Our Founder and CEO, Jason Appelbaum, recently sat down with Rue Phillips from the EV Chat podcast to discuss the current state of the EV industry, EverCharge’s patented SmartPower technology, the importance of taking a data-driven approach to the buildout of critical charging infrastructure, and more. It was a great conversation, and we’ve compiled a high-level summary of some of the key topics discussed.

Rue: What sets EverCharge apart from other EV charging companies?

Jason: We’re a holistic solutions provider, as opposed to parts and pieces. As part of being a holistic provider, we’ve come up with innovative solutions to fairly complex problems – connectivity being one of them.

Connectivity is a huge problem plaguing the EV charging industry, and there are lots of different ways to solve it. The way we solve it is one of EverCharge’s key differentiators: our load management technology, SmartPower, is baked right into the charging stations themselves. We utilize a mesh network to propagate data throughout the charging ecosystem, connecting everything together so our partners don’t need to rely on full cellular connectivity throughout the parking garage. You just need it at some point in the garage to act as a relay into the outside world.

Rue: You’ve spoken a lot about how we need to start thinking of public charging as just one piece of the EV ecosystem. Can you expand on that?

Jason: People continue to draw an apples-to-apples comparison between gas stations and charging stations, and it does us all a disservice to think that maintaining the old fueling paradigm is the only way forward.

We’ve seen a good amount of public and private investment go to build these charging “hubs” that in many ways mimic the gas station model. In certain situations, there is substantial value to being able to top up with a fast charge. Fast charging hubs are important from a road trip perspective or when you’re out and about at locations with short dwell times. But from an economics perspective, I'm not sure the value is being correctly measured. A huge amount of money should be going to multi-unit housing – where over one-third of the U.S. population lives – boosting up charging infrastructure where it makes sense. The cost per port is lower, but the affected population of who’s actually going to use it, is higher.

Rue: There continues to be an ongoing discussion about where and when to deploy DC fast charging vs. Level 2 (L2). What’s your take? Do you have a preference between the two?

Jason: I really like DC, and EverCharge has a great DC product, but I think L2 can do most of what we need as the world transitions to electric mobility. There are huge upsides to DC, but those upsides come at a cost. I’m a very data-driven person and EverCharge is a very data-driven company, so when the data says a location needs to have DC because of charging patterns – great. But the majority of the time, the data supports large banks of L2 infrastructure. For example, most of our fleet customers operate on large banks of L2 with DC for support.

We also need to be very, very mindful of the hardware we’re putting in the ground, in terms of its longevity and sustainability. Not only is deploying infrastructure that just gets thrown away in five years a waste of public and private dollars, it’s directly contrary to the supposed ethos of EV charging companies. As an industry, we’re actively working to combat climate change, and we need to live up to that mission.

To learn more, listen to the full episode below.