Good morning, Grid Connections listeners.
Today I have the pleasure of sharing my recent interview with John Volcker, a
contributing editor to Car and Driver, among many other auto outlets.
He's been at the forefront of hybrid and electric vehicle automotive journalism for
over a decade, and he gets to share his keen insights of the electric vehicle
industry's disruption of combustion vehicles with us today.
In this episode, we didn't even get halfway through all the topics I wanted to
cover with them.
But we had, I think the big ones and recent developments, especially in the
electric vehicle space, even as recently as this past week.
So exploring some of the nuances and the challenges that shape the narrative in
this rapidly evolving sector, it's really great to get his take on someone who's in
the industry and is a contributing writer and has a lot of influence and more
importantly, knowledge to actually contribute to what he says and be able to
back it up.
So John brings us not only his perspective, but also his exclusive
insights from his recent test drive of the Lucid Gravity prototype, a vehicle that's
sparking interest and excitement across the automotive world, especially among SUV
buyers.
But that's not all.
We're also charging into the discussion of the state of electric vehicle charging
infrastructure here in the US.
With EV adoption accelerating, the demand for more and more advanced charging
solutions is at an all -time high.
John will share his expert perspective on where the U S stands and building a robust
charging network, the challenges that lie ahead and what this means for electric
vehicle owners and potential buyers.
So buckle up and tune in as we discuss today's landscape of electric vehicles
from groundbreaking prototypes to the infrastructure that powers them with one
of the industry's most insightful voices, John Volcker.
This is the Grid connections podcast where the future of mobility is always in the
spotlight.
And with that enjoy.
thank you so much.
if there are any listeners that are unfamiliar, can you just share a little
bit of your
Sure.
My so-called career has lots of lumps and bumps in it.
But after working as a product manager for a large internet company in 2005, I
realized that if I was ever going to make money off what was my passion, which was
the auto industry, then this would be the time.
The house was paid off and that.
So.
I started freelancing in the auto journalism world, which is not how you pay
the rent.
And I needed something that would set me apart from everybody else who can actually
racetrack, drive, and has been doing this for forever.
And there was really, in the mid-2000s, there was no good journalism about either
hybrid cars or the nascent electric car industry.
I have a friend in Detroit who I remind every few years that he said to me,
when I told him that was going to be my specialty, John, you're insane.
The only people who care about those cars are smelly hippies and they don't buy new
cars.
I remind him of that every couple of years.
But really I thought the electrified vehicle industry, to use a problematic
word, was interesting because it was the first major change in powertrains since
the diesel engine arrived.
And, you know, there were stuff on the top end of engines, but basically internal
combustion cars were a known quantity with increasing refinements to meet increasing
regulation.
The whole idea of adding a battery and one or more electric motors was new,
interesting, completely unfamiliar.
And there were some articles out there that I thought I might have been able to
add some information and take a different tack.
And it actually sort of worked.
So.
Almost 20 years later, here I am.
I have pretty deep background in the EV industry.
The story I tell is that I got my first ride in a Tesla Roadster in September
2006.
I think it was Roadster number three.
It's a long story.
And because it only had 14% of battery left, they wouldn't let me drive it.
I don't know if it was even a licensed production car.
It had some kind of plate, but.
They said, we can only do one speed run because we have to run you back from Palo
Alto to our garage in Redwood City.
I actually have some pictures of the first Tesla shop in Redwood City.
And one acceleration run from a stoplight up El Camino sort of convinced me that
this was an interesting thing and electric cars were not just glorified golf carts
for hippies and everybody else.
So here we are.
Yeah, that's I think that's really interesting because that is kind of a
common experience.
I think a lot of people now in the industry or what have gotten people
interested into electric vehicles.
But let's say and there's a couple other things I want to talk about relate to
that.
But I'm kind of curious.
Was that the experience kind of told you like, oh, I need to write about this.
It sounds like that was actually after you had already decided, right?
I'd say they came about the same time.
I was knocking around trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
I was freelancing as a managing editor for magazines and websites.
I toggle back and forth.
And I was always a car nerd.
I mean, you know, a lot of little boys get sports, I got cars.
And so it was really that sort of pivot in my life where...
I've done a bunch of stuff, some of it was fun, some of it wasn't.
What would I like to do?
And I was lucky enough and privileged enough to be able to make that transition.
And I picked something that turned out to be a good thing for the future.
But yeah, the first Tesla ride was sort of, okay, there are hybrids out there.
And frankly, every VC in Silicon Valley where I was living at the time is buying
Priuses.
What's that about?
Because, you know, they have BMWs and Mercedes-Benz's and Audi's and sometimes
fancier stuff.
Why are they all bringing home Priuses?
And the answer was, this is the most technically advanced car in the world
right now.
And so, okay, Priuses, that's interesting.
No one's writing about them in an interesting way.
This Tesla thing I just wrote in and together it just sort of jolted.
What would you say?
Uh, no, that, that's really interesting.
That makes a lot of sense.
Cause that, uh, my exposure to it was a little bit different as we were talking
about this, where I was actually in high school, kind of building and racing, but,
uh, maybe only a year and a half, I was actually down in the Bay area.
And I was also really fortunate enough to get a ride in one.
And, uh, it actually was even crazier than that.
Not only was it, I just wanted to go check.
I was there for a work thing.
I just wanted to go check out one of the dealerships.
I just like see.
these things in the flesh.
And then the guy.
Oh, well, I mean, this was, uh, cause the one you said was in Redwood city.
I want to say this one was in Menlo.
Yeah.
The Menlo park location.
actually.
It was on the east side of El Camino.
And it had that, it was the weird kind of like a tagging all a little shaped, uh, I
guess retail location with a service thing attached to it.
And so I was just kind of looking around and maybe because I was just in a suit for
a meeting I had been in, uh, the guy there was just like, do you want to test drive
it?
And I was like, well, I would love to, but I don't think this is the right thing.
He's like, oh, here's the keys.
Go, go for a drive.
And I, at the time I think was 20 and I just couldn't, I don't know.
I mean, I think anywhere else in the world.
They probably would have been like, get the hell out of here.
But I think just once again, the Bay area and to some extent, Tesla has always been
kind of good about test drives like that.
But I think they just like, Oh, it's probably just some other tech millionaire
who just sold something that like, yeah, he can probably afford it.
Whereas like I was trying to figure out how to pay student loans and all these my
rent for that month, but it was hard to turn down that opportunity and.
Kind of the same experience.
It kind of closed any.
questions or any doubt in my mind that electric vehicles have a strong future.
I just wasn't sure at that time if it was going to be Tesla or some other company
and clearly they felt they'd followed through and everyone else is now trying to
catch up with it.
But following up on that, what was kind of the point that you realized I'm sure for a
long time.
And I mean, I've even read this and seen this where people are kind of doubting you
or not believing that this is the future.
What were
ever an article you read or a moment in the industry that kind of was the point
where you felt like things had flipped and people were like no longer doubting that
like, Oh, it's going to be the EV stuff.
And you kind of knew you had made the right choice to be the person focused on
EVs or do you, to be, do you think the industry is still going through this?
Yeah.
Now, let's be clear.
In 2024, the EV transition is unstoppable.
Okay?
There will be lumps and bumps.
Sometimes the curve won't go like this.
It may go like this.
Maybe it'll go like this for a while.
The US and North America are not leading the charge.
We are, in fact, global laggards, both because we use vehicles differently.
and because we're not good at industrial policy.
China is by far the leader.
They want to use electric vehicles to essentially crush the rest of the world's
auto industry.
And Europe is well ahead of North America at this point.
So it's going to happen.
It will be a transition.
that lasts well beyond my lifetime.
Depending on whose numbers you use, there's between 1.3 and 1.6 billion
vehicles on the planet.
The average car in the US on US roads is now almost 13 years old.
That's a transition that takes a generation, if not two or three.
But electric cars are now viable and practical in a way that they simply
weren't 10 years ago.
10 years to the day after
the first Leaf was sold in the US.
So basically December, 2020, I guess.
I did an article that said, look where we've come in 10 years.
That Leaf had 74 miles of range, ideally.
It had 50 kilowatt fast charging, which then was remarkable.
And it was a somewhat peculiar looking C-segment hatchback, compact hatchback.
not a form factor Americans tend to buy.
And at that point in December, 2010, Tesla only had the roadster.
They'd gone through a recall because they essentially blew up the two-speed
transmissions that they had fitted.
The Model S was a promise that everybody sort of sneered at.
And now in December, 2020, you had pickup trucks coming, you had a variety of SUV
formats and...
200 miles was the minimum acceptable range on the vast majority of EVs in the market
and 300 was coming Think what we'll be in December 2030, right?
batteries improve at 8% a year improving cost performance and We saw some of that
from 2010 to 2020.
We will see the same thing in 2020 to 2030 Assisted by
at least one new battery chemistry.
It's not new, but we will have lithium iron phosphate batteries coming into the
US market, which they largely haven't so far, because they're cheaper, albeit less
energy dense.
But everything's improving.
So lithium iron phosphate batteries will, in fact, be practical for that 200-plus
mile electric car.
So I'm not worried about the transition stopping.
To get back to the question you asked me five minutes
There wasn't one single eureka moment.
There wasn't that point where I was sitting, staring at a screen and the light
bulb went off.
I think it was really the combination of a few things.
The data on lifetime CO2 footprint per mile of electric cars became conclusive
that they had lower lifetime CO2 and it continued to improve as the grid
decarbonized.
because an electric car has lower and lower CO2 if it's charged on cleaner and
cleaner power.
And the Union of Concerned Scientists has a great US map that I've written about for
10 years, which started out being, well, you may not wanna drive an EV in these
areas of the States, drive a Prius instead.
Now, you know, at worst, you're almost equal to a Prius, and at best, it's 100
miles a gallon equivalent.
So.
It was the CO2 data.
It was GM's board deciding that Tesla was actually a threat.
That happened 10 years ago.
And overall, it was the continuing consumer enthusiasm, and at least among
early adopters, the fact that people really liked their cars and did not want
to go back.
Some people still have.
I think at the moment we're at this funny sort of trough between the early adopters
and early mass adoption.
We can get to that a little bit later.
But as of probably about three or four years ago, I no longer have any worries
that electric cars are going to fall off a cliff and we won't transition.
We will.
But it won't be done until long after I depart.
Well, hopefully that will be quite a ways away, but I see what Well, I think it's
funny Ever already there's a couple of things just kind of thinking back you talk
about like Silicon Valley and being there with the first Prius's and it just kind of
even reminds me of one of the big things especially count of the early 2010s was
people were getting Prius's and then they were going to shops to essentially convert
them to
plug-in hybrids and you're starting to, I mean, obviously it costs a lot of money,
but it was, it was exactly that thing where people were seeing this as being the
future.
And it was so fascinating to me that clearly it was definitely an early adopter
part of the market, but the fact that there were people buying brand new Priuses
and then taking to a shop to spend like another five to 10 grand to make them
plug-in hybrids so they could have kind of the best of both worlds for the commutes,
depending on the situation.
Uh, w it was one of those kinds of things also to me that also like still like
obviously there is a market demand and need for this and it was surprising.
Yeah.
And, and obviously the ideal situation was to get to the fully electric thing.
But back then fast charging wasn't even an idea.
It was like, maybe you could use these.
There's a chat, a Mo thing that kind of works here and there.
Um, but it was, it was almost the concept that plugin vehicles would be for around
town and you just have like a hybrid for longer.
I've drives and it's so wild to think about.
I can't remember how much that has changed and using.
Well, that is true.
Yeah.
the plug-in Prius movement was a tiny, tiny percentage of people who bought
Priuses.
Your earliest adopters were in Silicon Valley and California because gasoline is
really expensive in California, always has been.
But then the rest of the world decided, okay, yeah, it looks kind of strange, but
you know what?
I get 45 to 50 miles a gallon, no matter what I do to the damn thing, that's better
than the 22 miles a gallon that a similar shaped car that is in a hybrid gets.
I'm gonna do that.
And like electric cars, your friends, your coworkers, your neighbors, your relations,
all as one of them got, you'd ask questions, you'd realize it was sort of
normal, it was a real car.
Same process happens for electric cars, but the change for electric cars is
bigger.
Remember that there's a lot of people that still think hybrids have to plug in.
As for the plug-in hybrid thing, several members of your audience are gonna smile
because I am on record as being not a skeptic, plug-in hybrids work really
beautifully if people plug them in.
And thus far, although we had data.
from the last decade from GM and Ford about their plug-in hybrids and how many
miles were accomplished on grid power, we do not have that data this decade.
And the makers of the two biggest selling plug-in hybrids in the US, this is 18
months old now, which are Jeep with its 4xe Wrangler and Toyota with its RAV4
Prime and Prius Prime, will not say exactly what percentage of miles are
covered on grid power.
even though they have that data, Jeep did finally tell the Detroit Reporter at least
half of its 4xE owners plug in at least once a month.
This is not a ringing endorsement of the large amounts of subsidies we have given
to plug-in hybrids, and I remain to be convinced until I see proper data that
people are actually plugging in their plug-in hybrids.
End of lecture and several people in your audience have seen that already.
Well, no, there's, we got it.
There's so many things I want to cover, but it's funny you bring that up because
one, we had John McElroy of auto line on previously and kind of go into exactly.
And you said this on his show too, but exactly what you're saying about the whole
hybrid phenomenon, the whole concept would be so much better market.
And you get so many more people to buy hybrids.
Have you just said, this isn't a hybrid.
This is just a car that gets you 15 miles a gallon, and this is a car that gets you
20 miles a gallon.
Like there's.
Partially there's now even the politicization and the stigma of hybrid,
but exactly what you're talking about.
More people are just interested in, how do I spend less at the pump versus even
horsepower?
Some of the other things that I think more car focused people kind of think is what's
going to be the big thing that sets cars apart.
And
Prius taught the industry a lot, at least one really bad lesson, which was, if you
have a technically advanced car, it has to look weird, or in the words of Detroit, a
science project.
Now, there were very good reasons they designed the Prius that way, aerodynamics,
and aerodynamics, but one of the reasons the first Nissan Leaf came out the way it
did was taking that lesson.
that it has to be distinctive looking in order to tell people.
You'll note the Prius sales have fallen off a cliff.
There are 20 or 30,000 a year, I think.
That's because you can now get a Toyota Corolla Hybrid relatively the same
packaging within a few miles a gallon and no one knows your...
I think that's a great point.
And then even go into the plug-in hybrid stuff, there's really good data coming out
of Europe where they were showing that especially for company, uh, they, they
were offering, maybe, maybe this was just in the UK, but they were essentially
offering incentives for companies to give out hybrids as a work vehicle and so many
people would just not only get a plug-in hybrid, but they'd also get a gas card.
So there was never really an incentive for them to actually plug it in on a regular
basis.
They're not paying for it either way.
They just use the gas card and have to worry about charging.
Um, but I will say there is something ironically vexing when you do see a plug
in hybrid charging, even if I don't need to charge at like a free level two
charging thing that it is rare, but it also just seems like why, why are you
doing it?
I, I don't know.
That's I know.
this is going to veer dangerously close into religious belief.
Next topic.
Exactly, exactly, totally.
With that, you know, one of the things that I think is really interesting about
your background is you actually have an engineering degree.
And I feel like so many people in the automotive space, especially when it comes
to electric vehicles really struggle with seeing what the value or even the
advantage to an electric vehicle is.
And I think if you approach it or kind of have an understanding of
as you kind of go into the conversation, it really gives you a strong foundation of
the value and then you can actually essentially educate others pretty quickly
as to what the value and the advantage of going to an electric vehicle is, whether
that be financial, whether that be performance, yada, yada.
What I'm kind of curious about is someone who is in a journalist in the space and
has a lot of influence.
Do you think more auto journalists should have really have almost be required?
to have like an engineering degree or some sort of kind of background like that,
because I have been consistently disappointed by auto journalists in their
ability to effectively cover electric vehicles.
And I'd be kind of curious as someone who's really working in that space and has
a lot of exposure to that on your own, uh, for your thoughts on that.
I'm not sure I can speak for the whole panoply of auto journalists.
There is an entire category of video journalists.
And honestly, I don't have enough time to watch someone talk about a specific car
for 12 minutes or 60 minutes, with a couple of exceptions, Kyle.
But I would say more of the auto journalists I know have an engineering or
technical background.
than journalists at large.
Certainly not the majority, I don't think, but especially a car and driver where I've
been lucky enough to go to some of their 10 best testing and basically hang out and
BS with the staff in between drive loops.
There's a fairly high degree of mechanical awareness.
The issue is mechanical because there are a lot of MEs.
A lot of them came out of SAE Formula Racing series or have built their own
cars.
The quirky ones do Lemons Racing.
But you know, it's an electric vehicle is a fundamentally different thing and it's
still got suspension and electric windows and seats and infotainment and all that
stuff.
But all of the powertrain stuff is totally different.
It's a battery electric vehicle.
That is a different skill set.
And I think the field of auto journalism has gotten much, much better in about the
last four or five years.
I could be found to grumble, I grumble a lot, pretty much through the 2010s, but
things have really stepped up and I'm now seeing some pretty sophisticated analysis
from the more general automotive press.
So it's getting better.
It's a process.
Nationally, electric cars are still only 8% of sales last year, of which about 2%
plug-in hybrids, 6% battery electrics.
So there are more cars that are turbocharged sold every year than there
are electric cars last year.
So it's a process.
It's an evolution.
There's also the issue that, first and foremost, as a journalist,
You gotta be able to tell stories.
And, you know, I've had the odd young journalists come to me and say, what do I
need to do?
Right, you know, how do I write a good story?
And unfortunately, the flip line is it gets a lot easier after the first 5,000.
I wrote 4,600 stories in nine years running green car reports and I edited it
in one year, 7,500.
So, you know, after a while, it's kind of like riding a bicycle, I like to think.
But it's getting better.
Auto journalists should have technical awareness.
And those who race drive, which is a minority, but those who are actually good
on track, generally have a much greater understanding of how cars actually work.
Yeah.
And I guess I didn't mean it to sound so pessimistic and I would also agree with
you.
It has definitely come a long ways and been more positive.
I just kind of feel like, um, some of it is definitely, uh, education and the
efficiency and conveying the message and value of electric vehicles.
But I also do find that there is, I don't want to say it's generational either, but
there isn't really interesting, I guess, value.
Disconnect or understanding the value for the consumer I mean, I hate to use it as
the example But I think a big one would be Tesla where it's like so much of it is
through the app and I think a lot Of like traditional car people that can make some
cringe and they think of it as an appliance and I can kind of get that but
for the average person who thinks of their car as an appliance or as a Convenience or
as a just a mode of transportation and not really something they see for passion you
can kind of look at this with
Not even Tesla, I think any of the EV starves, but especially the Chinese
automakers.
This is where I think there is a big disconnect between a lot of the
traditional automotive outlets.
And, and I think to some extent it could be generational buyer values.
I would say kind of my, I know some people older, so it's obviously very anecdotal,
but like age group wise and younger, there is a lot about like kind of that Tesla app
experience.
That.
draws people to EVs and car brands once they even know that that's an option.
And I think if this makes sense, and I think there's a lot in that value that
these car brands are presenting to buyers that I've just noticed that traditional
automatic journalists are either mystified by or don't think it's really a big
selling point.
And I think if it got more press, it might also understand why like,
consumer preferences and some of the changes and why Tesla and some of these
other EV companies have been selling EV so well in the fact that it has become what
is considered I think to some as almost gimmicky is now almost considered a luxury
feature that is presented with a lot of electric vehicles and I know I can speak
of that to when it like when I had to get the tires changed on my car because I the
Les Schwab was backed up for months I was able to just do it through the app for our
Tesla
And there was a guy there two days later who did in the driveway and maybe you're
short of a McLaren.
I don't know any other services that'll could just come right to you.
And I think when people, I know other people just kind of like my age group when
they hear that, like, Oh, I want to get that.
And I realized that's kind of a another level and there's price mediums too, but
it is just interesting to me.
And maybe this isn't so much as a question as just a comment about it is fascinating
to me that value.
as a lot of auto journalists are, their role is to show like why to buy a car over
another, the whole spectrum of EV ownership that I don't know if it's
getting the right coverage or the right message to consumers to make a fully
informed choice, if that makes sense.
There's like 12 billion things to unpack there.
And so maybe this has just become its own podcast.
So I don't want to go down too much of a rabbit hole there.
I guess a few basics.
The data show that most people view their cars as a mix of appliance.
And it's the fascinating thing about covering cars.
There's this highly functional aspect.
I have a second kid, so it has to have three rows.
And it has to have at least umpteenth cup holders.
And what do you mean there's only two USB ports in the rear seat?
Stuff, really functional stuff.
And
the not all that well understood psychographic stuff about what a car
signifies to the outside society about you.
And some people don't care about that, but some people care a lot.
There was this wonderful article, and I'm going back 20 years, comparing minivans to
SUVs.
Because 20 years ago, the buyer pools demographically were almost identical.
Slightly above average household income, they both had 2.4 kids.
They lived in certain types of suburbs predominantly, but psychographically, as
the Brits would say, chalk and cheese.
Because the minivan owners are like, this vehicle is amazing.
It has incredible room inside.
I can carry anything.
I can carry the kids and grandma.
It's got all these great features.
The sliding doors are really great.
And the other side is like, oh my God.
What would people think of me if they saw me in a minivan?
Patooy!
And those are very different psychographics, right?
Most people are somewhere in this mix of, it's gotta have A, B, and C, but it also
has to say something about me.
And you saw that double-edged sword most acutely with the Prius, where it became a
joke.
One of my relations still calls them the Toyota Pius.
And that was a South Park joke from 20 years ago, I think.
So.
The idea that a vehicle is an appliance is important when you move from the early
adopters to the mass market.
And to quote the invaluable Chelsea Sexton, who is now working for the
government, so we haven't heard a lot from her lately, first and foremost, you've got
to be able to sell an electric car as a better car.
Never mind the environment, never mind the apps.
Never mind any of that stuff.
It has to be sold as a better car.
And they are better cars.
They're quieter.
They have punchier acceleration from a stop.
And even your aunt going to church kind of likes winning the stoplight Grand Prix now
and then.
And, you know, they have a lot of things.
Plus for that minority of Americans who have dedicated off-street parking, you can
charge it at home overnight.
It's...
you never have to go to a gas station, which it turns out about half the world
kind of likes.
And it's much cheaper per mile.
Those are all good things.
They're just nicer to travel in.
The challenge is going to be charging for people in multiple unit dwellings, which
is going to be a much bigger issue two years from now.
Once a huge slew of used EVs with practical ranges, Tesla Model 3s, start
hitting the market.
We'll put that one aside.
But...
First and foremost, auto journalists, with the exception of Consumer Reports, which
has its own slant, and a couple of other outlets are not looking at it from the
straight consumer point of view, they're looking at it from the point of view of
auto enthusiasts.
And so automatically, that audience of auto journalists, especially if they're
associated full-time with a specific outlet, is going to bring some
perception about who they're writing for as compared to the public at large.
Because I've been freelancing for so long, I do both kinds.
I do, you know, geeky stuff on battery chemistries, and I also do really basic
explainers.
Car and driver, bless their hearts, was shocked how well their explainers did.
How does a hybrid work?
You know, a hybrid is not an electric car that you plug in, you know.
and stuff like that because there is, and one of the things that I take away from
that is that the interest in articles like that, a lot of those articles are created
from search queries now.
What do people go onto Car and Driver and look for?
But the fact that they get such traffic indicates to me that a much broader pool
of people are now at least educating themselves.
Yeah.
And this, this will be the last question, kind of in tangential to all this, but is,
uh, I, I totally get what you're saying about the focus on automotive enthusiasts.
And that's really cool and interesting to see it and make sense that there's a
larger interest coming, the more general thing.
And is that just kind of because the old kind of business thing that's like 20% of
a customer base is going to be 80% of your business that you think for a lot of
these,
traditional automotive outlets that they just kind of focus on the enthusiast
because that's going to be the main subscriber.
That's going to be where they get the most of their revenue.
Usually.
It depends.
Any media outlet these days is a mix of regular readers and what I call drive-bys,
which are the people who search for something on Google and get an article
popped up.
If, parenthetically, and I'll leave this to one sentence, if in fact Google goes
full tilt into AI and starts answering all your questions for yourself on the first
screen, many, many media
sure.
Yeah.
So your ma or your uncle Fred who has driven pickup trucks all his life or pick
your stereotype, probably doesn't subscribe to Car and Driver.
And Car and Driver knows what its audience is.
It's a mix of what will people regularly read for the ones that get the daily email
or the daily push or the alerts on their phone versus
What's the stuff that our search data says people really want to know from us?
Right.
I know I appreciate that and I appreciate the insights in that.
So we'll, we'll get to some other topics.
I know that you're interested in talking a little bit more about.
So I know you recently had the chance to test drive the Lucid Gravity prototype.
What can you share about that?
And I know from what I've seen, just kind of like on Twitter and a couple other
things, you seem to be a really big fan of just the Lucid cars in general.
If you could just share kind of your thoughts on the brand, the cars and what
this recent prototype experience was like.
Sure.
I was lucky to be offered that chance.
It came with a number of caveats, no freeway time, because the car doesn't have
airbags and their lawyers got very antsy.
And it didn't have air suspension, so really my comments on the suspension were
limited to a small box, and I had about an hour with it.
But that said, I had actually seen the
demonstrator version, the fully built version of the Gravity and was quite
impressed in December.
I'm fond of Lucid because they have very smart engineers and they have really
packaged their drivetrain, an extremely powerful drivetrain, in a very small
space.
And they're actually, they have a side gig selling that powertrain to other makers.
Aston Martin has announced it's going to use...
Lucid powertrains.
So I think that speaks to the essential quality of their designs.
For those people who may not know, the CEO of Lucid was the lead engineer on the
Tesla Model S.
The company no longer says it.
In fact, they don't mention the T word at all, ever.
But at one point in their evolution, one of their employees told me about the Lucid
we want to make the Tesla Model S done right.
So there you have it.
I like their vehicles.
Part of it is design.
Derek Jenkins, their lead designer at one point said, "'We wanted to make a car that
wasn't shouty.'" Shouty is a British term meaning essentially brash, obvious, loud,
you know, noticeable.
And I think they've pulled that off.
rarely the person to talk to about interiors, but I love some of their
fabrics, surprisingly.
And overall, I just, I will never turn down a chance to drive a Lucid because it
is such a nice driving experience.
The power of their powertrain is demonstrated.
I haven't driven a Lucid Air Sapphire, but let's set the base here.
This is about a two and a half ton, more or less.
four-seat Luxury sedan That will accelerate you from 0 to 60 miles an hour
in less than 2 seconds I'm not sure I actually want to experience that at my
age, but my colleague Dan at car and driver wrote One of the more glowing
reviews I have seen in the outlet of the car because it's really everything that
car people would like
And it's totally tractable for everyday use as well.
It's kind of like you can have performance that leaves Ferraris in the dust, but you
can also have this very nice luxurious sedan that you can drive around and do
your regular life.
So Lucid's problem is that because they had a funding hiatus and everything just
sort of froze and they re-engineered quietly on the side, they didn't launch
with an SUV, unlike Rivian who launched with a pickup truck
more or less at the same time.
They launched with a luxury sedan, which in 2012 was fine for the Tesla Model S,
but by the time 2020 rolled around, luxury sedans were a declining category.
So I think the SUV is gonna be the one that really takes them to the next level,
but they are also talking about their mid-sized project, which is going to be a
smaller SUV.
You can really think of it as their Tesla Model Y competitor.
They showed one draped shape.
Right?
no real information, but I'm looking forward to that one because that's a car
that arguably I might be able to afford and I really like their engineering.
Yeah, I have always been really impressed with their engineering.
Personally, the styling of it, I have not been as big of a fan of, but I know plenty
of people that like them and I'm kind of the more of the merrier.
And I, like I said, I think the engineering aspect, especially with a
focus on efficiency is something that, uh, Tesla's started with and did really well
and it's great to see Lucid kind of take it even further.
And I think it's something that more automakers, especially from kind of the
traditional brands really need to put a focus on.
Um, just to really kind of get the best value and the best distance and range out
of, and the most of a battery pack.
So I, I really do think, uh, like you said, the team there is doing some really
oppressive things and I myself haven't been able to drive the Sapphire either,
but everyone I've talked to just does seem to, they won't stop talking about it and
exactly.
And as much as the, and it's not like it's a bad design, it's just not a design that
Kind of, I guess I get what you're saying.
Like I would say the original model S was kind of like an understated, but nice
design.
The Porsche Tycon might be a little bit more of that kind of brash and stand out.
I like that design.
The Lucid for me.
Yeah.
I love the Taycan.
I mean, I would take it, you know, in the world where I had money, I would take it
in there over a Taycan just because the Taycan is really cramped.
But on the Taycan test drive, it took all of 90 seconds to realize that the car had
more acceleration and more road holding than I had courage, which is fine.
And.
and the numbers coming out of this recent refreshed icon are just absurd from the
charging standpoint.
Um, and as someone who has road tripped, I mean, our daily is a model wide and it's,
it's a, it's kind of like what I've come to say is like, that's like the baseline.
If it can't charge as fast or do these things, I can't think about for the next
car, cause I've driven from Bend, Oregon to Phoenix, Arizona in a day, which is
just a shy bit under 1200 miles.
And it's a long day.
Um, but a big part is having a really good charging curve, good speeds and stuff like
that.
And it could be better, but yeah, it's just one of those things that, uh, I know
we had kind of agreed to talk about getting into the chart, uh, to charging
space, but what else?
Okay.
And so, um, yeah, I think in my dream situation, it would be the new Porsche
Taycan and Fortanbao cars with unlimited money.
And then be able to charge on the supercharger network.
And that would be like the ultimate road tripping vehicle, but there was a big
announcement this week.
And I'm still not a hundred percent sure how to pronounce it.
Is it Iona?
Do you know John?
No idea.
I call it IANA, but you know.
I think that has been the consensus for most people trying to describe it, but it
is the, I guess, next step in the seven different automakers that last year said
that they were going to come out with this charging network.
And they are Mercedes, Stellantis, Ford, Kia, Hyundai, and I'm dropping a couple
others.
BMW.
and yeah, I'm missing one too, but Well, and this is where I'm afraid I put in a
plug.
I did a four-part series last fall for charged EVs magazine so It's called
charging is changing.
There's four parts to it to make it readable, but
I encourage anyone, I'll say a few high points, but if you really wanna dig in, I
was surprised at the favorable reception on what is effectively a sort of a nerdy
aspect to the EV thing.
But I think broadly for charging, I have been quite disappointed in North America
in the entire auto industry outside Tesla, which...
fell back on its 100 year history of outsourcing fueling to John D.
Rockefeller and just sort of assumed that a nationwide charging infrastructure of
some sort would magically appear.
It's actually from the hydrogen field, but one of my favorite quotes is a Toyota exec
who said, well, you know, it would be so much easier to sell the Mirai, a hydrogen
fuel cell vehicle only available in California.
if a hydrogen fueling cell infrastructure manifested itself.
Yeah, well, you know, fueling and charging infrastructure don't manifest themselves.
You gotta spend a lot of money.
Tesla knew that.
They did a superb job of it within the constraint of only having to charge four
vehicles.
And if you design all the charging station hardware and all four vehicles and the
software on both ends,
That is a manageable thing.
I want to say that while I understand why Farley at Ford did the deal with Tesla to
give Ford's access to the Supercharger network, followed two or three weeks later
by GM and I think various others, whether and how that works is very much yet to be
determined.
I have seen some things from commentators who want to know better who have said the
charging wars are over The whole problem has been solved Tesla has won Every other
driver will see how Tesla how great Tesla's are That is entirely possible.
We are far from that time.
And here's why Tesla is able to Understand and constantly adjust both ends of the
charging equation because
it knows what's going on inside its battery packs.
When a non-Tesla pulls up to a supercharger, that carmaker is not
particularly going to want to lay bare all of its battery protection algorithms and
the rest of the software that controls its EV, let alone give Tesla access to its
customers, their addresses,
their VINs and all of the rest.
So there are some really hard negotiations going on right about now with Tesla and
all of its different partners about, well, no, we need to know A, B and C.
No, actually, we're not going to give you that.
How it all remains yet to be determined.
I will be surprised if the majority of non-Teslas charge as fast at
superchargers.
as Teslas do under the same circumstances.
I hope I am pleasantly surprised.
It could happen.
Well, once again, you've brought up about 12 different things that I want to talk
about, or can I remind you first, just real quickly, you probably saw it when you
talk about hydrogen and then earlier this week, the, I think it was Shell who had
like only seven hydrogen stations, but made up like a third of the actual
hydrogen fueling stations in California.
Yep.
They said, ah, we're not going to do this anymore.
Right.
my model for that was in the Pacific Northwest, I think it was actually
Seattle.
You may remember that for about 15 years, Honda sold a natural gas civic because
natural gas is arguably one of the few fuels that you can swap into a combustion
car.
No one was ever able to figure out a way where people with natural gas service at
home
could fuel at home as electric car owners do, because the compressor required to get
to, is it 300 PSI, I think?
I forget.
I may have that totally wrong.
Is a large industrial compressor that you don't want running in your garage.
So as a result, all the natural gas civic owners had to drive to a place and fuel
up.
And indeed, the Seattle area had, I think, four.
And three of them ended up just shutting down.
People with natural gas civics had essentially doorstops because they
couldn't fuel them.
So the hydrogen thing, just not that surprising, which is why I think you could
buy a Mirai.
I hope not very many people did except as a Curio because Toyota will take them all
back and crush them.
Yep.
I think that's about all we have to say on that.
I mean, there was just a lot even around the infrastructure.
I know a lot of natural gas companies been taught that I'm trying to go to hydrogen,
but even then, uh, just the physics of a hydrogen atom compared to the natural gas,
there's so much you have to do to retrofit, even make it work.
I just don't see that scaling too much.
Um,
be clear, the problem with hydrogen cars is not the car.
I have every confidence that over time, the good engineers of Toyota and Honda can
make a hydrogen fuel cell, tanks, power electronics, small battery and all the
rest of it that will package into where you used to have an internal combustion
engine with certain adjustments.
That's not the problem.
The problem is...
the fueling infrastructure and the good citizens of California have spent over
$100 million for what was supposed to be 100 hydrogen stations by December 2020.
than that.
I think there was another comment now over the last decade.
But yeah, I think that's, let's, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but I think it's also really interesting what you talk about,
especially around data and the different cars because the OEMs have kind of learned
this the hard way through the infotainment space.
with Apple CarPlay, with Android Auto, with just the amount of data that had to
kind of go out to these systems about their cars currently, that I think you're
probably right.
There is a high likelihood that there probably will be definitely a pullback.
But I mean, I wouldn't say I'm more bullish on it, but I do think that there
is, it'll be interesting to see what.
Tesla requires, but now that it is like the J 3,400 standard, it has become a
little bit more clear as to what information the car will be giving.
And, um, there's obviously the opportunity that the car could give the wrong
information, but when you look at just the existing public charging networks and the
cars being able to tell those what they need, depending on the thing that I think
is usually the bigger issue and my big thing about electric vehicles for them to
take off.
has always been, you look at this at any disruption, for something to take off, it
doesn't have to be just as good, it has to be better.
And one of the big things like with a Tesla, you just plug in and walk away and
it just does it.
I have tried that with other cars and other charging networks.
And I think only one time that the plugin thing actually work, I think that will
change.
And I know that that's something that allegedly Ford's trying to do with this
Tesla deal.
But yeah, I agree with you.
There's still a lot that has to be figured out and like actually even clarified
because there's been a lot of rumors as to whether it's actually doing that or not or
what is the facts of what will be the options.
What are you trying to say or look out right now, John?
Oh, so two points.
The first one is you mentioned SAE 3400, which is the Tesla standard.
Nax, they called it well before it was a standard, but it is a standard now, so I
will call it Nax.
My understanding is that by and large, SAE 3400 version one, which is what we have
now, was essentially the phone book.
that Tesla dropped on the table, plus explanations they had to give the
committee to fill in parts that weren't adequately specified.
I think the interesting thing with the North American Charging Standard is going
to come when the next round of changes is requested by all the car makers around the
table and how Tesla will react.
This leads to the issue that
car makers are not psyched about the idea that one of their main and most successful
EV competitors is actually controlling the fueling for their customers.
They very much dislike that idea.
And that is really where IANA came from.
But it also reflects the idea that if you get past early adopters who are in fact
comfortable
with driving into a prison lit Walmart parking lot in the rain at midnight and
screwing with the app till they get the one charging cable that works.
Or, you know,
who doesn't want to drive their $250,000 Lucid Air or Ticon into a, yeah, right
there with you.
Yep.
to have a better experience.
For several years I've said look EV charging has to be at least as pleasant as
your average gas station, which has canopies by the way.
The canopies are not there to protect customers, that's a nice side effect.
They're there to hide all the fire suppression stuff, but they protect the
customers.
So IONIQ came from that, but it also came from this idea that Tesla can't control
the entire North American charging network, that would be a very bad thing.
And finally, I wanna say, when I started to research that four-part series,
charging is changing, what came up over and over again was the fury and the rage
among automakers and Electrify America in particular.
Supposedly the reason that Farley at Ford did the deal
with Tesla was because he had called the then CEO of Electrify America and
essentially said, you are more than half of the reason that all of our Mach-E
customers are failing to charge, fix this thing now.
And essentially, it didn't get fixed to the degree that Ford felt.
So Ford was primed for, this is not good enough.
In some ways, I think Ford is
more attuned to the actual driving and customer experience, although GM has
gotten very silent lately.
I have my first interview with a GM person in a while this week.
But, you know, IANA is going to theoretically make a nicer experience.
I think it's funny that Electrify America rolled out its sort of flagship charging
station entirely indoors, which is interesting, but not something you can do.
This week, when IANA...
announced.
I'm sure it was just a coincidence.
Coincidences happen.
But the last point I want to make is you talked about plug-in charge, which is the
non Tesla way of plugging in and walking away.
I have now experienced plug-in charge because I checked for it on the Ford
Mach-E, the Ford F-150 Lightning, the Porsche Taycan, the Mercedes-Benz EQS, the
Lucid Air
and I may be forgetting one other, maybe another car from one of those brands, I
can't remember, but it does exist when both sides of the party wanted to
electrify America had to bring it up on its stations.
I gather EVgo is going to do some of that as well, but no question at all that plug
it in and walk away is the only viable way to do it, along with routing you between
charging stations and that is starting to happen as well.
To very varying degrees among different car makers.
Worth noting here that Hyundai pushed an over the air update to various of its
electric cars that added that function to its in-dash nav.
So they are getting it, albeit not on a schedule that I think a lot of us would.
right.
Um, no, and I, I think it's, I guess one of the things I always try to do is like
approach a lot of these conversations and technologies from the point of the
consumer.
And it's really easy.
It's not fun, but it's easy to just go to a gas station.
You swipe your card, you put it in, it works.
And the current status of EV chargers is not that, um, especially the public fast
chargers and even
When you've been having to use like a Tesla magic dock then you have to get the
app and that's and I just don't think That experience is good.
I know that's going to change with some of these some of these new Pedestals and
charging pistols that they're bringing out but I am Hopeful that plug-in charge does
become a more universal thing because you're right.
It is it is a two Sided you have to have the car talking and then you have to have
the actual charging thing talking with each other
And that has been.
often a third party validation for whatever payment mechanism exists, whether
that's at the carmaker or a bank or what have you.
So yeah.
that's that, that is kind of the thing then that takes plug in charge.
The next level is then it has to confirm the account, uh, and all the account
information, but I really do think that is something that needs to be figured out and
become that will be one of those things that everyone I've talked to that is not a
car or EV person, but it's kind of like curious in getting an EV.
It's those kinds of things.
They're like, Oh, okay.
I don't have to think about it.
It just, I do it like once I put in my credit card info and it just works.
I get that.
I can do that.
Um, and I'm kind of cautiously hopeful that will be more of the case because I do
think one other thing, um, we haven't heard much about this, but I, I know one
of the things that Tesla has really put a focus on that has kind of made their
charging system, uh, effective is one, they have the scale of it, but two, it's
throughput is a.
big thing for them and something that they measure and that's where I do see that I
kind of get what you're saying about they're not being the same speeds but for
them In my exposure and talking to people I work there like their interest is they
There's some interest obviously in what car it's charging, but they just want to
get that car through so they can get another one in charging
Oh, absolutely.
And one of the things that frustrates me about all the non-Tesla makers that are
selling EVs, which is pretty much everybody except maybe not, is their
absolute and utter inability, despite all sorts of PR blather, to educate the buyers
of these vehicles.
And a lot of that is down to
our valued partners, the independently owned and operated third party franchise
dealership networks, because, you know, car dealers, the less good ones have sales
staff turnover approaching 50% of you.
And so, you know, I hear an immense amount from the car makers about, oh, but we have
training or we give the guy an iPad.
As like, so my favorite dealer in North America.
is Bourgeois Chevrolet in a relatively remote part of Quebec.
Love those guys.
I was actually, I think I was on a roadmap panel with one of them at one point.
This is going back a little bit.
But they, at one point, sold something like half of all the EVs in Canada, and a
majority of the EVs in Quebec, which is really the California of Canada in terms
of EVs.
And the way they did it was by giving a Chevy Volt to every new salesperson and
dealership employee and saying, go home, take it home for two weeks.
You know, this is how you plug it in.
This is the charging cord.
Here's how it works.
Not even level two, just the regular charger.
And for two weeks, people got it.
They suddenly realized, oh, it's a regular car, but I never have to go to a gas
station.
I can plug it in, that's really inexpensive because electricity in Quebec
is cheap and it's a provincially owned electric utility.
So people are sort of, it's our utility.
And gasoline is really expensive relatively, kind of like California except
the utility part.
And so people just got it and they became the best and most effective salespeople
for electric cars in a place, you know, a...
less dense part of Quebec that is not necessarily your ideal EV use case given
the weather.
So most automakers can't do that.
They don't have the interest.
They don't have the dedication, despite what they will tell me.
And as a result, the dealerships remain the weak point on education.
Your point to Tesla throughput.
Tesla owners have educated each other, right?
You get there, you see it's 80% and you tell the guy, hey,
it's going to take a really long time for you to get the next 5%.
This is where you leave.
If Tesla had, the car hasn't already told that person.
I think that's a big part of it.
And that's from what I understand what I am hearing, which I completely agree with
you is there's a huge asterisk around that.
Allegedly, I saw one of these quotes and it was Farley on, I think CNBC or some of
it, but the idea is they plan to as part of this deal include a lot of the actual
information software in their software like Tesla does when you roll up to a
charging thing, whether that happens or not, or to what level, but that would be
huge.
And that does do a lot of this for you.
But what were you gonna say?
Yeah.
I was just going to say, I'm a big fan of the Chevy Bolt EV.
If they had an all-wheel drive version, which it was clearly designed for, I would
probably be driving one today.
You need all-wheel drive to get up my drive in the winter.
But it's fast charging, which maxes out about 54 kilowatts, is its main drawback.
How many EV people of the sort that you and I know and talk to have gotten to a
charging station?
and had the bolt owner angrily tell them, of course it charges faster on a 350
kilowatt than a 150 kilowatt, or insisted on remaining there until they went from
92% to 100%.
You know, people don't know this stuff.
We know this, probably most of the people listening to this know this, but the
education part has been historically and continues to be the big deficiency.
in non-Tesla owners and frankly in some Tesla owners too.
The guy who bought his Tesla and blithely fast charged it 100% of the time was not
real happy with the result after 40,000 miles of range.
I am not surprised by that and I think that makes a lot of sense and I completely
agree.
There's by no means is that system perfect either and it is really interesting.
I think there's been a lot of promotions recently that have kind of set some people
up for failure and set unrealistic expectations.
I think the most recent thing would be what we kind of just saw in Chicago with
so many of the chargers being kind of overwhelmed and a lot of it was rideshare
drivers who were
trying this electric car out for free.
And unfortunately it creates a really bad experience for them.
It makes it worse for existing EV drivers and then it becomes a huge media and kind
of PR nightmare there.
Uh, but you're totally right around the dealership because I actually even did a
podcast about this, uh, about a month ago.
My mom is looking to buy, uh, she always buys like a new car, like every 10 years
or so.
And she's finally replacing her Mercedes and she wants to get a new car, but she
wants it to be electric.
And we,
Test drove a lot of different vehicles.
We went from everything from a, I mean, she's even a man, like she wants to spend
a decent amount of money, like 75, 80.
And so we've test drove, and it's the most she's ever spent on a car, but she plans
to have it for at least 10 years.
And so we test drove everything from a Rivian to Mercedes to all these different
electrics.
And we kind of came back to the Mercedes electric, but it's funny because exactly
what you're saying.
The weird part was we worked at this, we went to this Mercedes dealership and the
guy that helped her was Brian.
So he was great and knew all these things about the EQE.
My mom was all about it.
She came back another time and then she asked for Brian.
Well, it turns out there's five different Brian's at this one Mercedes dealership
and in just the sales team alone.
And when I heard that, I was like, I would, even if my name was Brian, I'd come
up with like a nickname.
I'm just like, I'm Nigel.
I don't know anything.
Just call me something.
So.
People know who I am.
And then fortunately the third time she goes in, I go in with her and we
coincidentally at first sprint that meets us is as she says the right Brian.
And, um, yeah, he was actually pretty knowledgeable, but then hearing how bad
the experience was with this other Brian almost turned my mom off from getting the
Mercedes electric altogether, just because knowledge base and everything else was
clearly more interested in like trying to sell her an AMG something.
And it's just, unfortunately, I'm a huge hurdle.
My, the cringiest anecdote I've seen in the last year was, well, but the sales guy
said that I could go from 10 to 80% in 28 minutes, and I could always charge at
home.
Both of those things are true independently.
They are not related, because if you had a fast charger in your garage, you dim your
neighborhood lights.
That said, I am now telling people, when you walk into a non-Tesla dealer,
ask for the EV specialist.
If they don't have an EV specialist and they say anyone can answer your questions,
find another dealer.
And if they say, well, she's not here today, tell them, okay, have her call me
and we'll schedule an appointment and walk.
No, I think that's great.
That is good feedback.
I mean, here's what's crazy to me too, is this Mercedes dealership among other
places my mom was shopping is in the Portland, Oregon area.
Like as far as being as easy, educated as a market as one would expect, or it should
be, it's still kind of a sad state of reality.
Um, but I actually really like that recommendation.
Well, to close out and loop back to Matt Teske, which was where we started
chatting, perhaps they didn't have the chargeway beacon because, you know, Matt
has lots of stories about auto salespeople, but the ability to answer
those questions with a smartly designed device that says, here's all the charging
stations for your specific vehicle, here's how far you can go.
And by the way, if you live in this neighborhood,
your utility has this special offer, that's stuff that all salespeople ought to
be able to do for EVs and a tiny minority of them can.
So, have me back in a month and we'll see if it's changed.
Yeah.
And I mean, I also kind of get it from the perspective of the salesperson.
They have so much pressure to move cars and do all this stuff.
And at the end, like unless you make there more of an incentive for them to sell an
electric vehicle, it's going to be really hard for them to have to go through all
those.
Yeah.
stiff the EVs more to reflect the greater amount of time.
Yeah.
then also makes them more expensive to make and sell.
Well, it's unclear if anyone's making money on EVs beyond Tesla, but.
point fair point John.
I really have enjoyed this conversation.
There was a lot more I wanted to cover but I realized we're kind of hit the time that
were allotted So we'll have to have you back We we didn't get to talk about your
kind of work and fascination with British cars because that's something I also share
I Was gonna say let's at least throw it out there I want to talk about it more at
another point But let's at least throw it out there.
Maybe it'll be the teaser for the next time you're on but tell us real quickly
about
So Tempting Fate Tours, youtube.com slash Tempting Fate is.
I'll make sure to put a link in the bio for the podcast.
So if anyone's watching this, just go there and we'll have that along with some
of these articles you referenced.
It's basically my friend Tom and I, and it started when we got bad cabin fever.
So we decided to, he's in New Hampshire, I'm in New York.
We decided to fly to Portland by two Sterlings, a badly built British luxury
car from the 80s, and drive them to Radwood, Austin.
Hilarity ensued.
We have several episodes, I think eight or something like that.
Among them being driving through the desert in Arizona and discovering the
event we were going to had been rescheduled eight weeks later.
But, so we have just put up the first video for the next adventure, which
happened last September, when we took a 69 MGB and a 58 Riley, which I've owned since
1980, on a Lemons Rally, which is 1,100 miles in three days driving through...
a lot of not very much in Maine.
So check it out.
We'll have five episodes, one a week.
And thank you for letting me plug this, which in some ways is more amusing to me
than E.E.V.'s, but lots to talk about for both next So thank you for all.
that sounds great.
And I think that is, uh, I mean, inherently as someone who works at car and
driver, you do have to have a soft spot for kind of classic cars and a combustion
vehicle.
So the EV is a great daily and there's some great sports models, but to have that
kind of fun car on the weekend, especially when you can have the time for it to break
down and have all of those things that give it character.
Is what uh, having an EV as your reliable daily vehicles so powerful.
But.
With that, I just want to say thank you so much for being on today, and we look
forward to talking to you soon.
that brings us to the end of another high voltage episode of the Grid Connections
podcast.
A huge thank you to our esteemed guest, John Volcker, the contributing editor of
Car and Driver and just one of the many well -earned titles.
I want to just say thanks to him again for joining us today and sharing his
invaluable insights on the electric vehicle landscape.
From the thrilling test drive of the Lucid Gravity prototype to the critical
discussions on the state of EV charging infrastructure in the U .S.
It's been a journey packed with knowledge, foresight, and excitement for what the
future holds.
We hope today's episode charged up your enthusiasm for electric vehicles and
provided a clearer view of the road ahead for EV technology and infrastructure.
As the EV revolution accelerates, it's conversations like these that illuminate
the path forward, sparking ideas and discussion that drive the industry
forward.
Remember to subscribe to the Grid Connections podcast on your favorite
podcast platform to stay plugged into the latest developments in the world of
electric vehicles.
We also love hearing from our listeners, so drop us a review or reach out on social
media with your thoughts, questions, or topics you'd like us to explore in future
episodes, along with any recommendations for potential future guests.
With that, thank you for tuning in and charging forward with us.
Until next week, this is the Grid Connections podcast signing