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Status of the Electric-Drive Industry and Recent Federal Government Investment Webinar (Text Version)

This is a text version of the video for the Status of the Electric-Drive Industry and Recent Federal Government Investment webinar presented on March 24, 2010, by Jim Francfort, Principal Investigator for the Advanced Technology Testing Activity, Idaho National Laboratory; and Don Karner, President, eTec.

LINDA BLUESTEIN: Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody, for your participation. This kicks off our first quarterly Webinar/discussion group on electric vehicle technologies.

For those of you who haven't participated in these before, DOE provides Webinars to help Clean Cities coordinators and stakeholders get objective information without having to even leave their office or their home, whichever they're at.

There are some rules of the road for this Webinar that we normally have, especially if we're going to have a big group. And the rules of the road are that it is a Clean Cities Webinar, and as such, we give preference during the Q&A to Clean Cities coordinators. If Clean Cities coordinators have exhausted their questions, then other people are free to ask questions, but please be aware that you are going to yield first to the Clean Cities coordinators on Q&A, and then we might entertain some of your questions after that.

We asked Don and Jim to do the first presentation for this quarterly Webinar, and that particular presentation should take about an hour. And if it takes a lot longer, we're going to stop them because we do want time for Q&A, and we should have about 30 minutes for that Q&A time. And I know the coordinators like to have that quite a bit, so that's important.

So now to kick it off, I'm just going to introduce Jim Francfort and Don Karner and just a little bit more about the purpose of the quarterly Webinar. It's to keep, obviously, coordinators informed about the latest in electric vehicles and battery and infrastructure technology development that would affect them from a deployment standpoint.

First is Jim Francfort, and he's a research and development engineer and a scientist at Idaho National Laboratory. He's been the principal investigator for the AVTA at Idaho National Laboratory for 18 years, and he has an undergraduate and master's degree from Idaho State University.

The speaker that he's sharing the presentation with is Don Karner, and he is the president of the Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation, and that corporation specializes in advanced fuel vehicle and infrastructure development for both on- and off-road battery, electric, ATV, PATV, and hydrogen-fueled vehicles.

Don has a bachelor's in science and electrical engineering and a Master of Science degree in nuclear engineering, and he's a graduate of the Public Utility Executive Program of the University of Michigan School of Business. So I would like the two of them to get started, and then as I said, it will last about an hour, and then you'll have a chance to ask questions afterwards. Thank you.

JIM FRANCFORT: Thanks, Linda. This is Jim. If anyone does lose their ability to collect the data from the—lose the link, the presentation is on the Web. It's at—there's no www—it's A-V-T—Apple, Victor, Tango—avt.inl.gov. If you go to the left bar, you can see "Publications," and it's listed alphabetically under Clean Cities Webinar.

Okay, so my name is Jim Francfort. I'm with the Idaho National Lab, and Don is with eTec. He's the president of eTec. We're just going to go over the—briefly what the Advanced Vehicle Testing Activity is; hit the different codes, standards, regulations, some of the OSHA UL type of stuff; the permitting process for the industry status; and some of the different battery electric drive vehicle technologies; slide off some costs per mile; a couple of slides on what people are announcing; and then smart charging and infrastructure; and I guess the question and answers.

We will be going fast. Some of the presentation has been slower through different parts, and everything is on the Web, so you can go see that. The AVTA is a DOE program, part of the Vehicle Technologies Program.

As I mentioned, INOW and eTec conduct the program for DOE direction. We have two different target audiences for our information. The first is feedback to DOE, their modeling, the OEMs, and then also for fleets who are often the early adopters of a lot of these technologies.

We do different types of testing, track, field, laboratory. It depends on the technology, how big a sample, the cost, time, and we try to publish that in manners that people can actually use to help them understand different technologies to petroleum-reduction capabilities, what the infrastructure requirements are, and then the life cycle costs and risks.

And so there's different numbers ther—I don't know where those came from. It must be a little different format or bullets. There are now ten for us. I think it's the Webinar system.

Anyway, we have done a lot of electric-drive vehicle testing. I'm not going to go through the different technologies, but we've put about 13 million miles on 1600 electric drive vehicles, almost 100 different models we've done.

Going forward, we're also going to be doing the Nissan project where we'll deploy 4700 Nissan LEAFs in five cities and about 12,000 pieces of charging infrastructure, and all of that will be instrumented, and we'll be collecting data for both the charging infrastructure and the vehicles and reporting to DOE and the public how well that infrastructure is doing. Let's switch to Don.

DON KARNER: Thanks Jim. I'm Don Karner with Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation, and I'll spend a few moments talking about regulations, codes, and standards that impact on electric vehicle fueling infrastructure. That spills over a little bit on to the vehicle, but our major focus is going to be on the fueling infrastructure itself.

So there's a system of codes and standards that provides for both safety and standardization of the electric vehicle infrastructure, and part of the good news this time around as opposed to the late '90s is that we have finally adopted a single interface to the vehicle so that one charger will work with all vehicles.

The system of codes and regulations—codes and standards—provides some mandatory safety requirements, and some of those have their origin in federal mandates and others in local statues. So it's a complex system because there's a lot of local input into the overall system, but there is a fair amount of standardization that comes from industry standards as well.

The applicable authorities that I will talk about include OSHA and National Electric Code, which is promulgated by the National Fire Protection Association; Underwriters Laboratory Standards; and the SAE, Society of Automotive Engineers.

Let me start out with OSHA, and a lot of people don't think about OSHA when you think about electrical safety, but in the OSHA regulations in 29 CFR 1910, OSHA requires certification of workplace equipment that can impact upon the safety of workers in the workplace. And they established what they call nationally recognized testing laboratories, and you may hear the term NRTL.

And these are private testing organizations that are certified to certify equipment in the workplace as safe. And so they perform independent safety testing and product certification, and each one of them is listed in the 29 CFR as having a specific scope of accreditation. So for example, some NRTLs will be certified to do electrical work; some are going to be certified to do air monitoring, and others safety related kind of activities.

The common thing among them is that each of them has a registered mark that they apply to the piece of equipment that they have certified. That mark is trademarked, and so it cannot be utilized by anybody other than that NRTL.

They certify to U.S.-based test standards, and that's a specific requirement of OSHA is that the standards that they test to have U.S. origin. So often we get the question, "Well, if something has been CE-certified for use in Europe, does that work in the U.S.?" and the answer is, "No, because they're not U.S.-based test standards."

For electrical equipment and specifically for electric vehicle supply equipment or EVSE, often we call those chargers, wall boxes, EVSE. Those terms are all pretty much synonymous. UL is the standards body that is listed for providing the certification standards for EVSE. Currently, in 29 CFR they list UL standard 2202, which is specifically for electric vehicle supply equipment. UL is currently going through an update of that, and I'll talk about that a little bit later.

The UL list is maintained by OSHA, and most people think of UL as the only certification authority, the only NRTL, but they're not. There are a number of NRTLs that are accredited by OSHA for UL 2202. You can look in 29 CFR 1910 for an exhaustive listing, but for example, besides UL, CSA is also accredited for UL 2202.

So with that then, we have established that we have a way of testing and certifying equipment through the NRTL system established by OSHA. I'm going to switch now to the discussion of the National Electric Code.

And the National Electric Code is promulgated by the NFPA, and it's adopted by the American National Standards Institute, ANSI, as a national standard. And as you would expect coming from the National Fire Protection Agency, it has a fire protection focus. But electrical is clearly a significant part of fire protection because many fires are started by electrical circuits.

The National Electric Code is revised every three years, and the current code was adopted in 2008. So one thing I might note is that there are a number of editions, obviously 2005, 2002 that are out there. One, you want to make sure that either you're in the most current or you're in the code that's been adopted by your local jurisdiction because the jurisdictions do not automatically update to the new code when it comes out.

And so since they aren't—the code is adopted by the local jurisdictions, and that's typically part of their adoption of the international building codes from the International Code Council, they have to adopt the new code every time it comes out. Sometimes that takes as many as two years, sometimes more. Some local jurisdictions may actually be more than one code update behind.

But virtually all of the jurisdictions in the U.S. have adopted the National Electric Code as part of their local building codes. And the map that you see there, all of the red states have adopted the NEC, and so it provides a very uniform method of controlling EVSE across the country.

The NEC specifically addresses electric vehicle charging systems, and it defines charging requirements for permanently installed equipment, not for vehicles. Vehicles are not covered under the NEC. And it invokes a requirement for listing or by an NRTL. And by listing, they mean basically, that the NRTL has applied their mark, that trademark symbol, to equipment that is installed in accordance with NEC 625. So a lot of times people will look for a UL mark, a CSA mark, a TUV, which is another accredited NRTL.

Key requirements in 625 are wiring methods, the EVSE coupler itself, the coupler that connects the EVSE to the vehicle, control and protection within the EVSE to make sure that the cable that connects to the vehicle is controlled and if somebody rolls over and cuts it that they're not going to get electrocuted, and the location of the EVSE both from a weather standpoint and accessibility standpoint, those types of things.

It requires that the NRTL mark be applied and the local building inspectors then enforce that by assuring that equipment that is installed has an NRTL mark. And also they look at the physical requirements, those key requirements that are listed in the bullet above—wiring methods and the coupler and the controller protection, those types of things, that in fact those have been implemented by the electrician or the contractor that's installed the EVSE.

So the EVSE itself is controlled by the UL standard, and UL develops certification standards with an electric shock focus as their main concern is safety protection. And as I previously mentioned, these are then adopted by OSHA in 29 CFR, and it kind of closes the loop then on all these requirements between OSHA, the local—the National Electric Code—and UL.

So UL 2202 is the current requirement for electric vehicle charging system equipment. UL currently has what they call a study underway. It's listed as 2594, and that will ultimately replace 2202, and it will integrate a number of requirements that are existing not only in 2202 but in other UL standards that are referenced on 2202.

So 2202 covers the construction of the equipment; protection of users against injury; make sure you can't stick your finger in it and get a shock; performance of the equipment; ratings of the components for fire and insulation; markings of the equipment, for example, instructive markings on it; as well as instruction sheets both for the user and for the installer.

And then they require manufacturing and production tests. They visit the factories where these UL-listed equipment is manufactured. And they also define what outdoor use is, what indoor use is, that type of thing. And again, I remind you that UL is just one of several NRTLs, and they are not the only ones that are qualified or certified to test equipment.

So then where does the SAE fit into all of this? I mentioned when we started that this whole system of standards between OSHA, the National Electric Code, UL, and the NRTLs addresses permanently mounted equipment, equipment installed in the home or business, not equipment on-board the vehicle.

The Society of Automotive Engineers defines standards for the vehicles, and they develop voluntary—they develop vehicle standards that are—require voluntary compliance. There is no absolute that a vehicle manufacturer has to comply, and there's no certification requirements. There is no inspection that's required. These are all self-inflicted, if you will.

The particular SAE standard that applies to electric vehicles is J1772, and that defines the physical, excuse me, the physical configuration of the plug that the vehicle has on-board, the inlet that it has on-board, the plug that plugs into it.

It's a brand new standard, it was just adopted in January of 2010. It has some various electrical ratings that you can see here. It defines the communication protocol between the vehicle and the EVSE so that they can connect. Good news is one standard—all vehicles should comply.

So we've now got EVSE, and we've got a vehicle and we actually want to install the EVSE—how do we go about that? There is a permitting process that is involved with the building codes and the local jurisdiction. It's a process for controlling building changes. It's required by the International Building Codes. It supports compliance with the code, it enforces local planning requirements, and it maintains tax base and generates some fee income for the local jurisdictions.

It is locally controlled, so it varies by jurisdiction. It can go from an online permit all the way to a very expensive planning review that has meetings and review plans and spends a great deal of time to get that done.

Inspection is required. Typically, that can either be an authorized third party or what's called the authority having jurisdiction, AHJ, which is typically the city or the county that's involved with issuing the permit.

EVSE installed in residential, that typically involves the initiative of a branch circuit. That would be a circuit breaker in your electric supply and new wire to dedicated circuits for the EVSE. It may involve a service upgrade if your service entrance doesn't have enough capability, and it may require a load calculation, which is a determination of whether your service has enough current capability to supply both your home and the new EVSE.

From a commercial standpoint, it's definitely going to require one or more additional branch circuits, definitely will require a load calculation, and most times requires a planning review if the EVSE is going to be outside. You may have to install curbs, landscaping, other aesthetic kinds of installations that are required by your local planning jurisdiction.

One of the things we really try to work on is streamlining that process. Online permitting particularly on residential is something that, as you work with your local authorities, having jurisdiction really helps with the residential permitting. And then self-inspection or third-party inspection using specific qualifications for those inspectors is a big help as well.

Let me see, I'm going to jump now from talking about the National Electric Code and UL and SAE and permitting to talking about just kind of an overall industry status. And this is really a 40,000-foot view. There is a lot of drill down that could happen on any one of the bullets that's here, but really what we are trying to do is just stimulate some discussion with—in the question session.

So the different stakeholders are involved with respect to electric transportation; certainly the auto makers are. And the kinds of concerns they have are maintaining market share, meeting emissions regulations, and meeting carbon-reduction regulations that they see on the horizon.

The government is obviously a big stakeholder as well. Energy independence, and that's typically a DOE concern, emissions requirements typically out of EPA with local jurisdictions like in California, carbon reduction is also clearly a government concern as well as job creation and maintenance of jobs and other local needs that may manifest themselves in the form of earmarks or congressionally mandated requirements.

Electric utilities are clearly stakeholders in this. They become the fuel supplier for electric transportation, so they are interested in impacts on their generation and distribution resources as well as this is the potential for selling more of their product, which is energy.

There is a lot of legislation that is currently swimming around in Washington and in some of the states that can and potentially will impact on electric transportation. At the federal level, all of the greenhouse gas, the cap and trade kinds of regulations ultimately will have an impact on electric transportation. It's difficult to say whether that will be positive or negative, and it obviously depends on the legislation.

The stimulus, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, has had a huge impact on electric transportation with funding of battery manufacturing, funding of other research, and funding of infrastructure development. The Department of Energy budget is reviewed on an annual basis, and DOE has long been a supporter of electric transportation through its research and development programs as well as through the Clean Cities program, which we're all involved with.

Other congressionally directed legislation, there is the e-Drive bill, which is looking at postal service vehicles, Advanced Vehicle Technology Act, SmartGrid and Energy Independence Act, and a Senate energy bill are currently under consideration in Congress. I would encourage you to take a look on the Web, look at those, and see how they might impact your particular area of the country.

States, California—California is obviously always very active with issues that involve transportation. Currently, the California Public Utility Commission is trying to make a determination of whether people that—companies that install electric vehicle charge infrastructure are energy resellers, electricity resellers and whether they need to be licensed to do such essentially as electric utilities. Also, the State of Washington is looking at how they can recover road taxes that will be lost as they transfer from gasoline to electric fuel.

Finally, regulations that impact on the industry, environmental protection, fuel economy regulations, have a huge impact as corporate average fuel economy goes up electric transportation looks very attractive to the auto makers, and we'll see a big push to improve Cap A by selling electric vehicles. Battery recycle is something that will certainly be coming as more batteries get out into the environment.

On the energy side, SmartGrid integration, a great deal of money is being spent on SmartGrid, and electric transportation energy will certainly be a part of that as well as utility resource planning.

And finally from a tax standpoint, vehicle credits, there are currently credits available for electric transportation. We already talked about the road tax recovery—that's a potential issue. And as carbon legislation comes in, electric vehicles should potentially be a source of carbon credits. So with that, I'll turn it back to Jim and let Jim talk a little bit about all the different vehicle technologies.

JIM FRANCFORT: First, I want to—I'm making some assumptions that some of the audience is not that familiar with some of the technologies. I apologize if I'm boring anyone, but battery electrics is just a single battery for your battery power, your electric power. It will power one or more electric motors depending on how the vehicle is set up. And that's all going to come from somewhere off-board the vehicle—mostly power versus the electric grid.

And so you can argue that the—while the vehicle has zero-based emissions unless you're using a renewable—whether it's nuclear, wind, you know, some non-carbon source, solar—you're going to have emissions displaced somewhere else.

It does do regenerative braking. We are seeing some vehicles—about 80% of the energy is recovered during regenerative braking, and when EVSE accesses the motor—accesses the generator. And you've got the Nissan, the Mitsubishi, the BMW either out or coming shortly, and then you have the Tesla vehicle also.

The advantages: no vehicle-based emissions, domestically produced fuel—giant issue there—energy security, petroleum reduction. And some folks believe your overall electricity costs may go down because you'll be charging off peak at night, so your plant utilization or capacity factor will go up, and so they have more kilowatt hours to write off those capital costs of the plant. Battery electrics—electric fuel is always lower cost than gasoline as it is certainly now, and I'll get into that a little bit more later.

The disadvantages: there's always a question of charging infrastructure, that whole range anxiety thing, and the battery improvements—there still needs to be long-term battery improvements, and there is not a lot of factual history on how these batteries will do 10 or 15 years after they're put into a vehicle. And that's something that the OEMs are faced with is trying to make a decision on a warranty that's 10 or 15 years in the future will have a potential impact.

So the extended range EDs—you do have internal combustion engine battery. Generally, the battery only will power the electric motors. The internal combustion engine will charge the battery, and it will operate in all-electric mode. And then when the battery is depleted, the gas engine comes on, and it charges the battery, which turns these vehicles' wheels. It also does regen. You have to plug it into the grid to fully recharge and balance the propulsion battery.

The Volt, which will be out sometime this fall, late winter, will be the newest EREV. We did test the Kangoo back in 2003, which was an early EREV and similar to the PHEVs for their challenges.

The PHEVs, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, again you have that on-board battery internal combustion engine. Depending on the design, it could be series or parallel. You could have an electric motor transmission that's providing propulsion, and depending on the design, the internal combustion engine may charge the battery.

If you have a two-battery setup, sometimes it won't, and so you use the grid to balance the pack except regen braking. But it may only go into a hybrid battery if it's a two-battery configuration. It's believed that most—going forward—most of the designs will be a single battery.

High motion has done the most conversions to date, about 750. They actually keep the Prius battery and add a second mule battery or PHEV battery, and that can only be charged by plugging into the grid. Ford, Chrysler brand, most of the Japanese—you're hearing different plans for either large deployments or small deployments and demonstrations.

Some of the things we talked about with PHEVs are the different modes they can operate in so charge sustaining. You start off with no energy in the PHEV battery pack when you begin your trip, so you sustain that basically zero state of charge.

Charge depleting, you have energy in the PHEV battery pack to help with electric propulsion both at the beginning of the trip and at the end of the trip. And then the mixed mode is when you have energy in the pack at the start of a trip but the battery, the PHEV battery is fully depleted before the trip ends.

And electric propulsion can either be all electric. Sometimes it's limited by speed or acceleration and then you can also have electric assist where both the gas engine and the electric battery are pushing the vehicle. In one of the PHEV designs, the High Motion, has eight different operating modes. It can be just the PHEV battery, just the PHEV battery, a combination of the two, internal combustion with one or both or by itself and so forth. And that makes testing really a challenge how you accurately test some of these vehicles.

So PHEVs, the advantages, reduced fuel consumption, reduced emissions, smaller packs to pay for versus an all electric vehicle, the gasoline infrastructure exists, minimal electric changes in that a lot of this you can do with existing at home because you have the gas engine that will still move the vehicle. And that at home charging allows for low cost, fuel cost, hopefully you will be charging off peak.

Disadvantages, you've got the two power trains which brings cost, complexity, and weight, because you have two power trains you're going to have higher initial cost, capital cost.

We're seeing a lot of drivers—we have got about 1-1/2 million miles of PHEV data. We're seeing about half the miles and half the trips the vehicle has no energy in the pack but the vehicle still runs. And then component—the component industry is still pretty early in development.

Power grids, you have usually about a 1.2, 1.1 or so kilowatt hour pack and you've got the internal combustion engine. Use your parallel design or some will see you may have I think it's the Highlander, the Lexus has a separate electric motor on a different axle. And then there's no off-board charging. The battery is charged solely by the internal combustion engine and regen braking. And I think about all the OEMs either have a hybrid out there or they will be doing some in the next year or two.

Advantages of hybrids, again reduced fuel cost, reduced petroleum use, reduced vehicle emissions, regen, using the existing gas infrastructure solely, you don't have to worry about range anxiety or into the grid.

Disadvantages, again potentially is the two power trains. While we—there are about a million something hybrids out there, compared to the 240 million or 260 million internal combustion engines out there the hybrid components are still fairly low production and you do have usually the higher cost of the hybrid system.

Briefly the batteries, lead acid, most—the early to mid 90s all the EDs were using lead acid batteries. They are still used quite a bit in the industry where a situation like that added weight is actually a good thing for ballasts.

There was some limited cycle life issues in the 90s for new batteries. New lead acid there has been different looks at carbon and manufacturing processes and there's been some research and demonstrations that suggest 100,000 miles potentially out of lead acid batteries. And you get to the trade off where you may not have the ultimate life of a lithium but if it's a significantly lower cost maybe you can afford to put two lead acid batteries in there for the life of a lithium battery. It has to be seen.

Nickel-metal hydride, we're seeing 5 million miles with minimal failures on the hybrids, 500,000 cycle life. It's operated from about 50% to 70% state of charge roughly and that's a really nice, easy on a battery.

Lithium, that's what everyone is looking at. You know, I mentioned earlier there's questions about life because we just don't know what they're going to do over the next 10 or 15 years in a vehicle that may be operating at 40 below in Idaho or 120 degrees in Phoenix. And are they all going to be 100% discharged, 20% discharged? There's a lot of knowledge still needed and they're working hard on that research and a lot of financial Recovery Act money went into that.

So cost. It looks like the costs are—I've made some assumptions here and they're listed below in the notes. Internal combustion engine, that came out of a vehicle model out of Edmunds. The hybrid electric came out of another Edmunds.com, that's the Prius. The battery electric, I kind of a guesstimated at that. The PHEV conversion, that's for the cost of a Prius plus a conversion pack, about $12,000.

And I tried to use some real world guess numbers that we're seeing and I used the 10 cents a mile for electric costs. Gasoline costs I used $2.75 a gallon when I did this two weeks ago. Maybe now it should be $3, we'll see.

But anyways, it's a cost per mile for the different fuels. And then I took the capital cost per mile also and spread that out over 150,000 miles with no financing costs assumed. And so the internal combustion engine—and these do not include any maintenance costs.

There's folks, a lot of people believe that we'll see less, significantly less maintenance costs with the battery electrics because you're not doing belts and coolants, the regen braking will help with brake life. But we have no historical data on that so I chose not to include any maintenance costs.

So the internal combustion engines, you're about 25, 26 cents a mile for the vehicle and fuel. The hybrids, 21 cents. The battery electrics, a little bit of guesstimating there again on the capital cost and also a little bit on the fuel efficiency, the energy efficiency, but I think about 26 cents a mile. And then the PHEV conversions to the larger capital costs, about 28 cents, 28-1/2 cents per mile.

Next slide, I'm not going to go through all these, the next three slides, but I've gotten—most of this came from EDTA Website listed on the bottom. There has been a lot of announcements by OEMs, domestic, foreign, and converters and small builders about when the vehicles will be out. There are a couple of Subarus in New York. We know Chrysler is going to be doing some Rams, plug-in Rams actually. I think they're going to do some Smart EVs.

Dezen has built—I haven't seen the full battery ones yet and of course the Chinese offering Tesla as their own vehicle as well as talking to Daimler about a smart car. BMW I think was about 450 on the east coast and California and some of the different other announcements that are coming out there.

We know the LEAFs are coming in I think December, and I believe—well I'm not a battery electric, we know the Volts will be out sometime between September and December. Ford and everyone else just making more announcements going down the road. So obviously all the OEMs are moving towards electric drive transportation as Don mentioned.

Plug-ins, Fisker, they have announced a vehicle. I don't know if they're going to make that 2010, I think it will be 2011. Saturn I believe sometime this year they'll have a demo on the View. Toyota we know they're looking at doing some this year. I mentioned the Volt already and I'm not going to keep going but all of the others are also looking at battery—or excuse me, plug-in vehicles also.

So vehicle selections. We're looking at, you know, everyone wants to be an early adopter of electric drive vehicles. And the conversion companies are out there, they don't have—they're not dealing with some of the warranty issues at the OEMs and so maybe they've got the freedom to put vehicles out there a little bit earlier. But I would—if I was a fleet I would ask you is this car certified or EPA certified or has it received an exemption for emissions.

Crafts testing I think is a giant, giant issue. And is it FMVSS, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard certified. I think you have an obligation to make sure you're putting your folks in safe vehicles. Has the vehicle been made available independent testing to our program or others outside of the manufacturer converter themselves?

One of the converters who will remain nameless for a plug-in converter was at a conference. I heard him explaining that they don't need to test, crash test the vehicle because the 180 pound lithium battery pack was just another piece of luggage in the trunk. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

And so I think it's important to get a vehicle that matches the actual range requirements. We are seeing differences especially with the plug-ins in Alberta, Canada, we have some vehicles in Arizona. What's the drain, what's the passenger requirements. You can't make the vehicle fit the emissions, the emission has to fit the vehicle. And I would always make sure you put in—if it's electric fueling you need to put your infrastructure in first before you take the liberty of the vehicle.

Just quick two terms here, fast charge. It's not—as I mentioned not definitively defined. You have a large battery pack, a 30 kilowatt hour battery pack that's going to take longer to recharge than a 10 kilowatt hour battery pack. But generally it's about 50% recharged of capacity in about 10, 15 minutes. And for the larger packs obviously you need higher level charging at 440 volt for higher levels.

EVSE, Don touched on this earlier also. We all talk about putting chargers in homes. Well for Level 2 charging like you're going to see on the Volt and the LEAF, those charges are on-board the vehicle. That piece of equipment with the cord and the connector and plug is electric vehicle supply equipment, not the charger on the wall of your garage or maybe on a pedestal at your fleet. So we're going to switch back to Don, Slide 32 for smart charging.

DON KARNER: Thanks Jim. And I'm going to spend a few minutes just reviewing charging. And we hear a lot about smart charging and trying to find what that is. And there's not a simple definition so we'll start with just what I guess the opposite of smart would be stupid charging and I've call it stand-alone here where the charger basically has no communication with anything other than the vehicle.

There are some features that can be incorporated in that charger to help it be a little bit smart. It can track time of day if there is an internal clock in the charger so that you can program it to charge off peak.

What this allows you to do is to come in at—when you return home at 5:00 let's say or your fleet car returns to its overnight parking spot at 5:00 and plugs in. and rather than starting to charge then, the charger can delay that charging to start later hopefully at an off peak period where it has less impact on the grid and probably more importantly has a lower cost of energy.

It can also stagger the charge to where you can say give me a little bit of charge now and then charge the rest overnight. All of this is preprogrammed and is dependent upon the charger having a clock in it. So I guess the first step in charging is to actually—to have some kind of timer and the second step would actually be to have a clock that you can program time of day.

To really become smart the charger needs to have some kind of an interface with the electric utility, with the grid so that the charger knows what times are off peak, what times are peak.

In the U.S. we currently don't have real time rates for electricity but certainly that's a situation that we're moving to and in other parts of the world they in fact do have real time rates where that cost of electricity is set on a real time basis.

With an interface between the charger and the grid, those rates can be downloaded into the charger and the charger can then implement user preferences to charge when energy is available below a certain cost or at a certain time if only time of use rates are available which are fairly common in the U.S. where electricity is cheaper at night than it is during the day. That can be implemented as well.

And probably most importantly with respect to this smart grid interface, the charger can receive a signal from the utility that says either the grid is at a critical peak or there's a problem in the distribution system.

And one of the things utilities are really looking hard at is what they term clustering where there may be several electric vehicles that are all charging in one confined area, that could be residential, it could be commercial, and it's actually overloading a distribution transformer or a distribution feeder, the very local parts of the utility facilities. And that's just as critical an issue as overloading the grid.

So giving the utility the ability to interrupt demand is—interrupt charging is the significant improvement in grading smarts if you will in the charger.

Moving on then, networking the charger with other chargers is kind of the next level of education or intelligence in the charger. Providing Web portal that allows you to set preferences on the Web rather than having to stand in front of the charger and program it. Having mobile applications so that your smart phone, your iPhone or your BlackBerry can monitor what's happening with your charge, actually change the status of your charge if you'd like.

A home area network interface. If you have a controller in the home that's controlling load, you would like probably the single largest use—energy user in your home to be able to interface with that.

And finally interface with other network chargers so that you can understand what the status is of a charger that you might like to go to charge. You can potentially make a reservation on that charger so that if you're going to lunch and you'd like to charge you can reserve a spot at your favorite restaurant and assure yourself that you can get a charge.

JIM FRANCFORT: Switching back to Jim again, just some thoughts on if you are installing charging infrastructure and you don't know what vehicle you're installing it for. You know, it's much less expensive to install it in new construction than a retrofit. I would put the 240 volt Level 2 charging. You've got to do 1722, it's got to be all the UL, National Electric code just for liability and safety requirements. When possible, match the infrastructure to the vehicle if you know what you're getting.

I think Level 1, 120 volt is maybe only suitable for the smallest PHEV batteries or possibly emergency charging if you take a cardiogram off-house of something.

Level 2, 240 volt, that's going to be I think the minimum for battery electric vehicles because of the pure kilowatt hours. If you look and you say you want to put, you know, 20, 24 kilowatt hours on a vehicle, if you're doing it Level 1 you're only going to do about 1.2 kilowatts per hour and for 24 kilowatts you're looking at 20 hours of charging. That's probably not going to be acceptable most of the time. Going back to Don.

DON KARNER: Thanks Jim. And we'd like to just finish with some discussions about if you're looking at a vehicle, an electric vehicle in particular, have a fleet that you'd like to apply that vehicle in, what are some of the considerations that you want to give to assure that it's going to be a successful application? Because no one wants to put an electric vehicle or any advanced fuel vehicle in an application where it's going to fail.

So one of the most critical things is to make sure that the vehicle emission fits within the vehicle's capability. And Jim talked about this earlier that you can't adjust the vehicle to fit the emission, you have to fit the emission to the vehicle.

So as you look at the vehicle that you're potentially going to purchase, look at the configuration of it. Do you need a two passenger vehicle, is that enough? Is it four passenger, five passenger, six passenger? What kind of luggage or payload does it need to carry?

Does it have a payload rating that would support what you need? Particularly conversion vehicles, as battery weight is added the payload of the vehicle goes down. Also the space that's available in the boot or the back of the vehicle tends to be reduced. And you may have users that are unhappy because they can't get all of the equipment or whatever the payload is that they want into it.

Range is obviously a significant issue. You want to make sure that day in and day out the vehicle is going to be able to meet the range requirement. The vehicle is going to have less range in cold weather. It may have problems charging in very hot weather and not start with a full state of charge.

These are issues that you want to make sure you're conservatively selecting a vehicle with respect to range. Don't select a vehicle that you're at the outer edge of its capability every day because there will be days where the vehicle won't make it.

How much time does it need to charge? You charge at Level 1 and it takes 14 hours to charge. One of the issues that BMW had when they first put the Mini out was that it first came out, they only had Level 1 charging available. A number of reasons for that, that got immediately corrected. But at Level 1 the Mini takes almost a day to charge. So you drive it one day, you charge it the next, you drive it the next day. That's obviously not going to be acceptable to folks.

What's the repeatability of emission? If one day you drive the vehicle 2 miles, the next day 3 miles, and the next day 23 miles, that's typically going to be a problem for an electric vehicle. You'd like to make sure that you know what the emission is going to be, you know that it's always going to be within the capability of the vehicle.

And then accountability. I'll talk about operator trading and jump down to that. It's important that the person driving the vehicle knows how to drive the vehicle, knows what its limitations are. And we found that the best applications are not ones where the vehicle is essentially in a pool that anybody can jump in and drive the vehicle.

It's you're better off having it assigned to someone so that they know what the range requirements are, they know what the vehicle range is, they know how to use the charge infrastructure, and they know what to do if they get in trouble, how to deal with roadside assistance.

Finally you want to make sure that you have appropriate procedures in your fleet that for vehicle maintenance. You'd have technicians that are qualified and certified or you have made arrangements for an outside contractor to do that particularly as they are related to electrical service. That it's clear to everyone what to do if they run out of energy, if they get into a situation where they need roadside assistance. And you need people trained in vehicle recovery to make sure that the vehicle is recovered properly.

And finally you need to make sure that you have sufficient infrastructure. What kind of infrastructure you want, where you're going to put it, when it's going to be installed. It's important that the infrastructure be installed before the vehicle arrives. And how you're going to deal with all that, how you work your way through permitting, how you get the electrical supply there.

And finally that there are significant amounts of information made available to your fleet about the vehicle, about what its capabilities are, about what the expectations are for its use.

JIM FRANCFORT: So I'm going to— this is Jim. I want to, for Don and I, thank Lee Slazack who funds this and makes this work possible and also Linda and the rest of the Clean Cities Coalition program leaders for giving us the opportunity to present. The Website is there. There's about 400 or 500 testing sheets, fact sheets. We joke we're trying to confuse people with facts but we actually are. We just present the numbers. We're independent of the technologies.

And then just acknowledge where the information came from, personal, DOE, eTec, and EDTA provided some of this information. And I guess like I said, the presentation is on the Web, you can go to that Website, adt.inl.gov, go to the left bar for Publications and it's like for Claim Cities presentations or some are there actually. Linda?

LINDA BLUESTEIN: Hi yes, thank you very much for this very extensive overview of what Clean Cities Coalitions and others need to know about setting up electric vehicle programs.

It was very instructive, and I think you touched on a lot of the areas that we were hoping you'd touch on in terms of, you know, codes and standards—what are the issues with those, how to decide how to position a fleet and the infrastructure, and, you know, looking ahead to deploying these technologies as the vehicles are introduced across the country by the auto manufacturers.

We are planning to continue this series of quarterly sessions and we will set—before we get started with the Q&A which we have actually a little extra time for, I just want to assure everybody that we will be thinking about the questions that you ask during the Q&A. And again coordinators have preference during this time so please hold your questions if you're not a Clean Cities coordinator.

But we will be thinking about questions you're asking and also if you want to send me input about things, items that you would like highlighted in future sessions. The idea of this that we discussed with Lee Slazack and Jim Francfort and Don Karner and others that we're working with is to do this quarterly Webinar and eventually have some online training on the Clean Cities University that everyone can access to highlight some of these technologies.

And also in addition to that we would like to eventually maybe even provide for Clean Cities coordinators and perhaps even some stakeholders some onsite training as well. So with that I'd like to get started with Q&A. Sandra, can you take that part or the operator?

SANDRA: Operator, if we can go ahead and open up the lines to bring in questions from folks?

COORDINATOR: Yes, ma'am, and again you wanted the coordinators to ask questions first? Is that correct?

LINDA BLUESTEIN: Yes, please.

COORDINATOR: Okay if you are a coordinator and would like to ask a question please press star 1. Remember to unmute your line and record your first and last name when prompted and to withdraw the question you may press star 2. Again this is for the coordinators. Press star 1 if you would like to ask a question. One moment please for the first question.

JIM FRANCFORT: Don we must have done a really good job.

SANDRA: This is Sandra from ML. I have a couple of questions that were posted on mine if I can go ahead and read those out to get us started and then maybe some other questions will come in.

One is from Pamela Burns, and she asked —she mentioned I know that DOE mentioned at one point they're getting the EV portion of AFDC. Do you know when this will be completed?

DON KARNER: Could you read the question once more? We kind of missed that.

SANDRA: Sure. I know that DOE mentioned at one point that they were updating the EV portion of the AFDC. Do you know when this will be completed?

JIM FRANCFORT: Oh that's—I think that's not towards us I don't think is it?

SANDRA: Yeah that's actually more on our end of things. We're currently working on it. I don't know what the EPA is on it but it is currently in development and redevelopment. So we'll keep everyone posted as the changes and redesign is done to the EV portion of the AFDC. But it is something that is currently being worked on.

Okay I'm actually getting another one in here. Are there any legislative proposals to extend the alternative fuel infrastructure tax credit beyond the end of this year? And this comes in from Mike Wallace.

JIM FRANCFORT: I don't— do you have—I have no idea.

DON KARNER: Yeah I'm not aware of anything that is out there right now. It might be in the Senate Energy Bill, I have not gone through that extensively. That would be a good question for us to follow up on though.

SANDRA: Yeah that sounds good, and we can also follow up as well and see what information is out there on that in particular. And I'm showing one more here from Linda Benevidas. Have you done any CO2 reduction calculations in addition to the excellent cost comparison tables?

JIM FRANCFORT: We have not. That gets more into the modeling aspects. We are more focused on the petroleum reduction. I know there are some models out there. This GREET, I believe out of Argonne, GREET I believe is one of the models. I think there's a whole program at Argonne that looks at that. And NREL may also have done some modeling on that but we're focused much more on just the testing and producing the testing results.

SANDRA: Great, and then I have one more here from Lee Kranas. What activity is there related to certification of a Level 3 plug? I assume it will be a DC plug.

DON KARNER: That is currently being reviewed by the SAE J1772 committee and they are looking at a variety of different options. There is a standard that has been proposed that is currently used by the Nissan LEAF, the Mitsubishi i MiEV, the Subaru, and it's basically sourced from Japan. It's a JARI, J-A-R-I, standard that is used extensively in Japan.

That has been put before the SAE committee and they are in the midst of deliberations on what approach to take. You know, the committee was able to come to agreement on a single Level 2 standard so that's—Level 2 would be passing AC on-board the vehicle. That standard goes up to 80 amps. I think most of the EVSE suppliers are looking at 40 amp and below EVSE just because of the difficulty of finding a spare 80 amps in someone's electric service.

So the Level 3, it would be anticipated to be a DC standard so that there would be a direct connection between the charger that the off-board Level 3 fast charger and the vehicle. The standard would include both the physical configuration of the plug and receptacle or the coupler as it's termed and the communication protocol for the vehicle to tell the off-board charger what voltage and current it's looking for.

So the SAE committee, the chairman I think has indicated that he thinks it's going to be at least another year to 18 months before they are able to make a decision on a standard.

DENNIS SMITH: Okay this is Dennis Smith at DOE headquarters. If I could go back to the previous question on the CO2 emissions from these kinds of vehicles and then also bridges into updating some of our Websites.

We want to make sure everybody was aware that Congress did pass some requirements that there is going to be some new labeling for these vehicles just like everybody is familiar with the fuel economy labeling and it's on all the new vehicles. It's going to be modifying that so that the greenhouse gas type emissions will be labeled and tracked in some fashion on that.

In fact the Oak Ridge National Lab folks and I have a call this afternoon with the Federal Trade Commission and with EPA and DOT to talk about exactly what that needs to be and at some point in time all of that will shake out. But I just wanted you to be aware they're working now on what the guidelines are.

Some of, you know, they were unsure as to exactly what needed to be on the label, exactly what the test procedures would be on how you come up with those numbers. It's not near as easy as the old just fuel economy numbers with the regular vehicle. So we are working on that and kind of stay tuned. We'll try to keep you informed.

SHARON: This is Sharon Shade from DOE as well. Also one thing to note is that the GREET is life cycle so it does include manufacturing and also is customizable for what electricity mix you have. So depending on the electricity mix that's obviously going to affect your greenhouse gas emissions.

COORDINATOR: So would you like to take the questions from the phone at this time?

LINDA BLUESTEIN: Yes please, let's go ahead and do that. The first question comes from Bill Aker. Your line is open.

BILL AKER: Yeah, my question is the source of the lithium to produce the batteries. Is it domestic and where?

JIM FRANCFORT: Well I'm—I know Nevada has some having had a friend that was a geologist at a lithium mine down there. I believe China is another area that will be coming from, Chile, I think Bolivia, South America. While not domestic we're also not involved in hostile Middle Eastern environment.

BILL AKER: Thank you.

JIM FRANCFORT: You're welcome.

COORDINATOR: And our next question comes from Frances Vogel. Your line is open.

FRANCES VOGEL: Hi, Sandra, I would just ask this to a written question and it's namely what are the extent of interagency efforts to date between what you're doing and also with for example DOT and other relevant federal agencies?

JIM FRANCFORT: You know, and I can—this is Jim. I can only really address that more at my level. I know more coordination is going on at higher levels. But we work with post office, we work with MI testing, the 500 vehicles they deployed in late 1990s, we'll also have worked with the EPA in both the reasons why the fuel economy measurements were changed two years ago. We also provide vehicles EPA at end of life. They purchase them for their own testing.

I'm trying to think of who else we've worked with. We provided technical expertise to the National Science Foundation, a lot of information to the different park services, Park Service.

I probably want to say a half dozen of their parks we've gone out and looked at problems with everything from electric buses to batteries, thermal anomalies of batteries. So there has been—at certainly my level I think about a half dozen different federal agencies we've supported with technical expertise.

FRANCES VOGEL: All right, thanks, Jim.

COORDINATOR: And our next question comes from Sue Capolis. Your line is open.

SUE CAPOLIS: Yeah, my question was a little bit like the question about the lithium. I'm wondering where the batteries are manufactured and if not in the U.S. is there a move to start manufacturing them in the U.S.?

JIM FRANCFORT: Yeah DOE has been supporting that quite a bit in research and recently the Recovery Act funding. I believe it provided about $2.4 billion or $2.6 billion to do battery manufacturing, domestic battery manufacturing. And it's not just domestic companies, you have Nissan is one that will be building a battery plant in Tennessee.

But the domestic manufacturers both automobile and battery manufacturers are receiving funding. I think there's also a loan program to support that development too. Currently most of the batteries we're seeing are non-domestic but the DOE is putting a lot of effort into building that domestic industry.

LINDA BLUESTEIN: Don is there any way that you can talk a little bit about the eTec project that you're working on? This is Linda Bluestein at DOE headquarters. And I know that it's early days but could you maybe describe where you are with it?

DON KARNER: Sure I'd be happy to. The basic scope of the project—oops. Did I step on somebody? Okay, Linda, the basic scope of the project is to develop a mature charge infrastructure and vehicle concentration in five market areas and then to study that for the purpose of understanding the best way to deploy infrastructure and how to optimize those infrastructure resources so that for the next 50 or the next 500 cities we do the infrastructure development in the most efficient way possible.

So our market areas include Seattle and surrounding communities, Portland, Eugene and the surrounding communities there, San Diego, Phoenix and Tucson in Arizona, and then three cities in Tennessee, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Knoxville. And we'll nominally deploy 1000 vehicles in each of those areas.

Those vehicles are Nissan LEAFs, and they will be purchased by individuals and fleets. And then those individuals and fleets will be enticed, if you will, to join our project with us offering them that we would install the infrastructure and the overnight location of the vehicles so the fleet where the vehicle overnights, if it's a retail sale at the residence of the purchaser. We'll install EVSE at no cost to them in exchange for them providing data to us over the duration of the project.

That data comes through the EVSE. The EVSE is Internet connected and that information flows automatically to us. But we also will periodically ask the participants a survey questions and that type of thing. So there is a definite participation by them.

The data goes to Idaho and is data based at the Idaho National Lab and then Idaho prepares reports that come back to the users. So one of the benefits is to be able to get reports on how you're using the vehicle, how efficiently that is, what your utilization is, etc.

And in addition to the residential infrastructure we're also installing infrastructure in commercial space. And this is the important part of this because we want people to be able to drive their vehicles more than just if it's 100 mile range vehicle, just out 50 miles and back 50 miles and charge it at night.

We certainly like the majority of their energy to be transferred at night off peak but if we're going to achieve substantial penetration of electric vehicles into the market we're going to have to offer people places to charge away from home. And this commercial—these commercial chargers are located at where people work, where they're entertained, where they shop. So stores, employer parking lots, parking garages, those kinds of locations.

And we'll install 5500 of those across the five cities. And they also will be Internet connected so we'll understand when people are charging, who's charging. We also get data from the vehicle through the Telematic system on the vehicle. That's the system that supplies the on-board navigation.

So all of this data then goes to Idaho and we basically have a concentration of vehicles and chargers in an area that lets us see how the infrastructure is utilized, what chargers are getting the most use, and why are they getting used. What chargers are not getting used and again why so that we can transfer that knowledge to other cities as they build out their infrastructure. They can understand where the best places are to put chargers.

We'll also be installing a fast charge infrastructure because the 4700 leased vehicles that participate with us will be fast charge enabled. And we'll put those fast chargers on a grid within the city so that you're never more than a few miles away from a fast charger.

We'll also electrify transportation corridors so for example between Seattle and Portland, between Phoenix and Tucson, between the cities in Tennessee we will put fast chargers along the highways so that people can go from one developed infrastructure area to another using the fast chargers.

We have some university partners. Ohio State and UC Davis is to help us analyze some of the data to understand again why people are utilizing chargers, where the best locations are for chargers. And then what business models will work for charging.

Ultimately, we realize that chargers that are located in commercial space have to make business sense to the charger host. If a store is going to put a charger in their parking lot it has to be because there is an economic benefit to the store. Government can prime the pump if you will for putting charging in but ultimately if this charge infrastructure is going to deploy across the country it will need to make business sense to the charger host.

So what we'll be studying over the study period of the charger, or the project rather—it extends through December of 2012—is what kinds of business models, how can we create value for the commercial charger host, and gather the data that helps demonstrate that and put forth some business models that hopefully at the end of the project will show the way that electric vehicle infrastructure can deploy virally because it makes business sense to the charger host. So that's kind of a thumbnail. Jim do you want to add anything?

JIM FRANCFORT: I was just going to add a couple of things that we'll look at. When vehicles—we'll be able to tell where vehicles stop and for how long to determine whether or not charge infrastructure was there, if someone chose not to charge or maybe we're seeing travel patterns that suggest the charger should have been put in different locations.

We'll also look at over time will people go longer distances between charges. Perhaps they become more familiar with the vehicle or they become more familiar with the infrastructure. So maybe, you know, in the beginning people only to go to a 60% state of charge but toward the end maybe they're going to a 30% state of charge because they know they can get that fast charge or a Level 2 charger somewhere at a commercial location.

LINDA BLUESTEIN: When will any of these reports be available to the public?

JIM FRANCFORT: Well we already have people asking for the results even though we haven't started the deployment yet. We're trying to explain that, you know, we need some time. We're planning on quarterly reporting and so I think the first vehicle deployments are in January so I would think the end of the first quarter of next year will at least be the start of the summary reports.

We are working with some data now, test data, to make sure our systems are going to do this. We have collected data on electric vehicles going back to the mid 90s. I think we had about 300 data loggers in electrics. Currently we have about 230 or 240 PHEVs with data loggers. And so we've been working more recently for like the last two years in some of these systems. And we currently kick a couple hundred reports each month instead of quarterly through all the operators of the vehicles.

DON KARNER: And currently in the project right now we are basically working in the market areas that I mentioned, working with the stakeholders there to develop a roadmap as to where with the knowledge we have today we think we should be putting infrastructure.

Dealing with soft infrastructure issues like streamlining the permitting processes, dealing with educating first responders so that there's no worries about how to respond to an electric vehicle that's been in an accident, trying to develop roadside assistance and roadside services with folks like AAA to make sure they understand how to deal with a vehicle in distress and the appropriate way to handle the vehicle.

So all of that is being implemented in the market areas now. We'll begin to actually install infrastructure in commercial space in the fourth quarter of this year.

And then as Jim mentioned the first vehicles show up in December in small quantities and things really get in full swing in January of next year and we'll begin deploying vehicles, collecting data because the data comes to us via the Internet from all of the EVSE and then Jim will be able to issue reports.

LINDA BLUESTEIN: I guess I have another question for you guys, and that is the numbers of electric, battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, just based on your education and what you know and what you've heard so far, if you were betting people in the year 2020, what percentage or what amount of our total vehicle population would be either one of those types of vehicles?

JIM FRANCFORT: In 2020 you said?

LINDA BLUESTEIN: Yeah.

JIM FRANCFORT: So the reality is we have about 250 million vehicles, light duty vehicles out there. We are currently only replacing around 10 million a year and so you figure replacement rate is out there 20, 25 years. And honestly, you know, the percent of hybrids has been in the single digits. Likely the percent of annual sales of electrics will also be in the single digits. So I think in 10 years it's not going to be a large number. That's just the reality because of replacement rates.

Having said that, you know, there is a lot of externalities that will impact the adoption of electric vehicles that range from government—everything from government incentives to potential government mandates. And frankly the price of oil. You know, for better or for worse the reality is the higher the price of petroleum and gasoline the better and better the life cycle costs are for electrics.

You can make the argument now that the life cycle cost for electrics will given the batteries last 10 or 15 years, and that's an assumption, but you can argue now that the life cycle costs are lower for electricity, electric vehicles but the capital costs are higher.

And unfortunately myself like most of us, we look at capital costs first and then we have to figure out, you know, are we going to keep a vehicle for X period of years and get that lower life cycle cost.

So, you know, a lot of factors I think have to come into play before we see electric—all electric vehicles are the majority of vehicles. But I do anticipate more and more vehicles will have at least hybrid type of systems where you have at least a partial electrification of the vehicle.

LINDA BLUESTEIN: Sandra, are there any more questions from coordinators?

SANDRA: Are there any more on the line Operator?

COORDINATOR: Yes there are a couple of questions.

SANDRA: Okay.

COORDINATOR: Your next question comes from Leah Boggs. Your line is open.

LEAH BOGGS: Yes, I wanted to know if the speakers could give some stats for local governments to take to get ready for electric charging infrastructure. The conversation or the discussion that you just answered a minute ago about the eTec and Nissan project, we have had a presentation by Nissan to the coordinators of our coalition which are mainly made up of the 21 local government jurisdictions in the metropolitan Washington region saying that they're interested in coming to the DC region.

And we just wanted to know what types of stats would you recommend for a region such as the DC area where the local governments are very much interconnected where they can start getting their infrastructure ready. I mean, purchasing the vehicles is pretty much a no brainer but they have a lot of questions about the infrastructure.

DON KARNER: Sure. You know, it can range over a wide spectrum. You know, some simple things are looking at the permitting process. And I know that's one that certainly for the vehicle manufacturers is high on their list because they want to be sure that when someone buys a vehicle that they can promptly get infrastructure installed.

That's one that local government can look at and see how they can streamline that. And that can range all the way up then to a much more sophisticated, holistic look at how to approach getting EV ready in a particular city.

For the EV project we do what we call a micro climate where we go into the city or actually the region and we try and identify the stakeholders and obviously that's government, it's the electric utilities, as well as it's business, large employers, others that are impacted upon by transportation costs and transportation technologies. And then help work with them to coordinate some of these issues to deal with permitting, to deal with roadside assistance, to deal with all these different issues.

And then to look at essentially developing a roadmap that kind of reflects the community's desire to bring electric vehicles in and electric transportation. So it sets some target numbers, it tries to then say what kind of infrastructure do you need to develop to support those target numbers. It can even get into what kinds of incentives from local or state government are necessary to promote those kinds of numbers.

So, you know, that's kind of the ultimate end is to do a micro climate review of the area, actually get a roadmap and a plan in place that then has action steps that can actually be implemented and are tied to vehicle availability.

JIM FRANCFORT: This is Jim. I just might mention, Linda, I should have mentioned this earlier, is that we're not collecting just data from the Nissan project data loggers in the infrastructure but we'll also be collecting data from some of the Clean City Coalition sponsored deployments and charging infrastructure, the most prominent of which is in the Seattle area that I'm aware of so far.

And so I guess I'm not doing a blanket commitment, but if your coalition is putting in charging infrastructure and does some things like has a system for data logging those charging events and puts that out to a server that we can connect with and pull the data, that I am tasked by DOE to support that.

There's some qualifications if it's, you know, one data logger or one charging unit in one city, there may be some limitations in expense to pulling a sing pay logger data. But if we're doing some grouping of charging infrastructure I think there is interest by DOE and Clean Cities to see what the utilization of that infrastructure is and just get a broader picture on the charging event also.

LINDA BLUESTEIN: Okay, thank you.

JIM FRANCFORT: You're welcome.

COORDINATOR: And our next question comes from Joel Pointon. Your line is open.

JOEL POINTON: Thank you. I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge both Jim and Don as being leaders in the plug-in electric vehicles field and it's really a privilege and an opportunity to be working with you.

I wanted to make one call out one distinction and that's the references that are made to Level 3 charging. The SAE committee under Gary Kessel has reserved Level 3 specifically for AC charging above the standard for Level 2. And the type of infrastructure we'll be using in the eTec project will be DC fast charge and that will be a separate standard referred to as DC fast charge under J1772.

So I have heard a number of people misuse that so I'm just trying to on behalf of the SAE committee put it out there so people realize the Level 3 standard is on hold. The DC fast charge standard is going forward and it will include the review of the JARI Tetco standard that was referenced earlier. And thank you both again for your work.

DON KARNER: Appreciate it, Joel.

COORDINATOR: Your next question comes from Les Alt. Your line is open.

LES ALT: Yes, good afternoon. I would like to discuss a little bit like the last caller, a little bit on the eTec Nissan project. It sounds like that you've got a very detailed plan of setting up infrastructure and I know a lot of the municipalities that we're working with are starting down that road. Is there a place I can get a detailed or somewhat detailed mapping process of the infrastructure you're proposing?

DON KARNER: Let's see, are you interested in the—a map of the infrastructure in the cities or the process by which that infrastructure is determined?

LES ALT: Yeah I'd like to see both, that way I can take the process and overlay that on the mapping and take that to our committee and say, you know, here's the logic that was used, here's how it overlays on to a map. Let's try and use this as our roadmap for setting up infrastructure.

DON KARNER: Okay. I would point you as far as the roadmapping process and the micro climate process itself, two locations. One is the EV project Web site, and that's www.evproject—that's Edward, Victor, Paul—project.com.

LES ALT: Okay.

DON KARNER: And the other is the eTec Website and that's www.etecevs—E-T-E-C-E-V-S—.com. And you can look at what we call the micro climate and that's the process we go through and the micro climate, I think there is a brochure there that gives you some indication of the micro climate process.

On the EV project Website, we'll begin to show results as to mapping and roadmaps and that type of thing. This is very early in our process yet. We actually got our contract on October 1 of last year so we're only a few months into this. And so there's nothing on there yet as far as the actual results of this but there will be some things that come up.

If you want to contact us through the Website, you know, there's some more detailed information that we could make available to you that might help your city. Where are you from?

LES ALT: This is the Chicago metropolitan area.

DON KARNER: Okay, sure. You know, we can get a contact linkage going so that we can provide you information like, you know, when the roadmaps come out and things like that you can see that in a level of detail that may not end up showing up on either of the Websites.

LES ALT: Very good, thank you.

DON KARNER: Okay, you bet.

COORDINATOR: And at this time there are no further questions in queue.

LINDA BLUESTEIN: We have one...

MARK SMITH: One last question. Don and Jim, this is Mark Smith at DOE headquarters. I had a question and I think Leah was trying maybe to allude to that earlier about permitting.

And I know from my previous life in the natural gas vehicle infrastructure both for commercial and home refueling that even though you can go in and have, you know, CSA approvals and FPAs and cite all these things that more often than not the local fire marshal, if he's not up to date on it he refers to the state fire marshal. And if he's not up to date on it then you find you really have a real bottleneck in getting your infrastructure put in.

So I'm wondering in terms of outreach and education, the state and local fire marshals and codes officials, what you folks are doing. Are you leaving the onus on that to the infrastructure and vehicle people or what's the plan to address those issues?

DON KARNER: Well certainly and as part of the EV project that is very definitely something we're addressing. And we've already had meetings with the local code officials and the authorities having jurisdiction and you're absolutely right. It's a matter of education.

These people are very smart and they're very conscious of safety. They just need to know, you know, what the issues are, what equipment is being brought in, what the NRTL utilization was, those kinds of things. And so all that can be handled ahead of time.

We're trying to have those discussions as well as then trying to streamline the permitting process that will allow reduction in actual cost on both sides -- both contractors and the cities in implementing this. Because in a typical city we're going to install a couple thousand chargers and that's a lot of inspector time, it's a lot of wait time and if we can come up with some methods that minimize that, it will save everyone money.

But it very much is just an awareness kind of issue. It's getting people involved, letting them know what you're doing, and how you're dealing with any particular issues that they may have. Because a lot of times there's local concerns with safety, there's some specific local issues that the inspectors want to look at. And if we can address those up front it saves everybody from surprises.

MARK SMITH: Thank you.

LINDA BLUESTEIN: Thanks. Sandra, should we wrap up?

SANDRA: We can. I just—it looks like there's a couple more questions on my end. Some of these might have been answered but one of the questions that's been coming up if I may is that if the presentations will be available.

We're actually recording as was mentioned when this Webinar started, we're recording the Webinar and that will posted on the next week or so on our Website and the presentation as well on the coordinator toolbox where we normally post archived presentations as well as on the Website that has been mentioned, avt.inl.gov. So there will be two places. And if you do need a copy feel free to contact me directly as well in addition to our speakers.

Another one of the questions I'm noticing here from Chris Dobbins is—he is asking on estimated cost for Level 2 chargers.

DON KARNER: Okay. You know, that—the hardware itself ranges all over the map depending on the capability of the equipment and whether it's for residential or commercial.

I guess at the very bottom end I would refer back to the '90s when Avcon was offering a very, very simple EVSE that was sold with the Ford Ranger and my recollection is that was about a $300 box. And then you know, there are prices for, you know, street side units that range all the way up into the $3000 to $4000 range. That's for the piece of equipment.

You know, I think generally on residential EVSE, something that's just going to mount on the wall, you can anticipate around $750 for the hardware itself. And then the installation can vary obviously substantially as well because it's very dependent upon the residence.

If the service entrance is on the same side of the house as the garage and it's a simple, short run to get into the garage to mount the EVSE and there is sufficient capacity in the service entrance that you can just add a breaker and go, I've seen installations as inexpensive as $300 to $400.

I have seen multi thousand dollar installations as well where if you had to upgrade service or the service was on the opposite side of the house and it was a very difficult run to get over. So, you know, the actual cost of installation is typically a very substantial percentage of the overall cost of EVSE.

And so, you know, what we typically encourage is that you take a hard look at the installation, where you're going to put this. If it's a fleet very definitely you want to involve somebody that's knowledgeable about the costs of installation as you look at where you're going to—where you're proposing to put the EVSE.

Because just small changes in installation location can make huge changes in coast particularly if you're looking at parking garage types of applications where you may have to pour or cut concrete. You may have to install load centers, that type of thing. You want to definitely have some engineering talent involved to help you make some of those decisions.

JIM FRANCFORT: You know Don, I might just add that the high extreme number I've seen for charging installation includes solar and, you know, so you're getting more functionality but it was $110,000 a parking spot. You know, so the sky could be the limit depending on what you want to do.

DON KARNER: Yeah. I would also add it doesn't need to be that high either.

JIM FRANCFORT: No, no.

DON KARNER: You can do this very economically and that should be the norm rather than the exception.

JIM FRANCFORT: Yeah I think Don's point about being very cost conscious as far as the existing electric vehicle services can have a really significant impact on keeping costs down quite a bit.

SANDRA: Great. Thank you so much. I have another question. I'm not sure if you've already answered this but from Robin Erickson. She asked if you were installing charging at businesses, how are you working with the utility companies if the business cannot resell the power?

DON KARNER: Well I guess let me—I'll try and interpret the question. You know, only utilities can resell electric power, electric energy. I guess my view of providing charging is much like if you rent an apartment and utilities are included, you know, the apartment owner is not really reselling electricity. That most of the business models that incorporate electric vehicle charging, you're paying for access to the charger.

The actual electricity cost, the energy cost to provide charging, is really a very small percentage of the overall cost of having that charger there, maintaining it, providing the parking space, that type of thing. And so, you know, my view is that the energy that's actually transferred is really incidental to the overall access and availability of the charger.

So the business models that we look at all are you're basically—the vehicle driver, the vehicle operator is paying for access to the charger. You're not actually paying for the amount of energy that's transferred. You're paying for the actual energy and that's all you're paying for.

A lot of the costs that are actually involved in supplying that energy are missed and you're an energy reseller. And I don't think any of the folks that are installing charging infrastructure and planning to operate that infrastructure want to be energy resellers. So we're really looking at so many cents or dollars per charge per time of access, those kinds of models rather than charging somebody for kilowatt hours that are being delivered.

SANDRA: Great, thank you, just two more from Robert Primeriano. Is the project limited to charging stations open to the public or will home charging be provided and factored into the analysis?

JIM FRANCFORT: If we're speaking of the EV project, home charging will definitely be part of the analysis. We'll install home chargers and commercial chargers, nearly 12,000 chargers in total. All of those will be Internet connected, all of those will provide data into the database at the Idaho National Lab, and all of those will be analyzed and considered as part of our overall evaluation.

SANDRA: Okay thank you. One last question from Colleen Cornshield. She was just wondering if either DOE or anyone else had any information on where we are with respect to interstate signage for EV infrastructure.

JIM FRANCFORT: As part of the project we are trying to come to some consensus on some standard signage. There actually are some signage regs that include electric vehicle charging and as I recall it looks like a gas pump with an E and it covers a number of fuels. So it covers, you know, natural gas and propane and so it's kind of a standard sign that starts with a fuel pump indicating this is a fuel source and then it uses letters to define what fuel source is available.

So there's a standard out there. Whether local jurisdictions like it or not is a question because it may not be the best one in the world. As I said, one of our objectives is to try and have at least consensus among the cities that are participating in the EV project because it's not just interstate signage, it's signage within the city, it's signage within a parking area to direct people to where the EV infrastructure is located.

And, you know, we're not able to cause legislation to happen but our hope was that if we can come up with a consensus among the market areas that we're working in then perhaps that consensus could then result in a national standard that everyone is happy with.

SANDRA: Great, thank you so much for answering all those questions. That's all I have on this end, Linda, if you wanted to go ahead and wrap up.

LINDA BLUESTEIN: Okay, I'd just like to wrap up by saying that, first of all, I think that was a great presentation, and obviously, you can see that Jim and Don are a fantastic wealth of knowledge when it comes to all the issues that Clean Cities are going to be interested in in terms of building out the infrastructure and adding vehicles in their communities.

And we will be planning to again have them involved in our quarterly calls, and we will be sending out information on the next call. And I will be talking to Jim and Don about the questions that you asked in terms of what types of presentations we'll have for next time.

So please—also, your input is much appreciated on this call and any future calls that we might have. So particularly, Clean Cities coordinators, feel free to e-mail me with your ideas and suggestions for follow-up calls.

And we really appreciate all the time and effort that Jim and Don put into putting this presentation together and presenting it today and in answering all the questions that you have. Thank you very much, and again your input is much appreciated, and thanks to everyone who hung on the call throughout.

JIM FRANCFORT: Thank you, Linda.

DON KARNER: All right, thanks.

COORDINATOR: Thank you for participating in today's conference call. You may all disconnect at this time.