Chris Van Hollen Asks Witness About Challenges US Faces In The EV Sector And Potential Solutions

3 months ago

During a Senate Budget Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) questioned witnesses about the cost of electric vehicles.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank all of you for your testimony. I just make a couple points at the outset when you have a huge

00:07What economists call externality, which is climate change. I I know some of my colleagues don't really believe in that

00:15As a as a threat, but that is exactly where you want government action

00:20I also heard senator Graham at the outset talk about how

00:23China will

00:25Potentially and is right now, you know on a road if we don't do something about it to eat our lunch

00:30I mean the reality is

00:32Countries around the world consumers around the world are going to be purchasing electric vehicles

00:36And either we're at the top of our game or we're going to be left dramatically behind

00:41So that's why I'm pleased that Maryland is one of the states that has set very ambitious goals in terms of EVs

00:49Target for

00:51300,000 by 2025 and we're one of 15 states that have committed to ramp up the electrification of

00:57medium and heavy-duty trucks so that all sales

01:01Of those vehicles are zero emission by 2050

01:06there's been lots of

01:08evidence of the health benefits of this the Rocky Mountain Institute estimates that

01:14Among the 15 states that along with Maryland are participating in this effort

01:19They will see fewer premature deaths

01:23477 fewer premature deaths and over

01:266,000 fewer asthma incident incidents per year and that's 3.5 billion a year and that's

01:33On top of the climate benefits. I think it's important to point out to my colleagues that while

01:38heavy-duty trucks medium and medium trucks

01:42Account for only 10% of vehicles on the road. They produce about a quarter of the overall greenhouse gas emissions. So

01:49One of the challenges that Volvo

01:52Which is a company in Hagerstown, Maryland

01:56Is facing and they develop the the powertrain manufacturing the powertrains

02:02They have a facility there

02:03one of the issues they have there is the quiet is the issue of

02:08Charging infrastructure for medium and heavy-duty trucks. So miss gross

02:13Could you briefly describe some of the challenges we're facing in this particular sector and what we should be doing about it?

02:21Thank you senator for that question

02:24Let me focus on the solutions first and then I'll go to maybe recap on some of the challenges

02:28the the most important thing that we can do in the sector for for the for

02:33Heavy-duty medium-duty sector is to get pilot programs out there. It is amazing what fleet operators learn by just

02:42Purchasing and putting into their fleet the first one two trucks

02:46Understanding what the relationship has to be with the utility

02:49Understanding what charging is how it works what it means to discuss rates and off peak times and on peak times

02:55And what the economic opportunities are to actually work with utility on those rates

02:59So the fleet this idea that we need to continue pilot programs is really alive

03:04It's not the ones that have already started it, but every fleet in the in the country should start to understand

03:10What it would mean to actually have that experience behind you

03:13Once you have that experience you make better decisions about right sizing charging and right sizing the grid requirements for it

03:19We need to prioritize feeders

03:21Where are these truckloads likely to show up?

03:24So we've got the eRoadmap out there that describes and shows you visually where the loads are expected to come from

03:31We've got Volvo data, Daimler truck data. We know we have the telemetry. We know where the diesel

03:36Vehicles travel throughout the country

03:37So being able to prioritize where they are today and where they're likely to be when they're electric is

03:42super important for prioritizing these investments on the grid and then finally

03:46One interesting thing is we are kind of going about this piecemeal today

03:51This is this holds true for light-duty vehicles as well

03:53But on the medium and heavy-duty trucking sector where these loads can be very concentrated at local distribution systems

03:59We we wait, you know, the utility industry can really only invest once a customer shows up and says hey, I've got this load coming

04:08Can you please you know upgrade the grid for me?

04:11I'm coming with this charging load if we would step back and consider, you know

04:15In its totality how much load is coming when more fleets 20% 40% 80%

04:21We could do a better job up front more cost-effective job of putting these solutions in place

04:26So I would almost I would encourage

04:28Everyone to focus on sort of those big nuances about the trucking sector that are important and this whole

04:34Timing mismatch on I know that that's on top of mind for Volvo as well

04:38The timing mismatch between the time it takes to get grid power to a site

04:41Versus the time it takes to order a few semi trucks and I I said in my testimony earlier

04:46I can order a fleet of semi electric trucks and they can be delivered in four to six months and

04:52And the grid upgrades probably can't be made in the same four to six months

04:55So we've got to get hold we got to get ahead of this. So this is the issue

04:58I mean Volvo is actually losing orders right now

05:01From people that want to you know, purchase these

05:05electric

05:06medium heavy-duty trucks, but can't because of this

05:10Issue of charging stations, so I hope we will on a relatively urgent basis move forward

05:16I mean, this is the sort of chicken-in-the-egg problem. We've seen in other parts of this sector

05:20I may have some questions to submit for the record, but I see my my time is out. Thank you. Mr. Chairman

05:26Senator Van Hollen

05:28Senator Graham and I spoke earlier about trying to pull together some bipartisan technical recommendations for facilitating

05:35The

05:37Transition in a whole variety of ways things like supporting peak shaving and this would be another good example

05:42So look forward to working with you on that. Thank you very much for your interest and now we turn

Chris Van Hollen Asks Witness About Challenges US Faces In The EV Sector And Potential Solutions

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