SCE, GM, EPRI Celebrating 1 Million EVs

On Nov. 30, 2018, at the Newseum in Washington D.C., EEI hosted a celebration of 1 Million EVs on U.S. Roads. Nearly thirty speakers discussed this accomplishment and the challenges ahead. Including from Congress, GM, BMW, Nissan, Walmart, NASUCA, the Michigan PSC, NRDC, Sierra Club, EPRI and utilities.

You weren’t there? It’s ok. The PUF team was. Here’s a taste, three more brief video excerpts:

 

I. Jill Anderson, Vice President, Customer Programs and Services, Southern California Edison

 

“When we set out to do our first big launch of light duty chargers — it’s called our Charge Ready program — we had objectives of getting into multi-family. Especially as you're concerned about equity issues.

And that was the area we had the most difficulty. I think only three or four sites, [where] we were successful getting multi-family charging.

So it's an area that we have to think about differently. We might need to think about the utility doing more, you know, soup-to-nuts solution for multi-family.

But it's an area that's going to be important. Especially as we think about encouraging the used EV market.”

 

II. Dan Turton, Vice President, North American Policy, GM

 

Zero emissions, zero congestion, and zero crashes. As kind of our ultimate goal. Reaching towards the future with that invested. We think also, the EV platform will be drawn more into the public view once consumers can get even more exposed to it with the launch of autonomous vehicles.

And that's something that we are doing on an all-EV platform. We think that'll be something that really pushes the EV forward to the general public. The general public, if we can get them in an electric vehicle, likes it. You just gotta get them in it.

And so that's kind of one of the major hurdles we face along with the need for infrastructure. And obviously cost, getting the cost down, so we can compete.

So we're pretty strong in the public policy arena. Advocating for reform of the tax credit, advocating for a national ZEV program, and other public policy criteria to pull forward the EV into the market and public acceptance.”

 

III. Arshad Mansoor, Senior Vice President, Research and Development, EPRI

 

“That's the fascinating future that we're looking at. That future is right in front of us.

What I'm going to do is do a quick, what I call systematic innovation, that's going to drive how the customers expect… What their expectation is when they start buying EVs. Systematic innovation means you're not looking for breakthrough to change the way battery's ecology works.

It is innovation that's going to happen in the electricity sector. Innovation that's going to happen in the battery technology, and the automotive sector. Innovation that's going to happen in the retail sector and building sector. And most importantly, innovation that is needed in the regulatory and policy sector to make that happen.

So first innovation. Talk about batteries. Just make it simple. We think battery cost is around two hundred dollars a kilowatt hour. In the next five years you may actually get two hundred dollars a kilowatt hour.

What that means if you're just an average customer? What it means is if you're buying a three hundred mile EV (seventy-five kilowatt hour battery), you just took seventy-five hundred dollars cost out of that car. That's what it means if you're a customer.

Now, let me take this to the next step. Imagine, now we are seeing extreme fast charging (the phrase that's used). Two hundred kilowatt. Two hundred and fifty kilowatt.

You want to charge that car in thirty minutes. You want to charge that car in forty-five minutes. Imagine that battery now is in your house as a home battery.

A median price of a U.S. house is two hundred thousand dollars. If I can get it at seventy-five hundred dollars, install it at ten thousand, five thousand of the median house cost is a battery. I can now do fast charging right in my house.

And not only that, that battery, we talk about resiliency. When the power goes out, I can be charging my cell phone. I can be charging my computers from that battery.”