Luke: [00:00:00] From privacy concerns to limitless potential, AI is rapidly impacting our evolving society. In this new season of the Brave Technologist Podcast, we’re demystifying artificial intelligence, challenging the status quo, and empowering everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. I’m your host, Luke Moltz, VP of business operations at Brave Software, makers of the privacy respecting brave browser and search engine.

Luke: Now powering AI with the Brave search. API. If you’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features Diego Psi, the Global product line manager for EV Fast Chargers at A BBE Mobility with a background in automation and control engineering what we might now call industrial ai.

Luke: Diego has spent the last 15 years designing cutting edge products. For the energy and e mobility sector is passionate about accelerating EV adoption through innovative user-centered charging solutions, powered by data and AI insights, one of his most standout creations. The Terra 360 was [00:01:00] named one of Time Magazine’s, best Automotive Technologies of 2022.

Luke: In this episode, we discussed the current state of EV charging technology, the challenges impacting adoption and user experience, and what’s being solved right now. His work on developing Formula E race chargers used by all teams in the series, along with the vision for new frictionless EV charging experiences.

Luke: And now for this week’s episode of the Brave Technologist

Luke: Diego, welcome to the Brave Technologist. How are you doing today? Ah, thanks for having me. I’m doing really good. Looking forward to this one. We haven’t had anybody on from the EV space, aside from some autonomous driving and things like that, so I’m really excited to have you on today. You spent the past 15 years kind of building high tech energy products.

Luke: What keeps you passionate about EV charging innovation today?

Diego: Well. I’m personally very, very passionate about EV charging because it’s not just about moving electrons. It’s [00:02:00] a complete shift in the world and in the way that energy is being consumed. So ev charging as a whole, uh, sits on intersection between climate impact, digitalization, and new user behaviors.

Diego: Over the past few years, I’ve seen. If charging, evolving from a niche where the first drivers that were driving a Nissan Leaf were struggling to charge it to something that is very, very critical for nationwide because it is as critical as the power grid or, or other very important services. The main difference is that there is so much to optimize, compared to other utilities.

Diego: So user experience. Energy efficiency software, there is so much to do and a little fun fact about myself. It’s the very first time I designed something that actually people understand what it is, but everyone, everyone drives a car or knows about cars, so [00:03:00] it’s really good to break the ice. In a conversation.

Diego: I bet

Luke: it is. I bet it is. And it’s also one of those things that it’s on everybody’s mind too, because I remember it seems like this development and the adoption, I, I’m in the Bay Area and it’s almost like every other car you see now is a Tesla or another ev. And I remember initially when they started to roll out out here.

Luke: There were all these like concerns around like anxiety over losing a charge or, or I would travel a lot in people in Chicago where like, uh, in the colder weather it’s a little bit different than warmer weather ‘cause you get these Uber drivers that are all in their Teslas or whatever. But it has been really interesting.

Luke: I feel like you’ve seen a lot more of the infrastructure rollout and more and more people charging stations popping up and things like that. What is the immediate problem that you’re trying to address right now with the technology?

Diego: Well, the key problem that I’m seeing everywhere around the world is that EV charging is not easy yet.

Diego: It’s not frictionless yet, so there is still a [00:04:00] lot to do to make it accessible, seamless, and intelligent. You can see this friction in multiple ways. Starting from location might be challenging to find where a charger is. Then reliability, will the charger work? Compatibility, will it work with my car? Then waiting times.

Diego: How long do I need to charge? Will I have to wait? And then last but not least, payment. How can I pay? Is it something that I can do with a subscription? It’s something I can do with an app or just a credit card. There are a lot of things to, to improve and these can benefit everyone from the everyday drivers that used to drive or they need to drive around cities, especially the new ones, the newcomers, because the early adopters.

Diego: They are challenged. They, they like to be challenged with new technologies. Mm-hmm. But people that are less tech savvy, for them it’s a big, uh, big deal. But [00:05:00] not only consumers, also fleet operator, bus, uh, trucks. For them, uptime and planning is the key. So they can rely just on the public charging network.

Diego: They need their own and they have different metrics. And overall the cities themselves and grid operators, because. Especially you, you were mentioning in the Bay Area, but uh, other countries like Japan where there are natural disasters, EVs can be fundamental because they can provide grid stability. They can be that battery that keeps the grid running when there is something unplanned.

Diego: Uh, yeah, there is really a lot to do.

Luke: Yeah, no. It sounds like a lot of first order and and second order issues to kinda work through how universal. Just kind of building off one of the things you mentioned there, like how universal are these charging stations at this point? Is there like a standards body that’s kind of addressing these things and is it pretty interchangeable from one brand to another at this point, or are they still working through that?

Diego: There are multiple [00:06:00] standardization bodies and there has been a lot of work. To make sure that all the manufacturers of vehicles, both cars, motorbike, heavy vehicles, they adopt the same plugs. Mm-hmm. Very similar to what was done with USB, moving towards USBC. And until a couple of years ago, the world was basically aligning towards regional standards.

Diego: So Europe with the CCS two, north America with the CCS one. China with the GBT and Japan with the Shamo. Of course, things not always go according to plan, and Tesla is introduced. Their own standard that they were using on their vehicle and that standard called North American Charging Standard. NACS has disrupted this process in a good way because it’s a very good type of plug.

Diego: But this means that Europe, it’s already Europe and the rest of the world is already a little bit more ahead in [00:07:00] having. Standard type of plugs. And this means also you can drive your car from one region to another easily. Mm-hmm. And find a, uh, charger North America’s in the process of adoption of two standards that ultimately will lead to the N-S-C-I-S being the only plug that you will find.

Diego: But it’ll take few years.

Luke: Interesting. I had no idea around some of these complexities there too. You’ve applied AI to in machine learning, to ev charging systems. Can you walk us through kind of a real world example, uh, where AI’s improved the charging experience for the owner of the car? I.

Diego: Yeah, absolutely.

Diego: So in my career I’ve been following several projects where AI has been used to understand pattern. That’s also my background in data analytics and machine learning, and these as a natural application in industrial assets, but also for EV charging. You have an industrial asset, like a electrical device.

Diego: And a consumer or a human [00:08:00] user, so that takes the problem to another level. One very interesting project that I’ve been leading in the past few years has been a cooperation with several universities. I. To design a system to automatically understand the behavior of users based also on the location. So the user behavior means understanding how long the user charges, how much energy does it take, its vehicle, takes the type of vehicle, the type of plug.

Diego: If there is a mistake, what type of mistake? Maybe it’s taking too much time to find the credit card and the payment fails. And create an anonymized profile of that, that’s very important. The other side is location. So where is this charging happening? Is it close to a movie theater? Is it close to a gas station, a restaurant or supermarket?

Diego: This kind of analysis can be done. Manually when you have few [00:09:00] assets, but when you get into the thousands, millions, potentially in the future, then it becomes more complicated. So we did this exercise where with clustering techniques, it was possible to create these profiles and associate them to the point of interest.

Diego: So looking at the map and the put in different weights, and in this way we know very well that there is a different behavior. Of a user that goes to a restaurant rather than a user that goes to a restaurant is close to a movie theater or close to a gas station, because those are macro behaviors that otherwise you would never understand.

Diego: And this was super useful to also understand how we can adapt a certain hardware product, both with the configuration but also with the actual hardware design so it fits better, those type of use cases.

Luke: It is interesting too, ‘cause I just hearing you kind of run through that, there’s all these like environmental factors, location factors, but also the other thing my mind keeps going to is that you’re [00:10:00] coming into a space where there’s, I think roughly like a hundred years of established behaviors around when I am low on gas, I go to a station and put this liquid in my car and as fast as it can pour in, is it as fast as I’m off, but with charging it seems.

Luke: Fundamentally different, right? Where you’ve gotta wait for the thing to charge. Like are you setting kind of benchmarks to on that expected behavior or like how much of what you do involves, like trying to unwind some of those behaviors or, or match what people are used to? Is, is that even a part of the equation at this point?

Luke: Or are you guys just trying to kind of figure out the most efficient way to do the charging at the station?

Diego: It’s a very good question, Luke. So the original assumption a few years ago was, let’s replace gas pumps with EV chargers. Mm-hmm. And what we realized, and also ChargePoint operators, CPOs realized at high cost is that it doesn’t work exactly the same because in most use cases.

Diego: If you’re lucky to have a garage with [00:11:00] a charger wall box at home, you can start every day your drive with a battery full. Mm-hmm. So you don’t necessarily need to go to a charging station to refill the battery. And then the locations where. The charges are installed, you know, the need might be different from the traditional one.

Diego: So investments that have has been done installing charges at traditional gas station, were not very successful. it’s happening now in, for instance, in Scandinavia where gas station are being decommissioned and turned into charging stations. So using the facility that are existing. But fundamentally, there is new science that came up in the last few years.

Diego: To identify the location, and that’s all data driven. So where are the, the main traffic routes where people want to stop? Because you need to consider that it takes seven to 10 minutes to refill a car. Traditionally, with gas while for ev charging, the technology is improving a lot and [00:12:00] getting close to that.

Diego: But most, uh, vehicles charging 30, 40 minutes, you can get the battery quite full. So you want to be in a location where you want to spend 30, 40 minutes. And ideally that is a location where. You can do something else like a supermarket or a restaurant or a fast food. So there is an a rise of brand new locations and I’m seeing a lot of work in layering all these data sets that are evolving over time to figure out where is the best location and machine learning and AI has a huge role in this.

Luke: Yeah, it’s really interesting ‘cause as you talk about this, I feel like just from where I’m at in my part of the world, I’m kind of seeing a lot of this experimentation playing out. ‘cause you’re starting to see kind of ev charging at office garage, uh, parking garages or, or movie theaters or parks or, or different areas where we didn’t see it a year or two ago.

Luke: So it is really interesting hearing you [00:13:00] explain that because yeah, these are kind of areas where people will go and they’ll, they’ll spend an hour or more parked and you can actually charge it and they. It seems like we’re seeing kind of a mix of different incentives there too around like, whether it’s like locations of the parking spots that have these things where it’s super convenient, you know, or, or something like that.

Luke: That kind of gets, get people front and center engaging with this stuff, so that, that’s super interesting. How kind of do you ensure that the charging solutions are basically inclusive for a wide range of drivers, including those who may be less tech savvy?

Diego: That’s very, very interesting because this is a.

Diego: Complex technology to look at. It’s something brand new. So simplicity is the real innovation. Make the process very simple. It’s a, it’s a real differentiator. So, as I mentioned earlier about the, the plugs, there has been this drive towards standard plugs in different regions. That makes things a little bit simpler because you don’t need to, to think too [00:14:00] much about, uh, is the blue connector or is the black one that is likely going at least in the next few years.

Diego: But then there are, uh, other aspects. One that is super important is how inclusive are the charger for people with disabilities. There are standards like a DA in North America that is extremely strict, however. We had to do some work with the governmental agencies to adjust the standard because certain requirements were a little bit too.

Diego: Tied for the reality of this new technology, but there has been a lot of openness in that, and these make sure that also people that have more challenges moving around, they can access those stations easily. Then there are a lot of other aspects that have been taken in consideration, especially in the design of these uh, stations.

Diego: The user experience is key. One major aspect are lights. You might see screens information. That might be a little bit [00:15:00] confusing for a new user, but everyone knows that if you see a green light, that means available. If you see a red one, it means something is not all right. Playing with those elements and making them guiding the user help us to develop very good product over time.

Diego: In the long run, this will become less and less of a problem because new development, uh, actually already there, uh, there are new technologies like plug and chop. Charge that is a technical solution that allows to have a secure authentication, just plugging your, your vehicle with, uh, the charger and everything is being managed from the vehicle to the charger to the backend to have this secure authentication and payment.

Diego: So. At a certain point in the future, there will be need for no screen, no interface. You just have a plug, you plug in and you’re good to go.

Luke: Is that kind of the frictionless scenario that you would imagine? Is it, [00:16:00] it’s almost like you just drive up, plug in, swipe your thing or whatever and, and kind of done.

Diego: Yeah. Even payment will in the future. It, it’s still. Not a problem in certain realities.

Luke: Mm-hmm.

Diego: But it’s not universally so easy. So there is going to be, in the future, I would say, five to seven years a moment where you will see that things that are complicated, like am I authorized to use this charger?

Diego: Can I pay, will just become as simple as using an app. So you log in once. And then you’re good to go and all your credential, everything is securely communicated and used by the system without you worrying about that. You just need to to think where do you need to go, and the charging is just something that you plug in and you’re good to go.

Luke: Yeah, it’s super interesting ‘cause you’ve got like all of these different emerging technologies kind of working together. You know, you got like [00:17:00] more payment innovations that are happening really quickly right now and a lot of the different pieces of tech kind of all iterating quickly together into a better experience.

Luke: It’s, it’s really cool man. Like you oversaw kind of the development of. Abbs Formula E race charger used by all the teams in the series. First off, like can, can you go into a little bit of that and, and what was unique about it and did you get any insights from the racing world that influenced your approach with mainstream or everyday charging use cases?

Diego: That was a really fun project. So a little bit of background. A BB is a major corporation that is active since very long time. I think, uh, in some counties more than 120 years in electrification and automation. So when formal IE became a thing with professional drivers. Driving these electric vehicles that are very, very similar.

Diego: Now they’re getting almost indistinguishable from [00:18:00] Formula One vehicles from the outside, but fully electric. There was a decision to invest in that. So A BB became the title sponsor of that, uh, racing. One of the things that was decided was to provide the charging technology because you have electric cars and you make charges, so of course it makes sense.

Diego: That was. A big challenge because automotive, especially racing automotive, it’s a completely different beast from traditional car manufacturing. So those guys are hitting the road for months. Going from one counter to the other, everything has to be transported in efficient way. Formula, it was a little bit more challenging because it cannot be just hair freight from one place to the other.

Diego: They had to find more environmentally friendly ways, but we had to design something that is not just designed to be installed on the ground and just stayed there for years. But every week put on a pallet and drive or go to together with [00:19:00] the vehicles and all the equipment to another continent. We designed something very robust, but at the same time, the product that was designed for the first season, I.

Diego: It’s not the same that is now being used. So we have a team that, uh, travels together with the chargers and supports the different vehicle teams and another one that is in our r and d office that is analyzing all the logs and seeing how the system can be improved. So how we can make it more robust so that it’s ready to charge when it’s needed.

Diego: How to make sure that we modify some element inside by looking at how it was behaving during the race. Because every team relies on that, and if the charger does not work, you cannot charge the car before the race or during the race. So that has been super useful because then we took a lot of these insights and we put them into the regular products that are being installed worldwide.

Luke: Yeah, I mean it sounds [00:20:00] like a lot of like a forcing function, right, to get, because you know, even if you have to kind of distribute nationwide, like charging stations, things like that, there is a lot of like transportation involved and, and a lot of efficiencies you have to consider that a team would have to consider too.

Luke: I would imagine doing the racing, it’s just a interesting thing too. You’re putting a pedal to the metal with the racing, right? You’ve got this whole other dynamic with the, the EV piece of that. It’s just, it is a really cool thing to hear you talk about. What’s the conversation we aren’t having enough of?

Luke: From your point of view, what would you like to hear us talking about more in this kind of race to innovate?

Diego: I hear a lot of conversations that has are very siloed, so EVs or EV charging or software. Reality is that charging an EV is part of an ecosystem. So you have the vehicles themself. Energy because let’s remember, you need to feed those charger with some power that has to come from somewhere and hopefully it’s [00:21:00] not, uh, generated with coal.

Diego: It’s generated in a clean way. User behaviors, because the traditional behaviors are changing. You have a full tank every morning. If you have a, a charging in your garage. It’s different from, oh, I need to go to the gas station because before going to the office. And then even city design. I’m very passionate about city design because this element really falls into that.

Diego: You want to have people stopping in certain locations because they need to spend a little bit more time, which means that those location, it has to be somewhere where you want to stay so green and it’s, you know, the difference with a traditional gas station that is typically an environment that. Most of the time you don’t want to spend too much time.

Diego: It also because it’s potentially dangerous, you know, there are, they’re, they’re very safe, gas stations are very safe, but it’s still an area, an atex area. So there are, uh, gases that [00:22:00] could combust. So it’s not as pleasant as some greenery that you can have next to a charging station, because at the end, the, the risk that you have, it’s the same as being next to a light bulb.

Diego: Mm-hmm. So that. As a completely different impact, this kind of conversation are happening in certain countries. I’m seeing for instance, that in the Netherlands, that is a country that is really ahead when it comes to rethinking the way of living to provide a better life. There are operators that are designing their charging station to be beautiful location where you really want to to be, and but on the other hand, there are other type of conversation that are about.

Diego: Can we feed this new EV charger? Our grid is not powerful enough. They already reached saturation. These are the kind of conversation that, that I really would like to see more parts of the world, not just where is my [00:23:00] charger?

Luke: I would imagine there’s quite a bit of work that has to go into like working with like local governments and cities and things like that.

Luke: How has that process been?

Diego: Yeah, this is actually a good point because I noticed in the last two or three years there has been this big race to buy charges, ev charges to, to put on the street, but then this has hit a stonewall. Mm-hmm. Because you cannot just go. Install. You need to have approvals, you need to have the grid connection, you need to have the power in the grid in that location.

Diego: And all of these things have actually slowed down the, the rollout process in multiple regions. Uh, I can, I can speak about the Europe as North America. That are the, the, the two main runners, uh, at the moment, aside from China, of course, I see that The only realities that actually are not fixing this are [00:24:00] big companies that typically have locations.

Diego: For instance, large supermarket chains. Mm-hmm. Because they have huge parking lots. So those one are the one that are. Currently facing less challenges and their rollout is gonna be, it is and is gonna be huge everywhere else. Actually, the market, uh, had some hiccups because a lot of the demand certainly has caused to have warehouse is full because the charges simply could not be installed fast enough.

Diego: Wow. Wow. This is something that, that now it’s normalizing again, but it has been an in interesting dynamic because in the US there has been a lot of attention on federal funding being invested for the infrastructure, but at the same time, this has been slowed down. Then by this practicality, there were not enough transformers to feed those charges.

Luke: Mm mm You see people talk about this where it’s like a lot of these charging stations could be like renewable source where there’s like solar or some other forms. How is [00:25:00] that process going? It seems like something you hear politicians and people talk about, but like, how’s the development space going?

Luke: Like, is somebody working in the technology? Are you seeing innovation happening there, or is it something where it’s still kind of early?

Diego: This is something that really varies, uh, region by region. If a country is really ahead with renewables, I’m thinking to countries like Portugal, but also also Scandinavia, uh, a renewable, it’s many things can be also hydropower.

Diego: In that case, we really see, already see instances where 100% of the power that is being injected into the car battery is renewable or is, uh, clean. The mix really varies. There are other countries where this is a bit more challenging, but there is overall focus to get towards that. There is a layer in between.

Diego: So manufacturers of chargers are then working together with the operators of the charging stations, and it’s the duty of the operators of the charging station to [00:26:00] buy the right mix of of energy. So for them, there are some that have in mind. For them, it’s a selling point, claiming that they have 100% renewable energy in their charges.

Diego: This is very important because mm-hmm. If you invest, typically you spend more money than you would to buy an electric car. You do it. Most of the time because you want to help the environment. Of course. You don’t want to have a coal power plant fueling your car. Right,

Luke: right, right. No, it’s interesting. I mean, there’s like a lot of dynamics involved.

Luke: It also seems too, if you, if you can get renewable, like in the case of solar or something where you could even get a cost advantage, a revenue generating kind of advantage over time too, if you’re not having to source. Power from another place. You’re paying a cost for, you know, or you have to absorb the cost for and bringing it in.

Luke: It’s just really interesting, like there’s a lot of pieces at play with this, yet we’re seeing it, you know, get broader and broader adoption. To kind of close it out a [00:27:00] little bit, are there any bold prediction you have for the future of EV and tech that you’re willing to bet on today? If you could pick one.

Diego: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, today, if you charging. Still is friction and it’s perceived as a product that, uh, as some challenges. But in 10 years I see the charging not as a product anymore, but as an ambient service. Something that is just part of, of the cities. So you would not have to look for a charger, but you will charge without really thinking when you park.

Diego: Whatever it is at work, at home, there will be available solutions, just a plug that you plug, you plug in, or some other system potentially will plug in. Autonomous vehicles, there are developments to make them charging by themselves or even wireless pad that, uh, have some. Uh, challenges, but the technology is getting pretty mature.

Diego: [00:28:00] And then the other aspect is that ai, other than just being now a buzzword that, uh, that everyone is thinking about actually has this very big impact in improving the usage of the Chargers. So. The, the grid can funnel the energy to your vehicle, or your vehicle can funnel the energy to the grid wherever is needed.

Diego: And that can only happen if you have a brain that is automatically assigning this power flows without impacting your experience as a user. Mm-hmm. You don’t want to have a discharge card in the morning when you need to bring your kids to school. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So the matter is not about where you charge and when to charge.

Diego: The car just will be charged.

Luke: Mm. Interesting. And

Diego: in that way, you will just forget as we are now forgetting about connecting to the wifi, it’s just one click.

Luke: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So many similarities with different parts of life that just need coming together. It’s, it’s really cool. [00:29:00] Diego, if people want to follow your work or what you post online, where can people find out more about you or, or follow you on social or contact you elsewhere?

Diego: They can reach me out on my LinkedIn page, but I also have a website with my portfolio and the things that I’m really proud of. That is diego persky.com in case you want to have a chat, you know, just, uh, you can just reach me out there.

Luke: Fantastic. Fantastic. Diego, this has been fascinating conversation. I really applaud you for the work you’re doing.

Luke: I’m excited to kind of see one of those things you can see in real life when you’re outside your house and love to have you back too, to check in on how things are going down the road. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Thanks for listening to the Brave Technologist Podcast. To never miss an episode, make sure you hit follow in your podcast app.

Luke: If you haven’t already made the switch to the Brave Browser, you can download it for free today@brave.com and start using Brave Search, which enables you to search the web privately. Brave also shields you from the ads trackers and other creepy stuff following you across the [00:30:00] web.