Building Out the EV Charging Network

evVG August 6, 2025 Meeting Transcript

Meeting Facilitator

• Mike Austin, Executive Editor, Road and Track Magazine
• Nathan Niese, Managing Director & Partner, Boston Consulting Group

evVG Member Participants:

• Srijata Chattopahyay / VP: Americas EV Charging / Shell Recharge
• Tom Healey, VP, Facilities, Nouria Energy Corporation
• Gabe Klein, Former Executive Director, U.S. Joint Office of Energy & Transportation
• Chris Normandeau, Director, FirstService Energy
• Kimberly Okafor / General Manager of Zero Emission Solutions / Trillum – A Love’s Company
• Darren Palmer, Global Vice President Electric Vehicle Programs, Ford Motor Company
• Deb Peck Kelleher, Deputy Director, Alliance for Clean Energy NY
• Jay Smith, Executive Director, Charge Ahead Partnership
• Jessica Stoll Lowery / Project Manager / Climate Mayors
• Fred Yonghabi, Sr, Specialist, Con Edison

Presenter

• Nathan Niese, Managing Director & Partner, Boston Consulting Group

Guests

• Jed Prickett / Clean Energy Analyst / Alliance for Clean Energy New York

Vision Group Network Founders

• Myra Kressner, Founder, Kressner Strategy Group
• Eva Strasburger, President, StrasGlobal and CEO, Compliance Safe
• Roy Strasburger, CEO, StrasGlobal and President, Compliance Safe

Meeting:

Mike Austin:

Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming to the latest meeting of the EV Vision Group. I’m Mike Austin, the facilitator. My co-facilitator, Nathan, is delayed. He’s going through airport security, but he’ll be joining us later. I’ll kick it over to Roy for starters to get the general housekeeping out of the way, and then we have a couple of new attendees to introduce.

Roy Strasburger:

Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for this version of the EV Vision Group. We’re very excited about having you with us, and I think we’re going to have a very interesting conversation today.

Just a couple of housekeeping rules to share. As noted in the forms you signed when you joined, we are recording this meeting. The recording will be used to create a report called The Vision Report, and we’ll also be publishing the transcript and including videos of parts of the meeting. And a reminder that you’ve given us your release to do that. If you would like for something you say to be off the record, please let us know. You can tell us either before or after you say something, but if you’ll give us a notification that it’s off the record, we will treat it as such.

Also, I would like to remind you that some of our members may compete with each other, and we take antitrust regulations very seriously. Please do not discuss anything about pricing, dividing up market share, or any other type of anticompetitive discussion. If anybody does, you’ll be asked to stop, and if the first warning doesn’t work, then you’ll be cut out of the meeting. So, please help us respect that because obeying antitrust rules is necessary for us to be able to do these types of meetings. Thank you.

During the course of the meeting today, please keep your mic on mute so we don’t have any ambient background noises going on. If you would like to say something or add a comment, please use the raised-hand icon in the Teams window unless you’re in the middle of an ongoing conversation. But we do want you to contribute, and if you use the raised-hand icon, we can be sure everybody gets recognized and everybody gets a say. We would like to encourage everyone to speak freely and participate in today’s conversation. Those are the main housekeeping rules.

Now I’d like to ask a couple of people to introduce themselves. We have a new member joining us, Jessica Stoll Lowery. Jessica, would you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Jessica Stoll Lowery:

Yes, happy to. Hi everyone, thank you for having me. My name’s Jessica, I am a project manager with Climate Mayors. We are a bipartisan network of 350 or so mayors across the country working to take climate action. We do this through a lot of education, through convenings and through working with mayors on elevating different issues. I also have a background in EVs from working with an organization called the Electrification Coalition. A lot of my work has centered around working with cities both broadly in climate and then also with that EV piece. And I am based in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Roy Strasburger:

Excellent. Jessica, nice to have you with us. We look forward to hearing from you, and hope that after the first couple of minutes you get into the rhythm of jumping into the conversation. If you don’t, we will call on you; so don’t worry about that.

We also have a guest today. I’d like to welcome Jed Prickett. Jed, if you’d tell us a little bit about yourself, please.

Jed Prickett:

Thank you, Roy. Hi everybody, nice to meet you all. I’m Jed, I’m a clean energy analyst at the Alliance for Clean Energy New York. We’re the voice of the renewable energy industry at the state level. We’re made up of member organizations that are renewable energy developers, energy efficiency companies, transportation electrification companies, and we represent their interests at the Capitol. I’m happy to be here.

Roy Strasburger:

Great to have you with us, Jed, and thanks for joining us today. Mike, I shall turn it over to you.

Mike Austin:

Thanks, Roy. We’ll get started with a recap of our last meeting in April. A lot has changed since then. I want to be a little bit careful not to spoil the bigger new discussion topic, which is the One Big Beautiful Bill. But like I said, there’s a lot that’s changed. We have more than half a year of EV sales, we have incentives and other things that have changed. So, I want to get people’s thoughts on some of the things we covered last time and how that’s shifted, or if there’s any new information.

Starting with the approach to EV charging, anecdotally, I live in Michigan. We have ample, ample public fast charging now. Depending on where you are, Level 2 charging is not as ubiquitous, but it’s enough to the point where I was on a road trip recently and I pulled off at a charger, and it was really slow. It was malfunctioning. I planned to go further down the road and later I learned one exit away there’s a brand new, really fancy GM Energy pull-through station. It’s to the point where multiple exits have fast-charging. All that said, does anyone have any thoughts on how consumer education and even perception of EV infrastructure has changed in the last few months? Go ahead, Darren.

Darren Palmer:

I’m seeing companies continue to add to their network. Tesla charging has been added to more companies’ networks now. I think it’s almost everybody, which gives choice to the customer as that has added to whatever else is available. If a customer’s had a bad experience with broken charges, they can switch to that Tesla network and use it, and we can see from our statistics it’s very, very reliable. So, for those people who prefer that network, they can choose it now, and most of the cars go directly to it. I’ve also noticed in many areas there are enough [chargers] to give you options, multiple options now for any given route, where in the past sometimes there was only one option. And if that was malfunctioning — and during Covid, many were — then it was very troublesome. You’ve got that back up now, just as you described.

Mike Austin:

Roy?

EV Equipment

Roy Strasburger:

Darren, I think you’re specifically referring to the Tesla charging stations. Why do you think they’re more reliable than others? Is it the equipment, or is it just better maintenance, or better treatment of the equipment when people use it?

Darren Palmer:

I’ll talk about what I know.

What I know is they’ve been developed and running for many years, and they’ve had a long time to get them running. So they’ve got 13 or 14 years of experience under their belt. They’ve had multiple versions of hardware, and they’ve been able to iterate to get that hardware right. I know that.

I know that some of the equipment during Covid for the CCS (Combined Charging System) network was, well, it’s different equipment. It was first-gen equipment, and it had some problems. And Covid made it more difficult to solve them. It had problems in cold [weather], it had problems in hot [weather], and occasionally they had maintenance problems. So, we did see reliability of that below the goals we would like. That is improving now. It’s now a high-speed, high-charge network. And also they’ve been replacing some of that gen one hardware, so that’s improving too, and we’re now seeing the success percentage is quite close to the Tesla.

Where there is still a difference is: Do you get full speed charging? That is something that is more complicated for some customers. I’ve encountered many waiting drivers happily sitting at a charger, and they have no idea that they’re [only] getting 50 kilowatts. I usually say hello and point it out to them, and they have no idea at all. So, it requires a level of knowledge to be looking at how many kilowatts you’re supposed to get and then what you’re actually getting. It doesn’t actually tell you you’re only getting a third of what you should, and therefore you’re going to be there three times longer. You can tell from the time, yes, but a lot of these people are inexperienced; they don’t know what it’s supposed to take. So that’s out there. But that is getting better now over time. That’s where we still see the gaps in if they get full speed when they charge.

Customer Experience

Mike Austin:

That brings up another point, a perfect segue. Thanks for that, Darren. In terms of consumer perception, our summary is titled Consumer Misconceptions and Education Gaps. One of those misconceptions is speed of charging. That’s an important piece, where the marketing is not always synced with reality. I think everyone here on the panel knows, but not everyone in the general population knows you could have a peak charging speed but you’re not always going to hit that. And once you’ve had some experience fast charging, you get into this mental game where, “Okay, if I’m at 130 to 180, even if my car peaks much higher, that’s charging fast enough.“ I wanted to bring that up both in terms of consumer perception, and also in terms of infrastructure planning and charger planning, whereas from a practical standpoint right now you don’t need a car that can sustain 300 kilowatts of charging. You can go slower than that and still get a meaningful charge in 20 minutes.

Does anyone want to address either of those pieces? Or to put it in a better question: As we’re looking at this planning and infrastructure, do we still need 350 kilowatts everywhere? Tom?

Tom Healey:

For those that don’t know me, I’m Tom Healey with Nouria. We operate a network of 300-plus convenience store and motor fueling operations, and we have been installing DC fast charging at several locations over the past three years or so. In the New England area, we’ve got 19 sites online right now, and in our southeast region, we’ve got four or five locations with fast-charging stations. We have charging stations that have a 50-kilowatt output, 62.5-kilowatt output, and we also have sites with 320-kilowatt output with battery storage. What we’ve been struggling with is the actual rate of charging that the vehicles can take. So, we’ve got these more expensive, elaborate 320-kilowatt chargers, and we’re finding that the typical charge rate is much lower than that.

Of course, we were trying to future-proof, to some extent, knowing that the vehicle manufacturers are putting out batteries that can take the higher charges, but at this point we’re struggling with upcoming installations: What should we be putting in? Should we be putting in the very high kilowatt chargers that won’t really be fully utilized for years to come, or go with the proven lower kilowatt unit chargers that don’t have the battery storage? This is still part of the business model that we’re evaluating.

Mike Austin:

Jay, do you have something to add?

Jay Smith:

I was actually going to ask Tom, when you’re trying to future-proof, how many years ahead are you trying to look at the life cycle for that charger? I know you’re trying to anticipate what manufacturers will be doing and what their batteries will be able to charge. How far are you thinking of the lifespan for that when you’re looking ahead?

Tom Healey:

Jay, we were looking at a 10-year lifecycle, knowing that the manufacturers of this equipment are estimating roughly a 10-year lifespan for the charging equipment. So, that is the window that we’re looking out toward for the EV charger charging needs.

Jay Smith:

Thanks.

Mike Austin:

Darren?

Darren Palmer:

Just like all of us, the planning is a very difficult for 10-year timeframe at the moment. One thing I would say, and it’s going to tie to the next part of our conversation, where do you think it’s going to grow fast next? Given a change in regulations coming, given where we’ve seen people have enjoyed vehicles and where they work really well for us and other [manufacturers], is the smaller vehicles that are efficient with a smaller battery. They work really well. There’s a whole economic plan around them that makes them work really well. And everybody’s announcing them. We’re announcing some on August 11th. They’re more mainstream and lower priced, and those vehicles have a smaller battery, which effects charge rate because with that comes expense. And so, a lot of those are going to be smaller. And when you see also the market leaders for Tesla are the Model 3 and the Model Y, they’re actually relatively small batteries on the grand scale of things, and they don’t charge that fast, but the product works quite well.

So if you were looking not 10 years out, but five years out and with the latest regulations, I could probably predict that we’re going to see more of the more affordable smaller vehicles as they fit very well to EV. When you go to big, big vehicles, you need really big batteries, really big charges, and the price of batteries are not coming down as expected. They’re really expensive, as well, so not as mainstream. So those are my thoughts for five years out, but I wouldn’t know how to plan 10 years ahead.

Mike Austin:

Yes. I would add, I’m personally fascinated by all of this, and we’ll see what Ford announces next week. Cars like the Slate, which made a big splash with its small pickup truck, which I think they’re saying will be under $30,000, the base range is 150 miles. I’m fascinated to see how much the range and affordability will balance out in terms of demand.

One other piece of the review is, with EV incentives going away and in terms of sales cooling off a little bit, at least in the U.S., seems to be holding steady as a decent part of the sales mix. It’s just not growing as quickly. So both on the sales side and the infrastructure side, with the changes we’re seeing and incentives likely going away, what’s the temperature from the business side of things? Darren, go ahead.

Strategy

Darren Palmer:

At the moment, perhaps people are preparing because they know [the incentives are] going away. For Ford, last month we saw greater sales than last year. It’s growing, and we are anticipating growth this month. But we don’t know what’s going to happen after that. We can predict there’s a bit of a rush before the incentives go away. So, we’re planning for growth this month, and then we will have to see what happens afterwards. There’s going to be a competitive situation, and it’s particularly complicated because people put down a lot of capacity. And with the EPA requirements not there anymore, they don’t need EVs for balancing credits. So, the companies have to decide at what price they would like to sell them. And since many of them do still lose money on EVs, they’ve got to make a business decision on what’s the right price volume curve. It’s going to be very, very dynamic, I think. And if some companies are pushing them really hard, it’s going to affect the overall pricing for the whole market.

Mike Austin:

Thanks. Srijata Chattopadhyay, can you speak to the infrastructure side of how 2025 has shaped up so far?

Srijata Chattopadhyay:

I think the reality is all players are under pressure to be profitable. That applies whether like ourselves, Shell with a broader strategic [reach], or standalone players, like EVgo here in the U.S. In this kind of market there are macro pressures, as well as political pressures. It’s all intertwined at this point, and that is the trend that we see. It’s not even just on the top line but in terms of what’s being offered to the customer or the programs that are being continued or cut. The whole offering is changing to conform with this market requirement.

On the other hand, in thinking about the OB3 bill and thinking about the infrastructure, President Biden’s infrastructure law that was adopted a few short years ago, the arc of infrastructure really does span multiple presidencies because it is a long-term play; it just takes a long time. And so, no one president in my experience in the last 10 years has had a massive impact on the arc of time. It has slowed or it has sped up the build out of EV infrastructure. So I think for right now it feels like we’re at a nadir. There are changes within Shell that have been announced, as well. And I think for me, having been in this industry for a long time, it’s obviously disappointing. And at the same time, I have optimism that there will be continued adoption and continued build out of infrastructure [but] temporarily at a slower pace.

Mike Austin:

Thanks. At this point, I’ll hand it over to my co-facilitator, Nathan, to talk about our main topic today, which is the impact that the One Big Beautiful Bill currently has or will have. And there’s a lot to cover, I’m sure.

[SLIDE 1: Impact of the 2025 Federal Budget]

Nathan Niese:

Thank you, Mike. Well, I won’t call it the One Big Beautiful Bill other than this opening statement just because I don’t know that we can agree that it’s beautiful. I’ll call it OB3, and we’ll have a discussion on policy here. I’ll spend maybe 15 minutes going through a deck that my company, BCG, has prepared in terms of broader energy and climate impacts from this budget reconciliation process. And then, quickly narrowing into where we see the impact on EVs and more importantly EV charging. Please don’t hesitate to stop me. Raise your hand at any time, and we can pause and take questions.

[SLIDE 2: The 2025 Budget Reconciliation resembles …]

At a high level in terms of an executive summary, what we really have here is a recalibration that takes us to the pre-IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) policy dynamics, which really means you can have not much more than a 2- to 3-year time horizon to invest in the United States, given how much policy continues to shift from one Congressional session to the next.

That’s the main element in terms of the reframing that’s required from the long-standing versus the short-term view we can take on policy. The administration clearly is pushing for energy dominance, but a rather narrow definition of what energy dominance is. It’s one that is much more pointed toward fossil fuels versus the full band of energy needs that this country has.

Infrastructure Incentives

[SLIDE 3: Budget process to date/Broader policy context]

And so, we need to take stock of where we were at, at least when this was produced in July when the bill passed. At that time, there was broader policy context. Then we have the budget reconciliation bill, which was the legislative centerpiece of the 2025 session for President Trump in the domestic side. Beyond that, there’s a whole series of other executive orders where this has to be placed in context. Much of that was mentioned in the first half hour of this discussion as it relates to EPA, as it relates to the use of credits and other elements that sit outside of what has changed in the IRA but are still very relevant in terms of resetting the landscape.

[SLIDE 4: Budget Reconciliation reshapes IRA credit …]

And the main changes as it relates to climate and energy fall into three buckets. We have the changes to the IRA tax credits, which we’ll get into. There’s accelerated expiration on EVs, but also on things like solar and wind. Layered on top of some of that, there are production tax credits. There are foreign entity restrictions for wind and solar, at least from an energy-generation side. That saw the largest change in terms of accelerated phase-outs and very tight targets to be able to hit in terms of startup construction to be able to qualify. And then on the margins, there are some small changes in terms of hydrogen, with metallurgical coal being added to the picture, as well.

The middle bucket on the slide relates to rescinding some of the unobligated funds, so things such as the DOE (Department of Energy) Loan Program Office that had helped facilitate building out battery supply chains. That’s where EVgo was one of the EV charging companies that received conditional loans that rescinded any of those unobligated funds, in addition to some of the other aspects that are showing up in the bullets in the middle of the page.

What hasn’t been rescinded as part of OB3 but still is on pause is anything related to the IIJA (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) and the NEVI funding that we were all watching from an EV charging side, and how that would be deployed. So, there has been action since the start of the year, and February specifically, when a number of those changes were made through executive order. But this budget reconciliation bill did not change anything related to the IIJA. And then the right-hand side shows a series of other changes where we’re seeing, broader context on oil and gas, energy, coal and beyond.

[SLIDE 5: We expect US power and utility players …]

If we put ourselves in, say, the position of the U.S. power and utility players, we can break down the pipeline that they’re seeing into three categories.

They already have projects that are underway that are very clearly going to qualify for existing safe harbor, but then there are secondary ones where there’s a full-on rush to say, “Which projects do we think can hit the budget timelines, and how do we prioritize those to get them across the finish line?” And then anything else, this third tier of projects, cannot make it through the pipeline in time and are likely to be de-prioritized. I’m mostly talking about wind and solar, and the battery projects that might be accompanying that. But it does have carry-on effects in terms of the rest of the infrastructure and how the sectors are flying forward.

So that’s some of the main changes we’re seeing on the power and utility side. You could argue that maybe it then frees up some dollars that could go toward building out infrastructure on the transmission and distribution side that would’ve been needed for EV charging. It’s not like we’re necessarily going to be able to see a lot of new gas turbines go in. Nuclear projects take so long. All of the other needs that we would need to have to be able to bring different forms of energetic generation in place aren’t necessarily moving or unlocking as a part of the IRA or as a part of the broader supply chain context. So we find ourselves with, if you really squinted, you could say how the power and utility players reprioritize to focus on some of the other capital needs that they have that may have some tailwinds to support the build out of EV charging. I’m going a little fast, but I do want to leave time for a discussion. But please again, don’t hesitate to stop me if there’s some place you want to land.

[SLIDE 7: Recall: According to CBO …]

As we get into the IRA changes, this is a helpful picture as to where the dollars were intended to be allocated. Transportation, on the left-hand side of the slide, was the main one that had both electric vehicles and also EV charging. While it seems like a small number, actually, when you asked some of the third parties, not the Congressional Budget Office, but other third parties, how much did they project was going to go toward transportation as a part of the IRA?

[SLIDE 8: Upon passage of the IRA …]

This dark green in the center was showing it was much, much more than the $26 billion or so that was in the CBO’s actual calculations. Now, much of this transportation set of credits is going away with what we’ll get into in terms of the specific programs that are no longer being funded as a part of it or being phased out early.

[SLIDE 9: Summary of final changes …]

I’ll jump to the ones that are specific to transportation, which is really the four on this slide. We have the Clean Vehicle Tax Credits in Section 30B. That is for new vehicle purchases for passenger or light vehicles. That effectively has until the end of September. Used Vehicle Credit, same thing, end of September. Commercial Vehicle Credit, same termination date, giving you a couple of months since the bill’s passage to earn those credits. That’s where the conversation that we had earlier highlighted that we’ll see a rush of potential sales to be able to qualify for those through September.

After that, there are fairly significant questions about what will happen in terms of a reset on pricing, on production, on other aspects to assess how fast we see any bounce back. First there will be a drop off, but most likely then a bounce back. And we have yet to see if that will be consistent with what we’ve seen in, say, Germany or China when they’ve phased out incentives. That typically takes about 12 to 18 months for the phase out to then recalibrate and lead to growth again. Darren, I see you have a question.

Darren Palmer:

Could you clarify for us, there were some requirements for commercial vehicles, there was a government requirement and another requirement that was meant to encourage commercial purchase, though they had to hit certain targets. Both of those had gone away, and that’s having a massive impact on the commercial side. Could you comment on those please?

Nathan Niese:

The commercial vehicle credit 45W that’s shown here on the slide was the up to $40,000 credits for the purchase. I think that’s one of the pillars that you’re talking about. The second, I’ll just throw out a couple of things that you might be speaking to and then you can help point me in the right direction if I’m mistaking it. For government fleets, there was a whole series of targets for the federal government that they’ve said are no longer ae target. If anything they’re saying, “We’re actively against allowing EVs to be a part of government fleets.”

There are then state-level requirements, such as California, which rescinded its Clean Fleet Act. I think the Clean Truck portion is still in place but being challenged as a part of the broader legal challenge against California’s right to set its own rules. If there is a different pillar that I’m not hitting there, Darren, related to commercial vehicles, maybe you could educate us or someone else could educate us what might be further driving that.

Darren Palmer:

You may have got them all there. As a result, there’s effectively no positive credit to drive investment and no requirement to do that. So the double reservation has gone away. A large proportion of customers have taken that on immediately and have reacted. There are complaints from customers about how hard it is to put charging infrastructure in place. They had assumptions about what the cost would be. Some find the cost is much greater than they thought. So they now recalculate the total cost of ownership and that’s how they’re judging it.

It gives a completely different total cost of ownership when you factor that in. And you don’t get these benefits, as well. So it’s having a large effect on the commercial customer. It’s been damaging to those customers who want to invest in EV, because it’s the right thing to do for total cost of ownership, and they’ll do it anyway. Even if the government’s not pushing them or they don’t get the first purchase credit, they still will do it. That problem of getting the infrastructure is costing them, some saying $15,000 per level two charger. That’s really playing on their minds as far as total cost of ownership. They’re factoring that in and saying, “It’s not paying back as quickly as I need it to.”

Nathan Niese:

That’s a good segue for the rest of the group to chime in. Where have you seen, whether it be yourself, or your customers, or your partners, be surprised by any of these elements that are not necessarily driven solely by the credit? These elements are just higher than originally calculated costs and are another undercurrent that has changed the view for how fast to make this transition?

Jessica Stoll Lowery:

I can try and chime in on that. I think my audience is a little different. Like I said, I work with governments. A lot of them were really interested in 45Ws since they could get that tax credit through elective pay. Without that, it’s definitely putting a wrench in their financing strategy and whatnot to transition to EVs. I know a lot of folks that are actually still waiting on payments from initial filings from several months ago. So I know it’s made it really complicated, and in some cases, I think it’s turned people away from, maybe not EVs, but this funding mechanism. Since it is going away, they’re having to reroute a lot of things. That said, though, I think overall we’re still seeing that all the fleets that we’re working with are still interested in EVs. It’s just hampering the timeline. It’s hampering the way that they were going to accelerate more quickly than now is feasible with budgeting and cycling through vehicles.

Nathan Niese:

That’s super helpful. I would layer on one thing that you may have some further experience with, and that is many of the infrastructure funds or other investors that we’re helping finance these large fleet purchases on behalf of municipalities or other government agencies actually were not counting on the credits when they approved these deals in the first place. That was certainly a nice to have, and it’s expected as a part of the overall return and business plan. But these decisions had to work on a standalone basis without the credits. Therefore, it’s not the be all, end all that we now see some of these changes, unfortunately, playing out in terms of what would’ve been an important extra set of cost savings. Now those are not happening.

Jessica Stoll Lowery:

Yes, actually that reminds me, some folks that we worked with as well, they weren’t necessarily counting on this. I mean, governments filing for tax credit is obviously a new space. I think a lot of folks didn’t even believe it was true when we did have it. So you’re totally right. There are a lot of fleets that we work with, they were like, “Well, this is a nice bonus. We can use this to buy some more EVs.” But that is a bright spot as well that I would echo.

Jay Smith:

I think that’s probably true on the retail side, too. I mean, it makes complete sense, what Jessica is talking about in terms of commercial fleets, whether that be a commercial fleet or a government fleet vehicle.

But in terms of when you think about incentives like this, how much does that drive a fuel retailer to put in a charger or not, because they’re going to get NEVI funds, for example? They weren’t doing it just because there was NEVI. It didn’t make only sense to do because there was NEVI or that, now that that’s gone, it means they absolutely stop all build out. I would imagine it’s similar to the commercial fleets. [The grants are] not critical. It’s a nice extra credit to have or cash to help offset it, but I think there are other factors that are bigger at play to push that development than just simply a tax credit going away.

Nathan Niese:

Great. Well, thanks for sharing some of those observations.

Roy Strasburger:

I was going to direct the question to Kim from Trillium and Love’s. Have you been seeing anything in regard to this, considering the truck stops that you’re working with and the installation of infrastructure? What are you seeing the fleets doing?

Kimberly Okafor:

I look at it from two different sides. The first side is exactly what Jay said, which makes sense. Jay and I worked together. I think you said it perfectly. When I think about passenger vehicle EV charging and deploying our network, and what Section 30C meant to us as we were making investment decisions, we did consider it gravy. It was a really nice-to-have, quite honestly, but we didn’t make investment decisions on it. Now with it being up in June of next year, the question we have is how many can we get in before that timeframe so that we can take advantage of it as much as possible?

Now when we think about the heavy-duty side and commercial fleets, the total cost of ownership was always something that was extremely difficult. From what fleets told us, the total cost of ownership for zero emission vehicles was difficult compared to that of, whether you’re talking diesel or CNG/RNG. This doesn’t make it any easier. So we didn’t have very many fleets knocking on our door to put in heavy duty charging or hydrogen fueling stations over the road for long distance travel corridors. Now we’re seeing even less people knock on our doors. Hopefully that answered your question.

Roy Strasburger:

Thank you.

Nathan Niese:

Yes, it’s really helpful placing it in context that there were already slowdowns hearing what experiences some of these fleets and individuals were having. These are the same people who were expressing euphoria of a couple of years ago. That has subsided. So parsing out what the impact from these policy changes is versus what was already the natural reset that was happening in the market, I think it’s going to take a little bit of time.

We have a view that I’ll get to in a few pages that has some of it, but the actual physical change of removing Section 30D is only a couple percentage points of EV adoption by 2030. It’s meaningful in terms of essentially tens of thousands of vehicles, but not in the order of it going from a huge number to a negligible number in terms of EV adoption. It’s important what all of us are sharing here. We can appreciate that there’s so many other product fit, market readiness and other aspects that are playing into how we are seeing this transition occur.

To finish the transportation thought here, 30C the section that’s specific to EV charging. That one actually is not phasing out in line with the other electric vehicle phase outs that that are happening in September. It has until next June. So there is some time to be able to deploy additional infrastructure. There hasn’t been too many of the ChargePoint operators, as an example, that have come out since the passing of the OB3 that have said they are doubling down, or falling back, or doing anything different. I think Electrify America was one of those. BP confirmed their forecast, and others have been relatively silent or saying that their plans are currently unchanged. Fundamentally, they’re saying, “We continue to plan to deploy it at a certain pace regardless of this change.” So there’s more to come in terms of seeing what the actual impact will be with the 30C phase out.

It’s worth trying to find some of the positives that fit into this picture. 30C did have some requirements attached to it in terms of union labor, Justice 40, other elements about where you would’ve cited this. We’re back to much more just market fundamentals and where the best place is going to be able to place these or the utilization, and the returns that are expected. I’m not trying to dismiss any of those addendums that were added to being able to qualify for this particular program. All of those do have real important merit in terms of helping with this transition. But it does enable some of the broader degrees of freedom that companies and partners will now be able to consider. Tom, I see your hands up.

Tom Healey:

Yes. I will say from the perspective of an EV charging station installer, the incentive money does impact our decision making on what type of equipment we’ll put in. Earlier on the call, I had mentioned that we’re struggling with whether to go ahead with the 320-kilowatt charging unit versus maybe a 100-kilowatt charging unit. When the grant money was available, it was easier to make that leap to the higher kilowatt equipment installation. Now we’ve got to reevaluate that, knowing that the incentive money won’t be there at the same level.

Nathan Niese:

I appreciate the continued good dialogue here. It’s worth mentioning on the manufacturing side here, some things that didn’t change; they’re still in the broader orbit of the shift to EVs and support for EV-charging infrastructure. Section 45X did stay in place, actually got extended by a year. That’s related to battery cells, battery modules, and battery components that will continue to see support from an incentive standpoint. That will help push us toward a more domestic supply chain.

There were foreign entity concern restrictions that were added to it. So some of those same restrictions had initially sat on top of Section 30D, but Clean Vehicle Tax Credit, they’ve now been migrated over to some effect to the 45X qualification. So we’ll see some changes in terms of cell manufacturing in the United States, but nonetheless those business cases can at least persist as the incentives remain in place for that.

[SLIDE 12: 3/3 Proposed changes would mostly impact clean energy …(he skipped past slides 10 and 11)]

From BCG’s vantage point, if we were to rank the four main categories of where IRA programs were in place and credits were provided, we think transportation actually has the biggest impact from what was passed in the OB3. It represents a pretty meaningful setback in terms of BEVs (battery electric vehicles) and having the extra tail and the momentum relative to what did exist. Then when you couple that with a number of the moves that this administration has made to take away some of the, I’ll call them sticks, it does fundamentally change both the floor and the ceiling. Here, I mean tailpipe emission aspects, some of the other rules related to the EPA, and the ability of states to regulate their own tailpipe emissions. In changes what we can expect at least in the near term for adoption of EVs and therefore the demand of EV charging infrastructure. None of it’s completely over. It is still a meaningful and growing part of the overall transportation sector. But the highs that we might’ve been able to expect will take some recalibration. Darren, I see your hand there.

Darren Palmer:

Thank you. On the first point, we really are seeing an effect in commercial. Here, it’s indicating it’s not that meaningful. We are seeing a meaningful impact. I think we’ve got the leading commercial electric vehicle, and we are seeing it.

Really, the factor of cost to install charging is a big one. We concentrated on usability of the vehicle for the use cases, and we matched the use cases with customers to make sure we’re not giving them a vehicle that they can’t make their range on. These are people that can use the range within their runs, so it should work really well.

However, their installation cost, when they insert it into their TCO (total cost of ownership), is taking their TCO down significantly. So it has impacted us. Therefore, they’re saying, “If I’m doing it because I need to meet regulations and I’ve got an incentive on buying the vehicle,” it makes it worth it. As soon as you take those away, which has just been taken away, It’s purely on TCO. When the installation of the charger in my depot is costing me too much, I don’t make the TCO anymore. Therefore, I will reduce to a trickle how many more I’m going to buy. So it’s having a huge effect in commercial.

Nathan Niese:

I can prescribe to that as well. I think we would need to update that line to say not slightly, but meaningful. From BCG’s view, we were already seeing some meaningful drop off before the OB3 was passed based on product demand fit and other elements and some of the executive orders. But you’re even closer to the rock face and the board’s view on commercial vehicles, which has a lot more of the light commercial vehicle solutions in the market, which had seen some of the higher uptake. That’s a very helpful set of points that you just shared with the group.

Darren Palmer:

You’re right when you say light, yes. I’m forgetting about heavy commercial. Yes, I’m referring to light commercial vehicles.

Nathan Niese:

Yes, that’s right.

Darren Palmer:

Transit-type vehicles.

Nathan Niese:

The nuance is important. Medium and heavy duty [vehicles], probably already had more headwinds in place prior to the OB3 passing. Light commercial vehicles, including something like the Ford E-Transit Electric Van, may not have seen as much effect in Q1 this year. But now with the passage of the bill, there’s a double-whammy of sorts that is really fitting in. Makes sense that it would start to affect sales.

Darren Palmer:

And that’s interesting because at first we were focusing on usability. Are the vehicles functioning as customers would want them to? We put a lot of time into that. They are useable. There are certain uses you can meet, and then the bigger battery version will be able to meet more of those uses, and they’re just launching now. But that is not the main problem anymore.

We weren’t getting a lot of issues from that, whether the vehicle was performing or running out of charge before the run, and so on. That’s not the problem. They were largely doing what we hoped they would do. It’s the charging infrastructure, TCO, and the legislation that is guiding them toward having a larger fleet. To meet those legislative requirements, they had to start buying. Obviously, they don’t buy all their vans in one year. So they have to start ordering earlier to get to the particular percentage of fleet that they needed. They were buying early. They’re planning to buy more. They’re largely changing that.

Nathan Niese:

The other piece I had in that presentation is, when you layer these changes coupled with what’s happening in the tariff environment, how we’re seeing the relative economics play out. I can go there, or we can hit pause and continue to discuss these aspects in terms of OB3 and other implications that we’re seeing from it.

Roy Strasburger:

Nathan, go ahead and present more. I think what you’ve shown so far has been really interesting.

Kimberly Okafor:

Yes, I would like to hear your perspective on the tariffs and how that’s affected this stuff.

Gabe Klein:

Yes, same here.

Legislation

[SLIDE 14: In the midst of this uncertainty … ]

Nathan Niese:

Okay. I’m glad that this is resonating. I will say that we do, BCG, have different views on the automotive industry. That would be in a separate document that I could pull up in a minute. But what I had built into this document relate to the broader energy and climate impacts that we would see changes to.

As a baseline, we have one scenario, then you add tariffs, you add reciprocal tariffs on top of it, you add some of the IRA changes, coupled with the reciprocal tariffs. What does that lead us to in terms of an ultimate view? That’s what these next several slides will highlight with a deep dive on a couple of different sectors. I want to give that relative view on how outputs and intakes have ultimately led to a rebalancing of what’s in focus.

[SLIDE 15: On top of tariffs …]

This slide offers what would happen, for example, if we were thinking about the generation side and where renewables fall, or if you consider these different scenarios from a levelized cost of electricity and/or storage basis. What was the baseline on the left-hand side was putting utility scale, solar as the leader in the clubhouse and onshore wind not far behind, and that’s why 90% of last year’s deployments were both those types of renewables. Therefore, they had an advantage versus natural gas and battery storage was quite competitive in that whole picture.

You then can move to the right-hand side of the picture and see the percent change that’s been caused by levelized costs. We’ve leveled cost of electricity storage as a result of tariffs and the IRA changes that have been put in place, and therefore reset the picture. Any renewables adoption now has a higher cost but is also relative to what was natural gas combined cycle turbines. As a result in totality, it is now favoring the fossil fuel-based solution.

We need to take into context the point that I made earlier that just because now the economics have changed doesn’t necessarily mean that you go with the lowest cost solution. You have GE Vernova. You have Siemens. You have others that produce these natural gas turbines. They’re booked out for the next X number of years, and they’re not looking to add any capacity in the near term. You have those that are taking the longer-term view on solar and wind and saying that those are the solutions. And then there’s just a whole lot of additional use cases that are being found on the battery storage side regardless of [inaudible] next to renewables that are still keeping the pedal to the metal in the rollout of battery storage. But nonetheless, the economics have changed, and there was a significant rebalancing of the resource plans that the utilities and the regulators had to put together that are now being worked through in these months and quarters ahead.

[SLIDE 16: Advanced Manufacturing …]

Another example that I can jump to is what if Section 45X had been taken away? What we would’ve seen in terms of the competitiveness of, for example, on the right-hand side a battery storage system made in China and landed cost in the U.S. versus U.S.-made with and without 45X. The tariffs have made importing Chinese-based battery solutions significantly more expensive and no longer the preferred solutions. For those that do know battery storage systems a little bit better, there’s certain types of chemistries, and lithium-iron cost-graded LFP-based battery was the preferred one for battery storage versus a mix of LFP and or nickel-based cells used in automotive. LFP cells were really only produced in China up until a couple of months ago. Now we have a couple suppliers in LG and ADFC and Tesla through a license, and then eventually Ford with its partnership with CATL bringing LFP online. That will help both EVs and battery storage.

But in that window where we would’ve had the prices going up because of tariffs and no domestic supply solution, we would’ve been in a world of hurt for say the battery storage market to continue to see adoption and even still with prices going up as a result of tariffs. And honestly, some questions about who can actually qualify for the 45X given some of the [inaudible] concern restrictions that were placed on top of it. There is a different picture that is now in place in terms of a dollar-per-watt basis, and any of the other calculations that you would use to understand the battery storage solution can be deployed and where it can be sold from remains highly, highly dynamic.

And while I don’t have examples in here on targeting infrastructure on grid infrastructure such as your transformers and other equipment, we are seeing a reset across a whole series of markets that are effectively needing to go back through what were already pre-approved plans. We have to understand what near-term moves they can make, and in the more extreme scenarios, do you delay projects? Do you cite force majeure and other elements that say we are no longer pursuing the orders that we placed and take a different direction based on these evolving economics coupled with the fact that those seem to change weekly. Roy?

Roy Strasburger:

I apologize; My knowledge of 45X is not as deep as it should be. When you talk about the carrots involved and the development of batteries, can you summarize or give a couple examples of what those carrots might be?

Nathan Niese:

Yes. The carrot is 45X, which is to say for domestic production of battery cells, it’s $35 per kilowatt-hour that you would receive as a credit, an extra $10 per kilowatt-hour for producing a battery module. And both of those can be put into an electric vehicle or they can be put into a stationary storage unit, which is the BESS (battery energy storage system) here. They can get integrated into an EV charging unit for those that are trying to either have on-site battery storage as the larger containerized solution or those that are battery-to-battery types of solutions that we had seen for a period of time from some hardware manufacturers coming to market with a battery integrated into the charging pole itself. So all of those are benefiting from the continued existence of 45X as a carrot or an incentive to help lower the cost of deploying batteries.

The change, first and foremost, it layers on some aspects around foreign entity of concern. So no longer can it just be any manufacturer in the United States that produces cells gets this credit. It has to be those that are not tied up with a license or ownership from a foreign entity. And there’s been some additional sticks. These include tariffs. You could call some of the executive orders stick. They have forced a reworking what is the preferred order of overall demand and then the order of where do we seek to source those materials from or those systems from. In this case, it’s often been China as the lowest cost producer. Now, it’s not necessarily the lowest landed cost into the United States to deploy. There’s U.S.-based solutions, particularly the ones that are 45X-based, that have been hit and penalized less hard on the stick side and therefore are able to rise to the top.

Roy Strasburger:

Thank you.

Nathan Niese:

For those that are involved in broader infrastructure, as you think about procuring your energy, energy infrastructure, deployment of these EV charging stations, have you also seen tariffs start to bite? Have you also seen that have a more meaningful impact on decisions to invest relative to the loss of the incentives that we had talked about in the earlier part of this discussion? Darren, I saw you raise your hand.

Darren Palmer:

Yes. On the vehicle side, this is huge. China and other places are creating low-cost batteries. I’ve seen some of them at 80 kilowatts per hour at pack level. This has enabled a vehicle that can hit mainstream use and be good enough. The LFP has been significant. Packing those LFP batteries in a particular way, they are good enough for those vehicles and it spurred huge, huge problems. There are other incentives as well, but basically they work for a lot of people. They’re about $20,000, and if you arguably hit a point like that in America, you really would drive some mainstream adoption. So that has been elusive because it’s difficult to get a battery at that level in America.

Retaining 45X and incentivizing that in the U.S. is a big enabler. Companies can make use of that, especially with an LFP cell. They really can get the cost of batteries down. That can enable high volume, low cost electric vehicles that many have been waiting for. They’re only suitable for some vehicles because they’re not as dense, so they can’t do everything. But they work quite well for the smaller vehicles that I mentioned earlier that companies I believe are going to lean into. So it is a huge enabler to bring down the cost of EVs and make it more mainstream, but it’s a minefield. It’s difficult to step through because the regulations are moving and there’s a lot of requirements you’ve got to hit, including where the materials come from and making sure you meet the full regulation to get that credit. And it changes over time, as well. So it’s very complicated to do. But the companies that can work around that and make it work, I think you’re going to see some high volume vehicles come out of those in the next three years.

[SLIDE 17: Post-Budget signing …]

Nathan Niese:

Yes, I love that point. Layering on, we still see some rulemaking to come as there was when the IRA was passed initially. The letter of the law here doesn’t spell out everything. So we see, post-passing of this law, clarifications of those rules and how to navigate them, We have to count on our government affairs teams and the accountants and the sourcing teams and everyone else to be able to navigate the path. There’s some that are still to come. We’ll see how fast some of those rules come out. And then I pull up this page, which highlights the other side of that point. That’s the question of how much does the federal government continue to get staff to support these projects? We have Gabe on the phone here who served in one of those organizations that has seen quite a drawdown in terms of the folks that are actually staffed there.

Trump gave a promise that he was going to narrow the definition of what start construction was to further neuter wind and solar credits. We now have Senator Grassley just this week saying he will not put forward additional candidates for consideration in terms of some of the nominations for certain roles until the Trump Administration clarifies that it is not looking to go behind the back of the intent of what was written into the OB3 to enable these credits to still go forward. So there are a number of things to still play out even though the bill was signed in July. There is much more advocacy to still play forward to ultimately be able to see the spirit of what was written shake out in a way that’s favorable for each of us on the phone and the broader society as a whole in terms of what we’re looking to drive here.

I’ll be happy to share this presentation to you all after the session wraps up. Thanks for the great engagement during it, and let’s open it up to the group for any other directions to take the conversation based on this deep dive. Roy, you’re first.

Roy Strasburger:

Excellent presentation, Nathan. Thank you so much. There was a lot of really good information involved in that. Gabe, I’m glad you’re able to join us. Based upon your past work that you were doing and some of the work I think you’re doing now, what are you hearing from people that you’re dealing with on how the OB3 and the tariffs are affecting them and their plans for the future?

Gabe Klein:

Yes. Gosh, it’s sort of all over the place. You talk to some investors and they’re like, we’re moving forward. We see that the demand’s going to be there, that the Trump administration is likely temporary, and so a lot of the investors that take a longer-term view of their investments are moving forward. I would say the biggest damage from my standpoint is the suspension and clawing back of grant funding, particularly for startups in the space or companies with new divisions or efforts that they’re making. Some of that has been clawed back through OB3. Some of it is still in limbo. Limbo creates uncertainty, and uncertainty makes it a very hard environment for a lot of these companies to continue raising money. So that is challenging.

Something I’ve been working on is trying to figure out with some companies how to create subsidy-light or subsidy-free business models, to, as my old boss, Rahm Emanuel, would say, try to make lemonade out of lemons. And so is there a way actually to create more scalable models where you’re not chasing the grant funding, and instead you are basically entering into P3s (public-private partnerships) with states and cities. So that’s a whole other ball of wax. For me, with the tariffs switching a lot, I’ve actually stopped looking at the news. A tariff might be 25% in the morning, 50% in the afternoon, gone the next day.

Really, we’re just in a state of uncertainty, and I think that is making it so you either take that long view and you say, “we’re going to count the government out as much as you can and we’re just going to move forward with our long-term plans.” Or you are putting things on hold, including investment, new factories. I know one particular company that was a large conglomerate looking to make a $2.2 billion investment in charging in the United States, and the first week of the tariffs they said, we’re out. Not we’re pausing it, we’re pulling the entire thing. They had not announced it publicly. It was all super down-low, quiet. Things like that, they don’t even make the stats because they were unknowns. I think the long-term impact for the U.S. is that we lose our edge and we lose the ability to lead, and we cede that to China and other countries.

Roy Strasburger:

Thanks. There’s a longer strategic cost of this happening because people are not developing or innovating or moving forward due to either the uncertainty or the changes in the incentives of trying to do things. Is that what you were saying?

Gabe Klein:

Yes. Look, folks who are in the space, they’re going to stay in the space. You look at some great news from EVgo: $250 million of debt financing. There’s a special-purpose vehicle put together by Blink in the UK for $100 million. People are moving forward because we’re not going back to fossil-fuel powered vehicles. It’s not going to happen. I posted this on LinkedIn like a month ago. We’re not going to be Cuba where everybody’s driving a 1985 Chevy. We’re moving forward. We’re moving into an AV world, and we’re not going to be building autonomous vehicles with fossil-fuel engines. Investors, governments, they know where we’re going. It’s just the uncertainty of now. And so you’re going to see a downtick in some EV purchases. [But], you’re going to see, potentially, a record year for DC fast chargers in the United States and nowhere near as many level two chargers as we thought.

So we’re just going to fall further behind. And then at some point it’ll correct itself. The pendulum will swing back. But when you look at the CHIPS Act and the IRA and the IJA, they were very carefully crafted to work together for industrial policy all the way down to consumer incentives. I’m not saying they were perfect. There are issues, but they were crafted in an intelligent way to create demand and to onshore and so forth. I feel like that was our one chance to even try to catch up to China. So we’re going to be buying a lot of Chinese goods. Let’s be honest. And maybe Chinese cars at some point. I hope not. I’d like to be buying a Ford, and I would like to see Ford selling a ton of cars in China and in Europe and in Latin America, and I’m worried about that future now. No offense, Darren, because I know you can do it, but I’m just saying the government’s not helping to give us that.

Consumer Incentives

Darren Palmer:

No, I’ve studied it every day for many years and watched it. Governments in other countries have decided to promote it. For example, China has studied it extensively and the human element. Fear of loss is much greater than the gain. An incentive such as I’ll give you $5,000 if you buy an EV is less powerful than saying: Buy what you want, however, if you want a gas vehicle, you have to buy a license. China just simply said, buy whatever you want, it’s no problem. But if you want to drive in the city, you manage to use $10,000-equivalent. So the customer says, hold on a minute, the EV discount is $5,000, but it costs me $10,000 to get a gas vehicle. I don’t want to buy that license. Still, some people have licenses, and they buy the gas car, and it worked out on its own. We see a similar scheme in various countries in Europe and in Norway.

Norway did the same thing. You buy whatever you want, but if you buy a gas car, you may have up to a $20,000 tax on that, and if you buy electric, it’s free. At first there was some really unusual electric sport vehicles, the ones that are a little bit like a bike, but soon customers caught on and it really did help sales there. I think last I saw, don’t quote me, but it’s 97% electrified there now. That’s not just pure [inaudible] but it’s a large proportion. So if you want to do it, you can, but of course the conditions are not same everywhere. But it can help if you want to push it that way. So here’s where we are.

Gabe Klein:

To chime in on that. Yes, I remember the first time I was in, I think it was Copenhagen. I was meeting with the city, and there’s hardly any cars. I mean, you see people occasionally driving cars, it’s mostly taxis. People are taking trams, riding their electric bikes and so forth. And I was like, “God, you don’t even see cheap cars.” And they said, “Well, you have to understand, how much does a Toyota Camry cost in the U.S.?” I said $30,000. They said, “Well, here it’s $90,000 with the 200% tariff on a gas-powered vehicle.”

So I think what Darren’s talking about is there are carrots and there are sticks, and we are changing those dynamics dramatically right now. That has impacts on people’s choices. Then you layer on the uncertainty both for consumers and business, and you have to stick with what you know. Meanwhile, the rest of the world moves on because of what Darren was saying. Then Ford’s got to figure out: How do we make gas-powered vehicles here for all these people that are going to be buying them, but then electric vehicles for the rest of the world and stay competitive? It’s hard. Very, very hard. It’s like when we moved from DVDs to streaming, there was a gap because broadband was slow, and you could say EV charging networks are the same sort of thing. But we didn’t go back to DVDs. We’re not going back to DVDs. It’s not happening.

Darren Palmer:

You reminded me of a blast from the past from when I lived in Germany. I was in a village with a 6mg internet connection, and I wanted that streaming badly, especially because I wanted English language [content] in Germany, and I couldn’t get the DVDs. You just made me think of that parallel. You couldn’t stream fast enough to watch it, so I built a machine that would basically download multiple things over a long period, and then I would watch it later. So it was like the batteries you’ve talked about in the charging infrastructure. It cost a bit more, but that was the only choice. It was niche, but it worked. It worked great. I just had to select the things in advance. Actually for 10 years, I was there and when I left it was 9mgs a second, and that was it. Then I landed in America, and it was 1 gig a second.

Gabe Klein:

Wow. Well, that’s the infrastructure that makes the difference.

Darren Palmer:

It is. It’s a great analogy.

Gabe Klein:

The difference is most people are charging at home. So range anxiety actually, it doesn’t need to be that big a thing. We actually have enough chargers for what we have in terms of vehicles right now. We have actually enough chargers for many more. Now the conversation is: Are the charging companies going to be able to make enough money as utilization starts falling this fall? Which is really interesting. But yet the complaint is we don’t have enough chargers.

Darren Palmer:

It is. Everybody I know, and I speak to a lot of customers, everybody with an EV loves their EV pretty much universally because of all the different things it does. And 85%, 86% charge every day or charge at home. They’re doing that or they’re charging at work, and they normally have a couple of cars. Not so many are using them on long trips. They can, but they nearly always have two cars in America, so they just usually have a car for those longer trips. So that’s working really well, and those people are going to buy another one. Something interesting I’m seeing come through now, consumers have more reasons to buy. In California, I see a lot of people with solar and they feel like the solar is charging their car. Whether it is or isn’t, they feel that it’s all part of the infrastructure.

And then the next one that’s coming is bidirectional. As we’re talking here, my bidirectional just got switched on. I have bidirectional backup, but I just switched on for my full energy management. So every night now when I come home from work and plug in before 11 p.m., the vehicle will power the home. Not all of it, but it’s most of the house. It just pumps in, and that’s switched on as of tonight. That’s another incentive. For me, you keep piling on these reasons why it works. And when you have solar, backup power, bidirectional and the car, you’re never going back. You’ve got these reasons, and later on it will be mainstream. These solutions are coming that are going to be cheaper and cheaper.

They’re already cheaper than a generator, but not everybody buys a 12-kilowatt generator. It’s coming in the next generation of cars, the bidirectional power, the car outputs AC, so you only need to wire it up, really. Its just giving you more and more reasons. But everybody I know with an EV is telling everybody else to buy an EV, and that’s slowly going across the country. The analogy I always give, it took 10 years for iPhones [to become pervasive], and phones are now on a one-year cycle. So at that rate, it could take quite a while for each friend to tell their other friend how good an EV is, and for them to buy into that and buy them. So I feel there’s a mini golden age of EV right now because at the monthly rates that you can get an EV right now, it’s really great value, really compelling, and we’re going to see how that changes. It’s going to move around a little bit over the next month, and we’ll see where it settles out. It could be fascinating.

Gabe Klein:

Yes, I’ve been excited to see the announcement. I don’t know if Jim Farley made it today or if it’s coming tomorrow, but the Model T moment, very excited about this.

Darren Palmer:

It’s coming August 11th. I can’t say anything more about that, but yes, he’s referring to a volume play with Level 3, and so he’s referring to something exciting in that world. I’ll leave it to him to announce that, but that’s going to be something.

[Editor’s note: Ford’s August 11 announcement was a $5 billion investment to create or secure nearly 4,000 jobs across its Louisville Assembly Plant and BlueOval Battery Park in Michigan to deliver a new pickup and produce advanced prismatic LFP batteries.]

Gabe Klein:

Well, in closing, I think you’re absolutely right about vehicle-to-grid. It is going to unlock so much in this space. It’s coming. We were so proud in the Joint Office to help facilitate with SAE and industry plug and charge. And in my EV that I have now — I used to have a Tesla, and I have a different car now – I can go to any charger and just plug in, and it recognizes and reconciles through my account through ChargePoint no matter what. It could be a Tesla charger. It could be a Blink charger, EVgo charger. It reduces the friction. It makes it so much easier, and that’s getting better and better every day. It’s not perfect; it’s getting better. Then the vehicle-to-grid is going to be a game changer, particularly as climate issues mount. People really need that power.

Darren Palmer:

What disappoints me is, when I hear my morning news every morning, I hear environmental tragedies. And then you hear about the slow take-up of electric cars straight after. Why don’t more people put the two things together and really want to push that way? Humans are very resistant to change. I don’t see as much connection between those things as I would like to see. Obviously, I’m biased in electric cars, but that’s why I’m in it. There are so many advantages. Why aren’t people also looking at that point? In many cases, they end up being cheaper than a gas vehicle to buy, at the moment anyway. But even if they weren’t cheaper, you would think more people would put that together and want to do the right thing. I’m a little bit disappointed by that.

Gabe Klein:

I think that’s because, Darrin, you come from a collectivist continent. This is an individualistic society here in America. We’re still fighting the British for our independence.

Darren Palmer:

Yes, right. The independence, right? Maybe the backup power thing will help. The whole, “I’m ready for anything” [prospect it presents]. I love that part about America and that independence. It does feel good when you’ve got the energy, you’ve got the backup. It’s a nice feeling to have something like that.

Gabe Klein:

Yes, totally agree.

Roy Strasburger:

Well, let’s transition a little bit. Chris, how about the residential side of things? You guys have done a lot of work with residential multi-unit housing and things. How’s the impact been on your part of the business?

Chris Normandeau:

I’ve been listening in. As far as the bill itself, it’s not really had much to weigh in impact, at least as far as I can tell. All of the incentives that affect folks in the multifamily world, for the most part, come from either localities or utilities so those incentives haven’t really been impacted that much. We don’t get into the DC fast charging or anything to that effect. It’s all Level 2, and really hasn’t been impacted that much. It’s been a good conversation that I’ve enjoyed listening to.

Roy Strasburger:

Thank you. Nathan, that’s a great overview of things. Any other thoughts that you might have in regards to where this all may go and end up at the end of the day?

Nathan Niese:

So many thoughts, but I don’t think it needs to be all about my views here. I’d almost ask the group what’s helpful for our next discussion. I heard some good back and forth between Darren and Gabe there. I had the idea of discussing innovative business models and things that we’re seeing come forward. There’d be opportunities to hear more about the TXU Energy partnership with Ford, battery swapping and it serving fleets. There are other unique business models and partnerships that are showing up as we start to see cities and states bring some of this infrastructure online. That would at least be one area that I would find enjoyable to discuss, and I think a lot of us would have different ways to be able to add to that conversation. But we have a few minutes, so if there’s something else that we would like to see for next time or time and thereafter, that might be a good use of a few minutes here.

Roy Strasburger:

Jay, you have a comment?

Jay Smith:

I was going to add something to the previous conversation about where it goes from here. I think what will be interesting is to see if in 2026, states start to make up for some of the rollbacks that you’ve seen at the federal level. You see states like California and others who may look to tax credits for purchasing electric vehicles. Are they going to start offering their own to counter some of the drawback of what the federal government’s doing? I think 2026 as state legislatures come back, it’ll be interesting to see if they start to make up the difference at the state level.

Gabe Klein:

Yes, and just a thought, state budgets are going to start getting hit by all these dollars being clawed back. You see what’s happening with Texas right now and the redistricting and the response from California and Illinois. And you almost have to wonder at a certain point, do some of these states that are pro renewables and clean energy and EVs start to say, “Why are we sending all this money to Washington,” to try to get it back?

The reason I bring that up is are we heading toward a much bigger crisis, probably bigger than something we can cover on this conversation. There starts to be a real question about the federal priorities, about blue states and red states, welfare states and non-welfare states. Who controls the dollars at the end of the day? That’s going to be an interesting cataclysm potentially over the next 24 months, I think.

Texas is an anomaly. I think Texas does a spectacular job, by the way, on permitting, particularly for clean-energy projects. But I think you go outside of Texas, even to Florida, where they didn’t want to do anything with the NEVI program. Most of the other red states really didn’t move on any of the energy programs or not in a substantial way. I think Texas starts to look like an anomaly where you have a lot of people from California going and investing, and s a result, they’ve looked at it differently, which I think is great. I think there’s a lot that we could learn from Texas, actually, and apply to other states, but it doesn’t seem to be the norm. It’s an important example. I still think you have the issue with Illinois and Washington State, and Oregon and California feeling like they’re not getting their dollars back, which is a different issue.

Gabe Klein:

It’s already playing out on the ground. You have senators fleeing Texas. It’s a reality that’s already happening. It’s just a matter of how it plays out in our industry, I think.

Nathan Niese:

Can I ask a question, Gabe? You mentioned Washington State, and I think they were one of the dozen or so states that did not ever submit an RFP or get any funding authorized or out the door as a part of the NEVI funding there. That is the opposite of the Texas story, which is a state that maybe talks a big game, but actually is doing quite a few nice things on the ground that are delivering real projects and getting infrastructure built. Is Washington a counter story to that, or is there anything else that you might’ve seen from your view in the Joint Office?

Gabe Klein:

That’s an awesome question. And first of all, I’ll give more kudos to Texas. Texas was quietly moving the ball forward behind the scenes. They’re attitude was “Don’t talk about us. Don’t make a big splash about the things we’re doing” because it was a political hot potato. It was viewed in so many different ways depending on where you were in Texas and where you sat. In many ways, Elon made it much more fashionable in Texas to be pro-EVs, which is great for Texas. The deal with Washington State is very interesting because I would get on the phone with the head of the DOT there and be like, “Can you guys just move a little quicker?” And they said, “Honestly, we’d love to, but you’re such a small fraction of our program. We have a $1.2 billion EV charging program here, and you guys are giving us, I forget what it was, $30 million or $50 million.”

And they’re like, “So what we’re doing is we’re fitting you into our program,” versus in a lot of other states where you are the program. We have a massive program, and so we are doing all of these steps in our EV rollout and then we’re putting your money into our program. That’s a big takeaway. The other thing is a generational shift. Darrin talked about the iPhone, right, and how long it took to filter out the old flip phones and get in the iPhones. The reality, as Secretary Buttigieg said many times, the way we’ve chosen to do this through Title XXIII in the states means that we’re going to hit a peak of DC fast chargers going in through NEVI in 2027-28. And I don’t know why that was such a surprise to people except for the fact that maybe we, as in the administration, didn’t do a good job of setting those expectations.

But when you have a 24- to 36-month delay on transformers alone, nevermind going through the state highway trust fund process and the state transportation improvement programs and all the other things that have to happen. I don’t know why anybody thought there’d be any chargers going in the first 12 to 24 months. It was never in the cards. Now, Washington state, again, is a little bit different. They could have gotten some chargers in, but they didn’t want to. That was not their goal. And then we have to also remember that the purpose of the NEVI program, and many of these programs, was to supplement the private sector, not supplant the private sector. So let’s say that you had hundreds of chargers going into Wisconsin, but there were some rural areas that just didn’t get penciled into the private-sector investments.

They needed a substation upgrade. They needed transformers. No private company was going to fund that loan. By saying that you have to have these every 50 miles, that meant the state would make sure that there was some equitable access for people in that rural area to make sure, including — and this happened in New York State — putting in an entire substation. And what’s interesting about that is, by putting in that substation in New York state, a little town springs up because then you have a convenience store that goes in. There was no power there, so it’s actually an economic development. There’s a whole piece there, but it was all meant to be supplemental. If we need 1.28 million chargers by 2030, the bulk of which are Level 2, and 182,000 DC fast chargers, we only need 1,100 to get to four ports every 50 miles.

I think people’s understanding of what the NEVI program was supposed to do was totally off. But I think that’s also the responsibility of the federal government and the White House in our office to set those expectations, and maybe they weren’t set properly. But to meet NEVI fully built out, we needed 1,100 stations. We had 400 when we left. There were 40,000 ports in motion that have now been paused to various levels on our way to 500,000 public and private, facilitated by chips, IRA and IHAA by 2030. And we’re at about 285,000.

Nathan Niese:

Thanks a lot.

Gabe Klein:

I don’t know if I even answered your question, Nathan.

Nathan Niese:

Totally, yes. You gave more color than any of us had, or at least certainly I had, in terms of understanding a state that I would’ve thought would’ve wanted those dollars. And if they are indeed complaining on a broader standpoint of not getting their dollars back from Washington, of not ever receiving any dollars from NEVI because of their own processes, it was illuminating to understand the factors that led to that.

Gabe Klein:

I think they sued though and successfully got that money freed up. But I could be wrong because there were 17 states that sued, 14 that got it unfrozen. DC was not successful because there were three jurisdictions, three states that didn’t do something right in their filing. But the other 14 have gotten the money unfrozen.

Kimberly Okafor:

You got it.

Gabe Klein:

Yes, thanks Kim. And then there were 33 that didn’t really care so much about the program. I mean, it was a state-level program, right? So the federal government’s a bank, and there are some standards you’ve got to meet. The states decide what they want to do, and there are states that decided they didn’t want to do anything. And that’s totally fine, by the way. Congress just allocates the money. But if Florida doesn’t want to do it, Florida doesn’t have to do it, and Florida never did anything. Texas was awesome. I’ll get off my high horse now.

Kimberly Okafor:

It’s really interesting to hear your perspective on it. Gabe, especially, I mean the position that you were sitting at, you saw all the things on the background that we were, it was my life for a couple of years just trying to insinuate what the states were doing. Florida, for instance. I live in Texas, and Texas was moving really fast, hot and heavy, and they’re a red state, so you didn’t expect that. And then Washington, you expected them to move faster, but they were moving faster on their state funds, so we actually ended up applying for their state funds, not even realizing what you’re saying was actually happening in the background. So it’s interesting perspective. But you’re right, Washington was included in the preliminary injunction.

Gabe Klein:

Yes. And Texas has been able to reposition what electrification is, at least with the people that are important enough like Governor Abbott to get these things moving. But I have not seen that in most of the other states.

Wrap-Up

Roy Strasburger:

All right. Well, thank you everybody. Nathan, do you want to wrap up with anything else?

Nathan Niese:

I appreciate the great dialogue. It’s always a chatty group, but we were able to cover a lot of ground. It was centered in a policy discussion, but nonetheless, I always enjoy when we give it the filter of business side economics from individuals, and we covered a number of those different angles today. So appreciate you continuing to participate in this. I think we’re all getting a lot out of it. I look forward to any further input you have about what would be helpful in future conversations. Myra and team, you can update us as to the next time that we convene because I don’t have that top of mind right now.

Roy Strasburger:

Thank you. Mike, do you have any last comments?

Mike Austin:

No, I’ve been mostly a bystander on this one, but I’ve enjoyed the conversation a lot.

Roy Strasburger:

Well, thank you for leading the first half of it. And Nathan, thank you for the presentation and facilitating the second half of the meeting today. I really do appreciate it. Myra, since you’re on, would you like to make any closing comments?

Myra Kressner:

Sure, thank you everyone. I will just briefly share just a little bit of news and introduce Robert Hampton, who will talk about our VGN Global Virtual Summit that’s coming up in November. Our next meeting is November 13th, so hopefully you have that date on your calendar. We made a switch because we did schedule our VGN Virtual Summit for November 19th. And I’m going to ask Robert in a minute to make sure everyone’s got the updates on that.

And lastly, let you know that the delivery of our Vision Report now will be even more interactive with a much easier search mechanism. As Roy said at the start, you’ll see the actual video of Nathan’s presentation. So we think we’ve taken the vision report to the next level, as well. Please do share that with your colleagues and other industry association folks. Again, you all have delivered great exchange that everyone is going to be very interested in hearing and reading and seeing, so please do when you see that report in about three or four weeks. Robert, would you just close us out with just any new information you could share about the Virtual Summit on November 19?

Robert Hampton:

Sure. Thank you, Myra. Hello everyone. Great meeting today. I appreciate it. I wasn’t really a participant, but I learned a lot. As you might remember from our last meeting back in April, my name is Robert Hampton, and I’m a consultant within the retail and convenience space. I’ve been working here with my colleagues at Vision Group to develop some exciting new programs. By now, you should have received an invite for our very first Vision Group Global Virtual Summit. At this summit, we’ll be bringing together members from all of our vision groups. This is on November 19th at 11 a.m. Eastern time. We expect close to 100 participants in this virtual gathering, and more than 70 members have accepted the invitation. We have an exciting agenda, including Gerd Leonhard as our keynote speaker, as well as reports from all of the Vision Groups from all over the world.

You’ll be able to hear findings and insights from your peers and colleagues from other groups like foodservice, technology, leadership and others. This will be a three-hour virtual discussion. We have a section on the VGN website that will be updated with more details, and we’ll be sending out an update by the end of this month with any new developments. Again, that’s November 19 at 11 a.m. Eastern time. It will go until 2 p.m. Eastern time. If you have any questions or thoughts on that, feel free to reach out. My email’s on the invite, and you can get the latest updates from the website. Thank you and back to you, Myra.

Myra Kressner:

Thanks, Robert. Roy, I’ll turn it back over to you.

Roy Strasburger:

Okay, thank you everyone. It was a very, very informative meeting today. Thank you for attending and for your participation. Once again, Mike and Nathan, thank you for facilitating and leading the conversation. And Nathan, great presentation today. As Myra said, we’re hoping to have the Vision Report out within the next three to four weeks. Please do share it with your colleagues, your customers, anybody who you think needs to have more insight in into the EV ecosystem. And if you have any suggestions as to what you would like to talk about or if you think of topics for our meeting in November, please drop a line to Myra, Robert, or me. Thank you for participating. I hope you have a great rest of your evening, and we’ll look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you very much.

Darren Palmer:

Good luck. See you. Bye.

Myra Kressner:

Thank you.

Roy Strasburger:

Bye-bye.