Quarterly Meeting for the EV Working Group – November 2024 - Days 2 and 3 (Text Version)

This is a text version of Quarterly Meeting for the EV Working Group – November 2024 - Days 2 and 3, presented on Nov. 22, 2024.

Sara Emmons, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: All right. Good morning, everybody and happy Friday. My name is Sara Emmons, and I am the operations manager for the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. And I am also serving as the deputy designated federal official for this EV Working Group.

I want to go ahead and welcome everyone, and we can get started on the third and final of our November three meeting series here. So let me go ahead and kick things off. The requisite recording language here, let me go ahead and run through that, and then I'll hand this over to our moderators.

So a reminder, as with the other meetings, that this one will also be recorded and will also 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, and if you do not wish to have your image recorded, please turn off your camera or participate by phone. If you speak during the call or use a video connection, you're presumed to consent to recording and use of your voice or image.

So let me go ahead and introduce our facilitators, Rachael Sack with the Volpe Center at DOT and one of our joint office senior advisors, Scott Kubly. So, Rachael and Scott will, again, be leading our discussion for today's meeting. Rachael, handing it over to you.

Rachael Sack, U.S. DOT/Volpe National Transportation Systems Center: Thanks, Sara. And hi, everyone. Thanks for joining for our third and final meeting of this series. I'm just going to take a moment to review our agenda, and then we'll dive in. So, for those joining us from the public today, we will– we'll walk you through the process as well.

As a reminder, just raise your hands when you do have a comment to add and mute yourself when you're not talking. Many of you are on video, so if you are talking, it'd be great to see you if we can.

For our agenda today, we are going– we've shared a document that is a compilation of all the work you've been doing over the two meetings from last week and earlier this week. So, our goal today is to review that document and work towards finalizing some recommendations that you are ready to vote on.

So, we will momentarily be sharing, on the screen, a document that has been shared with the Working Group members that represents this compilation.

We'll allow everyone about 10 or 15 minutes to review the document on the screen or on your computer if you have the link to the file, and that will allow us to all literally get on the same page.

At that point, we're going to ask for any final comments or questions that refer to the intent of what is described in our recommendations, noting that any wordsmithing or final cleanup will happen afterwards.

For our purposes today, I think we're going to expedite that comment process and lead into voting while we have a quorum, especially so that we can hear from all of our members and then open it up for our public comment period at the end. I believe that is our process. Am I right, Scott and Sara?

Scott Kubly, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Correct.

Rachael Sack: OK. And then we'll wrap up with what has been voted on at that time. So, for our public members, just note the public comment period will be at the conclusion of our discussion and after voting. And now, I'll hand it over to Scott so we can work through the document.

Scott Kubly: Excellent, Rachael, I think you said it perfectly, which is we're going to have 15 minutes of silence from the Working Group members, as they all do one final read through of the document. So that is intentional.

Once we're done with that, I'll start calling on the Working Group members one by one to provide their kind of final comments, and then we'll move quickly to a vote. So with that, I'm going to turn it on mute and start reading the document myself.

Sara Emmons: Let's go ahead and have everybody mute their phones and just reiterate to folks the exact time that we'll come off mute. So, let's see, it's 11:11 my time. So, at 26 after, we will jump back online.

Scott Kubly: If people don't need that long, we could even ask in 10 minutes if people need more time because it might go quicker.

Sara Emmons: OK. Sounds good. We'll go ahead and reconnect at a 22 after. Thanks.

Scott Kubly: Just doing the 10 minute time check to make sure– to see if everybody's done or if they need a few more minutes.

Andrew Koblenz, National Automobile Dealers Association: is Andy Koblenz. I'm ready to go.

Mark Dowd, Council on Environmental Quality: Mark Dowd, ready to go.

Speaker: I'm ready too.

Speaker: Good.

Speaker: –also.

Speaker: Ready as well.

Scott Kubly: Is anybody not quite ready yet? OK, great. Does anybody have any public– or comments that they'd want to make, any of the EV Working Group have any comments? And I'll just ask Kim to go down the list of attendees. Oh, we have Andy.

And anybody that does have comments, please feel free to make them. And again, any edits, these would be things that would prevent you from voting yes. So, comments great but if there are additional edits, let's limit them to points that you'd make to prevent you from voting yes. Kim.

Speaker: Scott, do you want us to start with the hands raised or do you want to go member by member?

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: I can go member—

Scott Kubly: Sorry. Yeah, let's just go member by member. And if nobody has a comment, then that's just fine.

Speaker: OK. So first up, we have Andy.

Andrew Koblenz: Yeah, I'm up first? So I have two comments. They're both substantive, but they can easily be solved by edits. And they're on the two charging network recommendations.

In the audience, under recommendation one, it says that the audience is a general public, rental car customers, and dealerships. I believe that the audience is dealership customers. It's a significant point. It's on page two of the document. It's in the audience.

Go up. There, audience. Oop, you were– right above the screenshots. Go up a little bit more. It says audience, general public, rental car customers, and dealerships. Its dealership customers. It's not– the dealerships are not the people that we're going for.

It's the people shopping at the dealerships that are the target, I believe, and that's important to us. And then similarly, in recommendation two, if you go down to the recommendation itself, it talks about the EV Working Group recommends the development of a consumer effort.

It's actually not a consumer effort. It's a consumer facing effort. Again, it's the– just misplacement of who the object is. It's a consumer. The effort will be done by us and by the certifier but it's facing the consumer.

Scott Kubly: Excellent.

Andrew Koblenz: So those are two edits. And I'll just point out that you have the example of the end cap and energy [? star ?] in here twice. That's not going to stop me from voting for it, but—

Scott Kubly: We can– we'll take that, sort of edit out as we're cleaning up the document.

Andrew Koblenz: That's fine. That's what– those were my comments. Thank you.

Scott Kubly: Excellent.

Speaker: Next, we have Dean.

Dean Bushey: Yeah, one second. All right. So–

Sara Emmons: And if you all could just mention what page you're going to reference first, that will help me out immensely. Thanks.

Scott Kubly: And again, I just want to reiterate, happy to make minor edits that are substantive and impacting a vote. But if there are things that can be handled in cleanup, let's hold those– let's hold on editing those.

Dean Bushey: Reference page five, recommendation three. We've chatted about this via email. We did not mean to specifically exclude fuel cell EVs. I know, Scott, you've already addressed that in another comment, but we just need to make sure we clean it up that it's not BEVs, it's EVs. So—

Michael Berube: We– on that, Dean, the wording now in the document as I was making the edit, as we opened, includes hydrogen propelled vehicles. So, it includes hydrogen fuel cell and hydrogen combustion per Rakesh's suggestion.

Dean Bushey: Fantastic.

Scott Kubly: Excellent.

Dean Bushey: And that other thing– the only other comment I have is I think on page eight, grid recommendation six, support infrastructure investments. I think the word in the second sentence, urgently collaborate, that puts it a little too strong for me.

I would like the word urgent to be changed to something a little bit more manageable by the government. That's all I have.

Michael Berube, U.S. Department of Energy: I– can I make a quick comment on– I guess just to be clear, like that recommendation is not unique to just government taking action, but all of those stakeholders taking action. So, I don't know if that changes your thought, but that these groups need to urgently collaborate.

Are you– how strong are you on that? I think it– I don't think it's inappropriate to say urgently collaborate.

Dean Bushey, North American Council for Freight Efficiency: It will not prevent me from voting yes, so I'm good.

Scott Kubly: OK, excellent. Thank you, Dean. Danielle.

Speaker: I don't have any further comments. Thank you.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. David.

David Haugen, Environmental Protection Agency: Oh, yes, I have a question. Maybe it's editorial, maybe it's not on recommendation seven from the grid integration on managed charging. There's a few references to auto OEMs, standards 100 organizations, EV providers, and utilities.

I think it's important to have both auto and the medium- heavy-duty vehicle manufacturers, not just autos, both for the managed charging. The fact that they use different communication protocols involving both groups explicitly is probably important for this topic.

Scott Kubly: Is this–

Nadia El Mallakh, Utility and Clean Energy Sectors: If– just really quickly, David, if we change the word auto to vehicle OEMs, is that– does that not capture medium? And I hear what you're saying because you're saying you're not just trying to get– does vehicle OEMs capture medium- heavy-duty and light manufacturers?

David Haugen: It may to some. It may not to others. If there's–

Michael Berube: I would say the types of…charging here is more likely to be the light duty than the…I think changing it to vehicle usage is not…the people figuring out the details when we pick it up.

There are types of managed charging that are depot charging that are maybe a little different, the team talked about. But vehicle is not a bad thing. Flexibility.

Scott Kubly: OK.

Michael Berube: I think it's a good comment.

David Haugen: As long as we make sure because the passenger car market and the truck car market do use different communication protocols. And so if there's standards that are developed and the utility is going to rely on being able to talk to either a depot or something else, it would be probably important to try and harmonize them on the front end.

Scott Kubly: We'll make that update to vehicle. Let me see who we have next. Henrik.

Henrik Holland, Prologis: I have no further comments.

Scott Kubly: Thank you. Barak.

Barak Myers, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians: No, I think everything looks really well from my standpoint. I didn't really see anything that sticks out, I mean, other than just small edits that can be done and cleaned up.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. Cassie.

Cassie Powers, NASEO: Nope. It looks good to me. Thank you.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. Thank you. Crystal.

Crystal Philcox, Office of Travel, Transportation and Logistics, Federal Acquisition Service, U.S. General Services Administration: Looks great. Love the new formatting and the way you combined everything. So it looks good. Thanks.

Scott Kubly: Thank you. Joung.

Joung Lee, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials: Just a clarifying recommendation on page seven, recommendation seven for managed charging. I think for public consumption purposes, recommend if there's a way to explain what managed charging is in the headline itself, rather than right now it's in the background.

I think if you like, walk down the street and just say that or even for an EV conversion, folks may be helpful to just add a little more descriptive language as a headline.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. Are folks comfortable with us handling that in cleanup? Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. Kelsey.

Kelsey Owens, Office of the Secretary – Office of Policy Department of Transportation: No further comments. Thank you.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. Mark.

Mark Dowd: No comments.

Scott Kubly: Nadia.

Nadia El Mallakh: No further comments.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. Vicky.

Speaker: Also no further comments. Thank you.

Scott Kubl: Excellent. Rakesh.

Rakesh Aneja, Daimler Truck North America: Yeah, my key comment was the inclusion of hydrogen propelled in both recommendations three and eight. And per Michael's earlier comment, I understand that's been addressed, so thank you for that. No additional comments. Ruth.

Ruth Gratzke, Siemens Smart Infrastructure U.S.: I have two smaller ones. Page 10 of 12 in the recommendation. The second line reads utility and other key decision makers. I would think about if key stakeholders is more appropriately because it implies that everybody's got a decision authority that we've listed here, may not be 100% correct.

Then on page 10– sorry, the next page when we go into managed charging in the opening, we talk about utilities, auto OEMs, and our standards organizations EV service providers. We have other relevant stakeholders.

I would just suggest maybe calling out charging equipment manufacturers as well because if you don't get the charger to charger bidirectional, or I might make that controllable, then this whole thing wouldn't work. So just maybe put more emphasis on this.

Nadia El Mallakh: Ruth, I will note and it's kind of buried the way this got reoriented, that EV service/equipment providers down in the second paragraph under background, it's defined as—

Ruth Gratzke: OK, I see–

Nadia El Mallakh: Equipment, software and service providers, collectively EV service/equipment providers.

Ruth Gratzke: OK, good.

Nadia El Mallakh: OK. Yeah, just kind of got a little bit as it got reordered. And then I'm fine with stakeholders versus decision makers if others are– on the prior recommendation.

Michael Berube: Yep. Good suggestion I think too.

Nadia El Mallakh: Yeah.

Scott Kubly: OK.

Nadia El Mallakh: –agree.

Scott Kubly: Hearing no objections to that. So, we'll replace auto with vehicle OEM as well as another kind of cleanup that I see as well. And I see it showing up in a couple of different places. And we can edit that after the fact. Denise, I see your comment that you support and have no comments. So, thank you for that. And finally, Kofi.

Kofi Wakhisi, Atlanta Regional Commission: Hey, everybody. No comments.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. That is great to hear. OK. So, this– it sounds like we can do a vote by acclamation versus declination this time. So, what I would like to do is take everybody off mute. And if all of the EV Working Group members that want to vote in affirmation of these as the final recommendations, please say aye.

Speaker: Aye.

Speaker: Aye.

Speaker: Aye.

Speaker: Aye.

Dean Bushey: Aye.

Scott Kubly: OK. If there's any nays, now's your time. Unmute and vote nay.

[DOG BARKING]

Dean Bushey: Good dog.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. It's a dog– the dog.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

Scott Kubly: OK, excellent. OK, so that– he's not officially a Working Group member. I've heard there's no designees or whatnot, so his vote will not count. So, we have a unanimous vote to approve these recommendations.

So, I think we are good. I'd like to, now if we can, move to the public comment period. And then it looks like we will be able to maintain a quorum through the entire public comment period.

So, I know, Danielle, you had to leave at about– or somebody on the panel had to leave at about 45 minutes, so that should be fine. But anybody else that needs to leave, just– that is a Working Group member, just raise your hand so we can make sure we maintain a quorum during the public comment period. Thank you.

Rachael Sack: Great. So, at this time we're going to open up the public comment period. If you are a member of the public and would like to speak, please raise your hand, and we will call on.

The hand is in the reactions icon in Zoom. Each individual will have two minutes to share their comments, and you will be able to unmute yourself and turn your video on when I call on you.

As a reminder, you can also submit written comments to the Working Group email address, evwg@ee.doe.gov or mail your comments to Dr. Rachael Nealer as described in the Federal Register notice, and those received within 10 business days will be included in the meeting minutes.

So at this time, are there any members of the public who would like to provide a comment?

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

Sara Emmons: –do so raising your hand.

Rachael Sack: Yes. I don't see any hands raised at the moment. I just wanted to reiterate, as was stated in the comments, that the outcome from today's meeting will be made public on the website DriveElectric.gov/EVworkinggroup once it is finalized and approved.

So, thank you for your patience as we work towards this goal. And Scott, I don't see any hands, so I think we will conclude our public comment period for today's meeting.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. Well, I want to thank all of the Working Group members for participating the last three meetings. I know it's a lot of time to dedicate, to block off six hours of your schedule over a one-week period. So, thank you very much for that. Michael, you have a comment.

Dean Bushey: Just because I think you are going to wrap up and dismiss us, maybe just a quick– were you—

Scott Kubly: Sure.

Michael Berube: I think the– so this will be posted, right? On the website like we did last time. Presumably, it will also be transmitted to the two secretaries who are the chairs and sponsoring people and gave us the charge with kind of, I assume, Scott or the staff kind of just ginned up a general letter stating that and sending it to them.

Scott Kubly: Correct. Yes. So this will all–all the documents will be posted publicly. The Joint Office team will pull together kind of a–we'll do copy editing to make sure all the punctuation is in the right place.

We'll design kind of a final document. We'll distribute it to the group. We'll share it with the public. We'll put it up on our website, and then we'll transmit it to the secretaries. Rachael.

Rachael Sack: Yeah, I just wanted to provide a little bit of an update there. We actually transmit to the secretaries before we put it out publicly, because we just have some internal processing to do. I will flag– we built this into the schedule, it will probably take us a week or two to do that as it did the first report.

So, I just wanted to set expectations that if you start checking the website every day now, waiting for those recommendations to come up, it might take a little while, especially around the holidays. So, we are committed for it to be out by the end of the year. It just– it might take us a little bit of time to process. Thank you.

Scott Kubly: That is true. If you are searching for it, though, you will help our SEO, which is always valuable for spreading the word. So don't hesitate to Google it. Just don't expect that it will be up there for a couple of weeks.

And with that, I just want– Rachael, go ahead. Your hand is still raised. OK, you're good. OK, I will– again, I want to re– oh, Henrik.

Henrik Holland: I was just wondering if there was going to be any social media, like a LinkedIn push of the recommendations as well? That helps picking things up.

Scott Kubly: Yes. I can't imagine that we would not be able to get that up and out there. We definitely want to promote the work that the group is doing and that DOE, DOT and the Joint Office are doing. Rachel.

Rachael Sack: Yeah, and just to add on to that, Henrik, I think actually one of the most valuable pieces of all of this is the networks that every individual, every representative in this group brings to the table.

So, we will make sure that you have what you need to also share it on LinkedIn and social media, because we want to make sure these recommendations are highly utilized.

Henrik Holland: Awesome. Thank you.

Scott Kubly: OK. Well, thank you all very much. Are there any other comments from members of the group before we adjourn?

Michael Berube: Good job, Scott. Thank you very much for helping guide us through here the last few months.

Scott Kubly: It's been my pleasure. I did not actually do that much work other than cutting and pasting, so–but I appreciate that. Thank you.

Michael Berube: And to Rachael and Rachel as well.

Scott Kubly: Yeah, exactly. Yes, thank you very much. And I see a question that is from the public comment period. I will respond to that. That is a conversation that will come in the how portion of handling these recommendations.

The question was, "Is there any funding available to further these recommendations?" Dean, you had your hand raised.

Dean Bushey: Yeah, briefly, but I'll withdraw the question. I was going to say, what is the next step? But I think I understand we need to withdraw until we understand what happens next.

Scott Kubly: Correct. Excellent. Thank you all very much. Have a great day.