The political scion working on EV deployment

Jan 18, 2023 View in browser   By Allison Prang VERBATIM Albert Gore III, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association | ZETA Albert Gore III is taking the helm of the Zero Emission Transportation Association on an industry upswing. Gore, the son of the former vice president and climate activist, was named leader of the organization earlier this month after working on policy at Tesla for several years. He's got good timing: EV sales are soaring (even as Tesla is losing ground to competitors) and his focus at ZETA is the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, two massive incentive packages meant to benefit zero-emission vehicles. Gore also addressed hurdles facing the EV industry, including range anxiety and the need for a national charging network. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. What are ZETA's policy priorities for 2023? What we're focused on is implementation of the two big pieces of legislation that were passed over the last two years — the IIJA and the IRA — and there are a number of things in there that create enormous opportunities for growth and also where details will need to be worked out to ensure the smoothest and most rapid transition to electric vehicles. There's also important work to be done generally advocating for adoption of electric vehicles. They're still relatively early in the adoption curve. Last year, EVs represented almost 6 percent of all vehicles sold, which is a significant increase from just a few years ago. But still the vast majority of the car-buying public is going to be considering an electric vehicle hopefully for the first time and so it's important to get factual information out about all the benefits of electric vehicles and also to dispel some of the myths that are out there. How do you balance increasing EV demand with supply? Isn't there an issue that some people want EVs but they're not exactly available? Can you talk about the supply-demand issue? There've been a lot of factors that have affected supply of vehicles across the board. There was a industry-wide decline from 2019 to 2020 of total number of vehicles sold. Some of that was stuff that was far up the supply chain. Different automakers had different levels of success in figuring out how to deal with that. But electric vehicles were certainly affected by that in the same way that all other vehicles were. You also have a number of new companies in the space. Tesla is fairly well established, growing very quickly, but companies like Rivian, Lucid, Arrival are just now beginning to ramp up their production and have absorbed the supply chain impact and the consumer demand impact brought by Covid. Now you're starting to see those companies as well as legacy automakers start to scale up. I think we're really at the very beginning of a curve that's going to get very steep very quickly. You're right that demand exceeds supply right now, and I think that continues to be the case because the consumer response, the driver experience of electric vehicles has been so overwhelmingly positive. I think that very soon, really when you're talking about the next five to 10 years, there's going to be significant growth in EV deployment throughout the entire industry. Would you say that electric vehicles are right for everyone? It seems still tough if you're taking a long-range trip, especially with the lack of infrastructure. What's your take on that? I wouldn't be good at my job if I didn't say absolutely yes. There are many different versions of electric vehicles out there. One thing that I think is an important factor that doesn't get talked about a lot is when you look at regionally in the United States the type of new vehicles that people buy, there are many states where the majority of new vehicles purchased are pick-up trucks. So I think electric vehicles are just now breaking into that segment. To answer your question, I think yes, anyone should consider an EV, and the charging solutions are out there. The vast majority of charging takes place at home, at night, during off-peak hours, which, by the way, has a very positive effect on electricity rates. It puts downward pressure on rates when folks charge during off-peak hours. But for people who don't have at-home charging, there is a network being built all around them as we speak, and the IIJA and the NEVI Program is very quickly going to get a lot more chargers in the ground. All 50 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico submitted plans that were approved and they're just now starting to go into the final phase where that funding will go out to the states. That's really, really exciting. What are the biggest hurdles to the EV transition in the U.S.? There have been some natural hurdles. There's been the cost to manufacture an electric vehicle. That has come down significantly over the last decade. So that is one that will reliably continue to come down at a very rapid pace. Very soon I think electric vehicles will compete in absolutely every segment at scale. The other one is perceptions of charging availability and how the charging experience will fit into people's daily routines. Range anxiety is a term that I think most people in this space have been familiar with for six, seven years. It hasn't been a part of my experience of driving an EV, and I think for a lot of people it doesn't come into play because there is such a wide availability of charging. We really need to get a national charging network built even in places that don't have high utilization in the near term in order to overcome the perception that charging isn't sufficiently available. It is in most places, but people are familiar with the gas station experience. The visibility of gas stations along their commuting routes or the long trips that they might take twice a year, they know where they're going to refuel and they know how many options there are to refuel. Very soon, it will be the same with electric-vehicle charging stations and they'll be utilized very highly.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. 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