EV charging investment must balance the needs of existing drivers with giving more people the confidence to switch to electric vehicles, Christina Georgiou, Head of Product at char.gy as told the Transport + Energy Forum.
Speaking during a discussion entitled ‘Delivering the right growth’ in the event in Warwick, Georgiou told James Evison, Head of Content at Transport + Energy, that infrastructure planning needed to consider consumers who have yet to buy an EV, alongside current demand.
For those without a driveway, knowing reliable and accessible charging is available near home could be central to their decision.
“They are not today’s demand. So if we put a charge point outside this room today, they would not be an immediate customer,” she said.
“But if these people are to make a choice to change their day-to-day life and invest their own money to make that EV transition, they need to have the confidence.”
Georgiou said char.gy’s in-house data team used modelling to balance serving existing EV drivers with installing infrastructure in areas where the company believed future demand could develop.
The charge point operator has around 6,000 charge points installed and has spent about a decade designing, manufacturing and operating its own hardware, management system and driver-facing apps, she said, and that lamppost charging offered a way to extend coverage while making investment go further, allowing the company to support existing demand and encourage future uptake.
“The thing that that enables us to do is very simplistically put more charge points for the same amount of investment,” she said.
However, Georgiou acknowledged that different areas required different products, including where suitable lampposts were unavailable.
She also stressed that data modelling needed to be informed by drivers’ experiences and the changing conditions on individual streets.
Georgiou told how she has joined early morning walks in London boroughs to investigate where the company’s forecasts differ from what is happening on the ground.
“How are people’s lived experiences different to what our models say?” she asked.
The approach includes examining locations where charge point usage has fallen short of expectations. New shops can change how a street is used, while an electric scooter appearing near a charge point can reduce the space available for drivers to access it.
Understanding those changes, alongside whether nearby charging options are confusing or difficult to use, could help explain behaviour that demand forecasts alone did not capture.
On artificial intelligence, Georgiou said the technology was helping char.gy accelerate development, but human oversight remained essential.
“AI is a tool; it is not a decision maker,” she said, and explained how the company uses AI to support work on its systems and product development, while people test designs and drivers help assess new features.
Georgiou said the technology had been a significant enabler, but systems still required supervision to ensure a good experience for the end user.
Her central message was that securing more infrastructure for the available capital had to go hand in hand with serving drivers and building confidence among those still considering the transition.
“We have to serve the existing population, but how do we give that confidence as a wider industry for those other people who are on the fence who have those questions?”
