This episode of EV Musings delves into the challenges and opportunities surrounding electric vehicle (EV) adoption in the United States. Despite being the birthplace of Tesla, the U.S. lags behind other countries like Norway in terms of EV uptake.

The discussion covers the complexities of the U.S. charging infrastructure, the dominance of Tesla, the role of politics in EV adoption, and the importance of education for consumers.

It touches on the potential impact of Chinese EVs on the U.S. market and the role of incentives in promoting EV adoption.

We know that the US is 'a different beast' when it comes to EVs. But how much different is it really?

Guest Details:

Chris George - Chris's Website

Kevin Prince - Kevin Prince is a dedicated leader with 23 years of experience in the energy and infrastructure sectors. He has a proven track record of building and leading teams to creatively develop, implement and close complex projects. Kevin currently serves as Vice President of Fleet Electrification Solutions at Revolv, where he oversees the strategic direction, growth and execution of the company’s sales and development practice. Prior to this, he held leadership roles at Nextracker, Black & Veatch, NRG Energy, and SunPower Corporation, where he consistently drove growth and innovation in the renewable energy sector.

Kevin's Website

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the free to download app that helps EV drivers search, plan, and pay for their charging.

Links in the show notes:

• NASCAR selects ABB as electricity mobility provider. - Cool thing

Episode produced by Arran Sheppard at Urban Podcasts: https://www.urbanpodcasts.co.uk

(C) 2019-2024 Gary Comerford

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Mentioned in this episode:

Zap Map

The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers in the UK, which helps EV drivers search, plan, and pay for their charging. Zapmap is free to download and use, with Zapmap Premium providing enhanced features which include using Zapmap in-car on CarPlay or Android Auto and help with charging costs with both a pricing filter and 5% discount*"

Gary C:

Hi, I'm Gary, and this is EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles, and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today, we'll be looking at that charging wasteland, the United States. Before we start, I wanted to remind you that we're talking EV insurance next week, so make sure you tune in for that one.

Our main topic of discussion today is the United States, but first, some context. Did you know the largest market for Tesla vehicles outside the United States is Norway? And this might seem strange until you realise that this is also one of the most advanced countries when it comes to EV uptake.

Almost 9 out of every 10 cars sold in Norway are electric. Their charging network is more robust and advanced, their incentives are better, and they've embraced EVs and heat pumps in a far greater way than pretty much any other country in the world. Now, why did I tell you this?

Because America, home of the Tesla and birthplace of the electric car, is actually way down the list when it comes to EV adoption, and today I want to look at why that is and what they can do about it. The thing you need to remember about America is that it's a country of trucks. Tax breaks and specific emission regulations led to trucks being really cheap to buy and run.

They also have low fuel prices, although they do tend to complain drastically when they have to pay the equivalent of about £2. 90 a gallon for their fuel. Oh, how the other half lives, eh?

But most of all, it's a big, big country. And all of these things would seem to make it very difficult for the electric car revolution to take off over there. Couple that with Tesla producing a small range of very expensive cars, and we had the situation where Tesla sales were good, but they were limited to key places where the charging was in place.

And that's where we come to the major difference between the US and most other countries with good EV uptake. The charging network. Now let's get a little technical here, shall we?

If you drive an EV here in the UK, you'll be aware that there are different cable and different connector combinations. Now we've got AC connectors, we've got CCS connectors and CHAdeMO connectors. So do the US, but there's a difference.

They have what's referred to as Type 1 connectors. And what this means is, much like the 30kWh Kia Soul I used to drive six years ago, the connector they used to charge on AC didn't look like the one that most other EVs use here on this side of the pond. Yes, they had different standards.

The same applies for the CCS connector. Their standard is CCS1, and here in Europe we use CCS2. And why is this important?

Well, we'll come back to that in a little while. But then there's Tesla. In his infinite wisdom, Elon Musk decided two things which would put Tesla head and shoulders above the rest of the US EVs.

Firstly, he decided that he would roll out a nationwide set of easy to use plug and charge units that could be used by any Tesla with no fuss. Then he said that every Tesla produced would have a plug which was compatible with his charger and with AC charging. This meant the Tesla units were instantly compatible with all Tesla cars and it meant that all Tesla cars could charge on AC units at home or in public because they had the same connector.

Naturally, the connector he settled on was not compatible with the existing Type 1 AC or CCS or the CHAdeMO standard. Which meant that your Tesla couldn't charge on a unit outside the Tesla supercharger network without a converter. Now, this wasn't a problem for two reasons.

Firstly, nobody wanted to charge outside the supercharger network with their Tesla. Why would they? At that time, charging was free.

And secondly, there were very, very few non-Tesla chargers installed in the United States. Fast forward a few years and the situation is very similar, but it's also different. Tesla are still the largest charge point operator in the country.

Their cars still have their own charging connector standard called, ironically, the North American Charging Standard or NEX. And you still can't charge your Tesla on a non-Tesla charger without an adapter. But what has changed is the number of other non-Tesla chargers that have sprung up.

Electrify America, EVgo and many other companies have started to create their own network of chargers, pretty much as we have here in Europe. Non-Tesla cars can use these. So what's the actual EV market like in the US?

I am Chris George. I am the US co-lead for Octopus Electric Vehicles based in Houston.

Gary C:

Do you have any figures for us, Chris?

Chris George :

I might even be a little more specific to our current market, which we serve, which is Texas. Just looking at it this morning, we are about three and a half thousand EVs shy of 300,000 EVs in Texas. The share, as you could imagine, is going to be majority Tesla.

We see probably about a 50% market share for Tesla that's spread across the S, the three and the Y, the X as a small share. And then from there, it gets it gets very competitive, very small slivers of the pie. Well, that's fine for Texas, but what about the bigger markets?

Enoch Lenge :

For the past five years or so, Tesla has really been the leader in the industry. You see more than 50% of the vehicles being purchased that are electric in the US are Tesla. And it's become what people from the mainstream folks throughout the US think of when they think of electric vehicles, they first think of Tesla.

When they see a vehicle on the road and it catches their eye of what's electric, they're first drawn to a Tesla. It's a much more prominent brand than any others right now. But there is a shift that's starting to happen.

And it's very interesting to see that a lot of the other OEMs that have very impactful models in different areas are really starting to kind of encroach upon Tesla's ground, if you will, and are doing that in different ways. I think it's a combination of that. These are established brands that some people have affinities to that they feel connected to based on having an internal combustion vehicle with them.

Gary C:

That was Enoch Lenge.

Enoch Lenge :

My name is Enoch Lenge, and I work for Green TV Media as a director of partnerships.

Gary C:

So we've got the figures for cars in Texas and the overall market.

Is there anything that we've missed?

Kevin Prince:

Focusing on the commercial application, so there's eight common classes of... of commercial vehicles ranging from, or vehicles I should say, ranging from class one, which is your sedan, to class seven and eight, which are the large tractor trailers that are both at ports and move goods across the country.

If we focus just on the commercial applications, so not the residential and consumer vehicles, there's 90 million commercial vehicles in the US. And in terms of projections, it's 1. 3 million of EVs in the next six years.

So we're at the very, very beginning of adoption in this space. And when you even break it down into those classes, most of the adoption is in the class two through five. And what that means is pickup trucks, delivery vans, box trucks, step vans, that's the class of vehicles that make the most economic sense and operational sense today.

Gary C:

That's Kevin Prince.

Kevin Prince:

Kevin Prince. I run Revolve's Fleet Electrification Solution Group.

Gary C:

Who or what are Revolve?

Kevin Prince:

Yeah, we're 100% electric provider. So we help customers reduce the cost, complexity and risk of moving from diesel gas engines to electric.

It's a complicated market. There's a lot of moving parts. It's not just a normal fleet procurement exercise.

It's infrastructure project, environmental project, utility upgrade project typically, in addition to being a fleet project.

Gary C:

Now we've heard from Enoch about the domination of Tesla. What does Chris George from Octopus Electric Vehicles have to say about what other EVs are popular? Are there any others rather than Tesla?

Chris George :

We see, let's say anecdotally, the Bolt, Chevy Bolt is a very popular vehicle. The Ford Mach E is popular. Volkswagen ID4. The Porsche Taycan makes up a little bit of that market and the Ford Lightning. Trucks seem to be popular on the list.

Gary C:

What does Enoch Glenge think about that?

Enoch Lenge :

Yeah, I think it's so interesting that you said that because it couldn't be more true. And it definitely depends on the geographic area that you go to.

For sure, you very prominently see a lot of what we would say larger SUVs and pickup trucks. And that creates an interesting dynamic, because it's a dynamic where you can hopefully try to change the consumer a little bit, maybe to have them realize that if they're trying to think in a more sustainable way from an electric vehicle standpoint and carbon emissions that, hey, maybe I don't need as big of a vehicle.

Gary C:

So what is the best selling truck? Here's Chris George.

Chris George :

The Ford F-150, for context, is the best selling vehicle in the US. It's been that way for ever, as long as they've probably kept those stats or since it's been introduced. And previously at a company that we had in Houston, it was a public-private partnership looking at electrification for the region. We did actually a pretty deep dive on how unlocking the truck market was going to be key to electric vehicle adoption, specifically in the state of Texas.

Gary C:

America is, of course, also a country of long distance driving. We'll come back to that in a short while. But I want to take a bit of a deep dive into the thing that's underlined a lot of the US EV adoption, which is politics. Now, I don't like to talk politics on the show, but in the case of the US, there are a couple of factors at play. Primarily, you have the fact that there's quite a lot of government support for EVs through the Inflation Reduction Act and similar grants and schemes. But there's also something of a red-blue state split with Republican or right-leaning states tending to avoid EVs and Democrats or left-leaning states tending to favor them. Am I right about that, Enoch?

Enoch Lenge :

Short answer is yes. But I think that it also is dependent upon how progressive some of the overall economic growth of certain areas are as well. I think that and the regulatory policies. Florida, for example, is a Republican state, but their EV adoption is relatively high. I think that that's just a mix of their policies and some of their economic growth is really strong. It's also like a melting pot for a lot of people from all around different parts of the US go there as they retire and try to scurry away from the cold weather.

Gary C:

Does Chris George from Octopus Electric Vehicles have anything to add?

Chris George :

Yeah. That is certainly the reality when you look at places like California that have 2X the EV adoption or more. You have a state like Texas, same with the Northeast. Anytime you look at the markets like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, you see a higher rate of adoption. I will caveat that with we're seeing that a lot of the adoption is happening in city centers, I'm sure the UK is. And so a place like Texas is a little interesting. Austin, for example, has an extremely high per capita adoption rate. It's a very, you know, let's say liberal city and that is reflected in its EV adoption.

Gary C:

So let's go back and talk about those charging standards again. You recall I said that the US standardized on CCS1, unless you're Tesla who use their own standard, go Elon. Well, recently a move was made whereby a lot of the OEMs selling EVs into the United States moved their charging standard from CCS1 to the Tesla NACS standard. Now this made sense, but it also didn't make sense. There's a famous XKCD cartoon which says, Situation, there are four competing standards. Ridiculous! We need to create one universal standard that covers all use cases. New situation, there are 15 competing standards. Now we can go all day about whether the Tesla NACS standard is the right one to adopt. It's certainly better than the CCS1. But it doesn't do things such as vehicle to grid, which the CCS2 standard can, for example. But it is the one that's installed on the majority of US electric vehicles. So from that point of view, it was probably a reasonable idea. But it's also propagating the idea that any car with the NACS plug can use any Tesla supercharger and get away with using plug and charge. And that's simply not the case.

Plug and charge is not a function of the type of connector that's installed on a unit. The fact that you can plug and charge on both CCS and NACS proves that. Plug and charge is a result of multiple different factors playing well together seamlessly. The fact that Tesla do this is due to that one word, seamlessly. They manage the hardware, the software, the vehicles and the payment system. And if any one of these changes, it means plug and charge doesn't work. So when companies like Ford have glommed onto the Tesla plug and charge system, what they're effectively doing is letting Tesla deal with all of that complexity. Now that's fine for a company that's concerned with selling cars, but it's not so good for a company concerned with selling electrons. Electrify America and EVgo, amongst others, will not willingly allow Tesla to manage their plug and charge operations. So, even if they put that NACS connector on their hardware, it doesn't mean plug-and-charge works for them. So what's the insider's view of the NACS situation? Well, here's Chris George from Octopus Electric Vehicles again.

Chris George :

There are probably some questions around competition that companies had, you know, adopting a standard. I think also it was the US is big and complicated, but you have companies operating in different states, you know, bringing their standards, operating with different types of funding, different customers. You know, for example, this is tangentially related, there's a small city in the state of California that supports, you know, 99% of the hydrogen fueling, right? And so we just have a very fragmented market. And I think the hesitance around adopting a standard probably came from people wanting to be the winner and maybe manufacturers not knowing which horse to bet on, right? It seems like they've picked one from a charging perspective. I mean, I think the reality when it comes to the experience a customer has when charging their vehicle with a NACS charging station, Tesla's, you know, versus all the others is that there's a level of customer satisfaction that Tesla reached that other manufacturers weren't able to reach, right? And I think that NACS proved that, you know, in addition to uptime, you know, they can have a very seamless charging experience for the customer and frankly, they got to scale faster than everybody else. Right.

Gary C:

So back to long distance driving, the US is huge. So you'd think there'd be a lot of long distance driving and to some extent, you'd be right.

Chris George :

It's interesting to look at Texas because we have, you know, like I said, three, four large cities actually, you know, over millions of people in each of those cities that are anywhere from 150 to 300 miles apart, right? So approaching 500 kilometers in your case and the average commute, for example, in Texas is around 37 miles a day. We do have super commuters who commute up to 75 miles. Perfect example is my family. We go, I went to Austin this weekend to go see my family. That was a two and a half, three hour drive. Go to Louisiana. It's another two to five hour drive depending on where you're going. Going to Dallas, it's a three hour drive and that is pretty par for the course when it comes to, you know, people living in the US traveling between cities. We can do regional flights, but when you have a family like mine, that gets pretty expensive. And so you opt to drive. For us, something we don't think too much about, but I think for the general Texan Houstonian who has two cars, they think about it a lot. I think we are seeing a really interesting movement from having, you know, two very large SUVs, like an Expedition or a Suburban or a Ford F-150, these are seven, you know, three rows, seven people plus cars to having a, you know, still having one of those.

We still have relatively good sized families in Texas and Houston, you know, having one of those for your long trip car. I hear it all the time. And then you have your daily commuter car, which could be a Chevy Bolt, right? You're rarely going to drive over 200 miles in a day. You might approach it in a week, but you know, that is something that I'm seeing in the marketplace, right?

Gary C:

So let's talk about the elephant in the room when it comes to EV adoption, which is the infrastructure.

Here in the UK, there's the public perception that the infrastructure isn't there, despite the fact that installations are growing at a rate of 45% plus per year and the ratio of installed charges, public, private and workplace, is at about parity with electric vehicles. So what's the situation in the US? Well, Tesla is still the 800 pound gorilla over there, much more so than they are here, but with their reluctance to open up their charges to other marks, with some exceptions, a lot of the non-Tesla vehicles are relying on the other key providers, such as Electrify America and EVgo, for example. Are they as reliable as Tesla? Well, here's Enoch Lenge again.

Enoch Lenge :

In some cases, a lot less reliable. That's changing a lot over the past year and a half, two years, in a positive way. What happened was that Tesla, they had a very clear vision of what they were creating and a well-oiled machine and stayed focused and vigilant on growing that network and making sure that the user experience was very strong and have done a great job of that. And the rest of the industry, it's been somewhat of a struggle in the sense that they've installed a lot of good sites, but the focus on upkeep and maintenance and making sure that those chargers continue to function and operate, it became apparent that that was lacking just through lots of data and user feedback and reviews and things like that, that came out.

And to the point where certain drivers would be weary of, on a GPS or a map, seeing, meaning like some of the mapping tools that are out there or apps that show an EV Go or an Electrify America or a ChargePoint charger as available, they'd start to get weary of, well, it's saying it's available, but is it really going to be operable?

Gary C:

Now, I watched a video recently where an experienced US EV driver did the same trip twice. In the first, he took his own Polestar 2 on a 400 mile road trip across Tennessee using the public charging infrastructure.

It was something of a nightmare with chargers not working, difficulties initiating charges and paying for them and derated chargers, one of which a 350 kilowatt Electrify America unit was pushing out just two kilowatts. He then did the same journey in a Tesla Model 3. Every unit he stopped at worked, every unit he stopped at initiated the charge within about 10 seconds of plugging in, and every unit bar one gave the full charge available at that site. The one exception gave 130 kilowatts instead of 170 kilowatts. All of the superchargers he stopped at, and he deliberately stopped at as many as he could to check rather than limiting himself just to the absolute minimum he needed, only one supercharger had a unit out of order. Now, that's the sort of dominance that Tesla have in the US from a charging point of view.

But it's not just that. There is the charging aspect. Now, we complain about expensive public charging here in the UK. What sort of rates do they have stateside?

Enoch Lenge :

General stat is that about 75% of EV charging is done at home. And I think that's very, maybe even 80%, I think. And that's very prominently true is that most folks that have an EV that have the ability to charge a home do that with a home charger. And I think one of the things that is a little bit complicated in the US is that there's so many different utility structures that create a widespread difference in cost across the nation. So for example, the state that I live within, the cost of electricity in Connecticut is much higher than in other states.

And so the cost of charging an EV is more expensive. But the reason I was saying that is because it can become an easier decision to have an EV potentially in states where the electricity cost is cheaper. And so we have something like 3,000 different utility companies across the US. And so, yeah, it's insane. It's crazy. And that's a mix of investor-owned utilities and municipal utilities. And so it's like the industry eventually will probably have to come up with some type of standard for the cost of public charging. Some regulations around gasoline and diesel fuel probably will have to be something at some point. I don't think that there is anything formally. I think there's been some talks about that in certain jurisdictions. So you've got infrastructure that's definitely a tale of two halves. You've got pricing structures that differ state-by-state and utility-by-utility.

Gary C:

What about pricing for the vehicles themselves? Now, we talked about the F-150 truck earlier. Is there a big price differential between the petrol and electric version?

Enoch Lenge :

I think the price difference is still pretty strong. And I think that it will start to get closer to parity. And it's gotten a little bit better from when they first came out. But right now, it's still about $12,000 difference. And of course, it depends on the model and the bells and whistles and everything. But from what I've seen, I think it's for kind of a middle-of-the-line Ford F-150 ICE version, it's about $50,000. And for the F-150 Lightning, it's about 62,000. And of course, there's different...

That doesn't include tax credits and things like that. So there is the impact of tax credits that would definitely bring that a little bit more to parity. And I think that's one of the things just across the board in the US that's definitely, in a very positive way, impacting adoption is the federal and state incentives.

Gary C:

As Enoch just said, there are lots of incentives that you can claim over there. Here's Kevin Prince again, talking about specifically fleet vehicles, although the principles and some of the incentives can apply to private vehicles.

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So when we talk about... So the common calculation is called the total cost of ownership that fleets use in the US. And it takes the operational cost, the upfront cost and the operational cost, discounts that back, and you can compare the two, diesel versus electric. When we look at cost, there's... You're right. Electric vehicle today is more expensive, and it varies by class of vehicle. An e-transit compared to a diesel transit is a few thousand dollars. A Tesla semi compared to a regular semi is hundreds of thousands. And that's where a couple of the incentives that are available in the market come in to play. There are infrastructure incentives that help buy down the cost of the infrastructure bill by up to 80%, 90%. These are called make ready programs generally available through the utilities. They're not available everywhere, but in the markets where we see the most advancements occurring, they are available. You have vehicle incentives that are either offered by the federal government or by the state that are a nominal decrease in the purchase price.

So those range from a transit, you would get $7,000 off for a box truck or a step van, you'd get $60,000 off. And for a class eight, you'd get a hundred and some thousand dollars off. Another incentive would be operational incentives. There's in certain markets like California, there's something called the low carbon fuel credit. So every electron that you produce, you can monetize that and trade it in the market. So we can layer those incentives and end up getting to a cost that is below TCO or TCO parity or below what the diesel equivalent is. And that's where it is not a one size fits all. So the programs that I mentioned in California, all three exist in New York to exist in Kansas, none exist. And so you can see from a market standpoint where incentives and regulation are helping push the market, which will drive down costs, which will open up the market eventually to other states as well.

Gary C:

But all of this pales into insignificance if we don't educate the users on EVs. It's a tale I've heard dozens of times here in the UK and America is no different.

Chris George :

They've invested public dollars to support initiatives like Evolve Houston around the country. And I think you're seeing now the fruits of the labor there. But what I've observed now going from working on the energy side of things, trying to figure out how do you get customers to care about EVs and energy, going from the energy side of the business, which I started out at Octopus to now the EV side of the business where we are owning the physical assets, there is no replacement for educating the customer about their specific vehicle. And so where the opportunity lies is potentially a massive education push to dealerships or other leasing companies for the sales staff who are interacting directly with the customer.

There is no replacement for the ability for me to sit down with the customer and respond to their questions honestly, truthfully, directly, and provide them confidence in the decision they're making about their EV. We always say, our football and your football fans, it's like you always want to put butts in seats, right? Well, putting butts in seats in EVs is one thing and that helps with the adoption, but telling them about the vehicle, answering their questions, trying to assuage any fears.

Gary C:

So where's the education that says, if you're pulling up to a CCS equipped charger, such as an Electrify America one, you need to pull down the rubber bung covering the high voltage pins to connect that cable to your car.

Chris George :

That's funny because I literally delivered an ID for two days ago and I went through that very specific action where now, what did happen? Yeah, I mean, a perfect example, actually the customer, let me just give you generally how we do it, so our model is very different. If you live in Houston, we're going to deliver to your doorstep and that person is going to be able to tell you all about the EV. Now, before the delivery though, there are a whole host of things that can happen, right? We have a fully digital process. If you want to go through and lease a car with us, never talk to us, you can do that. But what we're finding is people are curious and they have questions. And so we are unique in a couple of ways. If you come in as a person who's interested in leasing a car with us, you're going to get a text message or a call from... me or one of my colleagues. And we know what we know, and we are very excited, right? So you're talking to one of us, which is great. I had a customer who I FaceTimed in front of his car and walked him through everything. He just... I was like, I'm here with the car, ask your questions. I'm going to show you exactly. I'm going to show you how to open the glove box on a Tesla. It's a button that's on the screen, right?

Gary C:

So let's summarize here. You've got a country where one manufacturer, Tesla, is dominating sales and charging. You've got other OEMs struggling to sell their EVs unless there's a guarantee that they can be used with the supercharger network. Hence companies like Ford Motor Company making a deal with Tesla to allow their new EVs to use the supercharger network. You've got hundreds of utility companies charging different prices in different states. But you've got a government which is split on whether EVs are good or bad. Republicans on the whole are against them. Democrats are in favor. But there are places where this partisan split is tending to fold. We heard about Florida, for example. But you've also got an Inflation Reduction Act providing incentives for both vehicles, manufacturers, and charge point operators to do the right thing. Now I put this to Kevin Prince from Revolve, and he pointed out that there needs to be three things to make this transition go right, especially from a fleet point of view. The first two, as we've already mentioned, are infrastructure and education.

Kevin Prince:

The third is human behavior. I think it's the hardest, I think, to solve. And that's for fleets, the biggest challenge is it's a new asset class. It's a different technology, different user experience. And it's a challenge. The biggest risk is fleets just doing nothing, deciding just it's too complicated. I'm just going to wait. And that's where we come in with our third party owned kind of solution. And we're taking technology risk and operating risk and maintenance risk and residual risk off the table and providing them with what they care about, which is performance and electric miles and trying to simplify it and make it less complex. But it's still a challenge. And the human behavior piece is very hard to get over.

Gary C:

So maybe there's more to this than meets the eye. By all accounts, the US is still a couple of years behind the UK in terms of EV adoption, despite the fact that they have more physical EVs on the road and more chargers in the ground. But the political will seems to be there and the country's starting to wake up to the fact that EVs can be a good thing if they're made in the US. Which brings up the loom inspector we've not mentioned at all. China. Jim Farley, the head of Ford, recently said he's been spending his time driving around in a Chinese made EV they shipped over especially from Shanghai. The Xiaomi has been his daily driver for six months and he doesn't want to give it up. It's that good. Many people see Chinese cars as an existential threat to places like the US automotive industry. And if the head of Ford Motor Company thinks they're better than any electric car his company makes, this has to be looked at. And this is probably one reason why the US government has recently added 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to try and protect the US automotive industry.

A move that's been followed to a lesser extent by the European Union, which approved tariffs of an additional 35% on certain Chinese brands. Notably, the UK has chosen not to add tariffs, mainly due to the fact that we don't really have a motor manufacturing industry to protect so much, plus we have the ZEV mandate which would be self-defeating to do so. All this means is that China will start to move manufacturing to the US, thereby increasing production costs and robbing the population of cheap EVs.

And nobody wants that. This season we're looking at raising the awareness of carbon literacy with our listeners. And one way we're doing that is with a carbon fact as read by carbon literacy trainer, Anne Snelson.

Anne S:

UK households waste 7 million tonnes of food each year. That's equivalent to 7. 5 billion pounds. It's also a kilo of food for every person on the planet. And about 50% is probably still edible. The rest could be recycled or turned into fuel.

So instead of wasting all that food and energy, why not plan more and throw away less?

Gary C:

It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with your listeners. Staying with our American theme, NASCAR is going electric.

Well, not quite, but they've entered into a deal with ABB, the folks who make the chargers that Gridserve tend to use, to run an electrified stock car. The vehicle is a race-tested, electrified stock car with three motors and a 1,000 kW peak power. One unit is located at the front and two at the rear.

I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show. It was put together this week with the help of Chris George from Octopussy Electric Vehicles, US, Enoch Lenge from Green Media TV and Kevin Prince from Revolve. Many thanks to them for their time.

If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages to pass on to me I can be reached at info@EVMusings.com

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Thanks to everyone who supports me through patreon on a monthly basis, and through Ko-fi.com on an ad-hoc one.

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Regular listeners will know about my two ebooks- ‘So, you’ve gone electric’ and ‘So you’ve gone renewable’.

They’re 99p each (or equivalent) and you can get them on Amazon

Check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my regular EV Musings newsletter and associated articles.

I know you’re probably driving or walking or jogging now. But if you can remember- and you enjoyed this episode drop a review in iTunes, please. It really helps me out. Thanks.

If you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you. Why not let me know you've got to this point by tweeting me at MusingsEV with the words, It’s a case of US and them #ifyouknowyouknow, nothing else.

Thanks as always to my co-founder, Simone. You know, he's always on the lookout for the ultimate electric unicycle riding location. He's done England. He's done Scotland. He's done Greece. He has a yearning for something a little bigger, a little more in the big scheme of things.

So where do you think he's going? Only the biggest state in the lower 48.

Chris George :

It's interesting to look at Texas.

Gary C:

Thanks for listening. Bye.