Good morning grid connections listeners.
Welcome back to grid connections, the podcast where we explore all things transportation, clean energy, and our power grid connecting all of these systems together.
The auto industry is in flux and our March panel is here to break it all down.
John McRoy, the president of Auto Line Network, Loren McDonald, the chief data analyst at PRIN and Matt Teske, CEO of Chargeway, all join us again to unpack the shifting EV market,
dealership
and the policy changes shaping the future of electric mobility.
We discuss everything from Trump's tariffs and their impact on electric vehicles automakers.
Tesla's brand shift, how Elon's politics are reshaping its customer base, the state of EV charging, Nevi delays, infrastructure expansion, and Tesla's gold standard network, along
with the fight over direct consumer EV sales, Volkswagen's scout motors versus dealership lobbyists.
Who will win all of these things we discuss in today's episode.
If you're passionate about the future of electric vehicles, this is an episode you won't want to miss.
Share it with at least one person who would enjoy the conversation too.
Plus leave us a positive review and sign up for our brand new grid connections newsletter via the link in today's show notes.
All of these things help us to continue to bring great episodes like today to you and many, many more with that.
Enjoy.
I think anyone that's been listening to our series for quite a while is probably familiar with all these faces and I'm just going to do an intro anyway for any new listeners, but,
I'm going to go in order of who I see in the tiles here, but, we were greeted today by Loren McDonald, the chief analyst of Pren Matt Teske founder and CEO of chargeway.
And of course, John McIlroy, the founder of blue sky productions and
As many of you probably know, auto line and auto line after hours.
Thank you gentlemen for all being on today.
I think we have quite a few topics to cover and a real briefly.
If you guys can do the one sentence, two sentence, elevator pitch of what you guys do for those who may not be familiar and a Loren, I'll let you kick it off.
Yeah, hi.
Yeah, Chief Analyst with Paren and we are an EV charging and electric vehicle data firm and focused particularly around reliability, usability, session data on almost all of the
US fast charging stations.
Matt, I'll let you go next.
All right, I'm Matt Teske.
I'm the founder and CEO of Chargeway.
And it is the best mobile app out there for finding EV charging stations and planning road trips.
It makes it super simple.
You just add your EV and we color code the plugs and show you power out on the map to make it super simple.
You can download that on iOS and Android.
And we also work directly with lot of partners, including electric utility companies, auto dealers, and as well as even policymakers around how we just make the EV experience for
charging better.
And I'm John McElroy.
Yeah, no, thanks for that, Chase.
Yeah, I'm John McElroy, the president of Blue Sky Productions.
We put out all kinds of video and other coverage of the global automotive industry, anything and everything to do with the automotive industry.
Well, I think that's a pretty good point to kind of jump off today because what isn't going on in the auto industry today, John, nothing I, business as normal is not kind of
what we would be even having this conversation about one, but two, like John, what.
Let's I mean, we got so many great topics to go over today, but let's I'm curious as someone who has been kind of a part of the industry and just tracking the industry for so
long.
What about right now?
I was going to say maybe since we last spoke a couple of months ago, but that there's too many things that have happened even since then, but like within the last month, what to
you is just like really standing out about what is making this time so unique and so different in the automotive industry right now.
Well, know, in case people don't know, there's a new president in the United States and his name is Donald J.
Trump.
And in one month, he has turned the industry completely upside down.
Nobody knows what's going to happen next.
We're talking tariffs, of course, but also government regulation.
He's going to gut everything to do with EVs.
He can get his hands on.
I would love to hear Max talk about this too.
when we get to that, gutting everything to do with EV charging.
He wants to destroy the California ZEV mandate.
I don't know what I'm leaving out, but Jace, this industry is in shell shop.
Yeah, I was going to say for maybe our one listener who's waking up out of a coma today.
maybe those are headlines they haven't seen yet, but yeah, I think those are a lot of the topics we've really wanted to cover today.
So, let's you said it, let's kick it off.
Let's go with the terrorists.
feel like that keeps changing every day, what we're expecting to happen.
And then there's a new development in it.
John, why, don't, mean, maybe once you kind of, I mean, you're the one that has been so locked into this and being in Detroit, you're hearing from everyone about what is.
They think it's going to happen.
What then actually happens and how they're reacting to it.
So like, maybe let's, let's just kick off there, what you're hearing and seeing and how people are reacting to all this.
Well, look, everyone's trying to figure out this president.
mean, he's something of a chameleon.
He's very unpredictable.
He changes things a lot.
I think part of his modus operandi is to make sure that he's at the top of the news cycle 24-7.
And he...
All right.
being, know, right?
Remember, let's go, it goes back to the, my audience is the biggest audience.
So that's literally, you know, the number one goal is I just want to be the top of the news and the topic of discussion.
And two, I want to create chaos, which feeds point one.
Yeah, exactly.
you know, at the beginning of the year, he said, look, I'm going to lay tariffs out there.
And then when we got up to his deadline, he said, OK, I'm going to delay it a month.
And of course, for the first month, everyone's talking about it.
Now for the second month, everybody's talking about it.
And we get up to the deadline and he says, OK, I've I put the tariffs in place.
And then the next day or two later, he goes, you know what?
We're going to delay it another month.
And so again, boom, he's at the top of the news cycle.
Everybody in the world.
is constantly talking about Donald Trump, which is exactly the way he wants it.
So the people in the industry are trying to figure out what is he really going for here?
And it's pretty clear.
mean, you you have to parse through everything he's saying, but he feels that the U.S.
has been something of a Paxi, letting so many imports into this, imported cars and trucks into the U.S.
Meanwhile, most other countries have
import tariffs on American vehicles that are significantly higher than what the US charges.
I mean, the US charges next to nothing, 2.5 % for passenger vehicles.
If it's a truck, like a pickup truck or a commercial truck, it's 25%.
Although Trump did not put that in.
That goes back to the Lyndon Baines Johnson administration when that went in.
But anyway, Trump says, hey, wait a minute.
I want to bring more jobs back to the US.
And he's...
definitely going to renegotiate the USMCA, you know, the free trade agreement, the free trade agreement, by the way, which he negotiated in this.
catch you off, but I guess for anyone listening, who's familiar with that was kind of what NAFTA 2.0 during his last administration.
Yeah, USMCA, US, Mexico, Canada, free trade agreement.
So Trump renegotiated NAFTA and now he's trashing the very pact that he negotiated.
what he wants is clear.
He wants to renegotiate.
It's up for review.
I think it's June or July, 2026.
And what he's saying, I believe is, I want these negotiations to start a whole lot faster.
And so he's pressuring the Canadians and the Mexicans.
And when he's done with that, we don't know when that's going to done, he's gonna turn his guns on the Europeans, the Japanese and the South Koreans.
I mean, it's pretty clear here.
And he's talking in terms of reciprocity.
And I kind of agree with him on that.
It's like, we're gonna charge you the same tariffs you charge us.
And so you can either lower your tariffs or we're gonna charge your tariffs.
And the net result of this, I think, will be some more production in the US, some more US jobs.
But look, what's going to happen is prices of vehicles are going to go up.
What happens when prices go up, sales go down.
What happens when sales go down, you start laying people off.
So I don't see a big net gain in production and jobs coming out of it.
And by the way,
And we're already seeing it happen.
The supplier industry especially is going crazy with robotics and automation because they don't want to pay, end up paying UAW wages.
And the cost of robots and automation is coming down so fast right now.
And remember these robots, they never get tired.
They never take a break.
They don't go on vacation.
They don't show up late for work.
They can work.
Two shifts back to back.
I mean, so the ROI on getting these robots, even though they're kind of expensive compared to a full blown UAW job, the ROI is like two years.
So anyway, that's in a nutshell what I think is going on with the industry now.
Well, and I think before, before John and Matt, I mean, before Loren and Matt hop and I know they're going to have all sorts of interesting takes on this.
But one thing I just want to add to that was, the auto line daily you had today about kind of BMW having a Mexican factory and how that plays into this.
They're like, there's certain specifics now of what vehicles can qualify from Mexico, but now there's, think you said like VW's plant does qualify.
BMW unfortunately doesn't make, can you just add a little bit of context for that for listeners to, cause that's really interesting that plays into all of this.
right.
So there's local content rules, I guess I would call it, that if you wanna bring vehicles in from Canada or Mexico, tariff free, 70 % of the aluminum and steel has to come from
North America.
75 % of the parts and components have to come from North America.
40 % of the labor,
has to be on average jobs that pay at least $16 an hour.
And there's another one that I'm missing there.
Oh yeah, the core components like engines and transmissions have to be made in North America.
But the penalty, if you don't meet any of those and you gotta meet all of them to not pay the tariff, you pay a 2.5 % tariff.
So BMW is figuring screw it, you know.
We'll just eat the tariff.
And if we build a whole lot more stuff in Mexico,
will save more than like paying the tariff is going to cost us.
So they are not compliant.
And again, this gets back to why Trump wants to raise the tariff.
He doesn't want it to be two and a half percent.
I don't know what the final number will be, but he's gonna force companies like BMW to become compliant.
John, I was just gonna add, I think it's interesting to look at the two different approaches of how sort of Biden was approaching sort of build cars in America through
incentives.
So offering loans to Kia and Hyundai and companies like that to build factories in the South and battery factories.
And so we saw
joint ventures between non-US Asian battery companies and US companies to open and build factories.
We saw the rules and requirements around the tax credits of requiring more and more of the minerals and stuff be from North America or free trade countries that we have agreements
with, cetera.
Like Biden's approach was, yes, we're going to require more things be made in America, but we're going to help you with that.
We're going to provide loans, grants, incentives.
You do this, we'll give you this, I encourage you and that type of thing.
Consumers will be rewarded if they buy those vehicles.
Whereas Trump, it's a real estate deal.
It's just all a negotiation, right?
It's just, you I'm going to offer you this.
What are you going to offer me back?
Right.
It's a sort of completely different style, but it feels like they're sort of the same goal though, right?
Which is, which is to have more cars built and assembled in America.
No, you're right, Loren.
There's one key difference though.
The Biden stuff was all about electric vehicles.
And the Trump administration and Donald J himself wants nothing to do with electric vehicles.
So you're right.
The Biden administration provided really good incentives to get the EV industry launched in the United States and not rely on China.
And that was what the bottom line is.
We did not want to be reliant on China.
And this need to not rely on China goes well beyond the auto industry.
It has a lot of national security implications, aerospace, space, military stuff and the like.
yeah, you would have thought maybe Trump would keep that stuff that Biden put there in place because I mean, it unleashed, don't know, tens of billions, if not more of foreign
investment in the US.
Yeah.
And by the way, and you guys know this better than I do, most of those battery plants are in red states, Republican states.
now having said, he's trashed the EV subsidies and expressed that he doesn't like EVs and the like, nothing has happened yet.
I mean, they have not been cut yet.
And so I see a couple of other things going on here.
Number one, dealers.
And dealers are overwhelmingly Republican.
And dealers have made it very clear, they're not enamored of EVs.
But as of right now, they have something like $7 billion worth of EVs sitting on their lots in inventory.
So they're telling the administration, don't pull the plug yet, we gotta sell these things.
So if and when the administration drops the $7,500 sales rebate.
it'll probably be phased in over many months to allow the dealers to clear their inventory.
Because, I mean, the NADA, the National Auto Dealers Association, in my humble opinion, is probably the most powerful lobbying group in Washington.
More powerful than the NRA, the National Rifle Association.
And that's because there's a dealership in every single community, all across the country.
They...
They sponsor the little league teams and the soccer teams.
They provide the convertibles for the Labor Day Parade.
They donate to the political campaigns of every politician in their district, state or county.
And so they're very powerful.
And so if they say, hey, Mr.
President, we love you dearly, but don't yank those just yet, he will pay attention to that.
Yeah, and I think the bigger impact since the tax credit is only available to whatever it is, it changes constantly like 13, 12, 15 EVs is the loss of the lease loophole, right?
Because the real thing, this is, Chase, probably a whole separate topic we might get into, but just the...
the growth and shift to people realizing that leasing an EVA is both they can get a better EV at a much lower monthly payment.
But also the EV is getting better every like 18 months.
I might as well lease do a three year lease and then get one that's got, you know, 50 more miles of range.
It can charge faster.
has better software, better, you know, like on and on and on.
And so I think
You know, we've seen a lot of people move, start to understand that and move to the leasing.
And then you get the loophole and get the full 7,500 credit built into your monthly payments.
So I think that's the bigger impact than the direct 7,500 loss if that goes away.
I think, I mean, all of this conversation, the thing that I think about is it's the amount of noise that is being created through all of this and the amount of, you know, then
analyzing of what's going on.
What is the game plan here?
And frankly, the I mean, where I've landed for, I mean, just personally is I'm tired of hearing about Trump.
I'm tired of hear about Musk.
I think that the
ramifications of what they're both doing and the impact, what will happen on a local level from a community perspective, then you go up to the states and, you county state and
everything else, it's going to be felt in a very real way.
And we're already seeing it and it's just going to continue to get worse.
like as to asking, what is his game plan?
I don't think there is a plan.
Most of what he does is for just pure attention or for, we're also seeing basically vengeance.
As it relates to like, what was happening when I was not in office?
I was being investigated by whom and who else?
And okay, well then we'll just take care of that.
And I think that, you know, I mean, all the things that will happen with the automotive sector, I mean, we're going to have to figure it out.
There's no way around that.
I think that if you take a step back and really look at it from a global perspective, I think that if you're a General Motors or if you're at Ford or any of the big 2.5 is you're
looking at it saying, well, we still compete globally.
We still do.
We have to.
And we have to maintain innovating because everybody else outside, mean, everybody on across the Atlantic and across the Pacific, they're all trying to figure out how they
maintain innovating as it relates to the automotive industry.
And we are basically throwing a stick in the spokes of progress related to what we've been trying to do with that domestically right now.
And part of what's wielding that is Musk and the things that he's doing.
I just, frankly, I...
It's just gonna get worse.
I don't want to try to figure out like, oh, like, what was he thinking?
He's not.
That's giving him way too much credit.
And he, you know, he'd rather have a photo op with his signature on a piece of paper saying, I made another erroneous opinion or another EO about like, this is going to change
now.
It's like not with Congress, you know, without them on board.
No, it won't.
And I'm at least happy to see the judiciary stepping in and finally putting a pause on the pauses they're making and saying, you can't do this.
And so that's, there's a glimmer of hope there, but what happens in install this?
We all podcast communities, industry, everybody spend exhausted amount of time talking about it and asking like, and that's part of the game plan is like, we're all so
distracted by all this.
And I just want to take a step back and say, well, brass tacks.
What is it?
Trump is a terrible diplomat.
He's a terrible deal maker.
He's trying to dismantle his own deal.
He made four or five years ago.
It's just like, I'm.
The obviousness of how bad it is to me is just, okay, let's just call it for what it is.
He's not good at this.
And the people that he's also bringing into help are not good at this.
And we're all going to suffer for it, industry and individuals alike.
And I guess where we go from there, to me, that's where we go from there is how do we talk about the solutions that's not analyzing what he was thinking?
I mean, that's just my two cents.
just, I'm.
I think that's a great call out, Matt, because I was really hoping that this conversation wouldn't be, I mean, obviously there's impacts of the decisions and what we're seeing in
the industry, but I completely agree with you that a lot of the takes are focused on like headline Trump, yada, yada, yada.
Like the actual takes and like substance of it are very low level.
and it really just seems to be like clicks ads and selling newspapers, whoever five people that still buy physical newspapers, but exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, it's,
And I think it's like a kind of self propelled doom loop as far as like people just tuning out more and more.
Yeah.
conversation.
You said clicks and sells, whatever.
and I, it's just, again, it is exhausting.
And the worst part about it is, is if you actually take some time to have conversations with people that again, the social media narrative and like that type of discourse never
helps, doesn't work.
I've had some inner, you know, some phone calls with friends who we clearly aren't on the same page about things, but we've had some conversations where it's like, okay, that's a,
there's a promise here.
that we're at least on the same page that we can all agree that this is not, no one voted for this.
Like no one voted for what's happening right now, but we can, I think for the most part agree about that.
But then it's the, do we go from here?
And you see these local town halls for, know, in, in red States where these GOP representatives are just getting shouted down when they make these just like talking point
remarks about, the things that are happening with Doge are really having a positive and these people just start yelling and booing.
And then they just.
these representatives just walk out?
It's like, okay, so at what point do we actually say, all right, we collectively agree this is not working.
And I mean, we're only seven weeks, eight weeks into this or not even.
And so.
I kind of agree with you, but what I will say that's two things there.
One is, mean, you live in Oregon, live in Oregon too.
I'm out the gorge now and that there is a huge difference between like four to six years ago when Trump was, it just seems so much more muted.
It's just like, okay, what, whatever we're starting to see like more people do.
And there's like protests here and there, but it's like nothing to the scale it was, but what you bring up is really interesting and we'll get to actually.
the important stuff, the cars and electric vehicles here a second.
But what's really interesting to what you're talking about with like some of these in-person like town hall protests is it does remind me a lot of kind like the tea party
movement on the like the right in 2012 where it's like people kind of disregarded.
It was quieter for a while.
Oh, let's see.
We might have lost you on there for a second, but then it kind of has now grown and shifted.
And I think it is a large response to the fact that like the actual Democratic Party is just like.
Enchambles and confused as what to do themselves.
Like their messaging has just been awful wherever you lie on the on the political spectrum I think they have just leaned into we'll see it's still early on.
Hopefully they figure something out Competition is good doesn't matter what the medium but what I what I'm really kind of interested about is like obviously we're talking about the
larger automotive Impacts and kind of what it means for trade, but my we'll see if John comes back for this but what I think is really interesting is
Everyone's talking about electric vehicles.
Everyone's talking about like how these impacts affect the automakers, but no one's really talking about what we're seeing is like, EV growth is still going, but the actual overall
auto market is shrinking.
And so I'm kind of curious on your guys' thoughts with what that actually means.
And there is kind of a point, like if that keeps growing and the rest of it keeps shrinking that
you can have to face the facts, especially if you want to keep some of these jobs that you have to put some investments and double down on electric vehicles.
Do want to pause there to see if we can get John back in?
once you I'm sure Loren and you've got some thoughts on that or at least maybe what you're seeing and hopefully we'll have John back here shortly.
Well, I think to the point that you made about it, is still naturally growing in the way that it's year over year, we're still seeing growth.
mean, Loren, you had a really insightful post today on LinkedIn about that year over year growth as it related to new models hitting the market.
And what was it that was existing growth as opposed to new growth?
And I thought that was a really good call out.
It still points to the fact that there's growth.
But as we maintain bringing new models to market and new options to market, I think it's helpful.
the damage that's been done and is being done daily still to the Tesla brand because of what is happening with Musk and his, know, what he's doing within the political realm is
very, very real.
And then it provides opportunity for other brands to step up and say, well, hey, can you know, we are, we also make electric cars.
And, and I saw that firsthand, the forlano show a few weeks ago when people that were, you know, interested in talking about electric cars, a lot of them, I mean, I literally dozens
of conversations with people saying, and again,
Portland is a, just like San Francisco where are Loren, it's a Tesla stronghold in the sense it's one of the cities that grew the quickest.
But also very, very liberal and politically correct markets, right?
Yeah.
And so a lot of those people that we talked to weren't just saying, I've had a Tesla for X amount of years and we just want to get rid of it.
So we're looking at what our options are.
And, and so that, I mean, those are very real things that are going to have, you know, very real impacts on the industry.
so to your point, Chase, about the, know whether it John that said about, you know, over $7 billion of inventory that's sitting on these dealer lots that are, it's like, we got to
move these things too.
how effective will they be at that?
Or are we just in another weird moment of the EV adoption cycle where we didn't see this coming, but now all of a sudden we're gonna see interest in non-Tesla EVs potentially
selling, but to existing EV drivers who just wanna get out of what they have.
So we're not exactly moving the market as much as we're just like, know, shuffling the cards.
So.
not 100 % convinced that that isn't just narrative.
because like, feel like some of, I think is that definitely a thing for sure.
But is that like what people kind of, I I think there's so many of these kind of going back to like what people print and what people talk about as narrative versus like factual
was like, blame up the election.
There was a lot of stuff like, I think Kamala Harris is going to win.
Come on.
And it was once again, not to make a blow.
It was kind of a blowout.
And I think.
just what I'm seeing already.
Like I feel like there was a huge and once again, this is very anecdotal and this is why I don't like it.
Um, but what is fascinating to me is like as a counterpoint, not that I necessarily agree with it.
New model wise going at shipping out.
I was just before this me, uh, before this, I was just like hopping on and looking at like a lot of the famous YouTubers who post all sorts of cars.
They're doing model Y reviews.
You go like a week ago or two weeks ago.
First thing would be all these things that anti-elite and all this stuff.
None of those were even in the comments this time.
So I'm like, I, totally, I guess what I'm trying to say is like, I totally agree with you.
It doesn't actually move the needle for EV sales.
And I do think that wherever you fall in the political spectrum, his, Elon and Tesla's kind of image, it's obviously shifted a bit, but I just don't think.
than a bit.
Yeah, yeah.
I once again, I think this is also like, I agree with it is a thing.
But I also think it is kind of the bubble effect because I talked to people I consistently hear and I'm now once again, I do not think it's a one for one, but I am seeing people who
are conserved who are buying some EVs and I'm like, what?
I and I and and once again, I don't think it's a one for one.
But it is and once again, there's something there's still a big gap.
Between all of this inventory sitting on dealership the electric vehicle sitting on dealerships and I do think that there has just been this Idea that well since Elon's gone
the right all these other EVs are just gonna start magically selling and I just I Yeah and I I'm not saying it is but I I just wanted to kind of jump in and just say like that seems
to be so much of the Commentary I've been hearing from that bubble
So.
right.
want to, and I want to, can I have a conversation with this panel?
Especially like what is it that's actually going to move that metal, whether it's Elon or not.
Cause I was talking to someone the other day who bought a ribbon, great cars.
Like, well, I bought it cause I didn't like, you know, it's like, did you, is that the only reason you must have bought for some other reason?
Is that literally, cause that's not a business model for them as a company.
And they're like, well, it was also cool.
Like, yeah, that's great.
You don't it's that optics level.
I, I always just am always trying to push back on like antidote versus the fact.
And I know I just use a lot of anecdotes, but this is my show.
But I am curious, I'm generally just curious on what you guys think of that and like trying to distill it further.
I don't think Elon being, you know, divisive is going to move a bunch of other brands EVs.
I don't think that's true.
I think that we're going to see some people like we saw at the ProLado show saying like, Hey, I'm just, I'm looking for options.
Cause I frankly just don't want to have this vehicle anymore.
I mean, that's happening.
I mean, we're, we're seeing a variety of talking points around people.
I mean, they're calling it things like swastika and things like that.
And, we're seeing vandalism.
I mean, the, Tesla showroom here in Portland was, was shot up yesterday morning.
And so that it happened in Salem, Oregon a few weeks ago where they had to it shut down for two weeks.
And the one comment I did hear from a friend of mine who will remain nameless though, who works at Tesla, he said, he's like, our foot traffic has completely died as it relates to
people coming in, looking at the vehicles.
He said, our foot traffic where we have, you know, showrooms in red States has gone up.
said, however, those people that are coming in saying they really think Elon's great for whatever reason they've they've concluded from their perspective.
if it's politically driven, he's like, they don't have the income to buy our cars.
He said, so they might have interest from a political or emotional or ideological perspective about what he's doing, but they're not, it's not going to help us move metal.
So who cares?
You know, it's actually destructive to our company.
do the $25,000 car?
Is that the?
We would not have been nice.
No, mean, by the way...
he was actually running the company and making decisions around that, right?
You know.
point.
I finally said to somebody the other asked me, like, what is he doing?
I said, he got bored with running Tesla.
He doesn't care anymore.
In his mind, he solved that thing and it's just doing its thing now.
that's a really good point.
And I was thinking about that this morning, not to get off topic because I want to come back to the Tesla owner kind of thing.
But yeah, mean, if we think about Elon, you know what, he helped start PayPal.
He solved like a financial payment thing.
Then he did, you know, Tesla, SpaceX, boring tunnel, like whatever it is, he's a starter, not a finisher.
Right?
Like he, he, he solves his, his, his mission in life is to be thought of as the smartest guy ever and to solve every problem known to man.
And so he just moves.
And so I solved the electric vehicle issue.
Like, so now he's bored with it.
Now he's solving government waste or
it is it is interesting because it's always like phrase now anytime it comes up about Tesla specifically, it's like autonomy.
And I think you can maybe say is he trying to hype the stock?
Whatever.
Sure.
But that seems to genuinely be it seems like he's way more interested in autonomous and robotics than he has anything in the actual car product.
Yeah.
is all these different things.
he needs autonomy.
He needs a whole bunch of people paying $8,800 or whatever he's charging for FSD, right?
And look what just happened in China.
BYD said, meh, let's make it free.
That's wild, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
try charging customers 8,000 bucks when a just as good a system is free.
Yep.
Chase, I want to come back to the kind of your previous point in Matt's comments around Tesla's.
you know, I don't have good data on this, but I've always wondered each year what percentage of Tesla's sales are to existing owners.
you know, we're on our third Tesla lease, right?
We got our first one in December of 2016 and it's going to be our last.
Right.
And, not, not just for political reasons is my wife and I are just tired of the windshield wipers not working, right.
Because they still can't get the software.
No, I don't.
Or when it's like a thunderstorm and the wipers go like this, you know, or don't come on.
Right.
And that we have to, to stop and go into the.
the TV screen in our car and trying to find the button that we pushed to open the glove box instead of reaching over and pressing a button.
Now, my wife and I, as you can tell by the wrinkles on my face, are not young kids and stuff.
yeah, so the politics is part of it.
But yeah, we're just not fans of like...
the experience and I think that's totally fair.
and stuff like that.
But my point is not to make it sort of personal, but yeah, I think one of Tesla's problems is just the significant percentage of existing owners that are just going to not buy
another Tesla or not lease another Tesla.
And I don't know if that's 10 % each year or 20 % or whatever it is, but it's a significant nut to crack right off the top.
John?
of attracting, you know, like somebody buying a Tesla versus a Lucid or a, you know, a Chevy or whatever it is, right.
And I think that's a big problem.
The second thing is, and I meant to look it up before I jumped on, but I didn't, but I did some analysis a few weeks ago.
And I think I determined that there's something like 40 BEV models that
in essence, compete with the Model Y.
They're in the $40,000 to $70,000 price range, and they're an SUV crossover, et cetera, or something like that.
Because if you look at all the models coming to market, they're in that typically mid-sized SUV crossover range.
And so if you're thinking of getting a Tesla Model Y, which is the most popular vehicle in the world,
A few years ago, you know, there was 10 legitimate competitors.
Now there's 30, 40 legitimate competitors.
And so I don't think the refresh is going to have much impact at all.
It might get 2 % of people, you know, to go for it, but it's still a Tesla model Y that has a few improvements and stuff.
I don't think it's going to move the needle.
think there are too many other.
Options and negative factors going on so
Yeah, I agree.
those are good points.
now that we have John back, I don't know if you, I'm pretty sure this was an auto line daily, like a week ago that there was still a poll that Tesla's did have like still the,
was, I want to say it was like then GM had the still the highest brand loyalty for resale.
I don't know if you remember that John, or I thought that was like one of the things that was from a recent thing you guys covered.
what we recently reported on vis-a-vis General Motors is it scored spectacularly well on JD Power's vehicle dependability study.
Now remember, this is a study that JD Powers does after three years of ownership.
like Buick was second to Lexus and Chevrolet, GMC and Cadillac scored better than Porsche and Mercedes and BMW and...
everybody sort of looked at it wow, Tesla was way down the list, by the way.
so, going back to what you were just saying, Loren, Tesla heretofore has had the highest loyalty in the business.
And in fact, like one or two years ago, the Y, the Model Y, scored unbelievable numbers, like 70 % loyalty, over 70%, which is unheard of in the industry.
But I agree with you guys.
I think...
the Model Y refresh is not going to be enough to put it back to be in number one again.
Now, having said that, in Outline Daily today, we reported that there's a media source in China saying Tesla got 200,000 pre-orders for the refresh, the Juniper model.
Now, we'll see if that makes a difference.
Maybe in China it will, but you guys have seen the sales numbers coming out of Europe, coming out of Australia.
Yeah.
50, 60 % down.
And again, and when people say, it's because of the Model Y refresh and people weren't terribly excited about it or, they had to retool some stuff.
like, I'm sorry, I have eyes and ears.
If when you have a toxic CEO, then it impacts that is intertwined with your brand.
That impacts people's perception of what they're willing to put their money toward.
I mean, it's not 100 % just that, but...
want this to be the whole conversation today, but I'm going to throw something past everyone.
Coincidentally, Tesla isn't the first car brand around today that's had a very controversial founder.
How does Tesla move forward?
Does he move?
That's one of a few.
think John's kind of cracking a laugh.
I know he can think of probably a couple of names.
but what I'm, I'm curious on your thoughts is like, does he just become like chairman of the board or something like that?
Does he have to sell all his shares or what, what, what realistically do you think that step looks forward?
I mean, and I think you all kind of said it, he's the only thing that he seems really interested with Tesla right now at the moment is autonomy.
If they do actually start launching full self-driving, like they've talked about in some of these cities into this year and next, then it kind of.
He's kind of achieved all the steps.
I mean, other than the optimist robot thing, but that's a whole nother story, but it seems like he's achieved a lot of the things that he wants to do.
And yeah.
where the board's got to step up.
And any other board at any other publicly traded company would have said, hey Jack, you're out of here.
You can't do all this stuff that's destroying the shareholder value.
We have a fiduciary duty to do something here.
Well, what's the board doing?
They're dumping their stock.
They're trying to cash out as fast as they can.
Or at least we know the chairperson, the chair board, or the board chair.
saw Kimball and some of the other ones have been selling as well.
I believe I saw, yeah.
this is you do not have an independent board in the case of Tesla.
And shareholders should be the ones that are screaming bloody murder about this, because he's wiped out just in the last two months or the last month.
What?
200, 300 billion dollars of value.
mean, no other company would stand for this.
But Elon's got, you know, the board in his pocket.
Yeah, you made them all rich.
yeah, John.
I think, I think, I don't think the board is going to do anything.
That's clear.
think what's going to be interesting to see is if some of the major institutional investors start, start pulling out, right?
I forget.
Loren, but they're still mesmerized too.
It's hard to bet against Elon and Tesla.
It's hard to do it because anybody who's done it in the past got their clocks cleaned.
And there's still this hope, some of the investors have said, they're down on their knees praying that the robo taxi thing really happens and proves to be brilliant, that FSD truly
is autonomous and that the optimist robots start building cars.
and then it goes back to over a trillion dollars.
So they're gonna keep their powder dry for the moment.
But I gotta tell ya, if the Q1 sales look as bad as it sounds like they're gonna be, and maybe it's gotta go to the end of Q2 to really verify it, then I think you'll see the
institutional investors screaming at the board, gotta do something.
Yeah, John, that was, that was the point I wanted to make earlier is that I think Q2 is going to be the one that really tells us what's going on because I think, because I think
there's, there's, there's a lot of people like every day that goes by, you know, Musk is, is pissing off more and more people that don't like his politics and what, what he's
doing.
Right.
And so, people don't just, you know, it's not like running out to the store and buying milk.
Right?
Like car is like, when is my, my lease up?
When does my, when are my kids going to college and I have to, you know, buy a new car?
what, like there's a lot of other factors that determine the timing of when you buy it.
And so I think we're, could see a delay.
If you will, of, really start to seeing people say, Nope, I'm not getting another Tesla or I'm not getting a Tesla starting in the next couple of months, as things just get worse
and worse and worse from their perspective.
So.
Q1 is probably going to be fairly ugly, but Q2 could be even worse.
Now I will say, I literally just looked it up.
Tesla stock is still up 46 % from one year ago today, even with the slide back and GM's is only up 18%.
So take that data with it, what you will, it is, and I think the only thing I would add to that is I agree with the thoughts on the institutional investors, but the big thing is it
is like the key retail meme stock and
Good or bad.
I think a lot of that was originally because of their mission compared to others that people were investing in it.
And now it's kind of become a bit of a kind of like a Bitcoin pump stock and all that stuff.
But the other interesting thing, because I was talking with someone about this the other day, is that this would make you're totally right, John, like any other board of the
automotive company would have jumped in and done something.
But with Tesla, I mean, they are kind of the
Whether you want to, mean, they're valued as one, whether you want to look at them as a tech stock or not, that's a whole nother idea, but they have the setup of a tech company
and follow that kind of legendary Steve jobs.
And this is kind of what we've seen with all the tech companies since then, where like with Zuckerberg yet meta that they have so much of their own ownership of the company and
kind of who they choose for the board to prevent being pushed out and good or bad.
I mean, I think that really is what.
I don't really see how that would change unless he wants to step down.
I think it would be really hard for even some of the institutional ones just because they seem so set with that vision.
Not saying that it can't happen, but it is just such a fascinating, unique position that they're in.
think the only thing that's going to change this is basically consumers where they're shopping and shareholders and individual shareholders saying, we're done.
I don't see the board doing what would be traditionally done.
Institutional investors to the argument of like, it's going to take some more time for them to see real pain through Q2.
I agree with that because again, they're not going to make a 90-day assessment on this.
I don't, short of some very
like, you know, come to Jesus type moments from Musk where he's like, okay, yeah, I'm okay.
I got it wrong here a bit.
Sorry, everybody.
And last time I checked, he doesn't do that.
It just like Donald Trump doesn't do that.
So, I mean, I when the damage like this is done to this scale, you don't just turn it around and come back.
I mean, this was this was a legitimate turning point for this company.
And we're like where it can and where it can go.
And I don't think optimists and autonomy and FSD is going to save what's happening right now.
There's too much toxicity around it.
And at the end of the day, humans have to be buying in on products and services and brands.
And there's now a ton of people that made the foundation of Tesla's cult following what it has been.
There's a lot of those people hitting the eject button.
Now, does that mean that are those gaps can be filled by people that are in red states that are really excited about what Elon's up to from a political perspective?
We've already heard, I mean, I've heard from people that are working at Tesla saying they can't fill the gap.
So I just, I mean, by the way, I think I'm to go back and just rewind on one of our last conversations.
And I am going to stick to the fact that I just don't think the Cybertruck is going to be around in three years.
And I did say, okay, maybe five, but gosh, here's $6,000 off and free supercharging for life.
Please take these things off our hands.
Hmm.
I mean, I'm just.
think you had, it was Michael Murphy, The guy on recently, I haven't had a chance to watch that.
I apologize.
But he had a fascinating survey, right?
That showed that, what was it?
I might get this wrong, but the Tesla brand is now more popular with people that drive gas cars than people that drive EVs.
Yeah, gas trucks.
talked to them too, didn't you?
I think you guys had a similar conversation.
Murphy.
He's great to talk to you.
But that was the point he made is that MAGA loves Musk, but they don't love EVs.
Yeah.
And they don't buy them, you know, that at that level, right?
mean, Republicans do, right?
I live in a very upscale concern.
I call it the orange county of the North market here in the, in in the East Bay, my little, little town and stuff.
Right.
And, you know, there's, there's, you know, gazillion Teslas.
pull up to stoplight and every car is a Tesla.
Right.
and so conservatives do buy Teslas, but not at the number and volume across the U S that, that those on the left side of the spectrum do.
And so it isn't, you know, it isn't a one for one thing to use your, your term, chase, but you know, the other, the other thing, and then I think you'll come back to this that I
think is fascinating.
We just talk about like, what is Tesla?
Remember when Tesla was going to be like this energy company?
Right?
That the sales of power walls and storage and batteries and everything like that was going to outsell the automotive revenue.
He doesn't even talk about solar and batteries anymore.
It wasn't even his idea.
was JB Straubel's idea.
And JB had to make a skunkworks team in Tesla to even build out that product line and then show it to when they were done.
now again, in Trump and Musk are very similar in that way in the sense that they just have some kind of a tunnel vision sometimes on what they want to think and talk about.
They'll take full credit all the time if something goes right, you know, but I just, don't see how, I mean,
Again, I think he just boarded the company and, Laurie, you bring up a good point, things that were supposed to be these mainstay elements of the business, all of a sudden it's
like, wait, we never even hear about it.
And I wish that...
haven't heard much about the 20 million units in sales in 2030 recently.
Has anybody noticed that?
Remember that?
Yeah, that's probably not gonna be achieved.
that Mexican plant, too?
Yeah, those renderings were, they were, they were good.
I will say, mean, their Powerwall growth and that has been actually pretty decent, but I agree with you.
He doesn't really cover it.
and I think, I mean, we could easily, this could be the whole, episode, just kind of talking about all these different dynamics, but let's kind of shift, I guess, to, there's
anything else you guys want to talk about around that, but I guess kind of stay on the topic of Tesla a bit is around their supercharging network and team.
I think one of really fascinating things that, I guess speaking some of the protests and all that stuff going around with that was there was a supercharger that was, vandalized.
was on fire in Littleton, Massachusetts.
And within 48 hours, you would never have known.
And I mean, so many of the people that I know that are far from a must cheerleaders quite the opposite.
They just like you that that's the gold standard.
Like you just can't.
do better than that.
And that, mean, that even puts like some, gas, locations and providers to shame if a gas pump is down and being able to get that back and running.
But I mean, looking at the kind of state of things where EV charging is going and obviously Loren, this is kind of your demeanor of expertise around Nevi and that stuff.
But I'm kind of curious on what your thoughts and what you're saying.
Cause obviously Nevi has been a bit of a, a thing, kind of pushing the industry forward as we've talked about on this channel.
But we're also just seeing so much more momentum from a lot of the different players in the space.
And we'd just love to kind of hear your thoughts on where this is going and what you're seeing.
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's obviously a lot of buzz and, and, know, media coverage and stuff and consternation industry about the, the Nevi pause, as we call, call it in the
industry.
But, and I think Matt, were referencing this, there was a, a court order yesterday that is looking like that it's basically overruling the, the Trump pause, right?
Across everything.
Right.
so, you know, still I've, it's like, I don't know, 80 pages and I've only had the chance to read part of it.
But from what I can tell, it looks like, that, that Trump and in our case with, with Neve, FHWA cannot stop anything.
Right.
Now they can, they can pause the redoing of the rules, which is separate from congressional approval and stuff.
But, what.
What we're seeing though is just mass confusion and consternation.
In fact, I just was drafted a survey that's going out to a number of the state DOTs.
And so I've started to see some of the responses already, but we're interested to learn what the states are ultimately going to do because what we're seeing is that the states
are just totally confused and totally
responding differently.
We've seen a red state, blue state divide that the blue states are basically saying, we're not stopping what we're doing, right?
They can't, we're moving forward.
These things are going to continue.
We're still working on our RFPs.
We're not going to announce new award winners, but we're continuing our process.
And the red states are going, whoa, we're not going to do anything.
We're told to stop, right?
And, sort of a few in between, but the net effect chase is that
Um, what we're seeing is, that companies that were sort of very dependent on Nevi, shall I say, right?
That that was sort of a key part of their strategy where there were large companies or small companies are nervous and hurting potentially, right?
And, um, and so they're, they're starting to pivot on looking for other grants and incentives.
So utility incentives, state incentives, and center, in other words,
For those companies, and it's actually just a really small number that were very focused and dependent on Nevi.
They're just going, okay, we've got to expand the horizon.
can't bet on Nevi.
But really, most of the companies, you look at the IONAs, you look at the Mercedes-Benz, the Walmarts, the BP pulses, most of the companies that are now have entered the industry.
They have billions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars of capital that they're planning to build out charging network.
Many of them have publicly stated goals of opening 5,000, 10,000 charging ports by the end of this decade.
Mevi was never...
important part of their plan, right?
So the reality is, and I think you saw it, I think both of you saw my post this morning, you and Chase, you and Matt, around that like, I'm looking at more than 16,000 fast
charging ports being opened this year, right?
11,000 of those being non-Tesla, right?
and so, you know, despite any pauses with Nevi, like the industry knows that we need to build out.
Yeah.
The industry knows we need to build out charging infrastructure in order to sell more EVs.
Companies have bought into it.
They've already, they've already, you know, carved out billions of dollars.
And so they're moving forward and incentives and grants are still part of how the industry works, but it's just going to shift more to.
like utility incentives, state incentives, things like that.
Yeah.
Now, John, I remember last time we had this panel, I put you on the spot and asked what Nevi stood for.
Do know what it stands for?
I'm to make it up again.
Yeah.
And in your defense, I know I should know this.
I usually have to Google it like once a week because I can always get the eye confused.
say National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure.
Is that it?
Really?
All right.
I'm patting myself on the back for everybody who's just listening to this.
And we lost you there for a little bit John, but now that we do have you back what you kind of came back into the middle of in some extent was like you were you'd mentioned
earlier about the seven billion vehicle seven billion in vehicles on dealership lots and I know we've kind of pivoted to obviously the charging infrastructure, but being in Detroit,
I mean with so many of the automakers there I am kind of curious like
I know that was a big shift for a lot of the automakers to say, Hey, we're moving to the North American charging standard from CCS.
This EV charging thing is figured.
And that wasn't been a hundred percent, but I'm kind of curious.
Do you, if you build it, will they come now that we have the charger infrastructure more and more now that some of these vehicles are coming to market with the, North American
charging standard is kind of the preferred plug type in the vehicle.
Do you think that that.
moves the needle in any measurable way for actually people to start getting any of these and kind of exploring and actually charging on them?
Or where do you see the gaps as far as that kind of perception with maybe some of the automakers?
look, let me start off by saying this way.
Imagine if Tesla had never built the supercharging system.
I mean, that alone tells you absolutely you need to have this.
What's one of the number one complaints of people about EVs?
Well, they're expensive and they don't know how far they can go, but they all say, I don't know where I can plug in.
And so the more they see, oh, there's a station, there's a station, and there's cars plugged in there, they start to get comfortable with the idea that
Hey, I can go out here and travel with my EV.
Doesn't just have to be around the neighborhood.
So yeah, I think building out the infrastructure, I still think going with the NACS system, it's better.
I mean, come on.
I mean, I'm not the first to say it, but it's almost as if the government should just give all the money to Tesla and say, build it out for us, because they got the best system.
It's the most reliable.
you know, it's software defined.
They can do software updates for this thing.
I don't know is that anybody else has got that.
So in my book, to get more people into EVs, you got to continue to build out the infrastructure.
And we know, mean, all the studies show there's a big chunk, a big cohort of car buyers out there that says, you know, when I'm comfortable, I'm buying, but they got to see those
chargers out there to be comfortable.
Bye.
So...
Yeah, now go ahead man.
I always think back to the UC Davis study from like five years ago in California when they asked people if they were comfortable with buying an EV and what percentage said yes or no
based on the infrastructure that existed.
And then two or three years passed and they doubled the amount of charging ports in California.
And they did the exact same study again.
And they asked people, are you comfortable with buying an EV now?
And the amount of people that said no doubled.
And I thought, okay.
Like it's yes, we need to have more infrastructure.
do, but the whole just build it for build it sake doesn't translate to the, the car buying journey as to how people understand that.
And seeing it as one thing, but having it reinforced through the research process, the buying process.
And then when you're into ownership and having there be an actual narrative around that, I mean, I will, I will go to my grave one day being the guy that said.
We never explained to people that you could use a different fuel other than gasoline in a way that made sense to the public.
We forced people to figure it out too much.
yes, I mean, stations like IANA and like what they're building out, which have awnings and bathrooms.
it's really, I mean, very well thought out for placement as opposed to it's on a curb at a Walmart because that's the place we could find the power.
And it's like, yeah, we're doing a much better job of how we're designing where the stations should go for humans.
But that's not enough.
It's a great step, but it's not enough.
Matt, would add that, go ahead, Loren.
I was just going to say, and Matt, and I think I've shared this on a previous show, but another UC Davis study that came out last year was fascinating, John, in that it, it
basically said is that for people that aren't interested in EVs, the actual seeing or not seeing EV charging stations had no impact on because they weren't looking for them.
Right.
So.
But the people who owned and drove EVs who were considering an EV, seeing or not seeing charging stations actually did matter, right?
So the point being is that if there's a brand new, exciting, I own a charging station down the street and you're driving a Ram pickup and you have no intent to buy, you won't even
see it.
It'll be invisible.
Yeah.
you're driving a Prius and you're thinking your next car is going to be a BEV, you're like, oh, yeah, charging station.
That's where I could charge.
It's just human nature.
And so I think.
of it is what we've needed, not just the chargers being out in the wild, but the fact that it's a destination in the sense that like when you are driving from maybe a few blocks
away, you see an awning with a big logo and you go, what's that logo mean?
And then as you go by, you see people connected and charging.
So there's an element about, yeah, the visibility messaging and visibility of it plays a huge role into how they will then inevitably be looking for it, like you're describing.
yeah.
think Matt, to that point on the visibility and something that doesn't probably get enough discussion is, know, most of these charging stations are not charging stations, right?
They're two, four, eight chargers out in the parking lot at a shopping mall, right?
If you're driving an EV, you're looking for them, you're aware of it, you go, there's the supercharger, there's the new Electify America station or whatever it is.
But what we don't have is on every four corners, like we have in many cities of America, there's a McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Hardee's or whatever it is, or there's a
Chevron, an Exxon on every four corners.
It's either fast food or it's gas stations.
Once we start seeing
you know, a BP and I own a, a, you know, circle K and a, you know, whatever other Electify America like on the four corners and it's big signage and awnings and, you know, lounges
and people are going there for lots of things, right?
Like that's going to probably start to move the needle.
Yeah, how about just putting big signage where those chargers are that says EV charging?
Because a lot of people will drive by these things, and if no one's charging, they don't know what it is.
They think it's some sort of transformer or something.
But I would go back and challenge that UC study to this degree.
Pull all those chargers out, like I said.
Just rip them out of the ground and see what happens to EV sales.
Like we're doing to the GSA chargers that have already been paid for and used.
Yeah.
I have not read the UC study, but I've heard about it and people are arguing there's no correlation between building out the infrastructure and EV sales.
But I would also say if you go back a few years ago, there was just a lack of knowledge of anything EV.
And what has filled the gap in the last few years?
It's become entirely politicized.
You have all these attacks.
They catch fire, they burn down garages.
You don't want to park it in your garage.
It takes tens of thousands of gallons to put this out.
And boy, when one catches fire, it's national news.
There's all kinds of attacks on EVs.
So if a few years ago, you didn't think much about it and you thought, yeah, should there be more charges?
And now there's more charges.
And what do you think about EVs?
I don't think they're the right thing because people have been bombarded.
with negative EV information.
Yeah.
Well, this is where it
you know, Matt and I could talk about this topic for hours, but, you know, in the EV industry, right, what's the first thing that people say about EV charging?
you're going to do 80%, 85, 90, 95 % of your charging at home.
Right.
And the only time you use, you know, fast chargers is the once or twice you go out on a road trip, unless you're somebody that, you know, goes out on road trips every day.
Right.
And people who...
don't have an EV and are thinking about one, they think about, need public fast charging like a gas station, right?
Cause I'm going to go to it all the time.
Where am I going to charge?
Like people that don't own EVs don't think in the terms that the EV owners do, which is if they do live in a single family home, they charged like we charged 98 % of the time at
home, right?
well, that's the conditioning factor that we're fighting over a century of using liquid fuel that is on every street corner that's highly visible.
mean, that's the huge part of that fight is all about messaging and explaining how the experience works.
And then the aspect of, your point, again, if you have a single family home, yeah, you don't fill up away from home unless it is a momentous thing for like a road trip or
something random.
And that is another part of the conditioning factor.
And the lifestyle piece is
hugely important.
Because if you if you have a single family home, you again, your entire world has changed for how you fill up, you know, and and that and this is where I mean, like, like the Frank
Luntz's of the world, you know, who's a great communicator, and he helped create the narrative around, let's not call it, you know, climate change is called global warming,
let's call it this, like, he led the GOP narrative around how to basically just say, we're gonna spin
Yeah, we're going to spin this so hard that it's going to make it so people just have a doubt in all of it.
But because he knew how to create a communication narrative around that and people that are the very good communicators need to be leveraged in this topic.
And, and he's even gone and spoken to people, you know, that from the democratic party, because, know, of things he's now experienced with climate change and it kind of opened
his eyes around like, no, like, but I can help you change your narrative.
And I think one of the biggest things that's still in the way of the EV effort is that there's a lot of folks that are well intended, but they are not good communicators.
And that is going to maintain being a big issue.
mildly.
Yeah.
No, I, and I, I, I completely agree with that.
I think what's really interesting too is like for the longest time, I go back a decade.
The thing that people used to say about electric vehicles is, it's just about butts and seats.
So when sits in electric vehicle, they'll start to finally get and understand it.
And I think.
Go back a few years ago, people are like, Tesla's everywhere.
Or they, just, EVs were becoming more and more of a thing.
And people kind of got away from that.
And they're like, we just have to advertise to it.
Or we have to figure out.
the EV charging part of it.
But consistently, I would say within this past year, again, I was reminded that the best way for people to actually understand and buy an EV is when someone either they know
directly, let's them sit in their electric vehicle and drive around or B it's also some guy in their corner or on their like cul-de-sac somewhere that buys an electric vehicle.
like, well, if Joe can do it, Joe's an idiot.
So if he can do an EV, maybe I can do one.
Or just like you start seeing it in the real world as like a practical kind of thing.
Um, and it's just consistently the best understanding for people to change that mind shift.
And I, I don't know if that also kind of goes into the conversation we might be wanting to have around the challenges of the dealerships with it, but, what were you going to add
there, Loren?
I was just going to say what you're referring to is what's called the neighborhood effect.
There's a lot of sort of research around this, like with solar, right?
Where they discovered that once one person in the neighborhood gets solar, then everybody starts talking to them.
I mean, it's sort of weird and obvious, right?
But yeah, if a neighborhood never gets the first solar, it doesn't go solar.
But once somebody does, it like, and that's what's happened on our neighborhood.
I think we were the first or second.
second, I think in our neighborhood to get it now, like half the neighborhood has solar, right?
But the other thing I was going mention, I had a question yesterday from a national media reporter.
He's working on the Nevi story and he was looking for the latest numbers on how many chargers there are and stuff.
And he said something like, and there's 4 million households have chargers at home.
And I responded to him and so like, you know,
That's probably not the best way to think about it because every home has an electrical outlet and you can charge your car with a just a 110 outlet, a 220 outlet.
A lot of homes have washer and dryers in them and you can use the mobile connector that comes with your car and plug in.
you know, and so again, it's that idea that, you have to go out and spend a thousand dollars on an electrician and a level two charger in order to fuel your car at home when
no.
The single biggest advantage of electric vehicles for those people that live in a single family home is to just pull into the garage and plug in, just like your smartphone, right?
Whole separate issue of infrastructure for people that live in apartments and urban settings and things like that.
That's a problem that we have to solve.
Sorry, go ahead.
I know I think this gets to an interesting thing that is more on the product side.
But we got another electric vehicle a few months ago.
And we don't really have a great level two charger for it.
So I've literally just been plugging the wall using it as a level one charger.
And it has not been an issue, which even kind of surprised me.
And it's like, and
you don't drive 300 miles every day?
I do pretty regularly too.
That's the crazy part.
Loren.
Yeah.
I mean, between my wife and I, at least do a couple, few hundred mile trips per week.
And even then it really hasn't been an issue, which is so crazy to think about.
And I still to this day am fascinated by the fact that I can even do that.
I think it is so crazy that the same outlet I put my electric toothbrush in can actually do my car.
You're brushing your teeth in the garage?
this is a weird thing to admit right now.
I thought you were going to say you're brushing your teeth.
Yeah.
No, but all this topic makes me think of like how many single family homes are there in the US?
mean, I mean, honestly, like 100, 100 million, hundreds of tens of millions.
Yeah.
is 120 million in that ballpark.
but that's, that's, that's the feedback that one journalist you were talking to Loren is to say, actually there's 120 million fill up.
Yeah.
For, for, your, your, for your lowest power charging, there's 120 million of those and cars are parked at them every day.
You know I mean?
Like somehow we have to get more creative about how we express the opportunity and.
But this gets to even the discussion, I mean, we have this conversation all the time in the industry of, but then someone says, well, how long does it take me to charge at home?
And then if someone says, oh, it takes me 10 seconds, I want to just rip the rest of my hair out and say, don't say that because it takes 10 seconds to connect to a gas nozzle
too.
Their concern isn't the act of connecting to the fuel, it's the, how long does it take to get me back on the road?
That's what they're asking.
So again, the communication aspect of this is so fundamental in how we can do a better job.
Yeah.
And to that point, Matt, right.
You also then hear the people's argument of, well, I'm concerned because if my little Billy falls down and gets hurt on his bicycle and I have to rush him to the emergency
room, am I going to have enough range left in my vehicle to do that?
Right.
And, you know, and there's sort of two responses to that.
One is probably, you know, at most 10 to 15 miles.
unless you're out in the country and then you're not driving an EV anyway, right?
To get to the hospital and be, know, most of us don't run our EV down to like five miles of range every night, right?
Like, you know, you have that buffer.
that's that that's conditioning thing of I always drive it down to E and then I go back to F and I go to E and I go to F.
I mean, the amount of times I've had to remind friends of mine, even family members that have bought EVs that they will say things to me like, oh, yeah, had to just for some
reason to drive out to the outskirts of town and only had like 28%.
I'm like, have a garage and your car's in it every night.
Why?
And they go, well, yeah, but I don't plug in unless I got it.
Again, it's that is a mental switch of
You can always be connected to your fueling source.
It can slowly get you back to where you want all the time.
And again, this is a consumer psychology thing that requires better messaging without a doubt.
and chase to brush his teeth in his garage.
I just have this picture in my mind of you like, you're just like going into the garage and I'm plugging the toothbrush, plugging the car in and then just standing staring at
your car and brushing your teeth.
a fuse the other day.
speaking of messaging, I mean, to your point, again, this is something that we could riff on for hours, Matt, but I think, you know, we've not done a good job of messaging around
the value of EVs in this industry, right?
Like, you know, for the first 10 years, it was to save the planet, right?
Like climate change.
then we, you know, somebody figured out.
not everybody believes in that.
Maybe that's not the right way to message the value of these.
Maybe we'll talk about this on a future show, Chase, but I provided some data to some researchers up in University of Toronto around the EV cells, and they did research on the
impact on air quality.
And anyway, that'll be coming out in the next couple of weeks and stuff.
what they found was that it had for those markets that have a high growth of EVs that dramatically improve the air quality.
it's like, you know, I've always wondered, like, why we don't talk about, like, reducing air pollution, like things that you can actually visually see, like,
that's actually, that's a great call out.
Cause I was going to say that the biggest, the best thing about smog is it makes great sunsets.
Otherwise it is pretty horrible.
it, it, and that, I think that's, that's inherently like the issue when people talk about global warming is like, sure.
can do all these research papers and I'll be the first like, yeah, there's really good data for it.
But I like visually for someone to see it's such a hard concept.
Yeah.
Visual aids always help explain things better.
to like anyone that's been LA or any major city you like it's something you can actually see and point to.
Yeah.
mean, look at the photos of LA from like, you know, the, the seventies versus today.
again, guys, who values that really?
And I was actually just going to say that to Matt, cause even our conversation with Mike Murphy the other day kind of goes back to this.
Like there is people don't really buy on that factor.
is kind of sometimes a nice feel good followup, but I really do think the biggest thing that seems to really align with people, especially once they've owned it is kind of like
the independence and having your own fueling station at home.
And then obviously like lower overall.
operational costs to.
Well, and to that point you just made about revisiting the feeling at home part and that's like having that autonomy is we are creating a class system within the fill up.
mean, that's never been a thing with gas.
It's like you could drive a Bentley and live in the Hills and you could have, you know, old, you know, an old Honda Civic that barely runs and you'll pull up at the same gas
station and be like, hi.
And it's, it unifies the fact that like, yep, we're all the same still.
But when it comes to electricity and how and where you can fill up, no, it's separate now.
It's very different.
If you want an EV but you rent in street park, you are going to go find your public chargers and that is your new world.
Whereas as we've discussed is, yeah, but if I got a garage, I don't even think about that unless I'm like, I got to go to Seattle from Portland.
Okay, I got to go find a fill up.
I mean, it is that consumer psychology piece has to be communicated far more effectively than what we've been doing.
Well, I realized we're coming up on 75 minutes.
And so I want to be respectful of your guys' time too.
And I know we could easily keep talking for another 75 minutes, but one thing that we've kind of mentioned about, haven't touched on that I think would be kind of a good place to
end is we've talked about messaging, but also then there's the buying and purchasing experience through the dealerships.
And I recently had another experience kind of just talking with someone about
when they were trying to buy an EV and just the education around that.
then John, I think it's been really fascinating watching online and how you guys are kind of covering the feud between Scout Motors, who's trying to relaunch their electric line
and the pushback from the dealerships.
mean, what, I mean, why don't you just kind of let's start there.
Why don't you kind of share what you're seeing, John, and for those who might not be familiar, just give them an overview of what's going on.
sure thing.
So Scout is an old brand.
Volkswagen got its mitts on it when it bought Navistar, the big truck maker.
Navistar in its earlier history was International Harvester.
They're the ones who started Scout.
So when Volkswagen bought Navistar, got the Scout brand and some very astute product planners inside of Volkswagen went, Yowza.
You know, we could go after Jeep, we could go after Rivian, you we got a brand here that resonates.
so they started this as a standalone company and they want to sell direct because everybody in the industry pretty much understands that selling through the franchise
dealership network adds a couple of thousand bucks cost to a car.
And Tesla paved the way of doing it direct.
In the United States, we have very strict dealer franchise laws and the laws are written state by state.
There's no nationwide one.
Every one of the 50 states has its own dealer franchise law and they're written pretty much in a way that says, if you are a manufacturer and you have used franchise dealers,
you have to use them for the rest of eternity.
And if you're a startup like Tesla,
or Rivian or Scout or Lucid or anyone.
It's been pretty vague, but Tesla plowed the way and said, look, we're a brand new company.
We've never used these dealerships before.
We don't have to.
Well, Tesla's still fighting the war with one arm tied behind its back.
Every state pretty much, I shouldn't say every, but most states limit Tesla's ability in some way, or form to sell cars.
So anyway, here comes Scout.
It says, we're gonna do direct and Volkswagen dealers have said, the hell you are, Volkswagen owns Scout.
It has used dealers.
So by the franchise laws, you have to do it, which I find supremely ironic because here are the dealers who say, we want nothing to do with electric cars.
Nobody wants them, but they're fighting tooth and nail to have this brand that's all, well, I guess it's going to be EREV2, but we didn't know that earlier.
So now the NADA, the National Auto Dealers Association is getting involved.
And what they've essentially told Volkswagen is, we're gonna fight tooth and nail on this, every single state.
So I wondered why Tesla hadn't done this.
And I know we've talked about this before.
Take it to the circuit courts, take it to the Supreme Court.
Don't waste your time trying to fight 50 states of legal battles.
Get this thing appealed.
My own personal opinion, I'm not a lawyer.
I don't know the legality of all this, but I learned back in the high school that...
restraint of interstate trade is illegal.
And to tell a company that is building cars that, no, no, no, no, you can only sell your cars through franchise dealers.
I mean, that's like telling the public you can only buy hamburgers through franchisees like McDonald's and Burger King and things like that.
So Volkswagen and Scout say they're gonna fight this thing.
They've clearly
are going to fight it.
My question is, are they gonna fight it in every one of the 50 states?
as I said earlier, I believe the NADA is the most powerful lobby in Washington.
They got an uphill fight against, and by the way, Honda's in the mix now too, right?
Because it's working with Sony on this new brand called Afila, and they wanna go direct, and the Honda dealers are going, wait a minute, no you're not.
So this is going to build to ahead and it's gonna be fascinating to see how it works out.
one thing's for sure, the lawyers are gonna make a boatload of money.
Yeah.
And John, it's interesting because, yeah, if it does go to the Supreme Court.
Which way would they go on this?
Because on one hand, don't like to, the conservative side doesn't like to inhibit people and companies from doing things.
That's the mantra.
On the other hand, who funds their campaigns?
Auto dealers.
that's in Congress.
So it'll be interesting to see what the Supreme Court does.
And what role does Elon Musk play in this?
What effect is he going to have?
I have a very interesting anecdotal experience to share with this actually, because in the state of Washington where I live now, it is illegal for like Rivian and other electric
vehicle companies to sell here direct.
And or even have like showrooms where they can show price and all that stuff.
And about a decade ago, Tesla did get a carve out.
And back then they're just like, this little electric car.
And nothing's going to happen.
And even since then, they've tried to kind of tamper it down a little bit.
And I actually had the opportunity to go to the beautiful Olympia, Washington, the state's capital and meet with some legislators about changing this.
And I think what's so funny was this became a conversation about being pro-choice.
And that usually means something else.
And coincidentally, the Republicans that I met with were actually the most open to it.
And the Democrats actually kind of pushed back.
lot of concerns around jobs for those who are in their district.
So there's this kind of really, it doesn't always follow the political lines that I think most people expect.
And what I found like really fascinating not to tie it back to this, usually the biggest thing, wasn't even the jobs, it wasn't the education, it wasn't even the very aggressive
clean energy goals that the state of Washington has that allow more electric vehicles would help them get to.
It was, well, you know, I mean, Tesla has a carve out and this would cause competition to Tesla.
And every time whichever Democratic representative or person I was talking to, like, they kind of pop, like I could hurt Elon Musk.
And it just like, and that to me was so disappointing as a citizen.
It's like, I don't care about that.
I don't care about your speaker, like getting a little sound bite.
It's just like, I, as a consumer would like the choice and two, like there's environmental and also job.
Relations to it and but it goes back to what you're saying like the North American dealership association quite a few other Groups that have been paid were there to
represent and the first thing they said well We always hire the little league baseball things, but both the Republican Represents I met were like really honest about it, but
they're like the same thing like I don't see why this wouldn't be a thing When we're the only state on west coast that doesn't do this and the dealerships have continued to grow
so that is
I don't know if that, I think it just goes to what you're talking about.
Like I think it could go to the Supreme court and it wouldn't surprise me if it did pass.
But also is just how these things have been going.
just doesn't, it isn't as linear or the outcomes don't really tie to the expectations that I'm seeing just because of how crazy the current political environment is just across the
board.
yeah, yeah, and go ahead.
was just going to ask John a question and you know, cause Vinfast sort of was going to initially go direct, right?
And then they started working with dealers, but I've not heard much on how that's going.
I mean, obviously they're very low volume, are you up on what's going on with them?
I don't know what the status of that is, know, Fisker ran into the same thing.
Remember, Fisker was going to sell direct and then they realized, man, there's a lot of dealers out there and they could really help us move the metal.
So, you know, maybe it's cheaper to go direct, but we got to sell cars.
so there's always going to be a balance.
I mean, there's an advantage to dealerships.
There really is.
There's disadvantages, don't get me wrong, but you you got to go someplace to pick the car up.
And you got to take it someplace to be serviced.
so I don't know if we end up with a hybrid system somewhere down the road, but right now I'm telling you, the dealers are in the driver's seat.
They've got all the legal power.
It's, mean, no other way to put it.
mean, they, they, they hold the purse strings in, in the local communities.
And as a collective, they are, I totally agree with your assessment that they're the strongest lobbying group without a doubt.
And I think that, so I mean, anecdotally, I did a training this week with, a showroom that has one of our charge weight beacons in it.
And which is our kiosk that explains how EV charging works for any EV.
And, and they've got new and used vehicles on the lot.
And the team that was there that we did this again, was a, it was a web training and, went through all the features and everything else and how it worked.
And some of these people have been working there for years.
And it was very interesting just how, again, in that just single moment, that one showroom of at the end of a 30 minute phone call, having them all say, this was really informative.
We, none of us knew anything about this.
we, didn't know that that was a thing where there was a tool that showed how you could use an adapter with just that car and everything else.
And it was just, again,
tiny sliver window into the 10, mean, there's over what 15,000 franchise new, new franchise dealers.
And there's, mean, thousands of used car dealerships around the US that was just a little window into they don't know what they don't know.
And part of the fight I think we see is that again, I love the comment of like, you know, John, to your point, like, well, they're saying they don't want to be because they can't
sell them, but they don't know how to sell them.
But then they're fighting tooth and nail to say, no, no, you got to sell your V's through us.
So it's
They understand that it is part of their future, but they don't have a good answer as to how to basically be a player in this space right now that shows they have, you know,
basically the ability to say, but no, no, we know what we're doing too.
And again, I think that it's because of, again, back to the conditioning thing, whether it's people buying the cars and people selling them, we are still decoding what we've
known for a long time.
And to try to sell both of those side by side, the gas car experience, the electric car experience.
That is an education and that is something that needs to be managed.
And right now we've seen efforts that have been made even through the NADA.
And I mean, my team has worked with the team at the NADA before.
The scale of which we have to do it is massive and there has to be a lot of funding for it.
And maybe that could have happened with the previous administration, but something tells me that won't happen with the current administration.
Just a guess.
I think the NADA thing unto itself is its own very large challenge.
But I will say one of the things I've heard from a few different people, and it was even brought up again with the dealership I was talking to about a month ago, where as far as
that education component, they found by far the most effective way is to let their salespeople have one for like 72 hours.
Let them take the EV or like 72 hours to have it for like a long weekend and just
drive it around and use it as like their personal car.
And they found that so many of their salespeople not only kind of got it, but they actually were just actively selling it because they just thought it was so cool.
They didn't have to go to the gas station, all this other stuff.
Now that I don't know if that's going to solve the problem, but I think that is definitely a big part of kind of that education piece to at least the, all the strings and stuff kind
of being pulled and going on the background between the dealership owners and like the dealership associations.
That's a whole nother challenge.
But I think just having the interaction between the person buying a car and the person either selling or educating the car, knowing what they're talking about, actually being
passionate about it makes such a night and day difference.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
Right now, is there another industry that we know that has had these types of evolutions where the traditional salespeople have had to try to sell this evolution of the product
and it's obvious they don't know how to talk about it.
That's not a pathway to success.
And this is precisely why Tesla years ago said, we're not going to try to get dealers to sell what we're building because they're not going to be able to explain it for us.
That was a big part of what their motivation was.
And so, yeah, I think, John, I think your comment of on one hand, saying people don't want them.
We don't know how to sell them.
This is a struggle.
And on the other hand, they're saying, you got to sell them through us, though.
It's the acknowledgement of we recognize this is something we have to we have to be a part of.
We're just still at the very early stages of how this entire market is going to grow and have an impact.
So even though we've all been doing it for years and decades.
Yeah.
And Matt, and we, think we've talked about this on, on past shows.
It's, know, it's a bit of a chicken and the egg.
mean, remember years ago, I was part of a small group of four reporters that got to go in a private room with, with Mark Royce, the, number two guy at, at GM.
And we were talking to him a lot about things and he was pretty candid.
And he said, you know, EVs are a hobby for deal for our dealers, right?
Like if, if they have one EV model.
out of 20 models or whatever.
It's like, yeah, it's like, whatever, they're not gonna get.
But when we get to the point where they're kind of are now right where there's like, what is it five, five Chevrolet EVs or something, right?
Like, and, a couple of them are selling well, the Equinox and the Blazer and stuff like that.
And then know, the Cadillac Lyric is selling well and stuff.
And now there's what three, you know, electric Cadillacs now out on the market or if they're not, they will be in the next
couple of days or weeks or whatever it is.
you know, then it's like, shit, if we've got like multiple models and they're selling well and people are coming in asking for maybe we actually have to start knowing what
regenerative braking is because we didn't know it last year.
Like I've literally had that experience right where my wife and I took a test drive from Mercedes a couple years ago and
The sales guy, like he's, I don't think, I don't think the car has regenerative braking.
Well, in fairness, like I bought an Audi in 2003 and I was at the Audi showroom and I was telling the guy what I wanted and I said, and I said, what do you have in the lot?
And I wanted an A4 and I wanted a 1.8T because I wanted a turboed car because I wanted to maybe upgrade the turbo one day and everything else.
And I said, well, he said, well, no, we got an A4 right there.
I said, yeah, but that's a 3.0.
I said, I want the 1.8T because it's turboed.
He goes, oh man, all Audis are turboed.
And I went.
It's not, you know, so this, yeah.
thing.
It's such an interesting time too, that the consumer is usually, in a lot of cases, better informed than sometimes the people selling these vehicles, unfortunately, especially with
electric vehicles.
Yeah.
some of these folks, they're just, again, this is again, the human element is so much of what we're talking about of, you know, people being passionate, wanting to be informed,
just having basic information, tools that they can leverage to do their jobs better.
And kind of full circle on our entire conversation is just, but man, right now there's so much noise.
We're all, we're all tired.
I mean, I don't know how many times you hang out with your friends and family and it's like, how you doing?
I'm just tired, man.
And so when it gets to that point where we're all kind of like overloaded, that's part of the challenge too, is we have to be just even slightly motivated to be engaged, to have
these discussions and learn something new.
that's how we move forward in this industry is going to require those of us who've been doing it for long time to maintain some level of energy around, we can keep going.
Even though right now it's not a clean pathway of how we can solve all these problems, but we just got to keep going.
Yeah, all out.
that's about as good of a point to wrap it on with some optimism there in the end.
John, one, one final question.
Wasn't the reason that Scout Motors even went out of business anyway, was due to bad dealership sales or something like that?
Or do you remember the history of that?
you know, they were part of Navistar.
What's Navistar sell?
Class seven and eight semi trucks, you know?
So they're not in exactly the urban centers where most buyers are.
No, that's a good point.
But
the first car wreck I was ever in, I got hit by an international scout.
And boy, that thing was like a tank.
Listen, I actually test drove one.
That's how long I've been in the business.
I think it was either 1979 or 1980.
And I think they went out of business in 80 or 81.
But I lived just outside Detroit, place called Farmington Hills.
And Farmington Hills actually had a dealer that had them.
I called up Scout and arranged to do a test drive for a week.
Had a lot of fun with it.
This was, by the way, should have
When I was in high school, my first job was washing US post office trucks for the city of Farmington.
And it had a number of scouts, right hand steering with a three on the floor.
And as a 16 year old, I was in heaven getting to drive these things.
So John, I'm not quite this old, but I think my first vehicle was a 1954 International Harvester pickup, which I inherited from my grandfather.
So.
Those are also great.
mean, yeah, I gotta be honest.
I'm actually pretty excited with at least some of the products that scouts announced.
We'll see how, if it's even possible or how easy they are to buy.
But, with that, I think we're we've crossed the 90 minute mark.
So I'm going to just cut it off now.
John, Loren Matt, thank you so much for coming on again.
We'll have to do this again soon.
this has just always been a fun conversation and can't wait to do the next one.
And we're guaranteed to have something to talk about, I'm sure.
job.
All right, thanks.
That's a wrap on today's Grid Connections panel.
Huge thanks again to John McElroy, Loren McDonald, and Matt Teske for all of their insights on the evolving electric vehicle landscape, from shifting policies and dealership
battles to Tesla's brand shakeup and the state of EV charging infrastructure.
If you found this discussion valuable, don't keep it to yourself.
Share this episode with at least one person who'd enjoy it too.
And while you're at it, leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.
It helps more people discover Grid Connections and keeps the conversation going.
Want to stay ahead of the latest electric vehicle trends?
Sign up for our brand new Grid Connections newsletter using the link in today's show notes.
Until next week, this is the Grid Connections podcast signing off.