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Editor Daniel Brown sat down with Blink COO Mike Battaglia at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to discuss the present state and emerging future of the electric vehicle industry and EV charging infrastructure, including DOOH opportunities.
Editor Daniel Brown sat down with Blink COO Mike Battaglia at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to discuss the present state and emerging future of the electric vehicle industry and EV charging infrastructure, both in the United States and globally — including the emerging use of EV charging stations as centers of digital out-of-home advertising (also known as DOOH advertising).
In a wide-ranging conversation, highlights included the following ten moments.
Top ten takeaways
- “Public charging is ubiquitous,” Battaglia said. “What we see is a very steady ramp moving up.” He predicts the U.S. will take a similar path.
- “As an example, in my household, we have two vehicles,” Battaglia said. “One of them is a Tesla, and the other one is an internal combustion vehicle. We have a charging station in our garage, and we never have an issue living our daily lives in our local community. So if you think about the amount of time that you spend going to work, going to the mall, going shopping for groceries, that’s the vast majority of what we do. Then every once in a while we’ll jump in the car and do a road trip. So for us at the moment, everything we do in our local community, we use the Tesla. Then when we go on longer distance trips, depending on the routes and where the chargers are located, we may take the Tesla, or we may opt for the internal combustion engine. Now at some point when the infrastructure is kind of fully built out, we won’t take the internal combustion engine vehicle.”
- Digital out-of-home advertising is a major area of opportunity also. While he can’t share the name of the partner yet, a forthcoming debut of DOOH advertising using the Blink network is planned for rollout in Utah, combining the charging stations with digital signage.
- Sustainability – how sustainable are electric vehicles, really?
- “There’s no such thing as a utopia,” Battaglia answered. “There’s no perfect technology, it doesn’t exist in any market, anywhere. So, what I always come back to is, when I’m driving down the street, and I can smell tail pipe emissions from the car in front of me, and I know that I’m driving a battery electric vehicle that is not emitting anything, to me that’s the anecdotal evidence… We can talk about supply chain, and where the minerals come from, and how much power does it take to actually produce an EV, but there’s so much research, and I’ll use that term loosely — there’s a lot of anecdotal stuff out there — there’s a lot of conjecture, but at the end of the day, I would be hard pressed for somebody to show me that a battery electric vehicle pollutes more than an internal combustion engine, and I think it doesn’t pass the sanity test.”
- “We like to say we’re changing the world, one charger at a time.”
- “The number one priority of Blink is to make sure that our chargers are up, working, and that when somebody rolls up to a charging station, it’s available for them to use.”
- “I think this is just another example of the innovation that’s going to happen. There’s a need, everybody talks about it; where there’s a need and there’s money to be made, guess what? Industry figures out a way to do it.”
- “We know that we’re doing good when a charger goes into the ground and it enables another battery electric vehicle to be sold,” Battaglia said.
- “If you have never driven an electric vehicle, find an electric vehicle to drive, because when you hit that accelerator, the smile it will put on your face — you’ll actually start laughing,” Battaglia said. “When we first got our Tesla, and we drove it off the lot, and we hit the accelerator in Sport Mode, we literally were sitting in the car laughing because of how fast it was.”
- Battaglia offered his preferred takeaway in closing: “Have confidence, if you’re considering an electric vehicle, that you’re going to be able to charge. We’re installing chargers every single day coast to coast. The network is growing at an incredibly robust rate.”
Daniel Brown
Daniel Brown is the editor of Digital Signage Today, a contributing editor for Automation & Self-Service, and an accomplished writer and multimedia content producer with extensive experience covering technology and business. His work has appeared in a range of business and technology publications, including interviews with eminent business leaders, inventors and technologists. He has written extensively on AI and the integration of technology and business strategy with empathy and the human touch. Brown is the author of two novels and a podcaster. His previous experience includes IT work at an Ivy League research institution, education and business consulting, and retail sales and management.
On The Road With Digital Signage Today
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