Episode 14 : Liz Allan and John Curtis - EVs, Innovation, The EV Café community and the greater good

so on today's podcast recording we i am lord let me just stop again right

there you are

sorry tom

thanks for calling

sorry tom good bye and

m

right okay let me go

yeah

let me start again right okay this is because of my four and a half hour sleep there you go right so on electric evolution today i have john curtis and i'm going to do the clapping

m

from b well thank you for joining

yeah

me john

oh

so so you are director of rations at the v cafe and we've kind of we met last week

m

which was amazing

oh oh

and you're so tall and i felt so small and i don't think i'm small normally but i felt

these

very

things

small

are these things are all relative so i'm six

so

four and i'm standing next to dean hedge from the who's six six you've got jordan

oh

middleton who was there from interval the recruitment part we have and he's six seven and built like a brick shed you know he's got a leg like i've got a torso s

yeah

just these people are enormous what's wrong with them

honestly

yeah

just see and i was with chris hunter who i

oh

worked with and he's like six one and i was just like oh my god it's the first time in a while i've actually smelt smelt

oh

i felt small smelt that's totally wrong get it the

this

right

could

way

be

around

a long podcast people this really

it

could

could be it could be i know exactly this is what happens it's a monday

uh

this is still where we go an it's monday

uh

in december

oh

and it's all going all wrong

oh

but

yes

not oh yeah so now then you originally worked in law

yeah

how the what is your journey to get to

m

where you are now

okay

from you no kind of working with vcafetam

i was thirty seven years old and i had a mid life crisis and the mid life

yeah

crisis was i need to do what i need to do in my life for those previous thirty seven years i've done what i was told and when i was seventeen years old i went to my father and i said dad he was a police constable and i said to him dad want to study law i want to be embarrassed and he said that is never happening as long as i'm alive because

okay

they are a

yeah

shower of sharks and you will end up turning a police constable inside out in a witness box and that is never going to happen with my son go and get a proper job twenty years later i had a bit of a moment and thought hang on sick i wanted that for me i needed that as an expression of who i was and i didn't do well at school because i played rugby and that was all i cared about so as as an adult i said go back to study and i'm going to do an open university course

it

which i did and i passed really well and qualified for a place at university of edinburgh and i did my lord degree at edinburgh at the age of thirty seven until i was forty one

wow

and so i wanted to do something with it and i've been working for the scottish

m

court service in a reasonably junior position and somebody said oh the director general for justice is looking for somebody to do something and i was like wow director general yes didn't care what the job

see

was

that let's do that

and so i went and did that anyway he retired after a couple of years and i've done the job and it was great and he said okay two choices you can either work for the new director general or you can do a job you'd enjoy and i said right okay job i'd enjoy please and he said okay what do you want to do and i said i really love cars of you got anything with cars thinking i might go to scottish government fleet or that kind i think and he came back and he said we've got this legislation it's kind

m

me to go and do a test drive of their brand new ness and leaf so i went and sat in this car drove it around port for a little while and went this is the future i want to work in transport this is so good yes so i went and did the job and i became head of sustainability for the scottish government sustainable transport

oh

and i ended up doing all of their transport policies around bio fuels hydrogen

a

vehicles and key to this was electric vehicle so we want some money from the government three million quid to put in the first charging infrastructure

yeah

and that was me i was hooked

yeah so

i

you

was a

were such an early doctor writing down early a doctor here you were just

ye

so hang on so that was twenty that was twenty ten

so my dad you'll realize that i have a close relationship with my dad and it's close but challenging some days because he was a very

oh

and still is a very strong minded human being my dad said to me

at

if you want to be a success at something get in to something new at the ground level and make it yours this stuck with

yeah

me and i realized as i was driving around portugal that this was new this was going to be enormous because of the impact of emissions and i just thought i've got to do this this is really important and so

m

got in at the ground level with something that mattered and would make a difference and now i'm talking to you oh

no oh my god that's i'm just overwhelmed by the length

oh

of time you've been in this industry you know it's amazing so so how how did you end up ting the v cafe

yeah

team what happened what was

oh

how did that happen

black magic

yeah

it was dark it was

yeah

really very simple so lock down happened march twenty third twenty twenty and suddenly the industry shut down so nobody bought car nobody sold cars nobody spoke about cars it all stopped and johnny berry who was doing a job with reno at the time he reached out to a couple of his colleagues and said we should just jump on a team's call and we should just chat and just keep in touch and make sure we're all okay which started

m

and there were two or three people that joined and one of those colleagues reached out to me and said we have this chat on a wednesday we just kind of staying in touch we think you'd be a bit of fun would you come on we know you don't know much but you know you're all right

ah

and i said yeah

oh

okay i'll do it and i

a

joined the call and there was me paul kirby sarah slow and johnny berry and this this guy called mat kisiok who unfortunately he was like the fifth beetle didn't quite make it and went on to

yeah

do other things and so sarah paul johnny and i started to have these conversations and we reached out to our networks and just said we're having a ball were talking about eve come and talk to us come and have a chat and we got wenty thirty people on a call and we're like wow and over the week and we were doing one of these every week for two hours on a wednesday

m

just chatting just shooting the breeze and we were using then we got past whatever the free limit was we need to

yeah

start paying for it so the four of us started to stick our hands in our pockets to pay for zoom so that we could keep talking and we paid twenty quid a week get a license and it grew and it grew and we got to five hundred and we're paying a hundred and fifty pounds for a license every month to do this thing

what

and we thought

my god

we need somebody who's got do let's get sam

yeah

clark on the show

is that how it happened

so so sam sam

m

join brought his massive wallet with him and he said what do you need

yeah

and off we went and so we grew and grew and grew

m

and i came up one day and said i think we could do something commercially here i think there's a business here

hm

where we could continue to do our day jobs but we could run this more like a proper business and the guy said yeah okay and we started patron asking if people would pay us all amount each month to support what we were doing and basically pay for the zoom license

m

and we were overwhelmed and we started to get ridiculous amounts of money from individuals who were so kind so believably kind and one of them was kate terrell who at the time worked for my energy and kate said you're brilliant would like

m

to do something with you can we explore a commercial elationship and they were our first sponsor and they paid us some money to promote what they do and how they do it that

yeah

was that was it and we knew people in the industry we reached out and we said we've got like a thousand people who follow us do you want to kind of join the party and they were like we'll have some of that

oh

and before long we had our coresponsors and our audiences grew what we realized we had somethin very special we had chemistry between the five

do

of us which can't explain because i didn't like sam when i first met him i thought he was an arrogant pig

does he know that

yes he absolutely knows and he told me i was the same he

that's

didn't like

good

me either

yeah

sarah i've known but didn't

m

realize how intelligent she is i just thought she was a bit of fluff that kind of came on and went oh eve's lovely policy

oh

and actually

it

honestly

um

i did i didn't think she had depth

m

i didn't think she had the quality that she's got she's phenomenally clever brilliant

she

and such a great

sarah

presenter

now

sense of humor and the reason i say this is that i'm very guilty of judging people on face value you know you see something and you go now not for me and

m

over the years with the cafe what i've

m

learned is that if you open your eyes and you open your mind and you open your heart you can discover some great things and electric vehicles are the same we all come at things from position of prejudice and

m

we say i like some things i don't like others i'm comfortable with i'm not comfortable with that and actually when i started to stop and seek to understand and i know i've talked an awful but that's why i'm here if i seek to understand i can challenge myself my fears my prejudices and learn something and vs are

excellent

that thing for me so people have learned about people but i've learned about that this v space is about community it's not about the technology is not really about health the cargoes or how good the charging infrastructure is those things matter but people

m

make stuff work they make things better people

m

often nominal so the cafes become this community of light minded people we've now got something in a region of fifty five thousand people in our network we have way over hundred thousand engagements every single month through social media along with the events we do the webinars their work place days that we do special days where we go in and we help your work forced to understand we do loads of stuff but the most important thing the human beings we connect with

absolutely i was i was going to say i said this to you before that when when we met at the v show last week it was it was it was so good but not not only that every buddy was just so warm who i met and actually it was funny i was kind of going to different events and things and i've not been a lot since the end of lock down but actually

m

it was just it was

oh

just so welcoming everybody was talking to you know everybody was and happy to chat men obviously there's a reason why the people on the stands at there you know they're there to kind of you promote their products but i found that it was just it was just so lovely and just war and yeah it made a difference i really enjoyed it

yeah

i really really did

i'm glad about that because that illustrates what the industry is when i started this ten and twelve years ago you couldn't get two charging companies in the same room at the same time to talk about anything they were a nightmare fighting with each other i'm the best your rubbish now what we realize is is a bigger greater good here and it's worth

m

talking about we can collaborate can move forward together

m

and i think that's really the key for the world is that we do collaborate this isn't just talk lots of industry say yeah let's let's collaborate but now e v s become far more than just the vehicle far more than just the charging infrastructure they have become renewable energy how you generate it store it

oh

use

yeah

it they've become software and systems processes and people complex as anything but actually still

hm

really simple at its core so it's a phenomenal world

the nconnectivity i wrote a blog about it last week in fact to ve written a newsletter i'm going put out today probably normally do it a couple of weeks later but the interconnectivity of everything was just for me it was mine blow in and as myself and chris mc colleague were walking round

m

i've kind of i've kind of been nosing around

ah

for a little you know for a few

oh

months and actually i could see the kind of the light go on in his mind you know it's like somebody was talking to him about i think we were talking to one company it was about the lamp post charging

m

you know

m

and actually just the fact that the innovation in there because it's it's electricity that's already

yeah

there and

m

why would you not use it to charge you know from a lamp you've got a lamp post on streets on all street most streets anyway

oh

you know and just things like that and just he was going around and there were certain things that i was like oh yeah he's just like wow

yeah

and it is quite mind blowing because if people haven't been around this industry you know and like kind of delvin quite quickly

oh

and was you know i kind of done quite a lot of research on this but but for chris it was quite quite early for him

m

but yeah it's just it's just amazing the innovation out there we were both talking about innovation

m

so much because just we're just it's just leading the way to it totally different place isn't it

it isn't and i think what's key here is to remember that the market isn't always the most innovative so those lamp post charges

m

i saw seven years ago in berlin and i was there with glasgow city council and a number of other

m

organization s looking at how berlin charges lamp post charging is second nature that they have seventy

hm

two different charge point operators for berlin alone

i me

this was then so goodness only knows what it is now

yeah

but as a customer you would never know that because you just rock up to a charger you have one app which you use and that

yeah

will essentially allow you to charge they take a scoop off the top

m

tiny amount of money for each charge that has undertaken

m

but you as a customer just have that one app you charge you pay them they make sure that the supplier gets their money job done all the complexity behind the system gone in the u k we've still got multiple different networks with multiple arf d cards with multiple apse with different ways of paying magnus

m

innovation is out there and what's really key is that we all have experience in the cafe we all have experience of our own market but we have experience world

m

wide so we're lucky enough paul goes off all over the world looking at different charging infestructure different solutions for fleet for van so that he's able to bring to the table the very latest in innovation from around the world so we're getting to the point in the vkfawhere we're benefiting from that wide knowledge and hoping to be able to inform and influence and engage and drive change because we know it exists and works swear

and it's the same kind of was recording something recently about about how people view change

m

you know and not everybody is you

m

know because of what i do because i work working

m

in business improvement and it's not it's not always

yah

easier for people i think what you're doing is kind of were both very very much singing from the same hymn sheet here that actually that has to be an education this this the stuff that you're doing the work that you're doing is education and big education education piece i can't get my teeth

uh

in today education piece

yeah

but this is you know if i can do a little bit to help people as well you know i haven't got the influence that you have but hopefully you know

yeah

i can get i can start getting us you know other people to understand who may be not ve not even thought about these things

let me

you know

let

because it's what we need to do isn't it

if i may i met as part of my job with the scottish government a man called olivia peter he was the head of the global head of nisan ah

m

and he was based in europe in paris and i went to see the v show and he was there now this man i was lowly civil servant and he was a massive massive figure head in the market place and i was lucky enough to be on the stage with him and i said to him olivia we need a champion we need an enthusiast we need somebody who can be a figure head for vs in scotland

m

would it be you and he said to me john i want you to answer me something why is it not you

my

and i said because i'm a lonely civil

m

servant and i put the policy in and that's not what i do he said why why is it not you

m

and that really stuck with me to the point where i can bring all the detail back and he was right because anybody can do what i do anybody can do what you do they just

m

have to believe and there was antony hopkins who recent he said what was the best advice you were given on a film set and he said i had a director one day who came to me and he said antony for this role i need you to do three things believe believe and believe and that was the best advice you've ever had

m

i believe that what i'm doing is right i believe that what i'm doing is to the best of my ability and so there's not much that stops me i hear lots of people saying they can't that's fine henry ford if you believe you can or believe you can't you're probably right

oh yeah very much and the chemistry that you guys that the v cafe team have when

oh

you know this last week was the first time i actually saw you live on stage you know together and the energy and the chemistry that you've got is fabulous you know

kay

it's

m

kind of i don't know what i was whether i was expecting something different from when i've seen you on you tube and in linked in live

oh

but was it was just it was great and the way you kind of you personally i would say because on a bit of a journey

m

you know i don't know whether you know i don't know whether you

m

know i actually sat in the wrong auditorium to

oh

start off with and i was at my god where are they why they making

oh

these people up my god got the wrong place so i go to the front and i think you just literally started so i kind of snuck in you know

yeah

and hit at the front well you can't really hide at the front

uh

can you but you know so

yeah

so but actually that the energy that you that you gave to

m

everybody and that you know that the information is just there's just so much and

yeah

it just it makes it makes a difference to people

somebody once asked

it really

me

does

what was the thing that has made you most money in life and you know i've got my lord grey on the wall and i've got you now achieved not very much in my life but things i have achieved have been through hard work the most important thing i have his passion that has earned

yeah

me more money than anything else because lots of people go through the motions of life for a whole host of reasons and the you know they're hugely weighed down by challenges in their lives i don't have those things i'm extremely lucky i give a hundred percent to what i do you may like it you may hate it you you may think arrogant you may think idiot you think what you're like i don't

yeah

care i'm fifty seven years old i'm past caring what i care about is that i give the best

yeah

account of me that's all i've got my mom died eight years ago

m

of lung cancer and when i lost my mom i realized that she had me for a reason she had me to be the best me i can be and up to that point i hadn't been the best me i could be and in the last eight years i've given a hundred percent to making sure that i never let down the p all that i care about

yeah

don't always succeed but i do my best

m i know exactly what you say and we've had the you know i've lost both my parents as

yeah

well so so yeah yeah changes your view on life doesn't

yeah

it really

getting old is actually really good i'm really enjoying this this journey because i'm far less bothered by what other people think and that enables me to do things which previously i thought maybe i couldn't

right i suppose yeah i'm still learning that

s journey it's a

ah

journey

really

you know

yeah

the

absolutely

hardest part of any journey is that first step and you and i have both taken those steps were outside of our comfort zone there was a time i had no idea that my first day in the scottish government doing this sustainable transport thing i had a meeting with a director of a biofiels company to talk about the t f o so the renewable transport fuel obligation something i knew nothing about nothing not a thing

uh

i went to google i kid you now before this

m

meeting with our director and this guy from this outside company i went to google and put in biofules what the hell is that i have no idea and now i've learned what buyerfors are because i was interested enough to go find out

yeah same with me

oh

absolutely like i say i just i just dig in and i like to learn and i like to share it the same as you i like to share so if i learn something and i think interesting in other people ud be interested

a

i want to share it you know it makes a difference so what is your what is your aim long term for the for

oh

the v cafe then where where do you

m

where do you see it you know

m

where where would you want it to be

it's a really

big heading

it's a really great question because sir we had a director's meeting two weeks ago three weeks ago where we asked that precise question you know what's the end game

m

what are we aiming to do and honestly there's a personal one and there's there's a business one so from a business perspective we need better transports stems that work for people and our goal is to facilitate that in the best way we can so whether that's by championing great businesses by working with authorities to make systems better to brig the best technology to to the market place to be able to work with new market so we started a conversation with a lady in gana who's a

hm

mass if they have three and a half thousand vs

m

in a population of thirty one million people we have an opportunity to help influence a market place based on a conversation we had last week that matters it has scale it has scope and it will impact people's lives and if we can change somebody's life for the better so that they can go and work when they couldn't previously they can get to the hospital the library the doctor whatever it might be and we've done that through something

m

we've done happy day so that's the business objective is to keep doing what we do in this space and it may be you know you heard it here first it may be that it's not just vs it may be that there are a whole st of

m

solutions to a whole host of problems that we can

yes

help facilitate so water and plastic in water might be an area we look at solar panels

plastics

when turbine nurables new technologies that come to market we've not even invented yet who knows so that's the business

yeah

one from a personal perspective it's it's an interesting question my wife and i had a nversation last week and we agreed to ban word that i'm going to use probably for the last time retirement

go on

retirement

oh

is not happening so i'm seven and lots of

we

my peers are saying i've only got three years and then i can retire

m

excuse me i'm thinking right i've probably got another good twenty three years to ship

yeah

to achieve some stuff

yeah yeah

before i might slow down a bit it's not happening i know that my work s keeping me young occupied out of trouble because you know this thing

yeah yeah

so the objective with the v

yeah

cafes as long as i'm still relevant and as long as i'm adding

oh

some value to stick with it if there's ever a day when my friends my four colleagues say to me john go away then i will

ah

happily hand over somebody else who can wear these

yeah it'll never happen

okay

but it's never going to happen honestly

i'd love to be like bruce forsyth who kept going till the day died pretty much and

yeah

you know that's an arrogant thing to say good grief sorry but to have that longevity he was

i know

hugely

a

talented

yeah

and all that stuff but you know i just want to make people's lives a bit easier

yeah

simple things so i'm gonna quick example making hydrogen is a complex thing to do right no

hm

making hydrogen really

okay

really simple

is it

you get some

is it okay

water in a vessel

yeah

happens to be the mug these are available

oh

so you get water in a vessel you get electricity

right

ideally renewable electricity you pass

of course

that electricity through the water and what escapes is hydrogen it is that simple

my good

okay ere

okay

is the lesson of the day now i learned

oh thank you

i learned that from somebody who spent their lives in chemistry i didn't i don't know anything but i pull in all

other

these

than

things that other people know and i'm able to make them

yeah

really simple that's what i do

yeah

and as long as

yeah

i can keep doing that i'm happy

i think that's brilliant that's brilliant so i'm going to ask you one final question tell me tell me how everybody can find you i mean so talked about you tube we've talked about linked in life where do

oh

people find you you're in multiple places

yep a

usually

oh

being very funny

yeah

and actually there's a lot of amusement and it cracks

yeah

me up with some other things so so tell me tell me where you are

okay

tell everybody where you

firstly

are

i'm going to give a warning if you're of a nervous disposition

yeah don't listen

don't do anything that i say in the next two minutes

yeah

so the v cafe

m

have our own website of course the v cafe dot orgsoevcafe dot org go find us and there's a load of stuff there we are on linked in all social media platform so instagram tick tock facebook twitter you name it we're on it be we need to get to people so that they can come to us and we can work together so

m

we're on all those things you tube as you say you tube live i read the news every friday morning at ten o'clock

dave

um and we do monthly webinars for one hour where we bring expert guests to come and talk to us markets about precisely what they do in the industry to make eves workable so the webinarsare really key the news on a friday you'll never have a laugh like i promise you some of the double ontondras

yeah

that we roll out you wouldn't

uh

believe

uh it's great

then i think one of the key things is the events that we do so we go to pretty much all of the relevant events so things like the i t t hubinfambra where at that so fully charged

m

we'll be at both of those we are at fleet and mobility life o trade shows essentially but they are places where you can come and you can find out the london v show we've even asked to go to saudi arabia

have you now

yes

oh my getting what

so we got yeah so

h

gana south arabia pulls off to australia were fully charged so yeah

my god

yeah so there's loads and loads of stuff that were involved with and again there example of how the community works so fully charged in some people's eyes might be seen as competition now shut up give them a big hug they go out they go do their thing we do our thing with different were complimentary and we work together

absolutely

for the greater good

absolutely very true and on twitter so you are the v cafe in most

yeah

places on on twitter

oh

your v cafe one aren't

yes

you

put in ev cafe into any of the social media platforms

platform

and you will find us if you

absolutely

can't

oh you're hearing

yeah

he

if you want more

and see you

if you want more information

yeah

hello at ev cafe dot org will send an email to our wonderful executive assistant helen who will then make sure that we get back to give you all the information you need

wonderful it's been really lovely talking to you and i'm sure we'll be carrying on talking ll keep getting you back on here so thank you ever so much for joining a

absolutely thank you for the opportunity because i can honestly say this is the first podcast where i've sat in the interview seat and it's an uncomfortable

yeah

seat to sit in

love it love it love it love it

oh

there you go anyway thank you john

sis

and to everybody else thank you for joining us and i shall see you next time by bye

see

bye