Sam Abuelsamid 0:00 Welcome back. This is the guidehouse transportation insights podcast for April 28 2022. I'm Sam Abuelsamid, from the transportation team at guidehouse insights and I'm joined again today by my colleagues, Joe Janata, Scott Shepard and Sergey empanada. Let's kick it off today with Joe Joe, what's been going on going on in your area of coverage. Joe Jannotta 0:24 So something I came across the other day was zip chargers new go hub product. So zip chargers, a relatively new company. They're founded in September of last year, they plan on offering portable charge packs with an attached battery, they look a lot like a suitcase, they're two packs, are they 150 pound one that offers 12 to 20 miles of range depending on your vehicles efficiency. And that's on a 30 minute charge. And they have a larger pack with an unannounced wait that offers 25 to 40 miles on an hour long charge, they market it as an at home charging solution, as well as an at work and on the go solution. I kind of struggled to see the at home use case because if you can charge up your portable pack at home, you can probably charge up your vehicle. But beyond that, there's definitely a use case for having a portable pack in the back of your car if you need that extra charge while you're on the go throughout the day. And I think it could be especially useful on a longer road trip, having an emergency pack if you're not sure when you'll be able to get that next charge. Or if you need to take a detour and miss a charging station you'd planned out along your route. One issue with that is if especially if you have that smaller pack, the 12 to 20 mile range might not really get you to where you need to go, especially if you don't have the most efficient electric vehicle. And recently, they announced their go hub charging hubs, they contain a dozen or so charging of the charging packs in a container through an app, you can reserve a pack when you're inbound to whatever law you may be going to, I think this makes the most sense because you don't need to lug around that 50 pound charge pack and worry about charging up the home. While you're probably already worried about charging up your vehicle overnight. So you can run to the store, do your shopping while your vehicles charging on the pack outside. It also removes the need to reserve parking spots and build out a larger infrastructure of chargers, which some some lots of might be tricky to get that infrastructure in there. And it also removes the need to lug around that 50 pound pack or that larger pack which is probably a significantly more than 50 pounds. So I think this technology could ease a lot of that hesitancy driven by range and charging anxiety. I think there's a long way to go with the technology making the pack a little lighter, maybe increasing some of the charge rates, but I think it's a move in the right direction and certainly solves some of the issues with vehicle charging. Sam Abuelsamid 3:26 So it sounds like this is basically a super sized version of the battery packs that we carry around in our backpacks for our phones when we go to conferences and stuff like that, right? Joe Jannotta 3:37 Yeah, that's a pretty good way to put it, it looks a lot like a suitcase and it can slide in the back of your trunk pretty easily. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 3:45 So I like the idea of having a rack of these you know in a in a parking garage or parking lot. So you don't necessarily have to go to a specific parking space you know, to charge up you know, if you're going to be somewhere for an hour or two just put in you know, put in your card and get one of these these things out of there and then go hook it up to your Eevee wherever you happen to be parked. Have they given any indication of when these are going to be available and how much they're going to cost? Joe Jannotta 4:19 Um, you can pre order them now but other than that there's not a ton of details out yet. Sam Abuelsamid 4:28 Okay. Anything from you guys? Scott Shepard 4:33 Yeah, it and just looking at the some of the announcements on it, it looks like you know the the Go hub where theoretically you could pick these up it looks it looks like they're they're thinking about integrating solar on the awnings over the the the hub as well as potentially some wind generation or small Learn by I guess I'd call it seems pretty interesting. As a way to make deployment much easier go hubs around various locations. Because I can see, you know, there's being a challenge of one, just starting with the business model, but also deploying the stations to an area that would be easily addressable, like to a parking lot or to a parking garage. It says the Go hub is probably has about 100 kilowatt hours of batteries, though. So it'd be probably interesting to see if there is, you know, what the, what the energy needs of these go up stations would be relative to evey consumer demands. But at this point, Joe, it's really just beginning stages conceptual. Joe Jannotta 5:52 Yeah, it's pretty conceptual, right now beginning stages. But I think a big argument for it is you don't need to build out as much infrastructure as what you see with bolt dischargers, where you need to install, you know, it doesn't chargers and set up the cabling for that. So I think that removes a lot of this need, especially if you're going to hook it up to solar panels or wind, if that makes sense in the whatever the case may be. So I think that's definitely an argument for this technology. Sam Abuelsamid 6:21 You could also have these hubs, curbside, you know, for street parking meet where you got metered parking, you know, put one of these right next to where you've got the machine, you know, where you can go and pay for your pay for your parking, but put one of these hubs next to it. And then if somebody needs to charge it, you're right, it would be it'll be a lot easier to put one of those on a block than to set up a whole bunch of charge points along that block. Just do it from an infrastructure standpoint. Joe Jannotta 6:56 Yet, it certainly doesn't limit the parking availability for traditional combustion engine vehicles. Scott Shepard 7:05 I guess an additional sort of thought I have is that this is based in UK, right? This is a UK company. Yes, yep. Yeah. But there have been a lot of charging companies in the UK kind of focused around these charging solutions that can help solve the curbside charging, because parking is a bit of a constraint. In England and and elsewhere in Europe, you know, things like chargers that sink into the pavement, and then pop up when you need them things like that. Sorry, I'm wondering if you have any on the ground? Thoughts. viability of this versus Yeah, and those other ideas? Sagie Evbenata 7:50 Yeah, essentially, I'm just trying to kind of look at a couple of articles about about the these power backs, I can see that it cost something like one pounds for a four kilowatt charge, as probably forget for the hub. But I think it's interesting that you mentioned, a use case would be potentially for home charging. And when perhaps if I'm not quite sure what the charging speed is from these, these power packs, but it could be the benefit that you could charge up your vehicle quite quickly in an emergency. We just need to have a quick top up after charging the power pack in your house. I think that could be one use case for for home usage. And yeah, Scott said yeah, there is a big there seems to be a big emphasis in the UK especially in cities like London where there's very little off street parking and and home charging. And, and yeah, those pop up bollards or or lamppost chargers that are quite popular. And this could be something quite an additional helpful solution for topping up your car. I I'm not quite sure how this works in practice, but I I'm not sure if there's some kind of a theft risk of having something like that out out on the street, which I can imagine being a problem in, in London. But But yeah, it certainly seems interesting and something helpful for people in in densely populated UK cities. Sam Abuelsamid 9:24 Yeah, when you when you lock an Eevee the charge connector is locked into place. So you can't unhook the cable when the when the vehicle is locked. So, you know, if you've got this thing hooked up to your car, you know, unless somebody wants to cut through that charging cable there is they're not going to go anywhere with it. It's going to it's going to stay there as long as your car's locked. And another great use case for this would be for roadside assistance vehicles. You know instead of or you know In addition to carrying around a jerrycan with a couple of gallons of petrol, you know, carry one or two of these in the vehicle as well so that if somebody, you know, does run out of juice on the highway or runs out of juice, you know, a few miles from a charging station, you can pop over, you know, give them one of these, hook it up, and and then they can be on their way again, within a few within, you know, 15 or 20 minutes probably. All right. Let's move on to Scott, what have you got this week? Scott Shepard 10:35 Yeah, so I guess keeping keeping on theme here, you're talking about innovative approaches to charging infrastructure for EVs, major battery supplier, based in China CETL. They're, they're the biggest they supply brands like Tesla and Neo. A couple of months back, they announced that they were going to create a battery swapping business in in China called Evie ogo. Or I don't know exactly how to pronounce it. But EV ogo is how it's how it's spelled. And the difference between this announcement and and prior battery swapping announcements in China, of which there have been many over the last two years or so is that unlike most of those other announcements, CA TL chose to go down the path of module battery swapping, which is an approach that is really pioneered by Apple based in the United States. And is unique because you're swapping out battery modules into somewhat of a plate that then attaches to a vehicle and that modularized approach. You know, there there are some disadvantages to it, there are some advantages to it. One of the advantages is that theoretically, you can partner with automakers, and make your modules fit into structures that then fit into a variety of different vehicles. Rather than having the automaker have to adopt a specific battery pack. They can adopt more your battery modules can can better fit into a wide variety of vehicle fits effectively. And so in this regard. As I said ample and CTL are the really the only ones to date that at least I have identified pursuing this approach. And as of last week, CTL announced that they have deployed some of these battery swap stations in Ximen or German China. And for the swap stations to be specific, and they have also partnered with an automaker F A W, with their best student brand to roll out EVs that are compatible with the station's in some of the other announcements. As well as as this announcement, they've indicated that they are partnering with more than one automaker and that they have partners so it's plural. But I haven't been able to identify which other autumn automakers in China have partnered with CA TL but given the company's position as a battery supplier, I would expect that there are quite a few companies at least in China that are our our potential partners here for further rollout. Yeah. Sam Abuelsamid 14:02 So CSHL I think is number one globally in terms of batteries. They're the largest supplier of Evie batteries globally. And with I guess, how does the how does the business model work? As far as the vehicle side of this goes? You mentioned that they're partnering with FA W. Would what what are automakers planning to offer this as a consumer option? Or are they really targeting fleets with this that need minimal downtime? And so you know, if a consumer went in and wanted to buy an NF Aw, EVS example, could they get it with a standard battery pack that has maximum capacity or opt for this? This pack that supports the CETL modules. So I guess, have they given any indication of how that'll work? Scott Shepard 15:04 Yeah. So the, I guess the direction of pretty much everybody but Neo has been towards fleets, fleets of cars or vehicles or of ride hailing vehicles or taxis. That that has been the thrust of most battery swap deployments. Neo stands apart, they deployed it for the passenger car market, and they've been expanding that model. And tangential to that they've also offered sort of nuanced pricing schemes for customers, and they've just sort of adapted some of their pricing schemes to allow for customers to to sort of buy themselves out of the, of the battery as a service model they pioneered with the Neo swap stations. But besides that, it appears that ca TLS partnership is at least initially for mobility services or fleet vehicles. Yeah, yeah. And in terms of there is a little bit of of information on the pricing. So for Evie, ogos service, they describe their their battery modules, as are they're called, choco SCB blocks. And you can rent one of those for the equivalent of $62 per month. And their estimates are that in China, that is nearly the same as going from from zero 100 for a DC fast charge. Sam Abuelsamid 16:49 That's that's a pretty, pretty reasonable price. Yeah. Any any other thoughts? Joe? Saji. Here muted Saji Sagie Evbenata 17:07 Hi, sorry. Yes, sorry. What did you say, Scott? Was that the capacity of each of these individual modules? Scott Shepard 17:17 That is a good question. I don't know offhand. Yeah, I don't I don't know. offhand. I know, I'll have to get back to you on that. Yeah. So long and short. You know, typically, the Evie industry is moving towards pretty much like a 60 kilowatt hour battery as your baseline. So I would estimate that one of these modules carries that, or around that. And I don't know exactly how many modules make up the whole system. But yeah, ultimately, I would bet that the various module designs are probably averaging around 60 kilowatt hour battery pack. Sagie Evbenata 18:19 Yeah, I guess I was wondering, in that case, if you could have a vehicle that was designed to have can take multiple modules, and then have quite a large, you're paying a premium to get that additional range from that bigger battery pack. Scott Shepard 18:35 Right? Yeah, and I think that's true, or that's what modularity gives you the capability of doing is having a more dynamic pricing structure, there is a complication. And this is one of the disadvantages of that modular approach, in that, by having a modular Swap System, you are likely to lose some of the volume that's available for battery cells. Whereas if you're doing a more unified approach, wherein you're swapping out the full pack, you're likely to maximize the volume that the product pack gives you for, for battery cells for energy. Now, of course, the same can be said of battery swapping versus vehicles that are truly maximizing all the space and therefore might not be battery swap capable in their batteries would be more more so built into the structure of the vehicle itself. Sam Abuelsamid 19:38 Yeah, this is one of the trends that we're actually seeing in the industry right now is this shift towards so called cell to pack or structural pack designs. Because current current battery packs, Evey battery packs that are that are comprised of modules, typically only have a fill ratio Somewhere around 3030 to 35%. So the volume of the pack that is actually comprised of active cells is basically about 1/3 of the pack, the rest is consumed by the structure of the modules, the rest of the structure in the pack. And I know from conversations I've had with, for example, our next energy, there are a battery startup here in Michigan, that is doing cell to pack designs, with just just going to a sell to pack, they're able to get that fill ratio of active material in the pack, up to about 7570 to 75% of the pack volume. So you know, with something like this, where you have to incorporate additional volume, you have to take account for additional volume, for the connections and everything for these modules, that fill ratio is probably likely to be less than 30%. And just looking at something about an apple, you know, their their modules are relatively small, the leaf, a car, like the leaf, you will take about 10 modules for that. So that's those modules and you know, assuming they're probably no more than about four kilowatt hours each for capacity. I don't know if CTL is given any indication of the size of their modules? How many would go into a vehicle? Scott Shepard 21:35 Yeah, I haven't been able to find that. But it is, it is an interesting sort of trade off. You know, the, the modularity of of the module approach theoretically, gets over a lot of, or some standardization issues or complications for battery swapping, but it does diminish the available energy capacity of battery SOC capable vehicle would likely be able to use. And, yeah, it'll be it, it's one of the bigger questions I have of which approach in battery swapping is going to be going to be the one that becomes dominant. Sam Abuelsamid 22:21 Yeah, I think, you know, for a lot of a lot of use cases, especially fleet type vehicles, whether it's car share ride hailing, or delivery vehicles. You know, most of the time, in most cases, those vehicles don't necessarily need 300 miles of range, you know, they're, they're generally operating around an urban or suburban area. And having minimal downtime for them is more important than maximum range. So if it's got, if you can have a range of 100 miles, but and you can swap out modules in a couple of minutes. That is more useful for for that type of use case that type of vehicle, then having, you know, that maximum fuel ratio and 300 or 400 mile range. Scott Shepard 23:09 Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I can even even see that with upcoming battery innovations in terms of energy density or improvement. The the module approach might be more more easy to integrate in battery energy density improvements to the existing platform than if you were to try and do that through more of the battery pack swappable approach just because your modules are in my mind theoretically a little bit more swappable in terms of production processes, then your your full battery packs. Sam Abuelsamid 23:58 All right. Thanks. Got Saji. We got Sagie Evbenata 24:03 Hi. So yeah, I thought I'd talk about interesting article or announcements, which will be good discussion, a discussion point regarding regarding Tesla. So this just following on from there. At this month, they had their their cyber rodeo event. And I think what I found an interesting topic that was mentioned is the proposed launch of a dedicated Robo taxi by Elon Musk. So So yeah, this is one of their big events. And they they had various announcements they met ran their robots, and they had this big drone display, which was quite impressive, but I thought what was quite interesting is yeah, he specifically called out having a dedicated Robo taxi design Um, now, he mentioned that it may not have like pedals or steering. And I think the key selling point is that he, he made some claims of a very low cost cost per mile in terms of using these Robo taxi services. In fact, he was saying it's gonna be substantially cheaper than public transportation. So there was no actual images or prototypes or details given on the proposed vehicles yet, and not too much talk about the technology, which I think is another interesting point. So for example, around the Senate, what kind of sensors are going to be installed on the vehicle, because, as you may know, Tesla are very much focused on vision based systems using their cameras. But I suspect that they're probably considering the use of other sensors, whether it be LiDAR, or so on, for a more robust solution for for a robust taxi service. There was no not much talk specifically when we launch but he did say something like, by the end of it of 2024, which sounds pretty near. So they must have done quite some work in developing it. And I think one of the very interesting points here is now in the past, Tesla, or Elon has has made some promises around the deployment of Robo taxis, but very much different. So he was talking about having a robo taxi fleet based on consumer vehicles that would have some kind of a robo taxi function if you had the full driving the full self driving module paid for so so I think it's quite interesting that he's kind of they've kind of kind of kept quiet about that, that previous Robo taxi promises but it probably seems that they've come to realize that probably the most viable commercial way of having Robo taxis is going to be through having a robo taxi service with dedicated vehicles rather than just conventional passenger vehicles, which which drive around whilst they're not being utilized by the owner. So so I thought was interesting topic, particularly for that change of tax and I think be interesting to know more about what kind of sensors and technology they intended to use for these vehicles, seeing whether they can potentially coming so soon. Sam Abuelsamid 27:44 Yeah, it's it's, I thought was fascinating when he first mentioned that I think on their, during their q1 earnings call, or their their fourth quarter earnings call, actually, I think in January, or perhaps me was when they did their plant opening in Germany, but and then he brought it up again, with a little more information during the event at their Austin when they opened their Austin plant. I think this shift to a building a dedicated Robo taxi is an interesting one, because outside of Tesla, and its hardcore fans, virtually no one that I know of actually believes that you can do true highly automated driving, or a safe, robust, highly automated driving system. With cameras alone. Everybody thinks you need multiple sensors. And I agree with that. And in order to actually deliver something that resembling full self driving capability, you know, I think that the Tesla will ultimately have to make that switch. But you know, that's would not be viable for them to do with their existing consumer fleet because they, they would have to go back and retrofit you know, a million and a half vehicles with added sensors. But by making the switch to a dedicated vehicle like this, they you know, they could say, Okay, for this vehicle, we are going to incorporate radar and LIDAR as part of the sensor suite, and go ahead and deploy those. And they, they actually, when they first announced the boring company plans in Las Vegas to build the tunnel under the Las Vegas Convention Center. Back then they did show renders of a robo taxi like vehicle that was supposed to be the vehicle running through that tunnel. Ultimately, they never built that they're just using conventional model threes to go back and forth from one end of the convention center to the other. So I would expect that it'll probably look something like that which is not dramatically different from other Robo taxi dedicated Robo taxi vehicles we've seen you know, essentially a box with a bow Just seats in it. So it's, it's interesting that they're hinting at this pivot now. And someday we may even see it become a reality. Sagie Evbenata 30:09 Yeah, I think he's also dropped a couple of hints that actually he's that they've been finding a lot harder than expected. And in developing full self driving based on the technology of the center, they've gotten the vehicles on the road at the moment. So Sam Abuelsamid 30:27 a bit based on the videos that testers have been posting, you know, watching those videos and seeing some of the crazy things that these vehicles do. The they're nowhere near ready to deliver anything that actually qualifies as truly self driving. Sagie Evbenata 30:45 Yeah, and certainly not for a robo taxi service. I think it sounds very premature at this stage. Scott Shepard 30:54 Yeah. Given how long some of the companies in this space have been developing the suite of sensor capabilities for automated vehicles. Is it going to take a while for Tesla to catch up via this pivot? Or, I guess what, what should be expected of Tesla when they say this? That they're making this pivot hat? What does it mean in terms of time? Sagie Evbenata 31:23 Yeah, good question. I think, yeah, obviously, the 2024 date that they've they've meant they they've mentioned, sounds quite optimistic. And of course, in the past, they've kind of over promised in terms of being able to deliver same products or features, Sam Abuelsamid 31:41 or 1 million Robo taxis. They said they would have on the road by the end of 2020. Sagie Evbenata 31:45 Yeah, I'm still waiting for the waiting for that. So. So firstly, yes, it may or may be a very stressful flexible timeline. But But yeah, I think that if they've been, from what we understand, they've been really honing in on using the cameras, for self driving sensors. But there must be a fair amount of catch up required when starting to utilize LiDAR, for example, and to incorporate it into their know, with merging with all the other data sources that they're already using. So I'm sure my feeling is that it will be a bit a bit further ahead than 2024. And, yeah, I think that there will be a bit of a catch up with those who are focused on dedicated Robo taxis. Sam Abuelsamid 32:35 For what it's worth, you know, Tesla actually has done testing of vehicles with LIDAR. They've, they've got some test vehicles out, running around with Luminar LIDAR sensors on them. You know, most likely what they've been doing is using those just for, for ground truth verification of what their AI models are telling them from their, from their vision processing, you know, just to verify that the distances that they're estimating from the cameras are accurate. But you know, they have they have done work with Lidar and with radar, internally. So it might not take as long depending on how much they've had going on. It might not actually take as long to deploy that. But, you know, Tesla is notoriously good at missing deadlines, and projections from from their CEO. Right. All right. Well, let's, let's go. Let's stick with EVs for a bit. This past couple of weeks, there's actually been a lot of Eevee news coming out. And it's increasingly is looking like 2022 is kind of the year when electric vehicles, particularly in North America, I mean, we've already seen in Europe and China, much more widespread adoption of EVs. But this this could really be the year when EVs really start to get into more of the mainstream market. We've there are a number of vehicles that have launched already this year like the Hyundai ionic five, the Kia Evie six. And there's so much more to come. But, you know, this past couple of days ago, Ford officially had a celebration at their Roush electric vehicle Center, where they are building the f150 Lightning to celebrate the launch of production. They've actually been building production vehicles for quite a few weeks. They've the f150 lightning is their full size electric pickup truck. And they prior to the event earlier this week, they had already built nearly two thirds 1000 production vehicles and they're going to start deliveries in the next few days as we speak, as we talked about this. And the they, they are sold out through for the next year at least, they've got firm orders in place for at least the next year's worth of production. At the at the event, Jim Farley, the CEO, talked about reiterated their plans to expand production even further by the end of 2022. Or sorry, by the end of 2023. Ford plans to have production capacity for 600,000 EVs a year. And by 2026 That number should be up to 2 million EVs a year. So they're really moving aggressively but the the fact that they're launching the F 150. Now, the the F series has been the top selling vehicle of any nameplate in North America for over 40 years. And Ford prior to the chip crisis, you know, they were selling close to 900,000 of these trucks every year. And the Chevrolet and or the GM and ram pickup trucks also round out the top five, you know, they are two of the other top five selling vehicles in North America. And they're all watching electric trucks. So the the, the the interest in the truck market going Electric is really I think, probably the biggest sign sign yet that we've seen of EVs really going mainstream in North America. Next year, GM is launching the Chevy Silverado Evie. During their earnings call earlier this week, GM CEO Mary Barra reiterated that they plan to GM plans to sell 400,000 Or let's see no 400,000 EVs between this year and next year by the end by the end of 2023. They want to have 400,000 EVs built and sold and be at a million volume, annual volume by 2025. And Ram has also been releasing additional teasers of the Ram 1500 EV which is going to be revealed later this year. And on top of that, you know we've also got a whole slew of other EVs coming from virtually every major automaker, we've seen the the reveal of the BMW i Seven Last week, Lincoln showed a concept of the new design direction for their EVs. Last week in Los Angeles, bright drop, which is GMs commercial Evie business unit last week, announced that they had done a 260 mile drive with the bright drop xivo 600, which is their their new electric delivery van from New York to Washington DC on a single charge. And these these electric delivery vans at the commercial sector is going to be a also another huge market for EVs in the next few years, as those commercial customers recognize the the benefits in terms of lower operating costs, from going electric, bright drop has already delivered several dozen of those vans to FedEx in California. And they've got a number of other customers for those as well. Ford has been delivering the E transit to quite a few customers over the last couple of months. So there's we're seeing EVs creep out into all all segments of the automotive space in North America right now. And I think it's going to be fascinating to watch to see if these manufacturers many of them are targeting, having 50% Bev sales by the end of the decade, you know, that's quite a bit more than our own forecasts. And it's going to be a challenge for everybody, too, especially to get enough materials to build the batteries for all of these things. Any thoughts? Scott Shepard 39:32 Yeah, Sam, I guess you alluded to this about the commercial market, specifically getting getting into EVs right now. And I wonder if, if that's part of or if if maybe you have some context as to how the commercial market is spurring interest in the Ford lightning. You know, if they have if they're a bulk of the pre orders and in that bulk is associated with that total cost of ownership analysis that commercial segments are more either just sensitive to than the individual market. Sam Abuelsamid 40:15 Yeah, that's, that's a, that's an interesting one. By the end of December, when Ford officially stopped taking pre orders for the lightning and started converting those to, to real customer orders, you know, taking the actual deposits for customer vehicles and getting them configured. At that time, they announced that they had about 200,000 consumer orders for the lightning. And that did not include their fleet orders, they did not disclose how many fleet orders they've they've received. But an interesting aspect of this, typically, when an automaker launches a new model, they usually start with production of the the higher end trim levels first. And then over the course of a few weeks or months, start releasing the mid and lower trim levels, the cheaper version, you know, they want to get the highest margins out the highest margin vehicles out the door first. Interestingly, the first lightnings that Ford is delivering are the bass lightning Pro, some of which are going to commercial customers, some are going to consumers that have ordered, consumers can order the lightning Pro as well. And so that's the entry level one, they're actually starting with deliveries of that. And then over the next several weeks, starting to deliver the lariats and limited and Platnumz. And similarly, Chevrolet has announced that when they launched that when they launched the Silverado EV next year, they will be starting with the Silverado work truck in the first quarter of 2023. And not delivering consumer vehicles until the fall of next year. So clearly, there seems to be a lot of interest in this in the from talking to various people at the at the manufacturers, you know, for for commercial users, you know, oftentimes these trucks and these vans are used in urban or suburban environments, they're usually carrying a significant payload, you know, whether it's, you know, delivery van, or, you know, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, you know, that are using these, they're carrying parts and tools around, they're often operating at low speeds, often, you know, stop and go conditions, which are the worst case scenario for gasoline or diesel versions of these trucks. And vans. I know myself having having tried, you know, the Ford Transit, which is their, their full size van, a gas engine version of that, when the last time I helped my daughter move that was I got about 12 miles per gallon with that. And, you know, that can those costs can add up really fast, you know, when you when you're using vans like that for, you know, 5060 70,000 miles a year for you know, for the provide service to customers, those operating costs add up a lot. And if you can go electric, you know, those those are also the ideal use cases for electric relatively low speeds, stop and go so you get a lot of regenerative braking, you can maximize the range with that GM with the bright drop van that they demonstrated it can go 260 miles on a charge the transit the transit has a smaller battery, so it's only rated for about 127 miles. But it's it's it's a use case that I think makes a lot of sense for those customers. Scott Shepard 44:04 Yeah, and given the current oil price environment seems like this is the opportune time to adopt. Sam Abuelsamid 44:11 Yeah, absolutely. Sagie Evbenata 44:13 I think from my perspective, I always think it's very interesting how these these big boys full sized pickup trucks there's a big proportion of of usages for personal use. So it's more people's habit as their personal vehicle not just for commercial purposes. And yeah, it's interesting you mentioned getting real world MPGs pre pretty low. So I'm and obviously gas prices are very different in the US compared to the UK or Europe, but it sounds like a phenomenal running cost. Having such a big pickup truck. And especially if you know you're driving around town, go to the to the supermarket and things like this. It's Yeah, certainly an electric drive train would be good A big selling point I can imagine, Sam Abuelsamid 45:02 it adds up very fast, you know, a lot of these trucks have, you know, 30 to 36 gallon fuel tanks. And, you know, if you'd have to fill that up at, you know, four or five $6 A gallon in California, you know that, that adds up really quickly. So, I think, you know, this is why we're seeing so much interest in these in these trucks, you know, one of the other during the the GM earnings call, one of the things that, that Mary Barra also mentioned, was that they already have 140,000 pre orders for the Silverado. Evie. So, you know, they're they're on a similar pace to what Ford was getting with the with the F 150. Lightning. So yeah, I think one of the one of the challenges one of the interesting challenges is going to be, as they, you know, one of the big use cases, especially for personal use, is towing with these trucks. I know here in Michigan, where I live, if you go up i 75. Or us 23 on any Friday or Sunday. Pretty much all year round. You know this in the wintertime, you'll see trucks and SUVs towing snowmobiles up north up to Northern Michigan, for a weekend of recreation in the summertime, they're towing boats and jet skis. And to go to the northern part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, from the metro Detroit area, it's about a 250 mile drive. And what's going to be fascinating to see is, you know, how these trucks hold up under those kinds of use cases, you know, they're, they certainly have more than enough torque to tow they can, you know, the the lightning can tow 10,000 pounds. But when you're towing, you lose a lot of range. And it'll be interesting to see if Electrify America and other charging providers have to quickly start to expand the facilities they have kind of in the middle part of the state, you know, about 122 miles or so north of the metro Detroit area to enable these trucks to get all the way up to Northern Michigan. You know, on one trip, I know I've used a couple of EAA charge stations and in Bay City and Cadillac Michigan in the middle part of the state. And right now they they have I think six chargers at those. And I think by next by next winter, you know, or later this summer, when a lot of these trucks are on the road, I think there's gonna be a lot more demand for those chargers, as people are telling their gear up north and back again on Sunday afternoons. Joe Jannotta 47:48 Yeah. Sorry, do you know what that percentage changes in the range? If it's towing versus empty? Sam Abuelsamid 47:57 It depends a lot on on the weight of what you're towing, and also the aerodynamics of what you're telling how much drag aero drag there is. But in general, you know, most of the tests that I've seen done with towing with with electric trucks, it's usually somewhere around 40 to 50% reduction in range. So you're looking, yeah, the rule of thumb, I think, you know, if you assume you know, a half or a little more than half of your norm, your nominal range, when you're towing is, is probably in the right ballpark. It with, you know, a more aerodynamic trail trailer, the impact might not be quite as bad. But it's, it's still it's still going to be a big challenge for everybody. Sagie Evbenata 48:45 Especially in winter. Yeah. Scott Shepard 48:49 Sam vetoing use case raises a couple of questions. And I wonder if you have some local insights on electrify America's deployment. In in Michigan, you know, the example you're using, because today, a lot of the charging infrastructure deployments have been at spots where you pull in and not where you pull through and imagining a truck towing a boat or whatever, it's not going to be able to use those pull in spots, it's going to have to use pull through spots. So my assumption is that a lot of the infrastructure that's already deployed is is not going to be able to use to satisfy that case. Is that correct? Sam Abuelsamid 49:30 Yeah, so I've I've used four different EAA stations here in Michigan over the last couple of years in the last year and a half. And all of them are like pulling where you back into a parking spot or pull into a parking spot, depending on where your charge port is. And they're not they're not really set up for vehicles with trailers. Last summer when I was heading up north with a Mustang maki the the station in Cadillac Michigan, right next to the EAA chargers that were Tesla superchargers. And there was somebody that are with a Model X and a trailer. And the the, the Chargers are set up on a curb at a curb next to an access road into the parking lot. And so the Tesla owner actually pulled up behind and to plug in so they weren't blocking the spots, the other spots they were they were behind the chargers, and they just pulled the cord around to plug it in to their vehicle. And I've seen others do similar things. I know some friends of mine that have done towing with with EVs, they've ended up having to unhook the trailer, before they could charge it, which is a real pain. When, when I first got a briefing on the lightning last year, I reached out to Electrify America afterwards. And they actually have configured a number of their stations with pull through charging bays. So it's set up more like a traditional gas station. And they told me at the time that about 8% of their charging locations were configured and had chargers that were configured for pull through as opposed to pull in. And they they plan to increase that number going forward, they recently released some renderings of their, their next generation flagship stations. So they're, they're starting to deploy stations that are more like the highway rest stops, that you often see where you have a whole bunch of fueling pumps. And like a restaurant, and other things, you know, where you can stop and take a route and take a break, while you're while you're on the road. And that was the sort of thing that they're planning. And so they're going to start deploying more of those. And I expect, I expect we'll probably see at least one or two of those here in Michigan, and in places like Wisconsin and Minnesota and other other locations where there's a lot of recreational activity with utilize these larger vehicles and often involve towing having, we'll probably see a lot of those deployed over the next year or two. Joe Jannotta 52:19 Sounds like something's zip charge could address with their battery packs. Sam Abuelsamid 52:24 would help. But yeah, I mean, you'd need quite a few of those battery packs. You know, like the the lightning, you know, the extended range version of the lightning is 130 kilowatt hour battery. And those battery packs look like they're, at best, maybe three or four kilowatt hours. So, you know, it's, it's a little, you know, you'd be constantly shuffling back and forth from the, from the hub, with the battery swapping out for the next one to do that. So probably wouldn't be very practical for that use case. Yeah, yeah. Well, as an example, the GMC Hummer EV, which is now being delivered, and the Silverado, which is using the same platform, the, the that the battery pack, and that thing has 212 kilowatt hours of usable capacity, and about 247 kilowatt hours total. So fully charging that thing using zip charge, will probably take you most of the day, if not two. All right. Any last thoughts? All right, well, let's wrap it up for this week. And we'll talk to you all again in two weeks. Thanks, everyone. Sagie Evbenata 53:46 Thank you. Thanks, Ron. See you later.