The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Sparklin.io: Simplifying EV Charging with Smart Sockets and App Integration

Episode Date: January 7, 2024

Sparkling.io: Simplifying EV Charging with Smart Sockets and App Integration Sparklin.io Show Notes About The Guest(s): Laurent Stefan is the CTO and General Manager of sparkling.io, a company that focuses on providing solutions for the massification of charging points for electric vehicles. Laurent and his team have developed smart sockets and a platform that allows for easy access to charging with simplicity and security. Summary: Laurent Stefan, CTO and General Manager of sparkling.io, joins Chris Boss on The Chris Boss Show to discuss their innovative solutions for the massification of charging points for electric vehicles. Laurent explains that their focus is on providing a simple and cost-effective solution for slow charging at home and work, as well as designing smart sockets for monitoring and easy access to charging. The company's platform includes an app that allows users to monitor their charging status and power consumption, making it convenient for both individuals and businesses. Laurent also highlights the importance of cybersecurity and sustainability in their products, as well as their plans for future AI development and load-balancing services. Key Takeaways: sparkling.io offers a solution for the massification of charging points for electric vehicles, focusing on slow charging at home and work. Their smart sockets include LTM communication for secure and easy access to charging, with monitoring and power consumption data available through their app. The company prioritizes cybersecurity, sustainability, and simplicity in their products, with a focus on reducing environmental footprint. Their customer base includes B2B and B2B2C clients, such as fleet management companies and real estate companies. sparkling.io's platform allows for the creation and management of communities, making it easy for businesses to set up charging solutions for their employees. Quotes: "Our main scope is to offer a solution for the massification of charging for every people." - Laurent Stefan "We have been trying to distribute the intelligence from the fuse board to the device, to the charging points." - Laurent Stefan "We have a 24/7 monitoring in terms of cybersecurity and avoiding intrusion or any kind of issue on your network." - Laurent Stefan "Moving from traditional cars to EV vehicles is a big change in the mindset of the people and in the way you are using your mobility solutions." - Laurent Stefan "We are more focusing on tier one, tier two customers and also in the real estate in general." - Laurent Stefan

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The family loves you but doesn't judge you. At least not as harshly as your mother-in-law because she never liked you anyway. So there's that. Anyway, guys, we've been covering CES Show 2024. And all week long, we've been covering some of the most amazing, innovative companies on the show, as we do every year. We've been doing it for, I don't know, 10 years or something like that. So we get a chance to talk to the CEOs, the managers, the people who are making the difference

and innovating at the cutting edge of technology out there. And that's the beautiful part of the CES show, the Consumer Electronics Show. We just put up yesterday our annual interview that's kind of become a tradition with Gary Shapiro, the president and head of CTA, the Consumer Technology Association, that puts on the CES show. And we got a preview of what's upcoming, what he's excited about. One of the things he's excited about is the French contingency. I think he won an award a few years ago from the French people, from President Macron over there in France for helping contribute to the country and helping them advance their agenda. And if you haven't been to Eureka Park in the basement of the Venetian at CES, you need to go down there.

You're going to see an amazing, cutting-edge group of people that are entrepreneurs, just making great technology and exciting stuff. And usually, those are the people who are going to be the future Apples and the future Microsofts and all that sort of good stuff. We have another amazing gentleman and company on the show with us today. It's a company at a website called Sparklin.io. We're going to be talking about what they're offering and going to be promoting at the company.

We have the CTO and general manager, Laurent Stéphane. Do I have that pronounced correctly, Laurent? Yeah, it's almost perfect. There you go. I'm working on my French. Oui. I see that. That's about all I know.

That and I think I know croissant. So welcome, Michel. I think I dropped your IO, your sparkling IO. Is there any other places you want people to find you guys in the interwebs? Yeah, you will find what you find at Sparklin IO. So you will get quite good information on what is Sparklin doing, which is to bring power for mobility with simplicity. That's the baseline of the company.

And basically, our main scope is to to offer a solution for the huge requirement of charging points for the smart city there you go now charging points for what for what use basically our our scope is to offer a solution for massification of the charging for every people. We have been mainly focusing on slow charging, which is basically what you have at home, what you can find at work as well, by designing some products, but also products which are, let's say, working on a smart platform. So we are designing smart sockets dedicated to monitor, to help people to get easy access to charging with simplicity, basically.

There you go. And they can use these for their smart cars, their smart, looks like, motorcycles, smart bicycles, smart... I forget what these are called. There's Segways here. By the way, any bicycles, smart, I forget what these are called. There's Segways here. By the way, any kind of vehicles, EV, whatever, it's two wheels, three wheels, or four wheels, the solution is quite effective to cover all the needs.

And it's also quite cost effective because we have been trying to work on that point as well to definitely offer a solution for the massification of the electrical vehicle. Yeah, as more and more of these EV vehicles proliferate and become normal, which seems to be happening everywhere, they've got to be able to have places to charge, especially when you're on the move. Whether you're companies or different places, you can do that. So I notice here that there's an App Store app that people can have on Google Play or iPhone. How does that integrate to your product and what it's doing? Yeah, by the way, for the end user, which is the most important,

which is our focus, we have also some applications. We're working on any kind of application or whatever it's android of or on the apple store so the only point the only focus that we had is to make it as simple as possible and to to make it as secured as possible as well because to one of the big difficulties that we may face on especially in this EV environment, is definitely the security aspect. Security, sovereignty as well, because all the servers and the containers that are used for our solution are local, so in countries. And last but not least is also the sustainability. All the devices that we have been developing and building, the smart sockets, have the smallest environmental footprint as possible

to bring anyway the same service for any people, for any user. There you go. And I imagine, you know, one of the challenges is there's kind of a diverse variation, isn't there, of charging voltage or amperage that's needed for different devices that vary, isn't there, of charging voltage or amperage that's needed for different devices that vary, isn't there? Yeah, that's true.

And basically, our solution is a platform. And on this platform, we have been validating and qualifying a very robust solution from 3.7 kilowatt hour to 22 kilowatt hour. So that it allows any kind of people to cover all their requirements, mobility requirements, knowing that 80% of our usage is to drive less than 50 kilometers a day.

So that we don't need so big amount of electricity per day to cover our usual needs. Whatever this is talking about a car and talking about lighter vehicles, it's even less. So it's definitely enough to cover more than 80% of the needs. And if we add 22 kilowatt hour, it's 100% of everyday requirement, by the way. And then tell us about how these sockets work, because evidently they're very special in how they're used, and they're evidently designed to make it so you don't have to, there's an ease of use in installing them and utilizing them.

Yeah, the socket is very, I mean, what we have been trying to do is to distribute the intelligence from the fuse board to the device, to the charging points, so that any smart socket is including LTE connection, so that it's communicating to the servers through this LTE communication. And does the app tell you, say, hey, your car is full or your bike is full, it's fully charged up? Yeah, exactly. There you go.

The app is on one side telling you that, but also telling you on a monthly basis your consumption, your power consumption, so that when you have this kind of plug at home and you have a company car, for instance, every month you get you get your your your data and you can bring it to your your company if your company is paying electricity for you now yeah that's good because you definitely want to get that you know that building called clawed back there invoice the company now let's say is it

secured by the app so like say i just come along and I'm like, hey, there's a plug there. I want to get some free electricity and charge my vehicle. Will it activate for me? Yeah, actually, that's one of our main differences. Basically, we have one of our partners in the company is specialized in cybersecurity. So, I would say that we have 24-7 monitoring in terms of cybersecurity and avoiding, let's say, intrusion or any kind of issue on the network in general. That's one of the big attention that we have been paying to making sure that the application and the solution is almost unviable. Wow, that's pretty awesome.

So, you know, I wouldn't want someone stealing my free, not my free, but my power, eh? I don't know. That's sucking. Some guy keeps pulling up to your house and charging your stuff. I imagine, are you finding, who's your biggest customer base when it comes to demand? Is it B2B?

Is it companies who are setting up these chargers at their office to appeal to their employees? Yeah, basically it's B2B and B2B2C, I would say, because we never forget the end user. Our customers are, let's say, renting companies renting companies I mean fleet management companies facility manager also I mean we are more focusing on let's say on tier 1, tier 2 let's say customers and

also I would say in the real estate in general all the people who are let's say managing big buildings or car park that's who people who are, let's say, managing big buildings or car parks, that's who people we are working with today. There you go. And building and real estate companies and also fleet management. Yeah.

You know what I'm doing at my company? We don't install sockets. So if you're out of charge, you just have to stay and work. And then we say, I don't know, if you put an extra hour, we'll turn the charger on. That's also a good opportunity to, let's say, to fix your employees because you have the solutions.

By the way, quite cheap at the end of the day. We're trying to make it as cheap as possible. That's first on the CapEx side, but also OpEx side. And so there's monitoring creation of communities so what is the creation of communities is there like an online community thing there you guys have yeah of course yes actually with the solutions that we are providing you can manage

very easily community and communities and sub communities as well so especially if you are a big company a big group it's very easy to to set up i mean the application and you have all the monitoring solution in-house to to to manage all your communities and your not all communities and end users as well so there you go that sounds pretty brilliant i mean i can see that you know i mean but the ev growth is so explosive you know here in america i imagine in france it is too and the european countries it seems like we're headed to you know everything's ev in fact i think california has a law on the books that they passed i don't know if it's fully cleared the courts but I think by like 2036 or 35 or it's somewhere in the few 2040 they're they're just gonna ban gas cars it's gotta go EV we've had a lot of discussions with the people on the

show as to whether or not we have the infrastructure for that so the infrastructure that you guys are rolling out is part of it really important for that. Yeah. And what is very important also for to understand is that moving from the, from the, from, from the traditional cars to EV vehicles is a big change in the mindset of the people and also in the way you are using your mobility. Uh, and, and that's why we have been focusing a lot on the simplicity of usage, of course, access control and make sure that nobody is stealing your electricity. That's something which is very important. But probably the big change, the biggest change,

is the change in terms of mindset that we all have to do because it's definitely, I don't know whether you are driving yourself, but it's a big change. And by the way, you have a very important American company which has been the leader of that. And that's quite now quite developed. I mean, it's going faster and faster the transition is now on the way and and you're right the infrastructure is quite poor at the moment that's that's clear

definitely definitely so it's going to be a wild future with lots of infrastructure and changes and and of course all sorts of different ways i love this concept and everything has an app nowadays so for your phone and you can monitor and know what's going on. You can check your thing. What does exporting consumption mean? It has a thing here for exporting consumption. What does that mean? What do you mean by exporting consumption?

It's on your premium package for your one-year subscription. Yeah, yeah. The subscription is, I mean, less than $100 a year. You have everything, and you have all the package for user, and this is for the end user, and for, let's say, the company business, corporate business, it's even lower, of course. Ah, that makes sense. Well, anything we haven't touched on about your company and what it's doing

and some of the things you're going to be showing off at CES show? Yeah, we will be presenting, let's say, our lineup of our products, which is fitting to the platform. Products which are, again, focusing a lot on, let's say, sustainability and environmental footprint reduction to provide the final, let's say, the best usage for any people. But we will be presenting products and also the platform and new services around this platform, such as load balancing, which is a very key and important thing, because it's one of the key services that we are launching,

because with, let's say, the huge increase of the electrical cars, let's say grid operators are also facing big issues to cover the needs of everybody. So that will be key to balance this energy between the users, but taking into account that they get finally the services. If you want to go to point A to point B, the day after you will be served. And that will be managed by the AI that we are currently developing. And we have developed part of this AI, but we have a roadmap for the next three, five years as well. There you go.

So it'll be exciting to see you guys down there in the Eureka Park section, the French contingency. It's such a huge contingency. I guess South Korea, from what Gary was talking about, Shapiro was talking about yesterday, has grown larger than you guys. So we need more French innovators to come to the show. So if you can round up a few of your friends over there in France and get them to buy more booths or something. Thank you. We are very pleased to come every year to the show.

It's a 22nd year to go there. It's always a pleasure to come. We always brag on you guys to Gary and CS. We're like, Eureka Park is just such a great place because, you know,

it's expensive to be in the main show. And it's, you know, there's a lot of big giant companies with lots of money and, you know, they can do what they want, innovating, and they can have these massive boosts. But, you know, young, agile companies that are the cutting edge, like I mentioned earlier, the future Googles, the future Apples, the future Unicorns, theses these are the people that you know they're on the ground floor of stuff and they they're usually the coolest ideas when it comes down to it i mean if you don't go down to eureka park you're missing out a lot of great stuff and the french contingency you know area has a whole section where you can see the giant french contingency i think that there's you guys have an association for the French folks

that oversee that sort of tech thing and things. So lots of great stuff there. Do you know your booth number off the top of your head at CES? Unfortunately not. I'm sorry. This is my mistake. Well, get it and put it on the show notes. There you go.

So thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you for your time and for your invitation. There you go. And thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you for your time and for your invitation. There you go. And check it out, folks. You can go to sparklin.io and see the wonderful things they're doing there. It's just going to be an exciting world that's coming before us. We live in the future at this point, I think, kind of.

I don't know. We'll see what the future brings. Thanks for being on the show with us. Thanks, to be honest, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com 4chesschrisfoss. Well, the bigger LinkedIn newsletter, the big LinkedIn 130,000 group over there. Chris Foss 1, the TikTok

at chrisfossfacebook.com Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.