Good morning.
Grid connections listeners.
I'm your host chase.
And today we're bringing you an all star panel featuring Steve Birkett founder of plug and play.
He's the king of all things.
Neve and EV charging along with Walter Schulze the data-driven mind behind the network architect channel on YouTube.
And last but not least Eric Way.
He's the experienced EV road tripper and voice of the News Coloumb channel together.
We'll dive into the trends of 2024 and how they're shaping the EV industry.
charging infrastructure and the future of mobility.
This isn't just about what's happening now.
It's a blueprint for what's coming in 2025 from the latest in DC fast charging reliability to current EV models.
Our guests share unparalleled insights around what is happening in the space today.
Plus we impact the big wins, surprising challenges and the current state of electric transportation.
So what's in store?
Well, how about how fast charging hubs and streamlined plug and charge tech are redefining the road trip experience?
The rise of vertically integrated networks like electric era and their game changing impact on DC fast charging for EV drivers, along with what automakers and EV buyers can
expect as federal incentive shift and private investment skyrockets.
This is an episode packed with interesting takeaways and eye-opening perspectives that you won't want to miss.
Love what you hear?
Well, share this episode with someone who's passionate about the future of electric vehicles as well.
Plus, don't forget to leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform.
It helps more EV enthusiasts discover grid connections.
With that, enjoy.
I'm sure all of our listeners are familiar, but just in case, and there will be obviously as we always do links in today's show notes, but real quickly, if you guys could just kind
of go around, in addition, obviously, talking about coast to coast EVs, which you do a fortnightly, but just what you individually do and your backgrounds for our listeners
today,
So I'm Steve from Plug and Play EV, a YouTube channel based out of Boston, Massachusetts and the back of my car quite often.
But yeah, so I cover a lot of infrastructure and electric vehicle.
Everything really reviews product reviews travel that kind of thing around the Northeast and more recently across the country and we also do with the fine gentleman to my left and
down below the fortnightly coast to coast EVs podcast which is a real a live stream on YouTube but also makes its way to audio platforms to cover EV infrastructure and the EV
news and analysis of the day.
Thank you, Steve.
Why don't you go next, Walter?
I'm just looking at the boxes on my screen.
I'll have you go next.
Walter Schulze.
I work at the Network Architect channel, YouTube channel to produce content, typically on DC Fast Charger station builds and also site visits.
And I've been mentored by Eric and his site review method.
So I've been taking that as the way I, when I show up to a site to do a review.
That's the method that I follow in order to do reviews.
So I'm definitely the junior member of the team.
And last but not least, Eric, why don't you tell a little about yourself?
Yeah, I was just figuring we'd go in alphabetical order by last name after Steve started.
yeah, so I mean, I've been driving electric vehicles for quite a while now.
I actually just did a road trip in my Chevy Volt that replaced the one I had before.
So I've actually been driving plug-ins, plug-in vehicles now for 13, almost 14 years.
quite a long time and then of course transitioned to All Electric about eight years ago.
what I do basically is a YouTube channel just covering the infrastructure, best practices for traveling, that sort of thing.
And I saw real dearth in coverage, especially people talking about the public charging infrastructure early on, which is kind of why I got into doing a video channel on YouTube
to kind of document it.
You know, Walter referenced that site review model that I created and I, I, I've been remiss in not doing as many site reviews as I need to, but it was just a way of providing
some analytics and quantifying the things about charging sites that really matter to EV owners because, know, we've seen so many chargers going in that are not.
like focused on the customer, they're not focused on the EV driver, they're focused on a business or something else.
And these are factors that people who actually drive EVs and use chargers are interested in.
So it's something that was worth mentioning.
so, yeah, I just kind of cover all topics, EV, but primarily trying to focus on the infrastructure because I feel like that's what affects us all really.
For sure.
And I know we have a few different topics that we wanted to cover for tonight, but let's kind of just start.
you mentioned Eric, even road tripping.
I think Steve, had you on earlier this year as well.
Kind of talking about the big road trip you talk, took across the entire country actually.
So I think it might be interesting to just kind of talk with all three of you having you on and even my recent experiences doing the annual road trip I do down to Phoenix and just
kind of hear any trends or insights that all three of you are kind of.
Seeing in that realm as far as I think there's a lot of headlines and there's a lot of facts on paper, but in the end there is reality.
And I will say personally, as soon as it's been driving EVs for a while, things are getting better, but there are still the occasional headwinds or unexpected issues.
So I'm curious to hear what your experiences have been and if you guys have had any trips that you want to share recently, we'll kind of kick it off with that.
I'll send people straight back to the episode we did chase of 60 minutes or more of my trip across the country so everyone should go back and listen to that after this.
Eric has definitely had some recent travel right Eric?
Northern California I think it's probably worth starting on your coast and heading east.
you want to start on the West Coast?
OK.
Well, I mean, I was going to say one one trend that immediately jumped to my mind when you when you mentioned that chase is reliability has improved.
And I want to say specifically for Electrify America, I feel like they've been sort of the big bad that people pick on all the time.
And I don't know that they've received.
Enough credit or acknowledgement for how much they've actually improved their reliability in the last year alone We've seen that fourth generation hardware going in and it's going
in very rapidly So it's not just putting in new sites, but it's actually replacing aging equipment or problematic equipment And so I've that's one of those areas that I feel like
it's really worth calling out
I personally try to avoid focusing on Electrify America, but I do think that we need to give them a little bit of credit for the improvements they've made in their reliability.
But the other trend that I've noticed and maybe I get, it's really weird because I follow the East Coast in the middle of the country as well, even though I don't get out there as
often, but I'm seeing the rise of...
these smaller charging networks that are really starting to get their footing and really starting to build out.
And Chase, I believe you had a representative from Electric Era on at one point in time discussing.
Yeah, and I've made it a point now to kind of go out of my way checking out some of the Electric Era sites that are going in in Northern California, and they're doing an amazing
job.
I think just so far I've visited three of their sites, all of them for 200 kilowatt dispensers, split power, all located at gas stations, all a block off the freeway.
know, all this complaining about I have to drive a mile off the freeway to get to a charger.
They're literally exit the freeway and you're there, right?
I've had one issue and I think four charging stops and it was related to
the payment card reader.
And the next time when I went, it was fixed, right?
So they have a really good uptime.
The chargers are working.
They're dispensing the power that they're rated.
And one of the big things that I've noticed is they are getting these chargers installed ahead of schedule, which for someone in California, that just doesn't happen, right?
Like this idea that...
They have, I think they got a contract with Costco because they had a seven week turnaround time.
In California, the station I visited most recently was in Wyricka.
They were initially targeting a spring 2025 opening date.
And they're like, well, we got the hardware ahead of schedule.
We're just opening the site now.
So they're done.
Like it's online.
It's ready to go.
So like this is something that we don't see.
so they're kind of right now.
in the terms of these smaller, lesser known charging providers, kind of the cream of the crop in terms of what I've observed.
I do have my criticisms though, right?
And I'm nothing if not a critic.
And I do recognize that they fit a very small niche of what I consider relatively low power, average power per stall.
So about a hundred kilowatt per stall, if the site is completely swamped.
No pull through parking, no canopies.
but they serve that niche of you're in a smaller, efficient car, you're not towing a trailer, you just want a reliable charger with a quick 10, 15 minute top up off the
freeway, you're in, you're out, it's reliable, you know it's gonna work, and you have on-site amenities that you would have at a gas station.
That goes a long way for a lot of drivers, and I think that is a niche that has not really been supported up to this point.
That's kind of top on my mind, but I've talked enough already, so.
Yeah, I was going to say you just said so much that I want to unpack there.
don't know if and Steve, you have anything to add to that, for sure electrify merit and electric air.
I have definitely some recent experiences and thoughts on that realm as well.
Steve or Walter, I don't know if you've had any recent experiences with either of those providers.
Yeah, I think there's still they there are a few kind of out locations that they've had kind of popped up across the US but by far they're still much more West Coast based and
you're correct.
We've had Quincy Lee, their CEO on the Great Connections podcast and their team are rock stars.
One thing that I have noticed in a trend as of late is innovation to solve the long-standing problem of, as you say, station lead time from construction to activation.
And there's a lot of innovation in this area with Revell and Gravity, which Steve could probably speak to, and Electric Era has got some very creative solutions.
So it's not only putting chargers in the ground, it's solving other problems as well.
That's one of the things that I've been noticing in the industry is that there's a lot of innovation coming to the table.
think the site that Eric mentioned in Wyrika was suffering, the middle of 2025 was down to the transformer lead times.
And they I don't know if they just got bumped up a list or if they they were able to source I know there's some creative work going out there on, you know, pre sourcing
transformers or, you know, getting a jump on those things.
But, but they definitely were way way ahead.
They just carried on building and then then got it live, obviously, as Eric's visit is a testament to.
Yeah, but I mean, speaking to that, Steve, in that same region.
So if you go a little bit south on I-5 to Weed, I talked to the installers at the Pilot Flying J and they had completed the Tesla V3.5 Supercharger the same weekend that they
completed the Pilot Flying J.
And the next time I went up there a month later, the Supercharger was on.
and working and dispensing power and it was still another month and a half after that before the Pilot Flying J went up and it wasn't a transformer issue because they both
supposedly had power drops.
So there is some jostling I think to get in the lead in terms of whether it's site approvals or sign-offs or something.
And if you know how to play that game apparently in California it gets you ahead.
It's an interesting now that you're mentioning it, there's also an overlap with the the the NEVI progress that I've been monitoring, because I've tried to keep it you know, it's
a little bit more of a cluster of sites.
So you kind of there's only 4042, I think at the moment activated.
So I've kept an eye on when they break ground or when the state DOT is saying they're under construction, that kind of thing.
And then when they've actually, you know, started charging cars, that's typically my metric of they're open and ready to go.
And the turnaround time there has varied from
The quickest one was in Hawaii for I think they started and finished in February this year.
So even that's a short month.
So some like 27, 28 days, but that's a municipal site.
had Tritium hardware already pre-bought.
this is, you know, they're well positioned to turn that around and it's a sunny place.
So there's no weather delays really, unless some tsunami comes washing in.
But the longest is, I think it was a pilot flying J in Ohio, which may not still be open.
But again, they've got, you know,
60 and 17 sites, some of pilot flying J that opened within a couple of months, some of them that have really dragged on to 200, 220 odd days.
And so you start to see even with the same provider owned and operated by the person who's, you know, putting them in on their property, just maybe local contractors, maybe
the equipment, all of these things that can move the goalposts and you know, some sites will be up and running in a couple of months, others may take, you know, four, five, six
longer, just kind of really depends on what's going on the ground, I think.
I think there's a couple of things to add to that.
know in electric era's case, have a, their focus is vertical integration.
And they have taken that to a pretty strong extreme between not just the hardware layer, but obviously software as well.
And I know some of the veterans that they've recruited, not just from ex Tesla, but other charging companies as well.
There have been some really interesting learnings.
around like how to actually do what exactly we're talking about right now that's execute a lot faster than some of these other players in the space, especially if they're not as
vertically integrated.
And I, be honest with you, I still don't know what some of these tricks are.
I just know in conversations I've had with people offline, they do confirm there are tricks as we've kind of alluded to with the jostling that they have learned from the
industry that they are leveraging.
They won't tell me what these tricks are, but they are saying that that has really helped with.
acceleration in development.
Obviously I'm not always a big one to talk about rumor, but it's just been an interesting trend.
and since you brought it up and just things I've kind of confirmed when talking with others in the industry.
Yeah, I mean it just stands out to me though, Chase, because California is such a particularly harsh environment in terms of opening DC chargers.
Electrify America had mentioned several years ago that their average opening time for California was double the national average.
And so that's a pretty harsh environment for, yeah.
think that that is necessarily, I call it the I-5 curse personally.
a lot of the cities along I-5 in the whole West coast are definitely much more onerous from a permitting standpoint.
And it doesn't matter if you were an EV charger or not.
just having a lot of friends who are contractors and others in, related kind of real estate development spaces.
It just takes a long time.
And obviously California, think it's the one everyone talks about, but this is something we do see in multiple States along the West coast.
Unfortunately, I think it is finally starting to change with new entrants like electric air and others.
But, yeah, I think it's just interesting going also not to just focus on them electrify America.
I definitely agree that their experience has definitely improved.
And I recently did, doing my annual kind of trip from.
It's about, I didn't do the full 1200 miles in a day.
Like I've done previously only did 800 this time from, bend, Oregon to Las Vegas.
And I did use an electrify America to kind of take this different route that I hadn't driven in an EV.
I'd done it ages ago, a Subaru actually.
And you go along what's known as the loneliest highway in the U S and it's incredibly beautiful and remote, but there was an electrify America charger.
used in, battle mounted Nevada.
And it was.
Probably the best EA experience I've ever had.
Having said that, the app was incorrect with how many stalls were available.
And then one of the stalls, just everything looked like it should work, but it did not.
And so I did have to move.
then once I moved to this other, 350 kilowatts doll, it kicked off and everything worked great.
and
they all the new 350s or was this one of the old kind of hybrid?
so correct.
yeah, there were some of the new ones.
but I, I think kind of talking about earlier Eric's experience and how he ranks, charging experiences.
I think there are one that's so spot on and that that is a great rubric and to just have like kind of a base starting point for them.
But then I always approach it from like people like my mom or other people I know who are very, tech adverse people and
If I was one of them, I would be so frustrated because everything looks like it should be working.
It would like I would swipe my card and it would even like say processing it like everything just seemed like it would work.
And then it would just say fault on the car.
And then the car would say there was an issue with the charger.
and I pretty quickly knew it was the charger, I, had, honestly, I had some time.
And so I was just kind of playing with it to see, there a weird thing?
Is there anything that it could be on my side?
Are there any weird things I can do to make it work?
And it was just really clear that it was just some sort of weird thing going on with the charger.
And then once I plugged into the other stuff, it worked fine and I was on my way pretty quickly.
Not to say, and I think what's interesting is with a lot of electrify America, it's definitely improved.
And to be honest with you, the experience I have with electrify America is not far off in
user experience and issues I've experienced when using gas stations in very remote areas.
There's usually a pump that's down or something kind of going on.
So it's getting better.
And the card swipe action was really quick when I went to the other one and it all just worked.
And I was a little nervous just because it wasn't a very remote area or a pretty remote area.
And this was kind like the long one before a long drive into a slightly less remote area.
But it all worked out and it was overall a pretty positive experience.
it just kind of goes to things are going in the right direction.
Yeah.
on this as well recently.
I'm sure he'll be a better place to speak to it.
the point of this transition eventually is that it should be easier.
mean, know Chase from traveling in the Tesla with plugging it in and going in a private ecosystem, closed network that just works right off the bat.
Now there's a lot more going on with these third party vendors and talking to another layer of software and everything else.
But when we get this plug and charge,
fixed across all public options and across all models and all network providers, then we start to get to a place where it's actually not even as difficult as gas.
You're not having to pump, you're not having to use unless you really want to.
They will need credit card readers just for the exact reason you say, your mom or your dad or your grandma and people going on, you know, chips that don't necessarily have it all
set up.
But, you know, that will be a backup because once the car is handling everything in the background with the station, you're not
doing anything.
You're doing exactly what Tesla owners have been used to for all those trips and just plugging in and walking away.
But Walter, you did the video on that and covered it in pretty good detail.
I'd love to hear like what you're seeing on that.
Thank you.
Subsequent to that, it's been uncovered.
We're looking at a very fast transition to this plug and charge technology.
One of my viewers chimed in and started feeding me some images from his BMW app.
And BMW already has the plug and charge starting to show up in their app.
And it appears as though what's going on is they're lining up with the IANA launch for plug and charge, this new, what I'm calling a parent plug and charge.
which coalesces the disparate plug and charge and auto charge technologies into a single authentication commerce marketplace sort of thing, where the authentication transfers
through transparently to the end user.
And we're looking at it very fast.
I mean, we're talking weeks away from this actually going live nationwide with all parties.
And he showed me his app.
It had EPICO, it had ChargePoint, and he actually went to the Mercedes-Benz charging hub in Sandy Springs and tried it.
And what was displayed on the screen was plug and charge error indicating that the feature is known within the software.
It's just not working right now.
So very soon, two things are going to be happening.
We're going to be standardizing on J3400 and we're going to have plug and charge.
Just think, plus...
I'm currently tracking somewhere around $50 billion of investment going into the United States and Canada for DC fast chargers.
So you've got builds of crazy extent going all over the place.
You've got plug and charge coming to the table very soon.
And you've got J3400 standardization going all over the place.
It's going to be a dramatically different landscape come this time next year.
We're going to be talking all kinds of different things occurring.
And as was mentioned, the gold standard of the Tesla Supercharger experience coming to EV ownership at large.
Yeah, that's great to hear because that's one of the things I've been pushing for so long because to me, you look at any sort of disruptive force and for something to kind of take
over the status quo, it doesn't have to be just as good.
It has to be better.
And that's really where that plug and charge experience has always shined.
And I know between automakers and OEMs, it's definitely where things are headed.
And I think that is the big thing that just cannot happen soon enough.
Now obviously that's for EA and some of the quite a few of these providers as even you mentioned I will say I did have probably the low point of my trip was the I'm trying to
look it up right now.
It was the champs Chevron in Austin, Nevada, which was a, I mean, it's a cool, it's a beautiful drive and it's a wildly remote area, but,
trying remember what it even is as far as the provider, but it's, it's one of these one-off.
a charge point along that route.
Was it a charge point?
I'm pulling it up right now.
I don't think it was.
think it was something else, but it just, and I'm trying to remember, I can't believe I'm drawing blank on this, but one of the other crazy parts too, was how difficult it was to
get it to start a charge.
And I think this is by far a one-off because it was only about 50 kilowatts.
And that's what it was too.
It was, DC was 75 cents a kilowatt hour and 60 cents to connect.
And because the system wasn't working, it was just free.
And so there was just like a lot of these weird issues with it.
And so this was also another time where it looked like both chargers were working, but one was also down.
This one was a little bit easier to figure out.
It was down just because it was kind of acting weird.
And I checked it in plug share previously showing up there.
But it's just one of these things that like.
I feel sorry for people that this, these are one offs, but it's in such a remote area.
And if you are doing this drive and you don't have, some like 400 mile vehicle, which there's only a couple of, it is just like such an important thing to have.
And the sooner that these do go to exactly what you're talking about, Walter, that just kind of minimize.
Cause like there's one way to do it.
You had to have like RFID, you had to do all these other things.
So are all those the ones that will be supported with
right.
On the BMW app, this is currently what is displayed.
So it's Blink, Flow, Francis Energy, EVgo, ChargePoint, IANA.
all those shall recharge.
All those apparently are going to be participating members in this new plug-in charge.
as you say, the one-offs will still exist, but at least we're getting some very quick adoption apparently going on here.
No, that's great.
And I, I think to even say as a counterpoint, my trip back.
we went to Phoenix state at a resort for the holidays or Thanksgiving.
And then on our way back, we took a different way to go through Yosemite and then leaving Yosemite.
We stayed, or we charged at a supercharger in Bakersfield.
And we've kind of been talking about this a little bit Eric before we went live here, but the big part was.
It was a new V4.
So the actual charging experience was great, but we pull up and my wife has to use the bathroom like crazy.
And so she's like running around trying to find a place and the place that allegedly had been said that you can go use the bathroom.
They're now no longer letting EV charger people, charging their EVs use the bathroom there.
And my mom was like, okay, I got cash 10 bucks.
I don't care.
I just need to use the bathroom.
And they were just kind of putting their foot down about, which was an unfortunate thing because
for my point, the new view was the first V4 charger I had.
I, it doesn't really matter to my car.
was kind of the same all the way, but it's just kind of interesting to look at the site design, some of these other things, but it totally goes to kind of that grading rubric
that we alluded to earlier, that there are a lot of different factors that go into this for me personally, when I'm on a road trip, I just want to have charging.
don't really care what the amenities are there.
If there's a simple bathroom thing and there's no canopy, whatever, I just want to have charging.
but I think.
A lot of the stuff that you've been kind of following along Walter is it is really great to see more and more of these more advanced and kind of just more fleshed out charging
locations and charging experiences.
And I think that that is also another kind of part to this change to electrification that really does need to make sure that the gas experience, even if you're at a convenience
store, there's usually a bathroom or something there that really does make it a lot less stressful when road tripping.
And I'm kind of curious if there's anything you want to add to that Walter and
some of the things you've been saying.
Yes, and I think the long-standing pattern of Eric's approach to grading chargers as a customer experience has, believe it not, had a rather extensive effect because Tesla left
to its own devices, as you say, would put chargers in the ground at locations where people could charge their cars.
But even Tesla now is shifting their focus to a more customer experience at their supercharger locations.
several new ones in North Carolina, my area that are at very nice locations directly off the interstate paired with a convenience store operator and extensive charging
infrastructure.
It's really a noticeable shift in the Tesla Supercharger team and all these other CPOs that are starting to focus more on customer experience as well.
I think is because what we've been chiming about all these years is that, you know, it's not just about getting gas at a pump that is unattended in the middle of nowhere.
You know, as you say, I'd like to use the restroom.
I kind of like to be protected from the elements and I'd like to have somewhere to dump my trash and I'd like to have maybe somewhere to get some food or some fresh water or
something.
So all these things are.
well known in the gas industry and perfected down to a fine decimal point and it seems as though the EV charging industry is finally starting to catch up.
think it's also down to competition, right?
I mean, you're just starting to get, it's not just a Tesla supercharger or an Electrify America and you go to the one that's, you you're able to get to because your range gets
you there.
You've got, you know, if I look back, I always kind of stop into Ellensburg, Washington as the stop where I got off the interstate and thought there's five options here.
I could go downtown, I could go to the Pilot Flying J, I could go to the Tesla supercharger with a Magic Dock.
So even for my Onyc 5 pre-adapter, it's ready to go.
There's an Electrify America that's been upgraded.
So it's all coming together, but you can't rest on your laurels.
mean, even the Tesla Supercharger, which a year ago would have been the, you know, I can charge at Tesla finally, you know, in that particular location, I think it's at a hotel,
which might work great if you're staying at the hotel, but it means that you need to walk two or three businesses down to the dining.
It comes down to obviously your use case and your road trip, but also, you know, there's just other places to go now.
If someone gets off at an interstate, they may have three, four, five options.
And that's a great thing for moving EV charging from, you know, the old days of just, hope anywhere has a charger to where do I want to stop?
Where do I want charge?
No, I think that's a great call.
And especially that location of being right off the highway.
I think that is also what was really interesting about this supercharging location.
just double check.
It only opened 21 days ago.
So it's only been open for a few weeks.
and it was one of the new befores, but as I was looking at what was really interesting was even the route planner actually had not been recommending for me to go to that one.
because it technically was further off, but because it was kind of a V4 and we were kind of staying out to the east side of it.
Anyway, I just figured why not go there.
but no, you're totally right.
I think there are so many areas, especially as we look into the new year of areas to where to be optimistic and finally getting to this point where, I, and I think this has been
true even to Walter's point of like, you really don't have to go that far off the highway usually.
And it's becoming more and more, especially along big interstates where you actually have choice in where you charge.
And that has been something I look at more as just like the price and then amenities as to where.
I would go to kind of choose and how fast I'm trying to get somewhere, honestly.
Yeah, but Chase, think I think your experience it I'm having a little bit of PTSD because my bones hurt.
I'm an oldie.
When I was traveling way back in the past, know, RV parks were still a very valid location for charging your car on a road trip.
This is back when, you're talking about hundred and fifty, two hundred, three hundred miles between superchargers, let alone
you know, public fast chargers.
And I started seeing a lot of pushback about seven, eight years ago where RV park owners were just saying no more EVs, right?
So it's one thing if every other week or something you have an EV owner to stop in and plug in, but it's once you get that many numbers.
And we've already seen this with gas stations and I can't remember who I made this comment to, but people forget that it...
even with the gas station, if all you do is pull your car in, fill up with gas and go in and use the bathroom and leave, that gas station's lost money on that transaction, right?
They have literally lost money because their margins on selling the gasoline are so low that you've used more of their resources than what they recouped.
And so that's why we even see gas stations now say customers only using the bathroom.
And that includes people who pull in to plug it or to use the gas pumps.
And now we're introducing chargers at these locations.
And it makes me wonder if this is going to be even more of a case.
And with EV charging, we know that for every one stop that you might need to make in a gas car, you're likely going to have to make two to three stops on a road trip in an EV.
And so now you're stopping more frequently.
you have more people using these locations.
And if it's a gas station or a convenience store that's there to sell items, they don't want you plugging in your car, going and using the bathroom and then leaving, right,
without buying something.
So this is something that think it might be interesting to follow because that Dunigan supercharger site, I think, Walter, you remember the one that I talked about?
I passed that on the way.
Thanksgiving, yeah.
It's right next to a ARCO AMPM convenience store.
And as I was driving by, the trash cans were completely full.
it was clear that that site had been used.
And I can only imagine if over the course of a day, this ARCO AMPM has hundreds of people coming in wanting to use the bathroom.
and not buying anything because they're just stopping for 10 to 15 minutes and getting back on the road again.
So this is an issue that I think we could see red flag now, but it's a potential future issue that I think we could see with some of these chargers and where they're being built.
For sure.
I think one of the other things I'd be kind of curious of your guys, especially your thoughts, Eric, I know we've kind of disagreed a little bit on this in the past, but one
of the things that really stood out to me on this trip again was like, there could be more chargers.
especially if you're off I five, the density, and I think it's really interesting.
Even when, I look at a lot of the maps for chargers, even in plug share, there is such a big density change in DC fast charging.
West of the Missouri River, east of the Missouri River, it's so much more dense.
And then if you're not along I-5, I-84 or like I-90, there's a very significant drop off of DC fast charging density.
And you do really have to kind of sometimes choose where you're going more and kind of the strategy to get some of these.
And I'm curious if you have seen that or kind of experienced.
still yourself that Eric that really just stood out to me more on this trip recently because a little bit the detour we took through Yosemite versus some of the other ways
I've gone.
Yeah, I I still sort of maintain this opinion that once you breach probably 12 to 16 stalls, you've reached the point of diminishing returns.
And in this last trip, I guess maybe spoilers because a BP pulse didn't exactly operate the way that I wanted it to, but it's a four stall BP pulse at an ARCO AMPM.
But I was just picturing this as I was pulling off the freeway and I'm looking and across one street, there's another gas station.
And then across the street from that, there's another gas station.
And so we tend to be so fixated on how many pumps there are at a particular location or how many plugs are at a particular location.
But I would much rather have four stalls at the Arco, four stalls at the 76, four stalls at the Chevron, than have 12 stalls at just one location.
I still maintain that.
Now what that right number is, because we do have to worry about, there has to be enough chargers and stalls to match the size of the location and the use case of the location and
the business itself and the typical dwell time.
But I'm not, for a lot of these highway locations, I'm not seeing a justification for more than.
six to eight to 12 stalls.
Basically the same as gas pumps.
The issue that I have more and it still pervades is the amount of power per stall.
Because that BP pulse, great location for stalls.
If all four stalls are in use, you're looking at a maximum of about 70 to 75 kilowatt per stall.
For a lot of EVs, what are you going to be there for an hour at an AMPM?
That's not gonna fly for a lot of people and and so I'm more interested in making sure it's a balance of sufficient stalls for the location and sufficient power to match the use
case of that that location so Steve comes in and his Superlative charging ionic five and he wants to spend ten minutes going into the ampm to grab a hot dog and use the bathroom
you're not going to do that on a 75 kilowatt charger.
So the chargers need to match and the stall count needs to match the amenities of the location.
It's cold now and my preconditioning sucks so I only get 17kW for the first 20 minutes.
Anyway, I'm in a good place to slur.
Yeah, I mean, I do see a case maybe, and this is to your point, maybe Chase, having some centrally located larger charging sites.
But I think we need to be honest about how big they actually need to be.
And I think that's totally fair.
I think a lot of the locations I was talking about eight, six probably would have even been fine.
it's just like, once you get off that I five, the main interstates kind of going up and down and maybe other than West and East on parts of the West coast, it is just really
interesting to me, like how there are still some pretty decent gaps or areas that, I'm hoping, but I, I'm, are you going to say, it looks like you're going to say something
there.
I was gonna say like just a point to consider because I've spent most of my life driving rural highways even in California.
When you go to a small gas station, it's not uncommon to see only two gas pumps, like maybe one or two gas pumps.
And so my thinking is, do we on these rural highways, once you get off the interstate, do we really need more than
two to four stalls per, you know, the Casey's General Store on.
Well, what's kind of funny speaking of that, just, guess, as an antidote is, highway 97, which essentially starts and kind of ends around Mount Shasta and goes North through
Oregon.
so many, the Rivian adventure network.
And I think, for sure the Chamult V4 that opened, the Tesla supercharger they're at abandoned gas stations, which is so funny.
And, that was actually one of the other places we had an issue where like we pull up, I mean, it was so slick in the interface.
We pull up to the Chimult, Oregon and it's also really in the middle of nowhere, but it's right off the highway.
So we charge and as you pull up a thing, flash is like, okay, bathroom code is like zero five, something, something, something.
was like slick, great integration.
Great.
We need to use the bathroom.
And then we get out of the car.
get over there and it just says bathroom out of order.
which unfortunate, a very unfortunate experience.
The execution was fantastic, but the implementation and the reality, hit hard there.
But it kind of goes to exactly that point where the Rivian Adventure Network, that one's actually been there a little bit longer, but maybe a year, 18 months.
There's so many that are just now like finally kind of finishing in that 97 highway and a lot of these other highways that are really core to not even just people living and like
getting to places, but so much actual commerce.
between businesses and then also semi trucks and that whole space that, I'm very optimistic.
I'm very happy to see what I've seen, but I think there's still a lot of room for seeing more.
was potentially a flying J that's going to get some hopefully soon that there's been kind of rumors off and on along 97, but we'll see what happens there.
But one of the things I wanted to, kind of ask before we get into some of the other topics was you're now starting to see like obviously.
Bleeding edge of we talked about severe in the ionic some of the high-end IKEA for the most part minus some of the cold getting issues that can occur the chartings fantastic and
We're seeing that obviously right now kind of reset even with the recent I 90 surge thing that kind of calcon or that whole group out of spec did with Porsche Taycan bleak of its
own when it comes to charging I'm curious to hear your guys thoughts as to two parts of this question.
The first is
Do you expect that in five to 10 years, maybe roughly like I would say three to seven years that that kind of tech we're seeing the Ticon just makes its way down anyway into
more affordable EVs.
then second, one of the things I've thought is really interesting with the other side of this is the infrastructure to support it.
Like IANA and some of these others are kind of coming to market.
Really great to see.
They're really leaning into like having a lot of
Or at least how they're positioning having a lot of amenities at these sites, which seems like a good thing too.
But I'm kind of curious if we do get to this point where it is like almost or within a minute or so of gas going to these charging locations, is there the potential for like too
much margin being invested into these locations that people don't really have an interest in like staying at or using going back to that kind of gas that we that
Metric we've heard about gas stations for so long that the longer people are at these you see that higher Transaction cost and kind of going on so two questions.
They're curious on your guys thoughts
Yeah, I do think the charging will continue to trickle down.
mean, it's not particularly expensive to get into, you know, IONIQ 5, IONIQ 6 leases right now.
So that technology is already at a fairly accessible level and it's only going to get more.
The batteries are going to get a little bit bigger, opening up a bit more room to increase the speed, know, and throttle back later.
So that's exciting.
But I mean, think what really needs to be focused on is efficiency, know, just being able to go further between these stops.
mean, we do it and I think we're kind of on the edge of the people that would do it and quite like to stop and charge and see what's going on.
you know, but that's, this is a select group of nerds.
Yeah.
So it's, it's, it's not something that, I mean, I think it's good to see the infrastructure expanding, accelerating to meet that 400, 500 kilowatts eventually.
and to trickle that into cars that are accessible to people.
But at the same time, I don't want to see that be the only thing that people focus on because it's been a game changer for me, moving to an EV that can charge that quickly, but
it's covering over a lot of the same range that the Bolt EV that I had did.
absent the fast charging, this would not be a massive upgrade in terms of...
you know, the actual capabilities of how far I could go on that vehicle, the lengths of stints of driving that we do are very, similar because it's so much more inefficient than
the bolt TV and it, you know, it charges way quicker.
So you get back on the road, but I don't want to see that be the be all and end all.
it's something to chase because it's the bigger number.
see this with the gravity charging hubs, 500 kilowatts.
Well, fantastic.
But, know, at some point we don't need to do that.
I mean, that gravity charging hub to Walter's point in New York city was
aside from me was only charging busy for exes for rideshare to go around the city to do you know 1020 mile loops so great it's got massive fast charging but a lot of those cars
were just you know trickling then they'd go off and get a coffee for an hour so let's not throw the baby out with the bath water to get this technology down to the gas station
phillips and then realize we actually had something very good with alternating power levels and being able to match dwell time to the map power you need
You wanna go first Walter?
Two things, the great wall of the United States that's trying to block out the Chinese cars, I think eventually is going to a road.
Chinese technology is advancing for charging speed.
And recently I saw a Tesla Bjorn video where he was inside a Chinese EV and it looked like a Tesla display.
It was a rectangle LCD and it had like little buttons on the bottom.
I mean, was like a Tesla.
It was, it was.
very obviously reverse engineered Tesla tech.
The opposite can happen.
mean, you know, we've got crafty people over here in the United States.
So either the Chinese are going to show up with a really fast charging cars or someone in Silicon Valley is going to sit down with one of those things, pick it apart.
And, I don't know about copy, but anyway, the tech is there, you know, in China price parity has already been passed and it hasn't, you know, we could argue about the whole
price part, but the speed.
the technology of charging speed has increased.
However, like, what Eric was alluding to, if I'm going to sit down and eat a meal, I'm going to be hit with astronomical, dwell time charges because my car is finished in eight
minutes.
You know, who's going to sit down at a restaurant when your car finishes in eight minutes.
you got to go into the convenience store and grab a cold burrito and run back to the car and unplug and get on the road again.
so I don't know, it's, it's a rolling, debate whether or not fast charging to that extent is good or bad.
And I guess it's good as, know, rather have instead of, instead of want, but I don't know.
my personal opinion is I have 155 max speed on my Volvo and for me is perfectly fine.
I can get everywhere I need to.
And remember, it's happening whilst you do those things, right?
And watch how people travel when you go to your next trip over the holidays or whatever else, and you pull off at a service plaza or whatever the equivalent is where you are.
See if they're rushing.
See if they're first of all not stopping to go into the place.
They need to use the bathroom.
They do need to go and do that.
See if they're just pumping gas and everybody is rushing out and coming back to the car within two minutes.
It's not the way most people do it.
Most people will probably park.
Exactly.
Yeah, you can't do it.
It's not physically possible.
But even the solo or the couple that are going, you they'll, they'll park up most likely, at least at the service pauses that we have, go in, maybe grab some food, snacks,
whatever, do the restroom.
That's probably 15, 20 minutes.
They'll go out and then they'll go to the gas station on the way out, spend another five, 10 minutes, you know, filling up, paying, and then they'll hit the road.
So what's the cumulative amount of time there and which was more inconvenient?
You know, I mean, some people are road warriors and just need to hit the road again and go.
I understand that, that, you know,
the huge, huge charging curves and power levels for them will be key.
But I don't think that's most Americans, honestly.
think most people travel much slower than they think they would like to.
Yeah, and I I I think to that Steve right that's to me chase that's the real risk is catering too much to the cannonball runners is what I would refer to it as because That's
a very unique subset of travelers.
I think you've mentioned yourself.
You probably do fall into that Whereas I think to Steve's point and I've noticed this for a long time with my bolt EV we're all
plug into a 50 kilowatt charger, get my strong 45 kilowatts of charging power, and I'll walk in to a restaurant and eat and come back out again to 70, 80 % battery and I'll look
around and all of the same gas cars that were parked there when I arrived are still there when I leave.
So, you know, there's a massive population of people who just...
don't travel that way and that's the real risk, Is I think, and that was my biggest takeaway from that I-90 surge video is the charging infrastructure has now exceeded the
capabilities of the cars, right?
Like we literally saw only one car that was able to keep up with the charging infrastructure and that was the Porsche Taycan.
And if it had more range, it would have actually kept up with the Acura, the gas powered Acura.
So like literally the only thing, and this is maybe speaking to Steve's point about efficiency and to me, range is always kind of more paramount because you're no longer
reliant on infrastructure.
If you had the Lucid's range with the Porsche Taycan's charging, it would have kept up with the Acura with existing infrastructure.
And that's, think the thing that to me, that was the biggest.
Takeaway but to your other your other questions chase like I I'll start with an anecdote or Not an anecdote, but just a saying right you you can have fast charging You can have
long range or you can have low low cost of ownership and you can choose any two so People yeah because people forget you rewind the clock nine ten years ago
You could get a Chevy Spark EV for $20,000 that would charge from 10 % to 80 % in under 20 minutes.
So this big red line that we've drawn that you need to be able to charge to 80 % in 15 to 20 minutes, well, we had EVs doing that for under $30,000 10 years ago.
Now you could only go 80 to 90 miles on a full charge.
but that was the trade off, right?
So I think that's already sort of been in place.
And I know for me personally, I do not see a benefit with anything faster than a 2C charging EV.
So for the way that I travel, if an EV can charge from say 10 % to 80 % in roughly 30 minutes,
As long as it has close to 300 miles of range or thereabouts, that is perfect for my personal travel needs.
And I think a lot of people it works for.
And to me also speaking to that cannonball run crowd, I think one of the questions, someone asks me what kind of EV they need or how fast it needs to charge, one of the first
questions I would ask
about traveling is how much faster than the speed limit do you normally drive.
Because if you just drive the speed limit, more than likely even a slower charging EV with decent range is going to serve your needs to the point that you're not even going to
really realize the difference, right?
You're going to be driving for three hours.
you're gonna stop for 30 minutes and you're gonna get back on the road again and drive for another two to three hours and you're just not even gonna think about it.
For sure.
And I completely agree with Steve's comment.
I mean, I know we've been talking about fast charting and I think it's probably just inherently quite a bit of what we also do focus on.
But I completely agree.
Like the first things I look at really now are efficiency and range.
And the more of that you have, the more you can kind of get around a lot of these DC fast charting issues, which admittedly are getting a lot better.
I mean, that was a big reason I chose the car I did recently.
And I
I think that's what is so impressive too is what we are seeing around the efficiency improvements and what we're seeing kind of consistently for vehicles on the road.
And I hope that trend really does continue just because as a consumer, it also means I'm spending less when I do have to charge it.
And I can go farther on a charge and stuff like that.
But I think
does the lyric do in terms of range?
always forget kind of how that compares to the charging.
312.
And is that kind of highway speeds?
are you getting out of it?
I mean, that's the difference.
mean, we talk because it's not.
than I can stand being in a car.
I can do 200 miles in the Ionicon, a good jaunt along the Mass Pike and it'll get me to Albany from Boston, but it's not going further than that.
The Lyric would then get me to Syracuse.
So, and that's, you're starting, so again, you, maybe I can charge faster, hooray, and I'm back on the road quicker than Walter, but Walter's already gone 100 miles more than me.
So, you know, it's just, there's a trade-off there.
It's just how you prefer to travel to some extent.
Yeah, I completely agree.
and, and I think I'm just kind of curious.
We've all talked about a little bit and then, kind of going back to my question, we all talk about each on our own channels, but just kind of about the rise of amenities at these
charging locations as to do we see that?
And I think we've also talked about this too, is like, as the prices get more expensive at some of these locations that have more amenities, does that kind of start becoming a
detriment, a positive, a just benefit of choice to the consumer.
I'm curious how you guys go about it in your own kind of EV road tripping.
Well, I mean, maybe I'm weird, but I actually don't look at the prices, like not in terms of planning my trip, right?
I drive and then when I need to charge, I stop and charge.
And then when I look at the price, I shake my fist at the sky and yell profanities.
But yeah, I don't plan my trips around the price of the charging.
I do plan my trips around the amenities that are available at the location.
But I know Walter, you probably have something to say to this as well, because we've kind of chatted on this on the side too, but there is a real fiscal incentive for businesses to
install EV chargers at this point.
And when you see something like an IANA where they're all in, in terms of they're building everything like that,
That's a little bit of a different model because they're fronting the costs.
They're doing all of that.
And they don't have an existing business that sort of supplements it.
They're looking to local businesses or whatever.
But in terms of if you're a fast food chain, if you're a sit down restaurant chain, if you're an existing established business that makes money from foot traffic, a Buc-Ease, a
Pilot, a Love's Travel Center, right?
when you put that charger in, it opens up the door for you to actually offer energy at a subsidized rate because every customer that enters your door is paying 10, 15, 20 % margin
on whatever it is that they consume when they're at your location.
So I actually see amenities and price complementing each other in terms of, if you're talking about a
charger being added to an existing business that makes decent margins off of foot traffic, they have no reason to try to then charge more than the most basic rate for power.
No, I think that makes sense.
Walter, Steve, what are your thoughts into that?
I could talk for this on this for hours.
Lots of things.
So first, let me talk about a trend that I'm noticing is that there's a divergence away from plopping chargers in convenience stores and instead building charging hubs.
Steve did a really good video on that just recently where there's an emergence of charging hubs throughout the United States.
Large fossil fuel companies like Shell Oil and British Petroleum are spotted
doing exactly what I'm saying.
They're shuttering gas stations and they're green fielding charging hubs at locations that are just nothing in the ground.
They're just building it from scratch.
so divergent away from the convenience store model, they're forging in a completely new path.
So that is occurring.
Whether or not that's going to be successful or not is yet to be determined.
But my personal opinion, back to your original question, if I'm stopping to charge,
I want a gas station.
And I think the sleeping giant in the United States, the United States is really a collection of small medium businesses.
The lion's share of employment in the United States is not in large Fortune 50 companies.
The lion's share of employment is in small medium businesses.
And when it becomes clear that as Eric says, you can increase foot traffic and you could also receive fuel.
electronically without a truck to your store.
And everyone starts to understand that it's an investment in dwell time, that there's going to be owner operators of convenience stores all throughout the United States
clamoring to get DC fast chargers installed as fast as they can.
And all of these CPOs out there that are gaining the limelight are just going to be completely swallowed up by the sea of
independent operators putting in chargers at their properties.
in my opinion, that's the best place to charge because they're already geared for me to be there.
You know, they have everything I need.
I think it's going to be interesting watching the business models.
This is something to start looking at in 2025 and beyond is what does the entity that's selling the charging have to gain elsewhere?
To Eric's point, is there a property for you to go into?
Are they putting amenities there so they can service you and your family and your dog?
And this loves is starting to really tell dog parks and the dog rest areas at the truck stops, which is part of the long haul trucking crowd.
But the pricing is going to be, it's really interested me recently because you're starting to see like on the lower end of players that are at least in multiple regions or
nationwide, it's the circle K kind of charging solution, which is a bit lower power.
You know, it's 180 kilowatts.
It's not necessarily the fastest charging on the market, but they've, they've cornered the market of kind of sub 50 cents per kilowatt hour.
They're in 43 to 49 cents per kilowatt hour range, wherever they're operating.
And that's across the board.
Then you have Tesla, who's much more of a, know, this is a kind of, know, we're doing it because we need to have the network.
We built it so that people would buy the cars and that, know, you have Max Dezega, the director of charging at Tesla charging saying our role is to force, you know, put downward
pressure on prices to bring the industry down.
So they've cut their prices a little bit recently and starting to see downward trends there as well.
And then you have the likes of Pilot Flying J who are, you know, as Eric said, incented to get people into the
the property and start to sell them things, but they're on the higher end of the, you know, it's around 57 cents.
I think Walter had said that, you know, for average, some of their prices go as high as 69 cents.
The lowest I've seen is 45 cents per kilowatt hour.
So it's mostly on the higher end.
And they, but then you have nicer amenities to an extent.
You may have shelter, you may have the squeegees.
So they've really built out the
quality of as soon as you plug in, you've got an experience around you.
Not every stop, but there's a lot of canopies now in Walter's slide decks that he does at the end of his pilot flying J updates to show you how many canopies there are and what
kind of quality you're getting.
So it's well lit, it's sheltered, it's fast, it's got the 24 seven.
So then maybe you start to think, well, all right, I'm in the middle of the night.
I'm at the weather, you know, in the Northeast here, it's coming down with snow.
I don't really want to.
friend.
it somewhere where there is a supercharger because a lot of those are uncovered or a circle cake it's cheaper but you know still I'm not going to get the level of experience
maybe I do want that pilot flying J in that circumstance.
Chase, I just say something that really grinds my reduction gear?
So I recently had to fill out a JD Power survey.
So every time you log in on PlugShare, a lot of times if you've charged there, they'll send you it.
Yeah.
on my recent road trip and now even Chargeway does consumer reports when you use it.
Yeah.
And so what really bothers me about it though is as you go through the survey, you can tell that one of the things that they're primarily fishing for is reliability, right?
Like, are you here because your charging session failed somewhere else?
Did your charging session here fail?
Did you have problems making your payment?
Were there any issues actually?
What I would like to see them start asking is did you actually use the business on site?
because that's data that really actually matters.
So if you're doing a survey for an EV owner and you stopped at a Target, did you shop at that Target or did you shop at a different business nearby?
So if you stop at an EV, go in front of a Chipotle, did you grab yourself a burrito or did you just sit in your car and check emails?
So to me, that's the kind of data I think that they need to start gathering from consumers.
because that's actually data that matters to the businesses.
I think we're past the point of fishing for, this charging provider only has 82.3 % reliability.
I'm charging there.
I told you I'm charging there.
Don't bother me.
Ask me about what I did when I'm there, and then that's useful data for the business.
So that's just kind of my take on it.
I mean, I get that they're trying to give a consumer report
for consumers focused on the charging provider.
But I think we're also at a point now where they could be doing a better job gathering data that's actually useful for the businesses that might want to be hosting these
charging providers.
So.
that's a fair criticism.
I do know, I mean, a lot of what they're being paid for is to get that reliability data.
So I agree with you that it's probably focusing the wrong area, but it is also it's vicious cycle.
Cause that's what they're mostly being paid for to get that data for.
but you're right.
There is definitely a kind of a spring well of opportunity when it comes to actually, cause that is something a lot of different business and a lot of people want to get that
data and are willing to pay for it to find out where those opportunities are for in the market.
And I realize we're now coming up on an hour and I really appreciate all this conversation So I do want to kind of address one thing we haven't really talked about.
I know this is kind of All you guys discuss this but obviously kind of looking at back Today, it's december 17th as we're recording this looking back at 2024 and now kind of
looking forward to 2025 obviously there's been Kind of all sorts of different announcements of what people think will or will not happen with the recent election
But I'm kind curious, like, let's just look back real quickly at 2024 and kind of start with some of the trends and things we've seen with Nevi.
And I know Steve, you're always posting a lot of great content about that specifically, but I would love to hear maybe just like a few just high, just bullet points about what
are some of the things that you've really, that really stood out to you in this past year, especially with kind of the Nevi implementations.
I think how much was going on underneath the surface is, is kinda, you know, crucial.
There's you're starting to see now that November was the biggest month.
I think it ended up with 15 activations under the Navy program.
December's lagging it obviously a bit at the moment, but if we get some builds here in the next week or two subject to the holidays, it will match or exceed.
So we'll be by the end of the year, we're pretty close to 50 active Navy stations.
so what, but all of that was proceeded by two years of.
government agencies trying to figure out how the hell to do what was going on.
I mean, we've spoken to a few people.
Yeah, well, yeah, so I'm still if you look at your Florida or your Wyoming, you'll not notice any nevi stations popping up soon.
And there's a reason for that the states, you know, have just not shown the interest that others have.
But you'll see the leaders, the likes of Ohio, who were about a year into their, their implementation now, and then New York State both had plans beforehand, right.
So they had some
semblance of how they were going to build out charging in their state even before federal programs came along.
They knew they wanted to do it.
They knew this was the future.
They just had to figure out funding.
Some of it was Volkswagen, Dieselgate based.
Others would be state based.
Whatever they had, they were starting to put plans in place.
So Neve has for those states just supercharged and catalyzed those efforts because they had the plan.
They said it would maybe take us five, 10 years to do this with the funds that we've got.
And then they've got this big pot of money now to say, well,
we want to empower travel across the country, your state's a big part of this, go and put charges every 50 miles and they'll say, well, we've got the plan to do it.
We've got some of them done.
Let's just get all these in the ground now.
So that's why you're starting to see so many pop up.
think Ohio was probably 60 or 70 % of the activations last month and pilot flying day has been a big part of that.
that the money is catalyzing, you know, cross country travel with CCS one connectors at least, but you're starting to also see it's kind of a light leading indicator.
The J 3400 plugs come online.
Texas had it as part of their requirement from early on.
So the sites in Texas that are going live will all be, whether they're Tesla superchargers or otherwise, will all have a next J 3400 handles.
You're starting to see that with quick trip up in Wisconsin also putting them on.
So you're seeing a lot of the things that are happening outside of public funding regardless, you know.
happening in the public funded sector just because they have to meet these requirements.
it's an interesting intersection of what would have happened anyway, but something that's been criticized for being so slow has actually really started to pick up pace now and is
kind of embodying a lot of these trends that we're seeing in the wider industry that would have been funded by the private sector.
Walter, I'm sure you have some thoughts on this.
Yes.
I'm very interested to see how the, Neve police enforcement of charger uptime lays out.
And the way I understand that hook occurs is data is required to be fed into the joint offices.
I think it's the each heart database or something.
forgot the name of the database, but telemetry from chargers that records uptime, throughput rates, several other.
variables is all recorded into the Joint Office's database.
And from that, it's disseminated off to the states in order to either withhold or disperse operational expenses for the Navy stations with the awarded operators.
Now, one concern I do have is that when the Trump administration takes over, they may try to cease the operation of the Joint Office.
I'm thinking
as an executive, as a part of the federal government, I'm not quite sure if that's achievable, but I do have concern.
If I was a employee of the joint office right now, I'd be pretty nervous, you know, cause there's a lot of talk about ways that the Trump administration might be able to curtail
spending towards electric vehicles.
And I would say the joint office is probably in the crosshairs right now.
So that is a concern I have.
The NEBI program itself will likely continue just because the allocation of funds has already occurred, but those roles can be rolled over into a different department.
And it could definitely become less effective, and that would be concerned.
But if it does sustain the effect of that telemetry rolling into the Joint Offices Database, I think we'll have wide-standing effect for overall.
station reliability because if operators are required to report that data just for Debi stations, they'll also have similar type of expectations for the rest of their stations as
well.
So it will be a positive effect, ripple effect throughout the entire environment.
At least that's my opinion.
want to kind of separate those things out as well because the NEVI requirement is on uptime and it's 97 % which kind of sucks as a you know if that's your metric then you're
not doing that great because that's potentially a day or more out every month which is not going to help people who roll up on that day but I think just looping it back to electric
era I think they've talked about as well as uptime which is kind of crucial successful charge activation rates scar they're setting up some other metrics which I really kind of
appreciate it because
That's more the user level, right?
If we go back to driver experience, that's what we're talking about.
So yeah, it has to be up.
has to be glowing green when I arrive.
Great.
But it also needs to start my charge without me having to futz with three different types of activation or, you know, call someone to start it up.
So if I'm started on my first attempt, that's another metric that I want.
And I think that's laudable for anybody who's focusing on that.
think Ken power has done some good work with publishing there.
success as well because the numbers weren't that glowing for Kempa but they literally said this is about transparency.
We accept that these are great numbers and then these are poor numbers and this is where we're going to improve.
So if we can kind of start to get that level of not just granularity but transparency from the providers then we start to really make some inroads into how things are actually on
the ground.
Yeah, I don't know if I share Walter's optimism that that data will be shared at the same level, but I think those examples of both Kemper and Electric Era that you shared, Steve,
highlight why they do and it's great sales data.
While it would be great to have that data of the providers and have more transparency around that, if you are a company that's selling hardware like Electric Era or Kemper, now
you're having some pretty good selling points as to why to buy that hardware.
And I do agree that electric area has been really great about sharing their data.
And a big part of that is they're trying to get more funding and they're trying to scale and they want to highlight and they have, they do also have that, very effective software
capability to have real time results that I think some others have definitely struggled with getting that data and having that reflective.
mean, even in the electrify America app, I've had that experience where it's just way off of what it's telling me is live at different sites.
So I would love to see that.
you're totally right.
I think we've seen this by quite a few ChargePoint operators where they have coincidentally kind of hidden what these numbers actually mean, especially with uptime and
reliability that yeah, the station was up, but maybe half of those chargers were down or you had to plug in twice to get exactly to what you're talking about.
So you're like, what was the actual experience or how does this kind of work into that?
There's a lot of ways that you can unfortunately use data to say the wrong message and how can we increase that transparency of the data to find the truth?
And, I hope what Walter is saying comes to fruition, but historically, I have yet to be more optimistic.
So speaking of that, maybe I should say a couple of negatives about Nevi.
I do actually think Nevi hurt the charging infrastructure development, I think, for at least a year and a half to two years.
I think there's a lot of people that were building chargers and knowing that these funds were in the wings, they paused because, maybe we're going to get access to this.
Maybe we can get
get in on this, maybe we can offset our costs.
And that's an unfortunate side effect of promising funds that aren't going to be available for several years into the future.
But the other sort of unspoken, I think it doesn't get enough acknowledgement, is the confusion about funding.
And I see this within a lot of the EV community, especially ones from people who are pushing.
certain sort of tribalism, certain sort of brands, because it's like, so and so isn't paying for chargers or so and so isn't building chargers, right?
They don't really care about EV owners.
And now that Nevi funds are here, it's GM is building chargers, right?
And I've seen this a lot with the Pilot Flying J and Walter can speak to this too.
There's a completely different funding channel for a lot of those Pilot Flying Js that has nothing to do with Nevi.
There are a lot that are now Nevi, but they're going to build them regardless.
If they get Nevi funds, great.
But otherwise, no GM is actually putting money into these charging sites.
Mercedes is putting money into these charging sites.
These aren't just automakers that are leaving, you know, EV owners to strand for themselves.
They're actually committing a lot of funds and a lot of resources.
And unfortunately,
There's an aspect of this where now people are conflating Nevi with work that other charging providers, other automakers are actually doing that in my opinion, they should be
getting credit for.
And, you know, not to get too political about it, but it was something that rubbed me the wrong way that President Biden was talking about how, we've put in hundreds of thousands
of plugs.
Who's we?
Right?
Like these were, these were put in before you, these were funded before you, you had nothing to do with them.
Now you can take credit for the Neve and the infrastructure act, but things that come after.
But when we're talking about, there's a lot of people who did a lot of hard work that yeah, could they have done better job?
Probably, but they deserve credit.
think credit, credit where credit's due to a lot of these charging providers and automakers.
who put in some skin in the game, as they say.
so while I'm impressed by Nevi and I like to see the funding and the build out, I don't want to take away from the charging providers that really did start laying the groundwork
for it and putting infrastructure in ahead of the Nevi funding.
Yeah, I think that is a fair call out just because that's a conversation we've definitely had on this channel quite a bit with Lauren McDonald and others about there is kind of,
called the monkeys power, unintended, native consequences that comes out with this, where we were seeing a couple of years ago, definitely more rollout of DC fast chargers outside
of, across different groups.
And then there was a big step back and kind of scale back and kind of slow down.
around where those funds and execution was being focused by these private companies.
Now, I would say 2024 was the year, especially the last six to eight months, this has really changed where there is no longer that like, it just kind of got to the point where,
and I think some of that was also just the business climate where it's like, we can't wait to get Nevi funds if we can get them great.
But I kind of think the market actually forced a lot of these companies hands with some going out of business, some merging.
by having to like, if we can get the funds, great.
If we can count these approvals, great.
But we actually have to get charges in the ground.
And I would say in the specific case of Pilot Corporation is owned by Warren Buffett.
They're very well funded.
know, Nevi funds, okay, they're there.
That's nice.
But, know, without them, they're still building chargers.
They're not a big winner.
mean, they look big at the moment because Ohio won so many and started off early, but I Walter has said now there's 100 plus 112 was the last count.
It goes up every week and that's not purely because of Navy.
Maybe 10, 15 % of charges had some Navy funding, but even then it's usually an 80, 20 match or some level of matching from the private entity.
So they've still put money into that.
You know, they've just got some offset from the government to help them.
And then you look at
I can't to Eric's point, you look at a loves who are, the equivalent of pilot and in a lot of similar places, they're only just starting.
And we know from the kind of testimony that some of the execs have said that, you know, we need government help.
waiting for this.
So the reason that pilot is at one hundred and twelve and that loves is at one or two now is because they waited, you know, and pilots way ahead of the game.
They just said, well, we'll get money if we can, but we're spending it, you know.
And I think loves is like third or fourth in the total.
you never you fund awards list.
And that's just why they waited a bit longer.
And they're behind now, you know, pilot flying.
Jay is the one that people associate with a really good charging experience loves is like, well, maybe one day
Well, and there are two wings of the GM energy network, right?
So there's the EV extend with Pilot Flying J, but there are literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of 350 kilowatt GM energy charging sites that have already been
deployed over the last two years that have nothing, no affiliation with Pilot at all.
in Ayanna?
Huge introduction into the charging space.
Again, no federal funds.
my personal opinion, as Steve said, is a, and as Eric said, there was a pause button with Nevi, but I think Steve will attest we're now past the pause and Nevi funds are getting
dispersed and chargers are getting activated.
it's really...
The golden age of DC fast charger installs coming up here for 2025.
Yeah, once they win the award, they got to get them in the ground so they can get the money.
Operating and maintenance, cash.
So yeah, now they're incentivized.
So looking forward now to 2025, I'm kind of curious for each of your thoughts as to what are some of the things that, or I guess real quickly, are there any things that really
surprised any of you about kind of 2024 in the EV in general, kind of automaker or like DC fast charting space?
Were there any things that really kind of caught you guys or surprised you in this past year?
I'll go first.
then fast pumping the brakes with the North Carolina factory was a big surprise for me and their production still coming out of Vietnam.
for the short term, there was a big announcement for the factory in North Carolina.
And I thought that fast was going to be an emerging brand throughout the North American market.
And although you see them on occasion, they're still very small and all of the cars are still being made in Vietnam.
So for me, that was a big surprise.
I was going to say, the sort of failures of Freewire and Tridium were a bit of a surprise to me.
then since I've been on such a Debbie Downer note, you know, one of the things that I haven't liked seeing is a lot of these stranded assets.
And it's a bit of a concern to me right now.
Yeah, there are some of them that are like the Freewires and things like that, that are like the...
The actual charges have just gone down.
But we had some older stuff here in California too, like the charge points.
And then there's some networks that I'm worried about, Chase.
I know you had a great experience with EVCS.
And then there's also the...
And then there's also...
be so...
Yeah, there's also EV Gateway.
Kyle on Out of Spec did a fun trip up I-5 in the old Model S and he stopped by that EV Gateway.
I've actually used that site in Stranded Hardware Now, and then they also have the one at the Pitt River Casino that looks like it may never be powered on.
And it looked like maybe it was just a funding grab.
They put chargers in the ground and never activated them.
And that's sort of a disturbing thing for me to see is you go through all of this, you do 90, 95 % of the work and then you just leave stranded assets in the ground.
And then, and then what?
So I'm really curious in 2025 to see if we see, see that trend continue grow, or maybe see someone working really hard to kind of take, take over some of those, those stranded
assets and fixed them up and repair them.
completely agree.
I guess to give historical context with EVCS, I would love to see them succeed.
They have just consistently disappointed me and been the bane of my existence whenever I've decided to use one.
And just, guess for personal contextual history, they had one, there's a thing called the West Coast Electric Highway that was built about a decade ago.
And Oregon, believe Washington, and I believe parts of Northern California.
Had I got to work with some of the team and help with some of the promotion of the original, Locations for these chargers, which were great, go through a lot of beautiful
parts of the state and receive decent amount of funds and then Five or six years ago.
They got more state funds to be upgraded because unfortunately they were old aero environment ones a lot have gone down they were replaced with a vcs and the experience has
been similar And if anything, it just did not seem like a great,
execution of future proofing unfortunately and I hope that changes.
So, well, go for it.
Yeah.
One thing that I maybe thought was not going to go as well as it has was GM's expansion of its electric vehicle stable.
This time last year, we were talking about the bolt going away for its hiatus.
And this year, that was something like 75%, 80 % of their sales at the time.
They were having problems with the rollout of a lot of the formerly Altium, now just whatever they're calling them, F3 models.
And actually, now that you fast forward 12 months, the Lyric sold great guns, the Equinox EV is the most affordable on the market, know, great deals on that.
They've got them all out.
And if you look at their roster across the board, that's the most, you know, diverse electric stable from the, you know, not quite that back to the Bolt EV yet, but certainly
the Equinox EV on the affordable end through Blazer and Lyric, through the Silverado EV at the top end, all of them getting great reviews for what they're at.
Yeah, I just I mean, I thought I always have been on GM's roster as a solid kind of plan, but I didn't think they would deliver within 12 months,
Did you include the escalate IQ?
I didn't even include the Celestique.
The Solistic or the Prologue.
yeah.
thing.
to actually be popular.
I have seen those around and I'm guessing they must have a really good lease deal going.
and I think they actually look decent.
I'm kind of curious if either, anyone has heard, I have seen a lot of anecdotal data about some of the GM EVs being on dealerships longer than the dealers with like, and I haven't
paid attention to the last quarter of their sales.
And I'm just kind of curious what you're
You guys seem to be a bit more plugged into the GM sphere.
And I'm kind of curious what you guys have heard or seen around the sales and experience with these new.
I think I completely agree with you.
think it's great that there has been a expansion of the product and seeing so many more options for people at different price points, different lifestyles, different makes of
vehicles.
I am worried when companies like this do that and the
public hasn't maybe been, I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm afraid that if sales aren't going well, that the company may then make incorrect guesses as to why that is, as
we've seen from some automakers and then change their tactic or do other things.
I'm kind of curious if beyond anecdotal data and like experience with, cause I know the trucks for sure have definitely been on Mark.
the lots a lot longer than the dealers have wanted.
I'm curious with your guys' experience or any hard data especially, but anecdotal data around moving of these vehicles.
Well, I don't know about the trucks or I mean the data specifically other than maybe if you're talking about like the Hummer EV in particular, because I think as far as I know,
the Silverado EV is still moving very quickly.
But in the case of the Hummer EV, you're talking about, I feel like a very limited market and a $100,000 plus vehicle, right?
No, no, no one's buying those.
are leasing them.
when I was just down in Scottsdale, Phoenix, I saw more Hummers than I've ever seen.
And I am convinced no one actually bought them.
There's just really good lease deals and that's like the place to have a flashy vehicle.
Yeah, and I think, I mean, I do see EVs on GM lots now.
And I would also worry about that because we saw the backlash for Ford where we had these dealerships marking up these EVs like 10,000, $15,000 because they thought they could get
away with it.
And then there was backlash and then people just, and it wasn't that Ford was losing sales necessarily, but those dealerships were.
And I've seen a lot of backlash against a lot of GM and Chevy dealerships for just overpriced vehicles in general across the lineup.
So it's not restricted to just the EVs.
But yeah, I haven't seen a lot of data.
I just know that for me personally, with my experience buying Chevy's and Chevy EVs in particular, there's only a handful of dealerships that I would ever consider going to out
of hundreds, right?
So
So yeah, sometimes this might just be a problem of the dealerships making.
And so if they're not gonna do a good job selling cars or EVs specifically, then they're gonna end up with EVs stuck on their lot for longer than other dealerships that are
working with customers.
yeah.
And I would say that this year, 2024 is the first year in 15 that on Tesla sales, outnumbered Tesla sales in the domestic EV market and General Motors family of brands
leads that charge.
So I'm not quite sure what you've heard.
But the reporting from the investor relation slide deck indicates that the sales of electric vehicles in General Motors.
is surpassing expectations.
And I think the Cadillac brand in particular would be a shell of what it currently is if EVs didn't exist.
Kellogg may be definitely one that's doing differently.
And once again, I love hearing that.
I love data versus anecdotal.
I just know there have been some of the dealerships have struggled, especially, it sounds like we're already seeing, at least in these few cases, some of the Silverados and others
being just kind of building up in inventory on dealership lots, similar to kind what we saw with the GMC.
of the year, right?
Because you'll start to see everyone will get the analysis once we get all the numbers in.
I think it's going to be really interesting to see where things have overlapped there with brands coming back with the overall brand and what the EV stable looks like.
and, returning guests, John McRoy always has a great saying about this, that no, no car stays on a dealership lot.
They all go eventually it's whether the dealership's happy about it or not.
And that has those kind of longer term ramifications.
Well, and I was going to say just to close out on this, Chase, speaking of anecdotes versus data, I was following the Bull TV very closely about three or four years ago, as
would be normal as my thing.
And I was seeing a lot of anecdotal stories of Bull TVs, hundreds of Bull TVs on dealership lots, languishing on dealership lots.
And then I looked up the data and the Chevy Bull TV was seventh.
among all cars for the shortest time period in inventory.
So there were only six cars in all of America that were selling faster than the Bolt EV relative to inventory.
Yet at that same time, I was hearing anecdotal stories about Bolt EVs languishing on dealership lots.
data versus anecdotes.
Yeah, I want to dive into the data a little bit more, but this wouldn't be the
first time that I've heard that about GMEVs not selling when the actual data says the exact opposite.
And that's great.
And just to clarify, this isn't like headlines because I no longer trust really any auto related headlines.
This is purely like people in the space and moving it, but no, I think that's a great call.
And that really is great to hear.
I think with that, since we've already hit the 90 minute mark, I, I want to be optimistic.
I'm naturally an optimistic person though.
This episode does not sound like I have been.
So, like looking forward to 2025 real quickly, I would love to just kind of hear, any
what you're hoping to see or any kind of optimistic things or trends you're expecting going in and maybe that we might see in 2025.
Walter, I'll let you kick it off.
Yeah.
I've been hearing a lot of doom and gloom because of the change in administration and decapping EVs and that type of stuff.
But what I'm seeing is vast amount of private capital getting invested in EV infrastructure.
And when I say vast, mean, very large global players getting into the North American market, implementing DC fast charging hardware in order to accommodate the inevitable wave
of transition.
to electrification of the transportation sector.
And who's in the White House has apparently to these people who are spending the money, no bearing because the number of very large scale projects that are currently simultaneously
in swing is truly staggering.
I don't think anything has been like this, at least in my lifetime.
I've never seen anything like this.
It's remarkable.
And so the doom and gloom, I just don't.
see it, there's too much cash getting poured into electric vehicle infrastructure.
Yeah, on the infrastructure side, I'd echo that.
I don't think anything's stopping this now that horse is fully bolted and has got an entire stampede of partners on the planes now to extend that metaphor.
do.
Yeah, that's right.
The thing is, the Dakota planes and now I've run out of space.
The on the EV sales side, I think we may see more spikes and
plateaus because obviously if the credit goes away you're gonna get a whole lot of people buying up to the point where that does get capped and then you may see things tail off
because of that.
I don't think it's going to be a long-term decline I think it's just there will be plateaus in any technology uptake and I think this is going to be one of those where you
do hit a wall we'll probably get negative headlines for three to six months and then it'll start climbing again towards the end of the year perhaps but just expect that that's going
to be the case.
Great call in for sure.
Well, how about this for Gloom and Doom to close?
We keep poking the bear in the Middle East, oil goes up to $500 a gallon or a barrel, and then people look around and say, why couldn't I have been driving an EV this whole time?
Yeah, if you want to get rid of subsidies, I don't mind.
But like Elon said, get rid of all subsidies, right?
Stop subsidizing the fossil stein as well.
Then I'm good.
Yeah, no, I've believed that for the last couple of decades.
Maybe this administration will change that, but it seems like they have friends in certain places that disagree with them.
No.
any administration is going to poke the bear, that's this one.
I think there is a lot to be optimistic about, not just on the charger infrastructure, because I completely agree with that, but also as we've kind of discussed this evening is
just around automakers and availability of different products and what we're seeing to come coming to market.
And as far as the actual technology is improving and yeah, there are headlines.
Yeah, there is.
I think the biggest thing that has been missing since day one is still missing is actually education.
The thing that's changed since day one is the technology and availability of the product and also the infrastructure.
And I think we're starting to see that with some of the traditional legacy automakers are getting better on that.
And then also just talking to friends and people that may be curious about EVs that are now seeing others down their street that have them in the driveway.
And, I, I'm kind of the mindset, you know, if a of the federal funding goes away, either way, whatever.
I completely agree with what you were saying earlier too about like it's, it's already kind of out there between the infrastructure and also the vehicles.
this is not the GM EV one sort of, and maybe that's also why, I, I am holding that against them.
Still.
This is not like, it's going to go away.
There's just too many by too many different people that EVs are obviously going to continue to grow.
And one of the big things we talked about in 2024 was just like all the negative headlines about.
EVs and yet it's such a and I think this actually this probably had been among many over the years But this was actually one of the larger reasons I was just so just over Auto
journalism was the fact that everyone covered that EVs were not working But specifically they were not growing as fast as they were projected But they were still growing and the
actual auto industry, especially globally and here in North America was actually shrinking
Faster than anyone had expected this past year to happen and that part of the math wasn't being covered and that's the big part of the math the fact you're having any growth should
be A positive headline and so I I think we're really going to continue to see this happening.
I would love to see more 20 000 cars that have taikon level of charging.
I don't think that's going to happen in 2025 but Realistically, and I think for more, the most people I would just love to see
as you've kind of said, Steve, like the big things really are range and efficiency and battery prices really did take a nose dive.
think between technology advances, manufacturing, increases and everything else, we're going to continue to see that in 2025.
So I hope the battery range and costs coming down are then taken advantage of with good efficiency in car design and then charging kind of could still be.
Not a hundred percent perfect to what people would like but a lot of those problems go away, especially if you have In some of the advances we've seen with level two charting
improvements and some of the people we've even had on our podcast making that easier that as long as you can charge day to day, I think Even though I think i'm looking at kind of
my boxes of this thing I feel like stephen walter at top and then Myself and eric are at the bottom and we've been like the doom and gloom ones kind of saying all the negativity I
think all of this
Going forward though, for people listening are is really great.
We're going to a great year of opportunity, whatever happens to incentives.
And as we even had on a recent podcast, Albert Gore, not to be confused with Al Gore, it was very tempting to do all sorts of fun SEO stuff with that.
Of the Zero Emission Transportation Alliance even shared with us that so many of these incentives are in place are no longer really the original incentive for EVs.
They are now incentives for batteries.
that consumers just happen to take, be able to take advantage of.
when these original, the $75 billion really came out, was to sell EVs.
Now it's to buy things with American made batteries.
And so, there's still a good argument that a lot of these incentives, maybe consumer facing will go away, but the backend and the manufacturing will stay because so many are
in red states.
But I do just feel like, as we've said this evening, that all of that could go away and we're still in such a strong position for the continued growth that we've seen in this
past year or two.
If at the very least continue but more likely accelerate With that I just want to say Steve Walter and Eric.
Thank you so much for coming on this evening This was a great conversation always really enjoy listening to your separate channels and great to have you on again
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks so much.
Thank you, Chase.
Huge thanks again to Steve Birkett from Plug and Play EV, Walter Schulze of the Network Architect channel and Eric Way from NewsColumn for joining us today.
I really appreciate their insights in the challenges, opportunities and trends shaping the electric vehicle and charging landscape.
All of them are voices in the industry that I recommend you follow if you're not already.
Be sure to check out the show notes for links to Steve, Walter and Eric's channels, plus all the resources mentioned in today's episode.
From the current state of EV charging to the state of EV models across price points, we've covered a lot of ground.
If there's one thing this conversation proves, it's that the momentum behind electrification isn't slowing down, it's charging full speed ahead into 2025.
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