 Good afternoon and welcome to today's energy seminar. Today we have a combination tag team talk, fireside chat, and plenty of time for audience questions. Like to introduce our two speakers for today, Karim Farhat at the Prodigal Returns. He was a PhD student in MS&E with people like me and Sally Benson. Jim, were you on his committee? Yes, his dissertation committee is right here. Also worked in ERE before that with Professor Benson, who's here with us today. And he's currently, we should have predicted this, but we didn't, he currently is Chief Commercial Officer for EV Charging Solutions. And I'll let him explain more about that. And we have with us not the pre-announced person from Hertz, but fortunately for us, a new collaborator with Karim named Nick Dela Pastina from Lyft. Nick is kind of a serial entrepreneur in San Francisco who's done businesses in the gig economy, garment manufacturing, and coffee. Not surprisingly, he currently leads electrification driver and sustainability partnership teams at Lyft, which might explain why the two of them are working together. I think it's true that one of the things in Nick's portfolio is Lyft's efforts to create a 100% electrical fleet by 2030. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Karim and Nick to talk for about 20, 25 minutes. Awesome. All right. Can you guys hear me? Let's see. Can you guys hear me? Well, perfect. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. It's wonderful to be back to Stanford. A few years back, I used to be sitting on your side of the auditorium. Now I get to be here and talking to you about EV charging. So Karim Farhat here. I'm the chief commercial officer at EV Charging Solutions, or EVCS. And we'll talk to you today about the electrification of rideshare. So I'll have the opportunity to introduce EVCS to talk a little bit about emissions from the transportation sector, talk about electrification, and then land with the electrification efforts for rideshare. I also want to clarify at the beginning of the talk that we were supposed to be having a guest with us, my colleague from Hertz. Unfortunately, they were not able to make it. But fortunately, I have another great colleague of mine who's Nick from Lyft, who is going to be joining us. So if you saw the announcement a couple of days ago, that was a bit of a mismatch. But we're all friends in the industry, so we'll definitely make sure that this still be worthwhile your time. So let's start big picture. Transportation. Historically, transportation is the largest sector in terms of CO2 emissions in the United States today. As you can see, the percentage of emissions from the transportation sector have been increasing over the past three decades. That could be for many reasons. Part of the reason is because some of the economic sectors are decarbonizing faster than transport. But the other reasons is because in the US, we like our cars, and we like mobility, and we like to move around. And that comes with emissions. In 2019, the transportation sector accounted for about 33% of CO2 emissions, about half of those from where from light duty vehicles. These are the vehicles that you and I drive. About 20% were from medium and heavy duty vehicles. And then the remaining 30% came from aviation, rail, and other modes of transportation. Now, the good news is we can decarbonize the transportation sector. And there are multiple ways to do it. The challenging news is there are multiple ways to do it, meaning there is no one silver bullet. What you're seeing here on this slide is from an interagency report by the US government that shows the different levers for us to decarbonize the transportation sector. And it really goes into three approaches. The first one is to change the way that we do things. That's the activity. The second one is whatever we're doing, we need to do it with less energy and in a more efficient way. And that's the energy efficiency and energy intensity. And then the third is whatever fuel we use, no matter how efficient it is, we need to clean that fuel up. And if any of you have heard of the Kaya identity for some of the energy modeling classes that you're taking at Stanford, this is very similar to that concept. And as you can see, in that report, there are multiple ways that are multiple approaches for the decarbonization of the transportation sector. Convenience goes into maybe walking instead of using cars. Efficiency means carpooling, using public transportation, using rail. And then, of course, the clean piece is the piece that we're going to be focusing on today, which is electrification, as well as using clean fuels, for example, like biofuels and hydrogen, which we are not going to be covering in our talk. The Biden administration have issued a executive order that wants to make about half of all the new vehicles in the United States, half of the all new vehicle sales in the United States, to be fully zero emissions by 2030. And that is a very ambitious goal. The thing is electrification is probably one of the most important pillars for decarbonization. And we know that every level of our society is working on that from the federal government into the private sector. We see that there are different projections by the private sector that actually are consistent with that executive order. Bloomberg, for example, expect that half of the car sales in the US by 2030 are going to be electric. And the Edison Institute also expect that about 32% of the cars are going to be electric by 2030. So regardless of what number you're putting in there, it's a big number. And we only have a few years to get there. So I can tell you that EVs are coming. They're already here, and they're going to be growing very, very fast over the next few years. Now, California is leading the nation on transportation electrification. And really, I should say California and the rest of the West Coast. How? By addressing both the supply of cars, the EV charging infrastructure, as well as focusing on the community adoption and endorsement of EVs. On the cars piece, the state of California have legislated that 100% of EV sales or 100% of car sales should be zero emission by 2030. So that's a very ambitious goal. On when you have the EV, you also need to have the charger associated with that. So you also need the charging infrastructure. So on that, we are anticipating that in the state of California, we will need about 1 million chargers available for charging by 2030. And then you double that number to 2.1 million chargers by 2035. These are estimates by the California Energy Commission. So we have a long road ahead of us, especially that today where we are is we have about 110,000 EV chargers in the ground. And about 10,000 of those are DC fast chargers. So again, there is a significant growth and a lot of work that us and the industry need to put forward to be able to reach those numbers. And of course, on the top of making sure that the cars are available and that the chargers are available, we need to make sure that the community is endorsing EVs. And again, the state of California have initiatives on that. For example, 35% of all of the investment in the EV ecosystem will have to be dedicated to disadvantaged and low income communities, which is something that we wholeheartedly support. And we think it's very important from an equity perspective. And we are also investing millions of dollars for workforce development because EV is a new technology. And we need to make sure that people know how to fix them once they break. And that brings me to EVCS. So who is EVCS and what do we do? EVCS or EV charging solutions is a startup. We are a public EV charging network across the West Coast in the United States. Our mission is to provide convenient, fast, and carbon free EV charging for everybody who has an EV on the West Coast. We started in 2018. And today we continue to expand very rapidly across the West Coast. And the network is powered by 100% renewable energy. So to give you a flavor of where we are, you see the map on the right. So every one of those small dots that you see is an EV charging site that does actually have more than one charger in it. We have about 175 sites, about 900 today chargers, the number increasing every single day, as split between 300 DC fast chargers and about 550 level two chargers. We offer customers different types of charging services. So a customer can just go into a charger, swipe a credit card, and be able to charge their car. Or they can also subscribe with a monthly plan or a weekly plan, which I'll talk briefly about. We're growing very, very fast. We're at CDZ today. And you can see the numbers in terms of the investment that we have that have been made in the company, both from the private side as well as through grants that we went from state agencies and states in general. And a big part of the reason why we are successful is because we collaborate and we work with a lot of partners in the industry. That includes our site hosts, which are the hosts that put the chargers. That also includes public agencies, like the California Energy Commission and the DOTs. The utilities, it's very important that we work with the utilities on EV charging, as well as some other charging service providers and some of the companies that you might have heard of that have a lot of cars. And they have the cars. We have the chargers. That's basically a natural collaboration. And a couple of examples there are our Hertz and Lyft. Let me pause for a second to ask, how many people own an EV in the audience by show of hands? Awesome. All right, we have a couple. How many people have driven an EV at all? OK, wonderful. That's great. How many people have tried to charge an EV? Awesome. So what I want to show you is that sometimes people think that charging an EV is very simple. It's like you plug it in, and it should work, and everything is easy. And it should. If you plug an EV, the charger should absolutely work. But the charger is also a sophisticated machine. It has multiple pieces of hardware and software that need to work together. So what you're seeing here are some pictures from the EVCS charging sites. But also, I wanted to give you a flavor of the hardware and the software and those important components that go into a charger. The big piece that you see on the left, the big charger is what we call a DC fast charger. That can charge the car fast. Between 20 to 40 minutes, you get a full charge. And then the smaller charger is a level two charger. That's what we call it. Every one of those chargers need to have a specific things for it to be publicly accessible. So it need to have a user interface where you can click on buttons and say, this is what I want to do. It need to have a payment card processor where you can swipe a credit card to be able to pay for your charging. It need to have a specific port that goes into your car. And there's not only one plug. There is a plug. There are multiple plugs today for multiple cars. There's a plug for a Tesla. There's a plug for all other cars. And then there's also one plug that is not very frequently used to the vehicle, Chattano, that is used for the Nissan Leaf. And then of course there's a cable. There's a pedestal. So every time you see a DC fast charger, it's actually a whole project that it took to build to maintain and it need to be running 24 seven. The other interesting thing is that there is some sophisticated software and communication systems in those chargers. So those chargers need to communicate with a network where we will need to be able to activate them and deactivate them remotely. And also they need to be able to communicate with every single car. And a lot of testing need to go in there to make sure that different chargers are able to communicate successfully with different cars. With that, with kind of like charging 101, we land into electrification of rideshare. Why is electrification of rideshare very important? It's important because we all use rideshare today in our daily lives. We, it became a very prominent mode of transportation. And of course, rideshare uses regular cars. So electrifying it would take us a long way in terms of meeting our climate goals. The opportunity there is that both the state and the private sector have endorsed the electrification of rideshare. Uber and Lyft have made an announcement for 100% electrification by 2030. And again, in the state of California, there's a mandate that 90% of miles that are driven by rideshare cars would be electrified by 2030. The challenges, there are three challenges if I were to sum them up. One is the access to the EV itself. Some drivers think that EVs are more expensive than regular cars, so there's a hurdle there to be able to get access to the EV to drive it. The second challenge is once a rideshare driver are in the car, they need to be able to find conveniently located chargers to be able to charge. And they have to be publicly acceptable, they have to be safe, they need to have amenities, and they need to be of course reliable. And the last piece is also educating the drivers about the benefits of driving an EV. And one of the biggest benefits is saving money. If you think about it from a total cost of ownership, it actually saves a lot of money for rideshare drivers today to switch from a regular car into an EV. An EVCS is doing a lot of work on that through partnerships. I'm gonna highlight two today. The first one is our partnership with Hertz. We have been working with Hertz for quite a while. And the way that this basically works is a rideshare driver, say an Uber driver or a Lyft driver would go to Hertz and they would rent the car. And then we would offer them charging plans for their car, they are weekly charging plans that are designed only for the Hertz drivers. We are doing this today in California. There are 25 participating Hertz locations. And the program is a huge success. In August, we announced that we had 2 million miles driven on EV charging through the Hertz program. Today I'm happy to say we have more than 3 million. So that number is increasing very, very fast. We have had more than 20,000 successful charging sessions under that program. And on average, every driver charges more than one time every day. This is just a quick illustration of a story from one of the drivers on the Hertz program. We're just gonna call her Jane Doe. Jane lives in LA and she's really happy with this program. One because in her own words, she says more than $500 every month on EV charging instead of basically paying for gas driving around. She loves the fact that our charger is half a mile away from her house so she can go and charge anytime she wants. And she really liked that she is now driving a Polestar 2 which is a luxurious car as opposed to her Camry. So her riders like the car, they tip her more. And she also really liked that the car is quiet, it's fast and it does not emit any pollution while she's sitting there idling waiting for riders. So we know that through these partnerships, for example, between EVCS and Hertz, the drivers are taking on more and more EVs and this is exactly what we want to see. And where I'm gonna leave you is actually with an announcement that we're gonna be making today which we reserved for the energy seminar and that is that EVCS is also gonna be issuing a new partnership with Lyft, which we are very, very happy about. So we are gonna be offering all Lyft drivers across the West Coast discounted EV charging with all of the monthly charging plans that we have. Any Lyft driver who is driving an EV Qualify and they can access any EVCS charging station on the West Coast. And with that, it's a perfect transition to move on to Nick to tell us a little bit more about Lyft efforts on electrification. Thank you. That was great, Karim, thanks. Well, it's nice to meet everybody. It's nice to be here at Stanford. This is my first time on the campus. It's beautiful. I walked around and took some pictures of trees. It was wonderful. My name is Nick DePeste and I live in San Francisco. I've worked at Lyft for the past three and a half years and I'm really happy to be here. So I wanted to talk a little bit about Lyft's vision before we get into some of our efforts around electrification. Really, we envision a world where cities feel small again and when I think about this vision statement, I think about the way my mom describes her hometown. She grew up in a really small hometown. It's called Davenport. It's in upstate New York. There's like 15 people that live there and the closest town to it is called Onianto where there's a college. But the way she describes it is there was a main street, everybody knew their neighbors and everybody felt really safe. I think all of these little things kind of add up into this big feeling which is really a community. And so at Lyft, when we think about community and we think about like making a city feel small again, the reality is like cities do not feel small. And I think in order to make them feel small, we really have to bring people together and leverage transportation to get people closer rather than keep them apart. And so our vision is really to reimagine the world's best transportation and start with a community focused mindset. And so when I think about things that are community focused, we're using transportation, we're using technology, we're using sustainability, we're trying to make things more equitable and ultimately we're trying to make things really safe. And so in everything that we do, we really wanna think about making the world's best transportation or community focused adding technology and making it a bit more sustainable. And so with that being said, I think there was a slide earlier where we were talking about like transportation and like duty vehicles impact on like green gas gas emissions. We're the largest contributor to that. And so when we think about the future of transportation, we really need to address its impact on the environment. And so when I think about like the value proposition to lift and to me as a business development professional, I really think about it leads to more sustainable cities which is a part of our mission. It also helps drivers save money and retaining and engaging drivers is something that we need to do from a competitive perspective. And it's also like philosophically aligned with our mission to provide earning opportunities to people. And it's also a better option for people who ride and use rideshare. If you've taken a maybe like green mode which is a new option for EVs through Lyft or through our competitor. It's just a much more pleasant experience and it's something that we really believe in. And so yeah, EVs are good for the planet, drivers and riders. Lyft is committed to transitioning 100% of our fleet of all of their drivers to 100% electric by 2030. And we did this because we really believe in this initiative. It's something that is gonna be really challenging to do but ultimately we believe that it's the right thing to do. And a lot of companies have followed in our footsteps. And so when we think about like the different levers and tools that we have to elect fire fleet, we really think about the first one being partnerships like we did with Grim which is access to charging. And so there's a number of different ways that people charge but access to public fast charging is something that is pretty critical when you think about fuel as a resource or a tool when you're a rideshare driver. Like rideshare drivers get in the car every single day and they think about like every single metric that they have to hit. And one of those metrics is making sure that their car is fueled up. Access to fast charging is a critical tool for that. And so we're really excited about our partnership with EVCS. Also we need to address the just drivers being able to acquire vehicles. And so today electric vehicles are very expensive. And so we're looking at different ways to reduce some of the barriers for drivers to acquire vehicles. And we also have a lift owned and operated fleet that we're rapidly expanding into more EVs. The third piece is around ride challenges. So today we wanna make it more competitive to earn on lift when you own an electric vehicle to encourage people to adopt EV technology and also engage on the lift platform more if you already own an EV. And then the last piece is really around education. Like I think that like I was saying before drivers think about their car very differently than the way I think about my car. My car is like a 2011 vehicle that's basically decaying. And like it would be a terrible ride share vehicle. A ride share driver they have to think about customer service. They have to think about fuel costs. They have to think about maintenance. You know, they use their vehicle more like a tool where the rest of us use it maybe as just like an asset that's a part of our life that gets us from A to B. And so we really have to think about how do we articulate the value of an EV in comparison to an ICE vehicle and make it more competitive and make the math really make sense for people who adopt an EV. And so through all of these different sort of pillars my team focuses on partnerships that try to address some of these barriers and really help help drivers make the transition. The last thing I wanted to touch on is a bit outside of my scope but it's just about what lift is doing with our rider community. And so we really think about what is lift doing to reintroduce our brand as a sustainable brand and how do we wanna kind of like push lift forward into the future where we're marching towards this zero carbon future or low carbon future. And I think it starts with equitable access. So expanding some of our micromodal, multimodal technologies and trip planning capabilities. You know, I think a lot about our bicycle infrastructure in San Francisco and in New York City. This directly addresses some of the challenges in low income communities that could be exposed to the worst of climates. We think about rider engagement. So we have a huge rider base. We wanna think about educating them and talking to them about different options and expanding modes like green mode. We wanna think about supporting our transit partners. And then we also wanna think about how do we leverage our technology and scale to impact things with regulators and ultimately like change the way that we interact with the grid. And so I think that the future is really going to be much more sustainable and we're trying to understand exactly how do we use the technology that we've built and also the community that's around lift whether it's riders or drivers to really address some of the things that are changing in a really equitable way. And so yeah, with that being said, maybe we, how do we wanna transition? Okay, thanks guys. That was terrific. Thank you. Yeah, we're gonna do a little fireside chat format just for a couple of minutes before we open up. It'll give you time to formulate questions you might have for Kareem and Nick. So the first question I have on behalf of the audience is what given all the changes in the world, economy, U.S. economy, what are the biggest challenges you think you'll need to deal with in the next five to 10 years as you expand your businesses which are coordinated out the ones that go first? I think for us the biggest challenge today when we think about transitioning drivers to electric vehicles is I would say access to charging is absolutely one of them but the other one is just around affordability. And so I think today the ride share business model is something that supports people in a certain part of their life, we wanna make it and evolve it to be a great earning opportunity for long term. And I think with that, we wanna expand the earning opportunity to include access to vehicles, access to charging in a more holistic way that really makes sense. I think Lyft started with a mission to really change the way people interact with cities and create a voluntary work opportunity. It's evolved since then. And I think now we really wanna think about okay, people come to Lyft as their main source of income. How are we able to support them in a way that really makes sense, especially in a low carbon future? And so I really think access to vehicles and access to charging are two barriers that I'm personally working on as we think about the next 10 years and electrifying our fleet. Great, Karim. I would say maybe in one word, it would be scale. And I'm kinda looking at how things were five years ago to kinda project where things are gonna be going over the next five years. Five years ago when I started, when I was in the EV space, not a lot of people even knew what EV was. It was kinda like this niche that might be nice to have and it was like super luxurious cars or just early adopters. Today I can comfortably say EVs are not for early adopters anymore. They are for the mass market. And we started looking at the adoption in terms of that hockey stick where the adoption is really shooting up. Now all we need to do is scale. Fast deployment today, not two years from now, not three years from now because we don't have much time. And sometimes John, you and I were chatting. Sometimes we forget about why we got into the EV space in the first place. We got into the EV space because we have a climate crisis. And climate crisis is not gonna wait. So that climate crisis is gonna continue to exist until we address it. So really time is not something that we have and we need to deploy more EV chargers, faster EV chargers that are publicly accessible as fast as we can. So if you only get it from that perspective and really scale is the opportunity and the challenge, scale requires a lot of investment and that investment will be public investment. It will be private investment. So also kinda like access to capital markets and making sure that the investment is being made in that infrastructure so that the automakers are producing the cars as fast as possible and companies like us are able to deploy chargers as fast as possible so that the whole electrification ecosystem is moving on as fast as possible. Speaking of scale, what expansion opportunities are you most excited about now? Is it new products, new markets, some combination of both or something else? Let's go with Korean first this time Yeah, I mean, I'm a little bit biased because I love partnerships. So I think a lot of the new partners that are coming down the pipeline are some things that we are very excited about. And I think faster chargers would be nice but to me personally, I think what is really important is just doing more of the same, doing more of what we are doing today which is deploying more chargers, having them being accessible. EVCS is growing the network very fast and we're doing it across the West Coast and we love being in the West Coast because it gives us focus on Washington, Oregon and California. So I'm excited about the new projects that are coming online. I get excited about chargers guys, I don't know, also probably because I'm a Stanford nerd but I am really excited about all the chargers that we're gonna be putting in the ground and excited about the partnerships that we're gonna be launching. Great, Nick. Yeah, I think the thing that gets me the most excited is just seeing some of the numbers. So in California, our EVM team numbers have exceeded my expectations pretty significantly and I think some of that's driven to access to public fast charging which makes people feel more comfortable with adopting an EV and choosing that four-ride chair. But I think another part of it is that there's a lot of great new EV cars that are coming out and so some of the cars from like on Dye and Kia for instance are fantastic and they're a bit more ride-chair relevant to look at things like range capabilities or just like the MSRP. And so when I think about like access to vehicles and I see some of the numbers, it's not just a dream or like a vision statement that's up on a slide. It's something that you can actually feel and touch and then when you get in an EV and you see a driver and you talk to them about that they experienced charging through Lyft or they have a great experience renting an EV through us, it's just really cool. So I love seeing it in real time and I think some of the metrics are speaking for themselves so it's great. Great, one final question is a transition to audience, a.k.a. student questions. What advice would you give to the students in the audience if they were interested in preparing for and participating in the kind of revolution you guys are pushing forward with? Let's go with Nick again. I think the first thing I would say is like there's a lot of literature about EVs online but the best way to experience it is go rent an EV, like go see what it's like, go charge at a station. We recently opened a Lyft dedicated charging site and we went there and the entire experience was completely broken and I was like, what is going on with this? And I think that maybe in school or maybe in your professional career we can really live inside of our computers and think that everything exists in a digital world but there's an entire group of people that have to convert to electric that are gonna have to experience this process on a day-to-day basis and so I think experiencing it in real time and really understanding some of the nuance with it will help you get a better understanding of exactly what needs to happen and what needs to change. Great, great. I might have many answers to that given that I was a student here and now I'm kind of like putting both hats on. I would say definitely it's a great and fascinating industry to be involved in so I highly encourage you to be involved, define your own way of involvement, fully agree with Nick on like, test it out yourself, rent an EV, go charge it with a slow charger, with a fast charger, see the difference between those. You'll have your own kind of like opinion and perception about what does it take to charge an EV. If you are an undergrad, I highly encourage you to kind of like just learn more about EVs and EV charging and maybe even do an internship at an EV charging startup. If you are a grad student, think about how you can take this massive field and maybe develop your research around it. I can tell you, as I mentioned, I think electrification is gonna be a pillar in the decarbonization of the transportation sector. There's no lack of interesting research questions associated with that, from a policy perspective, from an economics perspective, from the interplay of both policy and economics, not to mention all the technology that has to do with fast charging, with battery chemistry. So there's a whole universe of research opportunities out there for you to pursue and I'm gonna volunteer myself and Nick to say if you have questions, please talk to the industry and figure out where the needs are. We can definitely make use of more smart minds. Great, with that invitation, we now have a lot of time for a general audience question starting with students, any volunteers? Anybody wanna apply for a job? Thank you for a very informative talk. So I wonder if you have any experience as Lyft or as EVCS in developing countries or emerging economies in the two-wheelers, three-wheelers markets, and any sense, insights? What are the, probably the recipe of success there to enhance diffusion? Or you know, the early sense, early signs of what can drive success in adoption there? Gonna toss that to Nick. Truthfully, we don't. So Lyft is only in the United States and so the scope of our EV infrastructure and partnerships really live in the United States. I wish I had a better answer for you, but I just don't have any experience in that. Yeah, honestly, same, we're mostly focusing on the West Coast, even in the United States. That's where all of that EVCS operation is. The only insight that I can offer, which probably a lot of people already know, is there is some very interesting work on EVs and EV charging. China is by far leading in terms of EV deployment today, and I'm sure there's a lot of lessons learned from that, but beyond that, unfortunately, I don't have any specifics. Can you hear me? Yeah, okay. Thank you, Karin and Nick, for the amazing presentation. One of the main challenges of the charging, EV charging is the reliability aspect of it, especially the uptime. We see that in the news that the uptime is not very good. It's far from what we expect. I wonder what are some of the actions of EVCS, what are the actions that you guys are taking for tackling this problem? That's a great question. Fully agree with you. Reliability of chargers is a very important aspect for public EV charging, and there is both private and public efforts to address that. So for us, we take that very seriously, like from the get-go. We have dedicated teams, a whole operation team, in fact, that actually work on making sure that the chargers are up and running. I can give you an anecdote that every day when I wake up, I start my day by having a cup of coffee, and I am on our network map, looking at all of our chargers, every single one of them across the West Coast, to basically see how the network is performing. So a lot of work goes into that. We monitor the network on a regular basis. We dispatch technicians to fix chargers also on a regular basis. There's a lot of innovation in terms of if the charger is now working, how can you swap it very, very quickly so that before you fix the charger, the charger is completely swapped, and then you worry about fixing it later just to make sure that the charger is available for the public, and the public does not have to wait. And the last piece is also communication and clarity. Now, a lot of the charging stations have multiple chargers in them. For us, at least we have four DC fast chargers, or on average we have four DC fast chargers in every location. It's important for us to show the customer before they navigate to the charger that the charger is actually available or not. So we spend a lot of time in terms of how do we make that live information available for the customer, so they know that the charger is available, the charger is offline, the charger is on their maintenance mode, and then that would help them plan their trip accordingly. So it's both about giving that visibility to the customer and be very accurate in that information, and then also fixing, of course, the charger as quickly as possible. And we work with the OEMs on a weekly basis in terms of how can we continue to troubleshoot some of the hardware and the software issues that come up on the chargers. I want to say anything about that. Yeah, I mean, this is a huge issue. This is a big problem at Lyft, and it's one of the reasons why we actually, during our discovery process with EBCS, I think the way that they approach uptime is really great, and it's something that it's a required capability in the way that we kind of evaluate new partners. What I can say is there's nothing more frustrating than not being able to fill up your car, and even more than that, I think that imagine going to work and your computer charger broke and you see your charge going down and down and down, and then you're not able to actually earn that day. It's got to be extremely frustrating, and so it's something that we're addressing directly. What I can say is that rideshare has changed a number of different industries by really stress testing them. And so when we think about the way that a rideshare driver consumes a vehicle or consumes charging, or consumes even something like car washes, drivers wash their car every single day. In a lot of cases, they'll fill up their car every single day, and so the way that they consume charging is very different, and what we're finding with our partners, and eventually with EBCS, is that we need to have a very rigid feedback loop to make sure that we understand in real time when chargers aren't working or when there's just problems at the charger, and not all of that can be diagnosed on a computer. Like I was saying before, it's really important to understand in the field what's exactly happening, and so it's a little bit of a manual process, but it's something that requires a lot of troubleshooting and just awareness. A question over here in the middle. Hi, thank you so much for the talk. I actually have two questions, one for each speaker. So yeah, my question for Karim is that to install one of your chargers at any given location, how much of the cost is actually your hardware and how much of the cost is actually upgrading the infrastructure, like getting a high-power cable to this site, right? Yeah. Yeah, we'll stop. Great question. I'm not sure I'm at the liberty of sharing the exact costs. I can answer your question in two ways. One, there are really good reports that are issued by the California Energy Commission that looks at on aggregate in the industry how much does it cost to install a charger? So if you go to the CEC website, Clean Transportation Program, you'll be able to see some figures there. I'm pretty sure they're there, and I'm happy to follow up with you after that on some of those resources. But roughly speaking, from my personal experience with the industry, this is not representative of ECS, but just as a general experience. Generally speaking, it's kind of like, as a rule of thumb, we think about it as half-half. Half of the cost is hardware, and half of the cost is project development. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm going for, like the percentages, but not the exact costs. So half-half, you can, of course, the way to think about it also is the bigger the charger, the faster the charger, the capex for the charger go up, but also you will need a little bit more work on the project development side. So again, it continues to balance out as being 50%, 50%. Roughly speaking. Yeah, thank you so much. And my question for Nick is, do you think like for these drivers that don't have an electric vehicle, but then they want to drive for the red chair, and of course they don't have a home charging facility? Do you think it's more even easier to just give these drivers maybe $500, $1,000 reimbursement so they can buy a level two charger of Amazon and just install at their home instead of installing all these difficult public chargers? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think the answer was most of our drivers live in metropolitan areas and live in multi-unit dwellings. And so when you think about a multi-unit dwelling, like an apartment complex or condominium townhome, they really don't have the ability to install a level two charger at home. And so when we think about that and we think about where drivers live, L2 charging just becomes a bit less relevant. I think that there's a number of things we're trying to do with level two charging, but truthfully, we've done some engagement with drivers and we've also tried to do some home charging partnerships and there was pretty minimal engagement. And so I think in the future, when they come up with like more incentives for people who manage multi-unit dwellings or townhomes, HOAs and things like that, I do think that there will be an opportunity to do that. But today we see home charging as just a little bit less relevant for the current rideshare landscape, yeah. And maybe just to clarify also on that, I think the underlying premise in Nick's question, Nick's answer is not every person, unfortunately today, not every person who wants to have a personal charger can have a personal charger depending on where they live. So if you live in a house, you can have an electrician, you can install your own level two charger. If you live in an apartment building or what we call multi-unit dwelling for several reasons involving landlords and other stuff, you can't install your own charger. On a lot of, I shouldn't say you can't, but it's much more challenging for you to be able to install your own dedicated level two charger. And that's where public charging becomes, stops being a luxury and starts becoming a necessity for a lot of people. And I really think that when, and we're doing some strategy to try to advocate for there to become incentives for multi-unit dwellings to build home charging, but it's a real problem. For me personally, I live in a building with six units, they're all condos, two people have Teslas and they want to install home charging. It's going to have an impact on our HOA, it's going to cost money, it's going to create these problems. And so even in a really what would be perceived as a very simple multi-unit dwelling HOA situation, it's actually kind of a complicated conversation and each unit is very, very different. And so it's just different and it's not as simple as just giving drivers money or giving them a unit to install in their home. I really wish it was. But I think that that would be a huge unlock and I think that that's something that we'll have to address in the coming years. I think right now the biggest, the most effective tool for us to help drivers is really access to fast charging. So that's why we prioritize partnerships with companies like ECS. Over here. Thank you very much, that was a great presentation. So especially on this campus, bikes are a big deal and the big push towards e-bikes. And I know Lyft does a lot with the ride bike share services. How does that factor into all of these equations? Yeah, I mean bike sharing infrastructure is absolutely a tool to address the climate crisis. I think if you look at Lyft's efforts in our investments, we think about cities where maybe it's more challenging to grant access to EV infrastructure. I think about a place like New York City where there's like two chargers in Manhattan. It's just really, really difficult but there's like a thousand cabs. And so what's the most effective tool to address the climate crisis in a place like New York? I think bike share is one of those tools that we can use. It's not the only tool. It's a very effective tool though. Yeah, and it's something that we've made significant investments into. Also in Beijing, have you been there? Let's do one more and then Sally gets the last question. And they're fun too, the bikes are great. Thank you for the talk, it was really informative. I had a question about when you're working on this project, how do you account for the impact of rising adoption of EV on the grid? Do you have to work with utility companies and how do you get around that? That is a great question. We work with the utilities all the time across the West Coast and I think what you're alluding in your question is really spot on is that we can't work with one utility. We're gonna have to work with every single utility because we are gonna be installing chargers in all of their jurisdictions. I think the impact of EVs and EV charging on the grid is a very important topic. The trick to us is that we always engage early with the utilities and we don't think of a utility as only a service provider but we also we think of them as a partner. So we're always in conversations with them early on because the utilities might have specific programs and a lot of those programs as you guys are in the grid space, they go today by the general nomenclature of make ready, make ready EV infrastructure which basically means all of the infrastructure that the utility has to install on their side to be able to connect to the EV charger. So we work with the utilities on their EV make ready programs, we understand what's coming down the pipeline, we establish a process for them so that by the time we actually apply for a specific site, we try to streamline that process as much as possible but it is indeed a challenge today that the utility recognize that we recognize that the more chargers that get installed, the grid capacity cannot take all of those chargers and then you start through getting three grid upgrades at multiple levels of that utility infrastructure and sometimes it's challenging and sometimes that leads into long wait times which we don't like because we wanna be able to install chargers as fast as we can. Great, Sally, but... Okay, okay. Can you hear the back? Can you hear? Yeah. There you go. Okay, that's better. Anyway, thanks. You know, thinking about New York City, you know, you said there's very few chargers and all the millions of people there. I was just in Tokyo and they have 37 million people who live in Tokyo and what I'm thinking is that, you know, if you think about mega cities, you know, might there be another solution like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and are either of you thinking of not just being an EV service provider or using EVs but also thinking about other forms of electric vehicles including hydrogen? Truthfully, we're really focused on our 2030 commitment and the 2030 commitment is really centered around electrifying our fleet. And I think that when we think about like our driver community and we think about how everybody's in this different situation, the infrastructure that's available today and like some of the work that we need to do over the next decade or so, I really think that EVs are probably the most effective tool for us to address what we're looking to accomplish. With that being said, we've been very public about some of our ambitions around autonomous vehicles and the way that we are thinking about working with other types of technology to try to improve the rideshare experience. But yeah, our main focus is electric vehicles. I think that going back to the framework which I really like by the internet agency, I think, and you and I work a lot on this, I don't think there's gonna be one silver bullet to solve fully the carbon emissions from the transportation sector. I think it's gonna take multiple technologies and multiple business models. At EVCS, the focus is gonna continue to be on EVs and EV charging infrastructure. Now, taking off my EVCS hat for a second and putting on my personal Kareem hat for a second, I think that optimistically, I'm personally a big proponent for EVs simply because when I think about it personally, the grid is there, the infrastructure is there. We need to expand it, we need to develop it, but the grid is there. When I think about hydrogen, there's a piece in that puzzle that is missing to me which is the equivalent of the grid, which is the infrastructure that will eventually lead to the hydrogen being available for the vehicles and stuff like that. But that being said, there continues to be interesting applications for hydrogen, especially for bigger vehicles like medium and heavy duty vehicles with longer ranges. So it's possible, but if I were to bet my own money on a technology at Go EV. Great, we're just about out of time, so I'd like to thank, on behalf of the audience, Nick and Kareem for a thought provoking and inspirational talk and to the audience for a set of really good questions. Thank you.