As part of the interview series by Mobility Portal Group, Laura Goncalves, who has been the General Manager Spain at Powerdot for the past 10 months, revealed that the company is defining its plan for the next two years.
“Instead of announcing the launch of millions of charging points, we will seek to ensure the stability of our growth,” acknowledges Goncalves, who has been living in Spain for almost three years and is now fully dedicated to electromobility.
“We also want to focus on becoming a benchmark operator in terms of service quality. This will be our focus for next year,” she adds.
The company’s ability to focus on this goal is due to the fact that, currently, Powerdot is one of the fastest-growing pan-European charging point operators (CPO) focused on destination charging.
It is present in six countries and has more than 12,000 contracted public charging points, of which 4,000 are already active.
It is worth mentioning that, from a technological perspective, the company focuses on simplifying the user experience as much as possible.
“Our first focus is interoperability, therefore, we want to integrate into existing applications,” comments Goncalves.
She adds, “The second is to work with these companies to develop better solutions for the end user, such as the Autocharge functionality.”
One of Powerdot’s most significant alliances is with Miio, an app that allows you to recharge your electric vehicle at +60,000 charging points in Portugal, Spain, and France.
Both companies launched Autocharge in Spain and France, and it is expected to be introduced in Portugal by the end of this year.
This feature allows an electric vehicle (EV) to start charging automatically as soon as it is connected to a compatible charging station, without the need for the driver to initiate the process manually.
“Anyone using the Miio app and charging with Powerdot equipment simply has to connect their hose to the connector,” explains the General Manager.
What are Powerdot’s expansion projects?
While Powerdot is a company of Portuguese origin, this is not the only priority market.
“In France, we are one of the main CPOs, in Poland, we have a significant partnership with the Biedronka supermarket chain, and in Spain, where we doubled our investment this year to 13 million euros, we are in a growth phase,” explains Goncalves.
According to the company, commercial spaces are their primary focus for building infrastructure for EVs because they are part of customers’ daily lives and streamline the charging experience to the maximum: Users don’t have to travel to charge their cars; instead, they take advantage of the opportunity while performing other tasks.
Who is Laura Goncalves?
Although Laura Goncalves is Portuguese-Venezuelan, she has been living in Spain for three years.
Before joining Powerdot, she worked in various roles at Uber, including Marketing Manager and ending as the Launcher of Uber Eats in Portugal.
She also served as a Senior Product Manager at Amazon for four years and worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company.
“I worked in different companies, mostly focused on technology, operations, and business development, including mobility issues due to my experience at Uber,” she recalls.
Over time, she became interested in electromobility and currently holds the position of General Manager at Powerdot for Spain.
“In any company and in any industry, it is essential to have a good, motivated team. Finding the right people to be part of the team is very important,” acknowledges Goncalves.
Finally, Goncalves explains that working in the sector requires “motivation and technical capability.”
