Electric & Eclectic with Roger Atkins - LinkedIn Top Voice for EV
In conversation with the past, present, and future movers and shakers of the electric vehicle eco-system. Upstream in mining and mineral processing and downstream in batteries and charging infrastructures - and all points in between! I will draw on friendships and experiences from almost 40 years in the auto industry - almost half of that embedded within the nascent EV industry.
Failure and success are all part of my story...and that of many people I know. YOU will hear about it all.
Electric & Eclectic with Roger Atkins - LinkedIn Top Voice for EV
Revolutionizing Mobility: Crijn Bouman on Hands-Free Charging for Autonomous and Electric Vehicles
Prepare to be inspired by Crijn Bouman, the visionary CEO of Rocsys, as he shares his mission to transform the future of mobility with hands-free charging solutions for autonomous and electric vehicles. Live from Rijswijk, Netherlands, Crijn offers a rare look into Rocsys's groundbreaking work with major North American ports and logistics companies like Taylor and Hyster. With tantalizing hints of upcoming European developments, we uncover how Rocsys is setting the stage for a driverless tomorrow, where infrastructure is primed for efficiency and sustainability.
Our exploration doesn't stop there as we tackle the fascinating world of electric vehicle charging solutions. From the practicalities of battery swapping and wireless charging to Rocsys's pioneering hands-free charging hubs, we weigh the strengths and limitations of each. Discover how advancements in robotics and AI are the secret weapons in automating the charging process, ensuring scalability without the need for vehicle modifications. We also touch on the challenges of standardization across regions, with an eye on how China’s government-led standards could shape the future landscape.
Picture a world where steering wheels are obsolete, and vehicles operate as constant revenue-generating assets. We dive into the implications of such a reality, pondering the potential shifts in business models and the roles of traditional manufacturers. The accelerating race between the US and China in the autonomous vehicle sector raises questions about global competition and the economic ripple effects. Crijn offers insights into how Rocsys is positioned at the forefront of these changes, especially in the logistics and Robotaxi sectors, where automated charging solutions could redefine industry norms.
Hello, and welcome to the. Electric and Eclectic podcast show with Roger Adkins and some truly super smart and amazingly interesting guests. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.
Speaker 3:Hello everybody, I'm about to talk to Kryne Baumann, and Kryne works at a very intriguing and exciting company called Roxas. He's the CEO. He's got a very intriguing background in and around lots of things to do with energy, powering up, charging particularly and he's going to share with us today a perspective on a few things. Certainly, the specific thing we're going to talk about, which is charging in a very intriguing fashion, and we're going to talk about autonomous vehicles, for sure. But before we get into all of that, welcome to the Electric and Eclectic podcast, krijn. How are you? Where are you talking to me from today?
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me. I'm actually based in the Netherlands. I'm now sitting in our office in a town called Rijswijk. It's about 40 minutes from Amsterdam.
Speaker 3:Very nice. Well, look, I'm British. The British have, I think, an affinity and, I hope, a warm friendship with the Dutch. One of my favorite colors I've got two or three is orange, so I think, straight away that means we're going to get on well. Can I start by asking you about something I remember from years ago, and then we'll get into what you do. But it was a moment must be, I don't know six, seven, eight years ago where Elon Musk or Tesla showed a video of a robot arm plugging in and charging an EV up. Do you know anything about that? What, what was that about?
Speaker 2:So I actually met one of the people working on it. I think it was like an internal demo thing, but got a lot of media attention after it was on twitter. Um, I think at that time tesla was in the model 3 ramp up crisis, basically. So I don't know what happened afterwards, so I have no information there, but, um, at least it didn't make it to the market yet no, it didn't, but it was all very spooky seeing this thing come out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it looks very much like Alien or something from a dystopian future, for sure. But look, tell us about Roxas. You've been at this company now I don't know, four or five years, something like that, maybe a little bit longer.
Speaker 2:Five years.
Speaker 3:Five years. Okay, so what is Roxas and what are you doing, and what are you hoping to do as things evolve?
Speaker 2:So maybe start with the broad perspective. So, in general, roxas is trying to build the future of charging infrastructure which is fully hands-free charging infrastructure. But where we come from is, you know, obviously mobility is broken. It's not going to scale for the current concept, it's not scalable to the next generations because, you know, cars are only used a few percent of the time and they're stuck in traffic when we are actually using them. Everything is based on fossil fuels, which is not scalable.
Speaker 2:So let's say, the motivation, roxys, is that we really need to move to a completely new paradigm of mobility which is a combination of electric and automated vehicles, basically. So in our mission is basically to accelerate the uptake of zero emission autonomous vehicles. But of course, if you want to facilitate this at scale, charging is a major bottleneck because all the charging today is built for humans and when we move to this driverless vehicle, future charging is not ready for it, so it will become a bottleneck and of course, that's sort of the future of charging. We're working on the future of charging. But let's say our company is already delivering value today with the places where automated vehicles are actually being used. So, for example, ports, logistics processes or systems are used in the supply chains, where vehicles which deliver in the end deliver goods to people's doorstep are being powered by our solutions. So we're building the future of charging infrastructure, basically fully automated.
Speaker 3:Wow, wow. So you've currently got products, you've currently got customers, so you've currently got revenue. You know what? That's quite novel. It's good to talk to someone who's not just looking for investment I'm sure you are, but not just looking for investment. You're actually doing stuff and making money. That's good to hear. Can you tell us anything about your customers? What sort of applications are you talking about when you mention some of those things?
Speaker 2:there. Yeah, so we're mainly focused on ports and logistics and in the ports there's a couple of customers I can actually mention. For example, we're working with a company called Taylor. They are a North American supplier of port solutions, port equipment, and we are working with them for projects in the port of LA. We are working with a company called Hyster. They are a global brand. They are also a port equipment solutions supplier and we're working with them also for North American ports. So in general we are, I would say there's quite a few customers in the North American market. We will also have some exciting news during the course of the year, but I can speak to that. It's more on the Europe side. So, yeah, and unfortunately they're also the biggest customers at the moment. I can't mention in a podcast, but yeah, they're in the logistics space. I would say Logistics, warehousing.
Speaker 3:Right, right, oh, I like a bit of intrigue. I was gonna try, I was gonna try and tempt you there, but no, I appreciate. No, indeed, I do. I. I do because I, I like people who are interesting and innovative, and that's definitely you're both of those with a big tick. Um, so well, funny enough, I only recently saw, uh, windrose, which is a Chinese company, building a big truck, big tractor unit to carry the 15 meter trailers all around the place. They showed a picture of a vehicle at a port with a trailer unit on it and it didn't have a cab, so it was clearly just an autonomous vehicle. So, yeah, it's absolutely happening now. Uh, for sure, as you say, you've got customers with products, with services. You're actually doing it. Um, can, can I, can I come on to something? Um, can I do an unashamed name? Drop you. You'll forgive me if I do, will you?
Speaker 1:OK good.
Speaker 3:Well, 10 years ago there's that bloke that runs Tesla called Elon Musk. He was in London at the opening of the Westfield Tesla store and, as he did for some time, he doesn't seem to do it so much now. I suppose he's a lot busier. He did an audience Q&A, he did an open mic thing and was you know, for I spoke for I don't know a couple of hours it was. It was quite, quite enlightening and quite remarkable.
Speaker 3:Um, I asked him this question uh, with wireless charging, battery swapping and cable charging, what did he think the journey would be in the future and would one of those systems ultimately prevail? And at that time, a decade ago bear in mind, and I'm sorry I didn't mention robotic arms, but I I didn't know about that at the time um, he said wireless charging has some problems with alignment and efficiency. Battery swap if people wanted it, they'd engineered that proposition into the Model S. But you know, if people wanted it they'd do it, if they didn't, they wouldn't. And we know that's what happened. He said it would mostly be about cabled fast charging. I mean, at that time we weren't talking about driverless cars and all that stuff, of course. But what about battery swapping and wireless charging, and I must declare a vested interest. I am an investor and advisor of a wireless charging company, an American one called Hevo, and I have for a long time been an advocate and a believer in battery swapping. So where does your sort of proposition fit into that mix of charging solutions?
Speaker 2:I would say I think there's multiple solutions. I think there's not one solution which will prevail. I think there's. Each technology has their own pros and cons. So I would say for the wireless charging, it's typically lower power.
Speaker 2:So talking about like overnight charging etc. So where Roxas is focused, so we are focused on fleet operations, so it's high power, every second matters because money is earned on the road. So for in like or in a, in a robot taxi case, you know you, you earn money on the road, so you want the minimum amount of downtime. So everything is focused around fast charging. So hundreds of kilowatts of power, the same imports. The vehicles are massive, they're consuming fast amount of energy. So minimum power levels are like 100, 150 kilowatt and same in logistics. So I would say there, so what I've, what I know about wireless charging, I think it's a very attractive proposition to the consumer. I think it's very suitable for the consumer. I think it's very suitable for the uh, let's say probably a consumer driveway, the power if you want to go to fast charging. It's a big challenge with cost etc. So I would say the domain of why, at least our current thinking, is wireless charging is mainly in the low power domain, um, which is not necessarily your market, um, battery swapping mean.
Speaker 2:In China there's a lot of things going on with battery swapping and you know the challenge for battery swapping I would say is that there's not really a standard and vehicle OEMs do not want to standardize the battery because actually the battery is sort of the core, it's very close to the performance of the vehicle. So it's very difficult to come to a standard there. There are some use cases like ports and logistics, like a closed feed. There might be easier to phase in, but still in the end, you know, changing something to the vehicle is very challenging because you need to get the vehicle OEMs on board and as long as there's no standard, that's very challenging, because you need to get the vehicle OEMs on board and as long as there's no standard, that's very challenging. So that's actually sort of the thesis behind Roxas is that you know, in the end our company is not necessarily focused on one technology.
Speaker 2:We are about building charging hubs which are hands-free and effortless. So that's sort of the future of charging. We see like hubs where vehicles are just charged. In the end people want to drive right. The best charging experience is the experience which you do not have. So that's where Roxas comes in, basically, and we just figured that the easiest go-to market is to basically look at how it's done today, because every vehicle has a charge port. Every vehicle has a CCS1 or a CCS2 or a yeah, I mean, there's the two standards in America they're debating next, let's see so but every vehicle has a charge port and if you can automate, if you can basically create a solution to connect with vehicles without changing the vehicles, you can scale really fast.
Speaker 2:And maybe 10 years ago this was not really an option because robotics and ai and computer vision was very expensive. But today you know what cost. Like ten thousand dollar camera, like 10 years ago now, is in your iPhone. So the curve there is very, very steep. In technology development, compute power for navigating, robotics, robotic actuators they're all on a super steep curve in terms of cost.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, if there's a possibility to create like a hands-free experience without changing the vehicle, that's very easy to scale, even in a fleet situation, because fleet owners typically do not have one vehicle. They have maybe five different vehicles from five different OEMs. So if you're going to say to the like, we're going to go for battery swapping, then you need to bring five OEMs to the table to agree on a certain battery format, so it's difficult. But I think there's certainly for battery swapping. There's use cases where it can work Probably more in a closed fleet scenario maybe super high energy consumption, maybe more in like countries like China, where there is more government guidance to certain standards. I think the, for example, europe with all the like how many countries are we and how many opinions do we have in languages? I think it's probably difficult to standardize on a certain type of battery.
Speaker 3:I think yeah yeah, well, when you say you know there are many countries in Europe and of course we're talking about continental Europe, not necessarily you know the European Union, I'm British, of course we're talking about continental Europe, not necessarily you know the European Union, I'm British, of course we shouldn't maybe stray into talking about that. We're best leaving that delicate subject alone. That answer you've just given that explanation. That journey, that's fascinating. You spoke about a lot of things in there which resonate with me, so I'll go through a couple of things in there which resonate with me. Um, so I'll go through a couple of things. The point about why have it when we've got you know some of these other solutions, um, that resonates because the one thing, the big thing I learned from being at ricardo for a few years and if anyone doesn't know, ricardo is a blue chip engineering consultancy which, remarkably, I worked at for a few years and I'm not an engineer or anything like that. God knows how that happened, but anyway, um, the the answer I heard a lot from very smart engineers was when someone said does? If I asked, does this work? You know, what about hydrogen? What about battery swapping? What about about this? They would always use two words it depends. It depends on the duty cycle, depends on the use case, depends on the cost, depends on all of many, many factors. So, deciding what works best, the answer is always it depends, and you kind of said that in regard to all the different use cases and things that are going on. Battery swap, yeah, definitely needs that collaboration across brands and given that the batteries become, if you like, the new engine, you know, the differentiator for the internal combustion engine arguably was always the engine.
Speaker 3:And sorry, just a second, sorry, I will just cut there a second. I got asked by the dog walker where the dog treat bag was, but then they realized where it was. We won't have that bit in the podcast Makes it very cozy. Yeah, I suppose so. But the point here is, yeah, you've got to look at what works. It's almost a case of reverse engineering. You know what's the problem? Does this solution solve it? Number one, number two what's the viability? Is this a cost proposition that works either now or with a bit of cost down? And I think that's at the heart of things. You know, bringing solutions to market that solve real-world problems, not just saying, oh, here's a solution and someone saying, well, but what's the problem?
Speaker 3:You know what's the point of that. There is some of that stuff going around. What else did you say that I thought was fascinating? Yeah, the whole thing of you know ports, airports, anything where you've got a duty cycle, that's regular, that's defined. You know, that's easy to understand. Do you think we'd ever see, for example, things like taxes, taxi ranks, where people can sort of you know the taxes, all haul up and they get automatically charged using your system, for example.
Speaker 2:Would that be an application that would work? Uh, I think yeah. So I um, it will work. But let's say I think the world will first experience robotaxis before that, because at least us and china will. The european, continental europe, is slightly behind, although there's very good hopes for the uk because of new legislation on self-driving and government grants. But I would say like so, if you go to San Francisco now, you can just get into a robo-taxi. You can download the Waymo app, you can just press pick me up and you will have a robo-taxi within five to ten minutes and it will drive you anywhere in San Francisco.
Speaker 3:Have you done that crime? Have you done that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was in San Francisco like four or five weeks ago. I took six rides in a Waymo and they were all flawless. So it's really the future. It's there. Of course, this takes a lot of money. It's way most funded by Google. There's billions and billions and billions of investment there. Vehicles with no driver adding a person just for charging is is does not make business sense and it's not one person, because if you have a 24-hour operation, you need a morning shift, an afternoon shift, an evening shift, and then you're like a person and then you have the weekend, so you're easily talking like six to eight people just for, like manning one charging area. So, yeah, automated charging makes sense and and fast charging also makes sense because vehicles need to be on the road to earn money, so any any minute they spend in some charging scenarios just revenue lost. So so it's a operational excellence game. Basically, I get it yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3:Wow, but it's great to hear you've had that first-hand experience now of um, of getting in a driver's car. What was that? The first time you did it? You mentioned four or five times you did it in in in the, in the public environment, I don't know it was the first time on a public road because I've been in autonomous vehicles since, of course, the background of roxy's.
Speaker 2:I've been in autonomous vehicles at test tracks, etc. Etc.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:But it's very different if you're actually the robot actually takes you to your hotel. It's a pretty different experience. And there were like bicyclists, there were like strange situations. There was a school bus going in the wrong lane. There were all kinds of situations and the vehicle figured it out and I think the experience was very pleasant. There were all kinds of situations and the vehicle figured it out and, and I think it's, the experience was very pleasant. My first drive we're still me and my colleague, we were still aaron gallagher she's the head of our north american team and we were sitting in the back. The first drive, we were watching the steering wheel in the road all the time. The second, the second time, we were barely watching. And the third trip, we were basically sitting in the back with our laptops, because the drive was actually more smooth than a human driver, because it's you know, human drivers anticipate last minute, but the vehicle was already anticipating something like 100 or 200 meters, uh, out and the voice went off a bit.
Speaker 3:Let's have a look, try again. Just talk again. No, I can't hear you now. There's something untoward with your audio link, I think, or your wi-fi right again. Oh, that's better you're back. Yeah, can I hear you? Yeah?
Speaker 3:yeah yeah just say testing, oh, you're back again okay I don't know what happened then okay, right, I'm just gonna ask you that bit about that's okay. Um, so can you just talk us through that first hand, first time experience of calling up on an app, a driverless taxi? Um yeah, just just describe how how that went. I'm very intrigued and I'm quite jealous because I want to do this myself and haven't yet.
Speaker 2:Just one, one flight to san francisco away, but, uh, I think it's so. So, basically, you download the app, you uh press the button, pick me up up or your destination, like. It's the same like the Uber or the Lyft app, so, and a vehicle will arrive, and we were, of course, the first time, so it was my first time on a public road in an autonomous vehicle. Yeah, and within five minutes the vehicle arrived, we got in. It even opens the trunk for you to put in your automatically and it takes you to your destination. And that was like a really new experience, just on a public road.
Speaker 2:I've been in autonomous vehicles on test tracks, but this is the first time on a public road with, you know, bicyclists, with strange incidents, we had some school bus in the wrong lane, etc. Which it anticipated really well. So, basically, the first time we stepped in, we were watching the steering wheel, constantly looking, you know, being a bit cautious. The second time, we were barely paying attention. Third time, we were sitting in the back with our laptops just working the word with Aaron, my colleague colleague was using all the time.
Speaker 2:Smooth. It was really smooth. It's anticipating like hundreds of meters ahead of on things happening where a normal drive would probably last minute, you know, make a strong turn for the school bus, but the the vehicle was already moving to the side of the road and we we were like, why is it doing that? And then we were like, oh, the school was over there. So, yeah, the ride was super, super smooth. We did, in total, six rides. I'm completely convinced that this is going to take the world by storm, starting in US and China. Honestly, because I think, from a legislative perspective, europe is not ready for it and also, maybe the use cases are a bit too diverse. Every country has its own road legislation, etc. Yeah, but it was fantastic, it was phenomenal wow, wow.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you for that. Now is throwing up a couple of questions, more questions in my mind. Um, you mentioned you sat there watching the steering wheel move. Uh, how would you have felt if you'd got in that car? It didn't have a steering wheel, like like zooks have got, as I understand it, would you? I mean, you're obviously you're not a technophobe, you're fully embracing all of this. Clearly we, we can hear that. Um, but how would you felt if it didn't have a steering wheel?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think it. I didn't have the impression that I could intervene anyway with the steering wheel. Uh, okay, uh, I know from all the let's say so we are basically talking to every robo-taxi company in the US and China. Having a steering wheel is also a very practical thing. For example, you have to make an agreement with first responders if there's an incident and they use the steering wheel to drive the vehicle off the road in case of an incident. These kinds of small practicalities are a challenge.
Speaker 2:If you don't have a steering wheel, how is a first responder going to move your vehicle to the side of the road, for example? Or, you know, if you have a broken down vehicle at the depot, how are you going to maneuver it? So it helps to have a steering wheel, but I think, obviously, if there's no driver, there's no need for a steering wheel. So this can all be solved. But let's say, from a go-to-market perspective, what's like the most low threshold, simple way to go to market is, I think, leveraging existing car platforms. It's the most simple way. It may not be the most. I think, like the Zoox, like a purpose-built type vehicle, is probably like the most amazing experience you can have. But from a business model perspective, the go-to-market is probably a bit more complex, but I would love to go on a souks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can imagine it. But listen, you speak a lot of sense, because I think it's very easy, with new technology innovation, some of these incredible changes that are coming, to get carried away by all of that and forget that one of the real facts of life of any kind of new technology innovation is it's got to work economically, it's got to be a financial proposition, it's got to have a business model, it's got to work for the user and it's got to work for the provider financially. You know, if it doesn't forget it, you know it's cool, but so what? What? You know, um, if I can't afford to use it or all that sort of stuff. So we'll talk a little bit more about this, but I I want to come back to your business and, just, you know, get that sense of what happens next a bit more. Um, here's a thought uh, we all know china's in the lead on many things for various reasons.
Speaker 3:Let's not get into all of that, but one of the templates, one of the documents the plan, if you like, that illustrated their ambition was the Made in China 2025 document, which came out in 2015. So, you know, we're at the conclusion of that next year and, of course, electric vehicles was in there. The clues as to how they were going to get to where they are now were all written up, all in that plan, and now the battery and the EV is causing well ructions around the world. You know, the production of cars, the oversupply of cars in China now looking for an export home is having a profound effect. It's like a tectonic plate shifting. It's seismic.
Speaker 3:But what we haven't yet seen is one of the other parts of that Made in China 2025 plan, which was AI robotics. So companies like the I'm sure you know them better than I do Pony, ai, baidu, all these different things. So where do you think the breakthrough is going to come? Is it going to come from the Chinese, or is it Google, is it Tesla? Depending on when you're listening to this, there will have been the October 10th event, much heralded, oft delayed that may be going to present a robo-taxi proposition. Give us your flavor of who's doing it. Who's going to dominate in it, and is it going to be China all over again?
Speaker 2:I think let's say autonomous vehicles are going to be china all over again. Uh, I think let's say autonomous vehicles are going to be a us china battle. So it's it's clear that this, this technology, will fundamentally change the fabric of society. It will, you know, the roads are a bit.
Speaker 2:It's it's it's it's very profound, because everything is built for people driving cars, which which are idle 95% of the time. You know we have massive parking lots built because people only use the car 5% of the time. You know the highway system, the way things, everything is built for people driving cars. So I think that changes the value of real estate. It will change how insurances work, because now you know if we are in a, now you know it's a if, if we have we are in a car accident, it's your insurance, my insurance, but if autonomous vehicles crash into each other, it's maybe the general motors insurance versus the hyundai insurance. So it's a very it changes like complete this. The business landscape will be very significantly changed with this technology, so, and it also will. Yeah, it offers massive benefits to rearrange cities in ways that are much better for people.
Speaker 2:So I think that's why governments should be very interested to make this succeed, and it seems like US and China are ahead for sure, and Europe is lagging. So I'm also, as a European-grown person, I'm very worried about the European car industry because I think they are too far behind. I'm not saying too far to catch up, but I don't know if there's enough sense of urgency to understand what's going on in China, because China had 51% of cars sold electric last month and that's the biggest car market in the world. So one out of I think one out of two almost vehicles electric vehicles in the world is in China. So there's massive overcapacity and they control the Chinese control the supply lines of lithium, they control all the key materials, um, and, and us is also catching up there on that aspect, but they have like a bullish agenda on it and in europe we're sort of wait and see. So I'm, uh, I'm a bit worried about the european car industry, to be honest.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know about being wait and seek Ryan. I think we're the piggy in the middle.
Speaker 2:RAOUL PAL yeah might be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, it feels like that because I applaud the Inflation Reduction Act, I think, putting money actively into the supply chain, particularly, and understanding that you can't just say, let's build a gigafactory. What you've got to say is have you got the critical raw materials and who will be processing them as close as possible geology being what it is to that? The Americans got on with it. They're getting on with it big time. The problem with that is that's now drawing investment and interest out of Europe into America. Good for, uncle Sam, but, like I said, we're the piggies in the middle in all of this.
Speaker 3:Now can I just reconcile something? You speak with a passion. You definitely speak with authority and knowledge, but what you said about this profound change on society and all of the things that you, you referenced, I've heard that five, ten, maybe even 15 years ago and it didn't happen. So, um, why is it going to be different now? Crying, why is the next? Well, when are we talking about? Are we talking 10 years time, five years time? When is the world you just described really going to start to happen in reality?
Speaker 2:if we I mean talking about robotaxis in the us that's going to happen. I think that that's going to happen the next two, three years. So I think the next two, three years for the us and china will be sort of the chat GPT moment for robo-taxis where everybody suddenly realizes hey, it's actually working Because the robo-taxi come from. I don't know if you're familiar with the Gardner hype cycle where first it's like the peak of inflated expectations.
Speaker 2:That was clearly like yeah, that was basically the 2017, 2018. Everybody was like this is going to work tomorrow, but it turned out to be quite a hard challenge indeed, like it's a super, super complicated case with all the you know, the crazy things you have on public roads and being able to anticipate on it. But since then, so much has changed the compute power behind AI, all these things, the amount of investment, billions and billions into supercomputers which can train models. So I think in Europe and China, or in the US and China, the robot taxi is going to happen in the next two or three years on a scale that at least makes it plausible that this will be the dominant model for a taxi-like service. But, of course, it takes time, right, it takes permits.
Speaker 2:You need to manufacture the vehicles, set up the services and, like you pointed out earlier, make it commercially viable. That's also a big, big challenge and and if you are a robot taxi company, basically the vehicle is more expensive, but you have no driver, so you need to be competitive against human drivers as well. So the two levers you can pull is basically make the vehicle less expensive. So that's a big drive, of course, and the other thing is operational excellence. You need to make sure that vehicles have the least amount of downtime.
Speaker 2:Utilization is the key, so vehicles need to be on the road all the time where they earn money. So, and that's also why we think that automating charging, the charging operation for a robo-taxi, is a make or break. If you don't automate your charging operation, if you don't apply fast, fast charging, the business model will just not be feasible. You will lose. So it needs to be all about asset optimization have your vehicle on the road all the time available, picking up people and earning money, basically, and and that's it's clear that that can happen in the next two, three years.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow, cisco's example uh today yeah, wow also beijing with baidu apollo. I mean they, they did like seven million rides now, seven million miles in the from the start of this year.
Speaker 3:It's, it's pretty impressive yeah, there's a turn of phrase I like to use to describe some of these things. Um, it's from a book, but it's very simply these few words, gradually, then suddenly.
Speaker 3:That's how a lot of things change yeah you know, it's like you hear about it and people go, nah, you know, and then, and then suddenly it's oh my god, you know, um, and I I mean you reference chat, gpt, I. I think that's a classic example where it's a bit like, you know, people talk about what something, a tool like that, can do and you think, yeah, yeah, whatever, and then before you know it, it's totally mainstream. Yeah, before, almost overnight yeah, before chat gpt.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've tried some of the chatbots and there were, like the internet, examples of like chatbots going totally wrong direction or like everything felt a bit clunky, and then all of a sudden there's chatGPT and every like in a few months, everybody changed like, oh wow, if this can work, then you know, and I think they were like the fastest growing in terms of user adoption of anything in any. So I indeed like suddenly, all of a sudden, it will be there. And then so that was my experience in San Francisco, where you basically have like three, four rides in all of a sudden we'll be there. And then so that was my experience in san francisco, where you basically have like three, four rides in this robot taxi. And then you are like it's very clear that this will be the dominant model. This will be because it's only at the beginning and already so good. So, yeah, I think it's uh, that's clear.
Speaker 3:Yes, it is and, funny enough, I can remember being on stage in conversation with marty rimats oh, berlin, this must be 2017, 2018, something like that. And uh, he basically said look, the electric vehicle revolution is interesting, but it's actually only a kind of facilitator to, um, autonomous vehicles. That's the game-changing technology, not the electric vehicle. Um, and, funnily enough, an earlier guest on this podcast, uh, shia gassy, who you probably know who he is absolutely yes if anyone who's listening doesn't know, the battery swap, uh, champion, uh.
Speaker 3:Back in 2007 8, 9, 10 ultimately didn't didn't work out. But when shy was my first guest on this podcast, he indeed said the electric vehicle was simply the precursor to autonomous vehicles, the enabling technology. So there you are.
Speaker 2:Martin Remax yeah, so Remax recently launched their own Robotex brand and so they are all in. I do think it's indeed it's a precursor. Of course, they're addressing slightly different problems electric cars, more on the climate, but on the the other hand, if you look from autonomous vehicles, we are building these cars which consume a massive amount of raw materials, massive energy to produce, and then, when it's finished, we're using them five percent of the time, which is pretty crazy. If you would, if you run a factory and you would tell the factory manager like I want to buy this piece of equipment, I'm only going to use it 5% of the time.
Speaker 1:It's like what.
Speaker 2:Sorry, we don't do these things yeah.
Speaker 3:But Kryon, you kind of said it a moment ago in your answer. Essentially this defaults to a very old business principle, which is you sweat the asset. You sweat the asset. If you have spent all that money, get your money's worth. So on that point, let's just uh before we just finish on on, uh, what you're doing now, what you want to happen next and any kind of message you'd like like to give, thinking about all that you've just shared with us there. Do you think we could get to a point where a manufacturer of an autonomous electric vehicle well, I guess inevitably they're going to do this doesn't sell a car anymore. They leave the factory and they never get sold because all they do is go to work. The revenue that that would generate for a manufacturer would be much more on a better business model than the model that we've had for over 100 years of making, distributing and selling cars. Do you think we're about even to shift into that place where they don't sell cars anymore?
Speaker 2:I would say at least there will be a couple of manufacturers, I think, who will work like that. I do not think that there will be zero car ownership. I mean that's probably there's like yeah, there's like all kinds of use cases and in some cases it might actually make sense to own a car and of course there's people probably having emotional value of owning a car. That will stay to a certain extent. But I think there will be a very significant share of the market will be shared, kind of car going that direction For sure. I think that's true. And it's also the question you know who will be which company would be that? Because if you look at waymo, for example, their google basically, and they're buying their chassis from jaguar and zieker. So basically will the traditional car makers become like the metal workshop of the googles and baidus who are basically running the?
Speaker 3:yeah, become tier ones. They become tier one suppliers, yeah they become tier one suppliers.
Speaker 2:So all the added value is actually in the autonomy layer and the energy and running, like the daily operation, running the hubs, running the, you know the service. That's where the added value is. And then the car becomes like, yeah, it's just, they're a tier one supplier. I need a chassis, how many seats, whatever? Okay, just make it for me. And of course, there are certain brands, I think like the mercedes etc. Maybe there's a certain brand appeal still, but the cars will be very practical. Uh, it's, it's about transporting people from a to b. And there might be like premium models etc. But the. It's a question if the current car makers can actually maintain their position as a customer facing kind of brand, or will they become t1 supplier?
Speaker 3:wow, wow, there's a, there's a, there's a lot, all there's a lot in all of that. And, by the way, you mentioned there, you know, the, the energy side of this, the battery side, this and, as we hopefully get to the point of ubiquitous bi-directional charging, who's to say that? You know, maybe another part of the revenue stream is going to be the energy management. And if you look at who are the most powerful battery players in the world, I mean there's a number one player, of course there is. I mean, byd do both. They make vehicles and batteries.
Speaker 3:But if you look at a company like CATL and, by the way, I don't know anything, I just join up dots, and sometimes the dots shouldn't be joined up and it's my over-fertile imagination, but I could imagine someone like CATL coming to market with an autonomous electric vehicle, because essentially it's a battery on wheels, a power bank on wheels, an energy storage asset. If somebody with the prowess around batteries like CATL came to market just at the time that you don't sell cars anymore, you just put them to work, that they could have two strings to their bow.
Speaker 2:But look, we can talk about this. Yeah, so I think, like, indeed, in the case of automated vehicles, so with electric vehicles you have a battery on wheels and with an automated electric vehicle, you have a battery on wheels and you can control the position, where that vehicle is and you can decide, if you have, like, an automated charging connection, you can control where it connects to the grid. So you can build like this, this next level type smart grid, where you basically control where battery storage actually connects to the grid at which moment in time and you can build like an arbitrage trading mechanism between ride hailing revenue and energy revenue providing ancillary services to the grid, kind of revenue. So I think that's eventually where the whole ecosystem will will move. This will take some time, but that's indeed, I think that's that that's going to happen.
Speaker 3:There's an algorithm optimizing for, for, for, for, you know, uh, sweating the asset, as you say yeah, and look, if I mean I'm obviously a lot older than you, um, if two older guys could be talking about this together. We're not kind of teenage 20 something, airheads from californ. You know, we've been living in the real world for a very long time. If we can see this and sense it and embrace it, then wow, karim, you've given us some wonderful insights and perspectives. Thank you so much for that, but let's just finish a bit more on Roxas. So what are you doing now? What happens next? Is there any particular message you'd like to give to the person listening to this podcast right now about your business?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I mean basically we are focused on creating a fully hands-free charging experience and automated charging hubs where automated vehicles or sometimes also regular vehicles can charge without any effort from a person. And in the ports and logistics there's quite a few autonomous vehicles already there's the 1980s type automated vehicles and there's the new perception-based automated vehicles. But that's basically our focus as Roxas is to basically build our base business there and we have set up a separate team to focus on the Robotaxi use case because it's obviously going very fast and it's really an opportunity to provide a massive amount of value. And we know that, you know, for a Robotaxi operation or for any AV operation, how the charging is done is going to have a very significant impact on the business model and therefore the scale. So if the business model doesn't work or is less attractive, then the scale will not be that big. So you need, basically, you need, if you have automated vehicles, you need to automate charging to to have the best business model. And that's, you know, where we are focused. As Roxas, we're trying to provide that value to the fleet operators of of electric and automated vehicles.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, and we think the future is bright. There's exciting times and I hope we are already on the. I think the slope of enlightenment is the phrase in the garden hype cycle. I have a feeling we are there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you nearly quoted a strapline from a marketing thing years ago. The future is bright, the future is orange. Given that you're Dutch, look, look, I mean you've mentioned some great, great customers there heister taylor, um, some of the other ones you you can't talk about. There are people I know, like mark preston I don't know if you've ever come across mark um developing autonomous, um port port vehicles, um closed loop port vehicles. So so let's keep in touch and share some thoughts and opportunities.
Speaker 3:What I like about how you describe things is it's positive, constructive, real world and it's uplifting, I think, against the backdrop of what we know, the big challenge of climate change. It's all too easy just to slip into the kind of you know we're all doomed sense of things that doesn't engage with people, it doesn't embrace people's confidence and support. So I like the way you describe all of this and you know, like I said, we're not some kind of fantasist. We've been living in the real world and you're running a you know clearly, clearly an increasingly successful company, I'm sure with challenges ahead. But I wish you all the best. I'm fascinated by what you're doing. I'm going to definitely pay close attention to Roxas and I wish you well. Thank you very much for your time today, kryon.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for the great conversation. Morgan, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1:Starbucks is great. Thanks for listening to the show and make sure to follow Roger on LinkedIn, where you'll discover almost all there is to know about the spectacular electric vehicle revolution.
