Insider's Guide to Energy EV

23. EV Revolution: Plug In America's Joel Levin on Charging, Market Trends, and the Future.

• Chris Sass, Joel Levin • Season 1 • Episode 23

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In this enlightening episode of our podcast, we dive deep into the heart of the electric vehicle (EV) revolution with Joel Levin, the Executive Director of Plug In America, the leading voice for electric vehicle consumers in the United States. Levin brings to light the current challenges and opportunities within the EV landscape, emphasizing the crucial aspects of EV charging infrastructure and the burgeoning used EV market. As the EV industry stands at the cusp of a significant transformation, Levin's insights into the federal government's investments in charging infrastructure and the shifting consumer trends towards electric mobility are more relevant than ever. His expert analysis sheds light on how these developments are shaping the future of transportation, making this a must-listen for anyone interested in the evolving dynamics of the EV market.

This episode takes listeners on a journey through the intricacies of electric vehicle adoption, from the technicalities of EV charging solutions to the economic and environmental benefits of transitioning to electric vehicles. Levin discusses the impact of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program and the promising advancements in battery technology that are making electric vehicles more accessible and affordable for the general public. Furthermore, the conversation delves into the unique challenges and innovations surrounding the integration of EVs into multi-tenant dwellings and the broader implications for urban planning and sustainability. These discussions are pivotal for understanding the barriers and breakthroughs in making electric vehicles a feasible option for all segments of society.

As the electric vehicle sector continues to evolve, the insights provided by Joel Levin from Plug In America are invaluable for anyone keeping an eye on the latest trends and technologies in green transportation. This episode not only highlights the current state of the EV market but also explores the visionary efforts to overcome obstacles and capitalize on opportunities within the electric vehicle ecosystem. Whether you're an EV enthusiast, a potential electric vehicle buyer, or simply interested in the future of sustainable transportation, this podcast episode offers a comprehensive overview of the electric vehicle revolution that is shaping our world.

Transcript

 

00:00:02 Speaker 1

Broadcasting from Washington, DC, This is insider's guide to energy.

00:00:19 Chris Sass

This episode of Insiders Guide to Energy EV Miniseries is powered by Paua. Paua helps your business transition to electric vehicles by simplifying charging, managing payments, and optimizing your charging data. Welcome to insiders guide to Energy Ev. I'm your host Chris Sass and my co-host Neil Riddell with me today. We're excited. We have plug in America's executive director at Joel Levin on the program. Joel, welcome to the show.

00:00:42 Joel Levin

Thank you for having me.

00:00:44 Chris Sass

We are super excited to have you here and to hear what you.

00:00:47 Chris Sass

Have to say.

00:00:48 Chris Sass

Why don't we start out by talking about what's on the minds of EV drivers?

00:00:54 Joel Levin

Sure. So plug in America, we are the national consumer voice for electric vehicles. We are a membership organization of EV drivers around the country. And you know EV drivers in general are very, very enthusiastic about their cars. People love driving EV's for a long list of reasons that.

00:01:15 Joel Levin

You probably are already familiar with. If you say, what are people concerned about right now?

00:01:23 Joel Levin

The the the charging network, the public charging network is a bit of a challenge for people because it's not as reliable as it should be. We're getting there. The federal government is making some big investments into the the charging and it's taking a little while to get.

00:01:44 Joel Levin

The all the steel in the ground. But we're getting there slowly. So people are a little apprehensive about long distance charging. But I I think it is steadily improving.

00:01:54 Niall Riddell

So I'm genuinely curious about the kind of driver that's dropped in electric vehicles over with you here in the UK, we've seen certain driver groups, middle or higher income drivers, particularly those who are sort of green or environmentally minded and particularly the tech savvy as well jumping into electric vehicles. Do you see similar trends or are there different incentives?

00:02:15 Niall Riddell

Driving people into electric vehicles.

00:02:18 Joel Levin

Well, that's who started out. The early adopters were definitely people that were somewhat higher income that were very like tech forward, you know, wanted to have the latest and the greatest. I think that you know we're we're now about 8% of the market in the US which is behind Europe.

00:02:38 Joel Levin

But you know, catching up and we're moving beyond early adopters into what I would call sort of the early mass majority people that are.

00:02:48 Joel Levin

Don't necessarily need to have the latest and greatest, but you know our sort of tech forward are interested in in having what's out there or they're talking to their friends about what their friends are driving. So I think we're moving somewhat beyond that to people that just want a reliable car and they're interested in in EV.

00:03:09 Joel Levin

Because they have friends that have an EV and and or they've family member and they've they've seen about seen it. So we're moving a little bit beyond that now which in some sense.

00:03:18 Joel Levin

And it makes it harder because the early adopters were very forgiving people who wanted to have the first new EV on their block were a little bit flexible. If they were inconveniences. Now we're moving into an area where people just want a car that's reliable and get them where they want to go.

00:03:38 Joel Levin

And they're less forgiving if there's issues, or if the charging network is a pain. So that becomes more challenging. We're also getting more and more EVs into the used market, which is something that I'm particularly interested and excited in because.

00:03:54 Joel Levin

EVs are so Consumer Reports did a study about a year ago about the relative benefits of an EV versus a gas car. And they found that when you compared a number of EV's back-to-back with equivalent gas cars.

00:04:13 Joel Levin

The EV over the total life of ownership was cheaper was like not a little cheaper, but like a lot cheaper when you added in the cost of fuel and the cost of maintenance. However, most of that benefit actually accrued to the second drive. The second owner, not the first owner because.

00:04:32 Joel Levin

Overtime, the benefits of the fact that they're pretty low maintenance and the fuel is cheaper really add up and they particularly add up for people that tend to buy older cars and hold them for a long time. And that's sort of a secret about it. These people don't realize that. But as there's more and more of these on the market and they're starting to be.

00:04:53 Joel Levin

You know more mileage and kind of cheaper price.

00:04:56 Joel Levin

Points there's more people in the used market getting into EVs, and I think that's really interesting that it sort of breaks this myth that these are just like kind of.

00:05:06 Joel Levin

Fancy cars for rich people.

00:05:08 Chris Sass

So the the used market is interesting to me because growing up around combustion engines, we all kind of had our theory of how we bought a used car. I remember buying my first used car and what to look for was gonna be oil in the driveway or, you know, whatever you could afford at whatever budget point.

00:05:23 Chris Sass

You were at.

00:05:24 Chris Sass

Do the general public have the skills to go buy a used EV?

00:05:29 Chris Sass

Which is it's it's not the same as what your father taught you.

00:05:32 Joel Levin

It's different. It's easier, I would argue. But you look for different things. I mean, it's really all about battery health. I mean, aside from the tires and brakes and, you know, general, the wear and tear on the body, it's really about battery health. If you have a car that has.

00:05:53 Joel Levin

You know that the battery is in is in good shape and it's still has most of its capacity. You've got a good car that's going to last you many years. If it's a car, that's the battery is really degraded. Let's say the owner lived in a really hot area and supercharged it all the time. And and it's taken wear and tear of the battery. You want to be more cautious.

00:06:14 Joel Levin

But if you compare that with a gas car where you've got all these moving parts that have wear and tear on them, and where wear out overtime and so you need to know the condition of.

00:06:24 Joel Levin

Of the engine and the spark plugs and the transmission and all the belts and hoses and everything evies are, I would argue, a used EV is much simpler to to buy. You've got this kind of one big component that you need to have a picture of.

00:06:42 Niall Riddell

So I was debating this battery health question the other day with a major online car marketplace that sells second hand electric vehicles and the debate they were having internally is do we do a standard battery health check for every vehicle?

00:06:56 Niall Riddell

Should we not? And I was intrigued that they and are debating this because surely you want that as a second hand car buyer, you want to see that information, but they were making a case to say, you know, we don't have a second hand engine life assessment. So why have a second hand battery life assessment? What's your view should we do it?

00:07:14 Joel Levin

I think it'd be useful. I think there's companies that are trying to do that. Like I think there's one called recurrent that evaluates batteries, and I imagine there's probably others that are popping up because with a with a used EV, it's the most important thing. I know that for car dealers, that's.

00:07:33 Joel Levin

It's an area where they're trying to build some expertise because.

00:07:36 Joel Levin

They get trade-ins constantly and being able to properly value trade in is really important because with a with a gas car, how you evaluate a trade in is really different than with the used CD. And so having that skill set is really a a big deal for a car dealer.

00:07:53 Niall Riddell

So clearly there's a lot of concern sat around this journey that people are going on as they move to electric vehicles and you're the national consumer voice. What does plug in America then do?

00:08:05 Joel Levin

What? What do we do in terms of supporting people? So we we do a couple of things we in.

00:08:12 Joel Levin

And we're involved with policy discussions at the national and state level mostly where when the governments are trying to define policies around EV's or when they're spending money on charging infrastructure or creating incentives, we want to make sure that those are designed in in ways that benefit consumers and actually.

00:08:32 Joel Levin

Get people into the cars and aren't just kind of a a boondoggle for, you know, charging networks or manufacturers.

00:08:41 Joel Levin

Then we also do a lot of brand neutral public awareness and education around EVA's. So we're very well known for drive Electric Earth Month, which is the whole month of April coming up actually. And national Drive Electric Week, which is the end of.

00:09:00 Joel Levin

September and those campaigns have hundreds of events around the country. You can find either those campaigns you could just Google them and the website will pop up for drive Electric Earth month or National Drive Electric Week.

00:09:17 Joel Levin

And so those between the two of them, we have about 500 events that go on all the way from coast to coast, pretty much everywhere that are put on by EV enthusiasts, local car clubs, cities, utilities, environmental groups where people bring out electric vehicles and you can test drive.

00:09:37 Joel Levin

Or go for rides in a non sales environment where people aren't pressuring you to buy a car and you could talk to real EV drivers about their experiences owning the car. And we found that the best way for people to.

00:09:52 Joel Levin

To get educated around EVs is if you can actually test drive a few of the cars and talk to a real owner about their experience. That's very powerful and gives people confidence in the vehicles and kind of get a sense of what they like and what they don't like. So we do those. We have a website that walks you through the whole shopping experience called.

00:10:13 Joel Levin

Plugstar.com that allows you to compare different vehicles. Look at different types of charging that you could buy for your house. Figure out what incentives you're eligible for. See dealers that sell those cars and it's all brand neutral. We don't take advertising, it's.

00:10:31 Joel Levin

It's intended to be a a very objective look at the market and then we put out a variety of of different publications that give people tips and suggestions about, you know, shopping for an EV or how to use their car. So we do a bunch of things that are that are intended to be beneficial for consumers and they're they're really EV drivers talking to other EV drivers.

00:10:53 Joel Levin

We're we're not trying to sell you anything. We're trying to educate people.

00:10:56 Chris Sass

And you make two points in your closing there. One is EV drivers talking to other EV drivers and the second was kind of education is the Department of Motor vehicle up to speed. When I go take a driving test and I show up in an EV.

00:11:08 Chris Sass

What experience is that?

00:11:11 Chris Sass

Person rating me know about EV and what do I need to know different for state driving licenses. Is there anything they should teach me?

00:11:19 Joel Levin

Oh, that's a very interesting question. I don't think that it's a radically different thing. You know, there's millions of people on the road now who've driven EV's. So I I don't. I don't think it really changes things significantly in terms of of driving a vehicle. You know? Yeah, I wouldn't imagine it as a big impact.

00:11:38 Niall Riddell

One of the things we've started to see here in the UK is that people really like EV's because there's this massive torque. There's this massive power and suddenly everyone and anyone can own a super car. And the consequence of that is you've got people.

00:11:51 Niall Riddell

Who are?

00:11:51 Niall Riddell

Perhaps driving a little bit differently, their behavior changes, particularly when they're new into that vehicle and they.

00:11:58 Niall Riddell

Shoot off at the lights and bump. Hey, you've got a prang and we've started to see the implications of that through insurance.

00:12:04 Niall Riddell

Costs. So we're now seeing insurance costs rising across the board. There's a number of different reasons sat behind that. Have you started to see something similar with you guys?

00:12:13 Joel Levin

Well, we've seen that Teslas are a little bit more expensive to repair than other vehicles. Anecdotally, you hear that that it takes a long time to get parts for them because the Tesla factories are all basically working flat out.

00:12:33 Joel Levin

There was a recent situation.

00:12:36 Joel Levin

Where one of the major rental car companies announced that they were selling off a lot of Tesla's from their fleet because of the expense of repairing them.

00:12:49 Joel Levin

So I don't know that it's all EV's are that people are getting into more accidents. I I think it's that with Tesla in particular, they've been more expensive to repair. But I I think that that's partly that repair shops don't know how to deal with them and are struggling a little bit so.

00:13:09 Joel Levin

But we've heard.

00:13:11 Joel Levin

A lot of anecdotal stories where a car is in a Fender Bender and they decide to total out the car because they're worried that it might have created damage to the battery and for a very minor accident. They totaled the car and that I think as repair shops get more sophisticated about dealing with EV's, I think some of those.

00:13:31 Joel Levin

Loss will go down.

00:13:34 Joel Levin

Do do people drive more erratically in Eva's? On the whole, I don't think so. I haven't heard that as an issue. I mean, in general there's this issue in the US and I don't know if this is true in the UK where people are driving crazier since COVID I absolutely see that that there's just a lot more.

00:13:52 Joel Levin

Kind of, you know, scofflaw behavior, people shooting through red lights. And, you know, cutting people off and sort of bad behavior. I I don't think that has anything to do with VP's. I just think there's a a general decrease in civility in our society that we need to deal with.

00:14:07 Chris Sass

So the US.

00:14:07 Chris Sass

We're a car.

00:14:08 Chris Sass

Culture and we do vacations. I've spent four years living in Europe and now I live back in.

00:14:12 Chris Sass

The.

00:14:13 Chris Sass

US again and in the US, we think nothing of popping our family in the car and driving to Disney World or somewhere across the states. These long trips are the EV's ready for this today and that lifestyle.

00:14:24 Joel Levin

So I would say that it depends where you're going on major. What I mean the best thing that you can do is if you're going to go on a large road trip.

00:14:36 Joel Levin

Plan it out in advance on one of the major planning apps like Plug share or a better route planner or something like that, and take a look at where where you're going to go and what the charging network looks like.

00:14:55 Joel Levin

So for example, my sister just did a road trip in an EV from Denver to San Francisco.

00:15:02 Joel Levin

And there were sort of two major routes that she could take, and she spent a little bit of time with her route planner and realized that one of them, the charging was pretty good. And the other one, it was a lot sketchier. And so she took the the route with good charging and it was fine. She had a good trip. So I think that you need to do a little bit of prep.

00:15:21 Joel Levin

Planning. Certainly the reputation is that it's easier in a Tesla because of the Tesla network, so people prefer that. But it doesn't mean that you can't drive on the public network. You just need to sort of plan it out in advance and and make sure you know where you're going on major highways. It's generally easier on the interstates if you're going to be doing a lot of back roads.

00:15:42 Joel Levin

It could be trickier, and you might want to rely more on like destination charging.

00:15:47 Joel Levin

You know, if you're going to be doing some back roads, but you know you're going to a hotel that offers EV charging that, then you can fill up overnight. That could be a solution.

00:15:56 Chris Sass

All right. And I'd assume that most of our driving is local driving, not these long trips and many people are apartment dwellers. How are we doing on charging if I live in a multifamily or multi tenant unit?

00:16:11 Joel Levin

So it depends. It can be challenging. Some newer apartment buildings are being built with charging in them older buildings.

00:16:20 Joel Levin

Some are getting retrofitted, but many aren't because it's, it can be really expensive and difficult to retrofit an old building.

00:16:27 Joel Levin

So there are a few different solutions that are emerging. Some cities are focusing on putting in.

00:16:37 Joel Levin

Like curbside charging, that is close to dense areas of apartment buildings. So and like Los Angeles, where I live, the city is putting in curbside charging in areas where there's a lot of apartments, so that that can be a pretty good substitute to having charging in your house.

00:16:57 Joel Levin

Workplace charging also is a great substitute, so if you can't charge at home, but there's charging at your work or close to your work where your your car is parked for eight hours every day, that can be a good solution as well. So.

00:17:12 Joel Levin

Apartments are a big challenge because you know, obviously we we've seen the the biggest uptake today has been in people who live in single family homes for the obvious reason that it's cheaper and more convenient.

00:17:26 Joel Levin

Depending on your situation, you can get around that with an apartment. You can come up with good solutions, but some for some people it's more challenging, particularly if you don't have a a parking space and so you're always parking on the street every night. And if if you can't park, charge at work and there isn't any good public charging near you for some people it can be a challenge.

00:17:46 Joel Levin

So we're not there yet.

00:17:48 Joel Levin

There's there's no silver bullet. I'd say there's lots of silver buckshot, if you will, but not not for everybody. For for some people, but we're still working on that.

00:17:58 Niall Riddell

Yeah, this is a a fascinating challenge here in the UK we've got lots of terrace houses and we're constantly coming up with innovation to put it under the curb, put it through the streets, hang it over the top, you know, charge arm from nodum, connect it to a lamp, post. The guys at Charger who were on the show.

00:18:13 Niall Riddell

Previously, but this is all driven by innovators, small enterprises building new businesses to overcome these challenges. Do you have a lot of that sort of innovation entrepreneurship ecosystem in the US overcoming specific city by city challenges?

00:18:27 Joel Levin

Yes, there's some of it. I it's not as developed as I would like. We're actually working on putting together a sort of database of all examples of like that of the various different solutions that people have for apartment.

00:18:39 Joel Levin

Buildings. So there's some innovation going on, but we're going to, we're going to need a lot more of it. And so I think there's an opportunity for entrepreneurs to come in and come up with clever solutions. We are big fans of level one in a lot of cases, people ignore that. But if your car is going to be parked overnight.

00:18:59 Joel Levin

And you're not someone who has to commute 100 miles every day. A lot of times a plain old plug works just great. You know, if your daily commute is less than 40 miles.

00:19:12 Joel Levin

And there's, let's say you park in a garage and there's just a regular wall plug on the other side of the garage. That might be a totally adequate solution. So level one sometimes is this simple Dom basic solution that works pretty good for a lot of people. So I would not disregard that. People tend to forget about it because the charging networks.

00:19:33 Joel Levin

Everyone thinks, oh, faster is better. Faster is more expensive too. Sometimes slow work pretty good for a lot of situations.

00:19:39 Chris Sass

And then level one is generally that plug that they buy when I get the car right, you go in and they say, hey, you can go get this plug, you plug in in your garage, you're you're not doing any extensive wiring. I'm literally just plugging into the infrastructure I have. Is that correct?

00:19:52 Joel Levin

Yes, level one is just a plain old wall plug that like is probably 5 feet from you right now, where both of you are sitting, yeah.

00:20:00 Joel Levin

Obviously can't bring your car into your office, but you know, yeah, there's there's regular wall plugs everywhere, and every EV can use.

00:20:07 Chris Sass

Right, so plug America, you, you, you focus. You're you're educating. You're bringing people up on EV's. Do you work on EV charging infrastructure problems? Are you working with policymakers and helping or how are you involved in this dialogue of what's gonna happen with charging infrastructure? You just you just to explain the journey going from Denver to?

00:20:26 Chris Sass

La and although it's doable, it was one more complication in someones day. If they're taking that trip, so it's not quite prime time for everybody.

00:20:38 Joel Levin

So we have been pretty involved with the rollout of the federal standards for the NEVY the the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure. So the the federal government has a big chunk of money that is currently being just gradually dispersed to the states.

00:20:57 Joel Levin

To create a a National Highway infrastructure that is intended along major highways to have a charging Plaza at least every 50 miles.

00:21:09 Joel Levin

That has a speed of no less than 150 kW with a minimum of at least four chargers, and that they're sort of universally accessible to everybody. So states are now putting contracts out for that and and putting steel in the ground. The feds have worked very hard on developing standards.

00:21:29 Joel Levin

For it so that it's a uniform charging experience.

00:21:35 Joel Levin

You know our vision, you know, if you think about buying gasoline, not that I'm a fan of buying gasoline, but the experience in the US is very, very uniform. You can take any car and you can go to any gas station in America and you can pull any credit card out of your pocket. And you can you can fuel.

00:21:55 Joel Levin

You know, and the price is posted and there's generally.

00:21:58 Joel Levin

You know, lighting and there's a bathroom and the the pumps work and there's not a big line. So from a consumer perspective, it's a pretty consistent and consumer friendly experience and that's really what we want with EV's that you can go to with any EV, you can go to any charging station in the country.

00:22:18 Joel Levin

A lot of credit card and it works and they're, you know.

00:22:22 Joel Levin

There's they're not all broken, and there's not a big line and which is equivalent to the gas station experience or better. The experience can be better. I mean, if you look at plug and charge like what Tesla has and what other manufacturers are starting to have now where you pull up and you don't need a a credit card, you you plug in and the station recognizes your car and it just goes.

00:22:43 Joel Levin

So.

00:22:43

So.

00:22:44 Joel Levin

That's what we're looking for and I think we're we're getting there and the the federal standards call for uniformity and call for eventually converting over to plug and charge over time.

00:22:56 Niall Riddell

So this this, this is really interesting. We saw a lot of debate around the standards and the standardization that was going on over here in the UK and the one thing that I observed was the original definition included a CCS type 1.

00:23:09 Niall Riddell

Until a bunch of US auto manufacturers turn around again, no, we don't want to do that. We want to use a different standard and you know, alongside that standard, the plug in charge capability isn't currently accepted. So where are we with the type of plug that the US is fitting and what's going to happen with plug and charge?

00:23:27 Joel Levin

Well, so there's there's two different questions, there's, there's plug and charge, and then there's the standard, the, the, the shape of the plug.

00:23:34 Joel Levin

So CCS has been kind of the universal standard in the US, except for the Tesla network, because Tesla has its own standard, which is which they call N ACS. The North American charging standard. And because the of the reliability of the Tesla network.

00:23:55 Joel Levin

Most of the manufacturers have announced that they are going to migrate over to the Tesla standard, and they're in the process of like working deals with Tesla so that their drivers can use the Tesla network.

00:24:08 Joel Levin

So I would say that the Department of Energy is kind of scrambling now to accommodate that and figure out how do they revise their their rules for nevy, given that when the rules came out, it seemed like CCS was the winning standard. It was, you know, when everyone was going to be using.

00:24:29 Joel Levin

And now it suddenly appears that.

00:24:31 Joel Levin

It's either gonna be some combination of CCS and NCS, or potentially eventually only NCS. So it's a little unclear. So they're revising those standards and and what what a Navy station should look like to accommodate that so that that through kind of a big monkey wrench into the the works, but.

00:24:51 Joel Levin

I think it it showed that you know the manufacturers are very concerned about people's dissatisfaction with the public charge.

00:25:03 Joel Levin

Network and the fact that everyone really prefers the reliability of the Tesla network and they're trying to glom into that. So it's it's probably going to be for the medium term, you know, some combination of the two and maybe, you know, all charred cars will have, you know, it's relatively easy to use both. You just have like a little, you know, adapter.

00:25:21 Joel Levin

Sits on the end.

00:25:22 Niall Riddell

Of your plug. And do you see something adapting on that North America charging standard to enable it to handle the classic uh 1511 eights plug and charge standard or is it going to move into some Tesla dominated ecosystem for?

00:25:35 Niall Riddell

Watching.

00:25:35 Joel Levin

My understanding is that what would happen if you've got so so let's say 4 just announced that they're going to send Tesla adapters to all their drivers, and so there's there's sort of two things that have to happen. You have to have have an adapter and then the the network needs to recognize your vehicle. So.

00:25:57 Joel Levin

Like in Europe, that's already happening and I think in the US that will probably happen pretty soon where Tesla will allow non Tesla drivers to use their networks. So presumably Ford has some deal with Tesla that as a Ford driver, you can sign up to the Tesla network and then you put on your little adapter and then you can go to.

00:26:16 Joel Levin

The Tesla Charger and use it and Tesla will. It will recognize you and and you know, send you a statement at the end of the month.

00:26:23 Niall Riddell

Yeah, that sounds like it's a solution which consumers are crying out.

00:26:27 Niall Riddell

For I think it's one of these ones which will need to be seen to be believed unconscious, that there's a lot more technology behind getting the handshake between the vehicle and the charger to do what it does, and Tesla's beautiful because it's got that integrated system and we all want that experience and there's that journey to get there because clearly a forward and the Tesla might not handshake the way we want them to.

00:26:48 Joel Levin

No, you're absolutely right. There's there's, you know, a big risk of different kinds of software incompatibilities that people need to sort out. I mean, electrify America has had a number of challenges with the reliability of their network and partly it's because what they're trying to do is much harder than what Tesla did because you're they have.

00:27:08 Joel Levin

Multiple manufacturers who make their equipment and they have an open standard where you've got all the different OEMs.

00:27:16 Joel Levin

And you know, everyone has a little bit of different software and some of them take longer to verify that the the electrons are running and and so it's it's harder with an open standard like that.

00:27:30 Chris Sass

Now you touched on a couple of points throughout the conversation that are maybe bumps along the road or growing pains. Ohh you mentioned Ford, we we've talked about the different charging infrastructure.

00:27:42 Chris Sass

And if I turn on the news these days, the news about EV's in North America is a little disheartening. And depending on how how the newscaster frames it, you would think that the the big three don't support EV's and that that's going away and that EV's are not getting adopted in North America. Maybe you could shed some light on it and tell us what's really happening in the markets today in North America.

00:28:04 Joel Levin

Sure. I mean, the Evie market is actually growing really rapidly. I mean, in last year, I think it grew 42% in the country, something like that, which is a phenomenal level level of growth. It is it going to slow down somewhat from that. Yeah, probably. But that's that's what happens as as things grow, you can't grow at 42%.

00:28:25 Joel Levin

Forever. I imagine that you know it'll it'll. We'll still have steady growth as a percentage of the market. It'll probably.

00:28:36 Joel Levin

You know, slow down somewhat as as it grows over time, that's kind of normal. You can't really have exponential growth when the actual number of cars in the country is is, you know, not growing that much. So I I think it will continue. The big challenge we have and and the thing that makes the US so different from Europe is trucks.

00:28:57 Joel Levin

Pickup truck.

00:28:59 Joel Levin

That when you get outside the major cities in the US, people drive trucks, they don't drive cars, you know, sedans are something around 30% or 32% of new car sales in the US and the rest of it is, you know, SUV's and trucks and.

00:29:17 Joel Levin

Eva's, you know, in the beginning because of the cost and size of batteries, we're.

00:29:24 Joel Levin

Vehicles that were kind of urban, they were smaller vehicles because of battery size. We're now starting to see larger SUV's getting out there. There's the first three row SUV's hitting the market like the Kia. There are trucks in the market. There's.

00:29:44 Joel Levin

Ford and Tesla and GM has a truck that's just been released and starting to scale up, and Dodge is a truck that's coming out the next year or so.

00:29:57 Joel Levin

And of course, the rivian. So UM, the trucks are a big challenge and and of course people use their trucks intensively. You know, people haul things and when you we've we've heard stories that when you, you know, attach a big trailer to an electric truck it it.

00:30:16 Joel Levin

You know.

00:30:17 Joel Levin

Reduces the mileage you know as it does with the gas car as well, and so the manufacturers are responding to that and figuring out different solutions. And I think that's going to be really critical in some cases, you know, putting in really big batteries, in some cases having plug in hybrids that that, that dual fuel and so.

00:30:37 Joel Levin

I think figuring out solutions for people outside of the big cities that that need heavier duty vehicles is going to be really critical to the US and makes it harder than Europe to really scale up. And you know, to to really.

00:30:53 Joel Levin

Everybody.

00:30:54 Chris Sass

Now, trucks have been the friend of the automaker because they were high profit divisions for most of these, and they kept our auto industry alive for a long time. When we switched to EVA's, which are already so expensive. When I looked at at F-150 Lightning, I was super excited about it until I saw the price tag and thought.

00:31:10 Chris Sass

I could buy a house for that.

00:31:13 Chris Sass

Is that going to change the industry? Because are the margins still there on those big SUV's and trucks when when you're having electric vehicle is?

00:31:22 Chris Sass

It's still profitable for those companies.

00:31:25 Joel Levin

I think they'll still be profitable. I mean it's it's we've the manufacturers I think have discovered that it's easier to turn a profit on a kind of a more expensive vehicle because there's there's more.

00:31:38 Joel Levin

Profit built in there already more margin. I mean if you go look at a fully loaded Ford F-150, you know regular gasoline truck, that is not a cheap vehicle either you know people.

00:31:50 Joel Levin

Who?

00:31:51 Joel Levin

You know, people like their trucks. You know, trucks can be fairly expensive. So I think that there's margin there. The challenge has been battery cost that you know, if you're going to put a really big battery into a into a truck.

00:32:04 Joel Levin

That gets that.

00:32:05 Joel Levin

Gets expensive and cumbersome and heavy. However, battery technology continues to improve.

00:32:12 Joel Levin

You know, month over month.

00:32:14 Joel Levin

The you know, Bloomberg has been tracking the cost and density of batteries since 2010, and in the last decade, the cost of a battery has dropped about 90% on on average, it drops about 15% a year over time and.

00:32:33 Joel Levin

The forecast is that that is going to continue. And so as, which is why you're seeing vehicles, you know lots of vehicles on the market that go 300 miles and you didn't a couple of years ago.

00:32:43 Joel Levin

Batteries are getting cheaper. New LFP batteries are significantly cheaper than regular old lithium ion batteries with with cobalt and nickel in them. So I I think that battery technology will save us. Battery technology will continue.

00:33:03 Joel Levin

To improve and it will make it easier to to put out these larger vehicles and do it profitably.

00:33:11 Niall Riddell

It's exactly the kind of messaging we want to hear because one of the things we constantly get fed back on is is that upfront cost. And you know you've already talked about total cost of ownership being lower, but the upfront cost puts a lot of people off. And as a consequence, we need to start to see that number to make Chris happier when he goes and inspects his next truck that we can get that number.

00:33:31 Niall Riddell

Then what else do you see happening that would enable consumers to get in? How do we get in? You know, we talked about the early majority. How do we get into the the late majority? What else do we need to do to get that last group over the?

00:33:42 Niall Riddell

Fine.

00:33:43 Joel Levin

Right. So yes, in terms of when you when you buy a vehicle, people are used to just looking at the price and what we what we do a lot of dealer education on this and what we strongly encourage the dealers to do is get people away from that and have people think about the monthly cost of ownership because that's where EV.

00:34:04 Joel Levin

Lines. When you say, what is it going to cost me every month?

00:34:07 Joel Levin

For my finance payment, my fuel and my maintenance, and that's where an EV starts to look really different than a gas car, especially if you price that out over a long period of time and you realize that fuel and maintenance look really good five years in eight years in versus a gas car. So that's that's really important. And so for consumers.

00:34:28 Joel Levin

You need to change.

00:34:28 Joel Levin

Change your mind and don't just think of the upfront cost, which might be more, but then over time it's going to be very significant savings. Like I said, I pointed out that report from Consumer Reports that when you look at the total cost of ownership apples to apples of a similar gas card and EVE is cheaper, it's always cheaper that, which is shocking to people.

00:34:47 Chris Sass

In our pre call you you mentioned a a book by one of our previous guests and said Plug America was inspired by this book. Who killed the electric car?

00:34:56 Chris Sass

How did that? How does that relate in Chelsea's book relate to Plug America?

00:35:00 Joel Levin

Plug in America so it's it's not a book, it's a movie that the so I'll I'll give you a little bit of history of environmental regulation in in California. And so I live in Los Angeles. We have an air pollution problem. You've probably heard that and so.

00:35:21 Joel Levin

The state of California has been.

00:35:24 Joel Levin

Pushing to clean up the air in Los Angeles since the 50s, you know the air here 5070 years ago was much worse than it is now. And so there's been this constant pressure from the state of what else can we do to clean the air? Because as the population grows here, you've got to everything that humans do has got to get cleaner and cleaner over time.

00:35:45 Joel Levin

Otherwise this will just not be a place that you can live and so about.

00:35:51 Joel Levin

Ohh 25 years ago there was a a bunch of research that was done partly at UC Davis and elsewhere that showed that electric vehicles were a viable technology that you could you could build electric cars that would that would work as an alternative to gas cars. And so the state of California, the California Air Resources Board looked at that and they said OK well.

00:36:11 Joel Levin

If you can build them, we're going to make you build them. And so they passed a law called the.

00:36:19 Joel Levin

The 0 mission vehicle mandate, the ZEV mandate that said that if you're going to sell cars in California, a certain percentage of vehicles need to be a ZEV, a 0 emission vehicle, which can basically means electric or hydrogen, and that that has to ramp up over time. And so when the ZEV mandate.

00:36:37 Joel Levin

Came into being in the in the late 90s. A number of manufacturers complied and started to build.

00:36:45 Joel Levin

0 emission vehicles, electric vehicles and you know, in relatively small numbers, a few thousand of them and consumers loved them. People loved these vehicles, but they were a pain for the manufacturers. There was, you know, and they really weren't very excited about it. So they went back to the state and said, you know, nobody wants these cars. We can't.

00:37:05 Joel Levin

Sell them. People don't like them. They're hassle for us. And so the state relaxed the mandate and it turned out that they hadn't actually sold any of the cars they'd leased all of them. And so when the leases came up, they took them back and they crushed them and they destroyed them and got them off the street.

00:37:21 Joel Levin

And those handful of people, a few thousand people who had those cars were really upset. And so they created this movement to try to save the electric cars and to force the state to go forward, go forward more with the ZEV mandate. And it initially.

00:37:40 Joel Levin

Didn't work, and the EV's kind of disappeared off the streets and they were gone for a long time. There were no commercial EV's for a number of years, and that's when that movie came out. Who killed the electric car? Basically trying to figure out.

00:37:52 Joel Levin

Why did this happen that this new technology was there and then then it was gone, and then the state came back around and doubled down on the ZEV mandate and has ratcheted up to now where it goes up to 100% by 2035. And you know, to some degree because of that.

00:38:12 Joel Levin

Movement and the the regulators of the state of California. These are where they are today and have really kind of taken off and you know, around the country and around around the world. And so that, that movie document.

00:38:25 Joel Levin

That whole history you can find it on Amazon. It's still available and the the people who were involved in that movement, which again was 20 plus years ago, were some of the founders of Plug in America. So that movement gradually morphed into the organization we have today. We're pretty different, but that's sort of the the roots.

00:38:45 Joel Levin

Of plug in America.

00:38:46 Chris Sass

Awesome. Well, I appreciate this, Neil. Any final questions or thoughts that was that was amazing.

00:38:50 Joel Levin

It's probably more than you wanted to.

00:38:52 Niall Riddell

For me, that's an incredibly rich story. And what I really enjoy is when you go to thepluginamerica.org website, you can find a richness of support mechanisms and insight and guidance to help a whole range of roles. And you talked about dealers and drivers and events and getting people and vehicles and that whole ecosystem has to come together to help people move forward. So it's.

00:39:12 Niall Riddell

Really fascinating to hear from you. Thank you very much.

00:39:14 Joel Levin

Thank you guys for having me on. This has been.

00:39:16 Joel Levin

It's been really fun.

00:39:17 Chris Sass

Thank you, Joel. For audience, we hope you've enjoyed this content. If you did, don't forget to subscribe and follow us. We'll talk to you again next time and the insiders guide to Energy EV. Bye bye.