On the Record: Chargely CEO aims to build a community of electric vehicle drivers

Photo / Jim Neuger David Tse, the co-founder and CEO of Chargely, became an electric vehicle driver in 2022; his Rivian R1T pickup is shown here.

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By Renee Cordes

David Tse, an engineer, is CEO of Chargely, the developer of a mobile app for electric vehicle drivers that he co-founded in March 2023. Mainebiz sat down with Tse at Northeastern University’s Roux Institute in Portland, where he will soon wrap up his Founder Residency year.

Mainebiz: What is Chargely?

David Tse: Chargely is an EV travel product that helps people figure out where to go in their EV, and to go further. We’re focusing on building a community of EV travelers and connecting them to figure out what they can do on a weekend trip in their EV.

MB: Is the coverage nationwide?

DT: Yes, we have data right now on all charging stations and destinations all across the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii.

MB: But you can’t get to Hawaii from here …

DT: Yeah, but they have a lot of stations.

MB: How is Maine doing as far as charging accessibility?

DT: I think they’re doing relatively well, particularly when it comes to fast charging along I-95. However, we have a long way to go — as does the rest of the U.S. — in incorporating more Level 2 chargers near places of work or commerce. [The country] Norway is a great example of where we could be sometime in the near future.

MB: When did you become an EV driver?

DT: My first EV was June 2022.

MB: What prompted you to go that route?

DT: I had been working in the energy space for a while as part of helping the clean energy transition, both as a consultant to utilities and then as an employee at National Grid. I felt like you had to ‘walk the walk’ if you’re going to credibly work in that space, and so in June 2022 I took delivery of my first EV and decided to map out a couple of adventures.

MB: Any memorable adventures you can share?

DT: My very first one actually — after taking my EV, I wanted to show off to some friends at a reunion in central New York, from here in Portland.

That was a very memorable learning experience because we came across a lot of the standard issues that a lot of newbies come across: You go to a fast-charging station [and] it’s broken, or some portion of them are broken. As a result, the only remaining ones are full, and there’s a line.

We, being impatient, decided to look elsewhere and found another station. In retrospect, it was a worse station, it took a lot longer. Long story short, we ended up checking into our hotel at midnight with about 8 miles left and wondering how we’re going to do the next leg in the morning, and wondering if we made a big mistake in getting an EV and taking this trip.

Fortunately, we persevered through it and learned a lot of things about what to do, what not to do. For people who are EV advocates and experts, it’s a very common journey where you make a lot of mistakes and then you figure out ways or hacks around it, to be better.

MB: What’s your ‘hack’ in that scenario?

DT: I plan a backup stop.

MB: How many people are using Chargely?

DT: To date we’ve had over 2,000 people download and use our app. Right now, we can see just over 300 active users planning new trips and providing their insights to help fellow EV travelers.

MB: The app’s latest update covered what?

DT: The update was focused on trip planning and being able to say, ‘I want to go from here to Portland, Maine, to Buffalo, N.Y.,’ and using Chargely to not only find the public charging stations, but also restaurants, hotels and stops.

MB: What’s next for Chargely?

DT: Right now, we’re trying to build this community of EV drivers getting out there travelling and taking more trips. I’d love to see a world where instead of using Yelp or TripAdvisor, people are using Chargely to plan trips. Along the way, we also hope to help promote small and medium-sized businesses that are supporting the charging infrastructure.

MB: How would that work?

DT: We’d like to build a network of small businesses that would have charging stations and be part of Chargely community. We would partner with them, and they would pay to become a Chargely destination.