EV Hub Live

In this episode of EV Hub Live, we sit down with Arianna Skibell of Politico and Jennifer Hiller of the Wall Street Journal to talk about their experience covering the EV transition. Jennifer is an energy reporter and wrote a strong and data filled story about EVs and the cost of charging. Arianna is a climate and transportation reporter and wrote a fascinating and winding history of the Postal Service’s transition to EVs.

We will talk about the EV stories that both journalists have covered, how covering transportation electrification differs from other beats and covering the EV transition in 2022. 

This episode of EV Hub Live brings together Atlas founder Nick Nigro and two leaders in the mobility, equity, and transportation electrification space from the Greenlining Institute: Hana Creger, Senior Program Manager, Climate Equity and Román Partida-López, Legal Counsel, Environmental Equity. Hana and Román bring years of experience and expertise on equity and EVs and will discuss how investments can better incorporate equity.

This episode of EV Hub Live brings together Atlas founder Nick Nigro, Deputy National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi and Adam Ruder from NYSERDA to talk about the signing of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the proposed Build Back Better legislation and what these developments mean for the electric vehicle market and for EV-related state programs.

The report, Transportation Electrification in the Southeast (2021) prepared by Atlas and SACE, found that the Southeast (including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee), saw significant growth in transportation electrification over the past 12 months. The Southeast for instance makes up 18 percent of national population, but 37 percent of all manufacturing investment and saw large increases in EV sales, approved utility investment and charging infrastructure. That said, the Southeast continues to lag other regions. Nick, Stan, and Susan will discuss progress and the areas for future growth in the region.

As Chief Economic Development Liaison at the North Carolina Department of Commerce, Susan Fleetwood has experience in supporting industry and will offer up insights about the ways that Government in North Carolina has supported the EV industry and what else government, and the private sector is able to do. Stan Cross, the Electric Transportation Policy Director at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), will offer his insights both as a partner in the development of the Report as well as from his experience in tracking transportation electrification in the Southeast.

School buses constitute 80 percent of buses around the country – but only one percent of school buses are electrified. Sue Gander of WRI and Matt Stanberry of Highland Electric are leading the school bus electrification transition from two complementary standpoints. WRI have laid out their ambition to create “unstoppable momentum” to electrify all 480,000 school buses in the United States by 2030, centering equity in the process. Meanwhile, Highland Electric is behind the largest electric school bus order in history earlier this year in Maryland. Through Highland’s innovative funding model, a school district leases the buses from the company but pays the same as it would with its existing diesel fleet.

In this episode of EV Hub Live , Sue and Matt will discuss how to translate ambitious plans into reality. The conversation will cover innovative financing models for electrification, what it means to center equity considerations in school bus transport, and priorities for the near term.

California announced in May a mandate that 90 percent of miles logged by Uber and Lyft drivers must be electric by the end of the decade. The aggressive timeline could make ride-hailing one of the first transportation modes to go all electric. Meanwhile, research by RMI shows that electrifying these services could help build a bridge to a more equitable future.

In this episode of EV Hub Live, Nick Nigro will sit down with EJ Klock-McCook of RMI and Adam Gromis of Uber to talk through the ups and downs of getting more ride-hail drivers in EVs and what policymakers need to be aware of in the near term.

Forth’s Roadmap Conference is one of the premiere EV conferences in the world. Every year, the EV community convenes in Portland, Oregon to explore emerging trends, share best practices and lessons learned, and build the road ahead. Like last year, this year’s conference will be virtual but the event promises to be full of valuable information for all who can attend. 

In this episode of EV Hub Live, Nick Nigro will be joined by Jeff Allen, the Executive Director of Forth, the organizer of the Roadmap Conference. Jeff and Nick will discuss the key takeaways from this year’s conference and what lies ahead for EVs in the near term.

Research is starting to pile up on what the United States could look like with widescale transportation electrification. On April 8th, Atlas released findings from a deep dive on charging infrastructure investment needs to achieve 100 percent passenger EV sales by 2035. The research concluded over $87 billion in investments in charging infrastructure will be needed over the next decade, including $39 billion for public charging to put the United States on a path to full electrification. 

Just a week later, on April 15th, the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC-Berkeley, Energy Innovation, and Grid Lab released two landmark reports showing the tremendous benefits of achieving a highly electrified transportation future supported by a clean grid. The studies evaluated the economic, human health, environmental, and electrical grid impacts of an all-electric future and the policy necessary to realize that ambition.  

In this episode of EV Hub Live, Nick Nigro will be joined by Sara Baldwin of Energy Innovation, Nikit Abhyankar of the Goldman School of Public Policy, and Lucy McKenzie of Atlas Public Policy to discuss the benefits of widescale electric transportation, along with the infrastructure investments needs and the policy to get us there.

The U.S. Postal Service recently announced the awardee of a 10-year contract to build the USPS’s next generation postal delivery vehicle. The winner, Oshkosh Defense is known for building tactical vehicles for the U.S. military and has no known experience manufacturing an EV. In fact, the company expressed concerns to investors last year about its lack of experience with EVs, saying they “may not have the expertise or resources to successfully address these pressures on a cost-effective basis or at all.”

Given the long-term nature of the contract, the amount of money at stake, and the trends in vehicle technology, the policy community immediately raised concerns about the environmental impact of this decision and how this contract will play out.

In this episode of EV Hub Live, Nick Nigro will be joined by Dorothy Robyn of the Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy and Gina Coplon-Newfield of the Sierra Club to discuss the contract awarded by USPS, the response from Congress, the role of EVs, and where we go from here.

The National Association of State Energy Officials and Cadmus released a new PEV Policy Impact Rubric on March 1st which updates their 2018 rubric. The new Rubric can be used by state and local officials to evaluate the strength of their PEV-related policies. To develop the rubric, the study team reviewed the literature to see what the experts had to say on policy effectiveness and convened a committee of advisors to fill in gaps in the literature. Electrify America – one of the largest charging infrastructure providers in the United States – used the new rubric to evaluate the policy environment of metro regions throughout the country for its $500 million Cycle 3 investment plan.  

In this episode of EV Hub Live, Cassie Powers from NASEO and Geoff Morrison from Cadmus will join Nick Nigro to discuss findings from their work and how the policy community can answer that critical, ever-changing question: what’s working?