The EV Outlook: How Current Trends, Obstacles, and Evolving Regulations Affect EV Manufacturers and Consumers
Full transcript below:
Tom Stone
Hello. My name’s Tom Stone, I’m Editor Director of Electric & Hybrid Vehicle Technology International. Welcome to this live webinar which we are conducting in conjunction with PTC.
I have Dave Barry here with me from PTC. He’s Senior Solution Architect at PTC, and also Alec Peachey who’s Founder and Editorial Director of transportandenergy.com.
Now this webinar, which is entitled, “The EV Outlook: How Current Trends, Obstacles, and Evolving Regulations Affect EV Manufacturers and Consumers,” is going to take the form of a bit of a free-flowing discussion, I hope, where we are not going to have any slides. We’re going to be having a chat, particularly Alec and Dave are going to be talking, I’m going to be moderating and overseeing, and talking about some of the challenges of the industry.
And you can get involved with the chat as well as the audience because there is a Q&A function, which you will see to the right of your screen there. If you’ve got a question at any point, just stick it in the Ask a Question box there. We will see it pop up, and then as we get through the questions, we’ll publish them to the audience. I’ll try to keep an eye on them and field any questions and pose questions of my own as well, perhaps, and we’ll have a bit of a discussion and maybe time to focus purely on Q&A at the end.
What else is there to mention? I should mention anyone who’s just joining, maybe missed my introduction, or wants to share this later, it will be available on demand later so you can re-watch this or share this with your colleagues. Of course, you won’t be able to be involved in the Q&A if you are watching on demand. So I will hand over now, without too much further ado, to Dave Barry.
Just a little bit about Dave. He’s got nearly 20 years’ experience in manufacturing. David has managed and been the technical lead on a wide variety of business systems including ERP, PLM, and NES Solutions. With particular strengths in database design and software development, he’s capable of providing the glue to allow these systems to work in harmony and allow your business to concentrate on its core strengths.
So we’re going to find out a little bit more about that. And Alec, I’m going to hand over to Alec to give him a bit of a grilling, with 15 years’ experience in multimedia journalism and content creation. So it’s good to have another journalist on the presentation here, but I’m going to hand over to Alec for the main part of this discussion and, as I say, I’ll be here to moderate and make sure things don’t get nasty.
So yeah, over to you, Alec.
Alec Peachey
Thanks, Tom. Yeah, well it’s probably more over to Dave. Not to slide over already, but I think Dave’s keen to lead the conversation, but yeah, thanks for the introduction.
As you mentioned, I’m the Founder and Editorial Director of Transport + Energy, and our role, I suppose, is to try and bring those two industries together to accelerate collaboration as we transition towards net zero. There’s a number of stakeholders that are involved in this, of course, who in their past wouldn’t have looked at each other, let alone thought about working together. So that’s where we come in and trying to play role and delighted to have been invited to hopefully form part of this webinar. I’m normally used to asking the questions rather than answering them, so I’ll do my best.
Tom Stone
We’ll all have a go. So, Dave, over to you.
Dave Barry
Yeah, and thanks, Tom, thanks for that introduction. And I’m just going to add to that really in that, as Tom said, I’ve been working in manufacturing for probably over 20 years now, and I’ve worked with lots of different sectors, but I have in the past few years got quite involved with the EV charging sector. I’ve worked with quite a few of the EV charging companies, helping them implement PLM, product lifetime management, systems, which they can use to really get control of their product data and so forth, and we’ll probably talk a little bit more about that later on.
The other thing I’d like to say is I’m also an EV vehicle owner, so I made that jump myself, so I’m also interested to talk to Alec and find out a little bit more about the trends, what’s happening with the electric vehicles and so forth. So I’ve got a personal interest in this as well, so I’m really looking forward for the discussion.
And I’d like to kick things off really, Alec, if I could, by just asking what do you see are the current trends that we have in the EV market and how do they differ globally? Are you seeing common trends? What’s happening at the moment?
Alec Peachey
Well, I think obviously first of all, starting off with the U.K. market, Dave, I think clearly we’re seeing quite impressive growth in the EV market. I think recently we’ve hit the 1 million EVs on U.K. roads. The market, we’re seeing increasing growth despite some of the headlines to the contrary. I think some of that is misinformation, as I’m sure we’ll probably touch upon later, and also the way in which some of those figures are put together in terms of fleets and how they are aligned to private businesses obviously can impact on the numbers.
But you’re certainly seeing, in my view, a rising trend of EVs in the U.K. market. I think when you compare that to international markets, it’s sometimes difficult to compare, of course, because there’ll be different incentives in different countries, and of course if there’s incentives that are favorable towards the consumer, and the circumstances, and market conditions, then you’ll obviously see more of an upwards trend at a quicker pace than perhaps what you’re seeing in the U.K., for example.
A good example of that I guess would be obviously Norway, which I think has over 90% market share now of electric vehicles. I think it’s almost frowned upon if you don’t have one.
But a lot of that has obviously been driven by the incentives that are available over there. And then if you look at probably the U.S., I’m not a hundred percent sure on the numbers in that country, but I know that obviously there’s a number of incentives again that Biden’s put in over there and there’s been some talk that something similar is perhaps needed in the U.K. to give the market another kickstart to see, hopefully, a continued rise, that rise going upwards further.
Dave Barry
Yeah, you mentioned there that the markets appear to need a little bit of a kick every now and again, and I get the impression that the market could stagnate and maybe there’s an initial enthusiasm with early adopters, but then to maintain that momentum what do you think are the opportunities which are out there for companies really to help to grow the market?
Alec Peachey
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think probably what hasn’t helped in the U.K. was the previous government’s announcement that they were kicking the deadline back for the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030 to 2035. Because what that did do is create uncertainty in the market. It probably spooked the market a little bit, even though you’ve obviously got the ZEV, that’s the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate, which underpins the number of fully electric vehicles, of course, that U.K. manufacturers have to sell between now and 2030, and that’s obviously an upwards trajectory in terms of the percentages that they have to meet, otherwise that’ll be met with fines.
But of course, the Joe Bloggs, normal consumer who might be considering getting an EV, they might not always have the understanding of the intricacies of the market such as a lot of experts do, so all they see is deadlines being pushed back to 2035. I don’t need to worry about going electric for a little bit longer. And anecdotally, I can say that friends of mine would’ve had that opinion, they would’ve said, “Well, I’m not going to bother now, I’m just going to wait.” So that announcement, I think, definitely had an impact.
Of course, you’re now seeing the current administration make noise that they’ll perhaps put it back to 2030, albeit I like to think that’s been made official yet, although we’ve seen a couple of very strong speeches from Lillian Greenwood recently, the future roads minister making that implication very strongly that it’ll go back to 2030. So perhaps that will be the kickstart that we mentioned.
Dave Barry
I remember when I was looking at purchasing my electric vehicle as well, and one of the thoughts that I had in my mind: Is the infrastructure in place in this country? Do we have enough charging points? How long does it take me to get to charge my vehicle on a longer journey? How often will I need to stop? All of these sort of questions, well, ones which I had when I was looking at buying the vehicle.
What is the state of the infrastructure that we’ve got in this country, and it appears to be growing, and it appears to be increasing, but I just sort of wonder what your take is on that?
Alec Peachey
Yeah, well, I’ve only fairly recently become an EV driver myself, to be honest, Dave, and I think that arguably, I think it’s in a pretty good state to be honest, the charging market. Obviously there’s always room for improvement, but you’ve got a number of trade bodies such as ChargeUK and Recharge UK, FairCharge another one, who are obviously fighting the good fight to try and get the rate of VAT reduced from 20% to 5% in terms of the cost of charging that people will face on the public charging network versus those charging at home where of course they only pay 5% VAT.
I think it’s important to remember when you talk about home charging as well, is that the majority of people can home charge, albeit there’s still 40% of people that can’t, but most still can, and that number is often not factored in when you talk about the number of EV charging points that are out in the market and how probably most people do charge their vehicles.
I think when we spoke offline, you mentioned you’d hardly used the public charging network at all. Predominantly you’ve used home chargers, but that being said, you need of course a very reliable public charging network, and I think generally it’s pretty good. My experience with it so far, it’s been pretty positive I will say, albeit my interactions with it have mainly come with destination charging for example, hotels.
And you do have to think about it a little bit and plan a little bit and look at where those charges are available, but of course there’s all sorts of different technologies and apps as well to make your life easier. I think the figures now are, I think we’re getting on for possibly 70,000 or just above 70,000 in terms of the number of public charging points. There’s a target set of 300,000 charges by 2030.
Now some people might argue, is that really a realistic figure? Do you need to put a number on it, etc.? Ultimately people will say it’s about the right chargers in the right place at the right time, is often the expression that I’ve heard. And I think that’s very true because it depends on your own habits, I guess, around charging and what your journeys are, and that utilization of charging in terms of where the infrastructure is going to be put out.
Charge point operators, CPOs, are not going to want to put charging in places where it’s not going to be utilized because obviously they need to get a return on their investment, so therefore there has to be that thought process that goes into it rather than just lashing out hundreds of thousands of charges everywhere that are actually end up not being used and could become redundant. That’s not any good because that then perhaps could reflect negatively on the industry.
Dave Barry
It seems to me like there’s two types of charging that we require. There’s the type, sort of the high-powered DC chargers, which can charge your vehicle really quickly, and I’ve used those myself on longer journeys where I’ve needed to stop and it’s fine. I can stop at the service station, I can plug my car in, I can go and have a coffee. By the time I’ve had my coffee, the chances are my car’s charged up enough for me to complete my journey and that’s great.
But they can be expensive, there’s a premium you’re paying for those, but I’ve got luxury of having a home charger; but obviously there’s many people in the country which live in apartments, live in flats, they don’t have that luxury, will never have that luxury, so there’s a need to have a sort of low-cost charging infrastructure it seems to me, where people who are living at home and they want somewhere near to their home, where they can go and plug their car in, leave it overnight or whatever it is, charge the car up.
Is that infrastructure coming through or is the market just concentrating on these sort of high-powered chargers?
Alec Peachey
I think from what we report on Transport + Energy, I think you are also seeing an increase in the number of on-street charging as well. There’s companies such as Char.gy or Connected Kerb, or Trojan Energy, that are out there that are doing some great work to roll out that type of charging infrastructure. And as you mentioned, overnight charging—it’s more of your destination type charges, I guess, from a point of view of them having to maybe find a parking place where the charging is allocated to.
And of course, those without driveways, there are now solutions becoming available to help them be able to get a charge from their property—like gully cables and different bits and pieces of innovation that are in some cases quite simple, but at the same time, I suppose any innovation is innovative if it’s new and it helps the market.
So yeah, I think that you are starting to see an increase in on-street charging too, and I know that some of those companies that are very focused on that market have got quite ambitious targets and plans to see an increase further as we progress through the years, and of course the charging infrastructure will need to keep up of all types with the number of EVs that we’re going to see on the roads.
Dave Barry
Absolutely. Do you see that there’s a role really for government? Is there something that the government can do to help this sector out, help this growth?
I mean, they’re setting targets and setting a deadline for when we need to all transition across into EVs. What else do you see the government could do to help that?
Alec Peachey
Yeah, there’s obviously always a role for government. I think often the government will leave it to the private sector to drive the growth and see that perhaps it should come from there. And I think you’ve seen pulling away of certain incentives as the private market has perhaps taken ownership of the activity that’s happening in the market, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a done deal yet. I think that they still need to support the industry and particularly I mentioned misinformation briefly earlier, but I think misinformation at the moment is a very big issue in the sector, and it needs to be combated at the end of the day. And of course media brands in the space can play a part in that, industry experts and people just telling people how good it is to drive electric and tell their friends and their family.
They need to combat some of this absolute nonsense that is out there in the market, unfortunately. And it’s having an impact because people see the headlines and they believe it, and I think in the plan for drivers that the government put out fairly recently, that was one of their intentions, was to combat misinformation. I think probably it would be good to see some sort of national advertising campaign, perhaps in conjunction with the industry maybe, to help push back against some of this.
And also, I see a role for local authorities in doing so because I think that councils obviously have a key role to play in the rollout of charging infrastructure, going back certainly to on-street and of course rapid charging in terms of their power that they have at a local level. Ultimately, local councils have a lot of decision-making powers available to them and they act on behalf of their residents. If their residents want to see something happen, then generally they have to jump on it and try and find the money despite the fact they’ve got competing issues that they’re dealing with, they have to get on with this.
And of course a number of them have declared climate emergencies as well, so they have to be seen to be proactive in that sense, but when it comes to misinformation as well, I think actually there could be quite a key role for councils when you think about it because they’ve all got portals and websites, etc., and access to databases of residents who they’ll serve.
So if they can put the information quite simply available and it’s readily available in the market that combats a lot of this nonsense, if they can distribute and disseminate that to their residents, then actually what a great way of quickly combating a lot of the misinformation and helping people understand and educate them as to what is actually correct.
Dave Barry
You’re mentioning there, misinformation. When I was looking at buying my own electric vehicle then, I was hearing things. Oh well, after a couple of years the batteries start to degrade and things like this. And when I actually looked into it, it didn’t hold water really. I think you were mentioning earlier when we were talking that there has been some proper analysis done on the batteries, their lifetime of the batteries themselves.
Alec Peachey
Yeah, that’s right, Dave. Yeah, there’s lots of examples out there. It doesn’t take long to look and find them really. For example, there’s recent examples of Teslas that have done 250,000 miles on the clock and there’s hardly been a degradation of the battery at all. Maybe a couple of percent but you’re talking about a car that’s 10 years old and it’s done that sort of mileage.
I do think that one thing that probably would help the secondhand market in terms of giving consumers confidence to buy a secondhand EV would be perhaps something like a battery health certificate, which says this car, the battery is still 95% as good as it ever was, there isn’t a problem with this. It just, that would give confidence for people to buy those secondhand EVs because as you say, there is a lot of misinformation out there and it probably is unfortunately stopping some people from making the jump.
The best example of misinformation I’ve heard recently would probably have been the “EVs are the cause of potholes” one, which was a particular classic for me having been involved in the highway sector myself. Obviously, it’s nothing to do with the underfunded roads for many years, and coaches, and HGVs, and lorries that are going up and down the country’s roads on a daily basis. It’d be nothing to do with them, it’d be obviously to do with EVs. So it’s just a little bit silly. I think sometimes it’s so ridiculous, but unfortunately you have to keep pushing back at it.
Although I will say that there is a difference between what I would say is complete misinformation that’s clearly not based on facts at all and constructive feedback to the industry. I think it’s important that we don’t get too evangelical, to use a pun, about the whole industry and that everybody must change now, and they must get an EV tomorrow. Ultimately, we’ve got cost-of-living crisis. Some people might not be able to afford an EV, and that’s their choice. We can only educate. I think that there is sometimes you’re getting feedback to the industry, and it’s almost always being treated as misinformation where actually sometimes it can be constructive feedback based on facts. And if it’s constructive feedback that’s designed to make the industry do better, then that’s a very clear difference between clear misinformation, and sometimes the industry, it’s an emerging market, let’s be honest, so we have to always live and learn and try and do better.
Dave Barry
I guess it’s an emerging market that’s also now got quite a growing secondhand market, so it’s quite interesting what you’re saying. It is sort of giving the consumer confidence to buy into the secondhand market.
As you said, a lot of people at this point probably can’t afford to buy a brand new EV vehicle. They want to move to using an EV vehicle, it’s cheaper to run, cheaper on the road tax, and so forth, but they need to have the confidence, I guess, that if they’re buying a secondhand electric vehicle, it is still a good vehicle, it’s still going to last them for many years and many years of use.
And I think that seems to me very key. Once that market really starts to grow and take off, then it will increase the number of users in the country and definitely it seems to be something that needs to happen if this is really going to take off.
Alec Peachey
Yeah, definitely, it’s definitely all about confidence. I use the word confidence, and that’s exactly what the market needs and consumers need, ultimately. And obviously that’s underpinned as well by reliable infrastructure, which we’ve talked about already in terms of people knowing that they can get a reliable charge, particularly if they don’t have access to home charging.
They need to know they can go out onto the network and be able to charge their vehicles up quickly and hopefully cost efficiently. Of course, as you mentioned earlier, that is an issue at the moment; FairCharge are campaigning to try and get that rate of VAT reduced. There are all sorts of reasons why sometimes the cost of that energy is so high of course, but yeah, it’s a difficult one to try and address, I think, in some ways, but hopefully we’ll get there and there’s lots of positives for getting EVs, total cost of ownership, less maintenance of course, there’s all sorts of things going for it.
Obviously, there’s zero emission, better for the environment, but it probably is that affordability thing. And as you say, with the secondhand market starting to emerge, you can probably start to see more cars come towards the end of their leases and they’ll become available now in that secondhand market. I know organizations such as the BVRLA, the British Vehicle Rental Leasing Association, I’ll try not to use too many acronyms, they’re doing some good work in that space too.
But I do think going back to that point of the battery health certificates, I think that that would be, for me, a real turning point if we could get the message out that those were available and mandatory for all secondhand EVs, I think you’d definitely see the confidence coming in.
Dave Barry
With this growth in electric vehicles in the country, what’s the impact on our energy suppliers? Will they be able to keep up? Will they be able to produce enough electricity to charge all these vehicles? What’s happening in that sector? That must have a big impact if we suddenly start. I’m probably using far more electricity now just because I have an electric vehicle and I charge that at home.
Alec Peachey
Well, I know that National Grid have said on more than one occasion that the grid can cope and it’ll cope, etc. But of course, it does have to be underpinned by probably an increasing infrastructure but also looking at other solutions such as where there can perhaps be sometimes delays in getting grid connections. I’ve seen it myself, the EV charging infrastructure might be ready but there’ll be hooks over them for months and months and months because they haven’t got the grid connection, and grid connections can be expensive from a local distribution network operator to get into a site.
So there’s a lot of different ways that you can power this charging infrastructure, and I think you’re seeing more of those solutions such as battery energy storage, etc., come onto the market to be able to get these sites up and running and make that charging available as and when it should be before the grid connection perhaps then does become available at a more affordable level.
So yeah, I think that if everybody changed overnight tomorrow, you might have an issue, but it’s going to be, to coin a phrase of the Graham Cooper who used to work for National Grid, it’s a transition and not cliff edge.
Dave Barry
Certainly, I myself realized I’ve changed which tariff I’m on for my electricity so I can get the cheaper tariff for the overnight charging and so on. Of course, that obviously helps the grid as well because it’s sort of load balancing the charging that we’re producing. You mentioned something last time we were speaking about vehicle to grid as well, this opportunity, just explain what that means for us?
Alec Peachey
I don’t proclaim to be a technical expert, so I’m sure the Q&A will go mad if I tried to go into the technicalities. Definitely not an engineer, so I’ll just put that ahead of trying to answer that question. But yeah, essentially it’s using an electric vehicle as battery storage to be able to give back to the grid to help with that balancing, but also to give it back to homes.
There’s examples of where people have been able to run their whole homes from the energy in their EV that sat on their driveway, because of course often cars are set idle not doing anything.
So if we could find a way of getting all these EV batteries to be able to be used in that way, then wow, what a solution that’s sitting in front of us. But of course that technology doesn’t necessarily exist with all vehicles at the moment, not all vehicle types. I think as we go through and technology progresses, it’ll probably in time become a standard piece of technology that’s included.
And that’s interesting with the vehicle manufacturer side now because they’ve got to engage with, I mentioned at the top of the webinar, they’ve got to engage with stakeholders such as energy networks and different stakeholders who in the past they wouldn’t have really been interacting with, let’s be honest, and now they need to understand what their challenges are because that can help influence the battery technology that they put into their vehicles and they’ll need to speak to the charge point operators as to, okay, we’ve made a vehicle, the battery capacity, it can be charged at this speed, how can we make it quicker, etc.
So you’ve got all these different groups that are now really having to be much more joined up.
Dave Barry
Yeah, the thought of that is really quite amazing, the thought that I might be able to come down in the morning and boil my kettle by using the power from my car to boil my kettle. We all know first thing in the morning, that’s when the grid gets a spike and everybody’s trying to boil their kettle at the same time. So it seems to be this sort of ability to balance that load. And if that means storing energy in cars and then being able to suck some of that back to help balance and smooth out that load, it’s really using the technology to a great effect. I think it’s a really exciting prospect and it sounds like there’s a lot more that we can do to optimize things.
Alec Peachey
Definitely. And I think what’s interesting is I think when you get into this world and you become a consumer that might get an electric vehicle and that’s perhaps your first step into this renewable energy, clean transport world, it makes you start to think about, well, what’s the next thing I could do? Could I get solar panels on my house? Could I get energy into my property through using that and then I’m charging my car for nothing in that way. And as I say, vehicle to grid, vehicle to home, vehicle to X, all these different technologies that I think will become eventually readily available.
Might take a little bit of time, but in time they will become readily available. And it can only help, it can only help with the sale of electric vehicles as well because if they’re able to do these additional things as well, then what’s not to like? Because as well as the better drive, and the better feel, and the saving of money, the total cost of ownership, etc. If there’s all these other things that they can be part of and integrated into, into that sort of energy ecosystem that ultimately is helping the world as well, then it’s a good thing really, I can’t see many negatives.
Dave Barry
Well, I can see that all these new ideas that are coming out, and like I was saying at the beginning of our talk, that I think there’s quite a few new companies coming up with really innovative ideas using some existing technologies, some new technologies, bringing them together and actually being able to develop new products which really are helping us evolve the EV market, EV sector. I think that’s a really exciting time. It does mean that there’s a lot of competition in the market as well, lots of different EV chargers, and I guess some of those companies, some of them will survive, some of them won’t survive.
And like I said at the beginning, it does feel a little bit like that time when I was working back in the telecoms industry, and we were developing the products that went into the base stations for mobile phones.
It was a period when everything, it seemed that there was a lot of companies trying to get into that sector. Some survived, some didn’t, and when I look back at that time, I think one of the things that I would say is that the companies that are sensible enough to be able to invest in systems so that they properly do follow proper engineering processes, have systems in place that they can use to control their product data, have systems in place that they can use for managing their manufacturing, collecting data from their manufacturing, ensuring that they have a quality product, I would think these are the companies that are going to survive this period.
And in my work, I work with a lot of companies that they’re new startup companies, they’ve got some great ideas, and great products, and great engineers. They’re lacking at times a little bit on the knowledge of what you need to do to follow good manufacturing processes, and that’s something that they need to look toward as well.
It’s no good just having a great product, having the ability to manufacture that product—understanding how you collaborate with your supply chain as well, that’s also something that’s really, really important.
Alec Peachey
Yeah, no, definitely. I think at the moment, I think it’s such an emerging market, arguably it’s a little bit like the Wild West out there. There’s not that much regulation, you mentioned there’s a number of charging companies, charge point operators that are out there, real proliferation of them.
Whether or not we’ll still see as many in three years, five years, 10 years’ time, I would say doubtful. I think that you’ll see that market streamline down, and you’ve got some big players in the market at the moment who probably will survive, as you say. But there’s a number of different startup companies, Dave, and I know from your point of view, you mentioned how you can help them through PTC, so you might want to talk a little bit more from your side around that in terms of that manufacturing and how you can support the market, because this really is a whole ecosystem, as we’ve already mentioned a couple of times.
Dave Barry
Yeah, definitely. And I think the difference this time around compared to when I was working in telecoms is that now there actually is opportunity for smaller startup companies to start using really high-end systems which are available in a software-as-a-service type model, so it’s a subscription-based model. They don’t need to install their own systems on premise, they can just, as long as they’ve got an internet connection, sign up for a subscription, get into a system, configure that system and use that system purely online, have a single source of truth for their data.
It’s great because we’re all now doing remote working and things like that, but that doesn’t matter, as long as you’ve got an internet connection you can still all work on the same system in a secure way. And because it’s a subscription model, I think there’s probably quite a lot of these smaller manufacturing companies that may be putting off investigating, looking at this type of system simply because they think it’s going to be too expensive, it’s going to be outside their reach, and actually that may not be the case because of the subscription model, it makes it much more cost-effective for them to get into this.
And of course, when’s the best time? I often get asked this question. When would be the best time for us to invest in something like a PLM system? Of course, the answer has to be probably sooner. The sooner, the better, the sooner you get your data under control, you’re constantly, as a manufacturing company, growing and growing your data set, you’re doing new designs, new drawings, new bits of information, so it’s constantly growing. So the longer you put that off, the harder it is to get all that data into a system. The sooner you do it, then you’ve got that data controlled, that data set can grow in a very controlled way.
And yeah, I think that would be my advice to any of the smaller companies that are starting up, maybe haven’t got systems in place, do have a look at these, have a look at these systems, make sure that you understand what they can do and how they can benefit you and how they can really give you a return on your investment if you do do that.
Alec Peachey
And what would be your advice then to those SMEs and startup businesses that often perhaps are going through those growing pains of that scale-up challenge to try and keep in line with obviously the increased pace, particularly of this EV market.
You’ve obviously seen that in the telecommunications industry that you were involved in, and I think you were involved in a business that pretty much had to scale up quite quickly. So from that experience, what would your advice be to those types of businesses in this market?
Dave Barry
Well, yeah, like I said, I think it’s a really exciting time. I do remember when I was working in the same sort of… Really exciting time. It’s that one time in a business when you’re not so much looking at going out, struggling to find orders, the orders are coming in, what you’re struggling to do is fulfill those orders.
And you need systems in place, so there’s PLM systems, you need a good ERP system, you probably need a manufacturing execution system as well. These systems also need to work together, so you need to think about how are we going to make sure they’re not silos of information, they should work together.
So you design your product, you put the information about your structure of your product into a PLM system, it’s under proper change control, you’ve got control of that data. But then you’re going to need to purchase components, so you’ve got to be able to share that information with your ERP system so that you can go out and place orders on your contract manufacturers. You’ve got to share that information with your contract manufacturers so they’re seeing the single source of truth for that data. They’re not just receiving a drawing via email and therefore they might get the wrong revision of the drawing, and they make too many widgets all to the wrong drawing, all to the wrong revision.
So it is this reduction of any ambiguity that they might have within their manufacturing process, and you can only really do that by having a system that’s well-designed, robust, and will ensure that you reduce that ambiguity in anything that you’re presenting to your contract manufacturers. You’re trying to reduce mistakes. If you can reduce mistakes, you’ll reduce your time to market, you’ll improve. And reducing your time to market we know is likely to increase your profit, increase your margins.
So it is looking, keeping an eye, don’t just concentrate on just the product, look at the systems as well that you’re using; you’ve got to keep an eye on that, that would be my advice.
Alec Peachey
Yeah, I definitely would agree with you when it comes to breaking down the silos, and that’s one thing that we’ve tried to achieve, obviously, through Transport + Energy, that breaking down the barriers and traditional stakeholder groups who in the past would’ve just only been looking inside their own box and not at all looking outside, and that obviously needs to happen.
I think Tom will probably want to come in a moment because he’ll ask us some questions, but before he does that, I was just going to ask about the EV manufacturers. How do they balance the environmental impact of their products throughout the entire lifecycle and from raw materials to end-of-life recycling when it comes to bringing these vehicles to market?
Dave Barry
This again is a hot topic as well, and the manufacturers, whether the EV manufacturers, whoever they are, they want to reduce the impact on the environment, they want to reduce their emissions during the manufacturing process. This is something that they can only do if they monitor it, monitor it well, and there are again, systems evolving, constantly evolving, that help them look at their systems.
With a proper PLM system, you can capture information about what actually goes into our product? Have we got any hazardous materials going into the product? How can we reduce, how can we manage that? How can we reduce that level of material that we’re using into product? So there’s a lot of systems which are now coming onto the market. Some of them, not necessarily directly in my area, but I’m aware of them, something that PTC is very aware of as well. We are looking at how can we help our customers to become more environmentally friendly and to become better consumers, in a way, of the systems?
Tom Stone
Absolutely. It’s a huge, wide-ranging topic we have here. I didn’t get to all the comments and questions, so apologies if I didn’t get to yours, but obviously there’s tons of stuff to discuss here and we will continue to discuss these issues on our website and our magazine and as Alec will as well, I’m sure, on his platform.
But thank you very much for your time this afternoon. Strangely, this conversation about batteries has put an unusually high drain on my laptop battery, so running down much quicker than I thought I would.
So we’re going to have to wrap it up. But thank you, thank you very much for your time and we’ll continue this conversation, as I say, on our platforms.
Dave Barry
Thank you, Tom, it’s been really good.
Alec Peachey
Alright, thanks very much, thank you. See you, Tom, cheers.
Tom Stone
Thank you.