One of the biggest headaches of driving an electric car or EV, is finding a place to charge, especially when you're short on time or the plugs are all taken.
But what if your EV could get a charge the same way you get takeout?
It's like food delivery, but for your car battery.
Could this be the end of range anxiety or just the beginning of a whole new way to fill the tank?
Coming to you?
Live from beijing.
This is roundtable.
I'm he young for today's program?
I'm joined by steve hatherley and yushan is not here, but we do have yushun in the studio.
Good to have you here and first on today's show for all the ev owners or prospective ev owners listening out there.
Have you ever circled the block hunting for an open charging station, only to find it already taken?
Frustrating right?
Well, there's a game changer rolling in in china.
Tech companies are changing the playbook.
Instead of you driving to the charger, the charger drives to you.
Picture a mobile gas station, or better yet, the Uber Eats of EV charging.
Could this put an end to range anxiety and show us the future of driving?
And it's no surprise that this idea is coming from China.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology says the country built over 13 million EVs last year, keeping its crown as the world's top maker and seller for the 10th straight year.
Please walk us through what is this on-demand EV charging service?
Yeah, this is actually an quite innovative charging service model, conducted by some mobile charging vehicles and that vividly described as a door-to-door power delivery.
In this service, a mobile charging vehicle actively travels to the location of an EV to provide charging services and it functions much like a you said ordering food delivery, where users simply place an order via their mobile app or through a WeChat group and a charging attendant drives a mobile charging vehicle to that designated spot to charge their car, and it represents a shift from the traditional car finds charger model to the charger go find the car.
I mean, it sounds pretty good to me, right?
This is a really simple yet really cool idea.
I wouldn't.
This is why i'm not a great business person.
I wouldn't have had this idea in a million years.
But it totally makes sense because Whenever we talk about EVs, the topic always comes up about the anxiety of your battery dying right.
You're running out of juice.
So then the stress turns to where is the nearest power station?
Where can I go charge the car?
And you've got the issue of oh, if I know where it is, but I get there and it's already being used.
Then what am I going to do?
Because I've got a busy schedule that day.
I don't have time for this. this solves all of those problems.
And is it going to be expensive?
This is something that everyday people can easily use without having to even think about the fees.
Yeah, actually, this service is in its market expansion phase, so it's quite new.
So some of these companies are offering a lot of discounts and like vouchers, something like that.
And many of them operating this mobile charging vehicles typically charge according to the price of fixed charging piles in that area.
So basically, some of these charging stations.
So some services are offered discounted price periods, and one example is the door-to-door charging service in a community complex in Beijing.
Electricity costs one yuan, that's about 014 dollars per kilowatt hour, and it's Not that cheap because generally the residential electricity rate is about half yuan per kilowatt hour and sometimes at night it can be as low as 03 yuan per kilowatt hour.
So then you are yeah, expensive is a relative term, isn't it?
And you might hear that and you think oh, one yuan per hour, 14 cents an hour per kilowatt hour, excuse me um, but if you compare that to the regular charging prices in residential communities, that's double.
So, even though they're in their beginning stages and yeah, offering discounts and vouchers and things like that, and the goal there, I assume, would be to get as many people on board as possible, get as many customers as interested as possible.
But that might be a barrier if it's going to be charging double from your regular charging station.
Yeah.
And it's definitely a golden rule that expensive or not is subjective and relative.
As a owner of a traditional gas powered car, one yuan sounds really quite cheap, yeah.
And so i mean yeah again, it's a.
It's a relative, isn't it yeah?
And let me also just flag the uh major advantage of ev.
That is, when it comes to charging, when it comes to powering the car, it is just so much more affordable than the traditional gasoline powered cars.
And also the way to place the order it's as simple, as you guys mentioned going on an app and placing the order.
And then, you know, in China, digital payment is everywhere.
So it's just easy peasy like that.
Just use WeChat Pay or Alipay and then you can seal the deal.
I don't know if you have to meet them or not actually, because you order through the app and then they know your location, right?
They know the vehicle's location.
They know the license plate number.
Of course, they have your contact information.
I don't know...
If it's as simple as placing the order and then they come and do it and you don't even have to interact with anyone, or if you have to go down to the vehicle and meet them.
I'm not sure how that part works.
If your car has that kind of intelligent feature that you can open that door pot remotely, then you can totally just do it at your home.
And when they arrive, they'll tell you and then you turn it on.
It kind of makes sense.
I mean, the price, yeah, it's more expensive than your traditional charging stations.
But if you think of it this way right, if you go to a restaurant and pick up food yourself, you're not going to pay as much as if you have it delivered to your house, because of course, you have to pay for a delivery fee.
If you think of it that way, and the convenience is exactly the same, isn't it?
Having food brought to your home and having electricity brought to your vehicle. it does make sense.
And it, and it could be very well worth it.
As a matter of fact, you should, and I were chatting before the show and I thought, Oh well, you know, are people really going to be using this so much because they come and they charge, to give you a full charge or whatever?
And you brought up a very good point.
You should, and you said, no, maybe not a full charge.
This is for when you're in an emergency situation, right?
Like you're.
You got to the office and you realize, Oh my gosh, I forgot to charge the car last night, or something.
Then they'll give you they can come and give you enough energy so that you can get to the charging station.
And that's a great point too.
That is a very good point but sorry, can I just quickly jump in and mention one point, that is, I don't know how really useful this will be, in the sense that for most EV owners, when they're driving just from home to work and back and forth, or when they're in the city, actually range anxiety might not be all that big a problem, or the difficulty in finding a sufficient charger isn't all that a big problem, because when you're in the city you're not traveling long distance.
But for drivers or for EV owners, The real headache is when you are planning a long trip, when you are going from one province to another, when you are talking about maybe hundreds of kilometers that you're traveling.
That's when you might. find great difficulty in charging.
And if this kind of mobile charging service can be in place, I think that could be useful.
But can you find this kind of service when you're kind of out in the middle of nowhere or you're on the highway?
And You're really desperate, long distance travel and can't find a place to charge.
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that these companies have taken into account.
The location, where can you actually... order the energy to your car.
And some of the companies, they've deployed dozens of mobile charging vehicles in residential communities, older residential communities, business districts and you just talked about it.
If you're out on the highway.
They've deployed some vehicles out at certain highway service areas in Beijing and Shanghai and Henan and other regions too, which is a really smart idea, because that's a legit concern that you just brought up right.
Within the city, okay, maybe not so much of an issue.
Out on the highways, it might be even more popular.
And also in older residential areas.
It's actually one of the pain points of many EV owners, because in that area it's probably it's hard to find a place that can install your personal like charge and pile, and that is why when, or you have to go through all of the paperwork to get one thing installed and then that's why a lot of people are actually using this kind of service as their like daily charging routine.
So, but of course, as we mentioned, it can be relatively more and more expensive, and but when we're talking about, let's say, first of all, of course, it's an ev.
So when because i remember, when you like you need to fill a gas car, it costs you for like around 250 yuan easily yeah, and that for like the whole to to, to fill up your tank right but um, for this kind of ev um, when you're using this kind of service, it's like fully charged, it probably going to cost you like less than 100 yuan, even though you're using a little bit more expensive service, and it's kind of the kind of premium is Accepted by some of these users.
Yes, but it takes longer to charge, right when it comes to electric vehicles Oh, they're using that kind of fast charging services.
So mostly they will charge your car in within one hour.
Yeah well, I'm not here to promote traditional gasoline cars, but it takes less than a minute to charge, but it's far more expensive and And it's using traditional fossil fuel, which we don't like, and we want a better future for our planet.
That's interesting about the communities.
I didn't think about that either.
So some of the perhaps newer apartment complexes would be able to host one of these charging stations quite easily.
But within the older communities or complexes...
Yeah, you have to build it, right?
Yeah.
So you have to get all that paperwork done to get it in there, if that's even possible at all.
Well, with the newer residential neighborhoods, you need to set up your own thing as well.
And I don't think the process is all that different.
But with traditional neighborhoods, especially if you don't have your own fixed neighborhood parking space, then of course charging is a real headache.
And we're seeing that companies are jumping in to address that sort of point.
And also that's a good business opportunity, right?
So why do you see that this new form of mobile EV charging is taking place?
What issues does it try to address?
Yeah, we mentioned some of these already.
Public charging piles are often insufficient or unevenly distributed.
As Guam Daily reported, the pile-to-vehicle ratio of 1 to 3 in China as of May 2025.
The imbalance between vehicles and also chargers highlights this.
The need for more charging solutions, as we mentioned, or we talked about it before, we have more and more charging solutions now, even like the battery swap kind of solution.
Right?
And now we have developing more ideas or solutions.
Right now, with over 100000 annual vehicle runs out of battery due to charging issues.
So, which means there is still a strong demand.
Instant replenishment demand right now.
Yeah, one to three pile or recharging station to car ratio or vehicle ratio.
Yeah, they need, they need more, don't they?
Yeah, so figuring out Different ways to get that instant replenishment.
And people seem to be on board with this.
There was a report from the Guangming Daily that showed that middle income families, ride hailing and commercial vehicle owners are more receptive to this kind of idea that time cost outweighs monetary costs.
So the time is more valuable. than the price they have to pay for this.
Meaning what they're saying there is that they are willing to pay a certain premium for a door-to-door type of supercharging service.
60% of ride-hailing drivers said that they would be willing to pay for such a thing.
That's has to be taken into consideration too.
You say, well, yeah, I can just go to the charging station, sure.
But even that for busy people you think about I don't know what times of day, like morning or nighttime, but traffic is involved.
And if it's just within your means financially to have somebody come and charge your car for you, it's just.
It's a great service that people obviously are willing to pay for.
More people can or want to own EVs.
And this poor charging service is hardly a problem only in China.
It's happening worldwide.
And could you guys give us a recap on you know what are the biggest problems that in different corners of the world are they facing when it comes to owning the EV?
Yeah, I think it kind of depends on where you are, right?
So in the United States there are places where it's not really that much of an issue, but there are places where it absolutely is an issue.
There are drivers.
There was an example of a guy in the news.
His name is Ron Matherly, similar to my last name, in America. and he's had frustrating charging experiences.
He said that these supposedly fast chargers did not perform as advertised.
According to that customer, he said no.
And it's also very expensive as well.
Canada, there was a 2020.
We have a problem with this in Canada, actually.
So they did an analysis back in 2021.
It was commissioned by the Natural Resources Canada Group.
And they estimated at that time that they needed 52,000 charging stations by this year.
So four years ago, that was the prediction for this year.
They revised that target last year.
But as of this year, there were only 35,000 stations.
So they were 17,000 short of their initial goal.
And there are certain parts of Canada where you can find them much more easily available um than others, and then in america again, it just depends on where you are um.
In Los Angeles, the number of permits for EV chargers has risen from 593 in 2020 to 2768 in 2024.
They have seven consecutive years of increases, according to data from the L.A.
Department of Building and Safety.
And in the last decade, nearly 12,000 total permits for chargers have been issued.
But then I was reading a story about New York City and they were saying oh, there's just not enough.
So I think it just kind of depends on where you are, whether the needs are being met or not.
Yeah, the whole market is showing this kind of trend.
Lauren McDonald, chief analyst at Charging Data from a firm Paran, noted that concerns about public charging are one of the single biggest reasons consumers do not adopt EVs.
So, and also because we have so many discussions that you know, despite China have built the world's largest EV charging infrastructure network and it is getting bigger and bigger, of course, and continuously accelerating charger construction.
Transitioning from sufficient to user-friendly still requires significant effort, because some of these news are still showing that, even though we have a lot of charging stations, you still need to get into that station and wait for a long queue, for probably even like you need to charge it for one hour, but you need to wait for four hours.
Yeah, which is something that you don't get.
Again, we're not promoting, you know, gasoline at all, but just it's something that you don't really see at a gas station, where you have to line up and wait for a super, super long time to fill your car.
But also, can I just offer a caveat here?
That quote came from, I believe, spring festival period in China, meaning that's And also it's on the highway.
So when you've got, you know, so many cars trying to get home during the biggest festival for the Chinese people.
And these are the only few locations, maybe in 100 kilometers.
And so many electric cars will need to charge.
So that's why there's this massive queue.
But if it's any other day, then it's not that big a deal.
But this is a big problem when it comes to EV usage, right?
I was going to say there's a lot of EVs on the road here in China.
They estimate it reached 31.4 million. by the end of 2024.
But it's interesting, isn't it?
Because it's a case of, well, you can't have one without the other.
You can't have the cars without the charging stations.
And of course, you wouldn't have the charging stations if you didn't have the vehicles.
So the numbers need to increase kind of alongside each other.
You can't have one far outnumbering the other.
Um, ottawa is is dealing with this as well.
Ottawa, the capital of canada.
Um, they have a policy in place.
Starting next year, the city of ottawa will require that 20 of all new light duty vehicles sold be zero emission vehicles.
20 now, that's a, you know, pretty humble number, but That benchmark is set to climb annually and their goal is to reach 100 by 2035.
So if your city has goals, if your government has goals of reaching zero emissions for your vehicles on the road, then you have to provide the places for people.
If you don't, people are going to think, oh, I don't... Why would I buy that?
It's going to be really inconvenient for me to charge it.
And it's going to be very inconvenient almost every day.
Yeah.
That's very interesting.
This is one of those examples of you know, the chicken or the egg should come first, kind of thing.
Because with car owners, if you it takes some persuasion for them to switch to electric or hybrid and If you don't have the necessary infrastructure, people aren't going to switch.
But things are interesting in China though, because we've had these very compelling and powerful sort of preferential policies for EV ownership in the last decade or so.
So when...
The EV can come with a number plate, which is difficult to get for big cities and having these really favorable policies in China, actually it's easily persuaded a lot of people to switch to the green number plates in China.
If you drive, you know, you'll be able to spot these EVs easily on the road.
And also some of the fanciest features, they happen on the EV before on the traditional cars.
Yesterday when I was driving, I saw, this is a feature that I always wanted, but traditional cars don't have, that is on top of the number plate at the rear end of your car, there's this sleek screen that has a Pokemon cartoon run through that thin screen and says something like, have a good day or anything.
Like you can...
I suppose you customize.
Yeah, you can customize that.
Oh, it's like a digital screen on the back.
Yeah.
And there was a digital cartoon character of Pokemon running through it.
And I was like, that was just so cool.
Sometimes when I.
When I switch lanes too abruptly, I sort of want to say sorry to the guy or gal driving behind me.
But yeah, with my traditional car, I don't have that feature.
I'm very jealous of that.
Well, you could text them in real time.
Yeah, you can.
Sorry.
Or say something nasty.
No, I wouldn't do that.
I wouldn't do that.
So around the world, what has the industry done to fix all those problems that we've mentioned?
Actually, some of these companies are trying to solve this problem through another direction of the trail.
You know, investment by large corporations and retailers like major automakers like Mercedes-Benz Ford, GM and Nissan, along with large retailers such as Walmart, are building extensive fast charging networks.
And they view this as a significant business opportunity.
And also strategic siting is the thing that they are doing.
Charging stations are often located next to Starbucks, shopping malls, or convenience stores.
And the convenience stores industry in particular, believes it has an advantage due to existing locations and facilities, like restrooms and goods that meet drivers' needs.
I was reading about this from the American market, saying that combining things like grocery shopping with car charging is a big potential market because it takes you about 45 minutes to an hour to go in and do your shopping and get your food and while you're doing that then you can have your car charging at the same time.
Fast food restaurants I was reading about that too.
Right, you park your car at the fast food restaurant, go in with your kids or whatever, spend about 45 minutes to an hour and in there and charge your car at the same time.
It's a good idea.
It's the combination of things that take an hour, right?
Maybe large gym parking lots could have some EV charging stations too.
Yeah, it's almost like you've got a captive audience, then why not make best use of their time and just charge their car, because they're probably going to need it?
And what I find interesting here is that initially I used to think, oh, so what are the EV makers?
So the automobile makers. thinking to improve the situation.
But it just proved that I've just been too narrow minded.
Just look at this.
Steve, you mentioned gym uh, gyms or uh, what would you?
Supermarkets you know, and uh, these are all retailers that could really jump on this bandwagon and see if they can also provide the service, this convenience, and make a buck along the way.
What about here in china?
Um, we've seen that ev uh is is huge and some of the brightest innovations.
A lot of it is happening here in China.
So we've been talking about this manned charging vehicles that get to your doorstep and charge your car.
And we also have these unmanned driving charging piles. or robot chargers.
So, beyond these human-operated mobile charging vehicles, this industry is exploring some kind of these unmanned driving charging piles that integrate charging with robotics.
And this kind of technology requires sophisticated energy storage, artificial intelligence, and also autonomous driving capabilities to enable functions like auto obstacle avoidance and precise parking and also they will i i watched that video of this these these you know unmanned charging vehicles they go there is a small smaller car and then that goes to in front of your car and your the slot will open and then that specific gun charging gun will get into your car and charge it all automatically oh it's like r2d2 and cp30 from star wars the little thing comes from it charges your car yeah that's cool yeah that's going to be really that's going to need exact precision isn't it this might help reduce the cost though um see that as a good thing or a bad thing but if you have unmanned vehicles autonomous vehicles then obviously whatever company that is you're not going to have the labor costs associated with that so that might help bring the cost down for customers and hopefully a more futuristic solution involves wireless charging technology i've seen some of these news that Maybe in the future when you have that length of highway, when your car getting to that highway, your car will get wirelessly charged. allowed electric vehicles to charge while driving through magnetic induction from wires embedded beneath that road and receivers in the cars.
Charged while driving.
I wonder if they'll ever have.
You know how you can get that external battery charge for your phone?
Every shop and restaurant you go to here.
I wonder if they'll have those for the car someday.
You keep it in the trunk or something, just like an external battery pack.
You can just plug it in if you need in an extreme emergency situation.
And that way it will consume more electricity.
That is also true.
I told you I wasn't a good businessman.
Yeah.
Okay, that idea probably will not be developed.
We'll keep brainstorming that one.
And one other thing, I'm not sure if it's already happening here in China, but we love standards.
In this country, we love to standardize everything, have the rules and have each company meet the rules.
And supposedly I mean the advantage of that is well in this context, then every car doesn't need to go try to find a different or its designated style of charging, but just find one and you're in charge for an hour or less and you're good to go.
Maybe we need more standards in this area.
Well, also just looking at the US it's.
It was quite interesting when I saw this that apparently Tesla has opened its national fast charging network to other brands, and we know how big of a what do you call this concession it is.
Because for private companies, and as big as one like Tesla, I wonder what kind of agreements or fee structure has been debated over?
So it's willing to do this?
Because private companies would want some kind of scarcity and attract customers to its own brand, right?
So what about this um, you know, standard versus industry kind of debate?
Do you have some thoughts on that?
Well, the collaborations may be surprising maybe not, i'm not sure, but they seem to be happening.
Tesla, as you mentioned um, there's another company called iona.
Um, What they're doing it's a joint venture of eight car companies and they're developing a kind of a similar concept and collaborating with a couple of different gas stations to And their chains to add chargers at their properties.
So it seems like they would be in direct competition with each other, right?
The gas stations and the charging stations.
But they're working together there.
And they have plans to install 30,000 or more charging ports across North America by 2020.
Five years time.
So yeah, maybe some surprising companies working together, but that's got to be seen as a good thing.
And I think this is quite a good business strategy.
You know, when they are building a lot of these charging stations worldwide or like nationwide, it is, of course, first of all, benefiting their consumers.
That is a good point.
That is attracting more users to buy their cars.
And another one is that it is benefiting some of these smaller manufacturers, because some of them are not building their own brands of like charging piles and they're like actually actively using other brands piles, and that is how they are like quietly or gradually growing into a bigger market share and that is how the market is making up.
So i think it is a good strategy.
And this is so interesting when we talk about the ev industry.
It's part automobile, very traditional.
Part of it is like tech companies, you know, and it's very futuristic.
It just reminds me of the, of the philosophy behind, let's say, apple's ios system versus android's system.
One is very closed walled garden.
That's apple, but you can see lawsuits all over the world where that wall might be chipped down and there's everybody else using the android system and i think in the world of ev charging.
It's not like a direct mapping of that, but there might be some lessons and similarities being drawn.
And we're seeing more solutions like Huawei's Harmony OS, maybe have another competitor in the industry.
Yeah, well, having more competition usually is a good thing for the customers.
Door-to-door charging may sound like a stopgap solution solution, but it's also a glimpse of perhaps, how the car industry is reinventing itself, from mobile vans to wireless roads and charging robots.
The question isn't just how do we power evs, but how do we design a system where the power could come to us.
This shift could redefine what driving means in the decades ahead or not, and we'll wait and see.
But Roundtable will always bring you the latest on such issues.
