Pivot - Future of Travel: Is It Boom or Bust Time for EVs?

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Pivot's special series on the future of travel rolls on — next stop, electric vehicles. Is the slowdown in EV sales a temporary blip, or part of a larger trend? When will individuals get a piece of charging station revenues? And what will be the ultimate gamechanger to get people to buy these cars? Kara and Scott discuss it all with Beia Spiller, an energy economist, and the Transportation Program Director for Resources for the Future. Follow Beia at @starbeia Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway. And you're listening to our special three-part series on the future of travel, where we look at the business and tech trends affecting how we make our way through the world. Today, we're talking about automobiles and the EV industry, which we talk a lot about on Pivot. Here to chat with us about the future of EVs is Bea Spiller. Bea is an energy economist and the transportation program director for the Resources for the Future. Welcome, Bea. Thanks so much for having me. So let's talk about the state of the EV industry. Growth rates for sales have slowed, though prices have come down. Ford has scaled back EV expansion plans and Tesla laid off 10%

of its global workforce. Is the industry truly slowing or is everything settling out given the boom in the investments made? I think we're in a great spot. And the issue really is that there's a lot of reasons why we might see a count like in 2022, we were at 6.8%. Wow, that ramped up to 9.3% in 2023. And people are expecting to see a further increase year over year. But I'm not so sure we should expect it to move so quickly. Because what ends up happening is that we start moving into a really different segment of the population who's purchasing these vehicles, right? We started in the early years with people, environmentalists who, you know, care about the environment and, you know, maybe techie, they definitely have garages. Now we're moving into, you know, the customers who don't have garages, right?

And so they're going to depend upon public charging stations. You have people living in cold weather areas. And what we've seen, well, cold weather really decreases the range of these vehicles. So there's going to be a lot more trepidation on the part of these individuals living in the Midwest and the Northeast to purchase these vehicles. People who have to drive a lot, right? Maybe they're not really willing to go into electric vehicles. And crucially, households who only have one car. But what have we seen right now? We've seen a lot of these households, they have a

gasoline vehicle and they have their electric vehicle. So they're switching off between the two. But now you're starting to get into people who only have one vehicle. How risky is it for them to move into electric before they really know how these are going to function, where they're going to charge it and such? So I think at this point, we need to start really stepping up issues like education, outreach, getting people to understand how they can use these vehicles and how it would work for them. And we have to start really focusing in on the reliability of the chargers,

making sure that they work during the wintertime, making sure that the chargers are price transparent. You show up to a charging station, there's no prices listed. Yeah, yeah. It's a real janky experience still, although it is certainly getting better and you're seeing them in apartment buildings, you're seeing them all over the place. One of my places I go, there used to be two. Now there's dozens. Airport, for example, at DCA and IAD have a stream of chargers down on the end, which made it easier to think, oh, I'll go here. This is actually easier. But one of the things that I think about, I have a car.

I have a gasoline car, a hybrid car, and then an electric car. We're thinking about going fully electric because it's been easy for us. Obviously, we're a dual-income household, and we're a little more educated on the topic and understand how we actually drive, which isn't very far, right? It isn't particularly far. Scott, what's your question for where we are right now? isn't particularly far. Scott, what's your question for where we are right now? I'm just curious what you think of BYD and whether or not these tariffs imposed on BYD, does that considerably slow the adoption of electric? And this is, for people who don't know, let's just say this is the Chinese company that makes

very cost-effective cars that are very inexpensive in China and could make them very inexpensive here. Well, I think to a certain degree, import tariffs are really problematic because they don't force us to have competition, right? It doesn't allow us to have really cheap electric vehicles. But at the same time, even before those tariffs were jacked up, we were not seeing a lot of Chinese vehicles here. We already faced some tariff in imports, but at the same time, they just weren't being sold. So I'm not really sure that the tariffs will have meaningful changes in how many electric vehicles are actually imported since we were already starting with kind of close to zero coming from China. But I think it's a real failure because right now these electric vehicles are expensive.

And so we have to be subsidizing them as a country. We have to rely upon the federal tax credits, which are not great. There's a very few percentage of vehicles that actually are eligible for these tax credits because of where the minerals come from and where the batteries are being manufactured. And so, you know, we were trying to pump money at demand rather than saying, hey, how do we actually increase competition? And letting some of these

vehicles come in and forcing manufacturers to take another look at, you know, how are they actually going to produce low-cost vehicles is really important. Because what are the OEMs doing, right? For the most part, they started off with the most expensive vehicles. You've got the Ford Lightning, you've got the Mach. Well, that's what they do. That's what they all do. That's how it typically starts. And they have very high profit margins on those vehicles. And so they are using that to reinvest in their industry. Rather than the inexpensive ones. But when it comes to a lot of electric cars, everyone thinks Tesla for before.

Now there's a lot more when it comes to EVs. Are there other players in the game you think don't get enough attention here in the U.S. that are doing a more competitive job? I actually think what's not getting a lot of attention are some of these new charging station companies, these startup charging station companies that are working to actually bring revenues into the hands of individuals. For example, one is called It's Electric. And what they do is they work with a homeowner to actually, you know, they identify homeowners who have excess capacity on their electric panel, and they pull the electric cord out into the street. to actually, you know, they identify homeowners who have excess capacity on their electric panel, and they pull the electric cord out into the street, they make an investment to a public charger. And then the homeowner is actually able to get some of the revenues from that.

And there's several companies who are looking to do that in multifamily dwellings. And I think those types of solutions are really exciting. And nobody's really talking about that. Everyone always talks about the big national charging stations like EVgo and Tesla. And we're not really thinking about how do we actually bring charging station revenues into the general public. I have a charger at my house, and I thought, why don't they borrow my charger in some fashion right on the street? And you've seen some things where the chargers come down from the top of the pole, and they drop down, and then where you're parking, you plug it in. There's all sorts of innovative ideas.

But talk about the supercharger team layoffs, and why did this happen after he struck deals with other car makers after Tesla did? I'm not going to try to look into the brain of Elon Musk at all. Good luck. We can take him at his word, which what he said when he did the layoffs was we need to think about reassessing how reliable these chargers actually are. I think that the winter fiasco of those Teslas all piled up at a charging station, taking them hours to recharge, which should have taken 20 minutes, was a huge reputation hit for Tesla's chargers. So I think this idea of rather

than continuing to expand, let's make sure we're actually getting the ones that we have to work so that our reliability is up in the Midwest and in the cold states. I think that's actually a really good strategy. And I'm excited to see the market open up to other players. You know, there's a lot of competition out there. And if it's being dominated by three or four companies, then we're not going to be able to have, you know, actual price competition come out. So we've had government subsidies. We had some great companies come into the space. We've had huge investment by the traditional guys inspired

by the new guys. And yet there's still the vast majority of cars that are sold are still internal combustion engines. Do you think there's just a certain, maybe even the majority of car owners that just want an internal combustion engine? Is there a limit to the market share that EVs can acquire? I don't think so. I really don't think that people enjoy refueling with gasoline. I think they're just nervous about what it means to go electric. Obviously, there are some folks who are just really anti-environmental anything, and so they're going to, they love their diesel. They love the gasoline. I just want to press pause there because I do think you're dismissing a group of people who do like the sound and the feel of an internal combustion engine who still care about the environment that, you know, there is, and I'm one of them. I bought

an EV for all the reasons you're talking about, but I still prefer driving an internal combustion engine. And I think there's a lot of us out there. Well, that's interesting because of the sound. Because of the feel, because of the responsiveness, because it makes me feel strong like bull, because of the rumble. It makes him feel like a man. Quite frankly. Of course, that's not what makes the hum.

A humming car is not what makes you a man, but he doesn't like the hum over the vroom vroom. Yeah, there you go. Anyways, what I will agree with, though, just to validate your point, the gas station, once you stop going to a gas station, you forget how awful they are. It feels like carcinogens and that's where you're likely to get shot. I agree with you.

Not having to go to the gas station is a big, big differentiator. Yeah. I drive past gas stations and I go, so long, sucker. I yell out the window. Just wave at them. Yeah, I do. I say, so long, sucker. I do it. It's so long sucker. I do it.

It's so pleasurable. But go ahead. Keep going. So what I understood is that electric vehicles, especially the new ones that are out there, are extremely responsive. They have a lot of torque. They have more torque and really great performance. The performance is amazing.

They're amazing. I think to a certain degree, if folks can try it out and see, does it actually give them that performance that they're looking for, we might be able to sway some of the people who really love their gasoline vehicles. So what is, what would reduce prices, increase adoption, or what's the biggest hurdle facing the EV industry? It's definitely, was that a lull that it suddenly feels like maybe it's going up again? Like the people are, they overdid and now they're, and now the prices are coming down. Cause I do think people do want to try these things out. I do. I think there's a feeling among a lot of people, not just the elite necessarily that this, this is interesting. So what is the, and then some of the cars, the Mach is great. That's an

expensive car, but even the little inexpensive cars are very, I have a Chevy Bolt as I discuss all the time. I love it. It's my favorite car I've ever owned. But what's the biggest hurdle facing the EV industry right now and will reduced prices increase adoption? I do think that reducing prices significantly would help adoption, but that's not it. That's not all of it, right? There's so many other issues. And part of it is range anxiety from individuals, particularly those who don't have garages. Is it really going to be able to get me where I need to go? If not, what do I do? How do I get my car, you know, ran out of electricity? I can't just walk to the gas station and bring, you know, some electricity with me to power the car. So these are some issues that are going to require a massive expansion in the

charging station network, which we are headed in that direction, but also a lot more education. And I would also say, can we start to actually really test out the range before telling people, hey, you're going to have 350 mile range. I've been hearing from EV drivers, I was told 350. It's never more than 200. Okay, how does this happen? Why are we being told something, but then it's totally different? It feels a little bit like when you go to buy a gasoline car, they tell you the mile per gallon is going to be 30, and then you're getting 15, which is what happened with my Subaru Forester. And so, you know, it does feel like a little bit of bait and switch. So what's interesting is that there's been a bump in

hybrids, which to me indicates people want to move in this direction, but they want that little bit of safety of a gasoline, that you have both choices, you know, and you'd like to rely on electric. It is a whole lot less, range anxiety is a real thing, but you really don't when you actually look at how most people, many people drive, not everybody, and certainly not in the Midwest or in these more rural areas, but you don't drive that far, right? You don't actually drive as far as you think, which is with most people, with many, many people, but you still don't want that. If you have kids, you don't want range anxiety and stuff like that. What about reduced prices?

I think reduced prices is what will get people buying these things, correct? Absolutely. I mean, you know, if you can go and purchase a $25,000 electric vehicle, I think that would really ramp up demand. I mean, there's a lot of needs. And I also just want to mention, a lot of people have needs that aren't being met by the options that are out there. So for example, there's just no similar type of vehicle. For example, like a Forester, like the one that I have, which has a really big trunk,

really big carrying capacity. The only option is like the Rivian, which costs like $100,000. So where are these affordable vehicles that provide these other needs that people have? The minivans, the big carrying capacity that's not completely unaffordable. So once we start having more options, and it's not just about the cheap ones, because maybe I don't want to buy a four- or sedan that has no carrying capacity for 25K. Right. Well, the Ford Lightning is quite a car.

I drove it. The Hummer. And it's really expensive, too. But it's cool. I drove it and everyone loved it. Okay. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk more with Bea about the future of EVs.

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been overstated. I'll put that there. Do you think there's any truth to that argument? I think it depends on how we see things moving into the future. So we will need a lot more critical minerals if we continue to just make mines that are completely bad for the environment and really harmful. And yeah, there's our trade-offs, and this is exactly what we need to avoid. So there's new technology out there that is actually really thinking, how can we actually get those minerals out of the ground in a way that's not harmful, that reduces the land impacts, that reduces the social impacts? And so there's a lot of new technologies out there. I think we really need to be pushing this technological innovation on extraction and make sure that we can reduce

the environmental impact of it. And there's a lot of efforts that are being made now. So I don't think that it's going to continue in the same way as it has before. And for me, I believe that the environmental impact of electric vehicles will just improve over time. Okay. So when you think about what's to come, you have, Scott mentioned, you know, regulators and different things like that. You have the Biden administration, which is sort of not all in on EVs, but all in on EVs. And then you have Trump talking about getting rid of EVs. What, is there any, does that really matter? Will their statements matter or not? And obviously California is trying to get everyone to buy EVs and get rid of gasoline-powered cars.

Where do you think, what impact will the politics have on this? if they slow the release of funds through the charging and refueling infrastructure grants and the NEVI funds, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Funds. These are programs that provide billions of dollars to investing in charging stations. The federal government could slow roll the release of those funds, and that would then reduce how many charging stations are built, for example. I think it might be really hard to get rid of the federal tax credits. You know, this is legislation, so they would have to, you know, they could work towards that. They could try to remove the federal tax credits. But in the end, it's really hard to tell manufacturers, you can't do this, right?

If the demand is headed that way, a lot of manufacturers have made commitments to this and are really invested. There's somewhat of a ball rolling that it's just really, really hard to stop, regardless of how much Republicans might dislike electric vehicles. Once you sort of get that demand going, and California is not the only one. There's a lot of states that have adopted the ZEV mandates. And so they will be pushing manufacturers to require sales of electric vehicles ramping up pretty quickly. And that covers a lot of the sales in the country. So I think there's very limited amount that the federal government can do to stop this. So I think there's very limited amount that the federal government can do to stop this. Yeah, I think the car companies are well ahead of Donald Trump on this issue. They're far beyond it, even if you don't like some of the restrictions the government puts into place. So where do you think the EV industry will be in five to ten years?

Any big changes or new top players? We have talked about Tesla losing market share, which it's been doing, as others come into fore, not just Chinese companies, but all the companies are sort of committed in this area. So the more competition and choice consumers get, the more cars there will be, et cetera, et cetera. So where do you think the industry will be in five to 10 years? I'm hoping that we're going to have a huge amount, a huge array of options, right? Like I was telling you about, you know, no minivans, no really affordable SUVs or, you know, vehicles that are actually SUVs and not just look like crossovers for these people who have these other needs. So I think we're going to see a lot more options out there. And I would also say that we haven't talked at all about trucks, like actual long haul trucks and delivery trucks.

I think we're going to see a lot more adoption in the medium heavy duty vehicle sector and probably more push to make sure that these fleets are able to shift to electric when they want to. Well, there's Aurora, obviously, and that's also autonomous. You know, there's a lot of interesting investments there. I always think those are going to be first because they're efficient. They take, you know, it's easier to charge them. They'll go to charging stations outside of a city and then smaller trucks will take things into cities. Some of these autonomous long haul trucks are really exciting. I think they are. And you can see how much money they save. I mean, the autonomous thing, I think, you know, that's a whole separate issue, right? And they do need to be electric, but I think there's a lot of concern about autonomous vehicles.

And, you know, are they actually safe? Are they able to work? Yes, of course. Well, they're safer than people, that's for sure. I agree, I agree. I'm going with the autonomous over people in the end. Scott? Sure.

So we spent a lot of time talking about the new players across the legacy companies and include the international, you know, the Toyotas, the Hyundais, the Volkswagens of the world, but also General Motors, Ford, Stellantis. Who do you think does the best job in EVs as it relates to the legacy players? I'm really excited about General Motors. EVs as it relates to the legacy players? I'm really excited about General Motors. I think one of the things that they've done, which is really exciting, is build these Ultium cells. So they have a partnership with LG to create these batteries that are manufactured here in the United States. They get their minerals from friendly, environmentally safe locations. And they have these sort of modular batteries. So if one part starts to fail, they can replace it. So they're doing a lot. They've been very aggressive about their sales targets. I know

they did walk some of that back. But until they walked it back, I was, I think, most optimistic about General Motors really sort of rising to the top in terms of, you know, one of the legacy OEMs and being able to provide a wide variety of electric vehicles at affordable prices. Okay, last question. If someone came to you for advice on how to pick an EV to buy, what would be your recommendations? I think that the issue is, you know, what do you need it for? How, you know, how do you actually drive? And it's just going to be really, really personal, right? How many miles are you driving every day? Do you have, do you own your own garage? You know, how close do you live to charging stations? All of these questions need to be considered when you're purchasing an electric vehicle.

And so I would hesitate to give anybody advice, go do this, try out this vehicle. Rather, think about what are your needs? What are the vehicles out there that meet those needs? And then begin to move forward. Because I think the first question is, is an EV going to work for you? And if so, what are you targeting? Should it be a plug-in hybrid? Should it be a full battery electric?

All of these things are going to depend on what your own personal driving needs are. If you were to make a prediction about where the EV market's going to be in three years, do you think that this is just a temporary blip that the tr of the trough or the slowdown, it starts to reemerge again? Do you think that it's going to come back stronger than ever? Are we just going through, I forget what they call it, new technologies, there's a hype cycle, then they go through this valley of death and then come back? Where do you think we are in this cycle? I feel like we've passed the valley of death. I think we will just continue to ramp it up. How quickly, I don't want to make a

prediction about that. But the fact is, is that charging stations are going to be more and more ubiquitous. So I expect within three years, we're going to have a lot more charging stations. It's going to be a lot more obvious that you can charge in your neighborhood and along major roadways and being able to go longer distances. So that, I think, will really ramp up demand. And I'm hopeful that even with the tax credits, the requirements for critical minerals, that the manufacturers will have adjusted where they're getting their minerals and making their own batteries here in the United States. And so there'll be a lot more vehicles that are eligible for the tax credit in the coming

years. And so that should actually, that combined with the charging stations should be able to ramp up demand in a way that, you know, I'm hopeful will continue that trend. Yeah, I would agree. Remember how hard it was to get on the internet, Scott? Do you remember? You've got mail. It was so hard.

This is how it always goes. And it's gotten easier in the last year. I can tell you that. That's for sure. Okay, Scott, that's it for our part two of our three-part series on the future of travel. We've given you trains and automobiles, and we'll be digging into planes next. Thank you, Bea Spiller, for talking to us. We appreciate it. Thank you so much, Sipan. Today's show was produced by Larry Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.

Brandon McFarland engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Emil Silverio. Nishat Kerouac is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.