In our customer stories series, we shine a spotlight on Indra customers and the real-world benefits they’ve discovered from charging smarter at home.
Niall is a busy dad who has been driving an electric car for years. After taking a company car for a test drive, he made the switch to EVs and hasn’t looked back. We caught up with him to discuss his own personal experiences with EVs, including how his Indra charger has made life easier at home.
We were thrilled to chat with Niall about his experiences with EV driving and all things electric, from his family's journey with electric cars and how owning an Indra Smart LUX in London helped him sell his house, to what he most appreciates about his charger.
Niall told us, “I spent 15 years working in large energy utilities, trying to climb up the corporate pile and came to realise that my brain didn’t really work like that. So, I ended up in the innovation team, and part of that job meant running the electric vehicle team.
Just beforehand, I went and test drove a Tesla. It was quite interesting using autopilot in central London on a busy day. There’s a cyclist, and you nudge it over to let the cyclist come through, and it sort of brings you back into the middle. But it was a good experience, and after that, I borrowed a Nissan Leaf from the company for a long weekend.
It fits the children and all the practical car stuff, but it’s more fun to drive. And I think that’s generally been the story of so many people who get into electric vehicles, is that once you try it, it’s just a different experience.
So that experience really got me into the world of EV. I quit the world of large corporate companies a number of years ago and started Paua, but that’s where it all began - driving a Tesla and then a Nissan Leaf.”
“Well, we’ve usually had our cars on a subscription for the last four or five years, and we’ve had a couple of Nissan Leafs, Renault Zoes, a Jaguar i-pace and a Polestar 2.
Then six weeks ago we bought our first Nissan Leaf: it’s a 110,000-mile, 60kWh second-hand London taxi.
The immediate thing we did when we were looking at it was think, ‘110,000 miles is a lot of distance on a battery,’ but the car was about three years old, so it hadn’t had a lot of life.
Someone had been driving it very hard – 30,000 miles a year – but it had had something like 96% of its charging sessions at home. Someone with a driveway, running it as a business vehicle, was charging it at home every night with a nice steady top-up of 7kW energy into the vehicle.
So, we had two battery health reports done on it, which came back at 90-91%. We then thought, the health of the battery is fine, the vehicle is very well-priced, so let’s get it!”
“Something that surprises me is how many people in the industry are petrolheads. You know, they like cars, they got involved in cars and then they drove an EV. And then they were like, ‘this is really cool’, I think the technology converts people.
What I think a lot of people forget after that first buzz of excitement is they still need to charge it. And charging is the big psychological, mental, behavioural change that anyone who drives an EV has to go through.
At first, it’s like, ‘oh my god, I don’t want to do that’. But once you realise you can take ten seconds out of your day to plug your car in on your driveway - and it’s charged when you get out in the morning – and you never have to go to a petrol station again; your world changes.
People didn’t used to have the simplicity of being able to refuel their vehicle at home. But they’ve got that with electric.
Now it’s about changing people’s behaviour and managing their longer distance public charging experiences and all the corporate business fleet world stuff that we live in.”
“My favourite thing about my Indra charger is just the way it looks. There’s a little, gentle blue glow around the edge when you press the boost button, and it starts charging. You know it’s doing what it needs to do.
And after that, it’s the fact that it takes me 30 seconds to charge up my vehicle.”
“The buyer of our house was interested in buying the house because it had an EV charger. In London, you’ve got a congestion charge, ULEZ, and a limited number of parking spots. Our house has a driveway and a charger”
“We're in the process of moving out of our property in London and into the countryside, which gives us the ability to do the full integrated home solution. So, battery storage, solar, heat pump, vehicle to grid - go the whole way.”
“I think there are a lot of conspiracy theories around EV. The one that frustrates a lot of people is that when something starts burning, the working assumption is that it’s an EV that started it. No one bothers to look at the facts or the information; they just jump straight to the conclusion, and it’s a bit disturbing when that happens.
But you know, if you research a little, you’ll suddenly realise that actually breaking and burning a lithium-ion battery is pretty hard to do. So, you get over it and think that, realistically, everything in society has dangers. I mean, let’s be honest, crossing the road is probably one of the most dangerous things we do every day. So, yeah, I’m not a huge believer in the whole battery fire story.”
For more facts about EV batteries, head to our blog
Niall’s experience highlights how smart charging is transforming the way we live, drive, work and power our homes, as well as sell them!
Whether you’re a business exploring fleet-at-home options as part of your electrification plans or a homeowner taking your first EV step, Indra can help you charge smart and at the lowest cost.
Explore our range of home chargers and start your own EV journey today. Beautifully designed, effortless to use and built to last – it’s charging made smart.
Niall is the co-founder of Paua, an all-electric fuel-card type solution for businesses. They integrate the data from home EV chargers, workplace charging and public space chargers and present it all back to the business, effectively becoming a fleet management tool, as much as a payment solution.
 | About the author: Sonya is Indra's Senior Content and Marketing Executive. She is a content writer with many years of experience who is now using her expertise to help Indra communicate their branding, products, and the benefits of EV driving for both individuals, society and the planet. |
