I found this Future of Mobility podcast with Beam Global’s CEO Desmond Wheatley to be helpful in drilling down on the question of the speed of EV charging, as well as the company itself and the opportunity ahead.
His point is fascinating and one I hadn’t considered before. Our mentality around charging vehicles is based on a century of filling up ICE vehicles where we run as close to empty as we dare and then want to fill up.
We do this, he believes, because it’s a huge inconvenience (and expense) to put gas in the tank. So we do it as infrequently as possible. (Rings true for me.)
Wheatley suggests that EV charging needs a behavioral overhaul, where we think of charging EVs in the way we think of charging our phones. We don’t run our phones or tablets to empty and then wait to use them until they’re back to 100%. We just regularly charge them while we’re doing something else, because charging is easy and generally available.
While there are times–like on long interstate drives–where we need fast charging, the average person–even the average fleet vehicle–can complete a day with only 30 miles or so. He’s got the numbers to support that in the podcast.
He also points out that right now grid-connected charging at commercial locations that are not gas stations have you out standing behind dumpsters at the grocery store because that’s where the electrical connections to the grid are. With off-grid solutions, you can put the charging station where it’s convenient for people to use, not where it’s convenient to install because you need the grid.
Anyway, worth a listen. I bought more on the market weakness this morning.
In a way, this is an excellent point and in a way, it is alarming for EV adoption. With phones and tablets, I can find 5 or 6 charging locations in each ROOM of my house. Should I need to be off the grid, a small battery can keep me charged up for a reasonable amount of time for my devices, which generally have improved in terms of talk time or browsing time, etc.
With EVs, and I talk from experience here, having owned and sold a 2020 Taycan Turbo (whose depreciation was truly legendary), the immense joy of never visiting a gas station for my local travel was far eclipsed by the hassle of taking a trip over say, 175 miles. Depending on the ubiquity of off-grid solutions, some of this can be alleviated, but really, unless you can find multiple charging choices and, big and, get a 350 mile charge in around 20 minutes, the EV will be limited to local travel and the plug in hybrid will rule the EV world.
Your dilemma is exactly why Wheatley thinks their solution has a huge TAM and also why they (and any others working on the problem) will be working round the clock to produce their products for a very long time.
Editing the post to add that your need to drive long distances in one go and therefore need fast charging is, as Wheatley describes with statistics, not typical of the average use for cars today. It might slow EV adoption for some people, but for the average person–and even the average fleet vehicle–you only need about 30 miles. Listen to the podcast.
It’s also why their new acquisition in Serbia and the patents to have streetlights provide EV charging is so necessary. They just closed that acquisition at the tail end of 2023–they just filed to delay their year-end report because of the added work to integrate that into their filing.
Wheatley makes the point that a lot of the charging needs can be met if people can charge while they’re parked at work. He sees that as far easier and feasible than trying to have home charging, especially given the number of households with multiple cars. Once they’re all EVs, just paying the utility bills–let alone having the space at home–for grid-connected charging gets prohibitive for most people.
He sees not just room, but necessity, for many other innovators in charging solutions to enter the space.
Below is a video from 8 days ago with a Beam marketing person talking for about 17 minutes with folks from Parking and Transportation in New York State. They asked him to come after hearing that New York City was using Beam Global and figured they needed to check it out.
The production quality of the video isn’t great, but the use cases he describes are helpful.
@JabbokRiver42 based on the SEC filling, would you have a personal estimated earnings date? Just curious as this next report should reveal a lot of info.
@stocknovice , This is the last line of the SEC filing:
The Company expects to file the Form 10-K within the fifteen-calendar day grace period, as provided by Rule 12b-25 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
I don’t remember seeing a firm date for the earnings initially. Schwab had it this week, but there was not a formal announcement that I remember.
The filing was made on March 28. If the initial date for earnings was tomorrow, that would close the extension window on April 19. If they filed on the date they were supposed to report, that would close the 15-day window on April 12.
They’re presenting at this investor conference April 8-9:
Since it says the CEO “will present a corporate update,” maybe we’ll get something from that. The release says the presentation is on the 9th at 10 am ET.
Maybe that will coincide with earnings? It’s a virtual presentation and anyone can register. So, I did.
Looks to me like the outside window would be April 19, and perhaps as early as next week.
As an EV driver for the past 13 years, I predict that Wheatley is in for a rude awakening.
This situation is analogous to a situation decades ago (1980s) in the copier industry. I forget the company name, but this was an established copier company doing a survey of its users and finding out that less than 4% of copying was copying from books. So, they designed a more compact and cheaper model that could only take individual sheets of paper in - there top didn’t swing up out of the way to provide clearance for an open book. Well, that model was a complete flop. What they didn’t understand is that while only 4% of copying was from books, something like 90% of people would copy from books - they just did it only 4% of the time. And so they wouldn’t buy a copier that couldn’t do that.
The success of Tesla and the rapid domino effect of every other company to adopt Tesla’s L3 fast charging network proves this is true for automobiles, too.
That said, there are specific use cases, such as delivery fleets, where mileage per day is pretty fixed and vehicles can be charged overnight. But, then why do they need to spend $65k for a charging station when installing a 30-amp L2 charger is far cheaper (even with infrastructure upgrades) and won’t depreciate in value since it doesn’t have batteries to degrade?
Tesla’s Superchargers cost no more than ~$43,000 per charger versus over $200,000 for the competition based on the documents in these applications to the TxVEMP program. Some of the other applicants include big names in the charging industry like EVgo, Chargepoint, as well as many big gas station operators.
So, I continue to have trouble seeing how BEEM does well with their much lower power unit that costs more, with the only advantage that it doesn’t need to be connected to the grid, but does need enough sunshine.
