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Finally, charge Point is announcing the EV industry's first cut resistant charging cable, as well as an alarm system that's as it attempts to deter theft and vandalism. It expects the cables to be available for licensed by the middle of this year and joining us now to talk more about that as charge Points CEO Rick Wilmer. Rick, great to get you on the program. I want to ask how big of a problem this was in the first place.
I mean, I know a lot of people are disappointing when they pull up to an EV charger and it doesn't work. Is that happening a lot more often? And is it due to vandalism?
Yeah, it definitely has been a problem that has been pervasive and getting worse. I think the rumor out there is that as copper prices go up, thieves believe they can make money stealing charging cables and taking them into recycling centers. And seen hundreds and hundreds of chargers get vandalized, and I bet industry wide it's in the thousands. Seems to be concentrated in different areas. It surges in certain parts of the country and then builds up again in
another part of the country. We've also seen it with some of our customers in Europe where they've got charging cables of chests to chargers. So it's been a real problem. It's been very frustrating.
You know.
One reason the vandalism exists also is to get access to that copper that's underneath the surface there. And I want to pull it back to the price of copper because interestingly enough, it has been back on the rise after a fairly steep decline at the end of last year. I'm wondering what this means for you in terms of pricing, in terms of what your inputs are costing right now.
Yeah, good question.
But quite frankly, the cost of copper as part of the overall cost of a charging station is not all that significant. And I think a lot of the thieves aren't that intelligent, and you know, here a rumor or see something that makes them think they can make money, and it turns out there's just not that much value there.
I want to talk a little bit more about reliability. Of course, if your chargers are being vandalized, that would be a point of reliability becoming an issue. But let's also talk about software, like Matt mentioned, making sure that these chargers work every single time for all types of evs. How much time do you spend on the software making sure that that actually is the case.
That is our single biggest area of investment in innovation. Like many other industries, software is going to eat the world at EV charging, So we spend a lot of time not only making charging reliable through software making it easy to find, use and pay for charging, but also to develop all kinds of interesting new features that our customers can take advantage of to not only drive utilization of charging at their institutions, but also to drive their poor business.
Rick, I wonder about EV growth.
There had been clearly a big backlash, and with Donald Trump coming into office, you may think, well, he's going to, you know, remove the credit and slow EV sales even further. On the other hand, Elon Musk has purchased himself a place at the table here.
Do you expect EV growth to pick up.
Again or is it going to continue to slow in twenty twenty five.
No, I don't think it's going to slow at all. In fact, Bloomberg New Energy just forecasted earlier this week twenty eight percent growth for EV's in North America this year and thirty three percent in Europe. And I think what's really driving that and it overcomes you know, government incentives or lack of is really market forces. And I think what's held EV's back in the past on one side of the equations just the lack of selection of vehicles.
So we're going to see dozens of new EV models introduced this year, you know, different types of vehicles, lower price points, and I think that's really going to help adoption.
And then on the charging side, you know, we continue to grow our networks, we continue to deploy more chargers and innovations like we announced today around making chargers more reliable, but preventing vandalism is going to help the other side of the equation, you know, where drivers are concerned about finding a charger and when they do find one, making sure that it works.
Is it possible, Well, I mean it's possible to charge Tesla at charge point station, But do you have a significant number of Tesla owners charging at your stations?
Yes, a lot.
If you walk into our parking lot, there's probably more Tesla's out here charging than there are any other makeup vehicle, just because they're so prevalent on the road.
What do you think this means for Tesla? You know a lot of people are talking about Elon Musk's closeness to the President elect at the moment. Do you think that that's going to give him an advantage relative to other ED companies out there, especially because they're already very much in the lead when you think about the standalone D companies.
Yeah, it's so.
Hard to know.
I really believe that what drives EV sales is the superiority of an electric vehicle versus an internal combustion vehicle. And again, like you mentioned earlier, as more models become available that meet the needs of different types of drivers, that require different kinds of vehicles, and at a variety of price points, the market's going to grow. I think they're just a superior product to the internal combustion vehicle.
Rick.
As you know, I have a podcast called Hot Pursuit with Hannah Elliott where we talk basically about our love for cars, and there's some exciting evs coming out. I think Hannah's going to drive a Porsche Macon EV next week.
What are you.
Most excited about in terms of product offering in twenty twenty five.
Wow, there's so much coming. I think the Mcon is an exciting vehicle. I'm excited to see some of the Slantis vehicles come out. There's just a lot coming that I'm excited about. By the way, Matt big fan of the podcast. I listened to that pretty regularly.
Well, I really appreciate it.
Rick, thanks so much for joining us on Bloomberg Television as well. Charge Points CEO Rick Wilmer. For more on all things auto. Go ahead and check out my podcast with Hannah Elliott. It is called Hot Pursuit and you can get it on Bloomberg dot com or anywhere you get your podcast.
I'll be listening to the Maccon episode. Yeah, that's the car I want.