Electric vehicles can replace petroleum cars only if the charging network is dense and easy to use. Theis Lien co-started Norwegian mobile EV charger company Enua, and now he is contributing to an EV infrastructure venture in Switzerland. Cheaper, easier, and smarter chargers also help manage the electric grid.
Imagine not being able to charge your cellphone in the bedroom at night: your only phone charger is mounted in the living room, and you’d have to pay thousands of francs and call in an electrician to set up a second power supply in another room. Next morning at work, you can count yourself lucky if your employer has set up one or more phone charging stations for employee use. You better start your day early if you want to grab one of those docks! Otherwise, you’ll have to spend your lunch break at a charging station kilometers away to juice up your battery to last the day.
This is the reality for charging electric vehicles (EVs): you need expensive, fixed charging stations to refuel the batteries. Few can afford to have more than one at home, and finding a station on the road is a hit and miss.
Theis Lien worked for the EV giant Tesla in his home country, Norway. The Nordic country is known for high EV adoption rates spurred by governmental policies, such as tax exemptions and cheaper parking for electric cars. Yet the hassle of charging was a customer pain point Theis saw often at Tesla. In 2021, he joined forces with three of his friends to do something about the problem: Enua was born.
Enua develops and sells mobile chargers for EVs. The company has split the traditional charger concept into two modules, the fixed wall socket and the mobile charger itself. The high-voltage socket still needs to be installed in a fixed location, but it costs only about a hundred francs. The more expensive part, the smart charger, can be carried in the car and used with any compatible socket.
Enua’s initial target customer was a private EV owner who wanted to have a charging station both at home and at their summer cabin. However, this wasn’t what the market had in mind. Instead, people preferred to have multiple sockets at home: one in their garage for winter charging and another outside in the yard for the summer.
An even better customer segment consists of housing associations that manage apartment buildings with dozens or hundreds of residents. The traditional EV charging system was expensive and slow, as each unit needed to be mounted individually whenever a resident requested one. Using the Enua system, an association could afford to install enough sockets for the whole compound in bulk. Each resident could then get their own mobile charger whenever they bought an EV.
Theis shares an example of another Enua customer, a gym chain with 30 locations and three EVs to service those locations. Instead of buying 30 expensive chargers for each individual training center, the chain simply installed 30 sockets and bought three mobile chargers to keep in the cars. “That’s a lot of money and environment saved”, Theis sums up.
“I miss the Swiss innovation culture in Norway”
Enua didn’t need to convince investors about the Norwegian EV market’s appeal, Theis remembers the early days: nearly 90% of new cars sold in Norway were EVs. The company has since expanded within Scandinavia, and Theis says the team is now eyeing the rest of Europe.
Switzerland is not a particularly fast growing EV market, but Theis is drawn to the country for other reasons. “I’d heard a lot about innovation in Switzerland, and I wanted to understand why all these big companies went there for development”, Theis describes. Instead of doing desktop research, Theis packed his electric car and drove down to Switzerland for a few weeks, without local contacts or an agenda.
Theis felt a little lost, until he joined a software developer meetup in Zurich. “I met very, very many new people in a short time”, Theis explains. He kept getting introductions to even more people, and he felt a sense of community with a lot of knowledge sharing. Theis’s hypothesis was confirmed: Switzerland is a great place for innovation, because so many people there are interested in learning and new ideas. “When I returned to Norway, I missed that spirit”, Theis says.
Meanwhile, Switzerland could also learn a thing or two from Norway. Theis admits he is biased, but he would like to see more investments into smart EV charging infrastructure in Switzerland. With the alpine country’s shorter distances, a good charging network would make even more sense in Switzerland than it does in Norway.
“People rarely go back to petroleum after buying an electric car”, Theis observes. EVs simply make more sense, especially in densely populated areas. Driving in a city means having to stop and restart frequently, which is more comfortable and efficient with an electric motor. An EV also means cleaner air and quieter streets, Theis lists the benefits. “I know trains in Switzerland are magic”, he laughs. But even Switzerland still needs some cars, so replacing fossil fuel vehicles with electric rides would improve quality of life in our cities.
The hassle of charging is once again the problem: charging stations in Switzerland are usually located outside the busy areas. Theis learned this first-hand during his road trip. That’s a problem Theis hopes to be able to solve soon, though.
“Our infrastructure will become smarter and more connected”
Theis’s Swiss road trip wasn’t just a source of inspiration; it also sparked a business opportunity. A few of Theis’s new friends have come together to develop charging infrastructure in Switzerland. Theis won’t give details on the so-far unofficial venture, but the goal is to build a scalable, easy-to-use system for public space, using Enua’s charging systems.
Enua sockets and chargers are more than delivery tools for electricity. The sockets have NFC readers to prevent unauthorized access, and the chargers recognize optimal charging hours for saving money; the chargers also include features like parking radar and vehicle-to-grid capabilities. Throw in some solar panels, and electric vehicles turn into dynamic parts of the grid.
This connectivity is important, Theis believes. Transportation as a whole will become more electric, and the infrastructure will be smarter and more connected. This will help us use energy more efficiently, and it will help operators manage the electric grid better.
Excellent user interface is crucial for Theis’s Swiss venture: finding, accessing, using, and paying for the charging needs to be fast and intuitive. This is the only way to make people comfortable enough to use novel technologies on a large scale.
Because that’s the point: Theis is not developing a niche product just to try something new, he wants to create something that has a larger impact on our society. “It’s not realistic to expect people to use less energy in the future”, Theis admits. But we need to be smarter about what we do with that energy.
This article is partially based on this podcast episode.
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