Episode 91. EVolving Attitudes, Expanding Infrastructure: Electric Vehicles Are Charging Ahead Thanks to Public Sector Incentives.

Allan Rutter (00:14):
Hey everyone. Welcome to Thinking Transportation–conversations about how we get ourselves and the stuff we need from one place to another. I’m Allan Rutter with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Allan Rutter (00:28):
Many of our listeners may have noticed that NFL football resumed earlier this September, with televised games over a five-day period, and lots of folks were watching. Forbes Magazine reports that in 2023, 93 of the hundred highest rated TV shows were NFL games. That attracts a lot of high-priced advertising. My own unscientific analysis of the ads on the games I watched breaks down into three buckets: beer, sports gambling, and motor vehicles–mostly electric vehicles. In today’s episode, we’re going to hear about some of the issues associated with electric vehicles, as the public sector is responding to and encouraging the adoption of electric cars, trucks, and buses. Today we’re welcoming Gabe Klein, the executive director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation in the United States Department of Energy and the United States Department of Transportation. And Joe Zietsman, deputy agency director of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Gabe and Joe, thanks for joining us. There’s just so much going on in both of your worlds transportation and energy, and so much overlap involving both research and public policy. So if you would, let’s talk a little bit about what you do and how your agency rules relate to each other. Gabe, can you tell us a little bit about this new Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, its organization, and its mission?

Gabriel Klein (02:03):
Absolutely. And thanks Allan for having me today. It’s great to be here. So, the joint office was created in late 2021 as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law. We were given a $300 million operating budget to support about $20 billion in capital spend on a combination of charging stations, hydrogen fueling CNG, LNG, and then also rolling stock–which is a technical term for buses, both transit buses and school buses–which are EPA and FTA programs, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Transit Administration. We really got up and running in early 2022. I was hired in September, or I was brought on in September of 2022. Our focus is supporting the build out of a nationwide network of zero emission fueling and charging infrastructure as well as the zero emission transit and school buses. And we do that by working to align the resources and the expertise that’s across the federal government and there’s so much in different places in HUD, in EPA, in commerce with tax credits.

Gabriel Klein (03:20):
And then what we do is we work to unify guidance across all of these entities. We work to provide technical assistance and analysis for these programs, but we also work closely with the White House. We’re involved with them quite a bit on policy formulation for our agencies. And I would say we do a lot of analysis, data analysis with the national labs. We work particularly with the National Renewable Energy Lab, the Argonne National Lab, but also with two or three others. And that gives us the information that we need to support policy recommendations that we’re making. Our interaction day to day–the most interaction that we have is with states and increasingly with regions through metropolitan planning organizations and cities. As well as–and this is heartening to me is–you know really I’m a private-sector person, a lot of private-sector coordination, interaction support. We’ve spun up something called the Charge X Consortium with over 90 companies working together to increase the reliability and usability of chargers for instance. And I can go on and on, but I’m gonna pause there because that’s probably 80 percent of what people need to know.

Allan Rutter (04:40):
Well, thanks, Gabe. It is remarkable that you guys have been able to accomplish as much as you have since the creation of the agency in the infrastructure bill. Joe, tell us a little bit about your organizational role within TTI and your work with the Center for Advancing Research and Transportation Emissions Energy and Health, or CARTEEH.

Joe Zietsman (05:01):
Sure. Thank you, Allan, for having me. And Gabe, it’s a pleasure to be having this conversation with you, so thank you for that. As Allan said, I’m the deputy agency director of TTI, and in my role I serve as the chief research officer of TTI, and I oversee TT i’s research portfolio. We have more than 400 dedicated researchers working for TTI on a daily basis serving real world transportation problems. So it’s just a great honor and a pleasure to be working with such a talented group of individuals at TTI. And we are organized into five groups at the institute. Basically, it’s planning, operations, infrastructure, safety, and environment. And as Allan alluded, I’m also the director of CARTEEH, and the focus of CARTEEH is basically on the intersection of health and transportation. And what Gabe is talking about with electrification and bringing energy and transportation together has a really big impact on public health. And that is why our center about six years ago got very, very interested in this electrification space and electrified mobility. And we are very focused on what are the health implications of electric vehicles and electrified mobility.

Allan Rutter (06:22):
That leads us to the next part of our conversation, which is, you know, as we think about the effort to expand the use of electric cars, trucks, and buses, it seems like one of the most persistent obstacles is the number of charging stations. And a lot of the discussion comes down to consumer demand. Will more charging stations help to sell more cars, or will selling more cars create more charging stations? Gabe, maybe you start us off talking about that.

Gabriel Klein (06:50):
Yeah, I mean it’s very much chicken and egg. What’s interesting is the studies that we’ve done with NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, show us that we need about 28 and a half vehicles to charge a ratio that’s ideal in the United States with our land use and so on and so forth. That’s actually where we are. So what’s interesting is from a raw number perspective, we’re not doing badly and we have doubled the network through all of the different incentives in the IRA bill–bipartisan infrastructure law–and a lot of private-sector investment on the back of that. And now you have the public-sector dollars kicking in. However, what we don’t have is the right geographic coverage necessarily that we need the right density of level-two charging stations, for instance in cities; the right number of DC fast chargers and level-two chargers in all suburban areas and on all highways.

Gabriel Klein (07:50):
That’s why the work that we’re doing is so important to plug the gaps, plug the holes. You know, when the president set the goal of 500,000 chargers, it wasn’t that we’re gonna build 500,000 chargers by 2030. It’s that we’re gonna facilitate the building of that and we’re gonna fill the gap, supplement that, particularly from an equity standpoint, we’re gonna put chargers where maybe the private sector won’t on their own, right? So that’s a long sort of way of saying, we are actually in a pretty good position, but the number of Americans that have actually used an electric car is actually relatively small, right? And so there was a Wall Street Journal piece maybe about a week and a half ago. I thought was fascinating, a very interesting piece. It was sort of a first person op-ed type piece by a writer there that had been sort of anti-EV before.

Gabriel Klein (08:43):
And then Kia loaned him a new Kia EV9, and not only did he love the vehicle, but he realized that he could plug it into a standard outlet in the wall in his garage and he got 90% of his charging from a 110 outlet in the wall, and then once that week plugged it into a level two charger when he needed it. And so I think it’s gonna take a little while for people worldwide, but particularly here in the US, where a big country with a lot of different geographies and land uses to have that experience or to know somebody that has the experience that actually there’s a whole paradigm shift in charging and that you may not go to a “gas station” very often. I’ve probably been to one 30 times to a supercharger or a regular DC fast charger in the six years that I’ve owned an EV. And so, really, I think some of this is a bit of a culture shift. It’s a bit of a change management challenge, if you will.

Allan Rutter (09:42):
And Gabe, like you were saying, so much of that is about telling the story to each other. It’s one thing to have an official pronouncement on policy, but it’s another to have a neighbor or a friend or somebody from church say, “Actually this actually works.”

Gabriel Klein (09:58):
Right, it works. It’s faster, better, cheaper. And I’m not going back to a combustion-fueled vehicle. I mean I can’t imagine that like the McKinsey survey that came out said the majority of people who have an EV are gonna go back to an ICE [internal combustion engine] vehicle, which is at odds with every piece of data we’ve ever seen from anybody. Cox Automotive, JD Power, NREL, which says overwhelmingly people will be buying another EV ,to the tune of like 90 percent. I mean it’s hard to imagine going back and there’s so few moving parts that you don’t have to deal with a lot of maintenance and operations costs.

Allan Rutter (10:34):
So, as we’ve talked about sort of personal vehicles, one of the things you had mentioned, Gabe, was that transit buses and school buses are also in the mix, particularly as publicly owned vehicles. How is the federal government helping with that?

Gabriel Klein (10:49):
Yeah, you know about half that almost $20 billion portfolio I talked about that we’re supporting is actually EPA’s clean school bus program and FTA’s low/no emissions bus program–it’s about 10.6 billion. We’re partnering with both entities and the National Renewable Energy Lab to offer technical assistance. They are both buses, but it’s interesting, they are different, and the duty cycles are a bit different in terms of the way they’re used day to day. Also, the programs are designed differently where EPA’s program is a rebate program, where any school district can go out and buy a bus and then get a rebate for it. The FTA is more of their traditional grant-funding model. But there’s been like 2.8 billion, almost a thousand awards from EPA replacing almost 9,000 buses. And then you’ve got FTA with billions of dollars out there on the transit front. And we’re seeing a tremendous amount of interest–particularly in the school bus side I would say–in our assistance in planning routing, figuring out how big the batteries need to be.

Gabriel Klein (12:01):
Like, some of it is very technical, some of it’s more business case, some of it’s helping them figure out how to talk to the school board about the benefits and what they’re trying to do. So, we’re very excited about that and I just wanna be clear that the joint office is here to support the electrification of everything, all transportation modes. I get around on an electric bike most of the time. I find it to be faster, more efficient and better for my health. And so it’s about the right envelope if you will, the right type of vehicle for the right uses.

Allan Rutter (12:35):
Joe, it strikes me that thinking about the whole mix of vehicles of all kinds of users, all kinds of owners–that’s part of what you guys have had to consider as part of the University Transportation Center that you guys run at CARTEEH, is that right?

Joe Zietsman (12:51):
Yeah, absolutely Allan, and I’ll follow up a little bit on what Gabe discussed. I’m like him an EV owner–actually my wife owns the EV, but we have it in our household–and I sometimes go take it for a good spin and it’s a wonderful experience to drive the EV, and it’s very comfortable, very easy to use. So that’s very true. I do have a couple of colleagues who owned EVs and they went back to ICE vehicles just for the fact that they get a little bit worried about range anxiety and just their lifestyle and the way they operate. So, there are a couple data points that say wow, it’s not exactly for them, but for the most part, once you’re in the EV you don’t want to get out of it. So, I’m also on that bandwagon right now. So, coming back to your point Allan–and you know one thing I also want to just talk about real quick is coming back to the school buses.

Joe Zietsman (13:39):
I do want to touch on that, and it comes back to emissions. So, that’s an area that we at CARTEEH really study very heavily, and school buses is, as far as we are concerned, super important because we’re talking about the kids, their health, their developing lungs, the fact that they breathe bad air, and how important that is for society that we keep our kids healthy. And these diesel buses, the old diesel buses, uh, school buses are terrible, and it’s not only the kids riding the buses but also the kids at school and where these buses are idling. So, what Gabe in his office is doing and EPA and FTA is just tremendous in terms of replacing old diesel buses with electric buses. So, that’s fantastic. Again, it’s zero tailpipe emissions, but it’s not zero emissions per se. So, we need to remember that there is some charging. I mean, you have to actually generate the power, and if it’s renewable resources that’s being used, it’s great.

Joe Zietsman (14:37):
Twenty percent of the US sources for power generation is renewable. So, that’s great, and that trend is expanding. The good news about that is more renewable is coming, and also where the emissions is created is not exactly where the problem areas are necessarily. So, it’s away from the downtowns, it’s away from the schools, et cetera. So, that is why this electrification wave is very, very important from a health perspective. And then, in addition to emissions coming from the power generation, there’s also emissions from tire wear and brake wear. And with electric vehicles being heavier, we need to make sure that we understand that and also calculate that and measure that as we move forward. So Allan, yes, school buses is something that is a big part of what we do and look at at CARTEEH. And, then obviously, light-duty vehicles in terms of EVs is something that’s really penetrating the market. It’s very important. We are looking at that. And then, to a lesser extent and a little bit more long term, will be the heavy-duty vehicles we might get a little bit. But that’s from the perspective of CARTEEH.

Allan Rutter (15:46):
You mentioned the particulate matter associated with car use of heavier vehicles, which is my next subject. EVs tend to be or, at least, the array batteries might be a little heavier than a typical car engine, which has implications for how vehicles interact with others on the road and with roadside hardware. How are the offices of the research labs and the folks at DOT thinking about how to address the challenges associated with how these different vehicles perform on the road itself?

Gabriel Klein (16:18):
Yeah, I am by background more on the transportation side, actually, than the energy side having run two DOTs, and then worked in the transportation area more. And this has always been an issue, particularly in cities where, as Joe was saying, you have a density of people, you have vehicles that need to come into the city, and you’ve got a lot of emissions, if you will, of all types. So, this particular issue falls under the jurisdiction of the Federal Highway Administration, which is part of the Department of Transportation. And they tend to say, “Hey, safety is our biggest priority.” And I think, when we think about safety, we have to think about the people inside the vehicle–and NHTSA has given five-star safety ratings to lots of electric vehicles–but we also have to think about the people outside of the vehicle. And there’s a lot of research going into that, whether it’s increasing the safety of guardrails and the ability to handle heavier vehicles; particulate matter from tires and looking at alternative materials or additives to rubber.

Gabriel Klein (17:27):
But we have to think about people outside the vehicle and, you know, we take that extremely seriously. I think that the private sector is as well, and not just from a safety standpoint but from a cost standpoint. Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford Motor Company, was recently interviewed and talked about how from his standpoint, we need to right-size the vehicle for the use and that very large vehicles with very large batteries for consumers were never gonna be profitable for Ford. I thought that was very interesting, and I’m a big proponent of that myself. I choose to use a very small vehicle in the city. It’s an electric bicycle, and I have a few of them. And I do think that we can provide a more equitable system, cost-effective system, and safer system if we look at the weight and the size of vehicles, particularly in urbanized areas but also in inner ring suburbs for instance–for the safety of all people, not just the folks inside the car or the truck.

Allan Rutter (18:33):
And, of course, one of the things, Gabe, you mentioned there is guardrail research and one of the five research areas that Joe’s responsible for is our safety guys, including our crash test proving grounds here on the RELLIS campus where we’ve done crash testing for much of our 75-year history.

Gabriel Klein (18:52):
That’s great.

Allan Rutter (18:53):
Now, we’ve talked a little bit about challenges on chargers and safety, but apart from the challenges, electric vehicles clearly have some advantages. Joe, why don’t you start by talking about some of the advantages that electric vehicles have in a broad range.

Joe Zietsman (19:11):
Some of the advantages obviously is–being a person working in the air quality, the emission space–clearly, there’s some tremendous benefits on the health side where, even if you look at it cradle to grave or full lifecycle on average an electric vehicle probably gives you a third of the emissions, if you add everything up to an internal combustion engine vehicle, it depends on so many factors, but still it’s a huge delta. And, also like we discussed earlier, the location where the emissions get generated is important. And, in this case, it’s typically not where, always where the problem areas are. Another area that we are looking at in CARTEEH is the area of noise pollution. That’s one of the connections or intersections between health and transportation. So, noise is a big deal, much bigger than people initially thought. A lot of people get physically sick because of noise pollution and electric vehicles are obviously very quiet compared to internal combustion engine vehicles.

Joe Zietsman (20:15):
So, that’s a tremendous benefit. Gabe hinted earlier about the maintenance, and I’m experiencing that myself with our EV at home. Maintenance is just almost non-existent. It’s just, you replace the tires and then you’re good to go. There’s also a feel-good element about it because you are contributing to the environment, to emissions, to the climate problem and greenhouse gases. So, there’s some factor of that, and it’s really a fun vehicle to drive. So, when you get into an EV, you cannot really describe it to somebody except if they’ve really experienced that themselves. And, I’ve also noticed that in certain metropolitan areas, the high-occupancy vehicle lanes or some designated parking spots are available for EVs. So, you get some preferential treatment if you show up with your electric vehicle. So, there clearly benefits from what I’ve experienced owning and operating an electric vehicle.

Allan Rutter (21:12):
Gabe, talk about some of the things that your guys in your office have been either hearing from or sharing with the people you work with on what are some of the benefits of EVs that Joe hasn’t talked about yet?

Gabriel Klein (21:25):
Yeah, well Joe did a great job running it down. And, I think the only thing I would add is just the huge potential cost savings. Gas fluctuates up and down. Not that electricity doesn’t, but it’s generally more reliable. And if you figure out a way, a pattern of charging your vehicle, particularly at night at a level-two charger or a level-one charger. ‘Cause the average person’s driving less than a hundred miles a week, cars sit 95 percent of the time. And so, there’s a huge cost saving ’cause you have to carry the cost of your vehicle, whatever that vehicle is and depreciation and insurance and all that. But the fuel is a big component. And then last, I would just say that I think there’s gonna be a big opportunity for shared vehicles, whether it’s you know, transit and school buses, which are shared vehicles.

Gabriel Klein (22:15):
I mean, airplanes are shared vehicles for that matter, but also car sharing, bike sharing, scooter sharing, and we’re seeing a lot of interest in that. We have two funding opportunities where we’ve been facilitating investments in those businesses. Obviously, they work better in more urbanized areas, but there’s real interest in how do you take an electric vehicle and either fractionally share it or delivered on demand access to it or delivered rental, so on and so forth. And ride hail–we’re seeing a lot of ride hail drivers move to either used electric vehicles with a new $4,000 tax credit for a sub $25,000 used vehicle or a new one or a rental. And that’s eliminating a lot of missions, particularly to and from airports.

Allan Rutter (23:05):
So, one of the things that we’ve talked about a little bit is on the power grid itself in expanding electric power capacity to meet the need that’s created by charging stations and the vehicles. What’s the balance so that demand doesn’t overwhelm supply of power? That strikes me as given the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, Gabe, that’s one of the things that you guys are working with.

Gabriel Klein (23:30):
Yeah, so we work with, as I said NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab on this. And we did a study with them and Kevala, which is a private company in the data business, and it’s called the Transportation Electrification Impact Study, if people wanna look it up. And the goal was to help answer technical and deployment questions. ‘Cause people keep saying can the grid accommodate all these new demands from transportation? It’s really amazing. The study went down to like the feeder level and looked at the charging network, the associated distribution grid that’s needed to support increased adoption. And, it’s not what you would think it would be. The key takeaways were that we’re gonna have an incremental increase of 3 percent in annual electric vehicle charging infrastructure installations to support what we need. And yeah, we definitely need to invest in the grid, particularly for the DC fast chargers, which put more of a strain ’cause you’re pumping a bunch of electrons through there for your vehicle very quickly.

Gabriel Klein (24:43):
But for a level-two charger, that’s like plugging in a dryer, right? So it’s not really adding that much load. So, the study said that we need incremental distribution grid investments that equate to approximately 3 percent of their current annual investments. But here’s the kicker, this is what’s really important is that if we use managed charging, which is the ability to have your vehicle talk to the charger, your charger talk to the utility, and actually manage when we charge and when we use other energy resources right in our homes for instance in our buildings, that we could have a 30 percent reduction, actually, in those annual utility investments. So, we are making a big push into managed charging. We hope to have the framework in place within the next year so we have interoperable charging throughout the United States where you can plug in anywhere. And some of the things that we’re doing to build that system are also the future proofing basics that we’re gonna need for managed charging across the country. So, there’s a lot happening behind the scenes that’s gonna change the way people view the electric vehicle from a way to get around to a way to power your home to a way to cut your costs and to do other things that we haven’t even figured out yet as we delve into this more.

Allan Rutter (26:16):
So, it strikes me, one of the things I’m hearing you say, Gabe, is that on the one hand transportation represents about 28 percent of total emissions, but in terms of power use, it’s not nearly a third of all power that’s needed.

Gabriel Klein (26:31):
Correct. And, we have the ability over time, we can charge a vehicle at night fully, and then we can sell back to the grid at peak. So, during the day when somebody’s running their air conditioner–it’s 102 degrees in Fort Worth–but they charged their car at night when it was cooler and people weren’t running their air conditioning as much. They could make a profit on that they could sell back at peak and help the utility by avoiding the build out of infrastructure for just peak load. So, I mean this is really a revolution and it’s not just EVs. There’s other distributed energy resources we call them, but the batteries in the vehicles can be utilized, actually save us money, save taxpayers money and save individuals money on their electric bills.

Allan Rutter (27:26):
Which is another way of getting into some of the benefits. It strikes me that, at least to some degree public attitudes about vehicle electrification are rooted in how people feel about the natural environment, which is related by how people feel about climate change. How are some of the ways that we might move beyond the divisive nature of that particular issue to talk about some of these bigger goals of reducing costs, making quality of life–that’s a little broader. Joe, maybe you’d start us talking about some of those, what you’ve heard from people about their attitudes about the environment.

Joe Zietsman (28:02):
Sure. And I want to touch on managed charging that Gabe brought up. So, at TTI, we are expanding our emissions testing capability. So we have this large environmental test chamber where we can take in a few full-size vehicle–actually a full-size truck, the tractor and the trailer–and a controlled temperature and humidity in this environmental test chamber to test the emissions and other important performance indicators that we want to test in the controlled environment. So, we’re expanding that facility to be a electric vehicle testing facility as well. So, in other words, we are expanding the cooling capability to hit minus 40 and go all the way up to 200. We are putting in a heavy-duty chassis dynamometer so we can drive the vehicle even up to 85 miles per hour inside the chamber and expose it to all these different conditions of pulling a load, driving up a hill, accelerating, decelerating, et cetera.

Joe Zietsman (28:59):
And then, we are also including what we call a electric building or a power building that has got all the electric components that Gabe hinted to as well like chargers, load bank generators, et cetera. So, we could actually do a total vehicle-to-grid, grid-to-vehicle, empirical real-world testing scenarios, and we can test what that looks like because coming back to your earlier question Allan, which is so important, you know, “can the grid handle it?” So, the way to handle it is like, uh, Gabe hinted is through managed charging and now we can in a controlled environment do all the testing and figure out how that works, how do we send power back to the grid, under what conditions would be the impact on the grid, on batteries, et cetera. So, I just wanted to mention that because it’s a very exciting development and we should be opening that facility for this kind of testing by the spring of 2025.

Joe Zietsman (29:57):
So, we’re super excited about that, and I think it ties back to what we discussed earlier and coming up with information and we don’t have to only rely on lit reviews and modeling to understand what’s gonna happen to the grid and the power system. And your question about, you know, in our CARTEEH center, how do we make sure that we address these big issues of climate and the environment and health and make sure that folks get behind those big topics. It is not easy. All those topics are at some level politically charged. So we need to be careful and aware of that. So, how we address that, if we are always basing it on the facts and the data, then that’s the way to do it. And that is what TTI is known for. We are an independent third-party broker when it comes to information and providing unbiased information so that decision makers like the joint office can make the decisions.

Joe Zietsman (30:56):
So, we provide the information for them and that’s our role in that. We need to be very cautious of that. A lot of the decisions and a lot of the things we talk about here when it comes to electrification is economics based. So, people do ultimately make their decisions based on the bottom line and whether it makes economic sense for them. And we are definitely moving to a position where these kind of EVs are beginning to make more and more economic sense. So, tax credits and all those kind of things are very, very important when folks make decisions about EVs, even though all of them at some level understand that they want to contribute to the environment and social responsibility.

Allan Rutter (31:36):
One of the things that I think Joe just discussed, and one of the things I’m hearing from the creation of the joint office, things may not be as divided as people think they are. The infrastructure bill itself was the bipartisan infrastructure law. That’s why the, the administration calls it that–19 Republican senators signed on for that. When you think about the number of states, municipalities, regional governments, NPOs from across states of all kinds of stripes, all of those guys are going for some of the grants that you guys are providing, Gabe. So, it strikes me that you are in a position to see that there’s a lot more interest in the kinds of stuff you’re doing than might be exhibited in the current political climate.

Gabriel Klein (32:22):
Absolutely. Look, I was in London, Amsterdam, Paris recently meeting with the national and local governments there. We had a team down in Mexico recently working with them. Nowhere in the world is climate change a political issue in terms of is it real or not, except for the United States. When you go to the rest of the world, there’s no question. Now there can be a political conversation about how do we wanna deal with it? How fast, what are the costs, who’s gonna bear them? All of that. But we need to move beyond that. It’s just time. And I think to Joe’s point, the way to do that is with data. But I would go a step further, and I would say in the US what’s really important is the business case. And from an economic standpoint, I mean we’ve created hundreds of thousands of jobs through the bipartisan infrastructure law, IRA, the CHIPS Act, which is closely tied to this because we need chips and all these vehicles and chargers.

Gabriel Klein (33:22):
The rest of the world’s moving forward, China’s moving forward. Are we gonna move forward at that pace? Are we gonna build this equipment, these vehicles, these systems, the technology systems that support them in the United States or are we gonna let the rest of the world take over? And so I think when you start to make that economic argument and you show the investments–which, by the way, most of the investments, the majority have been in red and purple states–I think it’s hard for people to argue, and you layer on top of that the personal benefits that they get, the cost savings and so on and so forth, and things change. The problem is with the fearmongering, that happens sometimes in politics that has a damaging impact. And then you create this sort of tribalization, if you will, around propulsion types of vehicles and things, which really don’t need to be there. So as a nonpolitical in government, I want to rely on the data, I want to rely on what’s best for the American people, the jobs, the clean air for our children and for the next generation. And that’s the reality of what we’re selling and that’s the reality of what we’re building and fulfilling.

Allan Rutter (34:35):
And, Gabe, you mentioning the the private sector investment, that’s certainly one of the things that’s happening in the state of Texas over the past four or five years. You mentioned the CHIPS Act. There are enormous, multi-billion dollar investments going on–Texas instruments and Samsung and Global in Texas. The other part of that is over the last decade the percentage of renewables that are part of our electric grid, all you have to do is drive into West Texas and see the wind farms and other things that are happening to know that it’s not just about the Permian, it’s about a whole other range of things. Which kind of leads us into the next question about sort of the public- and private-sector investment. As we’ve provided for vehicle transportation in our history, it’s involved a combination of public- and private-sector players,. Governments build roads and bridges, private sector builds gas stations and truck stops… As the power source for cars and trucks moves away from gas and diesel, what are the kinds of public-private models changing as we provide some of that energy and the vehicles themselves? What’s likely to change both near term and longer term?

Gabriel Klein (35:45):
It’s very interesting to watch it evolve, and I’ve learned a lot, I’ll be honest with you, on the energy side. I wasn’t aware when I took this job that we had over 3,000 utilities in this country, and some of them are investor owned, some of them are owned by the municipalities. So, you have a combination of public and private just in that industry, and then you’ve got the the regulatory bodies and entities that oversee and work with them and set rates. Then, you’ve got the private-sector companies that are building and operating these networks. And, I think, everybody out there needs to know that while the federal government is incentivizing and plugging gaps–we call it gap filling–with our funding; it’s dwarfed, dwarfed by the private-sector investment. First of all, you know we got public and private investments in EV charging around $24 billion thus far, with a lot of onshoring of jobs happening because of Buy America.

Gabriel Klein (36:45):
So our seven and a half billion is a down payment, if you will, on what’s ultimately gonna be probably $70 to $80 billion. But when the government says hey we’re gonna align policy and funding, even if it’s at a small level, that allows the private sector to act and act quickly. And so in terms of the models that we’re seeing, we with Federal Highways and FTA and EPA, we send money out to states, state energy agencies, departments of transportation–now also to again regional metropolitan planning organizations, cities–they are contracting with the private sector overwhelmingly, almost exclusively. Sometimes, they’ll let them use their land, sometimes it’s on private property, but the people out there need to know this system is being built, operated and maintained by the private sector. And some states–Colorado is sub-allocating most of their funding and saying, yeah, we need to build a network every 50 miles, we need four ports but we’re gonna let each jurisdiction go out there and actually do that and contract that others are contracting for their entire state themselves.

Gabriel Klein (37:58):
And a lot of it depends on the geography, the politics, their experience. In the past it was interesting going to Europe ’cause you realize like each one of their countries is like one of our states. But it’s still interesting. I posted yesterday on LinkedIn, it’s amazing that Norway’s gonna hit their goal of a hundred percent electric vehicles sold by 25. They hit 95% so far in 24. They set a goal and they gave the carrots and the sticks, and now they’re gonna do it. And I think you’re gonna see states here that are gonna do the same thing. And Texas, by the way, is a shining star a red state–some people say red, some say purple–doing a phenomenal job on the charging network, luring companies, and selling electric vehicles now. It’s great. Go Texas!

Allan Rutter (38:47):
<laugh>. Well, we’re always glad to hear that. Now, which leads us to, one of the things I’m hearing about is there’s excitement both you and Joe have for your work, the enthusiasm you bring to it. But I’m guessing it’s not all sunshine and flowers all the time. One of my friends puts it, it’s not all puppies and kittens. What’s one of the things you feel most optimistic about right now? What’s the thing that you’re the most excited about? Joe, I’ll let you start.

Joe Zietsman (39:13):
Well, we’re talking electric vehicles and it is a true game changer from the perspective of the transportation system. You know, I’ve been in transportation all my career, 35 plus years. So, used to be the vehicles and the infrastructure. Now, we see it as the vehicles, the infrastructure and the power grid, and overlaying all of that is basically data and communication. It’s a total different world and it’s exciting. And, what really gives me some optimism is because, you know, at some point I’ll be moving on, and I would like to see younger folks step into leadership positions and take over and do things that we were not able to do. And the best thing we can hope for is we leave things in a place where it’s a little bit better than what we found it, but these young superstars take over and they really solve these big problems. So, I’m super excited to see a lot of young people being up to the challenge. They are not stuck in their silos, they’re seeing this as a much bigger, much more multidisciplinary problem. They’re open to that and they are collaborative, and they are just ready for this challenge. So that is giving me the excitement that I need.

Allan Rutter (40:27):
Gabe, what are the things you’re most optimistic about?

Gabriel Klein (40:31):
So, I get JD Power’s numbers every month. I get a lot of data incoming, and what’s really great for me is I know now it’s clearer than ever where we’re gonna be in 2030. And that’s where a lot of our goals are; and by 2035, and by 2040 on medium heavy duty. Like, we know where we’re ultimately going to be. It’s really just about pace to get there. And the technology’s getting better and better all the time. Batteries have gone down 90 percent in price. New innovations in the private sector and with research labs are gonna make batteries better, longer, lighter. So, I know where we’re gonna be. The question is how fast do we wanna move? And I think that we need to move as fast as humanly possible for a bunch of imperatives, including the climate and the next generation. I’m with Joe, the young people that I see out there, they think there’s nothing we can’t do. They are mission driven for the most part, and they wanna get this done. And they’re also open to using all different types of vehicles. They don’t see themselves as “I’m a car driver” or “I’m a bus user” or “I’m a bike user.” They’re very multimodal, and I think that also bodes well for the future.

Allan Rutter (41:47):
So the corollary to that question, which is what are the things that keep you up at night about what’s happening next? I’ll let Joe go with it.

Joe Zietsman (41:56):
Yes, Allan, being a transportation professional, I think we all share this big gloomy topic of more than 40,000 deaths on our road network every single year. We pretty much got numb to that number and it just continues and continues, and it’s unacceptable and we all agree that it’s unacceptable. It’s been like this since the Seventies, you know, it’s been hovering since 30,000 to 50,000. So, I really feel that it should be all hands on deck that we can really pursue Vision Zero. Electric vehicles bring its own set of challenges. So, we need to make sure that it doesn’t add to the problem. And, you know, with its heavier weight and lower center of gravity, we did a test recently at TTI testing a Model 3 Tesla. And, let’s put it this way, the barriers that were designed for conventional light-duty vehicles didn’t work. So, this much heavier EV with the lower center of gravity went right through the barrier. So, that’s something that’s a challenge, and it would keep me up at night because being an EV driver, myself and our family, we worry about those things. So, that needs to be fixed and more testing, more evaluation needs to be done. But there’s a lot of things that we need to do to address this issue of deaths on our roadway. And how do we get to Vision Zero?

Allan Rutter (43:18):
Thanks Joe. Gabe, what are the things that keep you up at night?

Gabriel Klein (43:21):
Well, first of all, beyond my job today and everything I’ve worked on for my career, I a hundred percent agree with Joe. I think it’s the number one issue, and I think that it’s a healthcare crisis in the United States and we’ve gotta fix it. So, I just wanna say that the biggest thing that I get nervous about in my job is the level of misinformation you see out there. And, I’ll be straight with you guys, even in the mainstream press, everybody wants clicks; everybody wants more eyeballs on their content. So, you might have somebody write a great story–and this happens to us all the time–and then have a terrible headline. We had a CNN piece come out, had a great headline and a great story. It wasn’t getting enough clicks so the editor put a terrible headline. It didn’t even really correlate with the story the next day to get clicks.

Gabriel Klein (44:14):
So, I think while the internet is amazing and has the ability to revolutionize, and the AI is also fascinating, and maybe technology should be reducing these deaths on our roadways, it’s also increasing the complexity of information that people have to take in. And people are increasingly in their little bubbles. And so, when it comes to EVs, they may think things that are completely untrue, whether it’s about cost, whether it’s about safety, whether it’s about who builds them. And so, you know, my hope is that I don’t know if it’s regulation, I don’t know what happens, but that we have some better consistency of information so that data can’t be misrepresented.

Allan Rutter (44:56):
At TTI, we very much appreciate that, Gabe. Part of what Joe described as our role is a honest third-party broker providing unbiased information so that people can make good decisions. And we really appreciate you spending some time with us today so that we can advance that cause of getting some better information out. One of the things we close out our episodes with is to ask our folks, what is it that motivates you to show up for work every day? Joe, why don’t you start?

Joe Zietsman (45:26):
Well, I started out as a contractor in the construction space, and then I moved to planning in a big MPO, and then I became a researcher. So, I’ve experienced transportation from different perspectives, and the last 10 years has been so revolutionary in terms of all the changes and everything happening. So, I’m just very fortunate to be able to participate in this great evolution in the transportation system, and being able to provide some input as that happens, and see how we can make a difference. But, honestly, what makes me the happiest come to work is the wonderful people here at TTI that I get the pleasure and the honor to work with–the brilliance, the intelligence, the enthusiasm that I see here. And just to be able to be part of that team and to play a small part is just amazing. And then not only the folks at TTI but also to be able to work with clients and sponsors like Gabe and his office and FHWA, Federal Highway Administration, TxDOT, the USDOT and on and on, EPA. It’s just a privilege and a pleasure to be able to be working in this space at this time.

Allan Rutter (46:37):
Gabe, what gets you to work every day other than your electric bike?

Gabriel Klein (46:41):
Yeah. Well, I’m a very mission-driven person. I think most people are. But I’ve had the opportunity to really pursue it, and I believe strongly that public and private can work together. If you have an environment where you’ve got fiscally responsible government working with socially responsible companies–sort of, switching hats if you will–there’s no limit to what we can accomplish together. And I think, as I was saying earlier, the imperatives are there to work together to use technology for things that matter versus things that really don’t matter or are not helpful, and great social outcomes, you know, which I think are hugely important that are also fiscally responsible, which is what we’re working on. It’s getting to show up and work with people every day. Like, the team that we’ve built from a couple federal people to now I think we have 40 people; Steve, who’s on with us, from the joint office and runs our engagement and outreach and media. He was a M&O contractor from NREL and came on full time as the program manager to run this ’cause he really loves to join office. I’m just gonna speak for him. And everybody that works with us–whether they’re from Google or Lyft or Rivian or a utility or New York City DOT–they love working with this team on things that matter. And I do, too.

Allan Rutter (48:06):
And that’s a great way to close things out. Gentlemen, thanks again for spending time with us on this very important subject and thanks a lot for participating.

Gabriel Klein (48:17):
Absolutely. And also, it was great to meet Joe and get to know him and more about what your organization’s working on. So thanks for having us, getting the word out, and I get to meet Joe.

Joe Zietsman (48:28):
Likewise. It was a pleasure, Gabe, to hang out with you during this podcast and what an honor to be able to work with the joint office and see how we can take this further.

Gabriel Klein (48:38):
All right, beers in Texas next time.

Allan Rutter (48:40):
There you go.

Allan Rutter (48:43):
Nearly 75 years ago, TTI was created by the board of the Texas A&M College System to be the agency of the system to “do highway research for and on behalf of the state of Texas and the State Highway Department.” Our first focus was to engage in research in the various forms of transportation of persons and property or activity concerned with the movement of persons and things. Today, the movement of persons and things that we study includes vehicles with increasing levels of onboard technologies and increasing energy efficiency. We’ll continue to monitor the adoption curves for these new power systems for cars and trucks, and how the changing vehicle mix will affect transportation funding, energy production in Texas, and motor vehicle supply chains in the state.

Allan Rutter (49:39):
Thanks for listening. Please take just a minute to give us a review, subscribe and share this episode, and please join us next time for another conversation about getting ourselves and the stuff we need from point A to point B. Thinking Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of the Texas A&M University System. The show is edited and produced by Chris Pourteau. I’m your new host, Allan Rutter. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.