Good morning Grid connections listeners today.
We're diving into the realities of urban EV ownership with Robert Hoffman, host of the urban EV podcast.
If you've ever wondered what it takes to own an electric vehicle in a city like New York from charging challenges to infrastructure innovations, this episode is packed with
firsthand insights.
You won't want to miss Robert shares his journey from investing in Tesla stock in 2016 to finally making the leap to an electric vehicle while living in Brooklyn.
He opens up about the real world experiences of public charging, the ongoing struggles with range anxiety and why misinformation is still holding many drivers back from making
the switch.
We also get into the role of plug-in hybrids, how rideshare drivers are shaping urban charging demand and the promising future of curbside charging solutions like it's
electric.
Beyond the daily challenges, we discuss how emerging networks like Iona are working to improve
non-Tesla fast charging reliability and why level 2 charging could be the key to widespread adoption in major cities.
If you're curious about the future of electric vehicle infrastructure, or just looking for an honest take on what it's really like to go electric in an urban environment, this
episode is for you.
If you enjoy the episode, we'd love for you to share with at least one other person who might find it valuable.
And don't forget to leave us a review.
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With that, enjoy.
Hey, I'm excited to be here, Chase.
Thanks for having me.
You know, I would say, you know, obviously we're going to file this under great minds think alike.
We have similar podcasts here in similar interests.
Do you want me to dig down deep into how I got to where I am today?
Well, we got hours, so let's let's let's use it.
Well, you know, I think there's an overriding theme of a lot of people that are attracted to EVs.
There is sustainable green energy and there's a bigger sort of holistic picture of what kind of drew us here.
Now, sometimes it could just be, could be techie geek and it's just fun, exciting stuff playing with electrons.
And that's certainly an element of it as well.
But, you know, I think this is one of those things that way back when I saw
you living here in the northeast of the United States, you really, think this is the front row seat to climate change here.
I think it's been a lot worse than lot of other parts of the planet.
But, when I grew up, know, winters were winter, you know, it iced over, it was cold over here.
And, you know, I remember the first time, you know, it was, you know, 60, 70 degrees in February.
like, what's going on?
Like, this is, this never, ever, ever happened.
And when you kind of...
lift the veil if you feel like it and really dig deep into what's going on and human's contribution to carbon and how things are our fault and this is specifically human manmade
climate change.
You can't unsee that.
looking ahead towards people who are potentially going to embrace EVs, that's not a good marketing tool.
Scare tactics don't work and a lot of people have their heads in the sand.
And that was part of my motivation here is actually starting the podcast was how can I deliver this message to people who just aren't interested or just don't want to know that
EVs are going to save the planet and they're not going to save the planet by driving EV.
You're not going to per se save the planet, but this is sort of a step, brick in the wall of the whole sustainable energy process.
And with scale and the embracing of green energy networks,
and infrastructure also by driving EVs, it's going to help mankind get to a better place.
So that was part of my motivation.
And I just think EVs are cool.
I think they're fast and they're awesome.
And I do love tech.
It's a hot button topic right now, but I invested in Tesla in 2016 before Musk completely lost his mind.
You know, I saw I'm like I think this company's is on to something and I really want to get behind them But it's also taken me years to actually get behind the wheel of an EV
because I do live in New York City I live in Brooklyn, New York and There are a lot of challenges and hence the urban EV podcast that we have here in cities as opposed to where
most of America living a home with the driveway in the garage have with charging and there's a lot of realities that that sort of
come into play here when you say, I'd really love to get an EV, but how am going to do this?
And it finally took for me anyway.
I had a nice powered vehicle before, and that served me well.
And I was just like, all right, well, I bought it.
paid for.
And I'll keep driving until the wheels fall off.
And that's exactly what happened.
And here we were last year in 2024.
It's time for a new car.
And I'm like, you
I don't know, do I dare the dream?
Can I get an EV?
I mean, I still live in the city here.
It's like, I can't get this done.
So I started having conversations with my wife about this and she's like, no way, uh-uh, this is your deal.
You're going to have to charge it.
Good luck.
Figure it out.
I'm like, all right, you know, she's probably right.
This is pie in the sky for me.
It's not realistic.
So I started looking into plugin hybrids and...
Really, you know, I do believe there's a place for plug-in hybrids.
think right now, in my opinion, it's an EV with a range extender.
I think it's the way they really need to be marketed.
And they're kind of evolving in that direction.
You when you look at the Scout, the new Scout that's coming out, it's much more, you know, it's got a, you know, I'm not quite sure of how many kilowatts those batteries are, but
they're pretty big.
I think you're going to get like up to 150 miles of range with them.
And then you've got a very small motor that's capable of powering that battery.
So, you know, for people who are just completely freaked out by range anxiety, we can get into all of that as well.
You've got that.
think that's a great marketing tool.
The plugin hybrids that exist today, though, when I kind of started really looking into them, there is a sort of still a big compromise with the amount of space they take up in
the boot of the of the car with the amount of range you actually get.
The fact that you can't fast charge a plugin
you know, a plug-in hybrid.
I was not aware of that at first.
I'm like, oh, you can only level two charge these things.
So on top of all that, I actually still was like, you know, I still think I want to do it.
And then I went and I test drove a Sorento, Kia Sorento.
And unfortunately, why also it's got like a 1.6 liter engine with a turbo and it's the performance was weird.
It was kind of like sluggish and fast.
It wasn't consistent.
I just didn't like the way it drove.
It didn't speak to me.
It was the right size for me.
We needed a third row.
That was the directive my wife gave me.
goes, all right, fine.
You do your thing here.
You give me a third row because we got kids to play soccer and we need that.
She's like, I'll begrudgingly agree to this folly that you're following right now.
I'm like, OK, so we did the Sorento thing, did the test drive.
I'm like, this is not working.
But then.
Once I had my eyes on Kia, I saw the EV9, which was just released last year.
And it checked a lot of boxes.
And then when I started doing further research in my area, I did realize there is a public charger about four or five blocks away.
How does that work?
Is that something I can actually get in on and use?
I wasn't quite sure.
And how busy is it?
And these are flow chargers in New York City.
There's a pilot program.
I think it was 2021 or something like that, that these things were launched.
They're not in every neighborhood, but there is one in my neighborhood.
And I was like, I don't know, can I do this?
Can I, you know, I actually even, you know, I was on some forums.
I was like, yeah, I'm thinking of getting a, uh, an EV, but I don't have any at home charging.
And everyone's like, good luck.
Don't do it.
You're crazy.
You know, better you than me.
I got a lot of that.
You know, this is insane.
There's no way this, no way this is going to work out.
And lo and behold, I'm
here to share with you, Chase.
It worked out pretty well, actually.
It was not that big of a deal.
I would say on average, the way I drive, I need to charge up once every two weeks or so.
And these Flow chargers are really reasonably priced.
It's super cheap when you charge overnight, and that's exactly what I do.
So when I'm running low, for the most part, when I'm using the car regularly around town, I'll drive over to those chargers.
You can see when they're available online.
even here in this congested city, they're open often enough that maybe not always the first time I want to go that it's going to be available.
But typically on the second time I take a peek at the app, it's available.
So I've been charging on those.
You charge up to 100%.
It's reasonable.
It's still cheaper than gas.
And so far, so good.
So the experience was actually really positive.
It's the road tripping where things started getting a little challenging.
Chase, what EV are you driving right now?
We have two, so we have a Tesla Model Y and a Tesla Model 3.
Nice.
And originally, I was like, I'm only going to get Tesla.
only going to a Tesla.
And then the X was out of our budget.
And the Y, they offer that third row, but it's kind of like baby seats back there.
It's not a real third row.
So we kind of checked off, crossed off Tesla from our list.
And in retrospect now,
I'm not quite sure if that was the right move.
And I'll tell you why.
So this is one of those realities, I think, and this is stuff I talk about on my podcast.
I'm certainly gonna talk about it on yours as well.
And I love EVs.
I wanna set the table here.
I am a supporter of EVs, but there are growing pains and there are some realities that not everyone is aware of when they get an EV.
And while I was aware of a lot of these things in IRL,
There's certain other things you sort of discover.
Now I always knew the power of Tesla, forget the AI and the self-driving is really the supercharger network.
And I knew that by getting a Kia, I was going to be reliant on the others out there.
Even though technically speaking, is opening up its, Tesla and Kia have opened up the doors.
We were supposed to be on the supercharger network already.
It still hasn't happened.
So I guess it's any day now, but.
I purchased the vehicle last year, so they give you 500 hours of Electrify America.
I'm like, I've heard some iffy things about Electrify America, and it's a reputation that's well deserved.
I had a lot of challenges.
Now, sometimes it's operator error.
The first time you go up to a charger, you're still not quite sure how to this thing.
I press this button, do I plug it in first?
These are all simple things.
part of a learning curve.
For sure, but this is actually part of reason I'm really glad to have you on because I think a lot of people, especially if they've been driving EVs for a while and if they're
non-Tesla, they kind of played out, the electrify America's got a lot better.
Oh, the public charges are better.
This isn't an issue.
And my whole kind of mental philosophy has always been with electrification, even before supercharging was a thing, was just that if, and this is true with like really any
technology space, but if a technology is gonna replace what it is,
What is already there?
It has to be not just as good.
It has to be better.
And that I think it was really the supercharger that at least got that you plug it and walk away.
You don't have to swipe a card.
And obviously now we got plug-in plug-in charge and some of these other technologies taken off, but it's really fascinating to hear someone.
And I think this is something that more people need to hear about like, no, it's not completely solved yet.
And even as someone such as yourself, that's like gung ho to try and do it for people who just
want the positives, but don't want to don't have the ability sometimes to invest the time and figure out all this stuff.
It really does need to be figured out.
It does.
And we're all early adopters here.
that's, once again, it's attracting the gung-ho types.
Plug and charge, I know the technology is out there, but I don't believe there's a standard, I believe, that's been agreed to from the manufacturers, the CPOs, the
ChargePoint operators.
By the way, I was corrected by a friend of mine goes, use a lot of acronyms on your show.
It's like, we don't get them all.
Make sure you explain what they are every time you use them for the first time.
So I know there's a standard.
that's out there, but not everyone has basically implemented.
I don't know if anyone has out, maybe not my area anyway.
the plug and charge concept really needs to take off.
It's really important because it's another, the credit card reader is another point of failure.
There's the initialization and there's the credit card reader where I feel like often there's something along the ways there where something goes wrong.
the biggest...
challenge which I've had now for you know this range anxiety concept.
I understand why now this is a thing.
It's like you've got all the route planning software that's out there.
There's Chargeway.
I've had Matt Teske on the...
Was it Matt Teske or Matt Teske?
Matt Teske.
Sorry about that Matt if you're listening.
So we've had Matt Teske on the show there and you know it's just terrific sort of deep dive into
how this all works and how it can be so simplified.
And that part's great.
So you know where I'm going to go from point A to point B and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And the route planning app is connected to my car and it knows what my state of charge is.
you have to stop here and here to get to where you're going.
That's great.
But the problem is, I know you live out in Oregon, in the high desert over there.
And here in New York, obviously, it's a very urban area.
But you get up, you go up a little north and you're in the aileron axis can be pretty desolate out there as well.
All right.
So the route planning software is telling me stop at this charger.
It's like that last last chance gas station kind of thing.
So it's like, this is it.
And then you're go another hundred miles until there's another one, maybe even not 100, but possibly.
Yeah, you're gonna go decent distance.
What if that's not working?
What if that charger is not working?
All right.
So I'm arriving there with a 12 % state of charge, ready to go.
Perfect.
Let's bring it to 80.
Easy peasy.
I'm going get to where I'm going to go.
What if there's a problem there?
And that happens.
And that's where things get very, very stressful.
Like, you know what?
I don't trust that that last charger is going to work.
It probably will, but it may not.
So now I'm going to charge, stop at the charger before.
And now that's going to kind of break up my trip in the wrong manner.
And now I'm going have to charge one extra time.
by the time I get home.
And that still kind of sucks.
That's still not that, like you said there, when the technology, when the ease of use is as good, if not better than what people are used to, that's when you're going to get full
embracing from the general public of EVs.
It's got to be, it doesn't matter how many extras, how many things you gain from driving an EV.
You know, the silence, the acceleration, you know, there's the
passing power of my car, know, this, my car is a family hauler.
It's a third row family hauler.
It does zero to 60 in 4.7 seconds.
Now I'm old enough to remember when the Buick Grand National came out and it could do zero to 60, I believe in 4.7 seconds.
And that was mind blowing.
A sports car, well, it was kind of like this cool sedan.
It was like a wolf in sheep's clothing that was this fat.
as fast, not faster than a Corvette.
That was a bad ass number to be able to accelerate like that.
And here I am, my family hauler.
can do that in my EV as well.
And it's cool.
It's awesome.
It's a really neat thing to have that kind of passing power.
And it's usable.
Listen, even when I'm driving with my family, some people will think, well, you're not going to use it.
You you don't need it.
You you're going to freak your family out.
But if nothing else, when you're merging onto a highway and you see there's an open spot there, it's mine.
I'm just going to take it.
first first week or two of like EV ownership.
Yeah, you may be driving a little bit more carelessly.
Yeah, you're you're having fun.
But yeah, usually by month in you don't you kind of forget about it.
It doesn't really matter.
But yeah, there's those moments where it's like, I need to get past this vehicle.
I need to get into that spot when I'm on the highway.
And it's, it's a look it is kind of luxury.
It is really nice.
neat.
Like I said, there's just so many positives that come with the car.
And obviously, me and you were willing to deal with some of these negatives.
Now, with the learning curve, you get better at it.
I know that it's funny.
I just spoke to my wife just earlier this morning.
I'm going to bring her on to the show with me.
because it's gonna be the point counterpoint, right?
At least right now, Chase, you and I are like-minded, right?
So in a certain way, we're agreeing, we're finishing each other's sentences.
But I think she's a great example of, I think, a lot of people out there.
And she's the first person to tell me, and will tell you as well, like, it was up to me, no way, no how, I'd never even consider it an EV.
Because it doesn't matter all this cool stuff that you're telling me.
is you're going to add to my life, you're subtracting something from my life.
And she's also dealt with the issues we've had with the chargers.
And in one infamous case, we were coming back from a ski trip.
once again, this is kind of not even a fully remote area.
But it was a shopping center.
like, all right, you know what?
We can stop here.
We do some shopping.
I knew I'd charged there before.
It was Electrify America.
The last time I went there, it was not communicating with the route planning app, but it was there and it worked.
And the same thing happened again.
So I'm like, all right, I'm sure it'll be fine.
No, of course it was not fine.
was the whole, I think they were actually installing new stalls, which was so, that's a positive, but they were down.
And then I was like, now this is a problem because we're really low on charge.
And the route planning software was suggesting it'll backwards half an hour.
this is after, you know.
four hour trip, I'm like, oh my God, I want to do that.
And then there was another charger, you know, the 45 minutes away in the direction we were going, but it was at a car dealership.
And another thing here, here's a little Intel for everyone else.
When you see a charger at a car dealership, sometimes they just park the dealership will just park their own cars in there.
You it loves just using as a parking spot.
and sometimes you can't access it unless the dealership's open too.
Sometimes it's in the garage.
Yeah.
And sometimes it's out and it's public and like, I don't know, do I believe what this says?
It says that, that, you know, it says there's two stalls and one's available.
So I'm like, all right, that's a good sign.
That means there's some dynamic going on there and there, there it's, it's, it's, it's, guess it's being used.
and it worked, you know, but I literally had to go there at, you know, was traveling at 45 miles an hour on the highway with the heat off.
My wife was not happy about that.
My kids were not happy about that.
My daughter started getting, my 10 year old daughter was like kind of getting stressed out.
like, it's fine, it's no big deal.
We're gonna make it, it's gonna be okay.
And I also knew that once you hit zero, there's still, you see a lot of YouTubers out there that run EVs to the ground, right?
They go into turtle mode eventually until like the thing just dies, which is neat.
They do it so you don't have to.
And I do know there's an extra 10 % with the EV9 after it hits zero.
yeah, stress, but it wasn't that stress.
still, my kids in the back were kind of freaking out a little bit.
So not great.
And once again, as an experience from my wife, she's like, this is the reason why.
This is the reason why I would never get an EV.
Yeah, it's the the wife factor just stings when you're already down.
It's just got to kick you kick you right when you're trying to already
experienced that in a car?
I mean, guess it's happened.
But that being said, so I think we've kind of, I think I've chimed on a lot of negatives here.
But, you know, I speak to a lot of infrastructure people on my show.
I do look at the future.
It's about the user experience and where we're heading.
And I'm sure you do as well.
And the future is bright.
know, IANA in particular.
is something here which I'm super excited and bullish about.
It is the counterpoint to the supercharging network.
They've got some big funds.
I imagine they're probably relying on some Nevi infrastructure funds, but at the same time, what is it?
Stellantis, BMW, Hyundai, they're all behind it.
well known large brands with pretty decent reserves to back it up.
they've got some deep pockets and you know, took them a while to figure out like, the EV strategy here, if you build it, they will come no Tesla figured this out a long time ago,
you build a supercharging network, and then you build it.
And then when people know that there is actually a place to a reliable place to charge, then once again, all the stuff we're talking about here, it goes out the window doesn't
exist anymore.
And IANA is doing some really interesting stuff here.
They're all about the user experience at the rechargeries.
There's amenities there, really clear labels, high-speed chargers.
Someone's on site all the time, so they can nip a problem in the bud.
So they should have some serious uptime reliability.
And if that works, then that's great.
And if you can double the amount of superchargers out there, or high-speed chargers, I should say.
then I think that's gonna really solve a lot of these issues that we're talking about today.
No, I totally agree.
And I think one thing to kind of follow up on just like how you were talking about with your quite a few things actually, but your experience with like the Tesla center, like,
they just have the supercharging network.
And I think that is something that's like, it's just the hardware.
And one of the things they did do a really good job of, and we're seeing this now from Riv, you know, a couple more of the kind of software focused startups, but it's like
having that information as to one, it's like
Real-time and actually true as what's at the station?
Who's actually there?
Is there a way?
And Tesla has just had that delved in for years and just like kept pushing the the data you get in the car to really make that effect and I think that's something that Is just so
underrated I'm hoping that as more and more of these other brands are put on the more of the state is kind of shared to help other EV drivers start to kind of you do have to think
about a little bit different than gas but now that there are so many
You can start to kind of optimize and not have to make it's like such a ration.
or account come come from a point.
Yeah.
Right.
real time live data.
No big deal.
Just like you don't think that this gas station is gonna run a gas, you know, it's like it's, of course, gonna have gas.
there's been a couple of times where it's really nice to see that live data.
Like, I tried to avoid driving or road tripping on like national holiday weekends, but there's been a couple of times where we had to, and you can see like, okay, these three
are just swamped and I have enough range.
I can just go like another 20 miles.
There's no one there.
And just like kind of having that, how to think critically.
And with that kind of visibility, you can start traveling faster than, mean,
I don't want to say necessarily faster always than a gas station, but there have definitely been times where I like people go for the cheapest gas and you're waiting for
the Costco for 30 minutes or something.
I've been there myself, but
it's, know, what, what, what, there's no question just, to do a sort of like a double tap here on, on Tesla and their technology.
And this is one of those things which I realized of, of, I did a, I drove a, model three, rented through Turo before I purchased my car.
I just kind of wanted to drive an EV for the first time.
and it was interesting even just to get a little taste of Tesla for the first time.
super excited to check everything out.
And then hopping into the Kia.
And you realize here, is this sort of, know, everyone's beaten this drum for years.
Tesla is not a car manufacturer.
They're a tech company.
But you know what?
They are a tech company and their tech is light years ahead of everyone else.
You can just tell that the awareness of the car and its surroundings is so much more superior than anyone else.
My Kia is great.
It feels like an audio it's a it's a high end car that Kia is like not known for that and they really kind of punching above their weight.
It's got so many cool things.
It's got a lot of buttons and people like buttons, right?
They want the physical buttons and I like buttons too.
get.
And I think they make some great products.
It is just like, I think they Tesla approaches it from like the epitome of like the digital first digital mindset.
And I think he has more much more like the analog mindset and how they approach it, which pro and con to that.
Yeah.
You want tactile feel while I'm driving.
I want to be able to grab something without looking at it.
And that's correct.
That's better in a lot of instances, but you're also beholden to that now.
And when I go through the, Kia, you UI, it's okay.
It's just not great.
You know, it reminds me of a sort of like a, you know, when Nokia.
was the leader in cell phone technology.
And then this iPhone thing came around and you're like the Nokia was super cool.
It did a lot.
But all of a sudden you're like, my God, this is what a phone really can do.
And that's where we are with Tesla and there's still, and even all these great EVs out there that offer all this really neat stuff.
They're still that far away, I believe, from Tesla's technology.
And that's a big advantage.
yeah, I think just the lesson is sad this one of the analogies I've always used is it kind of reminds me The Nokia one is funny, but what it reminds me at least for me personally is
like I used to have this old film rebel can't Got him drawn blank the word but a rebel cannon camera that was film DSLR that's what think of and With that it is you can do so
many cool things
But you have to kind of know, like I gotta do the exposure.
gotta do this.
And I kind of feel like that is a little, that's the pro and con to the Kia is like, I gotta get to the charger just at the right thing.
So I don't have to deal with it like cold gating or not charging at optimal speeds.
kinda, I, I, maybe this has changed, but I know like you kind of have to heat up the battery or manually precondition all this stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah, of course.
It's like, because I can't trust the route planning app on the Kia because it's, it's, I don't want to say it's garbage.
That's an exaggeration.
It's just not great.
It's, it's made a bunch of mistakes and done weird things and offered weird routes and I just don't like it.
Um, so if you're not using the internal app, now have to remind yourself to precondition the battery on a road trip.
Another step.
I don't mind it.
It's most people are like, what?
You know, I forgot.
Oh, now I pulled up.
There's a cold battery.
It's a cold day.
It's going to take a lot longer now to, to charge.
And you know, now I've got a whole system in place.
You know, when I, soon as I set the destination, I'll set a reminder on my phone, you know, alarm to go off or a timer at a certain time.
Okay, fine.
That's preconditioning.
Boom.
Let's do this.
Yeah, it's, uh, you know, it's not elegant.
the, camera analogy is so funny to me is cause.
Yeah.
Cause I used to use this SLR all the time.
I loved it.
And I just, really enjoyed the kind of the process and it was fun, but then eventually my iPhone camera got good enough and it kind of killed me inside to be taking phone or
cameras, taking pictures with my phone of all things.
But sometimes you just have to go with the thing that's right there.
You don't have to take out of a bag.
You don't have to do all these, like the finicky part of it.
just works.
And exactly.
And that wins the day.
Yeah.
as they always say, the best camera is the camera you have with you and just being able to pull out your phone real quick and boom, there's, there is advantage that I think that is
something that Tesla has done and understood really well.
But the thing I kind of take a step back about that.
What you're discussing is so fascinating to me and I think is a hundred percent true is the outward kind of optics.
And what a lot of people think is, well I live in minutes rural Minnesota, or I live somewhere else.
I can't go there.
There's no EV charges.
Well, you start looking.
Yeah, there's usually in a lot of ways I find it's usually easier, especially if you can charge at home.
That's a decent caveat.
But if you live in a more rural area or even a suburb and you have sometimes even just level one charging, but can do some form of level two, the day to day especially becomes
so much easier.
In my opinion, it's only maybe when you go on a road trip that you start to like think about some things, but data, you just forget about it.
Whereas being in a, in your, yeah.
the best thing you could do.
If you could charge, if you can plug in at home, 99 % of the time, that's it.
You never have to charge at a public charger or a level three charger on the road because, once again, cars typically now have two, 300 plus miles of range and yeah, and you're back
at home and you, that's another of these marketing message thing is, you know, when there's
get into these discussions with people, you know, I need to guess I need this, I need that, you know, range anxiety, blah, blah, blah.
You know, this is the reason why, you know, Evie sucking my gas car is better.
I'm like, I pull.
I don't because I don't live at home.
But I'm having these arguments with people or discussions, people that do have homes.
like, you're pulling out of your driveway with a full tank of electrons every single day.
You know, and you've already discounted the fact that you do have to stop
for five to 10 minutes to fill up for gas at the most inopportune moment on a regular basis.
You've eliminated that out of the equation if you can charge at home and you primarily drive around town.
But none of that really matters because even for people who only road trip two, three times a year, it's like they still want that convenience.
I could just say, all right, listen, I've crunched the numbers here and if you're gonna road trip three times a year, it's gonna cost you, you know,
an hour and 30 minutes more in the light, in a span of a year, more for charging on that road trip.
Sure.
So you lost an hour.
So you lost half an hour per road trip.
those are 30 minutes per road trip that you won't get back unless you start talking about all the five minute Phillips you did over the course of the year, which ended up costing
you five hours of time.
So it's a net gain.
It doesn't matter.
All they see is
My road trip's gonna be a half hour longer, therefore, EVs are not for me.
And I think there's even going back to your conversation, the conversation we kind of had first at where you time that would kind of forced you to get it.
And you had the environmental belief, which I have, I've always kind of believed in scene two, but I know for a lot of people that maybe they're like, eh, come on the fence or not
sure.
I think just inherently, if you have the ability to charge at home, and especially if you're fortunate enough to like solar or something, what's really cool is it's
independence that, and I think that is a messaging thing that would
So with more people, if it's positioned that way, but with, think what's really interesting is given your situation where you do have to like kind of go to the charging
station, it's, it's a more analogous experience day to day with a traditional combustion vehicle.
And that has its pros and cons.
And I think it's really cool to kind of hear the way you're going about it.
You're just being completely honest.
It's like when it works, it's great, but having that kind of inconvenience and like,
the flow chargers nearby work every time.
That is a gas station-like experience.
They're wonderful.
I really am pulling for them, and I hope they expand throughout this city and throughout the country.
It was a pilot program.
I know that New York is evaluating other players right now for the expansion.
And the way New York moved, it's probably going to be still a few more years away.
But actually,
I do want to shift gears here for a second.
It's along the lines of what we're talking about right now.
And I'm talking about level two charging in a city in an urban environment.
And this is a big thing, right?
Because no matter what, rationally speaking, most people who live in the cities are really challenged to own an EV.
And there just aren't enough public chargers right now.
yeah.
Any big city where there's apartment buildings or even
condos, know, it could still even be the suburbs.
There's some challenge, there's a lot of challenges to that.
There's a local company here called It's Electric.
Are you familiar with them at all?
I'm not sure.
So there, it's an amazing concept here.
And I know there's a few other players out here that have different sort of ways of trying to bring electricity to the masses in urban environments.
But I think the holdup for flow is these charges are still pretty expensive, rip up the sidewalk, plugging into a substation.
Some people want to do lampposts.
But lampposts are apparently single-phase electricity in the United States.
And they need two-phase electricity.
So there's still going to be a lot of infrastructure.
work that needs to be done.
So it's electric.
Their concept is let's just go to where the electricity is already.
And that is in your apartment building, a storefront commercial, that's on curbside, that building has electricity and they probably have excess electricity.
So what they're doing, there is still a piloting right now.
What they're doing is they'll say, hey, I happen to live in a condo here.
I've actually put my name on the list.
So they're like, all right, you have a condo.
Particularly if it's a modern building, if it's an older one, you may have more challenges.
I live in a condo.
There's X amount of electricity that's kind of when they lay down the lines, pipe in, it's supposed to handle the max load of what this building needs, right?
It's up to spec.
But of course, you're not using max electricity.
all the time.
Now, I'm sure in the summer when all air conditions are humming, that might be a different story.
There's a lot of times here, especially at night, where you're using a very small percentage of the electricity available.
So they say, Hey, we'll tap in, we're going to handle all the infrastructure, we're going to handle all of the, you know, we're going to handle all the finances, going to tap into
your electricity, we're going to install these sort of
It's not even a kiosk.
It's these sort of curbside accessories.
It looks like a square fire hydrant.
And it's a bring your own cable type of concept.
So if these things are dotted throughout the city, and basically they split the profits with the building that's providing the electricity.
from the building's perspective, it's like, I don't have to pay for anything.
You're maintaining this thing.
I don't have to do anything.
And you're going to give me a small revenue.
share from people are plugging in.
if these things are dotting the city, it's a lot easier because they're plugging into the infrastructure already exists.
It shouldn't be nearly as expensive to install these things.
It's a really novel concept that could really take off.
I do, when I'm looking at the future, I put my futurist hat on, like, how is this going to work in an urban center?
How are we going to get full mainstream adoption of EVs?
That to me is the
the path of least resistance and it's something that in theory should work.
So I'm really bullish on them, but it's also probably gonna be quite a few more years until you see one on every street corner.
But I think that, I mean, that's great to hear there's solutions for it, but I think that's also one of the things I like just cause it's still years out.
It just means it's going to get better.
There's still opportunity for people to do it now today, but I agree with you.
It's like more options, the better.
And we, even when you go to Europe, you're, you're kind of right where there's a lot of existing systems that have been leveraged to kind of be modernized to equip with the V's.
I think that sounds like a great option for exactly that.
Europe's ahead of the curve.
China's way ahead of the curve.
We are definitely the laggards over here.
There's no question about it.
and you know, with the Trump administration basically freezing all of these, you know, federal funds, you know, for, you know, the build out, it's gonna take longer.
You know, it's still happening.
The momentum is not stopping, but it is gonna slow down a little bit.
You know, those federal funds.
commingled with private funds, we're going to really accelerate infrastructure growth and it's going to take a little longer right now.
They've got their ulterior motives behind it.
I get it.
There's a lot of oil money that backed the Trump administration.
I think everyone was hoping that having must there, there'd be some net positive for the EV industry and in a certain way it's like, actually.
Elimination of federal subsidies for purchase actually probably helps Tesla more than anyone else because they're the most efficient, you know, electric automaker.
They make more money.
They make money on their on their EVs.
Everyone else loses money on them.
So they're like, fine, whatever.
It's it's we're still going to do better than everyone else.
This is besides the fact of all the stuff that Musk has been doing and turning people off and really turning people off to Teslas.
But, you know, that's a whole nother.
ball of wax.
But no, I think we were all I think I was hoping that having them there would be a more EV friendly administration, you know, they're saying one thing, but now in reality, it's
gonna they're still gonna be backing EV infrastructure rollout.
overly optimistic.
I'll just say it's only been one month Maybe the best is yet to come but I agree that does it not seem to be I to be honest with you was never unfortunately very I I kind of like
yeah, there's a lot of oil money behind this.
I unfortunately don't see this being as Good of an outcome as it could be Maybe that'll change but we'll Yeah, that's true That's a fair point actually
maybe even he has deeper pockets in the oil industry.
Maybe he does, but certainly close.
Yeah.
And I mean, that, that could easily be its own podcast to itself, but I think it is really interesting just kind of looking at the current state of things and not even politics
aside, but I mean, what are some of the conversations you have with people like day to day that are kind of where you live or just like on the street and that, like, do you find
that it's kind of like a positive curiosity?
Do you find like, it's like kind of almost shock?
I, whenever I've got like into road trips in the Midwest and gun with some really rural places, people always assume that like I'd begin cold rolled and all these things.
And I was consistently surprised.
Everyone was really like polite and I, I never had like a native experience.
I maybe had one or two like, okay, that's probably not for me, but good on you.
and so I'm, just kind of curious, what your experience has been.
I'm sure it's probably similar.
I always find the,
the disconnect between reality and social media to be pretty much night and day when it comes to this.
Well, I can tell you here in New York, I mean, I still remember what's gonna told you, you invested in Tesla a long time ago, man, I still remember seeing like the first like, model
X driving down the street.
like, my god.
And even the cyber truck the first time like, holy smokes, there's one for real in the wild.
But there's actually a lot of EVs in New York.
And they've incentivized New York City's incentivize all the Uber drivers to buy EVs.
So they're kind of like, everywhere.
They're just mainstream here.
there's still, it's still the minority, but seeing them around is easy.
It's interesting.
there's no kind of, you don't hear, there's no cold rolling.
There's none of that stuff here and no one's talking smack about your EV.
It's like, it's whatever.
It's just a car over here.
It's just, just part of the mosaic of New York city.
But it is interesting how, since I started the podcast, a lot of people.
what I call, and you probably call them that as well, the EV curious.
I don't think I, I know I didn't coin that phrase, but I use it all the time.
is, you know, all of a sudden out of the woodwork, friends of mine and acquaintances, my brother in law is thinking of getting an EV.
Could he talk to you and other friends of mine?
So what's it like?
Tell me more, you know, and my lease is coming up soon.
So get a lot more of those conversations, but still there's a massive hesitancy and still a lot of people who are even the EV curious, they get gun shy.
They still at the moment of truth, they chicken out.
And that's because there's been so much misinformation that's out there and it's really hard to combat.
I had an interesting conversation also this morning and this is another side note here.
my EV9 and this is a whole nother story.
It is actually, I love my EV9.
It's a great car.
There's a known issue with front end vibration on these cars.
It's sort of, some cars have it.
Most do not, but I don't think Kia knows how to resolve the issue.
And so, or I actually pulled the lemon law card and said, Hey, you guys tried three times already to fix this.
The dealership's like, we give up.
And so, Key is really good.
They hook you up with Better Business Bureau and they go, okay, fine, no problem.
You can speak to them and we'll go into arbitration, which is nice.
And that's where we are right now.
So they may be buying it back.
I'm gonna get another EV to be determined which one it is.
I still love the EV9 very well, maybe.
If they just offer me new one, I'll just probably take a new EV9.
But I had to have the inspector come in here and verify the issue of this front end vibration.
It's just a regular dude that lives here in New York City, Brooklyn resident.
And so of course, we're talking about EVs.
And he's just like, yeah, I don't know.
I think I'm waiting for hydrogen.
And it's like, these are the sort of conversations you hear, whether it's the range anxiety, I hear these things.
I'm like, no, it's like, hydrogen's not coming for your car.
10 years, you're going to be waiting 100 years, probably.
Uh, hydrogen is for airplanes, possibly for fleet electrification.
Maybe it will in the whole ecosystem.
There is a place for hydrogen, but it's not going to be your EVs.
They, for most, the layman, the lay person does not understand what's going on behind the scenes that we do because we geek out on this stuff.
And there's all that misinformation, you know, people, uh, another friend of mine, his wife, she has family up in Ithaca, New York, and that's about a three hour.
drive from here, three to four hour drive from here.
so, know, he's also, you know, with my EVs kind of always, oh, I kind of like to tell you more about it.
He's one of those guys as well.
I'm like, you know, and his car is quite a few years old.
I'm like, you know, and it's starting to have problems.
I'm like, why don't you, you know, why don't you think about getting one yourself?
And he's like, Oh, no, my wife, he, she says she goes out, she drives up to Ithaca to see her family like, you know, twice a year, there's no charges up there.
You know, there's no way she could never make it there and back again.
I'm like, all right, this is a simple Google search away.
But it doesn't matter.
I pulled up my route planning app.
And I go, you can almost make it there and back on one charge, first of all, if you got a Tesla.
And number two, here's like a million chargers that are literally in Ithaca.
You could charge overnight or get fast charge here if you wanted.
That's not an issue.
But it doesn't matter.
His wife is like, these things don't work.
This is too much of a headache.
This is too much.
I don't want to deal with this.
I don't want to deal with learning something new.
All of these things come into play.
People don't want to, you know, they want to, they already have been conditioned to understand how a gas car works.
You want to get into a new gas car, a nice vehicle.
It's, it's going to do pretty much the same thing that the last one did.
And, you know,
When I got into my Kia, by the way, like I already told you, the UI is OK.
It's not great.
It's complicated.
It's a little clunky.
It's good.
It's not great.
It took me like two weeks to really, you know, I mean, was taking the app or the user manual, taking it home with me and just studying it like it was a college course.
You know, I wanted to learn.
I would just go out in the car, just hit buttons.
You know, after I, you know, my wife's like, are you coming back in?
I'll see you another hour over here.
Not everyone wants to do that.
that's, once again, back to your original question, all of these things, the consensus I'm getting from everyone around me is X, Y, Z, whatever it is, too complicated.
I don't want to deal with it.
And the saving the planet card, it doesn't work.
It's absolutely, positively pointless to...
to for rational people who are still like, yeah, I know climate change is real and we need to do something, but it's going to make my life more complicated.
And what difference does make if I just change?
If I change to an EVA, it's not going to change anything.
And they're right.
It's a macro thing.
We all have to change.
But that's the constant, constant thing that I'm.
hearing all around is for people who are not totally, totally into it.
The complication of, installing a home charger.
I don't know.
Those things are expensive.
Well, and this is kind of this kind of comes back to two earlier things.
One, you mentioned Matt Teske and Chargeway and I think they do really good job of like, I mean, Matt said for years, like the messaging around electrification and charging, just
call electric.
Just keep it simple.
The messaging has just been god awful.
But the second part to that too is like when you're talking about like plug and hybrids, cause that's also like, well, maybe I'll just do a plug and hybrid.
And the funny thing that I've seen personally is both my mother-in-law and then my own mother, their husbands both had EVs first and they do a lot of driving.
And so they're like, well, I'll get a plug-in hybrid.
They are the only people I have seen with plug-in hybrids who actually charge them because there's already an EV charger at the house.
And in that case, yeah.
Okay.
They're doing it.
They are pretty, consistent about it, but yeah, I mean, I think.
the use case of in theory and like selling the idea of a plugin hybrids nice.
But like when it comes like once you have like, I got to pay like two grand or something to install it.
whatever.
No, I'll never I'll do.
And so maybe you go to like the grocery store or somewhere there's a level two or something else.
And then you see it's taken by someone in a plugin hybrid.
I've seen that quite a bit.
But I think I think that's one of the interesting things too, is just like going fully V is that forcing function to actually make
the kind of commitment to actually using it to actually having a battery electric, and like offsetting a lot of your fuel costs.
Obviously I'm still big fan of just going either go full electric or go like full combustion and just get a nice like weekend classic car.
But, I, do think it's, still just such an interesting dichotomy of what the messaging is leading up to a purchase and like how it's positioned where it's like, okay.
I guess I could just do a, a plugin.
Electric hybrid but then once you actually have to use the day-to-day it's like, I got to install that also and That'll be my next car Yeah, exactly
all right, I'll install it eventually.
And then you don't.
And I'm sure some people do it right, much like your family does.
And there are plenty of people who I'm sure are using the plugin hybrids correctly and have to fuel up once every two months.
And it's wonderful, right?
I mean, it can work.
And this range extender concept, which is basically the same thing, if that technology really can kind of catch on.
I guess that's going to be a solution that's going to help a lot of people.
I've always got the emergency pack in my car.
There's just another conversation I have with a friend of mine.
wants to the Scout when it comes out.
So he's another EV curious guy who's getting a little more serious than some of my other friends.
He's like, all right, I got my eye the Scout.
I really like the Scout, even though there's comparable vehicles out right now.
but he's got the Scout and the Scout is marketing.
One of their models will have that range extender.
And he's even telling me, he's like, did you ever think about having like an emergency battery pack in the back of your car just in case?
And I'm like, that would take up, anything that would be worthwhile would take up all of this space at all of this weight.
And he's like, yeah, but isn't it nice to know you've got this emergency extra range?
I'm like, yeah, do you have an extra?
gas tank in your car, you know, it's like, no, you look at the at the gas gauge.
And when the light comes on, you take it very seriously.
And that's when you start really looking for a gas station.
And I got listen, my emergency pack is that extra 10 % after it goes to zero, you know, I'm like, you that I but from him, who's never driven an EV before, like the range
anxiety, this is how you combat it.
And these range extenders, it's the same thing when I look at a car with a range extender is
Now I got a gas engine in my car that's going to require all of this maintenance eventually that I don't want to deal with, you know, when the car is a lot older.
And stale gas sitting in the tank.
It's just more complication no matter how big the vehicle is, and how efficient they get, it's still going to cobble up a lot of useful space.
is like one of the big reasons I got rid of it.
Got rid of driving combustion.
It's just, I drive so much at a lot of oil changes.
And then I think the other thing that's always been so fascinating, I don't know for sure about all of these irrev style like the scout, but I would imagine it must be is with so
many of the plug-in hybrids, the gas stick is actually under pressure to help prevent the gas from essentially decaying.
Yeah.
like, that, was kind of the issue with like the Chevy volt.
And so there's like, to me, it's like from an engineering perspective, not only do you have the concerns that people have that are usually way overplayed when it comes to like
an electric vehicle and the battery in the accident, you now have a gas tank, but you also have a guesting that's actually under pressure.
And so to me, it's like everything that could go wrong.
You've really just amped up a lot.
and I mean, to me, that's always.
You can engineer around it, but, and same with like hydrogen, but those were always the things that I would just like this.
You're really overcomplicating it if you're really worried about like concern and that stuff.
But I do understand.
I feel like when you're going into the purchasing experience and thinking and justifying of buying an EV or plug and hybrid, that's where range anxiety comes in.
What changes once you have it, depending on the vehicle and just situation is then the charger society actually in the practice.
And I think that's really the difference.
Cause really now the range isn't the issue.
It's usually is the charger.
I'm going to have to go to working.
Fortunately, I haven't ran into that issue.
I've gotten some pretty random remote places.
Well, I mean, even when I've like, even when I went to electrify American, a couple other ones, but they were all ones I could go through an app and check that they're allegedly
live, which I have been let down by in the past.
But, yeah, no, I was driving through very rural parts of Nevada that had chargers that said they were live.
And I was like, well,
This is either going to be a one way trip or I'm going to tell the tale and it was fine.
it's like things are definitely getting better, but yeah.
yeah.
But as we discussed, it's not there yet.
An interesting little side note here.
So as I mentioned before, KIAs are supposed to be the whole NAC standard, North American Charging Standard, Phil.
So now I spelled out that acronym as well.
So the NAC standard, as we all know, is the standard plug-in style that we're all going to use.
That's what are on the Teslas.
chargers they use next and now even Kia's now they're manufactured here in the US are having next plug everyone's going next that's that's the future CCS is what the legacy
cars like mine have so all you need is an adapter it doesn't really matter you can you know if the supercharging networks open all you need is adapter I can still plug into a
supercharger but there's a little thing here that no one is mentioning unless you once again geek out and go in the forums and start speaking the engineering types and do you
know where I'm going with this?
I think I have something to do with voltage.
Yeah.
EGMP of the the Hyundai's and the Kia's, which is a more modern architecture for an EV than what the Tesla Model 3 and Y have, 400 volt architecture.
So what happens is when you pull up to a supercharged with an 800 volt architecture car, it they have to have the time it or should I say it doubles the amount of time it takes to
charge.
So suddenly now
for charge time.
Yeah, exactly.
So you get the reliability but but although although there's v4 cabinets coming out for the superchargers which are capable of powering up an 800 volt
be changing over time in the greater scheme of everything.
But yet you're right.
It is yet to be seen.
I think Tesla has their own reason for doing it.
And to be honest with you, I don't know this for a fact, but it is part of the reason I think that Tesla hasn't been in a rush to make more 800 volt vehicles other than the cyber
truck, because that was kind of a one-off luxury thing that those buyers will be happy just to have it.
If they're inconvenienced every now and then by a slower charger, they probably
They're going to be first adopters.
won't mind as much.
Yeah.
And they, did do some engineering around it.
So it kind of splits the pack.
So it's not as effective, but it is effective.
And.
the Lucid does some weird stuff where it knows how to split the power as well.
And so you actually can get a full speed charge, even on an older Tesla supercharger.
I believe so.
You're more of the engineering type, Chase, than I am.
haven't I haven't played enough with the lucid as I want to but from everything I've seen Yeah, I think that thing's really cool I would love to play with one of those and kind of
see one more in person but From what I've heard and seen of people in real life again it
It does some clever engineering to kind of help that, but there's still a pretty big Delta.
mean, um, the pro and con of going to like super high.
I mean, and the problem is with like this whole 400, 800 volt thing, most cars aren't even 800 volt.
Like all the new Porsches are not all of them, but like the McCons like 600 volt technically.
So there's all sorts of kind of weird things that can happen.
So if like you have a 400 volt, uh, location, but it actually puts out at 500, 600.
Some cars won't be affected.
Others.
But that's a whole nother and even some of the cues are more like high sixes, sevens.
but once again, this is like getting too geeky and then there's so many like different, if this, then that, but on Tuesday when it's 35 degrees, yada, yada, yada.
And so I am hopeful that the V four cabinets that Tesla is going to do, they really lean into it just because from what they're saying, who knows what actually happens.
They're saying they're going to have more 800 volt.
vehicles coming out soon and I think that is probably part of the justification to actually make the experience more consistent with what traditional Tesla drivers have been
used to because if they start running into that I don't think that's gonna be positive and with the with opening the supercharger network it is in their best interest to make sure
that other vehicles that do charge aren't there for a long time to kind of have that throughput so cautiously optimistic we'll see what happens there
Yeah, I mean, listen, there's the whole thing also with charging curves as well, which Teslas aren't great with.
Keys are.
They can hold a high throughput for longer, much longer than a Tesla.
Just out of curiosity, what's your kind of average time for 10 % to 80 % stay-to-charge with Tesla?
That's a great question.
I usually don't charge that long.
or if I do, it's like, went to go do something else.
I'm, I'm, I would love to see it be more in the realm.
it's somewhere in the 20 minutes.
I would imagine probably high twenties.
Yeah.
it's for me.
It's it's also the chargers.
There's such variants and you don't trust them.
And even when they're rated, this one's rated at 350.
This one's rated.
It's hyper fast.
This one's 180.
It's kind of like maybe it is.
Maybe this is not what I'm seeing.
at a certain voltage versus amperage.
And this one's a different amperage and voltage to get to that three 50.
And I think this is one of those growing pains that will change soon, especially not just what does like Alpie tronic that supplying the law of the chargers to Iona, like you
mentioned, and others that just have really high performance across the bar.
So it really shouldn't matter what architecture that people,
Bring to charge it but I think that I've the whole 800 volt thing has some perks for sure and I think more and more vehicles will go that way for sure But I think it was overhyped
as being a cure all For I mean, there's I once again, I think there's really cool stuff on the efficiency side especially but like efficiency and range really is king and then If
it's got good charting even better
Yeah.
And, you know, and kind of once again, tying everything together with what we discussed, you know, all of these variables, all of these inconsistencies, all of these lack of
standards.
This is the reason why things this is what causes people gives people pause.
They're like, I'm not sure I've heard this.
I've heard that.
And even from us who are the real world experience of it, it's like they're kind of right.
It's still an inconsistent experience.
If you're a road tripper.
if you're not, that's once again, if this, then that.
So.
if, if you're a family that has a house and you need a second car, I don't know why you wouldn't do electric.
Um, if, yeah.
Yeah.
know, if you're like, OK, I'm concerned about those three road trips here, OK, we'll take the SUV or the bigger one.
And that's it.
It makes perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect sense already right now today.
But yeah, these.
and there's, are still these edge cases, but they're getting much, much better.
And I am sure they will be solved, but I think in this kind of media realm and just what people's recent experiences with gas are, they think it's like, this, this needs to be
fixed now.
And I'm always reminded, this is kind of just a fun automotive trivia is like when diesel first was offered in a lot of vehicles, you
that blue tech, right?
Volkswagen.
Well, yeah, no, no way before this like in the 50s 60s.
Yeah.
I remember when these old Mercedes diesels came out and you know, chugging with this black smoke coming out of the rear.
Yeah, that was supposed to be the future.
is when they first started rolling out cars in the U S that had diesel or ran on diesel, they actually gave you a map with the car to show you which gas stations around the U S
offered diesel.
And it's so it's like, and it took a decade.
took decades to get this all figured out, to have all of them, to have diesel at these locations.
was obviously the infrastructure was there for the truck.
So on the highways, it was never an issue.
Ironically, it's the exact opposite that you have with EVs now.
So highway driving was easy with the diesel.
And I had one, by the way.
I had a Volkswagen VW It was used.
It was one of my first cars.
It was a 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit diesel.
And so it got 50 miles to the gallon.
It could
Yeah.
hour with a headwind.
That was it.
You're stuck it.
If you had a slight, if you had a slight grade, you could get it to 70.
It was slow as a four speed stick.
Um, and I kind of loved it also, but yeah, that, that, that fuel gauge just didn't move.
It just stayed there forever.
It was kind of amazing.
But yeah, when you got off the highway and you went into towns, you learned she's way before the internet, right?
I didn't have a map either.
I bought that thing used.
You just learned.
here's in my college town, here's where that one gas station that sells diesel is in you.
And the good news, once again, is that the car probably had about 500 miles of rain.
you you learned, you learned not to go to eat, you learned, you know, if you were in unfamiliar territory, by the time you got to a quarter tank, still plenty left, you
started kind of looking around for a place to fill up.
So it's the, it's kind of just looking at the history of it is why I stay optimistic.
This isn't the first time that there have been these in the scheme of things.
This isn't a very wild technological thing.
Not only are you having to figure out all the gas infrastructure, you literally just need electricity.
And I've been doing this more this past year, just because of moving and having a rental.
We've been level one charging way more than I expected to be.
And it's been totally fine.
And we still drive between,
Bend and Hood River, Hood River and Portland.
So doing 100, 150 mile trips regularly.
and it's been fun just on level one charging.
Yeah, and truly you're the perfect case of that you get away with it.
So for everyone that doesn't know what level one is.
I mean, there's, there's ways to hack it, but it just shows that it is doable.
Yeah, so just for everyone who's also uninitiated, level one is just your AC outlet, 110.
And it's going to, it's sort of like a, what does it give you, like a mile an hour or something like that?
Is that the speed?
Maybe two or three miles per hour of charge?
I think it's like five or something.
And then it's like, I never use the miles per the mile rating.
Cause that I was just thinking that's BS.
So just go off percent and that's like one to one and a half percent per hour.
But at the same time, I mean, and that, kind of goes to the beauty of just like having a really efficient vehicle.
It just means you add that much more charge faster, even all of these things, but I'm still blown away by the fact that I can plug my car into the same outlet.
I put my electric toothbrush in and it still charges it.
It doesn't, mean, even if it's slow, it's, it's kind of wild that that little power can power my car.
And as you mentioned, you drive a lot.
And when you have a Tesla and you have a reliable supercharger network, all right, fine.
So for this trip, it's not going to work.
So I guess I'll have to stop and plug in on the way towards my destination.
And it won't be a big deal, because I have full faith that the charging experience is going to be a good one.
And yeah, and you're a perfect example of why you don't even necessarily need to even install that level two charger, which, by the way,
Ford now and I think one other manufacturer is starting to offer like basically a free level two charger with the purchase because they understand that's a friction.
and made it like, this is the challenge.
This needs to be solved and we'll help buyers do it.
Yeah, it's another marketing thing, which I think is a really smart move.
It's one less thing to worry about.
And with level two, once again, you're getting a full charge overnight.
just in case that's a problem, you're too concerned about that, it solves that issue as well.
You know, Rob, I, know, I, I appreciate all this and this has been a really great conversation.
realize we've kind of come up to time, but one thing I wanted to ask you, especially being the urban Evie, uh, podcast man himself and living in New York, we, talked about a little
bit around ride share drivers and kind of Evie charging.
That's been kind of a common topic.
I feel like for quite a few of the last episodes is like Evie go, I forget how many quarters ago released this data saying that 25 % of their public charging.
is actually due to ride share drivers.
And I'm kind of curious just in your experience, like you have this fortunately really close to you.
Is that, do you see as that being kind of a combative thing or an issue you run into as like when you're trying to get that charger, it is usually a ride share driver or someone
visiting from out of the city or a local also charging their EV.
It's a valid question.
Ironically, I don't see that many rideshare chargers on the level two charges because they need to because unless they happen to live right next door, they're going to have to keep
it on that charger for hours.
So it's not it's it's not worth their while.
They're going to all the you they're going to the fast chargers.
And that's where it's a mob scene.
And I've heard horror stories like near the airport where all the taxi drivers congregate.
Big lines.
I know some of the chargers there.
It might be Electrify America.
I can't remember which which.
which charge point operator is, they sent out some message saying, hey, 80 % you're cut off.
You're not allowed to sit here and charge to 100 anymore because there's too long of a line.
So there are these challenges in urban centers where the high speed chargers are, where you are going to be competing with the ride share drivers.
But once again, within the urban center, if you do live in an urban center,
If you're solely relying on high speed charging, which by the way, it's comparable to gas as far as how much it costs per kilowatt hour.
So you're not, it's already a little more expensive to buy the EV and now the fuel is basically the same thing.
You're probably, you don't have access to a level two.
You're probably, you're an edge case and you probably should not be getting an EV at this moment.
You should have at the very least access to a public level two charger.
So I find the ride share drivers are pretty much in the urban areas.
But if you do have public level two charging nearby, it's worth your while.
But if you want to compete with the, with the level threes, you, you may have some challenges depending on where you are.
It depends on what part of the city.
know some, there's a charger near me where, it's near where my son plays soccer, where I've topped off over there.
And it's, it's, it's been full, you know, quite a few times.
It's funny.
It's interesting.
Just, just in the.
Last two years I drove by even before I had an EV, it used to be empty.
Empty every time, like they're going out of business.
It's actually, I didn't realize this is a part of micro grids, which they're sort of, their main business is battery storage.
So they're store of like supplementary storage for the grid.
So they have these big massive battery packs and they're like, all right, we might as well put a charger here while we're at it as well.
But I didn't know what that at the time, I'm driving by, I'm like, they're going out of business.
Slowly but surely over two years,
my God, I see someone charging in there.
And I actually made a social media post about this about three or four months ago.
This is the first time I saw it full and a line.
The first time I saw it full and then the next day I saw a line to get in there.
And they were all and now every time I drive by it's almost always full and it's ride share drivers.
Yeah, they've discovered that that charger now it's obviously where it's gotten out.
So yeah, you're you're you're there are challenges in some urban areas for level three charging.
But to be quite honest with you, most people who live in these areas, you really don't use them.
You almost never use them because you do have access to the level twos, if you have access to level twos.
about where we just compare it to the traditional fueling industry.
it's like, well, most taxi drivers don't go to a gas station or fleet vehicles.
Don't go to the gas station.
There is commercial fueling location.
I mean, it's not uncommon.
They might have a fueling car, but in a lot of times, a lot of places, even in large cities, they'll usually have a commercial fueling station or location, or even at the taxi
place itself that they get discounted gas.
So.
There's things like that that I'd love to see that would help kind of maybe pull some of that off of these for that experience.
But you're right.
Like the more hotels or other places, especially for people visiting that can have that level too, you really don't need it.
Or even easy level one.
Yeah.
is a big thing here.
And I've kind of made the argument that hopefully eventually it's going to be the continental breakfast and the free coffee.
If the hotel doesn't offer it, you just go to the next one because that one is offering it and I need it.
And I think there's going to be a critical mass.
It has not happened yet.
I'm just kind of amazed at how few hotels offer level two charging.
Obviously there's still some upfront capital costs, but I know these big chains can afford it they just have to see the value proposition.
And eventually when everyone has it,
then the value proposition will be there because they'll be losing business when they don't have it.
But yeah, that's for another day.
Rob, no, thank you so much for coming on today.
This was a great conversation.
Pleasure to meet you.
I'm looking forward to having more on here.
For anyone that is listening, what's the best way to keep up and learn about your podcast and the other of the services that you're offering right now.
Well, you can well, well, I'm a video producer by trade.
So that is sort of my thing.
I like producing podcasts.
I like producing video content as well.
But you can find me.
You can find my podcast, the Urban EV podcast on Spotify, on Apple podcasts.
Pretty active on LinkedIn.
That's my main social media channel.
Once again, Urban EV.
The websites are in eevee.co, but does that even matter anymore?
anyone go to websites?
be sure to have links to all of them in today's show notes for people just have that direct link, but
Yes.
show.
That wraps another episode of Grid Connections.
A huge thanks to Robert Hoffman for sharing his experiences in shedding light on what it truly takes to own and charge an electric vehicle in a dense urban environment.
From the challenges of fast charging reliability to the exciting potential of curbside solutions, we hope this episode has given you fresh insights into the evolving electric
vehicle landscape.
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