The EV Experience: What to Expect from Public Charging (Text Version)

This is a text version of The EV Experience: What to Expect from Public Charging, presented on Sept. 10, 2024.

STEVE LOMMELE, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: Hello, everyone. I'm Steve Lommele. I'm the communications and education program manager at the Joint Office. We're going to go ahead and get started here in just a minute. I'll wait for the remaining participants to join, and then we'll go ahead and get started.

All right, we've got a critical mass here. So we're going to go ahead and get things started. Again, my name is Steve Lommele. I'm the communications and education manager here at the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. We've got a terrific webinar planned for today focused on the EV experience and specifically what to expect from public charging. If you could advance the next slide, please, Kerry.

So as we get started, just wanted to point out a couple of things. We're using Zoom for today's webinar, and controls are located at the bottom of your screen. If they aren't appearing, you can just move your cursor down there to the bottom edge. And you'll be able to see the options that are available to you. We are going to be taking questions using the Q&A window at the end of today's presentation. But you can go ahead and submit questions at any point so that we've got them ready when we're able to address those with the panelists.

The webinar is also going to be recorded, and it will be posted on the Joint Office website, may also be used internally. So if you speak during the webinar or use video, you're presumed to consent to recording and use of your voice or image. And again, if you visit driveelectric.gov, that's where recordings will be posted. So we'll have all of the slides as well as an audio and video recording.

And then we do have a newsletter that we send out on a biweekly basis called Powering Progress. And we'll include a link to the recorded webinar in that newsletter. So if you haven't already, I highly recommend that you visit driveelectric.gov, and go to our newsletter page, and subscribe to get those newsletters. If you can advance to the next slide, please, Kerry.

So our agenda today, I want to do a quick poll as we get started. And then we're going to do an introduction from the Joint Office. So our executive director, Gabe Klein, is on. And he's going to welcome you all. And then we've got presentations from some terrific panelists.

We've got Jaclyn talking about EV model availability and performance, Ingrid talking about policy developments for EV drivers, Roberto talking about public EV charging basics, and Mayuresh who's going to cover data on the driver experience. And then we will have time for a panel discussion and audience Q&A. Next slide, please.

So we've got a few polling questions. Lady, if you could go ahead and pull those up, please. Give everyone a chance to weigh in. So our first question is, what region of the country are you from? It's always helpful for us to understand where our webinar participants are joining us from. So if you go ahead and answer that question. Once we've got a critical mass, we can show the results.

All right, if we've got some good responses, let's go ahead and see. We've got– great, folks from all over the country, which is great. And do we have another polling question as well? Also helpful to understand if we've got folks from government or private industry, professional associations, that kind of thing.

All right, if we can go ahead and close this poll and look at the results. Great, continue to have great participation from government folks as well as industry. Thank you, lady. And is there another one?

KERRY SKEMP, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: That's it.

STEVE LOMMELE: All righty, Perfect. So if we can move on to the next slide, please. We've got Gabe Klein joining us here. So I'm going to turn it over to Gabe. He's our executive director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. Gabe, take it away.

GABE KLEIN, Joint Office of Energy and Transportation: All right. Thank you so much, Steve. Thanks, everybody, for coming. Thanks for our panelists. We can go to the next slide. So what I want to chat about real quick is what we are doing here. The Joint Office, we have our mission as you can see there, "To accelerate an electrified transportation system that's affordable, convenient, equitable, reliable, and safe." And these sound like just words on a page, but they're absolutely crucial to what we do.

And we don't necessarily differentiate between who's funding what. There's a lot of private-sector-funded chargers out there. There are wholly state funded, city funded, and there are federally funded with match. But our job is to look across the entire system and look to meet those requirements. So you'll hear today about the ChargeX Consortium. You're going to hear a lot about charging or what's happening in the private sector in terms of vehicles and chargers.

The goal is as we switch over from a fossil-fuel-powered transportation system to an electric-powered system as you can see here– we've actually doubled the number of ports since January 2021 when this administration took office. There's a lot of work to do behind the scenes, whether it's cybersecurity, reliability, usability. We're going to talk about all of that today.

And a note here also that you can see on the bottom right, we have a lot of level 2 chargers, which are those chargers that might take you three, four, or five hours to charge your car and then fast chargers as well for the road trips or for fleets to get up to speed quickly. Both will grow.

But our 2030 study that we did with NREL actually finds that there is a need for 1.2 million public charging ports, 1 million being low power level 2 charging. And the US is on track to meet this target. And as the CFI grants– and we're just awarded $521 million with federal highways just a few weeks ago. Go out. You're going to start to see a lot more ubiquitous level 2 charging to complement the DC fast charging.

And all of the money from the federal government is really meant to plug holes that aren't being– needs that aren't being met, if you will, by the privately funded system. And this is a great, I think, example or drawing, if you will, of how that works and why we need the routes, but we also need the branches for the public charging, the public destination charging.

So in this webinar, we're going to learn about how charging and EVs are actually coming together, EV model, availability, and costs. What are policies to help make EV models affordable? How do you charge at a public station? Or how do we want to charge at public stations– in ways that we're using data to actually improve the public charging experience. So we want to go to the next slide. Thanks to our awesome panelists for participating, and I look forward to listening myself. Thanks, everyone.

STEVE LOMMELE: Great. Thanks so much, Gabe. Appreciate that wonderful introduction, kind of, setting the tone for all of us. And we're going to move on to our presenters now. So you can see, we've got some great panelists. We've got Jaclyn who's a freelance automotive journalist, Ingrid from Plug In America, and then Roberto joining us from SAE. He's a sustainability editor there.

And then we have Mayuresh, who is from Idaho National Laboratory and one of the researchers working on the ChargeX Consortium that Gabe talked about, which is a multi lab consortium focused on enhancing charging reliability. So with that, we're going to turn it over to Jaclyn. Thanks so much, Jaclyn, for getting us started.

JACLYN TROP, Automotive Journalist: Thank you. Let me share my screen, PowerPoint. I think it's working. Is it working? Yes?

STEVE LOMMELE: Yes, it is.

JACLYN TROP: OK, great. And you can only see the screen, right? That's it?

KERRY SKEMP: Not yet.

JACLYN TROP: You're probably going to see my whole screen.

KERRY SKEMP: Yes.

JACLYN TROP: OK, good thing I checked beforehand. Full screen mode, yes?

KERRY SKEMP: Yes.

JACLYN TROP: OK, terrific. Well, hello, my name is Jaclyn Trop. I've been an automotive journalist for the last 15 years, the first five years in Detroit for the Detroit News and the New York Times, and then the last 10 years as a freelancer for a lot of different magazines from Fortune to Bloomberg Businessweek, to Newsweek, to Fast Company, to Vogue even.

My current projects are I oversee the Fast Company's Top 10 Most Innovative Automotive Companies list each year. And I also run Money magazine's Best Cars Awards each year. So that means that I drive several hundred cars every year. And more and more, they're becoming all electric. And that's because the number of models in the industry is just proliferating.

Now, you may hear some different takes on the state of the EV market and whether the rate of growth is slowing, or has it slowed, or will it speed up again? But the fact is that the absolute number of models in the manufacturer's lineups has absolutely ballooned this decade, especially since 2019. So I am very fortunate to drive a range of EVs from big to small to the Cybertruck, as you can see here, which I just got to drive for a story for Fortune in January. So that's just a little introduction.

Now I need to put my timer on so I don't talk too much because clearly, I'm getting into some history. Many people may not realize that electric vehicles have been around for– since the beginning of the automotive industry, well over 100 years ago. So back in the mid-teens, 1915 before influencers, there was The Vagabonds. And The Vagabonds are the old timey influencers. You've got Henry Ford, Henry Firestone, Thomas Edison, and then usually a US President or two.

And the idea was that they would travel around the country in their cars, Ford Model T and whatnot, with a huge caravan so that journalists could take pictures as they made stops along the way. And they could get the word out that cars are a thing that you can use to take a road trip with.

So at this time, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were collaborating on a battery-powered vehicle. And Clara Ford actually even had one because Henry Ford thought that it was– that the Model T was too dirty and too difficult to operate. So, they did have EVs way back in the day. And in fact, Rolls-Royce was even one of the early advocates. But the charging network and the energy grid was just not there. So that's how we ended up with 100 years plus of internal combustion engines.

And the real inflection point was in 2010 when the Nissan Leaf, as you can see on my slide here, came online. We had hybrids before that. And then the EV was really the first fully electric consumer vehicle that you could buy. And even then, it was only limited to certain states. And that was the case for a long time. A lot of times, you could only get an EV in California or Nevada. And now in 2024, you can get all of the EVs anywhere so big changes.

And then I put this picture of the Rolls-Royce Specter on here because this is– whereas the Leaf is one of the oldest EVs in modern history, the Specter is one of the newest. It just came out this year. It's Rolls-Royce's electric vehicles. So, Rolls-Royce did have to wait about 120 years to get the car on the road. But now they're electric also.

So, I have a graph here from AutoPacific, which is a very informative source of automotive data. And as you can see, the number of models that's expected the number of nameplates that are coming out. It's 2024, 84. By 2029, 216 are expected to be on the market. And as you can see from the blue graph, the blue bars, EVs are just becoming more and more of our daily life.

When I first started reporting on this– on the beat, EVs were about 1% of total new vehicle sales. Now they're almost 10%, give or take a few basis points. And that is massive growth, more so than many people thought was possible. So just to show you the idea of how creative EVs can be, they're not just mass-market budget cars like the Leaf anymore. Here, the orange car is the Hummer, GMC Hummer EV. Not so good at PowerPoint, hold on. Don't worry. I'll get it back. I don't know. OK, sorry.

KERRY SKEMP: Not yet, bottom right where it looks like a projector screen. You got it.

JACLYN TROP: Oh, yeah, OK, that one. I was using the one that didn't look like a projector screen. So that's the Hummer EV. And then in the middle, the blue car is the new Mercedes G-Class electric, which is– I think that the Mercedes CMO said that if the G-Wagen can go electric, then anything can. Because no one would really think to pair an electric motor or several electric motors with a car that's known for driving up rocks and through mud and down mountains.

And then, of course, at the bottom is the Ford F-150 Lightning. The F-150 was the best selling nameplate in the United States for more than four decades. So, to have that car go electric was pretty groundbreaking at the time, a couple of years ago. So, I really just wanted to give you an idea today of all of the new models on the market because they can be big, small, SUVs, sports cars, sedans. They can be for off road. They can be for the racetrack.

The idea is that there's really a car for everyone. There's an electric vehicle for every need out there, whether you're just a household of one or whether you have daily carpools with seven kids. You'll find something that's electric.

And before I talk about range, I'll just give you an idea here. We've got the Kia EV9, which is a three row SUV. That's all electric, which is– it's won a lot of awards. I am really impressed with it. And then right above it, it's the new mini EV so all sizes– now Cybertruck, and then the Nissan Ariya, and all kinds of cars that we would never expect OEMs to electrify.

So, I wanted to talk about range really quickly because that's obviously a big concern, whether you have a daily commute or you're going on a road trip. In 2015, range was pretty pitiful. There's the Tesla, of course, but most of the cars were– didn't even go 100 miles before needing to recharge.

Now in 2024, we have a lot better. 200 to 300 is average, but over 300 is not uncommon. And as you can see here, Lucid Air has a record-breaking range at 516 miles. So that is– that's a game changer for the rest of the industry.

And finally, I just wanted to talk about some of the upcoming models that I'm really excited about. We've got, oh, Lucid Gravity. We have Lucid Air, which is on the market now, Rivian. It's not just the established automakers. The idea with this slide is that there's many startups. There are some startups that have not succeeded, but there are also a lot of startups out there that are really doing well and going toe to toe with the legacy automakers.

I wanted to touch upon pricing. As you can see here, the Nissan Leaf is the most affordable at $29,000. And it maxes out right now with the Rolls-Royce vector at $420,000. The pricing is all over the place. And I think other speakers might touch upon this. But the idea is that the battery is about $10,000 more than you'd pay for a gas vehicle. And residual values are somewhat of a concern for buyers because we don't know how those values will hold up.

But a lot of the models that are coming on are– yes, there's some that are very expensive, like Rolls-Royce, and Lucid, and Porsche. But Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, they're all making affordable EVs these days. And finally, I just wanted to show what might be upcoming. I'm excited about the ID. Buzz, Volkswagen's all-electric van. And that was– that's all. I will stop sharing now. Thank you.

STEVE LOMMELE: Great. Thanks so much, Jaclyn. We're going to pull up slides for our next speaker now. And here we go. We've got Ingrid. So, Ingrid, I'm going to turn it over to you.

INGRID MALMGREN, Plug in America: Great. Thanks, Steve. If you could advance this slide or whoever, the magic person behind the screen. Thanks so much. I'm Ingrid Malmgren. I'm senior policy director with Plug In America. We're a national nonprofit that's been working for 15 years to accelerate EV adoption through education, advocacy, and research. Next slide, please.

So my job today is to talk to you, give you an overview of electric vehicle policies. There is a lot happening in the EV policy space, so buckle up and let's go. I'm going to talk about vehicle standards. Oh, if you could go back one, I'll just give a quick overview. Talking about vehicle standards, so this is basically incentives for automakers to make cleaner and more energy-efficient vehicles. We'll talk briefly about charging infrastructure investment. And I think some of my colleagues later– other presenters will talk a lot more about this, and we'll also talk about EV incentives. So now we can go forward to vehicle standards. OK, next slide, please.

So, the two green boxes on this slide are federal standards, and the light blue box is a state standard. So, the EPA emission standards limit tailpipe emissions from an automaker's entire fleet. And every year, these get more stringent. CAFE standards encourage automakers to make more efficient vehicles. And again, this is measured over their fleet and also gets more efficient– requires more efficiency every year.

Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC2) is linked off of the EPA emission standards. But historically, California has had serious air quality issues. And so they have the authority to develop and adopt more stringent emission standards. Other states don't have this authority, but other states can adopt California standards. And to date, 12 states, including the District of Columbia, have adopted ACC2. Next slide, please.

So, what does this have to do with electric vehicles? So, we're talking about emissions. We're talking about efficiency. So using the emission standards, since they're measured over an automaker's entire fleets and since electric vehicles have zero tailpipe emissions, the more EVs a manufacturer makes– click, click, click– that it brings down the fleet average, making it easier for automakers to reach their goals. Thanks, next slide.

So, what you can expect to see from these is more efficient vehicles, more vehicle options and choices, less expensive vehicles to fuel because they're more efficient, and better air quality. Next slide. OK, let's move on to charging infrastructure investment.

So, since the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, there has been $7.5 billion committed to building out charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in the United States. You can flip to the next slide, please.

So, I think you'll hear more about this. And you heard some of this from Gabe. The NEVI Formula Program is all about building out a huge national network of fast chargers. So, you can go from state to state easily and efficiently and never be more than 50 miles away from a fast charger. There's $5 billion allocated to this program, and it goes through the Joint Office, and it goes to the states through a formula program. And as Gabe mentioned, eight states are up and running. And there's 40 states now that are underway and moving toward installing chargers. Next, please.

So, there's also corridor grants, which further build out these corridors and other corridors for charging. But there's also community grants. And these are really important because as Gabe mentioned, if people don't have access to home charging– I mean, if you have access to home charging you haven't made, it can't possibly get easier. You plug it in. You plug your car in like your phone. You go to bed. You wake up, fully charged. You're ready to go. You never have to build time in to stop on the way to work to get gas. It doesn't get any more convenient, and it's really inexpensive.

But if you don't have access to home charging, it's really important to have community charging and workplace charging. And the community grants really help build out community charging so that everyone can drive electric. I won't go through the numbers because Gabe covered that, but there are a lot of chargers out there. I have 192,000 public charging ports now available throughout the country. Next slide.

So charging infrastructure investment also includes tax credits for EV charging. So there's up to $1,000 for a private charger, for a home charger, and up to $100,000 in tax credits for installations of public charging. Now, there is a geographic constraint that these must be a non-urban or low-income census tracts. And there's maps online at the DOE if you're interested in finding out where those are. Next slide. OK, EV incentives, next.

So this is a high level overview of EV incentives. Federal tax credits are available everywhere. State incentives are available in some states. And many utilities, of which there are 3,000 in this country, also offer incentives.

The best thing about these incentives is that they can be layered like this lovely cake or stacked. And they all add up, so you can get some really, really amazing deals through incentives on electric vehicles. Next. So looping back up to the federal level, there's clean vehicle tax credits of up to $7,500 on new EVs, up to $4,000 on used EVs, and up to $40,000 on commercial vehicles. Next.

Beginning in January of this year, the tax credit became transferable. So typically, the way federal tax credits work is you purchase your electric vehicle or whatever you're getting, and you pay for it, or finance it. And then you file your taxes the next year, and you get the money back. With the transferable tax credit, you get the money at the point of sale. You can use it for a down payment. You can use it to lower your payments. It's money that you don't have to finance. And buyers no longer need to have tax liability, which is a huge equity win. Next.

So I'm not going to get into all the details of the tax credit. But I encourage you to go to pluginamerica.org, and either print, or download one of our handy-dandy checklists if you're looking for new or used EVs. Next. They'll help you determine whether you're income eligible and also which vehicles. They'll point you to fueleconomy.gov so that you can find out which vehicles are eligible for the tax credits. Next. They'll tell you where to find a dealer because dealers need to be registered with the IRS in order to administer the point of sale or any tax credits. Next

And finally, when you get to the dealer, they'll tell you what to expect from the dealer and what you need to do to ensure that you get your tax credit. Next. Finally, commercial clean vehicles– commercial clean vehicle tax credits will be used for two things. They'll be used for fleet vehicles. And since the tax credit has this super cool direct pay option, it means that tax exempt entities can still access these tax credits. So nonprofits, schools, churches, even entities that don't typically pay taxes can still access these discounts on electric vehicles for their fleets. Next.

And the other thing that the commercial clean vehicle tax credits will be used for is for leases. Automakers finance companies purchase the vehicles, and they use these commercial tax credits. And they can then pass these along to you through leases. That way, they can be used as a down payment or to buy down your lease payments. It's really important to check that the vehicle you're interested in, that the manufacturer is actually passing these tax credits along, and that the dealer does too. Next.

So quick recap, we've got vehicle standards that encourage automakers to make more efficient and cleaner vehicles, including electric vehicles. We've got charging infrastructure build out that is just growing every day and creating a really robust network all across the country and in communities. And finally we have EV incentives that make electric vehicles, whether they're new, used, or commercial, more affordable. And that's all I have.

STEVE LOMMELE: Great. Thanks so much, Ingrid. That was super helpful. And now we're going to turn over to Roberto Baldwin. He's the sustainability editor at SAE International. And Roberto has extensive experience covering electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and the electrical grid. You may have seen his work in magazines like Wired, and Gadget, Car and Driver, Autoblog, Popular Science, and others. So, Roberto, I'm excited to hear what you're going to share with us.

ROBERTO BALDWIN, SAE International: Hi. So I'm going to talk about the state of charging. The state of charging is– well, it's getting better, but it still needs improvement. Typically right now if you have a gas car, you want to go somewhere, you just get in the car and you go. I want to drive to Nevada. I want to drive to Montana. I get in the car, and I don't have to worry about finding gas stations because they're so ubiquitous.

EVs are a little bit different. And while there are chargers coming online every day and Bloomberg reports that EV Chargers will outnumber gas stations by 2032, you still need to do some planning. If for some of our older audience members like myself– in the '90s, in the '80s– we wanted to go somewhere, you busted out a map. And you figured out where you were going. This is what you have to do with an EV for a long road trip right now is you have to do some planning.

And fortunately, there are– there's the help of in-car navigation, which has gotten better for a while. In-car navigation essentially just didn't tell you about charging. And now, more and more EVs are coming on the market that are mirroring what Tesla does, where it tells you where to charge, when to charge, and how long you need to charge in order to make it to your destination, and gives you your state of charge when you reach that destination.

Outside of those, there are also a few apps that you can use. There is A Better Route planner, which is a really great application and online resource that'll help you plan out a trip. It has recently been purchased by Rivian, but it's still available to anyone who wants to use it.

And of course, ChargeHub, which has been around for a while, it just tells you where all the charging stations are. And you can set different filters. So if you're still driving a Nissan Leaf, you can use– it'll tell you where all the CHAdeMO stations are. It'll tell you DC fast charging, Tesla charging, level 3 and level 2 charging.

That said, if you're traveling during busy holidays, lines are still a thing. I drove to LA and back during the– I'm up in Northern California– during the 4th of July week. And I had to wait in line twice. And each time, it was about 10 to 15 minutes before I was able to pull up to a charger. But as more and more EVs come onto the market, they charge quicker than, say, a Chevy Bolt or a Nissan Leaf. That means that those vehicles don't have to spend as much time at the charging station.

And of course, charging stations are also a lot quicker. I remember a few years ago when if you went to a charging station and it was 50 kilowatts, that was mind blowing. Now you have charging stations that– and the best in a perfect world would charge it up to 350 kilowatts for vehicles that support charging that quickly. Next slide.

So not all EVs are equal. And as I mentioned before, some EVs, let's say the Volkswagen e-Golf, which was a compliance car or the Chevy Bolt– those charge at a maximum of 50 kilowatts. So if you pull that vehicle up to, let's say, a 350 kilowatt station, it's still only going to charge at its peak at 50 kilowatts. Meanwhile, the new Porsche Taycan will charge it up to 320 kilowatts.

And this is why it's very important to learn the charge rate of your vehicle. A lot of automakers will tell you the 10% to 80% charge time, which is helpful. 10% to 80%, it'll charge in 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. But it doesn't really tell you how quickly that vehicle will charge. And this is very important when you go to mixed charging stations where there are, let's say, charging stations that charge it up to 150 kilowatts and charging stations that charge up to 350 kilowatts.

If your vehicle only charges up to 100 kilowatts, there's really no need for you to be at that 350 kilowatt station. So let some of the vehicles that charge quicker above 150 or 200 kilowatts charge at those much quicker stations. Fortunately, more and more of these companies– Electrify America, EVgo– are removing or replacing the mixed charging stations and only putting 350 or 400 kilowatt stations at locations.

There's another thing you want to know about the 80% rule. Charging is a bit like– the best analogy I've heard is people going into a theater. Let's say there's 100-seat theater. You have 100 people going in. The first 80 seats are going to be– they're going to be filled relatively quickly. It's those last 20 it's going to be difficult because people have to find a seat. They have to look around.

And that is a bit like the physics of charging a battery. After 80%, the charge rate is going to drop off dramatically. So really, especially if you're traveling, there's really no need to– and you're trying to save time. There's no need to wait past 80% most of the time. If you can make it to the next charging station with your 80%, you might as well just do that. Or you're going to be sitting around for an additional almost twice as long, waiting for your vehicle to charge.

And if you're wondering– you have that Chevy Bolt or you have that Porsche Taycan– why your EV isn't charging at its peak rate, well, that's because of charging curves. Preconditioning is your friend. This is why you want to use in-car navigation. As your vehicle is getting closer to a charging location, it will precondition the battery. It will set it up to the correct temperature in order to charge at its quickest.

That's not to say that when you get to that station– again, let's say if you have that Taycan, it'll charge it 320 kilowatts. There are a lot of variables on whether or not– on the speed at which your vehicle will charge. The state of charge, you know, the lower state of charge, you typically charge a little bit quicker, ambient temperature, whether or not the charging station is working correctly, how many people are at a charging location.

And so if you show up with that 320 kilowatt Taycan, and you're only charging at 200, those are some of the reasons. There's not a problem with your vehicle. It's literally just how physics works and, of course, issues that may or may not– you or may not be having with the charging station.

If you're charging at 200 kilowatts– I have a vehicle that charges at 230. It's really quick. 10 minutes, you have enough time to go inside, use the restroom, buy some beef jerky and a soda, and then get back out to your vehicle.

As for payments, there are in-app payments. And these are– if you use the Tesla network, there are no credit card readers on the Tesla network. So you just show up. You have a Tesla account. You pay for it via account. Most of the other charging networks also have that, EVgo, Electrify America. But they're increasingly putting credit card readers on their stations, which is incredibly important. Because you shouldn't have to download an app in order to use a charging station.

So hopefully, these credit card readers will be on more and more chargers and will also be a bit more robust. I think a lot of people have gone out into the world and realized that the credit card reader doesn't work so great. It seems to be the first thing that breaks on these charging stations. So that is an issue that I know the charging companies are looking into.

One great thing is a thing called plug-in charge. With a Tesla, if you just plug-in your Tesla, it'll just start charging. Because Tesla knows that your car is plugged into their charger, and it just goes. Ford also supports plug-in charge. And it works with, I believe, EVgo, Electrify America, and with the Tesla network.

So if I have a Mach-E and I pull up to one of those stations, and I plug-in, the charging supplier knows that, oh, this person has an account based on your vehicle. And it just starts charging. You don't to worry about credit cards. You don't have to worry about loading an app. It's actually very, very convenient. But again, I still think credit card readers are an important part of the future of EV charging. There are people, again, they don't want to use their app in order to charge their EV. Next slide.

So let's talk about the future of charging. And the future of charging is the Tesla charging port, a.k.a., NACS, also the SAE J3400. We're just going to call it NACS, going forward. You don't need to panic. It does not mean that CCS, which is the standard right now– that is not going away. Charging stations will continue to support CCS for decades.

And how do we know that? We know that because CHAdeMO, which is essentially only available on the Nissan Leaf and some Mitsubishi vehicles, it is still available at most charging locations for one vehicle. So if CHAdeMO is going to be supported for years after Nissan is no longer offering it, that means that CCS is not going anywhere.

So do not be concerned that if you own or you plan on buying an EV that has CCS that has not moved over to NACS– don't be concerned. You shouldn't be worried about this. This is good 10, 15, 20 years in the future that maybe they'll start removing CCS from stations. And one great thing is that places like ChargePoint actually have a station that has CCS and NACS on the same cable. So it doesn't matter what you pull up with. You're going to be OK.

As for adapters– I know a lot of people have been asking about adapters for their vehicles so that they can use the Tesla charging network. I would say stick with the automaker's hardware for now, just because it's a known entity. So if there's an issue, you can talk to the automaker. And I'm always a big fan of, yes, I love to save money but not at the expense of safety. And some of the adapters might not be from the best manufacturers or suppliers.

So for now, if you have a Ford Mach-E, get your adapter from Ford. The Hyundai Motor Group will be– they'll have adapters available, I believe, at the beginning of next year. Get those adapters from Hyundai. As time progresses, there'll be better adapters on the market. I think there is one that's actually pretty good. But for the most part, especially for those who just are in the weeds with EVs, stick with the automaker's hardware or what the automaker is offering up for now. Next slide.

So now we talk about the cost of charging. Home is incredibly cheap. I did the ROI on– or the cost between my Hyundai Kona Electric versus my Subaru BRZ. And for 100 miles– and these are old numbers. But for 100 miles, it was three times more to drive my gas car. And that is with home charging. That means I'm paying like $0.24 per kilowatt hour.

I live in Northern California. We pay a lot of money for electricity and gas. But even that, it's cheaper to charge at home if you can do it. It's typically going to be cheaper to charge at night. Because if you have a tiered utility that charges you less, you can charge at night. You can either tell your car to schedule that. Or if you have a level 2 charger, you can tell the charger itself to schedule that, which is great.

As for DC fast charging, I'm seeing rates about $0.56 per kilowatt hour. And that is– again, depending on where you live, it's a bit on par or lower than the cost of gas for, say, a Corolla or a vehicle that has good efficiency. So you're going to want to, if you can charge at home, try not to use DC fast charging as much unless, again, you are on a trip. And even then, you're going to be either on par or a little bit cheaper than what it would cost to drive a gas vehicle on that same trip.

As for the location of stations, again, I can't tell you enough to use the apps that are available from all of these charging companies. Also use, again, ChargeHub and also the app from Rivian. Sorry, the app is called A Better Route Planner. It's barely a name. It's more of a description.

And then, of course, there are more and more stations coming online that have things like canopies. They're indoors. EA'S or Electrify America's San Francisco location is a good indicator of something that's happening. And of course, there's also truck stops. Like, Flying J will start offering charging locations, which is great because truck stops are– you can stop. There's food. There's drink. There's rest. Some of them have dog parks. So yeah, charging is getting better. It's going to take a little bit. But yeah, there you go.

STEVE LOMMELE: Great. Thank you so much, Roberto. That was super informative. And now we're going to turn it over to Mayuresh, Dr. Mayuresh Savargaonkar.

MAYURESH SAVARGAONKAR, Idaho National Laboratory: Hey, guys. I hope that my audio is great. I'm going to talk about understanding driver feedback and how we can use AI, and machine learning, and all of the cool stuff to improve charging reliability. So whatever Roberto said, we just are trying to improve that through our efforts under the ChargeX Consortium.

And I'm going to also talk a little bit, as I start my slides, as to what ChargeX Consortium is before. But before I do that, as Steve said, my name is Mayuresh. And I work for ChargeX at Idaho National Laboratory. So at ChargeX, which is funded by the Joint Office, our vision is, "Any driver of any electric vehicle, any charger, first time, every time." As soon as you pull up to a charging station, as soon as you plug it in, it has to charge. That is our vision. That is where we want to get to.

But we are getting there slowly. So how can we accelerate this whole process? So that's why our mission is, "To bring together EV charging industry members, all the national laboratories, which have all the experts on there– consumer advocates, drivers, you guys– to measure and significantly improve the public charging reliability and usability in North America by June 2025." So we are on a tight schedule. We want to improve the reliability drastically.

Click. I have a few animations within the slides. I'll just call click. So the scope of today's presentation is how to measure charging reliability. My boss often tells me that to improve, we need to measure first. And that's what we're going to talk about today is how to measure charging reliability first, and then how do we go from there to improve?

So there are two ways to measure public charging reliability. And I try to give a very high-level graphic in this slide where we have the bottom-up approach, where you pull up to every charging station. Or you take a few charges, go to labs, plug it in, try to do some kind of a regression testing, and see how it goes, if there are failures, if everything is working well. And then it just is an exhaustive testing that we have to go through.

But then there's another approach called the top-down approach, which is quick. We can look at in-field issues and gives us a broader understanding. And that is through using customer data so like customer reviews, feedbacks, any sort of interviews. So every time you go and pull up to a charging station, you'll see maybe Electrify America's app or someone else's app. There's some sort of a feedback loop that comes in and says, how was your charging experience?

So I want you guys to always fill that out so that we can use that to populate some key performance indicators, which help us measure charging reliability. And that is the approach I'm going to talk about today is, how do we really use driver feedback to improve the overall charging experience? Next slide.

So under the ChargeX Consortium, like I said, we have a host of different partners. And then everyone comes in together and tries to brainstorm. Like, what are all the issues that customers face on a day-to-day basis? And Roberto excellently touched on some of those. And, trust me, we haven't been planning this with Roberto before, but this is the categories that we came up with at ChargeX Consortium.

So customer pain points are the individual pain points. So there's no restrooms, for example, or the charging went too slow. But then once we want to look at the data in a holistic fashion, we need to bin them. So under the ChargeX Consortium, we came up with six broader categories, which are called as Customer Pain Point categories, and they are as follows.

The first one is finding a charger. Were you able to find a charger? Did you have any issues finding a charger? The next one is, OK, now you found a charger. Were there issues accessing it? Like, were you able to pull your card in pretty easily? Were you able to plug it in? How was it? Did it have some sort of accommodation for a trailer– and all of those.

Now once you access the charger, were you able to start the charge? So like, were you able to tap and pay? And then did charging really begin or not? Once it began, were you able to complete the charge? So you requested maybe 80% SOC. Did you get to 80% SOC, or was there a failure before that?

Once you got to your desired SOC, for example, like I said, were there any problems getting there? If there were problems getting there, were you able to get to customer service really quickly? So how was the experience of getting help? So that's the next category.

And then the final category is how safe or comfortable were you? Because that's what is really important that we want you to charge the vehicles, but then also look at the safety, and the comfort of the driver themselves. So these are the six categories. And what they do is they help us take all of the issues that exist and then bin them up so that we can scale this analysis using machine learning, which is going to be our next slide.

So how does machine learning and artificial intelligence tie into all of this? And I'm going to run through an example to show you how we really can do this on a larger scale. But imagine you're a customer and you attempt a charging session. So you pull up to a charger. You plug your vehicle in. And then sometimes, it goes great. Sometimes it doesn't go as great. And sometimes you're not able to get a charge.

We want you to get a charge every single time, like I said. So we want to see what went wrong. And then a lot of customers write their feedbacks on those apps or those websites, just like you write reviews on– for restaurants. Sometimes people say, yeah, the charger was too slow. I had to try it multiple times. So we want to know what category that goes in. So click.

So once you put that review in, what it does is it goes into a deep learning model, into an artificial intelligence model. And it says, oh, this customer probably had a problem starting a charge and completing a charge, whereas the second customer had problems accessing the charger or completing a charge.

And that's how we try to bin all of those reviews and then try to perform a holistic analysis of, what are the failures? Where is it going? How good is the reliability? Can we develop and populate KPIs from that KPIs or the key process indicators, like I said? And then, what is the distribution? Was it specific to a certain EV? Is it specific to a certain ChargePoint operator?

So if you go to the next slide, I have– oh, OK. So this is where it helps with interoperability as well. Like I said, our vision is every driver, every charger, every EV first time, every time. So right now, if you look at the left side of the slide, the analysis and the data and the insights are quite siloed.

The customer pain points don't travel as much as they should to EV OEMs. And then the data that is at the EV OEMs doesn't translate back to the ChargePoint operators. And then the system has some gaps in it. And that's why I say it's– the insights that we get are quite siloed.

So from there if you can click, we want to go to the right hand side, which is, there's a seamless integration of the analysis. So we want to share the analysis between the customers, the EV OEMs, and CPOs to all go and populate the ideal KPIs. Next slide.

So I try to pull out two reference cases in some of our analysis. Again, these are slightly hypothetical, so don't really focus in on the numbers. But in the top one, we see across the same EV OEM sometimes. We have EV 1 and EV 2, same EV OEM.

A host of customers, they go to one ChargePoint operator. And they have singular problems. Like, EV OEM 1 on the left-hand side has problems starting a charge. EV 2 for OEM 1 has problems completing a charge. So starting and completing a charge go together. And we see that in this case, they are common. So there's probably some issues that are happening in– at the vehicle level itself, which needs to be informed from the vehicle to the CPOs and to the EVSE manufacturers.

In the flip case, we have the same ChargePoint operator, but then they have problems finding a charger across both the vehicles. So the problems are not same across the vehicles. They're same across the vehicles, my bad. So what that tells us is that there's something, maybe an integration problem, or maybe there's an app problem. So that's the flip case where we have this similarity between the issues across EVs or ChargePoint operators.

And this is the level of analysis that helps us really solve those interop problems, which I mentioned. And this is the holistic data and analytical overview that we really want to get that because we take the learnings from these and then disseminate them to the different stakeholders. And we just present a framework. The actual beneficiaries are all the stakeholders, including you guys of this system. This is where we really want to go to. Next slide.

So now, although Customer Pain Points and driver feedback is really crucial, we want to build ideal KPIs. So what happens with the reviews that are usually written? Is that, OK, I did not get a charge? But why didn't you get a charge? Was it too slow? What happened? Did the RFID fail? What stage did it fail?

To do that, we also have to look at the bottom-up approach– so click– which is the actual technical logs that are being captured. So every single time you plug in your vehicle to a DC fast charger, there's a lot of high-level communication that starts. So a lot of information gets exchanged between the vehicle and the charger. And they try to communicate with each other in a very rapid pace to get you that charge. And that has a lot of low-level detail, which is usually needed to go down to the root cause of the problems. But we need both those streams to develop and populate those ideal key performance indicators.

I also want to talk about those nice word clouds that you see. You'll see a lot of working in there, which is a good sign. But then we also want to look at, what are the other customer pain points. And then Roberto coincidentally mentioned and eased that for me.

It's like, card. That's the RFID, the restrooms, canopies, the apps, the charging power, the rate of the charger that is– or the car that it was charging on. All of these are really important. And they need to go in together with these logs so that we can really improve and get to that higher reliability percentage as soon as June 2025. Next slide.

So what did we learn from this– is that the traditional EV-EVSE data, it lacks customer inputs. So the analytics are really siloed. It needs to be more qualitative and quantitative from a perspective of the customer, because the customer is the person who is really bearing the brunt of it. And we want to improve in specific directions and prioritize the pain points that the customer faces.

To do that– click– we need data from you guys, the customers, the EV OEMs, and the ChargePoint operators. And all three should help us populate the key performance indicators, which measure charging reliability. And then once we measure the charging reliability, we should be able to tell that, OK, this is where the improvements should go. And that will drive the reliability way higher than what it is right now.

So data from customers, CPOs, and EV OEMs all need to be fused together to build ideal KPIs. And that's how we use machine learning in one aspect of it and listen to the driver feedback to improve reliability. This is my last slide. Thank you and if you guys have any questions.

STEVE LOMMELE: Thank you, Mayuresh. That was fantastic. It seems like what I've been hearing from all of you is there's growing model availability. The cars are fun to drive, can meet most of your needs. One of the things that Ingrid talked about was that if you have access to home charging, it really couldn't get any easier.

But a lot of our conversation was focused on the public DC fast charging experience and improving that. And I see lots of questions that reflect concern about the public charging. Could maybe each of you just spend a couple of seconds talking about how fueling an EV is different and maybe what charging looks like for people who don't have access to charging at home? Ingrid, maybe we'll start with you, since I know you've got a long history of driving an EV. How often do you use public charging?

INGRID MALMGREN: So I am one of the fortunate ones who has home charging. My car has a 300 mile range. I honestly don't even know because I never drive that much in a day. I might drive 30 miles. I think the average is 40 miles a day for how far people drive.

So most people could probably get away with charging once or twice a week. So I never even look at my range. The only time I ever use public charging is when I go on a road trip. And similar to what Roberto said is it definitely takes a little more planning. You got to build in a little more time.

I have a Tesla. It tells me where to go. It preconditions my battery. I go, and I get ice cream. And I'm not even finished with my ice cream cone, and it's ready to go, and I'm off on my way. So it really, it's pretty easy. But I do understand that other networks, it's more challenging. It takes a little more planning. But for most people in their daily driving, if you have home charging, you will not even think about it.

STEVE LOMMELE: It seems like that in-car experience for those who are accessing public charging is really important. And you talked about how Tesla has that experience dialed for a lot of drivers. Jaclyn, since you've driven so many EVs, are there other automakers making that experience more seamless for drivers?

JACLYN TROP: You can hear me, right? From my experience, I'd say no. I find charging to be extremely difficult. I have an at-home charger. So typically, that's fine. But the few times that I've been traveling and need to find a charging station, besides with the exception of a supercharger, it's really hard– broken screens, broken card readers. A lot of times they don't even exist where the map tells you it is. So I personally have found it to be just a mess. That's all.

STEVE LOMMELE: And, Roberto, I know that you've driven a number of vehicles too. Do you have anything to add to that?

ROBERTO BALDWIN: Yeah. Like Ingrid, I have a– and Jaclyn– I have at-home charging. So for my EVs– I had an EV for three years. We just replaced it with another EV. And we only started charging it outside of maybe the twice that we took it to a supercharging station.

We only started charging it because we just had all this extra free charge from Electrify America when we got the car. That said, when I do travel, there– yeah, what Jaclyn has seen. On one trip, there was a EA station that the app said it was there. All the apps said it worked. And you got there, and it was shut down.

Typically, I'll pull over a little bit earlier because I'm thirsty, or I'm hungry, or whatever. And so I got to that station. I'm like, oh, I'll just use this station. And it just– it was shut down. The app hadn't been updated. And so, yeah, it can be frustrating. And it's always– especially now with early days when we're still in the infancy of EVs and the charging network to always have a backup plan, which is a weird thing for when you're used to driving a gas car across the country where you're just like, well, I don't– there's going to be a Chevron station. There's going to be an Arco station. So if it says go 100 miles to your next charger, but there's a charging station at 80 miles, maybe you just stop at that 80 mile one.

STEVE LOMMELE: Yeah. So, Mayuresh, I know– I mean, this speaks to all of the information that you're trying to collect and help identify key process indicators, that sort of thing. Broken screens, icing, are those all things that you capture?

MAYURESH SAVARGAONKAR: Yes, that's absolutely things that we capture. And we have to train all our– retrain all our AI models to capture all of that. Because people tend to speak a lot sometimes, and they also tend to speak very briefly. But then you want to really understand what the problem is. So we capture all of that information. So every single time you have a problem, please write a review. We will try to take it in and then try to improve it.

STEVE LOMMELE: Got it. Well, I know we're out of time. But I'm just curious, are you all hopeful that the experience is improving and that the newer stations that we're going to see coming online are going to address some of the issues that we've experienced for the last few years?

ROBERTO BALDWIN: Yeah. I think a lot of these early stations were cobbled together with off-the-shelf hardware and software that was new. And that created a lot of the problems. So I think we're getting to the point of maturity with a lot of these charging station companies where we're going to see better stations, more reliability. And of course, we're going to have more people who are working on these stations, which is something we didn't have before.

INGRID MALMGREN: And I would put a plug-in for ChargeX Consortium because Mayuresh and the folks on the consortium, automakers, the charging providers– all these stakeholders are just really all working together to find all of the potential pain points. And really, that collaboration is what's going to help solve this.

STEVE LOMMELE: Absolutely. And I know one other pain point that was referenced in the Q&A is there's no EV convertible in the US market. Jaclyn, is that going to change?

JACLYN TROP: There's talks. There's talks but–

ROBERTO BALDWIN: I will say that I had– I set up an interview with the North American head of MINI specifically to ask that one question, if a MINI EV electric convertible was coming. And he said, yes. So that's all. There was other questions, and there was a whole article that had really important information. But really, I just wanted that one question answered.

MAYURESH SAVARGAONKAR: You can take the top off the Hummer EV and then call it a convertible, right?

STEVE LOMMELE: There you go. Great. Well, I want to be respectful of everyone's time. Kerry, if you could just pull up the remaining slides. As I mentioned, the recording will be posted on driveelectric.gov. So you can go and– if you could go ahead and advance to the next slide, please, Kerry. You can go ahead and access that.

But thank you so much. I want to remind everyone that National Drive Electric Week is coming up at the end of the month. You can find an event near you. There's lots of ride and drives that are hosted around the country. So there's a great way to experience an EV and talk to people about their charging experience, whether that be using public charging at home, at work, that kind of thing.

And then last slide, please. So we've got some resources. We have a public EV charging infrastructure playbook. That's a great resource for communities that are looking to deploy charging. I know a lot of folks asked about signage and making it easier to find electric vehicle charging while you're on a road trip or driving around town. And MUTCD is the traffic manual for electric vehicle signage. And we're seeing much improved signage around the country.

And then community charging, we've got some great resources for how to deploy charging that meet the need that Ingrid talked about for the folks that don't have easy at-home charging. How do you get charging installed in communities that is home adjacent?

We're going to do more webinars like this. We've done quite a few. So visit driveelectric.gov. And then if we didn't get your question answered, please visit us at driveelectric.gov/contact. You can submit a question there, and we will get back to you within a day or two. So Ingrid, Roberto, Jaclyn, Mayuresh, thank you all so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. And thank you to all of our participants.

INGRID MALMGREN: Thanks.

STEVE LOMMELE: Take care, everyone.