EVBox: Charging into an electric future

“We’re extremely well positioned to make charging your car as easy as charging your laptop.”

It wasn’t always easy owning an electric car, with the constant fear of running out of juice weighing on your mind. But those fears are fast vanishing, with unbelievable growth and innovation in charging technology. 

So as many countries prepare for a large-scale transition to electric, and with petrol and diesel cars soon to become a thing of the past, are we prepared for our electric future? Thanks to companies like EVBox, the future is bright. In this episode we visit EVBox’s HQ in Amsterdam to find out just how easy their award winning EV chargers are to use. We learn how they're speeding up charge times with their game-changing tech. And we hear about their successes and global growth.

We also hear from Jon Hirschtick who explains how EVBox uses PTC’s product lifecycle management and quality management solution Arena.

Find out more about Arena here.

Find out more about EVBox here.

Your host is Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC. 

Episodes are released bi-weekly. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates.

This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Ollie Guillou. Location recording by Greg Burke. Music by Rowan Bishop.

Transcript

Welcome to Third Angle, where cutting-edge EV chargers are powering our sustainable future.

I'm your host, Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC. In this podcast, we share the moments where digital transforms physical and meet the brilliant minds behind some of the most innovative products around the world, each powered by PTC technology. 

In the not-too-distant future, many of us will stop to fill up our car with gas for the last time; many petrol pumps at your local garage will be replaced by electronic charging stations. With all the petrol and diesel cars still on the road, it might be hard to imagine that future –but it's approaching rapidly. With the growing need to decarbonize our way of life, many European countries are banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035. But are we prepared for this electronic future? In the early days, going electric wasn't easy because there were hardly any charging stations available – and we'll talk about range anxiety in a bit. But thanks to companies like EVBox, those fears are fading. Our producer Greg Burke visited EVBox’s HQ in Amsterdam to meet product manager Chris van de Stadt and programme manager Steven Whittaker.

We're on a mission to reduce carbon emissions from transportation all over the world. And indeed, you can see that and feel that in everything we do here. Well, you can look around you, everything is green. And that's not just because we like it, but it's really what we stand for as a company.

EV Box was founded around 2010 after the founder had driven a Tesla Roadster. And he became very inspired by that and then decided to start his own company to manufacture charging stations. He saw the big opportunity ahead. In the last 13 years now we've really grown quite steadily, and now it's really accelerating as the adoption of electric vehicles expands. So we are one of the very first to market, especially in the Netherlands – you see our charging stations all over.

Why Amsterdam? Yes, it's a good question. Well, the Netherlands is, as you might know, one of the forerunners in the EV industry as a whole, and also the charging industry. So we in the Netherlands have the highest number of chargers in Europe not only per capita, but also in absolute numbers, which is, of course, huge for such a small country. That means that the whole charging industry is really centred here in the Netherlands. So we have a lot of big companies like Fastnet, but also us, EVBox, who are headquartered here in Amsterdam, so it's really a hub of EV charging in Europe. 

What are the challenges in trying to convert people to this new tech?

Range anxiety is a big one. That's where you're worried that you won't be able to arrive at your destination, or that you may become stuck somewhere because you can't charge. However, now, charging stations are becoming much more common. You can find them on Google Maps, especially driving in the Netherlands, it's almost as easy as finding a gas station. Also with having an EV, if you own your own EV, you have your own EV charger or charging network, it's quite nice because you never have to go to the gas station. You can charge on your own time and own terms.

So what we see here is Livo, our residential charger, where we have two versions, one with a cable attached if you want to keep the cable at the station all the time, but also one with a socket where you can plug in your own cable. And what you can see here is the LED strip, which is a very nice, intuitive invention from our side, where the colour of the LEDs combined with the icons show you the state of the charger. So it's very intuitive and easy for people to understand what is happening inside the station. 

So what we see is our charger on a pole so that people can place it in their garden or wherever they want to place their charger. It's a nice sleek design. And the whole charger is made from Makrolon, which is a plastic material, but not just regular Makrolon, but it's actually Makrolon RE, and we are the first charging company, or EV charging manufacturer, that uses this material. And the RE part means that the material is not a regular plastic but it's a plastic made from biomaterial as an input material which reduces the overall foot carbon footprint of the product by up to 70%. 

So for the innovation that has gone into LIVO, I think there are two types of innovation. So first of all, and that's for us the most important one right now, is the innovation in the usability of the product. So, where previously, in the beginning of the charging industry, it was really technology driven, what you see right now is that people want a station or charging solution that is super easy to use, and that they don't need to think about. Basically, one of our customers said, “I want charging my electric car to be as easy as charging my laptop.” So that's what we're trying to achieve with this new generation of products. So we've done a lot of user testing, UX design, thinking about how to design the app, how should it work together with what you see on the LEDs on the station, so that it becomes a very, very intuitive way of using the product. So you don't really need to think about using it anymore. That's the first part of innovation. And then secondly, more technically, what you see is that your charging station, or your EV in general, electric vehicle in general, becomes part of your energy system at home. So people are getting more and more electric appliances into their homes like heat pumps, solar panels, and batteries even, to store energy at home. And your charging station is becoming an essential part of it because that allows your car to even deliver energy back to your home, or at least charge your car when it's sunny outside so that you use most of your own generated electricity. So that's the technology innovation, that our charging station is able to communicate with all of those different appliances at home, to basically optimise your energy usage. And I think with the recent developments in the energy price, and energy availability, that's becoming even more important. So what we see here is the EVBox Liviqo, which is based on the same platform as the EVBox LIVO, but is basically the extension of EVBox LIVO towards the commercial and workplace charging market. This station has been designed so that people who come here for the first time immediately understand what they should do with the station. So where with LIVO we don't have a screen, with Liviqo we do have a screen, and it shows you exactly what you should do the moment you walk to it. So right now it says ‘connect cable’ because for people who drive across Europe with their electric car, you encounter hundreds of different charging stations, and each of them work differently. So sometimes it's very hard to understand what you actually need to do to get charging. So with Liviqo, we really try to enable everyone who walks to the station to see what actually needs to happen. So if you arrive at the station, you can take out the plug, and this side of the plug will fit into your car. So you can just walk to your car, take the cable off the cable storage, and then you plug the cable into your car, and you can swipe your card so that you can pay for the charging session. So you swipe your card, and then the station will start charging

Now we're walking past our lab where we do our development, testing, validation of new chargers, new features. So here we have the indoor garage, we can drive up to two cars here at once and test them in a variety of different conditions. So we have a climate chamber, we can test our chargers through the whole range of temperatures down to -25 Celsius and up to 60 degrees to ensure they work in a wide variety of conditions. We also have many different power options available here. This is a very valuable tool for product development. Looks like a large oven, but with very thick walls and a small window in the centre.

So we're standing here next to our fast charger Troniq Modular. It's about two, two and a half metres height I would say, and it has a big screen on the front, so that if you walk to it, you can easily see what you need to do as a user. And it has multiple outlets on both sides of the station so you can charge your car, it has multiple cables. The main difference is that this station, the Troniq Modular, is a so-called DC station, which means that it works with direct current instead of the AC stations that we saw inside, which are working with alternating current. The fact that it's DC means that the power, how it comes from the electricity grid, is AC – so you need to convert it from AC to DC, and that's where a big part of the space goes to. Also, the power of the station is much higher than the one that we saw inside, so basically all your components need to become bigger because you're handling a much higher power. 

As I said, this is meant for quick stops along your travel. So it can be that you see this next to a gas station, and obviously, in the end, we would like to replace all gas stations. But for now, they have to be next to the gas stations. But also in charging plazas just outside major cities, you can see some of these popping up. We actually as one of the first in the world can offer charging up to 400 kilowatts, so this charges your car from zero to 80% in about 15 minutes. While if you look at the AC chargers that we developed, those are really built for overnight users. So they would give you a full charge in about 8-10 hours depending a little bit on different circumstances. So it's a completely different thing. 

So what we see with our new products is that the ease of use is indeed highly valued. So we get feedback from customers that say that now, for the first time, I don't have to think about charging my car anymore. And it may sound strange for a company that builds chargers, but that's really the goal that we're trying to achieve. One of the main success stories that we at EVBox have is that we are delivering huge quantities of chargers all across Europe. So we're really a European company. Yes, we are headquartered here in the Netherlands, but we really think as Europe, and also the US too, to a certain extent, but Europe is our main playground, you can call it, and we've delivered over 400,000 chargers across the world, which is huge if you think about it. I'm very proud of that. And it's only accelerating, because if you look at the market where it's heading, I see a very bright future in front of us.

In 10 years, there'll be chargers everywhere. Almost all parking lots will have chargers in 10 years, especially here in Amsterdam. Gas vehicles will be prohibited from entering the city limits, so you'll need lots of charging. So you have the classic hockey stick curve. And if you look back, it already looks like we've grown a lot. But if you look to the future, I think right now, still, only a small percentage of newly sold cars is electric. But all across Europe, governments and other institutions have set goals to become 100% electric by 2030, 2035. So that's around the corner, right? That's in 10 years from now. So if you take that into account, and if you think about all the charging that needs to happen to get electricity into those cars, I think the future is extremely bright for us as a company, and I think with the products that we have, we're extremely well-positioned to make charging your car as easy as charging your laptop.

That was Chris van de Stadt Steven Whittaker. Now, EVBox is constantly innovating. And to deliver new products to customers quickly, their design teams have to be synched up. For all of their product lifecycle management and quality management needs, EVBox has chosen to use PTC’s cloud-native solution, Arena. Time to meet our expert Jon Hirschtick, who tells us how Arena works.

Arena is the world's leader in cloud-native product lifecycle management and QMS quality management solutions. Competing in the global economy is challenging, today more than ever. You need to share the latest product and quality information with your internal teams and your supply chain partners. You want to deliver innovative products to customers faster than you ever did it before. Because Arena is truly cloud native, it's a PLM solution that makes it easy for product teams to collaborate anytime and anywhere. With our Arena SaaS platform, we bring product information, people and processes into a single cloud-native system to speed new product development and new product introduction to keep everyone on the same page. Comprehensive cloud-native solutions help you design, produce and deliver innovative products across dispersed teams, anytime, anywhere. You get work done faster, speeding approvals, whether it's a new product or an existing product, and collaboration with supply chains. Today those supply chains change faster than ever, so the cloud-native aspect of Arena makes it perfect for today's agile teams.

EVBox’s products are revolutionary and changing the way that we power our vehicles. Their products are a complex mix of parts, sub-assemblies, and different systems that all need to work together efficiently. And the key to that is collaboration and visibility between the internal product teams and the external suppliers that work together to bring the product to market quickly. So as we move into this new era for the automotive market, how do you think EVBox’s products are also embracing this new era of product development?

Well, EVBox, like a lot of companies we see in the new generation energy world, green  tech world – electrification, solar, energy storage transmission – in that industry, it's extremely fast-moving, extremely innovative, people are building products that have never been built before. So Arena helps companies like EVBox move away from older, manual, siloed, disconnected systems. You bring together product information, people and processes in a single cloud-native PLM system, the result is you speed product development, you speed commercialization. Within the growing EV market, it's not just the vehicles – it's the whole ecosystem needed for charging and so forth that creates a market, a great opportunity for EVBox. Within that business, companies must move fast to get their product to market first, they must use agile process to adapt to changes in the market and unforeseen developments, and Arena enables EVBox to be successful, and to do all this efficiently and quickly.