Good morning grid connections listeners.
Welcome back to season six of grid connections, the podcast where we explore all things transportation, clean energy and our power grid connecting all of these systems together.
In this episode, we sit down with Mike Murphy, CEO of the EV politics project to explore one of the biggest challenges facing EV adoption in the U S political polarization with a
background in Republican politics and a passion for the auto industry.
Mike shares insights from EV politics research.
including why traditional EV marketing is failing to reach even mainstream and conservative buyers alike, along with how the industry can shift its message to focus on
attributes that truly resonate like performance, energy independence, and American jobs.
We also break down how China's dominance in the global auto market threatens US automakers, the surprising ways dealership incentives are slowing EV adoption, and the
real impact of EV tax credits on consumer purchasing decisions.
Plus we discuss why multifamily home charging is the biggest roadblock to wider EV adoption and the policies that could change that.
If you're interested in the future of EVs and how policy marketing and public perception shaped the industry, this is an episode you won't want to miss.
Share it with someone who cares about the future of transportation and don't forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.
Also be sure to sign up for our new newsletter.
Just hit the link in the show notes to stay up to date on the latest in EVs, energy and policy.
Thanks for tuning in.
And with that, enjoy.
Well, first of all, Chase, I'm a listener.
And so it is great to be on your pod.
I'm a big fan.
First time blowhard here.
So the story is I'm a Republican.
Well, in the Trump era, I'm one of these never Trumpers.
So I don't know what my party ID is, but a party ID.
But I've been a Republican professionally for several decades running campaigns all over the country.
Schwarzenegger.
A lot of governor is the Romney, Angler, Thompson, Jeb Bush in Florida, Christie, wet, blah, blah, blah.
A couple of presidential's work for McCain in 2000, but I'm from Detroit.
I grew up around the car business and I'm a car nut.
And I have to confess now and don't turn off the pod, dear listeners, but my lifetime average is about six miles per gallon.
But when I ran Schwarzenegger's campaign for governor, I moved to LA and I liked it and I stayed.
And as gas here went up to many bar.
of, you know, seven bucks a gallon.
And I followed EV tech.
And as a Republican, I kind of sneered at, you know, geodesic dome mobiles.
But the tech is too good to ignore.
The physics are too clean and beautiful, really.
So I got an EV and I loved it.
And a BMW IX.
And so that led to a huge amount of personal frustration at the knee-jerk reaction that Republican...
party leaders and a lot of the rank and file have against EVs.
They seem to a partisan lens.
And as somebody who does follow the auto industry, I'm very worried about the great secret issue.
We don't talk about American politics enough, which is China makes three times as many cars as we do.
And we're on the path to British Leylandville with our domestic auto manufacturing.
If Chinese continue their kind of plan of conquest, they don't care about profits.
They care about market share worldwide.
So at the end of
23, I did what political consultants do.
I called up a buddy of a campaign pollster, Dr.
David B Hill, who was the first DeLorean owner I ever knew.
And then the first Tesla owner, that car nut too, brilliant guy.
And we did a poll at the end of 2023 that looked at the partisanship, the different views of EVs through the partisan lens.
We sampled in our survey 600 people nationally.
They were voters, but with a family income of $50,000 a year up.
And the reason we did that was we wanted to capture the entire or, you know, 90 plus percent of the new and used car market.
So we got about two thirds of the voters in a presidential year in this sample.
So we wouldn't try to predict an election with it, but gave us a very good idea for people's political identity against the car market.
And I got up to the automotive news and the economist wrote a big story about our findings.
And then my phone started ringing from the OEM.
So the CEO of one Detroit OEM connected.
And one thing led to another.
So our initial mission was to share our data.
We have some very strong findings with the car people to try to improve their marketing.
And the little hint is, and
you know, don't get mad at me if you're an environmental activist, but the environmental argument does not sell EVs.
People who care a lot about climate change already like EVs.
They're worried about charging range and price.
People who think, and this is a lot of people in our fragmented, crazy American politics who think that the whole climate change thing is kind of a scam, it's a trigger for them.
And so the number on
Climate change is a big problem.
got to act now versus it's overhyped by the media and it's no big deal is about 58 40 and 58 % big deal act now 40 % block by humbug.
So in a lot of that correlates to partisanship.
So the bottom line is when you put the green leaf on the car, I mean that damn polar bear ad that they launched the Nissan leaf with, it was clever advertising creative.
It was terrible strategy because these things have been
Whoever they hired out for it.
That's for sure.
Yeah, exactly.
environmental virtue signaling mobiles and That is still there and it's a problem right now Democrats buy EVs at five times the rate of Republicans people might say great who
needs Republicans Well, the largest segment of the new car market is Republican or 40 % of the buyers Democrats are 36 So if you have a partisan fighter of the vehicles, you're not
gonna sell anymore.
Anyway, the the companies that
we're into this, we're very into it because as one CEO told me, we spend a lot of millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars on market research, but we basically ask
people how many cup holders they want and how big their garage is.
We never look at this partisan stuff, but that's the world we're in.
And it is mushroomed with Trump.
And now most Republican voters, not all, thank God, but most are initially quite hostile to EVs.
So we've done a lot of polling since then on how to crack that problem.
The other thing we're trying to do is get the national EV debate moved over to American jobs, particularly vis-a-vis China's rise.
A third of Republicans still think the USA is the world's number one auto producer.
So, you know, and we're trying to help a lot right now defending the subsidies and some of the IRA programs that are under threat from the Biden administration.
So we're busy.
and we're at evpolitics.org or americanevjobs.org.
You want to learn more about what we're doing.
Yeah.
And I, I really appreciate it.
That's a great overview for what your team is doing.
And I think, uh, what, what you just talked about really does highlight, I guess, two things.
One, I've obviously been very involved with the electric vehicle kind of sphere for the last couple of decades, but I also worked a lot in commercial solar installations and the
two big things.
Uh, I mean, exactly.
Like pretty quickly, I am pretty early on.
I completely agree with you in both those spaces.
There is a small niche that is interested.
in the actual like green movement of it.
The much larger interest is in kind of the TCO, total cost operation and the, essentially the ability for it to be so low maintenance and create independence from like having to go
and whether that's, commercially for like fleets who electrify and go with solar for charging to, residential and personal use.
I think that is such a big thing that you are talking about that just does not align with the messaging we've seen for so long and with kind of the rise in tribalism among the
different fractions of not only political parties, but even brands of the vehicles.
And I think when you had like the big three domestically that have leaned so heavily into like the big trucks and SUVs and now trying to position electrification, it really goes.
against the decades of marketing they've been even pushing for themselves.
Well, yeah, and unfortunately, the ugly little secret is, you know, the environmental movement, God bless them, and I believe in climate change, et cetera.
But the market has never gone crazy for small cars in the U.S.
And so now part of that is when gas is expensive, they have a boom lit.
But generally, people gravitate the big suburban friendly SUVs or pickup trucks here.
And, the chicken tax is part of that.
It's a less competitive market.
But so a great way to go out of business in the, in the car world is to orient your company towards small vehicles.
And, you know, there's niche room there, but the dream that we're going to talk everybody into driving European microcars in the U S you never want to market against culture.
And I think one thing that went sideways with their early EB marketing.
is if you're in Japan, South Korea, Germany, Europe, there's more of a consensus on climate change.
So if you're a European CEO and they come to you with, hey, here's the green leaf, we're going to stamp on all the cars and we're going to talk about sustainability, this is
great.
Well, here we're divided.
It's 58-40.
And it's not that way in other countries, but they tend to every...
I learned this doing campaigns abroad.
Whatever your culture is, you assume the local culture is similar.
It's why in American foreign policy, we always fall in love with the first general we meet who can speak English and drink whiskey.
You know, we think, that's our guy.
He'll be the most popular president of filling the blank.
Almost always ends badly.
You know, so it's it has been that here.
Now, I do think and we tell companies this.
In your EV marketing, don't be afraid to remind people that the average family spends $2,000 a year on gas.
You know, we asked Republicans and Democrats what they like about EVs.
And the funny thing is for all this partisan divide, they're pretty much the same.
When we say less maintenance, they both love it.
When we say gas and expense, they love it.
Fast and fun to drive, they love it.
Then when we say great for the environment, a 40 point difference breaks out.
Then they're ready to fight and the cars get caught in the middle.
So sell the vehicle attributes.
By the way, the best EV marketers in North America, they're not an auto company.
They're the Polaris, the recreational vehicle folks.
They make these, there's a categorical name for them, which I'm forgetting, but basically you ride around the woods.
There are a lot of fun ATVs.
They make an electric one called the Kinetic.
You got to wait a year to get one.
It is a huge seller.
But they don't say, hey, Bubba, when you're out in the trees, you protect mother nature.
They say when you want stealth and deadly hunting ability, you can sneak up with our ultra quiet kinetic.
And they sell a lot of them.
You got to go where the market is or the market will kill you.
Yeah, I think, I mean, it seems like we're going to be in complete agreement for this whole podcast, but, I mean, mean, around exactly what you're talking about, like with
where the kind of idea of EVs for the longest time were just electric golf carts.
And I know, we'll probably get into this anyway, cause it's some of recent pulling you did, but it was really Tesla and they were the ones to kind of re change that
conversation.
It's like, if you want to save the planet, we can do that.
But we make a really good looking car.
That's really fast.
That meets your needs that you can charge at home and gives you independence.
And Hey, here's a battery and solar to go completely off.
Gives you the full platform.
And I think right now all the politics aside, I'm asking that stuff.
It is just like getting caught up in the wrong things.
And I, I still am convinced.
I like pretty much daily that this is a smaller portion of actual Americans.
And just kind of the narrative that gets caught up versus like the reality of the car buying and like shopping market of what they're actually looking for and what they want in
a vehicle into really.
it's all attributes.
mean, theoretically, if you only wanted transportation, there'd be one model car and it would be one color.
But people like to express themselves to their cars.
Half of automotive marketing is built on that premise, why we have so many different kinds of car.
so attributes is the focal point, plus price and quality and word of mouth.
And we've learned a lot about
how to get the word out on EVs.
The best is peer to peer.
In all our polls, we ask people, do you have friends or family own an EV, yes or no?
Among the people who say yes, they rate EVs higher in every category.
I don't care if they're Republican, Democrat, Communist, whatever they are.
If they know somebody in their life who has an EV, they're gonna be warmer on.
If they don't, they're gonna be more hostile.
And so I tell the companies,
pump some inventory into dealer loaner fleets, by the way, you know, and give them to people for a weekend, burn up a bunch of miles, you have an unsellable car at the end, but
I would cut regular marketing spend, television, digital, everything else at a rate four to one.
In words, I cut $4 of that to fund this program and you get a higher ROI.
And then charging, I give Ford big props.
They finally figured it out that
you handle the level two charging in the garage problem.
You you'd be the one source and that's given them a big sales bump because this is one of my favorite, I'm going to rant for one minute and then you can get me back on track.
One of the biggest problems in the current system and we're studying this and this is something we want to do some work on.
If you're a retail car salesman and anybody who's bought or leased a car in a dealership will remember this.
What's the last thing you hear when you buy or lease a car?
I'm you know, call me if you need anything.
Now you're going to get a letter or an email or a call.
Well, yeah, that's FNI.
They're going to upgrade you.
How about a low Jack, you know, or the special magic aluminum foil?
No, no, no.
But what the the salesperson is before they turn you over to FNI or when they deliver the car after, you know, you do all the FNI stuff, they're going to say you're going to be
hearing from the dealer.
Please give me a high rating.
You know, it's really important to hire look out for that thing.
It really helps me and call me if you need any of blah, blah, blah.
Cause their cop is to varying degrees tied to that rating.
So let's say you're, you're in a Chevy store somewhere.
Guy comes in once the Silverado complains about the gas mileage.
Now, if you're just trying to move a unit, you know, we got these electrics here and save you two grand a year.
If you're a one car family, why we take them for a test drive?
You won't believe the acceleration and you're never going to see a transmission shop again.
But what the retail salesperson is thinking is, I'm going to put them into this electric.
And they're going to take a few weeks to figure out the garage charging because they don't know an electrician or they don't want to spend the grand because the down payment took
all their cash, whatever it is.
And they're going to wind up at a Walmart, particularly if you're in a big Metroplex.
And they're going to be waiting for Uber drivers to charge and they're going to get pissed.
And then my comp letter is going to show up and they're going to ding me.
And it's going to cost me a third of my commission.
I'm not going to take that risk.
So outside of the Ford world, we are incentivizing salespeople, even with the spiffs they give them for moving in electric, which some do, to take a risk on the charging problem.
or push them in.
Well, I hear gas prices are going down, you know, things are getting better and just don't be heavy on the pedal and put them into the ice car.
So on the showroom floor, we have negative incentives.
And again, kudos to Ford and we've worked with Ford, great for fixing that problem.
And hopefully the others will copy it because they will sell more EVs.
And it's not that hard to have that system in place.
You just have to have a good vendor who can drop in, you know, a charging unit.
Most utilities will pay for the box.
Yeah.
So this, this is such a weird dynamic.
and once again, incomplete agreement.
but here's, I hopefully, yeah.
otherwise this might be a boring podcast, but no, no, seriously though, the amount, like the one thing, this, just being around EVs for the last decade, a lot of like the
nonprofits and other people always say, well, you just need to get butts in seats and you get butts in seats.
And I think about five years ago, that conversation changed and purely, that's no longer effective, but you're.
totally right.
That like peer to peer conversation is still the biggest thing.
And I think obviously this kind of goes to the tribalism was down about, but even now with EVs, I mean, what's so fascinating was I was looking at other options, uh, for EVs on the
market for, uh, kind of doing some essentially intelligence gathering for like some dealerships and look at this and the area where the startups have been so successful is
they've leaned even more into like not just
Here's the keys drive for whatever, but you're right.
They're like here, you can have it for a weekend.
Yeah, you got to a longer drive and you've got to have the other thing.
And there's a VW store that Linda Ciccatelli had on her podcast.
And I want to make a little film about that.
One of our programs guy put all the Salesforce into EVs where they wanted to or not had a revolt, you know, the sales manager for a week.
And then, then half of them became fanatics.
And guess what?
Look at the lift, even selling ID fours, at the lift they had.
So it's a fixable problem.
The other part of it people don't talk about, if you own an auto store in say Kansas City, where you're not in a big, well any urban market is decent for EVs generally, but it's not
San Francisco or Dallas or LA.
And you're on the dealership, they roll in and say, well, you're not gonna make as much service money, which is of course fixed ops are a huge profit thing for most dealers.
You got to put in heavier hoists to lift these big heavy EVs, particularly the pickup trucks and that kind of thing, God forbid that Hummer, even though I kind of like that
vehicle.
I fantasize about getting one in LA just to bump people out, I run.
No, no, I'm in love with it.
I think it's great and kudos for GM.
Look, if we're to make an EV Hummer, make an EV Hummer.
Yeah, yeah, I give GM a salute there.
But anyway, you got to put in the heavy lift.
And by the way, you need a forklift to replace batteries.
And because you can't, you lose your fire insurance for the whole dealership.
So you've to build a blockhouse out back in most places, the store, the extra batteries.
So a lot of costs for very little return on the fixed upside.
And the average dealer is like, God, why do I need that headache?
And by the way, I'm in a red state where people think these are Biden mobiles and they resent them.
So no.
So the whole, the retail part of it is clogged up.
It's retail multifamily charging level two chart are the two biggest problems.
I'm not as.
Worried about an EV.
I've driven an IV for across the country three times in the last 18 months from LA to Boston.
No problems at all on the highway.
You know, it's much the first time it was bumpy with electrify America much better now.
Yeah, it's wild.
Not only just electrify America, but just so many other, mean, more of the traditional fueling and travel centers like the pilots and loves and flying J's of the world's kind of
coming out.
It is.
Yeah, exactly.
Bucky's is a great one too.
It is really interesting to me.
I, as someone who's also done a lot of road trip, EV road trips, it's wild to see.
Obviously you've got like I-5 and some of these like corridor things on the West coast, but heading East ID for there.
And if you look at a map of like EV charging station, there is a big.
Gap it's it's getting a lot better But like just west of the Missouri River until you hit like some of the like I five Western like there's some pretty decent gaps Exactly Yeah
your car for parts and walking home.
But all that, you know, I mean, we can talk about Neve and the political problems and everything else.
But fundamentally, and we ask people to send our polling.
You have a lot, particularly in a big multiplex, you have a lot of people who can afford a 60 grand EV in a million five, million six, million eight condo.
who can't have level two charging and they want EVs and they won't buy them for that reason.
It is a huge problem.
Then on the other end, you've got a lot of rideshare drivers who would much rather charge overnight at home at 19 cents a kilowatt.
It would be a meaningful pay raise to them.
We're doing a lot of work on this because it, mean, one of the largest developers in the country for communities.
Uh, we're close to them and they're looking at this and cause they notice an attribute people want.
It's just a camp X scares them away.
Cause in the real estate business, you, your capex should be in maintenance to keep this stuff out.
And every other dollar comes right out of your.
Your profit in the area of Brown with multifamily is there's so many owners, so many families who have three or four buildings they pass down.
You can't make three phone calls and well, the multifamily people are on board.
You know, you, got to go find 30,000 different owners and talk.
into it, which means it has to be free by the way.
You know, it's very hard to do the pitch.
This will only cost you a quarter million and in 11 years you'll make the money back.
I want to share one more anecdote that kind of will lead us to this multifamily thing that I've recently, uh, just had yesterday.
Uh, I've started working with, uh, I need to look up their name again, but essentially it's called the R I think the Y East rural, um, driving program.
And essentially what it is, it's based, it's focused mostly on like Eastern, which is a very rural part of the country, Eastern Oregon and parts of the Northwest.
But they were talking about kind of exactly what you're talking about.
This guy, he's always been a big Chevy Silverado guy.
but his wife works at home and they live in Antelope, Oregon.
Some people listening to this will know where that is.
If you were an Oregonian, a lot don't know where that is.
The best and unfortunately best way to know where it is, is if you've seen the documentary Wild Wild Country, that is the famous Rajneeshi kind of, cult.
and it's, and it's
That's the bag one, right?
Right?
The purple rose Royce's not electric, right?
Okay.
And every now and if you watch on any of like the carbidding things, you'll still see them pop up.
But that's a whole nother podcast.
Either way, it's a very rural part of Oregon.
They had a Chevy Silverado that they kind of use for everything.
The wife works at home as an accountant, but she has to drive every morning about 25 miles the kids to not to school but to the bus stop.
Wow.
is wild.
And so she's driving about roughly about almost when they figured it out close to 70 miles a day.
And in that Silverado with the gas and everything, they're like, I don't know if we want to get a EV, but there's a pretty big financial incentive to do it.
And it's exactly this.
And they're like, I don't know if it makes sense.
They, the Tesla dealership in central Oregon and bend offered them to have it for the weekend.
They had it for the weekend.
And before they even returned to the dealership, they said they'd
Lisa, they're like, we're sold.
And this, this goes back to exact.
Well, that's the thing.
They didn't even have that.
Just having, just having level one was like, okay, we can make this work.
This, I mean, it's a stretch, but like, we can see how this works.
And you're totally right.
And I like to put the idea in their heads, like, obviously it's not the fastest, but even to me as an EV driver, it's still insane that the same outlet I plugged my electric
toothbrush in, I can plug my car in.
Right, right.
of my daily driving and I drive 25 to 30,000 miles a year.
and so like seeing how this evolution is happening, but this gets to what your time at is like going into multifamily homes.
Not only do you have to have this different mindset approach to the residential or to the tenants, to the actual consumer of why to get EVs and how it fits in their life.
And I think this actually goes really well to that recent, podcast you had with Tom Malogny on your directly current podcast kind of talking about how important level one
level two is.
But then getting into that multifamily side of it is like, okay, the consumers are now bought in.
They can make it work with level one, level two charging.
How do you actually get this to them if they don't own the property on the home?
And that's kind of the next big hurdle, but it's clearly, it's not a lack of technology.
The technology was the batteries and the EVs and we've kind of figured that out.
It's the actual exactly.
own Moore's law going on a battery.
So in five years, this is hope they're not all Chinese.
I mean, we're in an interesting moment here in LA and it's true in the other big cities, we're we're LA County is probably the biggest EV market in America.
I would think it's 10 million people with about a 25 percent EV, you know, sales rate.
So.
It's nightmare to fast charge here.
Yeah.
For two reasons one is all the stations are overcrowded because there are enough stations and two it's near impossible to commission a fast charging station I'm obsessed.
There's an EV go station on If you're an LA person listening, it's on Robertson Boulevard right by the 10 freeway 10 freeway is a great interstate because you can literally swim
out of the water in your swimsuit in Santa Monica
Right.
get on the and drive all way to Jacksonville and then jump in the other ocean.
I'm sure the planet will stop turning at that point, but it's ocean to ocean.
So it's a very important highway across Los Angeles.
And two years ago, EVGO next to a Shell station got a big lot and God bless them.
They built the most beautiful EVGO station I've ever seen.
Everything but a canopy.
It's got like 10 dispensers and a construction fence, portable fencing around it.
And I've watched it for two years.
It got to the point where it looked like a set for the walking dead.
The weeds were taller than the chargers.
were growing up next to the I took some pictures of it and sent them to EV go and I said, you guys, God forbid Fox News finds this thing.
Cause it's the perfect Navy screw up.
Even if it's not Navy.
By the way, California, we have not built an EV station here yet.
Don't even get me started.
We have to look to Republican run Ohio on how to do it right or New York.
Right, right.
Anyway, so they finally cut the weeds.
I went nuts about this and just kept pestering them.
It took me a year and suddenly the weeds vanished, but it still hasn't been commissioned.
And I can't really get them to explain it to me, but I'm sure knowing LA and having complained to the governor's world about this, there are 22 different authorities, which
is why in the urban fast charging, I am a huge fan of the battery backup.
I love the electric era guys and I love ADS tech.
They're kind of the two leaders of Chinese company to X charge.
think it's called something like that.
they're, mean, electric area has a lot of advantages because they're purely software based.
their, their functionality is higher than anybody else.
Yeah.
Those guys are going, I'm looking at building a station with them in Malibu.
I'm trying hard to get it done and ADS tech.
I'm going to see who can solve it.
do get it open, let me know.
I'll drive down.
That'd be awesome.
Well, we've got a good location, though I got to convince the owner to do it.
you know, but even them with their lower demands and faster commissioning, you know, the Malibu regulations.
Anyway, I can bore you to death.
I've tried twice.
I tried to build a Neve station in Concord, New Hampshire, near the state capital, because I wanted to get a tourism subsidy to localize some battery based chargers.
Couldn't get off first base.
The Neve corridor.
apparently didn't believe in the lakes region.
And I have a friend who has to tow his Lucid all the time coming up from Boston.
There's no fast charging up there except Tesla.
So anyway, I'm happy with what Trump is doing with Neve, but I'm a critic of a lot of the program because they gave a lot of wet spaghetti to the states to push uphill and the
states have not been particularly good at it.
Some have.
Some have been great.
Ohio, Mike DeWine.
It's kind of funny and old school meat and potatoes Republican governor has been the
arguably the best job.
But for the most part, here in EV Paradise, California, it's been a mess.
you know, other red states now are taking a cue from the Trump administration, which is going to create I can just see some publicity hound Republican governor saying I'm taking
all my liberal Biden electric car money, and I'm going to send it back to the president to hire more immigration agents to deport them illegals.
I mean, you know, and they're, yeah, yeah.
you know, what people
I've been saying this for two years, they're like, well, it's appropriated by Congress again.
That's all true.
But bureaucracies are pretty lousy at doing stuff, even when they're trying to help.
In the Trump world, they're going to leave jobs open, and nobody's going to answer the phone.
And so getting your paperwork through, you know, it's like passive resistance.
No, this is exactly what we were talking with.
Lauren McDonald, a couple episodes back about kind of the Navi funds and how now that trumps in it's really become the blue red state, blue state red state kind of divide as to
how these funds move forward, which I mean, there was already a bit of that with some of the States that just said, we're not even going to deal with this.
but I think that's a really interesting kind of dynamic about like.
I mean, in some ways I'm more, continuously confirmed by the idea that the path to hell is paved with good intentions where it's just like, that's a great intention, but the
execution, the time and all these other things.
And I think there's definitely a place for it to show kind of like what this technology can be, what it can do.
And it had a really good point of trying to cover some of these places that are more rural that, some of the other larger providers hadn't either had the financial incentive or just
weren't ready to cover.
And so this kind of helps fill those gaps to make EV charging and driving a lot more feasible.
But I think going back to your point on like the focus on multifamily and kind of some of the things that once again, there are obviously some kind of like city state county
incentives for that.
But I think in a lot of ways, the beauty of that over DC fast charging, especially in the LA area where like you're talking about not only
Sometimes you have the rundown issues, but you also have, another thing Lauren brought up was.
EV go even said 25 % of their drivers charging our ride share.
And I think there does need to be kind of how there is already commercial fueling for taxis and all these other things.
There needs to be like a commercial charging element, but you can bypass a lot of that by putting in place the ability for like multifamily and that level one and charging at home
for these drivers that depend on the job.
a lot of work on this.
And so we haven't really gone public with it.
So I'm going to be a little guarded here, but it is a fact.
Yeah, yeah.
That if you're a full-time rideshare driver and you're in an EV because you got to subsidize the lease, you live in an apartment.
Not all, but majority.
So you have a targetable group there that ought to have overnight level two charging.
And that will put another 500 bucks a month or more into their paycheck, just in savings.
Now, some of them for the first year of the vehicle are surfing on the free charging thing, but that will go away.
And then they're 55 cents a kilowatt versus 19 or less at home if they night charge.
So there is a wonderful solution here that is gaining some traction in the public policy world.
And we're pushing this because
we can make a meaningful difference to them, to emissions, to adoption, and we can cut that line at the CCS charger at the Walmart.
So I think in the Metroplexes, nothing is more important than level two and multifamily and on the other end of the scale in the condominium world.
I mean, one reason we're looking at this charger in Malibu is there are lot of very expensive condos around and big adoption of EVs, but...
Those condo associations are still pretty tricky to install level two.
I mean, I've done it.
This office I'm doing this in as a former apartment building.
There are still some apartment tenants here.
I I'm in this thing and luckily I knew the owner.
So I said, Hey, what about putting EV charging in?
Hell no.
Complicated.
I say, no, no, just let me call your electrician.
I'll pay for it.
He said, all right.
You know, show me when it's done.
So I put it in here.
Wasn't cheap.
but I've got a charger downstairs.
Now the other tenants come by and say, hey, how do you get one of those?
So the demand is definitely there, but you've got to make it very easy for the multifamily ownership, who I can tell you are not going to spend a dime.
Even if you say, you get a tax incentive, you get a paper crown, you get this.
No, no, no.
What they want to do is charge people a little bit more for having it.
And they want people to pay their own bill, which is doable because these things have their own power meters.
but somebody else has to come in and spend the cap.
So goodness, it's not that expensive.
can do it for depending on whether you use union electricians or not, which any political deal in the blue state means, but seven, eight grand of parking space.
People argue you can do it for even less.
You kind of can, but there are issues with power in the buildings and everything.
So I'll shoot a little hot.
But for infrastructure spending, save 6,000 in the parking space, not that bad.
compared to what a $2 million fast charging station costs, and it'll take you three years.
Exactly.
And I'm kind of curious.
You alluded to maybe it's too early to share all this.
So maybe we'll have to have this conversation on the next podcast.
But for those listening, is there anything you'd recommend that they do or reach out to local politicians or what can they do to help make this easier for either themselves or
their neighbors and others?
Well, right now, the best way to do this is to move some of the Gen 2 Neve money this direction and to get some state money for it.
And there is in a blue state a pretty good political deal where you can say, hey, Governor, sitting in a room next door, I have the electricians union, building trades.
I've got the environmentalists.
I've got the apartment owners.
as long as they can charge 20 bucks a month, love this and keep all the money.
And I have some of the wage advocates who would like rideshare drivers to make more money.
Ideally, they'd want to unionize them, which is a killer for the companies.
They're never going to go for that.
kills their economic model.
So we got a pretty good constituency here.
Let's find 100 million in the state budget or do a bond.
And guess what?
We can go do 50,000 apartment building spaces or maybe 100,000.
So
Red states, it'll be a heavy lift.
Maybe you can do it in a municipality in a red state.
I mean, if we get it done in California, everything that happens in America happens first here.
It'll catch fire.
So a lot of work is being done on this.
So stand by.
And in the meantime, let when you send your rent every month, put a slip and please, need level two EV charging, Mr.
Landlord, and I pay a little more to get it, which is a language they understand, the love language of.
of landlords is how do I get more money beyond what I can increase based on rent control or whatever.
Because think about it, you're a landlord, you got an apartment building, and you're allowed to charge 25 bucks a month if you have an EV friendly parking space.
Most EV, if it's 200 a month, they won't pay, 25 bucks are probably paid.
So you get, let's say 10 spaces, that's $250 across 10, you know,
times a year, you're looking at $3,000 $4,000 times 10 years, 30 or 40,000 bucks at no cost to you.
So that gives them interested enough to let the electricians in the building to drop in the stuff.
So anyway, we're working on and we're trying to raise some grant money.
We do take donations and our C3 is tax deductible to put a coalition together to try to get this done in a big blue state.
Well, that's great.
And I guess for anyone listening, we will have the like usually we will have the links to your program and everything else in today's show notes.
So for anyone listening, that's curious, please check that out to do more of it.
I think.
I will say the rideshare companies are happy to this.
I don't want to mention names and stuff, but we started shopping the idea around and there is some interest.
So it'll take a while.
And here in California, some of the, I mean, I'll say to its credit, Newsom is pro EV.
But the hardest thing when you're governor of California is dealing with the municipalities.
Again, why is there the most beautiful EV?
And if you go to evpolitics.org on the blog,
I have some pictures of it during the walking dead phase.
But it's still not commissioned.
we have multiple jurisdictions here.
mean, it's just crazy.
California is the reason, by the way, that in Neve, the machines have to have credit card readers, which are hugely failure prone.
Although I think the electric gear guys have cracked that problem in some ways.
they've actually been really impressive of doing quick installations in California.
I they shared some of their secrets, but I pushed them to share more and clearly there's a little bit of their own secret sauce in it.
But exactly.
That's a great point.
Yeah.
they use existing power and they buttress it with a battery they charge you.
ADS tech, I should speak up for them a little too.
I was over selling our wares here in Germany.
I met with the CEO of Mercedes Benz, the global CEO, great guy, Ulla Kalinas and totally pro EV.
And I was asking him about charging and goes, you got to look at these ADS tech guys.
They do a battery based thing.
We're putting one on the front lawn of our Mercedes world headquarters.
So I talked to their CEO and they've opened the US operation and their first job was they put 90 of these battery back things and Porsche dealers all over.
They got the Porsche contract.
You will see them.
It's kind of a weird gooseneck, very thin dispenser and then a big box.
I think it's called the magic box or something.
It's very similar to electric era.
Electric era would say our software is better because we don't do modules and we're, you know, let them fight that out.
They're both friends of mine.
And in the real world, I'm looking at both for Malibu, but
That is a great way, like let's say you're in a suburban little shopping area and you can't put in a big EV go or electrify America or even a Tesla station.
You can drop in a battery back to ADS tech or electrify, excuse me, electric era and take up three parking spaces, not, you 12 and you can tie into existing power.
or get a slight service upgrade, it all works so much quicker.
So having a lot of those, in my view, is better than building the massive stations in the urbanized stuff.
Massive stuff works great on the highway, in a big deal.
Now in secondary highways, that's where electric gear has done well in Northern California.
Because those battery-backed things can't do as many charges a day, but they can do plenty.
And there's a better margin for the owner, by the way.
Look at EVgo's books.
They're a public company.
It's heartbreaking.
It's very hard for them to make any money because of demand charges.
they'd sell you $21 worth of electricity and they make a buck and those stations are expensive.
So I worry about that business model.
On the other hand, if your battery buffer, like to build an electric era station with three dispensers and six nozzles will cost you six to 800,000 bucks.
You can probably do it in six months.
I mean, I'm using some of the numbers I'm looking
at.
It still is not a moneymaker.
You're not going to get rich, but you're not going to get killed doing it.
You might make a little money.
And if you've got an amenity there, if you're the local mall owner and you've got a Starbucks and a Subway or whatever or convenience store, it starts to add up.
it becomes a people have 20 minutes to kill, go buy a Subway or Starbucks or whatever.
So it's a good model.
definitely talked about a lot is like the DC fast charging business model for a lot of the chargers is it's it's hard business.
We'll leave it at that.
But I mean, look at what the traditional gas infrastructure is.
Like they don't make money selling gas to gas cars.
They make money when you come in and buy that hot dog that someone surprisingly exactly the chips, the gum, whatever.
It's like you go into the store.
And so
there is obviously kind of that capex expenditure to put this in, but that I think is why you're going to see more of the traditional fueling stations.
And like you said, malls and other places where there's kind of the Delta in charging is coming down anyway, but there's, there's places where it makes sense that if you have to
go the safe way or someone shop anyway, once a week for 30 minutes, like it's perfect for doing that.
If you, if you have to fast charge and you can't charge at home, it's like, it's these kinds of things that make sense.
in the short to medium term, but also make a lot of sense long term as well.
Carl, who's at the Transportation Electrification Institute, I think it is, had me speak to their big meeting in Minneapolis.
And there's kind of a myth in the EV world of the oil companies are out to kill us and everything.
And some of them are, but some are.
And I had a bunch of big oil guys talk to me after the presentation.
And they were like, hey,
We would love to hold people for 17 minutes at one of our stations and sell them three times as many Pringles at a 40 % margin.
Are you kidding?
It's a gold mine.
That's why we're here.
The problem is the utilities charges 2 million bucks to bring the power in and we're never going to make it back.
you know, that's the battery buffered thing.
go into my pitch on that, but they, the, the, the power infrastructure thing is, is an issue.
You know, it's funny, Pete Buttigieg when he was transportation secretary.
was a big backer of ours and I would meet with him and give him the data and he was all in.
And I kept saying, you know, I wish you guys could all take Republican pills because instead of giving money to the states to add seven layers of their own, well, it's got to
be installed by left-handed, you know, people who are also poets and, know, just all the crazy neighborhood targeting.
Offer ChargePoint operators five years of very cheap power.
So you go to the power companies and say, hey, power companies, here's a lot of government money.
It's worth building infrastructure.
You know, you're going to get paid for the next seven years on a sliding scale.
And if I build a charging station and I get my reliability over 95 % or a reasonable number, I get that cheap power for five, six, seven years, then I'm weaned off it and I
can make a profit.
They will figure out what charging equipment to buy, where to put the station.
And it would be like if I wanted to get American needed 10,000 new bars, I would say, Hey, if you're a bar owner and you don't have a criminal record and you don't serve minors, I
will give you free beer for five years.
You figure the rest out.
And they would.
And as you wean them off, some would fail, but they would know to be in the longterm.
got to get it right.
And it would all work.
And that way the government's only writing one check, you know, to one fund rather than all this micromanaging at multiple levels we have now, which is why.
You know, I think I heard I heard some of the estimates on your pot.
I think because of slow walking stuff, I'm I'm not even optimistic we're going to get to this, you know, 800 that are that are due.
I think it might be six or 700 because of red state bureaucrats trying to slow walk everything, which is tragic.
I think that's a good call and maybe this would be a good point to bring up my recent experience on the state level.
And I think we can we've talked a lot, obviously, on the federal.
I'm kind of curious to hear more, especially for our listeners, ways they can help on the state level, because I live now in Washington, a state of Washington, clarify.
And it's the only state on the West Coast where you
have to still have the dealership model.
Tesla got kind of like a carve out.
Right, right, right.
Tesla had this carve out back in 2014.
Yeah.
And back then I was like,
all thought that Tesla was like a golf card.
Who cares?
Let the kid have his stupid direct sales.
But now, and I've seen some polling on this, that it's massively unpopular.
People really want to write to buy the dealership or to buy direct.
So this is the kind of thing if it ever got on a ballot initiative, I think for once the dealers might actually get beat in a locality.
because normally they're very strong on the ground.
very strong in state capitals, which is why the bill lost last year.
But if you ever took it to the people, I think it would pass.
I completely agree.
And I was up in Olympia, it's been a wild couple, I guess two weeks ago now, trying meeting with legislators and talking with people about this.
And it's so fascinating to me because, when I talk to people about this, completely agree with you.
They're like, yeah, this makes sense.
This should just be legal.
Why is this another hurdle?
And then the next question I asked him was like, who do you think's pushing against it?
And they're like, I bet you it's the Republicans and all this.
And to be honest with you,
There was like a little bit of pushback I got from Republicans just because a lot of them, especially the more rural ones did have car dealerships in their areas that employ people.
And they also do support the little league and all these sorts of things.
Having said that, they would mention that, but the conversations I would have with them were much more open.
And ironically, as we would say, it's, I guess we're pro-choice.
We want to have more businesses and more things.
It's a, it's a, and it started to go down a completely different political path, but actually most of the Republican legislators were totally open to it.
Yeah, no competition is good.
And by the way, the quote unquote dealers still have service.
They can sell used cars good for everybody.
You know, Hannah Steinway.
Yeah, she's she's very deep in this issue on Rivian's behalf there because it's a state they very much like to be able to direct sales.
For sure.
And I mean, they were even sharing that they believe their sales would triple if they in the state of Washington, if they were able to do this.
But it was interesting because then I was talking to some of the Democrat legislators and to be honest with you, was, it wasn't bad conversations.
They were open to it, but the big thing were like, kind of getting into these stipulations.
Like, well, what about the jobs?
This, what about this?
What about like getting into some of these like more nitty gritty, like are those good things?
Yes.
But I think it'd be a net benefit to everyone just to have EV options.
And so there's elements where I have to kind of be patient, educate, my tongue every now and here and there, but
politics work is they're like, well, we're open to it.
Tell us more.
And then at midnight, they kill it because they're afraid of the dealers.
Totally.
And it just, was also clear with just this, round of the legislature being open.
We had like a six minute gap between the 30 other people that were meeting with them that day and trying to get to it.
And yeah.
it, but the real politics are in most state legislatures, you don't want to fight the dealers.
They're too tough.
So that's why you have to go to the ballot, probably.
well and this is totally totally agree with you there This is kind of the thing I wanted to get to also that I think is just going back to that tribalism unfortunately because the
biggest thing when I had conversations usually with the Democratic or more liberal leaning people that start kind of connect like You mean this would give tests some more
competition and I was like, yeah, there'd be more
issue.
so instead of like the incentive of either being more jobs or more clean energy or more EVs, I was just like, we can kind of stick a deal on.
And that to me is kind of the tribalism that I find so frustrating personally.
And I'm trying to really find like, and I think this is why it's so important to usually take it to actual voters, like open this up to make it more competitive and give options
to everyone, give it to the consumer.
But I know
You recently had kind of done a poll that got a lot of media headlines around kind of the political affiliation and this kind of unfortunate, I think has a pro and negative EV
connotations around pulling a Vilon Musk and how this all breaks into it.
And I think it'd be kind of just fascinating if you wanted to maybe share a little bit about that.
sure.
Well, you when we started our pod here, I talked about that national poll we did in November of 2023.
Well, we did it again after the election.
You know, a few new questions, but we wanted to see, we want to track movement.
our goal is to do it every year.
It's kind of a state of EV polarization poll.
So we asked an Elon question and the Elon stuff was so fun and telling both Elon and Tesla's brand.
that we spun it out as a separate report.
And I see you're putting it up, which is great.
You can also get it at evpolitics.org.
just, okay.
Yeah, you can download the whole thing.
be a whole thing about Elon Musk and all that stuff.
But it was just really fascinating and this exactly
but nothing like now.
here's on the, you know, the chart here.
If you're a Trump voter, and this is after the election, you're 74 % favorable, Elon, 10 % unfavorable, 7 to 1 ratio, which is really good.
Those are close to Trump's own numbers.
He's only a step behind Trump.
On the other hand, if you're a Harris voter, you give Elon a 76 % negative rating.
and a 5 % positive rating, which makes me laugh because the margin of error on the poll is 4%.
So we can't statistically prove that any Harris voters who like Elon exist in the continental and connected United States.
So anyway, massively polarizing.
And then we broke it up by different groups.
And if we take a look at that, Elon is more popular with people who
drive ICE cars than he is with EV drivers.
As you can see, it's 35-42, so he's seven points underwater with EV drivers.
Well, he's plus five points with ICE car drivers, which is kind of amazing.
If you're a male, he's doing pretty well.
Generally, in politics, you want to see a three to one ratio, so none of these numbers are particularly great.
But he's 49 over 32 of men, but he's underwater by nine points with women, big gender gap.
And then finally, if you drive a pickup truck and part of this is the Republican Democrat rural urban thing, you know, express two cars, you like Elon, you're 46 over 28.
They're his best numbers.
Which I thought was probably the funniest metric of all this and Yeah, and this and this whole fort I mean it's 40 pages and obviously it's not just about this it covers a lot of
the different things looking at like this slide does Tesla Yeah
to the considering.
So we ask people to put themselves in one of three categories.
Category one was, excuse me.
The first category was, and we've read them statements and said, which one sounds like you?
First statement was, I'm pretty seriously interested in buying an EV in the next year or so.
The second statement was, I'm interested in buying an EV, but I'm waiting till prices come down and they get all the bugs worked out, which is charging basically.
And the third statement is, I'm probably never going to buy an EV.
So 20 % were in the first category.
I'm pretty seriously interested in the year or two.
And among those people, we asked some car brands.
And if you keep going, you come down, you see Toyota.
Volkswagen and Ford.
We always tend on these ask one American one German one Asian brand and among Toyota Toyota was most popular by the way among Toyota Ford and I think it's down a little
farther and VW they were all more popular than Tesla as a brand among people seriously considering buying an EV in the next year or so Tesla wasn't buried.
They were like 60 % favorable over 30 something unfavorable, but
Toyota was 90-10.
In fact, I presented this data or a version of this at SAE at their big Washington conference, about 500 auto people.
And a couple of Toyota guys came up.
Yeah, yeah, the slide you've got up now is instructive.
There's no partisan difference about most auto brands.
With Tesla, there is now.
And when you say electric only brand, is.
The Republicans instantly turn on it and get all negative.
But
You know, with Toyota among people looking at buying an EV at 9010, these Toyota guys pulled in, can I get a copy of the presentation?
We could wake up the guys at headquarters, we could make a decent EV for a change, because they all know the one they have is kind of a dog.
We could sell them.
And same with Ford and VW.
They were both good.
link.
So you can pull these up.
And I mean, it's a super fascinating report.
It's not just, obviously a big part of it's like Elon Musk and Tesla, but it's really just interesting to see these different auto brands too.
And you're totally right with Toyota.
Their EV is at best like a compliance vehicle.
But what's really interesting, I think when we look back at like the past sales recently for a couple of quarters, Chevy's been growing or GM has been growing.
over 100,000.
Cadillac in particular, but the Equinox, yeah.
But I think one of my favorite interesting things when you start looking at this, and it totally aligns to this, where you just have so many consumers, they're just tied to a
certain automotive brand.
This is why competition is great.
But look at the Honda prologue.
It's actually not that amazing on EV.
In spec wise, it doesn't look out bad.
But what's interesting is most Honda buyers do not realize that that is just really a
rebadged GM vehicle.
It's made in GM factories and all these things, but just because it's at the Honda dealership, it has the Honda badge.
It's selling well.
and so I think there is just so much of this is like, have to, the brands do have to bring a product to market no matter what.
I think in the case of Toyota, it needs to tune up the specs a little bit, but this goes exactly to your point.
Is that just like, if you build it, they will come to an extent.
it's just unfortunate with what Toyota has, but looking at Honda,
Like there's nothing really different or innovative.
It's just there is now an option for Honda buyers who are very also reliable buyers.
if you've got a strong dealer force like Toyota or GM or Ford or Honda, you can move a lot of units if you give them product.
And the Honda story, that is a strong dealer force and they know how to sell cars and that is a strong brand.
We didn't test them on this survey, but we've seen them in other places.
you know, it does show that, like here's Volkswagen on the charts, I'm assuming.
People can watch this podcast on YouTube, whatever, and see all this, right?
Right.
I said, for those listening, this is page 10 of this deck that, is linked in the show notes for today.
VW that doesn't test as well as Ford or Toyota, still two to one favor unfavorable, but most importantly, no meaningful difference between Trump and Harris voters.
It's only the electric brands that are polarizing and that's the Republicans going sideways.
Now there's one other finding here though about Elon.
If you go near the end of this, down around 35 or so, you'll see a trend chart and that's worth two, go up a little, you just have it there.
Look at 33.
Right right here.
So up let's go down to sorry audio listeners, but we're
yes.
So, I'm sorry, I keep calling the wrong charts because I don't have it in front of me.
If you go down one more, now we got it.
Now we got it.
We asked a kind of a telling question on the surveys.
Do you agree or disagree with a series of statements?
And one of them is, EVs are for people that see the world differently than I do.
And that gets right at the cultural differences, the tribalism.
Among Republicans, a bit over a year ago in November of 2023,
59 % agreed with that statement and only 41 disagreed.
So, you know, it was an 18 point deal.
In the poll after the election, same question.
It went from 59 agree among Republicans only to 52 agree and disagree went from 41 to 48.
So now instead of being, you know, 18 point difference, it's only a four point difference.
So that is closed a lot.
That's, I think is Eli.
even without meaning to.
In other words, he is such an EV identified guy and he's such a super Trump-er now, he could be softening that tribal thing.
If Elon ever wanted to be Nixon to China and say real mega people drive EVs or fund to run over liberals with, he would help.
But right now he's killing the Tesla brand.
It is not a surprise they're having all these trouble and their sales numbers are going down.
He is a real problem for them.
And they're not getting the longer term upside of moving Republican numbers.
So some of it is just happening organically as this chart shows you.
And it's still a problem.
majority of Republicans think EVs are for freaks who aren't like me.
But it's not 60-40 anymore.
It's now tied.
And that is progress.
So, and we have some other questions where we think, yeah, yeah, well, he's become.
you know, co-president and mega superstar.
He's gone from E.V.
Jesus to Hannity.
the Tesla's not getting in the short term the upside of that new image, but they're getting all the downside that people, I mean, there was a thing all over some, I think it
was Sheryl Crow.
had a, yeah, it blew up on Instagram or wherever she posted it, TikTok, showing her waving goodbye to her Tesla as it's towed away.
and
ironically, she bought a Land Rover.
So I mean, the optics to me was just like, okay, clearly wasn't about the environment.
The optics were the optics.
it's not about, so EVs are not about the environment.
Let's put it this way.
To the extent EVs are about the environment.
is being massively overpowered by the downside of the environment.
And this is hard.
I mean, I was in at the EDF and they're great and explaining and they kind of get it.
You my argument is, look, on the emission side, if you can get Bubba out of his pickup truck, you don't have to get him to put a save the whale sticker on.
You know, it doesn't have to come to your meetings and bring a dream catcher and sing the Joan Baez song.
I understand Republican culture.
I've worked in it 40 years.
I'm one of them.
But if you can tell him he can go floor it,
in a drag race and in a Ford Lightning and accelerate beyond his irritating hippie neighbor in the Volvo.
And he can carry stuff around and you can plug a saw into it and 110 power.
As long as you're not doing a lot of towing, you've got a lot of attribute arguments on that car.
Anyway, so looking at this, this is the one I talked about.
If you're looking to buy an EV in the next year or so, you're seriously interested.
that 20 % Ford three to one good numbers any product with good numbers 76 24 Volkswagen 73 23 Toyota 94 to 6 and I have a feeling that's been sent up to Toyota City by those folks
at the SAE conference and then Tesla 63 37 not terrible but nothing like the competition and again you got 37 % so a third of people
thinking about an EV in the next year ruling out Tesla.
Now, the attributes may still slide them into one.
The market is gonna be flooded with cheap Teslas coming off lease.
So that may be helpful, but yeah.
I have heard so many people say I'm never gonna buy another EV I'm never I'm never gonna buy another Tesla because Elon Musk yada yada yada.
They've been saying this for a couple years I know over ten people I can just list right now that ended up getting into the test and now a big part of that is the price Yeah, and
so I am curious with
One, I'm also curious if you're planning to pull these people in another year and see what they actually bought.
But two, like, what do you think that that
conversation looks like at Tesla like trying to change that narrative or I'm just kind of curious on what your thoughts of this is more looking forward and what you actually expect
what people say versus what people do.
Yeah, no, look, if you give them a great offer on price and generally, I'm happy about all these used Teslas coming into the lease market because it'll hit violent.
The biggest concern about EVs is price and charging.
So price starts getting fixed.
You sell more EVs, sell more EVs, more people have friends or relatives driving an EV.
All the numbers go up.
So flooding the market with used Teslas, even with the Elantra problem, is a big net win.
And that'll be helpful for Tesla, too.
Again, people will say, you know, I hate the guy, I love the car.
Now, if you're Tesla's CMO, Chief Marketing Officer right now, I think you're probably in a dark room with a bottle of whiskey and a revolver just staring into space because they
can't get rid of them, but they're paying a huge market tax by being part of Elon.
And Elon, I'll tell you, is a political consultant.
And there's a good story in The Washington Post today about the polling showing his skyrocketing unfavorable.
and Trump's unfavorables raising because they've been off to a very, they've been off to a deliriously fun MAGA start, not a very good entire electorate start.
And the polling numbers are starting to show it.
So play that forward a few months.
Go through the Trump-Elon fight that I bet is coming, two Tomcats inside one pillow sack.
I don't think it'll last.
I just saw a poll in California of voters connected to potential governor candidates.
And Elon's unfavorable and California is pushing 60%.
You gotta look at them in Northern California.
So eventually Tesla is going to be under pressure to promote Elon, the rocket genius and backup power and robot guy and get them out of the car brand.
Now how they do that, because Elon has so much of the stock and everything is tricky, though this trend continues and Tesla has another bad quarter or two.
They're still number one in market share, but it's slipping.
You can start seeing shareholder trouble.
know, the shareholder kind of lawsuit world saying he's destroying the value of the brand and that would be a big noose.
isn't a an investment channel by any means but it is really interesting just because they have they are kind of one of the original meme stocks and all that stuff if you will
because they have such a outsized large retail investor base and You're totally right like that could as if that starts a slide, but I guess one thing I wanted to take a step back
to share another antidote is Leading up to this recent election
I kind of just, wasn't really paying that close attention, but just kind of like, as they say, the vibes I kind of had, I thought Trump pretty much had in the bag the whole time.
And I wouldn't even say I live on the West coast.
I don't live in a liberal or a conservative area.
I live in rural areas, but they're still pretty liberal.
And I still kind of thought he had, because I would just see Trump signs in parts of these towns are like that never happened.
And then it was like 48 hours before the election.
I was going hang out with my laws more.
I've seen like seen in some of these other things and I was like, maybe Kamala is going to win.
And it was because of all these polls, all this stuff and.
It was, but like the narrative and the polls were pretty far off from the level of the execution.
And I think a lot of the data you're sharing, the point you don't actually pretty accurate and really relevant.
I'm kind of curious what you do and like, how do you find the signal versus the noise?
As they say, especially in something with.
I had very little certitude, but I thought she had a bit of an edge going in.
Though I will tell you, EVs were a big part of how Trump won.
And we did a study on this.
can get it on the website on Michigan.
Because we went to the Harris campaign and the super PACs and screamed, you got to make it a jobs issue in Michigan.
I've done a lot of campaigns in my home state.
I did three governor races that won there.
hold the record for that among Republicans winning Senate races.
I know that state very well.
You don't want to be on the wrong side.
It's pretty obvious.
So the auto industry, there are 50,000 new EV manufacturing and tech jobs in Michigan and nobody knows about them.
So I said, make them famous because Trump's coming for EVs.
Well, Trump spent and the Republican Party because there was a Senate race where EVs were a huge issue.
This is really only true of Michigan.
$30 million beating the hell out of EVs.
Your job's gonna go, Biden mandates, all that stuff.
The Harris campaign spent exactly $1 fighting back on it.
The Slotkin, the Democratic Senate candidate, did fight back.
She put up an ad that mimicked an ad we ran saying that you want the jobs in China or here.
And she narrowly won.
we actually, and you can download the report.
You can see the ads, you can see our polling we did two weeks out.
to see how bad the damage was.
And it shows in the automotive manufacturing county, she ran significantly ahead of Harris, enough to win while Harris lost.
Two weeks before the election, we did a poll because I wanted to see how bad the damage was.
And it was bad.
And that's all in the report.
Michigan people were 60, 40 saying that EVs are bad for Michigan.
They've been totally convinced by the Trump advertising.
Among people who get their living from either automotive or manufacturing in Michigan, which are connected, which is one out of four voters, Trump was winning them by double
digits.
you know, the Harris campaign blew the EV issue in the state where it counted the most.
yeah.
I i talk and I believe john mackroy a little bit about this but I I think kind of like retrospective that's something that should have gotten more attention especially for that
state and you're right that kind of dynamic between
thing, tested, we made an ad and we didn't have the funding and we're not in the campaign business, but we made a nonpartisan ad that said, EVs are good for Michigan, 50,000.
You can see it on the americanevjobs.org website.
And we ran it digitally and we got about a million impressions into auto swing voters.
And we did it early to protect the category to try to make EVs not bashable in the election.
But frankly,
We couldn't raise the funding to raise it, run it at the level that it really needed.
And then 30 million on the other side.
That was the end of that.
But we tested that ad.
We did an online test with a whole bunch of voters and even Trump voters that raised their EV thing 12 points.
So we have a story to tell on jobs.
We've done Republican only polling that proves that we're going to be releasing that soon, but we got to engage.
So one thing we're very focused on now is we're to have the website up pretty soon where
There are 35 districts, congressional districts that have gotten $167 billion of EV investment and 200,000 new jobs.
Thank you to Atlas Policy for doing the hard work to figure all that out.
So those 35 districts, seven are Democrat, 28 are Republican.
So we're targeting voters in those districts.
We're texting them.
We say, hey, you got 180 jobs right here in Murphyville.
click here to protect them.
Then you go to a website and you push a button, your congressman gives an email or a postcard.
So we're about to launch that effort in about 10 days.
Because if we make it a jobs fight, we do a lot better.
If we make it a Biden-Green car fight, we're going to lose.
And right now it's a Biden-Green car fight.
Yeah, no, that's a great point.
And I guess just as an aside, as I was going to say earlier, looking back at the presidential election, I think that call out of what happened in Michigan and that divide
is really fascinating.
like inherently, Kamala Harris, think I don't think any politician in modern times had a more difficult thing than you have 100 days, you have to become president campaign that
you would have to run.
So I try.
I kind of applaud them for like taking on Mission Impossible.
totally.
There's so many things on both sides that I'm just like, how the hell did this happen?
I'm a pretty down the middle centrist kind of guy, but just such a fascinating election.
Yeah.
should have had a two week primary thing and a stronger candidate might've emerged.
Yeah.
But instead they, they coordinated her and then that was that.
so I'll finish up by saying this fight is not only important for, you know, American jobs in the future of VVs.
You can't underestimate how important the subsidies are.
When the Germans cut their consumer subsidies, they had a 27 % drop in sales.
If that $7,500 lease credit goes away, it's going to have a devastating short-term effect on EV sales.
The used market will still be pretty powerful because the pricing is lower.
But new cars, particularly where the bulk of the sales are, 50K and up, are going to get hit really hard.
And automakers are going to back off because there's a limit to how much
good point too about leasing specifically that gets access to that.
And that's why there are so many cheap EV leases right now is leveraging that.
And so I think there are a few automakers specifically who aren't, they're selling some, but vast majority of their vehicles are leases.
And you're right.
It's not going to be so much that the product change or like sales will change.
It's because leases are so much of EV sales and EVs on the road.
And for some brands, it's closer to 75 % right now.
But Mike, I realize we've gone out over time.
This has been a super fascinating, great conversation.
And my apologies again for this, but I really want to have you guys back on soon with some of these things you've been teasing.
But yes, thank you so much for coming on and we'll have to talk again soon.
Well, Chase, I'll finish with a thank you.
And we have a merch store.
We don't make any money.
We lose money on it.
But I like people wearing the hats, American EB Jobs Alliance.
We have all kinds of crazy stuff.
Just go to EBPolitics.org.
And when you check out, if you enter the secret phrase, one word, no space, grid connections, 20 % off.
So there you go, just for your listeners.
Well, thank you so much, Mike.
I hope our listeners do take advantage of that.
But yes, you'll find links to all this in today's show notes.
And thanks again for coming on today.
And we'll have to have you again soon.
Thank you, pal.
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