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: So, I will go ahead and call this meeting to order. Hi, everyone. Happy Wednesday. My name is Sara Emmons, and I am operations manager of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. I also serve as the deputy designated federal official of this specific EV Working Group. Let me go ahead and share the obligatory webinar recording.

Warning, so, a heads-up to everyone that this meeting is being recorded. It will be published on our 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 [the] recording and use of your voice or image.

So, at this point, I’ll go ahead and introduce our facilitators, Rachael Sack, with the Volpe Center at VOT, and one of the Joint Office’s senior advisors, Scott Kubly. So, Rachael and Scott will lead our discussion for today’s meeting. Let me go ahead and hand it over to them.

Rachael Sack, U.S. DOT/Volpe National Transportation Systems Center: Great. Thanks, Sara. Good afternoon or—yeah, I think it’s afternoon for everyone now, so, good afternoon. So, this is our second of three meetings where we will work through the subcommittee recommendations. As a reminder for our ground rules, we ask just that you members raise your hands when you’d like to contribute to the discussion.

Please make sure everyone’s muted when you’re not talking. And for those able to go on video, especially while talking, please feel free to do so. For the public joining us today, you are muted but can chat [with] the host, if needed. During the public comment period, you will be given the ability to unmute when you’re called upon. And there’ll be a time limit for your comments to be shared at that time.

At this point, we wanted to take a minute just to review our meeting agenda for today. Like I mentioned, this is the second of three meetings. In our first meeting, we went through the subcommittee recommendations and voted to select three to approve at that meeting. So, those are ready to move forward.

Nine—or six, actually, remain, which will now be five, that we’ll be discussing to continue to revisit today. So, we’re going to hear the subcommittees report back on what ideas you’d like to propose based on the comments from our first meeting. And then we’ll see, after our public comment period, which we are ready to vote on.

We’ll rinse and repeat for our Friday meeting with the goal that all of these recommendations are in a refined place. And for those that are comfortable voting to approve, we can have those solidified, so they can then become part of a package. And I imagine we’ll talk a little more about those next steps during the course of our meeting.

So, what we’d like to do is just to recap just a little bit further, refresh everyone’s memory. We had three recommendations that I mentioned that were approved. Those were the managed charging recommendation from the grid integration group, the broad industry engagement on market segmentation, and medium- and heavy-duty classifications for education and outreach. That was recommendation two of the medium-duty and heavy-duty group. And then the charging network recommendation one, which was on myth-busting.

So, we do not plan to revisit those three, which were a mouthful. But we do have five that we will walk through today noting, and Dean and the medium- and heavy-duty group can talk a little more about this. One of theirs has been transitioned over to be incorporated with the grid integration comment. So, we’ve scratched one of those just so that it can fit nicely with another. So, we’ll hear a little more about that.

So, the order for today, just to give everyone a heads-up here, we’re going to start with the charging network, number-two recommendation. I’ll pull this up. We’ll hear from the group on their updates, and then open it up for discussion. And we’ll then go through the remaining medium- and heavy-duty recommendations, which were one, four, and five. And then end with the grid integration recommendation, which includes the other subcommittees’ efforts as well.

So, we’ll see what we can get through today and open it up for discussion. Then we’ll pause, have our public comment period, and then revisit which ones you’re ready to move forward with. Any questions at this time? So, with that, I will start to pull up and share my screen. I think we’re going to start. So, the charging network was a slide deck, I believe. So, let me pull this up.

John Bozzella, Alliance for Automotive Innovation: And while you’re doing this—this is John Bozella. Can you hear me?

Julie Nixon, U.S. DOT/Volpe National Transportation Systems Center: Yes.

John Bozella: So, Sharky Laguana, on our subcommittee, is going to take the lead on this discussion today. So, I’m just going to make sure as you’re pulling it up that—Sharky, you’re on, right?

Sharky Laguana, American Rental Car Association: I am. I’m here.

John Bozella: Thank you for taking the lead.

Sharky Laguana: My pleasure.

Rachael Sack: Let’s see. It should be pulling up momentarily. Can you see this? And let’s see if I can make it a little bigger. If it’s big enough for you. Is that good?

Sharky Laguana: Perfect.

Rachael Sack: Great. And take it away, Sharky.

Sharky Laguana: Sure. So, the charging subcommittee recognized that we need to create a carrot-based approach incentive for charging providers to, as we call it, race to the top. So, some examples of this would be the New Car Assessment Program, NCAP, by NHTSA, which rates vehicles based on vehicle crash performance, EPA ENERGY STAR®, which rates appliances like refrigerators. I’m sure you’ve seen them.

And one you might not have heard of, Top Tier gasoline, which is something manufacturers have done to certify fuel stations. And they put these in their owner manuals, and people know what kind of fuels that are best for their car. I guess some gas stations put detergents and other additives into the fuel, and it’s not good for engines.

All of these certifying entities create a degree of trust with consumers that what they are purchasing will fulfill their needs. And what the charging subcommittee recommends is that we set up a similar entity for charging providers. Now, if you could scroll to the next slide. Yep, keep going down. Up, up. There you go.

So, out of the NEVI minimum standards, we have identified the following six minimum standards. These are standards that are focused on consumers’ accessibility that the charging station be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, that it accepts payment methods that consumers are familiar with, that it uses a standardized pricing of dollars per kilowatt-hour, that the uptime be 97% or more, that the station configuration—there’s not a specific requirement, but we’re encouraging them to allow larger vehicles.

And we’re seeing some charging providers start to do that, vehicles with trailers. I saw Tesla made an announcement yesterday about this. And, finally, that the EV charging signage meet all of the FHWA requirements. So, these are the initial requirements that we are recommending, but there may be more. It’s not intended to be exhaustive. It is merely a starting point for the conversation.

So, as you may recall from the last meeting, we had some discussion about whether we would be recommending working with a specific entity. I think we concluded that recommending a specific entity would not be appropriate at this time. If you could scroll up to the next slide, or down, I guess. So, the charging subcommittee determined that the best way to move forward would be to establish some principles that would govern the selection of the certification entity. And we zeroed in on these three principles.

Credibility—the entity should be credible with industry, government, and consumers. That the entity should have expertise, so it should be able to assess compliance across all these required standards and have the staff to be able to do that. And, finally, scale—we’re all aware these chargers are all over the country. The certifying entity needs to be able to provide these assessments at the locations all over the country.

We’ve identified some potential entities or examples of potential entities. UL, Underwriters’ Lab; CE—I’m not even going to try and pronounce some of these; SAE, Society of Automotive Engineers; and NFPA, National Fire Protection Association. We internally also talked about charge acts as potentially being an entity that might be a good fit for this. We talked about JD Power as being somebody that consumers trust.

But our recommendation is that the EV Working Group adopt these principles, recommend the creation of a certification entity, and recommend that these principles govern that selection. And then let’s take things to the next step. And in a couple of months here, when we have more clarity about how the incoming administration is going to be proceeding on these issues and our new secretaries coming on, then at that point, we can evaluate what the next steps are.

And Scott, Rachael, that’s it for my presentation.

Rachael Sack: Excellent, that’s great. Want to open it up for discussion with other members of the working group? And then just for the purpose of voting, I think what we’re going to need to do, we can get tentative approval on this language, but then work it into a final document that we can vote upon on Friday. But we can get a sense of the group today to make sure that we don’t have any further edits beyond this specific language.

Rachael Sack: So, any immediate comments or questions on what you see? You can raise your hand.

Sharky Laguana: And while we’re waiting on them, Scott, for proposed language for the final document, I would recommend something fairly simple and straightforward. The EV Working Group recommends the selection of a certification entity with the following principles in mind: credibility, expertise, and scale, and then, done.

Scott Kubly, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Certainly, I would anticipate what you’re proposing. And I can’t propose it for you, as our separate roles. But what I’m hearing from you is it’s really a cut-and-paste of this last slide into the existing recommendation, formatted into the Word document, and then moving forward.

Sharky Laguana: Yes, that’s exactly right. Just adding [the] creation of a certification or selection of a certification entity at the beginning of this last slide.

Scott Kubly: Got you. Michael?

Michael Berube, U.S. Department of Energy: Just if we can just maybe take that conversation one step further, like what the actual recommendation would be. So, the EV Working Group recommends the “what” of what kind of—it might be helpful to talk through that, just a little bit here, to hone it in.

Sharky Laguana: The EV Working Group recommends the selection of an entity to certify compliance with the consumer-facing NEVI standards. John, I see you got your hand raised. And you probably have some thoughts on this as well. I’d defer to you to answer this question.

John Bozella: I think, Sharky, you have it exactly right. Just to frame it—can you all hear me? Sorry, I’m not sure if I’m—

Sharky Laguana: Yes.

John Bozella: So, Sharky, by the way, excellent work on the principles. And I think that makes sense. So, Michael, the, I think the recommendation is what Sharky suggested, which is the EV Working Group recommends the development of a consumer-awareness effort to identify charging points that implement customer-facing attributes for charging stations that align with the NEVI program.

And, again, it’s not a requirement. It’s an opportunity to assign, as Sharky said, a prize or a carrot. And that’s the recommendation. They would certify through—and that might be the right verb—through the application of a check or a star or a seal of approval that those stations have these attributes.

And what we’re suggesting further based on Sharky’s work is that the determination of an entity to do this would follow these three principles. And, so, that’s as far as we’ll take it here. But I do think that this is—I think, as Sharky said, this is where we came out as a subcommittee.

Michael Berube : And one thing to maybe to think about, and I don’t have a personal view one way or the other of this, is one thing we touched on last time is—it could be binary. It meets these or doesn’t. So, “certify” implies the binary. Like it’s a stamp of what meets this set. It meets or doesn’t.

The other way is something that’s a little bit more of a—it’s a grading. It’s a three-star, four-star, five-star. So, it’s how well it meets it. One’s more complicated. But maybe you have more rich information. Just a trade-off there. Either think if the group has a very specific thought. Like, no, we think it should be this way or that way. We should do that. Or it could be left a little bit open, and that could be part of what gets stood up by the group, whoever stands it up.

Sharky Laguana: I think we would be interested in hearing from others on their reaction to that. I see a couple other hands raised. So, we’ll see what the group says. And it’s a great question.

Mark Dowd, Council on Environmental Quality: Quick question. In case somebody has already covered this, and I apologize. But is this a group that is commercial led? Who leads the group, and who sets the standard?

Sharky Laguana: So, the standards are the NEVI standards so far. They could potentially be added to or subtracted from. But that’s what we were using as our baseline. In terms of your first part of the question, who forms the group or who governs the group, that’s a TBD right now. I think a lot of this depends on the reaction of stakeholders, and it also depends on what entities are potentially interested and available.

So, I don’t think we were ready to make a recommendation around who the group is or how the group is paid. The money’s got to come from someplace. So, we’re not making a recommendation around that just yet. Right now, we’re just saying that there should be a certifying entity, that it would be helpful for consumers. And we think it would be helpful for industry as well.

Mark Dowd: But when I say “standard,” I think I went more to the question of the star rating. Who determines the star rating? Because if it’s based on NEVI standards, which are a little vague at times. But now, we’re going and taking a commercial entity and putting stars next to it. And I see John’s hand raised. I think he knows the concern I have on that.

Sharky Laguana: Go ahead, John.

John Bozella: Yeah, no, I agree. And I’m totally aligned with what Sharky said. So, I think that we need the recommendation and the analysis of this third-party entity to help guide that discussion. And so, that’s why when Sharky went through the list of those entities and his first principle, which is credibility, we need help in working that out for exactly the reasons you’re alluding to, Mark.

Not only does the entity have to be credible, but the process has to be credible and recognized as legitimate. And so, I think the way we were discussing it, right, Sharky, is that that entity, we would identify that entity to help us with all of that.

Scott Kubly: I want to give Crystal, who’s had her hand patiently raised for a few minutes to jump in.

Crystal Philcox, Office of Travel, Transportation and Logistics, Federal Acquisition Service, U.S. General Services Administration: Thanks, no, I think that that’s right. I’ll just agree with John here that—we’ve got some examples here that we think would be good entities to take this on. Underwriters’ Labs, Society of Automotive Engineers, I think is a very strong one. So, the question I think is, who would go about then trying to recruit these folks and suggest that this might be a program that they’d want to take on?

But I would add also because someone asked this question, I think. Do you, do you see this as just a check mark, or is it a gradation? And I think we would have to work with the organization that would agree to take this on to see what they would feel most comfortable with. And we would want to consult the experts in the room from that organization to determine that.

Sharky Laguana: Yeah. John, I’ll answer, and then if you could also jump in as well because I know you have some thoughts here. So, the way I’m looking at this is that we first start with the higher-order items, try and get alignment around—I mean, should there be a certifying entity? If the answer is no from stakeholders, then there’s no need to proceed further.

If there should be a certifying entity, what are the principles that are governing the selection of that entity? If we can get alignment around that, well, now, we’re in a position to start to have conversations with these entities. Crystal, you got a great question. Who is the person charged with having those conversations? And I think that is another—perhaps this group will wrestle with that question at the next meeting, or perhaps that’s something that subcommittee will work on moving forward and try and color in more details here.

But right now, we’re just trying to start with broad strokes and make sure that we get alignment around some of these basic issues. I think when it comes to gradation, should it be four stars, five stars? I mean, I could imagine where somebody’s open 24 hours a day, 6 days a week. Well, that would be four stars versus 24/7, 5 stars.

But I think John had it exactly right when he said that this is something I think we need input from industry. And we need input from the certifying organization. And probably we need to talk to some of the consumer groups as well. And we can get more granular later.

But I think the steps—first, is we have to develop consensus and alignment around just core concepts. And the core concept here is, would it be helpful to have a certifying entity? And if so, what are the principles governing it?

And, John, you’ve led this group admirably. So, I want to make sure we’d get a chance to weigh in as well.

Did we lose John?

John Bozella: No, I’m here. Sorry about that. I was on mute. No, I think you have it right. Again, it’s a step at a time. And we’re not getting all the way to the end. I think we have to work through these questions. But I think Sharky’s described the threshold recommendation very well.

Sharky Laguana: Scott, you have your hand raised.

Scott Kubly: Yes, I was just going to do a quick time check on the discussion on this and summarize a little bit of what I’ve heard, which is it feels like what the charging subcommittee is saying is we want to vote on what, not the how. So, we want to approve what we’re going to be doing, not the how we’re going to be doing it. And the how we’re going to be doing it is future work for the EV Working Group. That’s number one.

Number two, we’ve been going through and doing the editing live. Rachael and team have been doing that. The thing that I want to just put a very fine point on is we need to have—the recommendations that get voted upon are going to be verbatim. And so, that is what needs to be approved. And then there can be comments that will be in the record. There can be dissenting opinions.

But there is, at a point, a—pencils down moment when we’re voting on these. And so, with that, I’ll ask Sharky and John, do you all feel, given what you’ve heard, you have enough to go back, make a final set of edits before Friday, so that we can get to a final vote? And I’ll turn it back over to you to respond to that.

Sharky Laguana: I feel comfortable moving forward with where we’re at. John?

John Bozella: Yeah, I agree with that.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. Any other comments on this before we move on to Dean and managed—or the medium- and heavy-duty, number one? Hearing nothing. Dean, you’re on the clock.

Dean Bushey, North American Council for Freight Efficiency: I’m on the clock. Good afternoon. If you want to turn that yellow—I mean, the yellow is hard to see. The yellow is just the change. For everybody who was on last week, I really tried to highlight what has changed, and it’s really just the yellow part. The emphasis on this, just to give you a quick summary of why we think TCO should be broken out even as a myth-busting or education, it’s fundamental in the discussion of how you drive medium-duty, heavy-duty charging.

So, that’s why even though it’s linked to public education and myth-busting, it stands up on its own. I tried to incorporate—we try to incorporate. We all met on Monday. Thank you all for the inputs. We tried to incorporate the operations, the various tools, the what, and who the stakeholders were. And we came up with this language, which identifies the fact that this TCO analysis is very complex.

It’s not simply buying a vehicle and what is the cost of the vehicle. It involves many, many factors. But also, the fact that there are several existing TCO tools out there—both from a government-funded perspective and public-funded perspective—that need to be evaluated and incorporated in a public education outreach. So, yes, it’s myth-busting.

But also, the what is we need to develop a public education and outreach, much like we’re going to talk about in the “whats” down below, whether it’s webinars, in-person meetings, reaching out at events, at conferences. And I’m not going to call it certification, but the government needs to work with public companies to look through the various TCO tools to make sure the data is available and the data is current and accurate.

The audience—being fleet owners, implementers, utilities, infrastructure planners, policymakers—those are who we’re trying to get after to make sure they understand the complexities of TCO. So, there’s no major change with this one. This is just a refinement of the language. Really a recognition that there are existing tools that need to be evaluated and incorporated in this particular recommendation.

Scott Kubly: And so, yes, I guess now is the time to open it up to discussion. Did Dean or did the medium-, heavy-duty group capture the essence of the comments from last week and any discussion around the specific verbiage before we put this to a vote?

Hearing none, what [I] think that says to me is that we’re ready to vote on this. But we’re going to have to do that after the public comment. So, we’ll table this, do all the tracked changes, accept changes, and whatnot. And then we can vote on it in a few minutes. Dean, do you want to move to the next medium-, heavy-duty number four?

Dean Bushey: Sure. Real quick, number two was adopted last meeting. Number three was the utility load planning. Nadia and I and the two subcommittees met, and we’ve synced our views on load planning, and that will be transferred over to Nadia’s group.

Number four, really, we try to identify who were the key stakeholders—that was one of the comments that we needed to get to—and how were you going to do this? This really says that there’s a middle tier. The people that are deep into this—whether it’s the OEMs, the fleets, the individual truck owners, the energy providers—are pretty clear that there’s the medium-duty, heavy-duty charging world, [which] is much different than charging an automobile or public charging.

The third tier would be public. But there’s that middle tier—decision makers, utilities, policymakers, planners. So, we tried to rewrite this to include some of those key groups that we’re trying to reach in the general discussion about everything that goes into charging and those four key facets, whether it’s the OEMs, the fleets, the truck owners, or the energy providers.

So, the what is, we need to do a public outreach, again, whether it’s webinars, in-person events, attendances at conferences, answering questions, putting statements out on websites. And also that the government and industry should work together in this effort to develop these different educational tools. So, again, tweaking of the language to make sure I capture the comments from last time.

Scott Kubly: And do folks feel—other subcommittees, so the charging network and grid integration, did this capture the comments that were given last week? And if so, great. Or are there other comments that folks would like to make? Michael?

Michael Berube: Just to make it the recommendation, I think we might need to be just slightly more precise in the—so, “Government and industry should work jointly to develop educational tools to,” and then just like, it’s “Develop educational tools to develop diverse communication tools tailored to different audiences.” I think there might be a little wordsmithing in a few of these.

Also in some cases, it’s not quite clear if we’re talking only about medium- and heavy-duty. You’re talking about all electrified vehicles. I think just tightening that up a little bit. If it’s all electric vehicles, whether medium- and heavy-duty, light-duty, or only medium- and heavy-duty. Or, I mean, I think the intent, I definitely support the whole idea, just maybe tightening up the actual recommendation a little bit.

Let me ask you: Were you thinking just medium- and heavy-duty or medium- and heavy-duty and all EVs?

Dean Bushey: I tend to lean towards medium-duty, heavy-duty. So, the intent from our group was medium-duty, heavy-duty.

Michael Berube: And maybe then a question to the overall EV Working Group is, are [INAUDIBLE] working together to develop educational tools, do we think the challenge here is unique to medium-, heavy-duty, or is it something that should be light-duty as well?

Dean Bushey: That’s a great point. I’ll speak from our perspective and my perspective individually. Yes, I think it’s worthwhile across the spectrum, not just medium-duty, heavy-duty.

Rakesh Aneja, Daimler Truck North America: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think the need is overarching. But the type of information needed is very different, which then also maybe supports, in my mind, this recommendation. But I’m certainly open to making it overarching beyond medium and heavy.

Michael Berube: If I could, I’ll just continue the thought there. So, a suggestion might be, as the staff—and he put these all together. And we look at our recommendations. We have the very first recommendation, which is around education, really around light-duty, consumer education needs. This is around medium- and heavy-duty.

At the end, when these are put forward to the public, it’s not like three subgroups that it’s like recommendations of the total EV Working Group. We might think about grouping a few of these. There’s unique consumer education campaigns needed. The EV Work Group recommends, in the case of light-duty vehicles, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. The first one we saw. In the case the EV Work Group recommends, given the unique challenges and natures of medium-, heavy-duty vehicles, to start, the government industry should work jointly to do—one, two, three might be a way to make it clear.

Rachael Sack: Scott, what did you want me to mark up now versus have the group do later?

Scott Kubly: I think my thought is, we’ve marked this up a little bit. I think what I heard, Michael, from you was getting to almost a parallel construction on the three bullets. And it looks like that has been changed. So, they’re now—all verbs, it’s written so that now, “develop” looks like a verb.

So, if we’re to language that everybody is comfortable with, what I heard from Michael is, it would be good to have, as by Friday, a preamble written that describes what the working group has done. And then an organization of the items that is not organized by subcommittee but rather by broad, topical area.

And so, what I heard—and correct me if I’m wrong, Michael—is something along the lines, there’s a communications side. And then there is more technical recommendations. And then the last category would be “invest additional research,” which I would call kind of resource or investment type of recommendations.

And so, organizing a committee report in that format—or “report” may be the wrong type of language. But a preamble, along with some organization and structure of the recommendations. Is that capturing what you were saying?

Michael Berube: Yeah, I think so. And there’s a few ways you could think about it. Maybe when we come back at the end, since we’ve already been through all these ones, it does seem like we have a few that are in the education outreach. The first one, the medium-duty, heavy-duty total cost of ownership, the common classification could be this one.

We have three that are in the utility, one we’ve already talked about, two that are coming up. And there might be, like you said, a third one. But yeah, some way of grouping those. And I just think on this one, if you just want to do it right now, Rachael, I was just saying, just in the “Government and industry should work,” I think something needs to be said about medium-, heavy-duty just in that first part.

So, then it’s clear all the remaining ones are related to medium-, heavy-duty. So, if we can somehow—somewhere in there, add the medium-, heavy-duty, then it’s clear that the whole thing is about medium-, heavy-duty. Because just when you read it now, if someone took it out of context, they wouldn’t know this is only for heavy-duty.

Scott Kubly: Got you.

Dean Bushey: Okay.

Scott Kubly: So, Michael, just for the organization, I’ve been taking notes as we’ve gone. Sounds like for the public communications information dissemination, it’s the EV charging public education awareness campaign, creating a competition to the top [? two ?] EV public education and awareness campaign around the total cost of ownership of medium-, heavy-duty. And then public education and outreach on the medium-, heavy-duty power requirements.

The next one I conceptualized as industry standards or technical—something around that. And I’ll let you all wordsmith that because I don’t think I’m allowed to. But broad industry engagement on market segmentation and medium- and heavy-duty classifications. Education and outreach, so the one we just covered. Then managed charging, which was from the grid integration.

And then for that future investments bucket—and, again, feel free to edit the words: “Promote research into new technologies,” which I believe was the last medium- and heavy-duty subcommittee recommendation. And then proactive infrastructure investments, which I believe is the grid integration recommendation that’s still to be voted on. So, those three broad buckets. And then a preamble to go into that.

Michael Berube: You might think about the power needs. I think that was aimed a little more at utilities and the public because that might go more in that utility-oriented bucket, maybe, and right [? mean ?] and use. But Andy’s got his hand up.

Dean Bushey: You’re on mute.

Andrew Koblenz, National Automobile Dealers Association: Can you hear me?

Scott Kubly: Yep.

Andrew Koblenz: My question is on this one that’s currently number four. And it goes to the—if you scroll up, there was only like about four words to talk about what all this education is going to be about related to the high-power charging and the unique needs. And a couple of declarative sentences in there about those.

In the charging infrastructure subcommittee, we were very specific about that education campaign. That is, it is how easy it is to charge and try to myth-bust a little bit. I would benefit from a little bit more precision on exactly what this number-four public outreach would be about.

It just strikes me that high-power charging and unique needs, it’s a little amorphous, and a couple of declarative sentences that say, because they operate on corridors, there’s intense needs at very specific places. And that’s where we want to educate that. So, something along those lines.

Dean Bushey: Andrew, I like that. I agree.

Andrew Koblenz: Great.

Rachael Sack: Scott, are we going to finish number five?

Scott Kubly: Yep. I think so. I think there’s a little bit more work to do on this one. So, let’s move on to number five.

Dean Bushey: Number five was just a little bit of wordsmithing about what is the call to action and who is the audience. So, we’ve changed it to “Encourage the exploration of emerging technologies,” whether it’s hydrogen fuel cells or other interim long-term solutions to support medium-duty, heavy-duty.

The recommendation really is what was added. The recommendation, “Government research initiative should partner with private-sector investments and research to foster the development of technologies, offering diverse solutions enhancements.” At this point, I don’t think we’re at a position to say who should be doing that. Obviously, the EV Working Group is in a position right now to call in some experts and make some recommendations. But, generally, I think it’s important that the EV Working Group makes the statement that we understand that there are emerging technologies and that the government and industry should work together.

Scott Kubly: Michael, it looks like you went off mute. I’m anticipating a comment.

Michael Berube: I’m just thinking how—depending [on] how the document is envisioned. At the end, if it’s a series, if the recommendations are pulled out, you have a lot of specific good words in the first part that you might consider making in the recommendation itself. Just so if someone can—I think if just, getting afraid of the recommendation—just looks at itself without the other pieces in it, it might get lost a little bit.

I think it’s helpful for them just to be clear in and of themselves. So, if it’s government—it’s unclear, is it saying here, “Government research should partner with industry”? Meaning it’s because it’s not partnering today. Or “Research should be done by government and industry partnering together” has a different meaning.

I thought the conversation [INAUDIBLE] a little just to clarify that, first off, all this research is critical to be done. That we recommend that, government and private sector, both need to be conducting their research and working together to coordinate.

Dean Bushey: Okay. Yeah, and I think the discussion—I get your point. Last time, we talked about there are many government research organizations working on this. There are also lots of private organizations working on this. And we should support that and encourage that but also work together. Yeah.

Scott Kubly: So, just to understand, is there a need to continue editing on this, Dean and Michael, or was that more a clarifying conversation?

Dean Bushey: Michael, I’ll probably defer to you. Because I think the intent is ready for a vote. But the wordsmithing to sync—probably needs a little bit of changing, the wording. But it depends on if we need to wait to change the wording and then vote. I don’t know.

Rakesh Aneja: Yeah, and maybe just one quick comment. The background—and that may be well familiar to this group, but the discussion we had last time was really around the diversification of the technology set, propulsion technologies in particular, where one, specific one may not be suited for all applications. This is now, again, looking at medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles.

So, for some of those applications, the need to continue to research alternative technology. That was the intent background fully onboard with the wordsmithing opportunity. And portrayed collaboratively as it needs to be. But just wanted to reshare the intent behind this recommendation.

Michael Berube: I think, yeah, that’s important. Because I do think that if you want to try it right now, I think the words are there. If you took that first paragraph, and put it with your recommendation, and be clear, again, for medium- and heavy-duty. Because these will now stand alone. They won’t know they’re coming from what subcommittee. But say that, “The EV Working Group recommends that government and private sector should explore—”

I’m just reading that first one, “Should explore emerging technologies” or for medium—“EV Working Group recommends that government and private sector should explore emerging technologies for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, such as dot, dot, dot, dot.” I think that would capture what you’re saying, which is maybe a little better.

Rakesh Aneja: Works for me. Can we—

Michael Berube: It’s clear it’s medium- and heavy-duty. As I read the first part—I get your point out, Rakesh, more that what you’re trying to say. And it’s not maybe quite clear just on the recommendation alone.

Dean Bushey: Okay.

Michael Berube: Your point that [INAUDIBLE] you make the statement, it’s crucial to understand the [? battery ?] vehicles alone may not fully fulfill all requirements. So, therefore, government and private sector should work and should collaborate in looking at battery system, but also hydrogen fuel cells and other internal [INAUDIBLE].

Rakesh Aneja: Exactly.

Michael Berube: Yeah, I think you got to put that in the recommendation then. Otherwise, it might get lost.

Scott Kubly: So, we’re doing reasonably well on time. Does everybody have enough patience for us to try and get that text into this doc, into this particular recommendation, so we can try and get it voted out today?

Excellent.

Sharky Laguana: Sure.

Scott Kubly: Who on our team is doing the typing there?

Rachael Sack: I have it open. So, do you want me to start fresh or just edit within it?

Scott Kubly: Perhaps, Michael, if you give us the starting word. I know that we’re asking you to say it again.

Michael Berube: Yeah, no problem. So, Rachael, I would take what’s in the “Best practices” and that will become “The recommendation.”

Rachael Sack: Okay.

Michael Berube: And it would start with “The EV Working Group recommends”—I assume each of these start that way. That government and industry drop the word “encourage.” And make “exploration” “explore.” So, “explore emerging technologies.”

And I guess “of” can go away.

Rachael Sack: There’s nothing like typing in real time—

Michael Berube: I know.

Rachael Sack: In a slow computer.

Michael Berube: Yep, I think that’s done. Maybe there’s one last sentence that’s not quite caught. We should add a sentence that is “Government and industry should also collaborate together”—I think is the other thought I heard you guys say, Dean, Rakesh. In whatever—in this research.

Dean, what do you think? Does that capture, Rakesh, others, your thought?

Dean Bushey: It does. I have to say, thank you for the assist. Rakesh?

Rakesh Aneja: Yeah, that’s good.

Scott Kubly: So, to just be totally clear, this is replaced. This language that is currently highlighted is replacing the entirety of the language above?

Dean Bushey: Correct.

Scott Kubly: The highlighted language above?

Dean Bushey: Yes.

Rakesh Aneja: Yeah.

Scott Kubly: Rachael, excellent typing in public view on a computer with WIFI that might make it really hard to—that’s excellent.

Dean Bushey: We have a hand up.

Henrik Holland, Prologis: Yeah, one thing that sticks out for me, and this might just be nitpicking on the language here, is that it reads now like, because it says, “Government and industry explore emerging technology,” so, it reads a little bit like it’s not happening at all today.

Of course, we want to communicate that there needs to be action. But could we say something along the lines “continue to explore,” or do we feel like more needs to be done?

So, [INAUDIBLE] and more of or—

Dean Bushey: I think “continue to explore.”

Michael Berube: And actually, as I’m looking at it, the word “explore” is a bit—the context from before, it worked. But I wonder if, is it “explore”? Is it “research and develop”?

Henrik Holland: I think if you use “research and develop,” then it, I think it fits what common industry nomenclature is.

Michael Berube: Yeah, that does. I agree.

Rakesh Aneja: And maybe one more suggestion. If we say “continue to collaborate in the research and development,” then maybe the last sentence can be taken out. Then we just bring everything together.

Henrik Holland: It’s very efficient.

Rachael Sack : You want me to strike this last sentence?

Rakesh Aneja: If we have the first sentence as is, then I would say it takes care of the last sentence

and can be struck out.

Rachael Sack: Is that good there?

Dean Bushey: Thank you, Rachael.

Scott Kubly: Excellent.

Rachael Sack: And so, I think we have one more to go to, Scott. Should I jump to the grid [INAUDIBLE]?

Scott Kubly: That’s what I was going to suggest. If we feel like this is something that we’re ready to vote on today, then I would recommend that we move to the final grid integration. And so, just before we jump into this, by my count, we’ve got the EV public education and awareness campaign for medium- and heavy-duty. And the most recent promote research will be voted on today.

And then we have two: the EV charging station competition at the top, and the public outreach and education on power requirements have a little bit of work left to do to bring back on Friday. And so, then this would be—so I think we only have two things to vote on. And I think on the agenda, just for a time check, I think we have about 30 minutes set up for voting.

And so, what I would recommend that we do is take a lot of that time since we only have two to vote on, and we feel—probably won’t take all 30 minutes if we don’t need to, if we don’t want to. Take some of that 30 minutes, move it up here, move the public comment a little bit later. And reserve only about 10 minutes or so for voting, if that makes sense to everybody.

So, add about 20 minutes. Long story short, add 20 minutes to this conversation. So, taking it through, call it 4:45. And then do—or rather, I’m sorry—through 4:30. So, give 30 minutes of conversation or so if needed for the grid integration. And then go into public comment, and then do about 10 minutes of voting. Dean?

Dean Bushey: I count three that we’re going to vote on so far. The TCO, it’s promoting research. TCO education, and outreach, promoting research. And then the one previous from the charging network group.

Rachael Sack: Scott, I think you’re muted.

Scott Kubly: Sorry. I was going to ask Sharky if we were ready with the language on the competition to the top.

Sharky Laguana: I was just raising my hand to say I think we’re ready. So, if you want to add that, then we can check that box.

Scott Kubly: Excellent, good. So, that’s three out of three. So, then, we’re down to two that need to be voted on Friday. But, so, let’s keep a little bit of extra time. So, 20, 30 minutes of conversation. So, now, on the last grid integration recommendation, if needed. And then we can go to public comment, and then vote. And Nadia, the floor is yours.

Nadia El Mallakh, Utility and Clean Energy Sectors: Good afternoon. So, the grid integration subcommittee and Dean, we got together to merge Dean’s team’s number-three recommendation into this, which that recommendation dealt with planning and proactive grid build-out, et cetera. And we also took in some additional feedback and made some additional changes based upon feedback inside the committee itself.

So, with that being said, some of our subcommittee has not seen this yet because we got together in short order. So, they may be seeing this for the first time. But one comment was [to] replace the term “proactive,” just maybe even strike that. And, ultimately, the subcommittee got comfortable with that because, actually, “infrastructure investments” is a broader category.

So, you’ll see our recommendation is “support infrastructure investments.” And that’s really the tagline here. And in a few places you’ll see that we struck “proactive.” But in some other areas down under the proposed solution, we did note that some of these investments will be made in anticipation of demand growth to really capture the spirit of the fact that we’re talking about how do we mobilize faster and ensure that we’re better ready for the grid build-out.

So, maybe let’s go back up into, really quickly, the issue section, and just see if there’s anything else you want to, just scroll back up. There we go. And we did call out—based on our discussion with Dean, you’ll see in the third full paragraph that we wanted to call out medium- and heavy-duty vehicles because there are some unique needs there. So, just pointing that out for the full working group to see.

And then I think we can keep going down. Let’s see. And in our call to action, we wanted to not just start with “reduce investment risk,” as we had before. But really touch on the punch line, which is “support infrastructure investment that will enable accelerated energization of vehicles, reducing the investment risk through…” And so, we had our list there.

So, those are really the tweaks we made. We felt that the language was actually fairly flexible and broad and allowed us to accomplish a lot of objectives. But I will pause there and see if any of my fellow subcommittee members have additional context to add, or if others have questions or thoughts from the full working group.

Scott Kubly: Michael?

Michael Berube: I like the changes. I think the move from the proactive all makes a lot of sense. In here, so in the call to action, is what we would call the—going forward, I think, Scott, the plan is to take these, you said. And make them into one document with a consistent look, feel. So, I assume, what is call to action is what we’ll say is the recommendation?

We should probably just clarify that, Nadia, which part of this is the recommendation. Is it proposed solution and call to action—

Nadia El Mallakh: It’s both.

Michael Berube: Yeah, typically it’s both. I think it is both. Yeah, right. And then, I can’t remember the number, but the second or third that Dean went through that was developing tools to predict demand for medium- and heavy-duty. If I don’t have it up. I’d have to go back to look at it. Do we think that’s covered in here now, or is that going to be a separate piece?

Nadia El Mallakh: We do. And we have it in the proposed solution. So, we’ve got the key stakeholders basically, government industry coming together. And we have, as a catchall, other key decision makers. So, if we didn’t note a specific industry or sector, that’s meant to be a catchall, but to collaboratively develop improved data and forecasting practices.

Michael Berube: Yeah, okay. Got it.

Nadia El Mallakh: So, that’s where we had—that’s where we were thinking we were covered because it was pretty broad.

Scott Kubly: Dean?

Dean Bushey: There was a little bit of discussion—and Nadia, I’ll let you take this in your subgroup—about data transparency. It generically, from what I understand, talking to the subcommittee that it’s maybe easy for some utilities. But it’s much more difficult for other utilities to provide data transparency across load planning and future load casts. So, there was a little bit of resistance. Nadia?

Nadia El Mallakh: I think that that’s fair to say that the utilities are at different stages. But what we also did discuss is this improved data and forecasting practices. There may be that opportunity to export some of the best practices. So, one of the very real challenges is you might have a utility. It could be a large investor-owned utility. It could be a smaller co-op.

And they may not have the technology tools right in place that can quickly do the things that are needed in the way that might be easier for some other utility that maybe just went through some type of system upgrade. So, all of it goes into that long-term planning and what’s approved by regulators or the governing bodies to go into rate base, and those types of things.

But, certainly, to your point, Dean, I think one of the activities can be what are some of the best practices? And that can also encourage discussion and collaboration among the utilities of what tools did you use, how did you implement it, et cetera. So, that’s a good point. And I think that’s how we were landing at this broad category, doesn’t foreclose those discussions and deeper dives in development.

Scott Kubly: John, you have your hand.

John Bozella: Sorry about that. Can you hear me?

Nadia El Mallakh: Yes.

Scott Kubly: Yes.

John Bozella: Got it. So, how does this recommendation—many of us are involved in EVs2Scale2030. Like, how does this compare to that? That’s a very, very specific effort of bringing all the stakeholders together to drive what I think is a similar outcome. So, is this consistent with that or inconsistent? What are the similarities and differences between these two efforts?

Nadia El Mallakh: I think absolutely consistent would be my thought. But I welcome other subcommittees to weigh in. Because I think that’s a great example of something that’s already in practice. That’s really advancing the ball.

Michael Berube: Yeah, so under the call to action, number one is essentially that it would support the work that EPRI and DOE have done under that, other modeling tools that DOE is trying to create. I mean, this is completely consistent with it. If the team wanted, they could go just a little—there’s an effort through that to create a standard way, to create a national way, kind of transparent and widely available.

Reading number one, you don’t—I guess there’s two parts to this. Number one can be also like individual utilities in their own integrated planning process. But then also maybe people like EPRI or DOE on a national scale developing tools, both consistent with it, just depending how specific we want to be.

Nadia El Mallakh: And I would also note—it looks like Danielle has her hand up. But I would also note that EPRI’s great work has a heavy focus on fleets. There is also some focus on light-duty passenger vehicles, too. John, as you know. But those are different from planning perspectives and the like. And so, I think this is a little bit more generic in some ways to be a catchall.

And then I would note a distinguishing factor—Michael, appreciate you. I was really focused on one. But if you go down to the call to action, things like four, that is a distinguishing—I think the working group making a recommendation to the federal government thinking about new or existing authorities and funding and strategies. That is something that is unique, I would say, and distinct from the EPRI work. Although a lot of thought leadership can partner there with that EPRI workstream, if that makes sense.

Michael Berube: I mean, I think number one is related to the EPRI and DOE work. Two, three, and four really are all pushing some new ground here that the subgroup felt is needed.

Nadia El Mallakh: I agree in some of those. And it doesn’t mean that EPRI’s work might not inform that or there couldn’t be overlap. But, yeah, absolutely.

Scott Kubly: Danielle, I saw that you had your hand raised, but then you disappeared.

Danielle Sass Byrnett, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissions: Sorry, [INAUDIBLE].

Scott Kubly: Any—

Nadia El Mallakh: I mean, I see Danielle. One other thing I would note is there’s a lot of other industry groups, think tanks, or policy groups like ATE, others, that may weigh in on these things, organizations. John? Others, like—so, when we—that’s another piece. This is meant to be very broad.

Scott Kubly: So, any other further comments, discussions of this during the group—or from the group, rather? If not, it sounds like, Nadia, your next step is to take this back to your subcommittee, work through the final language of them, and bring it back tomorrow or Friday. Is that the plan?

Nadia El Mallakh: That’s the plan. I think we’re—

Michael Berube: Or are we already there, Nadia? I think we’ve already been through it, a subcommittee, but—

Nadia El Mallakh: I think we have. I think it was—

Michael Berube : [INAUDIBLE] the phone here?

Nadia El Mallakh: I think this was just to make sure it’s socialized with the stakeholders that are broadly represented. Obviously, now, the state energy offices, [INAUDIBLE] the utilities have had time to see this and see if there’s any other additional public comment. So, I think from my perspective, it’s basically done. It just would give a day or two for other industry actors to have had the chance to see it and provide any public comment. But I think we’re basically—from my perspective, I think it’s in good shape.

Scott Kubly: Got you. So, just to be super explicit about it. So, at this point, it’s, accept the changes in the tracked changes. And then—but leave it out there for a couple of days for comment, and then for you all to hear back, and then bring it back for a vote on Friday. But absent any comment, it’s ready to vote on, or are you saying you’re ready to vote on it today?

Nadia El Mallakh: I think it’s the—I mean, I don’t even know if all of our subcommittee members [are] here. I think we’ve got a lot of them. We just did it quickly. And we actually have a meeting Friday, I think, so we could share with folks. But, I mean, I don’t know—how do others feel? I don’t know if there’s a pressing need to vote on it today.

Michael Berube: The only feedback you’ll get is from today just to be clear because the feedback comes through the public comment period here.

Nadia El Mallakh: True, you’re right. So, you’re right because it wouldn’t. Good thinking.

Michael Berube: Maybe the one thing that needs to be clear in this is like, we just need to start, and maybe we just want to do it right now, so all clear—sorry, “the EV Working Group recommends.” I think we have to put, “If that’s where a proposed solution is, the EV Working Group recommends that federal state”—I don’t know, or something.

And, again, each one of these seem like—I mean, once we get through this, we should come back and talk just a little bit how do we as a group want these to all—the physical look and feel of them [INAUDIBLE]?

Nadia El Mallakh: Right. I see people have their hands up. But, I mean, I think in substance, this is pretty much done. But I’ll turn it back over to our emcee, Scott.

Scott Kubly: I’m going to try and call an order. But I could have gotten it wrong. Because I think it was Dean, Rakesh, and then John.

Dean Bushey: So, I would agree. The substance is there. And I agree with the substance. The words need to be tweaked. Looking back at our recommendations, making this all about the medium-, heavy-duty group. But we probably can tweak some of the language, too. Referencing, is there a rush to vote? I don’t think there’s a rush to vote.

I think we could take some of Michael’s recommendations on word, beef that up, make four number—four clearer. Make them unified. If the language is, “the EVWG recommends,” whatever that language is, we can make it smoother rather than rushing to a vote today. We’ve already scheduled a meeting for tomorrow from our subgroup so that we could be ready Friday. I would recommend that for our group.

Rakesh Aneja: May [I] jump in and ask a related question, because Dean and I, we are, I think, going to talk about the same topic. Just to understand the process for voting as well. Or once we vote, after that, can the language not be changed? In that case, I would certainly support Dean’s recommendation that we take some time to really finalize the language.

And also, Michael, you had mentioned earlier the consistent look and feel among the recommendations for the various subcommittees, which I also support. And then you also alluded to maybe Scott taking a stab at that. So, I just want to clarify the process piece. And then we can decide whether we vote today or just defer to Friday.

Scott Kubly: So, Michael, I think you’ve got more experience with [INAUDIBLE] than I have, so.

Michael Berube: I think, yeah, I’ll say that—

Let’s say we all, not including Scott and Rachael, are individual members of this federal advisory committee. There’s, let’s say, professional staff helping. The substance of the recommendations need to be from the advisory committee. And I think we’ve certainly done that with all the work here in the group.

I think if we, as a group, say, yeah, we’re good with these recommendations, but we just need them to be put into one document and literally—not changing the core substance, but just literally—I think tech edit, would, like, okay, there’s a misspelling, the verb is in the wrong place, but the substance is there. And putting them like the titles—putting them in a common look and feel, I think the staff can do that.

And then it comes back to this group to say, okay, you guys are voting. Is this the substance you guys all meant? As long as the team isn’t developing the substance, but just doing some of the formatting and look and feel, that’s okay.

Scott Kubly: John.

John Bozella: Yeah, so just for those of you scoring at home, I’m not going to be in the meeting on Friday. I have a conflict that I can’t get out from. So, given what Michael just suggested, I would encourage us to vote today on what we can vote on today. But whatever it is, it is.

So, let me just say, since I won’t have an opportunity to say this tomorrow, from a light-duty vehicle perspective, by far the most important sentence in this recommendation, whatever it’s called, is “support infrastructure investment that will enable accelerated energization.” I think that word is probably “electrification of vehicles.” So, there needs to absolutely be a sense of urgency. This is an absolute holdup.

Charging infrastructure cannot develop the way the business is working today. So, we have a problem. And we have to do different things, do hard things, consider new business models. And that’s what I love about this recommendation. So, I want to make sure that wherever the wordsmithing ends up, that there is a commitment to accelerating this process.

It’s one of the things I really like about EVs2Scale2030 is its sense of urgency about actionable steps that can be taken to move quickly. So, I think that’s in here, but I want to strongly endorse that. So, whatever wordsmithing happens, if we lose that, you lose me.

Scott Kubly: Sharky.

Sharky Laguana: Yeah, in the strongest possible way, I want to associate myself with John’s comments. I’m completely on board with everything he said. And I will also say that I’m firmly in support of voting now. I will be on a plane to Paris tomorrow during the meeting, so I will not be here. That was planned over a year ago. So, I think we should vote now. And I think we should express the urgency.

I think we have all seen that many of these manufacturers have—they already have both feet in. They’ve already made the commitment. They already have substantial expenditures. There needs to be a net to catch them. This is that net. Government needs to step up here in order to help with this transition, which is what this group was formed to do.

If I could just jump in before Michael, just to say ditto to Sharky, other than being on the plane to Paris. But I will agree with John and Sharky very strongly as well.

Scott Kubly: Michael.

Michael Berube: I also agree. I think to that point, I will say, I think the wording here is we need, “Enable accelerated electrification of vehicles and energization of EV chargers.” And that I think is this. The energization of the chargers is a key. I think that’s really a lot of what John, you were getting at, too, the accelerating.

This gets a little, too, what the word and feel of—how do we sufficiently create that sense of urgency here? Do we sufficiently have it? The way the call to action—I do like that because it says, “call to action.” So, I think we should somehow find a way to make sure to keep that there because that starts with a sense of urgency.

Scott Kubly: Perhaps, Michael, do you have a place where you might say something that explicitly says this is urgent or give some guidance as a group? When I’m going in and doing the document creation, putting this at the top of the order. So, it is the first recommendation. If everyone feels this is the most urgent of the recommendations. Sharky? Michael, I’m assuming your hand is wanting to be up again, but giving Sharky [INAUDIBLE].

Sharky Laguana: To Michael’s point, maybe in the call to action, preceding support infrastructure. “Support existing and already committed investments by manufacturers and any other parties this group may think would qualify by supporting infrastructure investment that will enable—”

In other words, I think emphasize that a number of entities out there, including most notably the car manufacturers, they’re already in. They’ve already invested billions and billions of dollars into this that—I think the message we need to convey here is we can’t just let that investment die without any support. I’m not saying that that’s what will happen, but I think we need to emphasize the urgency.

Scott Kubly: Nadia.

Nadia El Mallakh: I think that this does that pretty well. So, I don’t know if we want to try to wordsmith it more or we think we’re there. But I think, I mean, there’s a bunch of other—I don’t mind adding the supporting existing and already committed investments, but there’s also additional benefits by allowing more proactive—I know not everybody likes that term—but proactive investment, you can, at times, more efficiently invest. And it’s not piecemeal.

And so, there’s a lot of different related pieces. So, I don’t want it to be that it’s—this is clearly a key point, but this has other benefits. So, where we talked in circles, we were calling out specific examples here and there. And then we thought, well, broad is best because it captures a whole universe. But if folks want to—I don’t think that that hurts to say it. But there’s additional reasons to take this type [of] approach, additional benefits.

MEMBER: Understood. And I defer to the group as a whole and to the subcommittee. But that was my reaction to the words that John said. John, you have your hand raised, so I’m sorry for jumping in.

John Bozella: No, not at all. I like the proactive word. If it comes out, it comes out. But I’m totally where—I don’t think that Sharky and Nadia are saying things that are in conflict with one another.

And so, whether you want to add a whole bunch more words to capture Sharky’s point and Nadia’s point or whether a broader word framework does both, I don’t care. And I’m open. I think this sense of urgency that we’re all talking about needs to be conveyed.

And so, Nadia, I think you’re 100% right that there is, in addition to supporting investments that have been made further downstream toward the customer, that there are other elements of this. And I do appreciate your point and your leadership on trying to make sure that we’re focused on things that have to change in every place—from the regulating entities, to the investors, to the ratepayers. And so, I think what I hear you saying is that, is what we’re trying to convey here, that we need a systemic change to drive all of that.

Scott Kubly: Real quick, I want to call on Danielle.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: I don’t know if my—yeah, I got out of [INAUDIBLE] this time. I was just going to suggest that if we wanted to add more about existing commitments and other things that might be better in the problem statement as opposed to in the recommendations. And so, I don’t know how important it is to get that word smithed, how critical that is for us to be able to vote.

But as Nadia was saying, there are lots of entities that have made investments. And all of this is in support of past investments and to ensure there are ways of making new investments in ways that are affordable ultimately for whomever it is that’s going to be paying for them. So, I would not support putting that new language in the recommendation. But if it’s important to include, maybe we can throw it up in the issue statement.

Scott Kubly: Michael?

Michael Berube : I agree. I don’t think we have to necessarily add a lot more, and it might get too weighty in the recommendation. If you do go down to the recommendation, though, I was going to maybe suggest just a one word that might help. So, right now, it starts, “The EV Working Group recommends federal, state, including [INAUDIBLE] utility, other key decision makers collaboratively develop”—could say, “And other key decision makers—,” say—

I was going to put the word “urgently” there for like federal, state—collaboratively develop improved data forecasting, mechanism and—urgently and collaboratively. Right at the very beginning, the sense of this is—I don’t know—a thought. You could add something right there, with the “urgently” word if people think—I don’t know if that’s too much.

Nadia El Mallakh: “Quickly,” you could say “quickly.” Sorry, I just jumped in. And I actually have an idea on Sharky—I have a friendly modification that may strike the balance between what you said and Danielle said. If you want me to jump in. Okay, I’m going to—does that work, Michael? I mean, we could use “urgently.”

Michael Berube: “Urgently”—“quickly,” kind of—I don’t know, I think in a document—

Nadia El Mallakh: I think “timely.” It just sound—

Michael Berube: “Urgently collaborate.” I like that from Danielle, yeah, “urgently collaborate.” What Danielle wrote in the chat.

Nadia El Mallakh: Okay.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: I was basically recommending that we pull the first portion of the call to action up since we’re now merging these into a single recommendation. This is in huddle. I can just get in and do it. [CHUCKLES]

Nadia El Mallakh: So, while you’re doing that, let me—not to type it yet, but just to throw out to the team as the call to action currently sits. It says, “Support existing and already committed investments by manufacturers.” I would say, why don’t we just omit “by manufacturers.” It’s everyone, anyone. “Support existing and already committed investments by or via, I would say maybe, supporting infrastructure investment.”

So, it’s like saying that can include manufacturers, that can include vehicle manufacturers, charging manufacturers. Danielle, to your point, customers’ investments that utilities have made already. So, it’s building upon that. I don’t know. So, if you just didn’t have the express callout of one group that inherently includes any investments.

You could even say “support”—yeah, so anyway, Sharky, does that work? And, Danielle, does that work?

Sharky Laguana: For me, that totally works. I wasn’t intending to be exclusionary. In fact, I think even when I was trying to articulate the sentence in real time, I said anybody else. So, I think a simpler, inclusive statement is preferable. And I agree.

Danielle, I would just respond by saying, to your point about what—should this be in the problem section. Incorporating a little bit of the problem into the call to action. I think it’s important primarily because to a certain extent, many people will only see the call to action and can’t be expected to go through the problem statement.

And I woke up this morning and saw an announcement that a major manufacturer laid off thousands of people because of anticipated shortfall. And it just seems really clear to me that at every point in turn, we do need to be articulating the problem and why it is salient. No matter what your opinions are on ICE versus EV, this is still a problem for the entire country.

Scott Kubly: I wanted to do a quick time check. So, right now, I think we have about five folks signed up to make public comment. So, that’s about 10 minutes. And then if we get this to a vote, and it sounds like that’s where the group is, we’ll have 4 items to vote on. And so, that’s probably going to be 10 or 12 minutes or so. So, I just want to do a quick time check that we have probably 5 more minutes or so to continue to work on this.

Michael Berube: One just a little grammar thing. But I think “make us urgently collaborate” rather than “collaborative.” And just so it doesn’t really, like a run-on, it might want to start—no, I think it might be in the next paragraph that we added that clause to the beginning, might need to start with a—call to action—“So as to support infrastructure investments,” and I think we lost the—

Sharky Laguana: We lost Nadia’s suggestion, yeah.

Michael Berube: “So as to support”—did we want to keep that in there? I thought we

just didn’t want to have the industry. “So as to support”—what was the—

Sharky Laguana: “Existing investment.”

Michael Berube: Yeah, “Existing and already committed—”

Nadia El Mallakh: “Investments.”

Michael Berube: “Investments.”

Sharky Laguana: There you go.

Michael Berube: How about “public and private investments?”

Sharky Laguana: Yes.

Michael Berube: Even better, “public and private investments?”

Sharky Laguana: Yes.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: The fewer clauses that we add, the more palatable this will be broadly. So, I would actually take out “public and private.”

Rachael Sack: Slow computer—

Scott Kubly: Can I ask everybody to give Rachael a few minutes to get—or a few seconds to get all this before we start adding more. And then again, to the extent that we want to vote on this today, my recommendation would be just maybe we can do a quick read-through of the whole thing to make sure everybody is—we’ve made a lot of changes, and make sure that everybody is comfortable with those changes that have been made. Nadia, I mean, assuming that you’re ready to bring it to a vote as the subcommittee.

Rachael Sack: Can someone advise, though, on that call to action for [the] sentence, “So as to support”? Or, Cassie, do you have an edit to make here, or should I finish?

Scott Kubly: You’re muted, Cassie. Thank you.

Cassie Powers, NASEO: I do. And it’s very possible I’m overlooking this. But I’m just wondering if we’ve edited this so that it is now “So as to support existing and already committed infrastructure investment.”

Sharky Laguana: No, no. Sorry, it’s “So as to support existing and already committed investments.” We recommend or—

Nadia El Mallakh: “Infrastructure” is deleted. I think “infrastructure” is deleted, yeah.

Cassie Powers: But I guess my point is, did we just change the meaning since we are now only looking at existing and already committed as opposed to—

Sharky Laguana: No—

Cassie Powers: [INAUDIBLE] have not yet been committed.

Sharky Laguana: We have changed the meaning. And I think it was unintentional. So, I think we’re incorporating—the idea here is we’re incorporating a little bit of the problem into the call to action. So, what we’re trying to convey is that we’re supporting existing and already committed.

“So as to support existing and already committed investments”—and just paraphrase me here for a second. Somebody can wordsmith this a little better. We’re recommending making infrastructure investments that will enable accelerated blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, it is recommended [INAUDIBLE] to make infrastructure investments. Yes.

Cassie Powers: My point is, should we be calling out, though, in the very first sentence, instead of all the way down in point number three, that in addition to existing and already committed, we are also supporting potential future investments. It’s getting back to the proactive intention of this entire thing.

Michael Berube: Existing and future—I, in the back of my mind, had that same concern, Cassie. I think, articulated it well, though. How about “already”—I think the “already committed” was people who had a thought about that. People had made commitments.

“So as to support already committed and future,” so people have made commitments already, but then there’s also future. So, maybe we just—that might work.

Cassie Powers: That works.

Nadia El Mallakh: So, we get rid of “existing,” and we just say—

Michael Berube: Because that’s kind of already committed like [INAUDIBLE] recovered there.

Nadia El Mallakh: Yeah, I think we can say, “So as to support committed”—I think we can get rid of the word “already”—“and future investments.”

Scott Kubly: I’m going to ask that we pause the conversation a little bit. Give folks a chance to read through what has been word smithed. And then open it up for public comment.

Rachael, I’ll let you read off the rules if I miss anything. But, again, we’re trying to hold public comment to 2 minutes per person so that we can then preserve the last 10 minutes or so of the meeting for voting. So, with that, I will let whoever can let the public commenters in.

Rachael Sack: So, Scott, whoever is interested in commenting, they can raise their hand at this time. And then Scott will call on for two minutes. And then, let’s see, if we run out of time today during our public comment period, you can email our evwg@ee.doe.gov email address, as is on the screen, or send comments via mail to Dr. Rachael Nealer. And her address is also listed on the screen.

And then any statements received within 10 business days will be included in the meeting notes that will be posted on the website. Scott, I’ll hand it over to you. And does anyone have a public comment that they’d like to share at this time?

Scott Kubly: I’m not seeing if there are any hands raised.

Rachael Sack: I don’t see any. While we’re waiting, if I could just mention to our working group members to, again, help inform your decisions moving forward. There were a few comments shared in the chat. So, if you haven’t looked at the chat in our Zoom meeting, you can peruse a few things that were added.

And then there was a question about these materials that we’ve been reviewing today being made public. As we’ve been discussing, these will ultimately become a final package that will ultimately, when ready and approved, be posted on the website. And that comment was also included in our chat for the public to see.

Scott Kubly: I do not see any hands raised. And want to confirm that there are none raised before we jump into voting.

Rachael Sack: Yeah, that is correct. There are none raised.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. So, my thought would be we’ve had this very rich discussion on the EV Working—or on the grid integration, that final recommendation. My proposal is that what we do is we vote on the—so we have four items that are ready to vote.

We vote on the three that are not the grid integration proposal so that we can get those done. And then continue the conversation on the grid integration to the extent that there’s any additional edits that are needed. Does that make sense to everybody? Dean, you’ve got your hand raised.

Dean Bushey: Just clarifying what we said before. We can vote on the intent or the intent of what we want on those three recommendations from the medium-duty, heavy-duty remain. The group is meeting tomorrow to add clarity and words. I just want to make sure it’s okay that we do that after we vote.

Scott Kubly: My understanding is—go ahead, Michael.

Michael Berube: Yeah, I mean, any subsequent vote replaces the early one. So, to the degree, having a vote now while we have a very large representation, this is the intent of what we want, and we are directing the subgroups to go and wordsmith it a little more, bring back a final one Friday that’s cleaned up with this intent.

I think then, those members who have already said they can’t make it, they’re voting on the core intent, and they won’t be there. As long as we have a quorum, they’re delegating to the remaining members to just make sure the cleaned-up version meets that intent.

Dean Bushey: Thank you.

Scott Kubly: So, Rachael, are you ready to throw up the language that we have for the EV charging competition to the top? And, Dean, or I guess rather, John or Sharky, are we ready to vote on that?

Sharky Laguana: We are ready.

Scott Kubly: Let’s do it. I’m going to wait for Rachael to throw it up there. But while she’s doing that, everybody get your voting thumbs ready. There we go. So, a little bit of—is everybody ready to vote on this—I guess if anybody is against it, if you could raise your hand with the little yellow hand signal.

Seeing none. It looks like the ayes have it. So, that’s approved. One down. The next one that I’ve got on my list here is public education and awareness campaign for the total cost of ownership of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles.

And the language here—so it’s the non-crossed-out language. Correct, Rachael?

Rachael Sack: I believe, so I’m just looking for the recommendation. So, Dean, is that—I can’t get it on. Where should I target?

Scott Kubly: Right in “the EV Working Group recommends” per Michael’s recommendation—of a recommendation.

Rachael Sack: So, is Dean here or Rakesh? So, where—

Rakesh Aneja: I think it’s in the description if you scroll up. You may not have the phrase “EV Working Group recommends,” but the description captures the recommendation.

Dean Bushey: And that’s where the wordsmithing has to go. “The EV Working Group recommends—"

Michael Berube: I guess it’s in your title. I recommend an EV public education and awareness campaign.

Dean Bushey: Correct.

Rakesh Aneja: To deliver trustworthy information about the total cost of ownership and so on.

Nadia El Mallakh: And is it just linked to charging, or is it to charging and operating medium- and heavy-duty—

Dean Bushey: It’s all of it.

Rakesh Aneja: Yes.

Nadia El Mallakh: Because we just say like linked to charging. So, maybe it’s just linked to operating instead of charging. Is that right? Because charging is a complicated operation. You have to—

Rakesh Aneja: Right, I would even contend, with the total cost of ownership, even the initial acquisition price of vehicles is [INAUDIBLE] so it’s really—

Dean Bushey: Yeah, it’s not just operating.

Nadia El Mallakh: Acquiring and operating—

Rakesh Aneja: No operation. Life cycle cost, total cost of ownership.

Nadia El Mallakh: Okay, that’s good. Linked to life cycle costs.

Michael Berube: So, drop the word “charging”?

Nadia El Mallakh: Yeah—

Rakesh Aneja: Yes.

Nadia El Mallakh: [? deem ?] to life cycle, like you were saying, cost of or for medium- and heavy-duty. I don’t know if it’s ever for [INAUDIBLE].

Rakesh Aneja: And we’ll clean up the language tomorrow, as Dean was proposing. But essentially, total cost of ownership is the essence of it, including initial acquisition, operation, and everything.

Michael Berube: And the EV Work Group recommends a medium-duty, heavy-duty EV public aware somewhere. EV [INAUDIBLE] for medium-duty, heavy-duty. I think just so it’s right up here in front.

Yes. Yep.

Scott Kubly: Excellent.

Are we ready?

So, again, same rule. If there is somebody opposed to this, given that there are far—please raise your hand, the little yellow hand at the bottom.

None were opposed. Excellent. So, that is approved. And then the last one, promote research into new technologies.

Rachael Sack: So, it was this last paragraph?

Dean Bushey: Correct. The intent is there. We will add, clarify, or more language. But the intent remains the same.

Scott Kubly: Dean, how much more language are we going to be adding here?

Dean Bushey: So, probably another paragraph that really spells out what type of technologies—I don’t know. The group is going to work on it. We could say let’s vote on the intent, and then we could give you the paragraph that we want to add. And you could say yes or no on Friday.

Scott Kubly: Okay, I think that makes sense. So, again, little show yellow hands for people that are not ready to vote on this, on the intent of this. So, I’m going to call that half a vote in the sense that we’ve got the intent, but we still need to get the language. So, we’ve got two and one-half down.

And then now, we’re on to the final grid integration item that we had just wrapped up or not wrapped up, but that we had been discussing at length. And so, I want to get to that. And [I] think a lot of folks had wanted to vote on this beyond just the intent, but the actual language. And so, Nadia, I wanted to turn the floor back over to you to see if we’re there yet.

Nadia El Mallakh: Same committee, subcommittee members. I mean, I think it’s close enough given we could make some minor—

Cassie Powers: Agreed.

Sharky Laguana: Agreed.

Michael Berube: Yep, agreed.

Nadia El Mallakh: It’s a little wordy. But, yeah, I agree.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: Yeah, as long as we can clean up that last paragraph later.

Scott Kubly: Which last paragraph here? I just want to make sure that I—

Danielle Sass Byrnett: The “So as to support committed.” I don’t think we quite got back to our intentions and the wording.

Scott Kubly: Do you all want to try to do that now? We have about 10 minutes left. Because it’s—

Nadia El Mallakh: Danielle, what are you thinking? I mean, I was really thinking it just is a little wordy in the first part. But ours is like, “So as—” we’re kind of academic. We’re like, perhaps—but that’s maybe okay.

Scott Kubly: Michael, it looked like you had a point to make.

Michael Berube: I was going to say, I do think we should take at least five, six minutes of our time to talk about how these will all look. I don’t think it’s quite as simple as just cut-and-paste them all into one document. So, just talking through that I think would be [a] good use of our time now.

I suggest we vote on this. We get the meaning of the intent, and then if that first sentence needs to be just made a little less heavy. The team does that and brings it back. Let’s get the sense of the whole group on the core intent here.

Scott Kubly: Okay, that sounds good.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: Yeah, so, I mean, instead of the “So as,” maybe it’s “To support already committed investments and achieve other benefits.” Because the reason we’re doing this is not just because investments have been made. There’s a whole world of—[INAUDIBLE]

Nadia El Mallakh: Maybe we say, “To support committed and future investments and benefits.” How about that, Danielle? That way we’re honoring the investment theme, which I think is important because there’s a lot of money at stake. And going forward, highlighting that is always—but adding benefits.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: I don’t think we want “it is recommended to” either. We’re wordsmithing here.

Crystal Philcox: No, all the others start with “The EV Working Group recommends.”

Nadia El Mallakh: So, “The EV—”

Rachael Sack: But is this the second paragraph of—

Danielle Sass Byrnett: It is.

Rachael Sack: Of “The EV Working Group recommends.”

Crystal Philcox: Okay.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: “Federal, state urgently collaborate to support infrastructure.” So, what I was actually proposing earlier was in the first sentence, above where we have “to support infrastructure investment that will enable—.” It would be “That will enable accelerated electrification of vehicles and energization of EV chargers.” Period.

So, bring the heart of our recommendation up to the first paragraph from the second paragraph.

Rachael Sack: I’m sorry. I [INAUDIBLE] sorry.

[LAUGHTER]

I can’t get in. They won’t let me get in. I can’t help. Just say it one more time.

Danielle Sass Byrnett: In the first paragraph, “To support infrastructure investment that will enable—.” You’ve already got it there. No, no, don’t retype, Rachael. You already have it there, where you already put that blue line.

Rachael Sack: Yes, you want me to move it up to the first paragraph? Or—sorry. There’s two paragraphs here. The one that starts with “federal,” and the one that is “To,” so—

Danielle Sass Byrnett: Give me a second to type. So, you can copy and paste.

Rachael Sack: Okay. Scott, I think, given our timing, and we don’t want to wordsmith meticulously here, it would be good to talk about process, too.

Nadia El Mallakh: And maybe we just vote on the theme of this, Michael, to your point. Does anyone object to the theme of this? And then we can also wordsmith this. We have a committee meeting on Friday. [INAUDIBLE] last weeks if we need to.

Scott Kubly: I think that makes sense. So, we can vote on the intent. Sounds like we’ve got that. But we’re going to have to vote. Like if we wordsmith it, we’re going to have to vote again on Friday, which is fine. Just to be clear about that. Go ahead, Michael.

Michael Berube: Yeah, I think Friday it will be good to—I really think the committee should see the full document. Here’s the thing as it’s going to look, or pretty close to how it’s going to look, to vote to approve it just because it’s—it just, we’ve all approved, but here’s how it all is. Yeah, make sure we didn’t miss anything up in there. Just people see it all organized anyway. So, that would cover you a little bit, too.

Scott Kubly: So, with that, so we’ll put together a proposal or a draft. Michael, I think your point about spending a few minutes discussing what that would look like for the group so that they know what to expect. And then we’ll have to vote on these final two, the final language of that on Friday as well. So, I’ll let you take it away and describe what your thoughts are on how the document can look, and then open it up for discussion in the last five minutes for the rest of the group and just react to your proposal.

Michael Berube: Yeah, so I think, one is just literally all in one document. We want this to look sharp and reflect all the work the group has done here. Some of the groups did a little bit of a introduction somewhere, like a long, really well thought through. Here’s the issue, and here’s the recommendation. Some just jump right to the recommendation. I think we do have to decide a little bit of do we do a little of that for each one?

I think it’s okay if some of the issues—if you did that, some could be a little shorter than the other. But if we do that, we probably need at least issue recommendation for each of them, or you just have the recommendations. And I think then just a little bit like I imagine a document that has a follow-up to the last report we did, based on the report we did, that EV Working Group has been meeting.

The committees addressing some of the most critical points. Attach our initial—I think this is a key thing. Initial recommendations—so it’s not to say this is the total work of the group, but these are initial recommendations that we believe are urgent and important to bring forward immediately. Something about urgency, important, bring them forward. And then we have them. But I’m curious to get people’s

thoughts. I mean, John, you have your hand up. How do we want to structure it?

John Bozella: Yeah, so my view is, I think what you describe makes sense to me. I think we have to recognize that the reason there are some differences is—how do I say this? Some of these recommendations are more actionable than others. Let’s be honest.

And so, the ones that are more actionable, frankly, need a little bit less “preambulization.” They don’t need any explaining. They’re things that we’re going to do that are actionable and produce results. And so, we should accept that there’s going to be a little bit of variation from recommendation to recommendation. Because some of them are bigger, broader, more strategic, and conceptual. So, I think that’s okay.

Michael Berube: Yeah, I also agree with that. I think that is a reality and okay.

Scott Kubly: Dean?

Dean Bushey: Yeah, I completely agree with both. But I do think we should have—what are the topic headings? Is it going to be issue, “recommendation,” “EV Working Group recommends.” And maybe that’s what the staff is going to do. But just to guide our group tomorrow when we wordsmith this, what paragraph should we be jointly—I think it should look uniform.

Michael Berube: This would be, let’s say, ideal, if we could get there. I don’t know if we can. But if maybe the staff—Scott [? and ?] you guys can do the header, the preamble, since that’s not like the recommendations. I think that’s even safe ground.

And then we talked a little about grouping them. Maybe it’s just the order. There’s ordered in a logical group rather than trying to create groups. I think if there’s something like, “issue,” and the title of that issue is obvious to what the recommendation will be. And it can be a sentence or two. It can be—I think the utility group’s kind of down like a paragraph. That’s fine. It’s a bigger, more complicated issue that leads to this more complicated recommendation.

But “issue,” sentence two, three, or four, if it needs to be. And then “recommendation.” And the recommendation all start with “The EV Working Group recommends—” And then it makes it clear. It’s like an action. We’re recommending—

Scott Kubly: We’re at time. Sharky, I want to give you a chance to make a comment, and then I will try to wrap it up and summarize next steps.

Sharky Laguana: Well, one, I want to know if “preambulization” is a word. Because if it is, I’m going to be using that a lot.

John Bozella: Come on, it’s a word now.

Julie Nixon: That’s right.

Sharky Laguana: Yeah, I’m on board with a short description, Michael. I think it should be staff. I think this group has shown a proclivity towards a high attention to detail around language. And I fear that it will become something that detracts from actually completing a report. So, I think a quick one or two-sentence explainer by staff would solve for that problem and keep us from going back and forth.

Scott Kubly: Excellent. So, what I will do is I will, as “staff,” try to pull that together for you all. I will share it out a little bit later, probably tomorrow. I will try to make the language as a matter of fact as possible as introducing things. And I will try to structure the headings so that they’re as consistent as possible.

And then without changing any of the intent. And then the body of it, I will leave to you all to finalize. And then we can bring that all back, encourage everybody to read it ahead of time. And unless there’s any showstoppers, we can vote on it as a whole package. Does that work for everybody? Thumbs up.

John Bozella: We’re authorizing the staff to preambulate.

Scott Kubly: Excellent.

Dean Bushey: I fear we may not get a quorum though. Just letting you know.

John Bozella: You will not get me, and I’m done voting. And so, good luck the rest of the way. And I hope we do get a quorum because we should get this chapter finished.

Michael Berube: Scott, there might—yeah, think we could double check. They may also be—I don’t know if people have to be literally live in person, or if they review, and you [are] asking for a vote on it, if that email that vote in like.

Sharky Laguana: Michael, I was going to, can ask that question, if we could potentially vote by proxy or in absenteeism. I mean, I’m ready right now to give my—I have enough trust and faith in the work of this group to provide a vote in support of whatever is decided tomorrow. I’m not sure if that crosses any red lines in terms of—

Scott Kubly: There are no proxy votes. We can’t hold a meeting if there’s not a quorum. I will check on the voting in absentia. And if we don’t get to a quorum and we cannot vote in absentia, we have a 30-day window to schedule the next meeting. And we’ll schedule that as quickly as we can to get to a final vote.

Michael Berube: I mean, you can’t schedule it for 30 days?

Scott Kubly: There needs to be a set amount of notice given for public meetings to provide folks time to schedule. I believe that is 30 days. I will confirm.

Julie Nixon: It is 30 days with a day or two of wiggle room.

Michael Berube: And Julie, do or anyone on the—yeah, I don’t know if the document can be just sent out for everyone to—

Julie Nixon: That we know we cannot do. We tried that before.

Michael Berube: We cannot. Right, okay.

Nadia El Mallakh: Is there a way to structure, just confirm before we jump, that people’s vote of approval—if one is conditioned upon if there’s a major rewrite if—but, I mean, I guess what I’m saying, could we just approve what is drafted here with just minor cleanup? I mean, maybe that’s the best. Because if we don’t have a quorum on Friday, we’re not voting on this for a month, and nothing happens with it at all. So, I don’t know. What do you think?

Scott Kubly: Go ahead, Michael.

Michael Berube: Well, for one, we should just vote on the grid one, to Danielle’s point. That’s the only one we haven’t.

Nadia El Mallakh: I thought we did.

Michael Berube: We didn’t actually take the vote.

Scott Kubly: So, does anybody object to it as written? If there is, for whatever reason, no quorum on Friday, and we were not able to get to it for another month. I want to just caveat that it would be verbatim, subject to some minor spell-check and grammar checks. Is everybody comfortable with that?

Sharky Laguana: Yes.

Scott Kubly: I will take my yellow hand down. If anybody’s hand goes up, that will be considered a no vote, and it’s not ready to move forward.

I do not see any yellow hands, so I’m assuming that means everybody has voted yes, that they’re comfortable with the recommendation as written today, if for some reason we don’t have a quorum tomorrow, or Friday rather.

Rachael Sack: Scott, I’m not sure we have a quorum now.

Scott Kubly: Who said that?

Rachael Sack: This is Rachael. I counted 12.

Julie Nixon: Yes, we’re down to 12.

Michael Berube: What is quorum?

Scott Kubly: Okay, well—

John Bozella: No, no. So, we started the meeting with a quorum.

Nadia El Mallakh: …

John Bozella: We started the meeting with a quorum. We have a quorum.

Scott Kubly: I do not—candidly, and this is devolving into comedy, but I do not know the rules of order on the [INAUDIBLE].

Sharky Laguana: I do. John, you have to have quorum for a vote under Robert’s Rules of Order. I’ve been in situations where I’ve been one short because somebody had to step out, take a call, or use the restroom.

Nadia El Mallakh: Who did we lose?

Scott Kubly: We’ve now gone five minutes over. We’ve got the meeting scheduled for Friday. We will try to do everything that we can. We’ve got the votes on the things that we’ve got the votes on. And we can look at the time stamp to make sure that we had a quorum at the time.

We’ll come back Friday with an updated document. And we hopefully will have a quorum, and we will be able to get a vote. And if we can’t, then we will schedule a meeting for, in all likelihood, early January to get to a final vote.

Michael Berube: And we also ask maybe the Volpe team to make calls to all the members to verify who will be there. Even if, hey, I could be there for 15 minutes. Great, 15 minutes. Be there at this 15, and we’ll get it done quick type of thing.

Scott Kubly: Yeah, I am getting notes that we should technically be ending the meeting since we don’t have a quorum. But, Michael, that seems a very good last word to direct us to call people and make sure they can show up. So, thank you very much. I appreciate everybody’s time and attention and participation.

Cassie Powers: Thanks, Scott.

Dean Bushey: Thank you.

Scott Kubly: Thank you.

Dean Bushey: Bye-bye.