Quarterly Meeting for the EV Working Group – FY2024 Q1 (Text Version)

This is a text version of Quarterly Meeting for the EV Working Group – FY2024 Q1, presented on Dec. 13, 2023.

Rachel Nealer, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Great, well, welcome to day two. I'm really excited to have the sessions that we have planned today. I'm going to start with the recording disclaimer again.

This meeting is being recorded and will be published on the EV Working Group page within DriveElectric.gov. If you do not wish to have your voice recorded, please do not speak during the meeting. If you do not wish to have your image recorded, please turn off your camera or microphone. When you speak during the call or use a video connection, you are presumed to consent to recording and use of your image or voice.

Great, so with that done, we're just going to quickly review the agenda. And then I'll pass it to Rachel who will give us the safety briefing again and some meeting logistics. But today, we are really excited to start fleshing out a little bit more of what we want to do as a group together. So, we have the secretary's charge yesterday. We got some really interesting discussions started, I would say. And this would be an opportunity to continue them.

We had the meeting before this—virtually—where we compiled a lot of different ideas on what people thought are the priorities coming into this EV working group, and now it's our time to start scoping out how we start working on those things together. We identified three areas: medium and heavy-duty electrification, grid integration, and the charging network. And then we have three crosscuts that we think are really important: equity, workforce, and supply chain.

So, I think, today, we're going to really break out into those subcommittees we—I think—agreed for the most part on, and we'll talk a little bit about reports and deadlines and things in the upcoming sessions, but the proposal was to give an idea of what we wanted to work on, flesh it out a little bit further, and then the first report we would have is actually a summary of what we plan to work on together. So, that first report is due in January. So, you can understand why we have an urgency to try to put something in writing.

But I think it's actually a really good kind of best practice that as we're coming together, as we're pulling this all together, we're able to communicate more publicly about what we're planning on working on together. So, this session, today—pretty much the full day—is really built around fleshing those ideas a little bit out. And then giving us some fodder for that initial report that I think will be relatively short, but kind of a summary of what we all need to get out of the initial charge of this EV working group.

And I will call back to the charge—I sent it around in an email last night, but we really want to be quantitative here. We want metrics. We want goals. We want milestones. We want to work collaboratively together.

So, I think there's an element of quantification for all of these topics, all of these crosscuts, but also, how do we work together as industry and government together, because we do have this unique opportunity in this federal advisory committee where we have government members actually on the committee. So, I think this is just an opportunity for us to really roll up our sleeves together and come up with some plans that will get us to an electrified transportation system.

So, with that, I will—so does anyone have questions actually about the agenda for today? Should have it in front of you. If you don't, I have extras here. We're going to talk a little bit more in-depth about—I'll show the figures, and we'll review the charge again after the security briefing and logistics. Maybe have a short discussion. We are going to have an activity where we write down the top priorities for each one of the focus areas. And we have three people that are leading those focus areas, those discussions, right now.

And the purpose of writing down the ideas first is that we want everyone to contribute to all ideas first. And then once we start scoping out in a little bit more depth, we'll come back, we'll report out what that scoping exercise produced. And then we'll also have a discussion about that.

So, nobody should feel like they’re dedicated to a focus area. Although, if they want to dedicate themselves early to a focus area, totally—totally get that. And we can accommodate that. But I think right now, since we don't know what we're committing to yet, right now it's just the scoping. Questions? Great. Well, with that, I will pass it to Rachel for logistics.

Rachel Sack, Volpe National Transportation Systems Center: All right, good morning, everyone. Feels strange to be sitting down instead of standing as a facilitator. Just to recap where we are, you are now familiar with this conference space. But in case of emergency, please exit and go down the hallway to the front entrance that you came in at. If we need to shelter in place, please stay here and await further instruction. I assume you know where the restrooms are. Take a right down the hallway, and then also the hallway leading to the exit.

And then when we do have our breakouts, one group will be staying here and two will be going to conference rooms in the department, and we'll be escorting you there. So, just keep that in mind. When we do the breakouts, we'll tell you who to follow. And it'll be important to stay with that group. So, at this point, just, again, to review the ground rules. For those here, if we do need to speak, especially when we have Q&A as the breakouts report out, please continue to turn your table tech vertically.

For those, I believe, we're just going to have one remote working group member, Michael, joining us shortly. So, we'll look to our colleagues to let us know when he needs to chime in, and he'll raise his hand. And we can—also we'll be including him in the breakout discussion. And then for those joining us today from the public on Zoom, you are muted. But again, you can chat the hosts if you have technical difficulties.

And then during the public comment period, like in our virtual meeting, we'll hear from everyone and give those public members who raise their hands the opportunity to unmute at that time. So, I think that covers our morning review. And then I'll be back shortly, so we can have fun with the index cards and lead into our breakout discussion.

Rachel Nealer: Great. Thanks. Well, let's maybe get into a little bit more of the details of building out this framework. So, maybe just a reorientation of where we are.

So, we were stood up in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as the EV working group. It was established shortly in FACA terms after that. And then we got the membership together in August of this year. We had our first meeting in September, and now we're in the real meat of this FACA where we have the legislative direction to meet every 120 days, so about every quarter.

So, this is our meeting for the end of the year. And we intend to meet in about three months’ time. We'll have a discussion a little bit later about if there are any events or things that we might want to consider, people are already going to, and we might want to convene around those, or if there are any holidays that people are taking that we should take into consideration. So, we do have some flexibility on the time that we schedule this in three months. So, we'll have a little bit of that logistical discussion at the end.

We do have our first report due in January. This we expect to be a high-level road map and update of our priorities, so will be really an output of this conversation today. We expect that's probably going to be a heavy lift on the staff side to put it all in writing, that you guys would then review it, make comments.
We would reconcile those comments. But because of the quick deadline, we want to try to execute that relatively quickly. But if anyone is really interested in putting pen to paper, we would be happy to have the support of that.

And then after that, we have, I would say, kind of an open agenda. So, we legislatively have to produce two more reports, but those are due every two years. I've also heard some other federal advisory committee models where they actually do some quick turnaround requests. And something will come from leadership of one of the agencies, and say, we want to know the industry's perspective on x. And then three months later, the EV working group produces a memo on x of their thoughts.

So, there's a lot of different ways that we can do it. I think in the initial meeting we also discussed how do we engage the subcommittees in a way that we can get more people involved because this is not only a whole of government effort to get to transportation electrification but a whole of stakeholder. You guys are representatives of that. But obviously, there's a lot of other people that are doing a lot of work in this area that we weren't able to have joined the EV working group. So, how do we engage the right stakeholders?

And so, there's also presentations, and we can think about what kind of formats we have to deliver the types of messages that we want to get to the government because ultimately, the federal advisory committee is for industry to advise and provide recommendations to the government. So, we have those two reports, but I'm hopeful that the reports are more of a box checking. And that we will just have lots of really robust discussions and products that those reports will just be almost an afterthought, that we have a lot of work to do ahead of us. And so, we will work together on a variety of products. Any questions, thoughts? Yeah, Doug.

Doug Greenhaus, National Automobile Dealers Association: The, uh, slide like this—some of the slides that we saw yesterday, are they going to be put on the EVWG page?

Rachael Nealer: Yes.

Doug Greenhaus: OK.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah.

Michael Berube, Department of Energy: Rachael—

Rachael Nealer: All right.

Michael Berube: –can I—

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, absolutely, Michael.

Michael Berube: Just want to reemphasize one point that Rachael made there. You know, this working group will be going on now for a while in the years. We'll all get to know each other. Certainly, the reports that we got to do are key things we have to deliver. But as Rachael said, we don't want the group to think that is their only way to provide input. And really, this group, as the Secretary said, gave the charge to this group. That is what they want to hear, need to hear.

And if at any point, we have key input from this group, the group has to vote on it as a group, I believe, by FACA rules. But if this groups at any point in two months, says we want to deliver this, or three months, we want to get this message across, or we have an initial thought on one perspective that we think is really important, that can be delivered up again at any time and is something that other FACAs do and is definitely encouraged.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, and I don't want to casually say that the legislative requirements are an afterthought. Just want to make sure that we are delivering things that to Michael's point are things that the government can take action on. We want to take action on. Cause we want to work with industry. We want to do the best we can to work together. And so, reports are one way to do that. And we will absolutely meet those milestones, those deadlines, but we want to also make sure that things are a little bit more dynamic than just putting things in reports.

I will say one last logistical thing is that, at the end of the second report, that is actually when the EV working group disperses. So, there is actually an end date in the legislative language. We get every two years to write a report. And then after the last report, the EV working group ends. Mike.

Mike Roeth, Northam American Council for Freight Efficiency: So, are we going to talk today any more about the subcommittees or is that something that will—a lot of people apply for these. So, there's, I think—there's probably a keen interest out there. Just curious what the ground rules and guidelines are going to be for subcommittees.

Rachel Nealer: Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the important things to know about the subcommittees is that we are able to engage a broader set of stakeholders. They are not technically EV working group members.

And any products that the subcommittees develop need to be approved by the EV working group in order to be submitted as federal advice, right, recommendations to the government. But I do think, Mike, that we got—we had almost 300 applications for the EV working group membership. We've got over 200 people on this call today. So, I think there's a lot of engagement.

And I think there's also people that we might want to engage that weren't specifically called out in the representation as well. You know, NGOs, for example, were not called out in representation. And so—and they're doing a lot of really great work in the electrification space so that might be an opportunity—the subcommittees will be an opportunity to bring people in, get more input on specific topics, I would say. We don't want to have it be too unwieldy, which is why we were kind of headed towards this initial framework. And again, this—there's a lot of different models. We could say that subcommittees will produce reports.
But we could also say, if—like I said, a secretary or someone says, I want the EV working group's input on x, and it doesn't fall into one of these categories, that's totally OK. We're the EV working group, not married to this framework. This is just a way for us to start organizing ourselves and figuring out what we want to spend our time on, what the priorities are of this group. So maybe just walking through this a little bit further, unless others have questions? Yeah, Sara.

Sara Emmons, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Quick comment I wanted to make on that. I'm Sara Emmons, the operations manager for the Joint Office and the deputy designated federal official for the FACA. I just wanted to let people know that the subcommittees are able to meet without the formal process of creating a federal register notice and making that meeting public.

So, they are a more nimble way to coordinate. And you are able to meet without requiring that those meetings be public. Also, subcommittees are able to interview outside entities. So, that's something that you're able to do as well. And we can provide you with additional guidance on that. Yeah, thanks.

Rachael Nealer: Laura.

Laura Chace, Intelligent Transportation Society of America: Yeah, so I know in the initial meeting we talked a little bit about the time frame and, you know, that the charge of this group is not to try to change anything that's in—like, you know, NEVI, right? Not to try to change anything. But to look a little further. But I did have a question about if we identify really critical gaps or areas where we think there could be a role for the federal government that is more in the here or in the short-term, can those be a part of the recommendations or goals, right? Something that is essentially not covered by existing programs that we think needs to be addressed, even if it's in the shorter term.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, I mean, I think you guys are our advisory committee, right? So, it's up to you to decide what you want to recommend to the government. We might want to have conversations, especially since we have federal representation on the EV working group, we might want to have conversations about what is reasonable and realistic for the government to take action on, right? Because we want to be able to take action on these recommendations, ultimately, right?

And so, we don't want to have this great brain trust here putting in a lot of effort and work to deliver something that, then we're not able to execute. So, I would say it's probably a little bit of a balance. But absolutely, we want to hear from you all what is advised by industry. Yeah, Joung.

Joung Lee: Just a quick question. Looking at the statute, it looks like there is an option to get help from the Transportation Research board.

Rachael Nealer: Yes.

Joung Lee, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials: Is that something that you guys are looking into, or—

Rachael Nealer: We did explore that a little bit on the logistical end early. And we kind of paused that since we were able to secure excellent support, as I hope you guys all think, from the Volpe Center. And—but we have kind of an open line to Transportation Research Board and the National Academies, in general, just to say, like, OK, you guys are also working on reports and things about transportation decarbonization. This work—this group is going to as well. So, let's make sure that we're at least coordinating, not duplicating work, and figuring out how we can work together on these things.

So, I think the TRB is probably a little bit more substantive. And so, once we have more of our substance fleshed out, I think it'd be a great idea to re-engage with them on what partnership could look like. Thanks for bringing that up. Yeah. Great.

So, maybe walking through this a little bit more, we have the three topical areas that we identified early on. We could share the poll results with you guys. It was very clear these were the top three: grid integration, medium and heavy duty, and charging network. Kind of to talk to Laura's point a little bit, these probably are happening in different timelines as well. So, I want to encourage people, when they divide out into their subcommittees, that you're talking about, what might the near-term actions be, versus, how do we get to a roadmap, a shared set of goals, or milestones in the longer term because, obviously, grid integration is going to take a much longer time than maybe some of the near-term work that's happening with the charging network.

So, I think there are different ways that we can look at this. And so, I would really encourage people to have a robust discussion in their subcommittees about timing. I do think that probably aligns then with how we roll out our products, how we roll out reports.

And so, I—that's just something to be aware of. We also identified—I think, Henrik actually had this initial idea where we had these kinds of crosscuts with these topical areas. And we have equity, workforce, and supply chain that are highlighted as important things that we want to identify ways to work together and metrics around all of those for each one of the topical areas.

So, a charging network product, whether it be a report, whether it be a presentation, whether it be a memo to the secretaries, we want that charging network to take into consideration the equitable distribution of charging network, how we are supporting the workforce that will build and maintain that EV charging network. And the supply chain, what are the constraints right now? How do we start identifying solutions? I do think going back to the secretary's charge, we want actionable recommendations, and we want solutions. We want to know ways that we can work together.

And I think a really important key part of that is identifying who's going to take the action, right? We can have a lot of really great actions, but the government might be able to do some things really well. And industry might be able to do other things very well. And so how do we piece together all of that work?
All right, so any questions? I also would say, this is our working group. So, we can wordsmith this. I want to make sure that everyone is feeling comfortable with the words on this slide. This will be, I think, the basis for that initial report.

So, anything that comes out of developing this is important. So, I think every word on here should be very intentional. People should sign off on it and feel really comfortable with it. So, I just—I sent out the initial draft early, but I think as we're starting to think about the subcommittees and fleshing out the scope a little bit more, we might want to update the wording on some. Yeah, go ahead, Danielle.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners: This is great and very logical. I would just submit that I think there's a big missing piece maybe right in the middle, which is cost or affordability. And that—as this has been well thought through and well laid out, that is an overarching and crosscutting and everything in here. And so, I would make a recommendation that it be incorporated in some way.

Rachael Nealer: Absolutely. So, maybe this is—so, we just debuted the secretary's charge. I do see that as a metric, right? Affordability as part of how we measure ourselves in the EV ecosystem. But let's talk about how we might be able to integrate now the secretary's charge maybe into this figure more visually, or maybe there's a separate figure that kind of talks more about the secretary's charge. But I agree with you. I think affordability, we also heard life cycle assessment and emissions. I think we also heard—what were some of the other ones. I don't think—if anyone wants to jump in on some of the metrics that we think we want to—

Laura Chace: It's less of a metric, Rachael, but I will say one comment that I've heard a lot from folks in my area is they question why cybersecurity is not on this. And even though I've said that was discussed and it's going to be incorporated, I actually think it goes to some of the issues that we talked about yesterday about trust. I think even just putting the word secure maybe under charging network and grid integration could address that. I think we should consider that. Just even using that word, it shows that is a core consideration. And I think that's really critical.

Rachael Nealer: Anyone else? I see Nadia, John, and then Mayor.

Nadia El Mallakh, Xcel Energy: So, echo affordability and cybersecurity. What I was thinking, too, is some of the subterms to sustainable, in my mind, that's resilient. That's secure. That's affordable, right, for it to be sustainable. So, I think one other, as we're working through this today and beyond, is how do we define some of these terms. So, I had some similar thoughts and perhaps even thinking about some of the crosscuts maybe expressly calling out those words. But just echoing that kind of thought for one potential approach there.
Rachael Nealer: Yeah, and I do think that some metrics and some of the overarching things is probably going to be different in different areas, right? And I think how we define it is really important. John.

John Bozzella, Alliance for Automotive Innovation: Yeah, I just I think the metrics are critically important. I think this is a sort of a high-level point of view about the working group. And I think that the conversations that we're having about affordability, that's a critical metric. The conversation we're having about cyber, and data access, those types of things, I think all come out of the work we're going to do. I get a little bit worried if we're going to add a lot of verbiage to this. Because what's going to happen is the more you add to this, the more obvious certain things that are left out.

This is really a good high-level framework. And I think the work that we're talking about now is cyber, critical, affordability—absolutely, probably one of the most important metrics I can think of at the integration of the charging network in the vehicle. Cyber, at the intersection of charging network in the vehicle. I think that has to work out through the working groups. And then we can come back and take another look at this. Because some things may rise to the top and some—but I'm looking forward to hearing the working groups tackle some of these things.

Rachael Nealer: Mayor Giles.

Mayor John Giles, City of Mesa, AZ: I love this. It's well done. And it's clear. And I think it does a great job of summarizing what our priorities are. This is what happens when a smart person sits down and creates a good work product, and then you hand it to a committee— [LAUGHS]

Hanging Christmas ornaments on it, and after a while it's incomprehensible. So, I hope—this feedback is important. But at the same time, I hope it doesn't create a work product that's not as good as what we started with. So, having said that, the secretary's charge, I thought was really great.

And it told us that our purpose in being here is to facilitate the widespread vehicle—widespread vehicle electrification, the adoption of that technology. But again, I kind of reflect back on yesterday's presentation from J.D. Powers, that's happening, right? I mean, so I think what we're here to solve a problem that is not a problem. The country is adopting electric vehicles. That's going to happen, and industry is adopting electric vehicles.

So, the part of the Secretary's charge that I really found the most important is this, the final phrase, we're here to do that in a way that accomplishes the public good. And so, I think that's a nice overarching thing to remind ourselves of is, you know what, this is happening. The cow is out of the barn. We are headed towards electrification.

Adaptation is not a huge problem, you know. But at the end of the day, are we going to be glad that we did this? Or are we going to do it and are we going to look back on it and say, well, man that wasn't a huge mistake, we accomplished our goals. So, I would just love to see—my two cents is if we could slip that overarching– let's do this in a way that accomplishes the public good, that would be a little comforting to me.

Rachael Nealer: Great. Thank you. Rakesh, Cassie, then Mark.

Rakesh Aneja, Daimler Truck North America: I was going to comment on the metrics, but I'm not sure if I should offer my Christmas ornaments. [LAUGHS]

But I really liked Nadia's comments with respect to the sustainability theme. I think there are a lot of ESG relevant metrics that we can consider as part of this activity. Just to—we—I offered a couple via email, which were related to cost of ownership and life cycle assessment. But in general, a big topic for batteries or electrification is circular economy, and the raw materials, and the human rights component of it. So again, I agree that we don't have to plaster everything on this one slide. But it could be part of the metrics and the working groups. The subcommittees can prioritize which ones to go after. Very relevant for our cause here.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, and maybe just if I could mention. So, we've talked already a little bit about TRB doing similar things. I think industry is also doing some similar things in all of these areas. The states are doing similar things in all of these areas. We even heard from Michael, the different modal roadmaps that DOE is working on in coordination with an interagency group. So, I think that stuff is the stuff that is ripe for subcommittees, right?

That's what we want to invite the right people to give presentations to inform them what our thinking is, what our recommendations would be, where the gaps are for industry and government to fill. So, I just want to note that there. That we've got a lot of great people here, but our collective value is more than just the people in the room. It's us times all the people in our networks that we can bring in to elevate, highlight good work that's already happening and coordinate with it over the life of this EV working group.

Cassie Powers, National Association of State Energy Officials: One thing I just wanted to add was to what extent government should be involved and how in supporting consumer education and awareness. I know it was discussed yesterday, but in the spirit of trying to get this network out as efficiently as possible, is there a role for government and industry to work together to raise that awareness? And I'm not quite sure where that fits on the chart, if anywhere, but something to add.

Rachel Nealer: Yeah, I thought it was a really great discussion yesterday and definitely something worth exploring because I do think there's a really important who has what role aspect to that conversation. I think Chair Mallory actually was the one that brought up, government can tout from the mountaintops that this is the right thing to do, or this is the best outcome for this. It's not even the right thing to do, right? But it could fall on deaf ears, if it's not presented the right way, not messaged the right way, not coming from the right people. So, I do think there's an element of who does what that is really important for consumer awareness. Mark.

Mark Dowd, Zero Emission Vehicle Fleets: Chair was also talking about the trust that government is not necessarily the most trusted voice. To John's point about the why, right, the why is kind of subtle, right? And what I get a little confused about is, we spending a lot of time, I think, on what but really it's the how. I know for—from Crystal, Vicki, and I's perspective, we're right now trying to turn over 600,000 vehicles. And it's very much about the how. And so, in other words, the subcommittees right now are trying to lay out what it is we're going to do. And then the next part is how we're going to do it in terms of sequencing.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, I think we have to agree on a scope first and then figure out who wants to be involved in those conversations and start fleshing out what the goals metrics and actionable recommendations might be. So yes, I agree, I think we need to get to how very quickly. I think there's an urgency that we heard by such high-level leadership being here, period, right. There's an urgency. You guys all know the urgency as well. You are all here as well. You have day jobs, right? So, I do think we need to get to the how very quickly. And I agree. I think—I think Mayor Giles you said yesterday, we're winning hearts and minds, right. And I think we are on the right path there.

But we still have a lot of technical things to work out. We need to figure out how this is all going to work together. You know, what's really striking to me is Elizabeth talked about how the Tesla network is so reliable, 97% reliability. Well, that's great, but that's what happens when you design and engineer a vehicle to work with the EV equipment, or the EV charging equipment, right?

It's got to work every time. But now we're opening that up. And we're trying to figure out the interoperability aspect of more vehicles, more charging equipment. So, things like that, how we do that, how the government does it, how industry works together to make that work is really important. And I think the devil's in the details. So, I think getting to the how is really, really important really fast. Crystal, John, Kofi.

Crystal Philcox, Federal Acquisition Service: Yeah, I really appreciate this conversation. And I appreciate all of the discussion about outcome metrics and as well as metrics that will help us assess along the way how our progress is going. And really appreciate the comment from Mayor Giles of public good because that's why I'm here. And Mark mentioned trust as well. So, I think one of the things that we want to—thinking of all those things together, I think one of the things that I want to make sure happens, and open to any kind of conversation about how we get there, but some sort of standard experience across the board, right?

So that if you are an EV owner or driver, that you are having a similar experience every time you pull up to a charging station anywhere in the country. And that I think is what is going to start to change hearts and minds. It's going to start to bring more trust that somebody is paying attention, right. And that you have someone kind of watching to make sure that it is going to be something that's for public good when we get done. So, thinking about that experience and who influence that experience, and how we get to that some experience that's more standardized across the board.

Rachael Nealer: Kofi, John, and then I think then we're going to wrap because I misread the tick tock, and we are a little bit over. But we will have some time to move to the different rooms. And Rachael will pass out the index cards so that you guys can start jotting down your thoughts on each one of the subcommittees. But, Kofi, please.

Kofi Wakhisi, American Planning Association: Yeah. Thanks, Rachael. I think it would be helpful for me at least to have a curated list of a lot of the research and initiatives that you're saying are maybe underway or about to be underway. Because we could include that in our subtopics, for example, and understand the—expect like what deliverables might be available to us while we—but I don't—I would love to take that on myself. I just—I'm not sure where to start.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's a good point, Kofi. I do think we want to do a little bit—so, I think this is a bit cyclical. I think we need to spend a little bit of time on scoping out what these things mean to us, and then we can start pulling in more of the resources, get some of that foundational knowledge that we can share among us. And then we'll have to stay on top of it because this is a dynamic area. Lot of people are working on it.

So, we'll probably request presentations from the government agencies but also industry on their products that they're putting out from now until the end of this working group, right? Like we want to continuously feed that information in so that we are making the most relevant recommendations. So, I definitely think because grid integration is a big term, right. So, I think we just need to hone in like what does grid integration mean to this group. And then we can pull in all of those resources. We have a lot. We have a lot to pull from, which is really great. John.

John Bozzella: Sorry, very briefly. I think public education is important, but there are so many organizations and industry sectors already doing it. The most important public education this group can focus on is facts on the ground. Reliable, accessible, affordable, infrastructure that supports more vehicles every day. Those facts are going to educate the public much more significantly than a statement about the importance of EVs because that's what the consumer research we're doing says. When people see charging infrastructure publicly available, they know the technology is ready, and they're more inclined to consider purchase. That is the most important educational task that this group can take in my personal opinion.

Rachael Nealer: Thanks, John. Great. Well, thank you for the initial thoughts. We are going to break into our discussions. Thank you to Mike, John, and Nadia for agreeing to be the leads. So, they will be the ones—I've given them a sneak peek into what the questions are and how we've formatted this session. So, they will lead you through the discussion. We have the cards. Rachael, do you want to explain the cards?

Rachael Sack: Sure. Before we break, because we know everyone has ideas for all of the three subcommittees, and you can't be in more than one place at a time, please take a moment to just write down your top two topics that you'd like each subcommittee to address. It can just be a short statement. But this way we have it and can share it with that subcommittee as they meet. So, the green cards—green, red, blue—align with the—green, medium and heavy duty; red, charging networks; blue, grid integration. Please take a moment right now and then we'll collect those cards and bring them to your subcommittees as you're meeting so that you have everyone's information and ideas to work through.

We are going to use the time, a little condensed from our agenda, but about an hour to have you guys digest that information and start to prioritize what is it that that subcommittee wants to focus on given what you heard from Rachael about the timeline of things, external stakeholders, or others that you want to bring in, and ultimately, what you're going to define as your goals for your subcommittee to focus on to be able to bring back and present to the government. So, just take a moment. And when you're done, you can just, I guess, I'm going to– you can hand them over to me as we break out. And then we'll shuffle them and bring them to the leads that are posted here.

For our breakouts, if you are in the charging network group, you are staying here. If you are in the medium and heavy-duty group, you are going with Julie and Sara to a conference room. And then the grid integration group—is Steven in the room? Steven. Steven and I will bring you there. But, Steven, if you could bring them and then I'll meet you there as I shuffle the cards. So, grid integration follows Steven. Medium and heavy duty follow Julie. Charging network stays here. And when you're done with your cards just bring them to me on your way out, all right.

Rachael Nealer: And we will do—so each of the leads is going to give a report out of the discussion afterwards for everyone to comment on in here on the subcommittee discussion.

Rachael Sack: And if I could just add for those watching on Zoom, we're going to pause given our working—our breakout sessions. But you'll be able to hear back, like Rachael just mentioned, the breakouts from all the discussions. So, we will return around 11:15. OK, thank you. Remember the date is close to on schedule as possible.

So, thank you for the challenge of reading Everyone's handwriting and navigating dozens of note cards. I hope it was helpful to at least see what people are thinking in their heads, especially if they weren't at your table, for your breakout. So right now, we're going to ask the first of three breakouts to report back to us. And I asked John if he could start with the charging network group. We're going to ask John if you can summarize, especially your next steps and the decisions of what you prioritize, maybe in about 10, 15 minutes. And then we can—

John Bozzella: Oh, my gosh, I can do it in five.

Rachael Sack: OK, five is perfect. [LAUGHS]

I don't doubt that this group will have questions, or comments, or tie-in what you all talked about in your own discussions because just hearing these different threads, there's lots of connections as we suspect. All right, so I'm going to turn it over to you, and then we'll go through questions.

John Bozzella: OK, Thanks, Rachael. And thanks to all of you because we've got a lot of excellent perspective, questions, comments, or challenges on the cards. And we spent a good deal of our time looking at them and identifying themes. And so, combining your themes with the secretary's char—or the chair's charge, we decided to organize the discussion in terms of outcomes, public goods. And we identified three or four, depending on how you count them. The first category, the first public good, the first set of outcomes is around accessibility and affordability. So, in other words, the idea that the charging network needs to be accessible and affordable.

The second public good we defined that is very clear in the themes from the cards is the idea of reliability, right. It has to work. It has to work all the time every time. And it's got to be interoperable between vehicles and charging. So, there's a whole set of reliability public goods that we need to achieve.

And the third or fourth, again, depending on how you count them, is that the charging network needs to be sustainable. And the sustainability idea is, obviously, speaks to sustainability and the combination of the work we're doing with the grid group. But also, sustainability from a business perspective. We heard commentary yesterday about the idea that there has to be a business case for charging. And so, when we talk about sustainability, we mean sustainability also from a business perspective. And so those are the public goods. Those are the big outcomes.

So then as we start to—as we started to get into scope, we identified—we took the scoping and created three buckets. And the first bucket, in terms of the scope of the subcommittee work, is where to build charging, right? What is dispersion look like, urban and rural? How does grid capacity support dispersion and where to build?

There's an aspect of land use planning, and zoning, and building codes that plays into where to build. There are questions, and this gets also to the idea of sustainability. There are questions about wealth creation, the opportunity to create business opportunity through the development of charging network.

There are inter-state right of way questions with regard to where to build as well as strategic placement post-NEVI, right? Like what does the overall network look like. We had a lot of conversation in the workgroup about the fact that there are a number of different charging network initiatives taking place. There's a lot of focus on NEVI in this group. But there's also a Tesla super charging network that's already built out. There are a series of EV SC networks that are built out. There is a consortium of automakers building out a network.

At some point, we've got to figure out—we have to take an inventory and understand where all that is, what the pace of that is. And I jumped to a next step, but we'll come back to that. And then the last piece in that where to build bucket is this idea of future proofing. And it's incredibly complex because future proofing relates to grid capacity. Future proofing relates to speed of charging. Future proofing relates to interoperability between the charging network and the vehicle itself, right. So, there's a whole future proofing category in that bucket.

Second bucket in scope of work is how to build. So, safety, security, workforce considerations. We felt like we needed to understand a little bit more about the workforce required and the standards of workforce required to build out this network as quickly as vehicle market developments require it. We talked—we identified the need for quick and affordable grid upgrades to support this, right. There's a very, very significant interplay between all three of these categories, obviously. And so, this is like a big one. I'm sure the grid people were saying the same thing going the other way. And so, there's clearly that synergy.

Supply chain crosscutting, obviously, the extent to which grid transformers and other, like E-steel and all these things, are not available for grid developments, that slows down the charging network, right, so supply chain. I mentioned, permitting. This is also important in how to build category. In terms of how to build, we had a good discussion also about funding accessibility, right, to make sure that this is accessible, that funding, federal funding and other funding is necessary to support hard to reach networks. Barack made a point about tribal—availability for tribal areas for funding, for example. And then interoperability in how to build category.

And then the last bucket in our scope was operations. So again, to review, where to build, how to build, and then now operation, right. And this again gets to interoperability, station to network, vehicle to station. Operation also includes pricing. Pricing transparency, how it's priced. It also includes reliability, accessibility, payment, cost to charge, all of those things. So that's how we described our scope. A note about what might be out of scope. We had a good discussion yesterday, for example, about affordability. And one of the themes of the affordability discussion yesterday was vehicle affordability.

So, we think that that's something we have to keep an eye on because we think the development of the charging network and the development of robust supply chains both will encourage vehicle affordability. But we don't think that it's in scope to directly address vehicle affordability. So, it's something we have to continue to keep an eye on. There's probably a metric associated with responsibility—excuse me, affordability that we can look at. But we didn't really specifically reach that in terms of these are the incentives that are required, or this is the right sort of price for a vehicle.

OK, next steps, we need metrics. Like I loved what Rachael said at the beginning of the meeting today. I loved what both secretaries and especially Secretary Granholm said about the idea that we have to have metrics. We couldn't agree more. We have to define them. Like what are the metrics that define those public goods, affordability, accessibility, reliability, and sustainability? So, we as a subcommittee want to start to look at the research and then further get your feedback and other feedback about what are those definitions.

We need to do baselining, next steps baselining of, as I mentioned earlier, take an inventory on what dispersion looks like, where is it today, and where is it going, so we can identify gaps. We're trying to figure out what the government's role and responsibility is in that vis a vis the public sector. But there is a see the whole chess board aspect of dispersion that I don't think we've grappled with yet.

Second or third, we need to look at the work already being done by the Joint Office on minimum standards. And we need to figure out how they get communicated to the public. There are two aspects of these minimum standards. One is what they require of the developer of the charging network. But there's also an aspect of the minimum standards. What they communicate to the public. Like when I'm driving down the road, I want to know that the station my app shows me is working. And I want to know that it's safe, and that it's well lit. And that it takes any payment that might be in my wallet. And so, we've defined as a next step thinking about how that works from the consumer's aspect, not just the developer of the network's aspect.

We think there's some work force baselining that we need to do, some status baselining. Some of us who are on the industrial side of the EV transformation are aware of a project already taking place with the Department of Energy and the Department of Labor on workforce standards related to the development of the EV industrial base, what is required of the workforce for battery plants, and other components, and those types of things. We think there's probably a similar exercise that probably needs to take place. We've got to get Kevin's input and others about what role, if any, there is for some baselining in the workforce space.

And then lastly, baselining with regard to public planning. Where are building codes required? It seems like the definition of insanity that we're allowing buildings to be built today whether they're commercial or residential that are not charging ready. Like, are we kidding? So those types of things, business codes, zoning, permitting, and other public planning aspects, we need to do some baselining there and understand where it's working, where it's not. And then from there, define what the appropriate local as primarily and maybe state requirements are. So, that's a quick review. Let me ask my colleagues in the subcommittee whether there's anything that I missed or should be addressed before we open it up to the group. You good?

Charles Brown, Equitable Cities: You did a fantastic job, John.

John Bozzella: OK, all good?

Doug Greenhaus: I think it's a good summary. And I thank you very much for shepherding us through the process and staying away from the AM radio issue. [LAUGHS]

John Bozzella: Yes, no, we're not—that's not in scope. It's in scope somewhere else, but not in this group, not today.

Rachael Sack: Great, thank you. For the other groups that met, are there any particular connections you want to highlight? We'll get into details of your breakouts after lunch. But anything you want to share that really resonated with what you heard from this group? Yes.

Denise Gray, Department of Energy: Just real quick, Bethany Jones out of the DOE is the one handling the workforce development activity.

John Bozzella: Oh, that's right.

Denise Gray: Bethany, thank you.

Speaker: I think you mentioned the quick affordable grid updates—upgrades, and I would say that definitely aligns with this one.
Rachael Nealer: I had a couple of things that I wanted to reflect on. I really like how you laid this out. I like that numbered things, and like we're really trying to organize our thoughts here. A few things that I think are important to keep in perspective is when to make decisions, when to take action because this is an evolving network. We're never going to have perfect information, especially as we're building out even just the charging network itself.

So, like what information does this group feel is good enough to start making more investments or other types of decisions. And specifically, on the minimum standards, I just want to point out that, in the title itself, they are minimum standards, right? They are absolutely bare minimum that we, as we develop it, think are required to have the foundation of an interoperable, convenient, reliable, and equitable charging network. I would love if this EV working group focused on what else is needed, what else can we actually add on to those minimum standards to ensure that the customer is driving up to a station in Ohio and Nevada and having the exact same experience.

I know NASEO and the states are also working on this. But it's patchwork right now. We're all doing this in parallel. And it's definitely what the Joint Office is here to help with. But I think an industry perspective, especially since you guys can bring in some of the consumer perspective in a way that the government doesn't have access to, that would be incredible. I think that could really move the needle on like not only what are the minimum standards but then what does industry think is required in order for this business model as EV ecosystem to be successful.

John Bozzella: I love that. And I just one—and I don't think I mentioned it sufficiently to represent the group's discussion. One of the things that came out, along those lines specifically, is the fact that the minimum standards or even something beyond minimum standards aren't transparent to the customer. They have no idea, right? And so there is the idea of almost like a real-time—like an application, like a real-time indication of what you're—like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval, a thumbs up, some sort of digital sort of representation of what that is that the customer gets, in addition to what the developers of the network are expected to do.

Rachael Sack: Is there anything anyone put on their index card that you didn't feel was incorporated given the priorities identified that you want to bring to the table or ask why not because there were lots of ideas on the cards. And I think a lot of them did lend themselves to similar themes. But anything that you felt like was missing or you want to inquire about? That means you did a stellar job.

John Bozzella: Oh, I just—oh, I'm sorry.

Nadia El Mallakh: Go ahead.
John Bozzella: Before Nadia mentions, the cyber discussion, I didn't—I don't think I referenced it. But we did talk about cyber and data access in the context of both how to build as well as operation and reliability. So, there was a lot of talk about that. I do think it's sort of baked into that aspect of it.

Laura Chace: I would say that, I would imagine that would be a part of what Rachael just mentioned.

John Bozzella: Yes.

Laura Chace: What else is needed on those minimum standards, that's how I would view it—

John Bozzella: Got it.

Laura Chace: —personally.

John Bozzella: That's helpful. Thank you.

Laura Chace: I think there are because there are existing standards for cyber. And I would argue, not getting into that, they're not sufficient. There could be more done, so like what are those areas.

Charles Brown: And just to be clear, we expanded security to be not just cyber, but safety and security overall.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, physical security. Nadia.

Nadia El Mallakh: So, I think it's implicit there but just thinking, and we'll talk about it on the grid one, but information early and often. And I think we've done a great job working with the states for NEVI on where sites are going to be located to understand capacity and needed upgrades, et cetera. So, information to your local utility before you even think you should be talking to them, talking to them. So, some guidance potentially around that.

John Bozzella: That's great.

Rachael Nealer: Laura.

Laura Chace: I do have one question. I didn't put it on the card, but that just brought it up, which is when you guys talked about the siting of stations was there a consideration given to ancillary services because, for example, I'm a mother. My kids are older. But a barrier for perhaps a mother or a parent with small children could be stations that do not have where you can't buy water or you can't go to the bathroom. Again, safety, personal safety, I think that's a real—that doesn't have good lighting. I think those are real– those are metrics that the consumer is going to make decisions based on. So, I think they're really important. And I think they need to be considered in the siting.

Rachael Nealer: I would also add we've gotten feedback on locations that can discriminate against race as well. Neighborhoods that are unsafe for people to go to particularly feeling comfortable in that neighborhood. And just making sure that everyone– that it's well lit. That, I think, there's also—we're designing these for able-bodied people too, and so making sure that we're taking into consideration various levels of disability and being able to access. So, I assume that's in the accessibility component of it, especially if I know Kelsey well. But yeah, I think there's a handful of components of that how consumers are making decisions based on gender, race, ability, et cetera.

John Bozzella: Yeah, that's great comments.

Charles Brown: Not only that we had equity as a crosscutting piece, so it's in all the buckets accessibility, reliability, and sustainability. And so, gender equity, inclusion, disability, rights, et cetera is part.

Rachael Nealer: Mark, did you—

Mark Dowd: Just building on Laura's and Rachael's point on cyber. We on the federal side are struggling with this mightily trying to set standards. I know working with you guys when you're first doing it, it is a minimum standard. How are we thinking about how we're going to build that out? Like is it industry standard? Is it—are we getting NIST involved? In other words, like that is a multi-determinative process that does not feel easy.

Rachael Nealer: So, I do think that there is a lot of work. It's very similar. Like we're running in parallel. We're trying to solve a lot of different solutions all at the same time. Joint Office is working actually very closely with other agencies on cyber, including the White House cyber. White House has very specific cyber mandate. And they are so—I think maybe what I can take as a note is like let's get some updates on that.
Let's figure out the ecosystem of where people are working on cyber because it does break down silos. You know, DOE alone has Cesar, our cyber office. And we also now have the Joint Office that's focused on EV charging as it relates to cyber. We've got the White House initiative. We have NIST. So, there's a lot of different components here. So, I think—

Mark Dowd: DOD—

Rachael Nealer: —we can do it—yeah.

Mark Dowd: DOD is involved as well.

Rachael Nealer: DOD, yeah.

John Bozzella: Yeah, and just one just to finish that. There are also—NHTSA has cyber policies and requirements for the vehicle. And so, the vehicle is already hardened against potential cyber intrusions at any threat vector, one of which is the charging port. So, like, I think you have to make sure that's integrated as well.

Crystal Philcox: I would also—I would just add that I'm also on that White House group. And so, they're focused a lot on generation and production of energy as opposed to—and EV charging is one of their areas that they're looking at. But they're really—it's a much broader perspective that they're looking at. So, if we can get specific on chargers, that would be helpful.

Rachael Sack: Any other comments or questions? Yeah.

Mark Dowd: In terms of timing, how do—we struggle with this a little bit in the grid side. We've got a report in 2025. And we shouldn't wait till 2025 for cyber. How should—

John Bozzella: I agree.

Mark Dowd: How should we start thinking about that?

Rachael Nealer: I would say let's get all the ideas out on the table first, and then we can start thinking about prioritizing. I think there are probably some ideas that lend themselves to turnarounds. You know, actually, Rachael and I were consulting about who we wanted to go first. And we thought charging network should go first just because it's here, right? We are actually doing it.

So, there's probably a kind of immediate urgency to the charging network whereas maybe the grid integration because it does take a long time to implement some of these solutions, while we should be acting now and thinking about it now, maybe that's ripe for a later report or activity. So, I think we want to maybe get everything out on the table first and then figure out how this stacks up in our urgency. And I think reasonable actions too. What can we do right now? Not just how urgent it is.

John Bozzella: Just our final report out. I should have mentioned this earlier. My comment, rather, is that you have a question, does the subcommittee want to meet before the next EV working group, and we've answered: yes. And I think it's for that reason. I think we felt there's more prioritization that we need to do given that we're up and running already. So—so, we are going to take that on to meet again soon to try and sort of further prioritize.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, and I think to thinking about how we start pulling other people in, other resources, we can be very helpful in making those connections, giving you guys the people, and the reports, and publications. I mean, obviously, all of you have access to your networks as well. But we're happy to support that. If you guys are like, hey, I want to get the download on this thing because we've identified it as an early priority, we're happy to help with that.

Rachael Sack: So, I think I'll use this time to bring us into our lunch break but tell you a little bit about the afternoon. So, like with this report out, and thank you very much for it, we'll hear from the other two groups with similar discussion. And then we'll hear from the public. So, the idea is between these discussions, the public comments, then you'll have as much information as possible for today that will give you a half hour to regroup as a subcommittee just to bring it all together and just identify those actions.

If it's scheduling a meeting, if it's wanting to talk to the other subcommittee and coordinate on something, or another comment sparked a question, we just want to give you a little time while it's still fresh. And so that'll be the remainder of our afternoon where you're hearing from the groups and the public and being able to discuss them. And then you'll come back at the very end with just five minutes for each subcommittee to tell us exactly what's your next step. Did you have a question?

Laura Chace: I do have a general question for later which is I think for me, at least, it would be really helpful to get some guidance on what actually needs to be completed by the next meeting because—what needs to be completed and in what format? Is it continued ideation? Is it something like—because there's not a lot of time. We've got the holidays. There's multiple—so, how do—helping us—

Rachael Nealer: You all volunteered your time. You have day jobs.

Laura Chace: Yeah, so that would be super helpful to get a little bit of a sense of what is actually expected so that we can then do our best.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, let's spend some time on that maybe after the other two report outs. I want to help you guys really set the—like let's get ready for success, right. Let's not bite off more than we can chew at first. Let's not think we're going to write a 20-page cybersecurity brief before we get to the next meeting. Let's maybe just tackle some early, initial steps that are important to us and ramp up in a way that we feel comfortable, taking into consideration holidays, day jobs, et cetera.

So, I would say let's drive to that last session of very clearly articulating what are the next steps, probably, like three next steps per subcommittee, and having a lead person. Who's going to be responsible? Who's going to send the email? Who's going to schedule the meeting? And then maybe we even have a report out type of time in the next meeting where we can reflect on that. Yeah, and I think one of the most important things, since we're meeting every 120 days, right? That's pretty frequent for a volunteer organization more or less.

So, like what do you guys need, right? Like put us on alert to in the next meeting get you, if we think cybersecurity is a priority, we will line up cybersecurity presentations for you. If you think grid integration is—you want utilities to come and speak, like let's line that up. I also think that a lot of those conversations can happen at a more detailed level at the subcommittee. So, just figuring out what do we need the whole group for, and then what can the subcommittees feel empowered to do in between meetings.

But yeah, I think our—it even says, three to five actions. So, I think that's what we're driving towards is a subcommittee, three to five actions, who's doing this, and maybe even if it's a priority. Like backups of who's doing those, so that if someone gets sick, or someone has a holiday, that they weren't able to get it done before, something like that, they're able to pass it along.

Rachael Sack: OK, so, I believe everyone received information on lunch. Is there anything else I need to announce on lunch? I think we're good. We do have printouts of the list that was emailed in the back. If you need it, you can see Kim. And then we'll escort you out, if you are assuming everyone's going outside for lunch.

We will resume sharply at 1:15, so please give yourselves time to go back through security like we did yesterday, at probably—I don't know—12:45 or 1:00 arrival. And we'll start back at 1:15 hearing—which group did we say? The grid—grid integration will be next, OK?

Rachael Nealer: All right, so I think we are jumping back into report out. And the next one we are going to do was grid integration. So, we'll have Nadia give a summary of the group discussion. Are there any questions, or anything we need to address before we launch into report outs? Awesome. Thank you so much. Nadia, the floor is yours.

Nadia El Mallakh: Well, thank you for the comments. A lot of great feedback. To summarize, we took them and tried to bucket them into some high-level categories. You'll see some themes emerging here. But our eight categories were supply chain, speed, regulatory, affordability, education/business models—you might argue if they should be together, but we put them together– grid readiness, partnerships, and then clean/carbon free—that can apply to several different components.

So, we thought about those areas and then tried to think—classify them as a what and a how. And so, we attempted to prioritize and create four focus areas. So, we kind of, Rachael, stole the concept that you have the pyramid and the crosscutting components. So, our four focus areas are grid readiness, comprehensive planning, transparency/education/roadmap, and then finally, partnerships because we think that's going to be absolutely essential for grid readiness.

And then some of the other themes we thought truly were crosscutting. So, we have our original crosscutting components which are equity, of course, the workforce focus, and metrics. So, we are sticking with those, but we added three others, affordability, speed—we turn speed into crosscutting because we think that impacts our four key areas– and data. So again, our four focus areas, grid readiness, comprehensive planning, transparency/education/roadmap, and then, four, partnership. And then crosscutting are our original three plus affordability, speed, and data.

So, any questions? Well, maybe I was supposed to report out first before. Should I just keep going? OK. So as far as, and we'll dive into a few examples of these here in a minute. But as far as next steps, we really were focused on the baselining. I'll borrow your term. We call it slightly different but the same thing basically, understanding what's out there. Specifically, we talked a lot about tools, inventory. So, tools that have been created by the federal government, private sector, NGOs. How do we even have a landscape view of the tools to help us understand the baseline settings?

And then from there a gap analysis, so understanding what are the gaps, what's missing, what do we need. And then that will drive our metrics. The third step is our establishment of metrics. We did talk about a lot of—we talked about some examples. So, we'll give you a couple of concepts that we discussed.

So, under grid readiness, that's everything from supply chain, thinking about transformers, how do we get—that's a great concrete example we all know. After the pandemic, we saw a 400% increase in lead time for transformers in the industry. That's an area we actually think that pretty quickly, and we know there are ongoing discussions. We could see the federal government helping on that front. But permitting, we talked about permitting, technology, no regrets investments, things of that nature. How do we really think about that?

The comprehensive planning, again, that has—you can approach it from a variety of perspectives. But thinking about rural versus urban needs, medium heavy duty versus light duty vehicles, a lot of the topics we've discussed. We also from a grid planning perspective have to think about not just electrification of transportation, but electrification of buildings, natural load growth that will come through data centers and economic development. And typically, you have to look at the whole picture and not just plan for one piece. So, thinking, always keeping in mind, how do we think about this critically important EV piece but it's part of an umbrella of an energy—once in a lifetime energy transition.

And transparency, there was a lot of discussion about—somebody put in their comments the utility suite of programs, incentives, even understanding rates. So really helping to understand the utility suite. We kind of liked that. We thought it was a beefy stew. Delicious beefy stew. But so—so, that was—and we talked about understanding what's available, just some basic road mapping, education.

And then partnership, we kept that separate. But that truly is—there's a tremendous opportunity, quite frankly, for all of these entities to partner together. And we've been doing it in many different ways. But I think there's a lot more. And so that feeds into understanding the business models of a specific industry and the utilities. How do they function? How do they work? How can you align there?

And finally, I'll just note we spent a lot of time starting to talk about what are the short-term things we need to do versus longer—mid and longer term. We would look to probably make some recommendations before– I mean, we all felt like 2025 was a long way out. And the sense of urgency to move on certain components, we think, is probably greater. So, having some potential activities beforehand is something that we talked about. We definitely are going to meet again.

And let's see. A couple of items, and we'll reframe this, but this was just based with our final next steps. But we definitely want to meet. We would like to have an inventory, hopefully, by January of at least the federal programs that we talked about EPRI, EEI, other organizations, nonprofits are doing a lot of work. How do we leverage that versus reinventing the wheel? We did spend some time talking about some potential short-term, immediate steps vis a vis supply chain that could be very helpful. And we'll talk further about some no regrets and other things when we reconvene. So, I think at a very high level, what did I—team, what did I miss?

Speaker: That was great.

Nadia El Mallakh: Grid readiness, here we come. OK. So that's our summary.

Rachael Nealer: Awesome. Great. Let's open it up for discussion.

Laura Chace: Thank you for a comprehensive report out. Question I have is one of the things that kind of aligns from our group the medium heavy-duty group to your group is does the grid readiness, or even the comprehensive planning angle, does either of them address what I describe as the misaligned timelines and incentives between some of these transportation sector investments and some of the utility sector investments and regulations? In other words, the need for larger power sources within a given time frame, and how those two things aren't necessarily matching up? I think that's really critical. And so, I just wonder if that was part of one of those four priorities.

Nadia El Mallakh: Yeah, absolutely. So, the speed—so, that crosscutting, I think, touches on speed. I'm thinking about reliability. But absolutely, and we did discuss that, that we have to—right now, we are seeing situations where there is not alignment. And then also taking a step further, what do you do? So, what are the temporary solutions, right? And how do we work to facilitate this, some solutions, as the grid is being built out? So, it's not no, see down the road. It's OK, what else might we be able to do? But I think that goes back to some of the education.

And that many industries have not had to deal with the utilities in the way we're seeing. And so, they don't– there's kind of an assumption, I can just plug it in, right, or I can just get the infrastructure there. But just like you're going through with sitting of charging, I mean, that's siting for distribution, of feeder upgrades, the construction, the labor, the materials, the supply chain. All of that is, I'd say, charging is a microcosm of think about the entire grid, and substations, and what that's triggering, and the timelines there. So, there are a lot of great efforts to coordinate better there. But I think we also need to think about some interim solutions.

Rachael Nealer: Rachael, I feel like I accidentally started to facilitate for you. So, I'm passing it back to you. [LAUGHS] Sorry. Great names think alike.

Rachael Sack: It's OK. Rakesh, I see your hand up.

Rakesh Aneja: Yeah, so, a couple of comments which potentially intersect the grid integration and the medium and heavy-duty vehicles but even otherwise. And one of them is just piggybacking on your last point on the timeline or the speed, right. So, in our group, we also talked about the opportunity for some paradigms shift and how we do the business today in terms of customers coming to a firm order. This is the requirement for a particular site, and if we stack up all those processes and the stakeholders involved, it tends to be a multi-year timeline. Multiple stakeholders involved, and it's a very serial process.

So, which ones of those can be done in parallel where we're maybe anticipating demand of future electric vehicles? I'm talking from a medium-heavy perspective but applies to light duty as well. And are able to set some of those things in motion already? And it's tricky because today, it's dependent on a responsibility to the ratepayers and who's going to bear the cost of that investment. So, how do we solve that element of it. And are able to proactively do that investment in anticipation of demand.

Nadia El Mallakh: That's a great point. And I think the no regrets investment—certainly, we've been working, I know you all are working with EPRI, EVs2Scale as are many utilities. And there's a lot of great work there to understand. Where we are seeing concentrations of medium and heavy-duty fleets now and how we anticipate that will evolve in the future, which gives some certainty. And you can line that up with capacity and needs. And what we think, with the industry, I think, there's great opportunity to do no regrets investments.

Rakesh Aneja: Exactly. A lot of our vehicles are connected today. We can use that data to anticipate or predict dwell times, durations, and things like that. And identify those hubs which would be part of that no regret investment.

Nadia El Mallakh: One other item we talked about is standardization. So, there's that can cut across many different angles and avenues. But standardization also I think with some of the site design opportunities, and we were talking a little bit about this at lunch, kind of bucketizing.

So, how—yes, each site is unique, but there are some things that we can see. How can we replicate that? And even on the utility side, some of the things we've been doing is understanding, for example, for make ready work at a commercial site, what are components we know we're always going to need to have for certain sites and how can we maybe pre-order and have some inventory in stock to be ready. So, I think also from the industry side, there may be an opportunity to think about some different standards that we could apply for sizing.

Rakesh Aneja: And maybe a second comment is related to potentially a very specific need for medium and heavy vehicles as we anticipate future development and faster rates of charging, so megawatt charging standards. And now you imagine 50 types of trucks at a truck stop or a single location trying to draw these heavy loads, you're easily talking double digit megawatt type numbers 20, 25, for example. Mike in his presentation call them the larger load beyond the 10 megawatts, let's say. And that would be a unique requirement on the medium and heavy side and certainly from a grid integration or grid readiness perspective. Very specific intersection of our subcommittees.

Nadia El Mallakh: Absolutely. John.

John Bozzella: Yeah, I think there's a theme here. I agree with everything that's been said, and it does apply, I think, to the light duty sector. The one thing I just would want to add is that, I think, there's an opportunity for us to identify a set of metrics that unify all of the work groups. And you know, again, reflecting on the JD Power presentation from yesterday, and the idea that the light duty EV market is growing at two and one half to three times the charging, public charging network.

We're doing a lot of work in the industry, the auto industry sector, with NARUC, for example, and others. I think there are probably two or threevit isn't 10, and it isn't one. There's two or three or four at most metrics that we can identify. And if we're measuring them we're focusing on them. And if we're focusing on them, then we're looking for solutions. So, I would hope we would be able to identify what those key KPIs or key metrics are that indicate the particular gap, like the gap that Laura mentioned, the gap between the aspiration and the reality.

Rachael Sack: Does anyone else have anything that made it to your index card, but you didn't hear mentioned yet? Any things you feel are missing or you'd like to ask about?

Laura Chace: I have one. I didn't put it on the index card. But just curious, if was vehicle to grid technology solutions putting power back in the grid. Was that discussed? Because I think it's a longer-term item.

Nadia El Mallakh: Yeah, we didn't discuss that expressly but I think the comprehensive planning really looks at how do we think about that holistic planning, so generation side. So, we have to make sure that we're going to be able to produce the carbon-free energy that's reliable, transmission, the high-powered lines, the plug-in, and then the distribution system. I think that planning has historically been at the utility level, and in resource planning, distribution system plans that are filed with the commissions or the city council or public.

And then there's the customer sited or distributed energy resources, and how do those work together. We've already started some of those areas, like managed charging and things like that. But that's certainly something that down the road, I think. And there's a lot of—there are pilots actually in work. Like different utilities are working with the auto OEMs and others on vehicle to x pilots right now. So, it's definitely developing.

Laura Chace: I just want to add, yeah, I think it actually unites all three groups in a way because school buses are a great use case. And there's pilots going on with school buses. Obviously, if that's something that's going to become, I'm going to say, more standardized, right, in the light duty sector, that's something that the autos would need to be incorporating eventually. So, it would—you'd need all three groups working together on something like that for the longer term.

Nadia El Mallakh: Yeah, we didn't dive into all the details. I think we were thinking that's more longer term. Like there's the immediate kind of pieces, but absolutely.

Dean Bushey, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Just to amplify what you were just saying. And you mentioned the DERs. I think it's important to consider the requirements for battery backup systems, microgrids, solar, local power. What may be required, especially in California? So, I heard you mention it.

Mark Dowd: I was just going to say that's what we did talk about, so on-site storage, on-site generation—

Nadia El Mallakh: And we did talk about grid—

Mark Dowd: Oh, we talked about those too because we thought it was all the same bucket, you know. So, on the charging side, like Tesla's coming out with a bidirectional charger, that you can put in your home. So how do you handle all that I think falls into the same technology issues and same grid-based stuff that Nadia's talked about.

Rachael Sack: Any other comments or questions for the grid integration group? Rachael, do you have anything?

Rachael Nealer: Could I ask you to read that first list one more time?

Nadia El Mallakh: Sure—of our four—of the four focus areas?

Rachael Nealer: Yeah.

Nadia El Mallakh: OK, grid readiness, which is kind of our name…[LAUGHS] So talked about that a little bit. Comprehensive planning. This was kind of a weird one, but transparency/education/roadmap. We couldn't align on one term. And then, four, partnership.

Rachael Nealer: Thank you.

Rachael Sack: Great. Anything else from anyone for this topic? OK, well, thank you very much. All right, Mike.

Mike Roeth: Yeah, so medium and heavy trucks—I should say medium heavy duty because the first thing we did was take a step backward. And we said why do we need a separate group for medium and heavy duty. I mean, what's different about medium and heavy duty? And I'm glad we did that because it forced us to think about light duty vis a vis the heavy duty, medium duty, and so forth. And so, the rest of what I'm going to say kind of builds on some of what we talked about when we talked about what makes this part of the EV transition unique.

So, then we actually did make a decision right away on that the focus of this would be classes six to eight. So "medium duty," quote unquote, sometimes refers to all the way down to class three, sometimes six, seven. I mean, there's a lot of confusion there. So, I would bring up—and so, we said it was six to eight, all medium duty and heavy duty, which does include the transit buses and freight movement, which I talked about yesterday.
But it might also include—we're not sure yet—more vocational types of trucks. Those that are—maybe even garbage trucks, snow plow, dump trucks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, a little bit of a question there. But definitely we decided that work would be six to eight. So, for class three to five we do want it to be part of this overall effort and not forgotten. So, the USPS truck, the delivery vans, and step vans, and other sort of class three to 5 are actually a bigger player than they were 10 years ago with e-commerce and some other things.
So, with respect to the index cards, with all due respect, we didn't even look at them. We got busy, and we said we will assess all of those next steps so that we can look at how that maps to all this. So, then we got into what would be in scope for this subcommittee and what would be out of scope for the subcommittee. And so, it was a real brainstorming effort around what's in scope. A lot of discussion around standardization. We had a nice mix of some of us who spent our careers in heavy trucking and some others on the subcommittee that didn't have quite that experience.

So, it was really good to talk about standardization. We talked about whether that's software and APIs, or whether that's vehicle specifications, charging networks, and so forth. One example that comes to mind is charging port locations. And these trucks can be 50 long, right? So, where is the charge port and how do you do interoperability when one can be 50 feet or 100 feet, if you're going around corners of the vehicle and so forth. We talked about early high-volume market segments that are happening quicker than others.

We talked about regulatory considerations, what Rakesh just brought up about some of these actual depots, or addresses, or truck stops are going to need significant amount of power with very fast charging pieces. Now we'll do what we need to do around indexing, and sequencing, and trying to make it all not hit at one time. But the fact of the matter is there's a lot of power because we're moving a lot of weight. And we talked about what we wrote down as misalignment and government incentives for utilities and infrastructure and the vehicles themselves. Sort of this idea that the vehicles are coming and even to the point around passenger cars.

We had one more question about in scope. I don't think we really answered what was in scope or out of scope is the whole idea—it's kind of workforce development and consumer—the consumer thing. So, with respect to drivers, and mechanics, and so forth, we kind of see the alignment of TCO and total cost of ownership and business to business decisions here is helpful in the EV transition. And these trucks are tools, and so that's kind of we're not sure how much we need to do there versus maybe what we need to do in the public sector with cars.

Out of scope, we said that there, well, the class three to five. And then we also said there are some hard segments of trucking that we ought to just not worry about. I always use the example logging trucks in Saskatchewan. I mean, good for them. But do we need to get them to zero emission in the next 30 years. I'm not so sure. So, think about what maybe we don't focus on rather than the big impact areas.

And then another out of scope, which is kind of interesting, was brought up is around bridge fuels. So, things like renewable fuels, renewable natural gas, we had a quick spirited discussion that I'm sure will lead into the next few months around hydrogen—burning hydrogen in an engine. And how it fits in a helpful transition, or a hurtful problem, or whatever. So, that though we said, we were going to study it a little bit, but it was likely out of scope.

So, then as we were trying to boil all this into what do we do now, so we did get into some really healthy discussions around the next steps. So, one was defining priorities for us as a subcommittee. Start to sequencing activities, I mean, what are the– trucking is at a different place than cars. Cars are at 9%, trucks at 0.5% or 1% or something like ridiculously small number. So, we're at a different place and later. And so that helps us in some ways and maybe hurts us in other ways. But we felt like there were some definite things that needed to be done now to get that adoption up and some of the things that to be done later.

See if the other team members agree with me on that summary, but so we really want to spend some time over the next couple of months working on priorities, which includes how we look at total cost of ownership. And then two other things that actions will be taking is really getting into how we define requirements of electrification better. Those are two areas. One is vehicle specs and standardization, so what are the vehicle specs that are likely knowing that trucks are different all over, but what is sort of the common things. And then the electric demands from a charging standpoint. So how much and where. We talked about that just a few minutes ago.

And then lastly, for a couple of things that we currently have in scope, we think it's important for us as a subcommittee to make some statements around. So, over the next couple of months make us some statements around hydrogen, fuel cell, electric vehicles, being– we suggest definitely for trucking needs to be in scope of this EV working group. But what does that really mean? Some statements around that. Some statements around regulatory considerations, or facts, or realities. And then finally, these what we're currently calling bridges, like paragraphs, or like a position almost on those three in the short-term as part of the scope of this. So that was– yeah, that was pretty much it. We do promised to read all the index cards from all of you. [LAUGHS] Anybody that was in the room, anything I missed, or was too light on, or we should make sure we talk about.

Speaker: Good job though.

Rakesh Aneja: Good summary.

Mike Roeth: Thank you.

Rachael Sack: So, maybe we can give a preview of the index cards.

John Bozzella: Julie looked at them. [LAUGHTER]

Rachael Sack: We'll review them. Is there anything anyone has strong feelings about that they put on their index card, and you would want this group to know about today given what we heard? Kelsey, and then Crystal, and Danielle.

Kelsey Owens, U.S. Department of Transportation: Yeah, just from your presentation yesterday when you were talking about fleets kind of reorganizing how they work to allow electrification to take place, some best practices, or ideas, or any assistance that could be provided to industry on that?

Rachael Sack: Crystal, you’re next.

Crystal Philcox: Yeah, I did not give you an index card. But we have been talking to some hydrogen fuel distributors. And it sounds like they are building out distribution and ways to—that whole corridor between Seattle Canada is pretty much all built out at this point. So, I know they have trucks up there. So, I don't know—to signal to that industry that they're out of scope, I mean, I know we're called the electric vehicle working group.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

John Bozzella: We're suggesting it's in.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

John Bozzella: We're definitely saying it's in.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

John Bozzella: But we just think it's valuable to say why we think it's in.

Crystal Philcox: OK. OK, I misheard you, then, and I said that. That is completely out of context.

Dean Bushey: And the distinction between hydrogenized versus hydrogen fuel cells.

Crystal Philcox: Yeah, yeah, and I'm talking about the—
Dean Bushey: Fuel cells.

Crystal Philcox: —fuel cells, and even not fuel cells.

Mike Roeth: Yeah, so—so—

Crystal Philcox: There are liquid hydrogen distribution stations that they're building out along that corridor.

Mike Roeth: Yes, liquid hydrogen can be used in a fuel cell or in an engine. So, I think the question is, of course, the whole industry, government, and others are working on the pros and cons of hydrogen in an engine, burning in an engine. A pro is you can get the infrastructure going while the fuel cells are being developed and so forth. But we felt like this was an electric vehicle working group, and it should be based on battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell electric for the purposes of this group. But we're open to feedback, of course.

Crystal Philcox: There's just a nod to the industry to recognize them.

Mike Roeth: Yeah, OK.

Rakesh Aneja: If I can just chime in with one comment. So, fuel cell vehicles can be considered electric vehicles because the drive train is electric. So, from that perspective, even from a nomenclature or semantics, it fits with an EV working group, right. If you wanted to fit, it's an easier fit in. A combustion engine typically would not fit into this scope, but some of us would argue it's potentially a good complementary technology, at least, as a bridging technology in decarbonization. Overall, for hydrogen, we felt we should have a position paper or position statement, as Mike was alluding to, but maybe the timeline can be different because we cannot take everything on at the same time, right? So, there are near-term priorities and then potentially hydrogen as a second step, which can come later.

Crystal Philcox: Absolutely agree with that. Yeah.

Rachael Sack: Danielle.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: Sure, thanks. One of the cards you will find talks about data sharing. And the importance of or information sharing, right? Coming from the grid integration side, we think of everything as data. But information sharing to support that medium and heavy duty and grid integration piece. And I think that's a part that came up in our working group as well. And so, I'm not sure that I heard it in what you were talking about yet. It may be part of the solution set as opposed to part of the problem statement as laid out. But I wanted to make a—

Mike Roeth: No, I think it's an excellent point. I mean, these trucks are now data factories and like everything else in life, right. I mean, these trucks are—these trucks have had to be—I mean, I don't want to get into too much history. But we had Caterpillar, Cummins, and Detroit Engines in all six truck brands for like 40 years. So, how different components work together in a truck and how that, as we've gone to electronics, and electrification, and software, and so forth and all these CPUs on the vehicles and so forth, I think, they have become incredibly data—they're just—they're no different than cars, maybe even more so. And so, it is easy sometimes to forget letting the data lead the way. So, I hear—absolutely, I think we hear you really well.

Laura Chace: And we did talk about the need for that digital handshake. And that's what we talked about whether there's data standards, APIs, those types of systems to allow for sharing of information which ties into that.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: And there's both the data, data and then the customer information part and the previews, as the point Nadia was making, the previews to the utilities that—

Mike Roeth: Yeah.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: Somewhere between one to five years from now, you know, preferably five. We anticipate that we're going to need 25 megawatts in and around this location kind of stuff. So, just the planning differently, the proactive– we're talking about it as a comprehensive plan but proactive planning, yeah, planning—data sharing that supports planning. Thank you.

Mike Roeth: Yes.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: Data sharing that supports planning.

Mike Roeth: And this will be phased, right. I mean, it's one thing to know what a site might ultimately need for 100% of their trucks versus where they're at in the next early phases.

Rachael Sack: John, Nadia, Rachael, Mark.

John Bozzella: Yeah, just to finish that conversation. I think I 100% agree. That came up in our discussion as well on the light duty side, right, that sort of where the planning aspect of it. And obviously, you're such big users of power on a per unit basis relative to light duty that you're going to be leading the charge in a lot of ways, no pun intended. So, we have to figure that out. The work that we're all doing together I think in EV2Scale is a really good body of work that's developing that can be brought into this conversation maybe. That would make sense?

Mike Roeth: Absolutely.

John Bozzella: OK, so I want to switch gears really quickly. You mentioned a statement around regulatory; I think you said. OK, there's a lot of regulatory dynamics that are floating in this space, right, at the light duty, heavy duty, vehicle side, sort of utility side. What is it that you would suggest the working group articulate in the standards—in the, excuse me—in the regulatory space?

Mike Roeth: Well, it was off—the discussion it was offered quickly by one of us that it should be out of scope. And then it was like, no, we can't have it not in scope. So, we just had this whole debate around it, and we just chose to work on what that might look like whether that's like, I don't know what that—we didn't get around to any more than that.

John Bozzella: I think it's an important tension, right? Because I do think that it is, certainly on the vehicle side, it's a driver of adoption. And so, it's something I think we have to be cognizant of from a grid readiness perspective and from a charging network perspective. So, if that's the sense of it, right, which is we have to understand the extent to which market readiness is driven by industry investment and to the extent that market readiness might also be driven by regulation. That we have to be aware of both of those drivers. I would agree with that, if that's the thinking.

Rakesh Aneja: Yeah, may I comment on this topic. Sorry, going ahead of you a bit. So, from my perspective, this step that the Department of Energy and Transportation have taken, that this Joint Office, I applaud that it's unprecedented.

John Bozzella: Agreed.

Rakesh Aneja: I think it's showing leadership of America to the world as well. And to me, I'm trying to be—not trying to be—I want to be greedy and go to the next [INAUDIBLE] and bring in the regulatory piece in here as well, because I think the opportunity is so significant to do a win-win situation around it. Today's regulatory approach, if you're looking at penetration rates of ZEVs by a certain time, puts the onus on manufacturers to make those vehicles available, which I think most manufacturers are up for or trying their best to make those vehicle models available.

But what about the corresponding demand. If you're talking percent penetration, there has to be a business case of win-win for the customer as well. And I think therein lies the opportunity. If we don't mandate or incentivize the other elements at a very high-level product availability, infrastructure readiness, and cost elements, it may not necessarily be a win-win situation. And that was, I think, the opportunity if we are able to bring our EPA and carb colleagues into this conversation, that we would take this to the next level. And I would suggest it has to be firmly in scope.

John Bozzella: Yeah, I follow.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, and I maybe just to– I sat in on part of that conversation as well. I think it would be hard to do our job well without acknowledging, recognizing the opportunities that regulatory agendas present, whether that's at the federal level, state level, local level, right? There's a lot of different layers there. And so, I think the regulatory discussion was around all of those. It's not just, hey, we need to mandate this at this level. It's just how do we make sure that we're aligned in order to get to the things that we agree to.

John Bozzella: Right, and I think what I heard is both opportunity and risk in Rakesh's statement. And I think that's—it makes sense to me.

Rachael Sack: Nadia.

Nadia El Mallakh: Two things on regulatory. We did talk about that. And we got what's in scope, out of scope. We certainly were talking about it in best practices. But also, we were working under the assumption that jurisdictional, like what's within the federal jurisdiction stays within the federal jurisdiction, state, and local, but understanding and identifying best practices. So, I don't know if other groups address that. But that was one of our assumptions. So, something to discuss if others feel differently.

And then certainly, I would say grid readiness obviously a big focus on battery electric vehicles, but when we're talking about hydrogen or anything else that's going to require electricity, right? It’s actually hydrogen can be more intensive on electricity—electric generation. So, it depends on the use case. But again, just let's make sure we think about the grid readiness in a comprehensive fashion. That's all I have.

Rachael Sack: Rachael.

Rachael Nealer: Mike, wondering if you guys spent much time on the equity, work force development, supply chain side of medium and heavy duty? Just, I know that we talk a lot about, especially in poor areas, medium and heavy-duty electrification could really benefit the communities nearby. And those are often disadvantaged communities, underserved communities. So, I don't know if you guys have—

Mike Roeth: We didn't get to it. Obviously, it's—I mean—it's in our minds in our discussions. But I don't think we spent time in the hour we had on anything directly. I do think there is a, by nature, freight movement tends to be where populations are, or at least some of the domicile of the freight, or where these truck stops, and not so much the truck stops, but where the hubs are, around airports. They're around ports. They're around– bypasses around the 20 major cities in the country. And these big distribution things, and sometimes—and so it tends to be where people are as well. So, I guess, my—we will be—I think we all need to be intentional about it but—

Rachael Nealer: Workforce medium and heavy duty has very different workforce considerations.

Mike Roeth: Yeah, we did talk a bit—we did talk a bit about it, and I mentioned it in my comments a little bit about this, do we need to win hearts and minds or just minds? I thought that was a really—I don't know which one of us said it, but it was a pretty, I thought—it was pretty dynamic and good thought where—and I mentioned it yesterday. We're getting the trucking industry excited about these clean, great to drive. These are professional truck drivers. This is what they do. They drive a lot. So, if it's easier to drive it, that means a lot. So, there's pieces of that, but that's a good reminder.

Laura Chace: Yeah, I'll just add that we touched a little bit on the workforce in the fact that, if you look at the medium to heavy duty space, like there are almost two different work streams in a way in terms of what's happening in heavy duty trucking, what's happening in transit, school buses, that world where we did talk about the workforce needs are going to be sequenced because you already see those needs in that transit school bus space, whereas it's a little bit of a longer lead item in the trucking space, right? Because you don't have– that these don't penetration. And in this other world, right, if you look at private industry, public agency, where it's been ongoing and it's continuing. And those workforce needs are real and now. And so, we talked a little bit about the fact that we had to go back to it. But it would maybe be a sequenced approach.

Rachael Sack: Mark.

Mark Dowd: So, out of respect for some of the other policy officers that are with the White House, on the regulatory side, they are said—there are rules that are in process and consideration that impact the heavy-duty light duty. We should probably stay away from those. Just to make sure we're clear, but it does set up a question or a concern with regard to, and I think, Mike, you articulated it better—or I think it was you—there is—as adoption comes online for electric and hydrogen hangs out there as a second step, how does that—should we be addressing that piece in terms of is our [INAUDIBLE] to try to facilitate quicker adoption for electric, or are we also considering the fact that two to three years out there may be better or more attractive hydrogen electric solutions?
Mike Roeth: I would love to spend an hour on that. [LAUGHTER] I think trucking will be battery electric trucks and hydrogen fuel cell electric trucks, not an or. So, the discussion really becomes what are early adopters for battery going to—how do we encourage that to move fast and really a pretty nascent technology to that's going to improve, improve, improve, and then see where hydrogen—if that's sort of in line with your comment or question—

Mark Dowd: I think, it's actually—I appreciate that. So, our medium is different than heavy in terms of technology and investment. And I think its investment is the piece is that if I'm a trucking company trying to figure out where to invest, and I've got a compliance issue. And I've got to invest sometime soon. But if I can hold off and make the investment in hydrogen, I'm not going to make the investment in electric. And the consequence of that is the climate impacts don't get addressed.

Mike Roeth: Yeah, and it's actually more complex than that because of the natural gas idea, renewable natural gas. I mean, there are fleets moving quickly with a better sustainability solution than what they have today. But that might classically bridge to nowhere. That might be the bridge that they think is bridging them to the zero emission or that future. And so, there's a lot—lots.

Mark Dowd: So, the question is, do we address that, the conundrum—

Mike Roeth: Yeah, so—

Mark Dowd: —that the industry is facing in light of potential rulemaking in light of adoption.

Mike Roeth: Yeah, I think that was in line with a fair amount of the conversation we had around some of these in and out hydrogen, just the actually even the discussion around hydrogen combustion versus hydrogen fuel cell. So, I do think—

Mark Dowd: So, the auto industry went through this five or six years ago, you know. And there was competing technology companies with different—and, you know, and I think Secretary Chu made a decision which way, at least, the Obama administration was going that impacted that investment. And to me is where we are now. So—so, I'm not suggesting we solve it. I just was wondering if guys know this stuff— [INTERPOSING VOICES]

Mike Roeth: Well, yeah, our path forward was to create position papers or some statements out of our subcommittee around some of these points you bring up. I don't think it'll be easy.

Rakesh Aneja: I think your point is valid. Competing technologies, if I can use that term, I'd like to believe it's a friendly competition, healthy competition. But even within a particular propulsion technology, there is also this generational effect. With every generation, we are improving that technology. And that's a question our customers are asking.

Should they wait for the next generation because of cost improvements? And how much should they invest right now? What is the backwards compatibility? What type of parts and service support they can expect for the current generation? So, even within a generation, considering how fast the technology is evolving or expected to, that's a very important topic as well.

Mark Dowd: Excellent. Thank you. I look forward to the discussion.

Rachael Sack: Joung.

Joung Lee: I guess something I wanted to flag for the subcommittee is that for the state DOTs, a key consideration is being able to provide the roadway infrastructure that can accommodate obviously all sorts of vehicles. But the issue really rises a lot in heavy duty vehicles, obviously. Even the conventional heavy-duty trucks—the size and weight limits—that's a conversation that's always taking place. And the added weight factor for heavy duty EVs is already, I think, rising up and we're talking to Congress about should there be a separate limit for EV trucks. But what does that then mean for infrastructure, you know, readiness?

And can it accommodate something like that? So that's something I wanted to flag for you guys because even for non-heavy-duty vehicles, what kind of shocked me the other day is that Connecticut has a number of parkways that are only for light duty vehicles. But Connecticut DOT is banning Rivians on some of the parkways because the weight factor is already impacting their safety and the ability again to accommodate such vehicles. And that's something that we're looking at very closely and offer that for suggestion.

Mark Dowd: Just to that extent, the coastal one with the announcement of all electric, they move from the Ford Transit to the Ford E Transit. And the battery moved them from a light duty to a heavy to your point.

Rachael Sack: Nadia and then Kofi. You have another comment?

Nadia El Mallakh: Oh, I would say just on the workforce development, I think we talked about that being potentially a universal partnership opportunity with everybody here because from the utility perspective, from the auto, from truck, I mean, all of us, right, communities, getting ready the workforce that we're going to need to support this transition is absolutely critical. And we need to start now, and so we thought that was a great opportunity to partner and something that we should be thinking about probably shorter term to get started on. So just wanted to talk about that.

Kofi Wakhisi: Thanks, Rachael. Since John brought it up, the safety issue. In metro Atlanta, we're conducting a regional plan on this whole thing trying to achieve a lot of what we're trying to talk about here but specific to that area. Some of the public safety folks are coming to us saying that they are concerned about incident response and fire suppression.

And they're asking us to do like a risk assessment on pretty much all of our recommendations that from a public safety perspective. So, I don't think we've talked about public safety yet. So, I just wanted– I didn't know how that may be integrated, if that's—I don't think that's a crosscutting issue. But I don't think we spent much time talking about that in our, at least, in our subcommittee. But it sounds like an emerging issue.

Mayor John Giles: And I underline that, and I have— [LAUGHTER] I have talked with the National Fire Chiefs Association. And they need you to carry our water in this—at these meetings because this—there are some significant public safety concerns. At our local fire department, we roll on vehicle fires several times a day. And that's an incident that's resolved in minutes, unless it's an electric vehicle in which case, sometimes it's resolved in days. And so, we need to figure out where that issue fits in this process.

John Bozzella: Can I just comment on that? From the light duty manufacturer's perspective, I think this is an important conversation. We're already working with fire organizations like the fire chiefs and others on exactly this. So, there's a whole training aspect to this work on educating firefighters and fire departments about the technology, and about fire suppression, and the approaches. And I think that's that maybe goes under the category of maybe a briefing that this task force might be able to benefit from is the current work being done and then we can identify what the gaps might be beyond that and what the actual to do might be for this group. But it is something that I think certainly from an auto manufacturer's perspective, we recognize, and we've already begun to develop best practices and training modules for that.

Rachael Sack: OK, we have time just for a few more comments. So—and then we're going to move over to our public comment period. So, we'll do Dean, Victoria, and Doug.

Dean Bushey: Great. So, I think safety should always be number one. And it's number one for most of the truck stops, definitely for BP Travel Centers of America. If you haven't been to a truck stop, especially one that has a food court and 400 parking spots with eight bays. It's very, very busy. And now we're talking about introducing high powered charging along with transitional fuels like hydrogen and renewable natural gas.

There's a limit to the number of fuels into an integrated energy company. We provide whatever the customer wants. But you start introducing these alternative fuels, now you're messing with the operational flow of the truck stop which is already at capacity. You're reducing fuels that are sometimes a little more flammable or highly combustible. So, the safety factor always has to be top of mind. And I think on all these discussions, especially at a busy, busy truck stop with all these fuels, it needs to be one of the things we lead with.

Victoria Stephen, U.S. Postal Service: Yeah, thank you. I think it's a really great point. And we know that there's a lot of development activity to get, for example, first responders up to speed, to give them the skills, and the capabilities. We don't expect that to be in place everywhere that we go. So, our deployment plans include explicit outreach to first responders in each community where we plan to deploy because we just don't know that everything will align in every community where we're going to be operating.

So, that's in our actual project plans to initiate that ourselves and make sure that the folks we partner with have that handshake. They know what we're deploying, what we're going to have where, and how we can work together for support. Thank you. Doug.

Doug Greenhaus: I was just going to say 100% agree with Kofi and with Dean and others that it should be a cross-cutting issue. In addition to the fires, you've got the technicians who need to be trained up on the high voltage systems under the hood and emergency responders coming to crash sites also have to be very conscious and well trained on dealing with the high voltage systems.

Rachael Sack: Rachael, any final thoughts on this before we move on?

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, if I could have the liberty to do a little bit of maybe summarizing of a few key things that I'm hearing across these groups. You know, I'm hearing possibly some action, some next steps around what I was initially calling fast action memos. But then Mike started talking about position statements, position papers. So, it seems like there's maybe some low hanging fruit of like what do we need to address right now as an EV working group that we can vote on, that everyone can have the ability to weigh in, on develop, and send that to the relevant agencies, or whether that's the public, just make it available.

So, I think there's that kind of activity. And that I think allows us a nimbleness to then do what I also heard, which was a lot of inventory, right? Like we need to spend some time like figuring out who's doing what, how it all fits together, make sure that we're not duplicating work. But that takes time, right? It's going to take us probably a year to get our feet under us, the four meetings with multiple presentations on there's public safety presentations. I also heard some presentations on cyber.

So, I think there's a lot of different topical areas that we need to spend some time doing some inventory figuring out who the players are. Figure out what the products that are already available. But that doesn't lend itself to making recommendations quickly. So maybe we need to figure out what topic areas kind of fit in the—like what do we want to spend time on, what do we want to do very intentionally in a very educated way, and what do we want to do quickly, like we think we can get agreement among this group on x position.

I also—this—bear with me here. I'm an engineer by training, so, I just keep hearing requirements from each group. Like I want to do this, and we need a set of requirements that reflects the outcome that we want to get. And I hear it from medium and heavy duty, like I need charging at this rate for this many trucks in this place. And then I hear it from the grid integration team. So, I wonder if there's an opportunity here for us to be almost like an organization where there's kind of an engineering department, and there's the grid department, the medium heavy-duty department, the charging network department.

And we share with each other—like—what the requirements are for these solutions. And then that group can say, well, we can't deliver 16 megawatt charging. But we can deliver four megawatt charging in this time frame. So, I just—I want to explore that idea of how do we tie people together on some common requirements that might be around use cases or specific solutions that we're seeking in the electrification space right now.

But I just– I think we've got a lot of really great people who can reflect on different aspects of this. I think having Kofi, and Mayor Giles here, and Dean to reflect on, OK, like you're going to put this big charger here, how does it impact the community? How does it impact the public safety? How does it impact what other fuels we're able to offer? So, I just want to flag that as something that I think could be really unique and interesting about this group is like maybe some specific solutions that we each focus on what is required to make that a success. And seeing what we can come up with as a team.

Kofi Wakhisi: I second that. [LAUGHS] That's a really good idea. Also, I wonder if there's some, you know, we talked about short-term, mid-term, long-term, maybe that's also part of that cross referencing requirements because we talked about in our group [INAUDIBLE] requirements will change and evolve over time. So, I think that's very actionable exercise.

Rachael Nealer: Right there. Bring it. [INTERPOSING VOICES]

Charles Brown: Yes, I think it was also actionable is that you have the new NEVI system out in Ohio. Why not ask those questions of it now so that we're collecting information in real time as opposed to wait.

Rachael Nealer: So, we have—minimum standards require a certain amount of data to be collected from all the—actually, all the title 23 stations.

Charles Brown: The actionable piece is taking the data—the information you've heard today ensuring that it reflects that in your minimum standards. So, minimum standards become new minimum standards based on the feedback collected today. That way it's timely.

Rachael Nealer: Yep. Yep, and the data too, right? I would argue that we do have a bit of that already in place with the public comment period when we do notice of proposed rulemaking. But definitely, want to make sure that's getting to the right people. This is a great network too when those do open that you guys are weighing in on it, and that you're getting it out to your networks as well. But I totally agree that it's a whole cycle of how we evolve the whole electrification system.

Rachael Sack: OK, thanks for a great discussion. So even without the index cards, there was a lively conversation. So, thanks to both groups that just presented. So now we're going to move to our public comment period. And then we'll take a break. But again, with these discussions and with the public comments, we hope this will just continue to inform and help you think through how you're going to take action on some of the priorities that you're considering.

So, before we open it up, let me just run through this process. So, at this time, we're opening the meeting to hear public comments. Please raise your hand if you preregistered to make a public comment and would still like to do so. You can do this by raising your hand within the reactions icon. Each individual will have two minutes to share their comment. When I call your name, please unmute yourself and turn your video on.
If we do make it through all preregistered commenters and time allows, we can ask others in attendance if they would like to comment. If we are unable to get to everyone during the next 30 minutes, we'd like to remind you that written statements can be sent to the working group's email address, evwg@ee.doe.gov or via email to Dr. Rachel Nealer as described in the Federal Register notice. Any statements received by December 20 will be included in the meeting notes to be posted to the website. OK, so with that, we will start—
Sara Emmons: Rachael, can we do a quick audio test with our co-hosts on the line? Kristin or Haylee could you please test your audio?

Christin Jeffers: Yeah. Test. Test. Check. Check. How does that sound?

Sara Emmons: Perfect. Thank you, Christin.

Rachael Sack: OK. Great. First, I will call on Sharky Laguana. Can you unmute yourself?

Sharky Laguana, American Car Rental Association: I am unmuted but struggling to see. I don't seem to have the camera option.

Rachael Sack: So, I think we're OK with proceeding, and we'll try to get that set up. But why don't you go ahead.

Sharky Laguana: OK, thank you. Thank you so much. Hello, EV working group members. My name is Sharky Laguana. I'm the president of the American Car Rental Association. Our membership operates just about every rental car on the road collectively, over 1.7 million vehicles and includes all of the major companies such as Avis, Enterprise, Fox, Hertz, and Sixt, but also hundreds of small business operators like myself. To the best of our knowledge, we own more EV vehicles than any other sector in America.

As the largest fleet operator of EV cars, we've been on the tip of the spear of EV adoption and have the scrapes and bruises to prove it. We have a substantial amount of real-world operating experience and would like to offer that experience to the working group at your convenience. This is an important issue for us, and we're paying close attention to these meetings. On behalf of the association, we want to thank all of the EV working group members for volunteering your time on this incredibly important issue. And we look forward to working with you all as the group moves forward with its recommendations.

As we've heard less than 1% of the vehicles currently registered in the US are electric. The point I'd like to make is that most Americans have not had a chance to drive an EV yet. And many, if not most consumers, will have their first experience driving an EV in a rental car context. We want to make sure that experience is a positive one. And I'm sure you'll agree that's in all our interests.

Accordingly, we want to encourage this working group to keep a close eye on making sure there is sufficient charging capacity where people are likely to have their first contact with EVs, such as airports, and to also ensure that charging capacity is sufficient in close proximity to their most likely destinations, including hotels, convention centers, tourist attractions, and other travel destinations.

With over 16,000 locations across the United States, our members, both large and small, want to emphasize that we have thousands of locations in economically disadvantaged areas. We are grateful for those that have mentioned concerns about equity and site placement. And we want to express our support and alignment with that concern and hope that we can ensure equitable distribution of sites throughout the US.

Finally, as a small business advocate and small business owner myself, I also want to encourage the working group to think about making sure that small businesses have an opportunity to participate in and around charging site locations. Small businesses are a critical part of the nation's economy and making sure they are included in this transition, I think is important for the robustness of our economy moving forward. Again, in closing, thank you all for your contributions to this working group. We're paying very close attention. A lot of great comments and have been learning a lot as we've been following along. So thank you very much.

Rachael Sack: OK, thank you very much. Colleen Quinn.

Colleen Quinn, National EV Charging Initiative: Hi, everyone. Can you hear me, Rachael?

Rachael Sack: Yes.

Colleen Quinn: Cool, great. Hi, everyone. And thank you all for getting together. I'm Colleen Quinn. I know many of you. I'm the co-administrator of the National EV Charging Initiative and Founder of E-mobility Advisors. My background is as a pioneer in the EV charging industry for over a decade. I served as the principal government and policy strategy officer at ChargePoint.

I now have been working with a very—which we think is a very important initiative called the National EV Charging Initiative which we started in 2020 to provide a framework to engage relevant stakeholders, many like yourself, both public and private, laying out how everyone involved would help deploy a National charging network for light duty, heavy duty, et-cetera, vehicles to meet the aggressive air quality, climate, job creation, and equity goals that we are all basically trying to achieve.

One of the things I just wanted to comment on about the great work that you all are doing is to really encourage you, I've heard a lot of discussion. And I think John Bozzella mentioned it. Rachel, you also kind of summarized it, the rep from Daimler Trucks, the importance of regulation in this whole strategy.

I want to mention that one thing that I hope that the groups, that both the grid group as well as the medium/heavy duty and even the light duty will look at some of the important things that have already happened in states, thinking about regulations and legislation as well that have addressed things, for example, like legislation in California very early on to enable the reducing upfront costs, to enable the utility to basically rate base, make ready formulas.

I mean, this is again these are state regulatory activities, but I hope that you will take a look at those. The same thing with was mentioned today about demand charges, the need to make this a business successful venture. There's the IIJA actually projected upon the regulatory commissions to begin to take up and look at demand charge reform.

This will cut the cost of overhead costs for being able to cite EV charging. And then also I want to mention, it was discussed, this paradigm between the regulatory agencies putting regulations on the automakers and the medium heavy-duty makers.

But we also need to do the– also understand the demand side of getting the consumer and getting ready for what those regulations envision. So, I want to mention a bill that happened in California, SB 410, that basically requires the California PUC to put together a shot clock on the energisation timetable for energizing, especially looking at the medium/heavy duty industries' needs.

So, these are things that I hope you guys will take into account, the work that we're going to be doing next year in the initiative is actually taking these best practices and introduce them into legislation as we go. So just wanted to thank you very much for what you're doing and make sure that these regulations are a part of your best practices and also, of your work. Thank you very much.

Rachael Sack: All right. Thank you, Gregory Scott.

Gregory Scott, American Car Rental Association: Yes, can you hear me?

Rachael Sack: Yes, can you speak a little louder, please.

Gregory Scott: Sure. No, that's never been a problem according to my elementary school teachers. First of all, thank you for inviting me to talk today. I'm not going to repeat Sharky's comments. I work with the American Car Rental Association, but perhaps hit on some points in between his points. As he mentioned, we have about 215,000 EVs in the global rental fleet today. 75,000 of those are in the United States. So that's about that's about 1% of the fleet overall.

50% of our rentals take place at airports. And so, as I hear people talk about electricity demand hubs or concentrations, I encourage the Working Group to take a look at airports. We certainly are, and talking to the airports and the FAA about the freight operations that take place at airports. Obviously, the airline operations, catering, tugs, parking and car rental take place there as well as the shuttle buses.

A huge electricity demand takes place at airports. And we are hoping that as DOT and DOE look at this, that they bring in all of the modes within DOT including FAA to take a look at some of the solutions because about– one of the points you all were talking about was data, and I think this is probably something that folks around the table are aware of, but there is no requirement under federal law for an electric vehicle to have an OBD2 port or a portal to harvest data or to transmit data through telematics.

California has recently adopted regulations to require there to be an OBD2 port in EVs, but that's something that's not in place in federal law, simply because EVs have no emissions. And that's the only reason that you need an OBD2 port under the Clean Air Act, so the Working Group may want to take a look at that.
And then finally, I'll comment on safety and the fact that many of the consolidated rental facilities that we have at our nation's airports that I'm sure you all have used were not built for EVs. They were built, as people were talking about, the gentleman, I think from Astro, said that the roads were not built to handle these weight of vehicles and neither were these parking structures.

And it's something we need to work on with the airports and we're also working on with the fire chiefs because the fire Chiefs are very concerned about having these vehicles in parking structures at airports. And it needs to that needs to be addressed as things go forward. So, we look forward to it. I appreciate all the comments from people today. We look forward to working with you. And we'll probably submit some formal statement for the record as suggested. So, thank you.

Rachael Sack: Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who would like to provide a comment at this time? If so, please raise your hand. And if there's anyone else who would like to submit a public comment at this time, please raise your hand. Seeing none, we will close the public comment period Thank you for those who participated.

So, we are ahead of schedule, which can give us more time in our subcommittees to talk about next steps. But Rachel, on the fly, well, let's figure out our game plan.

Rachael Nealer: Let's break and then go directly into the subcommittees. Maybe I'll just take the review of the [INAUDIBLE] schedule and stuff, kind of stick that at the end, so people can have plenty of time to talk, and also take a phone call if you need to, go to the restroom, et cetera, grab some water. So, maybe we reconvene at—so I don't believe we have rooms. We're not we weren't going to use the rooms, again, right we're just kind of—

Rachael Sack: We're going to huddle here. Although, Julie, could I ask you to just check outside if there's any rooms in the conference center for you? They had said, we could just check. So, the idea is we would huddle here. So, maybe 3:15, we would come back for report outs, and then you could review the milestone schedule. Would that work?

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, I think that sounds great.

Rachael Sack: OK, so take a break as Rachel mentioned and linger here. The groups can find space in the corners of this room. And then if we have some space in the conference center that's available, we'll let you know so you can spread out a little bit.

Rachael Nealer: I would like to mention right before we break, I did—I did notice one win. So, while I asked everyone to develop a scope and ask usual scoping activities, there are more things in scope than out of scope. But I think we have ruled out any– and it is aligned with our legislative language, but maritime, air travel, electrification did not come up.

So, I think we're well aligned. We're talking about roads. We're talking about deploying EVs on the roads. So, I'll take that as a win. Good job, guys. Big huge sectors that are out of scope.

Rachael Sack: OK, so take a small break and then form back into your subcommittees. And for the public, we'll be coming back around 3:15 for report outs from the group. And as a reminder, your subcommittee meetings are to identify those immediate next steps. What are you doing? Who's doing it? When are you going to do it? And then we'll talk larger schedule as a Working Group. OK. Thanks.

So, the groups you had, I know time went by too fast, but hopefully you were able to work through some of your immediate next steps. I think we will go in the order that we did our last round and hear your top, we said three to five, I think top three to five actions specifically what when and who. And we'll try to—

Rachael Nealer: Can I do a quick topper?

Rachael Sack: Yes.

Rachael Nealer: OK. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. OK.

Rachael Sack: Go ahead.

Rachael Nealer: So, we heard from a couple of you, some logistical things that you guys are thinking of like file sharing and how we share materials, et cetera. So, I want to say that the team working on the EV Working Group will come up with a solution relatively quickly, at least an intermediate solution, I would say.

If it is something that needs to be circulated to the whole EV Working Group or maybe it's a report or something that comes across your desk in the next couple of weeks and you don't want to lose sight of it, you can always email it to evwg@e.doe.gov. It's managed by a couple of us here. And we can at least have that as a intermediate repository of resources, just so that as they come up, you guys are thinking of it and can send it there. And then, once we do find a file sharing place, we'll make sure everyone has that information. Great.

Rachael Sack: OK, so we'll still ask maybe five-ish minutes for your report out so that we can talk bigger picture also before we adjourn and get you out on time. So, network charging, charging networks, would you like to go first?

John Bozzella: OK. So, high level, we started with a series of next steps associated with inventory. We need to understand, for example, current research and current projections with regard to the total number of charging stations required for a given level of EV penetration.

There's lots of work being done on this. NREL is doing work. At California Energy Commission has done some work, lots of different. So, we—first thing we need to do is gather that and make sure that we have some sense of what the center of gravity is with regard to that. So, there's a big piece of inventory gathering there with regard to that.

The other thing we did was in addition to inventory gathering, we realized there needed to be a set of metrics associated with our public goods goals. So, we want to define what we mean and how we would measure accessibility, affordability, availability, reliability, sustainability.

And that's going to take a little bit of time. And we think it's going to require outreach beyond the expertise and perspective of our subcommittee. So that's something that between Kelsey and I—Kelsey is going to help us do some of that inventory work. And I think some of that projection work aligns with work you're currently doing.

I'm going to add some projection perspectives from the auto industry with regard to EV market growth, but we're going to back to the metrics have to cast a broader net, so our plan is to use our individual networks and come back together at some point soon and certainly well before the next meeting and compare notes on what we think those key metrics are going to be in defining those public goods.

Rachael Nealer: Can I ask a clarifying question on that? When you're casting the broader net for metrics, are you casting a broader net at what metrics should be included, how they are defined or both?

John Bozzella: Both. Has to be both, right. So, we had a debate about a number of different metrics that we think ought to be included, but we also need to further define them. All right. We think there are some metrics, for example, with regard to the general state of development of the network which are easy to understand.

In other words, the J.D. Power point of view about EV market growth rates versus charging growth rates and that delta, that 2 and 1/2 to three times growth delta, between the two, is an indication of a broad macro metric that can tell us whether we're closing the gap. In other words, whether on track or whether the gap is expanding meaning, we're off track. But we also have to define the metrics that will determine an outcome, how many charging stations, at what point—at what point should we be at in 2027, 2030—say for example—2032 and beyond.

Rachael Nealer: And the metrics you're talking about are specific to your subcommittee. And maybe more broadly applicable?

John Bozzella: Both. I think they're both. One of the things we talked about is, and this is applicable I think to all three, is the work that what's the—EVs to scale, like many of us are doing work on EVs to scale. So, we think that some of the work they're doing can provide us with some metrics, there's especially great work being done in the heavy duty space and that work group, you know, and given load demands is going to be helpful to us as well.

Rachael Sack: Any questions or anyone else from your group want to add anything? OK. Oh. Yeah. Go ahead.

Barak Myers, United and Eastern Tribes Representative: We discussed some of the options with the sustainability of the network and some of that with some workforce development and things like that, and reaching out to some maybe of the organizations which could be providing say that technical assistance to figure out maybe what a metric would look like in that realm of building out, say, how much training has been offered and how much is being contended if you put that out there.

And I'm not sure you are aware of that training, because it could come through an LTAP, or a tribal technical-assistance program, or where that may be just to have some sort of metric to say, how much is being utilized, and what are the opportunities to maybe offer more or a larger variety of that, and then just a metric of sustainability as far as a business standpoint and economic development and the things of that nature. There's ways to build metrics in there where you can read the success stories of that on both of those ends.

John Bozzella: Yeah. Perfect. Perfect answer. One other thing I'm just now, I'm looking at the list again, we're trying to figure out what the appropriate metric is with regard to cost of the fuel, quote, unquote, the cost of electricity, vis a vis, the cost of gasoline.

That is something that comes up in the context of home charging. It comes up in the case of DC fast charging, public charging, and so I think we need to think about that and what is that metric? Is there a metric? Is there an appropriate metric that indicates what we should be targeting with regard to cost of the electricity in this context?

Rachael Sack: OK. Thank you. OK, grid integration, what are your immediate next steps?
Well, we're going to meet next week. [LAUGHTER]

Nadia El Mallakh: OK, medium/heavy duty, watch out. OK. So, we were looking at diving in a little bit more while everything's still fresh. And two, the inventory. We talked a lot about that. There may be a chance we were saying that there are some common themes through the inventory. And even just talking about this, here are some of the crosscuts might be ways to look at it.

But for grid readiness, we talked about capacity. We talked about EVs to scale. Are there other areas? We also kind of grouped federal maybe versus non-federal studies and work and modeling that's going on. And Mark, who's not here right now, so we can just assign everything to Mark.

Mark graciously, I think, agreed to help push forward some of that inventory of the federal work that's going on. Now our hope would in an ideal world to have that both federal and non-federal or at least a draft by January, or for the January report, just to what we know of. So, I think some of the things you were talking about jogged some themes we didn't expressly talk about. But we're like, what are we going to inventory?

So, maybe there's an opportunity for all of us to think about what are universal things we want to think about and we can add on specific components. Like for grid readiness, we're thinking about capacity, timelines, maybe there's a cost component, average costs, what does it take to build out certain infrastructure estimates?

What are some of the other—what are some of the solutions like managed charging, thinking about ways that we can also potentially offset the need for certain grid infrastructure or being very efficient there. And so, looking at what information and studies and data are out there. We also talked about building codes. We thought that might go into some of the other areas.

But when you're thinking about grid readiness, that's going to be pulling the permits, doing the citing, doing the upgrades. And in dense urban locations, for example, that can be very challenging, whether it's you're citing DCFC or you're building a new feeder to get or upgrading a substation. So, we were talking about best practices there.

And we like—team, do you guys agree? I like the metrics, kind of starting to define that. We didn't get there but we could certainly discuss that next week and borrow some of your ideas of how—what's in scope and how are you defining those? We didn't quite fully get there, but that's something we can look at. So, what did I leave out?

Rachael Nealer: I—piggybacking a little bit on what you've said, Nadia, so, you both talked about inventories. I think that's really important for us to start with. I would like to propose that—I don't know if it's through the subcommittees or maybe it's just a poll of everyone here in the committee, like what do you want inventories on so that we can start collecting the commonalities between them?

Maybe some of it falls to the subcommittees to do if it's more detailed and specific but maybe it's also things that this whole group would like. So, what are the inventories that we'd like to see? Maybe first, top, one or two priorities.

And then I think the other thing that I've heard is what are the fast actions? What are the maybe memos that we want to consider or positions that we want to consider? Would also like to hear from the group, like what are the top one or two that you think would be valuable for this group to tackle first?

And then we can serve as a coordinating small team and then reply back to the subcommittees, like here are the ones that fall under your bucket. What do you guys think is reasonable? Here's what falls into charging network. Here's what falls into medium, heavy duty grid integration, et cetera.

But I think getting some ideas on where we might want to first focus our attention in those two, like the longer-term planning thing will be helpful for us because then we can start lining up presentations. And then for the memos and things, like maybe there are things that we already feel pretty aligned on that we want to have discussions on or memos to the chairs of the committee, et cetera, or publicly available.

Nadia El Mallakh: We did talk about one that we had mentioned earlier and that was supply chain, that we thought there could be some fast action because we know there's been work with DOE and others and just from a national security standpoint, you might pick transformers, for example. But that would be one area.
And somewhere longer term, I mean, we were talking about that kind of comprehensive planning. I don't know that we could get that done in a short term but thinking about pulling all of these pieces together sooner rather than later, we probably wouldn't want to wait till the full report to have some best practices out there. But that was one that we thought was pretty time sensitive, and a lot of work we think is going on there.

Rachael Sack: Any other questions or comments? OK. Thank you very much. All right. Oh, yes, sorry.

Speaker: I have sort of a general question on—so, on—so, I agree that it's useful to have a common frame of reference for these inventories of what's going on. But I'm also very well aware that there's a lot of work that goes into—once you have that, someone has to read that, understand what the key takeaways are, how it interfaces or aligns or doesn't with the other 20 resources in that repository. And then what can we take action?

There's a lot of analysis and integrative thought that has to go into that. And I just wonder, I guess, I'm kind of wondering how we're going to manage all of that. Because we're talking about there's a lot of efforts. There's a lot of resources.

How do we get from inventorying all these different efforts that are going on to distilling, here are a couple actions. I just don't know, how is that going to happen? How are we going to do that? Is that like do we have to do that? Like how are we going to manage that because that's going to take a lot of time and effort.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good question. I'm not going to say that we have 100% figured out. That's why I'm trying to propose maybe a couple of smaller things, quick things that we could do and set up the process. Like for example, I was talking to Danielle on the side.

Is it going to be more like the model that we've already put forth, which is basically like you guys come and talk to us? We come up with a nice catchy figure. I circulate it out to the group, and I get a little bit of feedback, any like tweaks here and there. And then that's how we move forward. Perhaps, that's the model for some things.

Maybe there are other things that people are going to feel more strongly about, they would like to take a lead on and maybe it's someone that's leading a subcommittee. And they decided we want to write the report. And then we will circulate it to the broader group and get some feedback on, we need to have a discussion about it.

So, I think because we're not marrying ourselves to only writing reports or only doing memos, I think we're going to have to figure out how to match the message with the product. And I think the model for how we do that is going to depend on both of those things, message in the product.

So, if you bear with me, I am also someone that loves process and organization. I promise to steer you in the right direction, try to clarify things as much as possible. But I think we're still maybe a little bit in the sausage making of like what do we want to make this, and subcommittees giving us some action items to the next meeting might help us better understand how it's going to work.

And it might be different per topic. Maybe the Grid Integration Team really wants to dig into things and come up with, I mean, I heard you guys say, medium and heavy duty, we're like we have positions. We want to put out positions on all of these things. And we're feeling good about that.

So maybe you guys are taking a strong hand in developing that and then circulating it to the group. Maybe other things like the discussion that we're distilling into this potentially first report, that's going to be very staff heavy, like we'll take that back. We will write it and we will circulate it to the team and make sure that people feel good about it.

So, I hate to say it's a case-by-case and not give you a very clear answer. But I want the message and the substance to drive us. And we will figure out what the pathway is and what the mechanism is together. Is that a reasonable answer? Because we can also take back, feedback that we need a clear governance, clear process of how we get these things done if we think that's needed.

Rachael Sack: So, I suggest we hear from medium/heavy duty. And then with all of this and talking about our milestones and next steps for what you'll share we can figure out some of those plans. OK. Mike.

Mike Roth: So, in the next three months, we kind of work on prioritizing and sequencing, defining requirements and some of these, I don't love the word, positions, but say statements, positions, papers or whatever.

And so, what we're going to do is we're going to do a monthly meeting, but we've also identified volunteers for each of those three to lead the process over the next few months. For instance, around priorities and sequencing specific things that we think should be on the table to do with respect to medium and heavy duty, Rakesh volunteered to do some duty cycle TCO examples.

So, some market segment case studies, maybe, might be a way to talk about it, to both look at where we have successes to get that snowball rolling as well as where are some pretty defined short-term things that need to happen to increase the adoption of electric trucks.

So, we've got like three of us are going to work on each of these three items over the next three months, three by three by three to move the ball forward. And we got into some definition around it, but kind of letting the process get us to the next meeting.

Rachael Sack: Any questions there or comments? OK, so now we'll bring it back to what you were really just discussing about our next steps and the schedule you have in mind, how you'd like to move forward.

Rachael Nealer: So maybe leaving the easiest to last which is when should we meet again. You know, I'd like to talk a little bit about expectations for the next meeting, you know. I'd like to repeat back some of the presentation, some of the topic items that I've heard so far that I would like to start three months is very, very short.

And I don't want to be calling people like Mike Roth on Friday before the meeting, recognizing that we have a gap in medium and heavy duty as a presentation. So, I would like to get started on those things. So, I would ask that if anyone has any suggestions for work that's being done, people that are doing it that could come and present, please send that to our email. And we can start collecting those.

The few that I heard so far is we need a little bit more information on cybersecurity, what work is being done where. Public safety, what work is being done and where. I think I also heard some early potential action on workforce across the subcommittees. And so maybe pulling together some efforts that are happening both in industry and in government around workforce.

So, those are the big nuggets of things that I'm taking away as far as presentations. Maybe that's also figuring out how our—I think understanding where you guys are thinking on inventories will be helpful for us in developing the programs as well. So don't think that any of that is baked.

I think that's just the beginning of some things that were discussed here, but I'd like to follow up with each of you on what do we need to start inventorying over time, because it will take us time. I think it's important to recognize that it will take us time to have a common understanding of these big, hairy issues.

And then that will allow us more information on how do we even come to an agreement on these issues, like it might require us to have a handful of presentations, a handful of meetings, subcommittee committees to meet before we can formulate it. But I have a sneaky suspicion that there are a couple topics for specific things that we can largely agree on that is low hanging fruit, needs that quick action.

And that's where I want to target the memos, is like can we identify a problem that needs a solution that this group thinks they can work on quickly and then identify like who is going to be the lead on that. Who's going to drive what that memo looks like, how we're collecting the information, what the end recommendation is. And that will be circulated to the full group to weigh in on.

So, inventories and memos, I'd also like to start building a repository of examples and best practices. I think that's—we've heard a lot of that. I think we have a lot of capacity in this room to crowdsource lots of good examples and bad examples, honestly, things that haven't worked before and that we need to learn lessons from.

So, I would like to also ask people, this is also very aligned with something that I'm trying to do in the Joint Office, which is we are a technical assistance organization. I want to make sure that the people that are working on these things are getting access to these best practices, to these [INAUDIBLE], to things that have worked and the things that haven't worked.

So, I would offer up that pending GC allows me to—that as we start collecting things, I can start putting them or I can have work with the team to put many of these things on our website. And we can have not only the EV Working Group website that's part of driveElectric.gov right now, but it can link to many other resources and start building that as a team, because a key principle within the Joint Office is that this is not just whole of government, this is whole of stakeholder.

And so, I want that to be reflected in the resources that we have as well. So, I also think that if we build up that best practices of the things that have happened before, that's also—and this is something I think the Working Group staff can do is—if you guys deliver that to us, we can take a little bit of an inventory of where there might be gaps in those best practices, where we might be—it might be worth focusing our time to either develop new best practices or you the Working Group kind of develops recommendations to the government on how to develop best practices.

I actually think that there's probably a lot of resources out there already that can guide where it's most impactful to spend our time. So, that's what I would say is on deck for the staff working on EV Working Group is lining up the presentations, being the repository for the inventory as well as best practices.
And then starting to help catalyze what these fast actions or memos might be so that we can, whether we can help writing, or we can help with resources to inform these memos, and someone else would do the writing if they wanted to volunteer, I think that's kind of where we fit what is expected from us in the next three months. But I'd love to hear if others see other valuable actions that we as the working group staff can help with in the meantime.

Rachael Sack: Go ahead.

Nadia El Mallakh: In the inventory, I just want to—just hearing the discussion, it was good. I think—at least I was—I don't know how other members were thinking about it, is the initial pass, just inventorying what's out there. Not– just the subject matter. So, NREL has done a study on this. Embry has done that. EI has done this, just so you have a list so you know kind of for folks have done a study on rate design or whatever the topic might be, I don't know, probably out of scope. But that type of thing. So, just wanted to clarify that.

Rachael Nealer: Yes, I think we're going to have to be—there are tradeoffs, right. So, we could spend all of our time reading all of these reports and getting up to speed on them. But that doesn't necessarily mean that then we're going to have time to actually make recommendations in a responsive way. So, and I certainly—I have my main day job as well as you guys.

I don't—I'm not going to, I promise—I promise in advance—I will not send 400-page packets for you guys to read before you get to the EV working group meetings. OK. But I do think we've got to figure out the best way, the most effective way, fastest way to all get up to speed on some similar things so that we can have really robust discussions around the recommendations.

So, I do think the future EV working groups are going to be more about discussing, hashing things out and maybe they're topically focused. Maybe we have three subcommittees, maybe it's every subcommittee reports out on their activities and gets input for the EV working group for three of them and then we have kind of a wrap up one each year.

So, I think we have a lot of work to do to figure out what this framework is. But I'm confident that we will be able to get there together. We have a few comments. I'm going to start with Michael who's on Zoom.

Michael Berube: Just on that last point, and Rachael’s absolutely right, like I'm the first one to ask for 1,000 things then I'm even not have time to read them all. So, I think we're going to manage that. There is, I think one thing that I do appreciate, I hear this a little bit in some of the comments, is all of you are identified members of the EV working group, like the one and only EV working group.

People in general in the public and in your constituencies that you represent are expecting you to be like somewhat experts on all things EV. You're experts in your area, but how do people feel comfortable with the experts in other areas? So, some of the basic things we do want to make sure, the basic of like what's happening in the EV market sales, kind of a little bit more top of line type of stuff.

So, we can work a little bit toward some of that, where it's not like becoming an expert on in depth 40 page report, but more like, oh here's once a month, the 10 page sales update that we do or something like that where you can be all having the same general information, know what's going on, same fact based type of thing for the high level pictures.

And then if there are areas where, Rachael—where people feel like I need more background, maybe that's something we could do like a survey. Like are there specific areas where people say they really would like a little more, we could do a quick webinar on all things vehicle grid integration or something like for an hour with one of our best experts or an update on gravity critical minerals or something like that, where we just provide, you just whoever's interested just needs a little bit of refresher on some of that or needs an update from things we could provide. So, a few possibilities there.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, I think that's great, Michael. And we already are very practiced at webinars in the Joint Office. And so, I think that's a good highlight to say, we don't have to do all the catching up together sitting in a room watching presentations. We can also utilize existing resources, which is my favorite thing to do.

But also, if there are specific things that the EV Working Group wants to know a little bit more about we can work on exactly that, pulling together a presentation, recording it, making sure that you guys have access to it, so that you can watch it on your own time in preparation for meetings.

Rachael Sack: Cassie, John and [INAUDIBLE]

Cassie Powers: Process question. Can you guys just maybe share with us at some point any rules or requirements around advisory groups, so that we to what extent we should be volunteering our time, our staff's time, engaging our memberships on certain discrete deliverables that are coming out of this? Just in case there are any requirements or rules that we should be aware of, it'd be helpful to know upfront.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah. I will take that back. And I won't share a bunch of them now, I will put it in writing so that everybody has it and can refer back to it. But yes.

John Giles: I just want to endorse the idea of giving a running report on how we're doing on the website and posting articles that we're considering or people are going to be asking us, how's it going. And I think saying, oh wait for two years, and I'll tell you, it's probably not the best answer.

And to the point of there's going to be thousands of pages of data that are being thrown at us. I think there's a couple hundred people on that watching this meeting right now. I think we can crowdsource a lot of that, we'll get a lot of feedback from people will say, oh whatever you do, don't read this article because it's garbage. Or there'll be an interesting, healthy discussion that will contribute to the transparency of what we're doing and probably end up with a better product at the end.

Speaker: Thank you, Rachael, you mentioned earlier before the break, that exercise with the requirements. Is that—how did that fit into the next steps or even next meeting?

Rachael Nealer: How about I take that on since it was my idea and flesh it out a little bit more of how that might work and bring it back to the working group, I think that's probably more of a long, not super long term, like I don't want to deliver something in a year.

But I think it's something that it might take a little bit of fleshing out of the idea of just a struck me that we might be able to be our own engineering and design team kind of working together on coming to a common set of requirements and solving some of these issues. So let me flesh it out a little bit more, I will take that on myself and get back to you how it might work.

Rachael Sack: I don't see any other hands.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: Just a point of clarification, Rachael, when you're mentioning memos, position papers, et cetera, are those expected to be products of the entire EV Working Group, of subcommittees, of subcommittees to the Working Group, and then, et cetera? Can you just?

Rachael Nealer: So, we will have to run to ground what the working group is able to put, like is it called a position paper? Is it– there's probably some legal constraints that we don't have top of mind right now. So let me run to ground like what that actually looks like. But it would be a product of the EV Working Group. And all the subcommittee products would also be a product of the EV Working Group in that, as I said, we can engage more people on the subcommittees.

But anything that is produced by the subcommittees has to come back to the original committee to be then agreed upon. So, everything will have to have to come back to this group, even if it's a subcommittee product.

Rachael Sack: OK, now, I don't see any more tents. So, Rachael, do you want to discuss the next meeting?

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, so I think we're looking at the April time frame. Right. February, March, March, April time frame. I just wanted to give people the opportunity to hear say, looks like there's a great event happening in DC in March, April that we want to take into consideration that people might be traveling here for anyways.

Or maybe just an open question that if you have personal vacation planned or some big work event or something, you're like I really can't do it, this week or that week. We have some flexibility to schedule. I see Sarah with her hand up and Mike with his hand up. Sarah.

Sarah Emmons: Can you remind me when the cherry blossom season is? I feel like that is probably a time that we should [INAUDIBLE] be astronomical [INTERPOSING VOICES] Is that March, April. [INTERPOSING VOICES]

Rachael Nealer: It's getting earlier and earlier, yeah.

Mike Roeth: Do meetings have to be here? [LAUGHTER]

Rachael Nealer: I'm looking.

Mike Roeth: I didn't have any agenda there. Well, the reason I bring it up Is there are some conferences or events that might mean a lot to all of us where we could co-locate a team meeting there and we could get some maybe there would be some opportunity for collaboration with broader groups or whatever. That was my—

Rachael Nealer: Let's explore it. I don't want to say no. But I have heard there are additional logistical issues when you don't hold it in DC, but I have to double check that. That's based on an experience with another, so I'll have to double check on that.

So, right now I say, the world is our oyster. Not literally, because if we went to Hawaii or something as an EV Working Group, I'm not sure I can justify that. But I do think that if it's located at not only an event, but something we want to see, Danielle, and I were talking about potentially seeing a demonstration in Montgomery County that's nearby here.

So, I think we can brainstorm now and then down-select later when I have a little bit more information.

Rachael Sack: All right, anything else you want to cover?

Rachael Nealer: No. And we'll make sure to send up a follow up email, especially of these things that I've asked of you in the last half hour, so that I'm getting the feedback early enough so that we're able to plan the next one soon. We'll try to get a hold on your calendar.

Maybe we'll do a little poll of specific times and start holding it on people's calendar so that they can start planning. And our invitational, our fantastic invitational travel team and start helping people travel where they need to go.

Speaker: Sometime in April is what we're thinking?

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, late March, early April, probably, you might have spring break issues.

Speaker: If you get out a couple of options, that'll be great, because of spring break.

Rachael Nealer: There will be a couple options. Yep. Great, well, then I might take the last minute and just say thank you all for joining us here today. I think this was a really great in-person kickoff meeting. I feel energized by all the conversations. I think it's a great way to end the year.

In fact, I want to especially thank Rachael Sack for helping us facilitate. [APPLAUSE] Sarah Emmons, our deputy DFP and IT guru now. [APPLAUSE] And then a lot of prep and time and effort went in not only escorting you guys but also getting all the materials from Stephen, Kim, and Julie. So, thank you so much for your effort. Mike Scarpino, here too, really appreciates all of your effort. [APPLAUSE] Not that it matters but thank you DOT for hosting. Nobody's here really to hear that.

Speaker: And thank you, Rachael. [APPLAUSE]

Rachael Nealer: It's my pleasure. So, look forward to seeing you guys soon. And all the great next steps you have for your subcommittees. And please let us know if you want any re-allocation of your subcommittees, like if you felt like you needed to be in another subcommittee or accidentally went to the wrong one.

Speaker: We fixed that.

Rachael Nealer: Please let us know.

Speaker: I do have a question, though, and that is, again, and I know you're going to send a note. But like for example, if someone felt—if I did, or someone else felt like, well, I'd love to have someone else maybe either on my team or in my membership lend their expertise to XYZ subcommittee, like that's something I'd love guidance on and like when that could happen.

Rachael Nealer: I would say get me names and people who are SMEs that you want to put in front of this group as soon as possible. And I will just do the double checks with GC and any issues. I don't foresee like any, especially the people that are in organizations that are here already, I don't foresee.

And in fact, I think that a lot of us, many of the members, even have people help staff the EV Working Group because it can get very labor intensive, I mean, much we dive into these issues.

Speaker: I don't remember. Oh, are you guys going to send at least the top-line focus areas for each group out?

Rachael Nealer: Like the figure?

Speaker: No. [INTERPOSING VOICES]

Rachael Nealer: Yes. Yes. So, we have everything in—we have it recorded. And I think we also will provide a transcript. Yes. Thank you everyone who attended virtually as well. We are ending the meeting.