New Driivz CEO Sees EV Market Stabilizing, Continued Growth

0:00They told us to expect change. They warned us about the transition. But honestly, they forgot the best part. This is the chapter where we finally focus on us. LifeMD delivers expert menopause and midlife care right from your home. From hormone health to holistic wellness, LifeMD helps you feel your best for the best years of your life. LifeMD, it's just getting good. Visit LifeMD.com slash goodlife. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need.

0:40Now, a global workforce of 300 ,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 % of common questions. Not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.

1:32Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio.

1:44Shiri Levi-Laor:Sherry Levae Laor is CEO of Drives. It's a global EV charging software provider that's part of the publicly traded industrial tech company, Vontir. She joins us from Greensboro, North Carolina. Vontir, by the way, ticker is VNT, and it's got a market cap of over$5 billion, about$5.5 billion. Great to have you here with us. I think it's safe to say, just remind the world about what Drives is all about. Great to be here with you today. Thank you for having me. Drives is the brain behind the EV chargers. So think about it as the ones that operate that machine, that helps you charge your car, operate the app that helps you find the chargers and manage the energy to allow you to drive and charge with railability.

2:31We are the operating system behind EV charging. So the struggles that we've seen with the large American companies that I just mentioned, we have Ford and GM taking some pretty big write downs over the last few months on their EV business. How are you seeing that manifest in your business? Are you just not seeing growth the same way that you thought you would? Sort of the same thing that we saw from these EV makers? It's a great question. We are seeing growth. And if we look at it, the way I look at growth is number of EVs on the road and I look at number of chargers. During the course of 2025 in the US alone, there were an additional 18 ,000 chargers added across the US.

3:17Also during the course of 2025, 20 million EV cars were sold. We are seeing a great growth. What I think that is happening is a stabilization. If we look at a few years back, EV charging was the alien of cars. It was new. Now it's stabilizing. The early adoption phase is gone. We are getting into disciplined execution, which is very, very different than a few years back that people got the hype of charging. now it's becoming standard. We want to get into a point in which EV cars will be just cars.

3:52Shiri Levi-Laor:So this is about fast charging, correct? Fast charging, but not only. People charge in three main areas. They charge either at their homes, which will be most likely slow chargers. They charge at work, which many occasions will be slow to semi-high. And they charge on the highways, which is this is where we see the public fast chargers. What's the relationship between between software and charging? What's the what can software do to the charging process? That's a great question. If you think about it, just like your computer, your computer will not operate without the operating system, without Windows, for example, if you have a Microsoft base.

4:35It's the same with the charger, the charger alone without the software to operate it, to help you find the charger, to help you pay, to help you transfer the energy, cannot do. So this is why software on top of that charger is a key. Without that, people couldn't charge, just like you couldn't use your computer without their operating system.

4:58Shiri Levi-Laor:So how much of, I'm curious who's actually buying the chargers. You talked about retail and charging in your home, but how much of this is commercial versus kind of retail or just individuals? So when it comes to public, it's different. Public, you will see the charge point operators. This you can see in some convenience retails. You can see standalone EV charging sites. Those are the buyers of these chargers. At home, it really depends. Sometimes it will come with the manufacturer of your car that you will get the charger. Sometimes these people stand alone buying a charger from manufacturers of chargers.

5:34And it varies. The prices of it can change. We are there to help the network manage. So there are two parts to it. There is managing the chargers for the charge point operators, and there is helping managing the drivers for the energy management service providers who help you find chargers across the way, in many occasions not even owning the charger, but just helping you find chargers across the way, just like you do with roaming when you move between countries and you want to connect to or cellular network. How do you manage the regulatory environment in Washington right now and the changing administration's goals?

6:09So, you know, this new-ish administration, the president is not a fan of, I think it's fair to say not a fan of EVs, save for sort of what he did with Tesla earlier in the year, but that's kind of up and down. But, you know, certainly killing the subsidies for EVs, fair to say that. What's the read from the team in Washington that sort of determines future growth of this industry? I really believe that Nevi and other state policies, they are helping to unlock capital for more investment of chargers on the ground. But eventually, when we look at the drivers, when they buy the electric vehicle car, they don't really think about these policies.

6:51They think about driving an electric car and all the benefits that comes with it. I really think that we should look at other places like Europe, in which we are seeing that 17.5 % of all the cars are electric vehicles. In some countries, like in Norway, we are seeing that 92 % of all the new cars are EVs. There is no question whether the US will eventually turn EV and how long will it take. It's a question of the when. This is the direction of travel. And I believe that slowly we are seeing the Navy came back. Different state policies will change. In California, we know that the states is going to fully pivot to EV by 2035.

7:39So it's a state-by-state situation, but eventually the world is moving into EVs.

7:44Shiri Levi-Laor:We're talking with Shiri Levy-Laure. She is the CEO of Drives. It's a global EV charging software provider. It is part of the publicly traded industrial tech company, Vontir. One of the things I wanted to ask you, Shiri, is are you guys profitable as part of the Vontir business? Can you break down some of the metrics and talk to us about maybe top line growth for your part of the business of this company? And are you profitable? We are having double digit growth year over year, which is a great progress for us. We are growing together with the market. We are seeing a great growth around convenience retail stores, which is helping really to reduce and move from range anxiety to charging anxiety, which I can talk about more.

8:29But at the end of the day, we are seeing double digits, high double digits growth year over year, which demonstrate the success that we're seeing. And not only in EVs, but also in energy management, which is a key to supporting the reliability of the industry.

8:45Shiri Levi-Laor:So top line growth, it sounds like, but also profitability in this part of the business? Yeah, we are getting there. We are very, very much close. We are getting there. We are seeing great support. And we are seeing over years, this is where we're getting. We are SaaS companies. And we are making great progress. One of the things that, if you certainly go to your website, it is about energy management. And I think about grid stress, and I think about the AI build. And we talk often here at Bloomberg about the cost of utility bills for individuals because there is all of a sudden energy demand, which has been pretty consistent for a long time, it has grown.

9:24Shiri Levi-Laor:And a lot of that has to do with the AI build out. How does what you do, your products, play into that energy management need at this time? Well, if you think about it that way, we help control the consumption. And there are many countries like in Europe that already going into the broker scene of buying and selling energy. Energy is really the new gold. And we need to help the charge point operators and convenience retailers to manage the energy in a smart manner and to do load balancing and making sure to not stress the grid. So our solution of a mixed situation between the ability to manage the meter and that consumption on the site, and then cloud-based solution to help you balance the energy consumption, the energy, the peak hours, when should I buy the energy, and how to manage it in a smart way to not stress the grid.

10:23How do you do that in an environment that is seeing more demand than our grid was built for? I really believe it's a matter of how do you manage the utilization and how do you really ensure because where the situation is becoming really sour is in the peak hours so how do you manage in the peak hours how do you help understand where you might want to put some additional energy like batteries or renewable energy how do we really help the operators to manage your network in a way that will allow them to become profitable and the energy is the huge part of the cost for them so if we help them understand when to buy the energy and how to spread the energy across the different chargers this is where we're already seeing an amazing return on investment for them we are sitting if you think about it as drives we are managing today one terabyte of of energy this is worth to managing a small town.

11:27And having all of this data helps us understand how to do load balancing, manage the grid, and really enable them to control the cost in a very effective manner.

11:39Shiri Levi-Laor:All right. Interesting stuff. Shiri, thank you so much. Good to check in with you and get an update. Shiri Levi-Laur, she is the CEO of Drives, joining us right here on Bloomberg Business Week Day. They told us to expect change. They warned us about the transition. But honestly, they forgot the best part. This is the chapter where we finally focus on us. LifeMD delivers expert menopause and midlife care right from your home. From hormone health to holistic wellness, LifeMD helps you feel your best for the best years of your life. LifeMD, it's just getting good. Visit lifemd.com slash goodlife.

12:48with improving operating margins, or the S &P 500 minus high-debt companies. Chances are there isn't an ETF that fits your exact criteria. But on public, you just type in a prompt and their AI screens thousands of stocks and builds a one-of-a-kind index. You can even backtest it against the S &P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Go to public.com slash market and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash market. And paid for by public holding. Brokered services by Public Investing, member FINRA SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, SEC Registered Advisor.

13:25Crypto services by ZeroHash. Sample prompts are for illustrative purposes only, not investment advice. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna. and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind.

14:13if anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today with the goal of being 70 % more productive. Yeah, wow. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We're happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

15:12The contract is fair, but in insurance, the information gap is massive. The insurer knows every detail of what's covered. The policyholder rarely does. That's where My Policy Advocate comes in. For just 27 cents a day, their platform reads your policies and shows you in plain language where you're vulnerable. They're not selling insurance. They don't do that. It's about transparency, giving ordinary people the same understanding insurance companies have had for decades. because when you know what's really in your policy, you can plan, protect, and avoid surprises. Before you trust your policy to protect you, let My Policy Advocate tell you what it really says.

15:48Visit MyPolicyAdvocate.com today. Peace of mind starts with knowing the truth. MyPolicyAdvocate.com Deadlines shift, plans change, and sometimes you just need promo products fast. Turn to 4imprint. 4imprint has hundreds of promotional items available with 24-hour turnaround. from custom apparel and drinkware to trade show gear, writing tools, and more. And their 360-degree guarantee promises your logo will be printed with care. Your order ships fast, and it'll show up right and on time. That's the certainty of 4imprint. Check out the full 24-hour selection at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. 4certain. Find home wherever you roam at Sinesta ES and Simply Suites, where longer stays feel comfortable, flexible, and easy.

16:35Stretch out and enjoy spacious accommodations and home-like amenities designed to help you settle in and stay productive or relaxed for however long you need. And when you're a Sonesta Travel Pass member, staying at Sonesta ES and Simply Suites means earning points toward free nights, upgrades, and more with every eligible stay. Go to Sonesta.com to book your stay and unlock the best rates with Sonesta Travel Pass. Here today, roam tomorrow. Join now at Sonesta.com. Terms and conditions apply.