Zach Jennings, Chargie CEO, joined Automotive Logistics in a panel to discuss logistics of electric vehicles and give insight on how providers can prepare for future EV growth. He goes further in depth about some challenges in EV distribution and the necessity of adaption and investment to be ready for the EV future. Some big questions about not only charging infrastructure needed in the supply chain but also the bigger dimensions of EVs in trucks and railcars are tackled in this panel so be sure to check it out here to learn more!
Transcript
Richard 0:11
Electric Vehicles sales continue to grow, and car makers are committing more and more investment resources to the next generation of mobility. But, but how ready is vehicle logistics and the distribution models that we have today? So conservative forecasts indicate that production of pure EVs will account for 25% of production in North America by 2029. Just by a show of hands, just in the room, just want to get a gauge whether there’s a an appreciation for this, there’s a ready for this. So if you’re preparing for 25% or less, by 2029, by the end of the decade, can you just raise your hands? Okay, no hands that I can see. So, who’s preparing for more? Hopefully, there’ll be a few hands. Okay, five people. Is anyone preparing for electric vehicles at all? Okay, I’m in the wrong room. So. Okay, well, maybe the next 35 minutes or so might change your mind. So here to talk through some of those challenges, and some of the impacts electric vehicles might have. And we’ll have on vehicle logistics. We have Charles Franklin, senior national manager of Business Development at GloVis America. And Zach Jennings, CEO of Chargie. Chargie are electric and EV, charging station manufacturer. And Charles, I think, you know, pretty much everyone in the room so you don’t get an intro. So, let’s crack on and get straight into it. So, my question to the audience, which fell a little flat. But my question to you, is the vehicle logistics network ready for mass electrification?
Charles 2:04
No, absolutely not. In fact, we had our vendor conference just a few months ago, where we had all the rail carriers, Port processors, auto haulers in the room and room looks like this. And I said, okay, how many of you are ready for influx, and I’m talking about next year. So I’m not talking about several years, where based on the customers I’m working with, I’m estimating anywhere from by the end of the year, 250 to 500,000 units that will be crossing our ports either in or out. And I said in the room, how many of you are ready for that? And just like your question, nobody raised their hand. And the challenge with that is they are coming. I mean, I have the forecast. I’m working on contracts. And we’re not ready by any means.
Richard 2:52
Okay, great. So we do have a session. That’s excellent. You also said yes, we’re ready, then I’d have had to shut up. So, Zach, for those who don’t know charging, perhaps you can share a little bit of detail about your story, your journey, and why you’re part of this panel.
Zach 3:07
Yeah, so we’re a turnkey operator of EV charging infrastructure. We do everything from the start from design engineering, permitting, installation, we have our own software. So, we are one single point of contact. So what we specialize in, is working with the customer to move forward with the entire process, including rebates and incentives to lower the actual investment to get those chargers installed. So we primarily work a bulk of our work has been with multifamily buildings, commercial, and then also some work at ports and logistics centers.
Richard 3:40
Great, thank you. And so Charles, you’re working with clearly a number of OEMs, existing players, new EV players as well. Those existing players transitioning for ICT to EVs, at the simplest level, is it says is it not just moving vehicles from A to B?
Charles 3:59
Well, what I’m looking at now, and that’s even how I was introduced to Zach, is we’re saying about, okay, who’s putting through these, putting these vehicles through the ports, both inbound and outbound, and you have various what amount of our problems is in trying to estimate our investment. All of these car carriers have different states of charge that they ship the vehicles, but also with the new as everybody’s been saying most of this day Amazon model where a lot of these dealers want to make OEMs want to deliver directly to the consumer, then they want these vehicles to leave the port fully charged. And so in a meeting just last week, we had and I’m sorry last but you laugh some of you guys in the room will laugh as well. They said they want us to process 150 cars a day, which sounds like a small number, but they want us to charge them 200% So that’s three and a half to four hours per vehicle per day. You know, I mean, and you know ports you don’t have that much time so that’s if you use the level two charger with his people educated me, if I did a level three, yes, I could do them faster. But then now you might blow up the grid. So, you don’t even know if your port can support those level three chargers. Number one and a level three charger costs 10 times more than a level two charger. And for the OEMs in the room, you know, if I asked you can I raise your rates two cents, you usually want to cut my head off. So, if I tell you I need to raise your rates enough to pay for these chargers, it’s not going to work. Lastly, if you if I take the level twos and I want to process that many vehicles fastly, now I have to do this charger far. So not only talking about the investment, but now you’re talking about real estate. And I don’t want to take up that much land to charge your cars. So, it’s a it’s an interesting dilemma right now we’re trying to figure it out. And that’s why we’re talking to folks like Zach.
Richard 5:52
Yeah. And Zach, just on that. Charles, you alluded to some of the different kind of charging options. But Zach, maybe you can go into that a little bit more detail, you know, what is currently available to market in terms of charging? And we’re talking about on a commercial level here? How do the different models vary? Is there a vehicle charging station ratio that you’re working to that there are guidelines out there? What do you what are you seeing?
Zach 6:15
So they’ve broken the chargers, at least in America into three different levels, level one is considered just plugging into a household outlet. From zero to full battery can be anywhere from 60 to 100 hours, it’s a very slow charge. Level two is a good middle ground, that’s where you’re looking at being able to charge a vehicle within approximately 10 hours. And those chargers are basically a relay. The actual vehicle has the inverter and does the charging and controls itself. The Level Two charger is more or less an outlet that passes the power to the vehicle with a little bit of computing power to collect data. When you get up to level three. Those are like the Tesla Supercharger network, EVgo those things you see on the side of freeways. Those are incredibly powerful. Those can charge a vehicle in under an hour. The downside to those is that they’re upwards of $100,000 per unit for the charger, let alone the infrastructure it takes to actually power those. So when you start looking at that infrastructure cost plus the actual charging hardware, you get into a very expensive installation, and then you’re getting in a game because it’s such an expensive unit itself, you want to keep cars utilizing it. So you’re always having to move and make sure people aren’t hogging the spot, or staying there too long. So it’s really comes down to a balance of do you want to put a multiple level twos and then do a level three. But if you do all level threes, that cost adds up quick. And when it comes to a ratio, obviously, we work with our customers to figure out what makes most sense for that property. And the use case. For example, in multifamily buildings for apartments, we normally do about 20%. That’s a good ratio, at least to start for now with the obvious idea that it will expand as utilization goes up, and there’s more EVs in that parking lot. But with every customer, you never know what they’re going to need. So we try to maximize what we can get in there now to see us. And we’ll get into this later, but incentives and rebates that are local to help bring that cost down?
Richard 8:07
Well, I mean, yeah, let’s get into that now, in terms of the Biden administration has invested billions into the growth of electric vehicles. Is there a clearer picture on how the sum will be, will, be allocated maybe specifically, with, with commercial EV infrastructure, and I saw that there was some news this morning. But supporting the noncommercial side, in terms of charging stations around standardization there, but what’s what’s happening on the commercial side, and specifically, what would affect our audience here.
Zach 8:44
So there’s a, we have actually a whole team of just government affairs that focuses on going to different areas and finding all these programs, because it does get incredibly complicated. We’ve had customers that are trying to take it on themselves, and they don’t maximize what was available. And you can actually stack a lot of these programs as well. So it goes all the way from utilities have their own programs, up to state level. And then obviously, federal, and from the Federal standpoint, most of what Biden administration is pushing through is targeting corridor charging, meaning when you’re on a trip, so that would be those level three chargers, you pull off charge for 30 minutes and get right back on the road. So we always work to figure out how we can work with all those programs to maximize what we can get for each customer. And a lot of the times you get 100% of that cost covered. So we always push and stress to our customers that you want to get those while they’re available. It is a first come first serve basis on the most part, and once they’re gone, they may renew them, but it’s not a guarantee. So there’s no reason to not get those things installed today and take advantage of that. When the actual charging hardware isn’t going to change much. The cables are standardized. There was a situation with Tesla back in 2012. The Society of Automotive Engineers did not develop a charging standard for the actual connector, so Tesla had to sell cars they created their own. So that’s why there’s that little bit of difference between their connector and everybody else’s. But since then, all other manufacturers have come together and agreed that the J 1772 is the connector of choice for all electric vehicles. When you get to level three, there’s, there were two options. Japan had a connector called a chatty Mo, which is around connector that Nissan a couple other companies were using, and everyone in America and Europe, were using a CCS combo charger cable. So as of recently, I think Nissan has and the Japanese companies have agreed to eliminate that standard, because that is the whole idea, you’d want to make sure that you’re not putting double infrastructure to be able to handle two different types of vehicles when everyone can be using the same thing.
Richard 10:46
And looking at the other end, you know, we mentioned the ports or looking at the other end and the dealership side. How do you see that market developing that need that growth? For charging infrastructure there? I’ll come to you again. And then Charles, I’ll come to you on potentially, the distribution models are changing in terms of that dealership model or direct deliveries perhaps and the considerations there but first to use Zach on that dealership side, what are you seeing from your customers from the conversations you’re having?
Zach 11:18
What it really comes down to is available power, a lot of dealerships don’t want to spend that money, and they don’t have the power available. So it gets more expensive. But what we always recommend is, you really want to look at it, how long is the dwell period or the time that vehicles will be parked? If it’s going to be there for days, you do not need to worry about getting big level three chargers to blast power into those vehicles. Maybe you have one just so in emergencies or visitors can use that. But the idea is of those cars gonna be parked on the lot for a while, you get a lot of level two chargers put those in and just let them trickle charge up. It’s a much more cost-effective way. And it’s easier on the grid as we spoke about earlier.
Richard 11:53
Well, right now there’s no cars on the grid. On the on the lots as we hear that, obviously that will hopefully change in the plans are for vehicle ramp ups to happen. So, again, interesting, do you invest now for the for the short term or the long term, and hopefully there’ll be stabilization. So, Charles, but I’ll come to you on that distribution model and how that might be impacting vehicle logistics specifically,
Charles 12:19
Well selfishly in regard to EVs. I love when dealerships have the power because that means that I can receive that vehicle, process it and get it out. So yes, there’s a revenue opportunity for us to charge them but we’re more concerned you know, port is a flow through. And so, I’m we’re really concerned on how much that’s going to bog us down. Because as most of them for particular for my poor processing friends, and you know, you’re taking 1000s and get one vessel might have 3000 cars, what happens when all 3000 of those are EVs and all 3000 of those need charging, and you now got another vessel coming in two days, I don’t I don’t see how we can manage that. Even if we had, you know, look like a drive in, those of you as old as I am, when you used to have to drive in theater and you pull up the speaker. I mean, even if your yard look like that, and you can hook them all up, you couldn’t get 3000 cars out in two days, it just couldn’t happen. So, I liked the model for the dealerships to champion because then we could process them, send them out and let them top them off at the dealership. However, as we say, going back to the Amazon style, we have customers right now it’s a requirement. Actually, we have one customer we already have in place. Now, we have to do 80 to 100% charge before we deliver those cars. Right now they’re in their wrap up. So they’re not getting a lot of cars, and we’re able to handle it. But at the same time when they start doing a high volume. We’re trying to figure out how much we need to invest. And that’s the scary part. Because right now at some of our ports we have doesn’t sound like many, six chargers. And if you go there right now, I promise you the four of them, there’s nobody using them. And so we spent all this money and get you know, had the chargers or whatever number and nobody’s using them. What are we going to do? So our biggest challenge now is trying to do that estimation. So we’re estimating what we’re going to do. So we’re talking to folks like this, we may even engage with Chargie, and say, here’s our business model. Here’s the power grid were on. Here’s The forecasted volume, what’s our infrastructure, and then speaking again, selfishly as a processor, and anybody who handles vehicles. OEMs will tell you, here’s our forecast, and then they move that freight to another port. And now you got all these charging stations here. So it’s we’re working, we’re going to make that solution. We’re very flexible, but at the same time we have to manage the investment versus the risk of that investment.
Richard 14:40
Yeah, absolutely. You know, in terms of the policy investing in getting the right infrastructure in place, is that going to become a competitive advantage, differentiator when we’re selecting import and export routes and models like that?
Charles 14:56
I’d say yes and no and the reason why I say that most of the time, at least as we’re talking about ocean transportation, the vessel, the origination of that freight and the destination of that freight is going to drive the port. And so therefore those ports that receive and or ship out those vehicles is going to have to upgrade. Now the question is, where’s the cost? Who’s going to do that? So right now, if we use the Tesla word, in a lot of instances, Tesla has provided those chargers. But most of the customers I’m engaging with now are giving me requirements and asking me what you’re charging capabilities, which was the plan, so they want me to invest. And then I saw my friend Dona, I can’t see the lights. But she’s the port with me I say, oh, so what are you guys going to invest? And so we’re trying to figure out and then naturally, he says, where there could be rebates, but there’s limits to those rebates. So first, somebody has to write the check, before the rebate happens in hopes of a rebate. And then there are some limits to rebates, depending upon how big your company is, if you’re over a certain revenue peak, then you don’t qualify the rebate. And so you wrote this check, oh, I’m gonna get my money back. And so, so it’s, we’re in the middle, we’re going to make it happen. Like I say, we’re working with some customers. And then as my title alludes to business development, not only mean sales, but it means developing partnerships and relationships to support our customers. So when I talked to some of my other port processing friends, you’d be amazed at how some of the biggest Roro ports in America, there are zero chargers today. So it’s so I don’t have an answer. I just know that we’re studying it. And it’s and it scares me.
Richard 16:41
I suppose while this while this landscape develops, and it seems like there’s a lot of people waiting, looking to see what others are doing, how the system can be worked? Is this potentially gonna cause a huge bottleneck? And when suddenly the volumes do rise up? And things aren’t ready? Things aren’t in place, and then suddenly, there’s a drive for demand?
Charles 17:02
It could and that’s one of the discussions that I had with Chargie yesterday, what’s the lead time? Because let us say that I do decide to put in 100 units. So I told actually, I told him 10, and he said, six to 12 weeks. But what if it’s 100? Does that make it six to 12 months? And then and then that’s one port. So what happens if all the ports so I see the bottleneck. But hopefully, if I’ve successfully secured all of these agreements, that you know, once you get the ink, it’s easy to get some green to follow that ink, and then we can start putting it in. So I think there will be a bottleneck. But I think the solution for that bottleneck is for the OEMs to determine their minimum state of charge. Right now naturally, unfortunately, we had a fire as you know, not Globus but the industry had a fire, which is causing a lot of people to look at every shipment. But let’s just say if everybody agrees, okay, it’s 30 to 40%. Okay, and they agree that that’s sufficient for it to go, then again, now I don’t need to invest. Because I’m gonna receive that car, and I’m gonna send it out. And maybe I have one or two, because yeah, some of them will have drained and they need to get charged. So we need to figure out what is the norm, and there’s no norm today.
Richard 18:15
Yeah, I just want to pick up on that point on the minimum standard charge for vehicles. Now, there’s a lot of handovers a lot of milestones within the vehicle delivery network. But you’re saying that that’s not standardized what the level of charge should be. And presumably each stakeholder would want to minimize their own cost their own charging time, their own dwell time at their own compounds or parts of the chain. So how do we how do you know this can cause a problem where vehicles are arriving less than less than standard charge, it creates a bottleneck that hasn’t been predicted hasn’t been seen. And right now, we know that getting vehicles to market is at speed is critical. So again, what needs to happen to either create this standardization, or, you know, where does the responsibility lie to ensure that the network flows smoothly?
Charles 19:10
And again, as most of you know, I’ve sat on both sides of the fence for 20 years as OEM. And now I’m a service provider. I put it on OEM. And the reason being is yes, they want to minimize their costs and to dwell on the compounds in the yard. But it’s just like anything, all ports are ocean property. So just like real estate, that’s the most expensive property in the world. Okay, so you’re going to I’m going to charge you more for consuming my real estate than I am for the juice and I’m going to charge you the real estate as well as the infrastructure to charge it. So it’d be much more friendly to the system and to their pocketbooks if they send those cars out with a charge enough to get it to its final destination because then I can treat it just like ICV ICE Vehicle. I receive it. I process it I put it on the truck train or wherever it wanted to go and it’s out. You do not want any vehicles dwelling at the port any longer than they have to because it’s just like your vacation. If you stay in this hotel more than seven days, when you stay in it one day, it’s gonna cost you a big difference because it’s on the beach. So you got to move them I believe.
Richard 20:15
That’s a great point. Zach, we’ve spoken a lot about the infrastructure. But there are also concerns about energy sources is their capacity to deal with this. Projections be current or future projections of this demand, everyone charging at the same time, commercial businesses operating at the same time, truck drivers looking to be at home overnight, so not wanting to charge during the day recharge, all at the same time, is the grid going to be able to cope what’s happening there?
Zach 20:45
So our previous company, we actually spun out it was based in Los Angeles, large scale solar provider for commercial solar. So solar farms, warehouses, airport hangers, so we understand the way electricity grid works demand and all those aspects. And really what it comes down to, it’s not about available power, there is enough power in the grid, the grid can produce massive amounts of power, when it comes down to the just like you’re saying is, the time that those peaks happen, when it’s ebbs and flows are valleys and mountains that you’re looking at, you really want to be able to shave the top off, because the way the utilities look at it is if we have to provide your energy at this very peak, we’re going to charge you extra for it because we need to supply that capacity. And by having all this down period of these power plants that only need to supply it the short amount of time, it creates a huge issue. So what it really comes down to, at least depending on the use case, is energy load management, where you can have those vehicles, okay, there’s a two hour window, there’s gonna be a massive peak in your time of use pricing is very common with utilities, you pay based on the time of day, the peak periods are more expensive, with the technology we have is you can actually have those chargers automatically slow down at those peaks if available. Obviously, if you have to get it charged, you just keep it going. But if you can, you lower the charge rates at that time, and then kick them right back up automatically. To avoid those peak periods. From an economic standpoint, you can be paying double, even triple the cost in those peaks. So by just slowing it down for a few hours and kicking it right back up, you don’t lose much time and you save a lot of money. So that’s really what it comes down to is the, you know, the sophistication, the algorithms to help stabilize the grid and kind of flatten it out more. And when gets real advanced and you have super big loads and you can justify it, you can add battery buffers, that will then kick in those batteries will be storage devices that can supply the power to the vehicles for those peaks. And that with the cost overruns the Delta, you can actually economically make that workout as well. And there are incentives for battery storage.
Richard 22:46
So beyond that, beyond the charging function, yeah, we’re getting into smart charging networks, you know, how can that not only help the grid, but how can that also have an impact on logistics as well in terms of yard management, vehicle logistics movements? How can that how can that support.
Zach 23:04
So we’re in a world nowadays of data, data is everything. So collecting that data, analyzing it using it appropriately is what becomes very important in those situations, you want to make sure that you understand what is happening with every vehicle on that lot, what their state of charge is and how long they’ve been going for. And then at the end of it, you want to be able to have notifications, those vehicles are finished, so you know that you can move them, you don’t want to send an employee to walk around and check the screens on every vehicle to see the status. So by having the data through the charger side, you have a centralized command station, you look at one pane of glass, that he’s able to tell you all this information, hey, these six cars are all finished, you know, send someone to go pull those out and put new ones in those locations. So that’s where really it comes down to. And to get that you need to have reliable communication, you need to have hardware that works every time all the time. And then you need to have redundancies behind that. So for example, a lot of our systems have either dual modems or at least dual SIM cards. So if you’re someone or we connect to the local network, but we always put redundancies in place, if something does go down, it fails over and keeps going. You do not want to be in a situation, especially with critical real estate, where you have devices or cars that are stranded because something on the chargers went down. So especially Time is money in that situation.
Richard 24:18
In terms of you know, we’ve talked a little bit about a lot about data, the need for greater transparency, greater sharing. A question I’ve asked before, but I’ll put it to you guys and Charles maybe to you is the framework there for data sharing in a in a noncommercial setting. Is it Is there a secured network? Is there things in place? And is there a level of acceptance and comfortable comfortability for data sharing to happen to really maximize the potential here
Charles 24:51
That that’s what Zach’s teams tells me. So internally do we currently have the data to support managing what he just said, heck no. And that’s why, again, going back to developing partnerships with people, I believe in letting experts do what they do. Because we’re experts in moving vehicles moving freight. And so we want to find partners that can support that. And so I don’t I don’t see us developing or designing an EV charging network database. But I’m sure as we said earlier, he said earlier today through via API, EDI, whatever, we can interface with his system and transfer that information to our customers and more equally as important to our transportation partners, because you don’t want a truck driver to show up for his load, and half of them are still charging, because he or she wants to load them up and get out of there. Which goes back to our initial point, if they have enough juice, just let them go. And, and it’s interesting, even with the consultation that we do with some of our customers who say I want this car to get to them full because it’s a brand new was going to the doorstep. And I said yeah but consider this as your customer where they rather get their car tomorrow with a 35% charge, or a week from tomorrow, full, and an additional $150 delivery fee. I said I said most of us will say give my car tomorrow, give me a 50 or $60 gift card, and I’d be happy to get a car. So again, I think the OEMs have to figure out what their business model is what the consumer demand is, and we’re, we’re flexible. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll charge them up. And I’ll charge you for that charging them up and we’ll deliver them, but I think the industry as well as destiny is to figure out what does the customer truly want? And consider the impact of what they’re asking is on the supply chain.
Richard 26:42
Looking at some of the key trends coming out of electric vehicles, we’re seeing heavier weights, lower ground clearances, larger dimensions, versus traditional ice vehicles. Is road and rail equipment currently in use, essentially fit for purpose. No, right? Are they going 100%?
Charles 27:01
No. So in fact, we won’t say names, but we have a partnership with a very prominent EV manufacturer. And one of our first engagement with him I said is your car shippable. And it was very unique because as alluded to in other sessions, logistics is the redheaded stepchild of the automobile OEM family. So nobody considered about shipping it. They want to see how aerodynamic it is how fast it can go, how pretty it’s going to be. And they finish and they say here. And I said well, and they said what do you mean it’s a shippable. So we actually took the unit to one of our ports. We had six different auto haulers. We had three rail car designs, and we had a vessel. And so we spent two days just on loading unloading all only two of the auto haulers could the vehicle be loaded on and of those two, not all positions because of the lowness of the vehicle, only one rail car could accommodate that vehicle. And then with these new or new EV cars, they’re also wider. So the rail cars, you know, and they wider were 22 inch rims. And so we’re saying you know, we’re gonna be eatin wheels, because they’re gonna be dammed up. And so, and what I shared with them when I said shippable, if you can only ship your car on one or two types of trucks, one type of railcar, a couple of things happen number one, your costs go up. Okay, and then also the frequency of your shipment goes down. Because if that rail car is not available, or if that particular truck trailer is not available, your car’s not shipping. So there needs to be I think the industry will catch up with a remark they’re remodel the auto hauler trailers, they’re going to redesign the rail cars, but that’s a lot of money. And so a lot a lot of just look at the rail cars, I don’t even know how many 1000s of those are. So and then the other piece of that both for rail and truck is the weight that you mentioned to. So right now the rail calculates their fuel costs based on the load factor of that weight. That’s going to change that model. And right now, it’s probably going to be applied across all models of cars, be it electric or gas, because that how do they even know what’s coming through, they’re gonna say I’m taking 10,000 cars or what have you, particularly with the with the auto haulers is 80,000 pound limit. Okay, so somebody’s babies are almost 6000 pounds. So now you reduce it. And so we already have a shortage of trucks. And now you’re telling me I can’t fill them up because the load factor is too heavy. So now it’s going to be a greater shortage of trucks. And everybody says they’re petitioning for the government to increase the load the weight of these vehicles. And I used to pay my way through college, building bridges and working for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. I don’t see the states approving heavier vehicles because it’s going to trash the roads faster. And so I don’t I don’t know the solution, but it’s going to be an impact on the supply chain, the weight, as well as the electrification is going to have an impact. pretty quickly.
Richard 30:02
So clearly there’s a need for collaboration stakeholders to come together to work through this but just sticking with your Charles what are globus doing then uh with your own fleets and in terms of investment and upgrading equipment um to prepare and ready for this
Charles 30:19
We are ordering uh we’re ordering and working on getting redesigned auto hauler trailers um but again just like everything else even if you want regular trailers it’s just a shortage of everything so getting them is going to be slow as well as recuperating the cost because again from my oem side if I had to raise the cost per unit 25 cents I almost had to write a paper you know and so somebody’s going to have to pay for those trailers um but we are doing it but it’s going to be slow and again we’re also doing it particularly with the new startups and the new oems is right out the gate as I’m asking that same question is this car shippable so that hopefully before they do their finalization of their design they have their car adjusted to meet the current equipment here to move their vehicles so I think it’s a partnership and I think just like Kevin said earlier it’s becoming more of an enterprise before logistics like I said we built it get it there now they’re listening to us more because I can get it there but how much do you want to pay how slow do you want to be and how what do you want your damage ratio to be and so we’re working with our customers as well with our suppliers to try to meet that and again though going back to what’s the standard so what’s the standard height what’s the standard width because you want to make this investment and then all of a sudden the color is no longer red it’s green and now the stuff you just bought doesn’t work so it’s going to be interesting
Richard 31:52
Is that coming to you mentioned and touched upon automation um earlier and there’s some potential there I want to delve just a little bit deeper on that with charging vehicles is still a manual process in itself currently um there is a scope for automation be it the ports the dealerships what sort of road map do you foresee playing a part and you know also I’ve done some research and found that there’s companies exploring wireless technology and wireless charging inductive charging systems is this part of Chargie’s plans or is this part of part of industries plans and what’s the sort of timeline and roadmap looking like for that
Zach 32:36
What really comes down to is that getting everyone to agree on a standard so that they can deploy this type of technology like you said there is induction charging that you know hopefully will come up eventually you pull up into a parking spot you don’t touch anything there’s a pad on your vehicle pad underneath the concrete and it just starts charging automatically so that would be a perfect scenario one of the big issues with that is the efficiency of that you lose about 10 percent and when you start looking at scale losing 10 across all vehicles charging at any given time becomes a massive loss of energy so they’re continuing to advance it but even when they do get it up to a high enough standard it’s going to be really getting everyone to agree that okay this is the pad you put on your vehicle this is where you locate it and this is the way it communicates so that’s where it really comes down to interoperability in general is becoming more and more of a question if anyone has an ev they would understand this that a lot of cars exclude tesla because theirs is all within their own network but if you have a say a Nissan leaf you go to a charger you might not have a membership to that charger or an rfid tag so most cv drivers you open up their glove box you’ll see five or six membership cards because they’re not interoperable you need to be a member of all these different things so the future and this is where everything is starting to head to is interoperability where you just have your vehicle you plug it in there’s a standard called iso 1511.8 where the vehicle can actually communicate to the charger through the plug to identify itself authenticate and move forward with charging so it becomes a seamless process that’s where it really has to go similar to gas stations you don’t think about having a membership you tap your credit card and start putting gas in it needs to be that simple and you know there’s a lot of people from the other side that push back and say that’s never going to get corrected you know how could it possibly be solved but in the scheme of things we’re still in the infancy of evs it’s just getting started so in general there’s going to be a lot of development in the next five 10 years as things scale up and there will be you know some learning curves and some roadblocks but I think everyone’s motivated enough at this point especially with the incentives and all the push to get you know uh clean vehicles out on the roads that hopefully they can cut down the red tape and accelerate it and everyone can agree on a standard
Richard 34:43
That’s a pretty strong message there and we’re getting pretty close to time so sort of final question really is we’ve covered a lot of ground but what’s the what’s the key piece of advice um that you’d like our audience to kind of take away as we saw from my failed poll earlier no one is preparing for electric vehicles here in this room but what’s the key piece of advice you can give to get them on that journey
Charles 35:11
Piggybacking on Zach and some of the things I said before I think there needs to be some standardization some norms and some of the standardizations don’t really require any mega uh thought okay 35 or 40 and customer deliver is 35 or whatever so if everybody agrees that we’re going to ship them at this much and this much is acceptable for the customer delivery that that gives us something that we can now calculate he can help me figure out how many chargers I need based on that information but today we just don’t know and so we just need to have some standardization uh another potential solution is what they call battery as a service which means you would buy the car and you lease the battery but then that means that those batteries are interchangeable but that would also fix the port process because if a vehicle came in and let’s just say I know that 100 vehicles are coming in and they need to leave 100 state of charge I can have 100 batteries here charging when they come in you swap them it takes five minutes and they get out but what that require standardization yes it will require a big charging facility but that’s also a solution to what Biden’s talking about what they’re saying if you drive across if your battery’s at least batteries you pull in and just boom boom five minutes they swap and you keep driving so in all of those instances standardization is the requirement
Richard 36:32
Final comments?
Zach 36:33
Uh I would say the main thing is to start preparing sooner than later you can right now with timing keeping an eye on what the available incentives and rebates are is a great opportunity to get that infrastructure in uh either for free or at a low cost so I would say the main thing is to not wait until it’s absolutely necessary but plan ahead so that when the time does come, you’re ready for it
Richard 36:55
Fantastic! So plenty of opportunities plenty of information so I want to say thank you very much to my panel Charles Franklin, Zach Jennings
