500 Miles on a Charge: Is This the End of the Diesel Semi?

This one trucking company, you know, they own tens of thousands of diesels. There is a wait list of people that drive for that company that want to get into the electric. Once truckers actually drive these vehicles, they've really enjoyed the experience. It is quiet. There is no fumes and there are no vibrations. So the actual experience itself is really trucker friendly. Hi, my name is Jigger Shaw and I'm a clean energy entrepreneur. And I'm Jamie Nolan, a clean energy communications consultant. And this is energy empire. Hey, Jigger, how's it going? It's going really well. My, you know, son just got a new stripe on his belt for Taekwondo. So he's super excited. And so, you know, always like he always loves progress. And then yesterday we did trivia night. And we were like second to last place, but then they had this bonus question of how many dimples are on a golf ball. And I happened to know. And so we got 10 bonus points. And so we got first place. Oh my God. First of all, congratulations, what an achievement. But how many dimples are on a golf ball? 336. Wow. That is some like random trivia. I also had a fun children's activities weekend. But my daughter is an Irish dancer and she performs all over the region, like with her dance troop. And I am really enjoying it. This is her first year performing. And I'm enjoying it because I get to go to all these parties and these school venues. I did not expect that this was going to be a perk of being in a dance mom. But I got to go to a very fancy fundraiser at the Army Navy country club this weekend. And it's beautiful. And there's like a gorgeous view of the Washington Monument and the Air Force Memorial. And so I think that I'm going to enjoy this career of dance, momming and touring all the fancy galas of the Washington DC region. So all that said, if you are having a fancy party in the Washington DC region, and you would like some adorable Irish dancers to join you for your entertainment, please reach out. Okay. So we found out about your ice skating prowess. And now your daughter, is it River Dance? It is, it is exactly like River Dance. And it's, it's so fun. It's like, it's very percussive. It's so, I just, it's, I'm so happy that the thing that she decided that she was really into is something that I also personally enjoy. They've done private parties, Irish pubs all over the area. So there are some benefits. I'm not going to lie like you walk in and they're like, your dance mom, here's your Guinness. Oh my, thank you. Well, we have our friend Adam Browning coming on. You and I met him through his extraordinary service through Viltzola, where he grew that organization into quite an influential jug or not nationwide. Now he's working and trucking. Yes, I was very excited about this episode. First of all, I have to point out that this was really interesting because, you know, I do public relations. I do media relations. I know a lot of energy reporters to put it very lightly. And I pitch people. That's like a big part of my job. And now that I'm sitting in this sea at Energy Empire, I'm getting pitched. And so Adam reached out to me. I knew he had worked over, he had moved over to working on freight, which is an issue that we, like a sector that we kind of touched upon at LPO, but we didn't really get to do much with. So I admit I don't know a lot about it. And so after Adam reached out to me, I asked my dad about this because he, retrained a couple of years ago after a career as a maritime electrician and mechanic, he, he just couldn't physically do it anymore. It's really, really hard on your body. And now that he's in his 60s, he didn't feel ready to retire, but he wanted to do something else. So the state of Maryland actually paid to have him retrained for his commercial driving license. So he is now driving long haul trucks, refrigerated trucks from Delaware on the Del Marva Peninsula, all across the country, like to Illinois is a, that's a regular run that he does to Illinois and back. And so I have learned more about trucking just in like hearing my dad stories and such. So when Adam reached out about this, I kind of latched on to it. And took it to my dad and was like, Hey, what do you think about this? And literally the morning of your recording, he was like texting me furiously like with his questions and the topics he wanted to dress. So I'm really excited for my dad, who was probably sitting in his truck right now listening to this episode to hear our conversation. This episode is supported by S2G investments. If you've been listening to me, you know that I'm done talking about R&D. We have the technology. The real question is, can we deploy it at scale? When I joined Sunjeev Krishnan on the S2G podcast, we skipped the hype and talked about what actually matters, affordability, fit for purpose capital and getting real infrastructure built. S2G investments is one of the only firms who brings that same deployment first mindset to energy, agriculture and the oceans, connecting the dots across the real economy. Listen to the S2G podcast on your favorite podcast app now and start with my episode on energy affordability. Hi, Adam Browning. Welcome to Energy Empire. Thank you for having me here on I'm excited for this. I want to start somewhere personal. My dad is a trucker actually after a long career as a maritime electrician and mechanic. He retrained for a second career in trucking and he's absolutely loving it. He's open to new technologies, but electrifying semi truck sounds super far fetched to him. So when did the stop being so far fetched? I mean, you know, it is all really new and in that, I think there's an excitement to that as well. Like I enjoy the beginnings of things, but you know, I agree with the there's a lot of truckers who look at this and they are skeptical. And the technologies evolving rapidly, but let me just share an anecdote. We've got a depot where we have 12 different motor carriers that operate out of there. It's inside the port along Beach. And they range in size from a guy with a truck to one of the largest trucking companies in the world operating Amazon trucks. And this one trucking company, you know, they own tens of thousands of diesels. It is quiet. There is no fumes. There are no vibrations. One pedal driving is a lot easier on the entire body than like clutching through rush hour traffic on the harbor freeway. Well, that's awesome. And I feel like you just did one of the things that I trained my clients to do, which is you just hit all the headlines. You just hit all the key points in that opening statement. So I'm looking forward to digging into more on all of those points. But let's kind of go back to the beginning of your career because you've had kind of a storied career and energy and environment. And Jigger and I have both known you for a really long time because we all worked in solar. You worked on mercury emissions at the EPA as well. So what pulled you towards freight for your next act? You know, I've never had like a blueprint for how I wanted my career to go. Maybe similar to you guys as well. For me, it was like, just the next interesting thing after another. But after 20 years in solar, it was awesome. It was the ride of my life and I was a little burnt out. And when I ended up stepping down from my last job, I had a lot of people reach out and I started consulting. And what really grabbed me, I joined a board of this company that I'm now working with, working at a formability. What really grabbed me really like the beginnings of things, things that we know we need that don't yet really exist. Like that to me is, is the fun part of the ride. And so for me, I'm now invested. Like I've spent enough time really digging in to seeing how this, you know, really crucial part of our economy, the lifeblood of our economy can be fundamentally transformed and bettered for the experience of everybody involved by deploying advanced technology. And I'm in it to win it right now. Alright Adam, let's set the scene for listeners. I think that when you look at electric vehicles, the legacy automakers had years of warnings that EVs were coming, right? There were all these EV mandates in the state of California, but they really didn't move fast enough, right? And eventually Tesla was formed and Elon invested in Tesla and then took it over. And, you know, and then the legacy automakers had to scramble to catch up, right? right? Is that the movie we're now watching and trucking? Because you know, when I was at the loan programs office last four years, we kept going after all the legacy truck makers and saying, Hey, we're happy to give you a loan to make trucks here in the United States. And they kept dragging their feet and dragging their feet. So I just wanted to get your take on the dynamics here. Yeah. I would say the movie seems pretty similar. So, you know, at formability, what we do is we build truck charging depots and then provide to motor carriers, the trucking companies charging or will lease them a truck and give them a truck plus charging together. So we we own and lease out in our customer's own. A lot of all those dimelar eCascadia's, BYD's and they're working great. So our depot inside the port along beach now just past our customers have passed just their two millionth mile of zero emission freight going from the port along beach out to distribution centers with those containers. So you know, those that current iteration of truck that we're working with like it works great. The question though is can it really scale? And those trucks have been really expensive and the prices have been going more up than down. The Tesla semi, which Tesla is now building that factory, finishing that factory out in sparks and the beta, it is a different beast. It is a 500 mile truck versus the 250 to 25 mile range that we've seen with some of the current legacy versions from the other OEMs and it charges about four times faster on an MCS charging standard. It is more efficient in terms of its ability to turn an electron into a model and it's radically cheaper. So twice the range nearly half the cost. So right now that is all our customers are buying almost all. They are mostly just putting in orders for the Tesla semi. So that 500 mile truck just radically changes the use cases that you can deploy a truck into as well. So we had been focused and a lot of the policy makers had focused on pork drainage. So when a ship comes in, it's got all those containers on it. You need to get it out. It is hub and spoke. So the you are going from you know, the same place every morning and you're just going back and forth to distribution centers. Great application for a more limited range truck. And again, the legacy trucks that we have, those are that's working great. With the Tesla semi, like we have a great customer, she says 60% of her business is that local drainage. So they're going from the port of Los Angeles, the port of Long Beach out to Carson, you know, South, South Central Los Angeles and then all the way out to the inland empire. But 40% of her business, she goes with the container directly to Phoenix with container directly all the way out to Las Vegas. And again, with the Tesla semi, like those kind of ranges, that next that next ring is eminently doable. So we are now building charging out in Las Vegas, we're developing depots in Phoenix as well. So that is why in our mind, the performance, the cost, the operational capabilities, just it is a step change in the advance of zero emission freight. I mean, everyone loves to hate Elon, but then he pulls something like this out and you're like, I'd rather he'd be on our side. I mean, it's just one of those things. Like it's just it's the craziness. But the heavy duty trucks don't use standard sort of 150 kilowatt or 350 kilowatt fast charging, right? I mean, these are sort of megawatt scale charging, is that right? No, I mean, right now my Hyundai Ionic 5 charges faster than the trucks that we have operating in Long Beach. So those are on your standard CCS. We've got dual port 360s out there. And so you can get a maximum of 360. But that's why this next step to the MCS charging is so meaningful. Like, you know, that is a good, you know, they're pumping a 1200 kilowatts through there. And that is just radically faster. And so it starts to change a lot where you are now looking something that's much closer to a gas station model. That's great. And so when you think about what you're doing, so you're taking drainage ports and you're like, you know, doing the short haul there. And now you're going to the next ring, right? Out to Phoenix, etc. It still seems to me though that the that the that what you're looking at is 10% of the class eight truck market, right? Like we're not instantly saying that there's a national build out like that every single route and every single place in the country is like is fair game for EV trucking, right? It feels like it's more hub and spoke, right? Because the charging infrastructure is expensive. You want to make sure that those charges are used a lot, right? Is that is that is that right? Am I getting that right? I think you're absolutely getting that right. And so I will also say there is a ton of freight that gets moved in these shorter distances. So it's not just that first mile from, you know, port out to the distribution center. It's also there's plenty of, you know, middle mile, but then also the the the last mile, your regional distribution. So that your local safe way, you know, they have a distribution center. There is a truck that goes in loads up enough for eight store delivery or so as they go about their day. You'll see them those class eight truck state caps idling out in front of you as you're walking through the fumes and they're unloading. That could very well be like those are 200 300 350 mile daily deliveries that could and should also be done on zero mission. Let's go back to the analogy of like solar days, you know, we started out with rooftop. Why? Well, cost were expensive. So, you know, competing against a retail price versus a wholesale price put you in the money much sooner. And you also had a customer base that was willing to, you know, make those purchases to build scale to bring down costs and then eventually you brought it into the wholesale. So, you know, not to make everything about a solar analogy, but there is a absolute perfect sort of, you know, you don't start with like this solution has to work for everything everywhere all the time. Everybody, you fit the application, you fit the technology, you fit the application where it needs and tell you build the technology, build the business models that's going to take it the next step. Yeah, but let's dig in a little bit more on solar. Like when you think about, you know, a lot of solar manufacturing was sort of invented here in the United States. It's clearly been dominated by the Chinese Tesla, I think, played a huge role in getting the first generation car out the door. It's now being dominated by the Chinese. I think 55% of heavy duty truck sales in China last year were zero mission, mostly electric. And so, I mean, what's your sense around US truck manufacturing and whether we should be worried? Yeah, that China figure that was December, but I think like over the years around 30% nonetheless, yes, I think, you know, manufacturing of advanced technology in the US is at an existential state and we should be investing in and building upon the advanced technologies of the future and we're not doing enough in that. So I would, you know, the other legacy OEMs, like there are awesome people, awesome trucks, and they're also global manufacturers. So, you know, Volvo and Dime Alert, they have an MCS truck that they sell in Europe. They don't have it yet in the United States. And I cannot explain why that is. So I do think, and I would like to see Tesla needs competition. We need to see, I see this as a cataclysmic sort of catalytic called arms for the other OEMs to lift up their game and bring a better product to build a better product here in the US as well. I have faith that over the arc of, you know, our lifetimes, that will be the case. But we are still in the, let's get our shit together phase of like, Tesla has got a vastly different product right now. It's time for everybody else to level up. I would also say, you know, it is interesting here, you know, internationally, both when you look at light duty and when you look at heavy duty, the international sort of export market is largely now being electric. So Ethiopia, two years ago, banned the import of internal combustion engine vehicles. And they are now building on like their freeways, they're building large truck charging depots every 10 miles and they're importing trucks from China that are able to, they've got plenty of like hydro power at really low cost and they are going to be enured to the craziness that's going on in the Middle East and the Straits of Hermos. Right now to a larger extent because they are not going to be depending upon fossil fuel imports. This shift to a electric zero-emission future is going to be driven not just on the economics but on sort of geopolitical concerns as well. And I think that the US needs to skate to where the puck already is, not even where it's going to be and scale up. I do think actually are a lot of our legacy OEMs. You talk here, the CO4 talk about how the majority of their dealerships aren't in the United States and the rest of the world is clearly going electric. So they're now talking to partnerships with Chinese companies after they're massive write downs with the cancellation of the IRA. Definitely it's a missed opportunity. I don't know yet if it's a lost cause but this is where I think that our internal manufacturing capability and expertise desperately needs to go because this is where the world's going. So one thing I'm curious about Adam is particularly in Dreyage and like ports when I worked at the Card Morum, one of the things that we found was the health impacts from diesel at the port made it 10 times worse in terms of health impacts to live next to a port. You know, I guess what I'm trying to figure out is for a listener who's never thought about freighting their life, why should they care whether they're truck delivering their Amazon package, runs on diesel or electricity? What's the version of the story that you find that actually lands with people? Yeah, I mean, you know, I never tell someone exactly why they should care about something. I let them bring their own issue to it. But I think there is here a range of those issues. You know, if you are, it is true that the concentration of diesel emissions, especially in some of these more freight concentrated heavy locations like out of port are really horrible. And if you live right next to one of the busier ports and you've got all those diesel trucks going by, you know, the impacts on your life expectancy are measurable and unacceptable. And so we have great partnerships with the ports who are really, you know, trying to walk the walk and drive the drive on being much better neighbors to the port communities by helping to make this transition away from diesel to zero emission. I would also say, you know, we can't solve for climate without solving for freight. Globally, you know, that's part of my big motivation is solving for climate. It is some of 7% of total global climate emissions are involved with freight. We need to figure this out. This is often thought of as a hard to abate sector. I can tell you it may be hard, but it is also doable. And so let's do it. I would then finally say that like, it does need to benefit everybody in order to be really a durable long term solution. And I think the deployment of advanced tech is going to not only result in lower costs for the truck companies, but then also for anybody that enjoys products delivered by a truck, which is everybody. So this isn't only going to be a cleaner system. This will also be a lower cost system. We could go on and talk about, you know, geopolitical resiliency. But there's not just any one reason. There's a lot of reasons and you pick yours, whatever motivates you the most. All right. We've been expecting volumes of trucks coming out of Tesla for a long time. We've been promised them, right? Now like there was a recent spat of, you know, like tweets and and announcements that came out, I think everyone is now expecting that 2026 will be the year. What is your over under and whether we're going to get to meaningful deployments or deliveries, I guess you'd call it, of Tesla semis in the year of 2026. I mean, I will definitely take the over on this. So you're going to eat your trucker hat. If you don't get your, your deployments or your deliverments, I have a lot of trucker hats. So if I eat one, I won't miss a thing. But more to the point, like, I don't know. I can't speak for Tesla. What I can say is that I was at the factory in Sparks Nevada Friday. And we as a company have been taking motorcars, the trucking companies out to see for themselves. And it is an enormous facility right by that initial gig of factory. It is equivalent of 30 football fields under one roof. It is, they say that they will have an eventual production capacity of 50,000 units a year. And walking through the incredible amount of machinery and technology that is installed in that place. Yeah, it jypes, you feel it. Now, they've run a couple, they've announced that on Twitter as well. They have a couple of fully assembled vehicles that they've run through. They are fine tuning the production lines. They are having deep conversations with the various robots. They are, you know, there's, there's a, what kind of deep conversations are they having with robots? Work harder. I just to say that, you know, there's a lot of tune up. Like they have installing the stuff. There's a lot of tune up that then goes on. And so, yeah, it's going to happen. Like, will it happen this week, this month, next week, next month? It will happen within a relevantly doable timeframe because, you know, all the materials there, it is just the fine tuning left to go. And so, you know, we have, again, we don't speak for Tesla. They are going to do what they do. What we have done is we have brought a lot of motor carriers who are of interest that have the same concerns to the factory themselves, let them make their decisions and they have put in orders for hundreds of them. Our customers have bring advice that their delivery date will be late summer, early fall, last quarter, depending upon when they order, how many the order, whether they order the standard range or the long range. Some folks want the shorter range, the 300 mile truck, because it's lighter, and that makes a difference. And if they don't need 500 mile, they'll go with the 300 mile. It's also got a tighter turning radius. It turns, it's had a tighter turnaround radius than my old Chevy Bolt. It is really kind of amazing. But the, so, yeah, you know, I can't tell you the date, my bet is it going to be this year in a, you know, solidly this year, just because I've seen the immense amount of work at the deployment that's there. Awesome. So it seems like Tesla has a unique ability to really make consumers pay attention to and maybe care about things that they otherwise wouldn't think about. So do you think that the Tesla semi is going to do that for trucking? Do you think it's going to change how the public views and thinks about freight, which is probably not much at all right now? Yeah, I mean, Jamie, you are a marketing professional. And I would love to know how, as far as I know, like Tesla doesn't really market things, like they shoot a car into space, like they have other ways of bringing people in. Say, you know, our customers are mostly interested in, again, the performance and the price point, rather than any Tesla-specific mystique. And I do think that like again, because of the performance and the price point, this will be, this gets a lot of people's attention and will be a transformative vehicle. And also, I hope that this catalyzes not just Tesla, but a lot of other of the traditional OEMs to be right there at those same price points as well as performance characteristics. I'm not going to hold my breath in all of those other serious players having met them all the last four years and being completely underwhelmed by their lack of enthusiasm for dreaming big. But, but help me understand range anxiety, right? Like, we talk about it all the time, obviously with passenger electric vehicles, but like, you know, how does that problem change or get worse in a field like long while trucking? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think these initial deployments won't necessarily be for cross-country trips. It will be much more regional. And with charging built spect two customers and customers needs, we had talked about like this being a similar movie of what we saw in light duty. And here, Tesla is investing in similarly, a initial deployment of charging infrastructure enough, you know, to remove that range anxiety for the initial deployments as well. They've announced some, I don't know, 50 different sites that they will bring on by the end of this year, early next. Pilot travel centers, now they're doing 35 different deployments of MCS charging, principally on interstates, and then we as a company, our formability are building a lot of charging, and we have competitors that are doing the same as well. So-- - How long does it take to charge one of these all the way to 500 miles of range? - You're gonna, you can recover that between 30 to 40 minutes. And similarly to your passenger vehicle, if you can help not going all the way to 100, it is helpful to battery health to charge something less than 100%. So most substantial charges are gonna be in the realm of 30 minutes, which aligns very well with the mandated breaks for, for shockers. - Awesome, I love that. Talk to me about refrigeration. So I solicited questions from my dad, who I mentioned is a trucker. He drives a 30-foot refrigerated truck, and he pulls a 53-foot trailer. He mentioned that the refrigeration elements of the truck also run off of the diesel, so that dramatically reduces his fuel economy, and his mileage averages seven to eight miles per gallon, depending on load rate, speed, terrain, et cetera, et cetera. So what's the status of electric vehicle technology for refrigerated trucks? Is that coming? - That is an excellent question. You thank your dad for that one. So there, I think there's two fold on this. One is that there are those that are building the chassis with battery support in it that isn't associated with the truck itself to support refrigeration. The other is some trucks, including the Tesla have an EPTO, which does also support pulling a riefer. It does knock down your range substantially, depending upon how whole you need it to be, what the outside temperature is, how far you're going. So that is going to be one of the harder edge use cases that will not be your first to electrify, but we are seeing evolving solutions to that situation. - And when you say EPTO, that's just connecting the container to the truck electrically? - Exactly, so that you can then pull a refrigerated unit and provide it with refrigeration. - All right, now we're going to get in the lightning round of hard economics. So I think it's pretty obvious to everybody that diesel costs more than electricity, but why don't you like boil that down for me? - Yeah, and similar, there is no one number of what running an electric vehicle costs or what, frankly, there are regional differences in diesel prices that can vary quite substantially as well. I would say that you break it down in between fuel savings as well as maintenance savings. And on the maintenance side, we are seeing people go through tires faster and sometimes quite a lot faster due to the extra weight and maybe even just the approved torque. But on the flip side, our customers are experiencing savings on the maintenance as well. And that is expected to accelerate as these trucks get older and older versus you're competing against older trucks. Then there's the fuel savings. And again, your electricity is your fuel. And that can vary widely where you are in the United States and whether you're essentially charging behind the fence at the retail rate or whether you have to have somebody else like us build a charging depot for you and you're charging in essence on the road. But even so, under these use cases in California, we can typically offer a customer around 30% reduction in their cost per mile, their TCO, which is non-tribal as we look out over five year deployments. So yeah, and this is also inclusive of the subsidies that are available. But that helps that brings people to the yard. That is a good conversation starter, I will say. - So Adam, if you had five minutes with my dad or any other skeptical trucker, what's your pitch? What's the number one argument that usually brings people around on the solution? - Well, if I was talking to your father, I would first congratulate him on doing such a good job of raising an awesome daughter. And then yeah, I get it. There's a lot of truckers that are skeptical and the range anxiety is one of the first and foremost. If you get past that, you really do have to think about your vehicle in a different way. I would think some of the other advantages is just first the experience of driving an electric truck. You don't have the vibration, you don't have the noise, you don't have the fumes. You are doing one pedal driving and so you are not constantly clutching. We get consistent feedback from our drivers that they really enjoy the experience that their body has never felt better. Their hips, their knees are in a way better condition and that they will never go back. They do not want to go back to driving a diesel after that. I would also say, you know, these trucks have a lot of torque. You are passing diesel trucks when you're going up the Donner pass grade. They definitely, there is some real form and benefits that you drive an electric vehicle, a electric car that you appreciate as well. You see those iterated in the trucks too. But first and foremost, it is that daily experience of being in a vehicle that doesn't put your senses on constant assault. It is just a much more human-friendly driving experience. - Well, that sounds awesome. I think next time I'm in town, I'm going to have to bring my dad out to your facility so he can test drive. I'm going to do that. - Ending invitation to do that. I would also say what we offer at our depot in the Port of Long Beach is we have demo fleets. And so he should not only come to drive, he should bring his typical loads. We give fleets a truck and let them run it on their loads for a week with their drivers in their routes on their lanes and drive before you buy. So when he comes, he should bring his cargo with him. - One thing I'm concerned about in the policy side atom is that California is a laboratory for a lot of this kind of stuff. Commercial trucks are only 7% of vehicles but they're over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in California. One of the things I'm curious about though is it does seem like the carbon incentives have sort of been upfront rebates that the traditional truck manufacturers have jacked up the cost of their electric trucks by exactly the amount the car is providing as a subsidy. Have you guys thought about what the next generation of incentives might look like to sort of break this cycle and really get the total cost of ownership to a place where everyone's just super excited about moving to electric? - Yeah, I mean, our first challenge here was just, we are now shifting between regimes of policy in California. The first effort was around the advanced clean trucks and the advanced clean fleets, which were designed to just mandate this transition. And, you know, there's a role for four sticks. There's a role for mandates. But now that has gone away with the Trump administration and their revocation of, or at least attempt to revoke California's ability to set standards under the, that exceed the Clean Air Act. And so we are in a different paradigm where the process going forward is carrots rather than sticks. It's more, you know, CSI rather than RPS and solar standards here and solar speak. And, you know, I would, I do think, you know, our incentive regime does need to be market responsive. I do think the blue ribbon standard for how you design customer incentives has been the California solar initiative from way back when. So good. So good. And just, you know, the ability to have a market, you know, a set of incentives that were market responsive that helped build sufficient volume to help bring down those prices was really quite helpful. I'm a little less work, like right now, the last, I would have said we needed MSRP caps 10 months ago. The last opening of the incentive availability back in, in September, it ended up being, you know, the market spoke. And there was about 80, 85% of the applications were incentive vouchers. Were for the Tesla semi. And so if you had a more expensive truck, you weren't, you know, the market imposed its own discipline without having to have a regulatory or a incentive design standard. So I'm less concerned about needing to have a perfectly, most elegant solution right now. Right now, I just, we need to get volume out there. We need to get trucks on the road. And what, you know, I think really the next phase that I'm really looking at is the consumer demand, really, driven by the shippers. Like anyone that is, I would like to see zero emission freight be a proper noun, be the next big thing that every corporate sustainability director knows that they need, that every CEO with a customer facing brand needs to answer to their customers for and have a solution for both on a, you know, sustainability and environmentally friendliness standard as well as knowing that this is where we need to go in order to get better cost discipline. This deployment of advanced technology is going to benefit the trucking companies and is going to benefit in the end in the long term, the people who are shipping goods. So it, you know, our customers respond most deeply to their customers or to not their customers, but the shipping companies, the cargo owners themselves. And when you're able to develop partnerships like this, you can really de-risk any of these investments. All right. So let's get to the end here, which is, in my mind, we've talked a lot about California, but how many states do you think will have a critical mass of Tesla Semi's, you know, chargers, et cetera, by 2030? You know, I think it will be principally driven around California for quite some time because of the money that California is putting into it, the support for charging through the California Energy Commission, the support for incentives for the trucks to help buy down the above market costs through the California Air Resources Board. Similar to the solar story, the next place is going to be Texas, everything's cheaper in Texas, lands cheaper, electricity is cheaper, and those are critical inputs for the fueling of these electric trucks. And so if you look at where the Tesla is deploying their charging, if you know, their website, like they're putting in a ton of charging in Texas as well, we're developing in Texas as well. You know, Illinois isn't going to be too far behind as well. Chicago is crucial in the freight economy on the Pittsburgh administration is also quite interested in supporting a lot of climate solutions as well. You know, any place with that moves goods and that has cheaper electricity is going to be on the map. Washington is a place where you have a lot of hydro power and cheaper electricity if they can keep it, if it doesn't good, all absorbed by data centers. They have some, they haul really heavy. There are some challenges in deploying electric trucks in the state of Washington, but they've been exhibiting cool leadership too. So I think, you know, New York and New Jersey are going to be some additional places with the political leadership, the cost paradigms are a little more challenging there too. Can it does going to do great? Ethiopia is going to do great. There's a lot of places in Africa that I think are going to make the switch quicker than some of the states in this country to be honest. We're going to have to do a tour together of Ethiopia. I feel like there's an energy empire on the road tour coming up here soon. Road show, road show. I love it. Yeah. Well, given how much I hate gas leaf blowers, noise has become like a really big thing for me too, it does feel like a lot of the noise pollution in big cities are also due to diesels. I mean, how is it going to, you know, like sort of sound in some of these big cities as you succeed? They can well sound quieter, particularly around, you know, like the commercial deliveries when you're thinking about like all the vehicles that are bringing food to grocery stores, the beverage delivery, not just, I mean, I appreciate Amazon when they roll out their electric trucks rather than gasoline, but there is that just sort of common backdrop hum to large cities that I hope will be measurably quieter if we are able to get beyond just the insistent backdrop of the internal combustion engine. I mean, you've sold me Adam. What's not to love? I agree. I love it all, but I would also just say, Jamie, like it is, um, you know, it is early days and we are on the cusp of a generational transition to zero mission freight. And so I do think nothing succeeds by success. We're going to get more truckers. We're going to get your dad out in a zero mission truck. And then eventually, like what I am hoping for is a similar scaling as to what we saw in solar. And so once you get to that point where the gravitational pull of the economics take over, things get really exciting right there. And, you know, as we've seen, China moves more freight than the US 30% of their sales last year were zero mission trucks. December of last year, 55% of their sales of heavy duty trucks were zero mission. This is clearly the future and our pathway to bringing down costs, building up scale is before us. And it's really, it's an exciting time to be pursuing these solutions. Thanks Adam. It's always a pleasure to see you. I'm glad that you haven't retired after, you know, solving all the challenges in the solar industry. And you have decided to take on this new mountain. It's going to be just fun to watch, watch the Tesla Semi's come off the line and, and, uh, into your fleet. Well, I appreciate you all, um, and all the work that you're doing to uplift and, uh, tell the story of, of hope. Uh, and there's a lot going on in the world these days. Uh, we need, uh, y'all's deep understanding of, uh, where the good things are as well. So I appreciate you all. Wow. That was a tour to force, Jamie. We like covered a lot of ground with, uh, with Adam, like just, and it does seem like not unlike solar. This whole thing seems focused in California. And then it was sort of radiated out from California, uh, later, like it sounds like that's sort of what's going on here too. Yeah, totally. I mean, I will say, first of all, I'm sold. I'm so excited about this technology. And I do clearly see the benefits over our commercial, our rather internal combustion engine trucks and obviously burning diesel at seven or eight miles per gallon. Um, that being said, he very much so spoke from a California specific point of view. And I don't know that all that translates nationwide right now because of infrastructure. It's a major challenge. So that's great for California. I'm not so sure about Delaware. Well, you know, he's California dreaming, but, you know, like, but part of the, part of the thing that I find fascinating is in this moment when everyone in my neighborhood has those like special bumper stickers, other Tesla saying, I bought this before Elon went crazy like Elon is still doing the work to push all of this stuff forward, right? Mercedes, Volvo, Hyundai all had a shot of actually filling the void, right? Because they announced this Tesla semi truck like 10 years ago. I think it was like in 2017. And it's only now getting scaled up and coming out, right? They could have filled that void and they didn't. So why is it that we always have to lean on Elon to do the hard stuff? Oh my God, you're so right. I mean, I remember last year I was in a conversation with some other folks in our industry and we were reflecting on what a huge loss it was for us as a sector and kind of like as a political movement to lose Elon to, to mega and to the right because he is such a visionary and he's obviously the richest man in the world. And so I think when we lost him kind of as an objective, incredible voice on climate and clean energy, that was devastating. And I mean, I would be prepared to forgive him. Come back, come back. Well, I mean, I feel like ACP is already forgiven him. I mean, we're paying Katie Miller and you know, like Kellyanne Conway and you know, they're talking about solar all day. And I feel like, you know, like Elon's still talking about how solar is going to power the world. So he just announced his hundred gigawatt, you know, like manufacturing facilities. So yes. And we know he's still believer and we know he still agrees with what we're trying to do. But at the same time, if you're funding the political movement that's trying to dismantle all of our work, there's some cognitive dissonance there, Elon. That's all I'm saying. We will welcome you back. Someone makes sure this crosses his desk. Let him know. Well, and the other thing that's going on right now is obviously you have the Straits of Formus that shut down and diesel prices have spiked in the United States. So I feel like there's a lot of people looking for alternatives to diesel right now. And so my sense is that, you know, you're hitting the market at the time when everybody really wants solutions. Truly, I will say I hate war. And it's so difficult to see all this in the news. And the only upside that I see is that I really do hope it makes folks hesitate and think more about, hmm, does it make sense for us to be doubling down on, re, you know, they're about to go back to drilling for oil off the coast of Santa Barbara where there was an absolutely massive oil spill about a decade ago. Do we really need to pursue those solutions? Or should we just use this as an opportunity to hasten our move to electrifying everything into EVs? Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Well, I mean, Adam is the right guy to help us with this transition. I think when you think about what we did in solar, we said that instead of waiting for the natural cycle to occur, we're going to introduce solar financing, we're going to introduce all of this policy to make it go faster, right? And I think the same thing is true here, right? The natural cycle of things is for things to go electric. But through some of this policy work, et cetera, we could accelerate people moving into electric faster. You're certainly seeing that policy happen in China now, where I think Adam said in December, 55% of all new heavy trucks were electric. It'll be great to see 55% of all new heavy trucks in California go electric. Where California goes, so goes the rest of the country. So let's just hope we can get this done. And to harken back to the, you know, the, the jigger, the jigger motto deploy deploy deploy and he invited my dad and I out to the port of Long Beach for a test drive. So now my dad and I need to get that on the books. So he will love that. He loves to get out over this type of thing. And we may need to bring our producer Simon along for that. So he can get that all on video. Because I think that would be a fun field trip. I think I think we need Fiona's dance troop to be in the video. Yes, that sounds great. And I guess to parents by the Boyle School of Irish Dance. Let's make it happen. Well, with that, thank you so much everybody for being a part of this week's show. Thank you to Simon and all the folks from We Don't Have Time for helping us produce this, this show. It does not happen by itself. And listen to us obviously on Apple podcasts or Spotify or YouTube, where subscribing really makes a difference. And we really want to thank our sponsors. Because without that, we just really can't make this happen. So thank you, S2G, for making it all happen. [MUSIC PLAYING]