Episode 49: e-Mobility with Giovanni Bertolino (Enel X)

Episode Intro Notes

What We’ll cover

• What is e-Mobility?

• Why is e-Mobility important?

• What’s needed to make e-Mobility a reality?

• How do we accelerate the transition to e-Mobility?

• Are there any potential issues with the transition to e-Mobility?

• About Enel X and Giovanni Bertolino, Enel X’s Head of e-Mobility USA & Canada

what is e-mobility?

• Electric mobility or e-Mobility refers to the use of transportation modes that are fully or partly driven with an electric drivetrain versus a conventional gas-powertrain, and have a means of storing energy on board via a battery, and obtain their energy mainly from the power grid.

• By power grid, we mean the interconnected system that delivers energy from generation to consumer. Electric cars, electric scooters, e-bikes, e-buses, and e-trucks could all be examples of e-Mobility. Shout out to Episode 1 on Electric Bikes, which we replayed last month with a short update.

why is e-mobility important?

• The transportation sector is responsible for a significant portion of the greenhouse gas emissions accelerating climate change. In the U.S., transportation accounted for the largest portion of total greenhouse gas emissions at 29%. Globally, transportation accounts for 24% of emissions and is expected to grow faster than any other sector.

• Road vehicles are responsible for the majority of these global transportation emissions at 72%. Most of these are light vehicles but heavy duty vehicles like big trucks tend to have a much larger impact per mile. We’re focusing on light-duty vehicles in this episode because in the U.S., light-duty vehicles make up 59% of greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector (like Scott’s old Mitsubishi Galant...RIP). With cars, there are several different options that would all fall under the e-Mobility umbrella.

  • Hybrid. A hybrid has both an electric and an internal combustion engine. It’s charged via the engine while driving and stores braking energy at the same time. An example is the standard Toyota Prius.

  • Plug-in hybrid. The important difference with these is you can also charge the battery via the grid. An example is the Honda Clarity.

  • Range extended electric vehicle. With these, there’s an internal combustion engine that generates power for the electric powertrain through the use of a generator. In contrast to hybrids, the internal combustion engine does not directly power the vehicle until the battery power is exhausted. An example is the Chevy Volt, which can be plugged in and has an internal combustion engine.

  • Battery electric vehicle (i.e., EVs). The vehicle is powered entirely by the battery, which is charged via the grid. An example would be the Nissan Leaf and Tesla models.

• Ok, so besides greenhouse gas emissions, e-Mobility is also important because non-electric cars spew pollutants that can lead to worse air quality. Transportation accounts for more than half of the nitrogen oxides in our air. NOx can cause lung irritation and weaken the body's defenses against respiratory infections. Besides NOx and greenhouse gases, other major pollutants from motor vehicles are particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide. All those “ides” you don’t really like to hear.

  • Here’s an example that stuck with Jay related to this. Google measures air quality using equipment mounted on Google Street View cars. San Francisco was one of the first cities analyzed, and he could zoom into his block and see the nitrous oxide outside his front door. For more details on this Google initiative, check out Episode 26 on Big Data and Sustainability.

• Going electric reduces these pollutants in part because they require less energy. An electric vehicle needs 3 times less energy than one with an internal combustion engine, and it covers three times the distance. Plus, it has no tailpipe emissions.

• These pollutants are set to increase if we don’t change the kind of cars we drive considering we’re driving more. In fact, the Department of Transportation found Americans drove more between April 2018 and April 2019 than any other 12 month span on record, and Americans are driving 40% more today than in 1994.

what’s needed to make e-mobility a reality?

• First off is building out the charging station infrastructure. Charging stations could be in the home or publicly available. The bestselling smart electric home vehicle charger on the market is Enel X’s JuiceBox 40, which has up to 7X faster charging. The workplace is another primary charging location, yet one study found 9 out of 10 EV drivers are not able to charge their vehicles at work. Room for improvement there.

• Hundreds of millions of EV charging stations may be required around the world. In the U.S., 88 of the 100 top metropolitan areas do not have enough EV charging infrastructure to support the expected three million EVs that will be on the road in the U.S. by 2025. California, where half of U.S. EVs are located, has one of the more mature infrastructures in the U.S. at a charging station per eight vehicles. Eventually, a one to one ratio will be needed.

• Utilities are interested in providing EV infrastructure to optimize electricity supply and demand efficiently with smart charging. Smart charging refers to a charging system where electric vehicles, charging stations, and charging operators share data connections to optimize energy consumption and smooth out energy demand. Bloomberg estimates that as more EVs hit the road, smart charging could significantly reduce grid investment by 30-70% for grid operators. This represents up to billions of dollars on a yearly basis. States are working with public utility commissions and utilities to test different types of infrastructure, so that’s an area to watch.

• It’s important that we make these charging stations, smart, convenient and fast. Enel X offers smart charging stations that in less than an hour of charging, charge vehicles to go up to about 250 miles.

• Also, beyond cars, we need the infrastructure to support other forms of e-Mobility like e-bikes and e-scooters. These electric-powered modes of transport used for shorter trips are referred to as electric micromobility. There will actually be many more e-bikes sold in the coming years, as estimates for the mid-2020’s put annual e-bike sales at more than 40 million while electric vehicles look to be more around 12 million.

  • E-scooters are big too. There were actually two million more trips on e-scooters than e-bikes in 2018.

• Beyond the charging stations, we also need to modernize the grid. Modernization will allow the grid to accommodate more types of renewable power generation. More renewables incorporated means a grid that is more resilient to extreme weather. Plus, the sensors and other technology that make the grid “smart” allow for charging at non-peak times and open up more energy efficiency opportunities.

  • By one estimate, to supply millions of EVs and meet its normal load, the grid in the United States would need 20% more capacity. McKinsey found that the United States will need $11 billion of capital investment by 2030 to deploy the 13 million chargers needed for all of the country’s EVs.

• We also need people to get over their range anxiety, which is the concern that the car will run out of juice mid-trip with no place to charge up. In the United States in 2017, 60% of all trips were less than six miles and 95% of them were less than 30 miles. That’s well within a single charge of basically all electric vehicles.

• Ultimately, we have a long way to go to an all-electric fleet. There are 1.2 billion cars on the road globally today and that will grow to 2 billion over the next 20 years. Only about 5 million cars in 2018 were electric. That’s less than half of 1% of the total. Only 2% of the 5.3 million cars sold in the U.S. last year were electric. Interestingly, the largest electric car market is China, and Norway is the global leader in terms of market share with almost half of new car sales being electric and about 7 percent of cars in the country being electric.

• But EVs are a growth market. In 2019, EVs grabbed 2.2% of the global vehicle market over the first 10 months as a slew of new models hit the road. Looking into the future, Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that 57% of all passenger car sales globally by 2040 will be electric.

how do we accelerate the transition to e-mobility?

• One way is through policy.

  • For example, some cities are creating incentives and mandates to switch to electric cars. London started offering a congestion charge in 2003 and in April 2019, started applying an extra charge to the dirtiest vehicles in a central part of the city it called the Ultra Low Emissions Zone. EVs are exempt from the congestion charge and the extra charge for the dirty vehicles. These policy changes in London have had an immediate effect. By October 2019, nitrogen dioxide levels in the air had declined by 36 percent compared to February 2017. There were nearly 13,500 fewer of the most polluting vehicles in the city center on an average day, compared to the month before the new rules were instituted.

    • Prime Minister Boris Johnson actually took it a step further in February 2020 announcing that the UK wants to end the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2035.

  • London isn’t the only city looking at a ban on internal combustion vehicles altogether. Amsterdam plans to have gasoline and diesel engine cars out of the city center by 2030, largely to clean up its air. There are leaders in the U.S. too. One such state, maybe somewhat surprisingly, is New Jersey. In January 2020, it passed an ambitious law with a target of 330,000 EVs on the road by 2025 and 85% of cars sold in the state to be electric by 2040. The law includes $300 million in rebates over ten years that immediately reduce the price of the car. New Jersey’s bill also calls for charging stations across the state to reduce range anxiety.

• Another way to accelerate e-Mobility is through not just people purchasing more electric cars but also companies and governments.

  • Companies control more than half the vehicles on the road today. In January 2020, major companies including Amazon, AT&T, Clif Bar, and Siemens formed the Corporate Electric Vehicle Alliance. The Alliance will help member companies make and achieve bold commitments to fleet electrification, and is expected to boost the electric vehicle market by signaling the breadth and scale of corporate demand for electric vehicles. Electrifying the fleet is critical to many of the climate goals of these companies.

  • Ride hailing companies should also look at making more of their fleets EVs given the decreased climate impact of EV rides. An electric, pooled/shared ride-hailing trip can cut emissions by about 68 percent compared with a private vehicle trip in the average car. In some markets, Lyft has a “green mode” so users can select an EV or hybrid vehicle, and Lyft has established an EV rental option for drivers.

• A third means of acceleration is simply bringing the cost down. As more electric vehicles are made, the price should continue to come down.

  • GM announced in 2017 that it would be selling 20 electric-vehicle models by 2040, and it said in 2019 many of these won’t have “luxury-vehicle prices.” The battery is one of the most expensive parts of the vehicle, and its cost has fallen dramatically. It went from $2,500 a kilowatt-hour to $400 (that’s an 84% decrease!), and is now on its way to $100, which many believe is the magic number where EVs have cost parity without subsidies.

    • McKinsey estimates that fleet EVs can have a total cost of ownership 15 to 25 percent less than that of equivalent ICE vehicles by 2030.

  • One current way prices are reduced is with the federal, non-refundable tax credit of $7,500 for electric vehicles. But, many low income people don’t owe that much in taxes so it’s not a benefit to them. Also, it’s available for only the first 200,000 cars a manufacturer sells. GM and Tesla have already hit that ceiling.

  • The good news is after purchase, the costs tend to be less. There’s less maintenance and there’s no oil changes to pay for. Plus, filling up with electricity tends to be less than gas. With the average U.S. cost of electricity at 12 cents per kilowatt hour, a person driving the average EV 15,000 miles annually will spend roughly, at current prices, $540 per year, or $45 per month, to charge the car—a savings of about $860 per year over gasoline-powered cars.

are there any issues with the transition to e-mobility?

• The most typical criticism is that this transition will mean more electricity use and if that energy is derived from fossil fuels, that could exacerbate issues we’ve discussed like climate change and air pollution.

  • Certainly, if an EV was charged solely by electricity generated from coal, this would mean a high amount of indirect emissions. Indirect emissions refer to the emissions produced in the burning of fossil fuels at power plants to produce electricity for commercial and residential uses. The reality though is that renewables and cleaner fuel sources continue to be integrated into electricity generation across the United States. This is partly why, on average in the United States, carbon emissions per mile for an electric vehicle are 45% less than those from a gas-fueled vehicle of a similar size.

  • One alternative that ensures clean energy is charging stations that are independent of the grid. For example, Envision Solar sells solar-powered electric charging stations. Also, in some places, the guarantee can be made that all power from an EV charging station is from renewable sources. In Italy, Enel X’s charging points source 100% of their power from renewable sources.

  • Even when not from 100% renewable sources, software such as Enel X’s JuiceNet can tell you how much CO2 will be emitted on a per-mile basis based on which power plants are charging your EV. And, they can charge your EV based on when renewable sources are maximized.

• Another area for improvement is EV batteries. Sourcing the minerals used for lithium-ion batteries, dismantling batteries which have deteriorated, and building and delivering vehicles to customers worldwide all involve CO2 emissions. Still, an EV with a lithium-ion battery has about half the emissions compared to the average gas-powered vehicle over the lifetime of the EV.

  • One piece of research looked at the rare earth minerals required to convert just the 31 million cars in the UK to EVs. They found this would necessitate two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three-quarters of the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production during 2018.

  • It’s important that advancements continue to be made in responsible sourcing of these minerals. Some are looking at alternatives including those focused on batteries based in zinc, which is relatively much more plentiful than cobalt and lithium.

  • It’s also important that we advance our ability to use these batteries for energy storage once they no longer make sense for cars and to ultimately recycle them so the rare earth metals are captured.

enel x and giovanni bertolino

• Enel X is leading the energy transformation all over the world with solutions that allow businesses, cities, and people to use energy in new ways. It has four global product lines: e-industries, e-Mobility, e-home, and e-city. With e-Mobility, it focuses on promoting increasingly widespread and efficient electric mobility and smart charging infrastructure (i.e. vehicle grid integration). Enel X has deployed over 80,000 smart charging stations globally. 

• Its technology in the e-Mobility space includes the JuiceBox EV Charging Station, the #1 seller on Amazon, and also its JuiceNet IoT software that allows customers to charge their EVs automatically in a way that considers the availability of renewable energy and the cost of energy during different times of the day.

• Our guest Giovanni Bertolino is Enel X’s Head of e-Mobility in the USA and Canada. He has an MBA from New York University, worked for several years at McKinsey, and has been at Enel X for more than ten years.