 Okay, we're live. We're here at one o'clock rock. Well, we'll have to one o'clock rock. Here on Think Tech in the name of this show is Hawaii, the state of clean energy. And the name of our episode is Electric Vehicles in America. And we got real authority on that. You know, this is Ed Kemper. He's originally an attorney, still an attorney. He's always an attorney. Still trying to practice. Still trying to get it down. But more than that, he has created and is doing now for years and years Island Driver TV on OC-16. And he's been writing about cars, including electric cars, and the Star Advertiser every Friday. So if you want to know more, check him out on OC-16 or in the Star Advertiser. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Great to have you here. Good to be here. So, you know, we talk about electric cars all the time because it's part of multimodal transportation. It's part of the future of Hawaii, at least according to everyone involved in clean energy, because it is clean. And not to say that the source has to be clean, but one day if the source is clean, the whole continuum is clean. Correct. So we're interested in electric vehicles. So you follow cars. I know you do. You love cars. Yes. It's boys toys kind of thing. I know it is. I know your secret. And so I'd like to know what's on the market now that's worth talking about in terms of electric cars. Cars that are available to me that I might actually consider buying and using and incorporating into my life. Well, let's go through a little history. We have various vehicles that are on the road now that started as hybrids. Now to understand a hybrid, it's essentially we have some batteries and we have a gasoline motor. If it's fully charged, then you go along usually at a modest pace with electricity. And then the gas motor cuts on when you need it. So that resulted in gas mileage in the 40 to 50 mile per gallon range. Everybody knows about the various Toyota Priuses and there's quite a few different models of those that have been around for quite a few years. Popular car. Popular car. But here's what's on the horizon for the manufacturers. It's called corporate average fuel economy. It's a federal standard. And by 2025, essentially the mileage you're getting now is going to double. It has to double. You say, well, how are you going to do that? There's really only two ways. More and more hybrids and more and more electric vehicles. Let me give you the quandary that the manufacturers have. A perfect example of this is the best-selling vehicle in the United States is a Ford truck, the F-150 and the series after that. They sell 70,000 a month, which is one every 32 seconds or something like that, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Is this a great country or what? Here's their problem. The fuel mileage in a typical truck is not very good. And if they're going to get up to where they're talking about at 40 miles per gallon, they have to take some steps to deal with that. Ford has already done that to a degree. They changed from steel to an aluminum body. See, at the car show, yeah. Saved 700 pounds. Better fuel mileage. They go from a V8, which they still have, but also now they're in V6s, turbos. Puts out the same horsepower, better gas mileage. That'll get you so far. The real answer is Ford is going to have to do more and more electric vehicles to offset a low mileage of the trucks. So when you say average, you mean average among the fleet? Among the fleet. Corporate average. So Ford Motor Company, which is Ford and Lincoln, for all is going to have to have 40 miles per gallon plus. So the way to do that is high bridge, which Ford has and also electric vehicles. And you say, well, how does that work? The EPA has come up with a way of converting electric vehicle mileage into the equivalent of fuel mileage. So the typical electric vehicle maybe gets a hundred miles per gallon, although we're not talking about gallons of fuel. And you offset against the ones that are getting 20 or 30 or whatever, and then you get the average pulled up so you meet the standards. So it's a formula. Yes, 20, 25 is when we have to meet this goal. That's nine years away. That is correct. So electric vehicles are really the prime answer because their equivalent fuel mileage is in the hundreds. 105, 107, whatever the number is. So if you have a Prius, you're probably in the 50s range. There's a plug-in Prius, which means it has more batteries. And its range is even further. But the next step, as I said, is pure electric vehicles. There's some halfway steps that occurred. There's a Chevy Volt, not the Volt. The Volt is the older one and the Volt is just coming out. Right. So the Volt has a little motor in it and lots of batteries. So it runs on electric power most of the time. When the computer sense that I'm quote, running out of battery power, this little motor comes on and then shoots used directly into the batteries. So it'll go 45, 50 miles on electricity. And if it says and you can still drive it all the way across the country without ever trying to charge it because it is a plug-in electric. So next step is going to be from Chevrolet is the Bolt. Now the Bolt has a range allegedly of 234 miles before the Volt. You have to recharge it. Very competitive in the marketplace. That on this island you could go anywhere. Yeah. No anxiety at all. No, none, no anxiety at all. Other manufacturers are doing likewise. Volkswagen is going to come out with one with that kind of range. Take a step back. The Nissan Leaf, which is probably one of the more popular electric wheels, probably has a range right now of 70 miles or so. I should tell a story. I test drove one of them. I picked it up in Kandiyoi. I'm going up over the poly. It started with 64 miles left of range. And as I'm going up the hill, the range is dropping like a rocket downhill because the batteries are, you know, chugging this thing up. I said, uh-oh, am I going to make it home? Go get to the tunnel, start going down the poly because it's a long downhill to town. By the time I got home by Punchbowl, I was back to 64 miles because when you, you don't even have to press the brake. It recharges just going downhill on that. How interesting. Yes. Now obviously when it went the other way, it didn't sort of the opposite. You know, the net effect on that trip was terrific. Yeah, it went up there effectively free. Yeah, that's right. So anyway, so we're moving to the long range electric vehicles and we're doing so because technology has changed, the batteries are getting better, the amount of storage area is not as big as it had to be. Now of course everybody has to talk about Tesla, of course. And they currently have what I would call high-end electric vehicles. They started about $70,000. They have pretty good range. I shouldn't tell this story on myself. I test drove one of them and this particular one was the high-end dual motor all-wheel drive and you push a button, I think it was called insane on the dash. It's just insane. I thought you said insane. It is insane. Alright. Or worse to that effect. And then you, and the person with me said, put your head back on the headrest. I said, you know, I've driven race cars, I can handle this. Holy moly. You can stop on the accelerator because it's all wheel drive. There's no wheel spin. And in an electric vehicle, the torque is there instantly as opposed to a gas engine, which takes time. The acceleration was phenomenal. 3.2 seconds from 0 to 60. And now they have one that's even more powerful. Oh my goodness. But you know, $110,000 or whatever it costs. But it's very quiet. It has a very long range. But now the big one's coming. The so-called Model 3 Tesla. And it has a range of 233 miles, allegedly. Hasn't been built yet. It still looks Tesla, which is different from most cars. And they have 300,000 deposits of $1,000 apiece. For just get your name on the list so when they start producing them, you'll get one. What does that come to? American money? $300 million. That'll start your car company. Right. Well, what Tesla did was they bought the old General Motors Toyota plant in California. That wasn't being used. It was going out of business, essentially. And it's a million square feet or a million two. And I actually asked the Tesla guy, I said, well, I mean, how big is that? He says, well, we can run 5k running races inside the factory. And we still have room. I said, oh, okay, so you'll have enough room to build the Model 3. Yes. So you can see the interest there. And I think it's because, first of all, it sells for $35,000 or maybe $38,000. There's currently a federal tax credit of $7,500. And assuming you have income tax equal to $7,500, you can use that to offset the price. But this is only an offset credit. It's not a refundable credit. You get cash no matter what. Right. So you have to have a certain amount of income paying that amount of tax in order to offset that number. That's the way it's been. Yeah, right. So the concern, although among Tesla people, is they're using up the credit already with their more upper end models. And by the time the 3 comes along, is that credit going to be used up? Because there's a cap on how much it can be permitted. It's a number of cars that the manufacturer makes. Now, the Chevy Volt, they don't have that problem because they don't make that. General Motors doesn't make that many electric vehicles. Big difference. Yes. Because Tesla, that's all they make. And General Motors makes everything under the sun. And of course the Volt, Chevy Volt, you get the credit. And when the Volt comes out, which is pure electric, 234 mile range, people will be able to take advantage of that. And the pricing is roughly the same as the Model 3. Now, I think people will still, I still want it because it has an unusual look to it on the Model 3. It says Tesla, and I think there's a certain cache. As opposed to a Chevy, no offense to Tesla. Cars in America and the world, it's all about cache, isn't it? That's right. It's your persona. That's right. I suspect that the acceleration time in both of these electric vehicles, because they have so many batteries, is going to be quite good. It tends to drop off a little bit as you get into the higher realm, 70, 80 miles an hour, but who cares? Most people don't. But let me also say this. In Hawaii, of course, people say, well, most of our electricity, unless you have solar panels, comes from oil. Yes, that's true, but we're stepping in the future where we're going to be less and less dependent upon that. But also look at it this way. You're taking your car to the local gas station to get gas. Think how many steps occurred before you get that gas into your tank. Somewhere, somewhere, there's a big machine pumping the oil out, pumping into trucks or pipes, shipping it to a tanker. Tanker comes here, tanker offloads it to a fuel storage area. It's converted to gasoline. Think how much energy is used in all those steps. Then it's put on another truck, sent to the gas station, and then has to be pumped out of that into your vehicle. Whereas electricity, the lines are already up, just plug it in. Or if you have a home with solar panels, you're off the grid. Because you can plug it in at night and put that energy back into the vehicle off you go. And for that matter, as you said, when we get to the point where we're closing 100% renewables, these cars are all effectively working on renewables at a great moment. This has got to change things. It's interesting that the big manufacturers, not Tesla now, they're manufacturing all kinds of cars. And they love fossil cars and they have all kinds of great new technology, which you see on your show and which you examine. It's very impressive. But in the future we're going to be talking to electric cars on this. And it just strikes me that Tesla doing say 300,000 to start and then many more than that if it works, which I think it probably will work. That's going to change everything, isn't it? Because then the big manufacturers are going to say, gee, we better get a product up here. They're also being forced to do that because of the CAF standard. They're going to have to do it. Now, admittedly you have lots of trucks which are designed not for the cow or just passengers to and from work. And they have to have an offset on cars that get very high equivalent mileage, as I explained. So there definitely is going to be a big push to electric and hybrids. Hybrids still have a role to play because they can be in the 50s or so in the gas mileage range. When we come back from this break, I'd like to talk about how it's going to affect not only the marketplace but our lives and our society here in Hawaii and across the country and the world. That's Ed Kemper. He does Island Driver TV on OC16. He does a column in the Star Votizer all about cars. Here on Hawaii, the state of clean energy, we'll be right back in one minute. You'll see. Aloha, I'm Carl Kampania, host of Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers. I hope you join us over the next several weeks as we take a deep dive into biofuels in Hawaii and explore the alternative fuels supply chain necessary for the local and global transition towards transportation fuel sustainability. Join us as we have good conversations with our farmers, our producers, our conversion technologies, our investors, and our legislators as we try to achieve our transportation sustainability goals. See you soon. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Okay, we're back. We're live with Ed Kemper, an expert on cars, Island Driver TV and OC16 and a column in the Star Votizer for years and years. We're talking about electric cars today, electric cars in America. So you've examined and told us, which I mean a really very authoritative discussion about how these cars are evolving right now and why. But what's the effect? What's the effect in terms of people buying them of dealers or maybe direct manufacturer type sales happening? What's the effect on highways? The effect on our society? I know a lot of this is speculative but I'd be really interested in your thoughts about where we're going on this, Ed. Well, interestingly there was an article in the paper not too long ago about, okay, we start shifting to electric vehicles and we're not going to the gas station and pumping gas where there's attacks that the state government gets or the city gets. Interesting point. For roads, how are we going to get the revenue to keep our roads going? Interesting point. So here's their theory. You get your car expected? Okay, your last inspection, so your mileage was X, let's say 20,000 and now it's 30,000. We're going to assess you attacks based upon the mileage. And I think that's going to have to happen. It's not unfair. No, I mean you're using the road and here we have proof of it. You should pay your fair share to keep that road. It's like the tax on trucks on the mainland states have tax on miles. The trucks travel because every mile deteriorates the highway. Right, so that's one issue that's certainly going to come up. I think also people don't realize this just as a matter of noise. Electric vehicles are essentially silent and you don't have that engine exhaust noise potentially from regular vehicles all the time. So we may end up with traffic that's quieter. Admittedly there's still tire noise in the car traveling through the air but overall as we shift more and more to the electric vehicle there'll be a somewhat quieter sense. And that's dangerous. I can't hear him coming. That's correct. In parking lots there's been some talk about having a noise maker in the vehicle. So at low speeds it lets you know that the car is present. And actually there's a Kia electric vehicle that had that noise maker. It sounded like a car engine even though it was electric. It's easy to do. It's not an expensive thing. But here this is only low speed stuff. Just once you get going. It reminds me when we were kids we rode our bicycles and the bicycles didn't make any noise. So we put a playing card on the spokes with a closed pin made it sound like a noisy motorcycle. You're a high tech guy. I can tell that. You heard it here on Think Tech. But I think also even though we sort of have this downturn in the solar panel business because of various other features I think more important people will say okay if I'm on an electric car I might as well have solar power in my home. Because then I'm really completely off the grid in all aspects. And I've noticed a lot of the Tesla people because they're high-end vehicles they'll have solar panels in their home. They can afford it. It's a high-end family. And it pays itself off. I mean it isn't as if you're just throwing money against the wall and it falls down and that's it. Eventually because you're making these savings in your electric bill for both your home and your car or cars it pays off even quicker. Sure. It's a great connection. But let me ask you this first batteries will get better. Now there's huge pressure to have them get better. And in fact there's a substance called graphene. Graphene is one layer of carbon atoms. And if you layer that up using that graphene layer you can have a battery that's much more efficient than any battery today. And there are thousands of science that's working on this because it's a holy ground. I think I've heard about that. It'll happen. It will happen. It'll change cars. It'll change all these cars we're talking about. And so what's going to happen is we're going to need less charging because the battery will be more effective. And then we have an improvement in the quality which is also happening of the solar panels. So maybe you could make a self-fulfilling system. A self-supplying system with a flat roof or relatively speaking with solar panels on that high efficiency, high efficiency battery, the whole thing runs without any external force at all. What do you think? Possible. And let me tell you this. Over time the batteries have gotten better already because the range has already been extended and the time to recharge has been cut down. Some people fear, oh my gosh, it'll take hours and hours and hours for now, maybe four hours or even less. I mean and that leaf that I talked about earlier, they have a high energy machine in 30 minutes, 80% charged. Now admittedly you've got to buy this gadget to do it. And it costs some money. A lot of people would pay for that because they love their cars and they love not having range anxiety and all that stuff. Well, and also that particular device will become less expensive as they produce more of them and the technology changes. Now Tesla is building a, I don't know how many billion dollar factory in Reno, Nevada to build batteries along with Panasonic. And that's not only for their vehicles but also for storage of electricity in homes because we're having this problem in Hawaii already. That is, there's no, you can't get your credit back from the Echo because... Determination of net energy metering. So people are going to buy storage batteries and they'll be able to store their energy, plug it into their vehicle a perfect deal for Tesla because a lot of them are Tesla storage units. All this is connected. You know the car no pun intended by that connected the car No I didn't mean that but thank you. Well it's fine. I'll take your pun. But you know it's connected in the sense that you work on the batteries you work on the solar and it helps you not only with the cars it helps you with your house and everything sort of connects. But what it really says is that there's technology out there that can disconnect you with the utility and with the grid. You might, I mean who knows in ten years time we might be able to be completely independent. Car, house, only our stuff. Well I think not everybody because you have to afford it. And also you think of condominiums a lot of them now have no place to plug in your vehicle. It's very expensive to get a charging station for you and your vehicle and condo. Now there is a mandate I think if there's an X number of parking stalls then you have to have so many places where you can charge but for most smaller condominiums no. But I think in the future there may be changes in the law concerning that. Yes. And there may be pressure on condo associations. Hey, hook it up. Or vendors may come along and say I'll put it in because I want the revenue that's going to result when people plug into this particular system. Yeah so I'll hold it and I'll lease it to you or I'll charge you in case of how much juice flows through it. Right. So you put your credit card in, it reads it, well I've done that at the Davies building. Right down here they have one and I had an electric vehicle and I said well I'm going to try this. So I came in, plugged it in, put my credit card in and it gave me so many hours or whatever it was. It wasn't very expensive. That opens up the next part of our discussion and that is this is going to change the business model. I mean the business models are changing already. If you look at fossil cars a few years ago nobody leased fossil cars. Now little by little that's the way they marketed. I mean it's extraordinary you listen to ad after ad on television. I mean in the breaks between the debates. I mean because that's high advertising revenue right there. Right. And you see for every single car you don't get the price. You get the monthly lease payment. That's what you get. Changing. Well there's an advantage to leasing and that's this. The financing is based upon what the cost of the vehicle is and its residual value as opposed to the entire cost of the vehicle. So your monthly payments are less. And of course the manufacturers can then say okay we're going to charge zero interest and make those payments even less which are really they're subsidizing the price. You say oh my god I might as well buy a new car because and then at the end of the lease you have the following options. Give it back to the manufacturer or the dealer. They take it away or you can buy it at the residual value and if the value is actually higher on the marketplace you can then sell it and make a profit. My partner used to do that with his Ford Ranger trucks. After three years he would usually find out this truck is more valuable than the residual and then sell it. Yeah make a few bucks. But all of this is in play now and I think as electric cars take more and more of the market and they will in the next few years because of this 2025 standards and other factors that will attract people even macho people even Ford F-150 people we're going to have more on the roads. We're going to have more dealers trying to figure out more ways to get them to us and to change the model about buying them, leasing them, you know buying leasing, exchanging batteries. All these things are in play. It's a great time to be on the road isn't it? We can only benefit by this. Well it's interesting we used to call people that worked in the service department mechanics you know because they would take a tool and do whatever. Now they're technicians because vehicles are run by computers and all they do now is plug it into some big screen thing and it'll tell you what's wrong with it. So there's where we're going. Definitely computerization is taking over not only the vehicle itself but the repair of it and you know when you talk about electric vehicles you have a little dinky motor maybe yay big yay long very simple unlike a reciprocating engine that has all these parts going every which way and there you have oil in there and all that other stuff and there's no transmission in electric vehicles it's just one gear simple the problem in the expense is of course the batteries which are high tech but as I said over time it's going to be less and less expensive. Considering all these things there's your camera over there address the people tell them what they need to do now the ones who don't have electric cars how should they plan their future around cars given these changes I think if you have a home you should investigate solar panels not only for your own benefit at home but also ultimately for your vehicles because that way you save lots of money and even though the electric vehicle may be initially a little more expensive so a federal credit for many of them you should look at it that way now obviously I think eventually trucks minivans SUVs are going to be more and more either hybrid or electric so you might as well go down that avenue because that's where we're going absolutely unequivocally that's where we're going in and you know what I'd like you to come back on from time to time if you can spare time from OC16 come and tell us how it goes because it's a moving target that's Ed Kemper, Hawaii driver island driver TV and OC16 and writes for the star advertiser on cars every Friday and we have been honored to have him here in our show about clean energy in Hawaii. Thank you so much Ed. Thank you