So, so let's get started and my name is Sven biker I'm the executive director of the Center for Automotive Research here on Stanford campus And I'm working on a lot of different things regarding the future of the automobile one topic being Alternative energy and electric vehicles is my great pleasure today to have such an esteemed panel here to look a little bit more at the future of electric Vehicles and where trends are going So some of you might think okay an electric vehicle panel again and in fact when Professor Jim Sweeney and I discussed what we wanted to do at this panel. It wasn't really that easy because One way or another we all know that electric vehicles are supposed to be the cleaner vehicles But it really depends where your electricity comes from one way or another We also know that electric vehicles might be a big challenge for the electricity grid Depending on how many vehicles in what accumulation we will see in the public and We also know one way or another that consumers are concerned regarding range cost and the charging infrastructure of electric vehicles So so there are all these questions that have been discussed already a lot and we thought what can we do today? And basically what we want to highlight that the answer to these questions depends Highly on one group and that's actually all of you as you as consumers as you as Decision makers in industry in government in public and private services And this is why we wanted to discuss with you a little bit and hence Professor Jim Sweeney and I came up with a title for this panel, which is vehicle electrification Who should care? Why when and how much? So we have a great panel here, and I want to briefly introduce our esteemed panelist Right to my left. I have Tilo Koslovsky who's the vice president and automotive practice leader at Gartner They he leads the automotive industry analysis group and advises strategists in the automotive industry on guiding and growing their business prior to that assignment he used to be a consultant with Gartner Consulting, and he also was holding various marketing and strategy positions for a premium European automotive manufacturer. He's an education Background as an MBA in marketing and production Engineering and European economy at technical university Achon in Germany. Thanks for coming. Thank you very much Then we have David Peterson who's the West Coast EV project manager and corporate planning with Nissan more North America And there he's responsible for electric vehicle market readiness and deployment in the Western United States Previously he led the electric vehicle research at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and He was also a financial analyst with ING Bank in Shanghai He holds a master's degree from UCLA and a bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley. Thanks for coming David and Then further to the left we have Pat Romano who's the president and CEO of Coulomb technologies Formerly he was the president CEO of two wire and he also held several engineering and marketing positions at Polycom He holds an undergraduate degree in computer science from Harvard University and a master's degree from the MIT media lab And then last but definitely not least John Tillman manager and regulatory affairs at Daimler Where he's involved in government regulatory activities around electric mobility and development of long-term scenarios and strategies For introduction of advanced vehicle technologies in the United States He has actually been in the electric mobility technology of battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for about 13 years now Not all the time at Daimler, but also at Volkswagen, Hyundai and the UC Davis Institute for Transportation Studies He actually holds a bachelor degree in science Chemical and electrical engineering from UC Davis. So I'm sure you agree with me. We have a very esteemed panel here today And to discuss The topic of electric vehicles who should care why when and how much the way how we want to do this I discussed with all panelists in preparation for this meeting here today a few questions That we want to use in order to moderate This about 50 minute long conversation now But first I was asking all Participants to make a quick statement Where they will basically highlight what is happening in their respective field regarding vehicle electrification? If they think that electric vehicles are already being overhyped or maybe still underappreciated and What they see if they look at the electric vehicle market and infrastructure in the year 2020 so we will do this everyone will do about a two or three minute statement in that field and then we will do a Moderated discussion for about 30 minute and that should still allow for about 15 minutes of questions from the audience Which we will be happily taking for further conversations then with that I would like to start with Tilo and tell us a little bit more about your background at Gardner and What you do in the field of electric vehicles and also what you see when you look at the electric vehicle market in year 2020 Overhyped sure absolutely. Thanks for for the introduction and great to be here with the panelists and of course with you the audience as well I've been in this field for a long time as well I founded Gartner's automotive practice in 1999 on the analyst side me prior to that on the Gartner consulting side since 1997 I've been looking into Technologies and how they apply to the automotive industry in all kinds of different areas including powertrain technologies even prior To working at Gartner actually used to work for a car company that was looking into hybrid vehicles And even to some extent electric vehicles as early as 1994 1993 So a lot of the car manufacturers have been working on some of these battery technologies obviously for a long time That specific company that I work for couldn't actually figure out how to make it work Financially to bring out a vehicle and to really have something that consumers would find mostly interesting and note to your question in terms of What does that mean today? Where do we stand with all of this? I think ultimately there is a role for the electric vehicle to play definitely There's no question about this But the question is how big is this role going to be short-term mid-term versus long-term and I actually believe that Forward there's still a lot of hurdles that have to be taken primarily from a consumer acceptance point of view I'm not so worried about the infrastructure That's still an issue that needs to be resolved as well But first we have to figure out how to make these cars really attractive for consumers and we'll share a little bit more I will share a little bit more information about what we see we do a lot of studies with consumers too And we talk a lot to the car companies and the suppliers with regards to their technology Preferences and their point of views the connected or the electric vehicle was definitely be a real topic Continue to be a real topic going forward, but a lot of hurdles still need to be taken I think right now there's a little bit of a hype. Okay. Well, thanks Tilo Well next I'd like David maybe to tell us a little bit more about your background at Nissan of North America a little bit about your field regarding electric vehicles Obviously the Nissan Leaf is a big topic there But also maybe if you can share a few thoughts where you see this field going to the year 2020 Overhyped or underappreciated. Sure So I work in corporate planning at Nissan North America and so we do mid-term business planning developing new business for specifically zero-emission mobility and At Nissan we've had tremendous success with the Nissan Leaf the United States It's been available since December 2010 and to date we've sold 13,000 units 30,000 units worldwide And it still remains the lowest cost electric vehicle on the market in its class despite several new new models coming to market and Announcements by different auto EM's yet We still believe the price is too high and in line with our objective of making an affordable mass-market electric vehicle We're localizing production and several key markets around the world in the United States We're localizing production in Smyrna, Tennessee. Well, we'll have the largest EV plant for the Nissan Leaf in the world for Nissan It will have an annual production capacity of 150,000 Nissan Leafs and 200,000 battery packs and As you could probably infer from From the size of these plants of the Smyrna plant particular Economies of scale of production are an important element to bringing down vehicle costs But electrification has been happening in the automotive industry for quite some time And I think this is part of the problem with our industry is that we're sending mixed messages Or we're not sending consistent message about what vehicle electrification means Does it mean hybrid vehicles plug-in hybrid vehicles fuel cell? Hydrogen vehicles doesn't mean battery electric vehicles And so what does the electrification of transportation or cars actually even mean and so to this end we've confused I believe we should be infuse the public To a certain extent and so I believe that they're underappreciated by the general public and that the news media has generally overhyped electric vehicles the news media I believe has Expected things to happen too quickly or didn't or things didn't happen as quickly as the news media expected them to happen and Every time I meet somebody somebody new who's not familiar with the industry And they asked me so tell me about the Nissan leaf It doesn't take any gas, but it has a has an engine right so people are just generally confused about the technology They think it's a hybrid vehicle. They don't know they hear electrified electrified, but they don't know what that really means I still think it's a hybrid. So I think we have a lot of work to do in terms of consistent messaging and getting And just generally consistent messaging but the thing is is that most consumers don't pay attention to to what's happening in the automotive industry unless they're in the market to buy a car and People are in the market to buy a car on average every six years And so you can see how this is a long term process I mean Nissan's taking a very long position on EV technology because we recognize that to reach The 10% of consumers that we want to reach by 2020 Excuse me 10% of the new vehicle sales that we want to attain by 2020 We're going to have to do a lot of work on educating the general public and to this end we're working a lot in the EV ecosystem working with many of those here on on stage on Developing things such as residential workplace and public charging infrastructure on Nissan has brought its own DC quick charger to market It's the lowest cost DC quick charger available and we're continuing to expand financial non financial incentives and all of this with the goal of selling a profitable zero emission car that people love to drive Great. Thanks. Thanks, David. Appreciate it a lot coming Actually, you mentioned charging infrastructure It's a great segue to to Pat Romano president and CEO of Cologne technologies But if you don't mind tell us maybe a little bit more about how your company fits into the electric vehicles Electrification space and also if you see something like is this field being overhyped underappreciated and Where do you see things going within the next eight years so year 2020 our crystal ball? Sure kind of time first first. Thanks. Thanks, Ben for for hosting the panel and thank you all for your attention A little bit about Cologne technologies our public brand is charge point. So if you've Happened to cross a public charging station with the charge point logo on it. That's that's what we do It's not very well understood in the industry what role we play even though we're we're fairly visible out there With our name attached to many chargers out there and in the North American market, especially we provide Turnkey networking services. So anyone that wants to offer Charging services to drivers that may use their parking lots They can do that in an easy turnkey way and delegate all those responsibilities essentially to us to manage that network In our opinion Drivers need consistent infrastructure They need to be able to have a few relationships with companies like us that deal with payment remittance and Notification of what your charging session is currently looking like so you can get some information Say on your mobile phone while you're while you're charging your car because it's important to know when things like that Are finished or if there's been an issue Drivers need to be able to find stations. So we provide those services in fact We're integrated with most vehicle telematic systems right now We're providing feeds to not only the station location But also the station status navigating for example to a station that's occupied isn't that useful and given that this is a parking model Especially with respect to level 2 charging not a pumping model as it was with a liquid fuel People are parked in those spots for a long time in many cases longer than it takes to charge the car So it's important for us to provide those services to get the ecosystem sufficiently seated with Things like that so that these two gentlemen here can successfully sell cars And then we in turn can successfully sell more stations and more and more network services, which is really our thrust we Believe wholeheartedly that the market is it is is a parking model for level 2 charging It is not a find the nearest gas station and see DC chargers fill in those Gas stations and replace gas pumps over time There will be certainly a place for DC charging in this that it will play a significant role But the bulk of the chargers that most of us that drive EVs will run into Will be level 2 chargers because in most parking lots you're parked there for a long enough period of time greater than one hour For that to for that to be beneficial It's a top-off model in our opinion. We're seeing that on our network We have you know tens of thousands of drivers on our network already that are that are that are using Using you know charge point services to find and manage their their charging sessions And what we're seeing is the average session time is quite long It's it's multiple hours Especially in the workplace What we're also seeing is that there's a heavy heavy Dependency on workplace charging and this is a message that I've sent to not only our state governments But our federal government as well as incentive programs to get workplaces to put in Electric vehicle charging infrastructure is such an incentive for drivers to actually take the plunge and buy an electric vehicle The commute to work is the most important decision factor What we're seeing the state of California is is carpool lane access being granted to a lot of different EVs That are either out or emerging and and that's a big incentive to get them over the initial cost hurdle But more importantly if they can't if they can drive to work in the in the carpool lane is a nice incentive for a while As this market gets off the ground But they can't get to work and plug in and get enough juice to drive home It's immaterial right and so I think the takeaway here is while we're seeing it in cities towns retailers across the board Workplace charging on the front end of this market is going to be the most important Thanks. Great. Thanks. Thanks, Pat And you mentioned already regulation and incentive systems and so on maybe a good cue for for John Tillman a Manager of regulatory affairs at Daimler and based in Sacramento Tell us a little bit more maybe about your work regarding electric Vehicles, maybe also advanced powertrains in general because you you do not just cover electric vehicles And so there's quite a quite a large portfolio So a little bit about this and and also what you see regarding electric vehicles more specifically maybe being overhyped or Unappreciated and maybe the year 2020 what we will see by then In my role as manager of regulatory affairs I have to interact and specifically I focus on immobility topics advanced fuels Which as you mentioned covers electric vehicles covers fuels hydrogen fuel so vehicles But also covers advanced biofuels and so I am aware of both internally what our portfolio is What we're looking at as a company, but I also have to inform back to headquarters What kind of conversations are occurring around these topics and in my role I deal with the regulators Majority of time, but I also have to deal with the legislators and a big part of the problem that we are having right now Is there's a lot the topic of immobility is fairly new To most of the regular legislators that I've talked to you and they're coming up with ideas that although workable Really need a long-term vision what I'm finding and what Daimler's finding I imagine the other OEMs and gentlemen on these Panelists are finding is that there isn't a long-term durable policy for these vehicles beyond 2020 2025 When a large bulk of these cars are expected to be coming to the market That's one thing that we really need to have is a multi administration policy that Directs what can be expected what kind of fuels will be on the market. What's going to be supported as you go forward Diamond does believe that Electric vehicles have in a market The question is what kind of market is it are they short commuter vehicles short Distance commuter vehicles, or are they longer distance vehicles? We are seeing vehicles come in the market with 200 300 mile potential ranges very very large batteries And if those become the norm I'm not saying they are but if those become the norm in the marketplace We're going to need an infrastructure to charge them that isn't being thought of right now And the infrastructure as I'm sure my gentlemen to the right can attest to that is being looked at is a park model But to get to those longer Drive vehicles we have to have infrastructure that can support a Fill model and we're not there and that means DC fast charge or fast charge today Say there are other models of fast charge other than DC But right now the business case for DC is really a challenging one at least from the outside looking At it and the Sherman gentlemen to the right can attest to that issue But we really need to get our legislators to think about not just their term in office But the legacy the long-term issue of policy that will Facilitate the advanced vehicles not just electric But hydrogen and biofuel in the marketplace in 2025 and beyond Great, thanks. Well, let's see I thought we should start off with the moderated part of this discussion learning a little bit more from Those products already in the field and maybe that's something for for David from from Nissan so what have you learned from the Nissan Leaf that has been in the market now for about one and a half years at least in the United States and Is there something like Friends and family referrals that people have good expectations or good experience with their vehicles And then the friends and families buy one is it all these things like the neighborhood effect that some people always say well If my neighbor has an electric car, I'm going to buy one as well And then together we are going to blow the local transformer and electric grid and what is it like? People might have initial concerns regarding range and so on and do they come back after a couple of months and say no problem at all So what did you learn from the Nissan Leaf? So in terms of people's enjoyment with the vehicle 100% well 90% satisfaction Very high satisfaction. Some people do have mixed experiences with the vehicle with the Nissan Leaf But overall no problems with the vehicle at all anywhere in the world and It's been enjoyed by by over 30,000 people all over the world now in terms of Friends and family referrals. This is kind of hard to measure but Certainly, I mean we have and there's they're here today amazing advocates the bay Leafs So I see some representatives here in the audience. They're an amazing Leaf association Nissan Leaf Association of Drivers and their tremendous advocates for for our technology and and the vehicle and Certainly, I I don't know. I've heard stories of you know referrals for you know 15 20 20 people buying a Nissan Leaf because of the bay Leafs or their members. So really our drivers and early adopters are tremendous advocates for us Now as far as clustering effects and and what that could mean for the electrical grid I mean we do share information with electric utilities about where the residential location of these vehicles are and really So where essentially they will be charging at night? And so that gives utilities ample opportunity to upgrade their infrastructure Now as far as our early experiences with the leaf, you know, it's been out a year and a half as you said What's there's different ways of looking at it in terms of driving behavior We've been collecting a lot of data and what we've been finding actually is that most drivers drive less than 50 miles a day on an average they drive 30 miles a day and the distance traveled Between when the vehicles turned on and turned off so a trip is seven miles. That's the average distance so what we're finding is that The the battery range is actually more than sufficient and we could have taken out more of that that range But of course the buying decision being as it is we packed in more range And so the vehicles meeting or exceeding people's needs And so that's that's some initial feedback. We've had in terms of charging behavior. It's been interesting We've anticipated initially that most people would be using level two and that's been happening. They've been charging at night for about three hours using level two, but the level the usage of level one has been Higher than expected we expected five percent and it's been actually around 15 percent So that's been interesting in terms of sales For the Nissan Leaf it's been interesting in terms of conquest we've had 90% of of Nissan Leaf drivers are actually new to the brand and the number one conquest vehicle is as was expected To be the Toyota Prius We haven't seen as much pickup in fleet and that has been a lot of that has been due to to I guess budgetary situations in various state and local government We did find that in in the first year that more people were Buying the vehicle than leasing the vehicle, which was interesting because you had to actually have the 7,500 of $7,500 tax liability in order to to take that federal Federal tax credit and so we found that 90% were buying but we're seeing now as we move through 2012 that more people are leasing the vehicle moving More towards that 20 to 30% Lease Percentage of people that buy the vehicle that lease which is common across other Nissan vehicles And I mentioned the social and community aspect which is tremendous and The other thing we learned is is that you can't Get out there enough and speak to the public about the technology and We I know John if you want to add to this because the smart electric vehicle I think it's not been launched in the US market But in other markets that correct is there's some data that you have already from from that program actually The smart generation 2 was launched in very small numbers run 250 cars and nowhere near what Nissan numbers are But in those vehicles and the smart gen 3 we just announced a full production starting last week But that will be initially in Europe and we'll be bringing those cars over later this year to the US And then I'm prestige is branded version after that With these vehicles though we implemented a smart charging unit that actually can gather data and ultimately with the right Electric vehicle charging unit communicate to the charging unit to the customer of course and eventually to the grid back in What that allows us to have is actually a truly smart grid you and you can't have a Really smart grid that can't communicate with your your vehicle and then tell the the grid okay The charger is down. I'm having a problem, you know, you need to go to another charger We believe that a vehicle has to be able to Tell where the chargers at the grid has to be able to communicate or the charges communicate I'm up and running so we're a little bit ahead of the game and bringing those cars to market And I think our other competitors will also see the need to be able to communicate Beyond just the car to charger relationship. Okay, but the whole charging infrastructure Let's look a little bit more into that one with with pad so it can be complicated from a technology standpoint Especially if we're going into a smart charging vehicle to grid communication all of these things But it can also be very complicated thing from the regulatory side I assume that can you tell us a little bit more what it takes to establish a home charging unit for instance Or maybe a parking lot with about 20 charging units sure and also who I maybe your main Customers is it local municipalities? Is it parking structure? operators is it employers who want to offer free charging to the to the employees So it's actually not that complicated. That's the good news It's not I should say it's not that complicated for level 2. Mm-hmm a for level 3 different story much much bigger Issue I'll talk about level 2 first, and then I'll give you some updates on on level and I'm not sure It's so interrupting if everyone is really familiar with level 2 level 3 if you could briefly level level 2 is the an ace an AC charging standard in the US any car with a J 17 72 connector It's the standard connector that's on just about every car that's sold in the US Is is accepting that and it's basically charging at You know 208 or 240 volts depending on whether you're at home or or in a In a commercial area And it's passing that AC directly to the car and the onboard charger on the car is dealing with charging the battery So it's a lower-power Parking model slowing slower charging not too slow at slower charging Mode for cars. It's significantly faster about 4x faster than level 1 which is the AC outlet in your house So when you buy an electric vehicle and you get what's called a travel cord in your trunk It comes with the car and you plug it into an AC outlet. It's a it's quite a bit faster than that So it's probably the sweet spot for the parking model portion of this industry and then level 3 Is a DC fast charging that moves the charging electronics off board on from the car to an External box that external box tends to be Pretty large it can range up to 50 kilowatts. So it's a lot of power You're starting to see some 20 kilowatt DC chargers come out to kind of fill in that gap between the highest end that The AC level two chargers can support and and sort of the beginning of the DC chargers You know DC can charge a car depending and I don't want to misquote here in Nissan leaf I believe is somewhere around 20 minutes to 70 80% there about in that in that range But it really is going to depend on the size of a battery pack If you took a Tesla Model S and plugged it into a 50 kilowatt DC charger You're still going to wait an hour and a half for their bouts to get up to 70 80% and it depends on the battery option So his comment regarding large battery pack charging for instantaneous fill model is even an even bigger issue I don't actually think you can practically support an instantaneous fill model with with large cars The issue with DC now is that the transformer upgrades and your connection to the grid start to become a big factor at most sites They haven't most commercial places that work places city parking things like that They haven't contemplated a large number or even a small number of big instantaneous loads So it's going to be a pretty important. I think the couple storage With DC charging en masse to deal with the power issues for level two. It's actually quite easy For permitting for example, it's you know a couple hundred dollars to permit a level two charger Whether you're at home or or out and in the public. So it's not a big permitting problem Typically because on a public, you know on a public street or in a parking garage or at a retail location You have to trench because you have to pull pull power cables to the unit and you have to deal with You know concrete or or road work to cover that up and put the bolts in for the thing It typically takes a couple of months to three months We're seeing about a three month delay or so from purchase to provisioning on our network So our provisioning model sort of lags our sales model by you know, roughly a quarter or so plus or minus Also as a factor the time of the year if you're in Minnesota There isn't a whole lot of trenching and concrete work going on in the winter months if you're in California It's not as bad. So it's pretty uniform delay. So there's this there's a regional There's a regional component to The installation pitfalls around public charging at home Obviously, there's less of an issue it involves about the same complexity as putting a dryer plug in your garage roughly speaking So you can do that for anywhere between 800 and 1500 bucks is what we're seeing for a licensed electrician to come out and do that You want to use a licensed electrician for this because you are dealing with With with high power stuff a little bit about where these things are going Pretty much everywhere he listed That's the good news. You want them everywhere, right? Because we need we need to charge our cars wherever we go one of our philosophies is you know People are not going to change their daily course To to own an EV they're going to buy an EV when they encounter enough infrastructure on the course that they normally travel There's a couple of examples. We're seeing For example on parking companies. This is just two examples We have a lot of priority parking and pro park are both customers of ours They have pretty extensive implementations around Around the country fleet operators. We have a ton but two that are I think Notable County of Sonoma and the city of San Francisco City of San Francisco being very very much pro Electric vehicle charging County Sonoma. I mentioned for one reason. It's a very innovative what they've done They've decided that for their fleet County vehicles They would they wanted to double-duty the charging infrastructure and I think most towns should do this Instead of parking the fleet vehicles in a fleet garage The electric fleet vehicles park where a park on the city streets But they the parking spot is is is reserved for city vehicles after 5 or 6 p.m But in the normal business hours when those fleet trucks are out doing their their their daily work It's an open charger for the public. So they double-duty the charging infrastructure and for a small town Or even a mid-sized town. I think that's a great way of satisfying a governmental fleet need and Bootstrapping the infrastructure in the industry So it's a pretty cool example of pretty of an innovative thinking up there in Sonoma Employers, you know, we have a ton You know companies, you know, we you know everyone likes to quote Google or one of our largest work workplace employees I actually don't because you know, everyone thinks they're an outlier. They're actually not they're they're they're very progressive But I think they're buying patterns represent everyone else We also have companies like SAP Facebook LinkedIn and even outside the Bay Area companies like 3m We have retailers like Target for example the Target stores in Fremont have a bunch of chargers They're they're expanding that they're expanding that deployment to other stores. So you're seeing a very pervasive very very pervasive Experimentation or piloting of EV charging last point if you if you look at our workplace customers and the phenomena that happens they buy initially because a Very vocal minority like for example the Bay Leavers, which by the way are a great group I have to give my some props to Lunk David They'll go to their employers when they buy a car and they'll say hey look, you know, this is important I need charging infrastructure at work and the employers usually comply What happens is the minute they take the plunge or a group like that in other areas of the country that other person Sitting in an office in the next building over happens to notice. Oh my god There's a charger and in a leaf or a volt or whatever parked in front of it I want one of those now because I was waiting for my employer So then what happens to a tee when we sell into a workplace is that workplace calls us a quarter later for a bigger order and a Quarter later after that for a bigger order and it just keeps exploding because what happens is then more people want it And then they put in more infrastructure and then more people want it and they put in more infrastructure So it just catches fire But it's important for that first vocal set of employees to push those employers to put that stuff in because that's the Tipper that that's the that's the first domino that falls in the chain Okay, great Well kilo help me out here sounds all very good sounds from from all of the gentlemen here and really appreciate that that overview but one thing that Jim Sweeney and I discussed in preparation for this seminar here or for this discussion today and the Toyota Prius also was mentioned Certainly not the same vehicle not exactly the same concept But but there are some analogies that might be looked at and let's let's just say the Toyota Prius has been in the market Now for about 13 years and if you check out the the market share of all hybrid vehicles Then it's currently about 3% of all new vehicles after 13 years of the initial market launch 3% of all Vehicles United States are currently hybrid vehicles and at Gardner you work a lot with this hype cycle Explain that maybe a little bit to us and and can you explain or can you apply this to to electrified vehicles as well? Sure, absolutely, and you know, I think it's good that we talk a lot about some of these measures that have to be in place both from an infrastructure perspective, but also from a regulatory perspective But I actually like to go step back and because I think we still have another issue to deal with which is much more important We're talking really about a very very small market at this point And it's great to see that these are the selling quite a few cars But if you think of the market share that electric vehicles today represent of all new vehicle sales You're talking about less than 1% So that's a really tiny tiny fraction the real problem before we then have to worry about the infrastructure the grid and all Of these other pieces is how do we even get consumers to actually buy into those cars? And you mentioned the hype cycle for those of you that are familiar with gardening may have seen this It's a methodology that we use. It's a specific curve that shows our technology over time Matures first. There's a lot of hype. It goes up probably beyond Expectations certainly beyond what consumers are looking for and then it goes to the other extreme people don't really care about it anymore And eventually it kind of normalizes Normalizes think about e-business for example e-commerce how that kind of exploded a lot of companies Started out and they went out of business and now e-business is pretty much business. It became normal If I look at the electric vehicle on that hype cycle, I think we're getting close to actually what we call that the trough Of disillusionment where you know consumers in the industry realize that maybe some of these early Expectations aren't really justified They want to really focus on that piece because I think that's becoming more and more important Electric vehicles in my eyes today Even though I personally like them and there are some of you out there in the audience They'd like them and bought them have a marketability challenge more than anything else Consumers do not see how these cars can replace the existing vehicles that they have so it becomes almost a Philosophical choice maybe a secondary vehicle choice to buy into an electric vehicle because it does have limited range because it is still too expensive And I just want to give you a couple of data points We do a lot of studies with consumers to understand their desires for different powertrain technologies And if you ask consumers in the US for example, what is it that you want to consider going forward? If you can choose between a traditional internal combustion engine that's using gasoline Diesel maybe you have an electric vehicle a hybrid vehicle or even a gas powered vehicle Consumers in the United States view the electric vehicle as something That's pretty much at the bottom of that list 22% approximately say they definitely want to consider Going forward for the next vehicle purchase 22% That's a pretty high number But as soon as you actually attach a price point to that that number comes down very very quickly to a much much smaller percentage Just to give you an example there as well We found that those 22% said They're willing to buy an electric vehicle if there's no price difference Or if it's maybe up to $4,000 more expensive than a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle So that's a huge disconnect still today to really get consumers over that hump And I think a lot of that has to do with the expectation that consumers have but also to some extent with the car manufacturers Push in terms of getting these vehicles to consumers Many cases. I don't think that electric vehicles today can be a substitute for a traditional vehicle I had an interesting discussion actually with a reporter from KQED earlier this week She wanted to come down and visit me from San Francisco in San Jose and she has an lease on leave But she wanted to know if we have a charging station at our office and unfortunately don't so maybe I have to talk to you Pet about this but she couldn't make that trip So because that's out of the range if she hasn't really charged the car fully hundred percent So she had to go to what she called her back up car in California having a backup car is much more feasible than it is for the Average consumer vehicle on outside of California. That's something we have to keep in mind as well So I may sound a little bit more skeptical on this I think the industry is getting a little bit more cooling cooled off to that whole idea as well Just to give you another data point last year around this time vehicle manufacturer said that the United States will sell 100,000 electric vehicles that was the goal that they had I don't think we'll ever get close to that over the next couple of years because there are still these hurdles That need to be addressed. Okay. Where's your office? In San Jose nearby the airport You're gonna donate You know, there's there's plenty of apps out there to find a charging station if they always work That's the other problem. So, you know another big element of this is how do you make this experience as seamless as possible? Right and I think definitely that the electric vehicle will be a port portion or an element of powertrain Mixes going forward that the car industry has to deal with no question about it And if you can find these charging stations, you take out the headache of consumers having to find that next charging Spudden and reserving it and so on but the data has to be good and that's still all very much emerging So consumers take a leap of faith to buy into this and to say I just completely rely on this and I'm good I think we're getting better on this but it's very difficult from a consumer market perspective and from the automotive industry perspective because the car Manufacturers have to balance all of these different powertrain technologies going forward that costs a lot of money and for those of you that are Very much involved in the odd industry may have seen the announcement today that now BMW and Toyota Will collaborate on fuel cell technology going forward. Why because it's damn expensive to do that on your own To the extent that now carbon effects are willing to actually share resources and do this jointly together That's another challenge even from an industry perspective There's maybe some question for the automotive industry all these different technologies diesel gasoline Hybrid electric vehicles fuel cell vehicles. How do you balance those technologies and and would there be a winner? Any I think actually when Mercedes is working on all those technologies. We have fuel. So we have battery electric. We have we're working on Diesel hybrid vehicles working on standard hybrid vehicles and It's really too early to say Who's the winner? I mean if we could if I had a crystal ball I'd be a billionaire Which is person in the world, but I don't So we have to look at What is our consumer going to want the consumer is ultimately the decider of the success of this Technology any technology in the marketplace and being Mercedes our demographic consumer is very picky they have come to expect the best and it better work and Part of that is they're going to have they're going to require Whatever technology they choose if it's a primary vehicle, it's got to get them wherever they want to go Without any real challenges They've got to be able to find the fueling station on their GPS It's got to take them there and it better be up and running or it better tell them It's not running go to another one and if you start thinking about that whole dynamic not to get off to the left a bit But the electric vehicle is supposed to reduce emissions start thinking about it though if you start if you have a vehicle that cannot tell you Communicate with the grid that the station you're heading for is not up and running or it's actually being utilized already When you get there and see that you're going to drive to another one Which means you're going to actually increase emissions by trying to find a working station a Functioning or a station that's not being used So we actually need to develop for electric vehicles to actually take hold the consumer has to have an experience like they currently have Where it will take them to a gas station They need to be taken to and I'm working usable Charging station that's something we're not there yet. We need to work on that Pat what do you think? I actually think we're there We actually provide telematics feeds to every major telematics company out there and direct to some auto OEMs like Nissan It's in dash. It's live. You see if it's You will in on certain cars right now some of the feeds are static, but in most cases They're moving to active feeds into the car through direct coupling to our network So you will see station status Reservability price all kinds of stuff plus if you just go to the app store Android iPhone whatever download our download charge point on your phone. It's direct hookup to our network It'll give you mapping functions to location station location station status and so I'm not saying that It's perfect But the infrastructure is there at least on our network and we're the dominant network in the US So for US drivers, you know, we're getting there. We're actually gonna We're expanding those functionalities into other markets globally And I think what I do agree with is the auto OEMs are pushing very hard for this because they all to a tee realize that That's an absolute requirement comment on on electric fuel electric fuel is fungible. You can make it from anything I have a I have a fisk or karma. It's a gas electric hybrid. I have what I affectionately refer to as gas anxiety I hate when that gas engine comes on I do everything I possibly can to make it not come on And I rarely have to think about it because most of my driving is inside as David put inside the 30 mile range a day or what have you and my battery pack gives me more than that So rarely do I use gas? But I have no range anxiety because I know at the end of the day that if that engine does come on I can always get where I need to go even though I try not to drive on it because I like it I like the just the silence of that vehicle, but there are a lot of benefits to an electric car We have to stop selling electric cars purely on the basis of economics and fuel They're faster There are accelerations better. There's no transmission If you look at my car, it doesn't have to look like like an account There's a certain segment of the market what has to look like an economy car And I think that's right, but you can make the nicest sports car on the industry in the industry Which I think the karma is or you can go all the way down to you know A very successful platform like the leaf and make something that's targeted at the best economy possible for You know for a driver and fill in all those price points So I think the markets just got to stop talking about this as if it's just a different fuel option And you got plenty of choice out there You've got plenty of range and you know thinking that we're going to put in tons of infrastructure to change The high the the other side of the hybrid equation. I think it's foolish I don't think we're going to get into a hydrogen economy where we're going to refit gas stations with hydrogen tanks and Use hydrogen fuel cells or anything like that I think it's gasoline because that's what's there and there's plenty of distribution and hopefully not much needed And then there's battery packs and by the way that electricity I love to tell people about what my car runs on because they ask me and I say well it It's some days. It's a wind car other days. It's solar power. Sometimes it's clean coal Sometimes it's not so clean coal. Sometimes it's a gas turbine meaning the source of those electrons, right? We'll naturally get cleaner over time But they come from different places and over time mass generation will basically clean itself up And you want the end points to already be electric because it's the most fungible source of power that we have So we just got to focus on making, you know, the electric car the battery differential on an electric car Come into range and I think what David said is right We really got a question how much range we need in batteries over time as there's an awareness as battery technology comes up The curve I don't think I don't think it gets plowed into a two 300 mile range battery I think it gets plowed into a twenty thousand dollar entry point on an EV Mm-hmm, and I think that's what makes it happen. Yeah, so If you want to drive a luxury car made from Nissan I do drive the future infinity le I've seen it It's a great looking car So it's coming. So it's great looking car. It's coming, but we also have other ones that are coming We have the Nissan env 200. That's an all-electric cargo van cargo passenger van That's gonna be manufactured in Barcelona And they will be available in the United States So we're building electric vehicle technology from multiple applications for different consumers in the market But we're not taking a zero-sum approach to to powertrain technologies And your comments on, you know substitutes I mean is it a one for one substitute am I replacing my vehicle that I have today with an electric vehicle? I mean, that's that's my question to you and Nissan surely doesn't think that I mean We're looking at 10% of new auto sales for Nissan by 2020 not a hundred percent not 50% 10% And our focus is that 22% that are considering an electric vehicle. We want them to be our customer that's what we want and We understand that and you raised valid points, you know range Which we think can be addressed by education because it doesn't need to be a 200 300 mile Range vehicle it couldn't be you know 50 But we we decided we had to find the right balance between between cost and range and that that's what the Nissan Leaf is today But you're absolutely right that prices do need to come down in order to make this a truly mass-market vehicle No, absolutely, you know, and I think this is all correct all the things that are heard today But at the end of the day if you buy an electric vehicles to add to your personal fleet And you still have other cars to fall back into if you have to go that longer range But then it becomes really a cost factor for a lot of consumers, right? Let's not forget this Overall consumer interest in cars in the long term will probably be lower than it is today So do consumers we want to buy that many vehicles just to be green and be electric at some point And then be able to actually still get from a to point B if they really need to add not another day So I think it's becoming very difficult for consumers to justify all of these pieces Ultimately, I believe in impact said this No, we have been seeing this for many years as an electric car You really have to rationally convince consumers that it can do the things that you're looking for but you have to emotionally Wow with them that it's something that you really want to have Tesla is a good example For doing this because worrying about it powertrain technology is not something consumers really want to do unless they're really Into the technology themselves and that's not the average consumer that you have So I do believe that this becomes more and more of an issue going forward And I always tell people in a joking way that you know They're what do sports cars and electric cars have in common. He both cars You cannot really rationalize based on cost today. They're both a commitment So, you know, if any of you have a spouse who don't believe that you should have a sports car go and convince them It's the same like an electric vehicle. You can't really justify it But that's really the challenge that we have with a lot of these vehicles So you asked the question at the beginning. What will happen by 2020? We believe that by 2025 to 8% of all new vehicles sold will be battery Enabled doesn't mean fully electric vehicles. That means a lot of hybrid will be hybrids a lot of them Because it's just like that Fisker Karma that gives you that peace of mind. It doesn't matter Should have evolved the same thing now There will be lots of applications for using a fully electric vehicle like the Nissan leave And I think you may actually see completely different types of vehicles that we don't even consider today That will allow you to get mobility and there could be electric but from a government Point of view even from a leg legislative point of view I'm not sure that the governments are doing the right thing by just focusing on one technology only I tell people maybe we should all get a check in the mail from the government that gives us a thousand dollar Text refund so that you can buy a bicycle and stop using gas because maybe you start using a bicycle then for some of the Right that would be a much more broader approach to looking into how to get away from oil and some of the other issues that governments are worried about So we are getting towards the end of the panel unfortunately I definitely wanted to get into that question of incentives as well But I also would like to open up to two questions from the audience and I prefer that we go to the questions from the audience There's someone who's already waiting and hopefully there are questions about incentives. Maybe that we catch Doing things with one, please. Thank you very much. It was very interesting conversations this question is for Pat I'm very very spoiled by your app You know, I want to know will you do you this Coulomb has any plan to incorporate other brand of charging into your map It was just wonderful. Then the second question is for the Nissan and and Mercedes and it'll be so much nicer if you if your map in the car could incorporate what Coulomb has Saying all the available or not available or which one is being charged or which one is broken on your map That would be just wonderful because right now It's just very limited and you update very very slow like once a month So it's just too slow. You need to be updated just like Coulomb and this is for Steve Steve I'm sorry your bad boy. You took out the SPI charging stations out from the visitor center. That's the one and only one SPI charger that you promised To leave a year ago. I don't know why you took it out. I took my ref for here today and it's gone Okay, okay, let's start with Pat. All right Thanks for the comment It's a great question. I've gotten that question at every panel that I've spoken on We are definitely incorporating Chargers that are not on our network into our app. We don't think it does a service to we're not trying to make money on drivers And we know the driver and we also understand that to make the industry great We can't be we can't be focused just on our network because it's just drivers won't use multiple applications So we're going to go broad with our with our application and and include Locations of stations that are not necessarily on our network There's a limits to what we can get if we don't have a direct feed from those network providers the other network providers It's difficult for us to get station status. We're happy to do it An integration with them to be able to get the station status meaning is someone parked there or not I think that's an important factor But we're already for example in our feed to Nissan We already provide Station data that is not on our network and we're in the process of making that part of our our Full production suite. It's just rolling out. It's just not there yet, but it'll be there So, yes, I totally agree. I feel your pain it definitely needs to be updated more frequently the the Charging station database totally agree with you and we're working on improvements all the time and your feedback is absolutely essential to that But we do make sure that the chargers that are out there are able are compatible with the Nissan leaf And so we do test those and they'll make sure those are compatible before they show up on the map So you might be seeing some delays because of that if there's a new manufacturer on the market, but absolutely Thank you for the feedback actually made my point more specifically that the information about the status of the charge station needs to be something that any GPS installed in a vehicle can access whether it be a coulomb system Ecotality or some other provider who isn't even in the market yet There needs to be a tie-in between the final permitting of public station to a statewide database Which feeds out to GPS or navigation systems That would drive customers who aren't necessarily cool them to their charging. They need to charge They're going to go to cool them. They're going to go to whoever's there. They're not a subscriber charge them a little more I'd rather charge some place available then try to find one that is in my network so at some point though the federal government may need to figure out how to Require there to be a database that is accessible to any OEMs GPS navigation system and It's great that coolant provides it, but it's something that every manufacturer has to have in their cars and and accessing every public charger that is available So we're working on getting these aggregators actually. There's plenty of aggregators out there in the market. I Could just name if you want to look them up go download a recargo plug share. There's there's plenty I mean check out the coulomb app. They do this Yeah, there he is go talk to this guy plug share They do this already and I mean we're looking to incorporate this into into our future vehicles for sure I mean this is obvious Next next next move for us, but Yeah, it just needs to be improved, but it already exists certainly it exists. It's accessible with plug share I mean you can you can upload your own. I mean, it's really a crowd sourced I mean for different charging opportunities and it aggregates Not just plug share, but many other applications do this the aggregate across different network providers You can get cool on you get eco-tallet well charge point networking at the blink network. You can get Other networks that are showing their information static or or dynamic if they have open apis or not I mean this is happening right now and it's some of the most robust Maps are actually from from apps not from your traditional navigation services providers, but they're getting there But they're getting there. Yeah, I would love to have an answer for you for the mission missing charging spot But since I don't I'd like to give the next question to mr. Schultz I Have a question about the Nissan leaf and the other electric cars. I Might say I drive a Nissan leaf. I have solar panels on my house here on campus Long since paid for them by the metal electricity on my bill that I've saved So I figure I'm driving on sunshine. There's plenty of it around here. It's free. So it's a hell of a deal Thank you. I look at the Nissan leaf and I say to myself. It's all off the shelf There's a chassis Nothing different about that There's an electric motor electric motor has been around for a long time. They're very efficient. They're good There's a battery the batteries a lot better than the one I had when I drove an EV1 and Listening to the battery characters around Stanford and it's quite obvious that five years from now They're gonna be a lot better but What puzzles me is Lighter the vehicle is the further you can go on a given amount of energy and There are composite materials around that are very very strong Boeing uses them building into their airplanes So they work And they're much lighter So I as a Nissan and the other companies looking into a Chassis and more pieces of their automobiles made out of this light strong material So thank you first of all for for being one of the early adopters of the Nissan leaf And we are looking into more advanced materials but and I'm not a product planner, but at the end of the day, it's a it's a trade-off between performance and cost and I believe that the The engineers and the research that that went into producing the Nissan leaf Did the best they could in in finding that balance, but I agree with you that We need to continue to innovate And to lighten the vehicle and to improve the range of the vehicle. It's definitely a cost issue It's a huge cost issue right because you could use carbon other light weight materials Magnesium and other components, but at the cost would just go through the roof And that's the problem, especially if you also have to have a lot of safety Technology on board crumpled zones and everything else in the car. That's the problem that's behind this You will see some of those cars that are very light BMW with the i-brand will offer a couple of vehicles that primarily use carbon For a lot of the components and there are lots of investments huge investments in the automotive industry to make this work But it's happening very very slowly because the manufacturing processes just aren't there It would be much easier for all of us Even if you don't have an electric vehicle if you would have lighter cars because the fuel efficiencies Would be much much better than what we have today think about this most of us drive a car If you have an average size vehicle of three thousand pounds around to move a body of maybe hundred hundred something Pounds around that's crazy if you think about it. So things should change going forward Johnny's actually has a huge program internally just to focus on the reduction of weight and We as some of our production vehicles on the higher end such as our AMG line have these Carbon fiber and completely aluminum chassis on them, but to give you an example a standard steel hood cost of production might be around Three to five hundred dollars then you get an aluminum hood seven hundred fifty a thousand dollars. You go to carbon fiber It's a twenty five hundred dollar hood So on a higher-end car you can absorb those costs if the customer is willing to pay for the cost difference and the perform for the performance they're getting but Unless you can make up for that cost difference in volume It's not really cost-effective right now to replace many of the current Lightweight technologies and I say current because there are some very advanced materials that is being worked on Carbon fibers single layer carbon fiber materials versus the multi laminate layers We have now that we think will have a place in the marketplace in the future But right now the cost efficiency just isn't there on low volume production One more question over there, and I think then we unfortunately need to come to an end Hello, my name is Chris Verma, and I am an R&D in the silicon industry Question is the biggest so is stopper for the cost of the electric vehicle is the battery lithium niobate What is the progress in that area from panel's point of view because generally battery R&D is very slow pace for last 50 year Until unless you don't come out the fast R&D in the battery cost reduction Lighter battery cost will not come down any comment in that area. It's it's a big challenge You know there are some interesting new technologies looking at Into how you can make the batteries more efficient more compact and their walls have low weight But I haven't seen the breakthrough yet You know I do anticipate that batteries probably every year would be getting better Maybe two three percent in terms of range if you buy a Chevy vault now a new model here You get I think a couple more miles than in previous years And I think the same is true for some of the newer batteries that will be deployed in the Nissan Leaf going forward So you see incremental small steps to improve the the technology in the range But nothing is yet really a breakthrough that we can project will happen within this decade I hope that will happen that would change the equation completely Companies are working on this I wish that governments would put more money into funding research projects for battery Then for some of the other aspects that we're talking about because that's going to really change the equation for all of this Well for Nissan it's two vectors. It's yes innovation and then also scale So with the increased manufacturing capacity increased scale you're going to drop the cost of the batteries But coupled out with innovation and it's starting to look a lot better So there's an interesting phenomena in the battery industry right now. They're all forward priced It causes some pain for some of the smaller manufacturers because it puts their cost structure out of bed with what? You know car companies like this are buying batteries for but it also puts the industry on a faster treadmill So if they don't bring the manufacturing costs down to the batteries they bleed more So that 50 year pattern that you talked about that was before electric vehicles We're putting significant cost pressure on lithium-ion battery packs now There's so much cost pressure. It's a do or die They have to get out of the out of out of the situation they're in or you know, it's just not a very profitable space So it should it should cause natural selection to happen Being a chemical engineer. I have a slightly different take on your question Looking at nanotitanate materials and those in cathodes, there's a lot of advances that have been made there but the there are some basic issues with The energy storage specific energy and density storage of a device that you are intrinsically trying to pull materials out of to reduce cost I mean the material is where the energy is being stored at and you've got your electron movement across the membranes and so forth I won't go into that But there are some fundamental issues with existing lithium batteries that it's just gonna you can't be on the physics You can't overcome certain physical boundaries. So we're gonna have to look at maybe some other materials or Take the existing materials and put them in different Lattices if you will but beyond that there is still the issue of even if you get a battery the size of a shoebox That can has enough energy density power density to go take a vehicle 500 miles You still have to get the energy from somewhere you still have to charge that I don't think that's the direction We need to go to just decrease the size. It's all about cost But right now we're just not seeing the cost efficiencies in these more advanced battery technologies We're seeing battery prices increase, but we're not seeing existing technology prices go down because they're having to reduce materials to do that I I'm afraid we have to come to an end I think we can say at the end of this great panel that we learned a lot that there's a lot of technology out there But it's not that easy that we just put a turbocharger and a catalytic converter to a car and just gets better Obviously there's a lot of behavioral change necessary and I think what was very clear here that really communication between the industry The government and the consumers needs to happen And I hope that this gave some direction some things to think about for all of you here Throughout this panel and really wanted to thank our esteemed panel for being here and for the audience asking great questions And being part of this panel. Thanks a lot