Good morning Grid Connections listeners.
We've got a great panel for you today.
We're joined again by Loren McDonald, Chief Analyst at Paren Matt Teske, the founder of Chargeway, and John McElroy, the mastermind behind the Autoline Network.
Together we tackle the big questions.
How will recent political shifts shape the EV landscape?
What role will EV infrastructure play in this evolution?
And what does it all mean for automakers, consumers, and global competition?
From the challenges of EV adoption and charging economics to the latest on tariffs and automaker strategies.
This discussion highlights the tectonic shifts happening in the automotive industry.
Whether you're an EV enthusiast, a policy wonk, or just curious about the road ahead, this episode is packed with insights you can't miss.
If you find our conversation as electrifying as we do, share this episode with at least one person who would enjoy it as well.
And don't forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.
It helps us power up grid connections and bring you more episodes like this.
With that, enjoy.
John, Loren and Matt, thank you all three of you for joining today.
real briefly for anyone, if somehow they're not familiar with you guys work,
each do a quick intro and John, I'll let you kick it off first.
Yeah, no, sure thing.
I own a small media company called Blue Sky Productions.
We put out a bunch of coverage of the global automotive industry under the Auto Line brand.
And, you know, I got into this business because I'm a hardcore car enthusiast.
And now I tell everybody I'm a hardcore automotive industry enthusiast.
Matt, how about you next?
That was perfect, John.
Yeah, my name is Matt Teske.
I'm the founder and CEO of Chargeway.
It is a mobile app and software company for simplifying EV charging.
And so if you're listening, download the Chargeway mobile app to iOS and Android and choose whatever EV you want.
Makes it super easy.
You can plan road trips, find charging and enjoy the app.
our goal is to make EV charging simple.
And I've been an automotive enthusiast and in the industry for a long time as well.
yeah, so I share John's excitement and sense about where things are going.
Thanks, Matt.
was even just using Chargeway yesterday myself.
with that, Loren, how about you give us a little update?
I know you were just recently on the podcast anyways, but just in case no one somehow missed it.
Yeah.
Thanks again for having me on with this esteemed group, but Loren McDonald, Chief Analyst with Paren.
So some big news since the four of us were last together, my company, EV Adoption, was acquired by Paren.
Back in September, I joined Paren as Chief Analyst and basically we track all things charging.
So we have the biggest, deepest, most comprehensive database about everything from where the chargers are to utilization, reliability.
And I also, from my past, track a lot of things going on with EV sales and stuff.
we're bringing like VIO data together with the charging data to help companies understand where this market is going.
Thank you, gents.
guess with that, let's kick it off into just maybe looking at maybe real quickly, if everyone wants to just give their thoughts on where they see here, what their takeaways
have been already for the automotive industry since the election last week.
Do you have a little sound clip of taps?
Because I think that would be perfect to play right now.
Sadly, that might be correct.
yeah.
Are you done?
Are you suggesting you thinking it's over?
Like, like
no, I wouldn't go that far, Loren.
But look, this is gonna hurt and it's gonna hurt badly.
And it's gonna hurt everybody that's selling electric cars in the United States right now.
And, know, aside from Tesla, they're all losing big money, billions on it.
And this is going to make a very, very difficult job even more difficult.
You know, to pull out those consumer subsidies, that was a big allure for people.
You know, the biggest complaint about EVs really is they're so expensive.
that $7,500 in most cases went a long way to helping that.
And taking that away is really going to hurt sales immediately.
And we know this because we saw it happen in Germany already.
We saw it happen in China.
Yeah, I have a bit of a different take, John.
mean, clearly we've, yeah, yeah, no, it's more in like the level of impact, right?
I mean, clearly, you know, it's not a hundred percent, but it's probably what?
99.5 % certain that the EV tax credit is going to be going away.
And it's clearly going to affect
all of the automakers that make and sell EVs and consumers interested in them.
It's gonna hurt, I believe as Elon Musk predicted a long time ago when he said we should get rid of the tax credit, it's gonna hurt the other automakers more than Tesla because
Tesla's brand kind of...
adds a level of sort of value in it that so people are sort of, think out of the gate willing to pay more for a BEV from Tesla.
Cause that's all they make, right?
Where if I go to Chevrolet dealer and I'm looking at the Equinox and the Blazers and there's like, there's like a ICE version and there's a EV version and one costs a lot
more.
You know, my mental process is, is, I need some help.
In equalizing the cost between the two, because after all, they're just cars that are going to get me to and from, you know, work and stuff.
And so I think that tax credit, especially the loss of it, especially for like the, maybe the under 40,000 vehicles, like the Equinox where $7,500 is a significant percentage of
the cost.
Right.
I don't think it's going to have much impact on a $79,000 Rivian.
Right.
Or something like that.
Cause people that.
that want to buy a Rivian or, or, you know, fill in the blank, want it anyway.
Right.
know, income-wise, they probably don't even qualify for it.
Right, right.
And then of course, you we could spend whole hour just talking about the leasing loophole that sort of gets around all of this.
But I guess where I was going, John, it kind of gets at that, that I did some analysis a few years ago using IRS data around who actually filed for the tax credit back in the
days.
And as the people on the right spectrum of...
the political spectrum, conservatives basically were generally right, that most of the people taking advantage of it were higher income.
And so I think the biggest impact going forward is as we get into the people in Iowa and middle America who are looking at the $40,000 or whatever it costs, Equinox and
you know, they're not making $300,000 a year because they're not Silicon Valley software engineers, right?
That might mean the difference between pulling the trigger on that Equinox or not, right?
Because of kind of their situation and that comparison.
So that's a long way of saying that I do think the loss is going to have an impact, but I don't think it's going to be like...
We're going to lose hundreds of thousands of purchases annually from this.
think it's going to be much smaller number than that.
And with that, I'll shut up.
Matt, anything you want to add to that?
Well, I mean, there's no simple answer to any of this.
mean, honestly.
My gut reaction to all of the news, mean, election aside, just what it means beyond just even the EV market is there is, it's just be very messy moving forward for a lot of
reasons.
I think that the tax credit, as it was originally designed and as it was augmented and changed in the last couple of years, it's still lent to confusion around how people were
understanding the value.
I mean, there's the number value, but then how to actually apply it, whether you were talking to someone in a showroom or that you were talking to a consumer.
So.
I think to Loren's point, you know, it's the there's going to be damage done.
But again, if you really look at who was understanding how to take best advantage of that, it was skewed to a certain demographic even even till recently.
And so I don't at the end of the day, subsidies have been in the automotive sector in a variety of formats for a very long time.
And EVs have needed something to get some traction with certain people to say, that does sound attractive.
So if we're taking that away and we're just going to have
what arguably is supposed to look like a level playing field of like, no vehicle subsidies.
We'll just sell cars for car's sake.
Well, then it gets back to where the other subsidies that people may not actively think about, but that they understand through their wallet, which is on fuel.
And that's still there.
so, you know, I think that we've we've we've been throwing money at a problem, which is consumer psychology of why they would value buying the EV in the first place.
And I think that it was with the best of intentions, but it was never well designed.
And I think if it does go away, it is going to then put more pressure on the industry of doing a better job of explaining the value proposition of EVs in general, which frankly,
that's got to fucking happen.
Yeah.
Like that has to happen anyway.
So, you know, that's my first reaction to this, but we'll have to see how that continues to play as it relates to is, is the industry that has made EVs possible and the people on
the policy side who have made EVs possible in the last 10, 15, 20 years.
Are they gonna understand how to make that pivot or are they gonna get entrenched into the typical talking points, the typical strategies around what they've been doing, which won't
work.
So that to me is very telling about what I think could happen, but we will now see how it plays out in the next 12, 18, 24 months.
Yeah, Chase, I wanted to follow up on two things that Matt said.
One is that I was looking at the vehicles yesterday that qualify for the tax credit.
first of all, it's not very many, right?
So when we talk about the tax credit going away, it's not like all 100 BEVs and plug-in hybrids qualify for it, right?
It's a handful.
Well, for purchase, because remember, for leasing, just about anybody could get it.
yeah, for, and I'm, playing by the strict rules, not the lease end run.
Right.
But, but I mean, to Matt's point, right.
Like how many people even knew, you know, how many, how many car shoppers that aren't like who don't live this, like we do know that, there's a, there's an end run.
can do around this, right?
I can get the lucid air.
you know, I can get a tax credit for the lucid air because I can lease it.
Right?
That type of thing.
But my point was going to be if you just look at the straight non-leasing loophole number of models available, first of all, it's not a lot.
And there's only a handful that are sort of where I think the tax credit is really of significant value to the potential buyer.
And that's like the Nissan Leaf, which is going away, and the Chevy.
at least two now.
Equinox and the VW ID4.
Those are the ones that qualify.
mean, the Hondas, I think it's a little bit higher level and I think people that want that car probably wanted it anyway.
So I'm not sure.
I think there's certain EVs that are sort of people buy them for budget reasons.
They're buying it for a commuter car or whatever it is.
And the tax credit just makes it a...
Like an easy decision, right?
And I think that's cars like the ID4 and the Equinox and things like that.
Then I do, it would be like the Cadillac Lyric, right?
Or, or, or the Rivian R1, you know, T or S or something like that.
Yeah, I think there's two things or is there one other thing you're going to say there, Loren?
just the other thing, is, which is I made a list of potential things to talk about today and Matt hit hit on one of them, which is why should I buy an EV?
Right.
And I think Matt made a really stellar point is, is while there's, we're talking about sort of the negative impacts of this, the, the, potential positive impact is maybe the
auto industry has to do a better job of actually figuring out.
why people should buy an EV and learn how to make them more compelling and how to market and sell them better instead of relying on the financial aspect.
I think one thing to add to that is totally the dealership experience.
Like in California and maybe in Portland and Seattle, the dealers know how to make those, tax credits work out if they're not doing the least thing.
I mean, I even went to a Ford dealership in Roseburg and they hated dealing with the tax credit for the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Mach-E because it's like, well, this one
qualifies for half of it.
This qualifies for us.
We don't even care.
We're just going to go push the regular F-150 because that sells.
It's a more rural area for sure.
But I do think that, that just adds another layer that makes the sales from the dealership side so much more difficult.
And the, the end of the day, there's no incentive for most of these salespeople to try and move it.
It's like, they want to remove as much friction to the sale.
And pretty quickly, if they can't, if there isn't some of that's frugal enough or a tax accountant that's interested or coming in for that 37 50 that only the F one 50 lightning
qualified for.
They're probably not going to care.
at the end of the day, and I think John, you've actually covered this pretty well on auto line Ford and so many of these four dealerships are just reducing the price on them
anyway, without any of these like actual discounts that that seems to be more effective in getting these sales moving.
And I'm curious if either you are really anyone on here knows, but kind of around the topic of leases, I do feel like that has been a big thing.
Only anecdotally, I mean, I know some who have, who have done it for like Tesla and I've known some people have done it for Nissan Leafs, but it's like, it was less than a hundred
bucks a month or something so cheap.
It was worth doing, but it seems anecdotally, one of the automakers with their EVs I've heard of being leased like almost exclusively is Kia and Hyundai.
And I'm just curious if anyone on this conversation has any data around any brands that have like the highest lease rates for their EVs, or if that's kind of something that's
hard to know or track.
And to me, that seems like the red flag of who's going to see the 180 in EV sales if they're moving a lot of these VLEs.
Yeah, I've seen some numbers out there.
I haven't seen it broken down by company.
I don't know if that data is publicly available, but the lease rate for Hyundai's and Kia's EVs is very high.
And in fact, it's so high, it's dragged the entire lease rate for the entire industry up, even including non-EVs.
Yeah, like Chase, like, like John, I know, I think I can't remember if it was Cox or, or Experian or whoever it was, but somebody in the last couple of months published some
really solid data around lease rates.
Yeah.
And, and the, the, percentage of cars and EVs leased is just like gone up significantly.
and yeah, there were a couple of brands again, I, unfortunately, I can't remember which ones they were.
Where I think it was like 80 % or something like that.
It was, was, it was, it was really high.
Yeah.
mean, we've, we're on our third Tesla lease, right?
Like we've, you know, cause I, I personally believe, you know, leasing and EV is the better way to go because.
You know, they're, they're like, they're like an Apple iPhone used to be where, you know, they got really better every like couple of years, right?
Now they get sort of incrementally better, but I think,
you know, that, that with, you know, all the hardware improvements, the battery improvements, you know, everything about EVs, know, the amount of range you get at the
fasting, the, how fast you can charge the car.
All those things are getting better.
Like, you know, every 18 months or something.
And so that's why I always tell people like least, because then you're just going to get a, you know, a better car in a couple of years.
Well, that's the most approachable buying experience that most consumers can understand, which is well, and then frankly, dealers and OEMs have been leveraging that approach,
which is, OK, we can give you a bang and lease deal on this with very little down or something maybe significantly down, but your monthly payment will be approachable.
And if it is a second car or if it's your first step into trying a plug-in car or an EV, it's a way to just test the waters, you know, and that's
Consumers can grasp that.
So if it's cost effective without having to worry about explaining a credit of some nature, but it's like, my monthly payment is approachable and I've got some dollars I can
throw the down payment and it gives me a chance to try this thing out.
Then it just comes out of the daft, the demographic of who that person is.
If it's a homeowner, then they can take immediate advantage of what the experience will be.
And then they'll have three years of seeing how it works.
And I think that that's them.
There's that the most approachable narrative around how they can get exposed to the experience.
is something that I think we're seeing through the leasing process.
And the OEMs that have leveraged that the best, Hyundai and Kia, I think they've done a good job of that.
You then look at Ford just dropping prices is one thing, but then Ford, I forget exactly what the exact terminology was for the program, but like, we're just going to pay for your
home charging now, like just buy the damn car.
That's another example of let's just remove the barrier of entry down to, we're just going to do all the thinking for you and get you into the vehicle so that we can get
birthday cars off of our dealer lots and just get them into your hands to experience them.
And we'll give you as much benefit of that, you know, that we know you're going to need to just have a turnkey experience.
And I think we're seeing OEMs step in a little bit harder.
The Ford example being that you're the charging aspect of it where they tried to educate dealers around, okay, here's what we need you thinking and saying and doing.
And they just, think finally cut to the chase of as one OEM example saying, we're not even going to bother trying to explain this anymore.
We're just tell the damn customer that we're just going to pay for
And it's going to be super great.
And so I think that we're going to see more of that.
And then again, all the vehicles that are coming off lease that have been leased, that are about to flood the market from a use perspective, that's also going to change a lot of the
conversation around people that can say, I'd like to get an EV, but $45,000 is still pretty rich for my blood.
But all of a sudden we're going to have some pretty compelling EVs, IONIQ 5s, EV 6s, and others that have been leased for a couple of years, hit in the market, used for high 20s,
maybe.
That is going to change more, but that least goes out of question.
Now we're talking buying, getting that loan.
What's that percentage?
That's a whole new quagmire, but we're just, still so far at the beginning.
We're at the beginning of so much of this to see what happens as the market responds.
But as we've been discussing about the financial aspects of it, I still think this comes back to the fact that we have to have discussions around how do we make the conversation
truly compelling to everyday people without having to talk about just the pure finance of we're just going to save you thousands as this is why this will work for you.
And that's going to start really bubbling to the surface more and more.
I think one of the questions I'm kind of curious about too is how these changes, I know this is something Loren, you talk a lot about, then actually John, like P have any revs as
we're kind of go in this conversation on what that's going to be like moving forward in the product positioning of those and like the actual adoption.
and I think there there's a few other things I want to talk about, but I think just given the theme we're discussing in the moment, we might as well kind of talk about it anyways,
like
What you were talking about earlier, Loren, like why buy an EV?
Like how do you position this?
And I think you're going to have the same challenges with any version of electrification right now with these products.
Except for regular hybrids, right?
Like I'm going to preach the Teske philosophy, Which is consumers don't have to change anything about their behavior with a hybrid, right?
But you get instead of 21 miles per gallon, you get 35 miles per gallon.
Right.
The only change in your behavior is you go to the gas station fewer times, right.
But you don't have to install for, you know, $1,500 total in a level two charger at home.
You don't have to learn how to plug in and download apps.
and unfortunately you don't have to like learn how to use Matt's Chargeway app.
Right.
but, you know,
It was just a joke, right?
you that, yeah, you don't like need all these other things.
You don't have to learn all these new behaviors, right?
So, yeah, I mean, that was sort of my, you know, my take on Trump and the Trump and Musk win is that hybrids win, right?
I think the net of all of this is...
that we're going to see a lot more emphasis from the automakers on regular hybrids and consumers going, I get that.
Well, doesn't challenge, yeah, TearPoint doesn't challenge anybody.
I mean, the sales process is you want to save money on gas, buy that thing.
Anything else got to change?
Nope.
You'll just save some money.
But TearPoint, it's like the experience doesn't at all change.
So.
And Toyota is making the decision even easier because they're increasingly only making hybrid versions of their models.
So, you know, they're taking that decision away in many cases.
It's just the election and everything that happened, think, was it's really an indictment on how we communicate as an industry, but also just in general within our society is, you
what is it people understand?
And it's, you got to keep it simple and you can try to say that that was done on, from both sides of the perspective.
But in reality, you know, it's just, you know, you go all the way back and, you know, to when I was basically born.
You know, and you got the Reagan approach to like, just be happy.
Like, you know, Carter made you try to think, don't worry about that.
That's bad.
Just be happy.
And if you're happy, well, hey, you'll be great.
You know, and that's all we're seeing still.
And it doesn't challenge the public to engage on understanding anything other than, well, we'll just keep consuming.
And corporations love that.
Cause they're like, cool, then we'll keep selling your product that you can easily buy and be happy about.
that's path of least resistance.
Just look at it in every, every angle, whether it's buying a product or voting for a president and
That's the pity of it is that we still as the EV industry in total is just like, we do have, but we have to actually educate people.
We actually have to help them understand what all of this means.
And again, to your point, Loren, mean, this is what I've, the drum I've been beating for the better part of a decade now, which is it's not about education.
It's about approachability and it's about helping them see themselves in the experience.
And that includes the B2B side, the industry side, that includes the consumer side of saying, I understand what you're.
presenting to me as an option.
And it's, I, yeah, to me, the election was a, a, just a ringing of a bell to say, yeah, if you want people to buy in, don't make them think that hard.
And that's where hybrids as your point is like, yeah, no thing in there.
So how do we then change that conversations or like P have irrev and like acronyms about G, can we please just fucking stop?
Like it doesn't sell.
doesn't make sense.
Stop it.
is if someone is staring at a gigantic piece of metal with four doors and four wheels and a steering wheel, and you say, this runs on one fuel that is liquid, that one runs on two
fuels, this is a liquid and this is electricity, and that one runs on one fuel, which is electricity, that's where you start.
Cause that's the user experience change.
And I'm going to say that I think until I'm dead and I don't like that.
But I think that this selection cycle just proved
We have to understand and appreciate how the vast majority of people are thinking.
And that's not just to say that like 80 million people voted for Trump and 70 plus million people voted for Harris.
Even within that swath of people that voted for Harris, that wasn't that they were thinking about that they understood certain things.
That was more of an ideological position saying I didn't really want to vote for Trump for whatever reason.
And we still have to understand that most people are not, to your point, Loren, it's like people are in the weeds of this like we are every day.
And we just have this sometimes as an industry, we just kind of keep bouncing around inside of our bubble rehashing the problem and we have to get outside of that bubble.
And if we don't, we're in trouble.
Matt, I've got some interesting data on that that gets to Chase's question earlier on.
I live in Michigan, very much a swing state.
EVs played a massive part of this election.
So get some of these stats here.
Nationwide, $36 million was spent on political advertising that mentioned EVs.
$36 million nationwide.
$30 million of that was spent in Michigan.
Wow.
Yeah, I know.
89 % of that advertising was anti-EV.
50 % of Michigan voters said the candidate's position on EVs absolutely influenced who they voted for.
And 60 % of them said that EVs would be bad for Michigan.
But here's where it gets really interesting.
Kamala Harris never fought back against any of the anti-EV stuff.
In she barely even mentioned EVs in her campaign.
Here in Michigan, we had an extremely tight race for Senate.
There was a guy named Mike Rogers, very anti-EV, running against a woman called Alyssa Slotkin, who's been very nuanced, pro-EV, but for the message in Michigan was, look.
We need to do these and I want these jobs in Michigan.
So that was her position, but she fought back against it.
Harris got clobbered in Michigan.
Alyssa Slotkin eeked out a very narrow win.
And I'm not saying it's all because of that, but she fought back against the anti-EV stuff.
it absolutely had an influence in the outcome.
Yeah.
Well, and it's interesting about how all of the irony of Musk being just effectively co-president now, whatever they're calling him, because he's now living in Mar-a-Lago for
crying out loud.
you know, it's it's such an interesting again, if again, people's brains that are breaking inside of the industry, that if you rewind five years or especially 10 years and if you
said, yeah, yeah, the twenty twenty four election like Elon is going to be all in for Trump, you'd be like, what?
Like how?
think 10 years ago, would be like, wait, Trump's running.
Wait, he's running again?
He was president?
Right.
Yeah.
Well, it's just, it's so striking around again, the politicization, you know, politicization around EVs in general.
John, to everything you just described, the lack of understanding of how to reframe some of that messaging from the democratic side of like, yeah, in this state, this is so
fundamental.
And we just didn't didn't even address it, didn't even approach it.
And I think that that battle that's happening inside of our own internal politics here domestically.
Then you look outside of the United States and who's just rubbing their hands together watching the chaos.
China and others are like, you guys keep having this problem internally, but we're going to keep moving ahead.
that's just the pity of it is we're so good at fighting with each other.
We're not recognizing what's happening outside of that that's going to directly impact industry and our lives for decades to come.
It's very short-sighted in that respect.
But again, the simple messaging wins.
Don't make them think.
Make them, you know, get them wrapped up in something that makes them feel like, you heard me and I will respond positively to that.
And it's a pity that the Harris campaign didn't see what was happening on a congressional level for the messaging to then address that in any of the campaigning that they were
doing in Michigan.
Yeah.
I think to kind of, mean, I think she had that issue with a lot of things like what she was experiencing with like fracking and Pennsylvania, just like not really giving people a
clear answer one way or the other, which I don't think helped her in EVs.
And that, that number is wild 30 million of 36 million in one state.
So I, curious then like, what are your, I mean, what, what are kind of the vibes, the, feelings in Michigan right now that
That is kind of where the dice have landed and like people, the UAW kind of thoughts on this.
Cause it seemed like the leadership was kind of trying to kind of push, but didn't want to go too hard behind Kamala Harris.
And then it just seemed like there was also a lot of mixed messaging or just kind of players in the UAW and also kind of the big three, almost just kind of staying on the
side, sidelines and just kind of seeing where things were.
least that was kind of, think the perception to me.
And I'm curious if.
You think that's accurate, John?
Yeah, well, look, you know, the UAW has not been very keen on EVs.
They put out a white paper in 2019 saying that just in Michigan and Ohio alone, 20,000 jobs were at risk, union jobs.
So, you know, if EVs slow down or go away, I don't think the union cares one way or the other.
For the automakers, this is...
Taking, you know, so, you know, of course we got GM and Ford and Stellantis here.
Toyota's got a huge engineering campus here.
Nissan's got a pretty good size, one so does Hyundai and Kia.
Definitely not counting Toyota because it's been preaching its hybrid message forever, right?
But the others have got their hair on fire because they've all invested heavily, heavily, heavily into making EVs.
and there wasn't billions on it.
Now they just think, my God, it's going to be even worse.
So, and then politically, just depends, are you a Republican or a Democrat?
And if you're a Republican, you're glad that this thing's going down in flames, even though they're turning down billions of investment from Goshen, you know, to build a
battery plant here, billions for Ford to work with CATL to build a battery plant here, half a billion for GM to convert one of its assembly plants to make EVs.
You you would think with the right messaging, was be like, hey, free money.
This is going to create jobs.
This is going to be wonderful.
But instead, with the battery plants, it all became this thing about national security.
Those are Chinese companies.
They're going to be spying on us.
It's terrible.
And then with the GM plant, was, the government shouldn't be giving out subsidies.
And if you're on the Democrat side, you know, you're looking at your wounds, knowing that this is going to hurt the EV effort.
Which is so shocking because GM led on EVs.
I mean, I heard President Biden say that, you know, I, and to that, to that point, I mean, I mean, I'm joking, but also that was one of the worst political self owns in recent
memory.
Anybody that has eyes and ears watched that happen.
And it was like, okay, you're playing politics, you know, and
Matt, this is why Elon's living in Mar-a-Lago.
yes.
And that's what I think that they miscalculated in a big way.
They were like, okay, this guy's done all he's done.
He's rich.
He's, okay.
We've patted him on the back for 10 years.
mean, but we gotta get like our domestic industry to light up and be excited about this.
So let's start patting them on the back and make it look good for jobs for the UAW.
We'll show that we're supporting domestic manufacturing and domestic brands too.
But the tone deafness of just the, and the lack of authenticity around.
What are you talking about?
Like this was not GM.
This was not anybody else.
Tesla spearheaded this.
And to just be like, well, we'll just not say that.
Ignore him.
It's like, I don't think the Democrats and frankly expected that Musk would respond in such a vengeful way, but here we are.
And I think that is something that you can't deny now.
And the interesting aspect of that is then it's okay.
Well, if that's true for what Musk has did to the Democrats,
well, boy howdy, is it gonna be fun to watch two megalomaniac narcissists try to have a marriage together around decision making?
it's, yeah, that's gonna just get ugly in and of itself.
But that's the Democrats created the Musk response.
And I know people don't like hearing that.
They're like, Musk should have been an adult about it.
Well, clearly he's got human flaws and he's putting a spotlight on them.
But it's like, yeah, they in California when they said COVID were shutting down.
One of the state representatives told Musk, like, Elon Musk, and his response on Twitter at the time was, message received.
And they just kept beating the hell out of him from a political perspective.
And he finally went, fine, screw you.
I'm done listening to you.
that's also, there's no check there.
He's the most powerful, influential, and wealthy person on the planet right now.
And he decided to go all in on identity politics because why?
It benefits him financially and from a power perspective.
And the Democrats were just kind of like, who cares?
It's like, well, here we are.
And by the way, the richest man in the world who has a 14 year old, you know, basically mentality and personality moved his company outside of California to Texas.
Right.
So yeah, I mean, the idea that when Biden didn't give him any credit and Tesla and didn't invite him to the meetings and said GM was the leader, like if the Democrats didn't
understand how this
14 year old brain, you know, teenage mentality works.
mean, this is a guy that makes your car fart, right?
Like, like what did people expect?
You know,
again, I just, is evidence of just not reading the damn room and also lacking authenticity.
Like, I mean, again, and I think anybody in our industry saw that and went, give me a break.
But we all kind of like probably, again, I think a lot of people said, no, that's politics.
Biden wants those votes.
He's got to prop them up.
He's got to make them look good and make them feel like he's coddling them and be like, look, see, I like you, we're helping out your industry.
You're not going to get left behind.
I get the political game, but it fucking failed.
Yeah.
It blew up in his face and anybody paying attention was like, yeah, that's a bad move.
And then they just sorta kept going down that line.
again, Musk, just to your point, he just kept revealing things from his perspective, woke mind virus narrative and how he's treating his child who transitioned.
Clearly he's got an angle on what he feels is, again, in his view, almost evil from this side of the conversation.
And he's willing to...
invest as much time, energy, money and his world into fighting it.
And clearly it's more powerful.
The most striking thing I saw from an exit, you know, a voter coming to an exit poll and a voter coming out in Arizona was they were asking, who'd you vote for?
Some young guy.
And he said, I voted for Trump.
And they went, really?
What was why?
He goes, well, I was kind of up in the air.
I was waffling between Harris for Trump.
And frankly, Trump went on Rogan.
And I thought if Harris didn't go on Rogan, she's got something to hide.
You know, and you just kind of go.
crap, like you're not thinking about it any further than that.
But frankly, that's, mean, how, how many times do we talk about the narrative that comes out of certain places and angles where you can tell they're just kind of blowing smoke.
And that happens on both the left and the right.
But if that's the depth of which someone understands what's going on and that's what they're willing to think of, Harris was invited to go on Rogan and they said, that's a
three hour flight.
He wants her to come to Austin.
No, that's not worth our time.
And then you hear something like that and you go.
Again, you're not paying attention to how the narrative is being created and it's a pity.
So here we are.
yeah, I think, I, I, this will be the kind of last thing I say about the election side of stuff, but I, I honestly thought like this whole election cycle, he had it.
I think that's what was so interesting to me was there were so many places.
And I mean, I live in a pretty liberal area and I've never seen Trump signs up.
I'd be walking around.
I'd see Trump signs.
There was just a whole, and I think it totally goes to what you're saying.
Well, like I just, one, I think she was dealt the worst hand in political history.
of trying within a hundred days.
doesn't matter who you are.
You have to a hundred days for the American people to find out who are you.
And she has the unfortunate, like all the negatives of being the incumbent when you're a vice president who also just doesn't really have power in general.
So it's like, I, I, I was, I really had, did not think she had a chance to do it even with all of that.
And I think once again, like with this, it is just messaging.
I think, they just could not get
the right message to the right people.
And even then, I just think the message they were putting out there was really, it would change with the week.
wasn't a strong message.
look, if you look at the vote turnout, nine million Democrats sought out this election.
Nine million.
And that's it in a nutshell.
You know, one thing I'll say about that, that I think is really interesting is so many people voted in 2020 because there were mail-in ballots and people were still locked in in
COVID.
And I do think that part of it, cause if you actually look at like the last, I think it goes like back 20 years, every, presidential election, goes up by like a few million
people are voting and it went up by 15 million for 2020.
Now, of course that's where all the conspiracy theories say those are fake votes and stuff.
But I just remember people talking to people in 2020 like, yeah, I vote for the first time.
I've never voted.
I was just bored and it was right there.
And I'd been doing a crossword puzzle all day.
So I just started filling in these bubbles too, which I, my family is always big about voting.
Whoever you vote for, you should go and vote.
But I just, I think that was, that is something I keep hearing is like, these people didn't show up.
And I was like, I think that was just a weird election cycle for a lot of reasons.
And I don't think that there was like 15 million people.
got out of their seats.
mean, it was, it had never been easier to vote just because so many people are dealing with mail-in ballots and stuff in a lot of other states that normally hadn't that I think
it was.
That's part of that trend that people are talking about post-election that there was this big plunge.
I just think it was more people had access.
It was never easier for more people to vote in that election cycle to vote.
And maybe that says something on a whole different topic.
But to me, I don't know.
I'm not sure that that is necessarily the right thing the Democrats need to look at.
I think it truly is just really bad messaging.
Well, a hundred million people that could have voted this election cycle didn't.
That's a big number.
All right.
So this, this is not a political talk show, but now we've become one,
I'm just kind of curious on the panel's thoughts around what this will mean for, Mexico and Canada
we're going to see even more companies building here in the US or it's just we're going to have to deal with more expensive cars in general and tariffs be damned?
Yeah, it remains to be seen, but Trump actually does, right?
You know, he's threatening all this tariff stuff, but let's see what he actually does and how.
But vis-a-vis Canada and Mexico, the USMCA is up for revisiting in 2026.
Nobody's waiting.
I mean, they're already negotiating right now as we speak.
And both the US and Canada are zeroing in on Mexico.
They don't like this idea that China is going to
put all these plants up in Mexico and start shipping all kinds of things.
I'm not even talking cars beyond that.
And they don't like that idea.
In fact, this is why, you know, Gina Raimondo, who runs the commerce department in the Biden administration, came up with this idea of somebody on her staff, why don't we ban
all Chinese cars, connected cars, that have Chinese hardware and software?
And that's going to be a far more effective way of keeping the Chinese out of the American market than tariffs are.
But
That's where the focus is on right now amongst the automakers and the new Trump administration is putting the heat on Mexico to slow the Chinese down, not let so much
into their country.
And especially when it comes to cars, batteries, electric or not.
Yeah.
And to follow up on that, John, I've been seeing some articles about that.
Mexico is saying, all right, if you're going to make it difficult for companies that are setting up shop in Mexico to export to the US, then we're going to retaliate with tariffs
and trade wars and stuff like that.
somebody told me yesterday, you don't do that with Trump.
If he threatens you, you don't threaten him back.
And look, the US is in a far, we have far more leverage over Mexico than they do of us.
And so I think this was bravado on the part of the Mexicans, but yeah.
We'll get them to pay for that wall in a minute.
So I don't know.
mean, honestly, like this is as an American citizen, I, you know, hearing us talk about all this and most people, again, they're not actively thinking of it.
But the impact of how all this will start just trickling down.
If there's one trickle down thing that's going to happen in the United States of America that isn't money, it's going to be the impact of all these decisions.
And then how does that impact everyday people's ability to just, again, have access to
product, what the cost of those products are going to be, et cetera.
And I think that that, you know, to your point, John, like the bravado of Trump, like, I'll threaten you, you threaten me back.
I will, I will up the ante on the threat, you know, and that's part of what some citizens said.
I like that.
I like the fact where you put somebody in charge who backs down from no one, but at some point you have to have a nuanced understanding of what the ramifications are of that
continued escalation.
Right.
And he doesn't, he doesn't even care.
Because he's not looking at this from a public service perspective.
He's looking at it from a how are you making me feel perspective about my image of myself.
And he doesn't care how that impacts people and whether it's industry or individuals.
And that's what's most concerning from my perspective is that we can talk about all that all day, but then what is the end result?
And that's where we have an uninformed and an electorate that, again, they just didn't see that that's what was going to happen if they put someone like Kim into power.
No, I honestly think that, yeah, the decision to say if it's anything Chinese part related, then as the current administration is focusing on, as you described, that's much
more, that's cutting with a scalpel, not with a butcher knife of understanding how to approach these issues.
But we're not, again, if that gets thrown out the window moving forward, yeah, it'll be very, very interesting to see what happens.
And then again, how that impacts citizens as a whole.
Yeah, Chase, think the, it's, it's, as John said, you know, we don't know, right?
It's, we'll, we'll, we'll have to wait and see what happens.
But I think that, I think that the, yeah, I think the China, Mexico, U S triangle is going to really be sort of fascinating to watch.
Right.
And it's all speculation at this point, but I mean, one angle that, you know, people like Michael Dunn who've chatted with before and stuff think that that could happen is it's
like.
Trump says, okay, we want your low priced, fast, cool, know, really good software, software, you know, Chinese EVs here in the US, but we're going to play the game that you
played with us, right?
So you've got to have 50, 50 joint ventures, right?
So if you want to, if you want to sell cars here, then we're going to half own your company, right?
And we're going to control the technology and
And then at some point we'll say, goodbye, we don't need you anymore.
Right.
Thanks for, thanks for setting up the factory and spending all that money.
And we're now going to take those, those brands back.
Right.
But I mean, but, but who knows?
So that's, you know, I don't know if Trump will do that or not, but that's, that's one potential avenue.
It's like, yeah, bring, bring your money to us.
look, Trump has already said, if you want to build cars in America, no problem.
So, or batteries or whatever.
But it's like I said, right now it's a lot of posturing.
And you know, I'm dying to see what he actually pulls the trigger on.
So one thing I kind wanted to ask the panel about, guess John, you've been covering this a lot too, is like looking in Europe right now from their automotive scene.
There's, I believe it's Audi or I'm trying to remember if it's Audi or VW.
They're looking at closing quite a few EV focus.
Audi's closing the plant in Belgium.
look, Europe is a deep trouble, the European auto industry, man, I'm worried about it.
You I love this industry.
So I don't like seeing parts get...
you think who's in a worse position right now?
Us or the European auto?
Yeah.
worse.
know, Volkswagen, you know, it's a disaster there.
And you know, I looked at their latest financials, Porsche's profits way down, Audi's profits way down.
In fact, the heavy truck group Trayton and Volkswagen now makes more profit than Audi, Bentley and Lamborghini and Ducati put together.
So that shows you how far they've sunk.
And it doesn't look good.
They're talking about closing three plants.
The German unions don't like this one little bit.
We haven't even started to see the pushback yet.
And remember, half the board of supervisors, which is like a special board of directors for German companies, half of it is labor.
They don't want to see these jobs go away at all.
And then you've got Stellantis that's done a full face plant in front of us that, you know, a year ago, I was like, wow, are these guys good?
Highest profit per unit for any luxury brand, highest operating profits for any full line manufacturer and blammo today.
What a mess over there.
And plus the European market, the US market is 2 million units below pre-COVID levels.
The European market is 4 million units below pre-COVID.
And now you've got all these Chinese racing in because remember the tariffs don't apply to PFs or gas, you know.
It's electric.
And so they're racing in to see what they can grab on it.
you know, countries like Germany that has a lot of trade with China, they don't want to pick a fight with China and neither does Spain.
But the French and the Italians are like, no, we got to keep these guys out.
And it's going to be a, I mean,
I would not be surprised to see Volkswagen or, I don't think Volkswagen and Stellantis will go out of business, but they're going to come out of this severely crippled.
So I mean, go for it Matt.
Well, just the I mean, the discussion of the relationship between Volkswagen and Rivian as an example about where that was.
What I read this morning is they have like a 20 percent like a 20 percent stake or something into that ballpark of what the Volkswagen relationship is now with Rivian.
And the the the final conclusion was this is a marriage that's just going to happen.
Like it's it's it's just it's on it's on the pathway there.
And that I mean, again, it bodes well for Rivian.
Maybe that's the lifeline that Volkswagen needs to pivot that, you know, what the, you know, as an organization, how they can be thinking about what their connected car looks
like, what a software based car looks like.
Cariad was a, was, it just kind of never got anything going.
So if they can actually make some of those strategic pivots, maybe that's the lifeline.
and some of these, you know, collaborations that turn into, you know, something bigger is what we could see come out of that for some of European brands.
But yeah, I, I, again, no crystal ball.
we're have to see how this all starts to play out, but.
to the point about the Chinese and how they can come into market on P-Hevs and just even other vehicles that don't have those restrictions, yeah, it's gonna start eating the lunch
of some of these companies that just weren't prepared for how fast the Chinese were ready to do it.
And that's, think, what's been most interesting.
Right.
I'm kind of curious, are there lessons that can be learned from the European situation?
Is it that more of these need to be built in the US or is that kind of the room for tariffs to prevent this kind of issues?
Or what do you guys think?
Well, look, you know, the Europeans have been too accommodating for the Chinese.
They have, before the Chinese even got in, they had massive overcapacity in Europe.
mean, millions and millions of units of overcapacity.
You've got FIAT that doesn't make any money at all.
You've got JOR, well, the J, Jaguar.
mean, I don't think they're going to make it to the end of the decade, Jaguar.
Yeah.
You know, you've got just a lot of operations, say at SCOTA, know, the branches of the Volkswagen Group that really don't make any money at all.
And they've been too accommodating, in my opinion, to the Chinese.
It should have been, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
You know, we don't want to see, you know, these plants closing down that tear down these communities as they lose their tax base and all the desolation and hopelessness that
follows with that.
And, but the big thing is, like I said before, the European market sales wise is so weak.
You know, if they were at our level, if their sales were up a couple of million units, that would solve a lot of problems.
But I, you know, I believe we're at peak auto in the U S in Europe, in China, in South Korea, sales are in my opinion, never going to go back to their prior levels, just not
going to happen.
Yeah, John, I mean, if you think, if you think about it from a, you know, a pie chart perspective, right?
So you had all the European automaker brands, right?
And then what's happened in the last couple of years?
had Tesla come into the market.
You had the Chinese come into the market and Kia and Hyundai.
I mean, I was, I was in over in Europe for about three weeks in, in, August.
And that was the one of the things that sort of blew my mind is how many Kia's and Hyundai's I saw on the road there.
Right?
Like I didn't see very many Chinese EVs on the road.
saw, I saw like Kia EV 9s all over the place.
Right?
I'm like, what?
You know, it's like in Hyundai Alnick 5s, like, you know, so you literally have sort of three groups of new entrants into what, you know, as you said, the pie chart actually got
smaller.
And then you had sort of three groups of new brand entrance, basically.
Key and Hyundai obviously been around for a while, but they, you know, they're really taking market share here and there.
Right.
And so, you know, when, when you can sell fewer cars and then now you have three different types of new competitors coming in all very aggressive.
Ouch.
Yeah.
So right to your point, just in the last five years, I got these numbers, I've been going through it.
Just in the last five years, global market share, the Americans have lost 6.6 percentage points.
That represents about six, between five and six million units of capacity.
The Germans have lost about 3%.
The Japanese have lost one and a half percent.
The Koreans have not lost any share at all.
And all the gains came from the Chinese and the startups, which really means Tesla.
So, mean, I guess one question I do have is like with some of these plant closures in Europe and you're talking about the heavy influence of labor on their boards, what, it
just, it just seems like it, I'm kind of confused as to what they can even do when it is this bad or how, like what can be done or if it's, the numbers are so clearly off.
Yeah.
it in Detroit during the Great Recession.
People are gonna panic and they're going to start to look to all kinds of other things of, hey, wait a minute, instead of cutting here, why don't we do this?
So if I was Scott Keough at Scout, I'd be deeply, deeply worried.
What's the Volkswagen board going to do when Volkswagen is talking about closing three plants in Germany at the same time you're building a brand new one in the United States?
And I know what the unions are going to say, stop that plant in America, build those damn vehicles in Germany.
Yeah, they weren't particularly happy about the 5.8 billion that they gave to Rivian either.
It's like, wait, wait a minute.
You're, you're, you're, you're getting rid of us, but you're sending a check over to the U S what am I missing?
wasn't five point eight out the gate.
I think it was a billion out the gate.
And there was like some hooks on like the rest of the funding for how that would look over time, if I understand it correctly.
No, you're exactly right, Matt.
But Loren, you're right.
mean, it's going to be, you're losing all this money and you're paying the startup that by the way is losing all this money.
And you you spent 10 billion euros on Cariad and now you're spending 5.8 billion for Rivian to do exactly what Cariad was supposed to do.
And so, you know, and the unions very rightfully are gonna say, we're paying the price for extremely poor management decisions.
passing it just the end game is there has been poor leadership across the board, you know, and and and again, that's true in Europe and it's true in the States as to how they've
responded to various things.
But but Europe's in much deeper water.
And I don't I mean, chase your question.
Just kind of like, so what what can they do?
What are they going to do?
Some of this is too far gone.
And to John's point about the about the panic is, yeah, that's that's going to start hitting.
But then if you're in you already got poor leadership making these the
the lack of understanding of the strategic decisions for the long term and how the impacts of these things are going to affecting them not only just regionally but globally, then
how's that panic going to resolve any of that?
It's going to be ugly.
There's no easy answer.
I will add this, you know the old saying, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
And they're hitting a crisis.
And I'm telling you, the crisis of the Great Recession in Detroit was one of the best ever things that happened to the city of Detroit and to GM Ford and the old Chrysler Group.
They got rid of a lot of bad things, a lot of bad things.
They got rid of the jobs bank, they got rid of retiree healthcare, they got rid of fully defined pensions.
And I know to the workers, that's not good news, but these were the things that were dragging GM Ford and the old Chrysler group down more than anything.
And they were able to get rid of that.
And they instantly became more competitive.
Now the question is, will Europe be willing to take that kind of drastic action?
I mean, what we did here, that's the American way, right?
You you grab it by the neck and chop the head off.
And I'm not sure that Europe's going to want to be able to do that.
No, think it's right.
Culturally, think it's right.
five weeks of vacation away, right?
always fun.
Every time I do get a chance to travel abroad and we have to explain to whomever we meet as Americans, like, we're only on the road for about two weeks and they all kind of look
at you like you're crazy.
And it's like, yeah, sorry, that's all we really can do.
And they're like, they're like, shit, we're on our eighth week.
Like you guys don't know how to vacation.
It's like, yeah, that's true.
take the summer off.
What are you talking about?
Italy, they just closed for August.
They're like, screw it, like, we just won't be here.
Germany too.
But I mean, I guess the inverse then is China where it's like for the longest time it was what what's the it's 996 or something.
Yeah.
9 a.m.
to 9 p.m.
six days a week.
But who wants to live like that?
Yeah, there is, there is a limit.
There is a limit.
okay.
Well, now that we do have you back, Loren, I guess, we've, we've probably talked about everything we can about manufacturing and with how positive that was, let's turn to
charging, in the, EV space, at least in North America.
mean, I would say overall that is probably positive, but my first question for you was just around, we even talked about this a little bit was around Nevi and how a lot of the
funds have
been allocated for it.
But now that it's kind of become clear that the Republicans have the House, the Senate and the executive branch and the courts more or less.
And their big thing that everyone's talking about right now is cutting money and saving money.
mean, do you really think that to me this and there's been already a lot of talk of the IRA being kind of up there.
This seems like something that I know some of the funds have been dispersed to the states already.
But how are you looking at this and do you think that that could change going into 2025?
no.
So all the experts I've talked to, in fact, I'm talking to one after this call, a gentleman who actually designed Nevi program.
And he has assured me that Nevi CFI, all those sort of government federal programs are safe.
They cannot be killed, overturned, rescinded, anything else.
So, you know, there can be a lot of talk about it, but apparently the way they were structured,
they can't be killed.
as I always sort of say, and even if somehow they could be, know, most of the money will have been dispersed, you know, because they're sort of on a fiscal year cycle with these
things and three years have already been allocated to the states and the fourth is in the process of being allocated and it would probably take them a year to kill it.
So even if they could, the money would would basically be already allocated anyway.
So
That's a long way of saying there should be zero impact.
The only impact could be that Florida, which basically Governor Santos there has said, he's been cantankerous and not in favor of spending the Navy money, is that they may not,
right?
Yeah.
May just not like those are the two most sort of obvious States that may just say we're not going to, we're not going to use the Navy money.
But what happens is, the way the Navy is structured is if any state does not use their money within a certain period of time, it's put back into a pool and recal, reallocated
out to the States.
So if, if, and I think I don't have it memorized, but I might, I think Florida probably has, over 200.
million dollars for for NEVI program that would go into the pool and all the states would get a piece of that.
So NEVI is safe.
Chase, one other thing too, not apropos of Nevi, but still EVs.
I was talking to one of the chief lobbyists for one of the large car companies that was on background, so I'm not going to mention which or who.
But their thinking is that while the consumer credits will go or subsidies will go away, Trump will probably keep the subsidies for the battery plants because building battery
plants directly creates jobs and guess what?
Most of those battery plants are in red states.
So yeah, that's right.
So we'll see what actually happens here.
But some of the thinking is that the battery subsidies are safe.
But in some ways that also makes sense with EV charging, since it is a hardware infrastructure and there have been so many now EV charging companies, EV charging
infrastructure companies building here in North America, Georgia or North Carolina has like Alpetronic and all these others building there.
And I guess Loren, since you are kind of, I mean, actually both Loren and Matt.
is in Wisconsin, but that's it.
We're in the weeds there.
But yeah.
Yeah.
guess I'm kind of curious with since both of your guys realms are so focused on the charging landscape if there's been any interesting trends that you've seen Election 2024
or not and kind of like looking forward as to Going into 2025 any interesting things that really stand out
Yeah, there's two and one of them, think Matt will probably smile at and enjoy discussion around.
one is, and I think we talked about this on the episode I was on a few weeks ago, that utilization is like through the roof now in fast charging and it's all being driven by
ride share.
crap.
one thing we talked about the beginning of this year when we were even prognosticating about what our thoughts were about where things were headed, we've already seen the
shakeout happening as it relates to certain companies that just basically just folded.
And I think that moreover, because the Nevi dollars are safe, we're not going to have, we're just going to continue to see some of the shakeout is from what I can see.
from a network side and then obviously from a manufacturing side, we'll see how that plays.
But overall, I don't think that the overall impact, I don't think is gonna be very negative.
I think we're seeing consolidation and we're gonna see a little bit less of a messy experience as it relates to what's going on in the industry side.
The thing that still keeps creeping up though, from what I've seen, is we still continue to see networks crop up that are small and want to keep growing out what they think they
can build.
I think within...
within DOE tracking to the Alton Fuels database, it's over 70 networks now that exist within the United States.
That consolidation is gonna become far more abrupt, in my opinion, in the next year or two, because they just can't, mean, there's just not that much room for that level of
volume.
I think there's a couple of interesting trends going on in, in especially the fast charging industry right now, which is utilization has basically about doubled, on, on
average across the U S and what's driving that is not that like,
There's millions of more EV drivers out there.
It's rideshare drivers are driving this.
It's now, you know, 25 % of EV goes throughput, meaning the power dispensed at EV charging, EV go charging stations is to rideshare drivers.
Cause if you think about it, you know, somebody like Matt and I, you know, use public charging, you know, when we go out on a road trip a couple of times a year or whatever it
is, right.
ride share drivers use sometimes three times a day, six days a week, right?
And so, and the charging networks now understand this.
So they're designing and building and locating their new fast chargers like near airports and in certain locations where they know there's a company out of New York called Revel
that, you know, many of the listeners have probably heard of that started off as a ride share company.
They're basically now have pivoted to becoming an EV charging infrastructure company for rideshare drivers, right?
Like that, that is their, their strategy.
So that's kind of the first thing, chase is that, you know, I don't think anybody really saw this coming.
Like a few years ago, my God, the fast charging industry is the worst business ever.
Right.
It's like, you know, build it and they will come cross our fingers that a whole bunch of people will buy an EV.
And then, yeah.
high hardware costs that take a year to build.
Yeah.
and that'll take five years to break even, but we're counting on more people buying EVs.
And then like rideshare drivers have come in and are changing the economics.
And so, you know, that's.
And it's it's partly due to I mean, just anecdotally, I mean, I there was a one ride share driver I remember I was talking to the gave me a ride to the airport and we're talking
about where they charge and they even said to me, I have a home and I don't drive enough.
don't drive enough and I'd have an empty battery throughout my day.
I could go home and home charge but I live two blocks from a fast charger and they have a rate offering that I can use as a ride share driver for like $25 flat rate a month.
So I always go and use that.
as
And I thought, wow, okay, again, that's how the consumers think.
It's like, well, that's That's money back in my pocket.
And also they perceive it as a time savings as well.
And so those two things combined, yeah, we're going to continue to see that on the increase.
And I think, you know, following on what you just said was, which was the other trend that I thought was fascinating and EVGO's Q3 earnings presentation that went out a couple of
days ago, they said that they're deploying customer acquisition programs using organic and paid, you know, techniques and stuff.
And I'm like, as somebody who spent, you know, Jace, you know, as you know, like, you know,
30 plus years in marketing industry.
Like what?
They're acting like a normal business.
They're actually doing marketing and going out and acquiring customers.
And Matt, to your point, they're probably targeting rideshare drivers.
They're probably buying Google AdWords ads for rideshare drivers and targeting them because that's where the money is now.
But I mean, to me, it was funny and fascinating that the industry is moving to what I call charging 2.0.
They're thinking about customer experience and brand and we're going to have loyalty.
We're going to have loyalty programs and they're figuring out pricing and you know, design of the stations and like, wow.
Like it's not just, you know, put a couple of hundred KW charges in the back corner of a dark parking lot.
You know, it's like.
first strategy.
Go figure.
Yeah.
you're talking about around, especially, mean, a lot of those topics, but especially around the ride share is really interesting because this is kind of anecdotal, but this
was a few months back.
I was kind of on a road trip and I rolled up to this one like right before 10 o'clock and I just, I think there's 12, maybe it was a Tesla one, 12, maybe 16 stalls.
I was literally the only one there.
I plug in and I, I, I called my wife and I started talking.
And then also like, it looks like they're, didn't know if it was like a local Tesla group, if there was like some.
Evie fast, the furious thing going on or what they're just this mob of lights in this empty parking lot.
Just all of a sudden circum and they halt, they all pull up to the charger.
I'm like, what the hell?
And I looked down and it was 10 to one.
And I was like, this is so weird.
And I go and look in the.
It went, and it was like.
Time of use rate.
was like 25 cents per kilo, which is pretty good.
And then I looked at like 10, goes down to I think eight cents.
And so all of these like ride share drivers are just coming in and just charging up.
And then the instant one was gone.
Another would come in and just like recharge.
And so it totally is a thing.
And I think, this is something we've talked a lot about that there is definitely a need for like a commercial EV charging or to kind of better figure this out.
Like you do with.
commercial fueling and with taxi fleets and others.
And, and rebel is kind of doing that.
They've, they've already done for their own brands.
Obviously I hope to see more of these just because it definitely is having an impact on some of these charging locations.
But,
Yeah.
Yeah, it was interesting.
I was looking at some of our data last night around the time of day of by hour segment of, of when people charge and in the San Francisco Bay area between 6 AM and 9 PM.
There's a little bit of up and down, but it's basically flat like.
It's a sort of, know, that's when everybody is charging and then, you know, outside of those hours.
So, you know, one of the things we're going to start seeing is, is what I'm calling a prime time utilization, right?
That in many urban locations, it's going to be basically 80 to a hundred percent.
Like there's going to be no capacity to grow the business during those sort of prime, prime hours during the day.
And so then we might see to your point, Chase, with that eight cents pricing, right?
We're going to see those kinds of pricing like half off if you charge it 2 a.m.
in the morning, right?
And things like that, right?
Well, then that and that that I mean, that's price is one thing, but then it lends to things like, okay, safety.
And, you know, like some I mean, this gets to whole thing about I'll drive 30 miles to that one gas station in Pasadena, because it's got five cents cheaper regular gas or
whatever, right.
And some people will do that.
But then if you ask the question, like, this is a renter who is, you know, a woman, it's like, is she going to get up at midnight to go charge her car?
to say no, because there's other factors at play beyond the price.
So there's all these little things that are, again, but we're seeing better deployment around that for better station design, site location, things of that nature.
it's not universal for how people respond to those benefits, because some people will place other value on top of money, which includes things like safety and other things like
that.
So yeah, no straight and black and white answer on that.
Yeah.
And I realize we are kind of coming up on the time or you might have to bounce here, Matt.
So understand if you have to hop off.
But I did want to ask real quickly, John, just what has been your experience if you've been seeing from automakers any change in the conversation around the EV charging aspect
of buying an EV and if that has changed at all, or if there may be still come to the assumption that the market will figure it out and trying to step away from that.
Or I'm curious if you've heard any differences.
don't follow this as closely as you guys do, obviously, but, you know, we've seen, we talked about that, I think Loren mentioned it earlier, you know, Ford is like, hey, boom,
or Matt, maybe you were the one, who was the charger?
We'll arrange the whole thing for it.
You don't have to think about it.
Now look, the automakers have not done a good job of selling EVs.
They really haven't.
And Loren, I think you mentioned this earlier, you know, about
People are unaware of the $7,500 or the 3750 times two, as somebody described it more accurately.
Judy Power said, and I can't remember, was 40 or 60, either 40 % of the car buying public is unaware that this money is available or 60%.
And it's like crazy and they don't sell EVs on the attributes of EVs.
Why though?
They're better.
They just are like, this one's EV, you want to buy this because it's an EV.
And they don't show the performance aspects.
And I don't mean like, you know, going plaid mode or ludicrous mode or things like that.
I'm talking about a normal everyday person driving down the freeway and they got to get over and they see an opening with electric boom, you're there.
There's no mash the pedal and the butterfly throat opens and the injector shoot in more.
fuel and the engine revs up and the transmission downshifts and the engine roars so and then you get over it know it's like boom i'm there and guess what you only barely have to
touch the throttle pedal to get it to do that so a lot of people feel much more comfortable with it you know it's what i call eager response i've always had eager
response with you know good responsive ice engines but all evs are like this and it's quieter and the fact that you can charge at home
and never go to a gas station again, appeals to a lot of people, especially to women.
And you don't see any of that in the advertising.
It's, you know, come from the early days of save the polar bears to this is an EV, so you're cool if you have it.
And, you know, all I'm getting around to is a long-winded answer for you here, Chase, but you haven't talked about the good aspects of charging.
how your screen will tell you exactly where to go and if there's a charger available for you to use or if it's not working or whatever.
You know, there's been none of this education on the part of the car companies for the public.
true.
mean, Jim, when Jim had their, you know, EV live thing that you could call into, and they would have someone who would walk you through and talk to you about it.
I did it three different times and played dumb the whole time.
And in each experience, I walked away thinking none of that was accurate enough to help me actually make this decision.
It all sounded super fluffy.
And it made it seem like it's so approachable.
But because I knew actually what the truth was, all it all it said to me was, this is a very glossy
strategy around not understanding how to address the actual education problem.
And, you know, we haven't heard much else about it, you know, because, you know, I, to John exactly your point, I think they just, they've so just kind of kept phoning in, how
do they talk about this?
And it's the way they know how, which is here are the features of why our brand and our design and the fact that it's EV is so damn cool.
And then it turns into, yeah, but what does my ownership experience look like?
Because as a consumer that knows nothing,
It's still intimidating not because it's a car but because the experience with it is different.
And then what does Matt always say?
And it's the damn fuel that's different, not the car itself.
And they fundamentally do not know how to address that in way that is approachable.
And.
I think just to kind of add to that, it reminds me of a couple of things, but I remember Mary Barra or whoever maybe is Royce when GM was doing one of their big EV things and
they're like, well, Tesla is the Apple and we're going to be the Android of the EV space, which if anyone that's been in the tech space, like, I don't know if I want that.
If you're an investor, that might be a red flag because they're not making much money, but that's all another thing.
But what it reminded me of was like the nineties and two thousands of the Mac versus PC where it's like the Mac sells on value.
The PC sells on specs versus Lenovo versus gateway versus IBM.
And then the last decade with the Android versus iPhone, where it's like, okay, this makes every, this thing just works and it makes your life a lot easier.
And this Android has a 20,000 megapixel phone, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada.
And it's selling on specs and headlines versus like value to the customer.
And I think that's still, especially when comes to the feeling, but exactly to John's point of what is like the value to the customer, like
You don't have to go to the gas station.
You don't have to do oil changes.
mean, those two alone were huge reasons for me to go electric.
And the fact that it's depending where you are more environmental than other options as a huge one too, but it really was just like the actual experience.
and John, think you also nailed it.
Like with that, the Fiat 500 E I was driving for a week there.
The biggest thing that stood out to me is I had been an agent since I've driven one of the gas ones, but it takes like three gears to get up to maybe 40 miles an hour.
And it's so slow.
Whereas with that little thing, it just rips up to 40.
And then after that, it kind of dies out, but at least like getting up to like speeds and around town, just was so much easier to drive and experience than having to deal with
like, okay, am I going to get across this intersection or am I about to die?
And it just really changes what it feels.
like even makes driving a lot of ways more fun, especially around town.
But,
Yeah, I realized we've kind of gone over our time and we haven't even talked about autonomy, but since I guess Elon Musk is president, it'll just become federalized.
So problem solved there too.
Yeah, well my wife and I have had that free trial for full self driving in for 30 days and my conclusion is is the technology very Fascinating in the sense of like well, they
actually accomplished a lot of really cool stuff with this Yeah, totally But at end of the day if you actually turn it on and try to go to where you're going the last thing I want
to have is what feels like an 85 year old person chauffeuring me around That is really scared at an intersection.
It's like yeah, I don't want that.
I don't want
say has gone remarkably better, but yes, it's gone from like maybe a 15 year old learning to drive to now it's an 85 year old.
That's like, kind of know what I'm, I know, I know what I'm doing, but I'm a little scared.
I'm a little scared.
Yeah.
But it's still better, but yeah, totally.
Yeah.
We still got a little ways to go.
will solve that.
I'm like, you know I want is high speed rail.
Or better mass transit locally.
I don't need a bunch of robotic cars going around.
It's like, you go, no, you go, no, you go, no, you go, no, you.
It's like, come on, what are we doing?
see what happens there.
That might be another couple of administrations out or decades.
On that positive note, I just want to thank you all for hopping on again, discussing all this and talking about these topics.
That's great.
Thanks, Chase.
yeah, thanks for the invite.
Thanks for tuning into this powerhouse episode of grid connections.
A big thank you again to our panel, Loren McDonald of Paren Matt Teske of Chargeway and John McElroy from Auto Line Network.
We really appreciate them joining us today and sharing their perspectives from the rapidly evolving EV charging landscape to the complex interplay of politics, tariffs and global
competition.
Today's discussion showcased just how pivotal this moment is for the future of electric mobility.
We'd love to hear your thoughts as well.
What stood out to you and where do you see the EV industry heading?
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