EV Hub Live

Last week, Donald Trump won the presidential election and Republicans took control of the Senate. Republicans are also likely to take control of the House of Representatives. Atlas Public Policy's founder, Nick Nigro, will sit down with Mike Murphy, CEO of the EV Politics Project, to discuss what the results mean for electric vehicles. The incoming President and Congress will significantly influence the outcomes of the substantial investments in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing made in recent years. Nick and Mike will unpack these issues and more.

In August, the Oakland Unified School District in California became the first major school district in the United States to fully electrify its school bus fleet. Each of the 74 electric school buses in the fleet has its own bi-directional charger, allowing the bus batteries to return energy to the grid when they are not being used. The fleet was made possible by Zum (www.ridezum.com), the leading provider of turnkey electric school bus solutions, and Pacific Gas and Electric, the electric utility which provides 2.7 MW to the site.  On this episode, Ritu Narayan, Founder and CEO of Zum, and Sarah Swickard, Vehicle Grid Integration Manager at PG&E, talk about the Oakland fleet as well as opportunities and challenges related to electric school buses.

At-home charging is the most common charging method among current EV drivers in the United States. It is convenient and reliable and less expensive than buying gasoline. However, people who live in apartments or condos often do not have access to a home charger, making EV ownership significantly more challenging. In order to achieve an equitable transition to EVs, these residents need convenient, reliable, and affordable charging options. In this episode, Malcolm Johnson from UC Berkeley and Ellen Kennedy from RMI discuss recent research their organizations published on EV charging at multifamily housing, including barriers, equitable solutions, and examples. 

As electric vehicle adoption increases, the demand for critical minerals for batteries will also increase. There is an opportunity to create a closed loop minerals system through battery chemistry changes, energy density improvements, recycling, and other solutions. Already, chemistry changes and energy density improvements have significantly reduced virgin mineral demand. In this episode, E.J. Klock-McCook, principal of carbon-free transportation at RMI, and Daan Walter, principal of RMI’s strategy team, discuss recent research on this topic, including an RMI report released last month called “The Battery Mineral Loop: The path from extraction to circularity,” which explores what it would take to create a closed loop minerals system as we rapidly electrify transportation. 

Electric vehicle sales continue to grow globally. Segments such as commercial vehicles and two- and three-wheelers have already reached very high levels of electrification—at 26 percent and 47 percent, respectively. However, electric vehicle growth is not consistent globally, and some markets have seen a decrease in the pace of electrification including in the United States. Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s recently-released 2024 Electric Vehicle Outlook covers these trends and others, including the pace of public charging deployment, the breakdown of EV sales by battery-electric vehicles vs. plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and EV investment and market opportunities. We are joined in this episode by Corey Cantor from BNEF to discuss key takeaways from the report. 

The biggest barrier to a full zero-emission transportation future is infrastructure. Just like a national gas-powered transportation system needed coast-to-coast gas stations to be built and complex supply chain logistics to transport fuel across the country, EVs need charging infrastructure with ready access to grid-provided energy in order to power EVs for daily commute and long-distance travel alike. For that to happen, EV charging providers must work closely with utility providers to build that infrastructure together. Our guests Nadia El Mallakh and Brian Wilkie will discuss how utilities, charging providers, and the government can work together to accelerate our clean transportation transition. 

With the anticipated announcement by EPA this week of the final version for its light-duty and medium-duty vehicle regulation, the transportation world is abuzz about the potential for two thirds of new passenger vehicles sold in 2032 to be EVs. To help you understand the implications of this rule, EV Hub Live is hosting experts Audrey LaForest from Automotive News and Chris Harto from Consumer Reports to discuss the details of the regulation, the response from the transportation industry, and the long-term impacts that this rule will have.

The Inflation Reduction Act aims to create nine million good jobs over the next decade, with ten percent of those jobs in clean manufacturing. This echoes the manufacturing boom that created the Steel Belt, bringing life to communities across the heartland of America. But that boom eventually led to the Rust Belt and a sense among manufacturing workers that they had been left behind. With labor movements on the rise, workers are becoming more optimistic for another growth of sustainable communities built around these good jobs. But with persistent supply chain challenges on the horizon and neighboring countries with lower labor costs developing advanced manufacturing capabilities, how can the U.S. keep new, clean, good jobs here at home? Our guests Anna Waldman-Brown from the DOE Office of Energy Jobs and Reem Rayef from BlueGreen Alliance will discuss the vision behind the IRA, how the labor movement can build good jobs, and how the U.S. can keep those good jobs and build sustainable communities.

Atlas Public Policy rings in the new year with Gabe Klein, Executive Director of the U.S. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. In this episode, we'll hear about what impacts the Joint Office has made thus far, what they hope to accomplish in 2024, and how those efforts will affect the wider EV and charging markets in the United States to drive us toward a zero-emission transportation future.

When we think about EVs, many people immediately imagine electric cars quickly and quietly zipping down the highway. But for our guests today, the EV future includes alternative forms of transportation—like electric bicycles and scooters, or electric buses and rail. Our guests Stephanie Lotshaw from TransitCenter and Mike Salisbury from the City and County of Denver will discuss the importance of developing and providing alternatives to electric cars in an EV future, particularly in metropolitan areas around the United States. We’ll hear about challenges to implementation and adoption, as well as opportunities to reimagine navigable and clean city centers built for pedestrians, public transit, and micro-mobility.