Good morning Grid Connections listeners and for those of you who may be listening
for the first time, the Grid Connections podcast is the show where we unravel the
complexities of electric transportation, renewable energy, and our electrical power
grid that ties all of them together.
I'm your host Chase and in this exciting second part of our two episode feature, we
continue our deep dive with the esteemed Rustam Coacher.
This is a great episode, but also check out part one if you haven't already.
Rustam was behind Daimler's electric Cascadia trucking program.
Now a retired trucking executive, he returns to shed light on the intricacies
of total cost of ownership, or TCO for those in the know, the disruptive entrance
of the Tesla semi, the revolutionary vehicle to great technology that electric
trucking unlocks, and much more.
Building on the momentum of our last episode, we further explore the
transformative changes sweeping through the trucking industry guided by Rustam's
unparalleled expertise and firsthand experiences.
This discussion is packed with insights on navigating the challenges and seizing the
opportunities of electrification in the transport sector.
Before we roll into today's riveting discussion, a quick reminder.
If you found our previous episode enlightening, you'll certainly want to
share this one.
Pass along to someone in your circle who's as passionate about the future of
transportation as you are.
Your support helps us bring more engaging content your way.
Also, don't let the conversation in here.
Stay connected with the latest in tech and transport by signing up for our weekly
newsletter.
It's your direct line to the pulse of innovation and the story shaping our world
along with behind the scenes looks of the great connection podcasts and getting an
early peek of what's coming next.
We're always looking to hear from you as well.
Our listeners make the difference to what makes a good and great podcast.
So please reach out to us.
Do you have a burning question, a topic you're curious about, or a guest you'd
love to hear on great connections?
Reach out to us.
Your input helps us make the podcast even more compelling.
For those intrigued by Rustam's journey and eager to delve deeper into his current
projects, make sure to check out the show notes.
There's a wealth of information and resources waiting for you after the
episode.
Now let's plug back in with Rustam Kocher for the second part of our conversation.
With that, enjoy.
So from an operational standpoint, again, the technology is there.
Trucks are capable of doing probably 80 % of the routes.
And right now long haul is what we would call a corner case.
It's, if you have a graph that shows what the vehicle is capable of doing, it kind
of goes like this and it leaves things in the corner.
Well, that corner case keeps getting smaller and smaller as charging speed goes
up, battery density is improved, and the overall capability of the trucks.
And right now, all of the major truck OEMs, Freightliner, Packard, Navistar,
Volvo, are on generation one or generation two of their trucks.
None of them have started from the wheels up to design a truck simply to be
electric.
They're all using components of drivetrain, of chassis, of frame that are
pulled over from diesel days.
The only one that's actually designed it from the ground up to be electric is
Tesla.
And so when the major OEMs that have this tremendous depth of knowledge of the
industry actually get those, what I'll call Gen 5 vehicles done into the market,
they're going to be tremendously capable and those corner cases are going to
continue to shrink.
And so when you say Gen five, does that mean, and I understand this is a difficult
question.
Is that five years away?
Is that 10 years away?
Is that three to five years away?
You think?
Yeah.
cobbled together all these parts and you stuck a, you pulled out the old diesel
engine and you stuck in the battery and the motor and hey, it works.
That's Gen one.
Gen two is, well, how do we make this like a smooth operating experience for the
customers and maybe get it to a couple.
Gen three is series production, which is where, like I said, Freightliner, both of
those guys are on.
Gen four is the iteration of that.
You make it better.
You put more components that are designed for that.
use case into the vehicle so instead of some still cobbled together things maybe
you've consolidated four or five components into one things like that and
then Gen 5 is okay we've started with a clean slate of sheet of paper we're going
to design it from the ground up to be electric if we wanted it to be electric
from day one what should it you know how should it look how should it operate how
should the frame rails be you know
Because right now, every frame rail in the world on a diesel truck has what's called
a splay.
It goes straight and then it has a little bit an opening to drop the engine into.
You don't need that in a battery electric truck.
You even need frame rails in a battery electric truck.
I mean, you just you build a thing on batteries like Tesla's doing.
I don't know.
So that needs to be investigated.
And like I said, those guys have this huge depth of understanding of how to put
together commercial vehicles that will stand the test of time and be tremendously
capable and they'll get it done.
Do you think, so it's kind of interesting, like the Tesla semi -program from what we
know kind of looking on the outside, they had a person who had actually worked at
Dialog, kind of originally at the first part, kind of launched the program and it
obviously took a long while for it to get going and now it's kind of going.
It's still ramping up, honestly.
But do you think that they have kind of...
When you talk about that example specifically that it takes these other
people to kind of get to a Gen four, Gen five to do a clean sheet.
Do you think that that does give us a pretty significant large advantage in
that?
Or do you think it's still by the time it takes them to ramp up?
Can you share a little bit more of why you think that?
because they've started with Gen 5.
And I've never worked with sharper, more intelligent people in my life than the
folks that I worked with at Tesla.
These guys, they work really, really hard.
They're some of the smartest people, like I said, that I've ever met.
And when they encounter problems...
to them it's a challenge and they just go, oh boy, let's solve this.
And so you get this thing that in other OEMs it would be like, oh, who screwed
that up?
Oh, you designed that bolt and flange feature.
Well, let's hang this on you and then just figure out a way and how do we manage the
cost of fixing that problem?
Tesla's like, oh, we've got a solution for that.
Let's go.
And then they're onto the next.
And it's a complete different mindset with these guys.
So.
Like I said, the major OEMs have this tremendous depth and knowledge of this
industry.
And I have faith that they'll get a lot of things right.
The speed at which they'll get them right, I don't know.
It's going to be a challenge.
Yeah.
And it is kind of been interesting, um, given that this conversation we're having
right now, and you compare it to once again, the light duty realm where, uh,
Tesla was kind of scaling up and I don't want to make this all rah rah rah about
Tesla.
Obviously there's BYD and other kind of companies approaching, uh, essentially,
and I know they're startups, but they're kind of approaching it more from that
mindset.
But when Tesla was scaling up, you had the GMs, the Fords of the world and like, Oh,
That's cute and all.
If this becomes a real thing or we actually need to do electric vehicles,
we've been making cars for a hundred years.
We'll figure it out.
And to some extent Ford's been doing it, but like I just the last conversation we
had on the podcast, we had someone talking about the book they had written on GM and
the old team platform and that exact experience where it's like, no, this is a
very different beast altogether.
There's car there, both electric vehicles and combustion vehicles have wheels.
Uh, but you start getting to some of the other things and exactly like you're
telling about, uh, with the frame rails and these sorts of things.
It's, it's also a very different beast and you kind of have to, um,
designed a battery pack that did not take into consideration the fact that lithium
batteries expand and contract.
And you know what happens with the Coke can if you put it in the freezer, it
eventually explodes, right?
It was a major OYM then.
Company law room.
couple of semis having some issues in the news recently.
But no, I understand.
but it was just an idea.
But yeah, yes, there's a tremendous amount of learning that needs to be done in this
industry.
Yep.
So I I promised it might ask a few more of these questions just So we kind of talked
about around weight and I I think we're coming agreement and I think he's even
sees it where it's like Yeah, anything unless it's long haul, but even then it's
it's getting there.
The question more is kind of when it's gonna happen Yeah So we kind of address
the weight now
What would be really, I think, most interesting is, obviously battery life and
range play into this, but on a larger comparison, the difference in maintenance
versus a combustion truck and electric truck.
Because, yeah, first 150 ,000, 200 ,000 miles, yeah, there's kind of some pros and
cons.
Obviously, you got oil change and stuff.
But then you start getting further in the lifetime, and it is wild how much
maintenance and how big of things that a diesel engine requires.
you go from literally hundreds of moving parts, yeah, there's literally hundreds if
not thousands of moving parts on a modern engine.
And you go from that to double digits with the battery electric.
The best view we have on that is the New York City fleet that has undergone a
massive transformation to electrification over the last five years.
And they're seeing huge drops in maintenance costs.
And that is due to electrification.
So.
Yes, sometimes the battery pack does have to be replaced.
It's quite rare.
Yes, sometimes a fuse gets blown.
Sometimes you get a short somewhere.
But on the whole, we know that battery electric vehicles require tremendously
less maintenance than ICEs do.
And it's just the number of moving parts is a big number with ICE and it's a small
number with battery electric.
And you don't get torque.
So if you've ever watched a, sorry, if you've ever watched an ICE large class
eight diesel truck accelerate off the line, off a stoplight or something, the
entire chassis twists because of the rotational mass in an internal combustion
engine.
And there's all this torsion and twisting and vibration that goes on in this hugely
powerful truck.
And none of it happens with a battery electric.
So.
All of these OEMs built these trucks to last 1 .2 million miles with all these
rotational and torsional forces.
If you don't have those, how long is that truck chassis going to last?
4 million miles?
We don't know.
Well, I think there's two things to like even looking at batteries.
Um, let's say you have to replace them and stuff.
I think the, the infrastructure and support, uh, supply chain for this is
already growing and kind of already there, but it's only going to take off even more
where.
Like you have to replace a diesel engine.
I want to say almost every 500 ,000 miles or I mean, it can be even shorter, but I
think that's like the base warranties.
Like, yeah, yeah, that too.
And so.
While rare, let's say everything does go wrong with the batteries.
The fact is you can still recycle them and the infrastructure and the supply chain
and like you look at LFP batteries too, it's just like, it's really becoming
simpler and simpler.
And it's really becoming more of a thing of just getting the actual manufacturing
base built here more versus all of the supply chain, all of the parts that you
need for going into a diesel engine, the spark plugs, all these funds, fun little
things that really kind of.
go away pretty quickly.
And even when you talk, you just mentioned fuses.
And that was kind of funny to me because like you look at Tesla who does kind of
take the clean sheet approach and you get to like a gen five vehicle, you might, I
don't know if they do this in the semi, but I'd be surprised if they don't use E
fuses or other things that actually kind of get rid of that problem altogether,
like they do in their regular cars.
And if they're not, I'm sure they want to go there.
Um, so no, that, that, that's really interesting.
And I, I,
on that point, so all those things are in place already for the infrastructure and
the maintenance for existing ICEs.
So the warehouse of parts and the maintenance schedules and all those things
exist.
That's missing.
One crucial piece of that is missing for battery electric trucks and that's the
charging infrastructure.
And that's why that charging infrastructure is so important to get
built out so that you can travel.
east -west, north -south along the rungs of the ladder to get from LA to Houston,
from Houston to New York, from New York to Chicago, from Chicago to Seattle.
You can do all those runs.
That infrastructure has to be in place.
In 2019 and 2018, the Tesla, sorry, the Tesla Supercharger network was just being
built out.
And there was a group of nerds like me,
Right.
watching a father and daughter who was gonna do the first cross country trip
using only Tesla superchargers and they were driving from New York to San
Francisco.
And there was one stretch across Arizona that had not had the supercharger open
yet.
And they left New York without that supercharger site open.
on the anticipation that it would be open in time for them to use it so they could
reach San Francisco.
And there was about a thousand of us who were watching online as this was
unfolding.
I'm like, are they going to make it in time?
And Tesla actually opened it specifically for them to hit that site in charge so
they could make it to San Francisco.
And it was exciting.
We're like, yay, they made it.
It was the first cross -country drive using the supercharger.
And that needs to happen for trucks.
You need to be able to do those things.
You have to be able to go from point A to point B.
And that's why we did the work we did on the West Coast Client Transit Quarter.
That's why it needs to happen up and down the I -95 quarter on the East Coast.
And then it needs to happen on 84.
And those are the crossmember, the 10, all those other crossmembers, the rungs and
the ladder.
So you have to have the up and downs and you have to have the crossmembers.
Well, it's kind of interesting because that goes to what I was kind of mentioning
earlier.
So I just feel like there's a lot.
It's in some ways a lot clearer what needs to be done and where it's going for
electric trucks, because so much of it has been done already in light duty.
But it kind of goes back to like it's like five to seven years behind where it was in
the fact that exactly that like there just isn't the infrastructure right now to do
outside of like having a small fleet in a city or kind of going between cities,
which.
Once again, that's still a huge market and that's a great starting point, but to
really get all of it done.
And I think that's what's so kind of great to hear is it's really not, we need to
solve a nuclear fusion or something to make this happen.
It's just, we need to really more or less built the things.
And as we get more of that data and understanding, we'll be able to kind of
make everything else better and the technology improves.
But in the five years or so it'll take to do that anyway, we'll be looking at a much
different, uh,
many different platforms from these different auto manufacturers for their
electric semi.
So I, it's one of those things that I'm pretty optimistic about and I think it's a
pretty big hurdle, but I actually have the feeling that it's probably going to happen
a lot faster whether it's a flying J or whether it's a, like you're talking about
the company you've been kind of like someone's.
Okay.
So, but exactly that it's like, somebody is going to kind of take the first step.
Someone is going to have to be kind of, and I know Tesla is obviously thinking
about it and trying to do their own, um, thing to support their semis.
And so it's eventually going to happen.
LA to Houston as well and how we're going to build that out.
Oh, gotcha.
So yeah, I mean, it's really, it's interesting that that is the biggest issue
right now, but it's also other than just getting the supply base spun up.
It's really nothing.
You're dealing with higher amperages, you're dealing with higher voltages, but
thanks to MCS, you're kind of building out what that needs to be.
You have that spec sheet and now you just need to go get the manufacturers to
actually support it and build it.
One of the other questions.
MCS.
So ABB and Trayton, the Volkswagen group that makes trucks in Europe, formed a
partnership specifically to work on MCS and the rollout with commercial trucks in
Europe.
So it's happening.
Yeah.
No, that's great.
Um, one of the other questions my friend had, and it's kind of tangential to this
is maintenance.
So he doesn't work for Volvo, but he works for a dealership that sells Volvo, uh,
Volvo semi trucks.
And, uh, there's obviously kind of like you have with regular dealerships and the
actual manufacturer kind of sometimes disgruntled and not, uh, maybe just scrone
is not the right word, but there's the exactly there.
There can be tension.
Yes, yes.
And one of those is actually around maintenance and even some of the newer
diesels, there's certain things that have to be done by a certain person or that
kind of stuff.
And he was kind of curious as we go to electric trucks, what kind of discussions,
if you're aware of any, have there been around that or what kind of the
maintenance required and who can do it or what that requires for maybe even a shop
to be.
And maybe this is kind of too early to even know what that looks like.
you, and...
certified to really work on these electric semis.
That's 100 % a great question and that's something that the OEMs would never put a
truck in the hands of customers without that plan already in place.
So there's been a tremendous amount of certification and training and planning
for that exact topic in that if you're gonna be a maintenance bay and you're
gonna work on electric trucks, you have to have the qualified people to be able to
even open and touch the truck.
You can't have a high voltage system.
and have someone that's not qualified to work on high voltage systems working on
it.
You can't even change the tires on an electric truck unless you've had the high
voltage training so that you know what to touch and what not to touch.
And that's very...
defined from all the OEMs and all the dealerships that work on the vehicles.
And that's for the safety of the maintenance personnel and the ability of
the dealerships to work on the trucks.
And I guess for anyone listening, that does sound kind of intimidating to even
change the tires that requires that.
But that's also true with diesel engines and the current platforms they have that
there are very specific, uh, and much more detailed than you would think for even
what is usually a simple thing for a lot of light duty vehicles, but that's cause
they also expect.
There's a chance that Joe Schmoe could do his own oil change or something.
So it has to be a little bit, uh, more proofed in other ways than, uh, something
like a semi is, but.
have a saying in the industry.
We have a saying in the industry.
You make things idiot proof and they keep making better idiots.
That is pretty awesome actually.
That I'm afraid that that is true and I'm curious to see what electrification and
that proves to be.
Because I feel like there's gonna be some new ones coming out of that for sure.
But.
sure it will happen.
Yeah, exactly.
Um, so one of the things we've talked a lot about long haul and we've kind of
alluded to Evie fleets, but I think it might be just good to just talk about it.
So right now, obviously the easiest thing for like, let's say, I don't know, Safeway
for some reason, bottom of my head, but any, any sort of large company that has a
lot of semis and has one kind of warehouse or main area that's doing maybe only a
couple hundred or even less miles a day.
And they all go back to at the end of the night.
Um, it,
there's a pretty good and quick use case to make that electrified.
What do those discussions look like and what is sometimes like the hardware or
challenges to change a facility that's traditionally been having a combustion
engine vehicles go to a fully electric one.
Well, no fleet location currently today can do 100 % flip.
It's simply not in the cards.
So any fleet location right now today is gonna have a hybrid fleet.
It's gonna have some electric and some diesel.
And to start with, there's probably gonna be a small number of electric and a large
number of diesel.
And then over time, that number will start to grow from the electric side.
And then hopefully at some point it turns into a 100 % electrification fleet.
But let's use your Safeway.
sorry, is that because of, yeah, but I mean, is that because of, um, just in
like, especially if you're looking at like a Southern California, is that due to like
actual utility, uh, power needs for that location?
Or is that just because there just aren't enough, uh, electric semis being built at
the moment or kind of a mixture of all the above?
Okay.
vehicles.
That's the two issues.
And the availability of how much charging you can put in at a specific time.
You don't want your facility to be down for too long, right?
A day or two, maybe you could hobble by, but more than that, you can't.
So you have to eat the elephant in bites, right?
So it's any fleet location like that, you have to take a few bites at it.
So.
You have a facility, you need to do the analysis on a couple of things.
One is, who's your local utility?
Have a conversation with them.
Where do I sit on your grid?
How much available headroom is there on your grid?
In other words, what can you connect me to that you have in surplus nearby?
And what are you gonna need to build out?
Now, what most people don't know is that a public utility is a regulated industry.
So they cannot legally have a bunch of extra power at any point in their grid
because they're only allowed to build what customers need and demand.
So there's only so much headroom any specific location can have access to
because legally utilities can't just go build a bunch of extra capacity.
So you go talk to utility and they say, yeah, I got two and a half, three maybe
that I could give you, but you're asking for 10.
That's going to take me five years.
You say, okay, great.
Let's get the 2 .5 going.
That'll take six months to 12 months, maybe 14 to get everything connected to my
site and get the chargers in.
Let's get that started.
And then let's start the process for the 10 and we'll peg that for the five years.
Then you go and talk to your OEMs and say, okay, I've talked to utility, because
that's the first person you got to talk to.
The power's got to come from somewhere.
The power should be at the site for 2 .5 megawatts worth in 14 months.
Let's get the trucks ordered and set to deliver then.
And then the next step is I'm going to go talk to either a consulting company or a
company like Black and Veatch or Burns and Mack.
and design what needs to go into my facility so that my fleet can be
electrified.
And that's the design of the site, that's the design of the chargers, the design of
the power dispensation, onsite generation if needs to be, battery storage if it
needs to be, some combination thereof.
And you work that in.
The first thing you do when you're doing that as a consultant is you look at the
data from where the trucks travel.
So if you have a Safeway distribution site, they've got stores that are nearby,
and they've also got stores that are a little bit farther away, and they've got
stores that are really far away.
So you take that data and say, okay, right now with the trucks that can do what they
can do, we can get the close ones and the medium ones, we can't do the far ones.
That means that's 50 % of the fleet.
Okay, so we can convert 50 % of the fleet right now.
They have access to 2 .5 megawatts.
What number of trucks is that?
And you start to say, okay, let's pick these off and off we go.
And then so it takes much longer than anybody thinks.
It takes about 18 months to two years to get fully spun up on a site and get that
transfer started.
And then you've got to wait for the power and then you've got to spin up the next
one.
And what's interesting is that it's much cheaper to prep a site in one go.
So we say, we talk to customers and so we touch the ground once so that you're
prepared for the next steps of your fleet conversion.
So.
If you can, when you're doing the first conversion, prepare for step two, steps
three, maybe even step four, lay the conduit, prepare the switch here, prepare
the pads, all the other things, so that when you want to do your next round of
trucks and you get the next round of power from the utility, all you're doing is
pulling a few cables, dropping a few chargers, and you're ready to go.
It's much, much cheaper than re -digging, relaying cable, reinstalling chargers.
reinstalling conductors, all those things over and over again.
No, that kind of brings up another question.
Something you said earlier when we were talking about Electric Island and you
said, yeah, and we have the small 50 kilowatt ones for overnight, which
immediately, because my daily is like a model, I was like, sure, that's still a
lot.
And I was like, well, we're talking about semis here.
What is kind of like the average, what is like the level two equivalent for a semi?
So for EV, like a light duty EV like.
Anywhere from 6 to 11 kilowatts is plenty for overnight charging.
I'm kind of curious and there's probably a few similar variables, but like what is
good practice for like if you have a school bus fleet or something that
probably just charges overnight anyway, like what is there kind of like a set
level to band for these kinds of commercial vehicles?
Well, you asked three questions, so let's go back.
So level two charging is typically AC charging.
Excuse me.
Most of these trucks are gonna charge DC.
They're not gonna carry around inverters on board.
So they're gonna need DC chargers.
Kind of your overnight charge or your long, slow charge is gonna be 50 to 75 kW,
maybe a 40, depending on how long that quiet period is.
But what you do want is flexibility.
So you may want a charger that could do as low as 40 or 50, but could also be ramped
up and supply 450, 800, you know, and have these power modules that can be put into
effect.
And I call it as a layman, power sloshing.
So if you have a pan of water,
and you kind of tilt the pan from one side to the other, the water will slosh from
one side to the other.
So if you have a number of chargers and you have some trucks that need more power
than others, you want to be able to move that power around and supply some trucks
with more power, some with less based on what the battery needs and the fleet needs
are.
And so maybe you've got a truck that needs to go out quick.
And so you're going to give him a lot of power.
You're going to drop everybody else down.
Maybe you've got a long overnight or maybe a long midday in California where you have
a lot of solar overproduction and the power is really cheap.
You want to ramp everybody up to maybe 80 % speed and just give them a lot of power
and soak up a lot of cheap power from the grid.
So you want that capability to flex and flow with your charging infrastructure and
what those building blocks are determine how small of a chunk you can go down to.
So whether it's 40, 50, 70, everybody's kind of chosen a different chunk of those
Legos and how that small, that small building block is so that you can get up
fast and you can also get down to a small overnight dispensation.
And then you talked about school buses, which is another question entirely.
Those things are fantastic for students because they're lower emission for a very
vulnerable population.
And they're also fantastic for...
the utility because they store power and use power at very opportune times.
If you have a fleet of school buses and it's taking the kids to school and come
back to their depot and they're plugged in, then they can soak up solar power in
the peak of the day when there's a lot of overproduction from solar.
And that's happening more and more in Southern California, but in a lot of
places in the U .S.
you have all these solar systems going in and you have overproduction between like
10 and 2.
midday and that's when school buses are parked so they can soak up a lot of power
they can go take the students home from school after school is done they come back
and plug in they still have a lot of power left in their batteries and they can be
used to send power back into the grid when the utilities really need it when
everybody's gone home and you see this peak happen in demand and then later on at
night when nobody's moving anything because the school buses are parked and
they can slowly charge it overnight baseline power again and be ready to roll
in.
school buses are really interesting use case where something called V to G or
vehicle to grid or V to X vehicle to anything goes into effect.
Yeah.
So school buses are fantastic use case for that.
Yeah.
Uh, and I just kind of said school buses, just an example of a commercial thing, but
that does seem to be the most common and even the clearest business case really for
the vehicle to grid working with the utility.
And there's a lot of pilots of that going on right now with MCS.
I'm assuming that does have vehicle to grid as a pretty strong component of the
protocols, right?
That's yeah, I thought I'd seen something like that.
What are we going to say there?
vehicle to X was one of the baseline requirements that I had to be able to do.
I don't know that we'll see MCS on school bus though, because I think from a power
need standpoint, I think what NACS and what CCST can provide to a school bus is
more than sufficient.
It's the ability to have that communication standard defined.
so that the vehicle and the grid can talk and send power the right direction when
it's required.
Interesting.
Uh, so with that, when you look at, we've, we talked about school buses.
Are there anything that's kind of the first step for a vehicle to grade a lot of
these pilots or applications?
Are there any other commercial Vita G?
I guess opportunities that kind of stand out to you that maybe aren't being
discussed enough, or you think are kind of the next big easy wins after the school
bus example.
So a commercial truck isn't making money if it's sitting idle.
So that's why charging speed can be important for some fleets.
Some fleets simply sit idle at times when people aren't working.
Whether or not that will change with the rollout of silent, powerful, quiet fleets
is another thing entirely.
If you can make deliveries at night because you have a quiet fleet, do you run
at night?
Who knows?
Those things will change.
If vehicles can go inside of buildings because they don't have any emissions,
does that change things?
Who knows?
We don't know the answers to those things.
I think one of the things that hasn't been fully explored with vehicle to grid or
vehicle to X is how electric vehicles help communities during times of catastrophe.
So we all know that the Pacific Northwest is waiting for a big rip, right?
It's supposed to be an 8 .8 coming.
and you have all these public shelters that are set aside so we're all supposed
to be able to go to the local middle school, high school, grade school,
whatever, and have shelter.
Will the power be on?
Probably not.
If the school district has a bunch of electric school buses, can they take those
and provide power to a site with that V to X so that everyone inside has lights and
warmth when they need it?
Yes.
Could you do that as well with city vehicles if they have that V to X
capability?
Yes.
If I'm a fleet that runs class eight commercial trucks, is that a viable
opportunity for me to contribute back to my community if my trucks can do that?
Possibly.
Is it a way to make money if the city wants to contract me to do that?
Possibly.
Some of those things I don't think I've been fully explored.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I mean, especially when you talk about that example and kind of like cities, not
only do they have school buses, there's dump trucks and a lot of these other kind
of municipal and city commercial vehicles that we're also seeing electrified.
So that is actually a really good and interesting use case for them with some of
the things we're seeing too around the discussion that we've been having today
around electrification.
One other area I kind of wanted to ask you about was around
hybrids in or like plug -in hybrids even because it was just fascinating what you
even just said earlier about I didn't think about this that they won't have AC
charging that's I mean then they don't need an inverter and it saves parts it
makes sense because the demand they need anyway it doesn't really Yeah, and so
There's been obviously a lot in the light duty conversations lately about
kind of slowing down EV adoption and looking at hybrids and plugging hybrids,
especially it's kind of the stop gap.
And obviously a lot of pros and I think probably more cons of that actually being
realistic or plausible.
But there's now been conversations of that in trucking as well.
And kind of these kind of interesting, I don't think they'd work in Europe because
of some of the requirements they have there, but essentially you've probably
seen it where a trailer plugs into a kind of in between the actual tractor semi and
then the trailer.
And it's kind of like a hybrid slash battery thing.
I'm just, I think given our conversation, I think I know where you probably land on
this, but I'm just kind of curious if you've seen any exposure or anything in
that realm that's interesting to you or is a kind of valid stopgap to full
electrification.
I'll quote Martin Daum on this, who's the CEO of Daimler Truck Global.
His quote on hybrids was, the worst of both worlds.
And I agree with him on that.
Because if you have a plug -in hybrid truck, or even a plug -in hybrid light
vehicle, you're carrying two drivetrains that have been stuffed into the same
chassis that would normally fit one.
Neither one is optimized.
and you carry the weight and maintenance penalty of them being overused when they
are being put into use.
So you have an undersized battery and undersized ICE that really aren't
optimized to work with each other.
And especially with light duty.
there's no control over whether or not they get actually plugged in or not.
And there was a huge push towards plug -in hybrids being adopted as commercial
vehicle, fleet vehicles.
It's really common in Europe as an employee to be given a free lease of a
corporate vehicle.
And so a lot of companies went with plug -in hybrids five to six years ago because
that was what was available.
And most of those got returned with the charge cord still in the original plastic
bag never opened.
And so you have a plug -in hybrid vehicle that was built to balance batteries in the
ICE that never had the battery charged.
And so you had an overworked ICE for the entirety of that vehicle being put on the
road.
That's not a solution.
That's a fallacy.
the right for sure.
And I think that's, I completely agree with it there.
And that's something that we've discussed a lot is that exact example of the, a lot
of the perks and incentives that were given for people to have these plug -in
hybrids, but then coincidentally, since it's a company vehicle, they also have a
gas card.
And so it's like, well, if you're just wet and so it's like, as they say the.
path to hell is paid with good intentions.
It just seems kind of like the epitome of that.
And especially in the semi world with what you were talking about earlier with all
that rotational force, it's obviously true for a light duty hybrid, but much more so,
it's so visible when you see a semi startup and it's just one more thing
that's shaking and moving all these different parts.
Right.
And I think that is really interesting.
Kind of once again, going back to.
Exactly what you're saying with not needing an inverter.
I mean, you're just adding more parts more subsystems You're probably going to need
not just you're going to need not only a low voltage in the high voltage But then
you're going to need probably a medium voltage and it's it's just been really
interesting with electrification This is a very different thing.
But like even Porsche recently has essentially moved to With I think was the
Panamera they had like essentially like three different voltage systems in the car
Some of it was due to the technology being new and not having the right suppliers.
I
But then so they had like a do this and it's a very cool and very in a lot of ways
impractical much like much Porsche stuff is but really cool suspension system
that's hydraulic but also has a electric component.
So it was like it had a I think of 12 volt 48 volt 400 volt and then maybe even if
you were in the Tycon and 800 volt system which is really impressive really cool
engineer but it's just so many extra things and more importantly so much extra
weight.
Yeah.
Exactly, which I mean, if you have a Porsche dealership, that's that's the you
want to be selling like crazy.
I'm sure but yeah, for most people, it's not practical.
And so right, exactly, exactly.
Yeah.
So there was a couple of hybrid truck companies out there.
Hylion was one.
I can't remember the other couple, but they've all gone under.
And Daimler was making some hybrid trucks eight years ago.
And there was just no customer demand because they cost more.
And then the maintenance was cost more.
And so your cost per mile.
So we haven't gotten into this, but everything in commercial trucks comes down
to TCO, total cost of ownership.
So everything can be factored down to what does it cost me to roll this truck per
mile?
How many cents per mile does it cost me?
That is flat out the only reason you purchase a vehicle.
And so once that TCO becomes competitive, or even in some cases where we've seen it
be better with electric vehicles, then it's a spread seat decision.
You don't buy a Freightliner because...
you'd buy a red Porsche.
You buy a red Porsche because you turn 50 and you're feeling you got midlife crisis,
right?
You buy a Freightliner because it has lower TCO than the other guys.
Or you buy a battery electric because it has lower TCO than the other guys.
And that's what it's going to come down to.
It's going to come down to a spreadsheet decision.
And we're rapidly approaching from the bottom up.
So delivery vans are already TCO positive.
If somebody is purchasing gasoline or diesel deliver gans, they're not doing
their analysis correctly because it's already TCO positive to go battery
electric.
And we're slowly then creeping up to class four, class five, class six, class seven.
And many of those cases, depending on your load and your range, are already TCO
positive to go battery electric.
And class eight is next.
Yeah, actually it's funny.
We probably should have started with TCO since it is so important, especially in
the long haul and fleet space.
And we've kind of been dancing around it, but I'm actually glad you brought that up.
I feel so I didn't mention it sooner or call it out more, but yeah, you're totally
right.
I think that's one of the big things, especially when you're looking at fleets
and you're right.
That's honestly like bright drop and all these other kind of domestic OEMs have
been making a large investment in the commercial space because of the TCO and
It's a lot harder maybe for the light duty vehicles to sell individually to
customers.
But when you look at the total cost of ownership, whether it's through the oil
changes and all sorts of other maintenance that come along with that, the message for
electrification, even though there's actually a decent upfront investment to
add AC charging, if it's like a delivery vans and all these things, but once again,
over the total cost of it.
And there's obviously incentives for it too, but it pretty quickly pays for
itself.
And it just has so many more.
moving parts literally, but also from like even a business standpoint of what you
need to be concerned about and the like how large the actual maintenance and uh,
kind of upkeep of these vehicles that are what have you seen anything?
Yeah.
No, go for it.
quickly, many large municipalities in Europe and it's starting to happen in the
US as well are banning internal combustion engines in their city cores.
And so in many cases, it's a binary decision.
Am I going to operate within these city cores?
And if so, if I'm going to do that, then I need a zero combustion vehicle.
So.
These companies making deliveries, whether they're vans, class six, class seven,
class eight, in London or Munich or Berlin or Milan, if you're going to make
deliveries, it has to be zero emission.
So as companies make decisions, spreadsheet decisions, I want to make
deliveries to my customers in this area.
I kind of have to have a zero emission.
And I think obviously it plays a role, but obviously that can get a little bit more
contentious depending on who you're talking around and the political leanings
of stuff.
But you're totally right.
I, that is a big part of those decisions.
But even then, um, that I think is kind of maybe forcing or accelerating it, but with
everything else we're seeing, it is just cheaper, uh, on a purely financial and
just a logistical standpoint to do it anyway.
That just might be like, instead of doing it,
In two years and you're like, okay, I'll just do it this year or something to make
those upgrades, to meet those, those needs, which I don't think is a bad thing
either with what you're kind of talking about around the TCO.
What are some of the things in your experience?
Let's say you are talking to someone that just like, hell no, I'm not, you can rip
my diesel engine out of my cold dead hands kind of a situation.
Let's say they're not being as practical or financially observant, maybe.
Are there any sort of things that you have shared with them around kind of the
conversation of TCO?
Maybe not even financially, but just less maintenance or something that, or what are
these conversations that you have with people that maybe can be that kind of
point that turns them around and kind of opens them up to like, okay, this is
actually, let's throw out all the renew, like there's all the environmental
benefits, but let's forget about that for a second.
That actually makes sense.
Now I'm interested.
What in your experience have kind of been those things?
Two things, one from a financial standpoint, if you're rolling zero
emissions, typically you can charge more to the customer per mile because they're
willing to pay for it.
So you have companies like Target, Pepsi, Budweiser, that are willing to pay more
for a cleaner supply chain.
So they'll pay you more per mile for that zero emission transportation you've
provided.
And two, one of the biggest headaches in the transportation fleet industry is
driver retention.
And...
The zero -mission trucks are easy to drive, they are pleasant to drive, and
they attract non -traditional drivers because they are easy and pleasant to
drive.
And so fleets who would normally be struggling to find drivers if they have
zero -mission trucks find that they're attracting a larger number of capable
drivers from a larger area.
of non -traditional drivers and so they're able to attract and keep drivers, which
lowers their costs.
That's it's interesting you mentioned that because I didn't think about that.
But in a couple of the clips I've seen about the Tesla semi and a couple of
electric vehicles, they have kind of it.
That's when they asked the drivers first.
That's been a very common thing that one, it's just a much more pleasant vehicle to
drive and just even be in.
There's just a lot more kind of newer safety and I guess creature comforts along
with in some of the interviews I've just seen.
And Adoli, they mentioned, yeah, this.
I hadn't been a driver before I've gotten into this.
So that is really interesting because you're right.
I've talking with my friend that is a pretty common issue is finding drivers and
having kind of retaining them, especially.
And the one thing that we never thought about that came up once we put the trucks
into operation was the drivers were able to make it back to the depots quicker,
sometimes by 20 or 30 minutes.
And we asked them why.
And they said in stop and go traffic, when the car ahead of them starts to move in a
diesel truck, you have a delay because you've got to get everything spun up.
You've got to get through the gears to get things moving.
And by that time, you've got a gap that someone from a different lane has pulled
into.
I mean, you've got to stop again.
And this continues over and over again.
With an electric truck, how you do a step on the accelerator and you never create
that gap that other cars are dodging into.
And so the trucks were being able to go from Port of LA or Port of Long Beach and
back to the depot, sometimes 20 or 30 minutes quicker because they were able to
keep that gap closed and stay with traffic.
And the drivers loved it because they weren't constantly irritated by people
slipping in front of them.
Right.
And they could make more lights instead of getting stopped.
That's really interesting, but it makes a lot of sense.
Is there anything else you want to add to the kind of the TCO or kind of that
conversation of things that you've noticed can change minds kind of unexpectedly when
you're having that conversation around electrification of semis?
Just the simple nature of it, talking to people about technical change, a lot of
them will say that they're interested in going electric because they've started to
drive an electric car, or their child has an interest in driving an electric car,
who's due to come take over the business and they've just finished business school
and they're pushing dads to look at what's coming next with technology.
things like that.
So, you know, we've seen a lot of kind of interest from the incoming generations
that really want to do maybe not the right thing as I would term it, as far as the
environment's concerned, but the right thing for their business, which is to
follow what technology is leading them.
Gotcha.
That's interesting.
Um, and I guess there is actually one other area we've kind of talked about, but
haven't discussed directly.
And I'd be curious to get your thoughts on.
And that's a big discussion around electrification is data.
And especially when you talk about fleet management and some of the things that
that can unlock, you kind of talked about of even leveraging that to figure out how
you choose the right routes first and kind of make it the most, uh, efficient of
making that investment.
Is there anything else you can kind of share around that?
kind of impact that you're seeing around using data more and any kind of more data
first approaches that electrification has really unlocked for fleet management and
people who operate electric semis.
You don't charge a fleet successfully without using data management and charge
management.
You have to be smart about it.
One of the first fleets to Evergo Electric was a Foothill Ranch bus service in Los
Angeles.
And they did not factor in demand charges to their total cost of fueling the buses
with electricity.
And they got hit with some massive bills.
because they hadn't thought about that when they had modeled going to electric
truck buses for their service.
Granted, they were very far on the leading edge of this.
So was the utility that provided them.
And there was a lot of learnings that everybody came in contact with with that
rollout.
But a smart charge service avoids high demand charges.
It avoids high cost per kilowatt charges.
It maximizes.
the capability and capacity of your current charge system, how much power
needs to be dispensed to the trucks, the lowest cost potential per kilowatt hour,
potentially the greenest kilowatt hour you can provide to your fleet based on when
wind and solar power is available.
All those things have to be combined into a very smart system that can dispense
power.
in the most efficient way possible.
So yes, data has a huge role to play in deciding which of those fleet vehicles go
electric first, how that power is then dispensing the vehicles in the most
efficient and cost effective way.
And it's really important to work with a partner or become intelligent enough with
that sort of data that you can make those decisions yourself.
Most of the large fleets I know are...
depending on the apartment because it's a big nut to crack.
For sure.
And I know bright drop, which is Jim's kind of commercial and even especially
Ford through their, uh, try and remember what essentially their, uh, their
commercial program as well.
They're saying that's where they're making so much money too is around essentially
the data service that they are selling in addition to these electric transit
vehicles and stuff like that.
And so it is kind of an interesting, uh, full package solution that these and
software, uh, integration that is.
I don't know if it's, I think some of it's indirectly, but a lot of it is just
complimentary services being sold by going through electrification.
And that's unlocking a lot more potential financially and even kind of in that
example, time savings and where to make those investments to have the largest
impact first.
pays for itself.
I mean, simply reducing your charging demand when the utility needs more power
and other places on the grid can not only save you money, but make you money.
And so if you have a system that's able to respond to those demand signals from the
utility, your fleet can literally make money by lowering your charging speed.
But you have to have a system that knows what the signal is, when it needs to go
into effect.
whether or not it's gonna affect your fleet charging and customer needs, and if
it can be put into effect and then actually effectuate it.
So, all those things have to be done successfully for you to be able to take
advantage of that, something like that.
And that does seem to kind of go into the fact.
Oh, I think my camera just died.
But I think it's fine.
Let me just try and see if I can switch this word.
I realize we've kind of gone over time as it is.
So I'm going to try and make this quick, but it's interesting going through with
all these different kind of data solutions, how it also could kind of help
with a location that's trying to charge.
And figure out the balancing and working with the utility of leveraging the
advantage of going to like, uh, using or installing a large battery backup system
on that location to help with leveling out and minimizing demand charges, but then
also using to sell it back at night as well.
Yep, no micro grid and battery electric storage, I think are gonna be kind of the
two Swiss army knife solutions, especially for commercial fleets that are gonna be
really, really useful going forward, avoiding those demand charges.
So a demand charge, most people don't know because it's really only applied to
commercial fleets or commercial businesses is if you have...
you have a line essentially that if you cross, your electricity charge goes up
substantially.
So it behooves you to always stay below that demand value as best you can.
And so if you have a big demand that suddenly come on because you've got four
trucks that rolled up, they all plugged in, they all need a fast charge, you get a
big spike in demand, you've crossed your line that you really don't wanna cross
with the utility, where else are gonna get power from?
hits your on -site battery electric storage that can kick in, bring your
overall site demand down to that below or at that demand line, but still be able to
provide the power to the trucks that need to charge.
And then once that demand.
Mead has tapered off, the battery can slowly recharge from the grid, staying
under that line and it's available for the next use.
Or in your case, when the utility needs it, when they have a big demand going,
they can say, hey, can I have some of that power, please?
I'll pay you this amount of kilowatt per kilowatt for it.
And again, you can make money by feeding it back into the grid.
Yeah, and I think that is probably a good place to kind of, one final thing.
And I realize we've gone away over time and I think I asked this of a lot of
guests, but it is what they would like to see there from government or the private
sector to kind of change and help with electrification.
My guess is that you would like to see this really mostly through a better
charging infrastructure for semis.
But I'd be curious if there's anything else you would say or add to that.
Right now, if there's a site that's being built for commercial truck power, it needs
10 to 12 megawatts.
Nobody has that kind of what they call headroom, that extra power laying around.
And so the lead time on that is five, sometimes 12 to 15 years, which is just
much longer than we have if we're gonna try and duck under the emissions
requirements we need to cut down on.
trucks in the road.
So there needs to be some letting loose of the reins for the utilities to start
moving prior to the consumer indication that they need the power so that when the
customer does come for a particular site there is enough headroom and there's
enough available power so the utilities can provide quicker service to those
customers for those charging sites.
So
It is a big change.
I liken it to an increase in gravity.
So a power utility from the point that Thomas Edison kind of discovered
electricity and they started to move it around New York till today was they really
didn't need to respond to any particular request in under 24 months because you
couldn't build a new building or a new demand.
in under 24 months.
If you're building a new apartment building or a new Walmart or whatever it
was, you really couldn't build it any faster than 18 to 24 months.
And so the utility never needed to move any faster than that.
Today, you can pick up the phone and say, hey, I want 20 electric semis delivered to
my site.
And they could potentially be there in three to four months, potentially even
sooner when they really start to get up from serious production.
So the utilities just really have to get used to a heavier gravity as it were.
So.
suddenly they've gone from 24 months to 2 .4 months.
And so gravity has increased 100 fold.
They need the structure to change.
They need the speed to change.
And they need a little bit of loosening of the reins in the right direction so that
they can operate quicker and get ahead of what's coming because it's coming for
every municipality.
There's 3 ,000 utilities in the United States and they all need to be able to.
change with this massive switch in technology from internal combustion engine
to electrification and transportation.
I could not agree with you more and my camera's dead, but I think now we
definitely have gone over time.
This has been super fascinating.
I want to say thank you so much for coming on.
I know this, I've learned a lot and I know a lot of the people who are listening have
definitely learned a lot about the electric semi -space and how much of a big
difference that's going to make with electrification and sustainability that
everyone is hoping for.
So thank you so much for coming on today and we'll have to have you on again soon.
Pleasure, Chase.
Anybody want to come over to Portugal, ring me up, follow me on LinkedIn.
Always happy to have a conversation about electrification transportation.
As we bring this electrifying two -part interview with Rustam Kocher to a close,
we want to express our deepest gratitude to Rustam for sharing his unparalleled
insights and experiences with us here on Grid Connections.
His deep dive into the total cost of ownership, the groundbreaking entrance of
the Tesla Semi, and the potential of vehicle -to-grid technology has provided
us with a clearer view of the road ahead for the trucking industry and sustainable
transportation.
If Rustam's journey and the topics we've discussed have sparked your interest or
inspired you,
Don't keep it to yourself.
Share this episode with someone who shares your passion for the cutting edge of
technology and transportation.
By spreading the word, you help us grow and continue to bring enlightening
conversations to our community.
Remember, the conversation doesn't end here either.
Keep up with the latest developments in tech and transport by subscribing to our
weekly newsletter.
It's your gateway to the stories and insights that matter most in a rapidly
evolving world, and you can find it in today's show notes.
We also want to hear from you.
If there's a subject you're curious about or a visionary you'd love to hear from on
Grid Connections, reach out to us.
Your suggestions and feedback are the lifeblood of our show, helping us to cater
to the interests and curiosities that drive you.
For those who are intrigued to learn more about Rustam Kocher and his current
projects, we've included detailed information in the show notes for today's
episode.
Be sure to check them out for a deeper dive in the innovation shaping our future.
Thank you for joining us for this special two -part interview on Grid Connections,
and until next week, this is the Grid Connections podcast signing