EVs are great for people with garages to charge them in, but what about everyone else? In this episode, Gabe Klein of DOE’s Joint Office of Energy and Transportation talks us through new approaches to EV charging for people in multifamily residences in urban settings, including new business models, new technologies, and even new vehicles.
Text transcript:
David Roberts
When it comes to encouraging the spread of electric vehicles (EVs), one of the most vexing challenges is how to secure reliable charging for people who do not have their own garage or driveway.
A lot of focus in the media has gone to big level-3 DC chargers on highways, but the fact is that charging on the go is relatively rare. In practice, almost all charging happens at or close to the home.
So what's to be done for residents of multifamily dwellings and other urbanites who do not have a private space to devote to charging? The team over at the Department of Energy's Joint Office of Energy and Transportation has been giving that some thought.
It recently released a white paper on creative new solutions for urban charging, especially for renters. That seemed like a good excuse to contact Gabe Klein, the head of that office, to talk through some of the ideas that people are trying, including new business models, new technologies, and even new vehicles.
With no further ado, Gabe Klein, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Gabe Klein
Hey, thanks so much for having me, David.
David Roberts
Maybe we could just start — you could tell us what this joint office is. Is it newish? And so what does it do and how is it approaching or thinking about this problem?
Gabe Klein
Absolutely. And you misspoke on one thing.
David Roberts
Oops.
Gabe Klein
No, it's fine. We actually sit at the Department of Energy and the Department of Transportation and —
David Roberts
Thus, the Joint Office.
Gabe Klein
Thus, the Joint Office. So, I'm actually at DOT today, and tomorrow I will be at DOE. We split our time and we are — I mean, the reason it's confusing is because this is the first time it's ever happened. The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, and one of the reasons that it intrigued me was that the federal government had never tried this before. It never tried to bridge these silos or break these silos down.
David Roberts
You mean these particular energy and transportation silos or just joint offices generally?
Gabe Klein
Period. Ever. Anything in the history of the US government. So, this is very much an experiment, a startup within government. And as a product of many startups, that's what attracted me to it, was not just making the charging revolution work — and that's obviously a huge motivation for me, I'm somebody that cares a lot about climate — but the idea of also reinventing the way government works and attacks these issues and works with the public, works with companies, really intriguing. And so, the joint office came about as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and there was a $300 million budget allocated to operate a joint office to really mirror the NEVI program, the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure grant program, which is about $7.5 billion total.
We also are working actively on the FTA, Federal Transit Administration's LoNo bus program, and the EPA school bus program. So, we're involved in about $18.5 billion of capital expenditures with our $300 million operating budget and we work to help everybody, states, cities, metropolitan planning organizations, NGOs, and companies, to figure out how to work collaboratively to make this happen and to make it happen as fast as humanly possible.
David Roberts
So, I always sort of wonder, with the Joint Office or with this type of arrangement, you, I'm guessing, do not have like original authority over those programs. Is this mostly designed to be sort of an informational and advisory and, you know, bringing people together, sharing knowledge, that kind of thing? Or do you have actual, like, administrative authority over particular things?
Gabe Klein
Yeah, that's a great question, and I'll be honest with you, it's a bit of an evolution. We are absolutely advisory in nature within the federal government. So, we work closely with DOT, DOE, policy shops, we work with the White House, and then we interface with the national labs. And often when policy is being formulated, you need data and analysis of data to inform what you're doing and make sure you're doing the right thing. And so, we work regularly with about five of the national labs. They crunch a lot of data for us. We have national lab employees on our payroll as well that are on what they call an M&O, like a detail to the joint office.
And then, we also have contracts with the labs; they have contracts with the private sector. So, we are constantly informing policy and shifts in policy. Part of our job is to be like a startup and be able to pivot and change if we feel like something's not working, and to jump in the fold and make things happen. I think the switch to the J3400 connector, not to get too technical off the bat, but when that started to happen, we jumped into the fray.
David Roberts
That's the one that's going to be universal now, supposedly?
Gabe Klein
Yes, exactly. But it had to move into open source. It had to move from Tesla out and be available to all companies.
David Roberts
So, the subject here is one of, I think, really intense fascination and interest for a lot of people. I sort of threw this out on Twitter, and people just have a lot of thoughts and questions about this area — which is sort of a slightly vague area, but I think by nature it's vague — which is just right now the model for EV ownership. I think sort of the default model for EV ownership is single-family homeowners own EVs and charge them at home overnight. That is most of EVs, most of passenger vehicle EVs, not all. Of course, there are apartment dwellers who have them now.
There are people who get by on public charging, but the rule now is mostly people who have their own homes. And obviously, if you want the EV, you want electrification to spread, you want the whole thing, you want the whole fleet to be electrified, you've got to figure out what to do for everyone else. And that's a lot of very heterogeneous cases, people living situations to puzzle through and furthermore, a weird layer cake of jurisdictions and authorities, too. I was thinking about this also as I was contemplating this and reading your white paper is just that there's some state policy here.
There's a lot of municipal policy here. There are private companies and their policies. There's not actually, strikingly, really a ton of federal policy involved, oddly, which is another thing that sort of made me think that, like, you know, your main role is just kind of like sussing things out and sharing info. But, is that roughly accurate? Like, this is not, most of what's going on here is not federal policy?
Gabe Klein
It's a bouillabaisse, if you will, you know, because here's what happens, right. So, we formulated the minimum standards for this program and for all Title 23 chargers, and we're constantly iterating on those standards. But we said, okay, we're going to have a minimum of four ports, minimum of 150 kW for DC fast chargers. We're going to make sure that you have the ability to pay even if you don't have a membership. But we're not going to make everybody put a screen on them because we know that's a critical point of failure or have a swiper on it.
David Roberts
You're just talking about public chargers, generally speaking?
Gabe Klein
Yeah, yeah. So, we formulated those minimum standards ourselves, the DOT folks, DOE folks, federal highways. And so that really stimulates the private markets as well as sending the signal with $20 billion plus. I mean, there's so many other things. There's tax credits for real estate if you put in charging stations. There's consumer credits to buy vehicles. So, it's very hard to track exactly what moves the needle on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And sometimes the challenge is that the press, the traditional press, wants to be able to say, "Well, this week this happened and next week that happened."
That's not really how a revolution like this works. It happens over a matter of months, years, and decades. And I will say that I have been very happy because I've never worked in the federal government. I'd run the DC Department of Transportation, which is technically a state agency. I'd run the Chicago Department of Transportation, a big city DOT. And I thought, "Okay, I'm going to come here and are we really going to be doing anything that's going to be meaningful, that's impactful to people on the street?" I can tell you it's very impactful, and particularly the work we do with the private sector to enable them to be successful, as well as helping states and cities to figure out how to do this and how to bridge the technical divide between energy and transportation.
No, it's really impactful. But on a day-to-day, Federal Highways administrates. They're like the bank behind the program, but we work with them very closely on the rules of the program and how it's going to function.
David Roberts
One of the reasons this question came up is because it struck me that — when I think about what would be most helpful for people who are not in single-family homes, who are in apartment buildings or multifamily residences — it struck me that the first and most obvious thing that would be helpful for them is just if those apartment buildings and multifamily residences installed chargers. Right. I mean, that would be — obviously, not everyone who lives in such an arrangement has their own parking space. They don't even necessarily have parking at all. You know, one of the salutary things that's going on right now is trying to get rid of parking minimums and trying to get rid of some of the parking.
But in terms of just like, first obvious steps, that seems like the thing to do. Like what you'd want is for apartment builders and owners and owners of multifamily residences to install these things. And then right there, you're sort of like, "What's the barrier there?" Do you need a federal rule? Do you need state rules? Do you need building codes? Do you just need to nudge them? Do you need to pay them? What authority do you bring? And how do you induce that?
Gabe Klein
Well, this is the power of information. I mean, look, when you're in government and you're running one of these agencies, there are carrots and there are sticks, right? And particularly in local government, there are carrots and sticks. I would say at the federal level, it's more carrots.
David Roberts
Especially lately.
Gabe Klein
Yeah, and in this country, where like — it's funny, we were traveling in Europe to learn more about how they're doing community-based charging. And, you know, each one of their countries is like a state here in terms of size and geography —
David Roberts
Yeah, true.
Gabe Klein
and all of that. So they have the EU and we have the United States government, and there's very much an approach of giving people carrots. And the storyline that's out there, like the federal government's trying to take away your gas-powered vehicle or any of that, is so untrue, particularly compared to other places. But from a sustainability standpoint, whether it's financial sustainability, environmental sustainability, the cost to consumers in many different ways, including maintenance and operations, the electric vehicle just makes a lot more sense. But I do want to say that we are not married to a particular form factor.
We're not married to everybody owning a car, versus there are lots of other types of fractional and shared ownership in urbanized areas.
David Roberts
Yeah, I want to address some of those later.
Gabe Klein
Yeah, there are people, like myself, who prefer to ride their electric bike most of the time rather than take their electric car for lots of different reasons, including the fact that it's faster, cheaper, healthier, easier to park, more fun, all of those things. So, I think we're very much trying to test with our Communities Taking Charge Accelerator: what do cities and communities want? What do they want to do? How can we spur experimentation? And then, how can we then take the lessons learned and scale them into the next round of large-scale funding? And that's a lot of what we're doing with our own funding opportunities within the Joint Office as well.
David Roberts
Sure. Okay. But let's focus in on specifically what's holding multifamily residences back from having charging available, and what could induce them to do so other than just obviously heaping money on their heads?
Gabe Klein
Well, I mean, I would say building it into new developments is a no-brainer. And you see a lot of local jurisdictions passing regulations requiring X percentage of parking spaces in new developments to have electric charging. I just saw one last week. I can't remember the name of the community or city, but, you know, once one city or town starts to do this, then others want to rapidly fast follow and catch up. With older developments, there can be some upgrades needed from a power standpoint, but that's the beauty of Level 2 charging. Cars sit, on average, 95% of the time, not the most efficient asset to own, and that's the best time to charge it.
So, let's get people to put in these Level 2 chargers. They're not a big strain on the grid unless you have a whole huge bank of them. And then there's also other solutions coming. Solar, obviously, and batteries make a big difference. And over time, the ability, and we're working on vehicle to grid integration as well, the ability to actually use batteries, particularly fleets of batteries, as a way to actually protect the grid, if you will, versus put a strain on it.
David Roberts
On that note, if you have a big apartment building, we're talking like dozens or even hundreds of spaces, you can sort of envision a scenario where everyone gets home and plugs their car in at the same time. And you do, even if it's just Level 2 , you do get a surge that either exceeds what the building hookup is capable of or even could exceed what the local grid is capable of. Obviously, there are ways around that. You have now these smart chargers that will time, you know, will time things, or could stagger charging or could otherwise spread it out.
I'm curious, from your experience, are those the default yet? Or are they still kind of like a cutting edge thing? How common now is it to be able to control the load that way?
Gabe Klein
It's pretty common, and I would say that it's also a relationship between the charger and the vehicle. For instance, with my vehicle, I have actually an older charger from like 2017. So, it's not a smart charger from the standpoint of it being Wi-Fi enabled and programmable, but my vehicle is, and I've set it so that my vehicle tells the charger not to charge until the rates go down.
David Roberts
Right.
Gabe Klein
So that's what our standards and reliability team work on, led by Sarah Hipel and Jacob and DJ and Shankari. And we have these great people from Rivian, Google, and Ford. We've got a lot of expertise that we're building that is working on vehicle-to-grid integration, working on open source with EVerest, which is a project that we're undertaking with the Linux Foundation, to make sure that there's sort of a seamless language being spoken between vehicles and the telematics and the charger, and ultimately with the utility, which is what's really exciting down there.
David Roberts
It really seems like this is the kind of thing where you want to have interoperability from the beginning. You don't want to do another thing where — you don't want another USB C situation down the line. So, I want to get to public chargers because I have a million questions about them. But just I have to ask: We just saw this story recently, the infrastructure bill put aside billions and billions of dollars for public chargers, and apparently none of them have been built yet. Two years later, everybody's up in arms about this. This is being held up as an example of how government is, like, "Too slow, trying to do too much," you know, "Everything-bagel liberalism," trying to squeeze too many requirements onto these things and have basically just made it bureaucratically impossible to actually build them.
What is your take on that? Why are there no public chargers from this program yet?
Gabe Klein
Well, honestly, I think it's sort of funny, and I'm really glad that you asked the question. Not funny if it were true. But the issue is, as I was saying earlier, there are so many efforts from IRA and BIL that it's hard to know what's influencing what. We knew in the first two years of this program that the private sector money was going to hit first. That was obvious, right? Because when you put that many billions of dollars out, the private sector jumps in. They say, "Well, this is a signal where things are going," and they start working. When the federal government passes money to state governments and state governments pass money to local governments and so on and so forth.
And you have to go through procurements. That just takes a little while. So, the idea that this bill would pass at the end of '21, and we put out minimum standards, by the way, early '23, roughly one year later, and that somehow there'd be stations on the ground, I mean, it wasn't realistic, particularly DC fast chargers, you know, DC fast charger.
David Roberts
Yeah, those are big, but like the Level 2 things. Like, you know, that's not a technical —
Gabe Klein
But that's not the NEVI program. See, and this is where I think we have not done a great job of maybe setting a baseline understanding with the public. And let's be honest, it is technical, but the NEVI program is high-speed chargers on highways, on AFDC corridors.
David Roberts
Okay. I don't know that I even, I had put that together even from reading that stupid story. I don't think I had put that to —
Gabe Klein
Okay, and you're extremely educated, right? So we're not necessarily doing ourselves any favors in terms of explaining the details of this. Not that everybody would pick up on it, but it takes 18 to 24 months just to energize a DC fast charger on average. Now, we're working on all of these things and trying to help states speed it up. But out of the $7.5 billion, there's about $2.4 billion in the hands of states right now. So it was never like, "Oh, there's $7.5 billion dollars that's for chargers." There are some states that were ahead of the curve already working on this.
Like Ohio before, this program hit, actually Washington, Oregon. Like, we're a tiny part of those states' programs. They have billion-dollar programs out West. So, there's a lot of different components, but we're not behind. We're actually exactly where we thought we would be, which is sort of the irony. Unfortunately, maybe the general public doesn't understand that. But the good news is, we're adding, like we added 1000 chargers I noticed on the AFDC since yesterday. Between yesterday and today, on average, it's about 1000 a week.
David Roberts
You're talking about non-DC, the smaller chargers.
Gabe Klein
Both DC fast chargers and Level 2. And you can go on our website at driveelectric.gov and you can go to the data page and you can actually watch the numbers go up. And I go there two or three times a day to geek out. And so we knew that like 2026 into — the peak would be in '27, '28 is when you start to see a lot of these chargers coming online from our money. And then it's a combination of public and private money. Like for instance, there's the 45 tax credit that gives up to, oh gosh, I'm going to butcher this.
But quite a bit of consideration for real estate for the use of EV charging. And so, you can get a significant tax credit, I think up to like $100,000. And so, that's really having a big impact potentially on the investment on the private sector side. But it's hard to track every element. But I can tell you, it's growing like a weed.
David Roberts
Yeah, this seems like one of those things where, with Bill Gates' famous quote, we overestimate what we can expect in the short term and underestimate what we'll see in the long term. I think there's probably something like that going on, but okay, never mind. These DC chargers, though, I don't actually care about them for the purposes of this conversation. I think they're overhyped, honestly, and I think they're not going to really get used all that much. But that's a separate conversation. What we're talking about now is people who live in cities and drive around cities and have nowhere to charge at their home place.
So, the first sort of obvious solution here is public chargers. Chargers that you can make use of in public parking spaces. So, there are cities trying this. There are a variety of ways to try it. There are pole-mounted chargers, let's start there. Let's just go through a couple of sort of like, the ideas people have had for public chargers and how they're doing it. Like LA, for instance. Maybe start with, like, LA's experience. They're putting chargers in streetlights, am I correct?
Gabe Klein
Yeah, hanging them off of streetlight poles as well. Yep, absolutely. I've seen, I think, ten different ways of installing chargers. And it's exciting, right? Because, like, if you have power running to an existing street, like, let's say it's been upgraded to LED, it's got a NEMA port. We saw this over in London. For 3500 euro, they're popping out that panel on the old 100-year-old streetlight pole, but it's been upgraded inside and they're popping in a relatively slow Level 2 charger that's available to the public with a QR code.
David Roberts
Right. And the key here is, by switching the street lights to LED, you're using much less of the energy. So, there's like spare connection capacity, basically at these street levels.
Gabe Klein
Precisely. Plus, it's been modernized inside, so it's easier to wire the charger in.
David Roberts
And so, those would be like a thing where the cord is hanging and you grab it and drag it down to your car. One question I have about all these, and this is the first question on everybody's mind, is just like, "How are these not just going to get beat up and vandalized?" And that is happening, right? I mean, that is sort of legendarily happening. Like, I just saw a post that, like, somebody said that, like, 100% of the North Seattle fast chargers, or even like, public Level 2 chargers are like, vandalized in some way or not working in some way?
So what is the answer to that? Is there a physical, technical way of designing chargers that are immune to vandalism? Or is this about enforcement or is this about norms? Like, how do you think about any public, anything in the public sphere, not just getting vandalized?
Gabe Klein
Yeah, it's an excellent question. I mean, I have a lot of experience placing different types of infrastructure in the public right of way, running departments of transportation, but also on the private side.
David Roberts
Right. You did the shared bikes thing in DC, which also is subject to quite a bit of vandalism as well.
Gabe Klein
Well, it was initially. So, here's the interesting thing. When we first put it in, people realized they really worked at it, they could yank the bikes out of the station without paying for them. Now, of course, they're not worth that much down the road. You don't have a way to sort of take care of it and put it back in, or if it's an electric bike, to charge it or swap the battery. But anyway, we fixed it. We upgraded from a plastic piece to a metal piece. You couldn't pull it out. So, there's a certain amount of hardening that has to happen for anything in the public right of way.
There are some chargers where people think that they have copper in the cable, and they don't.
David Roberts
Yeah, I should have said that: it's the copper that is the main thing. Right. Like, copper's prices are high right now. The shortage of copper is needed for everything electronic, and you can theoretically just cut copper out of one of these things and go sell it for scrap and make a bit of money. So that's, I think, what's motivating most of this.
Gabe Klein
When I was running the Chicago DOT, we would go out to upgrade the LED lights on the poles and realize that thieves had taken the copper out of the ground between the poles and were going over to Indiana and selling it. So, this is not a new thing. There are security opportunities here with cameras. There's increasing the penalty, whether it be cash or something else. There's also looking at newer technologies. There are retractable cables that come down off the top of the poles. You can't access it unless you have downloaded the app or paid something to get the cable to actually come down.
David Roberts
Oh, I see. So, you're sort of giving it your information before, or you have access to the cable so at least it knows who you are.
Gabe Klein
Exactly. And then there's also "bring your own cord," which we're exploring more. That's the standard over in Europe for Level 2 charging.
David Roberts
Yeah, tell me about that a little bit. So, like, you just carry, the idea is all EVs, you know, just like an ICE car would carry a spare tire, EVs all carry just sort of a spare Level 2 charging cable —
Gabe Klein
Yes.
David Roberts
with them?
Gabe Klein
Yes, and in Europe, they come with most of the vehicles, because that's the standard. Here, the standard is different, and you're supposed to have a cable at the charge point.
David Roberts
Is that by law, like, are you allowed to do a bring-your-own-cable thing in the US right now?
Gabe Klein
Yes, there's nothing saying you can't. And so, we've actually funded, in our last funding opportunity, a company to do bring-your-own-cord charging in four lower-income communities. And so, there is an interest in exploring that. There's no explicit reason why you can't, except for the fact that most people are used to having a cord at the location, but you can buy one for often, like, $100. Some vehicles actually do come with one, and so that's something that we're also interested in. And then for DC fast charging, obviously, if there is copper in there and people are cutting them — and I just saw a picture of a Tesla station yesterday, that somebody had ripped the cord out or cut it — then I think that's an opportunity probably for better security at the location.
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, it would be nice if the solution were not that we have to spend a bunch of extra money to up-armor these facilities. It would be nice if there were an easier, technical way to do it. I saw one of those "bring your own cord" things in the UK where, literally, just like — people might even have seen these in residences now — it's sort of like a little panel on the floor that you just flip up and there's a plug in there. So that's the one of all the ones I've seen visually that seemed to me the most sort of, like, unvandalizable.
Gabe Klein
We even saw one in London. This company had produced a system whereby they basically install the ports in the sidewalk, and you just walk over them. You don't even notice them.
And then, people bring the actual charger in the boot of the vehicle, and they just pop it out, and it looks like a bike pump, and you just click it into the sidewalk and run it to your car.
David Roberts
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see people's experiments with that. I know New York City has been installing curbside ports. Do you have any feedback from New York City on how well that's going, their design?
Gabe Klein
It's gone extremely well from — I read their report, actually, that's online. And they had, gosh, I think it was about 77% utilization, which, when you consider the fact that 15% of the time, the chargers were blocked by ICE vehicles, I mean, that's the equivalent of, like, 90%. And you need, by our calculations, to hit about 20% utilization to be profitable.
David Roberts
Oh, interesting.
Gabe Klein
Yeah, so there's a message there that says, like, "Alert! We need a lot more chargers." The demand is so high. And I believe they had, like, zero vandalism. But again, these were up high on poles, and, yeah, it was very successful. And my understanding is that New York is going to expand that program.
David Roberts
How do you prevent camping out at these things? And anybody who's been to a public charger is familiar with, like, there's a car plugged in, blocking you, and it's been there forever. It's probably full; the owner's off doing something else, and you're waiting. Are there technical or other types of solutions for how to kind of move people along and make sure that people don't squat on these things?
Gabe Klein
Well, I found a really interesting solution when we were over in Europe learning from them, and they were a few years ahead of us in terms of EV adoption as well as charging. I was like, "Yeah, how do you guys deal with this?" They're like, "Well, we have, like, a $500 fine."
David Roberts
What?
Gabe Klein
Yeah, if you have an ICE vehicle and you park at a charging spot, you're not using the charger.
David Roberts
Oh, an ICE vehicle.
Gabe Klein
Yeah. And I was like, "Okay, well, that definitely will work." I mean, I know with a Tesla, if you park for, like, five minutes beyond, there's a pretty hefty charge that kicks in. If you're sitting there and you are attached.
David Roberts
Oh, it charges you. If you're full and you're still plugged in, it starts to charge you.
Gabe Klein
Exactly. So, there are some pretty easy solutions. I think one thing that's exciting is thinking about the integration of parking with charging and some of the opportunities there for cost savings for consumers to sort of bundle and just for information and data on what's happening at the curb.
David Roberts
Right. And you mentioned parking garages in the report, too. It seems like this would be a great revenue stream for parking garages. Am I... is that crazy?
Gabe Klein
No. And particularly garages that have quite a bit of inflow and outflow of consumer traffic versus if it's just an office building. Although office buildings, I think, will offer a lot of charging as an amenity and could probably make money on it. But, like, I was just in the Harris Teeter parking lot — I didn't even have my car, but I was just walking through it — and there were Level 2 chargers. And they're being utilized heavily because you have people stopping in to do their groceries, and it's a great place to top up.
David Roberts
So, here's a question about public chargers, but I think it sort of applies generally to the whole area we're talking about, and this is also something that comes up a lot and is the subject of a lot of angst among my communities. Which is, there is a large sentiment out there, which I more or less agree with, that on balance, we're focusing too much on electric cars and too little on reducing driving generally, too little on shifting to walkable, bikeable infrastructure, densifying, increasing pedestrian access, et cetera, et cetera. And in some ways, these two are at odds. They do clash sometimes and sort of, I guess the most obvious example is just like if you install an expensive electric charger in a public parking, you know, like street-side parking spot and are making money from it, you're not going to want to get rid of that parking spot to put in a bike path or, you know, or whatever else.
So how do you think about that balance? Do you worry that public charging is going to sort of inadvertently impede good urbanism?
Gabe Klein
I'm glad you asked me that because I sense this from folks running city DOTs, in some cases even mayors now. And it's interesting to me because, like, I was one of those people at the beginning, you know, in the 2000s, pushing for more bike lanes and, you know, great urbanism and walkable communities and lowered emissions and getting cars off the street, shared mobility, all those things. And I still am. The fact is, we have to do it all. We have to get rid of more cars in urbanized areas and give people less expensive and healthier options but we also have to realize that a lot of the country was, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on who you are and what your perspective is, designed around the automobile, was sprawl.
And as you head further south or west, the land use is often very different in a more suburban, sprawling area or even city than it is — and I think it's funny, running the Chicago DOT, you have the core of the city and you have the neighborhoods of the city, and then you got the sprawling parts of the city and they're different. And a lot of times, the lower-income people have been pushed to the sprawling parts of the city.
David Roberts
Yeah, an interesting reversal from decades past, right?
Gabe Klein
Yeah, exactly. So what I would say is it's nuanced and complex. I agree, absolutely. I ride my bike everywhere. I'm all for it. But if we're going to save this planet and we're going to sort of lead worldwide in terms of technology, we have to do it all. And that's why I'm excited about what's happening in Detroit with electric bikes and the new manufacturing effort there to share manufacturing between lots of companies so we can have American-made electric bikes. Just as I'm excited to see GM, Ford, and others make investments in EVs that are unprecedented.
I wish we could get away from pitting one mode against the other, and I wish we had more car drivers that were walkers and cyclists. And you have it more in dense cities, but when you get out outside of those cities, it's tough. But one last tidbit I'll say is that as people come into places like DC, where I live, or they're in Paris, or they're in other walkable, bikeable, lovely cities, they go home and they want those things. And so, I was in Bozeman, Montana recently, and they want those things, and they're building more walkable, bikeable areas.
And I think that that is the most important thing. Like, change the physical infrastructure and then, like, we can put chargers in. It just might be on a different block. Like, if you have a major thoroughfare with bike lanes. Well, okay, so let's not put the charger there. Let's put it around the corner. We can have it all.
David Roberts
We can have nice things. One of the questions I want to ask is, it seems like these public chargers require a certain density. And as you say in cities these days, you have kind of, at least in some cities, dense cores where these things could work. And then you have the sort of sprawling exurbs where they clearly won't work, where everybody has their own home anyway. But then there's a lot of sort of gray area in between there, sort of like neighborhoods and inner ring suburbs and sort of quasi urbanized areas. How dense — I mean, it's probably too early to know, I'm guessing — but how dense do things have to be for these things to work? How far out into the burbs do these things ever extend?
Gabe Klein
You raise an interesting point. Some companies are more interested in investing in corridors where there's more throughput of traffic, even for like higher wattage Level 2s than they are in the urbanized area because it's so complex. Right. So, you have different companies with different strategies. I would say that the ubiquity of charging, like what I saw in London and Amsterdam, where every block had at least a charger on it, is really important to give people that confidence that they can have access. And then also, something they haven't figured out here, I think we're going to figure out here maybe first, is more multimodal charging.
So, you have a place where you have a subway, and you've got a bus, and you've got car sharing.
David Roberts
Right, mobility hubs. Yeah, let's talk about those mobility hubs a little bit. Like, who's doing that?
Gabe Klein
And some of them are naturally occurring and then some are really well designed. But let's light those things up, right? And like, if you're going to light up a curb, stub out for every spot on the block because it's, you know, the cost is getting into the concrete and the asphalt, right? And running the wire. So do it all. Run an extra run for the bike share station that might go there at some point. Make sure that the streatery can get power and make sure that people can charge their phones if they're sitting there waiting for the bus.
This is an opportunity to electrify the curb and every mode because every mode is going to need it. And so that's what we're telling people. Like, people are like, "Well, we wish there was more money for, you know, more bike charging or more Level 2 at the curb." And we're like, "Well, there is, but putting that aside for a second, think about when you're putting in that DC fast charger. Run what you need for everything else because it's like a de minimis cost."
David Roberts
I mean, what you'd really like is just for, like to snap your fingers and have electric infrastructure, sort of be ubiquitously accessible. But that's like, we're so far from that and it is so expensive.
Gabe Klein
But that's why people like you and I are so into Level 2 charging, on poles, because you're like, "Wait a second. It can be slow. A car sits 95% of the time. It doesn't have to be fast all the time. It has to be fast when you're on a road trip." And then to your other point, though, about what happens in the suburbs? Well, that's where destination charging is really interesting. Low speed often. It's at the Harris Teeter or the Walmart or Starbucks. And people go in for 30 minutes and they come out and they've got 30 miles or whatever on their car.
Or like, Walmart, for instance, is investing in fast charging as well. I'm thinking of it more like a gas station.
David Roberts
Yeah, what I wonder is, you went to Europe, and as you say, I wouldn't say they solved this problem, but they're way ahead of us. And it sounds like the way they've solved it is basically just like public charging is pretty ubiquitous. There's just, like, anywhere you go you can expect to be able to find a charger. But it sounds like those public chargers are mostly just sort of opportunistic. They're on the curb, they're on a lamppost, they're on bollards. This was my favorite picture from the UK. They're attaching them to bollards now. What can't bollards do?
Gabe Klein
I know, right?
David Roberts
But what you're not hearing about is like the equivalent of gas stations. And that's what I was thinking about, because a lot of people, I think, when you ask them about charging, that's kind of intuitively where their mind goes. Like, that's how they think of charging their car now. So they're sort of thinking like, well, you just have, like, electricity, gas stations, you know, like a convenience store, etc. But are we like, is that where things are headed? Are, is anybody building those? I mean, it sounds. I tend to think that those are two such different models that they're just distinct needs.
They're going to be distinct infrastructures. But what do you think about that? Is there the equivalent of a gas station happening?
Gabe Klein
It's a really important point that the paradigm is totally different with an electric car. And unfortunately, if you haven't owned one, then you don't necessarily know, or unless you have a good friend or you're dating somebody that has one. I probably used a fast charger maybe 15 times over the last six years, and I primarily charge at home or at work at a Level 2 charger. And so the paradigm is different. I would say that in Europe on our travels, what they told us is that the curbside, like, Level 2 charger is the workhorse. And we were a little bit surprised by that.
Like, that's where people in multi-unit buildings are, parking their car, getting a charge, and they do want to have them on every block so that everybody can use them. It's sort of that simple. And it's cheap. Right. So it's a lot cheaper to install. Therefore, the company can charge less. It's not putting strain on the grid. We definitely saw that. And I think that that is where a lot of this is going. Now, in terms of the gas stations, though, what's interesting, you look at who's winning the NEVI awards: a lot of them are gas stations.
You know, it's Sheets and Loves. And so, there is a retrofit that makes a ton of sense. We're like, "Hey, you already have the space. You already got all these gas pumps. You got all this empty lot space. Let's start converting it." And so, these companies are already doing that. There's no need to build new gas stations. And in urbanized areas, gas stations have been dying for a long time because there's a higher and better use. Right. But in some cases, urban gas stations will get chargers. But I think in urbanized areas, between the apartment building and the work building and the grocery store building and the curb and then people's homes and their multi-unit buildings, it should be pretty covered.
David Roberts
Interesting. Two issues: how to charge people, how they pay, and how much they pay, and who pays. That's a whole nest of issues there. Walk through a little bit about the payment models you're seeing and how you think that's going to shake out.
Gabe Klein
I think it's really interesting, obviously, for states to be able to charge for kilowatts is really important. And I think the last state just passed legislation for that. I think it was North Dakota or maybe it was Nevada. It's something to start with an N, and that was happening this week. So that's important. You know, I'll tell you one thing I found interesting on the urban charging front because that's primarily what we're talking about, is that — oh, it was Nebraska — cities here, they are like, "Okay, so we need to do some charging, and it's really important and we're going to do it and it's going to cost us this."
And in Europe, they're like, "This is a profit center for us." And so we walked through that, like in Amsterdam, and they're doing these sort of pretty decent-sized tenders. They might have two, three, four companies per city come in and they give them long-term contracts and they add on a charge on the kilowatts of one or two cents and, you know, they're able to pay for their programs plus some. So, I think that figuring out the business model for the private sector, but also the use of the public space and the compensation for that is going to be really important.
And we have some people on staff. Kevin George Miller is one of them, came from ChargePoint. But we have some other folks, too, working on all the business modeling to figure out, like, how do we help states, cities, companies make this work and sustainable for the long term?
David Roberts
And what about like the physical act of paying? What's the best? Is it all going to be just tap your phone? Is that where everything's going?
Gabe Klein
I mean, I think it's going in two directions. I think tap to pay. Absolutely. And then in-app or light website, I would say. So, you walk up to, you know, a chargepoint operator and you're at the station and there's a QR code and you click it. And then either you can download the app or you can just go to a light website and enter your credit card info if you're not comfortable and you don't want yet another app on your phone, or you can just tap to pay and say, "I'll just pay as I go, like I do at a gas station."
And that's basically how we set up the minimum standards because we don't want people to feel like they have to become a member of something to use something. And what we're working on now, we're working on like a universal plug and charge system across the country for all chargers. We're not quite ready to talk about it yet, but we should have some news on it in the next couple months. We're very excited. And if you check out the project EVerest program on our website, you can get a tease of sort of what we're working on. It's open source.
It allows every company, any individual, to contribute to it. It's all transparent. And we want to enable all companies and all payment companies as well to be able to be interoperable.
David Roberts
Right. So, anybody can approach a public charger anywhere in the country and just plug it in, knowing how to do it.
Gabe Klein
And literally, just plug it in and it'll just start charging, and charge you. That's what we want to get to.
David Roberts
And what about the equity issues? Like, if you're just viewing this as a money-making venture, you're going to go to the nice walkable areas where the tech bros live and put five chargers a block and watch the money roll in, and neighborhoods that are neglected will be neglected. How do you push against that? How do you think about that? Extending this mobility, extending this charging access to low-income communities, communities that don't have the cash, maybe don't even have as many of the cars yet, but you need to get that cycle going. You need to get that self-reinforcing cycle going.
How do you think about that? Or what are people doing?
Gabe Klein
Yeah, it's super important. So, when I served on the Biden-Harris transition team for transportation, one of the things that really excited me was that equity was not just a talking point. They were dead serious about actually doing it and making it a priority. So, the Justice40 initiative, where 40% of the benefits need to accrue to people in low-income communities, is great because it's not just saying, like, "Hey, you got to drop something in somebody's neighborhood." It's saying, "Well, look at where people work, look at where they live, look at where they frequent, and make sure that they have access and the outcomes that they need."
And so, we actually just put out today or yesterday two publications, Embedding Equity into Community EV Readiness Planning and Embedding Equity into Electric Vehicle Charging Station Design. So, there's a lot of different elements, but big picture, which is what you're talking about, our money is plugging those holes, right? So, the private sector can fund a lot of the profitable infrastructure. It's often in lower-income communities, whether that be dense urban or rural, where it just isn't cost-effective yet. We're funding those stations. We have gap-filling cash, basically, and that's where a lot of that money is going.
So, we should probably talk about that more. Like, this is gap-filling money for equity, for everybody to have the same access to this infrastructure.
David Roberts
One other sort of major model I wanted to ask you about is peer-to-peer. This, I think, is really interesting because, of course, there are people who have electric hookups available that they're not maximizing, that they're not using all the time, that are more or less spare. They have sort of spare electric capacity, just like private citizens in their homes. And so there's this model now where you can sort of — I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I guess as a private citizen, you can just sort of buy a charger and stick it outside your house on the curb and make money by selling your electricity to peers. Is that how that works?
Gabe Klein
Yeah, I mean, basically, look, it's the Airbnb-ization, the Uberization of assets, and it makes a lot of sense. Look, somebody's already got power. Like, I actually have a separate power source running to my garage. I've got solar. I'm certainly interested. I even have a charger. I just don't have a way to get somebody at the curb to be able to use it, although I do have a long cord. And so, if you're able to facilitate that hookup and a payment system whereby those revenues get shared and your local government says, "Hey, we're okay with this," just like they do with Airbnb, it absolutely is interesting, and we're curious how it's going to work out.
And that's one of the reasons we funded one of these installations in our last funding opportunity with "It's Electric" in these four communities.
David Roberts
Yeah, that's so interesting to me. I mean, we're out of time, so we can't get too deep into it, but I'm just thinking about stringing private cords across sidewalks, about people charging other people directly and just all the regulatory possible shenanigans. That model seems both obvious and like it ought to be a big part of the puzzle, but also just like a lot of puzzles to solve.
Gabe Klein
Well, that's why, like, I think, and okay, now I'm taking my government hat off for a second, but when I was in the venture capital world and when I was in startups and stuff, a lot of those companies that were really breaking regulatory barriers would raise billions and billions of dollars because it would take a while to get there. I think this is a little bit different where you have local governments that don't necessarily see charging as their core business. They want to enable it. They're really interested in experimentation, maybe more than they were a decade ago.
So, I think it'll be interesting to see what happens. We're going to watch it, and we don't think there's one model that's going to work in cities. They're going to try different things.
David Roberts
This is such a fascinating topic. It's just overlapping economics, sociology, regulation, and behavior. What a meaty thing to be digging into. Any sort of final thoughts about your office and its trajectory and the trajectory of the subject?
Gabe Klein
Well, first of all, I can tell that you geek out on this as much and more than me, so thanks for having me. It's been really fun, and I think this change is inevitable. I like to tell people there were 7,000 taxis in Manhattan at the turn of the last century. They burned up suddenly in a warehouse. And, you know, there are reasons where we are where we are, but it was never inevitable that we were going to end up with fossil fuel-powered vehicles.
David Roberts
Yes.
Gabe Klein
And we did. We did. We did for 120 years. But out of the last 100,000 years, you know, and so put in perspective, things are changing. It doesn't need to be political. It's a different propulsion system. It's better for our environment. It's going to create a ton of jobs, and it's going to make our kids safer, happier, and healthier. And so, like, this is going to happen. It's just a matter of how fast. And some people want it to happen yesterday, some people don't want it to ever happen. And the reality is, it's somewhere in the middle.
It's going to happen by 2030, and we're going to see the majority of vehicles sold, I think, by then will be electric or hybrid electricity or plug-in electric. And, you know, anytime you have California say, "Hey, after a certain point, you can't sell these anymore.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Gabe Klein
Then, you sort of know what's going to happen.
David Roberts
Yeah, well, just say it one last time: I hope bikes are a big part of that.
Gabe Klein
Oh, my gosh. Look, I think we're going to end up selling more electric bikes than electric cars. That's my prediction, at least in urbanized areas.
David Roberts
Awesome. Awesome. All right, well, on that note, I'll let you go. Thanks so much Gabe Klein. Thanks for coming on.
Gabe Klein
Thank you, David.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes my guests and I sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts, or all three. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.
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