Founder of myenergi: “Switching to an EV is all about mindset”
Jordan Brompton, co-founder of renewable energy firm myenergi, believes a shift in mindset is required to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Everything EV podcast, Brompton began by telling the story of myenergi and how it came to produce the world’s first solar charger for electric vehicles, despite a cold reception to their concept in the early days.
“We actually got laughed out of the room once,” Jordan said. “We thought we had this amazing idea for car charging, and we essentially got laughed out of the room, like “nobody cares about solar” and “nobody cares about how they charge, they just want to charge,” so we thought we’re just going to go ahead and make it ourselves and we’ll be the judge of that.
“We were lucky in the sense that we were the first movers on it because I think it would have caught on eventually. Because we were the first movers and were able to carve our respected name into such a busy industry, it’s given us so much insight and we focus into the home and home energy management, whereas the rest of EV chargers focus on just EV charging and only a few might load-balance the home, but what happens if you run out of battery? What happens if you’ve got solar? What happens if you’ve got third-party devices in the home heating the hot water? They’re all going to be struggling over the power that’s used for the car and we just feel that the whole thing needs to work in a nice ecostystem and the customer doesn’t need to think about it too much.”
As a major player within the electric vehicle and EV charging space, Jordan also shared her views on the industry as a whole and the barriers facing people that are looking to move across to an electric vehicle.
She said: “I always try and think about it like somebody who is totally new to the space, and it is intimidating. When you’re making a change to something, there’s a lot of language changes – We’re so used to how our brain works when you see however many pence per gallon, you know how many miles you’re going to get for that. All that changes to kWh and how far that’s going to get you. It’s a minefield. I try and strip it back for people.”
Jordan also went on to talk about how far the EV industry had come in addressing and removing those obstacles for EV adoption.
“I think it’s tipped now,” Jordan said in reference to the balance of petrol and diesel cars versus electric vehicles. “From the beginning and when we first started the business, it seemed very ‘early adopter’ but now, as the OEMs are releasing more and more new models of electric vehicles, the mindset is shifting.
“The fact is there is enough chargers out there on the road and in public to be able to support your needs if you’re an EV driver. Obviously, we need more and more because more and more people are going to be on the road. Our ethos as a business is that home is the most important place; All I do is charge it at home. It’s a complete mindset and it’s our job and the industry’s job to keep educating people on it.”
