The EV Café Takeaway

The EV Café
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Tech News
  • Updated Weekly

Guests from across the EV industry will join the crew for The EV Café Takeaway, having candid conversations to highlight the work of the Electric Vehicle and Sustainability industry, to uncover stories that we all need to learn from and importantly, to understand something of the people behind the work.  The EV Café crew, have the wonderful privilege of talking to some amazing pioneers, innovators, and collaborators in our industry. The generosity, openness, honesty, and insight from our guests has been truly humbling and inspirational. We want as many people as possible, to be challenged and inspired by these podcasts.

  1. 1d ago

    Peter Jones | Nineteen Group

    Peter Jones built an events business twice. Two years after launching his first show, his bank manager told him he'd built a skyscraper on a sandy beach and gave him 24 hours to liquidate. He lost the house, the car, everything - then scraped together £16,000, bought the IP back at auction, and started again. Nineteen Group is now heading for 400 people and owns the Commercial Vehicle Show, Installer and International Security Expo. And last July, in front of 120 of his own staff, Peter couldn't force a smile. He told them he was done and sat down. At Nineteen's Wimbledon HQ, Paul gets the unedited version: the hamster wheel, the storm Peter took a 45-foot boat into and had to be pulled out of by the RNLI, and the leadership rebuild that followed. Plus the EV bit - where commercial vehicle electrification is heading, why charging still has "a lot of road to go," and what it takes to bring the big truck manufacturers back to the NEC. Peter Jones (the real one, not the Dragon:)https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-jones-0b501010/Nineteen Group:https://www.nineteengroup.com

    Peter Jones | Nineteen Group

  2. Sep 30

    Bob Murphy | Scottish Power

    Bob Murphy was working on electric vehicles before most of the UK had anywhere to plug one in. Back in 2011, having retrained as a mechanic at Edinburgh College, he fell into a small research project that put four EVs to work as staff pool cars. Nobody knew whether they could make it from Dalkeith to Dunbar and back. There was no public charging network to fall back on. The college ended up installing its own chargers and running a five-acre solar field on site, and some of those early Mitsubishi i-MiEVs and Citroën C-Zeros are still being stripped and rebuilt by trainee technicians today. From there, Bob spent years selling and siting charge points across Scotland, which he counts as one of his proudest bits of work, and it took him to almost every corner of the country. He now works as a technical executive at Scottish Power, advising on charging networks and infrastructure, and he is a familiar face at industry events and in the WhatsApp groups where he answers questions from anyone, silly or not. Paul and John talk with Bob about: Why a lifelong petrolhead who once owned a four-litre Jaguar XJ6 and a pair of modified Ford Kas became a convert, and what a Hyundai Ioniq 5 N ring taxi lap of the Nürburgring taught him about EVs and fun The wider home energy picture: home chargers, solar, batteries and heat pumps, and why an energy company is encouraging customers to use less Hyperfocus, problem solving and the undiagnosed ADHD Bob credits for the way he goes deep on everything from i-MiEV battery cells to Star Trek lore Pressing the reset button after a career or relationship change, leaning on friends, and a 2024 spent travelling solo to a different country every month Pushing for the Scottish Power job when he felt he wasn't good enough, summed up by a Scottish phrase you'll want to remember: shy weans get nae sweeties Plockton, the west coast, and where to point the car when you need to get away Bob's wish with the EV Café magic wand: less ignorance, more empathy Along the way there is a kilt, two West Highland terriers, a shortbread tin, a tour bus full of cameras at Fort Augustus, and the podcast's most contested answer yet to Star Wars or Star Trek. Connect with Bob on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-murphy-300031b0/Find out more about Scottish Power:https://www.scottishpower.co.uk

    Bob Murphy | Scottish Power

  3. Sep 23

    Chris Rimmer | CENEX

    Counting charge points tells you almost nothing. That frustration led Chris Rimmer and his colleagues at CENEX to build Are We Nearly There Yet? - reports that express public charging progress not in kilowatts or headline totals, but in years ahead or behind demand, local authority by local authority. (At recording: near-home charging sits about a year and a bit ahead. A little ahead. Not loads.) Chris has spent nearly eight years at CENEX, the not-for-profit consultancy set up in 2005 to drag zero emission vehicles out of the lab and onto the road. His particular skill is compression - turning meter points, grid flexibility and battery degradation into one sentence a politician can act on. He talks to Paul and John about the route in: physical geography and oxbow lakes, a graduate scheme at E.ON, a call centre at 24, a living lab of 75 Milton Keynes homes. A year in Mexico working for a Christian charity reset his sense of who bears the cost when the climate shifts. Connect with Chris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-rimmer-58468233/CENEX website: https://www.cenex.co.uk

    Chris Rimmer | CENEX

  4. Sep 9

    Kevin Hennelly | TVG

    What happens when you take an electric van that can wheelspin off the line and make it drive like the diesel it replaced? According to Kevin Hennelly, commercial director at The Vehicle Group (TVG), you get calmer drivers, fewer accidents, longer tyre life - and up to 30% more range from the same battery. Kevin lifts the lid on TVG, a "very well hidden" UK engineering company whose Aladdin's cave of products includes the Oculus camera (the only vehicle camera made in the UK) and EcoLimit, a power control system that tames EV acceleration, limits reverse speed, and can even put an overloaded van into limp mode until it's back at the depot. He talks through the real-world numbers: a refrigerated home-delivery fleet in London seeing 120–130 miles where unmodified vans manage 90, a water company getting over 200 miles per charge instead of the expected 150–160, and the knock-on savings in charging time, infrastructure, tyres, downtime, and insurance claims. Connect with Kevin: LinkedInThe Vehicle Group: thevehiclegroup.com

    Kevin Hennelly | TVG

  5. Sep 2

    Chris Chandler | Lex Autolease

    Chris Chandler is Principal Consultant at Lex Autolease and the electrification SME across all three Lloyds Banking Group motor brands: Lex Autolease on the B2B side, Tusker in salary sacrifice (22,000 vehicles at acquisition, 100,000 the week we recorded), and Black Horse in retail finance. Between leasing and salary sacrifice, that's a serious chunk of the EVs on British roads. Paul and JC get into: Why cars sprinted and vans crawled - benefit-in-kind versus a purely transactional purchase, and why commercial vehicles are far less price elastic than company cars The moment the tax went up and "the tap just turned off" - then came back down and switched on again Why converted diesel platforms were never going to cut it, and what changes when a van is engineered electric from the ground up Charging that should just work: plug in, it charges, no apps, no cards, no accounts V2G, home solar and batteries, and why a leasing company is now asking customers what's behind the wall socket Designing CO2-based company car tax in 1999, and why CO2 beat the other 18 candidates on the list Biodiesel, waxing fuel, bacterial growth, and the argument for a 5% blend across everything rather than 67% in a handful of refuse trucks Chris Chandler on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-chandler-756b9813/Lex Autolease:https://www.lexautolease.co.ukLex are principal sponsors of the Greenfleet EV Rally.

    Chris Chandler | Lex Autolease

  6. Aug 26

    Angela Muresan | Be.EV

    Angela Muresan arrived in the UK in 2015 with broken English and a job picking and packing in a warehouse. Ten years later she's a presenter, content creator, and the face of Be.EV — and the story of how she got there involves a notebook full of borrowed email templates, a self-funded industry event that left her with £20 in the bank, and a one-way ticket taken purely because an ex once said the UK was the one place he'd never go. Angela talks about ADHD — what it cost her before she understood it, why she now calls it a superpower, and how an unlikely combination of therapy and ChatGPT helped her make sense of her own brain. She explains the gamble behind Race to Zero, the event she organised alone with no marketing experience specifically so the industry would come to her (it worked), and why her proudest achievement has nothing to do with work. Along the way: why she refuses to be boxed in as "an EV person" or "a petrol person", the sameness problem with modern car design, her plan to convert a classic — ideally a '69 Shelby Mustang — to electric, and what she'd do with a EuroMillions win. And when handed the EV Café magic wand, her one wish isn't about chargers or range. It's about ending the tribalism — petrol versus electric, us versus them — and just getting on with building a cleaner future together. Connect with Angela: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marketingwithangela/ Website: https://www.angelamuresan.com Be.EV: https://www.be-ev.co.uk

    Angela Muresan | Be.EV

  7. Aug 19

    Warren Philips | EVA England

    A co-founder of EVA England, incoming chair of the Recharge APPG in Parliament, and one of the earliest UK adopters of home solar, battery storage and electric driving — Warren Phlips received one of the very first consumer Tesla Powerwall 2 units in the country (number three, he's told, just behind a certain Robert Llewellyn) — he has spent the best part of a decade quietly pulling the EV transition in the right direction, almost entirely as a volunteer. But this conversation goes far beyond charge points and policy. Warren talks candidly about the moment that changed everything: sitting alone in a hospital room, holding his newborn daughter while doctors fought to save his wife, and deciding then and there that his job was to make the world better rather than build a fortress around his family. Everything since — the advocacy, the lobbying, the 20-plus hours a week given freely to EVA England — flows from that decision, and from a promise to his daughter. Along the way: From avionics engineering and FTSE 100 software to government security work — and how none of it explains the hats How showing off a Renault Zoe and some solar panels at an eco open home quietly converted a neighbourhood The five principles Warren tests every policy against: fair, accessible, equitable, safe, accurate A live debate on the newly announced VAT cut on domestic electricity — good news, but is it fair to the millions who can't charge at home? Recognising privilege, and choosing to spend it on other people Lucid Destiny, his new consultancy helping companies navigate the EV transition without losing sight of the consumer at the end of it Why his daughter is named after Ayrton Senna And a Magic Wand wish that might be the best one yet: removing fear itself Connect with Warren:LinkedInEVA England:evaengland.org.uk

    Warren Philips | EVA England

  8. Aug 12

    Alun Davies | ElectrAssure

    Alun Davies once told his team that electric vehicle charging "would never catch on" — and sent someone else to do the first installation jobs. Today he leads ElectrAssure, the electrical contractor behind nearly 2,000 charging sockets for National Grid, the chargers that greet every electric Volkswagen arriving on UK shores, and some of the first DC rapid chargers for Western Power Distribution. This week, Alun sits down with Paul and John to trace the line from qualified electrician to business leader — and it's anything but a straight one. Along the way: a theatre degree, a stint as sound engineer for the England football team's press conferences (and Girls Aloud), a summer spent on commercial roofs, and a cherry picker licence that landed him an apprenticeship in the family firm. Alun talks candidly about the roundtable moment six years ago when nerves nearly got the better of him — and how a "nuts and bolts" perspective turned out to be exactly what a room full of fleet managers needed to hear. He opens up about running a business with his wife (a former deputy head teacher, now Ops Director), why they've agreed never to switch off from work, giving up alcohol in 2022 to think more clearly, and measuring success by the energy in a room rather than the numbers on a spreadsheet. There's also a school report that shattered a 20-year self-image, a son whose GCSE English presentation was titled "Why Electric Vehicles Are Rubbish", and the revelation that this softly-spoken sparky is the lead singer of a heavy metal band, Before the Sirens. Whether you're wiring up a depot, scaling a family business, or just wondering how a self-confessed class clown ends up advising National Grid, this one's worth your fifty minutes. Connect with Alun and ElectrAssure Alun on LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/alun-davies-electrassureElectrAssureelectrassure.co.ukBefore the SirensYouTubeSpotifyApple Music

    Alun Davies | ElectrAssure
See All (186)

Trailer

About

Guests from across the EV industry will join the crew for The EV Café Takeaway, having candid conversations to highlight the work of the Electric Vehicle and Sustainability industry, to uncover stories that we all need to learn from and importantly, to understand something of the people behind the work.  The EV Café crew, have the wonderful privilege of talking to some amazing pioneers, innovators, and collaborators in our industry. The generosity, openness, honesty, and insight from our guests has been truly humbling and inspirational. We want as many people as possible, to be challenged and inspired by these podcasts.

Information

You Might Also Like