Jeremy Bezdek, Managing Director, Strategic Platforms, Koch Industries (KSP), and Kristof Vereenooghe, CEO of EVBox Group join Grayson Brulte on The Road To Autonomy Podcast to discuss scaling electric vehicle charging globally through strategic partnerships.

The conversation begins with Jeremy sharing a high-level overview of Koch Strategic Platforms and the company’s mandate.

Koch Strategic Platforms mandate is to look for companies to invest in tail-wind industries and companies looking for growth equity. Either as public companies or late-stage private companies, maybe soon to be public companies. We invest in key verticals, specifically industry 4.0, connectivity, healthcare technology, and energy transformation. – Jeremy Bezdek

Taking a look at the EV charging industry, Kristof discusses fragmented markets and how EVBox’s market share in Europe combined with their open-architecture platform gives the company a strategic advantage.

We are headquartered in what I call the Silicon Valley of EV charging. – Kristof Vereenooghe

As EVBox begins to scale in the United States, Koch Strategic Platforms is actively collaborating with EVBox to assist the company with scaling the business in the U.S. In addition to the strategic capital relationship with Koch Strategic Platforms, EVBox has a partnership with TPG.

With the partnership with TPG and going public, it will give us the capital and the resources to scale. Most importantly, many competitors in the U.S. are closed systems and do not provide the same benefits as EVBox. There is a real need for our model and our software here in the U.S. market. – Kristof Vereenooghe

Koch’s has a long-term relationship with TPG. It is through this relationship that Koch first developed a relationship with EVBox, and later invested.

With their footprint, their European leadership position, and quite frankly our energy transformation vertical it made sense. It was a perfect fit for what we were looking for. With the vision that Kristof had to do a U.S. rollout, we felt that our capability could be applied to help them. It was a perfect fit for us to invest. – Jeremy Bezdek

Shifting the conversation to strategy, Grayson asks Kristof to discuss the EVBox strategy and the company’s relationship with three out of the four largest European automakers. EVBox’s competitive advantage is the company’s open-architecture platform.

With the competitive advantage of the open-architecture platform secured, EVBox is focused on developing a world-class brand that will have a positive impact on society.

We are planting a tree for every charging station that we ship. – Kristof Vereenooghe

Operating in over 70 countries presents opportunities and challenges. The brand has to be adapted to local customs, habits, and languages. Today, EVBox software is running software in over 21 languages.

With Koch being a global company with over 130,000 employees there are a lot of opportunities inside of Koch Industries. Jeremy goes onto to explain how Koch Industries and EVBox are collaborating on opportunities from installing charging stations to helping with the supply chain for materials.

Wrapping up the conversation, Jeremy and Kristof explain the opportunity for electrifying fleets.

Recorded on Thursday, March 18, 2021

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