Meeting for the Electric Vehicle Working Group - September 2024 (Text Version)

This is a text version of Meeting for the Electric Vehicle Working Group - September 2024, presented on Sept. 30, 2024.

Rachael Nealer, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Thank you so much for—thank you so much for joining the EV Working Group meeting on the last day of September. We have a short meeting here to give some subcommittee updates. But before we begin, I will just mention that this meeting is being recorded and will be published on the EV Working Group page within driveelectric.gov.

If you do not wish to have your voice recorded, please do not speak during the call. 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 are presumed to consent to recording and use of your voice or image.

With that disclaimer out of the way, we are here today with two great leaders in the electrification space, Acting Administrator of FHWA Kristin White and Executive Director Gabe Klein of the Joint Office. So, I will pass it to Kristin and stop sharing my slides here—just to give us some opening remarks—and then Gabe will go second.

Kristin White, Federal Highway Administration: Thank you, Rachael. And thank you to all of you [inaudible] group members. And to you, the members of the public, that are tuning in to help us understand how we can electrify America and build a strategic national charging network that meets our net-zero goals and our goals of 500,000 chargers by 2030—which the news tells us we are right on track.

I am acting administrator of the Federal Highway Administration. I work very closely with Rachael, my colleague, Gabe Klein, as the director of the joint energy, and office, and transportation. And you've heard from my colleagues before. But I just want to take a moment and celebrate all the success—because last week was Climate Week.

Many of us may have seen events—participated in events—from New York, to Austin, to Detroit. And one of the things we talked about is we really need to take a moment—that with your leadership, both in the public and private sectors, we have significantly accelerated the national electric vehicle program in America since—even—it was incepted in 2021.

We have doubled the number of chargers in America, which we announced in August. We are electrifying 80,000 miles of interstate systems. We have 52 states and territories that have teams, and plans, and programs ready to go. And—in fact—we just announced this last week to our colleagues at the White House that 34% of the grants through our charging and fueling infrastructure initiative and EVC-RAA, known as the NEVI 10% program, are already underway.

So, this is a credit to the hard-working staff of the Joint Office, both at DOE and the Department of Transportation, but also to all of you that are taking advantage of these significant funding opportunities and helping us with these policy priorities. One other things that I really wanted to make sure we hit on is policy—is still crucial as we build out and evolve this network.

So, for those of you in the medium-duty, heavy-duty space, I sure hope you are aware of the medium-duty, heavy-duty request for information, or RFI, that is published and open for your comment, and advice, and feedback on how we build out the national network for our friends in the fleets, buses, and medium-duty, heavy-duty markets. That RFI is open until November 12. So, you still have a lot of time. And we really need your feedback and ideas on how to make this network and this NEVI program work for you.

The last thing I want to thank is that—I really just want to take a moment. You all have been taking time very regularly to come together here since the start of the Biden-Harris administration's commitment to our half-a-million charger goal by 2030 and the NEVI program.

And I think—I just want to thank you all, individually, your organizations, your teams, and the networks that you're building, both relationally and across organizations. I think that's really a celebration of these types of working groups. And I want to thank Rachael, and the Joint Office team, and the staff that have been really, really making this work.

So, with that, I want to encourage you—make sure you are listening and engaged actively. We want to hear your feedback. For the members of the public, we want you to participate. So, we know this is going to be a great conversation. And it couldn't be without my colleague, Gabe Klein, who—I'm going to turn it over—in the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. Hey, Gabe.

Gabe Klein, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Hey, thank you, Kristin. And we're happy to welcome you to the EV Working Group team. We really appreciate your leadership and participation. And Kristin and the federal highways team are invaluable primary partners in getting all of this done. I actually want to take a second …

We're so focused sometimes in our office on what's happening within the federal government, but there's a lot happening out there beyond what we're doing. A couple little notes. One is, we just saw numbers for—I believe it was—August EV sales because this working group is not just about EV charging, it's about EVs as well. And once again went back up over 10% for sales of EVs, which is awesome.

And also I saw a really interesting report that was recently published by MIT and reminded me of my city DOT days putting in bike share stations—where initially, retailers were like, “Oh, I don't know if I want that thing near me, near my store, my location.” And then once they saw the data and how much increased sales they could get by having a bike share station near them, they wanted them. Well, we're seeing the same thing with EV charging.

This MIT study—and I'll put it in the chat after if it's not in there already—found that EV charging boosted spending at nearby businesses to the tune of thousands of extra dollars annually. And this increase was—quote—"particularly" pronounced for businesses in under-resourced areas. So, it's bigger than just the propulsion system in our vehicles. It's good for people, it's good for the environment, and it's good business, even if you're just adjacent to it.

And, so, investing in charging in communities—and we're rapidly moving into more community-based charging as well with the CFI grants and EVC-RAA—it can help create jobs and then grow the local economies, particularly for disadvantaged folks and small businesses.

I also want to note—the Joint Office has also kicked off seven EV charging workforce development projects, totaling almost $10 million. And that's across Oregon, Alabama, Pennsylvania, California, Wisconsin, this DC Baltimore area, where I am, and Virginia. And this is to support the more than 5 million EVs that have sold cumulatively in the U.S. to date.

And that just shows that, more and more, driving an EV is a daily reality for millions of people, and growing. But we also know there's still a ton of work to do. There's really important work to be done to fill gaps along highways—substantially grow community level 2 charging so that people can charge where they park and when their cars are sitting. And we know that they sit—on average—95% of the time. So, that level 2 charging that we're getting into now is going to be the workhorse of our national charging network.

So, in summary, we've come a long way, but there's still more to do. We really value this collaborative effort. As we collaborate—and that's our job in the Joint Office, to collaborate across federal government—particularly with DOT and DOE—but even beyond, with EPA and so forth.

We want to collaborate with you. We look forward to hearing your recommendations so we can incorporate those. And as Kristin said, thank you so much for your time, your contributions. And I hope the meeting is informative and productive for you all, as it will be for me and our team. And I'm going to pass it back to Rachael. And thank you, Rachael, also for all of your efforts here as well.

Rachael Nealer: Awesome. Thank you so much. Well, thank you so much to Gabe and Kristin for taking time out of your busy days to kick us off. It's really great to have you here. And we will go ahead and get into business. All right, I will pass it over to Rachael Sack, our facilitator today, to go over ground rules.

Rachael Sack, U.S. Department of Transportation Volpe Center: Great. Thanks, Rachael, and thank you for those great welcoming remarks. Hi, everyone. My name is Rachael Sack. I'm with the Volpe Center, and I'll be your facilitator today during this short meeting, which is really intended to allow us to have updates from our working group members and some discussion as we plan for our next steps in the future.

I did want to just note that there are a few links put in the chat based on the comments that you just heard. So, if you haven't wandered over to the chat just to see those, those links are there for you. Just a few logistics as we get started. For our members—as we have our discussion, please raise your hand—

and I'll be happy to call on—so we can hear comments from everyone. Please mute when you're not talking. And you can turn your video on when you are speaking. But just to help ensure everyone's connections are strong, we ask that you stay off video if you're not talking.

And for members of the public who are joining us, you are muted, but you'll be able to chat with the host if you do have an issue. During the public comment period towards the end of our meeting, you will be given the ability to unmute when called upon. So, we will review those steps when we get closer.

So, meanwhile, before we dive in, just a quick recap of what is on our agenda for today. We're going to turn it over—back to—Rachael Nealer shortly, who's going to give us just an overview of some of the activities lined up to take us through the remainder of this calendar year. And then today, the majority of our time is to hear from our subcommittees. So, we'll have time to hear some presentations from our three subcommittees with some discussion amongst the working group members.

And then we'll turn it over to our public comment period to round out the discussion before talking about our next meeting for this calendar year and some of the next steps in actions our working group members will be taking. So, thanks again. I look forward to our discussion. And Rachael, I'll turn it back to you to talk about the calendar year activities.

Rachael Nealer: Great. Thank you so much, Rachael. We have been working across subcommittees here to come up with a little bit of a timeline—give us some structure of how we get to the end of the calendar year and really produce some valuable results—some recommendations from the EV Working Group to really take all of our ideas and thoughts over the last number of meetings and turn them into actionable recommendations that the federal government and industry can work on together.

So, this is just a high-level review of the timeline to get us to the end of the calendar year. We have, in September—I know many of you have been meeting across subcommittees to develop content for recommendations and really formulate ideas around the priorities that we initially set out for the EV Working Group.

So, the subcommittees—for those may be new to the meeting here—are grid integration, medium- and heavy-duty electrification, and the EV charging network. And, so, those subcommittees have been working together to formulate ideas and recommendations. And now, we're at a point where we want to get those recommendations out in the public sphere.

So, the EV Working Group staff have already provided some examples and templates for those recommendations. The goal here today is to get a little bit of a progress update and talk about this timeline through the end of the year so that we're all shooting for the same goals. So, next month—which is just tomorrow—Can you believe it's already October?—we are intending to have the subcommittees put forth a number of recommendations that then the EV Working Group staff will compile, and then the full membership will begin review.

In November, we want the full membership to continue that review and also start commenting on the recommendations. Once we get all the comments back from the full membership, then we will have the EV Working Group staff compile all those comments and identify where we see alignment in putting out public recommendations.

And then we will bring that package of recommendations to the full membership to do a series of short public meetings, where we will discuss each one of those recommendations and vote on the approval. We do need majority vote to approve a recommendation, but we are also able to record a minority opinion if there are some folks that disagree with the recommendation.

The goal here, though, is to try to get to as many substantive recommendations as possible across the various perspectives—the 25 different members pulling together those recommendations—that we think we all need to move—to follow with actions to really support the electrification transformation.

So, then, in December, those approved recommendations by the EV Working Group—that, again, will be done all through public meetings—will then go through an internal process, where we will just do any copyediting, get the approvals from the chairs, our Secretaries of Transportation and Energy—get the approval to put on our website—and then those recommendations become published on the website.

We do have a process that will start then after that—of bringing the recommendations that didn't either make it to approvals or didn't get put in that first recommendation package. The subcommittees can then start reviewing how they might want to revise those in order to get them to something that the full working group membership can approve.

But then we will make sure that we are following up with actions and steps for the recommendations that do get approved and having the members amplify those recommendations. So, we are really getting it out to our full network and can work together as a public and private industry to realize the goals of electrification. So, that is our ambitious timeline. And with that, I will go ahead and turn it over to the subcommittee updates because I think that's what most folks are here and excited to listen to.

Rachael Sack: Great. So, we are going to start with grid integration.

Rachael Nealer: Oh, Rachael, I don't know if I'm the only one that can't hear you, but I can't hear you.

Kristin White: I can hear you, Rachael.

Rachael Sack: OK.

Gabe Klein: I can hear.

Rachael Sack: OK, let's hope that things will cooperate. We're going to start with grid integration, then move on to medium- and heavy-duty, and then charging networks. So, Nadia, I have you as our first subcommittee to give an overview. Would you like to come on camera and provide an update to the group?

Nadia El Mallakh, Utility and Clean Energy Sectors: Sure. Thank you, Rachael. Good afternoon, everyone. So, the other Rachael, thank you for laying out our roadmap through the rest of the year. We're excited to be digging in with the objective of presenting recommendations that will, ultimately, hopefully be adopted by the full EV Working Group.

We have come up with about 10 areas of focus, but I wanted to start with 2 that do bear some relationship. And the first is—we know that the grid is the backbone, literally, in many situations for this electrification evolution. And so, we want to proactively lean into a recommendation around how the federal government, the utilities, and other stakeholders can collaborate to have some sort of backstop or guarantee around proactive buildout of the grid.

So, in partnership with industry, we know where many areas of concentration will be, for example, with medium- and heavy-duty trucking. So, how do we address grid upgrades while, of course, respecting the state processes that are in place, but allowing industry to be a little bit more nimble and start to build out areas that we know we will need to [inaudible] one. And again, this is in process. It's not final, and it's subject to change, but this is the first area that we have identified to lean in and come forth with the recommendation.

The second is managed charging. And I say it's related because—obviously, the more that we can think about and ensure that we're putting the foundation in place to support managed charging, that impacts the utilization of the existing grid and the need for future investment.

So, we have also been exploring collaborative stakeholder effort that would be led by DOE to develop standard data requirements and exchange of information among the key parties and entities that need to support managed charging. And, of course, that's a handful of entities at least.

So, with that, I will note that we have seen the other subcommittee focus areas and also certified those. So, I think what's nice here, today, as you hear from the other subcommittees, you will see that—I think—that we've really tried to be thoughtful in bifurcating and dividing up the focus areas. And we think all of them will be essential to helping to continue the momentum that was highlighted at the beginning of our discussion today. So, with that, I will pause and see if there are any questions.

Rachael Sack: Great. Does anyone have any questions so far for the grid integration group? Laura.

Laura Chace, ITS America: Hi, all. Sorry. I'm trying to get my video on. Not a question, per se—Nadia, I appreciate that—but a request. As managed-charging—as that moves forward—I'd love to be a part of that because I think that is absolutely critical, and it ties into a lot of the work that we do on the technology side. So, I would love to be a part of that.

Nadia El Mallakh: Absolutely. We would be happy to have you join. Thank you.

Rachael Sack: Any other comments or questions? OK, great. Thanks, Nadia. And after we hear from all three subcommittees, we hope to open it up for a more lively discussion just to encourage more of that cross-collaboration that has already been happening—but that can take us further into the year.

Nadia El Mallakh: Thank you.

Rachael Sack: Great. So, we are going to move on to our next subcommittee, the medium- and heavy-duty group. And I believe Mike is going to share some updates for this group.

Mike Roeth, North American Council for Freight Efficiency, Rocky Mountain Institute: Hello, everybody. So, I'm standing in today for Dean Bucci. Dean—as we might have known since we've been together—he took over the leadership of this medium- and heavy-duty subcommittee. And, so, Dean is leading it. Update on Dean. He lives near Asheville, North Carolina, and was pretty heavily affected by the hurricane that came through.

Basically, he let us know he is without water and electricity, and the roads are pretty beat up in the mountain area he lives. He was able to get out and get back, but Dean is dealing with that. So, we said we'd take over working on this and presenting our findings from this subcommittee.

So, we've been working on the medium-duty and heavy-duty electric vehicle—the uniqueness that our industry brings to the electric vehicle—adoption—and challenges. So, that's an interesting and difficult because we don't want to—obviously, we need vehicle integration, we need infrastructure for charging, and so forth. So, that's where this collaboration between the different subcommittees really come together.

So, with the focus on what makes these vehicles’ adoption unique, we created a number of recommendations—a list, if you will—and looked at various different things. And these are the two that we're proposing today. The first one is really around education of the unique pieces that the industry brings.

So, the recommendation is that the federal government and industry provide education on the unique needs of electrifying medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. This is things like myth-busting and sharing some of the unknown facts and realities of commercial vehicle electrification.

So, this just continues to show up in the work that we do on electrifying, where there's just misunderstandings of different pieces to the things that need to fall in place. Just basic understanding of how these trucks operate, where those operations can be modified for electric vehicles, and where, maybe, they won't. So, a lot of just good education before action is needed and is the essence of this first recommendation.

The second one is around detailing the use cases that are best suited for electrification to expedite waves of adoption. So, what we mean by here is really looking at the entire industry of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, trucks, buses, etc., and detail how those vehicles are used today and knowing, again, that those operations might be modified a little bit.

But basically, here's how the business of moving freight, the business of moving people, service industries, and so forth—so, with the goal, though, of looking at those detailed use cases and then determining which ones are ripe earlier and later for electrification. And we think this is really important. And we keep coming back to this as a subcommittee—this segmentation, which will help us then better understand.

When I say “us,” I mean everyone working on commercial vehicle electrification for things like analysis and understanding around total cost of ownership, and well-to-wheels calculations. I mean, you can't do those calculations and understand the effects of electrification if you don't have the market segmentation.

I always think about a garbage truck—starts and stops 800 times a day. A long-haul truck might stop twice a day. And you start to think about how that affects things—of these calculations. So, here's our two recommendations from the medium- and heavy-duty subcommittee.

Rachael Sack: Thank you. Anyone have comments or questions for this subcommittee? Nadia.

Nadia El Mallakh: I really appreciate the recommendations, Mike. And I think that, when we get to the next subcommittee's recommendations—also getting to the essence of sharing the different use cases that you noted and making that part of our public education campaign—I think will be very beneficial, because at first glance, I don't think that most people really understand the intricacies—at least, I didn't, until you all had educated me—of all the various and numerous ways that trucks can be used in our economy. So, I think it's a great tie-in and segue into the next subcommittee. But I just wanted to note that I think this could be a good area for public awareness and education.

Rachael Sack: Thank you. Any other comments or questions? And I will just note—for our public that's listening in—your opportunity to comment will be during our public comment period. So, the discussion right now is for our working group members only. Andrew.

Andrew Koblenz, National Automobile Dealers Association: Yeah, let me turn my camera on. I want to echo what Nadia just said and commend the subcommittee on draft recommendation 2, in particular. I think segmenting is absolutely the way to go. We have to crawl before we walk and walk before we run. And being realistic about the fact that there are different use cases and different cycles in the heavy-duty arena—I think a lot of it applies to the light-duty arena as well.

If we're smart about it, and we know which is the next cohort of users that is likely to embrace the technology, we'll accelerate the adoption. And I think, across the government and across the private sector, we have to be really smart about this stuff. So, I really commend them on the recommendation.

That's it.

Rachael Sack: Thank you. Any other comments or questions? OK, Andrew, I'm going to assume the hand is from your previous comment. Great. OK, excellent. All right—so, John, I'm going to hand it over to you so we can hear from the charging networks subcommittee.

John Bozzella: Great. Thanks. Can you hear me OK?

Rachael Sack: Yes.

John Bozzella, Alliance for Automotive Innovation: All right, perfect. Thank you. So, first I want to thank my fellow subcommittee chairs, Nadia and Dean and Mike. There's been a lot of opportunity for us to compare notes and collaborate through the process. And I think all of these recommendations are better for it. And as we continue to refine these and look forward to others, I know that there is additional work that we're going to be able to do together. So, thanks for that.

Also, secondly, this particular subcommittee focused on the charging network has been particularly active and focused. And I want to commend all of the members of the subcommittee for being at the meetings, for providing input and perspective that's really helped shape the two recommendations that we're going to summarize for the full committee.

So, what we did as a subcommittee is we started with the customer and we worked our way backwards. And so, by “customer,” in this case, we mean the men and women who are buying, leasing, and using EVs. And we're trying to understand how to make sure that that experience is an experience that is positive and that is an experience that reinforces the cutting-edge nature of these types of vehicles and this type of experience.

And so, what we did was—we wanted to focus both our recommendations on the customer. So, the first recommendation that we are presenting to the full committee is actually a public education and awareness campaign. This would be—as we are thinking about it and presenting it to the full committee—is an opportunity for collaboration between the government and the private sectors to build awareness about the technology, and notably, how it works at a particular point in the process.

And that is, how, when, where, and how much do I charge my vehicle? And so that's really the focal point. As Nadia referenced this as well, as did Mike, we think this could be the first step in an opportunity for us to work collaboratively on other aspects of public education in the EV space broadly.

But we focused here on the charging experience for a couple of reasons. One, when you talk to, certainly, light-duty customers and intenders to buy or lease an EV, what we hear are two questions. How far does this thing go on a charge? And where do we charge it? And then within those questions, how does it work? How do I charge it? Where do I charge it? Those types of things.

And so, the focus of this first recommendation is—and literally, imagine—a PSA, a short, crisp, public awareness campaign message that could be used by various partners. It could be at vehicle rental counters. It could be at automotive dealerships. It could be at service stations. It could be at fleet operators. The opportunity for people to see in a creative, sharp way how easy it is to charge a vehicle and what the fundamental process is.

One last point I'd make before I go on to the second recommendation is that we have seen these types of public-private collaborations on important public education and awareness work in the past. One that is certainly familiar to those of you who have been around the automotive safety space is the idea of the “Click It or Ticket” campaign and the airbag and seat belt safety campaign coming together to promote the use of seat belts and the recognition of the importance of crashworthiness technology. So, that is our first recommendation.

Our second recommendation looked, again, from a customer's point of view at the experience of charging. And what we have found, those of us who are EV owners and also through looking at various survey research, is that the charging experience from a customer-facing point of view is not perfect every time.

And so we recognize that one of the key aspects of accelerating EV acceptance and utilization is going to be to make sure the charging experience is a customer-friendly, reliable, robust experience every time. We started this conversation by looking at requirements that are built into the NEVI program.

That program funded by government resources, of course, has minimum standards. And we debated whether there ought to be standards—meaning a stick—or whether they ought to be incentives— meaning a carrot. And so, what we've come up with is the idea of a race to the top, a rating system for all publicly available charging points.

And so, the idea would be that a charging point that has meet standards, customer-facing standards similar to what you see in the NEVI program—for example, high levels of uptime, 97, 98% of uptime— multiple payments accepted, well lit, etc.—would be rated more highly than stations that don't meet those standards.

And the idea would be similar to what we see at the Department of Transportation's New Car Assessment Program, NCAP, known affectionately as “Stars on Cars,” or for example, the EPA's ENERGY STAR rating program. So again, more detail needs to be developed in both of these recommendations. But these are recommendations we think start with a focus on the customer and address key concerns and opportunities to educate and to improve the experience of these EV customers today.

Rachael Sack: Thank you, John. Anyone have comments or questions on these two draft recommendations? And, as we think about all six together, I'm just curious if there are any connections people are making or larger approaches that can include some of these unique aspects—but certainly, with the same goals in mind. Michael. You may be muted.

Michael Berube, U.S. Department of Energy: Sorry there. Michael Berube here from DOE. I wanted to comment specifically, John, on the last few, but also use it as an example. I think those are both really strong and really good. I think, as we are developing these recommendations collectively to the degree that they can be as clear and actionable—but with some meat to them, I think—is really what's called for here.

And I think those last few are good examples. They're pretty specific, pretty clear. But they'd be a very tangible thing that would, in and of itself, move the needle forward in some way on the EV market and space. So, as I'm thinking to myself about all the recommendations, I know we shared six examples here today, and I know some of the teams have a few others that weren't quite maybe ready—they're kind of percolating on. But to the degree that we can do that, I think that will be well received.

Rachael Sack: John, did you want to add anything?

John Bozzella: Yeah, I just wanted to come back, Rachael, to the question you had asked about just a minute ago about some of the cross currents or connections between the various recommendations. And I just want to highlight one that I think is important between the work that Nadia and the grid readiness group is doing in the charging infrastructure.

I really love the managed-charging aspect of this. What we were just talking about in our charging infrastructure group, of course, is charging outside the home. Charging inside the home is still a majority experience for light-duty EV owners. I won't quibble with the data. You have the data, whether it's 80% or 85% of EV owners right now are charging at home.

I think that we would love to continue to dialogue with Nadia and the group about what specific recommendations we can put together between the work that the utilities and the PUCs and PSCs are doing and the work that the automotive industry is doing to add bidirectional capability to vehicles and see if we can identify specific win-wins.

So, a way that a customer with that vehicle—with that technology—gets a benefit from charging at home and how a rate-payer would also benefit from the effects of managed-charging and bidirectional technology on the rate base. And so, I just love the work that Nadia and the team are doing. And I think I want to make sure that we're adding that automotive technology perspective to it.

Rachael Sack: Thank you—great. Rakesh.

Rakesh Aneja, Daimler Truck North America: Hi. Yes, thank you. I'm not able to get my video on for some reason, but I just wanted to make a couple of quick comments. We saw a recommendation on the charging network side with respect to public education and awareness. On the medium- and heavy-duty side, we had something along the lines of myth busting.

So, there could be some synergies in these two recommendations and work areas. Of course, the demographic that we are trying to reach with respect to passenger car vehicles versus medium- and heavy-duty vehicles is very different. The way those vehicles get charged is very different as well.

So, there could be some obvious similarities, as well as contrasts in these two areas. And it would behoove us to have these two working groups collaborate close together so that we can deal with the similarities, as well as the contrast related to these two recommendations.

Rachael Sack: Thank you. Great. Are there any other suggestions, or ties, or questions for each other as we're here together? Because hopefully, this is a space that's going to help you continue to build your ideas into more of that deliverable aspect that Rachael talked about—at the answer. So, does anyone else have anything they'd like to add to the discussion—maybe has or has not yet come up in your individual subcommittee groups and would benefit the larger group here? Anything else to add from anyone?

Rachael Nealer: Rachael, I'll also just open it up to—if anyone has any process questions as well. I know we didn't take a lot of time between the timeline and the—or maybe that was just when my audio went out. But if there are any questions on the process as well, happy to take those.

Rachael Sack: John, you have your hand raised.

John Bozzella: Yes. Just to—again—your question about things we can be doing to work together. We have had conversations at past meetings. And you can see it within the recommendations that we're discussing today—the importance of having metrics or key performance indicators that identify the track we're on, and the progress we're making, or where we need to focus more to continue to make progress.

And I just want to note that work is ongoing and I think will allow us to—as a full committee—as a full EV Working Group—not only move forward with these specific recommendations, but to identify a way of defining success that will keep us on track going forward.

Rachael Sack: Michael, you have something to add. Thanks, John.

Michael Berube: Yeah, one of the common think—is one of the recommenders—I can't remember which one—noted this well. It was not a recommendation only to government. And I think—in my sense, the spirit of this EV Working Group that brought together literally every stakeholder, that touches the EV market in some way.

And I think we're making recommendations to that broad stakeholder group. So, I like thinking, “What are the most critical things that have to happen, and who needs to take those actions?” It may be government. It may be private sector. It may be others. So, thinking in that term, I think, is very helpful.

And maybe as we hone in over the next coming months—go back to that core question of—What are the most critical things we think need to happen in order to make sure that EV market is successful? And then make sure we're hitting those top ones in our recommendations.

Rachael Sack: Thanks for that. Does anyone have anything to add along those lines or other pieces we haven't yet brought up for today? Laura.

Laura Chace: Thanks. One question I have—and it may not be something to address today—but I wonder if the working group could maybe get a presentation. And maybe I don't know, Michael or Rachael, if it's within your shops of—I know there's a lot of investment from DOE into the grid.

But if you look at what's happening right now in the Southeast of the country, and you look at the challenges we have with a major storm, disaster recovery, loss of power, and the conversations we're all having about moving to an increasing electric transportation system—I think it could be helpful for the group to have a better understanding of the larger-scale investments that are happening within the grid, within our energy infrastructure to support that—because I know there's a lot going on.

But we're talking right now—and John is exactly—Consumers say, “How far will this car go, and where can I charge it?” And a negative experience really impacts perspective. And I think we need to be realistic that climate-related disasters and such contribute to that. So, how can we understand the whole scope of how we're addressing this larger issue of energy availability and grid resiliency?

Michael Berube: That's something—yes, I think, we can figure out the right way, the right time to put share some of that information on those pieces that are happening. And the resiliency question overall during times like this, as you said—it makes you think of them a little bit more.

There is, we said—we think about our recommendations—there's something there on the resiliency of the network, resiliency of the charging. One thing to point out is, during times when there's not electrical power, there's also not gas stations pumping gas either. So, in some ways, we want to build as much resiliency.

We want to make it better than the current system we have. You don't want to take a step backwards, but there are resiliency challenges during natural disasters in almost any way you're fueling as well. But that's something we can also think about—how to build that into our recommendations.

Rachael Sack: Nadia.

Nadia El Mallakh: I echo that. A great point, Laura and Michael. Additional context—I know that is something on the radar of the utilities and many others. So, I think the timing is ripe. And I know there is some really good work going on on the government side and industry side. So, we'll definitely add that to the list. Thank you.

Rachael Sack: And to Rachael's earlier point about process—Does anyone have any questions on your next steps from the feedback from today and what you've been already starting to develop? Does everyone know what their marching orders are to get us through the end of the calendar year through that timeline that Rachael shared through November and December? Are there any questions on that? OK, let me ask Rachael. Any questions you have for the group right now?

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, I just wanted to take the moment to introduce my colleague, Scott Kubly. So, we have been working to staff up the Joint Office over a number of months, and we recently welcome Scott Kubly to the Joint Office. He is going to be working on partnerships, and he has a great background in the business side of all of this. So, really excited to have him support the EV Working Group. So, Scott, I would love for you to give yourself a little introduction.

Scott Kubly, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Absolutely. Well, it's been really great to join the Joint Office. I spent, probably, the first one-half to two-thirds of my career in the public sector. So, I worked with Gabe as an executive in the DOD in DC, and then Chicago—and then moved over to Lime, the scooter sharing company—well, then ran to Seattle DOT for several years. So, I learned at the feet of Gabe, and then took what I learned to go run a big-city DOD, and then jumped over into the private sector and worked at Lime, leading the government relations team for a while, and then went off and joined my—or started my own company, Cabana, which was a mobile hospitality van sharing company.

Along the way, as I'm having these EV memories start flooding back to me—And so I was just thinking today on this call, I remember my first EV ride was in the ARA days, way back when I got to drive a Nissan Cube or a retrofitted Nissan Cube around Hains Point in DC, if you've been there.

And then for folks that have been around DOT for a while, Seattle—we put together a big electric bike-sharing TIGER Grant that was probably a year to 2 years ahead of its time. So, we didn't get it, but we all get to see the magic of electric bike-sharing now, which is pretty awesome.

And then also I had a chance to see the first electric-car-sharing fleet in the U.S—and ReachNow, which was BMW's car-sharing service. They had a bunch of i3s all over Seattle that we helped get them permitted. And when I was at Lime, I wound up leading our very promising, but never realized EV car-sharing effort.

We wound up going with Fiat 500s because we didn't have enough publicly available, ubiquitous electric vehicle charging. So, definitely get the need there. I did have a chance to drive almost every neighborhood electric vehicle on the market in the world throughout the streets of Seattle and San Francisco. So, I know that will make Gabe a little bit jealous because I know he's a big NEV fan.

And then lastly, when I was at Cabana, we tried very, very hard to figure out how to electrify our fleet of Ford Transits and Mercedes Sprinters. But sadly, our customers were driving a little bit too far—so, about 250 miles a day, instead of the 90 to 100 miles that they could accommodate at the time. So, anyways, long story short—long history in transportation—lots of attempts at electrifying fleets.

And I'm really excited to be able to be a part of this now because I know with the money that Congress approved, and FHWA, and the Joint Office are putting out there that we will actually get there. Thank you. Michael, the Fiat 500 was the vehicle—the battery electric one was the one that we were trying to put out there. And we just didn't have enough L2 charging or DC fast charging at the time. This is 7 years ago. So, we're much closer today.

Rachael Sack: Thanks, Scott. I love the experiences you share, and you'll be really helpful as we work through our next steps with the working group.

Scott Kubly: They are nothing if not eclectic.

Rachael Sack: Great. So, before we turn over to our public comment portion of the meeting, I'd like to open it up one more time. Are there any things that did not come up in the subcommittee recommendations that you'd like to inquire about or flag? Certainly, there are lots of priorities, and you have to go through that process to pick and choose what are the ones to focus on with a finite amount of time.

So, as you're figuring out your next steps, having two strong focus areas is a great goal to move forward with in each subcommittee. But we know that there's a lot of connections to be made, and probably, even building up—out—that scope a bit farther. So, any other final thoughts from anyone that you'd like to share, or support, or ask questions on before we go to the next portion of our meeting? Michael.

Michael Berube: If Kofi is on, I'll put them on the spot here. Yes. In just one to share that maybe our team will come back—we've been working on. Kofi helped lead us in an exercise with our team to think about developing a set of KPIs. So, the idea basically being a recommendation that, collectively, someone—we'll see who, whether it's government or others—should basically be tracking the set of KPIs.

And here's what are the top 15, 20, 30—we can think about how many there are—to make sure we are all on track for that different parts of the EV transition. So, that's just another one that we were thinking that could come in. So, we're working towards that idea, and Kofi started us with the first list. And we've been working collectively to refine that over the last month or so. Hopefully, we'll have that for the team coming up soon. I don't know if we'll be in time for this round of recommendations, but maybe.

Kofi Wakhisi, Atlanta Regional Commission: Ditto, Michael. Yeah, we're working on that now. And we're working with the other subcommittees as well, including John's. And we hope to bring some recommendations to the group for a discussion. Up to you, Rachael, when you think we could facilitate that over the next two meetings that we've got, or next meeting that we've got scheduled, or the one after.

So, we want to be able to narrate. We want the KPIs to be able to talk about the progress we're making. We want to be transparent with these indicators. There are some indicators that are really important that we're realizing that we should be tracking, but not necessarily some—all indicators need to be made public.

So, we're trying to—for reasons that we may confuse the general public—there will be available, but not the ones that we would track at a frontline level, say, on a dashboard. So, we're teasing out what metrics are going to help tell the story for how we arrive at accelerated adoption. But then we're also very serious about the other measures that help tell the story as to where we're performing and where we need to improve.

Rachael Sack: Thanks for that update. That sounds great. Michael, anything else you wanted to add? I see the hand go down. So, I'll just take that as a no. That was excellent. So, anything else people would like to add? OK, so we are just slightly ahead of schedule, so I'm going to move us to the next portion of our meeting, which is the public comment period.

So, at this time, we're going to open up the meeting to hear from the public. For those members of the public joining us who would like to participate, please raise your hand if you'd like to make a comment. You can do this by raising your hand within the reactions icon. And each individual will have 2 minutes to share their comments. I will call your name. At that time, you can unmute yourself and turn your video on, if you so choose.

If we're unable to get to everyone today, I'd just like to remind you that written statements can also be sent to the working group's email address, which is evwg@ee.doe.gov, or via email to Dr. Rachael Nealer, as described in the Federal Register notice for this meeting. Any statements received by October 9 will be included in the meeting notes to be posted to the website.

So, at this time, I'll look at my screen to see if there are any hands raised. For those attending, please feel free to raise your hand if you'd like to give a comment. OK, we have one hand raised so far. Agustin Villarreal, you can unmute and turn your video on, if you would like.

Agustin Villarreal: All right, so—let me get the little thing on. So, I'm trying to get on, but I don't see the little thing I'm trying to get. So, I'll try and get—what's it called? Try and get up—but it keeps trying to make me.

Rachael Sack: It's OK. We can hear you. So, why don't you begin with your comment, please? Would you like to share your comment?

Agustin Villarreal: Yes, I'm trying to get—but my camera is still not opening.

Rachael Sack: It's OK. We can hear you. So, that's fine. You can go ahead.

Agustin Villarreal: Thank you. So, today, my name is Agustin Villarreal. I'm advocating is for electric cars. What electric cars are doing is—I'm advocating against electric cars because, for me, what the electric cars are doing to our—what's called planet—is taking away jobs. For me, the other day, I went to Hermann Memorial Park and found out that there was electric train that was made electric.

The trains at Memorial Hermann and Teslas, every car and train you see, are made electric. So, what they're doing to the planet is they are taking away jobs. It's destroying our planet. So, what we need to do is try to do a little bit more, but not what's called put back—when the cars run on fuel, they blow up each time.

So, what we need to do for our country, for this planet, is to understand more about the electric cars and understand it more—see what can we do to make sure—hey, we can make sure to help the environment out—the planet—help do a lot more—help with cars and stuff in America. So, it doesn't have to be—what's called more blowing up—so we can do more. What I want to do is work with organizations to do a lot more to make sure that electric cars get more help.

In the next 10 years—5 years—we make sure to get these electric cars ready and going on the roads, but we make sure to not what's called make them explode at all. We need to make sure it's safer, but not like [inaudible]. So, we've got to be more cautious about what's going to happen with these cars and stuff. We want to make sure what can we to do our part to make sure—hey, if these cars—

Rachael Sack: Agustin, yes, thank you for your comment. We are at 2 minutes, so I'm going to ask that we stop. But we appreciate your comments. Thank you. OK, we have another hand raised. I'd like to call on Cassandra Dumay.

Cassandra Dumay: Is my audio working?

Rachael Sack: Yes, we can hear you.

Cassandra Dumay: So, I'm Cassandra. I'm from Politico. I just have a quick question for Mike [inaudible] or anybody on the subcommittee for medium- to heavy-duty vehicles. Are there any—or what are the myths specifically that you guys are hoping to address with? Which is what, I think, was your first recommendation. Are there any examples of information that you guys are hoping to clear up to move forward with expanding EVs?

Rachael Sack: So, Cassandra, I'm just going to stop us here for a second. Just to clarify, this public comment period is for comments to be made, but the working group members will not be answering any questions. Certainly, the EV Working Group email address can also collect other requests.

Rachael Nealer: Yeah, and I'll just add, Rachael—if you don't mind, Cassandra, just stay tuned because we're going to publicly post some work from the medium- and heavy-duty working group subcommittee anyways. So, we hope to have something to share with you and all of the public very soon. Thanks.

Cassandra Dumay: OK, I'll keep an eye out. I appreciate it.

Rachael Sack: Thank you. OK, at this time, are there any other members of the public who would like to provide a comment? OK, seeing none, this will conclude the portion of our public comment period. I'm going to now turn it back over to Rachael Nealer. Rachael, you can walk us through some of the next steps, and we can discuss the scheduling for the next working group meeting.

Rachael Nealer: Awesome. Thank you so much, Rachael. All right, so we are now headed towards, I think, a pretty robust next set of months for the EV Working Group. So, just want to make sure that everyone's participating in the subcommittees—but also these full membership groups as meetings as well.

We are very excited to hear from the subcommittees on what they want to propose to vote on for the recommendations for the full committee, and that's really our next steps here—so, very happy to talk about next steps. And I think our next meeting will be proposed around that voting. So, it'll be a series of virtual meetings that will be focused on getting some of those recommendations approved and to the public on our website.

The other proposed meeting is an in-person meeting in December, where we will also take a look back at the year that we had as the EV Working Group and start thinking about the next year to come. So, we will, at that point, depending on the timing—we'll likely have voted on the approved recommendations, but we will also be posting those publicly around that time.

And then we can think about what recommendations we want to tackle next. But then also, as we talked about, what are some of the actions around the recommendations that have already been approved? What does the EV Working Group want to substantively dig into? And let's identify some stakeholders that we'd want to work with on those.

So, those are the next steps proposed. I also heard that doing some presentation or report out of the KPI across the subcommittees would also be something valuable for the EV Working Group and for the public to hear as well. So, I think we can also work towards scheduling that as well. Any questions?

Rachael Sack: Rachael, there are a few comments in the chat. Just looking to pin down any December meeting for scheduling purposes.

Rachael Nealer: Yes, so, we are already working on a poll to send around to folks. It will be before the holidays. In fact, our work plan tried to take into consideration some holiday slowdowns so that we could still meet our goals by the end of the year without asking for volunteer time during some otherwise pretty busy, busy times for folks both in the work sense and in the personal sense. So, we will have more information then, but it should be in the first half of December. And we are expecting to, I think, hold that in DC. Were there other—I'm sorry—I don't see the chat, Rachael. Were there other questions?

Rachael Sack: No, just a few folks looking for that December date. And Julie did note the poll was sent out for the December meeting, so we're just working to finalize it.

Rachael Nealer: Fantastic. All right—well, then, with that—thank you all so much for your time. Really excited to see what the subcommittees put forth as recommendations and that we can share that soon with the public, both in the voting but also in the public website that we'll have to share all these recommendations. Thank you so much, folks.

Rachael Sack: Thank you, everyone.