Speaker 1: Look, it's easy to think. Electric cars are still for someone else who lives somewhere else. A lot of the most popular EVs aren't even sold in every state. So you really feel left out. I guess this is part of the reason that you and I get so many of these click bait articles in our inboxes saying, Hey, here are the best states to own an EV let's dig into that. [00:00:30] Now, when you list out the best states to own an EV the results are pretty predictable. You're gonna see California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Vermont, and a handful of others. That interestingly are roughly the same crowd that either are California or follow California's emission standards that have long been tougher than the feds. So that group has also moved ahead to be the most ambitious on electric, but this isn't really the [00:01:00] story.
Speaker 1: Now why it matters. What's a good or bad place to own an EV is because the next and much bigger wave of EV and tenders and buyers are gonna be taking a hard nosed. Look at them. They're not leaning in cuz they love them by default. They're gonna say, prove it. And if those people live in a state or an area that is not great as an EV environment, they'll walk, they'll go across the showroom or across the street and [00:01:30] just get a really efficient gas engine car. You've heard about those. There's lots of them. And they work really well. I talked to S and P global mobility, which has done some pretty serious study of this question. Global lead mark Bois told me, look past the state resolution, go finer than that. Don't forget about an interesting gray market that's developing in states that don't get all the cool EVs and look for what's replacing the former big dog, the federal [00:02:00] incentive.
Speaker 2: I think that the thing that a lot of people have to consider is the incentives and tax credits and rebates to promote that initial sale of an EV beyond what the feds offer. And there's a number of states that do, um, you, you have to sometimes search and find a little bit for this information, but, uh, ultimately that's, that's a, a state that's promoting the sale of EVs. Um, there's 12 states on this list right now they're called Zeb states, [00:02:30] uh, where they're kind of methodically working to reduce the transportation fleet to zero emission vehicles, um, California, Oregon, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, uh, couple others. They're all in that, that, that list of Zeb states today. But, uh, it's not just the incentives at, at initial sale. Um, different states have, uh, issues and, and opportunities with charging networks. Because if, if [00:03:00] you're gonna buy an electric vehicle, as we all know, you're gonna have to charge it somewhere.
Speaker 2: And, um, you know, different states are taking a different approach to incentivizing and building out charging networks as well. What's most interesting is when you look at the, the charging networks, it's localized, right? Some cities in California like LA and San Francisco, they've got highly congested charging infrastructure because there's a lot of EVs on the road that want to use that public charging network. Um, 30 to 40 EVs per charger at times. [00:03:30] Whereas other cities in California are much less. So, you know, the state level perspective is, is one, but you do have to dive a little bit deeper.
Speaker 1: And as you rattle off that list of states, I'm thinking, huh, those are the California emissions states. As I, as I think of it from the combustion days, kind of the same set,
Speaker 2: They don't necessarily go one to one, but the consumer can benefit knowing if, if they live in AEV state, because that's gonna give them more benefits to, uh, the, the incentives and, and the tax rebates for [00:04:00] the, the vehicle purchase for the charger purchase for the charger installation. And for the knowledge that the, the charging network is gonna be more robust in their state. Have
Speaker 1: You looked much into the area of how many people are gonna charge at home mostly or exclusively, and how many people are going to need a great public charging network?
Speaker 2: Most of the adoption of, of electric vehicles today have been on high income earners. And those people generally have more, uh, a single family home ownership, which comes [00:04:30] with the garage. Um, when you have that, uh, now luxury, you can fuel your car at home in the situations where you're in an apartment, a condo, any sort of multi-family, uh, unit dwelling. You know, that that is a different consideration. And there's a lot of question around how that charging, network's going to serve you. And if the, the economic still makes sense, but fortunately you've got, you know, lots of different applications, lots of different websites, where you can find access [00:05:00] to where these chargers are. And, you know, I tell a lot of people who are interested in getting into an electric vehicle, the range anxiety thing, it's real, whether you own a home with a garage or not the first three months, you're gonna figure out how this works and it's gonna be a little uncomfortable, but soon you'll kind of understand that it's better in many ways than having to drive to fuel to have your, your car fueled up. And, and that ranging Eddie starts to drop, especially because we're [00:05:30] in the realm of vehicles with 200, 2 50 or 300 miles range in a, a single charge. And that, and that's well beyond what most people's daily drive commute is going to need.
Speaker 1: How about any incentives for building or for putting a charger in my home, do any or many states subsidize that
Speaker 2: There are incentives there? I would actually look for your utilities to do more of that incentive work for what's being installed in your home or in your garage, um, because that's more [00:06:00] in their, their realm of control, right? And oftentimes if you have, um, an electric car and you're gonna put a charging station in your home, you can have it set up on, on a different meter from the rest of your electric, uh, bill, and they can charge your vehicle at night over, you know, over day, uh, nighttime hours when electrical grid demand is low. And that actually will incentivize you because, because a lot of these utilities will give you lower rates for charging in off peak times. Um, they can only do that [00:06:30] when you've got that kind of set up and you've got the separate meter and that sort of thing that said automakers are also working directly with, um, a lot of installers to, to kind of promote and subsidize those build outs, because they know that, you know, many of their buyers are going to want to charge at home. And, and because of that, they want to help facilitate that, that infrastructure, that home, uh, domestic infrastructure build,
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting as I, as I listen to you, call these points out, I'm thinking, well, if we could go back a hundred years, 80 years, let's say to the initial [00:07:00] popularity of the gas engine car, I guess it kind of broke out in similar ways. It was really popular in certain states and certain metros at first.
Speaker 2: And it is market by market. I mean, if you take the entire us, the, the, the viewpoint is, is very macro and, you know, Biden's infrastructure bill, it's a great momentum shift and a great inertia, um, uh, shift for, for building out infrastructure. But these charging stations aren't built in the U you know, they're not installed in the us. They're [00:07:30] not even installed in New Mexico or California or Colorado they're installed in, you know, main street and seventh. Our consumer research says that large majority of people still feel that there's an insufficient charging infrastructure where they live. Um, what's interesting is it's almost like a, uh, uh, a field of dreams referenced, right? If you build it, they will come. And we see a lot of people in our consumer survey come back and say, I don't believe there's enough charging network, uh, capacity to, to charge my vehicle, [00:08:00] even though what's in the data.
Speaker 2: And what's on the ground already is sufficient for the number of vehicles that are there, but it might not be where they want to be. That's a very critical component to where these charging infrastructure deployment plans are gonna be placed. You know, there have to be amenities. It has to be where people want to go. Um, I certainly don't know how many people are gonna wanna stop at a, at a, you know, traditional convenience store for a long period of time. But if that's convenient stores, you know, alongside other amenities, like a, a parking [00:08:30] structure for, um, access to an event center or a, a park or a golf course, or things like that, or even your workspace in your office, that's where the charging stations need to
Speaker 1: Be. And this is the new factor because in the old days, wherever a gas station is, it's only a three minute commitment you're in and out. Yeah. Here, you've gotta take a piece of your day and say, yes, I wanna be there for a SU significant amount of time. And that is new.
Speaker 2: There are accessible charging network. Uh, you know, whether you're Tesla or non Tesla accessible, pretty much [00:09:00] wherever you, you want to go today. Um, long haul road trips are not optimized yet. Um, it's available, but it takes special planning. And it takes a little consideration on how much time you're gonna spend charging. So, you know, if you're trying to do a nine hour drive, it might take 10 or 12, right. Um, but most people are not doing nine hour drives on a daily basis. And the opportunity to, to take advantage of the total cost of ownership advantages, uh, which I know you just recently wrote about it. It's significant and [00:09:30] a little uncomfortable change of pace with how you use your mobility is one thing, but people will be more comfortable with in the long haul. They're seeing more money in their bank accounts because they're not shelling it out of, uh, out into their gas tank every, every week.
Speaker 2: Um, I live in the twin cities, Minneapolis St. Paul and I was taking an EV from Chicago up to the twin cities. It's about six hour drive. Um, you know, with my family, with my, my wife and kids. Now, my kids are young. So, you know, 30 minute planned [00:10:00] stopover for them to stretch their legs was perfect. Right. I mean, it helped reduce that, that road trip anxiety. Um, but what was interesting is, is along the way, you know, we faced some headwinds, like it was a 30 mile hour winds coming into Wisconsin. And, um, because of that, we had to make an extra charge stopover in Madison we weren't expecting to do so. Um, I think the anxiety came in and not knowing where the chargers were gonna be, cuz that was kind of off plan. Um, again, we'll get to a [00:10:30] point in our relationship with vehicles and planning your trips and you know, that that expected knowledge of, of where the charging stations are gonna be. But in the, in the early days, there's still gonna be that anxiety on, on road trips. And I don't think anyone's gonna be able to get around it. Um, <laugh> during that trip, I, I ran into a, a gentleman who owns a Kia soul EV in Wisconsin. There's no way he bought that brand new in Wisconsin because Kia never made it available there.
Speaker 1: Oh, interesting. [00:11:00] Okay.
Speaker 2: Turns out there's an importing going on from the coasts where there is stock of these used EVs into the center of the country because there's demand in these states that don't have the stock, the new car vehicle stock for, for electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids. And so he literally imported it from San Jose to a dealer in Chicago and then registered in Wisconsin because the demand was there, right. He wanted an EV he couldn't afford a, a new one and, and it was hard for him to find
Speaker 1: Anyone. And I find that [00:11:30] fascinating cause we haven't fully seen the impact of a good fleet, large fleet of late model used DVS that have still ample charge capacity. Yep. There haven't been quite enough of them out there yet, but I think we're kind of on the cusp of enough years and enough sales, we're gonna start to see a lot of those cases you're talking about, which I guess will then inspire the manufacturers to say, okay, there's enough demand if they're, if they're gray marketing, so to speak our cars into states where we don't sell, we should be doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yep. And, and there's entrepreneurs getting it on [00:12:00] this too. I know of at least half a dozen startup used car dealers that are selling only EVs used EVs and importing them from California, Oregon, you know, Florida, Texas. And, and it's, it's making a lot of money because in, in the center of the country, you don't have the, the new vehicle stock, but the demand is there. And it's interesting because we actually see negative scrappage rates. It's a industry term, but basically there are more, um, new registrations for EVs and [00:12:30] certain states in the us. Then there are new car sales for EVs, meaning that, you know, there are, there are some used com uh, used vehicles coming into the marketplace.
Speaker 1: Okay. So to bring it full circle, we started here by talking about, you know, what are the best EV states and, uh, what are the next wave? But as we're talking, I'm almost thinking the question, isn't the right question. It's as you mentioned, market by market, as opposed to state by state,
Speaker 2: Right? Because ultimately that's where the demand is. [00:13:00] And we're gonna see some markets at, you know, attract electrification faster than others, partially because of state funding and those incentives we talked about, but partially because of the demographics and the geography of the, of the, the area, um, we look at housing demographics pretty closely, and those that have a higher percentage of single family home, home ownership are starting to see a little bit more attractiveness to electrification because people have more, more ratio. People have that luxury [00:13:30] of, of just charging at home. Whereas cities that are quite urban, there are a lot of multi-family housing, um, components that could be a little bit harder, but at, on the flip side, that's where the charging demand is gonna be even greater. So it's, it's gonna be market to market. As we look at, um, the evolution of this in the us over the next five to eight to 10 years, um, eventually Brian, it's just gonna be buying a car, right? You're just gonna say, well, this automaker that I'm friendly to whether and not it's, [00:14:00] it's the one I've been using for years or not, you know, nine out of their 10 offerings are electric. Anyway. And like I said earlier, it's about getting butts and seats. And the more people we can get to experience this as an industry, but, but really consumers gotta drive them.
Speaker 1: That also ties back to the state penetration and the state friendliness toward EVs. Cuz if there are no dealers, it's a lot harder to sample an EV. Now you have to know somebody who may be gray, marketed a car into wherever they live and maybe they'll let you drive it cuz they're a friend or family, but that's kind of threading [00:14:30] the needle compared to there being car dealers where, oh yeah, I'll go try one of these. So that's another interesting factor that either does or doesn't uh, evangelize these things in some states. Now the most recent numbers from the EPA tell us that California, Texas, Florida, and Washington pretty much run the table in terms of number of EVs registered. Now that's not a rate obviously, but look at the dichotomy, even in Texas, here's a state that more [00:15:00] than any other loves the traditional full size pickup and yet go to Austin within Texas. And just about anybody who lives there will say, yeah, this place is lousy with Teslas
Speaker 1: As mark, Bizo kind of inferred. This is sort of like the real estate market. You know, the old saw all real estate is local. EVs are kind of mapping that way in their appeal and adoption at this early stage, it's sort of misleading to look at them as a national market [00:15:30] right now, look at this chart from the EPA, the orange line on the bottom shows the robust growth in charge locations. But the real story is the much stronger growth in charge ports or connections shown by the blue line above. That's a combination of more ports being added at locations where there's already EV appetite and more EV owners just rolling their own with home charging and perhaps less about statewide or nationwide growth of charge locations.
Speaker 1: Oh, by the way, if you're wondering if there's much of a horse race [00:16:00] between electric and other alternative fuels for cars there isn't, there was for many years it was a small horse race, but rather evenly spread. Now look at recent years, electric charging for battery cars has blown everything else outta the water with the exception of E 85. If you can even consider that an alt fuel, it's been a long time since car buyers had to even wonder, do I live in a good place to buy a car that was handled decades ago for combustion cars, fueling [00:16:30] was ubiquitous service and repairs virtually on every street corner or every desolate highway. And you could buy almost any maker model of car in almost any place except for some exotics. But now we're going back to a place that most of us alive today have never seen before restarting the history of where and how you can adopt automotive transportation, this kind of thing. Doesn't come along very often. It's going to be a fascinating story to watch.
