um, so they know when your vehicle, uh, how much hours are needed for it to fill up, and then. It creates this sense where I, I've now tried several times and I've talked a bit with the people behind it and yeah, at least I've found out how they want you to do it, so you, you sort of have to plug in at the stupid moment and then it will delay the session for

you and that's how you get the reward yeah, the reward is based on that it, the, the app will show you the, the price bracket that you are sort of delayed to. But it's not very clear. And then yeah, also this app is more expensive to use than the app I normally use. So in the end, half the time it didn't, it didn't help me much. Now like best reward I ever got was, I think just over €1 but in Amsterdam that means that you sort

of get gifted. kilowatt hours, which is more than nothing, but if you look at the hassle that I just sort of had to do this right to even get that like the I, I, I literally because I wanted to have another proof of concept I plugged in the other night before I came here. Uh, and this reward was less than 20 cents, even so not even worth 1 kilowatt hour, and later I realized that if I would have just left home an hour earlier in the

morning, plugged in at the first supercharger outside of Amsterdam. For 8 a.m. I would save way more by doing that because Tesla has a variable pricing in the Netherlands and in many other countries as well. I think it's mainly based on the spot market, but I think it's also their local contract because it differs per location completely. Because the the there's like just for the listeners who are not so familiar and maybe, maybe you know it as well that would be interesting. There's different value streams

if you want. One is the, the, the congestion of the grids which mean that the local distribution grids that. We're talking about, uh, heavily congested, so you help the grid by not charging at particular times when the, the grids are congested and I assume that's the reward you get through the app we're just discussing and not through the spot market, which is what you were hinted up and that you expected the, the, the reward being, OK, it's negative price, it's a spot market that changes every

hour and then which is a different market, right? True, yeah. Yeah, so that's definitely um something to improve upon and to consider both in a in a good smart charging solution, but there's. One thing I don't know if you had experience with it or if you, if, if you know anything about it, but one thing that I found also interesting in the Netherlands is the V2G case of Utrecht, which apparently is one of the most advanced in the world, but have you seen anything and could

the experience in your charging there or? Well, I was invited to the opening, so I've seen how the concept works and it, yeah, they, they say it is working, but. Yeah, this is one of these cases again where I, I wonder like, OK, it is great, this will help the city of Utrecht for sure. It will definitely help the company running the shared vehicles. It might even help uh the companies selling these cars, but I do wonder, like, uh, yeah, there's really for me is the

what's in it for me because if, if you live in Utrecht and you like to use these shared cars, then yeah, I think. The ultimate way to do these things is to make sure that sort of people use them at the right time, people plug them in at the right time, and yeah, I, I wonder like, yeah, if where are the incentives for the actual end user and because if these are, these are Renault cars, I think it's super cool that that Utrecht has. I'm, I'm

sort of jealous that Amsterdam doesn't have them. Maybe we will get them at some point, but. Um Yeah, I just, yeah, I wanna like if, uh, this V2G stuff is that somebody gets rewarded there, but I feel like it's not the people who sort of deserve it, which is these people in the streets that give up their car to use the shared car that is V2G capable, uh, yeah, if, if, if they live with, uh, oh, the lights can stay on, I'm so happy. No, like

give them, give them a discount on that car if it's doing V2G, which is making you money, the company, uh, so it makes me a bit sad that I, I've seen many shared cars that I love to use and that I use a lot. They have mainly become more expensive. If I look at Berlin, where I tried many of the electric cars that I tried over my life for the first time, many of those cars are gone now, and the companies I used to use all

the time now I have hardly only petrol shared cars, and it's 2025, and I see these things and I just wonder what what's going on here like, yeah, I, I want some well, I, I, I'm afraid it has to do with um. Yeah, if, let's say this, I think some of these shared cars, I loved to use those electric cars in Berlin already years ago, but I guess. Uh, not, uh, all the locals actually loved them so much because there weren't many chargers, so probably you

would find a lot of these cars at half a charge and then not find a charger nearby. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm afraid that it definitely has to do with this real world where Berlin for many years hasn't helped these companies run the share because a shared fleet needs public infrastructure. To be successful and it's a bit sad to see that now I walk through these Berlin streets where there's suddenly a lot of chargers available, so suddenly that that that fleet that I have in my

head from 3 years ago could could charge everywhere now. And the actual fleet is gone and probably sold at a loss or shipped to Denmark because over there EVs are crazy successful in one of the countries where several years ago I used DC public charters over. Already at half the price because the spot market went lower and I could plug in at a DC charger during lunch uh for half price in a country that's already has attractive prices but the price goes even lower in the

afternoon when you need your fast charger. Uh, in the afternoon, so yeah, it's weird to me that um in some places things are moving so fast and uh and then I come over here and, and I actually see this movement in infrastructure, but actually the fleet seems to um struggle. And, and coming back to the Netherlands, a last point as well and to your last point as well. What makes the Netherlands such on the on the forefront or Denmark or other countries that you might have

in mind here in Europe like Norway such uh what what was the motivation or the reason behind them so so much in the leadership compared to other countries? Yeah, I think that if you look at Europe then it's sort of easy to see that most of these countries where EVs are successful either have a lot of infrastructure or sort of have affordable infrastructure but not only that, it's also in many cases if you. Look at Norway, there's simply no tax on EVs. So suddenly, yeah, uh

I just the other day I found out that getting a Model Y in Norway is thousands of euros cheaper than here where it's built, uh, because they don't tax it. So you ship it far from where it's made and then it becomes cheaper because there's simply no tax on it. So imagine if Germany simply said EVs have no tax. You can just sell them and we just take no tax like. EVs would be booming yesterday in Germany if you did it because everybody wants the best

deal. I, I trust that blindly. So the thing is that EVs have to be the best deal in China. They are. That's the only reason why they're successful. And yeah, if, if you want the, the very cheapest car of your life in China, you will always go EV because it's cheaper to buy, it's cheaper to use, um, probably in the city where you live, half the time you're not even allowed to drive petrol anymore or they will restrict the days or the hours. And yeah, I

think these things, uh, let, let's take the Paris example because I love Paris for being so two-wheel friendly. It's in Europe. You will not I would even say in Paris you see more electric motorbikes than in China and why is that? Because of the local rules because, uh, Paris introduced paid parking for motorbikes and at the day that they introduced this they said electric motorbikes pay nothing. So everybody in Paris, well I'm exaggerating, but a lot of people in Paris. That day they switched to an

electric motorbike. You also got a discount for trading in your petrol bike and etc. But in Paris I can walk in a single street and see several electric motorbikes parked together charging up at the traffic light, and this is the only city in Europe where this happens, and that is because of a parking rule. And it just shows you in my opinion that yeah if you set these rules correctly, which in the Netherlands was sort of this tax thing where, yeah, uh everybody in the Netherlands

drives a company car like the new cars or old company cars, and there was simply no taxation if you went EV so everybody took a Tesla. Half of all the Teslas in 2019 that came to Europe came to the Netherlands. It's now true in Belgium. So in Belgium you will now see more German-made EVs than in Germany because everybody still loves their German cars in Belgium and they simply pay no tax on it. In Denmark it's also this way because if you walk into a Danish

showroom, uh, let's say that you like BMW. The Danish showroom will simply show you the, the 4 series at let's say 80,000 Danish euros, and then it will be 60,000 to go for the I4, uh, and then I haven't even spoken about that, uh, Denmark, for example, they also don't tax your electricity at home if you use solar and if you charge your EV, etc. so it becomes a complete no-brainer like you have this super expensive fossil. Purchase or you, you go less than half price

by going EV and then yeah also public infrastructure has to be named because in Denmark it is absolutely wild that it's a small country and the highways have the most crazy fast charging infrastructure of all of Europe maybe except for Norway but yeah it's sort of that's not EU so it's sort of disregard them a bit they're so hidden far away. Uh, but Denmark's so easy to visit if you come from Germany, and yeah, you will not believe your eyes because it will be easy to

pay by credit card, pay half the price of what you're used to, find more plugs available, uh, actually see, you know, uh, in, in Germany, I've been to many locations where there are, let's say 40 superchargers or there's a big MBW charging park with, uh, let's say 30 plugs, but Do I ever see them busy? OK, maybe on a winter sport day, but in Denmark you can just, we can drive to Denmark right now, be there in a couple of hours, and it will be crazy

busy at all these big charging parks because everybody's driving EV today. Like the fleet growth there is so absurd that they're even in some months this year they have imported more EVs than new sales. Uh, because they're that attractive to, to use. It's pretty cool. Let's talk about China. You, you have been there when was it twice in January and in April, uh,

I, I visited places like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Shanghai. And uh Hangzhou, and yeah, it's, uh, it, it is a bit wild because being in Berlin now and trying to compare it to uh one day in Shanghai or something, uh, it, it, it is totally crazy because everything about it, yeah, if you, if you take a cab ride. You will, you will be in this old cab that just, yeah, it, it looks like an old car, but it's an EV and I, I've been in some

cabs that have 300,000 kilometers uh already driven. Uh, from brands that nobody here knows, and that cab driver doesn't even, yeah, I've, I've been with some cab drivers. They were too young to know what a fossil car even means, uh, and they will never drive one again, of course. So everything about it is just. It's just wild and I think the crazy part is also that in a country like the Netherlands we've had a couple of Chinese companies active for a bit that that they all

said they would come to Germany but it's sort of going slower here but in the Netherlands we had a couple of companies active for a while and. You can just see that things are are moving so fast in the sense that these EVs that yeah they were, they were already charging at 800 volts last year, but now they put in a new battery and it can go again like double the kilowatt rate. I recently tried to. The Zeeker car and you know it, it, it is

actually sort of hard in the Netherlands to find a charger that can supply it with what it can handle. Um, it can do over 400 kilowatts, uh, you actually, uh, need a charger capable of going way over 500 amps, which is not that, uh, common, um, and yeah, you, I think it's just this combination of Yeah, they simply the fastest chargers that I've ever seen, they were there. The cheapest charging I've ever seen was also there. What, what can you talk numbers? Yeah, so when I

was trying a Zika car in Hangzhou, I was outside of the city. I was just clicking around on the screen. And you know, just nearby where I was like I, I wasn't, I wasn't in the city. I was nearby a lake. It, it felt kind of quiet, but on the screen I could see that any direction I looked within a couple of kilometers, there would be fast chargers of several. Speeds and several operators and I found 120 kilowatt charging at 10 cents for example but I

found 500 or 600 kilowatt charging at €15 cents and that was without looking so I'm sure that I didn't find the cheapest ones or whatever and yeah it's it's just it is so crazy to to realize that. You're in a country in China, a liter of petrol, yeah, if you don't go to get the right deal, a liter of petrol will cost you €1 and 120 kilowatt charging is easy to find at 10 cents. So that is, that is not even that is not having an

option. That is just you go EV's 6 times cheaper. So that is just so wild and. Yeah, uh, I think the, the speed of these changes that I've been in these models that last year they, they already impressed me last year even though, you know, the AAS is never as good as a German one that I've tried so far. So yeah, even in the Zeeker car it can charge way faster than a BMW, but the BMW can still handle the autobahn better and also. Um, you

can never use the cruise control at the highest speed and whatever, so there's still ways in which the Germans can just say, you know, we offer something that they don't, and for now that is totally true, but wow, it might be just next year that is not true anymore because of the speed of things moving, and this is where I just wonder if, if we are aware enough of these things moving at the speed that they are, um. Because, uh, Volkswagen, yeah, OK, uh, it might

be that somebody told me this morning on Blue Sky that they will get to a million EVs this year, which sounds amazing, and if it's true, that's even more amazing. But then you realize that Volkswagen sells 10 million vehicles, so actually only 1 out of 10 is an EV. And then if the competition that makes 5 million cars already does have EV. Yeah, what will that be next year? And yeah, and the thing is that it's just so, I really think that people don't realize that

when, when these battery prices come down the way that they are, uh, it will be so easy to even install hubs in, in, in America. Tesla has now built their biggest site ever, um. They say without a grid connection, not actually true, has a tiny grid connection, but that really shows you there's suddenly a charging site that has a 1.5 megawatt connection if I'm not mistaken, uh, but they have 10 of these mega packs, so they can actually just handle 1000 Teslas coming in in a

couple of hours. Charge them all, uh, and that can be done thanks to these batteries in a location in the middle of nowhere and I think that that is just, you know, in, in Europe that kind of middle of nowhere doesn't even exist but that is sort of the point like we don't even have that kind of middle of nowhere and still we're going too slow with this so that just really frustrates me that um I feel like in the mega cities that I visited in

China, yeah. It's sort of you you you have challenges that that I think in a way are tougher than what we have here, uh, but they're tackling them at the speed that just as a European is almost impossible to believe, right? So you saw like an immense amount of charge points in the apps that you, yeah, and that is also this weird thing where I did see, uh, for example, a lot of AC chargers walking around. But the weird thing is that you really notice that

what I already felt a bit like in uh in the Netherlands now it's very easy to to live in a place where AC charging might not be ideal. Like uh in my opinion, uh, if an AC charger is running at 50 cents per kilowatt hour, I think for what it is that is sort of inexcusably expensive. The thing is that in my opinion those kind of chargers, they become a luxury for people who don't mind, people who don't pay for it themselves, or people who simply

need that charge, they will clearly plug in. But yeah, for if you run the right DC charging infrastructure, you can definitely go below those prices, but it has to be smart infrastructure of which we don't have that much in Europe. And in China, you see that I, I noticed that a lot of the AC chargers that I saw were sometimes more expensive than the DC chargers I saw all over the place. And you could also see that. DC chargers were everywhere. There were all of these

cars, they were using infrastructure that wasn't built for their car. I also saw a lot of old EVs that I never saw before that, you know, they cannot even charge fast, but they can charge and it's cheap, so people will use them and they will be super interesting secondhand and whatever, and I think that that is also this point that that I think in Europe is sort of this risk where. We are making a lot of EVs. A company like Volkswagen is producing a very decent

amount of EVs and. Yeah, in in Italy, where I want people to go EV at a faster rate than the Netherlands because they deserve it, it doesn't make any sense for most people to do it. And if we don't fix that. Yeah, then I don't know what we're actually doing, um, because, yeah, this idea in Europe we're still at this point where it is not even weird to to say, to see that an EV is something for people who can afford it, and that is that

doesn't make any sense to the logistics of actual EVs. Um, but it's, yeah, it's, it's true in many places. Was there anything else that was very surprising to you in China compared to Europe, uh, your experience in, in Europe that I, I, I know we touched upon the payment via WeChat. Or, or like, like for example, you can elaborate maybe on, on the wax for the, for the, it is, it is absolutely wild that, that downloading, let's say, uh, in my case, let's just, let's just

tell my story. I downloaded both WeChat and Alipay, um, and with those two apps, I, I lived 3 weeks in China and Yeah, I bought food in the street at night with a lady that had this bike cart frying super tasty stuff at the most absurd prices ever, yeah, and, and you know there's just this QR code hanging at the stand. Uh, and when I scan it, yeah, faster than I've ever done payment in Europe, she gets this, this loud message from her phone or whatever

device that I have paid, uh, and, and so there's also this. Um, this realization that they just, there's just no, yeah, there, there's no friction. So there's this, there, there's really this, and it, it is a crazy consumerist society. So really when, when I, when I walk around China, I, I feel like I'm in sort of a hyperdrive version of the America that I thought I knew where there's cars everywhere. Uh, there's the big cities with just sky rises all over the place. It really in

many ways to me looks like America, but things are affordable. Things are all digital, public transport, mind blowing. And yeah, it's a bit strange to see that that you're in this place that looks like America but where everything feels like it's working

and that is just yeah and then the EV case makes it even crazier of course, but I think it's also A case of, I guess they have sort of a younger pyramid of people where there's just so many digital natives. So if I'm in a Berlin metro, I was in the Berlin Metro this morning, and clearly I will see a couple of people on their phone. And you know, I'm not, we have, we have a lot of phones here. That's not the point. But if you're

in a Chinese metro, first of all, it's 3 times the size you've ever seen a metro in Europe. Uh, that's also, I haven't, I've maybe been in one quiet metro, but the other 50 metros were busy. So it, it's just the, the crowd size and just how they, how they handle it and you also sort of realize that if you, if you don't go digital when you have those kind of crowds and nothing works, so it sort of makes sense for them to do that from

the beginning and Yeah, then I read this morning an article about a Dutch city at the sea in the south, Domburg, where they didn't want to upgrade the parking meters to ones that don't accept cash anymore because they get so many Germans visiting and they expect to pay the parking. With cash and it just made me smile because that if you would read that about a Chinese fishing village that gets a lot of tourists from the other province, nobody would believe you if you told them

this because I haven't seen cash in the in the 3 weeks that I was there. And so you paid, for example, the charging with the WeChat or Alipay. How can I imagine, uh, for each charge point it was the same UX? Well, this is the thing where they, they have this crazy model where in WeChat there's these mini apps for everything. So the WeChat app is sort of a portal to the Chinese digital world and as soon as you go to a new city. It takes

you a second when you when you take your first metro there, then you sort of have to log in to the metro there. But yeah, it, it's, it is frictionless, but you just have to say yes to their, uh, whatever, um, circumstances, and yeah, the, the same thing with the charging like usually. Uh, you just scan it with WeChat and you get into this mini app of that provider, uh, and that is, uh, that is the way that you pay. OK. And then you, you don't

have the risk, you know, the QR code that was a big debate here in, in, in Europe that there was fraud maybe. Yeah, so I think, but of course. I'm not Chinese, so that that is one that that we would need to research is that the um, the WeChat as a portal, it, it probably creates this sort of this problem where you're not scanning a QR code with your camera, which I'm used to in Europe. If I scan a QR code I use my camera. And

it could lead to any website. It could be anything and the and the trick I think is that this WeChat app scans the QR code and it will probably only send you to the parties that it knows and I'm, I'm definitely, I'm, I would not be surprised to hear about somebody uh figuring out a way to, but yeah, the thing is that um. I think it's much harder to come in between that line than if you can just run your own because the thing is that

these, I, I haven't seen many Chinese websites, you know, that's the thing. Everything is hidden behind these mega portals. Um, I feel like, yeah, there's, there's hardly sort of a, I cannot even prove to you that that Chinese websites do a lot. Like, clearly there will be many sites I don't know about, but I feel like I, I didn't see, uh, you know, you don't see like here even though in Europe we also maybe advertise websites less, but for me it's still. Completely normal to go

to a website when I want information. When I met people there, they never went to a website to show me anything. They went to WeChat. They went to the mini app of the car rental or whatever, and that is where they would show me stuff. Yeah, yeah, no, I know, I, I mean, I'm not sure if you, you know, but I also have some history with China, so I definitely the super apps concept there is quite different to what we know in Europe. There's this mini

apps for everything. Which makes it also quite convenient, uh, when you're there, but so you don't have many. MSPs like we know it that where you would download a separate app, you would only use the mini app. Yeah, I, I have not, yeah, so it's it's sort of this world where we really know the app store as sort of the center where we do those things and yeah, I, I really feel like they, they don't. And talking EVs now in terms of really the vehicles, if

you had like your rank. And from the best experiences you've had so far in the crappiest ones, maybe you can

share a few examples and stories. Yeah, I'm I'm I

I when you talk about this immediately that I, I, for example, traveled to France 5 years ago with an s and that was one of the first times that I could try Chinese EV. Uh, they were very early to come to the Netherlands. The brand is called. And they're already, they aren't even active anymore in China, so they just sell in Europe and I, I don't know how much right now. Uh, it's very difficult to find out what's actually going on. But anyway, I, I took

that car to France and you know, the way it charged. The, even the, the, the way that they, they put the CCS plug on the front of the car, uh, but sideways. So I had many struggles with CCS cables to actually get them in and I had to sit on the asphalt. To even plug it in, like, just, it just shows you that, yeah, I, I feel like did, did, did anybody ever try this uh before they launched it like, and, and it would have this

big eye looking at me, so I immediately put something on it and luckily it didn't complain. Um, but it just, yeah, you know, the It, it pretended to be able to do CarPlay, but it couldn't, and I think that that is also, I even tried other Chinese vehicles last year that they were promising CarPlay but they didn't have it. But this is where you see where, yeah, they're, they're moving very fast, so nowadays the CarPlay is already normal. Uh, they actually can upgrade a lot of

things over the air, so you can actually see that they're improving the things that I complained about maybe just a year ago, um, and yeah, there's really this, this difference in that some of these companies, they are maybe just too small, yeah, to like this iways company. I'm not aware of that they have a very big parent company behind them. But in China, there's actually like in, in, in Europe, you might see a brand like Zicker or, or even Polestar and yeah, many people were simply

will simply see that and have no like in, in, in, I was in Yteb the other, the other month and there were Polestars everywhere and I think that many Swedes, and of course Polestar has a big office there, but yeah, when When I see a pole star, I think of Geely because I'm interested in the industry and yeah, I think that that a company like that. Is putting when you walk around the average city in China, what you see driving around it like when I visited

Guangzhou in January, the normality of this Zika 001, I, I know of two of those cars in Amsterdam. In, in Guangzhou, you can be at one traffic light and you already see three, and the rest of the day this will continue. You can see thousands on a single day just walking the city. And you just realize that this car that here still looks new and is already pretty impressive for what it does at the price. Over there, completely casual. They already upgraded 3 times. It charges

double the speed that it does here. They don't even sell the faster charging version here because nobody cares. The infrastructure isn't there anyway. It's already competitive with many German cars, so. Yeah, it's a bit crazy and the, the luxury is also wild because you can really see this complete difference in approach to screens like in China, a screen, even, even just the, some cities in China feel like a screen because they're projecting stuff on these buildings that I also wonder like what are you doing and

and why. But, but that doesn't matter, you know, it, it doesn't matter if it impresses me. The thing is that if you sit in a A modern Chinese EV that costs a bit of money, then yeah, I've sat in one that had 2 6K screens, so one in the front for the driver and the passenger and another 6K screen in the back, and I realized sitting there watching some Chinese movie that I don't have any friends here who have a 6K screen at home. And in

China I don't want to say that it's normal yet in cars to have several, but soon it will be. And obviously that doesn't matter to us. Like it won't change and it like it won't suddenly create a screen obsession for Europeans that need 6K 6K screens in their car, but for. Any Chinese that will be normal and they will not accept anything less if we don't build that, they will never buy anything German anymore, not a chance, and these things matter because half of the German

exports were Chinese and in 3 years, if you would ask it to me, I would say 0 is expected. Mm, uh, my question was, uh, also related more to your experience with, uh, any type of you, not necessarily only Chinese, uh, so if you had to share what are your top EV, I mean, I don't know how many EV models you have been driving and never enough, but I mean the, the, I will always mention the Taican because it is still. The, the nicest one I

have driven myself, uh, just in the way that it was just this, this feeling of being connected to the road in an EV, uh, is just completely unusual because even today many EVs aren't built that way and it just shows you that. Yeah, I think they were right in going EV very early, you know, many people think that nowadays there's an article written that they sort of went too early. And I think that's completely false. They were absolutely right to go early and unfortunately, yeah, I'm

not sure if they put in the right batteries and everything, but yeah, it, it, it was still, you know, even, even though I now charge a Chinese vehicle as fast as a Tikan, that is 5 years later, so you can see that they really set a benchmark in 2020. Yeah, it could charge at a peak rate of 270, but it could hold it for a while, so yeah, it, it created this opportunity for me to charge close to 60 kilowatt hours in 15 minutes. So even

today that is still very impressive, uh, and the new Titan that I have never driven charges even faster. So that is just a very um. It's a very good product, but then again, uh, yeah, you can really notice. I, I sat in one the other week because a friend of mine actually has one nowadays because they're, I'm, I'm not gonna say affordable, but you can buy them secondhand at a very different price than then that they were new. Uh, and you noticed that, yeah, if you

come from a recent EV uh then. It does feel diff, you know, you, yeah, it, it feels more like a car. There's a lot of buttons. You sit really well, you sit really low. That is still very unusual in most EVs, um, but then again, yeah, uh, this is the. It is like this, it, it, it will always be a niche product for what it is, and I think there is where I wonder, um. If they have this right approach with, yeah. Going Makan afterwards but

delayed and I feel like the cayenne is also delayed again. I would say that these products already needed to be there. Like uh this, this Titan drive that I enjoyed so much is so long ago that on the one hand, I'm still so impressed by it and, and I, I forever will keep that experience. But what happened in the meantime, like why, like I was looking forward with some German friends to try the, the Boxster and we did a road trip together to Glasgow actually to

the, to the Cup. And it was 21 and back then we all felt like this Boxster EV was coming and we, we talked about our potential road trip together as new made friends that that this would be our target and here I'm sitting with you 4 years after discussing that with some German guys and We were all ready for that product years ago and now it's been delayed to I think 27 and Yeah And, and, and you, you talked about Porsche and one company that tries

to measure itself at the same level that I find also particularly interesting is uh Xiaomi that is sort of doing what Apple didn't and uh and created the and uh for those that don't know, Xiaomi is this big smartphone and, and other electronics um manufacturer. And, and very successful quite actually late creating I think in 2012 or so, very, very not, not so long ago but now being wildly hyped maybe rightfully so, but I would be also curious to, to hear your opinion. So if you

just put a few of the brands that are a lot on my mind in terms of that are shaping the e-mobility or BYD, of course, Xiaomi from, from China, you already touched upon Geely, um, as maybe the three leading ones in, in China, and then. In Europe we have the German automakers that that are kind of very much wary at the moment they're trying but not trying enough or I'd, I'd be curious to see this comparison uh and, and how this will develop in the upcoming

years in your view. Yeah, so that was, that was one of the very cool things to be in China this year because I was just so surprised even because I visited both in January and in April that I could see this difference in. I already saw a lot of Xiaomi's back in January. But then going again in April, they just released the Ultra, I think a couple of weeks before I actually went and walking around a city like Shenzhen, I could simply go around the city

and just see several ultras driving around and yeah you can really notice that that there's there's a serious crowd that is into getting the new thing. And yeah, I, I didn't drive it, um, so I just visited the showroom, but, um, but just seeing, yeah, the, the, the crazy amount of shopping malls over there are filled with stores selling phones, uh, and stuff, yeah, whatever. Uh, but the thing is that nowadays if you walk into these Huawei stores, uh, that you didn't mention or Xiaomi stores

uh, yeah, easily half of the store is, is like lined up with could be laptops, could be tablets, could be, uh, vacuum cleaners in the case of Xiaomi. And the other half of the store is suddenly packed with cars, uh, so when I visited, uh, the Ultra was taking the, the, the center stage in April, um, and then around it would be the, the slower versions, um, but let's say that you and I would fly into Shenzhen tomorrow. Uh, which is, it's still July when we

record this, so that's months after I just visited, and the Xiaomi store would already look like a new store to me again because their new model would now be in the middle, uh, and that's gonna be crazy competitive to Model Y, no doubt. Ah, forgot, of course, Tesla to have your view on Tesla as well too. Yeah, very interesting one to keep an eye on and, and, and what you see is just that this. This approach of that they, you know, a company like Xiaomi should

be compared to things like Apple because they offer an ecosystem and that, yeah, if, if you're like a 30 year old in China. Uh, with some decent job, then, yeah, probably you have a, you, it could be that you have a house full of Xiaomi stuff doing your lights, doing your vacuuming, doing all kinds of things around the house, and, and automate them, uh, and now your car gets integrated into this. And um yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they would also do home batteries and

stuff at at some point, but yeah, a company like BYD probably a better example of that because they already have this uh that that value chain built in but Yeah, you can really see that there's just this, it's, it's a full set of offering and the car is just a new part of their bigger puzzle and It just shows you that people can go around and they, they will, they will sort of never leave such a place, so they will always look at the Xiaomi system

next and I, I wanted to buy a walkie talkie there, but I couldn't because they needed them, so they had a lot of walkie-talkies around, but they needed them as demos for this car shop and it showed me also that I thought I was in a shopping mall because. People went shopping there, but actually people shop on their phones. So even though the Xiaomi car is in front of you, most people will buy them on their phone, and that is really, I think, where Tesla comes

in, in that they're still one of the very few where, uh, you can simply, we can go to the website right now and you can get yourself a Tesla on your phone as we sit here. You, you could do the purchase before we end this podcast and That is a that company has been doing that for over a decade, and it really makes me wonder that there's very little companies who actually simply copy that model to do the same. Nothing else, not better, simply the same

be a competitor to Tesla, and I think that is really where the Germans shine in absolutely missing. The point because they don't offer this like even just a German configurator of a car. Clearly I get that some people want a very personalized experience, so there will always be a space for that. But the simplicity of buying a Tesla is a selling point, and I think Xiaomi copies that in a big way because I just went on their website in the store there. And it was just

very easy to click around and get a SU 7, and now we could do the same with the U7 before you buy, you see the, the, the waiting time for your product, so you also, you can decide on upgrading to go get a faster. because it will be there in 30 weeks instead of in 50 weeks, uh, and this is the same trick that Tesla has been playing that they can just release a new product and they will give you the fast one, and, and later

yeah, there will be an even faster model and boom, there will be a new hype cycle around that and I, yeah, I think this that is really. Yeah, I, it just shows you that also the Americans, you know, because let's not focus on the Germans only, like the Americans, excluding Tesla, have also missed that point completely. Like they, they live in their dealer model bubble so deeply that they think that that is the only way, and with EVs that will never be true. Um, so you

need to get out of it and if you don't find a way then you will get stuck and that is such a risk that I feel with that that Europe as a whole is just in this place where yeah I think we, we could, we, we are doing some things better than the Americans for example, but we're also really missing, uh, yeah, seeing what we could do uh at the same time and yeah with Tesla it is just fascinating that mm. Here is a product that

uh I guess, yeah, they always stood for simplicity. Their software is super well polished uh on, on that level, I think there's very little competition even today. But yeah, you can see that where once they, they offered faster charging than most, yeah, if you go to China today, almost any brand. Uh, even some brands that would be almost regarded as budget, they would be very competitive to Tesla experience. So luckily for Tesla, they are still very efficient and hardly anybody beats them at this, maybe the

Germans. Um, so, but then in China when you look at what charging costs, for example, how many people will be very interested in efficiency, so luckily that is, you know, I think that that is also this element where Europe can really focus on that because we are good at it and we can choose to stay good at it. Uh, so I'm very happy to see a brand like Mercedes really focusing on such a thing. But at the same time, like, how, how did we make it

to the summer of 2025, and I'm not seeing the CLA anywhere. I know you can buy it. I don't know when you will get it if you did, but I'm, I'm not seeing that. I, I just want to see them in the streets, like, you know, when, when we would travel somewhere, we would see this car and. Let's also go into this point where It freaks me out that in America, where on the, if you look at America and uh like from the global perspective, I

think nobody is utterly failing at EVs as bad as America. Yet they have Lucid, they have Rivian. There's another company coming with another Bev truck, and they wanted to use the subsidies that are already canceled and whatever, but. Where is the European Rivian? Where is the European lucid? Well, European lucid, some people might say rematch, but I say there's no scale. You're just not comparing it, so. I, I want these things to true, yeah,

yeah, the, the solar car, yeah, yeah, so, and that's, I think, even more painful. Some people tried these things and they really deserved a lot of support. They didn't get it. And yeah, it just shows you and that that Xiaomi is really succeeding and is at the very beginning of something that can be so big, no European will ever believe it. That shows you things that are about to come to us, and there's no way for us to stop them. We have to be better. Who's

going to do it? Yeah, just BYD because it's the number one, you see it as you staying the number one or have you driven one? BYD is a is a funny one because they, they do so much. So you can go to California and we can drive a school bus there with some kids and it could be a BYD school bus in Los Angeles. Um, so that really surprises me. You can run into them anywhere. I've been into the weirdest cities where I suddenly saw a

BYD bus and I could not believe my eyes. Um, and then. At the same time, when I, when I sit in some of their cars, yeah, uh, if, if you sometimes use a Tesla and then you get to AO 3 interface, well, they, they don't compete, yet the Otto 3 in the Netherlands costs €38,000 and the Model 3 in the Netherlands costs €040,000 so there's €2000 in between those, um, but. Yeah, when, when, when talking BYD they're, they're so colossal that uh I really feel that

the only sort of comparison that I dare to make is sort of a VW Group and there you can already see that some things are really mismatched because clearly VW Group doesn't have the battery potential that that they do. And I'm, I'm not aware how VW is into buses, um, but anyway, the like. They have this, the, the classical approach where they would, they would operate a normal dealership, um, and that gives them also this edge where, yeah, they will operate. I think a competitive amount

of dealerships to most European brands probably by the end of next year, let's say in Europe, and those dealerships will sell cars and that means that those people will not buy a European car. Um, and I think many people will like what they buy because, you know, in, in the Netherlands now and in the same in Denmark, for example, uh, but even in France. On the highway I see these Seal U cars everywhere and in the Netherlands, more than half of them this year have been

uh petrol cars with a battery plug-in, um. And it really shows you that, you know, the European Commission, they thought, at least that's what they say, that that these these electric cars from China are sort of a risk to European automakers or whatever, and we needed more time. And so they introduced tariffs on on the electric cars. So now what the European Commission did, in my opinion, is they made the plug-ins even more attractive for the Chinese to sell, and they can make way more money

doing it. And there's a super big crowd in Europe totally not ready to go EV because in your local neighborhood charging will probably be either unknown to you, expensive, you're not interested. I could go on, the list goes on forever. Um, so this is a bit hilarious because even some of the companies that I was a big fan of in the past, uh, in China, they're all going into ERAs because the thing is that even in China, uh, first of all, many people can afford to

still buy petrol. And also can afford to just not care, not want to care about charging because it will, you know, you will need to figure things out with an app. You will need to figure out where the charger is, even if it's around the block from your house. Yeah, if you're used to going to the gas station, maybe you just don't mind. Um, so the thing is this, you see that a lot of companies that used to sell Bev only in China are going to

also sell ERVs. Xiaomi is one of them, uh, because there will be huge crowd for it, and it just shows you that, uh, yeah, that's, that is even more danger to us, I feel, uh, because it just shows you these cars are just so competitive that for us to stay competitive as Europe. It is going to be so challenging, and I think half the people here just don't want to know, but that is really not that interesting. And one switching gears and but also good segue

BYD announceds Octopus Energy in the UK a big V2G um program that they just launched. And it got me quite exciting as well, excited about this, uh, which for the listeners is like a 300 pound package I think with leasing a car and then you get driving for free if you adhere to the V2G conditions of octopus Energy. What do you make? Of that particular announcement and in general, what's your, as an EV driver, what's your take on, on V2G and what would be your ideal

smart charging V2G package, so to say in your day to day. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that, that, that UK package is super interesting and it really shows you that here we have an agile energy player in the UK that is taking over half the market and becoming a real UK colossus. And you can see that a company like BYD comes in and that could have been a Tesla deal, you know, they have a Powerwall. They started selling it in way more countries over the last weeks in

Europe than ever before. I think they feel the threat, and it shows you that BYD just comes in there. They have more models to offer. They have batteries. To go around and they will just sell you this stuff and they can, they can subsidize if they want whatever, um. And it's just in the UK I think these things make so much sense because of we talked about already the public charging is a bit hit and miss definitely pricing wise and uh as far as I'm aware

the numbers in the UK are like 50% of people can park in their own driveway. And yeah that is an amount that in most European countries we don't get close to those numbers so that's just the market potential there for home charging home batteries is crazy big um so there's just such a big potential customer group and yeah these incentives to. Get a good monthly price and then even get good energy rates and you will just plug it in when you get home anyway and the

app takes care of it. They know your vehicle, they know your energy, um, rhythm, so yeah, these things are like a no brainer. It is just the, the mathematics add up 3 times over. It it's just so absurd and I think that is also this part of, yeah, many car companies. Uh, will not go to that stage where they sort of really unders like they, they sort of will become a part-time energy company or at least they could have been and I think this potential, yeah

for a company like BYD is natural because they come from the battery side of things, but that is just, yeah, completely unusual, of course, uh in the industry and yeah I would expect such offers. Yeah, coming to any European country that has an octopus-like player uh could happen yesterday, uh, and I think the potential is huge and yeah, the company, uh, I'm so used to a country like the Netherlands that I'm always focused on the public charging side of no, so in in the Netherlands it's

so unusual well. Uh, for a huge group of people it's highly unusual that you park in front of your own house, like on your own property. Um, that's not the norm. Like, clearly there are a lot of properties where people own 4 cars and they're very different, but yeah, in, in, as soon as you get close to Amsterdam this will become completely unusual, uh, and there's a million people there, which is already close to 110% of the country anyway, so. We have to do things publicly

and that is why I'm super eager to see these public charging testing going to a stage where yeah every charger cooperates way more apps support this and mainly really this incentive for me. To plug in at the right time or know when I should because that is really where I think right now we're just missing out so much is that people are unaware like how many people in Europe even know the kilowatt hour price at their house like I, I feel like that is just not

like clearly thanks to things happening um. In the east this has changed a bit, so some people clearly found out, but, um, yeah, it's still just, yeah, I think, and that is also where I just wonder if the EU is just, yeah, alert enough to understand that, yeah, kilowatt hour education, yeah, we should get it in school and yeah, it's just, yeah, it's just basic. Yeah, and, and if you had to, if you and maybe you have thought about it, or, but if you had to

imagine what would be the ideal kind of future V2G case, so I, I put some thought into it, obviously, and what, what we think is that the user should have a seamless experience in the sense of. Not having too much manual input and it should somehow the app should learn from the past behavior or from integrations within your calendar or other types of data points that are useful to understand how the what the user preferences are so that you just have to plug in and it

probably the app would learn when you would like to plug in and then and then when you would like to leave again and use the vehicle so that there's somehow the mobility needs uh more and more with time. Learned and then it just automatically sort of schedules the charging so that you are able to drive um your next uh kilometer range that you need to if there's an exception that you might be able to to say it but that should be the exception rather than the

rule and then and then you minimize your cost as much as as you can even maybe as far to zero as in the in the octopus case in in the UK for a public charger but for private or for a public charger. Um, is that so how, how would you like, uh, have you put some thought or what, what would you think on what would be the ideal case in the hopefully very upcoming future? Yeah, well, I, I think that definitely the, the automation part of

things is just so important because clearly there will just not be this, yeah, acceptance that, that people don't want to be pushing buttons all day, plugging in at the right time like these things, they don't make any sense, but. If you can remotely start things and if they just happen because the system knows that it's the right thing to do. Uh, or the reward you just simply set that you want to be rewarded and the system will be more aggressive about it, but you can live

with it because you're flexible enough like clearly people live different lives, so there, there should be different settings, but I, yeah, I, I wonder a lot about how we can make such things work, uh, in public because I really, when I look at a city like where I live in Amsterdam. I actively, yeah, I have this curious mind where I just wonder like, OK, we have been growing the charging network a lot, um, but still like the fleet, even though the Amsterdam fleet is very electrified

there's still a lot of old cars around and yeah, how, how would it actually look like to sort of go full like if everybody had an EV. We simply needed, we would need many more plugs in public places to make a V2G case work, and, and it would be so easy to see how it could work because I think, yeah, it would make total sense. Like you create more flex if more people can plug in, you have more flexibility. So ideally you want that, but do

you actually want to see this city full of chargers? Uh, that is a very dubious one. So I, I always wonder like how can that actually look like and I think that you see in the, in the neighborhoods that are more recently built what what happens in a place like Amsterdam and I guess uh same here is that yeah way more cars are actually put under buildings and etc. and I think in as soon as you have. A big garage and stuff, yeah, uh, to have

a battery there, plugs everywhere, literally a garage. If you, if you build a garage today, if, if you don't put in the wiring for, for these kind of models, then I think you're just. Yeah, you're either you, you, you don't want to join where we're going or yeah, the incentives are maybe just wrong in your market, but yeah, I think this is really where the EU has to be like signaling and, and really push these member states like. Because if, if these things are happening in

in Denmark, I guess the sort of, they will never build a new garage without plugs, and in Sweden I've been to parking garages where simply the whole deck has chargers. Like I, I, I hardly see that in the Netherlands, but in Sweden it's quite common. and you see that also they are smart about it because, yeah, OK, these chargers, they aren't fast, but it doesn't matter. These cars just stay there. They just plug in, they charge slowly, it's affordable. Yeah, that's in these scenarios that's exactly

what you want, um, so yeah, but, but the idea. I want to see those things around the EU and ideally just globally, uh, but you can see that yeah it's it's. It's going, it's going at very different speeds uh around Europe and yeah, I think that's, that's a risk that we shouldn't be taking because, you know, in the thing is that people say that China moves so fast because they don't have the oil. Well, we don't have the oil either, so why aren't we moving as

fast or faster? Like we can move faster. There's nothing is stopping us, so. All right, yeah, with that uh sentence, maybe you have a last message you would like to leave listeners with. Well, uh, mainly to, to just try driving electric, so maybe you don't own an EV but take my advice as in rent one for the weekend, for the day, try a shared car, because, yeah, I think the chances are just so very low that you won't enjoy it, that, yeah, you should. Felix, thank

you well and keep on, keep it up, and I think you're doing a great job.

Wow, what an episode with Felix, Electric Felix, who clearly is passionate about the industry. And has shown us in so many ways his expertise and his experiences. Most fascinating ones are for me, the Netherlands, the geographical differences between the different countries, the incentives clearly being key for an effective transition to EVs and incentivizing people with tax breaks, for example, having enough charge points everywhere, having the Chinese with very cheap, cheap electric vehicles, but also. Down to 10 cents per kilowatt hour type of pricing. There's also

the Xiaomi and other types of software dominance and experiences from Tesla as well and how to purchase cars and how to pay for electric charging that needs to be definitely the case to motivate people to make the transition. His personal story was also quite fun and to understand his why with the electric motorbikes and also his. Experiences in in in most EU countries and comparing them with Germany unfortunately having to deliver better results just yet but I'm sure we will make better and. His view on

smart charging, his experiences as he's tested the Amsterdam pilot and there as well, having to combine spot charging, spot spot market-based charging as well as DSO grid congestion will make it very smart or the V2G case, which shouldn't be limited only to Renault 5s in, in, in Utrecht. There's still a way to go, but it's already a start. Yeah, I think it was a great episode. I hope you liked it. Feel free to share and tune in next time.

Ep. 19: Felix Hamer, AKA “Electric Felix” on Incentives, Smart Charging Pilots and EV Adoption Across The World

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