Automotive Repair News Today

Braxton Critcher [00:00:05]:
All right, thanks for downloading this episode of Automotive Repair News today. I'm Braxton, and if you have followed the news in the past couple months since the new Trump administration took office, well, you've been a busy boy because a lot of things have changed. They've been, they've been working, they've been changing stuff. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. The NEVI program has been nixed. And so the past year OR so, Ryan McKinnon, who is our guest today, have had conversations about EV charging and the infrastructure that needs to catch up, to catch up with the EVs that are on the road. And the NEVI program, of course, was a big part of that, and the administration decided to nix that for a list of reasons that I don't know all of them. That's why I have Ryan back.

Braxton Critcher [00:00:58]:
Hey, Ryan.

Ryan McKinnon [00:00:59]:
Hey, Braxton. How you doing?

Braxton Critcher [00:01:01]:
I'm good, man. I'm good, man. So this happened in February. So it's been a few months. And I kind of waited to reach out to you to do this because there was so much happening back in February. And of course, when something like this happens, whether you expected it or not, you're going to learn more about why and learn more about what's next. It was so new and you just didn't know the direction. Here we are in April.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:25]:
Hopefully you have some of those answers. So NEVI is no longer a thing. Tell me, tell me. Well, I guess so. First, did you expect this? Because when Trump took office, he was not shy about telling us that he was going to make changes. And I sort of had a feeling that some of his comments when he did take office, that he just wasn't going to be the same as the previous administration with Biden about some of the things they were doing with EVs. So I kind of had a feeling this could be the direction they were going. I wanted to hear from you if that was kind of your vibe, if you felt the same way.

Ryan McKinnon [00:02:01]:
Yes. That feeling that you had was very accurate. You know, with Trump coming into office, there's been so much emphasis on eliminating government waste and eliminating ineffective programs has kind of been one of his big things that he's really established is going to be a priority during this term with Elon Musk and Doge and all that stuff. And nevi, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program, had basically become a punching bag for more than a year, and not just from extreme fiscal conservatives or people who really don't like EVs, but you have the Washington Post running stories about how Biden had allocated $5 billion to build EV charging stations and it only built five of them. And so that, you know, when a mainstream outlet like the Washington Post is calling out ineffective spending on the EV charging program, you know that the program is not going well if it's attracting critics from all sides of the spectrum. And at the end of the day, the NEVI program, which what it basically was, it was, it was a business grant program. What it did is, is it took $5 billion and it divided up among all 50 states based on the population and the miles of highway, a bunch of different factors, and it created a pot of money that businesses could then apply for to get a grant to offset the cost of building an EV charging station. And so this was a pretty business friendly program.

Ryan McKinnon [00:03:31]:
It wasn't just supposed to, you know, it wasn't giving money to local governments to build a charging station at the library or. The NEVI program specifically was really geared to help businesses make an investment and have skin in the game and be in it for the long term so that they could get sort of get an EV charging operation up off the ground, get it functional, get it running. Some states did really well. Ohio is kind of the gold star state when it comes to this. They got their money, they put out applications, they accepted applications, announced winners, gave out the money. And I believe Ohio ended up with about 19 NEVI funded EV charging stations built throughout the state. A bunch of other states though did nothing with it. Fifteen states in total either never even put out an application or they put out an application and never even announced a winner.

Ryan McKinnon [00:04:22]:
And so when you have 15 states and this is three plus years that they had to do this, 15 states could never quite figure out how to actually get this money into the hands of the small businesses that are supposed to be using. Was really bad. It was really bad optics. It looked terrible. And you know, it just the stories kind of wrote themselves in terms of billions of dollars going to fund. As the year went on, you know, the headlines didn't get better be like, okay, now they're funding 15 EV charging stations or 20 EV charging stations, no matter how you cut it. Ultimately I believe Navy resulted in 57 funding charging stations. Once the program was eliminated, there's still some that are going to come on becoming online.

Ryan McKinnon [00:05:06]:
The Department of Transportation announced that the grants that had already been announced and contract signed would still be eligible to receive the funds. So over these last few months and for the next few months to continue, we've seen NEVI funded stations coming online, but those are not new grantees. Those are ones that were already awarded before the program was shut down. Right. So to answer your question, yes, this was, this was not a surprise. It is a shame. It's a program that was really thoughtfully designed, very poorly implemented by a lot of states. The and the reason I say thoughtfully designed and people might think that's a ridiculous thing to say based on the outcome, but what it did is it looked at the reality of who is best equipped to serve EV drivers and that's you got a few options when you're considering that you could reinvent the wheel and you could build brand new EV charging facilities and find the real estate and buy the real estate and build the structure and really sort of just try to create a whole new ecosystem specifically for EV drivers or you could take advantage of all the existing infrastructure that's already there.

Ryan McKinnon [00:06:22]:
That's what this program did. This program said, hey, primarily this money is going to go to gas stations and convenience stores and truck stops. The folks that are already have the best real estate, that are located right off the highway, that have the bathrooms, that have people working there 24 7. They got the coffee, they got the snacks. Those are the people that we're going to give the money to because those are the people that people are going to want to stop at. You're not going to want to stop and go charge up at just in the back of a Walmart parking lot at 2 o'clock in the morning, which is unfortunately the way a lot of EV charging programs have approached this. They've given money, they've given grants, they've given government funds to all sorts of entities that really don't have a long term vision for developing EV charging and are not appealing to EV drivers. And so the NEBBY program a plus for the way they approached where the money should go and the best way to spend the money.

Ryan McKinnon [00:07:18]:
And I don't want to grade it on implementation, I think it kind of speaks for itself. But it was a 50 state approach. Every state did a little bit differently. Like I said, some did well, some did terribly.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:29]:
So by the way, I don't think I mentioned it earlier, you're with the Charge Ahead partnership and you and I had talked at length, really back just before Christmas about implementation, specifically from Florida and how Florida had, like you said, for three years had opportunity to use this grant money and had a lot of EV drivers in their state, but never really tried to get it going. And so I mean you, you're you were a big proponent of the NEVI program and you would advocate for it, you know, with states. So, you know, now that it's over, when you look back and assess your conversations with states, what, like what happened, like, I know you had talked to me a little bit about that with Florida and the reasons why, but when you go back and try and put yourself in their shoes, when you, when there's free money on the table to try and help their state members, why not use it?

Ryan McKinnon [00:08:32]:
Florida is a textbook example, should be studied in schools when politicians are able to take advantage of the fact that people don't have time to study these issues in depth. And so with Florida, basically they said, hey, we don't want your federal environmental money. We think this is a dumb use of money. We don't want it. And I disagree with that. I think it's a good use of money when you are helping small businesses get off the ground. But that's fine. If that's your position, that's fine.

Ryan McKinnon [00:09:09]:
The thing that makes Florida such a unique case though, is they denied the federal dollars, but then they allow Florida Power and Light, the largest utility in the state, to use ratepayer funds to build, own and operate their own Florida Florida Power and Light branded EV charging stations. And so Florida's kind of saying, hey, we want the free market to do it. We don't want your federal dollars. This is not a good use of taxpayer money. But then they're using, they're allowing the largest utility in the state to use ratepayer funds to box out the private marketplace using your grandma, your aunt, your uncle, people who are never going to buy EVs who live in Florida and just pay a power bill. They are subsidizing, they're paying for Florida Power and Light to build charging stations that are disproportionately used by wealthy, I mean, honestly, by wealthy snowbirds from the Northeast. That's the, you know, that's the main user of a lot of these charging stations in Florida. And so it's just a very Florida.

Ryan McKinnon [00:10:14]:
There are so many EVs there, and there is such a market for EV charging that the private marketplace is still getting into it because there is, there are enough customers that it's not like Florida Power and Light and the other utilities can completely dominate the marketplace. There's certainly opportunity if you're a gas station or convenience store to build an EV charging station and serve drivers. But you have a big sort of red flag if you're thinking about spending your money to Invest and do that in Florida because, you know, the state has allowed over and over the utility to raise rates on its customers to subsidize their own EV charging stations where they sell power at below market rates. That's a really tough thing to compete with if you're a private business. That's a really annoying thing to pay for if you don't own an ev. And so what we would have preferred Florida to do is shut down the utilities from competing with the private marketplace, welcome the federal dollars in order to help private businesses get off the ground. And in five to 10 years, you probably would have a much more competitive, totally privately funded EV charging marketplace than you would if you deny the federal dollars and allow utilities to run the show.

Braxton Critcher [00:11:22]:
Do you think Florida and other states that are like Florida look back and have your perspective? Like, would they, would they go back and change that? Like, that may have been their stance in the time, but can they look back and say, ah, we kind of missed on that?

Ryan McKinnon [00:11:39]:
I don't know. I mean, I think NEVI was so poorly implemented by so many states that not a lot of people are. Not a lot of, you know, states like Florida that ultimately didn't use the money, I don't think are going to look at it as like a huge missed opportunity. Yeah, and they're sort of right. I mean, just the numbers in terms of. For the whole course of Navy, there was about 57 EV charging stations built funded by NEVI. During that same time period, there was over 26,000, 28,000 EV charging stations that were privately funded. And so the idea that NAVI being eliminated is going to cause EV charging in America to grind to a halt is just kind of silly.

Braxton Critcher [00:12:18]:
Right.

Ryan McKinnon [00:12:18]:
So I don't think states like Florida will look back on it and think, oh, shoot, we really missed our opportunity.

Braxton Critcher [00:12:23]:
It's just free money that you turn down, though.

Ryan McKinnon [00:12:25]:
It's free money. And yeah, and it's, it's designed to kind of help folks get into the business who maybe couldn't afford those startup costs. But once they're up and running, they'll be able to stay in it.

Braxton Critcher [00:12:34]:
So you think it comes back to a political stance at all, just not wanting to work with the other side?

Ryan McKinnon [00:12:42]:
In some states, yes. In Florida, you know, they, they kind of made it very clear that it was political. They put up a website that said fund roads, not politics or something like that. I forget what it was, but it was very, it was very much like, we don't want this federal money. But then you had states like Nevada, that as much as Florida kind of has gone astray in terms of allowing the utilities to use so much money to compete with the private marketplace. At least Florida's rhetoric about how we don't want your federal dollars aligns with our actions. Whereas in Nevada, the attitude there was very much more like, we want to build EV charging stations. We are very pro ev.

Ryan McKinnon [00:13:26]:
We're very excited about this. And they never put out an RFP either. So they had three years. They never put out an rfp. It was a bunch of states that were in that category. It was Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming. So those states all left collectively hundreds of millions of dollars on the table that they could have used. And then you had a bunch more.

Ryan McKinnon [00:13:48]:
Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Louisiana, and Massachusetts never announced winners. So that those are red states, those are blue states, those are urban, rural. It's kind of across the board. I think ultimately the common thing that they all have in common is it just slow moving, bureaucratic.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:10]:
It's just hard to get the money.

Ryan McKinnon [00:14:11]:
It's hard to get the money. Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:13]:
Yeah. Okay, so, I mean, what's next? So, you know, charge Ahead partnership. You and I have, have done two or three, maybe four of these episodes, and, you know, most of the time we talk about nevi. And so, you know, you guys spend a lot of time and effort into trying to make this happen. And so obviously, it's chargerhead Partnership. You're, you know, you're. You're very adamant about trying to help states get EV charging. And so you say there's a lot of private equity in that, and there's, you know, that kind of thing.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:43]:
So what. What is Next now that EVs gone? What. What are you guys focusing on?

Ryan McKinnon [00:14:48]:
Sure. So NAVI was never. NEVI was. It was never. Our primary focus as an organization. Our primary focus as an organization is advocating for a free market for EV charging. And what that looks like is basically helping states pass legislation that prohibits utilities from using ratepayer funds to build, own and operate charging stations. So just.

Ryan McKinnon [00:15:08]:
And I know I mentioned that with Florida, but that is happening in a lot of states where there are gas stations that want to build an EV charger. And they say, okay, this is going to cost me $350,000 to. To get the infrastructure to get the charger, to get it hooked up. And then I got to give up parking spaces. I need to sort of reconfigure my gas pumps. I gotta think about what these people are gonna do while they charge up like it's a major business decision if you're running a small business or even if you're a chain of gas stations. And so there's folks that they want to do that. They see every driver who is in an EV as potentially a lost customer.

Ryan McKinnon [00:15:47]:
You know, if you're, if you run a gas station, you see someone in an EV that could potentially be someone that never steps foot inside your door again. So they want to serve these drivers regardless of what they're using to power their vehicles. I don't care if it's gas or ethanol or diesel or electricity. They just want to be able to serve the drivers. And so, but what a lot of these small businesses are running into is that the utilities as EVs came on the scene in the last decade or so, obviously the power companies had a lot to do with it because they had to deliver the power that was then used to charge up the vehicles. And what that turned into in a lot of states was the utility saying, hey, we are generating, distributing the electricity and we're going to own the charging station and we'll sell it directly to the driver. And that sounds maybe harmless if you don't really think about it, but if you think about it, that makes it nearly impossible for private businesses like a gas station or a grocery store or truck stop to compete because it's a vertical monopoly. They're competing against all of a sudden, someone who's not only generating and distributing the electricity, but selling it directly to the driver who is also subsidized by everyone who's paying a power bill.

Ryan McKinnon [00:16:59]:
And so what we're advocating for, and this is why our organization began and what remains are primary goal is to advocate for policies that allow for a free market investment, which basically says, hey, power company, you guys are awesome at generating and distributing electricity. And you have more on your plate today than you've ever had. As more and more states are electrifying everything, as heat pumps are replacing other forms of air conditioning and house cooling systems, and you have electric vehicles, you have data centers, you have all sorts of new technologies placing massive demands on power companies. So we're saying, hey, focus on generating, distributing electricity and stay over there, stay in your lane. And what will allow the retailers to do is then buy electricity from you and sell it directly to the driver.

Braxton Critcher [00:17:53]:
Yeah, it makes it easier for them. They make money off of that. You don't got to worry about the stress of trying to install and manage the property of the, the EV charging.

Ryan McKinnon [00:18:01]:
That's True. Now, the way power companies are structured though is they can make money off of, because they get a return on equity for every dollar that they spend building charging stations. So if they, if, if I'm a power company and I go to the, the Public Utility Commission, I say I want to use $100 million of ratepayer funds to build, own and operate charging stations. Baked into that is a guaranteed return on equity for me. So that means if I'm a power company, I can use $100 million. I can get 8, 9, 10% return on that. That's direct profit for the power company to build EV charging stations, regardless of if anyone ever uses the charging stations. So that is a, that is an incentive structure that is designed for other things, that is designed to incentivize the power company to build transmission lines, to invest in transmission lines in places where maybe it wouldn't necessarily be profitable to deliver electricity.

Ryan McKinnon [00:18:59]:
It's designed, it's, that incentive structure is designed to make them, you know, make upgrades to substations. It's really designed to prevent power companies from cutting corners on vital infrastructure upgrades by saying, hey, if you spend the money, we'll give you the guaranteed return on equity that is not designed for them to then basically get into the retail business and open up non utilized and non profitable charging stations and then still get a return on equity on them, even if no one uses them and they break. And that's what we're seeing in Maryland.

Braxton Critcher [00:19:29]:
There's a little loophole.

Ryan McKinnon [00:19:31]:
Yeah, it's, it is kind of a loophole. It's, it's, and it's unfortunate because what it requires is private businesses to really help educate lawmakers and say, hey, this, this sounds great. You know, when the power company says, hey, we want to expand our green initiative and build lots of charging stations, that sounds really nice. The reality though is, let's look at the results. And you look at what happened in Maryland. In Maryland, all the power companies came together, this was about six years ago, and they said, we want to use repair funds to build a network of charging stations across Maryland. And it's going to be the most interconnected charging network in the country. And we're going to, you know, everyone's going to be able to have an EV because it's going to be so easy to charge up.

Ryan McKinnon [00:20:17]:
There'll be chargers every, everywhere, regardless of income level of neighborhood, regardless of how remote it is. You know, it doesn't matter. There's going to be charging stations everywhere. Sounds great. Power companies then do that. They don't have the real estate. So they have all these built in advantages where they make the power, they sell the power, they get the guaranteed return equity, but they can't just snap their finger and you know, buy up all the real estate they want because that real estate's already owned by gas stations, by truck stops, etc. And so they end up putting all the charging stations at publicly owned buildings.

Ryan McKinnon [00:20:49]:
So that means your chargers at libraries, you had them at the zoo, you had one. You know, I think there's one at Camden Yards which is a publicly owned. But you know, it's sort of like a big gathering space, right? All sorts of places that if you're driving down 95 in the middle of the night and you pull off and charge up, you don't want to have to go find like the Howard county administrative offices and sit in the parking lot at 2 o'clock in the morning with nothing to do, no one around, doesn't feel safe. And so no one was using these charging stations because no one's using them. Eventually they break and now they're coming back and they're asking for more money to fix them. And so, and, and they've admitted the power companies and the public utility commission up there have basically said, hey, this is not working. This is not your guys role to build charging networks to try to, to try to get into the retail business. You guys need to stop this.

Ryan McKinnon [00:21:39]:
But, and the, they've sort of pumped the brakes on it, but they're still asking for more money to fix the chargers that are already broken. So it kind of shows this cycle that gets into when you don't have anyone who's ultimately accountable for making sure the charger works. You don't have anyone whose profitability is directly tied to the effectiveness and the success of the charger. Whereas with a private marketplace, if I own a gas station, I put in a charger and no one uses it and it breaks. I've just lost $300,000. That's really dumb. And I am incentivized to put the charger in the best spot to make sure it's always working to make sure the driver has a good experience. All the things that EV advocates want, the private marketplace, when they get a charging station, they have skin in the game and they have incentive to do that.

Ryan McKinnon [00:22:23]:
And so that's the thing that's sometimes hard to get policymakers to understand because it requires a longer conversation and it requires them to really sort of think about this issue more thoughtfully than just seeing that the Power company is promising 200 new charging stations. And doesn't that sound nice?

Braxton Critcher [00:22:41]:
Is that the solution policy written to help that situation? Because I know nobody really wants more policy, but sometimes it might be necessary.

Ryan McKinnon [00:22:51]:
In most states, yeah. And basically it's a simple policy that says, you know, there's a prohibition on using ratepayer funds to build, own and operate charging stations. So it's not a new regulation or a new, it's not making people's life more complicated. In essence, it's basically telling the power company, hey, you can't take your customers money and do this with it. You got to use it to generate and distribute electricity. So yeah, the policy solution is in most states, what's necessary in some states, the regulated body, the state Corporation commission or the Public Utility Commission can crack down on it, basically say we're not going to approve these programs, but it's helpful to have a policy that has lasting power.

Braxton Critcher [00:23:38]:
So is that, is that what you're working towards, trying to have those conversations?

Ryan McKinnon [00:23:43]:
We are, yeah. We're active all over the country. Charge Ahead partnership.com is our website. So if you are, if you are anyone who's interested in EV charging, but especially if you're a business that is interested in getting into EV charging and you're curious about the policies in your state that might make it harder or easier to do that, check out our website, charge aheadpartnership.com basically what we do is we work with fuel retailers, grocery stores, small businesses all over the country and we help them advocate for policies that make it easier for them to get into the charging marketplace. And what that looks like is, let's say you live in Nebraska, you might find out that there's a bill that's going to allow the power company to use ratepayer funds to compete directly with you. And so we would put information about that on our website and you click on a button and you'd be able to see what the policy is and who you should contact to let them know that you don't want that. And so we really help these small businesses connect with their lawmakers to let them know, hey, support this, oppose this. You know, help them communicate directly with the decision makers.

Ryan McKinnon [00:24:52]:
Because every lawmaker ultimately is answerable to their constituents. And so someone who lives in a lawmakers district is running a business there has a much stronger voice than just me sitting here in Richmond, Virginia. So what we try to do is help the businesses connect directly with the folks who are making the decisions.

Braxton Critcher [00:25:12]:
Link to Charge Ahead Partnerships website is in the show notes, he's Ryan McKinnon. Tell me this, Ryan, before we started recording, you were telling me a story about you shooting a video. I want to hear again what happened. For the folks who have listened, at this point, they need a treat. So tell me. Tell me the story and where they can find this video.

Ryan McKinnon [00:25:33]:
Well, I don't know where they can find it. So we are. We help out this organization in Virginia that basically tracks policy. And every year they put on a big luncheon that's their fundraiser, and they try to make it funny. Like the sort of. The theme of it is, like, lighten up, it's just politics. And so they'll. They'll bring in politicians, they'll do jokes, and they'll do skits and stuff like that.

Ryan McKinnon [00:25:51]:
And we were helping them make a video for it, me and some of my colleagues here. And they need me to play a guy who was trying to catch an elevator as the doors were closing. And so I thought, all right, I gotta. I gotta lay out for this. Like, this is important that I. Yeah, sell it. No, I gotta sell it. Yeah.

Ryan McKinnon [00:26:09]:
And so I sprint like they said. Action. And I was sprinting towards the elevator, and I got there right as doors were closing and just, like, slammed into it. Stuck my arm, and I ended up cutting my hand. It was bleeding all over the place. I was totally bruised up my hip. I thought I cracked my cell phone. Thankfully, it was okay, but I just totally.

Ryan McKinnon [00:26:27]:
Yeah. And it. We got it in one take. It was. You know, it was a. I nailed it. So, like you said, I wasn't really acting. I was legitimately hurt.

Braxton Critcher [00:26:38]:
So, yeah, you might get a. You might get a contract from NBC or Paramount next, right?

Ryan McKinnon [00:26:44]:
I know. Yeah. Miss my calling.

Braxton Critcher [00:26:48]:
Oh, my gosh, that's so funny. Well, Ryan, thanks, man. I appreciate it. We'll touch base soon.

Ryan McKinnon [00:26:54]:
Okay, thanks, Braxton.

Braxton Critcher [00:27:00]:
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