Products & Services
What Can I Do to Put You into an EV Today?
Electric Vehicles are engineering marvels. Setting aside for a moment the very real concerns of upfront cost and access to charging, EVs blow away their polluting competitors in terms of performance, comfort, reliability, style, and user interface. However, if there’s one thing that is common between old and new it is the nature of the automotive industry itself.
As someone who has been working to advance electric vehicle adoption for 15+ years, I have personally found it alluring to think of automakers, fleet leasing companies, and rental car agencies as partners in a mission to fight climate change and transform transportation. I have many great relationships with people in this industry who work tirelessly to deliver EVs to fleets and individual consumers. Yet, at the end of the day, the auto sector is what we have always known it to be: one of aggressive tactics that are unbound from the shackles of business ethics.
A friend once invited me to listen in on an internal call with an executive at a major automaker. During the call, the executive was pitching an idea that I had shared with him as though it was his own. I would have said something, but I didn’t want to get my friend in trouble and the executive was doing a bad job of selling my idea anyway.
Buyer Beware
Over the years, I have seen how automotive companies - big and small - operate in all corners of the world. When someone wants you to pay for a vehicle or the use of a vehicle, treat them with the same level of trust as you would with any random salesperson at your local car dealership. I know there are many perfectly kind and caring car salespeople, and I also know to exercise a high degree of caution when negotiating a business transaction with them.
For example, the rise of Tesla popularized direct-to-consumer car sales over the objections of franchised auto dealers. The quality of service and maintenance has been widely regarded as exceptional, yet now it has been alleged that Tesla is manipulating the odometer readings of its vehicles to limit its financial liability to perform maintenance and repairs. Oh, and all your data may be directly fed into a proprietary AI model that Elon Musk can use for whatever purpose he sees fit. There are no free rides.
I flew into San Antonio for a conference and needed to drive to Austin. The rental car representative at Thrifty tried talking me out of renting an EV, because it “only charges slow.” It was a 2024 Polestar that could definitely accept a fast charge — in fact, I rented the car and used a fast charger before I dropped it off at the airport. In the meantime, she asked me if I wanted to buy a toll pass for my drive to Austin. I asked how much the toll roads are, and she said she once spent $100. So, I bought the $20/day pass. There are, of course, no toll roads between San Antonio and Austin. So, I suppose, some rides are free unless you get duped.
Now, take everything you know about automakers, dealerships, and rental car companies and apply it to charging station manufacturers, software providers, engineering firms, and consultants (with some notable exceptions). I once encountered an engineering firm with an interesting business model for developing EV charging infrastructure for small municipal fleets. They provide “free” analytic support to help clients plan their fleet electrification programs. In exchange for this support, the company receives the exclusive right to design, build, and operate the client’s charging infrastructure. Why would any client accept this arrangement? I don’t really know, but I suppose they’re the same types of people who would pay for a toll pass from Thrifty Rental Car.
Planning for the Real World
The purpose of sharing this Parade of Horribles is not to deter organizations from pursuing fleet electrification, though I do believe it is important to have a realistic understanding of the dynamics of this marketplace. My general advice is to build a significant buffer into fleet electrification plans to account for discrepancies in vendor claims related to cost, schedule, and performance. For example, I typically model a 40% reduction in EV driving range from manufacturer specifications to account for a lack of manufacturer credibility and other real world conditions. Similar buffers for cost and schedule have proven (repeatedly) to help ease the transition from planning to implementation. These planning tactics are critical, but we must do more than improve our analytic models.
I know what you’re thinking: procurement and contracting are too lurid to bring back into a technical report. Sexy as these topics may be, the fact is that a well-conceived procurement process and informed contract terms are the key mechanisms to capture the benefits of electric vehicles while mitigating risks. In fact, procurement and contracting are two areas where I have most consistently observed clients in need of expert support. Things like validating compliance with open charging standards may not be obvious to people who have not done this before. Yet, when EnelX abruptly exited the charging station operator business, many (former) customers soon realized that their claims of interoperability between software platforms was demonstrably false.
Pressing Forward
Coming back to the original point, the shadiness of the EV industry is more to do with the shadiness of the automotive industry in which it resides. The difference is that, now, we have the knowledge and tools to demand better.
Vendors across the EV industry are selling us on a future that is truly achievable, certainly better than what we have come to know over the last century of rampant pollution. Our task as advocates and practitioners is to ensure that vendors who are now selling us on this cleaner, more sustainable future are held accountable for delivering it.
Relive the Magic
Dig into the Stakeholder Soup of Fleet Electrification:
Products & Services: What Can I Do to Put You in an EV Today?
Leased Property: The Case of Furley v. Roper (Coming Soon)
Public Policy: The 250lb Orangutan in the Room (Coming Soon)
…And the Rest: People You Don’t Know You Should Know (Coming Soon)
Or, Skip to the Punchline: