The End of The Beginning For Fully Charged As Fight for Cleaner Technologies Gets Dirty...

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1:13Hello and welcome to this rather unusual episode of the podcast. We're here in Robert's kitchen. I'm joined by Robert and Dan. and we're going to delve into a bit of the history of Fully Charged Show and keep one eye on the future. Very mysterious. So, how are you both this morning? I'm very well, thank you. Good, yeah, 15 years of the Fully Charged Show. 15 years, we just passed the 15th birthday. Makes me feel young. Yeah, makes me feel that I've been doing it for 15 years. But it is intriguing because it's a really good way of mapping what's changed, you know that in that 15 year period because i mean there must have been a time when it was 10 years old i can't really remember that five years ago yeah well that was during the pandemic during the pandemic probably didn't celebrate it from our memories no that's right yeah so 15 years it's kind of but i mean yes when you think of you know if you compare well the one that really struck me when we saw the byd dolphin surf was the comparison between the mitsubishi imeve which i still think it's a genius little car and they're similar size but when you think of the technology in those two cars it is literally worlds apart you know really and then the price because i think the mitsubishi i mean if you wanted to buy one 38 000 pounds 40 000 pounds it was somewhere in that region and it would if you were really careful on a day like today and you had a lot of downhill and a bit of a falling wind you could maybe get 80 miles out of it and a bit of a push well i think but that's the thing because 15 years ago so the year is 2025 if anyone is listening to this in the future uh and 2010 i mean no we wouldn't have thought that technology was comparatively primitive at that time but you look back at some of those early episodes and it is astonishing the change now let's rewind because this is something that you and i have spoken about many times in the car on the way to various shoots but i'm sure there's many people out there who are intrigued take us back 15 years ago all right why on earth yeah did you start the channel i mean i've had to sort of think about it this year i think there are there are two reasons there literally are two reasons so for the 10 years previous to that so from 2000 to 2010 five six years of that i spent quite a lot of time in california making junkyard wars the american version of scrap heap challenge we also made scrappy i've forgotten about that because i had talk about Scrappy the other day we did a series of Scrappy where we flew all the team the British teams to California and they made things there and they all burnt themselves on metal because they didn't know that if the car's been out in the sun for and you lean on it I learned it's like putting your hand on an art when you're ironing is this iron on ah yes it's that hot anyway so we did that and then we did Junkyard Wars which was for Discovery Champions of America exactly the same show identical show and with other presenters but I would do guest presenting on certain things they did and in that time I now can see and I didn't it wasn't conscious time I met these engineers and people who were like consulting with us or coming in to do a one of the shows were working on battery management systems battery packaging electric drive trains and I sort of came across these different people and actually one of the and I'm not I'm going to get his name wrong so I'm not going to say it but a man who was very a British guy engineer very involved in the very early formation of Tesla came to the show in an electric car that was phenomenally fast like a little sports car thing yeah so there it was in the background but I mean I wasn't interested in it but it kind of clicked a button and it was that and also we got a visit from these three lovely young Californians who work for this thing called CARB and I'd never heard of it but all the americans go oh my god they're from carb oh my god that's awesome you know they were really into it and carb it was californian air resource board which was the government funded organizations and that said when you drive a million pickup trucks past a primary school the iq goes down and the children are ill and they don't develop as fast and they're smaller and they've got breathing problems and they've all got asthma and the kids that are in the mountains where there's clean air are fine and it's nothing to and it was also nothing to do with economics or racial mix they really managed to prove that it's because they're breathing poisonous air and so that was the start of cleaning up the air of catalytic converters of unleaded petrol all those things came out of california and when i i kind of learned that backwards and i went i think that the prius but the first time i ever came across a prius was there and then it's got to be said the the episode of top gear where jeremy clarkson drove the tesla roadster and they said it ran out of batteries and it hadn't which is you know but equal to that the other man with the with the hair and the flowery shirts oh james james may drove the honda clarity hydrogen fuel cell car and said oh battery cars are never going to work this is the future and by then because i'd spoke to so many engineers who worked in that region i understood what and i'd been in a hydrogen fuel cell car in america and i went this isn't going to work this is a fantasy this is never going to work without really having an argument about it so i just went they're bloody wrong both of them are wrong and they get huge attention and huge influence a massive impact on that industry and i went i want to do something that counters that gently and suggests that petrol cars aren't perfect and we're not going to use hydrogen fuel cell cars and battery electric might be the answer but i mean no one knew in 2010 our three free youtube channels on evs and cleantech are funded by our fun packed test drive-tastic events in farnborough london the southwest the north melbourne and sydney and next up we're in canada for everything electric vancouver and new for uk viewers you can now buy a battery ev and much more at everything electric dot store now back to the episode okay so fast forwarding to when you met this lovely gentleman here daniel caesar ceo of foolish art show well how did that happen how did you guys meet well can you remember the year that i did that was it 2015 2016 2016 was it okay i remember it because it was um immediately after the brexit vote had taken place that's right it was very soon after so it was very raw.

7:45We met in London at the Science Museum where I was hosting an event and I asked Robert to compare the event which he very kindly did. It was a good event it was really good and I'd actually you know talk about you know your background in oil both of you not really yeah I'd come out of sort of the gas industry as a kind of a director of communications very grand but in that industry and I very quickly sort of fell in love with the notion of heat pumps as everyone knows and solar and batteries and things like that and I'd spent a lot of time sort of promoting renewables and lots of time in industry meetings where we were all trying to convince each other that electric cars are the future batteries are the future solar was the future etc etc and I felt very very strongly that we were all in a little bit of a bubble, talking to each other.

8:38And actually, at some point, someone's got to cross the Rubicon and talk to end users. I don't call them consumers anymore. No, I've always hated the term consumer as well. People, people, just people. Yeah, end users. I prefer that because I think that's where we're heading with AI, end users. And so I'd sort of realised, been made aware of the Fully Charged show and I watched it and I thought, you know, this guy has got it. He understands the topic, but he's able but he's able to communicate it at a level which makes it understandable and interesting and so that's when we met and i think that at that point is it fair to say that you know you were struggling to make it work financially oh it was a nightmare yeah and i think that is so that people were like oh wow youtube it's so glitzy it's there so it's so glamorous you must be loaded and you think if you could only see because I've remembered there were two short periods of time before I met you where it was sponsored by first by Ecotricity no, first by British Gas for eight episodes by British Gas and the people I worked with at British Gas were amazing so they were installing solar car chargers for their customers and that's why they they I got but then I had to do smart meat British gas smart meters and I don't and I have huge respect for the people who work at British gas but their smart meters were as dumb as a box of spanners I mean they weren't smart they were the most annoying thing so I had to promote something that I really didn't feel was we had one here and it was hopeless yeah it was kind of 1990s tech in a box it was awful it was awful so that it was so painful and that was the only time where we actually had a budget and that's when i went to dubai we did a very successful show about the sustainable city well that was because we had enough money to fly to dubai with a camera operator and do it and make it and uh you know and then i knew that wasn't going to work and we then we got ecotricity so dale vince from ecotricity very keen supporter of what i was trying to do you know very very limited very small support but really generous of them to do it and so i did all my weird ecotricity opening title sequences hand-drawn cut together i mean boy you know talk about cottage industry so that would all have happened before i met you i think and it was unsustainable so the only way it was keeping going was because i had other work thankfully that i would then be able to do another two episodes so it wasn't every week it was probably maybe twice a month we'd put out something or whenever something was launched like when the LEAF came out obviously I could do an episode about the LEAF and the Renner Zoe so that well you know I'd finished off well I'd finished off working on something called the Renewables Road Show and I also was doing a Renewable Heat Incentive Road Show for the Department of Energy and Climate Change shortly axed after Brexit and so I'd come off the back of doing lots of different events to promote these technologies and I was sick of events I'd done so many around around the country and when we first met we were thinking how can we kind of you know turn this into a business enable it to to grow and I kind of avoided events as a possibility but as it as it happens that was the kind of the the path we took and the right one and it's really interesting I think because there's been a huge cast of hundreds if not thousands of people that have made the Fully Charged show possible today.

12:14I'd certainly name check Dale Vince at Electricity. Not only did he support you then, but also he was one of the first sponsors of Fully Charged Line when we announced that back in 2017. The other first sort of mover was a chap called David Martell, who played Chargemaster and then became BP Chargemaster, became BP Pulse. so he was kind of very involved. Also, we worked internally. We had another great presenter, Johnny Smith. Yeah, fantastic. A great creative camera operator. It's difficult to describe him in full. Mark Taylor-Hankins. Mark Taylor-Hankins. And there are many, many people over the years, far too many to kind of name check in this.

12:56But that sort of formative stage, we said, well, how can we make this into something? And I think what was really, really interesting about the technologies we covered is that they were so new, and they still remain new. Yeah. that people wanted to come and see them in situ. And so actually it played really, really well into the events because you actually could have test drives for EVs and maybe test rides of different micro-mobility options. And also you come and look at heat pumps and solar and actually talk to people. And quite often the companies that were exhibiting, those were bringing their experts with no disrespect equally to dealerships, for example.

13:31If you go into a dealership, it can be a mixed bag. I noticed Kia were one of the best dealerships for EVs recently. They were kind of really, really good at that. But it is a mixed bag when you're into dealership, you're talking about EVs. We've definitely heard some slightly less than perfect stories about people. But people come to our show, they're getting the EV gurus. So actually, us doing events was a big, big step forward. And it was at the Electric Vehicle Experience Centre in Milton Keynes in December 2017, where we announced the idea and then we did our first show at Silverstone and our next show in Vancouver is our 20th show around the world so it has been you know a successful formula for us but yeah that first one is still you know kind of a proper like pivoting moment when we were waiting for everyone to come in and you said can you come down the front and welcome everyone and we all stood there and that was Johnny and Maddie Moat I think I can't remember all the people there Helen was there as well Helen was there yeah and we and and I think you because that's when I think because I'd said no this is a night I got more and more anxious about it I thought no one's getting bloody Silverstone so difficult to get to who's going to come to this this is ridiculous and now I think because the day before I remember pushing huge trolleys with um like Ikea furniture that we had to build to put merchandise just like what are we doing yeah this is insane everyone working so hard and I just think it's we're going to be standing here with five people and Jack Russell coming in you know and a man who wants to moan about the charging infrastructure and then I think there was about 5 ,000 people waiting to get in that morning about you lent over my shoulder and you said I think we'll be okay well I'd run events where we didn't have a we didn't have a star name we didn't have an audience and I built the audience from scratch so I was fairly confident that given Robert's star power and having that audience we would be able to do well right from the beginning but they have been tremendously successful and love to kind of you know talk a bit more about what we've got coming up from a perspective so one of the best things about the events i think is it enabled us to chart our own course we didn't have to do sponsored content or commercial content we were able to to you know avoid that and it's not like we've we've never done sponsored content we do it occasionally but it is very very occasionally and within your YouTube rules, you actually have to say that it is sponsored.

15:59And we do that. We know other YouTubers who don't do that. But if we've got something sponsored, you'll see in the top portion of the screen, actually this is paid for content. Paid for content. But we have largely managed to avoid doing that. And I think I wanted to say that because actually Robert recently reviewed a car and it did another YouTuber, didn't mention us by name, for example, but basically said that actually this is pay for content. And quite a lot of comments underneath that video then jumped to the conclusion that we'd been paid for that content, which we hadn't. So that was a recent launch that you went to.

16:36You were there as well, Imogen. Yeah, so actually, just on that, Robert is driving and I am sat in the passenger seat like this so that I'm out of shot. But also feeding me vitally important information. I think you weren't just sitting there for fun. So when you hear me confidently talk about the car, It's because Imogen's just told me, and I've got a memory of a goldfish, I can remember quite a lot of data for four or five seconds. I thought you were very sharp in that video. Now that explains why. Driving in London, that is stressful. It is quite stressful. And then having to remember if you're saying 160 kilowatts or 162, it helps when you've got some of it.

17:09Oh, God, it makes such a difference. So that was the launch of the BYD Dolphin Surf at Alexandra Palace. And certainly from our point of view, it's quite interesting to see insinuations like that online and unfortunately those online rumours suddenly become, perception becomes reality. The honest truth is that car companies have forever basically said, do you want to come and film things? It's no different with a BYD, but we were not paid to be there. We felt it was an important car, one of the most important cars ever because it's actually serving that kind of more affordable end of the market.

17:48And also we aren't paid what to say. We say it as we find it, but actually, unfortunately, another YouTuber had said basically that he had been sent a contract and that he was only able to go if he was speak about the BYD in positive terms. And categorically, we have never done that. We would never do that. And I actually would dispute whether he was telling the truth in that instance. I think it's very questionable. So I won't mention him by name because I can't remember his name. But the reality is with online information, be very, very cautious about what you do or don't believe. But I think the positive I would take from that is that if people are absorbing content or consuming content, consuming content, watching videos.

18:33If a person is watching a video. If a human being. If an end user is absorbing data. And they're asking that question, is this sponsored? I think in today's day and age it is very important that people are scrutinizing what they're watching yeah yeah but we do find it funny because uh because of how we're funded and because of the events we can be more authentic we can say what we want um oftentimes we are positive because we've actively chosen the things we feel positive about and we say many no's to many many things but the other thing that is kind of funny in all of this and I wish people could get this insight that car companies often you know they put on these quite luxurious events they'll put people up in hotels and it's not paid for but I think you know in the spirit of transparency they make it very easy we couldn't make the show without them doing that absolutely wouldn't go to wherever it is yeah but when we cover the stuff that isn't cars it's much much more bootstrapped and often we'll have conversations with people they'll say um you know how does this sort of work and I say it's editorial we always welcome a sandwich yes and they'll be like I think we can stretch to a sandwich um but just just coming back to the events as well because i feel very smart that i was there at the 2018 event but as a panelist yes and andy who is behind the camera you were there um one of the sort of fully charged ogs so i think it's nice that we kind of all have that and isn't it interesting that we actually spoke about i think we i met you there and we'd seen you in a in-house Jaguar Land Rover video and we had both said I wonder if Imogen might introduce you in presenting in the fullness of time and you went on a slightly different journey and we ended up making that happen in the fullness of time.

20:19The stars aligned. I'm very grateful. I mean those events though I think for anyone who hasn't been to one they are weird and I find it so funny that you, I will caveat that statement, I find it hilarious that you're like no I don't want to do events and fast towards now we've done I'm so sick of events but they what is extraordinary about them is that they're very hard to describe because they are simultaneously for any joe public on the street but also industry and you have this mishmashing of worlds of people who are deeply interested in this technology forming the next frontier of it or just want to find out more and actually can get their hands on stuff get in a car talk to a heat pump expert and actually have all the information in one place and also for people who've been sort of banging this drum they get that sense of being part of this there's something actually happening community i mean it's been really important for us because we try to avoid youtube comments for example and there are many nice commenters of course there are but then of course there is some you know um how do i put this some detritus at the bottom uh and if we just read comments alone I don't think we would have kept on doing what we're doing so actually going and meeting our people meeting our audience meeting industry regularly has been hugely valuable and there's a really special feeling about these events they were fully charged live for the first 10 or so the the last 10 have been everything electric and we made the brand uh the brand decision to change the the brand there and what that's actually given us is more and more people who are coming from outside the fully charged tent.

21:55Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We're just seeing that it's everything electric and through the graphics, et cetera, they know it's about electric vehicles, electric tech, and they're coming in. And even to the extent that in Sydney, earlier this year, we had quite a lot of people say, well, I've never heard of Robert. I've never watched Red Dwarf. I've never watched... It sounds like I'm really... I know, that's very true. I don't even know what fully charged is. I've never seen... I don't watch YouTube. And they were coming in, and that was a really good sort of crossing the Rubicon moment for us. But I think what we found to be interesting about this change is that you cannot see the consumer market, I'm going to say that, as a single monolithic block.

22:36People are coming, you know, a few thousand here, a few thousand there, and they're coming in their own time. There are people you could argue with online who will never get an EV, but there are lots of people who are getting ready, and these shows are a great way of them coming and actually in a very non-judgmental, non-salesy environment, speaking to people, testing the kit, and speaking to other EV drivers, other solar panel owners, etc., to actually kind of make that move. So they've been really, really powerful. And yeah, I'd be remiss if I didn't say we're in Vancouver next. Yep. Oh, we love Vancouver.

23:09Vancouver in September. Really excited about that. That's sponsored by BC Hydro, who provides huge amounts of hydroelectric power. I still wear it. That's my favourite hat. Is my damn good. My damn good peak. I haven't lost it. Do you know, and I often worry that you might. Yeah. And I think about, we need to get a second one just in case. Well, they offered me a second one. I said, I don't want a new one. This one, because it's really horribly worn. Oh, it's lovely. You'd have to disclose that under bribery and corruption, I think. And it's been amazing to have them in our camp. They actually have millions of homeowners in British Columbia and they're able to promote that show to them.

23:47but equally there's a lot of ground root support as well for that show and we've got a lovely guy if you saw the email a lovely guy called dave who has thanks dave who has basically volunteered out with his own money to put a huge banner along the highway in vancouver island uh promoting everything electric uh canada which is just what i love is he was concerned that he hadn't used the right colours. I was going mate you don't need to worry any colour you want. Any font, Comic Sans. So that's fantastic and then shortly after that we have Everything Electric South at Farnborough and we've done that show a few times.

24:27Well that's a very exciting show that's looking really really strong already but additionally we have got the... A little add-on event. An add-on event. Drumroll. of uh well sorry that's perfectly queued up you can see we don't actually prepare this at all hand in the shoe zap heep challenge so zap heep so this i'm going to blame colin first this is all his fault all his fault so we'll talk a bit more about we'll do that in a minute but we're doing the tests live in front of an audience in farmbra which is two things amazingly exciting and brilliant and terrifying. Yes, a little bit terrifying.

25:09And I would say the atmosphere within the company at this point in time is this just nervous energy. Yes. So excited. Yeah, but also... But there's like a lot of, oh, this is outside our comfort zone. It will be fun. I'm sure it will be. I think it will be fun. It will be great fun. Fantastic. And amazing teams. The teams that are making the things are just incredible. So we're very blessed with that. Anyway, yeah, we'll maybe mention that. And then just very, very quickly, then we go to Melbourne. Yes, very exciting. In November, first time. Back to Sydney, which has been a huge success. So there must be doing...

25:42In March. There must be PR going out in Melbourne because we're hearing from Judy's... So just to explain that to her, my wife is Australian. She lived in Melbourne before we met. She's from Brisbane originally, but she lived in Melbourne. And she's hearing from her contacts there. What's that thing Robert's doing here? So that isn't coming from us, it's coming back to us. so there must be announcements made that's sort of gearing up nicely now great then we have a bit of a hiatus in December then back to it with everything Electric Sydney in March back to London in April not Easter and then we will be going north again next year yes I'm so thrilled about that I won't say too much about that we're going north again next year that's been a great show for us and we're also for the first time we are going I'm not going to name the venue yet but we're also going to go into the southwest as well with everything electric next year and we're really really excited about that because actually our production business is actually headquartered in Bristol so that's probably overdue.

26:45The northern gateway to the southwest. Yes. Did you just make that understand? But anyway we're gonna we'll announce exactly where we're going and when soon and then yeah I mean the events have been you know fantastic for us and we really I do enjoy it It is amazing, but yeah, I mean, certainly a tiring endeavour. They do have, they are a slog. We work, everyone in the organisation works incredibly hard, but we all get that huge sense of, it was a success, it was great. But I think, you know, everything that we've spoken about so far points to what an amazing journey that this has been. Yeah. And it has, it really, really has.

27:28But I would say in terms of the heat turning up a little bit in more recent years about how this is becoming increasingly politicized, an increasingly divisive topic. It just feels like we're in a slightly different part of this transition. And I know that a lot of the stuff that you've been evolving the brand and evolving the different tranches of the brand are trying to address that. So perhaps we should talk a bit about Electric Vehicles UK and maybe what's next for the channel. Well, I think we're in the kind of the white hot period of the energy transition. I certainly feel that the last two or three years, the misinformation has ramped up very, very significantly.

28:06These issues have become incredibly political. And from our perspective, it's extremely unhelpful to obviously, you know, have to clear away all the white noise before you even start to talk about the benefits of these technologies. There are times where it's difficult to watch, you know, politicians be negative about these technologies. for example, press, get the wrong end of the stick, or maybe deliberately misinform, who can say? But the reality is we remain very, very confident of the end point, as I think does the fossil fuel industry. It actually knows what's going to happen, but obviously it's doing its absolute utmost to delay that.

28:50And the reality is that's hard to watch. But one of the reasons we're confident is the technology is not mature yet. So if you take an electric vehicle, for example, you'll know we talk about electrochemistry a lot. There's been huge developments in that area just in the last couple of years. Now, LFP is the actual majority chemistry that's being made around the world. And that actually is much cheaper than lithium-ion. It's also much safer. And then we know that solid state and sodium-ion and all these other technologies are coming along. we've seen a story recently which insinuated that you know a chinese manufacturer might be able to develop a 1200 mile range electric vehicle so the the battery chemistry piece is not over that's still developing the charging is getting charging much much quicker the technologies which are already safer than combustion engine vehicles are getting much safer as well and the same applies to solar is getting more efficient yeah um people are understanding better how to deploy it there's lot more talk about rooftop and housetops now than there was before.

29:51And perevskeite and all those. I always say perevskeite, perevskeite, whichever it is. The new material in solar panels. Yeah, yeah. Wind turbines. Well, wind has been a huge success story, particularly in the UK. Heat pumps are going to have their day. They're already commonplace in Scandinavia and much colder places around the world. So we know the technologies are getting better. We know they're getting cheaper as they scale. we know that the network effect will kick in the more EVs that are out there for example the more people will go well what is there to be you know worried about so we are very very confident of where we're going to get to in time but it seems to me that there is just so much noise about this topic now that the opportunity to delay it is is real and we as a business have had to kind of mature and say well how do we best address that can we play a role in that and so from our perspective i think we'd always staunchly tried to avoid anything political yeah um we were we were anti-establishment almost as a channel a few years ago but as as time's gone by i think we see the value now of being within the tent explaining to very very senior policymakers for example senior members of the press that actually these are the realities of these technologies and actually we do understand it really well so I think it was a bit of a not something we necessarily wanted to do but for the sake of these industries continuing to grow we felt we could play a positive alongside lots of other people but we felt we could play a positive role in helping continue to educate yeah I mean I think the thing that I understood a while ago but not that long ago say four or five years ago was the the power and influence of lobbyists and fund and the funding and the money behind them and the influence and the political leverage that for instance the fossil fuel industry has and i don't think it's wrong or bad or evil that's business you know but they will will dig in the levers with politicians who really do want to change things and not and they've got the force and the power and the the leverage and the you know they've got that we and you know the electric vehicles were a dissipated group of people some of whom were very influential some of whom were unheard and there wasn't any thing that you could you know because whatever however successful electric vehicles uk is it's literally a whisper against a five million ton machine that is the fossil fuel industry it's like I've got a minute.

32:23Excuse me, it's a check. Excuse me, do you want to wash your tongue? Do you mind listening? This is the truth. We've got to burn more oil. It's kind of, oh, that's a kind of cartoon. No, no, no, but I, you know, it is, you know, and I have to smile about it sometimes because it's actually very, very difficult. Yeah. We can see the technologies that we believe are really, really important being completely misrepresented. Yeah, yeah. And often within social media, you know, you get short sound bites and you can't fully adequately put across the counter argument. Ultimately, we understand that if we talk about the climate a lot on the channel, for example, quite a lot of people don't want to hear about that.

33:05And that's a shame. It's a real shame. But the reality is that what we're really aiming for is cleaner technologies. and air pollution is a big unifying topic that we think is a way of actually making people aware that this is a problem. So the Royal Society of Physicians, I believe I've got that correct, said last week that actually the cost to the health service of air pollution is about£28 billion a year in the UK alone and it's costing about 500 lives a week. And so, you know, whenever we sort of think, you know, feel maybe sort of slightly disillusioned about the fact we're having to, you know, spruik for these technologies, so there's a really strong reason behind it.

33:52And these technologies are, in often cases, cheaper. Yeah. And almost invariably better. And we want to better put the case across at a variety of different levels. You've got this kind of vicious circle where maybe there are some overseas owners of tabloids who would be quite happy to denigrate newer technologies and actually to perpetuate fossil fuels. And unfortunately, that information is where a politician may well be reading that information. so it's a vicious circle and so from our perspective we didn't feel we could sit on the sidelines and not participate in that so about a year ago we set up something called electric vehicles uk we have a patreon page called stop burning stuff which allows eb drivers to contribute and part of that is us tackling uh misinformation tackling it you know particularly the major sources where it's the mail or the telegraph gb news even very sadly occasionally the BBC we can get out there and tackle it but actually beyond that we felt there's an opportunity to influence the press and to educate the press there are some brilliant journalists out there yeah some fantastic journalists who really understand this subject matter and there are some others who simply just want to create a clickbait headline yeah and you know get as many views as possible and unfortunately EVs heat pumps those technologies are sadly a lightning rod for for those sort of criticisms equally we want to be able to influence a political level and we also want to play our part in in driving demand because actually if we market evs and clean tech to everyone it's a very expensive um very expensive path to go down and actually we want to be more efficient we know there are people who are open-minded to these technologies and that's who we should be talking to so um we've done some interesting things under the electric vehicles uk uh banner already uh we created a cost of driving electric report earlier in the year which showed that a used EV is an average£2 ,781 cheaper than a used combustion engine vehicle so you know if you're looking to get into an EV look at the second hand market it's fantastic the bulk of people buy second hand so the idea that EVs are no longer affordable is for the birds you know you can get into them now relatively cheaply and then if you get a new or a used EV the running costs will be something like£5 ,850 cheaper over a typical term of ownership which is four years so you could save on buying a used car and then save on the cost of running them or you could just get a new one and save on the cost of running that as well so we're trying to make the point clearly that they are in fact cheaper we are just in the process of running a ride-along event with mps in westminster to get them into the cars so they can actually understand that they are cheaper they are better to talk to them about charging and any other issues to help build a relationship with them so we can keep educating them so when they talk to their constituents and the constituency says actually this isn't quite right for us because of x y and z we give them the tools to be able to actually go back to constituents and say actually no this could work for you uh and here is why um we are and i'll put a link to it in the show notes we are creating a kind of a myth busting masterclass infographic that I think which will be really, really useful.

37:16And when you come up against someone who's very anti-EV online, you'll just be able to share this with them. And I think it will really surprise them because I think there's a few things on there that people just don't understand. And now we're trying to get companies in the EV industry to join us as partners. That's going very, very well. And ultimately, we do want to help the industry drive demand by better educating press, better educating politicians, better educating end users as well. all under a single mantra so make america great again love it or hate it it definitely worked it's catchy right it's a slogan and i think one of the things that we struggle with as ev drivers often is there's so many things we like about evs yeah sometimes we get incredulous that people can't see that what we can see and sometimes you have to get in them to try i have an enormous hat with an enormous amount of writing on it yeah exactly that it's a bit like 40 pages that's very small text.

38:12They go, what the hell does that say? That's exactly the point. You know, we will not win a communication competition by creating something that's too unwieldy and too complicated. So our whole strategy is very, very simple. It could just about fit on a cap, which is cheaper, better, battery electric. And then we want to evidence cheaper. We want to evidence better. And we want the whole industry to repeat that mantra until people understand it. The cheaper and better bit is important that they're together as well because cheaper could mean inferior. And we know EVs aren't inferior. So you have to have the better bit as well.

38:50Better could be more expensive, but the cheaper bit is important. So it's cheaper, better, battery electric. That's good. And ultimately, we do know, and I still speak to people every week who know what I do for a living and they say, I do want one, but they're more expensive. Yeah, yeah. And so that is the single thing, cost, that will move more people than anything. Some people will move because they don't want to pollute, of course. Some people will move because they want new tech. But it is the cheaper message that is the key message of our wall. So we're making some headway with that. We do rely on people supporting the Stop Burning Stuff patron.

39:26We do rely on the industry supporting Electric Vehicles UK to do that. Because as you say, it is a David versus Goliath task. But we think we can make some progress with this message. I think actually David's slightly bigger than I was implying. I was implying David, he's about there. I mean, the oil industry filled this whole room, but David's getting, you know, he's getting bigger. Well, I think the thing that's fascinating, I think, in all of that is that we have an audience, we're so blessed that our audience is so engaged and so on the same page as we are. And I have a theory about whenever we talk about climate change and it sort of switches people off.

39:58And I think it's because our audience is like, yeah, we know. Yeah, they know about it. And we're doing the stuff, or we're frustrated that we cannot yet do the stuff because it's currently out of budget or the policies don't work for us. And I think the value of Electric Vehicles UK is exactly that, of how do we speak to the people outside of this echo chamber and equip the people inside the echo chamber with the tools they need to speak to those people? Well, that's exactly right. I mean, one final thought on this is that that's why misinformation is so powerful. Flooding the zone with negative stuff is very, very powerful because then everyone just runs after, oh, no, that's not true, and I'll correct it, I'll correct it.

40:37And so actually what we're doing with Electric Vehicles UK is about 20 % of our time is spent on correcting misinformation. Amongst the biggest sources, about 80 % of our time is going to be on reframing a positive narrative. As I say, making it easy to understand, evidencing it, and then enabling people to actually sort of share that message. Because if we constantly chase the negatives and we're constantly reacting to the negative narrative, we won't get anywhere. We need to be much more single-minded. And I think that's the genius of misinformation. So I'm going to make a chess analogy. I feel like I've made a weird amount of chess analogies in various podcasts, which is kind of astonishing because I'm very, very bad at chess.

41:14But when I played with my husband, he taught me in lockdown. He's very good. I am newer to the game. And I find myself, if I'm suddenly playing in a defensive mode, I will always lose. And that kind of 80-20 rule is so important in anything because actually you've got to go out with as much pushing in the direction that you want as much as being ready with the defence. How often have you been online and someone said something negative about electric vehicles, a subject about which we understand a lot more than the average person? At what point have you gone back and the person's gone, you know, you're right, actually?

41:51Never. Oh, I've had that happen. Very, very rarely. Very, very rarely, right? so why are we spending all of our time talking to these people when there are lots of open-minded people who can be persuaded by the cheaper better battery electric message yeah and you know i mean i had i'll just bring up two responses that i had that were quite amusing because i think it's always important to go back with kindness and open-mindedness to say well okay here's the pragmatic information that i can share with you and one person told me to get back in the kitchen make me a sandwich brilliant thank you very much it's so proud of men we've really moved on and then the second one i shared a really well researched article that the aa had done they'd done it with um ewan mcturk who obviously friend of the show incredibly well researched thing about particulates and um brake pads etc and i said oh this is my source this is what i'm referencing what's your source and this guy said my source is my eyes i was like well i'm never gonna win with with your anecdotal data that you're bringing to this and actually that's okay you need to come on this journey in your own time yeah and we should be spending our time sort of you know on the sort of you know universal infographic we're producing we do mention particulates uh and actually there was a fantastic uh study done by greater london authority and transport to london by a company called EIT I think it's the last word in particular pollution it came out in the last month or so it's about non-exhaust emissions right we already know that you know if you don't have an exhaust pipe or a tailpipe there are zero emissions from the tailpipe um but actually what this shows is that brake dust emissions are 83 percent lower from EV because obviously regenerative braking, one pedal driving.

43:42And what it does say, which I thought was very, very interesting, is that the tyre particulate pollution is, based on the average weight of the car, 20 % more. You don't have to buy a bigger car, of course, but I'll let that lie. 20 % more because the weight of EVs is on average a little bit higher, but only 2 % to 5 % is airborne. So 95 % to 98 % is not airborne. Now, I'm not saying that particulates going into the runoff is unimportant. What I'm saying is when it comes to air pollution, respiratory diseases amongst children, for example, that is a red herring. So this infographic is going to contain a lot of that good stuff that you can actually push back.

44:20Because I think people, you know, believe what they see. And it's shorthand. It's easy, right, to believe what you see. And then you kind of get locked into a particular idea. But we've been doing this a long time. We're very, very close to it. And so from our standpoint, yeah, Electric Vehicles UK, we're hoping we can make more and more of an impact over time. But I suppose, you know, all of this points to the fact that fully charged show, everything electric show has just grown astronomically in ways that I don't think anyone could have expected. and reaching out to the electric vehicles UK element of it it talks of the way that all of these different bits of the puzzle need to connect in a very cohesive way which I suppose segues perfectly onto what might be happening to Fully Charged Show the future of second drumroll well I think a bit more build-up before the drumroll but you know the reality is that we have grown as an organisation we have now fully charged, everything electric Zappi, Electric Vehicles UK Electric Vehicles UK is going to be spun off as a separate business, owned by industry not owned by fully charged it's been useful and helpful for us to begin it within our tent but ultimately we are going to gift it to industry but actually what you'll see is it is confusing to have too many brands and it isn't obviously clear if you listened to the podcast before when Robert introduces the Fully Charged podcast on the Everything Electric channel.

45:49You know, that's not necessarily ideal. What we've done over the last three years is we started our second YouTube channel, which, if you can remember, began Life is Fully Charged Plus. That's right. It was Fully Charged Plus. And I think it's just turned seven years old. Oh, right. Or six years old. That's been going seven years old because I always think of it as the new thing we do. It's not new at all. There's a little alive on YouTube. I think it's, from a growth perspective, after seven years it's ahead of where Fully Charged show was at the same point in time and we also have changed the name of our live shows at the start of last year to Everything Electric as well and we were I guess probably doing what corporate businesses do which kind of leading up to a bigger brand name change and so you can do the drum roll now if you like from today onwards we are going to line everything up under the Everything Electric brand.

46:46So everything that we do will be known as a fully charged show production, whether it's Zapppeep or Everything Electric etc. That's the company behind the... Everything will be known as fully charged show productions, but even as of today the fully charged show will become Everything Electric Cars, the Everything Electric show will become Everything Electric Tech, all the exhibitions already everything electric followed by their location even the podcast to your relief will become the everything electric podcast so everything is a fully charged show production nothing's changing in that respect but we actually think that's a positive much clearer way of engaging with our current audience and our future audience as well and as i said what's interesting about the evolution of the brand is that people are now coming to our shows because they're seeing it's very obviously about electric vehicles.