Take It EV

Take It EV is an interview podcast hosted by Gregg Jaskiewicz, and the electric car is where its conversations start rather than where they stop. The host gives the reason himself, in the heat pump episode with Nathan: people who buy electric cars tend to start noticing solar panels, heat pumps and a good deal else. That observation shapes who comes on. Dennis Watling of ChargeGuru talks about charging for people who live in apartments or travel to a workplace, and the host went to the company's Paddington office in London to record it. The questions are the ones a resident would ask. Is there a minimum number of spaces a small block of flats needs, and is a London high-rise with hundreds of flats too big? Size, it turns out, is no obstacle, and large sites with hundreds of spaces suit the approach well. Glyn from Open Energy Monitor, an open-source energy monitoring project he started with a colleague around twelve or thirteen years ago, gets asked what the project is and why anyone should care. The talk also reaches heat pumps, and Glyn makes a point from experience: a lot of the trouble starts when an installer fits one exactly as they would a gas boiler. He says he learned mostly by watching YouTube videos, and that never having fitted a gas boiler was almost an advantage. James from Ionetic is a returning guest, back to catch up on a rebrand, a new logo and website, and an announcement the company calls the World Arc. That conversation also sets headlines about EV sales stalling against how many electric cars are actually on UK roads. One episode turns the format around. Matt Donnelly's episode came about after someone told the host his interviews were all serious, with no jokes in them. Matt turns up with his own agenda: he drives a 2016 Corolla and wants his next car to be electric. So the host answers the questions this time, describing how quiet electric cars are, how instantly they accelerate, and why he no longer thinks a manual gearbox is the better way to drive. He signs off hoping it helped and did not scare Matt away. The show can be political, too. In 'Reform vs. Renewables: Is the UK's Green Future at Risk?' the host warns that things will get slightly political. He then asks whether carrying on burning fossil fuels can work as a political strategy when, in his view, more people want change than do not. He closes by hoping anyone thinking of voting for Reform will reconsider, and says he spends a lot of time travelling to interview people in person. The delivery throughout is informal: thanks to patrons on Patreon, a note that the Nathan conversation can also be watched on YouTube, and an admission that a bonus question should have come twenty minutes earlier. What a listener gets is a practical, conversational picture of what changes once a household starts going electric, with the car as only the first piece.