Using Design Thinking to solve complex challenges for Electric Vehicles
Interview with Tiya Gordon, COO of itselectric, a Brooklyn-based company with a new approach to charging infrastructure.
🚘 TL;DR
One of the main bottlenecks facing the scale up of Electric Vehicles (EVs) is that charging infrastructure can’t keep up. I spoke to Tiya Gordon, COO of itselectric, about how using Design Thinking can address this problem differently.
Before we dive in, here’s a quick explanation of Design Thinking.
👥 What is it?
Briefly put, Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation.
It pulls together 3 central ideas:
Desirability: What makes sense to people and for people?
Feasibility: What is technically possible within the foreseeable future?
Viability: What is likely to become part of a sustainable business model?
Using these questions helps to reframe big and complex problems, in order to identify new and more viable solutions.
🧠 Isn’t all problem-solving design thinking?
Good question.
Design Thinking differs to most problem-solving by focusing on the person behind a problem, instead of the problem itself. The more empathy and understanding shown to the person and need, the better the ability to redefine the problem and challenge assumptions around it.
From there, new innovations will emerge, and the prototypes iterated faster.
With that, let’s apply Design Thinking to the EV charging infrastructure challenge. Over to Tiya Gordon of itselectric.
🪫 What problem is itselectric solving?
People will soon be funnelled towards having EVs due to regulation, but will be waiting years to have sufficient infrastructure to charge them. In the meantime, there are all these buildings with electricity going spare, especially at night.
It’s also an equity piece. Today there are real barriers in regards to who can afford EVs based on who can afford access to charging. If you live in a suburban area or have your own parking space, EVs are an option. For anyone else, charging is a huge prohibiting factor.
💡 What’s the premise?
itselectric’s vision is to dramatically increase charging capacity in cities.
We provide a network of curbside charging posts which tap into the electricity streams of nearby buildings to create public power outlets. EV drivers then have a far greater number of locations to charge from, whilst people sharing their electricity supply can earn a passive income.
“With this model, energy can be seen as a type of currency, moving back and forth between buildings and storage and cars.”
🔎 How does Design Thinking come into the picture?
Instead of waiting for charging stations to be installed street by street, we are trying to plug the gaps with the energy that we already have.
This is where Design Thinking comes in hand, because we’re thinking about creating a seamless customer experience. And right now, if you’re queuing every time you need to charge, or just can’t find a place to park, that’s an incredibly frustrating experience.
We’re also looking to the future and thinking how can we capitalise on other existing trends? And one of them is that we are adding more renewable power sources to buildings, such as solar panels, but in many places that energy doesn’t flow to sources beyond the structure it is connected to. We can change that. If a building has more energy on certain days due to high solar, we can make sure that is transferred to an EV in need.
🔌 So how does itselectric work?
itselectric adds small curbside charging points outside buildings at no cost to their owner, which connect to an existing electricity supply through a small borehole in the ground
EV owners use an app to identify a charging point location and then use a detachable cord in their car to connect to the charging point
EV owners then pay itselectric for the charge event, and itselectric then shares that revenue with the building owner
Source: itselectric
⏩ Why is this approach different from existing charging infrastructure?
Time and money savings - today the installation process for charging infrastructure requires extensive siting studies and engineering to connect to under-road utilities. It is also highly capital intensive and disruptive to dig up roads. Instead our curbside chargers can be installed with only a small borehole in the curb and in a matter of days.
Flexible locations - we’re not limited in location the same way that existing infrastructure is. Our charging post footprints are much smaller and don’t need to factor in where there is public capacity, as we are taking from private energy sources, so we aren’t focused on shopping centres and public carparks in the same way many existing charging infrastructure companies are.
Equitable access - our process widens the number of people who can benefit from the rise in EVs on the road. It’s not just commercial companies benefitting from charging infrastructure: we think that individual residents should get a piece of the pie.
📍 What’s the challenge to getting this going?
Our approach is to use existing technologies for charging and re-packaging them in an innovative way. The challenge lies in the permitting process which is different in every city. Eventually our goal will be to have our EV charger added to the pre-approved elements on city curbside lists, but for now we need to scale place by place.
We need to build public-private partnerships to enable EVs to be rolled out as fast as possible. For us, the public side means being about to install the charging points on curbsides, and the private side means signing up building occupiers willing to share their energy.
The government’s target is 500,000 L2 public charging units by 2030. We have a goal to put 40,000 chargers in the ground in the next 5 years, and to make EV charging stations as standard as fire hydrants. Our pilots in New York this spring are just the beginning.
Source: itselectric’s mockup of one of their chargers
Thanks Tiya!
Further reading: