Post-Election Impact on EV Charging, Incentive & the Auto Industry with Loren McDonald of Paren

Summary
Loren McDonald, Chief Analyst at Paren, shares his thoughts on the potential impacts of the recent U.S. election on the EV and automotive industry. They dive into possible shifts in EV tax credits, the future of federal programs like NEVI and CFI, and how changes in political leadership may affect legacy automakers’ emissions standards. Loren shares insights into emerging trends in the EV market, including why hybrids are seeing renewed interest, challenges in the EV truck market, and how rideshare drivers are driving up public charger utilization. They also discuss improvements in charger reliability and the growing presence of Tesla’s Supercharger network as the largest open-access fast charging network in the U.S. Tune in to gain a comprehensive understanding of what these changes could mean for EV manufacturers, charging infrastructure, and consumers.

Takeaways

1. EV Tax Credit Uncertainty: The new administration may end federal EV tax credits, with potentially significant impacts on middle-market EVs that rely on these incentives to remain competitive in pricing.
2. NEVI and Federal Funding Stability: Programs like NEVI, designed to expand EV charging infrastructure, appear secure despite the political shift, as funds are already allocated to states for several years, though certain states may opt not to use these funds.
3. Growth of Hybrid Vehicle Sales: With consumer interest in lower-cost hybrid options over full EVs, automakers may shift more focus to hybrids, especially as new models at competitive price points enter the market.
4. Challenges in the EV Truck Market: EV trucks, including models from Ford and GM, face adoption challenges as traditional truck buyers show hesitation, particularly around towing capabilities and charging convenience.
5. Increasing EV Charger Utilization Rates: Rideshare drivers are now a key driver of charging demand, contributing to high utilization rates at urban charging stations and supporting profitability for charging network operators.
6. Focus on Charger Reliability and Uptime: Improvements in public charging reliability are underway, with networks investing in durable hardware and faster maintenance, essential for gaining public trust in EVs.
7. Tesla's Growing Influence on Public Charging: Tesla now operates the largest open-access fast charging network, allowing non-Tesla EV drivers to use its Superchargers, surpassing other U.S. charging networks in scale.

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Keywords
2024 US elections, EV industry, automotive landscape, EV charging, hybrids, tax incentives, consumer behavior, charging infrastructure, sales trends, political impact, EV tax incentives, charging infrastructure, NEVI program, EV sales trends, public charging reliability, Tesla Supercharger, EV truck market

Creators & Guests

Host

Chase Drum

Host of Grid Connections and Founder of Bespoke EVs

Guest

Loren McDonald

Marketing and electric vehicle (EV) evangelist with 35 years experience in executive marketing, content marketing/thought leadership and evangelist roles.

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Good afternoon, Grid Connections listeners.

We're diving into the big news from last night's election results and what they could mean
for the future of automotive and EV charging industries.

Our guest, Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren shares his thoughts and industry data on
the political policy changes and economic impacts that could reshape incentives,

regulations, and investment in EV infrastructure under the new administration.

From EV tax credits to federal programs like NEVI we're breaking down what could shift in
the coming years and how these changes could influence everyone from automakers to

consumers.

Loren shares this perspective on what companies in the charging space may need to prepare
for, as well as the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Wherever you fall on the political scale, Loren does share trends and facts that will give
everyone listening a lot to be excited for in the realm of electric vehicles and EV

charging.

Also, please share this episode with someone who'd be interested in electric vehicles and
the industry as well.

Additionally, please leave us a positive review on our podcast page to support more
in-depth conversations like this.

With that, enjoy.

Chase, it's always great to be on your show.

I think this is, I don't know, maybe my fourth one, couple with the team of a few others
and a couple on my own.

yeah, excited about it.

And obviously a little bit of news to potentially talk about this morning.

Yeah, I think just in case for anyone that may have missed that podcast or are unfamiliar
with Paren or what your team is doing, could just give us kind of a quick overview of that

and then I think we'll get into the updates from there.

Yeah, yeah, no thanks.

Yeah, so Paren is a EV charging mostly focused data and analyst firm.

we're really, how I like to explain it is we have sort of two businesses that we're
working towards.

One is the current one, which is really just.

providing charging industry data and from my former company, EV Adoption, now being part
of it, also EV SalesDate and stuff.

But fundamentally, we're helping companies in the EV charging ecosystem understand the
dynamics of what's going on in the industry from things like utilization and reliability

and just all the sort of the data trends around what's going on.

in fast charging and then long term what we're really building towards is taking hundreds
of data sets and piping them into the in-car navigation to help people find the available

and safe place to charge with the right amenities and pricing and safety and all those
types of things.

So kind of, you know,

building towards the long-term big vision while we're basically working with lot of
companies on the sort of just the B2B side of charging data.

So it's very exciting.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of really cool things that your team is working on, especially
just kind of given the, maybe sometimes the gaps in data and knowledge base or kind of

transparency, especially as to what is working, what isn't.

yeah, and a lot, lot of the, the, the charging data is hard, hard to get at, right?

Like a lot of the companies have it for their own business, but they're not necessarily
sharing it publicly.

So we're able to magically capture a lot of this data and clean it up and aggregate it and
make sense of it.

And so it's, yeah, there's a lot of really cool, insights that we're starting to see going
on with the, with the industry.

Well, speaking of the industry, that may be as good of a segue as we get for talking about
what happened last night with the presidential election and even seeing in other races

with the Senate.

I actually haven't checked the House.

I don't know.

It may be showing up.

I was up pretty late last night.

In all transparency, I kind of had a feeling this was the way it was going to go.

yeah, so.

I'm trying to catch up on some coffee and be up to speed on this, but I think there's
definitely been a big change, obviously, politically and what's in power, or we will be

seeing that coming January especially.

And so definitely curious on your thoughts about this, Lorne, and what maybe are some of
the takeaways or expectations or maybe even some of the wild, unexpected things you're

thinking will happen with this outcome.

Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, obviously it's early and there are lot of theories about what will happen kind
of to the EV and EV charging ecosystem over the next four years under a Trump

administration.

But why don't we tackle sort of a couple of them one by one?

I think the first one that is the, you know, that sort of...

Whether it's the top of the list or not is something that a lot of people are curious
about, wondering about, which is like the EV tax incentive, basically the tax rebate,

right?

Sort of the federal EV tax rebate that, you know,

was a tax credit and now you can get it as a off the hood.

If the dealer participates, if you lease, it can get built into that.

We won't get in sort of the details of it.

But that's probably the quickest, easiest thing potentially for Trump to just end.

Yeah.

I think, you know, one of the interesting side bits of this is the, you know, the Elon
Musk influence.

They're obviously sort of wet at the hip now.

And, you know, Elon plays sort of an interesting role in that, obviously, he wants to sell
more Tesla EVs, but he's also, I don't know if you could call him a libertarian, but he's

definitely not a fan of big government and incentives and things, even though

all of his companies that he is CEO of that hugely benefited from government subsidies and
incentives.

But I think that's one where Musk has long not been necessarily a fan of the EV tax
credit.

Again, even though it's made his cars more affordable.

So off the top, I'd say probably the thing that's at most risk is

is that EV tax credit.

I've been pretty vocal about the tax credit for the last seven years.

I think in its various forms, it's not been structured very well.

So I have a lot of problems with it.

And fundamentally, I think it's changing now as we're getting into more mainstream
consumers.

But I think for first several years,

It was really a discount for middle to upper income people who were going to buy the EV
anyway, right?

And, you I'm being very stereotypical here, but I think, you know, certainly there were
people who wouldn't have bought an EV without the tax credit.

But I think the majority, you know, were middle to upper income people who cared about the
planet or whatever, or just like the idea of a fast, you know, EV, et cetera.

And they would have bought it.

without the tax credit, right?

Whether it was $7,500 or whatever it is, right?

Yeah, it looks like, you're gonna...

Yeah.

when you say they would have bought the EV, do you think they would have bought the Tesla
or do you think they would have bought the EV?

Because I think I agree with the that logic and I think a lot of the time now and
admittedly you do it now.

I actually I don't know if Mercedes does have any other qualified, but you've got like
BMW.

You do have more premium luxury vehicles actually competing in that price area.

But yeah, I do agree with you that.

For a long time, was kind of more premium to luxury vehicles and it kind of like, it
wasn't necessarily always like the thing that pushed people over, but it was a really nice

to have.

And then you do look at other markets like Germany that had a decent incentive, they got
rid of it and then EV sales did go down quite a bit.

So.

there's some interesting analysis that I and others did back, I think it was about 2018 or
so.

So Georgia had...

some really significant number of incentives for EVs.

it was, sort of the joke was that the Nissan Leaf, so this sort of gives you sort of the
timeframe, right?

Sort of, know, 2017 or something like that back then.

The Nissan Leaf was basically free.

So at the time I worked for a company headquartered in Atlanta and...

You know, like there were like 20 employees at the companies that bought Nissan Leafs that
used as a commuter car, because basically the combination of all the different incentives,

you know, people would say it basically made it free, right?

When they took those away, EV sales in Georgia tanked, right?

So that was an example, but I always sort of argued that that was sort of, you know, the
perfect storm of multiple different things.

The Leaf cost itself.

fair.

And you know just all those sort of different different things pulled together, but I
think you know more importantly I think chase where where you and I were headed with this

is that as we're heading into You know sort of more mainstream consumers so people that
are not making you know two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year and And who don't want

to buy a hundred thousand dollar electric Mercedes or whatever

but might be interested in a 35 to 40,000 Chevy Equinox, or the upcoming Kia EV3 or things
like that.

Some of the more kind of affordable sort of middle America cars, like Chevy Blazer, Chevy
Equinox, some of the cars like that.

For them, right.

like the loss of a $7,500 tax credit might mean the difference between, I'm going with the
hybrid, right, or whatever, right?

So I think it, you know, historically if we'd lost the tax credit, I don't think it would
have had a significant impact on EV sales, but going forward, it could at those, you know,

sort of, you know, under let's say 40,000.

right models where the tax credit really has a significant impact.

when somebody walks into a Chevy dealer in Iowa and they're looking at, you know, a hybrid
or whatever it is versus an EV, that might mean the difference with, I'm going with the

hybrid.

It's a no brainer.

Right.

I'm kind of curious, do you think, and this I have to admit is kind of a stretch, but on
the campaign trail, know JD Vance had said this, and I think even Trump mentioned once or

twice that they had an interest in even applying a tax credit to diesel vehicles, but the
focus was it being made in America.

And kind of some of those things that we ended up seeing why Tesla has benefited so well
with the tax credit, kind of those additions of it having to be really American source and

American made.

Do you think that there's any chance of us seeing that?

Like there being a tax credit, maybe it is even open up more to hybrids and stuff, but
it's more contingent on it being a fully American made or very North American based

vehicle with American labor.

Or just too early to tell.

Yeah.

think that definitely fit with what we've heard from Trump over the years, right?

That it's all about choice, right?

Like choice of powertrain, even Ford, a couple of months ago, I think we talked about this
on previous podcast that Ford came out with in the ad campaign stuff, it's all about

choice, right?

Right, right, right.

know, hybrid, gas, diesel, fully electric, whatever it is, right?

And I think that's, you know, that's always been sort of a conservative foundation, right?

Of, you know, of giving people choice.

Don't have the government tell them what to do.

So you could see, you know, a Trump administration, just maybe they don't kill certain,
you know,

EV incentives, like you said, they just convert it into sort of a US-made incentive,
right, based on maybe a certain percentage of the car and parts being made here or

something like that, right?

So yeah, that's hard to predict.

not be a fan of giving it to diesel, but that's just me.

But yeah, we could definitely see some shifting to...

kind of US made.

you know, I mean, the Biden administration, that's been a foundation of what they've done.

Like you've got all these battery factories and everything that have been built in down in
red states because of the Biden administrative incentives.

But, you know, I guess the Trump administration would argue that those could have also
been, you know, factories to make gas-powered cars, right?

Not just EVs and stuff.

So that's probably...

you know, part of the shift we will see as well.

I think it'll be interesting to see if there are tax credits that remain.

Will they be consumer facing ones or will they be manufacturing?

Because so much of that, the IRA investment tax credit is actually around the
manufacturing of batteries and this stuff that indirectly consumers will see through

ideally the price of the car coming down.

but that's dependent on a lot of things.

so, yeah, I guess at this point, it's pretty much just looking to a crystal ball that
neither of us have and trying to figure out, will there be any?

Will there be some that are more consumer facing or none at all?

Yeah, I mean, if I had to guess and it's just a guess that, you know, partially with the
influence of Elon Musk, they might be geared more towards consumers as opposed to giving

money to his competitors, the other automakers, right?

So let's give it to the consumers to sort of make the choice of how to spend that instead
of, you know, to GM or Ford or Stellantis or whomever, you know, Honda to go build a new,

you know, new factory and stuff.

But, you know,

I'm not good at predicting things when it comes to politics.

But I think that the second area, Chase, is that a lot of people have been curious about
for months is what happens to the federal EV charging incentive programs like Nevi and CFI

and things like that.

And again, I'm not...

I haven't worked in the Beltway in DC area for years and stuff, but everybody I've talked
to who is an expert tells me that the way that the NEVI program was designed and

structured is it can't be overturned.

So I think we're okay with NEVI and CFI and those programs because of how they were
structured.

And even if there was some way to sort of overturn them or whatever the money has already
been allocated To the states for like three years for for actually four years is my

understanding, right?

It's five-year program, but it sort of works in a fiscal calendar thing.

And so The first year of the pro we're in a third year of the program, but the first year
had two years of funding so

Hmm.

Basically, and the plans have just been approved like this this month for that sort of the
next year.

So My understanding that you know, yeah And so if there was some magic way that the Trump
administration could sort of overturn or send stop whatever it is I mean most of the money

has been allocated and will have been allocated by the time they were able to do that So I
think I think we're okay there I think all of a sudden we're not going to see like money

pulled from the states to build

you know, Navy, Navy funded charging stations.

I think the one impact we could see is that some of the states like Florida and Wyoming
who were not particularly excited about the Navy program might just go, thanks for the

money, but we're, we're not going to spend it.

We're not going to, we don't believe in this and we're not going to build it.

And one of the things I learned, Chase, actually while I was in,

DC just a couple of weeks ago, talked to some people is the money actually.

let's say Florida, right?

Which has been basically, you know, saying, actually built a website basically anti-nevi,
right?

It was pretty crazy.

And so, you know, they haven't launched their, their Nevi RFP or anything like that.

And so I think as of today, it's definitely probably on hold for a long time, but if they
don't use that money.

It actually goes back into a pool and the Federal Highway Administration then will take
that Florida money and reallocate it out to the other states, right?

So it's their loss and everybody else's gain.

And I'm not predicting that's what will happen.

But I think on that front, that's something that could happen is just some of the laggard
states might just continue to lag and maybe not move forward and use the money.

Yeah, that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about was kind of around what that
looks like from the, and I think in some ways that also goes to the question of, it going

to be consumer focused?

Are we going to continue to see business focus, federal incentives?

And I know there's probably more you want to discuss around NEVI and I don't want this all
to be about politics, but I think one final question I have is,

in this regard is what do you think is going on in the legacy domestic automakers this
morning when they see and hear this news?

Well, I think the CFOs of the companies and the compliance people are probably jumping
with joy.

They're probably going, OK, we're going to have less pressure.

We can focus much more on profitability of our existing power trains.

Because I think that the one thing that we haven't got to is I think one of the

the sort of the clearest impacts is probably going to be slowdown and lessening and
lightening of sort of emissions requirements.

And maybe some repealing of some things there.

That's always been something that, you know, Trump has not been a fan of, of forcing and
requiring, you know, sort of higher and higher, you know, MPG and lower emissions and that

type of thing.

So.

I think that's one of the most likely things to happen is a of a rollback on some of those
things.

And that's potentially great for the profits of Ford and GM and Stellantis and others in
sort of the near term, right?

Because they can just keep pumping out F-150s and Rams and...

GMC Sierras and Chevy Silverado's and stuff that get you know 20 miles to the gallon or
whatever I don't actually I'm not exactly sure what that what they get but it's somewhere

in that range right or less depending on the the model but But that you know the concern
is is You know the the Chinese are coming.

They're already here, right?

and You know

America in general and automakers tend to often not do things unless they're forced to.

so the concern is that if we sort of slow down, Kia and Hyundai are not slowing down,
right?

The Chinese automakers are not going to slow down.

We might wake up in five, six, seven years and while everybody else has sort of put the
pedal to the metal on like

BEV technology.

And then now we're like, crap, right?

Like we're so far behind on some of this stuff.

And so that's the concern is that while it's great that we have maybe a government that's
sort of less intrusive and forcing companies to do things a certain way.

it also puts, puts our competitiveness at risk longer term because it takes, you know, it
takes a long time.

I mean, it took, as you know, it took Tesla about 10 years to really, to really get to a
point where they were humming and profitable.

Right.

And so if we, yeah.

So if we slow down, right.

what does that do to our competitiveness?

So, but yeah, so I think there, there are a lot of people inside.

you know, those companies in Detroit that are that are happy and jumping for joy.

But, you know, let's see what they're doing, you know, seven to 10 years from now, they
might be out of a job.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

package or whatever.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it is kind of interesting.

I think you're 100 % right on the competitiveness part.

And it does really make me wonder if what this hap- if this continues, if it is even more
like a lot of these credits, whether it be consumer or manufacturing or business focus do

go away.

To me, think there is definitely, like you're saying, a short-term bonus with a long-term
loss for the legacy domestic auto manufacturers.

And I think whether pretty much the startups or the companies like Tesla who are all in,
like the Rivians and the others of the world, I think it's interesting you mentioned Kia

and Hyundai because that is a really, they're probably, I think one of the more
successful, if not the most successful, like legacy automaker who's making this

transition.

And they are investing a lot in domestic manufacturing here in the US.

But it kind of does mean that if you're all in on EVs, it really almost makes the
long-term, like if you can get kind of through the short-term sales stuff, which for some

companies right now, it is a big thing.

It kind of sets you up long-term to be in a really strong position.

Yeah, absolutely.

We'll get to that in kind of our third section of today's conversation around some of the
sales trends.

But yeah, mean, like you made.

I know we had an election last night.

I know we had all this and I know your time's valuable.

So we've already used almost half an hour.

So let's help over to, let's look at the sales trends.

So let's kind of start with, I mean, is there somewhere you want to start with or?

Yeah, I was going to go with charging, we can go to sales trends.

So that's probably a better transition anyway.

yeah, mean, think when we've talked about this on previous podcasts, depending on what you
read in the media and stuff is, EV sales are either tanking or they're still growing.

like, you know, sort of like politics, it's right, you which narrative do you want to
believe?

But, you know, here's as far as I'm concerned is sort of the reality is, you know, full
battery electric vehicle sales are clearly sort of slowing, right?

But

That's almost so much sort of a misnomer, right?

As I sort of explained on the previous one is, if you go back like five years ago, right?

When we had sales, EV sales of like 300,000.

When the next year, it jumped to like 600,000, right?

Or 550,000, whatever it was, right?

That's like an 85%.

I remember one year we had an 85%.

year over year increase.

Well, we're going to be at like 1.2 or 1.3 million, something like that, sort of this year
and stuff.

And so a couple hundred thousand increase is no longer an 85 % increase.

Whatever that math is, it's like a 20 % increase.

so I think one thing to look at is just sort of more volume.

Growth, like how are we doing sort of on like sort of the volume numbers and less on sort
of the percentage increase because the percentage increase is just naturally even in a

good year of growth, just the way math works, right?

It's just that those numbers are not gonna be as big.

I mean, the analogy I always use is, you know, like smartphone sales or iPhone sales,
right?

The first few years, right?

You'd go from 5 million to 50 million or whatever in a couple of years, right?

And it's like, well, now, Apple's sales, yeah.

But I mean, yeah, mean, when they're like, yeah, whatever they are, 50 million a year or
something, I have no idea what it is right now.

yeah, it's like, if they grow one million year over year, it's like,

You know, it's nothing, right?

For sure.

I think one of the big stories, and not to make it political, but it's like this election,
especially it's like media focus on narrative versus fact is in just like two completely

different realms.

And I think the bigger story that's been missed for this year, especially when it comes to
auto sales is overall auto sales are way down than what was projected and has been

repeatedly re.

The predictions have had to been adjusted multiple times because it kept going down
further and further and further as to what the overall, it doesn't matter if it's electric

or not, sales were going to be.

And so the fact that the overall auto industry is shrinking, yet EVs in general are even
growing, I think that unto itself is a huge win and a big story.

just, it makes it really easy to say, EV sales aren't growing and stuff.

like, so they must be dead.

First is like getting into the nuance of it.

Yeah, yeah.

is actually, that to me I think is an even bigger story is that they're still growing in a
very weak automotive sales economy versus like, when interest rates are low and everyone's

buying cars and they're growing, that's great, obviously.

But to see growth in such a down market for auto sales domestically, I think that's
actually a big win.

It's just hard to convey that into a headline.

I agree and I don't have the analysis handy, but I think another sort of metric that's
important to look at is sort of what is the, you know, the BEV and plug-in hybrid and

hybrid share growth of an automakers sort of overall numbers, right?

So what is sort of the mixed growth looking like?

And, you know, if you look at somebody like Toyota, you know, their hybrid, plug-in hybrid
and BEV sales are just, you

going through the roof as a percentage.

And in their case, it's fundamentally supply driven, right?

Like they now have several models that are hybrid only, right?

And so, they're what they call electrified sales shares.

I'm gonna probably get this wrong, but I think it's north of 50 % now, right?

It's something like that.

I mean, you're totally right.

So many of their models now you can only get as a hybrid and it's just like to what level
of hybridization you want.

And it's really funny.

know you're, this is something we've kind of disagreed up about in the past is around the
value of plug-in hybrids.

Yeah.

But I think to speak, now there's definitely some interesting caveats, but coincidentally
in the past year, coincidentally both my mother-in-law

and my own mother have bought plug-in hybrids.

And what's funny is both of them had other cars available to them that are fully electric.

And their takeaway is they love it, and John Volcker will not believe this when I tell
him, but they both regularly plug in.

But that's also partially because they already had the infrastructure for the EV they
already had in their house.

interesting.

Yeah.

And so it made it easier for them to make this adoption.

And so I think it's really interesting to me that you're kind of getting that early Chevy
Volt thing.

It's like, you know, I'm driving so much on electricity anyway, if I could only go so much
farther, I wouldn't really need gas at all.

And I think it obviously helps that they both have had experience with Teslas and kind of
that knowledge base to know what kind of charging is.

But I think it is really.

That to me is such a big thing, is if you're gonna go P-Hav, they have to have the EV
charger installed.

And then once they've had that experience, which is a huge hurdle, and especially in a
dealership realm, I mean, one of the cars they bought was a Volvo, and so I think they

probably had better EV kind of knowledge and education around that.

But it's just been really fascinating to me to hear that what their issues have been, and
what their takeaways have been from it.

So one of them...

They were really annoyed because they replaced one of their Mercedes with a Tesla Model Y
and then they replaced their other car with this Volvo plug-in hybrid.

And she was annoyed that it didn't charge as fast as the Tesla does on level two.

And so to her, that was kind of annoying because like, yeah, if it would just charge
faster, I could do all my driving on the 40 miles of range it has.

But there's been a couple times where it needs to kick in.

And so obviously these are kind of these little interesting standpoints from people who
are aware of electric vehicles, who have access to electric vehicles, but we're not fully

confident in going to the range of society and that experience of it.

And then once you've had it, you're kind like, okay, I get this, I can do this.

And it's interesting to me that I think

I agree with you that P-Hubs are a good starting point, but it just seems like so much an
experience that it just, and maybe this is what has to be anyway, is kind of this band-aid

or process where it's just like, I could have gotten electric.

Yeah, mean, yeah, it's fascinating.

I hadn't sort of really heard of this concept before, of like, you know, BEV people then
getting, you know, instead of like an ICE backup, they have a plug-in hybrid sort of

backup, but sort of the seamlessness of that sort of second car, right?

Like you said.

it's obviously kind of a small demographic, but it's really interesting that both of their
husbands have bought Bevs and both of them probably aren't the most, especially for my

mother, dare I say, not tech savvy.

And so there's like kind of an apprehension and they're both really comfortable with the
brands that they bought Plug and Hybrids from.

Also not very cost effective if you just work with the brands they went with, but they're
very nice cars.

And so just, it has been really...

This is obviously a small subset of a small subset, but it's just been really fascinating
to hear their take.

Yeah.

are always fun and educational.

They may or may not translate to the broader market, but that's sort of fascinating.

let's stick with plugin hybrids for a minute because I'm looking at a chart here I created
around trends in California over since 2020 and then the three quarters this year.

And basically,

You know, BEV sales sort of exploded over the, you from 2020, you know, to 2023, they went
from 5.8 % to 21.5 % sales share in California, right?

This is pretty, pretty significant, right?

One out of more than one out of five cars purchased in California last year were full
BEVs, right?

But year-to-date we're at 22.2 percent Although we were up to 23.7 percent in in q3 but
the point being is that you know, bev sales in California are still growing but you know,

we're We're growing at sort of a slower rate and again, right like out here where I live
in the East Bay like, you know everybody drives a Tesla Model Y right like they're they're

they're sort of rampant so it's like

the number of, and we're already past early adopters and into mainstream.

And so that's sort of our challenge, which we'll get to more in a minute.

you know, the interesting thing is, you know, hybrid sales are now sort of growing really
pretty significantly, but plug-in hybrid sales have basically been flat for the last sort

of year and a half.

basically, they were 3.4 % sales share through the end of 2023.

year to date, they're 3.4%.

So while the other two power trains are growing, plug-in hybrids are flat.

And we could spend an hour just on why that is, but I think one thing, Chase, that I think
to me is kind of fascinating is you think about sort of the consumer buying process and

choice.

So if I walk into a Best Buy,

and I'm interested in computing technology, maybe I look at desktop, laptop, and a tablet,
right?

And each of them has their role and benefits and stuff and based on my needs and price
points and things like that and the ability of the salesperson to push me in one direction

or another, right?

It helps determine which of those sort of three platforms I go with.

And while not a perfect analogy, I think we've reached this point with powertrains, right?

Where you've got ICE hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and BEV.

And what's happening now, and I think, you know, going back to our first topic with Trump,
I think the big winners are going to be hybrids, right?

I think what's happening now is when a consumer goes into a dealer and there's these
multiple powertrains with, you know, kind of significant

and compelling BEV options and now growing number of hybrid options, right?

Like the Honda Accord hybrid is now more than 50 % in the US of Accord sales.

That's crazy, right?

We think about like Toyota being sort of the hybrid leader, but we're starting to see some
of the other automakers do really well as well.

one of the things with plug-in hybrids is just sort of the competitive positioning now
when consumer walks into a dealer, right?

So many automakers now have multiple power trains for lot of their different models,
right?

So everything from ICE to hybrid to plug-in hybrid to full BEV.

And I think one of the things is as a lot of the BEV models have gotten more compelling
and stuff,

that consumers are now looking at sort of the advantages of a BEV, but the cost, the extra
cost and things like that, and I'm not comfortable with charging and stuff.

And then they're going, but I can get a hybrid that has 35 miles of MPG versus the ICE
version, which is 22, and it's only like $1,500 more.

And then there's the plug-in hybrid in the middle, which is $10,000 more.

Right.

it's like, but I've got to plug it in and you know, all this kind of stuff.

think that was my big takeaway too is like, and it totally makes sense.

And I don't think people enough talk about it's like, of course you're not gonna plug in a
plugin hybrid if you don't have the charging at home.

And I think it like going full bed is enough of a forcing function to do that.

And it's a whole, and it requires a lot of work, a lot of research, a lot of different
parties to be working together.

But like seeing with my mom and mother-in-law, just like, yeah, they have it because they
have access to it.

Like who would go through all of that without having it?

I don't know.

I think it's then a very small force unless they can charge a worker or something.

And I guess my point really is just to sum it up and then can move on is that I think
there's a lot more hybrids coming out and they're much more compelling and they're much

more cost competitive.

They're only oftentimes $1,500, $2,000 more than the ICE version.

And my point is that for several years in a lot of these brands and models,

You know, the choice may have been BEV or plug-in hybrid or ICE, right?

But now with so many hybrids, you know, coming to market that, you know, the choice is,
you know, if it's, you know, ICE hybrid, plug-in hybrid in BEV, it's like the plug-in

hybrids are sort of getting lost in the mix, right?

Because of...

going to say, do you think that this is really just another disadvantage for kind of like
the traditional automotive legacy?

Because it's like you have to sell so many and educate so much and then you don't have the
dealership control.

But it does, I don't want to say it's a death spire, but it just seems like it creates
more and more problems.

And I get why they do it and what the advantage to it is.

it is, it just seems like the dealership and like that in consumer experience has been
such a big uphill battle for BEVs.

and now throwing in hybrids, plugging hybrids, having these manufacturers have to build so
many different ranges of the same thing.

It just seems like there's so many financial and educational and experience hurdles.

I don't know.

we're finding and then yeah, then we can move on is that to your point, right, for a lot
of people, they're not necessarily, as John Volcker always says, which I don't necessarily

100 % agree with, says, nobody walks into a dealership saying, you know, I want a car with
like two power trains kind of thing, right?

But I think there are a lot of people that understand plug-in hybrids.

And want them and love them, you know, like your mother-in-mother-in-law But but I think
what we're finding is that for a lot of people The simple choice now is just get a regular

hybrid Right and and that and so that you know, yeah so we're sort of kind of going down
these paths of which ultimately is good for the planet, right is because

Correct.

I'm a big fan of hybrids, right?

Because I'd much rather have somebody driving a car getting 35 miles to the gallon than 20
miles to the gallon, right?

it's just, yeah, yeah.

So, and it's going to take a long time.

I think just, you know, sort of the last sort of car trend thing is that one thing that's
becoming clear is that, you know, BEV pickups are not doing well, right?

Like, you know, even though, you know, the F-150 is

had sort of growth in sales this year, right?

Like Ford is pausing production this next month and things like that.

But we're definitely, we've sort of seen the plateau, right?

Like even the Rivian R1T is outsold by the R1S SUV, three to one, right?

The Silverado and stuff is not necessarily.

You know, so I think that's why I'm really excited to see what happens next year with the
RAM charger with the extended range.

I think that's going to be a real bell weather of sort of the future of how we electrify
trucks and what sort of the truck buyers are willing to go with.

So I think that's going to be a winner, but you know, we'll see.

Yeah, I think the truck market is a really interesting one.

I mean, it is funny that like the best selling EV truck right now is the Cybertruck, which
I think a lot of people either were like, of course, or other people were like, I didn't

see that coming.

But you're.

hasn't sold millions and millions yet, but yeah, I mean, it's...

and to your point that just kind of shows how weak right now, like the people who wanted
them pretty much got them.

And we're starting to see, and I'm kind of wondering if some of this is marketing related,
but we're already starting to see, and this is anecdotal too, but we're seeing like a lot

of dealerships with Hummer EVs, which that's kind of a repeat of history, just different
reasons.

And then a lot of like the Silverado and the

Denali like already like piling up on dealerships.

And so like, think if you can grab one for cheap, which I think will be possible, that's a
great deal.

But it is just really interesting to me.

like, okay, where was the figure out like this?

You're making the product and just because you make it doesn't mean they're going to come
to you.

And I don't know.

It's

I think it's going to be a really interesting, I think we're really just trying to, we're
just starting to see this as an issue.

And I think it'll be interesting in the next six months.

then like you're saying, whenever I talk to like my really conservative, like people who
are truck buyers, who love the Midwest and stuff, they, they, they're always wowed by like

an electric vehicle.

think like, especially for like a sedan or crossover, they think it's really cool.

But anytime it comes up for a truck, they're like, eh, I don't know about that.

But they're like, but one of those EREV or.

plug-in hybrid things that seems kind of like the best of both worlds and I'm not a
hundred percent sold on it but it makes sense the fact that it's even being a conversation

thing and that's how they're approaching it like I get it so the point

think before we move on to charging trends, I think that's where a lot of the domestic
automakers made their mistake is betting on full BEV pickups, because it's just completely

different buyer demographic, psychographic, and you have the towing issue and all those
kinds of things, and that they really should have, I think, focused on plug-in hybrids

and...

I think it also looking at who's bought the Ford F-150 Lightning outside of some like city
and governments that kind of bought it as, which makes sense.

A lot of people use it as kind of a lifestyle truck or an around town truck, which once
again, totally a market for it.

But then you look at like the R1T and Cybertruck and those are kind of like the epitome of
like lifestyle trucks and kind of do that.

Which.

Right.

And I think that's where it's kind of interesting to see.

Once again, for probably a couple of reasons, but you're seeing the Silverado and the
Hummer EV also total, or not, I'm sorry, not Silverado, but like the Denali already.

Those are much more kind of the comfy lifestyle trucks that are kind of building up an
inventory.

I also understand why they would go for that first, because there's such high margin, but
it's really going to be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Because I do think that that specific area of the EV market right now, especially for like
the traditional truck buyers who trying to sell into middle of.

is really going to be a difficult sell.

I wish them the best of luck in doing that.

But I in some ways this has been a making of their own decisions leading up to
electrification.

And it of goes back to our earlier statement of just leaning.

Do you go into electrification or do you lean in with what you know and what you think the
traditional truck buyer is going to buy?

Pro and Cal in there.

Yep.

Yep.

So that's a podcast series for another day.

Let's go to something more positive.

Maybe let's talk about charging.

favorite topic, charging industry and charging trends.

you know, just a couple of things.

You know, one, just sort of big picture trends chase is that we're seeing is, you know,
kind of a shift in who the sort of the charging companies are, right?

So, you know, it was started off by a lot of like, you know, what...

They're now mature companies, but they were startup several years ago, very dependent on
incentives and things like that and sort of a growing market.

And now we're reaching, you know, sort of this next wave where you have, you know, the
companies like Iona, which is the, you know, the company formed by now eight automakers.

You've got Mercedes Benz, high power charging network.

You know, you got Walmart coming into the space.

You have companies like, you know, BP.

and, you know, and pilot and loves.

And so you have, you know, kind of this sort of next wave of sort of the maturation of,
of, of the charging industry with companies with either, you know, sort of big pockets

that, that want to come in and basically reshape the sort of the charging industry with
sort of a better experience.

And it's, they're not necessarily incentive driven, right?

Like, you know, government grants and stuff.

They're like,

to not try and make it political.

I that was the big conversation I had with my wife, like, seeing what happened is like, if
you are an EV charger only business and you have not figured out and you're still like

getting by, like, I think this is really gonna, and in some ways, to be honest with you, I
think from a market perspective, that's a good thing.

That's either gonna force you to either get it all together and start really making money
or it's gonna force consolidation or you to go out of business.

And I think we'll make the market itself probably stronger and more serious.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so the second piece of this is really sort of really around kind of the economics,
right?

So as we move into kind of what I call charging 2.0, if we move into this next phase,
right, with sort of different and bigger companies, and sometimes they're smaller, like

you look at Rove, which is a startup out of Southern California that launched a 40 charger
station with a store and awnings and all sorts of stuff, that that's kind of

You know, the next piece of this is that the charging stations are getting, you know, sort
of bigger and bigger, you know, 20, 40 chargers, et cetera, and with, you know, canopies

and stores and food service and things like that, right?

Which means that, you know, they're getting really expensive too.

They're costing, you know, instead of a million dollars, they're costing two, three, you
know, or more.

the rates they have to charge for charging are becoming to a point now where it's like, I
don't know, let's chip in the gas now.

And, really, if you're charging at home, it's an issue here and there.

But it has been really interesting to see that come up.

But, so, you know, kind of the sort of the, the kind of couple of things that are going on
with the shift and sort of these, what I call sort of greenfield rights or these charging

centers that are, that are being built sort of from the ground up with like stores and all
that kind of stuff, or the ones that are where you're adding chargers to a circle K, a

seven 11, you know, a quick stop, a loves a pilot, cetera.

It's moving into kind of more of the old, you know, supermarket or gas station model,
right?

Where, you know, sort of the volume is, be the charging business, right?

But where you make your margins is on the food and stuff inside, right?

And so, you know, not all charging stations are going to be that way, right?

We still have, we're going to have thousands of legacy stations that are in a back corner
lot of some parking lot, right?

almost most of the new ones sort of being built right are these sort of from ground up
with amenities or what I call sort of additive stuff.

And so then, you know, as you get these sort of higher costs to sort of build these
charging stations, you know, how do they become profitable?

Well, again, it's partially it's like those amenities and things like that, maybe higher
pricing as you intimated.

the other, the sort of one of the most significant trends chase that

that we're seeing this year is there's been a significant increase in utilization over the
last year.

And one of the things that's driving that in particularly a lot of sort of the major urban
markets and stuff is rideshare drivers.

So one of the most eye-popping, and I wrote an article about this a couple months ago, one
of the most eye-popping stats

that I saw in EVgo's Q2 earnings presentation was that 25 % of their throughput in Q2 was
from rideshare drivers.

Meaning 25 % of the energy dispensed went to rideshare drivers.

And you think about that and most people, unless they live in an apartment and have to
depend on...

public fast chargers.

Most people might only use fast charging a couple of times a year when they go on road
trips and things like that.

Right, shared drivers might go to a fast charger two or three times a day, five, six days
a week, right?

And so what we have is we have this sort of, you know, typical sort of customer
segmentation of like an 80-20 rule, right?

Where you have this growing

you know, small number of rideshare drivers just like starting to sort of dominate and
being maybe what determines being profitable or not, right?

So, you have...

and it's interesting, too, because that's where we're seeing a lot of the negative
headlines around charging experience.

Because, like when there's that big winter storm in Chicago and all this stuff, well, it
turned out a lot of the backup was and understandably so, they still use it.

Were these rideshare drivers trying to charge their E's and stuff?

And I think one of the things I've talked about is like with the gas experience.

Yeah.

Maybe a taxi could go into a gas station, but that's pretty rare.

They usually go to specifically commercial fueling stations for their own taxi, ran one.

And that's clearly just something that needs to happen in the electric vehicle space.

And there's been like some talk of it, but yeah.

one of the companies and actually met with them just a couple of weeks ago in New York is
Revel.

They started off as basically a ride share company.

They got the blue cars and they had motor scooters and things like that.

And they're kind of basically getting out of that business and focusing almost 100 % on
charging.

they're building

charging centers, large charging centers in the New York area and they're coming to San
Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles in the next two years.

And so yeah, they're focused basically on building charging centers for rideshare drivers,
because they understand that that's where the utilization and the revenue is, right?

Like, you wanna, think about it as a coffee shop, right?

Do you know, think about the commuter who stops every morning on their way to work to stop
in and spend, you know, $5 on or $6 or $7 on a coffee and a bagel or whatever it is versus

somebody that visits your coffee shop once a month, right?

Like who are you going to focus on?

Right.

Well, that brings up kind of an interesting thing.

I wanted to get your thoughts and I realized we're kind of out of time.

So what.

mean, we still have a little bit to go, so I'm fine.

you know.

With I think there's been a lot of like really positive news and it's great to see like
Iona come into the market.

And I think it's really cool that they're trying to make more of a kind of high tier
experience, which obviously is going to be and if they can kind of get some of these other

ways they make business or make sales to get that margin like we're talking about, that's
great.

But to me, it seems like we're really seeing two kind of parts of the market.

And I think they're going to really have a strong or a

big uphill to kind of face when you have like the circle case and the traditional players
of the space come into that that already have all of this infrastructure and locations and

they just have to do the site upgrades that it seems like they could take off.

I'm not saying they can't, but it just seems like you're really starting to see with this
wave of after consolidation, we're seeing the market really be much more commoditized.

And I think that maybe Tesla will be kind of

what we might start seeing is Tesla's kind of like, I don't want to say like low end, but
it's like, they don't have canopies, they're usually a pretty decent margin cheaper, and

they have just locations.

And if you're in a rush, most of the time you don't care.

Like if you know you're going to be somewhere longer, then yeah, maybe you go to a Circle
K or an IANA.

And I'm kind of curious if that conversation's kind of come up at all around like, do you
focus, I mean, we're starting to see like, I think two different markets, like the

electrified Americas of the world.

are really having a challenge being just the competitor to Tesla, like you're saying, in
the back of a Walmart parking lot or something, and then fighting on price.

And I think that's gonna be really hard to make a business case for.

But if you can do the margin thing, but then if you're a new player trying to come in to
compete with Circle Ks of the world, it just seems like long-term, that's a really strong,

that's a really competitive space to be in.

I mean, think Chase, what you're really getting at too is that what we're seeing is the
maturation and the evolution of the charging industry.

And what that means is, is, you know, it's going to be like all other industries, like the
airline industry or whatever it is, right?

Where you have, you know, companies that focus on low cost or their regional players.

And then you have like bigger companies that are going to focus on, you know, better
experience and stuff with loyalty programs, et cetera.

And you're going to be willing to pay for that because you're going to get a better
experience.

You're going to get points, you know, things like that.

Speaking of Tesla though, Bill Farrow, my data partner in crime here at Peren, who I know
you had on recently as well, just...

gave me some hot off the press data this morning, which is really kind of fascinating that
Tesla quietly now is not only the largest fast charging network in the US, it is now the

largest fast charging network open to non-Tesla drivers.

So they basically have surpassed

all other charging networks, Electify America, EVgo, ChargePoint, et cetera, as far as the
number of superchargers that a driver of, let's say, a Mustang can charge at either using

the Magic Dock, which is that built-in adapter.

since all these next announcements, really does seem to be, there have been a few going,
but like it.

quite a few.

We've got numbers on that.

or you can use an adapter, right?

basically about 63 % of Tesla's supercharger stalls, if you will, are now open to
non-Tesla drivers, right?

So it's like miles above everybody else.

And that's sort of like

The untold story.

other thing, Chase, just kind of using some of some of our data is one of the fascinating
things we're seeing is, and this is partially driven by both the growth in EV sales and

rideshare drivers and stuff is year over year, we're seeing a 70 % increase in the volume
of charging sessions, right?

So like a massive increase.

But utilization has basically stayed about flat at about 20 % nationally.

What do mean by that when you say utilization at 20 %?

So utilization is the, if you look at the 24 hour period and you look at the number of
minutes of charging sessions, and you divide that by the 24 hours, you get utilization

rate.

So 20 % utilization is one fifth.

So whatever that is, that's like, what is that?

Five and a half hours or something like that.

Right.

So that means that, you know, a charger is busy.

five and a half out of 24 hours.

So that's what that.

Now is that per station or is that per station port?

Per charger, okay.

Yeah.

Wow.

and again, you know, what's, what's driving that is, is there, you know, there are a lot
of, charging stations in, you know, like San Francisco, Los Angeles, you know, downtown

Atlanta, Boston, Austin, et cetera.

You put these sort of.

like 25, eight than the others that might be, yeah.

they're getting 50, 60, 70, 80 % utilization, right?

Like just sort of off the charts.

So the ones they're only getting 5%, right?

You throw it into the pie and it sort of averages out, right?

But the interesting thing is the point was in looking at the data this morning was that
while the charging sessions are growing utilization,

is in many of these is sort of relatively flat.

And it's because we're building a lot of new charging stations in these bigger ones.

So the capacity is growing.

So a lot more charging.

we're actually, the point is that people are concerned, are we building enough fast
chargers to keep up with the EV sales?

And our data has looked like it's showing, yes, it is.

We're building so many that

It actually can easily handle the increase in charging sessions, but it's sort of slowing
the overall utilization numbers.

It's sort of spreading it out.

And I'm sorry, was that for charging in general or just Teslas?

No, that's actually for not including Tesla.

So that's non-Tesla.

Yeah, so that's your non-Tesla.

everybody else, basically.

But yeah, but again, there's sort of these, it's sort of the nuance in the data, right?

But if you look at, like I said, if you look at sort of same store sales, right, the
utilization is growing.

In fact, we did some fascinating,

analysis around the Labor Day period and year over year comparing this Labor Day sort of
period, of like Thursday to Monday kind of thing.

And session growth was up about 30 to 35%.

So, you know, basically about a third more sessions.

and utilization increased from about 15 % to about 17.5 % on average, again, at non-Tesla.

you know, again, the, you know, and so the utilization increase was about half the session
volume increase, if that makes sense, right?

But yeah, so the capacity is keeping up.

with charging demand.

we're doing pretty well.

And a lot of these stations, as we've discussed, are getting bigger and bigger.

Like the days of 200 kilowatt chargers in the back of a parking lot, that's going to
continue.

That's going to continue a bit.

But where do people want to charge?

They want to get off at the exit where there's

an Electify America, a Tesla, an EVgo, a Francis and a, you know, EV range, like whatever,
right?

Where there's like, like, like sort of the gas station, right?

When we're driving down that highway and you see, you know, all those signs and all the
logos on the, on the sign, you're like, okay, I've got choice.

and there's also a Burger King, a Taco Bell, a Chipotle, a blah, blah, blah.

Right.

And, and so that's really what's happening is these are sort of becoming magnets.

And that's going to help sort of drive where people want to stop.

And especially they're attracted to larger charging centers, right?

If you know a charging center has 12 or 20 or 40 chargers versus one that has four, you're
like, okay, if a couple of them don't work and it's really busy, like, I'm either not

going to have to wait or

you know, I'll only have to wait a couple of minutes, right, because somebody's always
going to be leaving, right?

And so I think consumers are really waking up to that as well as the charging hardware
companies that while it costs more, right, utilization can often be much higher when you

actually have more chargers.

I think that brings up another question that's been brought up is I think this past year,
maybe in two years, people have talked about, know, range anxiety isn't so much the thing

anymore.

It's charger anxiety.

So hearing this utilization is great.

Are you seeing any trends for uptime or other things like that that also are kind of
helping not only just with that utilization, but things to be optimistic about.

Yeah, yeah, we're definitely seeing an improvement in reliability and uptime and there's
sort of several things driving that.

One is that a lot of the companies that had problems were sort of working through and
switching and trying new hardware and stuff.

so they basically, so, EVgo and Electrify America in particular,

both sort of had like branded programs where basically they're ripping and replacing,
right?

So they're going through and they're replacing the hardware that had issues and stuff like
that.

And so they're sort of cleaning through that.

And as they do it, they're like, those new chargers might have both NACs and CCS.

They might be higher power, 350, 400 KW, right?

So not only they're becoming more reliable, but sort of providing potentially a faster and
better.

better customer experience and stuff.

And we're also, obviously seeing as you kind of referenced that we're seeing a shakeout in
the industry and we're seeing new entrants into the market like from Europe, like

ChemPower and Alpatronic are coming in and with great brands and reputation.

And we're seeing companies actually valuing, meaning sort of the charging networks and
stuff valuing.

warranties and higher quality and

seeing a lot of these, field tech companies that worked with like the gas stations and
stuff, like get into this space and, we're, starting to track, like when a station, when a

charger goes down, how long does it take before it's sort of back online?

Right.

And so we're definitely seeing, and we'll have some really cool data around that, pretty
soon, but yeah, we're definitely seeing improvement in that because that's been the black

eye in the industry.

and so there's a lot of, a lot of companies getting into the space and using AI and
everything like that to sort of predict when a charger might go down, but then track it in

real time and then get somebody out there in a truck and to fix it, not in like a week or
two weeks, but in like,

no, we're definitely seeing a much more proactive versus reactive with the addition of a
very effective and functional software layer to get much more of this versus the other

ones out there.

know, competition and brand and, and, know, just, and, and growing utilization is like,
okay, you know, it used to be, we're just happy to have a charger.

And now it's like, no, it's, it's, it's, it's gotta be, it needs to be reliable, high
power and, and a good experience.

So,

With that on a positive note, this has been great.

Yeah, thank you so much, Loren.

I realize we've gone over time and we could easily keep talking about some of these
subjects.

And I think it's been so great with you joining the parent team and what you guys are
working on.

we're going to have you actually back on and count the panel thing I know in a couple of
weeks anyway.

But for anyone that's listening and want to kind of learn more and especially just stay up
to date with kind of a blog post, all the data you guys are releasing about this, what's

the best way for people to connect with you and the company?

Yeah, yeah, you can go to paren.app, so p-a-r-e-n.app, A-P-P, yeah, so we don't have a
.com domain, we've got a .app domain, but you can go there and we've got a lot of cool

stuff.

just really, you know, we're a startup, we're just building this up, but we've got a blog
and we're gonna be building out a bunch of resources with some really cool charging data.

So stay tuned, stay tuned for that.

Loren, thank you so much.

Always a pleasure.

And I'm sure we'll have so much more to talk about again the next time we talk.

So with that, have a great day.

Take care, everyone.

Thanks for tuning into this 2024 US elections focused episode of grid connections.

hope Loren McDonald's analysis gave you a picture of how last night's election results
should reshape the future of the automotive and EV charging landscape.

From potential shifts in tax incentives to the role of data and optimizing EV
infrastructure.

There's no shortage of change on the horizon, but still plenty to be optimistic about.

As always, we're here to keep you updated on the latest developments impacting the EV
industry.

If you enjoyed today's conversation, please share this episode with a friend who'd benefit
from staying informed.

And don't forget to leave us a review on our podcast page.

It really helps us reach more listeners and bring you valuable insights from industry
experts.

Until next week, this is The Grid Connections podcast signing off.