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Jazz Shaper: Charlie Jardine

Posted on 11 May 2024

Charlie Jardine is the founder and CEO of EO Charging, a company he established in 2014 to enhance the EV charging experience.

Charlie Jardine

Elliot Moss                      

Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues.  My guest today, I am very pleased to say is Charlie Jardine, founder and CEO of EO Charging, an electric vehicle charging company.  Despite initial scepticism, it was while working for a charging manufacturer in London that Charlie fell in love, as he says, with electric vehicles – as you do – but frustrated by the unreliable infrastructure and a marketing turn that was overly scientific, Charlie saw an opportunity to build a simple, reliable, good-looking product and be one of the first in the market to charge commercial vehicle fleets.  EO charging was launched in 2014 with Charlie designing his first charger in a pig shed on his grandfather’s farm.  Their technology is now used by some of the world’s largest businesses and fleet operators including – you may have heard of some of these – Amazon, DHL, Uber and Tesco and is distributed to more than 35 countries.  It’s really good to have you here. 

Charlie Jardine

Thank you for having me.

Elliot Moss

I’ve got the future in front of me. 

Charlie Jardine

Hopefully.

Elliot Moss

Well, I mean we all hope so, right.  I mean, this is, this is you know going back to when you got into this business and I said earlier, you’d started in the same industry.  It isn’t by chance that we’re talking about something which is potentially a game-changer for the planet.

Charlie Jardine

Yeah 100% right.  The amount of, and we talked about it before with the amount of press and noise about the climate crisis, it’s, it’s super real and yeah, EO obviously focusses on charging commercial vehicles so, vans, trucks, buses and that is a massive contributor to toward pollution and obviously it has an impact on our climate and so yeah, you know we wake up every day and get to try and address that problem. 

Elliot Moss

And was it, it was your first proper job as it were and I’ll go  back to other inventions that may have happened at university, which I just love the story about which we’ll come to but am I right, was it the first, the first thing that you would call a…?

Charlie Jardine

Almost, almost.  I moved to London after university and got a job with a company that actually made EV charging stations.  That was my first proper job.  That was my only proper job.  I left after about eighteen months, I’d say probably unemployable but was desperate to start a business and after exploring lots of different ideas just thought actually, this is a market that is just getting started, there’s a limited amount of competition, it’s trying to solve a massive problem and I think we can have a crack at doing a really good job.

Elliot Moss

And unemployable, why, Charlie?

Charlie Jardine

Well, eighteen months, initially I started out in sales and I was so bad they moved me to marketing – no offence any marketing people. 

Elliot Moss

Well, you may be looking at one but that’s absolutely right.  You just carry on.  I’m not bothered. 

Charlie Jardine

No and not excellent in taking orders and, you know, as you alluded to before, had a couple of businesses at Uni and was just always destined or always desired to have my own thing so, yeah, I’d learnt a bit at my former job and was just eager to get cracking.

Elliot Moss

I want to come to Rusty Can briefly.  Well, you haven’t mentioned it, I can’t resist going for it now, even before Kamasi Washington.  Rusty Can, a waterproof onesie. 

Charlie Jardine

Correct. 

Elliot Moss

Of course.

Charlie Jardine

Rusty Can Limited. 

Elliot Moss

Limited, sorry, yeah, of course you limited the company, it’s very professional. 

Charlie Jardine

Yeah, it’s not even…

Elliot Moss

As a student, so just talk to me a little bit about the idea behind the Rusty Can. 

Charlie Jardine

I was en route to a music festival, my mum had packed me a poncho and it was raining and we were at the music festival in Manchester and I saw a person wearing a onesie and I thought oh my god, imagine if that was waterproof and yeah, I was kind of festival mode and at the time it was an amazing idea so, started a business which we called Rusty Can Limited for no reason and yeah, and tried to make waterproof onesies which didn’t work, didn’t quite work.  We were trying to get them made in China before we even had a prototype and it was an absolute disaster but we were awarded and Enterprise Scholarship by the University of Leeds which gave us some money which we invested into market research which meant attending more festivals.  It was very helpful and, yeah, look it was a massive education in all the things not to do. 

Elliot Moss

You said it all kind of didn’t work out.  The serious side of that is, you were young, it kind of doesn’t matter in a way, would have been lovely if you’d have been a billionaire, we’d be having a different conversation, it would be all about Rusty Can Limited.  What did you learn?  Just a couple of things that you didn’t do again.

Charlie Jardine

Don’t try and build the endgame off the bat.  Be scrappy.  Get a prototype.  In the end, we went to a waterproof company like in the Yorkshire Dales and paid through the nose to get prototype but we actually go one that fit, that we could work the designer and it happened super quickly.  Trying to get something made in China because at some point if this was successful, we’d have to move production to China because it would be cheaper was a bad idea.  We waited weeks and weeks to get our kind of second and third version of prototype and they always came back wrong.  So that was, that was a pretty good lesson.

Elliot Moss

One more for me, I’m greedy.

Charlie Jardine

One more lesson?

Elliot Moss

Oh yeah.  I mean for you personally.

Charlie Jardine

I, I, do you know what, I loved it because it was super creative and the actual product and what it does is one thing but the opportunity to express your own ideas and creativity into the product, into the brand, to really like capture what the customer wants to see.  Like, to me, that’s the, that’s the really fun bit.  And so we did that again at EO and you know those first kind of 12, 24 months when you’re creating the product and spending a lot of time with the customer, literally obsessed by the customer, and you know really getting into the engineering of the product and that bit, defining who the brand is, agreeing kind of what language you want to use, like that to me that’s the really fun part. 

Elliot Moss

Did the customer, as you call it then, did they mind that there was this young person in front of you called…

Charlie Jardine

I was the customer. 

Elliot Moss

Oh you were the customer as well?

Charlie Jardine

100%.  I was twenty…

Elliot Moss

Oh no, sorry, but I’m talking about EO. 

Charlie Jardine

Oh I see.

Elliot Moss

I’m talking about then when you went, did you then go and have to go and talk to customers with regard to developing…

Charlie Jardine

Yeah 100%.  I mean, at the time, you know, 20…, 2014, I handed my notice in, 2015, January, started the business, took six months to get, you know, actually firstly decide on what product we were going to go and build but you know, there were not that many EV drivers in the UK and it’s a pretty small, even now right, it’s a pretty small group of people who’ve been in the industry for such a long amount of time and typically, anyone in the industry has experience of EVs hopefully, drives and EV, so you are your own customer.

Elliot Moss

But in terms of you tipping up and having all these conversations and deciding and obviously you have a Design and Technology Management degree from the fabulous Leeds University.  I say that as someone…

Charlie Jardine

It was the worst course at a great university.

Elliot Moss

It’s great, oh good, I’m pleased you agree it’s a great university, I studied Politics and Parliamentary Studies with Spanish at Leeds University.

Charlie Jardine

At Leeds?

Elliot Moss

I did, at Leeds.

Charlie Jardine

Mad.

Elliot Moss

I’m a little older than you though, Charlie, just a couple of decades separates us.  But did anyone think well, who’s this young person in front of me?

Charlie Jardine

100%.

Elliot Moss

Did they?

Charlie Jardine

I’m almost always still the youngest person in the room.

Elliot Moss

Which you love, I bet.

Charlie Jardine

I love now, you know at the time, I mean to be honest, yeah I loved it then as well.  You know, unfortunately, age carries a presence and also probably a confidence, right, and you know I love being young in the industry, I love trying to disrupt what we’re doing and be non-conformist and non-traditional but…

Elliot Moss

But not for the sake of it, you don’t strike me as someone who does that just because.  Or am I misreading you?

Charlie Jardine

I don’t know maybe.

Elliot Moss

You mean you do?

Charlie Jardine

Yeah, I think so.  I mean that’s the whole fun bit, isn’t it?  So, I mean I look maybe look too straightlaced for that but…

Elliot Moss

No, no, no.  My thought was more that you’ve built a proper business here and being a contrarian is one thing and a non-conformist is another but actually putting structure and putting scale in there and doing something which is a serious endeavour now, funded for many millions of pounds, people believe that Charlie may well be a contrarian but actually, you’re not breaking the rules for the sake of it, you’re saying I think, they need breaking. 

Charlie Jardine

Yeah, I think there’s two parts to that, right.  Like, we are fundamentally tearing up an industry that’s been in operation for decades.  Running diesel, petrol, buses, trucks or vans is something that, you know, our customers are very, very used to and often those customers, they don’t put technology at the heart of what they do and so, you know, one we are trying to you know electrify what is, we call it ICE, internal combustion engine, which is a massive change and then secondly, we’re trying to actually shove technology into these businesses and really help them transform and that’s a massive change and then how we do it and how we stand out against the competition, you know, again, we’re trying to be different in that regard.

Elliot Moss

And the buzz is still that charge and that change rather.  Charge and change.

Charlie Jardine

Yeah, 100% and I think, you know, we’ve been going almost ten years now and we are more relevant, like what we do, we are more relevant now than we were ten years ago, 100%. 

Elliot Moss

Stay with me for much more from my guest, Charlie Jardine.  He’ll be back in a couple of minutes.  Right now though, we’re going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions which can be found on all the major podcast platforms.  Mishcon de Reya’s Suman Kaur and Geoff Dragon talk about how startups can best prepare for success.

You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again if you pop Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice.  My guest today is Charlie Jardine, founder and CEO of EO Charging, an electric vehicle charging company.  It’s quite a mouthful, Charlie there, we’ve got to, we’ve got work on that, even simpler language.  I’m kidding, it’s pretty straightforward.  Your dad is involved in the business.  I’ve read somewhere and tell me if this is true or not that when you left your first job, your dad said, “Don’t do that.”  As I understand it, both parents, both your parents are entrepreneurs, why do you think he was slightly more risk averse on behalf of his son than he would have been for himself?

Charlie Jardine

I mean, so I have no idea, right.  He was never employed by anyone, he’s always had his own businesses, you know my grandfather is an entrepreneur as well, my mum is, my brother has been doing his own stuff, my uncle is, like, you know we used to talk about companies and setting up businesses at the dinner table, it’s mental but I got a job and I said you know, “Dad, I want to leave, I want to go and do my own thing” and he said, “Don’t you dare”, you know, “You need a job to go to”, you know, “How are you going to live?  You need some money.”  Anyway, I went to this entrepreneur course one weekend and rung him up on the way back from it on the Sunday evening and said, you know, “I’m handing my notice in tomorrow” and then I called him up on Monday and said, “I’ve handed it in” and anyway look, he quickly got over that and when we started EO, you know there was a couple of ideas before EO in it's current format and the third idea, which is EO Charging, he said, “I like that.  That’s a great idea” and so I was very lucky that he was prepared to lend me some money to start the business and you know, as he sold out of his previous business, he gave me more time and eventually he spent all his time working with EO and he did that until about two years ago, so he’s now, he’s now a Board member, still comes to the Board meetings every month but yeah, he’s no longer operational in the business. 

Elliot Moss

I meet people that have like had that background and also people that have never had an entrepreneur anywhere near their family or in their experience thing.  If there were a couple of genetic bits to the Jardine makeup, what do you think they would be that have ensured that, you know, “I felt compelled” as someone once said in a famous movie, to become an entrepreneur?  You know, what was the compulsion, Charlie?  Apart from, you know, people often say in that kind of, “Yeah, I’m not employable” and I got that and you said that.

Charlie Jardine

No, I said that.

Elliot Moss

But beyond that though, really if you dig into it, what is it about the Jardine family that means they’re just going to have to work for themselves?

Charlie Jardine

Do you know what, I have no idea.  I mean, we’re all relatively creative but there’s a strong business angle to it so, I think, you know, maybe it’s independence.  I don’t know like, for me personally, you know I want to create a big business, I want to create something that you know we’re now trying obviously be the global leader in charging van, truck, bus fleets and that is going to take a long time and there’s lots of countries that aren’t yet making major moves to EVs and so to me, I think it’s an opportunity to make a massive, massive impact and, you know, to create something that leaves a legacy.  You know, to do something that I can’t look back and be proud of, to me is, would be a real shame.

Elliot Moss

And in terms of just, and I think that must be right and that’s a pretty decent, pretty decent answer as it goes but in terms of something else I read about you, it said you were a shy person and again…

Charlie Jardine

Very.

Elliot Moss

So, so again, extroverts and introverts, often people think that entrepreneurs need to be an extrovert type personality.  You would disagree with that.

Charlie Jardine

Yeah, 100%.  I mean I’m, I’d say I’m massively introverted and so that, that’s quite a difficult thing to get over to begin with because, you know, being a young entrepreneur you think, as you just described, that just because you are the face of the business, you know doing things like this, press, lots of pictures, like you are an extroverted, confident character.  That is so far from the truth and actually, you often find it’s completely the inverse.

Elliot Moss

And how, just very briefly, did you overcome that or have you, do you continue to overcome that?

Charlie Jardine

Therapy.

Elliot Moss

Therapy is really good, right?

Charlie Jardine

100%, yeah.  A lot, you know, a decent amount of therapy, you know, plenty of medication.  No, seriously, like you know, it’s like cheesy but you go to the gym you’ve got to build the muscle and it’s pretty had to begin with and you know, over time you get used to it. 

Elliot Moss

You’re ten years in as you mentioned, Charlie.  America is beckoning.  You want to rip it up, the whole system and create an infrastructure that works and boy do I, you know, what’s stopped me buying an EV car was the lack of points, truthfully and the thought if I’ve got to go and drive over there and do all that stuff.  The speed at which you’ve gone is actually relatively fast and you’ve been noted in the FT 1000 to disturb, you know, top companies in like high numbers and on a regular basis, you’ve been I think a Forbes Under 30 person as well, there’s a lot happening, you’ve raised a lot of money, you’re going international, there’s a lot of speed here. 

Charlie Jardine

100%.  It’s, you know, like when you’re in it, it sometimes doesn’t feel like that but it’s definitely been a race.

Elliot Moss

Is it?  Why is it a race?  What are you racing against?

Charlie Jardine

Well, it’s you know, I think, you know, two things.  Like, one it’s a race against the competition, you don’t get that many opportunities to be first and first move advantage is a massive advantage and so we want to get to the customers before anyone else does and once you get to them and you win the relationship then you are in a really good place and, you know, the market is very infant and so there’s, again, there’s lots and lots of opportunity and so, you know, you need to be massively speedy and super agile because the markets change massively and if you are slow, you get eaten up and if you move quick and are agile then you have a pretty good chance of being successful.

Elliot Moss

And it’s without borders this job, I mean this business you’ve got now.  A lot of businesses have a domestic market but this is, they sky is the limit, right? 

Charlie Jardine

Yeah, 100%.  Like, the UK is great, okay but in the grand scheme of things it’s a small market.  We’re across UK, Europe, so nine European countries and also just recently expanded into the USA and Canada about twelve months ago and just the size of the opportunity in North America is unreal, you know, clearly population size is enormous, the number of vehicles is amazing and also you’ve got whilst the government point is something we don’t want to talk about right now but the amount of money coming out of central government that’s really going to drive this change is colossal. 

Elliot Moss

This government or the US government or any government?

Charlie Jardine

Talking about the US government.

Elliot Moss

Okay.

Charlie Jardine

But you know irrespective of who’s going to be president of the country, there is an amount of, an enormous amount of capital committed to help this transition so, it is the land of hope and opportunity and we see that and we’re, we’re right at the forefront of that and so, super eager to be one of the main players there. 

Elliot Moss

Now doing that, you can’t do it alone and I think you’ve got about 150 people, is that right, a bit more?

Charlie Jardine

Yeah, a bit more than that.

Elliot Moss

Bit more than that now.  It’s going up even more than I realised.  How do you inculcate a sense of urgency and quality in all those people as you get bigger and bigger?  Because they’re not all like Charlie.

Charlie Jardine

Yeah and you know, it’s a challenge but you’ve got to find the right people and the right people are, I think they share that sense of urgency, you know people just want to get on and do stuff, you know, we’re in a market where there is a real urgency around climate and so I think the type of people that we attract and we have in the business, hopefully share that urgency and so, you know, for me, you know, I’m definitely impatient and hopefully that has an influence on the people around me.

Elliot Moss

Is there a language thing as well because again I read about the way you talk about language and how it needs to be simpler, it needs to be clearer, you need to get people to the point where they go, “This is a problem.”  Internally, do you find yourself thinking hard about how you communicate to precipitate a little bit more urgency where it’s required?

Charlie Jardine

I’m probably not that strategic but I definitely take advice from our team who give me good guidance on what I should and shouldn’t say.

Elliot Moss

You were pooh-poohing sales and then marketing and there you are now saying you need a bit of that. 

Charlie Jardine

We all do, we all do.

Elliot Moss

We all do.  Stay with me for my final chat with Charlie, he’s been my excellent guest today so far and he’ll be back for a little bit more.  We’ve also got some music from a proper Jazz Shaper, it’s Kenny Garrett, that’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere. 

I’m with Charlie Jardine just for a few more minutes here on Jazz Shapers and we’ve been talking about this incredibly important industry that you’re in because it could potentially transform the way we consume energy and the way we create energy actually as well.  So, this thing called ‘the future’ Charlie, I kind of started and saying “I have the future in front of me” but you’ve actually, the point here is that if you don’t create the infrastructure then this thing that we’re talking about, electric vehicles, won’t happen.  What are you doing to ensure that if we had the conversation in ten years from now, you would be able to say, “You know what, Elliot, everything I said I would do, I did.” 

Charlie Jardine

Well, okay, I mean look, we work with, again, we work with fleets so, most of our customers have made a commitment to transition their fleet to zero carbon, whether that’s EV or maybe even hydrogen, by 2030 or 2035 or 2040, there may be some laggards behind that but you know ultimately this transition is going to happen over the next fifteen years.  For us, we obviously provide the infrastructure and we typically need to wait for those fleets to electrify before they require the infrastructure but it’s chicken and egg so, you know, we’re putting infrastructure into their depots typically, and I think you know in terms of where we’re going to be in ten years, I mean of course, you know, hopefully, our customers have successfully achieved their commitment to electric, you know, some of our bigger customers like Amazon, they have a, a plan to get 250,000 EVs on fleet across Europe and North America by 2030.  Like, these are enormous numbers and they and we and whoever else is involved are going to have to be running super-fast for the next, you know, six years and probably longer than that.  So, there’s a tremendous amount of work to do and we really are just getting started as an industry. 

Elliot Moss

Do you have any doubts that it’s going to work?  That you’re going to get there?

Charlie Jardine

No, no doubts.

Elliot Moss

And why no?  Why no doubts?

Charlie Jardine

There’s going to be twists and turns, right, you know, last two years have been, for every single business in the world irrespective of what you do, it’s been a really hard time, you know that said, it is a speedbump in the road and there is no doubt that transportation has to be zero emission, again, whether it’s you know purely EV or a proportion of that is hydrogen, I think you know that’s probably likely it will be a combination of the two so, it’s going to happen, the question will be how quickly. 

Elliot Moss

Have there been moments when you’ve unlocked an issue with one of those big partners which I mentioned before, the Ubers and the Tescos and the Amazons, where actually you’ve gone, hold on a minute, if we do that or you do that then we can move much quicker.  Have you sort of got good at identifying those obstacles or those, as I call them, unlocks?

Charlie Jardine

Yeah, I think you know, the biggest issue that we have is our customers receiving the volume of vehicles that they need to electrify their fleets.  The last two years have been pretty tough with supply chain and obviously all of our customers represent hundreds of thousands of vehicles so, we cannot influence that, they are obviously as customers hoping that the manufacturers of those vehicles are going to ensure speedy and steady supply and for us, you know, we have issues like bringing new power connections to sites, so obviously everyone talks often about the grid and is the grid going to be able to cope with lots of EVs.  The answer is yes but with lots of modification and so, yeah, that does take a long time, it will cost a lot of money, it takes a long time.  So I think, you know, not a great answer to the question but there are things that are slowing down progress and it does, it does require collaboration amongst several parties to make the change happen as quickly as we need it to. 

Elliot Moss

And do you personally think that this is your thing or could you imagine that Charlie Jardine will put his name to something else or would it always be in this space?

Charlie Jardine

Look, I don’t know, I mean I have different thoughts depending on the day but look, I know EVs really well, I love what we do, I’m committed to what we do for a very, very long time, I think if I was to do anything else, it would absolutely be focussed around climate.  I think what we’re doing is a major contributor toward Net Zero.  I think unfortunately, incremented improvements is not going to be enough to prevent some of the climate crisis and we need reversal so, I’m not an expert at all in carbon removal as an example but technologies like that would be super interesting for me to explore. 

Elliot Moss

It’s been great chatting to you, Charlie, the antithesis of incrementalism, there you are.  Just before I let you disappear, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?

Charlie Jardine

So it’s Sexual Healing but it is the, I’d call it the New Orleans version.  I got married to my wife during Covid in New Orleans, she’s from there, just off Bourbon Street at Antoine’s Restaurant and we had Second Line play post the wedding and they played this song and we were dancing on Bourbon Street and it was a super special time, super special day so, this song has a massive place in my heart.

Elliot Moss

The Hot 8 Brass Band there with Sexual Healing, the Bossman Edit, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Charlie Jardine.  He talked about with age comes presence but not to worry about the fact that if you’re young and you haven’t got it, it doesn’t mean you can be effective, you can.  Extroverts versus introverts, not true.  An introvert entrepreneur and absolutely fine with that so, if you’re not an extrovert, that’s okay, obviously.  First move advantage, he talked about, interesting one because not everybody thinks that you need to be that but he absolutely did for the business that he’s in.  And finally, that brilliant point about commitment, he has no doubts, absolutely zero doubts that he will achieve exactly what he set out to do.  Great stuff.  That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.

We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.

Under his leadership, EO has seen substantial growth and has shifted to provide comprehensive fleet electrification solutions. As EO celebrates its 10th year, Charlie is steering the company towards making fleet electrification more accessible and sustainable, introducing innovative solutions like Charging-as-a-Service (CaaS). EO's technology is trusted by leading businesses and fleet operators, including Amazon and Uber. An acclaimed entrepreneur, Charlie has been recognized in Forbes 30-under-30 and has been featured in Green Fleet’s 100 most influential figures. His efforts have propelled EO to be listed twice on the Financial Times’ FT1000 list of Europe’s fastest-growing companies. 

Highlights

We wake up every day and get to try and address [the climate crisis] problem. 

I was desperate to start a business and after exploring lots of different ideas just thought actually, this is a market that is just getting started.

Don’t try and build the endgame off the bat. Be scrappy. Get a prototype.

The opportunity to express your own ideas and creativity into the product, into the brand, to really like capture what the customer wants to see... that’s the really fun bit.

I loved being young in the industry, I love trying to disrupt what we’re doing and be non-conformist and non-traditional.

We are fundamentally tearing up an industry that’s been in operation for decades. 

We are more relevant now than we were ten years ago, 100%.

I want to create something that leaves a legacy.

There is no doubt that transportation has to be zero emission.

Incremental improvements are not going to be enough to prevent some of the climate crisis and we need reversal.

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