July EV Industry Panel with John McElroy, Loren McDonald & Matt Teske

Summary
In this episode, the panel discusses the current state of the automotive industry and how EV Sales plays into it. The panel also examines the factors that contribute to EV sales, including the charging experience and the availability of charging infrastructure. Highlighting the importance of understanding the target demographics and the need for automakers to focus on software, infrastructure, and user experience to maintain momentum in the EV market. The guests discuss the shift in the charging industry, with major companies entering the market and the focus on providing a better charging experience for customers. The conversation in this part focuses on road trips and the charging experience for electric vehicles (EVs).Along with the need for better communication and marketing of EV charging options to the public.  Along with discussing the challenges and benefits of the NEVI corridor program in conjunction with the rollout of DC fast charging infrastructure.

Creators & Guests

Host

Chase Drum

Host of Grid Connections and Founder of Bespoke EVs

Guest

John McElroy

President and Host of Autoline.tv

Guest

Loren McDonald

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

Guest

Matt Teske

Chargeway Founder; Chargeway uses simple colors and numbers to identify every electric cars charging options. Available for iOS and Android.

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Good morning, Grid Connections listeners.

This week we have our favorite panel of returning guests, John McElroy from Auto Line
Network, Matt Teske of Chargeway and Loren McDonald of EV Adoption.

In this episode, we discuss the past quarter's EV sales, along with examining the trends
and challenges facing the larger automotive industry.

EVs might not be the only ones having some issues with sales, it turns out.

Our panel discusses the pros and cons of plug -in hybrids versus fully electric vehicles
as

offering insights that every electric vehicle enthusiast will find valuable.

We then turn our attention to the current state of electric vehicle charging, exploring
the realities of road tripping in an EV today.

Additionally, we discussed the status of a Navi funding and its potential to significantly
enhance charging infrastructure across the United States.

Don't miss this episode packed with expert opinions and thought provoking discussions.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with at least one other listener who you
think would appreciate it as

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

Your feedback helps us grow and bring you even more fantastic content.

With that, enjoy.

I'm joined today by our favorite panel.

got Matt Teske of Chargeway, John McElroy of Auto Line Network.

And we also have Mr.

Lorne McDonald of EV Adoption.

Thank you gentlemen for being back on the show today.

Thanks.

It's great to be back in such awesome company.

Yeah, agreed.

Same here.

have said it better myself.

I just real briefly.

I think everyone's pretty familiar with all three of you now, but just in case I'm just
going to pick one of you on random, just looking at my screen.

If each of you could just give a quick background, that'd be great.

So Matt, why don't you kick it

Definitely.

Yeah.

I'm Matt Teske.

I'm the founder and CEO of Chargeway and Chargeway is a software and mobile app for
finding and locating EV charging stations and planning road trips.

And we have a system that makes it super easy for everyone.

So give the Chargeway app a download.

Thank you so much, Matt.

John, what about you next?

Yeah, the president of Blue Sky Productions.

We have a bunch of products that we put out under the Outerline brand, everything and
anything to do with the automotive industry.

And finally, not least, Loren, why you take us home?

Yeah.

Hi, Loren McDonald, CEO of EV Adoption.

We're a EV, EV charging data analysis firm.

So we track everything from, you know, how many chargers are going into the ground to like
incentive programs, like the NEVI program that many people might be familiar with, utility

incentives, EV sales.

We do a lot of forecasts, things like that.

So if it's EV or EV charging data, we're, we're probably tracking

And I think we've got a few different topics that are always fan favorites to go over
today, ranging from just the current EV market to kind of EV charging in North America.

But let's kind of kick it off with a focus on, I think not even just EV sales, but
automotive sales.

John, I've been kind of watching some of the stuff you've been covering this week with a
lot of the North American automakers about how this past quarter Q2 went them went for

them in 2024.

And I think there's been such a strong narrative and maybe not

Automotive news realm, but just the media in general that electric vehicles and all of
these things aren't doing well.

But from what we're seeing from this past quarter, it might be the automotive industry in
general, has definitely kind of been struggling a little bit, this year.

So I think it'd be great just to kind of get your take and thoughts on what you've seen
recently and we'll go from

Sure thing.

You know, everyone thought 2024 was going to be pretty good.

They thought, OK, we got COVID behind us, the chip shortage behind us now, we're going to
go back to a quote unquote normal year.

And it hasn't materialized.

I think there's a couple of things going on.

Number one, interest rates.

Holy moly.

know, car prices have been super high.

They've moderated a little bit.

But now with interest rates so high.

People are having a hard time getting a loan or they don't want to pay the money.

It's really expensive.

Plus last month we had a cyber attack on this company called CDK that does DMS dealer
management systems and thousands and thousands and thousands of dealers all across the

country use CDK software to run their business.

Well, guess what?

It crapped out.

I mean, they literally went back to pen and paper in a lot of cases to try to process
sales.

So, you know, the latest sales figures for June, for example, last month, a little bit
uncertain as to how things are going because we don't know how much CDK disrupted what was

going on.

But I will say this, Chase, even though overall sales are soft, the EV segments outperform
in the market.

I mean, it's one of the few bright spots, although with the latest registration numbers,
doesn't look like

Tesla is hauling the water anymore.

It seems to be the legacy automakers that have picked up the pace here.

Because in point of fact, we've seen Tesla sales go down.

And so, are we at this poignant moment in the market where, here we've seen Tesla create
this segment.

I mean, let's get real.

But now it looks like the legacies are starting to make their weight felt.

John, I have question for you on the CDK thing.

Do you think there's going to be a delayed reporting?

In other words, like might July and August actually be higher than they would have been
because of the delay in moving from the paper back to technology?

I think there will be.

fact, you know, on our Auto Line After Hours program yesterday, we had the new VP of Sales
from Honda on the show.

And he was saying essentially that, Loren, that, you know, some people couldn't get the
car they wanted, so there's a little bit of pent up demand there, and other orders

couldn't be processed.

So it should look better.

I would say on the sales side of it, I think the elephant in the room of it is with the
Tesla conversation is Tesla has, yeah, they're going to have to contend with how their CEO

is having an impact on their brand image and people's interest in their products.

It's rampant on, I I've had conversations with people, but you hear people chattering
about it on a lot of different social platforms about how people are flat out saying.

I will not buy a Tesla because of Elon.

And yeah.

think about it.

You know, his biggest market in the world is California.

And he's been trashing the state saying, I'm moving Tesla.

I already moved Tesla out.

Now I'm going to get SpaceX out.

I'm to move Neuralink out.

The hell with that state, essentially.

You know, it's the old city, know, feds to New York City drop dead.

This is Tesla to California drop dead.

And I think it's been foolish for him to take that kind of stance.

I mean, as an individual, fine, but as the CEO of a car company, that's a big mistake.

And the other thing I keep harping on, it's time for Tesla to update its styling.

You know, the S and X have not changed in a decade, the three and the Y are five years old
or something.

I know I get lots of blowback from the Tesla fans saying, you're ignoring over the air
updates, you're ignoring the Highland refresh on the Model 3 and blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah.

I'm telling you the auto industry is a fashion industry.

The companies with the freshest designs are the ones that make market share grow.

And this is why, you know, big department stores and big cities change their window
displays every couple of months because otherwise you get used to it, you don't even

notice

Yeah, no, I think it's amazing the S and the X have had the length they've had in sales.

mean, it's, they've done some gloss here and there.

The interiors are refreshed a tad, but I think the Model 3 Highland as an example, I think
is what each of these Y, X and S all need the same type of genuine refresh.

And so if they can do that on the Y, the X and the S as they did with the three, I think
it'll help.

But it doesn't change the fact that I think that the S and the X, to your point, John,
mean, they are just dated products now and you can only squeeze the over -the -update

benefit for so long before, your point, it is, again, automotive industry is, the
aesthetic there is so important to people.

And if you feel like you're buying a product from 2012, you can only say so much about the
software before you're kind of like, yeah, but, you

you know, I, I do agree with you on that, John.

do have a question for you.

Cause I feel like you're totally right.

That the styling hasn't changed.

think they're usually improvements, especially exterior stuff.

Like we saw recently with the model three, but, you know what?

It really reminds me of is like Porsche, like devout Porsche 911 buyers.

Like I cannot tell the difference between one year from the next and suddenly say, you see
the light, the light head of the, they have this different type of led versus that led.

And the average person has no idea.

And it does seem

Good or bad, there is a very similar mentality and following to a lot of the people who
buy into the Tesla thing.

And do you think that that is, do you think that there is some element to that?

Like almost kind of the mindset and just like they have that core group of followers that
have really followed that or do you really think at the scale that the three and why are

it especially they need to be changing it more or is there some sort of other way that
they can kind of get that engagement without the exterior refresh?

Like you're seeing with maybe high end day and some of the other, EV cars that from like
kind of the fashion styling that you're talking about have been seeing a lot of

Yeah, look, when Tesla was the only game in town, so to speak, the only EV game in town,
it could do whatever it wants.

But now it's facing some pretty tough or toughening competition.

And, when you bring a Porsche, you know, that's a very small group, you know, the
Cognizant, they're hyper aware, kind of like Tesla owners.

But, know, yeah, right.

But if you're going after the mass market, Musk has talked about making 20 million cars a
year, which I never believed anyway, and I don't think he's ever gonna get anywhere close

to that.

But if you're going to the mass market, the general American buyer, when they buy a new
car, they want everyone to know, I got a new one, I got the latest stuff.

I mean, we all deny that, we're not that egocentric, but guess what?

When you buy a new car, man, it feels so good, and you want everybody to know.

And when you buy a 2024 Model 3 that looks like a 2019 Model 3, people don't know.

Now, it depends.

It's very regional.

So if you're out in California where you see Teslas everywhere, you know, people can't
tell are you in a new one or an old one or what.

You know, out here in the Midwest where I'm at, just outside Detroit, you know, maybe not
so much the 3 and the Y, but the S X, you don't see them very often.

So they still look like fresh designs.

But in places where they've been selling well, people are starting to look at some of the
other alternatives.

Yeah, John, wanted to talk about that because I agree with both you and Matt that from
what I see it, there's sort of like four main things that are sort of slowing the Tesla

sales in the US and one is the Musk effect, right?

I I hear that from a lot of people and think about it, even if it's only a couple of
percent, five percent of potential buyers, like, you know, of what 700 ,000 in sales that

Tesla in the three in the why last year, whatever.

What's, what's that math?

That's let's 35 ,000.

I have been looking up the numbers.

like just through the first of this year, Tesla has sold globally 830, 831 ,000 vehicles.

Then it goes down to BYD at about 726 ,000.

And then the next closest is a pretty big jump down to Volkswagen group at 316 ,000.

So, just trying to bring in the numbers for sure.

a small number of people who say I will not buy Musk issues.

And I think actually the sub part of that, which is people like me and Matt, who are, you
know, maybe multiple time Tesla owners are like, not again.

Right.

So like, if you think about the couple of million people that own Teslas, a lot of them
have decided.

Like I don't want another Tesla.

the next time around, and that's losing a big part of the market share, John.

It's not just like the people that are thinking about an EV and a Tesla.

that that's a big effect.

The second thing we talked about that, that I agree is just sort of the models are, you
know, need to be updated, but I also think they need a new model, right?

And I'm not including the cyber truck.

I was about to say, Loren, what do you mean?

It's a brand new Tesla.

just, literally was driving back about 20 minutes ago behind one and that's definitely not
its best angle.

mean, and John, you could talk for an hour about this, like, you know, especially like in
the East coast, like what do people like?

They like the Honda CRVs and the, you know, and the Toyotas and the, you know, like the
smaller, you know, crossovers and stuff like that.

And, you know, the Y sort of filled that for a while, but now I think we need something
smaller and cheaper than that.

Right.

Like, and, and where is it?

Right.

I guess we're getting the Robo taxi.

Well, that's yeah, that distraction piece is a big part of the conversation, right?

Musk, I think we talked about it previously, is he just, he's lost interest in running
Tesla and the things that he is now interested in as a CEO has, yeah, it has nothing to do

with product development, new, refreshed product, things like that.

And, you know, you can put that onto someone like Franz and Holhousen and be like, okay,
like what are you dreaming up and how can you influence must be like, Hey, we really got

to rethink some of this

Yeah, just, that's gonna be a tall hill to climb, I think, for where Musk is leading
things, unfortunately.

John, think the, you know, the last thing they're sort of connected at the hip, which is
where I live in Northern California in the suburbs.

Literally I can pull up to a stoplight and intersection with eight lanes, right?

And every car can be a model Y.

Like I'm literally not exaggerating, right?

And so they're boring out here.

Like to your point,

You know, like you said, people deny this.

If you ask people, when you buy a car, part of it is you want other people to know that,
you know, you're well off or whatever it is, right?

A lot of the reasons we buy people don't admit it, but they do.

Right.

When you buy a Tesla now, you're not telling anybody anything anymore.

Right?

Like it's, it's not that different.

You know, when we bought our first Tesla in 2016, it was like, Ooh.

You drive a Tesla.

Now it's like, you drive a Tesla.

Right.

It's like, it's, it's boring.

Right.

And so, and this, the sort of the second part of that is the competition, which you
touched on, right?

Like four or five years ago, there were, you know, 25 other EV models you could choose
from, including plugin hybrids or whatever.

Now there's like 80, right?

Like, and you know, several years ago, if you wanted a luxury,

sedan, there was the model S there are now like eight luxury sedans.

You can get a lucid, you can get a BMW, you can get a Mercedes, you can get a Audi, right?

Like you can get, you know, whatever, go down the list.

Right.

And so, you know, the, they're being sort of nished to death, I think also, right.

And, and I did this analysis, an article looking at the average sales per unit.

over the last couple of quarters, right?

And it's just, it's, it's basically roughly flat.

It's like five to 6 ,000 sales per, per EV model per, per quarter, right?

It's like, it's, it's not growing because, you know, like, look at this last quarter, we
had the Equinox, the Blazer, right?

You got all these new models.

A lot of those are people that maybe we're going to buy the Mach -E or the Y, right?

And so then they go over to the other ones.

So like, as we get more of these models.

It's really difficult for the sales to grow for any of existing ones, including Tesla.

Yeah, and I think what we're seeing is the typical car buying process, is what do people
everything we've talked about.

What do people know?

Well, they don't want to buy the thing that everyone has.

They do want to be the standout a little bit different, which will only help these new
models coming to market.

Equinox, Blazer go down the list.

Yeah.

actually going to push back on that a little bit.

and it's not like, I think everything you guys are saying is totally true, but in some
ways for the Evie, like first time buyer, I still get questions.

even had a question yesterday about guys like, I get a Tesla?

And I just asked him like, do you want to, do you want to get an electric car and not
really have to think about it?

He's like, yeah.

I was like, okay.

And then he was like, okay, I'm done.

I'm in that's I'll just get that.

It like, think.

Yeah.

is that, is that the, the buying experience that people are accustomed to, which is, just
liked that car.

They haven't had to think about how the car functions for their day to day life.

They've been buying based on the aesthetic that we're seeing that now translated into the
EV world.

But the EV experience as Chase, as you just pointed out, yeah, it's not apples to apples
there.

It's software infrastructure, things of that nature.

And for all the things you can point to Tesla about where you, or even give, you know,
Elon grief, which he's earned.

I mean, my wife and I talked about this, we both drive Teslas and we're both kind of like,
yeah, but what would we opt for if we still wanted to have an electric car?

And because of the knowledge we have, the answer is, yeah, instead, I'm just going to get
the sticker for my trunk that says bought it before he was a jerk.

know, I mean, like, honestly, because it's like, I know that if we opted to switch to
another electric car, we'd be giving up things like how well the software works and how

well the infrastructure works.

I, as much as I can say, like, yeah, I

I've got plenty of friends that work at Tesla and they still take a lot of pride in their
work.

So it's like, yes, it is about the CEO to a point.

There are really smart engineers and hardworking people there that make the company
function.

But if the board or somebody does not get Elon to tamp down on what he's been doing as it
relates to the image of Tesla being tied to him, yeah, they are in trouble.

And then that concerns me that people's first time EV experience because they say no to
Tesla and they buy another EV that has deficiencies in software and infrastructure,

they're going to have a potentially

less positive experience for those factors.

And it might actually damage people's first impression of EVs because they're just
thinking how they always do, which is like emotionally and aesthetically, it's like, I

don't like Elon, gonna buy that EV instead.

I think we do run the risk out for EVs in general and Musk clearly doesn't care about that
anymore.

The mission to him, pooh, gone.

He doesn't care.

So that's, yeah, that concerns me.

Look, it concerns me too.

No, I'm just going to say it concerns me too, Matt.

You know, I want to see Tesla succeed.

I think that's a great story.

And I've come from full skeptic to, you know, I drank the Kool -Aid.

But, you know, look, they had a disastrous second quarter.

I mean, their operating profit was down what?

Almost 40%.

That should shake the board up.

And you know, the success behind Tesla has been this 50 % per year growth.

It's over.

That growth is over.

This is why Elon has pivoted to talking about Optimist robots and AI and robotaxes.

Because he's got to do something to keep the faithful, you know, there with the stock
price.

look, Franz, you brought his name up.

He's a great designer.

I bet he's got sketches all over his studio of what they want to do with all the models.

You have to let them rip loose and go for

Yeah, I agree 100%.

Yeah.

What you don't think the Tesla tequila is like a growth market opportunity, Joe?

It probably is.

Yeah.

No, think until we get Elon in line in some way, to your point, John, the numbers, when
those came out, I think everybody just kind of had their like, my God moment about,

someone actually did the math on and broke it down.

said, if we were to do this by the numbers, this stock should be at like $8 a share.

Yeah.

Well, it is the best.

It's the best hype stock.

for the last 10, 15, 20 years, arguably, right?

I mean, and it is that.

I think the promise of what Tesla offered for the last 15, 20 years is what people were
buying into.

And John, to your point, now he's just like, okay, how can I keep the faithful alive and
excited about how we're a tech company doing this crazy, fun stuff?

like, yeah, but we also need you bring the lunch pail to work type CEO on this is still a
car company in so many ways, not this just, like cornucopia of all these things.

Like you guys still do make cars.

And if you don't get that right, you're going to just all the goodwill that you've gotten
from people is just going to just flounder over the years.

yeah, mean, without Franz getting let loose, like you said, John, or maybe it Loren, it's
just like, yeah, without that,

Yeah.

was, was kind of interesting because like their last, stock or, investor relations that
they did earlier this week, was clear, like all their margin was coming from their energy

storage grid backup stuff, which it's great.

They have that, I guess, but it was just, it kind of reminded me of what we've seen for a
while.

Definitely different, but like the legacy automakers are there trying to take all their
profits from one area and try to cover some of the challenges they've had with the EV

market.

obviously Tesla's kind of didn't.

pretty big 180 because they used to be their strength was kind of the margins they had.

But one thing that, I did kind want to ask you about John, cause this was covered, I think
in the news, like a month or so ago and you guys had mentioned it was like, I believe it

was like 47 % of people who were in an EV then.

Yeah.

And I was just kind of curious if you had heard any more about that or like what your
thoughts are with why, I guess clearly.

Matt and Loren, you have some ideas too, not necessarily.

agree with it, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on what has been the issue with that
struggle as to why just for anyone listening who's not familiar, the, believe it was like

47 % allegedly due to this, globally.

Thanks.

do the survey was saying that when someone went to an EV, then they went back and they
went to a combustion vehicle after

Yeah, look, haven't dived into the details of that survey.

It sounds like click bait to me, to be honest.

I'll have to look more into it, Chase, but I didn't get into the details of that.

Yeah.

So, so chase and Matt and I were on a string with, with John Volcker, the, infamous, EV
analyst, almost as famous as John McElroy, he, actually had some back and forth with, with

McKinsey on that got a bunch of questions answered, including some from me and Matt, but
they're, they're defending it.

But, there are 10 other studies out there that have completely different.

numbers on that.

it's like pick which survey fits your narrative and go with it.

I just find it hard to believe that half of the people that buy an EV go back to a gas
car.

You just don't see it, right?

Some percent, yes.

And there's an old study from a few years ago that UC Davis did that's one of my favorite
on this topic.

It's just, it was kind of old.

know, there was like the early Nissan Leafs and the Fiat 500E in it, right?

So that gives you a sense of how old it is.

But what they found was like literally almost nobody that bought a Tesla went back to an
ICE vehicle.

And the people that went from an EV back to ICE were apartment dwellers, or they were
driving an EV that had 90 miles of range or a combination of both, right?

In other words,

It all comes back to Matt Teske.

It all comes back to charging.

It all comes back to the charging experience, right?

That the people who say an EV is not for me do not have convenient access to charging a
longer range EV.

They rely on shitty public charging, like whatever it is, it's not the car.

It's the charging experience is why they go back.

That's what it all boils down to.

And you know, that takes us back to Tesla.

Why people who

don't want to buy a product from Elon, still buy another Tesla, right?

Because it's the best charging experience, software buying experience, et cetera.

Yeah, I couldn't I couldn't say better myself, Loren.

I mean, I agree with all that.

It's, you know, and so to the point of where do these studies come from?

Who are the target demographics?

What is like everything you just said?

It's like they got to dig a little deeper.

Which EV did you have and where do you live?

Yeah.

And if I remember right, it was a pretty small survey group too, but it was just something
that I remember had been in the news around EV sales that we hadn't talked about since our

last meetings.

sure there was some truth to part of it, but it just, yeah, it just

It was a glaring difference from most of other studies we see.

JD Power has followed this too, and they're very careful.

I think maybe more careful than McKinsey's been in its numbers because if I remember
right, and I admit I didn't read the whole survey, they were looking at trade -ins on new

cars and they were seeing all these electrics and drawing a conclusion from that.

And what the JD Power people have said is, hey, wait a minute, you don't know if they're
really getting rid of an EV because they don't like it.

Maybe they had two EVs in their household and they thought, you know what, do, we should
have a nice vehicle too.

So let's trade that in.

I think there's a lot more study that's got to go into this, but I just don't buy the
numbers that they're giving up on

Yeah, McKinsey did get the fentanyl market right.

They understood that that was a big market.

So we know we know they get some things

Man.

That's a different podcast altogether.

Yeah.

But it is Friday.

So who knows?

Maybe, we're sliding into our week and a little early, guess today.

I guess, one, I, I realize we've already talked about almost 30 minutes on this, but I,
I'm just kind of curious talking about EV sales.

Obviously Tesla has been a big part of what we're talking about already.

let's change it a little bit.

What do you think?

Obviously we're starting to see some kind of better other

actually options come to the market from other automakers in multiple, kind of segments
for, the industry.

What do you think that either the tradition essentially, what do you think anyone other
than Tesla really needs to be doing right now to kind of keep that momentum going to kind

of put the focus back on the narrative that overall EV sales are

Just, can I just throw out one last sort of numbers thing?

So sorry.

So I looked at 57 BEVs over the last year and a half, quarterly sales, and they were up 30
% in Q2 over Q1 of 2023.

If you take out the new models, so all the models that were introduced since then is only
up 14 .8%.

Right.

So basically, you know, the, the, the models that have been around for a year and a half
growing just a little bit.

know, so it's, it's the existing market is growing a little bit and the new market is sort
of growing a little bit, but still it's not adding up to the big numbers.

And I think.

You know, and then John could talk to this like five, six years ago when EV sales were a
couple hundred thousand and the next year they went to double that.

Right.

Like we had 80 % growth, whoo -hoo, a hundred percent growth or whatever it is.

Well, we're at like, you know, including plugin hybrids were like 1 .4 or whatever it is,
you know?

And so now when you get a couple hundred thousand growth, you know, it's like 20 % or
whatever the math is, right?

It's like.

And so I think, you know, it's just, it's just math and this idea that we were going to
continue to see 80, a hundred percent growth just ignores, you know, people's ability to

use Excel and understand that, you know, I mean, Apple years ago stopped having a hundred
percent year over year sales on the iPhone, right?

Cause they were selling 50 million a year or whatever was, right?

they weren't going to sell a hundred million the next year, you know, if

If they sold another million, that was huge.

And I think we're entering that part with, with EVs.

Anyway, I didn't mean to get off, but I think it's just an important point to understand
this narrative that all the automakers are going, my God, EV sales aren't, growing like we

thought.

yeah, did you think they were going to grow a hundred percent every year for the rest of
life?

You don't know.

Maybe, mean, maybe not that, but I think some of them, you know, we keep hearing more to
you about like our projections.

we're not going to do a million in 2025.

We're pulling back on that or we're going to hold out on switching that factory to pure
electric.

So we're actually going to build more trucks at that factory again, still.

So we are seeing that happening.

And to a certain extent, I mean, again, I think that some of this

a lack of understanding of what they were building, the ecosystem they needed to build.

It's like, yeah, if we build cars with big batteries in them, people are going to buy them
like Teslas, right?

Well, geez, let's do that.

And it's like, yeah, okay.

But in the legacy world, it's like, you have to contend with, did you get the software
right?

Where's the infrastructure?

How is your dealer network going to support that and actually make it really a good
experience for people?

There was a lot of pieces that they just kind of did what they've done for years, which is
we produced the vehicle, we'll just put it into the sales system that we have.

And we've got some marketing around it.

And look what EVs are doing.

I mean, not to oversimplify, but I think to an extent there was so much going on to get
the engineering done, just to get these products to market with still missing, having gaps

and understanding of what they're bringing to market.

Right.

And we've seen that play out with these kind of reactive moments of, we need to change
strategy or whatever it look like.

So, to your point, don't think they thought it was going to be like, we're to sell a
hundred thousand of these or a million of these out of the gate.

But to an extent, I just don't think they fundamentally understood a lot of the different
little, you know, support pieces that had to be there to make their

be what they anticipated.

And so we're now seeing that backtracking and add to that the political year that we're in
that's just all kinds of fun.

It's just like, how are they reacting to those moments too?

So there's a lot of things that come into play with that.

Yeah.

I think, you know, and this is like going to be the third topic.

So I don't want to get us out of order here, Chase.

But I think an exclamation point to what you just said, Matt, is the fact that, you know,
a year ago, seven automakers got together and announced Iona, the new charging network,

right?

It took them, you know, 10 years to figure out what Tesla figured out in 2012,

Right.

I was literally driving my car yesterday.

I mean, I have a 2018 Model 3 and I was driving it and it did cross my mind and I was
like, yeah, this coming fall, I will have had this car for six years.

And I thought to myself, and I'm like, okay, six years, like what's happened since I
bought this car?

And yeah, new products have come to market and things have been growing, which is true.

But then if you compare the apples to apples game, and John, maybe think of like the
videos you've done about what's happening in the Chinese market.

And I thought,

Yeah, there's just a dragging of feet still happening domestically on a lot of what they
could be doing to compete.

It really just, it struck me.

was like, yeah, this thing is still better than most brand new EVs you can buy from other
brands today.

And it's six years old.

That's crazy.

How did we get

It's funny.

You mentioned the six year thing because, I didn't really realize this earlier this week.

I'd had my model Y for two years.

And the only reason I know that officially is I got a push notification and it said, they
said a message from Tesla.

was like, okay, I figured it might've been a service thing or something.

And it says, congrats on owning your car for two years.

And then it had this whole like a survey of different things they could be doing
recommendations.

And it's one of those just really surprising.

It's just a completely different approach to it that I thought was pretty fascinating with
kind of like, once again, just the user experience and asking for feedback saying, just

like looking, they had like highlights of how I'd use the car and all this stuff.

And I don't know if it's, if it's more like a generational interest thing, but like,
especially from someone who's kind of worked in the software and tech side, you're like,

of course they test would be the one to do this, but you would see more of like the
Rivians and the lucids of the world to kind of take that approach.

But it is just a really fascinating.

Chase, this is not true.

Tesla does not do marketing.

What do you mean?

okay.

Sorry.

have to, have to translate.

so for years that the Tesla fanboys have, been proud of the fact that all the other
automakers spend all this money on advertising and everything like that.

And Tesla doesn't spend any money on marketing when in fact, cause I've met with people in
the marketing team before and stuff, they do email marketing.

They're now doing Google AdWords, right?

They have like

Hundreds of stores that's marketing, right?

They have superchargers, that's marketing, right?

It's brand, et cetera.

So anyway, I was teasing.

No, no, I just, it just was something that popped in my head because it was such a like
crazy thing to think like my car is telling me I've owned it for two years as like, and I

just thought that that was just such a wild experience, especially if you lease the
vehicle.

It's almost like, it's been two years.

Well, you got a year to go.

And then you could start some sort of drip campaign to remind them at the end of that
third year of the lease, like, Hey, we got this hot deal.

I don't know.

It was just such a, it was such an interesting.

I let's put it this way.

My Subaru never told me how long I had had

My Land Rover from the eighties does not tell me how long I've had it.

and then it doesn't ask me how could, how could I make your life better chase, which is
such a funny experience.

this really defines the difference between that vertically integrated ecosystem compared
to a dealer ecosystem.

The legacies are like, that's the dealer's job to do that outreach and hit people up on
those comments and thoughts.

We don't do that.

Whereas Tesla is, I I've never seen an email like that from Tesla.

think it's cooler doing it, but that's just, it speaks to their engagement with their
customers in a way that is different from legacy.

mean, lesson to be learned from that possibly, yeah.

But yeah, think that's the thing is we're still in that that the legacy mindset of
pivoting from things that they have known to how can they think differently in these

processes and Yeah, we're still in the throes of how that will all play out

No, I'll be curious if you, I'm sure you'll probably get one.

It was just a push notification to my phone.

So I definitely, as someone kind also in the marketing tech background, I'm curious to see
what you think of it when you get one, but John, what, what, where, mean, yeah, I think

this will probably be the last of it.

Where, where do you think that, you're hearing as far as like in Detroit, as far as with
the legacy OEMs, is this everything that we're kind of babbling about aligning with some

of the stuff you're hearing from the messaging as well

the repositioning of selling EVs or how they're trying to approach them as a product to
the customer.

Look, they got their hair on fire and it's not just Detroit, you know, it's Stuttgart,
it's Tokyo, it's, they've got this transition to EVs to make and now they found out, you

just don't put batteries in electric motors, you got to do software -defined vehicles, you
got to go to zonal architecture, you've got to develop this with digital twins, it's like,

holy crap, we don't know how to do any of that stuff.

And you know, you've seen them try to do things on their own and fail miserably.

You know, look at Volkswagen with Cariad.

I mean, it fell flat on its face twice and they ran to Rivian and paid them $5 billion to
get their zonal architecture after they spent, I don't know, at least that much money or

more trying to get Cariad going.

And now they've got the Chinese breathing down their necks with maybe a 35 % cost
advantage.

Maybe they're coming into Mexico and backdoor the tariffs that way.

So they're desperately worried.

They know that what they've got, well, let me make some statements here.

Ford knows what it's got right now was a rush to market job, slap stuff together as fast
as we can.

We got the Lightning, we got the Mach -E, we got the E Transit.

They know their next generation vehicle is not gonna be out until about 2027.

That's when they'll start to get competitive.

GM, I'm not gonna say bullish on, but I'm starting to admire their, stick to their
strategy.

They clearly over -invested like Ford did too.

They were exuberant.

And going back, Matt and Loren, to some of the earlier discussion, they were misled by the
market.

Remember, Tesla got a million and a half reservations, deposits for the Cybertruck, fully
refundable.

People went, holy crap, look at that.

Who's ever seen that?

Ford got 200 ,000 deposits.

for the lightning.

Where are those people?

GM got, I don't know if they ever really announced the numbers, but they said, look, we're
getting strong orders for the electric Silverado, Cadillac Lyric and whatnot.

But having said that, GM is probably going to end up this year in the United States
selling somewhere between 200 and 250 ,000 EVs.

They claim that once they break the 200 ,000 barrier, they're going to start to have a
variable profit on those

Honda's part of that mix too, the prologue is just hitting the market.

They claim within a 12 -month period they're going to sell 40 ,000 of those things.

So it's starting to happen.

But, you know, if it wasn't for that irrational exuberance of four years ago where they
went, yeah, we need all these plants, we need all this capacity, if they had been a little

bit more conservative, they'd look a whole lot smarter right now.

And that's why you're seeing them either delay plants opening,

or moving ICE vehicles into them because they can clearly make way more EVs than there is
demand for right now.

Yeah, John, think it's Q4 is going to be fascinating this year, right?

Because you've got, the Equinox and the Blazer, you know, just they're starting to scale
up production and stuff.

And if those things are hits, you know, from an EV sales perspective, if they're selling,
you know, six, eight, 10 ,000 a quarter of those, you know, like that, that's going to be

like really pretty solid.

But if they're only selling three or 4 ,000 a quarter or something like

That's going to be concerning.

And what does that Honda Prologue do?

And then the Acura version.

So we've got these new models that are either coming out or just sort of scaling up.

And I think that's going to be the real litmus test of where this market is at, is if some
of these new models that are like solid models, they speak to the middle America.

Right?

These are Chevy buyers, right?

It's like, will they actually buy them?

That's, that's going to be fascinating.

Or do they buy them for like one or two quarters and then it like plateaus?

That's what I was about to say.

Like is it full circle on our conversation?

Is it the fresh new car in town and people jump out and grab at them?

And then all of a sudden it's like, yeah, but what was that interest?

They do have some pent up demand from people that have been interested in some of these
new models from EV, people in the EV community that have been on lists for Equinox and

Blazor, et cetera.

Blazor had that issue from the outset was from the software side looks to be resolved.

Hopefully Equinox hopefully doesn't have the same types of issues.

I think that what we're, think it kind of, again, full sort of our conversation.

People are still hungry for new options and EVs, especially because of what we're seeing
with what we talked about with Tesla earlier, which is, know, this lightning rod CEO

that's, that's, you know, again, doing damage to the brand and the product combined with
the aging product.

Everybody's looking around going, well, what else is on the market?

So the timing actually is really good for some of these things that are coming from like
GM.

So, but I think exactly what you said, Loren is like, yeah, but how is

longevity to that?

is it going to be it's just new hotness on the market and then a quarter or two later,
it's like, womp womp, you know?

you know, look, the real question too is who gets elected in November?

You know, and if Trump gets reelected and tries to, you hadn't noticed a, but I mean,
look, we've seen it happen in China where they reduced incentives for EVs and sales

softened.

saw it, we're seeing it happen in Germany where sales are actually going down.

I mean, it's not the growth rate slowing down, actual sales going down because the Germans
yank the incentives on

So that's a real danger.

that's why I fully expect the auto industry, dealers, the unions to say, hey, wait a
minute, Trump, if he gets elected, don't financially damage these companies because that's

what you're going to do if you yank all this stuff out from under

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what's interesting, the comments are made on that on the political side of it.

When, you know, when Elon was all gung -ho of talking politics, like the last month on
Twitter, for example, sorry, X, I just can't bring myself to call it X.

It just sounds ridiculous.

But, but you noticed how even his commentary around when he was asked during the earnings
call, he said, well, frankly, it's not really going to hurt us much.

I mean, it might hurt other people, but it's not going to hurt us much.

And I was thinking, wow, that's, that's again, so far from the original mission

what he said he was trying to accomplish with this company.

But no, think John, you're right.

think if that does go to the wayside, then even how they did clarify and clean up how that
was working as it relates to what vehicles were eligible.

Yeah, we stand to see again, I don't think it's going to drop off.

But I mean, we are seeing this, the growth curve is not this hockey stick.

It's more realistic in the realm of we are talking about $50 ,000, $60 ,000 products here
that and to Loren's

Where's the $20 ,000, $30 ,000 one legitimately that people can actually afford?

Because when I was flying home from a recent trip, I was at the airport, I went to buy a
McDonald's hash brown.

It was $3 .59 for a hash brown from McDonald's.

And I thought, man, if this is pissing me off, I can only imagine how people feel when
they're like, how much is that new car?

Forget it.

You know, it's like, good Lord.

So, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I know what.

Matt, the average age of cars is going up like, like six tenths of a year, you know, like
half a year or, you know, nine months, like every year now.

Right.

You know, pretty, in a couple of years, we're going to be at the average age of cars is
like 20, 20 years old.

Right.

Because, think about it, cars are made so much better now than they were 30, 40 years ago
that, you know, a 20 year old Toyota Camry is still a good car.

Right.

Right.

I mean, I get that argument from friends all the time who will say, you know, hey, I love
the idea about going electric, but I have to be pretty honest with you, like my car's paid

off and it runs well still.

I'm not really having problems.

So I mean, maybe for my next one.

yeah, to that, to how do we replace this aging fleet?

Well, if the aging fleet is still operating way that people say, and people are getting
pinched at the wallet, they're kind of like, yeah, unless that's a $20 ,000 EV that really

makes it so like, you know, unmistakable, I should do

Maybe they'll wait for it.

But then it's like, what do they buy in a used age DV that has technology from 2018 that
wasn't a Tesla, you know, or 2020 that wasn't a Tesla.

And all of a sudden it's like, yeah, what are they buying?

It's like, there's a software gremlin in that, that, you know, legacy OEM vehicle you're
looking at.

And that's the thing is people are discovering this stuff in real time.

We just don't have an educated buying market that understands what they're getting into.

They just approach it like they always have.

we're going to have so many of these.

just kind of start and stop moments as it relates to how people are responding to what
they're getting simply by sake of, is it new or old or what's the price?

well, think one of the other things that I've found really interesting, well, kind of work
with some dealerships lately is kind of going through the political side of it is if those

all go away as far as the incentives, I think that may help with the sales process.

Cause I've recently had an experience where they just were not interested in dealing with
like, it qualifies for 37 50, this qualifies for that.

Or if you lease it, then it's 7 ,500 and they just seem to feel like I'm not kind of
understandably that

overconfli, over -complified the already complicated sales process of selling an EV over a
combustion vehicle.

but I also say like with the used market, that is such a huge market compared to the new
vehicle market that it's, I, yeah, it'll, it only slowed down that adoption, right?

If there's less EV new car sales, in addition to all the concerns you've kind of brought
up about what the quality of those are and concerns around,

battery degradation, other things for some of these EVs that are newer to the market
versus like the decade Tesla's already had for a lot of their products.

I mean, man, this is a weird time to be alive in the world of automotive.

mean, it's, and it's volatile.

And again, week to week, day to day, I mean, I, again, we've discussed this in the past.

I try to do my best to just not respond to the daily news and really take a step back,
look at the parade view of the conversation and say, okay, how does this impact the long

term here?

Or is this just like a fly by night, you know, news hit?

Well, know, Gartner Research does this thing that they call the hype cycle that they've
developed.

And it's sort of a bell curve kind of a thing chart.

And it shows out, you know, a new technology comes out and it's sort of there.

And then all of a sudden it catches fire and man, it takes off.

And that's what we saw with EVs over the last couple of years.

The hype got way out in front of the reality.

And

per the Gartner hype cycle, things collapse.

Everybody thinks it's garbage, it's never going to happen.

And that's where we're at, I think kind of right now, at least with the general public,
that yeah, EVs are stupid, it's not going to happen.

And it's from there that you see slow but steady growth.

And that's what I expect to see.

I've been saying this for a number of years.

My own personal opinion is somewhere in the 2027, 2028 timeframe.

we're really going to see EV sales take off in the United States.

Hmm.

Well, yeah, everything you said on John, I think is 100 % accurate.

And the, that's what we talked about at beginning of the year.

It's like what I, when I was, whatever the, you know, projection I had, Chase, you said,
was like, the hype train is going to come off the rails.

Whatever I said, I wasn't as eloquent about it as John just was.

But, but I mean, but that, think that part of it is just, we, we've had so much hype
around it.

And it, mean, name the topic, we have hype around on a 24 hour basis and people just need
practical information around, is it real?

Is it not?

And

We're weeding through a lot of the BS right now, which I think is a good

Well, I guess that's an interesting segue real quickly.

know I'd put it as one of the bigger things to talk about, but I don't think there's as
much.

was kind of EVs versus hybrids.

And I think in the auto industry and among us, people talk about hybrids and are excited
about it.

Talking to mainstream people.

don't think they really care.

outside of like how you said it, John, that they shouldn't be talking that it's a hybrid.

They should just educate people and say it gets 50 miles a gallon.

The only people I have talked

As far as like buying demographic, and I'm curious for everyone else's thought that are
kind of bought in and think hybrids are interesting are like traditional Ram truck buyers.

They're like, okay, that kind of makes sense.

And they're very anti -V usually.

and I realized there's a lot of generalizations I'm using, but that's like the only part
of the market where I've heard any sort of interesting enthusiasm for hybrids.

And I'm curious if that's something that you guys have been seeing as well, because I
think overall, especially with a lot of other,

more general consumers, I think the idea of an EV makes a lot of sense to them.

It's if it can work with their life and it's not a big change to make that adoption.

so I'm kind of curious on your thoughts of hybrids are kind of.

I just, I feel like people just don't have the enthusiasm that there was for them in
talking about these discussions.

Like there was even a year

Well, look, sales of hybrids have taken off.

mean, if you're an automaker with a strong hybrid portfolio, you're sitting pretty.

Toyota, Honda, Ford, the Hyundai Kia Group, I mean, their hybrid sales are up
dramatically.

And what's so funny to me is the same crowd that's bashing EVs saying they're not really
good for the environment, don't make any sense, are the exact same people who were bashing

hybrids 15 years ago.

You know, they hated hybrids.

They hated that thing.

But now, hey, hybrid's got an internal combustion engine in it.

All right, that's what I want.

That's good.

And, you know, they keep talking about, electrics being shoved down their throat.

They don't want the government telling them what to buy.

Well, I don't know anyone who's telling you what you have to go out and buy, but that's
become this, this narrative amongst the, anti -EV crowd.

And, and for whatever reason, well, we know the reason.

They're embracing hybrids because hybrids got an internal combustion engine in

So just to put some numbers on this, so the industry and the media tend to talk about EV
sales share, the percentage of new vehicles purchased each year that are EVs, BEVs, and

plug -in hybrids are one of those.

To me, the more fascinating number is the VIO numbers, the vehicles in operation and
looking at that.

And there now about 295 million vehicles on the road

in the US.

like 6 and 1 million of those are BEVs and plug -in hybrids.

Somewhere in there, I don't have it memorized.

So we've now reached about 1 .6 % by my latest VIO forecast.

The vehicles on the road have a plug, right?

The point

It's going to take us to like 2060, 2065 or whatever to get rid of those 290 million ice
vehicles.

Cause just like we said, they're lasting 20, 30, 40 years now and they're still good cars
oftentimes.

Right?

So the point is, that while, know, everybody talks about, you know, BEVs, we got to get
everybody in a full electric vehicle.

It's going to take decades to get.

BEVs to the point where they work for everybody, they're affordable, all that kind of
stuff.

So our goal is not 100 % BEVs, right?

Isn't our goal to reduce carbon emissions and pollution?

And so if we can get somebody out of a truck that's getting 16 miles to a gallon into one
that's getting 25 miles to a gallon, you know, or, you know,

We're cutting carbon emissions by 30, 40 % or 50 % or whatever.

And so I'm a big fan of hybrids because it's reality.

Like if 90%, 92 % of the US market buying a new car this year, don't buy a BEV, right?

Well, would we rather have a hybrid that gets 35, 40 miles per gallon instead of one that
gets 20 miles per gallon?

Like it's just

Common sense, isn't it?

Like I just, don't get why anybody would be against hybrids because they're perfectionist.

talking about long standing brand recognition of what took 20 years.

Yeah, it's taken 20 plus years for people to go from, saying, that's, mean, South Park
made a really hilarious episode about people, their Priuses, right?

I mean, like, that was the it's taken that long to understand the psychology of what
people were having against that.

And it's it's again, that lily pad car kind of concept, right?

It's

That was the greeny car 20 years ago.

like, well, that's a hippie car.

I'm never buying that stupid thing.

Now the psychology around it is, well, it's not about that the hybrid isn't hippie as much
as it's like, as John was pointing out, I want my miles per gallon to be better than 10.

So if I can still fill up with gas every day and get 22, okay.

And if that's called a hybrid, fine, man.

Like I'm game.

The hippie car is the one that's got the plug that runs on electricity.

Yes.

hybrid, whatever it is, it's, runs on gas.

That's not a weird thing now.

So that took a fifth of a quarter or quarter of a century for that to kind of, you know,
rotate through.

to your point, Loren, yeah, it's like, how much longer is that going to take for plugins
and pure electrics to get to where we're at?

Well, if we start doing the math and also that longevity of gas cars on the road, yeah, we
are decades away.

And I said to people all the time when they say, we got to get that gas, the gas model of
how you get gas out of people's minds.

We have to kill it immediately.

I'm like, you won't.

Yeah.

is a generational change.

You know, we will in 20, 30 years, we will have plenty of people who will see that home
that own homes that will say, yeah, I, I just fill up at home 99 % of the time.

I don't care.

I don't think about it.

It doesn't bother me at all.

And it's cheap.

Like that will be a thing that is much more mainstream understood, but the experiential
piece has to happen.

And all these factors we're talking about are going to have to live themselves out.

And yeah, it's the human element is the thing that no matter how much we talk about this,
how are humans responding to

And so often that gets overlooked because as we talked about, and as John pointed out
earlier about that hype cycle of just how, just get the product in market, just get it in

there.

like, it truly ready for people to use yet?

No, it's going to take time.

Yeah, Loren, I completely agree with what you said.

The focus has got to be on carbon reduction.

Who cares how you get there?

Who cares?

And in fact, you know, I'm dreaming now, right?

I would have much preferred the government or the EPA to go to each one of these car
companies and say, General Motors, you got to reduce your carbon footprint by X number of

tons this year.

And here's what every year is going to You figure it out and we're going to have some sort
of mechanism to verify, know, trust but verify.

But, you know, let's focus on carbon reduction, not on specific technology that we want
you to use.

Yeah.

And the answer is still probably going to be electric vehicles, right?

But don't prescript

with their, kind of mandates for

vehicles yeah I mean that's kind of what they were doing

slowly walking into the, you know, you know, carbon credit type thing of like, how did
Tesla make money for a decade?

And what were they doing?

I mean, so like, so do we put the backs yet again, on other companies are willing to make
pure electric fleet, these other companies just buy their credits from somewhere else.

I mean, now we're getting into the deep politics of it.

And the truth is, is we need genuine vision and leadership from companies on product
development.

And so that's where I really look at what we're doing, you know, to basically

shield Americans from products that are being advanced and designed well outside of the
United States.

And the American public is just not really being exposed to what they should be thinking
of as options.

And we're shielding our domestic manufacturers from having to compete.

And so it doesn't really help us in that way either.

yeah, everything we're discussing right now is a very interesting and crazy web of what's
the tipping point that actually gets people to say they want it and the industry

domestically disabled do

And then how do the politics align with all of that?

I don't know.

Do we have another hour?

Because we could really unpack that.

since we just solve that, obviously, let's go over to the state of EV charging.

but I guess, no, one thing I'll just say is I think everything you guys said was pretty
accurate, but there's nothing.

I think one of the advantages to why I think EVs will overall take off faster than,
hybrids did is hybrids just are not fun to drive.

And as like for an average American or anyone that's

You're not going to buy a car like, if I buy this car, I'd buy a car.

If it saves me money, I'm not going to buy a car probably because there's a carbon
reduction, but if it's drives faster, it's more fun and it's better for the environment.

Okay.

Now I'm kind of interested.

And

Yeah, if you can save several hundred dollars a month on gas, because if you're driving
like a big Ram pickup that gets, you know, 15 miles per gallon and you can get it up to,

as Matt said, to 22 or something, right.

It matters, but to Chase's point, this gets back to even we're talking about earlier, like
even the aesthetic of like, man, Tesla's got to update their fleet because it's aging.

It's like what triggers people to say yes to wanting to buy the product they're buying,
you know?

And yeah, some of these factors that make sense.

Well, that's fine.

That's logical.

But as we've discussed multiple times as a group, who buys cars based on logic?

You know, not a lot of people.

Yeah.

When I think there's just something to be said, like obviously, yeah, if you live in
Wyoming, you got your, Ram pickup props to you.

I don't think they're listening to this podcast, but I will say it's just like.

We have a land Rover, great off -roading vehicle.

gets like 10 miles a gallon.

And, but at the same time it's older than I am.

So it's been around for almost 40 years.

And so it's like, we're keeping on the road.

We've only put up, we probably put like.

5 ,000 miles a year on it.

And then we put 26 ,000 miles a year on our Tesla.

And that's kind of the thing where it's just like, if I think there's more of an argument
to be made to make the city driving a lot of the day to day driving, just your EV.

And then if you want to have a combustion, like, don't know, I disagree with, I think
there's interest in that, but I think for a lot of families, especially on multiple

vehicles, it's just like, I think you can have a much larger indent in the carbon
reduction side of it.

If you have

And I think we're starting to see this, but there's still challenges with the actual
fueling thing.

That whole part of it of actually just making your daily and doing so many more miles on a
fully electric.

then when you want to do something or go off in the matter, go to something, yeah, you got
your big old pickup.

Are you making the case for plug -in hybrids today?

say, as a product designer at OEM is like, you know what that sounds like?

no, no, I don't want to plug in hybrid.

you just did and I'm a big fan of plug -in hybrids because they allow you to do with one
car What you just described to do with two cars?

Anyway, let's move on to charge

I realized I'm coming to the minutiae though that, but yeah, I'll, I'll drive like 200
miles in a day in an EV and it's fine.

I don't want to deal with oil changes and all that crap and unplugging hybrid, but, this
is, this is my own opinions on that.

And like you said, we've already been talking about this for an hour.

So let's get to real quickly the state of EV charging, which I think is something we
probably agree more on.

And Loren, I'm curious on your thoughts of just what you've been seeing in the space and
probably a lot of the conversations you've been having as far as Nevi and actual kind of

the current state of charging infrastructure

Yeah.

So I'll sort of speak to it from like the industry perspective, kind of the B2B
perspective.

And, you know, I'm sort of, I'm calling it, we're moving from charging 1 .0 to charging 2
.0, right?

Like the, if you think about the last 10 years, and I'm not going to mention any names
because I work with all of them as customers or prospects or whatever it is, but you know,

there, there are some charging companies that basically were in

Let's sell chargers to unsuspecting restaurant owners and stuff.

And those chargers go out back behind the building where there's no lighting near the
garbage cans.

three years later, those chargers have cobwebs on them.

The software hasn't been updated.

Matt knows what I'm speaking about.

And people just getting incentives and grants to get these things in the ground.

was a land grab, right?

Now in the last 18 months, we're moving into BP Pulse, Circle K, 7 -Eleven, Pilot, Loves,
Mercedes -Benz, GM, Quick Stop, Quick Trip.

You go down the list.

We're moving from companies that

crossing their fingers that they could sell a lot of chargers and then EV sales would go
up and utilization would go up and at some point they would actually make a profit.

To moving into companies that are like multi -billion dollar companies that already have
physical footprints and stores and profits and adding chargers is a business that they

understand because most of them are in the fueling business, right?

You know, often refers to it.

We're talking about refueling here, right?

Whether it's gas or electric.

And so they're adding a different kind of pump.

And they understand that business and they, they, they don't want to lose money on the
charging business.

But what they're really excited about is getting people out of the car.

Once they plug it in and inside the store.

I mean, we just, I posted something the other day on Bucky's Bucky's is announcing the new
store in Ohio.

It's going to have a hundred gas pumps and 24 fast chargers.

you know, and I've never been to a Bucky's, but I'm told they're like twice the size of a
target store or something like that.

They're, they're massive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so we're the second part of it, Chase is that, you know, the first part is we're
moving to a different kind of company and what their goal and reason for getting into the

charging business is.

The second part of it is they already are in the retail business, so they're looking for
incremental revenue.

you know, so this whole thing about how do we get people inside the store is sort of like
the next part of this.

And so we have this, this dichotomy.

I wrote about this in my newsletter the other day of, you know, there's all these people,
the Ram drivers who don't want to be EV and say, I am never going to buy an EV until it

Charge in five minutes, just like I can at the gas station.

But guess what?

All the companies that are now getting into the charging business want you to stay parked
for 20 to 45 minutes and go inside the store and get the Bucky's barbecue and the Bucky's

beaver hat and a lotto ticket and hang out and have a nice

and spend, you know, $37 and 52 cents inside the store and, $12 out there for charging.

Right.

So we're, you know, this is what I see is fascinating that we're moving into like a whole
new different paradigm of companies and why they're in the charging business.

And then you add in like Mercedes and Iona.

And they're like, well, we're doing this because we want to sell more EVs.

Right.

And we finally realized that that's what we have to do.

We can't just rely on.

You know, unnamed charging networks, right?

But, and the, last thing I will say that that's part of the sort of this charging 2 .0 is
that the dream of high utilization is actually happening now.

Like several of the major charging networks now have 20, 25, almost 30 % utilization on
average.

A couple of years ago was 4%.

Like two or three years ago, Electify America averaged 4 % utilization.

They're now at, by my numbers that I get from a third party source, 27%.

I visited the Electrify America 20 stall center here in San Francisco.

That's an indoor mall.

They have two lounges in there.

We were there at 10 .30 in the morning and there's just cars like lined up.

And there was times where there were a couple of stalls open, but they said

In the middle of the night, rideshare drivers come in by the droves.

know, so that station is probably at north of 50 % utilization.

Right.

So what does that get us to?

They're actually starting to make money, right?

You know, you can actually now make money in, in, the charging business.

And we're seeing, you know, Electify America actually now is testing.

pricing strategies and limiting people to charge to only 85 % because they're trying to
get rid of the lines, right?

And I know Matt can talk about that.

Not a good idea for like an hour, but, but any rate, there's just sort of like some of the
key components we're seeing in sort of like this next version of the charging industry.

It's fundamentally going into the next phase.

I guess Mike, it's really interesting you talk about all that, cause I had a conversation
pretty similar to those lines yesterday.

And I'm not terribly convinced that there's a strong business case for like an electrify
America where it's just what you do, unless they pivot and become like the next generation

of like a pilot or flying J as well.

And that's, I think a bigger business transition than the pilot and flying J's of the
world or the

Adding charging stops and kind of getting that additional revenue from the actual sales,
which to me makes a lot more sense than trying to make, cause we're starting to see like

the per kilowatt hour rate of some of these, EV chargers go up to such a point that it's
just as if not more expensive than buying gas.

And then you're just kind of running into like a worse situation overall.

Whereas like when I wrote it with my wife and our dogs, the car is usually ready before
they are.

And then you're kind of looking at also, yeah,

Kind of what, what is available to you at that place that you stop.

And that's where it kind of something like a Bucky's where it's food or whatever is such a
big benefit then, behind like you're talking about some of these early old ones that would

just be in kind of random places behind old kind of sketchy parking lots and stuff like

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's, that's, know, to your point about the amenities, like that's why the majority
of the, award winners in the, from the States and the Neve program, are the, you know,

the, the convenience store chains and the travel centers.

Cause those, those people, the state DOTs at the end of the day, they want their legacy to
be,

This money that we handed out from our federal tax dollars to these companies, it's
actually a really good charging experience, right?

Like they don't care about the hardware and the chargers and all that kind of stuff.

They want to make sure that it's a good, safe experience.

Well, and that right there, I think hits the nail on the head for what's what is a
positive direction for Neve dollars and where things are going for the future, as you call

it, like the 2 .0 process is it's about the driver experience.

Finally, you know, not, not just like your point, like, well, let's put something out
there and hope to God someone finds it, you know, and I think that that's a good.

and I just always was just, I just, you shake your head at it.

It's just like, now you're not thinking about how people operate, how humans operate.

And I think that there's a lot of positive points that are coming out of where these
deployments are going to happen and how it will improve upon the actual driver experience.

years ago, when people used to say like, we should just install charging stations at gas
stations.

My response was always not until the technology actually can make it worth being at a gas
station for a reasonable amount of time, as opposed to two hours, for example.

you know, we're now it's like 15, 20, 30 minutes.

It's like, okay, that balances out more.

And if you have something like a

I mean, people that buy gas at a Bucky's, they're not timing themselves when they're
there, but chances are they're there for a lot longer than, it took me five minutes.

It's like, yeah, but you were there for a while.

Yeah, know, hey Matt, there's been some studies on that where people traveling on the
interstates, their average stop is about 27 minutes.

And you know, if you're traveling with children too, you know, and they all got to go to
the bathroom every couple of hours, you're going to be stopping again anyway.

So charge to 80%, even make it faster.

Yeah.

yeah.

To that point, John, I posted something the other day about this and a guy said he did a
road trip in a Tesla where he never stopped for more than, I think he said 10 minutes,

because what he would do is he would get to about 20 % and charge to 50%.

So he would do these and experienced road trippers and EVs know that.

Like, no, you don't charge to like a hundred percent.

You charge in that curve.

And so you stop maybe one or two extra times, but your total accumulated time on the trip
is actually less because you're maximizing the charging curve.

Now Matt, Matt could counter for an hour about what, while that's going to take a while to
get like the next generation of EV buyers to understand and want to do that.

But you

present it in a way that I think actually, if we communicate it in a way that they
understand it in a way that doesn't sound like a deficiency, not even, not even that.

just, again, the whole 85 % thing from Electro America, for example, I I put up something
on LinkedIn and I just said, I said, this is not going to translate well, you know, and

because why people when they're filling up their car, if all of a sudden you're told, at
this particular station and pump,

you can only get 85 % of your tank, they're go, why?

That seems crazy.

Like, they don't understand the chemistry of and the engineering of why they just want
what they want.

So I think there's better ways to communicate to the public what how the technology will
work for them.

That still appeases a mindset of I'm getting everything I want.

Everything from like, you know, again, saying that 80 % of the battery is 100 % on paper,
and then calling the 81 % to 100 %

bonus battery that you can use for road tripping that only can slow charge.

I mean, we can then identify different metrics around like how does the battery function,
but still arguably saying to people, you're still getting what you think it is, which is

full.

You know, I mean, the idea of saying, we just need you to make a concession as a consumer
to only get 80 to 85%.

I'm sorry, this is America.

And that's the last time I checked.

Someone doesn't go to a ball game and say, Hey, can you give me that beer, but only fill
it up three quarters and then have the rest foam.

and watch me go like this, it's like, yeah, give me a break.

This is just not how you communicate product to public.

So what do you think about using capitalism, Matt?

And sure, you can fill up to 100%, but the 80 % to 100 % is going to be $4 a kilowatt
hour.

Well, then you'll have the people that that are willing to justify that have yeah, then
you still run the risk of someone who's just going to sit there and go, you know, and

still piss people off because they're charging to 100%.

I think it's I mean, again, most people that again to chase this point, who's listening to
our conversation?

I think the vast majority of the general public is.

That's that's that.

Yeah, that is the point.

But but I mean, the general public, think if you tell them they're getting what they
expect.

which is I want to fill up.

If you just tell them, yeah, you can fill up.

The concession the automakers then have to make is we can't maximize our EPA rated range
out of the entire battery pack and say it gets 312 miles of range.

In fact, it's the 100 % daily usage is 270 miles of range.

But for road tripping, you can make it 312 with this bonus battery.

To me, that's how you communicate the technology in a way that helps them understand,

you're right.

I don't need three and 12 miles range every day.

But if I do road trip five times a year, I can use that bonus battery.

Okay.

That's a, that's a benefit.

Okay, cool.

I think that's a better strategy for communicating as opposed to saying, Hey public,
please make a concession.

trying to learn all this engineering.

think it's just, I think it's a completely ridiculous way of going about it.

why don't you think the automakers have used like a reserve concept like you have in your
gas car and you get down to E, you know, it's like, okay, you know, you've got to go to a

gas station, but you know, you've got like a gallon or two gallons left below E.

Why don't you think they've done that with

I think it depends on the automaker.

Yeah.

maybe I think maybe like the Volkswagen Audi kind of played with some of that a little
bit, think, but for how they can open up battery down the line kind of thing.

But I think the bigger reason is they were looking at what do people care about most range
anxiety.

So they go, forget it.

We're just how far can this energy density of this and efficiency, this battery pack get
you from a hundred to zero.

Let's throw them that number because that makes them feel better.

That's that's a misunderstanding of what people were concerned about in the first place,
which was access to fuel.

Not how far can this thing go?

So, you know, that's, we're, yeah.

kind of interesting you mentioned that cause Loren exactly that guy that commented that
they kind of roll in.

mean, when I, the longest road trip I've done kind of regularly is from Bend, Oregon to
Phoenix, Arizona, which is about 1200 miles.

And I've done that in a day, think six times twice in a combustion and then mostly in a
UV.

And when I'm doing that, yeah, I'm like rolling in at a few percent charging it for

10, 15 minutes using the bathroom, whatever, and then get on the road for another two
hours.

It does take me longer than when I did it in my Subaru, but I do notice like every time
I've done it, I am definitely more alert by the time I'm rolling in either to bend or

Phoenix, just cause I kind of have been able to kind of get up and kind of mentally reboot
a little bit.

and it's not that big of a time difference, but once again, the majority of people aren't
crazy like me and they drive with like other people.

And when they've done that, like I said, with my wife, you're usually at these places
longer.

so that Delta isn't as big of a thing, but to kind of what you're talking about, Matt
also.

Like some of the EVs, like with the Tesla, you can pretty much take that thing down to 0 %
and even go a little beyond it.

But then like pull star and a few others, once you get to like five or even under 10%,
they, get all sorts of lights going off.

You have to like charge it all.

And it's, it's a much different and kind of a much

EV driving experience, whereas I know with like my Tesla, I can just get it down to a few
percent regularly.

And I don't even notice a, I can still like floor it and it still has plenty of

Well, that's confidence in the product ecosystem that they're selling to the public,
right?

But I, but I think that that conversation, it's good to have that.

But I think very few people do that in even a combustion vehicle.

And I think very few people even do the road trip.

I think just so many people in the U S just fly now that I'm always surprised.

Like I almost kind of do it for fun.

Just like, you know what I can, given the industry I work in and stuff, I can do this road
trip, kind of document it.

And there's some interesting things along the way anyways.

But I think so many of these people, this could be probably not a good argument for carbon
reduction, but I think most people after like a four hour, like if it's going to be a four

or five hour drive and there's a flight option, they're probably going to take the flight
option.

And in some ways that's where the cycle.

high -speed rail in North America.

Yes, yes.

Another future show.

yeah, I was going to say if, getting people to drive VVs is a pipe dream, I think that is
just like a pipe, delusion.

I don't get it wrong.

I would love to see that, but that is a unfortunate, unlikely outcome.

I've got a feeling you want to say something there though, Loren.

Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, on your, and I joke about this, this often,
right?

I think there are probably two main types of road trippers, right?

There's that single driver who's saying I can get from San Francisco to LA in five, five
hours and 20 minutes.

And I'm going to have a bottle in the car to pee, right?

I'm not even going to stop, right?

And then there are people.

yet.

which, which, my dad had a bottle in the car when I was a kid.

So I know that that concept exists.

Right.

But, and my oldest daughter would do that when she was in school and college in Southern
California, she would only stop to like get gas and she would not do anything else.

But when we, as a family go on a road trip, I look at road trips completely differently in
an EV.

Now that you're doing a gas car, I look at it

enjoying life more and enjoying like the boring trip down interstate five and turning it
into I'm going to stop off and have a nice relaxing breakfast or lunch or stop off at

Harris ranch and get a nice dead cow, you know, grilled, grilled to perfection.

Right.

but, know, to me, I look, I, turn it into an advantage of, know, if we're going to stop
and charge, I want to enjoy life and have a nice breakfast or lunch or whatever it is.

That's not for everybody though, right?

That's not for everybody.

Some of those.

Loren, what you're describing is how motorists were 120 years ago.

You know, you had to plan ahead, you had to think ahead, you know, going on a motor trip
was, you know, it was an adventure.

You know, we've made automobiles so convenient, so easy, you know, it's just fill it and
go and whatnot.

You're getting back more to the roots of what automobilism, as they used to call it back
then, was all about.

Yeah.

And part of it may be, you know, my, if I had gray hair, I would say gray hair, but, is,
know, it's just like, you get a certain point in your life and it's about smelling the

roses.

Right.

And so to me, it's like, if I'm going to go on that 500 mile road trip, you know, that's
really boring down interstate five, I want to enjoy it.

So stop off with the outlet mall, stop off and have a nice breakfast.

Like whatever it is.

Yeah, the counter to that is the person who says, if I know it's gonna be boring, I want
it to go as fast as possible, which means I don't wanna stop, right?

Yeah.

for everybody.

And that's why I tell those people to get a hybrid or a plugin hybrid, right?

Like, know,

All

Now, I mean, I think if you're doing that regularly, that's for sure.

thing I mean, I'm kind of curious of everyone on here.

What's, what's the longest like, right.

what's the longest, road trip anyone, any of you guys have done in like the past year or

I did Portland to Chicago back through North Dakota in my Model 3.

Okay, yeah, maybe that's pretty good.

Yeah.

So, and that was one of those ones where it just kind of like, I know I can do it because
I've, you know, but I just, why not?

You know, and I could have flown, but I actually, did drive that trip to make a point
because when I got to Chicago, I was presenting to the executives from the auto dealers

from around the country.

And I made it a point to say, look, what I just did is what you are about to need to
explain to every single person that walks in your store when you have an EV on your lot.

Like that's what you need to understand.

And so I did it as an exercise, but to Loren's point, the experience, I, the drive of it
for what it was.

I mean, yeah, I mean, I did enjoy the idea of stopping and seeing what was around me when
I had to stop and charge, but I also wasn't stopping and charging for, you know, you know,

40 minutes or whatever.

I was, I was leapfrogging, you know, like you described Chase.

So again, all these things are learned elements of what we've had to learn about.

And exactly what John says, like, yeah,

You're rewinding 120 years.

it's like, OK, which hardware store or pharmacy has gasoline added on this rudimentary
map?

And so it's full circle in this experiential thing of how we're evolving.

It all comes back to confidence and trust of where you can get your fill up so you can
continue your journey.

And then what is your comfort around that?

And while you're doing it, what is around you while you are doing that?

So it's amazing how it's of come full circle for it.

is an evolution of what did you say was automobile, automobile, automobile, mobilization,
automobileism.

Yeah.

No, it's, it's, it's just a new chapter in that.

And, it's the human element, the human factor that's involved in that is what creates
these discussions.

And then in turn, how we translate that as a value proposition to the public.

yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm excited to see if we can get the conversation from here.

to out to more people in the industry as stakeholders and say like, we need to be talking
about this all in this comprehensive fashion more often, because we're not yet.

But think part of it, Matt, is sort of connecting the dots with all of this is like, when
people see these announcements from Buc -E's and stuff, LinkedIn just explodes with

excitement.

Like, my god, that's amazing.

And so you think about Pilot and Circle K and Loves and all these sort of destinations.

And then now you add in the Starbucks with the Mercedes deal and things like that.

I don't know about you guys, I usually choose, you know, which superchargers to charge at
based on what food options are closest to that supercharge.

that that's true, there are options because for a long time as a Tesla owner it was, I
have to use that supercharger.

And so you got really used to whatever restaurant that was, but now you can now have
variances in your road tripping because of how many there are.

five, there's like nine superchargers, right?

And so literally, you know, I could choose to skip two to go to the third one because
they've, they had a nicer restaurant option or whatever, or yeah.

the other, the other importance of what you're talking about there is this is normalizing
EVs and the EV charging experience because people, I hear this all the time.

I wouldn't know where to go charge.

And I said, well, of course you don't because you don't own an EV.

You don't see these things.

They're not well -marked and whatnot.

But as they go to rest stops and these different chains have got fast chargers and they,
they see them and they see that electric cars are being charged

They're all different kinds of electric vehicles.

That's going to get them thinking, you know what, maybe it's time for me to start looking
at one.

Well, to that point, it's the complete lack of visibility into there's gas as an option to
fill up and there's electricity as an option to fill up.

And that electricity is an option to fill up.

There's still a hundred percent lack of visibility.

There is no marketing, no communication around it.

The day I watched Sunday Night Football and there's an advertisement about electric fuel,
I'll go, okay, cool.

We're finally having a serious conversation about how we can get people to understand this
better.

Until that happens, I know that we're not getting it right.

Yeah.

John, there was a fascinating study done by UC Davis transportation studies department
earlier this year that looked at, you know, kind of what you and Matt are talking about,

which is recognition of chargers being available.

And what they found, which makes a lot of sense is that people that owned EVs or were in
consideration mode of an EV, noticed

EV charging stations when they were driving around town or wherever they were.

People that were not interested in EVs didn't even see them or the lack of them.

In other words, it's that old sort of obvious idea, you know, when you, when, when you see
a pink Porsche, then all of a sudden you see like a hundred pink Porsches.

it's like, if you're not looking for charging stations.

Right.

You don't see them even if they're there.

And so it's this sort of like catch 22 thing.

is where the industry got it wrong thinking like, well, then we just got to build more of
them.

We got to, we got to build a trillion of these damn things.

And my response, UC Davis did a study around this about five years ago now, maybe more,
where they asked those, you know, those who were in the market, is there enough public

charging out there for you to trust in EV and X percent said yes or no.

Then three years later, they did the study again, the amount of charging stations in
California had doubled.

This is all done in California.

They asked the same question again, are there enough charging stations?

and the amount of people that said no doubled.

And so it's like, okay, that's a great data point that tells you don't just carpet bomb
the world with these things exactly how you said it, Loren.

It is about visibility.

And if you're actively looking for it, you will go, my God, there's a level two right
there in front of Lowe's.

didn't even, wow, that's great.

But most people to your point will just walk right by it because they're not thinking
about it actively.

This is where somewhere Don Draper is like, hi, have you heard of advertising?

We can help change the conversation.

You know, so,

Well, I think the secondary thing that's really interesting too, is like the infotainment
in a combustion vehicle.

When you say you're going to go somewhere, it just shows you like, yeah, you're driving
800 miles.

You're just going to do straight that like it just automatically assumes you're never
going to stop and you figure out along the way where to refuel, where to stop.

Whereas I think one of the other kind of underrated things for like Tesla and Rivient and
extend is they just have a really good, trip planner.

built into their infotainment.

So it does like a lot of this heavy lifting for you.

And so you don't even have to find it.

And I think that's just inherently one of the big challenges is like for a new technology
to take off, doesn't have to be just as good.

has to be better.

And I think part of that is obviously the fueling experience, but the simplicity of just
like, okay, I'm going to get to, I don't know, Grand Rapids.

I'm just throwing out some random city.

And I know exactly where I'm going to stop on those places.

And I was like, okay, if I want to be here for 30 minutes or whatever, I'll just get lunch
there.

Well, this is what we're describing as that subconscious trust of, course gas is between
me and 800 miles away.

It's because it's highly advertised and highly visible and we've had it for a century.

And the Tesla's approach was again, the McDonald's of charging.

It was like, okay, on this map, we'll show you where these dots are.

And when you pull up teach one, it's gonna look exactly the same every time.

And when you plug it in, it's gonna work the same every time.

And it's gonna be about the same amount of time every time.

That's the beauty of what they designed.

And that's what the lack of understanding from the legacies was they said, we'll just get
these data points, throw them in a map and yeah, you'll figure it out, but we'll call it

ours because PR is rad.

And then people that experienced it went, wow, this is not the same looking station as the
last one.

Then the shape of it's different.

And I guess it's from this now.

mean, that's the lack of appreciation for what we're asking people to do.

And to your point, Tesla knocked out of the park.

Rivian has a bunch of Tesla alums

understand how to fix it.

think it's very interesting that what that Rivian has basically said like CarPlay, same
way Tesla said we're not doing it.

And I think that's if you can get software right, that is the right approach.

CarPlay, Android Auto, they are what people have gotten accustomed to in legacy vehicles
because you just mirror it and gosh, my phone's in my dashboard.

But man, you can create a better experience if you actually get the software

And that's the part that I think we're still at the beginning stages of how most
automakers are going to understand how to push that.

And to John's point earlier, they can spend billions and still get it wrong.

And then they might end up just saying, okay, who got it right?

We'll wave the white flag and we'll just use what you got.

I think that is going to, we'll see more of that

Hey, John, I realize we've already gone over time pretty decently, but I'm kind of
curious.

You usually, you probably test drive vehicles the most out of any of us.

And is your daily, is it an electric vehicle?

This week it is.

I've been driving a Honda Prologue this week.

I had an ID .4 the week before that, last week.

yeah, I mean, I love getting into electrics and trying to evaluate, you know, who's doing
a good job and who's not.

When you when you're test driving these like how do you ever kind of purposely take on
road trips or like what's the farthest you've ever gone in any of you when you're

borrowing

they don't want us taking road trips in these vehicles unless you get permission from
them.

You know, they have these vehicles that they put in the fleet.

They want all the media to drive it.

And then once it hits a certain mileage, they pull it inside and sell it.

So no, I have not taken an EV on a long

Well there's an app for that called Chargeway you can just download it'll tell you exactly
where you gotta stop, John.

I'm I'm just pointing that out.

I mean, just damn it,

That's right.

No, they, you know, usually they want you to not go more than 500 miles in a week.

And, you know, now you can call the automaker and say, hey, look, I want to take a road
trip in this.

And nine times out of 10, they'll say, yeah, go ahead and do that.

But I have not gone on a long trip with an electric.

Well, you're dedicating time differently than you normally would for what you're
evaluating, right?

So, yeah.

Chase, just, want to, since we're talking road trips and you asked you, brought up Nevi at
the beginning when you asked me, which I didn't really address.

you know, the, one thing that the public still, and even much of the industry still
doesn't understand is the Nevi corridor program, the part of the $5 billion that, that

will be spent on building out the, the four 150 KW chargers every 50 miles.

By my estimate, that's only going to add up to 7 ,000 8 ,000 ports, right?

And so this, you know, Biden goal we hear of 500 ,000 all the time.

The Nevi corridor programs intent and purpose in what it's going to do is add actually
very few chargers.

that's not, it's intent is to put them there where nobody else is going to put them out in
the middle

You know, rural North Dakota.

So somebody can go from, and I don't know my geography, but from let's say Idaho to, you
know, Wisconsin or whatever, and go through North Dakota and know that there's plenty of

fast char, they can actually make that trip, right?

That's its point is to give people confidence that they can take that trip to Yellowstone
that they've been saying they're going to do for 10 years and never do it.

But they actually know they can do it if they buy an EV.

You know, so it's fundamentally, it's, it's purpose is to help give people confidence to
buy an EV cause so they can go on the road trip that they've planned for years.

and you know, fill in those charging

you know, you'd mentioned before Loren, with the Nevi funding that it kind of had the
unintentional effect of maybe slowing down some of the rollouts of DC fast charging.

Are you still seeing that?

Or is it kind of, it does seem like there's being a lot more charging, sites are going in
whether they get Nevi or not.

They might apply for it or try to get some.

But I just remember with the original kind of rollout, we were seeing kind of a slowdown
unintentionally because of

Yeah.

So there's, so there's a couple of things.

One is when, when the, Nevi announcement first came out and the program was going, I had a
lot of customers who were like, woohoo, right.

We're going to get some of that free money, 80 % blah, blah, blah.

and then when they, when the state started rolling out their RFPs and they were like, this
is really difficult and complex and it takes time and we may not win.

There's competition, right?

And there's companies that like know how to file grants and incentive applications.

They've been doing it for 10 years.

Right.

And, and then a lot of them said, okay.

We're going to move to plan B, which is we actually already have plans to add a thousand
charging stations over the next five years.

And so we're taking a.

Neve is nice.

Not necessary.

Right.

And so that's, I've sort of seen a lot.

mean, there's certainly some companies that are like all in on Nevi, but a lot of them are
like, you like, you you, take, I'm not going to mention their names because they're pretty

much all customers of mine, but you you look at some of these, these major charging
networks that have these big plans and they're like, we have to these numbers.

And if we get Nevi funding, great.

But if we don't, we still have to open them.

Right.

The second piece of it, and I just posted some numbers about this on LinkedIn the other
day, and the numbers are still, I don't have a lot of confidence in them, but there are 15

sites that have been Nevi funded that are now open.

And I looked at the award announcement date and the open date.

And the average was about seven months.

was gonna guess nine, but okay.

Yeah.

it's, but, it, but it ranged from like 60 days to almost a year, 357, I think it was for a
pilot site.

And the 60 days was a New York site that was funded actually under a state program.

then they called it Neve.

but, you know, and speaking of New York, they have a rule of thumb that it takes 16 months
from contract signing with the vendor to a site, fast charging site going live.

Right.

So far, you know, it actually looks like this is not slowing down.

But the reality is, think a lot of what has happened is these states all require the
applicant to have pre -negotiated with the utility, that utility can pull the power.

They've got transformers, they've got all that stuff.

So by the time they get the award, it's like they've got the construction crew like
sitting there,

Yeah, yeah.

trench and literally they can actually get the site done in like two or three weeks.

Install the hardware, drop it in like EVGO and Tesla do this now.

They literally bring in the prefab, right?

They're literally just drop it in and then it's just can the utility connected up to the
grid and do they have the switch gear and transformers?

And so that's actually the side benefit is that you will

With an award if you don't have an agreement with the utility that they can supply your
site Within a reasonable time frame the power the equipment and stuff like that.

So, you know It's still early but it but it seems like that once you get the award and the
contract sign things go like really

That's good.

How many states have not still not done Nevi at all?

14.

That's what I thought.

have, New Jersey just opened there as a couple of days ago.

So we went from the, the, sort of frigid 15 down to 14.

have to come up with my name for the 14 now, but, yeah.

So there's, there's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, yeah.

So there and, but there's about five or six States now that are on like phase three.

Right.

So we have 14 states that still haven't even opened round one of RFP.

There are several that are in round two and round three.

Right.

So it's a real, like all things in life, right?

It's a mix.

Some people are like way ahead and some people I think are waiting for the election and
then they're going to say, yeah, we're not doing this.

was already trying to reallocate Nevi dollars in other ways and things like that.

yeah, don't get me started about Florida.

Hahaha

Well, I think on that note, we've crossed the 90 minute mark and we're trying to keep it
under two hours.

So to make sure no one else talks about anything, I think that's probably where we're
going to call it for today.

But, I just want to say thank you to all three of you.

This was always a great time.

And so, looking forward to the next conversation, but thank you everyone for listening.

And with that, we'll have to do this again soon.

Thank you

Thank

Chase.

Thanks.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Grid Connections podcast.

We hope you enjoyed our deep dive into the world of electric vehicles with our fantastic
panel of guests, John McElroy from Autoline Network, Matt Teske of Chargeway and Loren

McDonald of EV Adoption.

Remember to check the show notes in today's episode to learn more about each of our guests
and learn more about what they are working on in today's automotive industry.

We covered a lot of ground today from the latest trends in EV sales and the challenges
facing the broader automotive industry.

Our discussion on the advantages of plug -in hybrids versus fully electric vehicles, along
with the current status of EV charging and road trips, providing valuable insights for all

EV enthusiasts.

And of course, we explore the progress of Nevi funding and its potential impact on EV
infrastructure across the U .S.

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