The View from Fully Charged Live '21

Wow! It feels like forever since I wrote a review, or some notes at least from a trade show/event. It used to be a very frequent occurrence. I think the last in-person event I attended may well have been Fully Charged Live in Austin, TX, or maybe MOVE in London? Either way, it's been a while. So what was it like?

I'm not going to talk about all the Covid stuff, of course precautions were taken, and the event was mostly outdoors (and the UK weather behaved). Firstly, as you would perhaps expect, it was brilliant, and energizing to meet people again. More specifically it was great to meet good friends, contacts and clients again (as well as everyone else!).

There were quite a number of Hyperion Executive Search clients exhibiting, and in attendance. One of the things I love most is seeing how our clients, many who start working with us at a very early stage, go on to scale and become major players in a sector. I hope I don't offend any other clients with this one picture, I love you all equally, but I have known Lee and Jordan at myenergi a very long time!

I took this picture nice and early one Saturday morning whilst having a coffee and a pre-meeting stroll. But there were crowds! Big crowds, across the whole event, and all of the theaters/stages, and a majority of the stands.

Fully Charged is a interesting event for me and Hyperion. I've know the Fully Charged team for a very long time, and always supported the channel and the events in any way I could. It is though an event that is biased towards the general public, and around educating, informing and entertaining the EV/Clean energy loving, or investigating, public. We're a B2B company, and yes, I did attend and enjoy the Business day (Friday) and spent much of the day meeting and talking to clients, contacts and the business community at the event. It's not to be underestimated how many businesses there were and that was great to see. But for the cleantech sector as a whole, and for those who were exhibiting, it was amazing to see the growth in the numbers, but also in the knowledge of the general public in attendance. The tide has definitely turned, in regards to the level of interest and knowledge of 'Jo Public', and Robert Llewellyn, Dan Caesar and the whole Fully charged channel and team have to take a good chunk of credit for that.

One frustration I often get is that we, as a cleantech community spend a lot of time in our cleantech bubble. We've always needed that for moral support, encouragement and to not feel so alone in that big bad fossil fueled world, and long may such events continue, they are also a hotbed of collaboration, funding, and of course, meeting old and new clients. But when you see so much interest, so much energy, so much enthusiasm from the general public, that is when you know we're making progress. Fully Charged has also progressed, from an event with a hardcore of Tesla and EV enthusiasts and early adopters, and one Nissan Leaf from one OEM, to an event where so many Auto OEMs came to show their wares, and to host I believe over 1,000 EV test-drives. All in a couple of (Covid interrupted) years.

Speaking of test-drives, I ordered a Polestar 2 a few months ago, it arrives in November, but I hadn't yet driven one! So a sneaky test drive on Saturday affirmed I'd made a good choice. Thank you to all of the Polestar team that looked after me, and goodness knows how many others who had an interest, or fell in love with the car. But the car choice there was amazing. One or two OEM's still slow to the party, I expect they will be there next year, if they haven't gone Kodak!

Hopefully all the EV Charging infrastructure companies and talks helped bust some of the myths about range anxiety too. Apart from the home/work EV charging companies, we had GRIDSERVE, Instavolt, Osprey and others in Public/rapid charging infrastructure there too. I think our NED and GRIDSERVE Chairman Jerry Stokes was the busiest sales person at the show, not sure how many he signed up for an Audi eTron via their leasing arm.

Oh, I nearly forgot all of the vans, e-bikes and event the HUGE Volta electric truck were there, great to see the interest in all of those things.

The long and short, Fully Charged is the Motor show of the future, but one with far more than just awesome EVs but with so much to show and so many talks and opportunities for people to see, hear, touch and smell when it comes to the mobility transition. Well done Robert, Dan et al.

To all those I met, it was great to see you, to all those I didn't but were like ships in the night, maybe next time, or hopefully sooner. To all those who didn't or couldn't attend, there's always next year, or the US, NL, and Oz events hopefully coming up. Might just see you there!

(Now I'm off to Berlin to speak at EcoSummit)

David