FAQs

In the 11 years since Robert Llewellyn started Fully Charged, the overwhelming majority of funding has come from his personal pocket, and from the crowdfunding platform (Patreon). This in addition with revenue generated via Google AdSense, and the occasional sponsorship just about kept Fully Charged afloat. It is fair to say that, without ‘People Power’, Fully Charged simply would not exist. To enable Fully Charged to fulfil its potential, we are working to expand our commercial activities, but critically without undermining the show’s integrity. Fully Charged Live 2018 was the first such activity and profits from commercial activities like this are being reinvested in growth, especially that of our audience. However, at heart we remain committed to being ‘an independent voice, powered by people’, and it is our intention that the majority of our funding continues to come from individuals, not institutions.

Patreons are the people that make a monthly contribution to Fully Charged via the Patreon crowdfunding platform. Contributions range from $2 to $10 a month and our Patreons have had, and continue to have, a pivotal role in the development of Fully Charged. Not only do Patreons receive lots of content a little earlier than everyone else, but we are also working to offer them more exclusive content too. What’s more, we try to offer Patreon discounts on our commercial activities (e.g. Fully Charged Live tickets). Finally, as we struggle to cope with content suggestions from our audience as a whole, we intend to rely more heavily on ideas from our Patreons, in the hope that they can play as much of a role in the future of Fully Charged as they have in our past.

We have been unable to cope with the volume of suggestions for some time, so rather than request content, we work with established networks of experts and consult our Patreons. Additionally, we survey our audience on an annual basis, so we recommend that people take that opportunity to let us know what they would like to see featured on Fully Charged.

Fully Charged is seen by millions of viewers each month, and thousands of subscribers are signing up every week. We have huge audiences around the world including in the UK, Europe, North America and Australasia. Our audience is predominantly male (something we are working to balance out) with almost three quarters between the age of 25 and 54. The majority of our audience (~87%) are consumers and they’re interested in seeing more content on both Electric Vehicles and Clean Energy (88.67% v 88.61%). Their interests also extend to other Future Technologies as well as issues such as Air Pollution, Climate Change and more. Only ~30% of our viewership own Electric Vehicles, of those that do around three quarters power their Electric Vehicles with renewable electricity (that they generate themselves or that they purchase from a ‘clean energy’ supplier). 78% of our viewers intend their next vehicle purchase to be electric.

Above and beyond being the inspiration for thousands of consumers to switch to Clean Energy and Electric Vehicles, we are committed to more than talking the talk. We are working to educate consumers on an array of subjects that enable them to ‘stop burning stuff’ and this extends far beyond Electric Cars. In terms of our personal carbon footprint, our core employees typically drive electric and either generate their own Clean Energy or purchase it from a Renewable Energy supplier. As a channel that covers stories across the world, the elephant in the room for us, is air travel. Furthermore, our strategy does involve audience growth in overseas markets, this is not growth for growth’s sake, but is designed to ensure that Fully Charged is a commercially sustainable enterprise. It is our intention though that Fully Charged is on a trajectory towards almost entirely removing the requirement for our team to fly (non-electric) planes from 2025 when on business.