EV charging infrastructure capacity ‘will be essential’ for grid independence: Beam Global CEO – EQ Mag

Beam Global Chairman of the Board, CEO and President Desmond Wheatley discusses the state of the EV industry and details how charging infrastructure capacity will be an essential aspect of grid independence.

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, Mean Global closing higher today. The sustainable EV charging solutions company reported its Q1 revenue on Monday. That increased 240– that increased 245% year over year to $13 million, beating consensus estimates of $8.34 million. You see the stock up more than 5% today.

For more on a breakdown here, let’s bring in Desmond Wheatley, Beam Global Chairman, CEO, and President. Desmond, we should point out some of your competitors, at least in the charging space, all down, whether that’s ChargePoint or Blink, in the session today. You’ve kind of had the perfect storm over the last year when you think about higher gas prices, more awareness on EVs, and so much buildout, especially with the IRA in terms of the infrastructure. To what extent do you see being able to sustain that momentum in the face of what’s happening today, whether it is gas prices coming down or consumers being a little more cost conscious?

DESMOND WHEATLEY: Well, actually, we are seeing nothing but more and more growth and more acceleration of growth in our future. In fact, I don’t see any end of it for many years to come. We are definitely looking at electrification of transportation. our products– actually, we don’t compete with the EV charging companies. We support all of them because our products just provide a form of infrastructure that just requires no construction, no electrical work– you never get a utility bill.

And, crucially, we continue to charge electric vehicles during blackouts or brownouts. This is, of course, very important in Europe as well at the moment, where people are very concerned about energy security after what’s going on in Ukraine and with Mr. Putin. But nothing but growth ahead of us at the moment.

– But, Desmond, Diane here, your business hinges on EV adoption. And there was this expectation that we’d be further along with regard to electric vehicles. For instance, I don’t have one yet. I do want one eventually, but we’ve seen some data recently, as Akiko has talked about, with people holding on to their gas powered vehicles longer. What is your expectation or what are you preparing for in terms of the road ahead for EV adoption?

DESMOND WHEATLEY: Better than half of our revenues come from government sources. We know that the federal fleet is going to electrify all of its 645,000 vehicles by 2035, and, in fact, all of its light duty vehicles by 2027. I think the infrastructure has to come first honestly.

One of the big reasons that people are not adopting electric vehicles is because they’re concerned about range anxiety and lack of infrastructure. We’re in the business of providing that infrastructure very quickly, as I said, with that construction and electrical work. So we’re solving a problem, which, frankly, is massive.

I mean, it’s a massive opportunity. But we’re going to have to build out all the charging infrastructure in the next couple of decades. And I think that will probably require something in the order of 60 million publicly available plugs to fully electrify the United States. So it’s a huge opportunity.

AKIKO FUJITA: Desmond, to pick up your point earlier, you do differentiate yourself because you don’t necessarily need to power to the grid as opposed to some other charging stations in terms of how Beam operates. Are you finding that, increasingly, cities, governments, are thinking about this differently? In other words, it’s not just about building out the charging stations, it is about thinking about this more holistically, because the resources are still limited when you think about the overall infrastructure?

DESMOND WHEATLEY: We have a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is a very good idea. That’s to ensure that we never run out of diesel or gasoline for our ground transportation. But there’s no Strategic Electric Reserve. In fact, we’re at capacity in many of the markets in which we operate.

New York City’s our biggest municipal customer. Everybody knows that there during August, if everyone turns up their air conditioning, the power gets turned off– the same thing over here in California where we are. So adding capacity to the electrical infrastructure here, the way we do it, which doesn’t require a connection to the grid, although all of our products can connect to the grid, is going to be essential.

And I can tell you that what we’re starting to hear in the halls of Washington, DC and other parts of government across the country is that probably at least 25% of all charging infrastructure should be locally generated and locally stored electricity, not connected to the grid, so that we reduce the vulnerability we have to centralized failures. We know that the Russians have hacked the grid. We know the Chinese and the Iranians have done so.

So we need to have charging infrastructure that’s immune to those sorts of failures. And that’s exactly what we’re providing.

AKIKO FUJITA: And that begs the question, Desmond, why we aren’t seeing more of your product out there. What would you say is the biggest challenge right now in being able to scale up in a bigger way?

DESMOND WHEATLEY: I mean, there’s no doubt in the first 10 years that we were doing this, it was all by education. People were really not very sure about electric vehicles, and they were even less sure about the idea of driving on sunshine, which is what we are enabling people to do. But I think you’re seeing that changing very dramatically now.

Obviously, the introduction of vehicles like Ford’s F-150 Lightning, I drive a Rivian, 0 to 60 in 3 seconds– it’s just impossible to imagine a future where consumers will select slower, clunkier, or more expensive to operate vehicles when they have these magnificent new gadgets to operate. And our ability to provide charging infrastructure very rapidly, very scalably, removing all the uncertainties and cost variations of construction and electrical work, it seems to me it’s just a very important thing to be doing.

And it’s a thing that’s come of time. Again, we’ve been doing this for a decade. But it’s only right now you can see the extraordinary growth that we’re having– 548% year over year growth in orders, 245% year over year growth in revenues, and absolutely no end in sight to this. So I suppose our time has come. And now the recognition is there, you’re really seeing us take off.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, I will say as an EV driver myself in California, where there is the most concentration of chargers, it still doesn’t feel like there’s enough chargers, really, to meet those ambitious targets on EV adoption. Desmond, it’s always good to have you on the show. Beam Global’s Desmond Wheatley there.

Source: PTI