Chase (00:05)
Good morning grid connections listeners and welcome back to grid connections. The podcast where clean energy electric vehicles and the grid converge

As always, this episode is brought to you by Grid Connections Consulting. In today's episode, we're joined by Gabe Klein. He's the former head of the US Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. And as he announced just yesterday, he is now the chair of the advisory board at Paren Along with him will be joined by, once again, Lorne McDonald, the chief analyst at Paren, as well as Florent Breton, the CEO.

We dive into the future of EV charging infrastructure, standardization and data transparency

Unpacking how Paren is tracking 3 million charging sessions every week and helping charging providers, automakers and governments optimize reliability, pricing and location. Gabe shares why he joined Barron's advisory board and how lessons from the federal level are now accelerating private sector innovation.

Loren and Florent explore the shift to charging 2.0, the rise of retail led networks and how standardized data will shape the next billion charging sessions. If you work in electric vehicles or just care about a better charging experience, this episode is a must listen. If you enjoyed this conversation, please share this episode with someone who'd find it valuable as well. And don't forget to leave us a five star view on your favorite podcast platform. helps us bring more episodes like today's to you.

And be sure to sign up for our newsletter. All of this can be found in today's show notes. With that,

Chase (01:35)
I am joined again by the team from Paren I've got not only just our returning face, Loren McDonald, but we're also joined by Florent and Gabe Klein. So ⁓ for any of those who may not be familiar with ⁓ what only Paren is doing and having a big impact in the space, I think it'd be just kind of great real quickly if each of you can go around and just give a quick summary of your background. And then we'll kind of get into some of the big news that we have to share about.

One of the special guests we have on today and the influence with the parent team. So I will just pick Florent. I'm looking at you first. So let's have you kick it off.

Florent - Paren (02:14)
Sir, yes. Thank you so much, Chase, for having me and having us over at Great Connections. We're a big fan here. So I'm French-American, hence the accent that you'll hear all along this recording here. I'm based in San Francisco. Also, look at the sweater if you're looking at this video here, because it's 55 in the city. I'm also the CEO and co-founder of Paran. And yes, I'm sure we'll talk more about that in a minute.

Chase (02:40)
Loren, I'll let you go next.

Loren McDonald — Paren (02:43)
Yeah, Loren McDonald, Chief Analyst at Paren, ⁓ longtime listener, many time guest on your podcast. So excited to be back on. ⁓ Background is 30 years or so in marketing, but the last 10 in the EV industry started a business called EV Adoption, which then last September, we're actually coming up on almost a year, time flies, ⁓ merged the EV Adoption business into Paren. ⁓

was really excited about all the data that Florant and Bill Farrow, the other co-founder, were building and it was a perfect fit. So I joined as chief analyst, basically diving in and analyzing and making sense of all the amazing data we have.

Chase (03:27)
Thanks, Loren and Florent. And Gabe, ⁓ thank you again for coming on today. I know you've got quite the background, but for those listening, let's see if you could just share real quickly.

Gabe Klein (03:35)
Sure, and thanks for having me, Chase, and all of us. ⁓ So I've got about 30 years of experience now in the public and private sector. The majority actually in the private sector with lots of startups and helping companies scale, whether within companies like Zipcar or my own companies, or as a venture capitalist or a consultant. I also wrote a book called Startup City, and I wrote that book after I did two stints in government.

⁓ one running the Washington DC Department of Transportation and ⁓ one running the Chicago Department of Transportation for Adrian Fenty and Rahm Emanuel, who I mentioned to you guys earlier. ⁓ Most recently, I was the executive director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which was ⁓ spun up when the bipartisan infrastructure law or the IIJA was passed with the goal of

convening public and private sector and also breaking down barriers within the federal government, ⁓ specifically between the Department of Energy and the Department of Transportation. The thing that excited me about that role was ⁓ it was entirely new. It was entrepreneurial. It was the first time the federal government had ever attempted to bridge two separate federal agencies within office. ⁓ So I got to work with Jennifer Granholm and Pete Buttigieg. ⁓

probably Trottenberg and Dave Turk, and work with people like Loren and ⁓ on the outside ⁓ to figure out how to make the EV charging experience the best it possibly could be. So when the office started to go away, the new administration, ⁓ working with the private sector closely to continue that work was really important to me. And I think Paren is at the absolute forefront.

on the data side, we have a CPI and a CPP, but actually taking that and unifying that data to make it useful ⁓ for all the companies, for all the state governments, the city governments, and ultimately for the consumer is I think why we're all here.

Chase (05:48)
Florent, Loren, maybe you can give a little bit of the backstory. was kind of like the vision behind launching the advisory board. And then we can speak to Gabe's kind of joining it and influence over the team and what we're really excited to see how Paren's grown from the addition of the new team member.

Florent - Paren (06:03)
Sure, absolutely. I can take it, Loren if you want. So we launched Paran about a year ago now. And the goal and the vision behind Paran is to create standardization ⁓ in our industry. We currently have 40 to 50 charge operators in the US. Every single one of them work in silo. And it's very hard for drivers and for other stakeholders in the industry to access information and access it in a way that they can make

business critical decision or for drivers to make decisions toward the next charging stations. So we started pairing around that vision and we have been working with charge operators in the US and also now in Canada to access information related to not only location but also utilization, reliability, availability, pricing, amenities and safety. And over the last year, we have been ⁓

We've seen more and more charging events to the point now where we are currently tracking 3 million charging sessions on a weekly basis. And as we continue to grow, we definitely need people to help us navigate our stage of growth. And that's why as a startup, it is very critical for us to launch that advisory board. And that's actually

a fantastic opportunity, it's a fantastic vehicle for early stage startup to bring in people of the caliber of, know, Gabe Klein, Garcelloner, and Luke Vincent. These advisors bring to the company so much expertise, so much leadership, and they can weight in on the strategic decisions that we face. So that's the reason why, you know, the timing was right at our stage of growth, and we're thrilled that Gabe is actually leading the initiative here.

Loren McDonald — Paren (07:58)
Yeah, and Chase, I'll just add, ⁓ I started tracking the NEVI program, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program. It'll be actually almost three years, I think, next month. And in that process, I had the honor and the privilege to start interacting with Gabe and his team. And as he said, when things started to ⁓ devolve ⁓ in Washington with the joint office, continued, ⁓ you know, ⁓

speaking and interacting and talking about the future of the industry. that ⁓ sort of led to actually a great meeting in DC with Gabe and the team. And we quickly saw the amazing ⁓ guidance that Gabe could bring to us, not only with his expertise and experience in federal, state, local government.

But his past, you he was also a venture capitalist. He's started many companies and stuff. And so you bring that together and it was, you know, sort of the perfect fit with what we were trying to do. And lastly, really, as Gabe said, you know, I think, you know, he probably left out part that he joined that office, you know, with a true belief to try to figure out how we can improve.

the charging experience for consumers, which is, you know, the last couple of years had been one of the top stories, right? In the charging industry is, you know, how bad the reliability was in the charging experience and stuff. And so this was an opportunity, as he said, to work with a company, Paren, that's basically using data to try to improve, you know, standardization and the customer experience in the industry. Cause without that, ⁓

You know, we're not going to see the sort of this next wave of, of EV drivers, ⁓ taking a gamble on, on getting an EV.

Chase (09:57)
No, I think that's a great kind of recap given the background. guess Gabe would love to hear your side of it too of kind of what drew you to the advisory board, especially coming from the joint office.

Florent - Paren (10:01)
Thank

Gabe Klein (10:08)
Yeah. Well, you know, we envisioned the joint office originally being about a five year office, sort of mirroring the bipartisan infrastructure law timeline. And then we quickly realized, okay, it's probably more of a seven to eight year office because the president set a goal of 500,000 chargers by 2030. Not ⁓ government funded chargers, but all the chargers, you know, that were stimulated, if you will.

by a multitude of efforts at the federal level as well as state, local and private. So, you know, we got about three years of our mission done, we a ton of stuff started. The thing that was probably proudest, actually so many things I'm proud of, but plug-in charge was really, really important. Sarah Heifel on our team, our chief technology officer, worked very hard on that with SAE, also through ChargeX, and that has actually been coming to fruition.

I sold my Tesla, got a Mercedes, pulled up to an EVgo station. had a Chargepoint membership and it knew me. And it recognized that I was a Chargepoint customer, did all the reconciliation on the backend. I plugged it in, I walked away. It was amazing. And it just made me so proud. So we had a lot of different efforts going. Data is hugely important because knowledge is power. The company's out there and they're as

as Follon said, there's a multitude of them, you know, probably have some level of consolidation over the next few years, but there are multitude of companies, they all want to do great work. They have different amounts of resources, capabilities, ⁓ technical expertise, and so forth. And so, you know, what I'm excited about with Parent is it is in many ways picking up where we left off. And we always envisioned at the end of that seven or eight years, the private sector is going to have to carry that

Well, they're gonna have to carry it a lot sooner. They're gonna have to do a lot more, a lot faster with a lot less. And that's why the data and the analysis that like Loren provides on top of that data is so valuable for these companies that wanna do a better job, but don't necessarily have the data or the know-how to do it. And it's because as Florant said, they're all living in their silo with their data. And what we're able to do is take all of that data

amalgamated, process it, enrich it, and then give it back as valuable insights. Like the other day, I went to an unnamed company's charging station, and I had no idea I was gonna be paying 87 cents a kilowatt hour. It's a lot. That's a lot, you know? It was a $40 bill to fill up my tank halfway. It would have been like 80 to $100. So that left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

We know that EV charging can be so much better than filling up your tank with gas. can be easier, faster, cheaper. And so with this information that they're providing and with like the awesome expertise of Luke and Garth and Luke and I got to hang out at an offsite ⁓ with these guys and I was just blown away. And this is the guy who built Google street maps. It was absolutely amazing. ⁓ I've no doubt that this will become the standard.

⁓ for EV charging data, not replacing the existing standards, but this is the next thing to unify all these companies' so that we can actually make the US and North America, I think, the best in the world. In fact, last week I saw that 84 % of people in the US said that EV charging experience has gotten significantly better, much higher than Europe by like 20 points, China, everywhere else. We need to continue that. Hold on.

Florent - Paren (14:06)
Yes. Yeah, I I wanted to build on what you just said, because it's actually one of the reasons why we're also launching the advisory board. If we put things in perspective, we are at the very early stage of the adoption curve of electric vehicle, even though it doesn't feel like it in San Francisco, where we have a lot of electric vehicles, and especially in California as well. But overall, when you look nationwide, we are still at the early phase of that.

Gabe Klein (14:06)
And if you had something you want to say.

Florent - Paren (14:33)
And when we are in early phase of that, we'll come more challenges with the next cohort of EV drivers. Expectations will change. Maybe, as Gabe mentioned, price will be something that will matter to more people, because the next cohort might be more price-sensitive. So when you look at things, there will be many more challenges coming, and the scale of it is going to be gigantic. As I mentioned before, we've seen about 100 million EV charging sessions in 2024.

We expected 140 million charging stations in 2025, just for the US only. We expect that number to grow potentially to 1 billion by 2030. And so we're going to see a massive growth in the number of charging events on the public fast charging infrastructure. And when we think about that, we need to reflect on how do we make sure that we build a company, like a business to business platform.

that can support that type of growth and the scale ⁓ as well. And that's why leaning on people like Gabe, Luke, and Garos really can help us do that. Gabe, obviously, with his entrepreneurial background and industry expertise and everything that he's bringing to the industry is fantastic. He can help us navigate that space. Gabe mentioned, Luke has been the founder of Google Street View. He started Google just working with students out of Stanford.

And then he scaled it to global business. And that's the kind of experience that we need as early stage, you know, ventures and especially as early stage entrepreneurs. We need people who have been there and done that. And Luke can certainly do that. Now the question is, how do we make sure that our technology and our platform is adopted massively? And that's where Garth Saloner is actually stepping in. Garth has been one of the very first writing about the adoption of technologies from network effects.

And we've built fantastic relationships over the last year. And we're thrilled to have Ease experience helping us achieve that growth and standardization with parents.

Loren McDonald — Paren (16:41)
Chase, be, be.

Chase (16:41)
Yeah, that's I was just going

to ask something to kind of pull apart a little bit more on that. And maybe you're going to go into this, Loren. But one of the things we talked about, obviously, is kind of like the phase one, the phase two, the phase. It feels like we're almost in like the phase three of charging infrastructure, like the third kind of generation of it. And I'm kind of curious, is that a big part of what you're seeing as the value is why all these systems can kind of work and how parents kind of being the I guess.

Is it timing is the big motivating factor? mean, Gabe, you were just talking about a lot of the siloing and that's definitely been an issue for a long time. Do you think the big thing is now the timing and people seeing the value in having this data more transparent or is there some other thing that Paren is also kind of taking advantage of that's really helping with all of this being able to be done now versus earlier or even a couple of years ago.

Loren McDonald — Paren (17:40)
I can step in. was thinking that Gabe was going to jump in. I mean, you mentioned phase three, about 12, 18 months ago, I started talking about a concept we call charging 2.0, really sort of the next phase, particularly of the fast charging industry.

Chase (17:41)
Yeah. Go for it.

Gabe Klein (17:47)
Go ahead Mark.

Chase (18:01)
You

called it 2.0, but as someone who's been using charges for over a decade, think we've, I mean, we've had the blinks of the world. We've had the massive like level two. We've had all these different, not to throw anyone under the bus, but we've had so many of these generations. I mean, I feel like there was the first generation was just seeing level two. And then we had kind like the first generation as DCFC, but I don't, that's my at least kind of interpretation, but I agree with you that we're kind of seeing this final phase of it, but.

Loren McDonald — Paren (18:17)
Right.

Gabe Klein (18:24)
I mean.

Loren McDonald — Paren (18:25)
I mean,

if you really wanted to break it down, yeah, it might be 4.0 at this point, right? I tried to keep it simple and basically said there's sort of the old version ⁓ as you sort of hinted at and really the sort of the next phase. And there's a lot of things, Chase, that sort of go into that definition. One is just the players, right?

Chase (18:33)
Yeah.

Gabe Klein (18:34)
2.8

Chase (18:36)
You

Loren McDonald — Paren (18:51)
And we're seeing companies like Walmart and Mercedes and Iona and BP Pulse and Sheetz, Wawa, 7-Eleven, Circle K, We're seeing an entirely new phase of companies that are getting into the charging industry in a very big way. one of the, so that's sort of the first point, it's just different companies that are well-capitalized, that are massive, often global.

And what's really sort of important, different about these 2.0 versus 1.0 players chase is why they are in the industry, right? Most of the first sort of phase players were in it either to sell hardware or software fees, basically to get chargers in the ground and to generate revenue from selling electricity.

A lot of these new players, most of these new players have completely different goals. One is in the case of the automakers that have gotten into the industry, it's to sell more EVs and improve and have more control over that customer charging experience. mean, you think about an automaker, And while they don't, except for the new players like Tesla and Rivian, they don't control the dealership part of it. But they want to ensure

that driver experience because the charging is so critical to ownership in the EV. And they saw that the 1.0 players weren't actually delivering. Let's just be candid, right? And so it took them a while. They probably went kicking and screaming. But then they realized that if they wanted to sell more EVs, ⁓ like Tesla learned early on, we've got to do this. But then the second part of that chase is

that ⁓ a lot of the companies like the, what we call the fuel and convenience companies, the gas stations, the travel stores, the centers like Loves and Pilot, et cetera, and the convenience store chains are seeing their gas revenue either flatten, it's probably peaked for most of them, maybe not in like North Dakota, but in...

In most of the country, it's probably peaked, if not decline. And so they have to start, how do we pick up that high volume revenue? But the second piece of it is really that industry has become all about retail and stores. It's about getting people inside. And so they all realized about 18 months, 24 months ago, that drivers can spend anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes.

plugged in, right? And so the industry now is, you know, their number one goal for that group is how do we get people out of their cars and inside where we can sell them, you know, a $5 cup of coffee that has like a $4 margin and, you know, lotto tickets and, you know, a salad and a sandwich and stuff like that. you know, it's sort of a very different makeup of companies. And so, you you add that all up.

Gabe Klein (21:49)
Thank

Loren McDonald — Paren (22:02)
And those companies are much more interested in transparency and standardization, right? Because it's consistent with their goals of saying, we've got to take this industry, pick it up and take it to a completely another level and improve that experience. So, you know, the old players were maybe a bit more reticent to be transparent and things like that and step up their game. And the new players are like, they're on board.

They're all in on this.

Chase (22:34)
Yeah, think that's a good call. mean, the big thing to me ⁓ between kind of the this generation of DC fast charging and the one before really is the business model. And I mean, it kind of speaks to what you're talking about, traditional energy and gas suppliers, they don't make money on or they make revenue. They don't make margin or real serious profit on gas. And maybe, Gabe, I guess wherever you're going, someone's trying to make margin when it's 80 cents a kilowatt hour. And that just is not going to be very competitive for very long.

Loren McDonald — Paren (22:43)
Right.

Yes, baby.

Gabe Klein (23:02)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think to Loren's point, like the consumers coming into focus now, you know, we had the early adopters for EVs. ⁓ Many of them were Tesla owners inside a, ⁓ you know, a closed wall garden of charging. It's now like becoming a wide open field. Every major manufacturer now either has, ⁓ you know, two, three, four, five EVs.

out there that they're selling. And we have over a hundred models now, or a whole bunch in planning. And so I think also the new folks entering the first and second ⁓ generation of people building EV chargers also were obsessed with the value of their data. Like everyone thinks their data is worth so much on its own. And I always say the data is either worth everything or nothing. It sort of depends on like what you're going to do with it. And the reality is

In this time of upheaval that we're in, it's a perfect time for Paren because all of these folks actually really need to come together so that EVs are successful. GM and Ford and Iona and Chargepoint, like we all have to work together. It's not about creating a whole bunch of little wild gardens. And to do that, you got to have each other's data, right? Because if you're 20 points below from a reliability standpoint, you're competitor across the street, that doesn't work.

And it's more valuable for you to understand why and make the experience better than just to try to monetize your data somehow. And I think that's what I see out there that everybody understands. Like, this is a make or break moment of the next, let's say 24, 36 months. We are not going to have the federal government support that we had before. We're going to have less resources, even in local and state government. And so the private sector is really going to have to kick it into high gear.

and collaborate in a way that maybe they didn't even foresee. I Paren is right there at that intersection saying, hey, we're here to help you facilitate it. And instead of you, California having to say, all right, we're going to come up with this standard that everybody needs to adhere to. And then Oregon saying, no, we're going to do this different standard. It's easier if the private sector can coalesce around what Paren's already doing. And that's what I hope happens.

Chase (25:23)
No, that makes a lot of sense. And I guess for context, a hundred percent of our listeners are EV nerds. 50 % of them work in the industry and then 50 % of them just drive EVs. So for that 50 % that is actually in the industry, are there any ways that parent, mean, obviously with these new entrants, it kind of makes a lot of sense to them to be open with their data. Is there a kind of conversation or a talking point that parent has for those that might be a little more hesitant or have been kind of slow?

to be more open as to see why there is the value in kind of taking that step forward or has it been like, are you seeing things that work with some of these players that maybe have been traditionally a little bit slower to be open and now they're kind of seeing the value of having a more open, ⁓ essentially just environment for data sharing and then how to actually leverage that data for the drivers and themselves.

Florent - Paren (26:16)
Yeah, I think it's a very good question. And the feedback that we've had from ⁓ different players in the industry was that they were optimizing for ⁓ the outcome of their strategic decisions. And if you make strategic decision on your very own data set, you have outcome number one. If you make strategic decision on a larger data set that represent the entire industry,

you're no longer blindsided. And then the outcome number two is actually much greater than outcome number one. And that's what they are seeing here. They are seeing that the benefit of accessing a wider set of data is actually helping them moving forward. And that has been the driving dynamics that ⁓ different partners, and I'm not necessarily saying only charge operators, but different

know, stakeholders in the industry are embracing. You're better off if you have sufficient and standardized information in your hands. And the standardized part is actually very key because you have your very own data. Of course, like as a company operating in the space, you have your very own data. You can potentially get access to like some additional data sets, you know, left and right. But how can you compare, you know, the additional data sets to what you have? It takes a lot of efforts to eventually, you know, like bring that together. And that's also where like

Having a standardized asset can help everybody understand where they're standing and how they can move forward. And overall, we believe that standardization will benefit the overall industry and down the road, AV drivers.

Loren McDonald — Paren (27:56)
And Chase, I mean, think one of the things that we've seen in conversation is it really comes down to trust and the quality of the data. think, know, ⁓ know, Florent does a great job getting on the phone with, we won't mention names, but these companies that we're talking about. And one of things that he does is we show them data on their own network and stuff. And the feedback we get is that it's like...

It's within, you know, it's the accuracy of our data. Yeah, it matches their data. so, ⁓ you know, oftentimes they start off a little suspect, but then when we show them how accurate our data is, they become, you know, where do I sign? You know, basically where do we come on board? had somebody with ⁓ one of the largest charging networks, Tess messaged me the other day saying, basically ⁓ they...

Florent - Paren (28:29)
It matches, yeah.

Loren McDonald — Paren (28:53)
they had a conversation with a government organization that was talking to us. And they basically said, you know, we hope it's your data and not somebody else's, right? Like that's the, know, think that's one of the things that's, that's taken a bit of time, but, we're now getting to that point where people are seeing how accurate and reliable our data is. And that helps get companies that might've been reticent to go, okay.

You know, maybe we were excited about transparency before because we didn't trust the data and you have the most reliable data. So it is what it is. Right. And, and so, you know, they're, they're, getting on board and, ⁓ you know, they realized that, ⁓ you know, they'd rather participate with a company that's got accurate data.

Chase (29:43)
Yeah, that's kind interesting. And I guess having worked in the data space previously myself, and I realized bill isn't on today. ⁓ this may be a more technical question, but I guess if you're, if someone is listening and they are a person that, ⁓ has a company that's looking at going to parent, like what do they need to think of as far as like their stack, how they have like their data warehouse to like actually make it useful. Cause I mean, that's a big thing I've just seen so much anyway, is not only are these companies sometimes

not through any fault of their own, struggling with actually taking advantage of the data they already have, but it's that layer of how to optimize their data to actually communicate across internally and externally to then actually make it actionable. And I'm just curious if you're, yeah, go for it, Florent.

Florent - Paren (30:30)
Get you want to say something, you know, from the last conversation or.

Gabe Klein (30:34)
I did want to say something, actually it's probably for the next conversation. So I'll let you go first.

Florent - Paren (30:38)
Okay, great. So I think

to your point, Chase, I don't necessarily want to have a solution to a problem that is not necessarily extremely well-defined right now. People come to us and we're still at the early stage of our venture ⁓ and we want you understand. We're not saying here, here's the solution. You've been waiting for these for years and a decade. Here is the solution.

What we want actually to do is actually work with them, understand exactly what is a pain point and how can eventually we solve that with our data. We are at a stage where we want to build the conversations and where we want to build a solution around problems that we don't know of right now because we haven't been exposed to every single challenges that small industry players to very large and industry leaders have been facing.

And that's also why, you right now we want to be in that, in that listening mode and co-building services for the different stakeholders. know, Loren mentioned charge operators, automakers, government entities, writer operators, map makers, you know, every single one of them can benefit from standardized and rich data. Do we have a solution for every single one of them?

Potentially we will, we do right now for some of them, but we want to better understand where is the alignment so we can provide that solution here. And that's where we need people like Gabe, who has been an entrepreneur, an investor, an industrial leader to help us make sense of all of that and eventually prioritize what matters the most at our stage of development.

Chase (32:19)
No, that makes a lot of sense, especially when you're dealing with those, an automaker or a charge point operator, their datasets and then data challenges are going to be pretty different in trying to find that right. So makes sense. So Gabe, I'm sorry, I cut you off there. What were you going add to that?

Gabe Klein (32:20)
and

No, I was just going to say, ⁓ in addition to what, Florence said, cause like there's the, there's like the heavy data stuff and there's the, you know, every system talking to every other system, right? But there's the work that Loren does and spending time with like Loren and Bill too, and getting their insights from that data is so valuable. ⁓ and so when I was even in the joint office,

You know, getting the Nevi insights was super helpful to me. And so I look through this from a few different lenses. There's the consumer, right? There's the state and the city, but there's the person that's in the driver's seat at Chargecoin or Iona or EBGO or Blank or whatever. And like, you got to make business decisions. And so I think that that analysis and the insights and then the iterating on that analysis and saying, okay, so you're saying that in the Southeast.

you know, our reliability is lower, right? Or we're having problems with our payment systems or whatever the issue is to then be able to drill down even further and figure it out, either yourself with that data or with the assistance of people at parent, I think is really, really interesting. And I think that like, whether you're the CEO or you're the director of operations or you're in charge of marketing, you're going to want to drill down into this more and more. I think

That's where like Loren and his team and others can be very, helpful.

Loren McDonald — Paren (34:05)
Yeah, Chase.

Chase (34:06)
Yeah, I guess to

follow up that I'm curious, Loren, if you can share without going too far into the secret sauce. How do you find the signal in the noise? Because there's a lot of noise in these kind of data sets.

Loren McDonald — Paren (34:17)
Yeah, I mean, ⁓ it's actually a lot of iteration to, I think, Gabe's point, right? It's a lot of almost sort of like trial and error. we've, and I, Bill Farrow, the co-founder of the company, ⁓ and I, we're working daily with our data analyst and we're constantly looking at different sort of data sets. And it's one of those things we're so early in sort of the market and look at these things that we oftentimes don't know.

what we're going to find until we sort of play with it. I'll give you a really quick answer that was just sort of mind blowing. So we were looking at ⁓ a location in the Southeast where there was an existing ⁓ very well-known charging network, ⁓ might be Tesla, ⁓ and a new player came in literally within like hundred feet of that charging station. And what we saw was that the traffic

⁓ basically shifted over to that new entrant. It literally took a significant amount of sessions away from that existing one. A lot of it was pricing and brand and stuff. In another case, we saw three charging stations all located next to each other. One of them changed its pricing from flat to time of use.

and dropped it by like 20 cents ⁓ and had kind of a pretty significant impact on utilization. So part of it is just getting in and diving into the data and see kind of how what's going on with the charge point operators and the consumers is actually sort of evolving and changing. mean, Gabe talked about like the 80 cents per kilowatt hour, right?

Gabe Klein (36:14)
87.

Loren McDonald — Paren (36:15)
And

87 cents, And, you know, we're starting to see a lot of 65 cents and higher here in the US. you know, the road trippers are not real happy about that. Most people, like, if you do that once or twice a year, it's not a big deal. Yeah. But Europe, well, you're a road tripper, right? But, you know, I always like to look ahead, you know, to Norway, to Europe and stuff like that. ⁓

Gabe Klein (36:18)
You

Florent - Paren (36:19)
Thanks.

Chase (36:31)
I'm annoyed when it's in the 40s.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Loren McDonald — Paren (36:44)
And, you know, Europe is starting to see ⁓ price sensitivity, right? The drivers, because they're sort of well beyond us, right? We haven't generally reached that yet, but so it's going to be interesting, you know, as the sort of this next wave comes along, are people going to be okay with spending, you know, 70, 80 cents per kilowatt hour? And, you know, if it's the only station there.

It is what it is, right? But if when there's three charging stations all located in the same, you know, shopping mall parking lot, ⁓ you know, we're going to start seeing a lot of interesting strategies around pricing, right? Might be loyalty, might be amenities, might be a lot of different things ⁓ that sort of impact that. I'll share one last sort of thing that we uncovered recently at a few stations, Chase, is that ⁓ the use of time of use pricing.

So the idea of there's too many people charging in the, in like in the afternoon. let's raise prices then and lower it and early in life. We're actually seeing it's not working at a lot of Literally, literally it's not increasing the moving people to those, those lower prices. And it may simply be that a lot of people just have to charge when they have to charge. Right now, you know, yeah, go ahead.

Gabe Klein (37:49)
Right.

Chase (38:03)
⁓

Well, was gonna ask is that do well exactly that's what I gonna say is like honestly looking from a driver EV perspective ⁓ Even come from a combustion vehicle. There's apps like gas buddy or stuff like that But people it I mean that is the whole thing with apps you have to open app yada yada yada There's a lot of friction to even effectively do that. So unless you're super price sensitive That's one thing now you do have some of the automakers like tests and a couple others do show price

Gabe Klein (38:05)
They don't know.

Loren McDonald — Paren (38:17)
Right. ⁓

Chase (38:32)
and time of use and make it pretty visible to the driver easily. But I would say with most models, they don't. So you kind of have to either show up or maybe once again, the EV nerds that like that 10 % that knows all this stuff might pull out plug, translate. this one's cheaper than that. That's just not really feasible and scalable for most drivers. I'm curious if there's Well, but I guess what I'm curious is like, can you effectively say that that time of use is not being

Loren McDonald — Paren (38:52)
Yeah, Floran has an answer for this. Yeah.

Chase (39:01)
impacted because of price or is it just truly because drivers don't know better have that better visibility across brand or a lot of things? Yeah.

Loren McDonald — Paren (39:09)
Yeah, I'll answer that. then, then Floran's

going to give you the answer to the real problem. Right. And I think, one, and I've written about this, I don't think the price differential that a lot of CPOs are using is probably enough, right? If it's like 4 cents or something like that, right. 6 cents, maybe that's just not enough. know, maybe it needs to be like 20 cents, 25 cents to really, really move the needle, right? Cause it's

Florent - Paren (39:26)
I think that's a good point. I think that's that's point. I think that's a good point. point. I a

Chase (39:36)
Well, then there's

also what is at the site. Like if one on one side of the street has like bathrooms and all that stuff, I'll probably go there if it's 10 to 15 cents more. If it's no different than I'm going for the cheap.

Florent - Paren (39:37)
I a a a a a good I I

Loren McDonald — Paren (39:39)
Right?

Florent - Paren (39:41)
It's great.

Loren McDonald — Paren (39:45)
Right.

Yeah. mean, if it's like six cents or something like that, what is that good? It's going to be like, whatever, 50 cents or whatever, right? It's, think it's, it's gotta be sort of significantly different, but, Florent, why don't you, ⁓ you talk about.

Florent - Paren (40:00)
Sure.

What I wanted to say is that ⁓ it really depends and shows what people are optimizing for. 10, 12 years ago, people were optimizing for location. Where do I find a charging station? No one had any idea of where to find a charging station. So then we started seeing crowdsource app that were enabling people to share, there is a charging station right behind that parking lot.

And that was one of the reasons why we've seen these apps flourishing, just because that was what people were trying to get, access to information where stations are located. We are now seeing that the charging experience is evolving with many more attributes into the equation. Not only they want to know still where it's located, but how much power is it, the reliability, the pricing, and everything else. That's why we're seeing that way more data.

Chase (40:49)
Reliability, yeah.

Florent - Paren (40:56)
are needed for drivers to make a decision. Drivers or their car or their mapping system. And so it's very fascinating to see that ⁓ the evolution of which we are at right now, the adoption curve of electric vehicle, lead us to a richer experience for drivers and the need for better data and more statistical approach as well to data.

Loren McDonald — Paren (41:27)
Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Gabe.

Gabe Klein (41:31)
I'm just going to quickly say, because like yesterday I went to a Tesla charger for the first time with my Mercedes, realized the adapter wouldn't work, ran to another lady with the Mercedes, just like mine, she had just figured out it her third Tesla charging station that she'd been to. Very interesting conversation. Then I go up to use a Shell recharge ⁓ station. It turns out there are two across the parking lot from each other, both dual port.

I go to the one I could see on the little, there's a big screen, a little screen on the little screen. I could see that there was some error, but I thought, okay, the big screen's working. I spent 15 minutes trying to start a charge. couldn't, I didn't realize there was one right across the parking lot that I could have used. like we need customers to be able to say like the number one thing that's important to me is that it's working. Number two is that the price is or the location, maybe this is me.

is within three or four miles of where I need to go. Number three, would like the price to be between this and this ideally. And parent can actually deliver that information in customized format, whether it's in car, ⁓ whether it's to my phone. But right now it's like I have the Mercedes, I have the Tesla app open, I had the show recharge app open, and I had the ⁓ plug charge. I mean, it's too much. And like, here I am the guy that directed the joint office.

and I can't figure it out, well, that's where pairing comes in. We need to simplify it for people and it will get better. It'll be, I think it'll be the best in the world in a few years, but we're not there yet.

Florent - Paren (43:11)
And I know, you have to jump in at the top of the hour here. Chase, if that's OK, can we ask a little bit like Gabe on what's going to be your role as chairman of the advisory board here? And maybe we can also share about what's coming up next and where we're going to be focusing on.

Chase (43:35)
Yeah, no, that sounds great. think, ⁓ I don't know if you're able to stay on a little bit later, Loren, because there were a couple of questions. If you're able to, that'd be great. But yeah, let's, I want to be respectful of your time, Gabe. So let's, let's focus on that right now.

Gabe Klein (43:49)
Sure, Well, my goal is to be the master of all time, space and dimension, but I know I will fall short. ⁓ So I think that's like, yeah, I think that's like a Steve Martin quote from 70 and dating myself. But no, the reality is like, I want to help give insights to the team at Paren which is an excellent team, by the way. ⁓ And they're humble, right?

Chase (43:58)
You gotta aim high.

Gabe Klein (44:16)
They know what they know, they know what they don't know. And that's how you grow a startup and you get feedback. And I think myself and the other two folks on the team, we're all very different in terms of our diverse ⁓ background, but that we can give them a lot of feedback to figure out how to iterate on this data, how to make it better, how to enrich it in some ways, or allow it to be enriched, maybe even using AI. ⁓

There are some things that can be done to accelerate, I think, the EV industry on the whole, something that government was working with the private sector to do. And now companies like Paren are going to have to function in that role, bringing together a lot of different players ⁓ to get them to work together, which they are already succeeding at, I should note. ⁓

and filling in the gaps, even on standardization, working with standards organizations, like I say, and others ⁓ to say, maybe we need to go to another level in terms of standardization. And look, maybe it needs to be a certified standard or not. And then I think also that myself and the other two gentlemen, ⁓ Luke and Garth, can help from the standpoint of accelerating their growth. ⁓

know, Garth has ⁓ decades of experience in innovation, business, network effect, ⁓ you know, figuring out ⁓ from from that purchase that he has at Stanford, you know, how companies that are successful become successful, how they get there. ⁓ And then, you know, Luke is sort of like a tech genius. ⁓ I applied him with Mezcal in ⁓ Mexico and ⁓

tried to figure out his secrets for all his technical success, whether it's working with AVs and building that at Lyft, working at Meta. Google Street View and Maps is something I rely on every single day. And just like that, EV charging is going to be something going forward that everybody in this country, we're not going to be cute, but it's not like we're going to be the only country with old gas powered vehicles.

We're all going to be driving EVs or we're going to be in EV mobility services or e-bikes. And so ⁓ the work the parents doing to unify the information and the standard is going to be absolutely crucial. It'll be ubiquitous. We're all going to use it. And so I think people like Luke have the ability and my job as the chair is to make sure that what Iran

and Loren and Bill and the rest of the team, what they need from the advisory board that we're able to get that post strategic, but also tactical. Hey, do you know somebody at Google that can help us on X, Z, right? So ⁓ that's how I hope to basically be that filter ⁓ and make sure that we work as fast as humanly possible because there's no time to waste.

Chase (47:30)
No, that's great to hear. And I really appreciate that, Gabe. That's kind of awesome to see that because you're totally right. This is definitely a resource and where the industry needs to go and some of your expertise to kind of step in and provide that. It's really great to see. And ⁓ I was always really impressed with what your team was doing. And now it just seems like it's going even faster, further. So that's great.

Florent - Paren (47:30)
Absolutely.

Gabe Klein (47:51)
Thanks, Chase. Thanks for that. Yeah. And on behalf of all the folks that join office, thanks to you for the work you do. Thanks to Paren. Like we, it's a bunch of really mission driven people, 50 people. And they're as excited as I am to see companies fill these gaps.

for what the future holds. As I said, I'm LinkedIn, LFGO. ⁓

Florent - Paren (48:12)
All right.

Chase (48:13)
Love to hear him.

Florent - Paren (48:13)
Thank you so much.

Gabe Klein (48:15)
All right. Thanks, everybody.

Chase (48:17)
Thanks, Gabe. Bye.

Florent - Paren (48:17)
Bye Gabe

Chase (48:21)
Yeah, Loren, I'm just kind of curious. I know we've covered a lot today and there's a lot of cool things obviously that the team at Paren is doing and having Gabe and some of these other announcements your team has been making lately is just awesome to see. I think also to be respectful of your times, we'll try and keep this short, but I'm always just curious to hear what you're kind of seeing or any interesting trends in the EV industry right now, especially to charging.

that maybe we haven't covered yet, because that's something I'm always getting questions about our guests or from our listeners about what they're seeing in the industry. And there's a lot of headlines and there's usually not as many facts versus what is shown in those with the reality of the industry.

Loren McDonald — Paren (49:04)
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different things. I'll talk about a couple. One is, one of the challenges that you heard about the fast charging industry for years was low utilization, right? Oftentimes it was in sort of single digits and stuff. And over the last year or so, it's just like exploded. And we're now seeing markets where...

you know, during what we call peak time or prime time in the afternoons and stuff like there, there's stations that are, 80, a hundred percent, right. As far as being utilized and stuff. And I met with a senior executive from one of the largest charging networks in the U S just, last, last month. And he, and he said, we're actually having serious congestion problems at a lot of our stations. Right now this is, this is a network like, like several of the major ones.

You know, they have stations in like virtually every, every state and every, every part of the country. So it's really a sort of a portfolio. there, you know, there's stations in, you know, Bismarck North, North Dakota are, are not being tapped out, right? They're very low utilization, but there's stations in, you know, New York, Miami, San Francisco, LA, et cetera, are literally there are queues there. There are lines weighed up at sort of the middle of the day. So one of the problems it's emerging. ⁓

and why you see like California has the highest adoption of that time of use rate, right? Whether it's working or not, as we discussed earlier, is a different point. a lot of the major charging networks are now having to grapple with ⁓ how do we improve that customer experience by shortening wait times, right? And so we're going to see a lot of innovation and then it's everything from pricing and amenities and different things.

and loyalty rewards to try to change people's behavior, but it's also bigger stations, right? Which is a quick transition to one of the other trends, right? I posted on LinkedIn about this, I think it was last week, right? We're now seeing that we're headed towards a sort of a national average of about five ports per station, right? And we used to be at like about two.

And, you know, Tesla was always up here like nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, and the rest of the industry was like at less than two. Right. And so, I mean, it's math, obviously, but, overall the, the number of charging networks that are now building like one in two port stations is, is, is going well. Yes, there's still a lot of those, you know, uh, mom and pop coffee shops that are putting in a single charger, but the charging, the companies that are in the business.

of creating a stellar national or regional charging business ⁓ are moving to four, six, eight, 10, 12 or more. We're seeing more of these charging hubs that are oftentimes 20 or more. And so I think that's one of the really great ⁓ trends that's happening with these new charging 2.0 players. They're building

Stations that are going to be more reliable and be able to handle a lot more drivers, reducing that wait time and increasing confidence. If you're driving down the highway, you're going to want to go to a station that has two chargers or 16. It's obvious, right? Because if one of those chargers at the two is full and the other one's broken, you're of SOL, right?

Chase (52:35)
Right.

Loren McDonald — Paren (52:47)
You know, if many are full and a couple are broken into 16, you probably still have plenty of options.

Chase (52:54)
No, and I think that's a great call. And honestly, you go to a gas station. It's not uncommon to see one or something down even. And by just having seven or eight there, it you don't even think about it. And I think that is really true about kind of the station county and proving that because I did a decent road trip recently and the site I went to to just try. Luckily, there's a secondary, so if it was completely down, but there were four and two of the four I tried didn't work. Unfortunately, I got to that third one. finally worked.

Loren McDonald — Paren (53:02)
Yeah.

Chase (53:25)
And at the same time, it's like, I know what I'm doing. This still wasted 20 minutes. I should have just gone to the other one and been done with it, but seeing and just having that kind of ability to be more proactive and having that communication. And so I guess I'd be really interested to hear from you, Florent, around kind of what you're hearing around automakers or app developers about what they need from your API and what you can kind of share around that and how to kind of build that visibility.

Florent - Paren (53:51)
I think overhaul, mean, what we hear from automakers, mapmakers, and other industry players is one stream of data that can capture what drivers would want to see on their site. So we are really operating as a business to business or called that as a platform ⁓ service. And so we want to provide them with all the information that they need.

for them to own the UX and the UI ⁓ within their car, within their app, within their interface of whatever is exposed ⁓ to drivers. And that's really what they want. If they have just part of the information, how relevant is that? If you're driving by a charging station that was not even on the app or not even captured on the dash of your vehicle,

you know, how would you trust the information that is coming through ⁓ that channel? So really what we see is that our partners want to have access to the most exhaustive and the richest data set.

Chase (55:01)
And I'm kind of curious, because with your data sets, they're pretty much real time. And are there requirements you have? Because I mean, this has changed quite a bit, but there's still a decent number of DC fast chargers out there that don't really have real time status as to what, if they're charging or not, or even if they're up, is that something if I was a CPO that had a bunch of chargers like that, how would you work with me? Would you say?

I mean, is there a point where there could be a charge point operator that comes to you and there isn't value in the data? like, what are kind of the bare minimums that your team needs to make it so it's like a relevant, powerful data for the larger community, I guess.

Florent - Paren (55:45)
think there is always value in every stream of data that we see. Say that we have a charge point operator is coming to us and sharing their OCPI feed. They have information, obviously, about location, availability, pricing, things like these. But then all of a sudden, we add information around amenities. And when we talk about amenities, we not only talk about

You know their restaurants or bathroom, but we also give the name of the place We give the Google rating we give the opening hours So, you know that information becomes much richer for anyone who wants to make a decision if you're driving down You know the highway if you have to make a decision, you know sometime it comes down to do we stop at in-and-out or do we stop at McDonald or Burger King and so you need to have that information that the CPU does not necessarily have you know in the first place so

The benefit is not only to standardize, but is also to enrich with additional data points that can be helpful for anyone who would be using the data field.

Chase (56:48)
No, that's great. And I guess we've been talking about what you look for and for people who come into you. But I guess for parent looking forward and count, I think this past year, didn't you guys have 140 million or something roughly like that of charging sessions tracked? I mean, that's huge. I'm kind of curious where that's taking parent next.

Florent - Paren (56:57)
Yes.

Yes, it is.

Yeah, it's very good question because we've seen 104 million charging events in 2024. We're on track to see 140 to 150 million in the US only. And we're talking about fast charging, public charging stations. So obviously discounting the private fleet sector and discounting as well the level two charging networks.

So where are we going is that we're going to more charging events. We're also going to richer events. So as I mentioned, amenities, safety, and other data sets will come on top of every other feed that we are getting and reaching and building up our data sets. We also made a move up north ⁓ expanding to Canada. So we established an office in Quebec ⁓ earlier this year. I believe that was in March of 2025.

And that's great. have our team out there and we're also expanding to Canada currently covering about 70, 75 % of the fast charging public ports in Canada and helping our North American operators to expand there with greater visibility on the market. So this is where we are at right now in terms of data. And now the focus comes to route toward how do we access the data? And the real time API is going to be another channel and we're excited to bring that to our partners.

Chase (58:31)
No, that's great, Florent. Loren, I don't know if there's anything else you want to add. realize we've kind of gone a little bit over our time, but I just want to say thank you to both and obviously Gabe for coming on today. And I feel like, I mean, we only had you on a few episodes ago. I mean, we took a slight break between seasons there, Loren, but even then there's already so much more that's kind of happened since we last talked. So it's always great to have you and the team on.

Loren McDonald — Paren (58:57)
Yeah, great. Thanks. And I'll throw something out that, you know, you can use or not use or put it in or whatever. But when Florant was talking about the, ⁓ the 1 billion charging sessions in 2030, I was trying to do the, do the math. think that's 30, if you use a 97 % uptime, that's 30 million failed charging sessions in 2030. And you know, that's really what we're trying.

big part of what we're trying to solve with that in-car ⁓ navigation and the API and streaming that data in. So if you're thinking about that, you're driving an EV down the highway or whatever in 2030, that's a lot of failure. Now, hopefully, reliability is going to improve a lot between now and then, and I think it will. So hopefully, it won't be quite that many charging sessions.

But really that's sort of a way to think about the magnitude of the problem that Paren is solving, right? As Floran said, we're taking, you know, not just location data, but safety pricing. You know, we're going to know like the, you know, the amount of lighting at charging stations and the amenities, how far it is to walk to that in and out burger, right? Bathrooms pricing and stuff, real time pricing, right? So literally, you know, today, you know, we're moving from a

a period of where, you the last few years, people were just happy that there was a working charging station, you know, when they needed one. And now we're starting to see really this, this growth of kind of like the model we saw in the gas station business, right? Where there's a gas station on all four corners of an intersection, just like there are, you know, in the fast food industry. And now we're starting to see that, that same thing, right? Because they're, they realize the charging networks realize that

that attracts more and more drivers, right? But it also brings competition, right? And as we're seeing, so ⁓ we're gonna provide that visibility and transparency for people to pick which of those four is the perfect location and everything for them to choose.

Chase (1:01:13)
No, that's great to see and definitely something that is much needed in the space. So always great to have both of you guys on. Thank you so much and can't wait to catch up with you next time.

Florent - Paren (1:01:21)
Thank you, Chase.

Loren McDonald — Paren (1:01:23)
Yeah.

Chase (1:01:28)
Thanks for tuning in today to Grid Connections, where we explore the intersection of clean energy, electric vehicles, and the power grid. A big thank you to the whole parent team, Gabe Klein, Florent Breton and Loren McDonald for joining us to share how parent is building the data backbone of our electric vehicle charging future. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please share it with a colleague, fellow EV driver, or policy maker, and help us grow by leaving a positive review on your podcast app of choice.

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