ATE Member Spotlight: IONNA

Discussion Guide

3:51 – The Rechargery model

5:41 – Navigating zoning for EV charging

7:20 – Emily’s role and background

9:19 – Working with cities for pipeline development

11:56 – The role of utilities in informing IONNA pipeline development

17:09 – Navigating load demand and the pursuit of flexibility

21:09 – What makes good utility partners

26:08 – Examples of good utility customer programs and practices

30:47 – How to help your utility help you

34:49 – Rechargery @ Circle K

37:21 – Maintaining a consistent customer experience across brand partners

40:39 – The value of ATE membership

42:02 – IONNA Electrification Summit – November 17 – Los Angeles, CA

Emily McCullum 0:56
Yeah, great. Thank you. So, we are newer to ATE. We’ve joined a couple of times as guests and then officially became members this year. But IONNA, we are a public-facing EV charging network provider, building out public-facing fast chargers across the entire country.

We are founded with eight founding automaker partners. BMW, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Stellantis, Toyota. I think I got them all. And so we have this really unique platform where with automakers as our backers and founding partners, we’re really focused on the driver. It’s all about customer experience, and really the origin of IONNA is to open North America’s roads to all EVs. And we’re here essentially to solve the problem of a lack of reliable infrastructure out there. And essentially, with IONNA there, the hope is that a consumer making their kind of vehicle choice, their buying decision, is not swayed by a lack of public infrastructure or public infrastructure being there, right? We want to solve the problem. So it’s just about you can buy whatever car you want and really helping those sales and electrification take off.

Wesley Holmes 2:16
That’s awesome. And as we all know the availability or at least the public perception of availability on public charging points is a key barrier to mass consumer adoption. There’s just that sense of uncertainty of can I get where I’m going and will I have enough power to get there?

And even in the charging space, so much of the early stuff was standalone chargers or a few banks of chargers in the back end of the parking lot, maybe shaded, maybe not, maybe in a space you don’t feel totally safe. And I know, with the Rechargery’s, you’re trying to do something different, make it more traditional, make it more like the amenities people have come to get used to. Also, with a little style, a little flair. I like y’all’s branding look. The lean towards the old historic gas stations. I think I heard one of the first ones y’all opened up near your headquarters over here in Raleigh-Durham, right? It was a 100-year-old gas station, right?

Emily McCullum 3:04
Yes, that’s correct. That’s Apex. You know your stuff, Wesley. I cannot take credit for the amazing branding, but it certainly also drew me to IONNA. But yeah, I think it’s all about focusing on the customer experience. And I think what you said about public perception, unfortunately, has been true up to this point a lot of times in terms of not enough charging out there for folks, first of all, not enough reliable charging at all.

And the experience being typically less than that of a traditional ICE fueled car. And we want to change that. We expect when you pull up to charge, you are going to be there 15, 20 minutes. You should have access to somewhere to recharge yourself as well. You know, get a drink, get some food, use the restroom.

Emily McCullum 3:51
So for IONNA, the Rechargery remodel really works one of two main ways. Either we are having what we call a relay site where we’re partnering with someone like a Sheets, a WaWa, just an individual restaurant or coffee shop, and we’re bringing the charging, maybe canopies with lighting, trash bins, kind of simple amenities to that existing business. And then the user there is encouraged to go into the business on site. Maybe we’re on a shopping plaza with a lot of businesses, but we’re up front and we’re well lit. We are not in the back by the dumpster.

Or we’re building out that full Rechargery, like you mentioned, the Apex site where we actually took over the entire site, and remodeled what was an old gas station that now is a coffee shop. We partnered with a local businesswoman on one half. The other half is the driver lounge with vending open, all access. When you plug into charge, you get an access code, go in, relax, charge yourself up as well while you’re there and waiting, hopefully, just for, around 20 minutes.

Emily McCullum 5:41
Yeah, so true, Wesley, and that keeps me busy. I think the kind of variations in permitting across the country, so many cities still don’t have any kind of code that references EV charging. Maybe we’re considered a fueling station. Maybe we’re considered something completely different. More and more are adding EV as a secondary use because now, they’ve seen the model where you are just a couple of stalls in level 2 or fast charging and the back of a parking lot.

But I think particularly where we are coming in as a primary use and maybe on a partial wall we are adding vending machines and a restroom, but there’s still shops next door. And so, the main use of this property is EV charging with an amenity as a kind of secondary use. That’s still a pretty new scenario for a lot of cities and counties and something that we really have to work through with them in terms of focus on the customer experience. Because a lot of time what they come back with is, hey, we understand we have a regulation for charging, but we don’t know what to call this restroom now because it’s not the primary use, so can you build it? And it ends up being the unintended consequence that those amenities that users and customers want are the piece that makes the permitting so much more difficult. And I think maybe that’s why many haven’t done as many. And so that’s something we’re trying to work through.

Emily McCullum 7:20
Sure. Well, IONNA is headquartered in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, as you mentioned. I’m actually from the area, and I had been living in California working at Caltrans Department of Sustainability and Equity and Tribal Affairs, on some EV work there, kind of more focused on the policy side.

I had been watching IONNA for a little bit, and once I saw that they were headquartering in North Carolina, it looked like a great brand and a great product I wanted to be a part of. I kind of tracked them down and joined to be on this entire public engagement sphere in terms of working with all of our public partners.

So when I came in in January of 2025, it was really introducing IONNA to all of these electric utility partners, the cities that we’re working with. At that point, the majority of my role was just going out to find who are these partners that we’re going to need to work with so closely to get these things built. And what do we need is power and we need permits.

And so it’s making the relationships with all of those people. I think many of your members have probably seen me around ATE and other conferences. And now it’s more about deepening those relationships and understanding how do we improve processes together and collaborate to achieve something new and in a new kind of efficient way.

Emily McCullum 9:19
Yes, so I am definitely not doing it all here, for sure. We are just under 100 staff members now at IONNA. On my small escalation partnership team here, we’ve got a government affairs associate, Kavita, and a utility engagement associate, Ethan. So some of the (ATE) members might have talked with both of them as well.

And then we have an entire site acquisition team planning where sites are going. We have our deployment team, who are the ones actually project managing day-to-day. And the role of my team is more to build across the entire portfolio of sites we have with one key utility partner. How is that going? Going out to meet face to face and understanding process.

And same with the city. We’re going to do a ton in whatever metro area, let’s say San Francisco, LA. How do we build the relationships there to really understand, especially in some of these larger cities where it can be timely just to get through their pipeline? Just having those conversations up front on which door is the best one to go through to begin with in permitting, and who are all the people we need to check in with is really key. Like I know on a certain project right now in LA County, I think we have like 10 different permits, 10 different departments are reviewing and just making sure you get all the right ones on the list is a key first item.

Wesley Holmes 10:32
Wow. Yeah, so it’s a lot of boxes to check, a lot of moving parts, a lot of agencies and interested parties that you got to navigate your way through, right? You know, our core constituency at ATE, is utilities, OEMs, charging manufacturers, the software companies behind them, the people who help interface and network all this stuff together.

When you think about utility relationships, about your pipeline and where you want to go. I mean, obviously, you want to go where the charging demand is, right? But then I think there’s also the question of meeting your goals and hitting your timelines and hitting them in a cost-effective way, right?

So, I’m interested in your perspective and experience on when you’re looking at utilities, when you’re looking at territories, what are some of the things that you’re looking for that says like, okay, we have speed to power? We can get this in the ground, we can get it turned around quick. Like constructing the station is probably the shortest timeline. Getting all the permits and approvals and the make ready in place in advance, is where a lot of the time this is really sunk. So when you all are thinking about your strategic pipeline for where you want to build your Rechargery’s or where you want to partner with some of the other vendors like Circle K, what are some of the things you all are looking for in terms of prime location?

Emily McCullum 11:56
Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is going to already be determined by where are those drivers today? Where is the current demand? In certain areas, Texas, Florida, California, the demand is so high and there’s already queuing for folks, like people just need more charging. And so we’re obviously going to go where customer demand is.

Also along key corridors and those metro markets. But then I think within that, where you see we expand even further and where do we invest more money back into these territories is going to be, as you said, territories where we can build the projects that we want to and we can build them efficiently. That way we can get the return on capital.

So in permitting, if we want to build sites where we can add canopies and restrooms, there has to be a permitting path forward. Or in those jurisdictions, maybe you don’t see canopies at some of our sites. I mean, you won’t see them on all of them. And many of the times you won’t see them in that site because it might be another year or two for the permitting there. So sometimes like we have split out projects and will come back secondarily and add a canopy at a later date. But in some cities, just splitting into two becomes even more of a difficulty, right? Because then you’re managing two projects at the same time and it can lead to extra confusion. So I think that’s kind of number one.

So that’s on the permitting side, I think something that makes a difference in terms of on this city or the other is if there’s a clear pathway for EV charging in their zoning and in their code and also EV charging with amenities, that’s huge, right? On the utility side, I think it really is about interconnection timeline, right?

I think utilities are reliable. They’re trying to reliably and safely serve the grid. I think there’s a couple things that make it stand out as an easier kind of collaborator to partner with for us. One is going to be just how long is your actual interconnection process in queue.

But the other is going to be how flexible can you be with us? Because as an EV charging provider, we have a pretty flexible load and business model compared to maybe like a factory coming to a territory. You know, if you say, hey, if we are building out five 400 kilowatt chargers, do we actually need the full 2 MW nameplate load? Like we don’t, and we can work with less. And so if you’re able to have the kind of flexibility and knowledge of your grid to even say like, hey, we can only serve at 1 MW for the first two years, how can you make that work? That’s the kind of conversation we want to have.

A flexible suite of options of software-based load management. We can size down hardware and size our switch gear differently, or we could even drop chargers in some scenarios to be able to serve customers sooner than later. And so we always want to be able to have a conversation and problem solve to get as many chargers as we can online for those customers sooner than later.

And, you know, inevitably some projects will just take a while in areas where there’s substation upgrades needed and demand is crazy. We’re seeing a lot of that and a lot of unprecedented growth for electric utility. So I think it’s a challenging time.

I think the narrative I hear a lot and that I think rings true with everyone as a customer as well is we want to keep rates low and how do we utilize every electron that’s already out there, right? And so, I think having those conversations is an area where I would like to be a collaborative partner and obviously, we want to take advantage of what’s available on the grid. And I think that we have a more flexible kind of business model than a lot, so we’re able to take advantage of whatever power you’ve got.

Wesley Holmes 15:51
Definitely. It was interesting. I heard an interview with your CEO, Seth Cutler, earlier, and there was a question to him about what we would call flexible interconnection strategies. And I think what you described is some practical flexibility strategies that speak to just working with what you got. But he was being asked, one of the things that you might do to stave off excessive demand charges or things like that would be solar canopies and on-site battery storage and if you all were thinking about that from the beginning? And he said off the bat, no. Anything that’s going to add costs and overhead to our building of these stations is going to wind up on the tab of the customer trying to charge at the site.

And so IONNA’s goal was really about designing a great customer experience, which included an affordable customer experience. And the more they tried to bake into that to make it, yes, it sounds cool, yes, it would be good for IONNA to avoid demand charges, but it’s not necessarily good for the customer today, and it’s not serving that ultimate goal, which seems to be the driving light over there.

So, I’m curious, is that part of the evolving conversation about how you’ll think about what you can do in terms of powering sites or navigating demand charges, or how do you how do you think about that, I guess, from a utility standpoint?

Emily McCullum 17:09
Yeah, I mean, I think obviously what Seth said rings true with me as well. Folks often ask have you thought about battery storage? I mean, especially if we are bringing charging to somewhere like a shopping plaza, like there’s not space for that, right? It’s quite a large piece of equipment you’d be bringing in, potentially, you know, renting additional stalls and spaces most of the time. It doesn’t really pencil out. And as you said, even if you are bringing it in, it’s just going to be an additional cost laid on for the customer. So we would rather just work within what’s possible.

And I think there still is so much possible on the grid. Just having conversations with utilities, we’ve been able to talk through what transformer sizing do we actually need right now? We’re able to share some of our aggregated peak load data across average peak kilowatts we’re seeing over the month. Now that we have more and more sites online, we have over 150 sites live now, many for over a year. We can share that data with our electric utility partners and show them Hey, this is the same profile site. Here’s 10 other sites that have the same number of chargers around the country. And this is kind of the peak kilowatt they’re seeing.

How can we use that data to figure out we can actually diversify here. We definitely don’t need 100% load. And what do we need? And I think that conversation is, to me, almost like the easiest number one, because it doesn’t require anyone to get new technology or do a ton of R&D or extra cost. It’s more conversational.

And then, I think flexible connect. When you talk about more advanced technology, I would think of something like PG&E’s Flex Connect program, where they actually have the ability to monitor their own grid, do day ahead signals, and we work with them. We have, I think, six sites enrolled in that Flex Connect program right now. We’ve built out the software and hardware needs on our side partnered with the right folks to get that up and running for IONNA. And that’s a huge way to be able to take advantage of what power is available for now until some of those more major upgrades are available.

And I think to me, the differentiating factor there is how much power is available. Because if you have, let’s say, 60 or 70% of the nameplate load, we might be able to live with that long term. And so just right-sizing the transformer or something makes sense. So if you’re talking about 80% of load or something on a site where we’ve got 10 bays, that’s probably fine for our equipment.

This is where we can confidently give you power full time. And then these are days ahead where it would potentially be constrained. But you know what, if we can get the power 90% of the time, then it might be worth it. And we are able to proactively communicate that with our users in terms of if the site it will be down due to working with the utility.

San Jose has approached us asking the same thing. Asking more folks to enroll in that because otherwise we’re faced with the same thing that all the customers in California are faced with, utilities asking you to come and do power shutoffs to prevent grid failure.

And so it’s everyone’s role to play a part there, and we want to be able to do it, but in a way that we’re still putting the customer at the forefront of the experience. So providing charging but not with additional cost and not with a subpar experience.

Wesley Holmes 21:01
So that’s an interesting conundrum. I hadn’t considered much about the public charge points navigating demand response events, which are unfortunately increasingly frequent. Power demand is continuing to skyrocket and weather extremes, heat extremes… and I hadn’t considered how the public charging
industry have to navigate that experience.

Because you’ve got people who are showing up, they’re on the road somewhere, they’re coming home from work, they’re on their way to work, and they can’t just not power their vehicle. Or if they do, they’re probably going to blame you. They’re probably not going to blame the power company for that, right?

So, when you all think about that are you communicating with the utility in terms of when you can? Like this is our user data, when we’ve got flexibility on the consumer side versus, obviously I don’t think you necessarily control when the sudden weather or whatever is driving the demand event, right?

Emily McCullum 21:59
Yeah, so I think it’s all about utilities who are able to proactively communicate. Like, hey, this will be an event three days in advance or four days in advance and asking. I think the gold standard, as a lot of folks have offered, Duke has one where it’s an opt-in where you can sign up for the demand response events. If you don’t participate, there’s no harm. And if you’re able to, great, you might get some credit back, and I think those are kind of the best, right, because they won’t know when it’s coming up until it’s coming up.

And then for us, if it’s a holiday weekend and we know folks are going to be on the road, like we probably can’t respond to that event because we’re trying to serve critical infrastructure, right? We’re moving people. July 4th is a critical weekend for us. We’re not going to limit power on folks. But if it’s the middle of the night and we can check the status of our chargers and who’s online, and no one’s there, and they need to use that power, then maybe that’s something that we could participate in. So, I think it’s all about being dynamic, being able to monitor our own system and then being able to work with utilities as we can while maintaining a peak customer experience.

Always keeping the customer focus is IONNA’s central tenet. What’s going to be best for the driver on the road. Because I think everyone has had that experience where if you’re driving, if I pull up to a charger right now, yeah, I’m not going to be thinking about the betterment of the grid necessarily, or just like I’m trying to get to my work, my home, my next destination on my road trip with your kids in the backseat or something. So that’s always got to be the number one.

Wesley Holmes 23:36
Yeah, and it’s paying off. I know it’s breaking news last week about JD Power. IONNA are found to be one of the most enjoyable, reliable charging network experiences out there. And the reliability and speed of power at your stations being one of the top high marks, along with your amenities and thoughtful environment.

So y’all are definitely doing that right as far as hitting the customer where they need it and what their experience is. I think that’s definitely the way all the companies have to start thinking now. This is about customer service, it’s an infrastructure challenge, but it’s a people-centric infrastructure challenge. I think that is the new way of thinking that y’all are definitely on the forefront of.

Emily McCullum 24:16
Yeah, that was really exciting to see the JD Power announcement. I mean, it felt great and it was a unique experience for me to get to see that after I got to experience on a road trip to Florida, where some of us from HQ actually got to go down along with other influencers and take a road trip just using the IONNA recharger network. And then on the way back, me and a colleague also hit up some of our competitors to see the difference.

I think it was really enlightening to just get that experience firsthand, talk to customers in the field and hear anecdotally from them, why they like IONNA more with competitive pricing, canopies, fun branding, and just what makes that experience so different for them was really key. So that was the first in one of our road trip series and more to come there in the future. But I think it’s another way for us to be able to really think about what is that customer experience like.

Normally I’m in the office, I travel a lot, but I’m normally traveling to our other utility partners and city partners and not road tripping on our own network. So that was a really fun experience for me to get to be the customer.

Emily McCullum 26:08
Oh, so many. How can I fit them all in here? I think the biggest thing I’d say is every single utility excels at something, right? We’re all innovating in different areas at the same time. There’s so many different places. So I think a lot of the excellent utilities I work with have really got a big focus on clarity on process. One of the things I did was I visited like 15 of our partners in person and just sat down and talked through, everyone has the kind of general flow map of step one you apply and then there’s, you know, intake, design, easements, other requirements and construction.

But like for this specific customer, because everyone’s business model is so different, what does that mean for us? And I think one of the first questions you want to ask is even making sure our initial service application is correct, given these questions on right sizing, available capacity, what kind of load information do you need from us up front to be able to determine even like what’s possible is huge. I think Center Point does a lot of real advanced stuff in terms of diversifying. There’s some of the kind of…top tier there, I guess I would say in terms of from my personal customer experience. They have a lot of experience with EV charging and they’ve done some of the more aggressive diversifying and it’s worked really well in their territory. Haven’t seen any issues.

I think having a key account manager, like a key point person is just huge because that unlocks all the other keys, right? When I want to talk about who do I talk to for sizing transformers, right? Who do I talk to about this question on easement process? It’s all about having that point of contact. I have so many of those folks across many of our utilities. You know, when we mentioned Duke, they have their dedicated transportation electrification and grid readiness team. I’ve got, you know, work with the Rule 29 team at Edison and SDG&E and, you know, 70 plus utilities. I can’t fit everyone’s name in here, but I work with you all. And I think that’s really the key, right? Having that one point of contact who can help unlock all of those other doors when there’s inevitably going to be something.

One thing I would highlight comes up a lot at conferences. What’s the best practice for this utility that they should do for all EV customers? And I think the biggest caveat I would just say, IONNA is not the same as the other EV charging providers, right? Because you might also be thinking about folks who are fleet operators, very different business model than us open to the public, we’re passenger public facing, you know, that’s super different than a terawatt or a medium heavy duty or these massive sites where it’s 40 plus bays. Every business is different. And so our needs are going to be different as well.

I think its both that we want those general best practices, but in terms of actually sizing equipment, make sure to have that conversation with your specific customer on what their business model is and how does their hardware work? How does their software work?

Wesley Holmes 29:13
You mentioned an interesting point because this is definitely becoming more of a crowded field, right? There’s more players getting into the EV charging space, particularly around fleets. So not just service deliveries and Amazon trucks and people who have that kind of fleet services, but ride share is moving heavy into this space. And they’re needing a lot of dedicated fleet charging locations because they’re finding they need more certainty than public access charge points can necessarily provide.

And I know one of the things that’s always been a point of, call it anxiety, for the utility companies is the question of certainty, right? You know, like you said before, like a data center, you know what they’re demanding, you know what they’re asking for. It’s predictable, it’s reliable. They like that kind of certainty. And when it comes to fleets, I think there could be at least a perception that fleet charging services are a more predictable, reliable state of demand. They’re penciled out, they’re going to have this many people charging day after day after day. Versus if you’re operating a public site, it’s a little harder to know what the flow of public behavior is going to be, right?

How are you finding that impacting the conversations happening in the marketplace? I’m just thinking there’s those actors coming in, but then there’s also the competition from the data centers themselves, and just more demand for more technology, more equipment, and more time from the utilities. As you’re out, as you’ve been doing this, how is it shaping the marketplace for getting this work done?

Emily McCullum 30:47
Yeah, I think one of the big things I hear is just when you’re communicating with your utility partners and putting service requests in, being able to delineate what is a potential project versus what’s real and what’s moving forward. Given their ever-increasing volume of service requests coming in or those initial feasibility and capacity checks.

So we try to be really sensitive, and reach out only once we’re more than halfway through contracting a site, making sure it’s real potential before we’re taking the time to do too deep of a dive on utility. You want to understand the power that’s there before you’re finalizing the purchase or the lease of a site.

We also have to be sensitive to the workload that our utilities are facing with an ever-growing demand from all of these folks. I think the other item there is in terms fleets and others out there, I think there’s a big opportunity for overlap, right? And more folks are talking about how does this public charging also serve rideshare drivers? Could it serve fleets at night? How can we use this infrastructure to help actually balance out that load curve that the utilities have to deal with, right?

Because you can make the same argument of certain fleets if they have to be out at a certain time, do they have to charge a certain time or can they charge overnight? How could you take advantage of existing infrastructure? How can we have public charging there to fill in those gaps. So if we’ve built out a new substation, there’s still unused megawatts. The more that someone is using those and paying for them, the more we’re getting that money back into the utilities and lowering rates.
So, I think it’s almost turning it on its head as an opportunity and focusing on if we can actually maximize the efficiency of what we build out, then it will lower rates and it will make it easier for utilities to have more resources, hopefully hire more staff. And I think that’s a huge thing too of advocating for our utility key account partners and advocating to those regulatory bodies.

Like why having a key account manager or someone like that is crucial for these national accounts where we’re trying to work with, you know, over 100, 150 utilities at the same time. We want to invest in having these folks there. It’s so crucial to being able to make decisions on how many sites, where are we putting this? Are we giving you all the right information?

Emily McCullum 33:31
Yeah, or even our city partners, some of them will reach out of if they’re electrifying their fleets and they don’t want to build out. Maybe they have level 2 chargers, but they’re not going to build their own fast charging necessarily, and it’s quite expensive. And if you’re only using it some of the time, how do our public charging infrastructure points help serve those fleets when they’re away from their depots?

And same from another medium duty vehicle or any fleet vehicles. Presumably most of those vehicles are going to drive away from the fleet depot at some point, and they might need to pop in somewhere else. So I think it’s all about how do we think about the entire system working for the user.

Wesley Holmes 34:08
Sure. Yeah, that’s a great idea. I like that idea of being a value-add to your municipal fleets. Who are doing their best to get up to speed on this, but it’s a lot of cost and sometimes harder to do things in that environment, right?

I wanted to ask a little bit more about some of the partnerships y’all cultivated. There was a big announcement of y’all working with Circle K, looking to do about 350 sites with them. Some you’ll operate and some you’ll just add chargers to, is that right?

Emily McCullum 35:27
Yes. Exactly. It’ll be a relay and so they’ll still get the same Circle K amenity experience. It’ll be Rechargery @ Circle K. They’ll get the same Circle K experience and amenity available there. I think it’s about pointing consumers to where there are existing amenities.

We’re also not trying to reinvent the wheel here. If there’s already a great place to stop on your road trip, but what’s missing is the charging, then we want to bring in the charging. If you’re missing both, then we’ll bring both. So I think it’s just figuring out what’s needed in that area, in that corridor.

Wesley Holmes 36:06
Yeah, I think it’s a great, natural fit. We’ve all been waiting to see how the convenience store and traditional gas station community get into this space. And I think they were all trying to figure out what made sense. And partnerships with companies like IONNA certainly make sense as a way to accelerate their own plans without trying to reinvent their business and understand an entirely new segment. They can make it a complement through these partnerships. That sounds like a good idea.

I wanted to hear a little bit more about what y’all are doing. Because we talk a lot about the site experience, and it’s not just the physical space and feeling safe and liking the look of it, but it’s also interfacing with the equipment, right? So y’all have got eight different car brands behind you who are somewhat competing with each other. You’ve got all these different partnering locations, Wawas and Sheets and Circle Ks. What’s going on at the Rechargery bays to make the experience as seamless as possible across all these different brands?

Emily McCullum 37:21
I think a lot of testing, regardless of who we’re partnering with on the amenity, IONNA is always owning, operating, maintaining the charging equipment itself, as well as like the trash on site, the canopies, the lighting, all of that is going to remain in-house. We have a great team here who is constantly monitoring all of our facilities. We get alerts any time of day. Folks are actually reading, reviewing all of the comments we get in customer feedback from Plugshare.

It’s just a ton of attention from our quality facilities, testing teams, always out there trying to make sure we’re integrated wherever we can be. Not just with the physical partners, but we are in fifteen plus apps, including your automaker apps and third parties like Charge Point and Presto. We have plug-and-charge with some of our automakers as well as Ford and Rivian, Volvo.

So more and more evolving on how do we make that user experience easier and seamless. It’s working with a lot of these partners as well to make sure no matter where you’re coming from, the IONNA experience is great no matter which angle you’re approaching it from.

Emily McCullum 38:56
Yep, so BMW, GM, Hyundai, Kia, others, Mercedes-Benz, others also have plug and charge where you can set it up with your own vehicle and then you just plug in and walk away. That’s by far the easiest and I think it takes away a lot of the potential errors as well that can come through payment systems. So if you have the capability to plug and charge, set it up. Do it. That’s going to be the easiest experience for you.

And then we always have credit card, just have to pay for anyone. And from customer feedback, I think once folks have plug and charge, there’s no looking back, right? That’s the easiest thing in the world. But if you have a vehicle where that capability hasn’t been integrated by the vehicle yet, just credit card always works. We’re in any app where you want to be. We just want to meet the customer wherever they are. And as you said, we don’t get a ton of feedback from folks saying, hey, we want more apps that we have to download to use your products. So.

Emily McCullum 40:39
That’s awesome. Yes, exactly. We want to just make sure whatever vehicle you’re driving, it works for you. We’ve got NACS, CCS. And for us, I think in my role in particular, my honest focus is on customer. My focus is on all of our partners that we rely on to be able to provide that customer experience. We can’t we can’t do this without our electric utility partners without our city partners and without folks like ATE bringing us together.

I will say that is something that’s been huge. To give ATE and all your work, Wesley, Phil, and everyone there some praise. When you are someone who’s developing across the country, it can be quite difficult to crack all of the policy, all the legislation, all of the regulatory proceedings happening across the country. And I think having room to gather key stakeholders, share updates, and then also share best practices is huge. So that’s the biggest benefit for us to get to be a part of ATE and participate and meet your members.

Wesley Holmes 41:48
Thank you. That was actually my next question, the value of being an ATE, and you got it ahead of me already.

I don’t want to take up too much more of your time, but I did want to offer an opportunity if you have any announcements, anything coming down the pipeline from IONNA you want to let our members know about.

Emily McCullum 42:02
Well, yes, we do, Wesley. Thanks for setting me up there as well. I think in talking about highlighting our partners, IONNA is going to host our first electrification summit this November. We are going to have all of these folks out to the Los Angeles area, California, November 17th. I’ll be sending out some more info to many of you soon, but reach out to me if you’d like more details.

We’re going to gather key stakeholders across four pillars of transportation electrification. So we need power, and those are going to be our electric utility partners we’re talking about. For permits, we’re inviting folks from our key policy orgs, counties, state orgs like GO-Biz and others who’ve worked on kind of permit streamlining.

For infrastructure we’ll have our founding automakers there as well, talking about transportation mobility via their vehicles, their home charging programs, their innovative vehicle to grid and vehicle to home technologies as well. So gathering all of these stakeholders in one area and being able to connect those pillars of industry and talk about best practices and hopefully give out some awards as well for best practices.

Wesley Holmes 43:15
That’s awesome. We’ll look forward to that, and we’ll certainly help spread the word amongst the ATE membership and all of our network, and I’m sure we’ll be in attendance as well.

With that, I’ll go ahead and let you go. You got a busy agenda ahead of you, a lot to get done this year, a lot of exciting projects, but I just really appreciate you spending the time to chat with me. We’re really happy to have you as members at ATE. And congrats again on all the tremendous success that IONNA is having and wish you all the continued success and growth.