Senate Joint Hearing Climate Change — 2026-10-20

Yeah, I'm happy to make a little opening room.

Let me just start by thanking our chair, and not just for today's hearing, but for her years of leadership on this committee. We're getting to it. Everything changes, and it must unfortunately change here. But I think your legacy and your staff especially, I just want to take a moment to thank you and Sam and Brett and the rest of your team for turning this committee not just into an oversight body but into a policy generator that has actually changed the state for the better. And it's not just in the high-level changes we've made on climate change, but really in the nuts and bolts of our programs. And here on mobile sources, I think it's an underappreciated part of legislative leadership and accountability. To really progress with our programs, we need to be tough on our programs. and the scrutiny that you and others, both through legislation and through this committee work, have applied, I think, have made our programs more robust and healthier. And despite all the bumps and bruises that we're going to take along the way and the headwinds, as you mentioned, from the federal front, legal challenges, technology issues that may occur during rollouts, on the whole, the maturity and the growth that we're seeing in this industry, despite political headwinds perhaps and maybe some legal challenge, The market is happening, and there's no stopping it. It's here. And so I think that's a testament to your vision and to our fellow chair, which I believe – are we a joint hearing of your select committee as well, Assemblymember Shalva?

So this is duly chaired, and so my colleague from San Fernando Valley is just joining us here as well. But I would just tell you in the valley where, you know, I've got a three-year-old who has to breathe every day, like most three must It is brutal Being off the 5 and the 405 and eating diesel pollution on a daily basis When I pick my daughter up from school and you have to go through the roundabout and it's just trucks all day long. And as soon as I start seeing those cleaner ones coming along and you see those EVs penetrating the market and it's visceral. I know you both appreciate this as parents and as others but I think I think the progress you made on clean air here is just a prelude of a much different future where it's just it's it's gonna we're gonna save a lot of lives and save a lot of money at the same time so I appreciate your your work here and hopefully we'll keep it going in your stead and I'll

Thank you. Thank you. Both of you. Stuck in traffic, coming from the valley. It was all good. So thank you so much. I want to thank the chair for convening this meeting and this important discussion. As the chair of Electric Vehicles and Infrastructure Select Committee in the Assembly, this is an important issue to my heart, and I'm so grateful for Assemblymember Irwin's leadership on this issue. She has been a strong voice in Sacramento and really pushing us to make sure not only that we're making our goals when it comes to EVs, but also that we're doing it in a way that makes sense and allows for the policies that we put forward to be successful. Because I think the best policymaking is policymaking where, you know, all of the pieces are there for compliance to happen. And we have shared stories of being early adopters of EVs and the challenges around charging. And that's actually the reason I started the select committee, because as a mom, I was driving from L.A. to Sacramento for Thanksgiving to my brother's house. And I had to stop four times to charge. It took four extra hours. and at the end of the night my kid was crying in a mall parking lot saying, I told you we should have taken the train. So we don't want people to be having that experience when they go on a family holiday. And I'm incredibly grateful for, oh my goodness, what did I just say? Assemblymember Irwin's leadership to help us get to the place where we need to be so that adoption can happen more broadly and more affordably. You know, here in L.A., I've heard from so many people who have talked about the stories of when you couldn't see the mountains from, you know, the valley or the L.A. basin or downtown. and I've experienced that myself. One of my early internships back in 1999, I think, was here in LA and I was stuck in stop and go traffic and the exhaust from the traffic made me sick. I had to pull over and I actually got sick. That's how bad it was. And so when we're talking about this, it's not just kind of to make us feel good about going electric, but it is truly about people's health and safety and protecting the health and safety of our communities. So you know this work is critical It critical that we make our goals And I think you think today we also have some important conversations about is the market there yet The federal pullback is really making that difficult. Not only is it difficult on just encouraging adoption, but it's also an indicator to the market that you don't need to step up and create what's needed in this space. That's incredibly problematic for us to be able to make our goals and so I have you know I know we have some real challenges ahead of us and California wants to continue to lead and we have to be able to figure out how to do that realistically and affordably and you know and make sure that we we are able to get to those goals and and keep our air clean and communities safe while we're doing it so thank you so much again for convening us today.

Good morning. Thank you, Chairman and Assembly members and senators. I'm very happy to be here. I'm responsible for directing all the mobile source regulations and incentive program spending and investments at the agency, and I'm here to emphatically reaffirm the agency's commitment to continue to lead as a state in these areas and to protect the public health of breathers in our state. I'm relatively new to the agency. I left retirement to do this job. I moved to this state from a nice retirement. And I can promise you I did not disrupt my life to lead a strategic retreat. We are not backing down. We are driving forward. I don't like to use the word federal headwinds. What I tell my team every day, we're in the tailwinds making business. And so we have a big job, but a very important job and a righteous job to complete. Before I make my formal presentation, I do want to spend just a few minutes commenting on reporting in the Los Angeles Times recently. That was incredibly disappointing to me and my team and our leadership, particularly because we spent many hours and meetings with the reporters over eight months to properly inform, to share the information, the evolution of our heavy-duty truck incentive programs with the reporter, did our best to share as much information as we could, and how the program has evolved and adapted over the years. and the reporter chose to ignore all that and write a story that focused on a very small subset of firms and VLs. where there was alleged wrongdoing and fraud, but remarkably failed to disclose to their readers that it was the CARB team that uncovered the alleged wrongdoing through our very multilayered, redundant guardrail and checks and balances that we have in place. and ignored the fact that this program, with the generosity of the legislature, has put over 16,000 clean trucks on the roads in California, most of them electric vehicles, and they've driven over 340 million miles, particularly in priority communities, delivering those clean air benefits. So I think the story did an incredible disservice to the Times readers. It also focused on the few companies that have gone bankrupt through this process and criticized CARB for supporting those firms. But the whole program initially was designed to be a market transformation program, to support the innovation economy, to support those firms, you know, trying to navigate the proverbial valley of death. And sadly, some of those firms didn't make it. That happens in our market economy. But again, the 93%, and the reporter knew this, 93% of the vehicles that the legislature and their generosity has funded to support are being produced by firms that are healthy businesses today and are driving those miles. So, you know, I'm new to the state. I expected better from the LA Times with their rich history of recording, so it's very disappointing. So we took the time to post a detailed response on our website. I would commend you to look at that, and we also plan to engage with other members of the legislature to make sure that you have the facts. So, that off my chest, ready to go to the presentation. And I think it's important, am I in charge of the slides? There. I think it's important as a public official to always begin with the progress, just as the three of you have done. And it is remarkable progress that the state has made over the years. And it's not by accident. First of all, it was back in 1990 where my predecessors had the vision to start introducing regulatory policies to require electric vehicles for sale in the state of California. This was before AB 32. This was before the UN's International Panel on Climate Change put out their seminal reports. And it's because they understood the math, and the math is hard. And the math is that we cannot achieve our public health goals, our clean air goals, our ambient air quality standards, federally enforceable, without significant numbers of zero emission vehicles on California roads, both passenger vehicles and light duty vehicles. And you can see that decades of leadership in California has produced remarkable results. on the passenger duty side. If California were a nation, we would be the sixth largest ZEV market in the world You see the number of zero emission trucks and buses on the road already exceeding the state clean truck goals We are the number one ZEV market in the country by far. And again, this ecosystem of policies that have been produced over the decades between the legislature and successive administrations has produced these results. It's no accident. You have to have it. Our lesson here is you have to have this ecosystem of complementary and coordinated policies across the state from the Energy Commission to the ARB to others. This has produced this remarkable result. And so what I want to leave you here with today is that that ecosystem of complementary policies, both current and future, needs to continue. You can't do simply regulations alone. You can't do spending alone. You can't have these other complementary infrastructure policies alone. They have to work together and we can, and it shows what can be done. And we showed the world that this is how appropriate governance works. So we're very proud of this policy. And as the Assemblywoman pointed out, you can see the mountains now in California. I've worked with a lot of colleagues who tell me growing up that was not the case. So three things for progress, political will, continuous and consistent funding, and the policy. That's what needs to happen to maintain the kind of progress for clean air, for breathers, and to develop this market, which also incidentally has produced significant economic benefits for the state, 52 ZEV manufacturers located here. Sadly, this progress is being threatened right now by the federal assault on our right to protect California breathers. And I don't want to dwell on all these numbers, but as you can see, the consequences of the three illegal actions by the Congress has the potential to reduce real harm, economic harm, and health harm in our state. This is just from the three actions that the Congress has taken, and I can tell you I expect it to get worse. Congress is now considering other resolutions as we speak to eliminate other rules that California has adopted. The federal EPA is working very hard to roll back other federal protections, which will increase emissions in California and across the country. And I want you to appreciate the irony here. We are obligated as a state to meet federally enforceable ambient air quality standards. We have some of the worst remaining air pollution in the country. At the very same time, the federal government is attempting to take away our most effective tools to achieve those clean air. And the consequences for failure are significant, up to and including withholding of federal transportation dollars, which are the tens of billions of dollars that the state counts on. So these are real-world impacts. If we do not prevail in our litigation against the United States, this is what people will be experiencing, this is what breathers will be experiencing. So this depicts the current landscape that we facing here and it creating a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace Is California going to continue to be committed to be a leader to create these markets to continue progress in clean air? We're seeing original equipment manufacturers shifting their capital allocation away from production. So we don't think we have a demand problem in the state of California. We think we have a supply problem because these firms no longer will be required to produce clean and efficient vehicles as they had expected and they've been planning to do. These vehicles exist. This technology exists. But because of this uncertainty now, because of this landscape, we're quite concerned that the supply is not going to be there. So continued progress in clean air and building these markets, as I mentioned, you know, will require consistent and predictable funding. Our experience has shown that if firms can count on the incentives they will continue to produce. We need to have forward-looking regulations that will inspire early actions to comply with those regulations and take advantage of the incentives. But make no mistake, this is part of the thing that's been a bit frustrating with the reporting. California still retains our authority, our unique authority under federal law, to set emission standards to protect California breathers. Congress has, illegally in our opinion, objected to how we applied that authority in three specific instances, but we still have the ability to establish these standards and request a waiver from EPA, and we've gotten them for the last 50 years. And so to paraphrase Mark Twain, you know, the news of our death has been greatly exaggerated. We're still in it. So briefly, I want to give my colleagues time to present. Forgive me for indulging my brief rant in the beginning. We're not sitting still. Last fall we launched an initiative that we call Drive Forward to continue to make progress for Californians and for breathers. And it's a multi-path effort which encompasses both new regulations for passenger vehicles, for heavy trucks, for off-road diesel machines, as well as concepts addressing fleet emissions in what we call in-use emissions. We are very grateful for the legislature, the state legislature, for a meeting of the moment this year and providing $271 million to and supporting both current incentives and a new incentive that we call My First EV that launched in September. Actually, some firms launched their own versions in August. And that has been an enormous success in demonstrating that California still want to have access to these vehicles. We announced last week that nearly 12,000 incentives have already been issued. One firm went through their allocation in the first few days. And so we're very pleased with the response. And it just, again, demonstrates that Californians still demand these vehicles. It's a unique and different way of approaching our incentive programs. It's an experiment. It the first time the state has ever done this in partnership with the automakers First time automakers have signed a grant with the state of California Didn know if that was going to happen but they and I could tell stories about how this all came about but they all wanted in at the end, and they're enthusiastic. In fact, Toyota has even launched a complimentary program because this program is really aimed at influencing those EV curious buyers, those first time buyers and gives them a nudge to go that the hypothesis is would this be enough $3,500 on the hood instantly was that going to be enough to nudge people into the showrooms and it turns out the answer is yes. So we're very pleased with how things are going so far. We've allocated almost $20 million already in reimbursements to firms and we're looking forward to, again, California breathers having access to these technologies. So I'll just close that. My first EV is just one example about how innovative policies can continue to maintain and grow this technology and this market. We are continuously looking at how to improve our current incentive programs so that they're more efficient and that people have access to them. And as we're proceeding with our regulatory process, we've had a couple public workshops as well. We're looking at policy designs that will encourage early action, so firms that could, under the regulation, get credit for taking actions sooner than they have to be. So, again, this integrated approach between regulatory strategies, between incentive strategies, between investment in infrastructure is the strategy going forward. So I will conclude my remarks and be happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much.

Welcome. Thanks so much, Assemblymember. Assemblymember Schiavo, you were correct in the other title. We're going to clap on that, but we'll leave that one alone for the moment. I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak in front of you and also to give my appreciation to both Assemblymember Irwin, Assemblymember Shavo, and Senator Stern for your leadership in this area. Because all three of you have carried very important legislation that has helped California continue to move towards achieving its goals on EV adoption and the electrification of transportation. So all three of you have been extraordinarily pivotal. So I'm going to quickly go through some of the actions that California has taken, a little bit different than what our great representative of CARB just mentioned, and then some things I think that you should have on your radar and you should consider. So we remain the nation's leader in new EV vehicle purchases and in charger deployment. So new EV sales in California, and we just updated our dashboard, maintained a steady market share in the third quarter of 26, despite a drop in new car sales overall in California and across the country. So with interest rates and high interest rates and low consumer confidence, there were just fewer cars bought overall. But our percent of EVs, which was 19.1%, was – or rather, 19.1% for ZEVs, 16.3% straight, fully electric. You take that percent compared to – only 6.4% nationally. So we're doing well. And our charger network continues to expand. So hopefully, maybe we're not quite at the place yet where Assemblymember Shavo, you and your son, your child would never face what you faced on that Thanksgiving drive. But I'm hoping we're pretty close to there. And I'll tell you where we're at, where we're just updated this dashboard Additionally, we now have 224,438 EV charging ports at public sites such as grocery stores, shopping areas, gas stations, that kind of, you know, where you see them very public. And then included in that number are a little bit more limited access sites like doctor's offices, workplaces, hotels, and multifamily housing. Now, among the publicly accessible chargers, about 23,000 now are DC fast chargers. So those are the kind where you can get a charge in 15 to 45 minutes, depending on your car and the charger. But much better than if you're traveling and such and you want to get a charge quick. The growth in the DC fast chargers is a huge improvement. Now, those numbers are in addition to the approximately 1.2 million chargers that are installed in single-family homes and in those properties where it's a home or it's a duplex, but up to four units. So we have 1.2 million there. We have just, we, the CEC, has just completed our assessment on their estimated charger need. So we're revising it now. If you recall, The previous assessment, which was a number of years back, projected that we are going to need like a million public chargers by 2030, which is really hard to imagine that we would get to that. But that was based on chargers that were much lower power. That was based on vehicles that had less range. It was based on a lot of factors that have totally changed today. So our revised estimate for 2030 is now that we will need 478,000 charging points at the publicly accessible and more limited locations that I described, as well as 136,000 at multifamily housing. So as you can tell from what I described before, we're almost halfway there, which is not bad. And that, in effect, we are charging installations are almost ahead of our vehicles. Not quite, but almost ahead because the number of vehicles that those numbers are based on by 2030 is 6.8 million. And while I think all of us want to get to 6.8 million EVs by 2030, you know, a lot of factors might get in that way. But we're certainly moving, making great progress on the infrastructure that's needed. So what are the what are some other actions that we've taken more just in response to like Trump, the legally challenging the federal actions and Trump's actions that undermine California's authority? and if you want to know the whole list of them, certainly ask CARB. One of them I'm very familiar with is we challenged, our AG's office challenged the feds on the elimination of the federal funding called NEVI and we won So we have NEVI funding solicitations out on the street right now and just about to award actually And then there were at least two, for example, that sued the administration regarding revoking the three crucial Clean Air Act waivers. So our attorney general has been very busy, supported by our lawyers at Air Resources Board and other state, you know, other attorneys in different state agencies to basically challenge everything that Trump is throwing at us. But more internally, what we've been doing are very strategic funding of charging infrastructure to make up for where public's private sector may not be acting. And the other good news I haven't mentioned, this is private sector action, but there's much more private and sector investment in chargers now. There's a new consortium called IANA, and IANA is made up of a number of auto manufacturers who then have put their money together, created this new company, IANA, which is putting in gas station-like charging facilities throughout the state. They have over 175 locations planned and already, you know, under permitting and such. And one of their signature locations, which will have a convenience store, restrooms, DC fast chargers, the whole bit, will open in Westminster in November. So we're really looking forward to that. But there's a lot of private sector expenditure now in meeting some of our infrastructure gap, the charging infrastructure gap. So we, the CEC, are trying to be really smart about where do we put the money, where is the private sector not going to invest. And one of the areas that we've identified that's really important is funding for multifamily because people, one of the biggest reasons somebody doesn't get an EV is if they don't have access to charging at home. Anyway, keep going. We've got our reliability regs passed. legislature directed us to do so we developed them they're passed the payment regs are underway which should be in the next couple of months and the roaming regs are already being uh as assembly member erwin knows very familiar with her legislation those will be uh there we have a tight a streamlined timeline for them and moving very quickly there was also legislation this session that the governor signed into law that will improve the testing and verification of the chargers and eliminate some of the bottlenecks that have affected public sectors or private sectors willingness to invest in charging infrastructure in California. But that I think what was passed is going to really help. The My First DV incentives, thank you legislature for passing Governor Newsom's initiative. And as mentioned, there's already 12,000 drivers so far who have taken advantage of it. and the program is still live. The only automaker that has used up their incentives is Tesla. All of the other EV makers that are participating still have incentives available. So anyone who's listening who hasn't purchased an EV yet, get out to your car dealer, and you can get it right that the incentive is paid right at that moment. You're not having to go apply for it later. The other thing that California has done is the Clean Miles Standard, which was a bill of mine, from a number of years ago where the PUC administers it and there a fee on every ride that any of us take on transportation network companies so Uber Lyft etc And And that fee I believe it In Colorado they mimicked us but their fee is Now, the point of it is to help the TNC drivers go electric and to provide them some funding to do so. Now, my only criticism so far is that PUC sat on the funds they collected for a long time, but they've now launched the program. It's called Ride, Rideshare Incentives for Driving Electric. And they are offering up to $20,300 to a certain category of TNC drivers to either purchase or lease a new EV and up to $14,200 for a used EV. So it's quite a significant amount of funds. And I hope that TNC drivers are getting enough awareness of it and it's being promoted fairly. or rather aggressively. Now, to get to the actions I think you should consider, I think the My First EV is a brilliant program, and the legislature should continue it, the new governor should continue it. And part of its brilliance, besides that it's an incentive and helps Californians go to EVs, is that it was designed, it made the automakers themselves have skin in the game. They had to contribute also. So it's really true that one of the biggest pressures we have is automakers pulling back from their making of EVs or their supporting of EVs, and we need them to stay committed because we're continuing to be committed and our residents want EVs. So the brilliance of my first EV is that the automakers have to have skin in the game, and it's a good program. So we should continue it. I think we should also continue and strengthen the program for TNC drivers. Because if you look at the data, the VMT, the miles driven by TNC just keeps increasing every year. So every mile that they drive that is in a combustion engine is creating pollution. So what's the best way to get them out of those type of cars is through this program. So it should be expanded and not at all shrunk. And then I think we need to provide some more funding for the gaps in EB infrastructure, specifically for multifamily housing, because the private sector is not really going to make up that gap. So we're going to need to use public funds to help get chargers in apartment buildings, especially the older ones where there's a lot of electrical upgrades needed to do so. But those are some of the things that I recommend for you as you're thinking of going forward. And I think now I would like to introduce Spencer Reeder, who is our new director of our fuels and transportation division at the Energy Commission. And that's the division that is under my purview as a commissioner. I have some other things within my purview, but the fuels and transportation is primarily. And Spencer is a great addition to our team. So let me turn it over to Spencer.

I'm newer than my colleague here from CARB. I'm about six months in, and I think you know and Senator Stern knows I come from the automotive industry. I ran sustainability and government affairs for a company for eight years, and I'm now on the California team. I'm really excited to be here working on these issues. the significance of what we are doing at this moment is hard to overstate. There are so many headwinds, and people have been rooting for our demise. I think, you know, use the Mark Twain quote. So I think what we collectively are doing here is quite important. And I've also driven between Sacramento and L.A. four times, and what my technique was early on was to bring a nerve football so my son and I could go in the parking lot and throw while we were waiting because I also had those same experiences, the pounding against the window, like why is it taking so long? And I know we talked in my prior capacity about the reliability and the ease of charging. And so I will say in my new role as the director of this division, I've established three North Stars for our work, and this was in collaboration with Commissioner Skinner and Chair Hochschild. We all sat together in a strategy session. And I want to share them with you because I think they're indicative of where we need to focus and head and where the investment should focus. The first North Star is everything that we're doing at the Energy Commission in collaboration with our partners at other state agencies should improve the driver experience. We have to pause. Anything that we're doing in any program, are we improving the driver experience? We certainly should not be making it worse. So that's the first test. The second is more of a statement that I want all the folks in my division to think about. And that is, and you'll think this will resonate with you, Assemblymember Shavo. The only thing worse than not having a charger where you want it is having a charger where you want it that you cannot use. That's far worse, right? If there's not a charger where you need it, then you're going to make plans accordingly. But if you think you're going to be able to charge somewhere and you get there and you can't for whatever reason. That's far worse. So that's the second test. And this is a regulatory work, which I'll talk about briefly, is to address those issues. And I know many of you have passed legislation to address that issue. The third North Star is that whatever we're doing in our work at the state should be keenly aware of the added cost so that the cost to charge or fill your battery with fuel, electrons in this case or hydrogen fuel, should never exceed or rarely exceed the cost that it would take to fill an equivalent gas vehicle. Because as soon as we get inverted in that wrong way, then people are going to say, why? We know the resonance of affordability. So I offer those three as something that I've brought into my new role. And, again, this was developed in collaboration with Commissioner Skinner. And I think these are important guiding principles for our work. I want to share one other thing before I get into the slides, because I think this kind of trivia is really important, and it sets the stage for what you all were talking about. And I'd even invite you to see if you can answer this question. Guess how many miles a day are driven on the road in California? Just take a wild guess.

Twelve. Twelve miles.

A million.

A million miles per hour.

2.76 million. 900 million miles per day. Between 320 and 330 billion miles per year. In California, just California.

She's in you.

I don't know what percentage of TNCs, but we can find out.

Sure. Yes, I do have a couple questions. I was doing some of the math, Mr. Grundler, based on your comments at the outset and sort of looking at program performance. I think we've taken a hard look at things since that LA Times piece came out. and looked at CARB's comments as well. I would love to get some verification from your staff if possible, but I was trying to sort of run to ground just a more straightforward apples-to-apples look at how the cost of sort of ZEV deployment overall and then sort of nature of our market transformation. I remember when we first set up in the Obama administration the first loan guarantee program, and there were attempts in politics to undercut the program. I think we had a less than 1% failure rate of a $9 billion program, for example, in that. I think you're actually beating that rate. From what I can tell here, and again, I would love to get some corroboration from CARB, but starting with the maintenance costs of ownership, right, we're talking about around $0.09 a mile to own a ZEV truck. to own and operate a Zev truck for repairs and maintenance, and about $0.20 per mile on the diesel front, so more than double the cost of owning that. That's why it starts to pencil so quickly for someone who gets into a Zev truck and they actually end up saving right away. It doesn't just have to accrue over time. You get it right away. I know this. I just switched. I don't drive a semi. I went from a 20-mile-a-gallon Ford Transit into a Kia EV9, and it changed my entire life and my whole budget right away. It wasn't like it took time. suddenly you're filling up for $20, and that changes everything. As a parent and someone who's trying to pay the bills on a good government salary, the failure rates, there was a lot of talk about the failure rates, but we did our own analysis of sort of how just normal people buy cars and the failure rates out there. I think that they say that in California say the lemon rates are about .5%, .55% of people who go out and buy a car. It's not going to work for them. It's going to fail on them. This program has a .23% failure rate. So in other words, you're, from what the average consumer out there is just getting from a faulty car that they get back, out of the thousands and thousands of ZEVs purchased through the HFIT program, our sense is that the failure rate is actually much lower than the average, even light-duty vehicle, let alone heavy. So I want to commend you on actually not just spotting some of the problems that were emerging but also on the really accelerated transformation that we would have expected I think, when we funded this, a much higher failure rate and much more losses. I mean, I think you talked about 93% of the firms. That was a firm-based calculation you gave of only 7% fell out. But in terms of the actual vehicles themselves, from what we've seen, not only are they being used robustly and are those costs lower, but even if you say add in the 27 vehicles that didn't work out out of 16,000, even if you add that in to say the cost of ownership, you're still far below the cost of diesel. And I think just look to the Strait of Hormuz to realize that, you know, in terms of demand, the demand is huge out there from what people are facing in the diesel market. just being crushed right now by federal policy and by wars, that the demand seems robust. But what I heard from your testimony that did cause me some concern is that you felt like the supply wouldn't be there to meet that demand, that the demand is robust and that California's program performance has been solid, and that probably something worth doubling down on. And I would even submit for my colleagues here and those of us who will be working on these issues in the years ahead to not look at one-time funding, to look at a continuous appropriation and to look at something consistent. But can you just – why are you – why do you feel like we're at this precipice, if you will, between supply and demand? And what's happening out in the marketplace? My understanding was there's a lot coming offline from the new Sparks facility and that we should see those semis coming into the market. I just read a Wall Street Journal piece about Texas is certainly deploying them at very high rates. So the trucks seem to be coming in the near term, but is this a medium-term challenge that you think we're facing from the OEMs? Can you sort of describe the nature of that precipice a little better?

Thanks for that. But, you know, I'm anticipating getting through these next few rocky years and then sort of getting back on track. The hope is that the capital allocation on the private side doesn't get sort of bottled up in a long-term, you know, chasing gasoline and, you know, a future of cheap gasoline and cheap diesel, which just proves to be out of reach as their sort of core mission for the OEMs. I'm deeply concerned about that. I would love to see some analysis of, and maybe this could come from you or the stakeholders, about what a longer range My First EV program could look like or sort of what kind of cost savings we could achieve by having, say, a longer range partnership, especially if it included the Section 177 states or some of them that you mentioned. So I think that would be helpful information if we're able to take even a three-year view on this. You know, what does it take to get us through our own political valley of death at this moment? So that's something I'd love some follow-up on. And then the only other thing I just wanted to ask you, you know, I know you're in the mobile source division. We have to hit our Clean Air Act goals writ large, both mobile and stationary within California under our SIP. And, you know, we in the legislature, I think, have looked at the challenge. If we don't have these same mobile source tools that we've had in the past, say, as our main tool, we want to be looking at other ways to achieve those outcomes. We've been looking at indirect source rules and looking at how that could work, not just for the heavy-duty sector where it's being deployed right now in South Coast and San Joaquin to some limited extents in certain areas, but also more broadly in the light-duty space. You know, in our past exchanges with the CARB chair, there's been discussion whether you all have the underlying authority to pursue such an indirect source rule unilaterally on your own, whether you'd need legislative authorization. I think maybe that equivocation is unnecessary, and the more important question is, you know, if we do need to have that backup plan in place, how would that have to be structured to achieve this sort of, to fill the gap that we seeing from you know uncertainty on the mobile source side So is that something you have any comments on for today Yes I do And then that it for me First of all it important to have a plan B

So thank you for those questions.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Reeder. Those three kind of principles of how we ground our policymaking and programs, I think, is really helpful because we do want it to be reliable, more affordable, and just make people's lives better. I think in this space, we are not so good about highlighting all of those pieces. I feel like people who really hate EVs have never driven an EV because I now, my EV is in the shop, and I having to drive rental cars that are gas and I hate it I hate driving those gas cars now They so slow to pick up and get on the highway to pass people It like I just I can stand it And and so you know there's so many the the lower cost and maintenance, the fact that you get to drive by every gas station and look at those high prices and not stop. I feel like we could do a much better job highlighting all of the benefits of having an EV. But as we've talked about today, there's real challenges too. When I first got my EV back in 2022, I think, I did not have charging at home. And so I was on the public charge. and so driving up to that charger that did not work, I wanted to pull my hair out and scream. And, you know, especially if you're really low and you don't know if you have enough charge to get to the next one, it can really put you in a terrible position. And so, you know, I'm proud of the work that the legislature has done around reliability, and I think that makes a huge, huge difference. But I'm curious on the – and I'm so glad, you know, as a single mom, having the federal tax credit made the difference between me getting an EV or not for my budget. And I know that, you know, I'm really proud that we as a state invested in my first EV and make sure that, you know, that $3,500, that's real money. That is real money in your pocket and makes a difference for people. Do you know how many folks who are doing the program, do we have a sense of whether or not they're buying new or used EVs or how that breakdown is happening?

Yeah, it's true. I will add, because this is important,

because of so many EVs that were sold because of the federal tax credit. They're coming off lease. If you do the math and you look back in time, like, okay, those three-year leases now, summer two-year leases are now mature. All those vehicles are coming into the market. I just bought a used EV. for a fraction of the cost of the new price. Even you know incentives and subsidies aside which there are many and it great that this state has those various programs and the local governments and utilities and all the various players are looking at this issue of incentives We need to be prepared for all of these people who've never driven an EV before or buying a used EV. And to Commissioner Skinner's point, many of them are living in multifamily housing. Like, how do we serve their infrastructure needs in a way that is a good experience, that's frictionless, that doesn't cause them to say, what did I do? this is not working out for me and my family. So I think this is our challenge, what I think about every day at the Energy Commission now in my new role and talking to our leadership team, like how do we put ourselves in the shoes of the new drivers, the next wave of a mass market drivers that are far less tolerant of inconvenience. Like all of us that were early adopters, we tolerated some level of inconvenience. The next wave of buyers will not. So we really have to think carefully about our programs. And that's what we're trying to do. Well, I conveniently authored a bill this year, AB 1820, to help make the basically to have more reliable multifamily housing charger costs to install chargers and make sure fees were not unreasonable. But I also we had a hearing. My select committee had a hearing at the end of last year, I think. and this was a big topic at our hearing and one of the things that we discussed also, which I think is important that we don't overlook, is that most people don't, what's the average that people drive like 34 miles a day or something like that?

Yeah, it's roughly between 30 and 40 miles. The problem with these kind of statistics though is it's not an evil in the distributed curve and you've got people, many of our lower income, who are driving great distances to get to their jobs. And so I know this is when I was in the industry, this was, oh, well, you know, EVs only need to have 100 miles of range because the average distance people travels 30 miles a day. Well, no, it doesn't really work out like that. And for people that are most impacted that have a couple kids and they're shuttling kids here and there and they've got a job and maybe two jobs and they're driving all this distance. And so, no, if we're going to get the deep penetration, the 90, 95, 100 percent transition to this technology, we have to reach all of the drivers and all of their various use cases. And I think it's really vital to not get seduced by this idea, oh, it's only 30 miles a day. Yeah, for a lot of people, it's 30 miles a day, some less. And this gets into, like, what is the proportion? And Commissioner Skinner and I talk about this regularly. how much level one charging is even viable for a lot of these folks. I mean, yeah, if you are retired and you're driving to the store and the library twice a week, then level one's great. But if you're someone who's commuting every day more than 30 miles, then maybe level one doesn't work. So level two, what power levels of level two? Like that level two goes from two or three kilowatts up to 19. Utilities get nervous when you say 19 kilowatt level two charging. How are our transformers going to handle that? I would say six to nine kilowatts is the range. And then for DC fast charging, like what makes sense? Like all of these questions are on the table as we think about our investments, the requirements we put into our grant agreements for state money being leveraged for charging. So really, really important questions about like do we have a target or do we need to look at a distribution and a range of different kinds of use cases and make sure we're not losing people at the margins. Just one last question. One of the conversations that I've been having locally with in my area is around emergency vehicles and the requirements around emergency vehicles. And I recently had a meeting, hour-long meeting, with my water board and water agency, and they've been doing a lot of due diligence. They've been trying out heavy-duty vehicles and have not actually found anything on the market that can do what they need. And so it's a real barrier for adoption, obviously. They're talking about having semis that you can fill with gravel and then it can tow a trailer with some kind of heavy machinery on it. I mean, if you imagine a battery doing that, it's a lot of load. And so I know that heavy-duty vehicles are critical in making our goals. I think it's a really different scenario when you're talking about big heavy-duty trucks that have a planned route, and they know where they're going, and they know how many miles they need and all of that, and they can come and charge at key points or when they get back or whatever. and obviously some of the trucks that are coming on the market right now are changing the game and a game changer in this space. But when you're talking about emergency situations where there may be power down, where you cannot charge up, where you may be out in the field for days, I'm wondering what is the thinking around CARB. And the other piece of this, which for this particular agency, they've already raised their rates 5% for the next five years each year, so 25% increases over the next five years, and every additional million dollars that they spend, I think this was statistics, don't quote me if I'm wrong, but for every million dollars they spend, it's an additional 1% increase on rate payers. So, you know, as we are struggling as a legislature to also control the cost of utilities, and this is something that is really stretching people's wallets, especially with these hotter days that we have all the time now. Is there conversations happening within CARB around these challenges? I know there were exemptions that were given, I think, to FIRE and maybe someone else around emergency vehicles. How are we thinking about, you know, we have this challenge of chicken and egg where, like, we need the demand to be able for the market to produce the kind of vehicles we need, but they're not yet, and the deadline is around the corner for some of these agencies who plan five or more years in advance. So what is your thinking, and how are you trying to address this?

Sure.

Right. Exactly. Thank you, Spencer.

Thank you. Okay, I'm going to ask two questions, hopefully a quick answer, because we have a whole other panel coming up, much larger than this one, and we want to make sure that they all have an opportunity to speak. So the first thing is for the MyEV incentive program, what are the parameters around it? Is there an income limit? Is it just second used EVs? What are we doing to make sure that we're getting the most bang for the buck in this program?

Okay. And then the very last question, and this is maybe Commissioner Skinner has something to add to it. The CEC is working on vehicle-to-grid integration. Commissioner Skinner had the bidirectional charging bill. What can we expect in the next few years and the next decade on that issue? Commissioner Skinner, do you want to take a shot?

And maybe Chair Erwin if you indulge me I like to just address a few other things that were raised in the questions And one of those is that while the My First DV program has the incentive has been used less for used DVs

Yeah, I think there's a ton of opportunity there. So, yeah, especially in our area where we're dealing with the PSPSs. All right, well, thank you very much to our panelists. Maybe we can give them a round of applause. Thank you. All right, and I'd like to welcome our second panel up for an in-depth discussion of EV deployment in California, what is being done to support EVs and what more we could do at the state level. And I don't know if you can kind of sit in order. We are first going to have Ann Carlson, then Tricia Dello-Kurt, Tim Hagel, Laura Renger, and Craig Siegel, and then Professor Carlson. So we got to – yeah, we have a very esteemed panel here. There definitely is. You don't have to, don't worry, but it might make it a little easier. The music stops all the time. Yeah, that's a . All right, so I think everybody's going to do five minutes? Five minutes. Five minutes, and then we will, I'm sure, have many questions. our first speaker is Ann Carlson who is professor of

You just have to press a button.

Thank you. And I grew up in the valley and always tell the story about the yellow air. We had to go inside. You know, when we were at school, we had to move inside quite frequently. Or we didn't and our lungs burned. Yes. Or we ignored it. Yes. Thank you. Tricia. Yeah.

and the incoming administration. And I'd like to highlight three of those opportunities. Many of them are not new. Well, that's carrying a theme over. First, we need to make charging infrastructure easier, faster, and more affordable to deploy. California has made important progress in expanding charging infrastructure and addressing deployment barriers, including Assemblymember Chavo's AB 1820 to reduce permitting costs for multifamily charging and SB 1283 to streamline the permitting of charging infrastructure. But getting a charger permitted is only part of the challenge. It also needs to be connected to the grid in a timely, predictable, and affordable way. Utility energization delays can increase costs slow projects and ultimately make it harder for consumers and businesses to transition to electric vehicles We made important progress establishing utility energization timelines and accountability requirements through legislation like SB410 and AB50, but we need to ensure these requirements translate into faster, more predictable grid connections, particularly for multifamily housing and public charging infrastructure. One idea that we've been playing around with at Catalyst Mobility is this coordinated effort among state agencies, utilities, and industry to identify where charging projects are experiencing delays, improving transparency around energization timelines, and recommend practical administrative changes to accelerate deployment, something like an infrastructure strike force is what we've been calling it. This could help ensure that recent legislative reforms are being implemented effectively, particularly for multifamily housing, where charging access remains a significant barrier. And beyond getting chargers installed, we need to ensure they are reliable, accessible, and affordable to use. A charger that doesn't work or that costs too much to use doesn't help build consumer confidence, as has been the theme. So second, we need to make limited public resources work harder. Incentives remain an important tool, as Anne just shared, especially for consumers who face the greatest financial barriers to EV ownership. California's My First EV program is an encouraging example of how the state can structure incentives to be more immediate and accessible while leveraging manufacturer contributions to stretch public dollars, as Chris shared earlier. But we also know that California can't fully replace the federal incentives that we've lost. So that means looking at other ways to reduce costs and support market demand without relying exclusively on new appropriations. One example is using the state's existing purchasing power. California already has statewide procurement contracts for certain zero emission vehicles and charging equipment. Expanding those products and services available through those contracts, improving access for local governments and smaller purchases, and identifying remaining procurement barriers could help more communities access clean vehicles and infrastructure at lower costs. I know one of the things that many of the community members are talking about is this kind of cross-state procurement and how do we work with our neighboring states to make a procurement agreement. These may not be the most visible policy changes, obviously, but they can make a meaningful difference in how quickly and affordably vehicles and chargers are deployed. And then the third thing, California should look beyond its borders to sustain market momentum. California doesn't have to navigate these federal challenges alone. Through existing partnerships with Oregon, Washington, and the British Columbia, including the Pacific Coast Collaborative, we have an opportunity to strengthen regional coordination on clean transportation. That can include shared approaches to charging infrastructure deployment, utility energization and grid readiness, harmonized technical standards, and strategies to make limited incentive dollars go further. We're particularly interested in moving beyond general commitments to collaboration and identifying concrete actions that states can take together with clear implementation priorities and measurable outcomes. California's market influence is significant. Coordinating with neighboring states can help create greater certainty for vehicle manufacturers, charging providers, utilities, and other businesses making long-term investments in this transition. I'll close with one broader point. Strong vehicle standards and consumer incentives have played a critical role in California's progress and they remain important tolls. But given the uncertainty at the federal level, we also need to focus on the practical barriers that determine whether consumers and businesses can actually make the switch to electric. I'll stop there and look forward to discussing more. Thank you very much. Ms. Iacono and next up we have Kurt Augustine who is the Senior Director of State Affairs for for the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

Thank you, Mr. Augustine. Next up we have Tim Hagel, the Executive Director of the Safe Passage Youth Foundation.

Just for everybody here, Tim Hagel used to be the police chief of Thousand Oaks, and then he founded Safe Passages. And a lot of the discussion we were having in the legislature is, you know, we have all the early adopters, but we're never going to meet our climate goals unless we figure out how to get EVs to low-income folks. So I actually approached him and said, can we give you some money and can you do this study? It's not like this was something that he regularly did. And he designed a study with academics, and that report is coming out next week. I would really urge this is like as grassroots as you get with real answers on how these folks are coping with trying to get into EVs. So I would encourage you to read the report, and Tim is happy to share any of his experiences with you. You've done a phenomenal job. And next we have Laura Renger, and Laura is the executive director of the California Electric Transportation Coalition.

Thank you very much. And last we have Craig Siegel, a senior advisor for the Federation of American Scientists.

I will also say I used to get to do more work with UCLA, and they are great. I'm glad to be here. So I think what I want to do is talk a bit, some concrete suggestions in both affordability and jobs. And I'm going to start by framing this fundamentally as an economic and industrial policy problem. We are in the fascinating historical situation, which Ann's book discusses, where we've been running an economic transition through our air agencies using oddly President Richard Nixon's environmental laws. It is 2026. This is a large-scale global economic transition. There are many more tools we can put on the table now, especially in the context of globally affordable EVs, far more affordable globally than they are in California or the U.S. with cars and trucks, and a global diesel fuel crisis. And we just saw, I think, 16 trucking firms declare bankruptcy in like the last month. We've just heard the enormous squeeze that people are facing in their individual budgets. And we just had the legislature pass, and thank you, last year, SB 1213, which is this first effort at getting price transparency and financeability into these markets. So I think there's a platform that combines these things. And what I'll say is the way I think about this problem is we tend to frame this as what can the incentives do and what can the regulations do. And another way of thinking about this that Chris Grundler, my much better successor at CARB, talked about earlier is as a CapEx and industry behavior problem. One way of thinking about that is who making long investments Senator Stern got this as bad as did others Another way of doing this is thinking about pricing and investments and seeing that there been this shared problem in the market of persistently high prices For instance, in California, we saw zero emission truck prices go up 30% as they fell 30% in Europe as we put our regulations in place. That's because those prices have largely been secret for trucks. Many of them are under NDA, and it's a hyper-concentrated market. For buses, noted liberal stalwarts of the American Enterprise Institute along with Brookings put out a study showing that public buses have stayed at a half million dollars and there are only two companies in that market. For passenger cars, we see some of the highest rates for loans for EVs even though they have the lowest delinquency rates. Over and over and over, we see strategies especially on our market where folks price EVs as boutique niche products. They don't sell them for ordinary people. like Teslas in Marin rather than trucks in Imperial. That is a huge problem. And we don't see prices fall in the way they would in a transparent competitive market. Nor do we see sufficient manufacturing or competition in our own market. So we keep that hyperconcentration. So I think the questions are now, not, you know, what can we do in 29, but from a, you know, don't mourn organized perspective, what can you do in 27? Some thoughts here. First, I think looking at 1213 and what that sets up, which is basically transparent pricing. if you take state dollars, a market monitor, and a request to the iBank to start figuring out clever financing tools? How do you surge capital into a market where right now, let's just focus on trucks. You have thousands of small truckers, like 19K between ports of Long Beach and LA and West Oakland just to start, maybe 30K or so statewide trucks, who are now just being hammered. They're caught between giant shippers, giant truck companies that have high prices, incredibly high diesel prices. Those folks, we can't buy them all a truck. Think what you will about the state's pioneering incentive programs. This isn't a problem of finding the money for 30,000 trucks out of our ever-strained budget. It's how do you get private capital into this market. And what I want to really emphasize is people want to make those loans. That has been an information problem. Just concretely, most banks don't know the value of a used EV truck. So it's really hard to write a loan because you don't know the collateral value or the residual value. There's very good data out of Europe that suggests that if you just guarantee those loans and bear in mind, public money mostly doesn't pay out because mostly these are high value, that's a 25 to 1 leverage ratio. Maybe that's off by a factor of two. Maybe it's 10 to 1. But that's at a stage where if you look at the numbers between that and the price transparency and downward pressure we're already seeing from things like a Tesla Semi, you could easily turn over 19,000 trucks. And now you're talking about hundreds of millions, maybe tens of millions in partnership with the banks if you can guarantee those loans. That's new. So I love the My First EV program for cars. I'd love to see My First Electric Truck program that's about credit, not more and more state money, but graduating the market from its birth that California created into just a commercial market where it's as easy to get a truck loan and get out of your now, very high cost, hard to maintain diesel fleet to the numbers you were citing, into here's your electric truck, your small business. We owe back that credit. We probably won't pay out because that's going to be valuable down the line. Maybe, heck, we have to be paid if it's more valuable than we thought it was in that guarantee. That's a possible design. But let's go forth and build it. That could happen next year. It could happen fast as a trucker relief package. It could happen in tandem with other states' iBanks up and down to the west coast or out to Houston. That's a lot of capital. It could be sitting in the Catalyst Fund by next spring. We could turn over those fleets. It would vastly improve air quality. It would cut asthma rates. And it would really help truck drivers. So that's thought one. Thought two, we spent a lot of money in procurement. Working through these public fleet mandates, you raised those, Chair Shivo. Well, we don't actually have a structured procurement policy aimed at either lowering prices for the public or ensuring some of those vehicles are made in California, and hence provide some competition to manufacturers who perhaps have been assuming that they can absorb state rebates and keep prices high. I would love to see that happen. As an example, Microsoft, Akela, the other big fleets did this ZET scale purchase just last month. It's the biggest combined procurement in history. of electric trucks, 2,500 to start, 10,000 total over the life of the program. They negotiated with all the OEMs, the truck makers. They all bid. They lowered prices, I think, from around half a million. My guess would be about 250,000 through that volume. And they'll double the national EV truck population. California could do that with our own procurement. We could also scale in more capital. Maybe we do lease to own for private fleets. Huge thing. Last thing I'll say is it's worth thinking about direct job investments. And this is the last piece I make. We've spent billions on buying trucks for people and cars too. We've spent, as far as I can tell, about $20 million since 2017 through CalSeed on onshoring. That is just not a great ratio for us. We've got like a $7 billion annual trade deficit on batteries. Are we going to make every battery in the world or every truck? No. Do I think GoBiz and others should have the authority and some funds to get people across the valley of death and maybe take an upside share if they do well as we did not do with Tesla? Yes. So I think that would be where I would start next year. Credit, procurement focused at scale, made with allied states, and thinking really seriously about how we bring the competition to bear that gives people both a better market and a stake directly in this industry at home so they can see themselves not just in a car, but in a job making those vehicles in the long term for their family. Thank you very much.

Let me start with ISR and the thing I'm going to do is direct you to a publication that we issued last year on ISRs and all the kind of legal ups and downs and how you can construct them. Super helpful. I'm happy to send it to you. I mean, one thing to note is that I think the legal authority is pretty clear, and it's important. It can be resource intensive for air districts to actually implement an ISR, and I think one of the things that we might see is that CARB might provide a lot of technical assistance. There are ways actually to fund also the compliance mechanism So I will just say that and then turn you to this publication which is really really helpful Carol Horowitz helped author it I think she had to leave but was in the audience With respect to automakers, I don't know what to tell you about the OEMs. So with all due respect to my alliance friend here, you know, supporting Congress in not just getting rid of the California waiver, but doing it with a process that by all accounts was illegal, basically, not consistent with the statute, the Congressional Review Act. On a day when I was actually meeting with John Bozella and others in Washington, D.C., I thought, kind of stunning, I have to say, and it makes me question the commitment. I get that there were problems. I do understand that there were states that had withdrawn from 177 states that had withdrawn. But I don't know what the commitment is. I mean, obviously we're seeing Ford commit to a $30,000 truck. That seems great. But I think the existential threat to the American auto industry is from China. Greg has already alluded to the fact that there are high-quality, low-cost electric vehicles that the rest of the world is now buying. And I don't know how we get from a world where the protectionist of the United States is not allowing those vehicles in to maybe we hold on long enough that the legacy auto manufacturers can compete. But I'm worried. I don't have much more to say about that. I think Craig can add some things. But, I mean, I think we're at an incredibly critical juncture. I think the withdrawal of consumer incentives and the combined with the regulatory push that was coming from the federal government was not in the automakers' interest. I wish that the Trump administration could have seen that. I think we've ceded unbelievable leadership in the auto sector to China, and I don't know how we get back to being competitive. Quick thoughts.

I was going to ask something kind of along the same lines as, you know, saw Norway that they are, I think, 90% EVs. And a few years ago it was Teslas, and now it's a lot of them are the Chinese vehicles. So how does this industry stay competitive when that's going on around the rest of the world? And if you could answer all these. No, all great questions. And I actually agree with some of the things Ms. Carlson said. I hope that doesn't offend you. But I think fundamentally on the federal policy, the whip sawing is incredible. I mean, these are long-term investments. I mean, whether it's an EV or a gasoline-powered car, the development cycles are three to seven years. So changing the policy every three to four years in a seven-year development cycle is impossible, and it's quite challenging. There is an existential threat. to the EV market of the United States. And people do wonder why are cars so much cheaper in Europe and other places. There's one fundamental reason. The Chinese government subsidizes each and every electric vehicle $25,000 per car. Free market companies cannot compete with that, period. That is impossible to meet. That is one of the reasons why the federal government has not allowed, among national security issues, why they've not allowed them into this country. That subsidy is impossible to meet. I mean, we're very happy and very thrilled about the $3,000 that California provides. That's $25,000 on every car. And also, the Norway example gets pointed out a lot. I've had the pleasure of a former, at the time he was the Minister of the Environment, and he basically said the reason we have a lot of electric cars in Norway, we have collective national guilt because we've pumped more oil out of the North Sea than anybody else in the world. And, again, they are heavily subsidizing the price of those vehicles. So the combination of what's happening with the Chinese and other federal national governments subsidizing, subsidizing. That's what we don't have here, and that's why we see these price differences that are so dramatic. And again, I want to reiterate one thing. Our companies are in business to make and sell cars. We are responding to market demand. We cannot make people, despite kind of the illusions that I'm hearing, like if we only made them, people will buy these cars. We can't make people buy cars. We make cars that people want to buy. And until that kind of really is better understood that is why we have challenges We not selling cars in the middle of the country because we don want to The people in the middle of the country just aren't buying electric vehicles. And it's, are we perfect? No. But I think that's the fundamental thing is we don't, you know, you have to remember we are making cars that people want to buy. We cannot make people buy cars they don't want. I just had one more question before I go to, I mean, we'll have a few questions,

Yes, it's half the rebate. Half the rebate comes from the state and half comes from the manufacturer. Okay. Yeah.

Certainly. Yes, there is some advertising, but you're right. I mean, the vast majority of it is for more traditional cars. But I would also note that while we do not represent them, the most successful electric vehicle company in this country, Tesla, has never advertised. So it is not a function of advertising that makes people buy that vehicle, and I would suppose that it's probably not also the case of why people bought other vehicles. So it can motivate behavior, but it's not the sole behavior. Can we do better? Absolutely. I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say we can't, but I think if the record was clear that this type of advertising would direct more sales, the companies would do it. I mean, I don't know why companies do advertising if it doesn't direct more sales. Well, of course it does, but it can't necessarily always create a demand for something that people don't want. You can stimulate it, but it doesn't always work out. Yeah, well, we'll never find out if they don't do it.

Yes, there are several, and I believe that Commissioner Skinner actually alluded to it as well, too. Yes, there are a couple of developments that have happened. There were a couple of different charging standards, and most of the companies now have coalesced on one standard based on the Tesla charger for many of the reasons you just said. But there are also these charging stations that are being developed and other coalitions. Yeah, so, I mean, to be honest, they have been resistant. They didn't build gas stations, so they've been a little resistant in doing that. But there is now an effort to develop more of those charging standards. Excuse me, charging stations.

No, I mean, that's absolutely right. That's why I'm sort of banging on about loans for truckers. But same deal for ordinary people. Like, I will never buy a new car. Yeah. Right? I cannot afford that, won't do it. Thinking about the auto industry as a loans company is probably worth thinking about, right? That's a big profit center. So how do you ensure you've got low-cost auto loans for normal people and then add on? The state had durability standards and warranty standards for heavy batteries. In the ACC2 regulations, my team designed that the industry blew up. Those durability and warranty rules, as far as I'm concerned, could be reenacted and I think would really help. Can I add one other thing? And that is the education of dealers and auto salespeople who don't push electric vehicles. It's a huge issue. It's something that the manufacturers actually could do something about. If you want people to buy EVs, your salespeople have to know about them and have to understand their benefits. I have to tell you how to charge it I leased an EV before I bought my used EV And the salesperson was the nicest guy in the world but he did not know anything about electric vehicles And I was like how does this work? What do I do? How do I get this set up? And he's like, go on YouTube, you know? So yeah, it's a learning curve for everybody. Thank you.

especially with regard to using the low-carbon fuel standard funds. You know, a portion of the funds that the utilities receive from low-carbon fuel standard goes to the statewide program. And then another portion goes to what we call the holdback programs, and those are for each utility to decide what to do with them within some parameters that the CARB regulation provides. For the investor-owned utilities, they have to go through an additional step, which is to get approval from the Public Utilities Commission.

Yeah, that's a great question. One comes to my mind instantly. this one intrepid driver lives in low-cost apartment housing every single night, drives about a mile from her apartment, knows where there is a level two charger from a public facility that has a trash bag over it because Hank, the maintenance guy, has never repaired the meter on it fully, and it's a public access nonprofit government charging point. Plugs the car in every night at 7 o'clock when she gets off her shift and hoofs it home, and then at 5 in the morning takes her dog with her because she scared to walk on the streets goes back to it It actually works It just the maintenance department hasn ever got around to fixing some of the attributes of it so that she can charge it for free That's why she's doing it, is there is no charger available whatsoever in her apartment complex, and the nearest fast charging is about six miles away. So that's what she does, and I think that's an intrepid solution at that point.

Yeah, that's great. What has been your experience Yeah and you brought up zipping along like you saying you going fast You zipping along You able to get places They absolutely love them We do weekly reports. Like, do you like it? If this program was over, would you keep the vehicle? And more importantly, what we're looking at is, would your next vehicle be one of these? Are you switching back to combustion? I mean, that's the important question. I think that's what you're asking. They love them. straight out, love them, and they would keep it. Their only Achilles is the charging cost and access in their multifamily homes. That's it. Otherwise, hands down, they love it. There's so many anecdotal stories from them that just, I get to read these on Monday mornings. The research comes through, and sometimes I'm just laughing on how much they really love having the electric vehicles.

Yeah, that's the most surprising for me is that I thought this is going to be so difficult. But because of the charging situations, I thought, wow, personally, unbiased, when the project started, I thought they're all going to want to dump these things and go back to combustion. They're going to take their 400,000-mile car that they're buying for $3,000 on Facebook, and they're going to run that car and go back to that. And so far what we're finding is that that's not the case.

Well, I'll keep it under a minute. I'll just say we've heard throughout this is a question of economic policy, whether it's the industry's perception of itself as in a bind or in the experience that you were just discussing. of someone just trying to figure out how to make it through the day. I think there are real opportunities here. As I've said, looking at the world situation, this is where the world's going. California helped get it started. And now it's about how do we make sure this isn't just two or four companies upcharging the state and upcharging people. How do we go from us creating this to this just being shared prosperity for everybody? I think that's really available the more we focus on this across all our tools and the vast majority of those tools. One, could make us money back, which is a big deal. And also, I don't need to ask Donald Trump's permission for them, and neither do any of us, because they're within the authority of the states. I think focusing there now changes the politics and gets us in 2029 when president whoever takes office and thinks, oh, my God, we're behind the world, critically behind the world, and we're exposed to all these costs. I want them looking at California not as the most unequal state, not as the state that started this, but as the state that is now making this a mature market for ordinary people. I think that's where we can go. Thank you.

All right. Just with regard to the last question that you asked about the concern about charging for low-income customers, I don't know that it's necessarily, I think, you know, part of what we talked about was whether or not it's regulated. We also have to be concerned when we're looking at the companies themselves that are making these technologies. These are not typically huge corporations that have a lot of wherewithal to be sustaining, and they also have a business that they need to run as well. And so I think where we might want to focus our efforts is more on what are some alternatives, recognizing that the charging companies need to make money as well. There's been fits and starts as to whether or not there's a business model there, but also looking at possibly what are some other alternatives like charge cards. And that's something that's gained a lot of traction. Recently, there's been a number of pilots. There's been proposals even to allow the automakers possibly not to have to provide a level one cord, but instead to provide a charging card. Different community-based organizations have been working on these charging card models. And I have some studies from GO-Biz. They did a pilot on this a couple of years ago, and we could share that as well. So some of these options are looking to be a little bit more promising.

I feel like we are saying two things. I'm just going to address it. EVs are fun to drive, and there's no demand. If they were not fun to drive, where is the demand issue? So I think let's not confuse regulatory uncertainty for market demand. We need the regulatory certainty so that the OEMs and the manufacturers produce the vehicles. They have a North Star. But at the same time, and we hear this both in the light duty and the heavy duty side, Trucks, cars, EVs, they're fun to drive. They are ergonomical. They're easier on your body, especially for truck drivers who are driving eight hours on the road. Dryage vehicles. People want to keep buying them. I think the other couple things that we didn't talk about when it comes to costs, especially as it relates to California. So California has Power Forward, which is a battery program. Batteries are one of the reasons why the costs are high. We need to do a better job of investing in the technologies. I think California has amazing technologies available to them. There's businesses here that are investing in the future of batteries and helping to draw down the cost. So more investment into Power Forward, the program, to bring those costs down will be helpful. And then just putting a finer point on the TNC program. Obviously, this also goes to my first point. EVs are fun to drive. Uber drivers prefer and Lyft drivers prefer to be in an EV. So ensuring that we're continuing that program that has been wildly successful so they have the opportunity to drive in an EV. I'll stop there.

All right, can we give our panel a big round of applause? Just really appreciate all of you joining us today. This was very informative and like a great diversity of opinions here and backgrounds. And so we really appreciate you joining us today.

And now we do have an opportunity for public comments. So I would ask that you limit your comment to maybe around two minutes or so. You can stay or move or whatever you would like to do.

Thank you.

thank you good afternoon Rocky Fernandez with the Center for sustainable energy I wanted to make three key kind of updates in this realm one we look forward to working with the new legislature and new governor it's a hopefully continue my first ee take a lot of the lessons learned from the the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project that we worked on for several years. We also do this in several other states. We also work on Clean Cars for All. I think there's a lot of work to do to fine-tune the program moving forward, but we have a lot of lessons learned from all these things. Second, we also work on the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Project with Mr. Reeder and Commissioner Skinner. And we're very excited to say that the program has become incredibly popular, and we've taken a lot of good work with Spencer and the commissioner to cut down the average installation for DC fast charging from around 500 days to around a third of that. And we've completed our fastest project in as low as 41 days from start to finish. Third, we're also very excited about that big event that's coming up in two weeks. Not talking about the election. I'm talking about the rollout of the ride program, the ride share incentive program that we're working with the CPUC and the ride share companies with. Hopefully we'll come back next year to this committee and have great updates to give. So thanks again and have a great lunch.

Hi, I'm Ruben Aronin with the Better World Group. We support EV stakeholders and advocates here in California and in states across the country. And I want to, as we just celebrated the AB32 20th anniversary, commend you and the legislative leadership over the last two decades around our climate and clean transportation policies. And we need to see that continued engagement and leadership from the legislature in policy vehicles. A few thoughts on what we've heard today. With regards to the skin from the automakers for the My First EV program, I'd encourage the legislature to look at where requirements for placing affordable EVs and threshold number of deployments to California would be a qualifier for participation for the program in the future, and those that are discontinuing EV production perhaps don't qualify. We've heard about the need for that My First used EV program to be proliferating. I think used car partners, utilities, other stakeholders that can help us get that through. But let's really invest through our amazing Clean Cars for All program. You put $18 million a year for the next few years. Last year, we can turbocharge that to deploy used EVs to frontline communities. And the last thing I'll say for efficiency from my stakeholders and for your time, Now with less funding for GGRF, we need to think about what are the political investments we need to make to get multiyear funding secure so we don't have to fight for the funding every year and the private sector has some predictability. You heard Commissioner Skinner talk about the Colorado model, the retail goods movement fee at a cost. You know, that's something to think about. Scaling our existing program for ride hailing is one model. A luxury SUV tax could be another creative model. We're probably going to get dinged by the federal government for $135 EV fee that they're threatening to put on all the EV drivers in the country. Maybe we need to waive DMV fees, low-cost administrative deployment opportunity to make good on this punitive fee from the federal government. Whatever we're able to do over the next couple of years with a hostile federal government helps build progress and momentum so that we can turn the switch quickly in 29 and beyond or have an insurance policy. We're Californians, for God's sakes. We led the world to the transition that is taking the world by storm, and we need to bring it to the people who invested so much to make it happen. So thanks so much for your leadership.

Thank you Thank you. Thank you.