Senate Select Committee on Transitioning to a Zero-Emission Energy Future

Okay. The Senate Select Committee on Transitioning to a Zero-Emission Energy Future will come to order in 60 seconds.

Senate Select Committee on Transitioning to a Zero-Emission Energy Future will come to order. Good afternoon. The senate continues to welcome the public and has provided access to both in-person and teleconference participation for public comment. For individuals wishing to provide public comment via the teleconference service, the participant toll free number for today's hearing is 877-226-8216. Again, that's 877-226-8216, and the access code is 5700096. Again, that's 5700096.

We also have panelists who are participating remotely. For our remote participants, please mute your phones or computers. Please select unmute before you begin speaking. Our IT personnel will put you back on mute when you are done. Once recognized to speak, please make sure you can be seen on the screen, state your name, and then when you are ready, please address the committee. For today's hearing, we will be hearing all of the panels of witnesses on the agenda, prior to taking any public comment.

Once we have heard all of the witnesses, we will have a public comment period for those who wish to comment on the topics on today's agenda. We're going to endeavor to finish by 03:30 p.m today. I'd like to begin the hearing by thanking my colleagues, here on the dais, for joining us for the inaugural hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Transitioning to a Zero-Emissions Energy Future. Senator Cortese. Senator Wilk. Senator Archuleta. Senator Dodd. Senator Caballero. Thank you for being here. Particularly. Thanks, Senator Archuleta.

Senator Archuleta chairs the Select Committee on Hydrogen Energy, on which I'm a member. And I appreciate you participating in this hearing, as well as your leadership overall. Let me get started. According to NASA, we have all just lived through the hottest July on record. Most of us in Southern California just endured the first hurricane to hit the region in over 80 years. And residents throughout the Central Valley and our Central Coast are still rebuilding after this spring's devastating floods.

It is clear and the science attests to the fact that California is already suffering from the effects of climate change. It comes as no surprise then, that California has set forth some of the most aggressive climate goals in the nation. These include ambitious targets to decarbonize each of our state's most polluting sectors, from light duty transportation and freight and goods movement, to our grid and heavy industries. The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 requires California to reduce its annual greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent, below 1990 levels, by the year 2030. And the California Climate Crisis Act of 2022 mandates carbon neutrality by 2045. But it's one thing to have a plan. It's quite another thing to make that plan a reality.

The 2020 Scoping Plan from the California Air Resources Board finds that California will need to reduce its consumption of liquid petroleum by 94 percent and overall fossil fuels by 84 percent to reach carbon neutrality by the year 2045. Attaining these drastic reductions will require quadrupling the state's supply of wind and solar generation, the electrification and conversion to alternative fuels of many hard-to-decarbonize industrial processes, and the transition of the state's more than 36 million registered vehicles to zero-emission technologies.

Our clean energy transition presents a tremendous opportunity for cleaner air, healthier communities, and, importantly, new jobs and economic development. But as with most changes, this transition will be challenging, and it is critical that we work together to achieve our goals as equitably and seamlessly as possible. Doing so will require an acute understanding of the specific challenges we face in expanding our supply of renewable energy and converting fossil-based processes to zero-emission technologies.

It will require hearing from our state agencies and our partners at the federal and local levels on opportunities for cooperation and challenges with implementation. It will require hearing from industry and the economic tradeoffs and risks we face from such an accelerated shift away from fossil fuels. It is critical to remember that private investment in a self-sustaining clean energy market will be essential to achieving a greener and more sustainable economy.

And it will require hearing from everyday Californians, for whom we are asking their cooperation and their partnership and their investments. From the residents who, through no fault of their own, rely upon the continued use of fossil fuels to put food on the table and roofs over their heads. And for the residents who proactively invested in a zero-emission vehicle that, as we'll discuss further in today's hearing, can sometimes feel like buying a lemon.

Our clean energy transition will require not just a whole of government approach, but a whole of society approach. And it is important that every step we take be realistic, achievable and fair. It is my hope that this select committee will help to highlight some of those important perspectives, and remind all of us what is at stake as we contemplate new climate goals and new policy priorities.

Done right, California can unlock billions of dollars in economic development, capture 4 million new clean energy jobs. Done incorrectly, and we may end up saddling Californians with unattainable expectations and, just importantly, a reduced quality of life. The success of our transition will ultimately depend upon the details of our execution. This is especially the case as we work to reduce the single leading source of greenhouse gas emissions within our state, and that is transportation.

When accounting for fuel production, our transportation sector accounts for roughly half of all greenhouse gas emissions in California. The unfortunate reality is that the cars and SUVs we depend on to get to and from work, school and life are single handedly responsible for approximately one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in California. That's more than the annual emissions from the state's entire electrical grid.

It is therefore critical that any conversion on our work to achieve a zero-emission energy future begin with a candid conversation on the challenges and, frankly, the frustrations with our transition to a zero-emission vehicle fleet, thus far. And so that brings us to the topic of today's hearing. For many ZEV drivers, it can feel like the State of California has not lived up to its end of the bargain.

On the one hand, the state has moved to end all new sales of gas-powered internal combustion engines by the year 2035, with requirements that just over one-third of all new vehicles, sold in just three years from now, be zero-emission vehicles. On the other hand, California remains woefully short on having the necessary zero-emission vehicle infrastructure to support those vehicles.

Our networks of publicly accessible EV chargers and hydrogen refueling stations do not instill the confidence that every driver in California can get to where they're going in a zero-emission vehicle and then get home. Modeling by the Energy Commission has found California will need roughly 700,000 level-two chargers and 10,000 DC fast chargers by the year 2025, just two years from now, to sustain a population of 5 million ZEVs on California's roads has called for under AB 2127, which was authored by Assembly Member Ting.

And in estimating the degree of ZEV adoption needed to achieve a phase out of internal combustion engine sales by 2035, CAR projects California will need 8 million zero-emission vehicles on its roads by the year 2030. This even larger population of vehicles will require 1.2 million level-two chargers, 30,000 DC fast chargers, and likely more than 200 hydrogen refueling stations by 2030.

And so, by way of a progress check, California has a long way to go and not a lot of time to do it, if we're going to meet either our interim or ultimate goals. Over the last decade, the state built almost 79,000 level-two chargers and 9,200 DC fast chargers. That's just 13 percent of the 700,000 chargers we'll need by 2025, and just 7 percent of the 1.2 million we'll need by 2030.

Even after accounting for the 172,000 chargers in the pipeline, California still faces a gap of 440,000 chargers that we will need to plan for now, and even a more daunting gap of almost a million chargers by the end of this decade. We are frankly lucky that so many Californians have answered the call and purchased zero-emission vehicles. But relying upon the passionate, environmentally conscious among us is not enough, if we're going to reach mass market adoption.

For the millions of Californians who lack the luxury of at home charging, the lack of a ubiquitous and reliable public charging network makes EV ownership unrealistic. Further, as pointly noted during last week's hearing of the Senate Select Committee Hydrogen Energy, chaired by my friend Senator Archuleta, light duty fuel cell vehicles will also be essential to creating the economies of scale for the decarbonization of both medium and heavy-duty trucks and vehicles and standing up the sustainable hydrogen economy.

In doing that, we'll need to decarbonize industry and provide energy storage for the grid at the same time. Now, in full disclosure, to the handful of you here who haven't already heard, I'm the proud owner of a Toyota Mirai, and I'd like to introduce myself as the self-proclaimed chair of the Legislative Hydrogen Car Caucus, of which there are two members. And I grabbed the chairmanship first.

I actually do love my car, and I'm glad to have some witnesses here to talk about the challenges of owning a zero-emission, fuel cell hydrogen vehicle under the current situation. But we are facing significant gaps across both categories of zero-emissions vehicle, and we need to expedite our process and our priorities. As we do that, we have a lot more work to do on both fronts when it comes to accelerating our infrastructure build out to meet our future needs and our articulated goals and targets.

So with that, I'd like us to get to the bulk of the hearing. Let's move to the first panel. And that's really about the role of government, on the roles of state and local government, in zero-emission vehicle infrastructure deployment. So our first panelist is Salem Afeworki, the first energy and sustainability manager at the city of Costa Mesa. Welcome. Costa Mesa has the distinction of being home to both an extensive EV charging network and two hydrogen refueling stations.

Ms. Afeworki is responsible for developing and implementing citywide sustainability projects and initiatives. Prior to joining the city, she founded Value Sustainability, a boutique consultancy specializing in climate change and community engagement, and previously worked at organizations including the United Nations, KPMG and Jacobs Engineering. After that, we'll hear remotely from Gia Brazil Vacin, the Deputy Director of Zero-Emission Vehicle Market Development at the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development. Welcome. Thank you both for taking the time to share your insights. With that, Ms. Afeworki, please proceed with your testimony.

Good afternoon, Chair, senators. Thank you very much for the invitation today and to be able to share our journey with you. Is the mic working okay?

Excellently, as a matter of fact. Please.

Sure. So I'll start with a little bit of background -- what we have in terms of infrastructure. We have been making a focused effort to electrify our fleet -- city fleet -- for the last five years. Currently we have ten EVs and ten hybrid. Most of them are carpool vehicles, and it's widely used by city staff. We also acquired our first EV shuttle bus through VW Mitigation Trust Fund grant, which was very helpful. And then this shuttle now currently serves the Senior Center.

We completed the construction of nine EV charging stations, eight level-twos and one level-three charging station, at the city hall in 2021. These chargers are networked and accessible to the public 24/7. We were able to secure AQMD funding and then CEC grant, a little bit, to offset some of the construction and equipment costs. The city hall EV charging station project was a big win for us because that was the first publicly available charging station, and we were able to receive an award for ASE's Energy Project award for the year. To expand our infrastructure throughout the city, we deployed two solar-powered EV charging stations, also, that are now currently at the senior center, and also another one at the maintenance facility. In addition to municipal fleet, Costa Mesa has an extensive network of privately-owned and operated EV charging stations.

We have, also, two hydrogen fueling stations in the city, which we are proud of. We hope to have more. And then to streamline our permitting system for applications that come through, our building department is committed to at least spend not more than five working days to approve these process and get them approved soon. We also are launching, at the moment -- almost -- it's like a one stop shop. It's called TESSA. It's a totally electronic self-service application system. It's one stop shop for all applications.

And we hope that that will also streamline our permitting, allowing us to do more of the EV, solar and then hydrogen fuel cell projects to be approved. So I'll quickly share the challenges we see, lesson learned and then some recommendations. So challenge one in the past: it used to be funding for local government. We didn't have a lot of money to spend on this, but now there is state money, federal utilities, there's a lot of money. The problem now is access to that funding.

The smaller the city, we don't have the resources to go through this competitive bid to be able to get the grant and have the access. So now it's almost becoming more of an equity issue. So the cities that have resources can tap into it. For those that don't, and they're having a hard time. The other one challenge we see is grants related. Most of it seem to be on planning, design, construction, but not much for operation and maintenance.

We need to upkeep the existing infrastructure we have, while continuing to expand the need for to build more charging stations to meet the state goal. Another internal challenge we see is capacity -- internal. Our maintenance team fleet -- a little bit of pushback because it's a new technology for them. They need the resources to upkeep that. So we see a regular need to educate and give the tools for our staff to be able to maintain these.

Another one we also hear, both from residents and at the same time from our fleet team, is supply chain. So even though we want to buy them, we have the funding, the grant, just sometimes, it takes from nine months to twelve months to get the vehicle delivered. That's another thing we keep on hearing. So lesson learned for us is: first involve everyone that has a stake on the project early. In the past, it would be the engineering team or the construction team that would do this completely and hand it off to maintenance.

But then the maintenance at the back end is a new thing. It's making it very difficult. So we're trying to proactively involve everybody, both the ones that are going to own and operate it, but at the same time the builders, the financiers, financing -- different teams together early, so that we develop a plan that works for everyone. For example, Costa Mesa police station is interested in expanding our EV infrastructure.

So we're trying to get all the right people at the right time and the technology works for them, for their operations. Another lesson learned: we can't electrify everything, is what we learned, that the future has to be eclectic; meaning that we need EVs but also hydrogen fuel cell. We're going to need hybrid in short-term until we clean our -- 100% of the energy comes from renewables. So we have to coexist. And each city might be different.

How Costa Mesa does it is going to be probably a different mix, compared to Berkeley or Los Angeles, for example. Another one is leverage utility programs. I think one of the things, probably would like to hear from us, is how utilities are, and their rebates might be helpful. It's very helpful -- for example, SCE is our utility, and they have EV readiness study and other free resources for the cities that helps us in identifying the site, studying this -- so leverage. If you ask, there is a lot of tools and resources available. Sometimes we don't, and we try to figure it out ourselves, being a costly thing if we're doing it on our own. Industry could be a good partner. This is another one, but right incentives need to be in place.

For example, sometimes we would hear from businesses saying that there is this grant available, but you need to have 8200 charging stations deployed now, in public right of way, because it's a big project and they are coming to us to partner. But it's very difficult for us to do that. So there are great grants, but sometimes we won't be able to take advantage of them. And then the last one, pilot and demo is very important when it comes to a new technology, a new solution. That's how we do it. Whether it is solar power, solar plus battery, EV charging station, that we have in place, or water heater pumps or anything we do -- start small, do it well, get it right and scale. It's the easiest way. Recommendations? I'll make it quick. Sorry, I know I'm going a little bit more than my time.

Please.

Recommendation one on grants: population-based allocation is better than competitive grant, especially for public sector. For example, SB 1383's implementation grant, and also like the one now with DOE's energy efficiency. It's both population and location, so smaller cities can secure that, there's the funding for them. We just need to find a good project that fits us and what's our need. And that's so much better, especially to address the equity challenge we see. And then ideally, no reimbursement model too.

That means the city would have to come up with the money first, if there's any other way that could make it easier. And if it has to be competitive, less paperwork, less -- that would make it so much easier. On incentives and rebates now, it's still going -- the EV incentives that are available at the moment, most of it is going for those that have the means.

We still need to find more programs designed for DACs and then multifamily units, more focused efforts for them, because someone who already own a Tesla can get some more. But meanwhile, other stuff really need it, could benefit from it. But that would be very helpful to see how we can do that. Third one: please don't forget operation and maintenance. There's a lot of focus on building new things, design. I'm sure it's good to cut a ribbon and take pictures, which is really great.

But then at the back end, whoever's the owner is responsible for keeping it. And then we're hearing from residents that say, "I had a little bit of battery, I finally made it, and then it doesn't work," or things like that, too. So to be able to ensure reliability. The other one is: consider the full cycle of EVs. When it comes to greenhouse gases emissions, EVs by themselves might not be that clean because where they are generated, there's mining that goes into it, to greenhouse gases generation. The car uses energy that's not clean 100 percent at the moment, and the battery at the back end too, when the battery end of life, too. So look at the full picture of EVs. If our goal is to reduce emissions, we need to look at the full picture, not only when it's just operational, meaning when the car is driving in a specific area.

And the last one: the focus on workforce development and education. This is going to require transition -- the way we think, the way we do things. And there are many people that are pushing back, including some of our residents, because they feel like they're going to lose out or they're not going to have the right skills to benefit from this new world. So upscaling, giving resources and education will go a long way. Thank you very much and happy to take all your questions.

And thank you for your testimony. I'm going to ask you a quick question and I'd love for my colleagues to join in. First, you know, I'm impressed that Costa Mesa has a sustainability manager. So congratulations.

Thank you.

How common is that among other cities? And how essential is that to Costa Mesa's work on decarbonization?

Definitely. There aren't many, especially in Orange County, LA, and other bigger cities. San Diego County have more than us. It's very important because it's the holistic picture. It's not like we're not doing things, but it might be different departments that are doing it. It's very important, in goal setting, in the delivery, collaboration, partnership that's needed. This is no way one person, one organization can do that. So that is -- sustainability having as a role within the city is very helpful.

I assume you report directly to your city manager. Good for Costa Mesa. Second question is, in really broad strokes: what should the state be doing to make your work?

And the work of other cities to decarbonize transportation, make it easier and certainly make it more rapid?

Definitely. I think the state already has done a great job in setting the goal we need, where we need to go and by when, because goals are set too, which is very helpful. Now we are locally trying to figure out how to get there. So resources -- I know the state provides a lot of maps and data, which is very helpful, too -- and then also now, funding grants, which is more money that's coming, both from the federal government and the state -- but just make it more usable. We see it. But it's very hard to access, especially when it's a smaller city, accessibility would make it easier -- or for disadvantaged communities, how do we better do that? It's making sure that the money gets into the right hands and then streamlined and easier, so that we can run with it. But I think it's so far, it's helpful.

But this collaboration and conversation, too, with the state, to be able to provide input, and then the other way around, too -- collaboration with the local government would go a long way.

Appreciate it. Colleagues. Any questions? Senator Menjivar.

Thank you so much. I have two questions. The first one is around the technical assistance for small cities to be able to apply for the grants. Can you talk to me a little bit more about -- does that not exist when it comes to the grants? Several grants that are disseminated, they come with some technical assistance. Are you saying that these, around energy or EV, don't come with that assistance for small cities?

No, they do, but then we have to decide which ones to pursue and which are not. Generally that comes with the TA, with technical assistance, or big dollar projects. And then it's still mainly going to be competitive, too, generally speaking, as well. So what we're saying -- yes, if we pursue those, the big projects or grants with the TA, yes, they will be able to help. But the allocation, population-based allocation -- that would make it so much easier because we can ensure that we have that funding to be able to do proportional to our city, to our impact, a little bit.

The funding, it's too much in terms of the ratio of the population?

Yes, it just makes it -- when it is competitive, we're competing against bigger cities that have higher the consultants.

You're asking funding to be a little bit more guided towards smaller cities.

Exactly.

Got it. My second question is you hit on something that, for me, is a big priority. We talk about so much of single family homes and the individual consumer, but we often forget about multifamily dwellings. Can you talk to me a little bit more about some barriers that you're seeing in providing this kind of infrastructure for apartments and so forth?

Sure. So the ones we have in the city, the ones we own and operate, are in public right of way, and they're ours. The only thing we can do is incentivize or have -- because if it's going to be multifamily units or DAC communities, generally it's going to be a private project. So all we can do is streamline to make it go faster. But you are right, there's more need, but a lot of barriers. If there is a property manager, for example, in the multifamily unit, do they have a dedicated parking space? Can they even use it? So there's a lot of things, and then some of them are renters too. There are a lot of renters in Costa Mesa. But when it's a single family home with your own parking lot, it's way easier.

Are you seeing any incentives that are helping these private managers to install this infrastructure in their apartments?

I personally don't know of, but I'm sure -- it would be better to either have them, and then if there are already, just find a way to get it out so that people can benefit from it, too.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Senator Archuleta.

There you go. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for appearing before us. We really appreciate it. And of course, the spirit of the meeting is to see, not how we got started, but how do we excel at this point? I think most of us agree and understand that California is trying to lead the way, and we are. But we need to get partnerships together: automobile, cities, the state, everybody, to join in. And doing that, we've got to create the workforce. Tell me how Costa Mesa is developing your workforce to work on these buses and vehicles that will be part of the city and that are part of the city. Where are you getting these individuals and how are you training them?

Sure, thank you for that question. We see that, when it comes to workforce development or just capacity building, we see two things. One is like, just generally educating our residents and people that live in the city, but also internally, city staff, because they're going to be -- especially our mechanics that never had to deal with anything EV before or hydrogen. Now they have to; it's a city fleet and they have to manage.

So we're trying to have a lot of educational workshops in the community, in partnership with different stakeholders or organizers. That's one thing we're working on. But at the same time, internally, we're organizing Lunch and Learns regularly, where we provide lunch, but then we would have a guest speaker to come and present. So for those that care more, we can deepen more and have a more focused effort, with very specific training for a specific need that might come up.

But the first thing is just awareness on what is coming. Why are we doing this -- in different topics -- sometimes it could be on stormwater-related because that's between the state requirement and then what needs to be done. But it could be sometimes on electrification, our mechanics and fleet, they are amazingly, really good at what they do. But then now we're giving them a new e-shuttle bus, now, they have to maintain.

And then combined to the solar powered -- sorry -- solar plus battery EV charger station, also at the ..., so now the energy is being generated, stored there, and used for the e-shuttle bus. For sustainability practitioners and for the engineering team. It's a great project, and we did it. It was a good win. But for maintenance now, they're like, "If this breaks, what do I do?"

So there's a lot -- definitely the education and giving them the workforce development, things like that, but also support on maintenance. There's a big world there with all this technology changing. And they're really good at what they do, they've been mechanics for 20 years, 30 years. They're very proud of what they do. But then you're giving them-

Add one other thing. I think I'm looking for partnerships. Partnerships with community colleges, partnerships with Toyota, partnerships with the industry to keep your city going and excelling. And in reference to excelling, have you thought of partnerships, private partnerships, joint ventures with the city to expand your infrastructure? Are you going to be able to look into that, or is that something that you're not even looking at?

Sure, we're definitely open, and we're planning to do more, as long as figuring out how the procurement works. Just going exclusive with one company, just within our boundaries on how we want to go about it. But yes, definitely. Because there's no way we can do it our own, and it's too expensive and too much of an undertaking to be-

Sure.

Thank you. Any other questions, colleagues? No? Ms. Afeworki, thank you so much.

Thank you.

I really do appreciate you making the time here, as well as your testimony. Next via Zoom, we have Gina Brazil Vacin. Ms. Vacin works for the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development, and she is focused on accelerating the ZEV market in support of some of California's ambitious goals. Ms. Vacin, I'm looking for you on Zoom. Welcome.

Hello? Am I coming through here? Can you hear me?

We have your audio, but not your -- there you are. Welcome, and thank you for making the time today.

Great. Thank you so much for having me. Let me put my presentation here and make sure that you all can see it.

And to all of the members of the audience, I'll apologize. For some reason are -- you don't know this, Gia -- but our screens are in the back. There are none in the front. Everybody has to turn around if you want to see the presentation. Someday I hope to solve this problem. In a good budget year we're going to buy another screen.

Okay. Are you able to see that?

We are. Thank you. Please proceed.

Okay, please let me get it in presentation mode here and go forward. All right, okay, great. Well, good afternoon, senators. Thank you for having me today. I'm sorry I can't be there in person with you, but I am glad to be here just the same. I'm going to spend the time that I have to help set the context for this afternoon's panels, and quickly share a summary of where we are in the ZEV market. So I wanted to show this.

I know it's quite busy, but I think it's a really fun and helpful tool. This comes from the Energy Commission. It's one of their dashboards. And so we have, here, nearly 92,000 charging ports today, with almost 10,000 of those being direct current fast chargers, which, we have 9800, as you can see there on the bottom right. And the 10,000 DC fast charger target is a 2025 target that we expect to achieve, actually, more than a year early. We're getting close.

The Energy Commission's Clean Transportation Program and general funding has put us on the path to reach this 250,000 EV charging port target. However, there will be additional funding needed to meet the 1.2 million charging ports by 2030, Senator Newman, that you mentioned in your opening comments. And for hydrogen, we have 65 light duty hydrogen stations open, and we're about to have 66.

There's one that's eminent here, in Oakland, that's going to open up and a couple following just behind that, with the 200 station target there, you can see up at the top. So the Clean Transportation Program, from Energy Commission and general funding, had put us on a path to reach that 200 station target. And California had funded almost 180 stations and recently had released a solicitation to close that gap. But a couple of recent developments have delayed our progress there. So I'll just share those with you.

The most recent grant funding opportunity was undersubscribed. I want to point out that there's probably a variety of reasons. We hear from station developers that, in some cases it was, not for lack of interest, but because of increased station development costs and other factors. The amount wasn't enough to be able to feel that they could meet and deliver on the commitments that the grant would require. So that's one data point along those lines.

Also, one of the primary station developers recently declined a $41 million grant, which reduced our projected network by 50 stations. So in spite of this, California does remain committed to hydrogen station deployment and really thinking through and evaluating the next steps, as a result of these recent events. On a positive note, I want to say that we also have Chevron entering the light duty station market, which is 100 percent privately funded at this point. And they currently have nine sites that they're moving forward.

They publicly announced a network of 30 stations and have identified nine sites and are thinking through next steps there. And the first site is expected to break ground in September. So this is not, by any means, exhaustive here, when you talk about infrastructure funding, but wanted to highlight a few items. So California has invested to support both fuel types. So, as an example, the CEC had awarded $364 million for light duty charging stations, $177 million for light duty hydrogen stations, with $271 million allocated.

Big ZEVs, which is the affectionate name we have for the medium heavy duty market, really are a maturing part of California's investments. There's recognition of the need to really look there, and see the opportunities for climate impacts and for local pollution reduction is well recognized. So an example here would be that the CTC recently awarded charging and hydrogen station funding for goods movement. We're also working to capture charging and funding infrastructure federal dollars along these lines for a network of hydrogen and charging stations.

It's worth mentioning here that the low-carbon fuel standard, even though it's not direct funding from the state and the addition of the zero-emission vehicle infrastructure capacity credits is meaningful, right? So being able to generate credits for the full capacity of a station for DC fast chargers and for hydrogen stations has really helped the economics. The volatility of that credit price makes things a little bit less stable, but nonetheless, it's a really important piece.

So just the point here, that the future investments will continue to be informed by market trends, by technology costs and maturity, consumer preference, and really looking at how we can best meet our future targets. And challenges remain for both technologies. So more detail on this here. In the interest of time, I'll just highlight a couple of areas. Even though the hydrogen and batteries are different technologies, when you get into the details, different unique challenges -- but broadly, they have similar kinds of challenges, right?

So station reliability, we have mechanical and technical challenges, screens and payment systems pose challenges sometimes, the supply chain of getting the equipment that's needed in the amount of time, even down to switch gears. When we start to think about things like that, station development pace is a challenge. We clearly need to go faster. And so permitting timelines can be long. Utility timelines pose a challenge. And again, costs and supply chain issues also remain. And then finally, workforce.

We hear we need more engineers, we need more technicians, we need more people who are helping with construction, the local government level, and in the utilities, as well, capacity is very constrained. So permitting timelines are slower because they simply don't have the capacity. So a lot is being done. These are recognized challenges. And the state is working hard, as well as with the private sector, to address these challenges.

And I'm happy to share more on those, but just sort of broadly, here's where we see some challenges. I want to move to cars. So, in terms of our vehicles, at the end of last quarter, there were about 1.6 million ZEVs sold, 1.2 of them being battery electric vehicles, and 16,000 of them being fuel cell electric vehicles. And we have 95 light duty models that are available in California.

And that -- we recently, at the end of Q2, achieved just over 25 percent market share of one in every four cars as ZEV, and that is very exciting. So now looking at funding, just a lot of different options here. Hearing from our speaker from Costa Mesa and the concerns around kind of equity and how we're investing money, I think it's worth mentioning here that CBRP, which has been a long standing source of funding, is sunsetting.

And going forward, all of the money will be put into Clean Cars for All, which is serving low-income drivers. So it's also being expanded from just regional deployment to include a statewide program, which will also include new kind of driver segments and people like those in tribal communities. So, worth noting here that CBRP has been a success, and really, it serves its indented purpose. Right. We thought about how do you spur an early market?

We get people to buy cars, and as the market matures, we use other kinds of tools to continue to spur the market. So forecasts were that we would need, originally, CBRP, until ZEVs had reached a maturity of about 20 percent market share, and here we are now at 25 percent. So really leaning into how can we get cars into the hands of people who have not necessarily had access in the past becomes increasingly important. And that's where we're looking. And we've achieved some big milestones, right?

Our 1.5 million ZEV target we achieved two years early. When Governor Brown put that in place, people thought he was crazy. We did it. And ZEVs are, as I said, 25 percent of new car sales. California is the number one ZEV market, and it's also the number one state for ZEV exports in the US. And we have a lot more to do. So Governor Newman -- sorry, Senator Newman. Excuse me.

No, no, no, no, please. Please. It's got a ring to it. Thank you. Please.

Harbinger. We have a lot more to do. So you mentioned the Scoping Plan. In May, CARB released the draft Scoping Plan here, which charts our path for carbon neutrality by 2045. We're going to need 37 times total ZEVs on the road, relative to 2022, in 2045. And thinking about the future of hydrogen, transportation and otherwise, we'll need 1700 times the hydrogen supply that we have today. So this will be particularly meaningful for hydrogen, in terms of the hardest to decarbonize sectors.

And I think that we can recognize the value across the different weight classes of on road transportation for hydrogen as well. So California will continue to design and implement supportive policies and regulations to achieve our targets. And I guess I have some cool animation in there that I didn't remember I had. Okay, so thanks to the governor and to the legislature, we are prioritizing climate action. So this is just to highlight. We have the $52.3 billion climate package over six years.

And many of these areas, which I've highlighted here in orange, do include batteries and hydrogen, and span from transportation, to other kinds of ways to think about building more renewable energy resources, which of course, feed both of those things, as well as climate, jobs and investing in the workforce and investing in our schools and education and academic institutions. So a few more slides here. Funding isn't the only strategy we're using, of course.

So in these following slides, I wanted to share a couple of other examples of how we're helping to support the ZEV market advancement. So, as part of Governor Newsom's ZEV Executive Order, Go-Biz was tasked with developing a ZEV Market Development Strategy, which you can see here, some of the primary goals of what we were trying to achieve there. It was first published in 2021 and we're actively updating it now. It will be updated every three years, so the next version will be published in early 2024.

It's really intended to be North Star in how we organize and more effectively move forward together as the agencies, but also in terms of the whole ecosystem of players together. And so it identifies core principles and sets clear roles, and it sets forward objectives for the nearly 30 state agencies that touch zero-emission vehicles. It also has annual action plans that we work with the agencies to create, to focus our efforts, and it brings us together more regularly.

I want to just point out here that it's built on these four key pillars, right? So vehicles, infrastructure, end users, and workforce. If we're not standing up all four of those pillars, we can't succeed in achieving the broader level outcomes that we want to achieve. And I also want to point out here it's built on five core principles, the first one of those being equity in every decision. So let me just take a side step, quickly, about equity. I always like to talk about it in every presentation I give. It is a priority for the state. Of course, we know this. And we're taking a multi-pronged approach to this. So again, I'm happy to go into more detail at another time, but very high level in kind of what falls underneath these five, but high level.

We really have this direction and focus within the ZEV market development strategy within SB 1251, which was passed in housing equity advocate within Go-Biz -- huge funding going towards low-income and disproportionately affected populations, from the Energy Commission, from the Air Resources Board, from the CPUC research and analysis to understand barriers, awareness, building and tools and programs, and thinking about the workforce transition as well, which -- Senator Archuleta -- you brought up in the last presentation. And I want to share one other example.

So we are also doing permit streamlining. It's played a big role in helping to accelerate ZEV infrastructure deployment. So our two key streamlining laws for EV charging stations are: AB 1236, for administrative approval of station permitting; and then AB 970, which sets timelines for permitting approval. So I wanted to share, here, that AB 1236 actually went into effect in 2016. And you can see here, in 2019, Go-Biz started to help streamlining efforts. It requires expedited processes, right?

So in 2019, you can see this little map here. We started reaching out to local jurisdictions in 2018. You can see how many streamlined cities and counties we had. And today here we are. We have 300 streamlined jurisdictions and we're making our way, quickly, towards even more, there. So I think it's just important to note, here, how the focus on implementation is key and having some assistance there.

So being able to have -- we now have a dedicated staff person who helps with this as well, at Go-Biz. And it's really been helpful. Just one more point on this. Since she joined our team -- we were making good progress -- but since she joined our team in November of 2022, we've increased our cities and counties, streamlined by nearly 40 percent. So it's dollars that are working hard. We also have SB 1291. Thank you, Senator Archuleta, for helping to bring that, and the other co-authors there.

It extends the administrative approval process to hydrogen stations. It went into effect in January of this year, and we have already been seeing -- you can see here on the right, we're setting up similar -- tools and resources in a similar approach to help get the local jurisdictions in compliance with that, as well. We're just kicking that off. But we've already heard some really phenomenal examples of how it's helped unstick projects that were taking a really long time, and/or were really in threat of being lost.

So in the interest of the time that I have, I won't go into the details here, but Rohnert Park and City of Colton were two great examples, and I'd be happy to share the details for anybody who's interested. And lastly, I just want to say that earlier this month, thinking more about hydrogen again, the governor directed Go-Biz to develop a hydrogen market development strategy, modeled after the ZEV market development strategy, and in support of California's efforts to be awarded a federally funded regional clean hydrogen hub.

And so I want to underscore that this is not just transportation. The state's really looking at where hydrogen is best suited to help decarbonize the economy. Some key sectors we see: transportation, ports, power generation, industry, and others, as outlined in the Scoping Plan. But I think this will really help to organize the system here. And I'm excited to get started on this. So we're really in the early stages of that now. My last slide here is just a quick summary.

We remain a national global leader for ZEVs. We've made substantial progress. We have a long way to go. In that spirit, batteries and hydrogen are complementary, and we need both to achieve 100 percent decarbonization. The state will continue to support both technologies, and we need to continue to have this multi-pronged strategy for market development, right? We need the support of policies and legislation. We need funding, we need implementation support, we need collaboration, education. Federal funding is a huge opportunity.

And as we heard from Costa Mesa, I think it's a challenge to think about how can we actually -- we, as the smaller collective that makes up the state -- really capture these dollars. And so we're trying to work on that as well. And then of course, interagency legislature, public private sector collaboration really remains essential. It's how we've built this market so far. And we're going to need to go forward that way and maybe even deepening our collaboration more. So with that, I'll say thank you, and I will take any questions. Let me stop sharing my screen. Thank you for the time.

And thank you for your time. I'm going to ask you questions and then I'll open it up for my colleagues. The first question actually references, directly, core principle number two: embrace all ZEV technologies. I've been integrally involved, as you know, in many of the conversations, and I'm really encouraged about the work that was done in the prospects for the ARCHES application for a federal hydrogen hub.

But at the same time, as you're aware, we've had what has turned into kind of a fraught conversation about light duty and hydrogen's role in the decarbonization of the light duty fleet. And so I'd argue, one: light duty FCEVs are necessary. We're going to achieve the whole of our goals, especially the interim goals. But two: I think I'm one who agrees that the light duty platform is symbiotic. It's actually intrinsic to the development of the larger hydrogen goals for the state. So what are your thoughts or Go-Biz's thoughts on the apparent friction around that? How can we count on the governor's office to help us resolve some of those questions?

Yeah, thanks for the question. We definitely hear from the private sector that the driving down costs actually, that light duty and heavy duty are interdependent with one another, right? Like light duty development helps drive down component cost, heavy duty development helps ensure more molecule demand, and together they work synergistically to drive down costs. I also think that there are -- thinking through unique driving needs and use cases, supporting more than one technology is wise. The state continues to invest in both.

I think that the market for hydrogen has hit bumps along the road. It's an early technology deployment; in some cases, has really been down to things now, like realizing that some of the demands in a real world situation of this equipment that was built, it needed more work. And so the station developers are head down, working so hard to make sure that these stations can deliver the promise that they have.

And so I think that as we go forward, it's most important that we remember to remain technology neutral. And embrace all these ZEV pathways and that we can, as a state and as a government, that we're enabling both technologies to succeed in the ways that they will. None of us know what the breakout will be between light duty and heavy duty, for which technology, and so enabling both, I think, is really wise. Also, hearing from other places around the world, Honda is putting into production in 2024 its CRV, which is its most popular platform, we just heard. And I got to drive in a BMW iX5 fuel cell, which is on the X5 platform, beautiful vehicle, all of whom want to bring cars to California.

So I think if we can stay working closely with the station developers and ensuring that we're helping overcome the barriers that they're running into, that will position us to really take best advantage of the benefits that these different technologies bring.

So I appreciate that. To your earlier point, the station developer that actually turned down grant money, one could view that as a less than positive market signal. And there's also the question around cost of fuel. But also, to your point about BMW, it's one thing to have developed a prototype. It's another thing to bring that prototype aggressively to market with all of the marketing programs and subsidies that have accompanied other ZEVs, especially FCEVs. So what can you tell us about your recent conversations, particularly with OEMs, about their, sort of, prospects or their sense of California's market and their commitment to it?

Yeah, well, I think it's probably no surprise to hear me say that infrastructure is a limiting factor. And in some cases, we haven't -- broadly, there technically are enough molecules floating around, but the way that drivers use stations and the way that we've thought about kind of densities that we need -- we're learning as we go, and we're still leading the world in the light duty space here.

So we are hearing from the OEMs that they want to bring the cars here, and that they really are looking -- patiently, wanting more infrastructure -- but really looking to the state to provide -- and the station developers -- to provide some reassurance that we are going to remain committed to advancing both technologies. And so I think it remains to be seen what production numbers we'll get, here, in California, if any, of those new platforms or of some of the existing models. It's dependent upon, really, from what I understand, from what I've been told by the private sector, the availability of infrastructure and being able to provide the experience that these OEMs expect to deliver to their drivers.

I appreciate that. And to your point, the operational challenges have been far greater than anticipated, even as we did probably anticipate some of the supply chain problems. Colleagues, any questions for Ms. Vacin? Senator Menjivar.

Thank you so much. You spoke about the permitting timelines and the utility timelines. I don't know who I'm speaking to, but I'll just stare.

She's there.

Okay. But then on SB 1291, extending the administrative approval process, can you -- and this is a new topic for me that I'm trying to dive into. If we're having some potential bottlenecks in the permitting timelines, does SB 1291 then allow for that same kind of potential bottleneck for H2 stations? Or what were some of the barriers that you're seeing in the permitting process that we can, at the state level, address or help to address?

Yeah, great question. Thank you. So, SB 1291, administrative approval -- so when the station goes into permitting, that really it's just health and safety considerations that can be considered for a permit. So some of the issues that we were running into, which this really helps to solve, are lots of different kinds of things. Everything from: "We don't like the way the canopy looks on the fueling device or on the fueling canopy," to, "We want more landscaping," to, "We need to paint this other thing."

Here, we joke about -- there's one station that has a beautiful piece of art to the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars. We've heard things like, if you want to put a little portion of this property over here and you want to use that and suddenly say, actually, we've really been meaning to underground all these power lines, so can you do that?

So a lot of different kinds of things that weren't actually really related to what's most important, which is the health and safety components of the hydrogen station. So this really does help to eliminate those kinds of slowdowns and potential real cost increases. So, yes, I think that a lot of the local jurisdictions aren't fully aware of SB 1291 yet. We've been sharing the word as we've gone along, and the response has been positive. In some cases, been a relief to cities that they aren't having to think through all these different pieces. Did I answer your question?

So would you say that once the awareness and campaign has been successful this year with local agencies, that the permitting timelines and the potential utility timelines could be addressed? Or there still needs to be an extra step?

Permitting timelines -- certainly, we've already seen those drop, because the developers are getting savvier, but also because of even just the small awareness of this legislation. Utility timelines is a different animal that still is a very big challenge and can be a long waiting time. And so with the utilities, that's something that I think is on a lot of people's minds, not just in transportation, in a lot of our electrification efforts. And we need to continue to work closely with the utilities to address their needs and be able to pick up the pace.

Thank you so much.

Senator Archuleta, please.

Thank you. I got to thank my colleague for bringing up my bill, SB 1291. But let me just share that with you just a little bit. It came to me because the punitive spirit that was out there in some of the municipalities, and they would literally ask that individual or entity it was trying to put an infrastructure together for hydrogen: "Well, if you're going to put that station there, we need a new sidewalk and let's replace those trees. And those power lines need to go underground."

And there was half a million dollar outlay before they'd even consider construction of the infrastructure. So this bill says no more of that. That punitive action is out the window. We're going to open the door and we're going to streamline the process. And that was the spirit of the bill. And with that in mind, I've got to ask that, I see that we've got $177 million for light duty and hydrogen stations, but we have $271 million allocated. Is that allocation ready to go with grants to partner with some of these entities that would like to open up the infrastructure when it comes to the hydrogen stations?

That's a question for the Energy Commission. I know that they had released a grant funding opportunity last year, I believe, or maybe it was earlier this year -- that hadn't been fully subscribed. And so thinking about how they're going to roll out those grant funding opportunities would be a question I'd need to check with them on and get back to you, senator.

Okay, well, thank you. And I'd like to thank you and the governor for keeping that door open for hydrogen, because I always say that here in California, we have a treasure chest of energy and we've got to use it all. And it's got to be a partnership with the electric vehicles and hydrogen and the big 18 foot semis that need to be running on hydrogen and, of course, the hub that is going to really bring California to the forefront of hydrogen. We're looking for that. So we're on the threshold of what this industry is going to be doing. So I'm looking forward to the other presenters, as we go on. But I see the partnership, it's getting stronger and I thank you for it.

Yeah, likewise.

Any other questions, colleagues? I guess I'll end it again. Thank you for your participation. You referenced the CEC. It's become kind of clear to some of us that there's a jurisdictional tension, perhaps. On the one hand, CARB is assigned the responsibility for scoping and kind of articulating plans, and at the same time, the CEC has been allocated the funds and charged with dispersing those funds. What's your sense of how well they're working together, with particular tension on expediting the buildout of light duty hydrogen infrastructure, Ms. Vacin?

Yeah. The CEC and CARB and Go-Biz, number of agencies, work very well together on the staff level and up through leadership. I've been in my role with GoBiz, I should say, for seven and a half years, and I've seen increasing -- always recognition on the need for collaboration -- but increasing communication there. And so I think some of those things may remain from time to time, but the agencies are working really closely together. We all have the same desired outcomes, right? We're all trying to achieve 100 percent decarbonization and 100 percent ZEV. And so maybe more to do there, but I think the relationships are good.

I appreciate that. You may get a slightly different version when we hear from our hydrogen refueling infrastructure panel, but thank you again for your participation. Thank you for all your work on behalf of the entirety of the project of decarbonizing transportation. And with that, I think we'll move on to the next panel.

Thank you. Our next panel actually is around electric vehicle charging infrastructure. And let me let the panelists come up. And Mr. Thomas, nice to see you. Call me senator today. Maybe call me that other word some other time. So welcome. So Orville Thomas, glad to have you. I am looking for my script here. Orville Thomas is a state policy director at CALSTART, a California based clean transportation technology consortium that focuses on accelerating the transition to zero-emissions.

Thank you.

And after that, we have Steve Kosowski, a manager for long range strategy and planning at Kia North America. Steve, thank you for being here. Mr. Kozowski's work straddles regulatory compliance, including CEVs, and also EV product planning, and also closely related areas, including EV charging infrastructure. And our third presenter will be Kameale Terry, CEO of ChargerHelp. Terry was born and raised in South Central LA.

And with over a decade of experience in clean tech, Kameale formed ChargerHelp with her co-founder, Evette Ellis, to create more reliable electric vehicle charging infrastructure, particularly for underserved communities. And finally, we'll hear from Wendy Salvador Galbraith, who's a clean -- actually, I'm going to read her statement, correct, because we couldn't get her on Zoom. Welcome to all of you. Why don't we start off with Mr. Thomas.

On now? Okay.

Oh, yes, very much so.

Thank you, Senator Newman. Thank you to the committee. And thank you, Brandon. The background was very thoughtful. I thought about just reading it, in the dais right now, as part of my testimony. My name is Orville Thomas, and I serve as the state policy director for CALSTART. We are a California based, internationally recognized nonprofit that focuses on accelerating the transition to zero-emission transportation technology. We also administer several of the state's largest ZEV programs, two of which I will focus on today.

And I think some good news, as we kind of table set, is on the light duty zero-emission vehicle side. I think we're starting to move away from range anxiety, and we're starting to get closer to charger anxiety. And I think that this is a great opportunity to discuss what needs to come next to alleviate some of those concerns. CALSTART administers a program for the Energy Commission called Communities in Charge. I wish Senator Menjivar was here because it kind of addresses one of her questions.

It's a Energy Commission program that distributes funding for level two chargers in places that people gather, largely looking at: how do we get more level two charging technology into multi-unit dwellings in disadvantaged communities and low-income communities? I asked our administrative staff and they said there were over $35 million worth of applications in this last round and almost $30 million in reserved awards that will be going out to California communities, $25 million of which are for multi-unit dwellings.

75 percent of that funding is going to disadvantaged communities or low-income communities, and it does kind of run the gamut of the state geographically. So we have awards going out as far north as Mount Shasta and then as far south as the California-Mexico border. The majority of those awards, though, are going to be going out towards the greater LA area and the San Francisco Bay Area.

What's good when we look at kind of the data on these, is that 75 percent of the applicants, especially in multi-unit dwellings, are coming in with permit ready processes, so that they can get those chargers into the multi-unit dwellings that we know and we've heard are very much lacking in the infrastructure necessary for the zero-emission transition. The second program that I want to point out is a program that we work with other nonprofits across the country on.

It's a federal program called Charge at Work. It's essentially our opportunity to work with employers and local governments to give them the best practices on what funding is available and how to kind of navigate the permitting process. I think we've heard from Gia and the Go-Biz team that the permitting process is starting to become easier, but it is still a little cumbersome, as we heard from Costa Mesa.

This is an opportunity for us to help those local government officials and employers provide charging opportunities at the level two kind of power for people to charge. So when we're not charging at home, and instead of always having to use a DC fast charger, this is their chance to have those kind of charging opportunities. Senator Newman is correct, in that we have to do this correctly.

As California passed the Advanced Clean Cars II regulation, there are about 17 other states that follow what our state does, and are in the process of either adopting now, or going through the process of having adopted Advanced Clean Cars II. And they are looking at California for what to do and what not to do when it comes to infrastructure and kind of connecting with the utilities.

The opportunities I see, when I look across the country, is that there's a lot of attention and it's appropriately acknowledging the Tesla charging experience. We have, and I think Steve's going to talk about this, a lot more breaking news with joint ventures and utilities and EVSC providers saying that they are going to make sure that there are charges available to the public, and that those chargers are going to have an uptime that does reach that 97 percent that Mr. Ting had kind of advocated for in AB 2061 last year. And then the other thing that I think is going to be critical, is the recent budget action of tap to pay being the way that people will be able to use their credit card.

Some of the problem with reliability isn't necessarily on the charger side but mostly on the component side. So if there is a credit card reader that's out then it's going to be a charger that isn't able to be used. So having a kind of process like tap to pay and having that become the way that chargers roll out, not just in California, but with NEVI, across the country, is going to be vital to ensuring that there is the reliability necessary.

Some of the concerns I do have, and I think you'll hear this if you talk to a lot of folks in the electric vehicle and infrastructure side, is the issues of interconnection and energization. You know, Costa Mesa is really lucky to work with Southern California Edison. I think you'll find a lot of the experiences on that side are very positive. Not all utilities are the same. And I think what we're hearing from the utility side is that the processes for them to bid on substations or other parts that are needed to provide the energy to large charging sites are out of their limits and scopes. It is kind of competitive now on where the supply chain is, for some of these parts.

So we are seeing that the utilities, which are kind of boxed in on what they can pay, and if they have rate changes they have to go to the CPUC, that they are not able to compete for some of those same kind of parts and measures. A question here is --another concern is over regulation, which is not to be confused with no regulation. It's just that this is a rapidly evolving marketplace. And so we really do want to give it some time to breathe. Some of the legislation that went forward last year, we want to let it kind of hit the public, and hit the marketplace and see if there are any good intended consequences that need to happen.

And if there are unintended consequences, let's come back together and figure out, or if we'll figure out if there are bad actors that are just not kind of applying. And then, as Gia pointed out, permitting. It's great to hear cities like Costa Mesa taking leadership on this, but there is necessary processes that need to go in place to make sure that these charging stations can move faster because the need is great.

Every day is another climate disaster that we're starting to see, and I don't like to be an eternal optimist on this, and acknowledge that we have a lot of work to do. It's exciting that this is probably the first of many to examine the charging infrastructure. And so I look forward to it. Obviously, we're also looking at funding CTP -- the Clean Transportation Program, I think, is vital. A lot of us have had conversations about its future and ensuring that it does move forward with reauthorization. And having that as a backstop, with about $110 million a year from the Energy Commission, is going to be imperative and necessary if we're ever going to meet our battery electric, or fuel cell electric vehicle needs. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. So, why don't we -- let's do this. Let's take all the panelists, and we'll take questions as a panel. Mr. Kosowski, welcome. Please proceed.

Thank you.

How about that? There we go. Okay. Thank you, Senator Newman. Committee Members. Brandon, thanks for the opportunity to be here. I work for Kia North America, which is the number five brand in sales in the United States right now. We're ahead of Nissan. We're ahead of Volkswagen. We're ahead of Subaru ahead of Hyundai. We've been selling EVs in California since October of 2014. Right now, we have the Nero EV in the market, an EV six in the market.

And we're a couple of months away from launching our newest EV, called the EV Nine, which is a 300 miles, three row SUV EV aimed at the mid size SUV market. So we're looking forward to that. We are committed to ACC two success. We have $28 billion that's funding the development of multiple EVs, seven to eight EVs for the US. Market by 2028. A brand new Assembly plant that's going into Savannah, Georgia.

It's also paying for a retrofit of an Assembly plant we have in Georgia right now to build the EV Nine next year. In order to reach our ACC two goals, we need to move the transaction price to the left. We need to move the price of these cars more toward mainstream buyers. That means lowering the cost and building higher volumes of these. All of this is interlinked, as you'll see. We go through this from an infrastructure standpoint.

We need to do whatever it takes, whatever it takes to make the customer feel comfortable driving the EV relative to an ice car. All roads lead to infrastructure in this. And one of the key advantages for driving an EV is charging at home. We've talked about multi unit dwellings here. 70% to 80% of EV charging is currently done at home. And this is very important because a lot of people don't have time. They just don't have time to wait.

Which gets to another point in my comments about DC charging. But we see EV infrastructure as the most important factor in increasing EV adoption for a lot of reasons. One, it increases charging confidence. People feel a lot more comfortable, confident driving the car. Right now, EVs are second or third or sometimes fourth cars. So they don't get used all the time, partly because of this.

For us, as the manufacturer, having a lot more prolific charging infrastructure allows us to enjoy that confidence in a sense that we can build EVs with smaller battery packs, right? Because folks know they can charge all the time, just like they can put gasoline in their car all the time. By making the pack smaller, we're going to reduce the cost. That's the most expensive part of the car. That's going to reduce the price.

It's also going to let us use less critical minerals, which we all know are under stress right now. So we see this as the linchpin for ramping up EV adoption. It's very important. So I want to get that out there what really matters is charging confidence, charging proliferation, uptime, and the cars per charger. Talk for a moment about the cars per charger. There's some data.

So we know in California the number of chargers, the number of units in operation, we call it UiO. And if you look at that metric by California different states, what you see, for example, is about 90 cars per non Tesla charger. The CCS protocol, right, about 90. You see a lot more Teslas per Tesla charger, which is indicative of the uptime, the reliability. Right. Their throughput is much higher. If this is working. And the uptime definition is really important for lots of reasons.

One is even UC Berkeley's own research on this found woeful reliability and uptime for non Tesla chargers, which sends the message to the customer that it's risky, I won't have a place to charge my car. So what we need to do, I think, is talk about being very specific about the one of the recommendations in the Berkeley study is look at data centers and cloud service companies for their uptime definition. Right now, what we hear from Nevi funds is it's 97% uptime. What does that mean?

Really? If you look at the definition of Tesla's uptime, it means 50% of global supply, global charging capacity being functional, which to me, I don't know if that works right. If I'm a customer, I want to go to a gas station and put gas in my car. That's the reference that's uptime. And I think if we're paying for these, if the funds are coming from these, from our budget, then the uptime needs to be a lot more specific than just 97%.

If that feels okay, we'll talk for a second about one more point on this is, in the marketplace after price, when it comes to EV rejection, right? You talk to the marketplace, you considered an EV. You didn't buy it. Why didn't you buy it? Price, number one reason makes sense. Number two is lack of charging infrastructure. Right? This starts to make sense from the manufacturer's point of view. We see this as sales risk. We talked about a moment ago about our $28 billion.

That's building seven to eight EVs by 2028. We know what our volume plan is, and we cannot afford the risk of not achieving those volumes, which is directly linked to infrastructure. Which gets me to the other point about our recent joint venture announcement. So Kia, Hyundai, BMW, Honda, MercedesBenz, Stellantis, we have entered into a joint venture to build 30,000 DC chargers by 2030 for a lot of reasons. One is to instill this charging confidence.

We see it as a very critical factor in supporting our sales targets and solidifying EV adoption. So we can talk more about this. But we think this is a very critical factor, and I want to close for a moment on uptime. We also sense that the perceptions are growing from bad to worse, which is to say that the word is getting around that EV charging infrastructure structure is problematic. You can see it in the data and survey after survey of reliability measures.

And you can see it in data we get from syndicated research on the consumer's temperament, toward rejection, reason, things like that. So with that, I guess I would close it out right there.

Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you for that. Ms. Terry. Welcome and appreciate your patience. Waiting to go third.

Thank you. My name is Kameale Terry. I'm the co founder and CEO of Charger Help. Chairman Newman, thanks so much for having me. I started Charger Help back in January of 2020. Prior to that, I used to work for a company that we made software for electric vehicle charging stations. And I was EV driver support. So, Mr. Newman, you might have called me if you ever had any issues at a charging station. I might have been the person on the other end.

But having that job really sparked two things for me. The first was really the importance of electric vehicles. As stated earlier, I'm from South Central Los Angeles, and folks who come from communities such as mine, we don't have great air quality. We're surrounded by freeways and gas combustion vehicles. So it significantly impacts our health. And so when I first got the job at that company, I started to understand what could be from a health perspective with electric vehicles.

The other thing that really sparked my interest in this space was really how interesting charging stations are. So what folks may not know is that electric vehicle charging stations, they're IoT assets. They're actually the first publicly deployed IoT assets we've ever done as a nation. Most of these charging stations function off of Windows software. And then when you start connecting cars to them, and also payment systems, and then you have them communicating up to a cloud, you start introducing a lot of failure points.

And so I state some of these things here before I go into some of the work that we do at Chargerho is to state that this is the thing that we should do. And when we look at the challenges and the things that we can learn from here, as we think about smart cities, as we think about connected cities, this is actually the perfect opportunity for us to better understand those challenges as we look towards the future.

And so what we first did at Charger Help back in 2020 is that we went out and we got some data, because what was happening was that a lot of folks were talking about the infrastructure not working, but no one really understood why. And so we went out and we survayed about 5000 charging stations across the US. All publicly accessible charging infrastructure. And what we found out was that most of the stations, while they showed up as online, they did not work.

And recently, back in May, we've actually completed our 15,000th work order and we've also trained our 1000th person in fixing charging stations. And here are some of the things that we've come about and what we've seen. One of the things that we see as a huge failure point really is around interoperability. There is issues in regards to standards around error codes.

I do want to point out the federal government has stood up the Charge X consortium that has been working with the network providers in order to come up with the standard for error codes. But today the protocol that is used for charging infrastructure typically has about 30 error codes, but only ten are usually included. And there wasn't any consensus on what the definitions of those error codes are. And so oftentimes folks will receive another error code, it would not have any action to it.

But the work that Chargex Consortium has been doing has been very helpful. The other thing that we started to find out really was around firmware updates. So oftentimes when firmware is pushed from Car OEMs or even sometimes from the payment system themselves, to even the hardware itself or the software itself, when those firmware updates are pushed, oftentimes each of those entities do not know that that firmware update is pushed.

And this is actually one of the reasons why a singular system like a Tesla has a better experience, because it's all within one company. And so there is significant opportunity to figure out how can we better coordinate around just firmware pushes that are being done and how those systems are talking to one another. The other thing that we've been able to find out through working in this space is really around technician training.

As I stated, we've trained a ton of people and then we also work with manufacturers to train as well. However, we do start to see bottlenecks in manufacturer certification. Some manufacturers may only certify seven people at a time and the next opening for a certification may not be until two or three months later. So there's significant opportunity there to figure out how can we allow for manufacturers to better scale certification of folks.

And then the last thing that I think that has been like a challenge really comes down to who is responsible. And so some stations are owner operators, right? Where there is a large entity that is responsible for the infrastructure, but then there is a lot of infrastructure that is actually particularly monitored by the site host. So these are small business owners, these are multi unit dwelling owners, these are folks that got free infrastructure and did not get any budget for ONM, right?

And so when we have receive an issue and we go out into the field, maybe that specific owner doesn't even know where the circuit breaker is, or they haven't blocked off the site for us to work on, or they haven't budgeted funding to pay for the service call. So those are some of the challenges that we've seen, some of the solutions that we've been working on. Because one of the things I've been very proud of this industry is how fast we've been tackling this problem.

I would say maybe about a year and a half ago. It came into the public light. And I've just been really pleased with my colleagues and what we've been doing. And so one of the things that we've seen a lot of work on is around SLAs service level agreements. And not just having service level agreements for time on site, but service level agreements for part shipment, service level agreements for coordination between multiple companies.

The other solution that we've been working with is actually with the Society of Automotive Engineers. SAE actually championed a group of manufacturers and network providers to come up with the standard, the first standard for EVSC technician maintenance ever. That test is going to be implemented all throughout the United States starting at the later half of this year.

And so what that now does is to allow for there to be some type of standard around what is needed from a person to go out on site to solve an IoT asset. And I think that is the key portion to this, is that the issues that we experience out on the field are not electrical issues, right? These are software issues. These are comms issues. These are issues that has to do with computers. And so I've been very proud of the work that SAE has done.

And so, just in closing, I like to lead with hope. While there are a lot of challenges, I do see that there is a lot of private partnership collaboration that's happening. Charger Help is a venture backed company. We've raised over $25 million in order to solve this problem from a people perspective, but also through a software and technology perspective. We've also done a lot of work in regards to transitioning folks into this space. The technicians that work at Charger Help are W two technicians.

These are folks that come from oil and gas. They're folks that work at factories. They're folks that are very interested in participating in this space. And so what I leave with you is that, yes, there are a lot of challenges. We have a lot of data that we're very happy to share. And that too, this is a unique opportunity to learn from IoT assets because there will be more things that are going to be connected in the future, and why not learn now?

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. And I'll ask a question and open up to my colleagues. I'm particularly kind of intrigued about the point you made about cost of service calls. Right? So you got a whole bunch of locations that have probably received a subsidy, but obviously not for ONM. And then you have this Internet of Things device that may often go unnoticed until it breaks and then only noticed by the people who need it when it breaks.

So are there sources of subsidy that you've drawn for those places that can't afford or otherwise aren't even aware of the need to repair them, but where the repair is necessary to provide quality of service in that area?

So there are new grants that are coming out. The CEC Reach program did allow for there to be O M covered in that program. But what we ended up doing was coming up with a product that's a fixed cost for labor. And so we call it reliability as a service. And so it allows for a limited truck rolls because, as you may know, with technology, it's not a one and done turn a screw and the thing works. Right.

It may have another software issue, like a couple of days later. And so allowing there to be a fixed cost that a site host can be able to budget for has actually allowed for folks to actually buy in and purchase. So, just to summarize, one, we're seeing new implementations that do allow for O M coverage. Dec Reaches.

One, I know SCE, Parks and Rec also include O M. And then two, I think really looking at a different model for charging for labor instead of, like, ad hoc, but more so of a reoccurring. Fixed pricing allows for folks to better budget and prepare.

Appreciate that. Actually, while I'm thinking about a question for Mr. Kosowski. So you mentioned the consortium effort to put in 30,000 DC charges by 2030. That'll make a huge dent, obviously. What are some of the reasons you specified? But it's interesting to Ms. Terry's point, we are reliant for the success of this platform on the ubiquitous distribution of charging infrastructure out of the home in order for it to work. So how does a company like Kia think about that?

On the hydrogen side, there's an obvious business model for retail fuel, right? It's not that different than gasoline. But we have seen over the last 15 years or so, a whole bunch of companies try to make a business out of charging. Never works.

What you find at the end of the day is you find abandoned assets that serve to do nothing other than, I think, to miss Terry's point, alarm drivers when they get to the end of that road and find out that the device doesn't work. So how to think about making that actually standing up that system?

Yeah, that's right. Very good. Point is how do you make a business out of EV charging? And it's very difficult. The model that's in place for the JV doesn't become cash flow positive until about 2027 or 2028. If things go our way and I'll get into that, it's probably going to be profitable toward 2029 or 2030. The capex is huge. Some of the assumptions on electricity cost in there, they may change things like chargers.

That's a very important point, because if we're going to the retail market to buy chargers, it's a lot more expensive than making it in house like Tesla does, right? Tesla builds its chargers. The cost basis is much lower. But to answer the question, frankly, it's going to be about utilization.

And what a lot of the modeling does is it includes, for example, electrified cargo charging at night, Uber and Lyft users charging it, and finding that sweet spot in the utilization time of the day, that kind of thing, to get folks to come in there. It could be dynamic pricing. That's one of it. But that is maybe one of the more difficult parts of this venture. And in a way, I think for all the Members of the JV, it feels a bit like it's a cost of doing business.

Appreciate that. Questions from my colleagues, panelists, Senator Archuleta, anyone else? Okay.

It's just because I'm on the committee that I'm so excited that you're all here. And again, I mentioned the hydrogen and electric working together, but you seem to have the same problem. My colleague here has the fuel cell battery car that he loves. And like so many of my friends, even my staff, they have one. And they run into a situation, they start looking at that needle, and then they're trying to get onto an app on the phone, some way to find the location.

They get there. And it's not there. These are issues, and I'm glad you're bringing them to our attention because I thought it was just us. But the question is that once we know the problem is there to address it, to fix it, and the investment for the future, that's the thing. And the innovation of your company to be able to work together and having the data, this is where that partnership comes together.

And I think this is what the Governor is looking for, for all of us in private industry and the government to work together to solve these problems. But we have issues. The industry, automobile industry would like to sell these cars, no doubt. We need infrastructure. We've got to deliver it, we've got to secure it. And of course, we've not talked about vandalism. I don't know, is that an issue because I don't have the electric car.

But is that an issue or is there an issue with connecting and this, that and the other? Are you looking into the next level of product? Tell me about that.

Yes and yes. How's that? So with respect to vandalism, in some of the downtime issues, I haven't seen it come up in the data. A lot of the issues will relate to software. It relates to chargers just being inoperative chargers, being derated. I go to a charger and I expect 150 kw charge, and I get 50, right? It's not fast enough. Screens being out, things like cables not being long enough to reach the car. Probably the most prolific problem is just charger unavailable.

I can remember in December there was somebody I follow on Instagram who went to a charger site and he had the phone up and he just said, charger unavailable, charger unavailable, charger. So five out of six chargers just unavailable. And the last one he went to was an EV owner who said, I'm selling the car tomorrow because this is just ridiculous. But vandalism don't hear much about that on the product investment side. So I mentioned we have the EV nine coming.

It's going to launch in November. I'm coming from the media launch today and yesterday with 65 Members of the media to show them the car. So we're really excited about that. Then we have almost one or two new EVs every year through 2028, and they're primarily EV utilities. The sweet spot in the US market is electrified utility SUV, EVs, small, medium, and large. That's the formula we're also working on.

You've probably read about it, but we have something called the purpose built vehicles, electric vans that are configured for various different people in the market, whether it's Uber and Lyft or the cargo Van user. Those are coming in 2026. So we're approaching a commercial side of the business. We also have a couple of sedan EVs that are coming.

So we are focusing primarily on EV SUVs, a couple of sedans, some vans you might have read about, other vehicles like pickup trucks that we're starting to look at as well.

And I just want to follow up.

Terry, if you want to add, please.

Yeah, just in regards to vandalism. So one of the things I think that would be helpful to do is to look at owner operated stations of time and then non owner operated stations of time. So we often see that stations that are owned and operated by a network or a utility that has a person that's responsible typically have higher uptime for stations that were necessarily given to site hosts and that did not include ONM may have lower uptime.

And so we in general do not see a ton of things around vandalism. But what it really does come down to is when there is an issue, is there funding already allocated to fix that issue? And is someone really responsible for making sure that that issue is taken care of? And so I want to point that out because sometimes it gets really conflated and it feels like everything's broken, which is not true.

I think that there's some tangible, low hanging fruit things that we can do to do some immediate improvements to the current infrastructure.

And my last point is, you mentioned all these automobiles coming, they're going to hit the market. Isn't that another reason that everybody should join together and contribute to the infrastructure? It is so important. Yes. Bottom line, it's the most important part of EV adoption. With that comes new technology as well. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate that. Anybody else? Senator Caballero.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I really appreciate this panel because, well, one is some of you were talking Greek, so I'm going to need a study guide for how you use different words and what it means. And part of the challenge in my district, it's a rural agricultural district, so EVs just people can't afford them, first of all. So I'm happy to hear that there are models coming that are going to lower or be more cost competitive, put it that way.

People desperately want to get into EVs, but unless they can afford it and then there's a way for them to access a charger because if you can't afford it, most probably you're renting and to require all new construction to have EV charging station becomes cost prohibitive for people that are looking for the lowest rent possible. That's kind of been one of my beef.

But the other thing is that we've got to come up with a systematic way to make sure that there is a charging station available that you don't get there and then find out there's no port that works. So any suggestions you have for us? Well, I'd always thought about the issue of charging of vehicles as the failure to have interoperability. It was like in the olden days when our phones had a different cord every time you bought a phone. Right.

And it was really frustrating because if you left that cord somewhere, nobody else in your vicinity had a cord you can use. And then we went to the interoperability of pretty much it's been a life changer for many of us. And so it was a mistake to have allowed Tesla to do their own thing and not share the technology to be able to charge everyone with the same kind of cord.

And so this issue of the challenges that we have with charging vehicles, we've got to resolve if we're really going to get to the point where we're moving into the heavy duty vehicles, because that's really where we need to. And the vignette that I tell you is I had family that was coming from Southern California for the Swearing Inn, and they had hydrogen vehicles and they ended up renting cars to drive up because they couldn't guarantee that there was hydrogen fueling stations.

There's one in the Central Valley and that's in Coalinga. And if you get there and it's out of hydrogen or if it's closed, then you're SOL. And so we really can't afford to move into a green future unless we solve some of these issues.

So I took copious notes on it, but I'm not sure I understand what's the pathway to get to having stations where you can charge or areas where you can charge and that they actually work and that there be the responsibility of the owner to keep it. I didn't realize it's a software and a hardware issue as well. So I really appreciate that because that makes it much more complicated. We all know what the problems with Internet access are.

And if there's one thing we learned during the pandemic is that there are some areas that have better internet service than others. And I'll tell you, the Central Valley has very poor internet service. It's intermittent. And I'm not surprised that that causes station issues or plug in issues as well. So I don't think I have a question.

I'm still trying to understand a little bit better how we ended up with a situation where there's different owners that don't have the responsibility or the technical expertise to be able to fix the problems as they occur at their locations. And so if you have ideas that can help us in the future, especially for funding some solutions, I think that would be really helpful.

Appreciate that. And Mr. Thomas, I know you wanted to speak, you know before you do, I think senators and others touch on a very good point about allocations and how do we ensure that as we allocate funds, especially public funds, that they are properly spread across all of the different needs. And I think, you know, highlighted one, which is operations and maintenance. Go ahead.

Yeah. And Senator Caballero, I think to your point, the ability to go to a charger and make sure it works is critical. And I think that is where we're starting to see the charger anxiety that we kind of touched on. It's imperative that we kind of remind the Legislature that you guys have taken this as a priority. And Mr. Ting's Bill to rely on 97% uptime for publicly funded chargers is a great start.

I think we have private companies, many of which are in the crowd, talk about EV, Go ChargePoint Flow, BP, Pulse, ABB, Qmerit that have taken it upon themselves to ensure greater reliability of their product and their stations. For us, with the Communities in Charge program, the funding that we do provide to level two chargers for people to have in multi unit dwellings or places of worship or workplaces or educational facilities, it does have mr. Ting's 2061 97% Uptime requirement.

So I think what we're hoping for is that similarly, it'll be just like you go to the gas station when you go. There might be a nozzle out, but for the most part you're going with the understanding that it's going to work when you plug it in. And so what we can do, I think as an industry is continue to have these productive conversations.

We really didn't touch on this panel, but I think the background touched on the amount of money California is going to get from the federal government. Almost $400 million to ensure DC fast charging stations all up and down the highway system is going to be critical to have if you don't have a multi unit dwelling that has access to a charger, knowing that there is a reliable charger somewhere.

Very close to you is then, you know, as I think I touched upon having extensions at the workplace or universities to make sure that where you are going, a destination will have some charging capability so that you don't have to necessarily rely upon it.

When we talked about vandalism, I think the city of Fresno was talking about site location and making sure that if it's site located appropriately and if it's busy, that deters vandalism from becoming one of the uses or one of the causes of downtime charger. And so I think we are learning through this process of what best practices are and how we can essentially ensure that no one gets left behind, especially our rural community partners in the Central Valley Indian empire and know the border areas.

So one thing I would just add quickly, so we're currently working with Ray Leon with Leap Institute in the central valley. Actually, we're translating our current curriculum into Spanish and his group and the central valley is going to be the first group that we're going to be training in Spanish. And what Ray has done, which is very interesting out there, is that they have an electric vehicle shuttle and also charging stations. And so I'm just like once again with hope it's happening, it's happening very quickly.

And then the last piece I wanted to touch on is like the issues that we find out in the field. We've been building out predictive models. So there's like some issues now that we can predict that when something's about to happen to actually be more proactive. And that's just literally happened within the last so one, the central value we've been working with Ray and the CEC has helped out a lot, which is the training and understanding of IoT assets and then EV charging.

And then two, we've really leaned in heavy and collecting the data from the field to build out the models in order for us to have a better understanding of what to do when we go on site and get into a place where you don't have to have downtime at all.

That's great. Mr. Chair, if I could real quickly, the key to the central Valley is that the traveling public takes I Five and if the chargers are placed on I five, you miss entire communities. The Mayor Leon's community is not close to I Five.

And so having charging stations in places like Huron mendota Fireball is great, but then we're going to have to heavily subsidize the purchase of vehicles in those communities as well because the mayor is doing a great job, but all of those are publicly financed vehicles that are mobility for the community vehicles. He's doing a tremendous job but he's done it kind of on his back and it's really hard to replicate in other communities.

Absolutely. Thank you you for that. I appreciate it.

And thank you to the panel. Mr. Cortese, you had a question?

Yeah, I think it's important for us to all express what we're experiencing both legislatively and out there in the world. And others have done that. So I don't want to be absent or.

Folks lessen any of the gravitas of what's been said by not saying anything. I think there's two big issues with the public right now that is qualified and capable of purchasing EVs. I have two, and that's distance travel Senator Caballero was talking about. It's not just Central Valley and Highway Five. As somebody who came in to politics from a business background, what it looks like you're seeing from a business perspective these days is a degradation, not an improvement of the systems.

At this point, you would almost suspect that some of the providers who are out there trying to make this work, meaning I won't name names, but trying to create a return on investment to their shareholders, are under capitalized. It's hard to imagine why anyone would leave charging stations or a bank of them incapacitated for days and days at a time.

And I understand there's essentially an industry trying to help correct that, but it also sort of reverses progress or sets progress back in terms of carbon footprint, because every time somebody makes a decision and I've had to do it myself, it's not just Highway Five. If you go south of 101 from San Jose to the Central Coast.

You can't take an EV. I don't care what the capacity is. I don't know about Tesla, I don't have a Tesla. But there's absolutely no frequency of charging stations, no reliability. There's entire areas along the Central Coast, along highway 101 that basically have no charging stations whatsoever. None. Zero. So that means somebody like me takes his old Ford F 150 fossil fuel vehicle that's supposed to be parked except when I need to move something, and all of a sudden that becomes the long haul vehicle, basically.

And it feels terrible to do that after you've invested in a couple of EVs. Second point I want to make is it may have been discussed at the outset or it may have went right over my head, but a lot of work has been attempted by this Legislature. And it's difficult on the issue of not only those folks who aren't at the level for affordability in terms of purchasing the vehicles themselves or paying charging rates that are out there on a retail basis.

But the retrofit problem, unfortunately, sadly, crisis unto itself, a separate crisis is we aren't doing housing production. So the people in the housing that need to charge this 80 20 thing where people, 80% of people prefer to charge at home, as we all know. I'm stating the obvious, but I want to make sure everyone knows that we know apartment dwellers, folks in older built communities like Sacramento where main service hasn't been upgraded, those retrofit issues are astronomical.

If I was investing either in the automobile side or the EV side, what I would be worried about is hitting the wall, much like Solar did, where people who could afford it on the single family side do it, and then all of a sudden the graph just drops straight down. Because you can't get into multifamily, not just from a capitalization standpoint, but you need easements. You probably need the investor owned utilities to be a partner. Legislation like that that we've tried here has been challenging.

Senator Allen's here today. He's done, I think, the yeoman's job of coming forward and say, come on, let's start putting the legislation in place while we're figuring it out to try to help. But there needs to be some kind of breakthrough on that.

If there isn't, I just see EV infrastructure at some point not keeping up with what would have been the demand on the consumer side and what would have been what would have been the prudent risks that car manufacturers would have been willing to take had they had a more expansive customer base to sell to. We're capping the customer base right now, unfortunately. I hate to tell you that, but it sounds like you know that.

I can't believe anybody who's running an automobile production would not know that. But that said, we're not at that point yet. I guess it's the next section. But the both and approach to hydrogen, especially when you start talking long haul and then especially when you talk about the commercial side, it's one thing if we stunt the market for people to make consumer choices. It's something else entirely if you start stunting the market in terms of commercial activity.

If we can't move your cars to this marketplace from wherever the hell they're built because trucks can't get them here, we got a secondary problem that perhaps dwarfs all these other infrastructure problems with EVs. So we have our work cut out for us. We know it. People are working on it. I think this too is a great panel that's opening up the discussion for the first time since I've been here about a both and approach and what all needs to be done.

Part of it is hearing the complaints. I think we have lived experiences too. We're out there, we're consumers and legislators. So I just wanted to get my thoughts on the record. Thank you for being here. I appreciate the stimulated conversation.

I appreciate that. And I think Senator Menjivar. Great.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If you indulge me, I stepped away for a bit. So these questions, you might have already reviewed them, but I actually just bought a new car two months ago and my dream car was the F 150 Lightning, fully electric. Oh, it's beautiful. But I drive every four weeks here to Sacramento because I bring my wife and my dog, so we have to drive.

And that was the only reason why I didn't get the EV, because driving up there's an Assembly Member in my area that adds 3 hours to her commute up to Sacramento with her daughter. And I didn't want to do an eight hour drive each time, so I went with a hybrid. But you're right, our lived experiences also exist here.

But I represent a community that is heavily dependent on public transportation, is heavily dependent on working outside of the San Fernando Valley, going to West LA to Senator Allen's area for some domestic work and so forth. And it commutes a lot. And when we talk about EVs and again, I apologize, as I said already, the rebates and so know it's not even achievable or attainable for my community whatsoever. And I say that I want the infrastructure first.

When I step around to other areas, like Senator Henry Stern, which is my neighbor Senator, they have EV infrastructure everywhere. And it's just a mile or 2 miles away from my district because I represent a not so affluent district, and I see almost every single Ralph's have EVs...and so forth. So can you talk a little bit?

I think someone shared about where the placement is going to be, where you're shopping and so forth, and how we're going to make sure that the Vallartas of the world, the super kings of the world, are also going to have EV stations.

Yeah. Thank you, Senator. I think one of the things that we were talking about while you were absent was a program called Communities in Charge. It is a California Energy Commission program that does pump money into disadvantaged communities and Low income communities to make sure that they have access to level two chargers at places where the community gathers or lives. I was saying that there was $35 million worth of applications, around $29 million worth of reserved awards that are going to be handed out. 75% of those are going into disadvantaged communities and Low income communities.

Is that list public yet, or will it be public?

The list isn't public yet, but it will be public.

Okay.

And the website is live. So it does provide best practices. It does provide technical assistance for communities that are looking to turn in an application for that program. And it does have a wide array of eligible sites. So it includes multi unit dwellings, it includes shopping centers, it includes community colleges, places that I think we're seeing there's a big, I think, gap and dearth of charging experiences for our Low income communities and disadvantaged communities and where we want to make sure that there's at least a level two charging experience for them.

So even if they don't have every multi unit dwelling having a charger for overnight, that when they do want to go to a shopping center or to the hospital or to church, that there are chargers available in those parking lots that are going to be working and available to them.

And then I don't know if this question is better for the next panel, but somebody was talking to me about the Tesla charging conversion or other maybe this is a question for you, and what is that looking like? Are we getting to a point where every single other kind of vehicle is going to be able to charge at a Tesla charging port.

So, if I may, 1, I'll answer your question, I promise. I think we're at a moment where we need maybe state oversight, like a Czar of all of this, somebody who is an overlord. I'm not sure the mechanism, to be frank, but I think we're at that moment. Now you brought up the point that we have billions of dollars of product investment that's coming, these cars are coming.

And if we don't have this charging confidence figured out, if we don't have this consumer comfort with EV charging figured out, that's going to be a bigger problem. And the other part as a corollary to this would be a consumer based uptime definition that needs to be sorted out because Tesla has one definition, nevi has another definition. EVgo has another definition. Electrify America has another definition. You call EVgo, oh, it's 98% uptime, but my survey 98%.

And we can name names for all the manufacturers or all the charger companies, but with respect to the Tesla charging protocol, which we refer to it as NAX, North American charging standard, at this point, we have something in the order of 85% of the market volume by nameplate, has agreed to use NAX. They're in the process to shift. So Rivian, MercedesBenz, Nissan, Ford, General Motors, honda just last week announced they're going to be shifting that way.

A couple of other big brands, including Hyundai, Kia, Stellantis, it's understudy. And the tipping point is around 2025, when we start to see things en masse. And the discussions we've had in the JV, the joint venture, is they relate to the trend down for CCS, the current DC charging protocol. What does that ramp down look? So there's a lot of moving parts, as you can imagine.

You spoke about, or maybe you spoke somebody spoke about the fact that Tesla makes the cars, the chargers, the firmware, the hardware, all of that's made by one company. So it works. If the car gets updated overnight, so does the charger. Everything works. Now you have Electrify America, EVgo, we may make an update on some charging software, the charger company may change something. There's so many moving parts in this, and that's part of the challenge.

So the hope, maybe more to the point, the expectation within the industry is that shifting to NAX will help alleviate that. Part of this relates to the payment moment happening separate from the charger. That's a very important point, because when you initiate a Tesla charge event, that payment moment happens here. The car connects to the charger. And there's one more step that's not going to cause a problem with the charge event happening. If I'm articulating this problem. So that's another part of this. Am I helping you?

Yes. And then can I then safely assume then hopefully 2025, that's going to ease accessibility, right?

Because yes, I wish. I got to talk to you before you bought your hybrid. Ford, the CEO, just a 1000 miles road trip to kind of go over what he could experience and what his drivers are experiencing, especially in a Ford F 150 Lightning or a Mustang Mach E of is there reliability on the road with my EV chargers? Where is the network for Fords right now? There is agreements with Tesla to open up their supercharger network. I think that's what you're referencing.

A lot of the big automakers are providing that and starting, I believe, right now and in 2024, you're going to see adapters be included on a lot of the vehicles. And starting in 2025, you're going to see some of those that are in agreement to have the NACS standard. And talking to Tesla in preparation for this, you could use their app. Right now they have two stations in California that have the combined CCS and NACS standards.

I believe that's Santa Cruz and placerville and that I think is going to be the model for the Nevi rollout where you're going to know chargers that do have a community charging standard. That has been the kind of standard protocol for non Tesla cars up until pretty soon and then the NACS which is the standard for Tesla.

So I think that there is a lot of progress being made, especially in the last six months, to alleviate some of these concerns and to figure out how we can provide a reliable, safe charging experience and get to a position where we can just plug the charger in. It'll be connected to a credit card or some kind of payment processing system and then you could just sit and charge and then know that your payments will be going through and your charger will work.

I think that is the goal. We're getting closer, I believe, every day. But conversations like this where we hear what is not happening, that's ideal, are critical. And especially for communities like yours, Mr. Archelada for yours, Senator Caballero for yours, because as Mr. Cortesi said, this is light duty. We really have to decarbonize medium and heavy duty and commercial fleets.

And so if we're not getting it right here and having conversations about issues like interconnection energization and how to partner with utilities, how are we ever going to get those really big 18 wheelers to start transitioning to battery, electric or hydrogen? Because those are the ones that adversely affect our communities so much more.

Thank you so much, appreciate it.

Well, thank you to our panel, Ms. Terry, Mr. Kozowski, Mr. Thomas. Thank you so much. We have obviously talked more than we expected to and I guess that's a good sign and a validation of this hearing. So thank you and appreciate it and I'm sure this conversation will continue in this and other venues. I really appreciate your time today.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Let me. As we do this, I want to welcome up the final panel that will explore the state of California's light duty hydrogen refueling network. And as you come up, as I promised, I'm going to read the statement from our other witness from the last panel who we had technical problems. We couldn't connect here. So please come up. Get comfortable. And her name is Wendy Salvador Galbraith and she's a clean mobility advocate and a clean energy community organizer.

And as you jockey for position up there, let me read her statement and then we'll move on to the next panel. Good afternoon. My name is Wendy Salvador. I was born and raised in South Los Angeles and I'm a proud owner of an electric vehicle. Yes, we do exist. We're not as numerous as we like, but we are here in South Los Angeles and many other disadvantaged neighborhoods.

As you can imagine, transitioning from an internal combustion engine vehicle to an EV was a huge investment for our family. I'm here to tell you that we love our EVs. It has been truly a game changer. For this reason, Redeemer Community Partnership has made it our mission to inform and educate our community about the benefits of clean mobility. It has not been an easy task to inform and walk our neighbors through this process.

I can tell you firsthand, when we organized our first clean mobility workshops and community engagements, neighbors were initially apprehensive. As we continue to work extensively to bring new resources and information to our community, we've captured their attention. In the past few months, we've assisted numerous families with the purchase or lease of an EV. Many families have told us that their new EV car payments are less than what they were previously spending on gas.

Most, if not all, the people we've assisted either live in apartments or don't have a charger at home. Some must drive miles away just to charge their cars. Our team spends countless hours introducing, educated and walking our neighbors through the process to make the EV switch. However, one issue continues to deter many families from switching to electric vehicles. The charging infrastructure does not meet the demand.

Why is it that my family can drive cross country from South LA to Kid remain without concern over finding a charging station, but we can't drive from Crenshaw Boulevard to Main Street and have access to a working charger, let alone a fast charger. If by any chance we do find a charging station, there are a very limited number of chargers available or none of the chargers work. Many of the affluent areas have an abundance of available chargers.

When we visit these areas, our chargers are upstairs, downstairs in the parking lot structures. Outside of the parking structures, fast chargers, level two chargers. You get my point. This is not so in South Los Angeles. All our participants have expressed their frustration with the lack of charging infrastructure in our community. For some of our participants. I've mapped out the few charging stations in our neighborhoods out of a sense of obligation to our participants. We let them charge at our house when necessary.

On behalf of current and future EV owners in South Los Angeles and other disadvantaged communities, please bring charging stations to our neighborhoods. Not only is there ample space, but there is an exponential need for the chargers and the workforce to install and maintain them. Our churches, parks, neighborhood markets, community centers, schools, and our sidewalks are ready for the new chargers that will bring our neighborhood into the future. We must develop a charging infrastructure sufficient to overcome the EV charging desert our communities are facing.

We are ready for the Chargers and we need them now. So thank you to Wendy Salader. I'm sorry we couldn't connect you to our zoom as we got started, but her comments obviously reinforce and amplify some of the discussion from the last panel. With that, let us move to the next panel, which covers the other zero emissions platform, hydrogen light duty, and the specific challenges and delays of the industry. So I want to welcome our panelists.

The first will be Rosanna Carvaccio Elliott, who is a legislative advocate and is representing the California Hydrogen Coalition. Next we'll hear from Jacqueline Birdstall, senior engineering manager of the fuel cell integration group at Toyota Motor. We'll then proceed to Alessandra Magnesco, who's? The governmental affairs and regulatory Director for the California Fuels and Convenience Alliance. And last, but certainly not least, we'll hear from my fellow fuel cell drivers, greg and Bobby Kane, hydrogen car drivers and board Members of the California Hydrogen Car Owners Association.

They have three grandkids. Their post retirement career is to work for a better world with their grandchildren. And to their credit, they recently made a cross. You made a trip that went to many of the country's national parks in your hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that came not only with the enjoyment of driving a fuel cell car, but the challenges of driving a fuel cell car. So thank you with that. Ms. Elliott, please proceed.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Senators, Rosanna Carvacho Elliot here this afternoon on behalf of the Hydrogen Coalition, I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to be here and testify. And as was previously stated by Mr. Thomas, thanks the committee for a very thorough background. I felt very similar as I was reading it that a lot of that could just be my statement this afternoon.

And I know we are short on time, so I will try to be as brief as possible, but we'll still get across the points that I think are incredibly important for the committee to hear this afternoon. The California Hydrogen Coalition is dedicated to enabling California's transition to zero emission vehicles by expanding the availability for reliable, convenient and affordable hydrogen fueling. I think we can all acknowledge in this room that the use of hydrogen is necessary throughout California's economy.

And we are going to need hydrogen as well as battery electric vehicles to meet the zero emission vehicle regulations and our carbon neutrality laws here in California. As California residents, all of us in this room are living with the impacts of climate change every day, even just this week, we experienced our first hurricane to hit the state in 84 years. So we can't wait.

We need to address these issues now and along the lines of I think what you all have heard very clearly this afternoon from numerous panelists, I believe also including GoBiz, is we can't invest in just one technology, battery electric or fuel cell electric vehicles. We need both. There is a demographic for both in terms of the availability for charging as well as the availability for, and when I say charging, I mean at home charging, right?

That's why we have seen, I think, a great uptick in battery electric vehicles because those of us that are lucky enough to own a home or be able to rent a home where you can have a charger, have access to a charger, whereas if you are a renter, you live on the street, you have a long commute.

A lot of the reasons I have heard this afternoon from Senator Cortese, Senator Menjivar, in terms of their districts and what that looks like, those are the individuals that need fuel cell electric vehicles. So as we look towards California's goal of 100% new car sales being zero emission vehicles by 2035, we really need to look at ensuring that both technologies have a fair seat at the table.

As I think everyone knows, the current Clean Transportation Program, which was included in AB Eight back in 2014, what went into effect January of 2014, expires at the end of this year. So we are in a position where the Clean Transportation Program needs to be reauthorized, as I think at least everyone in this room knows, because I think we've got a Dwindling membership here. But I think overall there's been a great showing, frankly, and a great discussion amongst your colleagues.

The current law in regards to the Clean Transportation Program has a 20% set aside for hydrogen infrastructure. This was a requirement as part of that law. It's still current law. And then AB Eight also included a goal of 100 stations. I think, as was outlined in the committee background, since then, Governor Brown extended that goal from 100 stations to 200 in a 2018 Executive order. I think, as you all know, we are unfortunately far from meeting either of those targets.

We currently have a hydrogen refueling network of 64 stations. And there are a few reasons that we are so far behind this 2014 goal of 100 stations and 2018 goal of 200 stations that I'll outline. The first being that even though we are close to ten years since the enactment of AB Eight, there have only, unfortunately been three grant funding opportunities issued for hydrogen fueling stations, and the largest tranche of that funding went out in September of 2020.

And we all know what was going on then, the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Unfortunately, these delays and funding limitations have led to abandoned vehicle launches and reduced vehicle deployment projections. If we look back at CARB's 2015 AB Eight report, they projected that there would be 44 stations up and running by the end of 2015, and by the end of 2016, there'd be 51. We're now seven years later and we have 64. There is a problem here.

As you can imagine, this is a very damaging signal that is being sent to the market about California's commitment to fuel cell electric vehicles and the refueling network must come first. I don't remember who said it, but we really do need to have that infrastructure first. And we don't have the privileges for hydrogen vehicles of the at home charging, right? That's obviously not an option.

And as you'll hear from some other panelists, the automakers cannot put vehicles on the road if the consumers that purchase those vehicles from them don't have a place to refuel them. Another important issue to note is that the majority of the current hydrogen stations that are out there today were funded by the Clean Transportation Program, but they did also have substantial private investment. The match for hydrogen stations is much higher than charging stations.

And then in addition to that, seven of the 64 stations that are operational were fully privately funded. And there are 30 more privately funded stations that are in different stages of permitting and planning. Which leads to the permitting discussion, which I know there has been a lot of discussion with GoBiz earlier. That was really the main point I wanted to make on permitting. We were seeing, as Senator Archuleta knows, as the author of that Bill, we are seeing 900 days to get a station permitting permitted.

Excuse me. And Senator Archuleta gave some examples of real life scenarios of what the developers of these stations were facing when they went to cities, asking them to put power lines underground to do Ada things that were completely separate from the station. Especially when you consider the fact that most of these stations, the majority of them are colocated at gas stations, right? So they're already at a location that is being used for something like this. It's not a complete redo.

So we really appreciate the Legislature and the administration's effort on that Bill. SB 1294 91 excuse me. And we are seeing the effects of that. We are starting to see a positive impact on the permitting timeline. Having GoBiz get involved has been very helpful as well. And so we're hopeful that we will get to see more stations built faster and come online faster as well.

So, as you can see, there's a lot of factors that come into play for why we are at the current status of just 64 stations, despite the numerous goals put in place via statute and Executive order. So one of the things I want to make sure that you hear from us today is the importance of the Clean Transportation Program. The Clean Transportation Program is the only funding source for hydrogen infrastructure. Again, the only funding source.

The committee background did a great job outlining the numerous additional funding sources that are available for battery electric vehicles. But this is why it is so important to reauthorize the Clean Transportation Program and continue to have a strong commitment to the hydrogen refueling network. We know that hydrogen plays a critical piece in California's zero emission and vehicle and decarbonization goals. And I have a bunch of data in here about CARB and the different regulations.

But I will just say that between clean cars I'm sorry, advanced clean cars two, and the mobile source strategy, CARB estimates between 17 and 22 and a half percent of light duty vehicles will be fuel cells by 2035. So we are highly employing that. The Legislature act quickly. The session is coming to a quick end, and there needs to be a strong market signal that is sent to the industry.

In terms of California's commitment to fuel cell electric vehicles, we can't pick a winner or a loser. This is necessary to bring the private capital to bear that will fully enable the buildout of the hydrogen refueling network. And frankly, unfortunately, if we fail to do this, we're not sure how we'll meet our zero emission vehicle goals. So, with that, I will conclude, and I'm sure there will be questions. Thank you.

And thank you. Speaking of the industry to have our next panelist Jacqueline Birdsall, senior engineering manager of the fuel cell integration group at Toyota Motor North America. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. Mr. Chair, senators. Oh, we are getting some help here to share the screen. Fantastic. Thank you.

Okay. We have handouts as well.

Okay, fantastic.

Appreciate it. And again, just noting the time. So I'm sorry this has gone long.

I will abbreviate my remark.

Does not mean that fuel cells are less important than other technologies. Please proceed.

Understood. So I actually worked on my first fuel cell electric vehicle in 2003. So I have been in this industry for 20 years, and this is the first time that I can remember ever people coming to us and saying that we've done the calculations, we've looked into our options. We need hydrogen and we need your fuel cell technology. Instead of us going out and saying, 'hey, look, we have this technology that we think can get us to our decarbonization goals.'

And I think that if California wants to continue to be a leader in this space, this is the time for us to have the discussion of how to reauthorize the CTP, how to improve our infrastructure, and how to support not only Toyota's customers, but all other fuel cell electric customers that are on the road today. Let's see if we can advance this. Okay, so I just want to make a few points before I hop into discussions on infrastructure, particularly.

The first one is that customers love their Mirai, including myself. If you've never driven an all electric vehicle, it is an all electric vehicle. We have that wonderful all electric motor. It's silent. It's a luxurious drive. We love driving it. Also, for those of us that don't have the luxury of charging at home, it affords us the opportunity to drive zero-emission. I don't have the opportunity to charge at home, but I am fortunate enough to live near three hydrogen stations.

So for me, that means going to one of the local stations, quick five minute refill time, and I get over 330 miles on a fill for my particular vehicle. The second is that the vehicle technology is here. At Toyota, we've been developing this technology for over 30 years. We're on our second generation of a full production vehicle, right? And we sell it to our customers, which means once they own it, they can kind of do whatever they want with it.

And that we have the faith in our technology to actually sell to our customers. Not only that, it has our Toyota logo on it, which means our customers expect the durability that they've come to experience from Toyota vehicles. And that's what we have delivered. Unfortunately, we've had to limit our sales of this phenomenal product because of infrastructure. And that's for two reasons. One is there is an uncertainty around future station builds. As you've heard, we've recently had a station provider back out of 50 stations.

We've heard maybe eight more are coming online. But if you look at this graph here, this shows what stations are currently open versus what the targets were. And within just two years, we are supposed to go from what is right now 51 stations because we've recently, unfortunately had many stations come offline, which you will hear from our drivers. But how do we get from 51 stations to 200 in a few years, right?

And then how do we, as automakers, have any real confidence that those stations are going to come to fruition? It would be against our conscious to give our customers vehicles when we don't know if there's going to be stations available to them or if they can even refill their vehicles, right? So there's a lack of clarity, there's a lack of signals. There's a lack of a real plan of how we're going to put that infrastructure in place.

And the next issue is the reliability of the current network and therefore, potentially the future network. So what I'm showing here on the slide is from 2021 to 2023, the year to date uptime of the stations divided in Northern California versus Southern California versus the overall network. And this is something that we track very closely at Toyota because we recognize that the customer's experience with filling directly impacts their experience with the driving the vehicle, right?

So if they have a poor fueling experience, even though we can't directly affect it, it's critical for us to understand what their experience is so we can understand what our customers are going through. So you can see 2023 year to date, we're looking at an average network uptime of 66%. That means even with all the stations we have built, only 66% of the time can our customers actually go and access fuel at that station.

What this doesn't capture is that those stations that are online, they may only have one dispenser and next thing you know, you have a queue of vehicles waiting hours sometimes to get fuel, right? And this is just unacceptable. We see the reasons for this to be kind of twofold. The first is hydrogen supply. There have been disruptions in the hydrogen supply to the stations themselves. And this can be in part because we are essentially a small player in the hydrogen space.

There's a lot of industrial giants that use hydrogen for all types of applications. Mirai customers are a very small piece of that. And so, unfortunately, when there are disruptions in hydrogen supply, some of our stations take the hit. We do see some opportunities for some great advancements here if we leverage the funding made available by the federal government for the hydrogen hubs. But the other problem is the reliability of the components themselves.

And when we've heard about capital investment that is going into the stations, into the development of the stations, right, into the components, we've been developing this technology again for 30 years. We have tested them. We've done durability of cycling of each component in the Mirai to ensure that it lasts the lifetime of the vehicle. That does not exist for stations.

Their valves fail, their compressors fail, there is failures of all these components because they just haven't put in the resources to do their engineering diligence to ensure the durability of these components throughout all of the usage of our customers, which by the way, we do have the highest customer use case here in California compared to the rest of the world.

So when these station providers say 'hey, this component works in Europe,' it may not work in California because we're really testing the heck out of it here. So finally, I think you are familiar with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, but for those who aren't, I want you to imagine the most modern day fueling station, right? This one right here is in Fountain Valley.

You have a zero-emission vehicle rolling in to one of four dispensers filling every five minutes and then that vehicle takes off with another three to 400 miles of all-electric range. It's really a driving experience, uncompromised. It's very hard to compete with. It makes so much sense, and it's a reality in LA. And we believe that it could be a reality in the rest of California.

And right now, with the funding coming in from the federal government, this is not the time to step back from light duty infrastructure. This is our moment to make this vision a reality.

Thank you, I really appreciate your testimony. We'll get to questions when we do the whole panel, Senator Archuleta. Next let's hear from Ms. Magnasco from the California Fuels and Convenience Alliance. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. The California Fuels and Convenience Alliance represents fuel marketers, gas station owners and common carriers across the state. Our Members are predominantly small and minority wholesalers and retailers of traditional fuels as well as alternative fuels, including hydrogen. The primary goal of CFCA Members is providing clean, affordable and widely accessible fuels that meet the needs of California drivers and the transportation industry in the state.

CFCA Members have been at the forefront of deploying alternative fuels infrastructure across the state, including hydrogen fueling stations, and want to be an active partner in the state's energy transition plan. Our members, however, have unfortunately been faced with numerous obstacles that have severely hindered their ability to deploy this infrastructure in a timely manner. Permitting delays make deploying this infrastructure slow and painful at best. The process for obtaining all the necessary permits from local agencies is entirely disjointed and usually redundant.

And the duration and experience of getting permits varies widely depending on which city or county you are building in. If you are lucky enough to be building in a locality that supports hydrogen projects, the process will still be slow but manageable. If you are attempting to build where there is no local support for projects, permits can be delayed for years, and in some cases these permit delays have ultimately killed projects entirely.

A standardized checklist that station owners can follow to fast track building these stations would significantly improve this issues. As noted a few times today, another major issue is scope creep, but I won't belabor that point. I think we've hit on it a few times. Utility interconnection delays are also a major inhibitor to infrastructure deployment. Our station owners are completely beholden to utility companies to upgrade our sites, and until that amperage is increased, we can't bring the fueling stations online.

For the stations that are online, there have also been major supply chain issues in the past few years. This is because there's no dedicated hydrogen production for the mobility sector specifically. Unfortunately, the hydrogen that is being produced is not being prioritized for the end consumer or the mobility market. Without incentives for hydrogen to go to stations, producers are going to continue to distribute to large B2B operations. Additionally, when disruptions at hydrogen plants do occur, fueling stations are the first to be taken offline.

Support for hydrogen production specifically for the mobility sector would help to create redundancies in our supply, which would mitigate the impact disruptions have on drivers. Currently, if there is a disruption at a hydrogen plant, stations can be left without fuel for days at a time and-severe case scenario-it's been at a month at a time as well. Moreover, if Sacramento continues to send mixed signals on its support for hydrogen, then businesses will continue to be hesitant to invest in these multi-million dollar projects.

A large majority of station owners have deployed hydrogen fueling stations at their traditional gas station sites have leased a portion of their property to hydrogen fueling station operators. Although this business model of subleasing the space to hydrogen station operators may seem like a less risky option, especially for our smaller station owners, it can still present major disruptions to their business operations, and long construction delays can exacerbate these issues and increase frustrations with deploying this infrastructure.

Many are willing to take on this risk, but we cannot expect businesses to make these major investments today if the state is not even certain that it will continue to support this technology tomorrow. I look forward to continuing to work with the Chair and this committee to address these obstacles and to find solutions that will make the deployment of this infrastructure more streamlined and efficient. Thank you.

Thank you and thank you for the speed reading. You moved this committee along nicely. I appreciate that. So thank you. Greg and Bobby Cane, welcome. I know we've spoken in the past. I really do appreciate you being here to represent the driver community, which unfortunately is often the least sort of attended to component of this market. So interested in your comments. Please proceed.

Thank you. Getting our slides up here.

Thank you. I thank you for inviting Bobby and I here today to speak in the interest of the requisite brevity. We will talk fast. So we're going to be sharing the comments on our slides up there.

Unfortunately you can't see, you can see your screen, right? So we can see them in the back and I can see them up here.

Our talk today will cover three areas: despair, optimism, and how we could do better in the future. And our comments on how we could do better are just based on the man in the street. What we hear when we talk to people.

Without exception, this is what we hear and what we strongly believe. We love the car; we hate the refueling. Very often a significant number of the state's operating stations, not quite sure how many of those are now, are out of commission due to the lack of fuel or equipment failures. The stations that are operating very often have long lines. We took this picture last winter at the West Sacramento Station.

We are that car away in the back, the third from the last and we along with three others were not able to fuel that afternoon and had to stay overnight because the station shut down. So we spent the night in a nearby hotel. The worst times we have seen have been were that last winter and also the last most recent three weeks. Our Marai is at home today for lack of fuel.

A few weeks back, we read a most interesting post on the hydrogen car owner's Facebook and it said, 'no one was hurt but my Marai was recently totaled. While I love the car, I'm secretly glad as I won't have to fight fueling hassles anymore,' which is very sad. Last week we visited the City of Lancaster, the first hydrogen city in the US. They have eleven fuel cell cars but ten of these were purchased used as a result of drivers that have returned those cars.

But like we say, there are real tangible challenges, real tangible reasons for optimism. Hydrogen cars have a driving experience that is nearly synonymous with the gas and diesel cars of today. Additionally, no automaker has walked away from technology, especially Toyota. We see great hope in the future streamlining as we have spoken about today, streamlining of permitting of hydrogen fueling stations. And this technology will work if there are enough stations.

We will look at the South Korea example as what we could strive to accomplish. On this next slide, I'm not going to, it actually is a clip, a video clip. It runs for 30 seconds and I know time is short but what it shows is that during a four-hour period, 48 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can get a full charge or a full driving range in that four-hour period much faster than the electric vehicle alternatives.

Again, this is a slide I probably don't need to dwell on. We've talked about this Senator Archuleta's Senate Bill 1291. We hope to see the very excellent benefits that they have seen from the Assembly Bill 1236 in the previous streamlining of the battery electric vehicles. On this slide, on the right, the blue line represents the situation in South Korea. They have built, started from nearly zero stations in 2017 and now have nearly 200 stations.

The line in brown on the right graph is the timid California pace of hydrogen station construction. On the right graph, the blue line shows the corresponding sales of hydrogen cars in South Korea. There were virtually no fuel cell vehicles on the road in 2017 and now there are nearly 30,000. So if we build it, they will come. One additional note that we found though, is that the worst hydrogen station-to-car ratio in the world. Another is in California; there are too many cars chasing too few stations.

So in advance of this hearing, we met with twelve industry and agency leaders. And as a result of these meetings, there were two recommendations worthy of note. One, or the first, is to create an advisory committee of hydrogen car drivers. Currently the hydrogen industry is well represented at the state level, but hydrogen drivers, not so much. Such a committee would provide timely and credible real-world feedback on how we are doing. Members of the committee would act to liaison with other drivers.

Second, but most importantly, we've heard this a lot today: build more stations. During our meetings to a person, it was agreed that is undeniable that the lack of a reliable and robust hydrogen fueling infrastructure in California is single-handedly thwarting the success of these cars in California's green energy future. What is needed is a steadfast and visionary commitment by the state in line with California's green energy goals, to build 200 hydrogen fueling stations by 2030; 1400 stations by 2045. If we build these, they will come.

Thank you very much for hearing us today.

And thank you. And I am one of those Marai drivers and I have had the same experience as everybody you've described and it's a challenge, to Ms. Bristol's Point. I do love the car and I've never met a driver who does not love the car. But I am equally concerned that there are literally thousands of drivers of these wonderful cars that have good reason to doubt the viability of this system or its ability to support their lives, their transportation needs. And that's really concerning to me.

And I would say really two things. Thank you for all of your comments. One, as we've heard, it's to me inarguable that we need light duty hydrogen to meet our goals and certainly meet them given the aggressive targets and timelines.

Two, equally important to me is I fully believe that California, through AVA and a whole bunch of other programs, made a promise to the industry and to the people who bought these cars that we would commit to building out this platform and ensuring its viability as a really meaningful component of our decarbonization strategy. And I think it is fully reasonable to doubt the sort of integrity of that promise at this point.

It really does concern me because it sends a negative market signal, not just on hydrogen light duty fuel cells. It sends a powerful signal of doubt about all of our other plans as well. And so the sums of money in play are actually quite small against the larger investments that have been made by everybody who bought into that plan based on that promise.

And it's really concerning, and I'd say saddening, the degree to which the conversation right now around the CTP has devolved into kind of 'us versus them,' apparently zero-sum enterprise. And it's become highly ideological in ways that I don't think make sense and actually, again, run counter to kind of the broader goals. And the best example of that is in the station space. We have approximately 8000 gas stations in California. They're not likely to be used well for anything else.

We have millions of cars on the roads and that's the perfect venue, that's the perfect way to assist this transition. But we have treated stations in many ways as adversaries as well. And it's really concerning because more than anything, it doesn't make any sense. So a couple of questions first to Ms. Birdsall, and I know Senator Archuleta has been very involved in this. We have some questions as well.

And I'd also know at this point you're preaching to the choir, but you know that, but we're happy to learn more and be better advocates. So, cost of fuel, right? So the cost of fuel, for reasons that relate mostly to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, have just skyrocketed over the last couple of years. And Cane's going to test this, I think. When I bought my car in 2021, retail cost of hydrogen was about 13 dollars a kilogram.

Right now it's somewhere on average around between 29 and 30 dollars a kilogram. In many ways, you could argue that's not the biggest deal because most of the drivers in California bought vehicles that came with a subsidy in the form of a preloaded debit card that had 15,000 dollars worth of value. But at 2 point, two and a half X per kilo, that's obviously not going to last as long.

So we run the risk right now of many of those drivers coming off of those cards and having to pay with their own money. And what you're looking at is buying a tank of fuel that gets you 300 miles would cost you 50 bucks for a gasoline car, but 120 bucks for hydrogen. And that's actually hard to justify unless you're like a real nerd that just loves your hydrogen experience. And those are the drivers I talk to.

Those are the drivers to which I think the Canes referred. Really concerning. And so how Toyota as an OEM, how are you thinking about that, both as a signal, but also as a predictor of your future market prospects here?

Well, maybe I should start by admitting that I am a hydrogen nerd and yes, we're speaking to the choir. Yeah, we've been watching this very closely. Honestly, the price of the pump is higher than what we anticipated when we first launched the vehicle as well. So when we first came out with the 15,000 dollar fuel card, three years, now we're seeing that the average customer we expect to go through that faster than three years.

So it won't even last the three years of the original intention because the fuel price has skyrocketed so much. To your point, mostly due to LCFS. The market signals that that sends to us is that, again, the the infrastructure providers haven't really done the investments that are that are necessary and it hasn't reached the economies of scale yet to really start to make sense for them to charge as a normal fuel.

They are, to our understanding, trying to recover some of their capital investments in the cost of fuel itself, which is not typically the case for a gasoline station. But you can correct me if I'm wrong there, but as we get to more robust stations as we get those utilization rates up, right, it's hard to make money if part of your business plan is having 98 percent availability, right, throughput.

If your station is only online they're 63% of the time, you're probably not going to hit those throughput numbers that you originally had intended for as well, right, to recover those costs. So we need to see an improvement in the reliability of stations. We need to see more stations. We need to see more throughput, which is going to come through hopefully a lot in the heavy duty and medium duty space.

But I think to your point, overall, the market signals have started to become quite negative and we have made promises and we've committed to this. And it's time for us to really make right on what we have promised to all of our customers.

Appreciate that. Go ahead, Ms. Charvacho.

Thank you, Senator. I just wanted to respond a little bit to the question about the price of hydrogen. I think you've heard LCFS is a big piece of it. We completely agree. I don't recall who said it on the panel, but the fact that the hydrogen that is being used to fuel the Mirais and the Hyundai vehicles, typically it's not being produced for the vehicles.

Right? That is not why this hydrogen is produced. So what we need is, as Ms. Birdsall said, we need more vehicles on the road. We need more fueling stations. Because once there is that demand, there will it's part of it, I think, is a supply and demand issue, right? If there is enough demand for this hydrogen for transportation purposes, then there will be the producers. Our understanding from the Hydrogen Coalition is there are seven projects in the works now to produce renewable hydrogen here in California.

It takes time to get online. One other thing we think will be very helpful, and I know this doesn't help now, but the ARCHES program and getting the scalability and having the use cases for a lot of hydrogen production will help bring down the cost. So I think where the state can help most immediately is with LCFS and trying to address that. That's been, I think, the biggest change; pre and post pandemic is my understanding.

I do appreciate that. Let me give the Canes a chance. Your thoughts as drivers, but particularly as kind of active members of the community-and I actually do think your idea of an advisory committee is a very good one-what if just sort of speaking on behalf of the community, what would it take to kind of reverse the negative sentiment that we've been seeing?

I think at this point we may need to look at a near term tactical plan to address drivers frustrations. We've talked a lot about our strategic plans and they're all great, but there is an incredible amount of frustration as like I said, we're preaching to the choir here. An incredible amount of frustration out there. And there needs to be some something happens soon that will show that we really are serious about making this work.

Agreed. And again, I'm encouraged. It's weird to say that none of the OEMs have actively or explicitly committed to leaving the market, but the prospects for an addressable market aren't so good right, given kind of the current challenges. So there's always that question, especially with kind of ecosystems that have to bootstrap themselves up, right. If you're not moving forward, there's very little room for standing still. Once things start to move in the other direction. It creates often kind of a doom loop.

And we unfortunately saw that with CNG in California a decade ago, so Senator Archuleta. Go ahead. Yes, please. I'm just anxious to talk because I'm so excited that you're all here and I'm glad you're not trying to sugarcoat know it really is important. We have a problem. We made a promise.

Mr. Chair, thank you for grabbing that word out of the sky and putting it right in our faces. We here in California made a promise. We're going to clean the environment. We're going to get rid of the emissions that are just polluting our air and on and on. That was our promise. But we didn't implement the plan properly. And here we have are asking all of you to help us change it and make it right. And we need to do this together. No doubt.

But here's my question. If I invent this and I don't invent this, then how am I going to expect this to be able to be profitable without this? So, Mr and Mrs Toyota, I think you need to listen. You need to put some money on the infrastructure. You need to jump in and be the lifeline. You really got to be the lifeline because you've got so much to lose. I'm assuming you're into the billions of doing this. Electric vehicles, all of us, into the billions.

We're trying to set a precedent here in California that we are the leaders of cleaning our environment, but we've got to invest in it. So who better than the manufacturer? And I was teasing somebody today. If I turned the clock back and I invented Pepsi COLA in a can and nobody had can openers. We don't have can openers. Nobody has can. No one's ever seen a can opener. But if I attach a can opener to every six pack, guess what?

Here's your six pack, here's your can opener. But without this, you can't do this without your investment, your involvement in taking it to that next level and join in. I mean, talk about really jumping in. That's one of the solutions. Because if we don't do that, because you've got more to lose than I think of anyone Toyota. So you need to take that message back. And I know the Governor's listening as he listened to our chair, but we did make a promise.

So let's all join in and try to correct this. But I need Toyota to come up with a solution. So the very next meeting, I'd like to hear what Mr. And Mrs. Toyota have to say. I appreciate that.

Toyota has done a number of things that have gone above and beyond. One, they and other OEMs have subsidized the cost of fuel to a very meaningful level in ways that I don't think we've ever seen with a vehicle launch. Two. And as you probably know, Toyota is a major investor in one of, in fact, the primary supplier of retail fuel in California and among others, including the Japanese Sovereign Investment Fund. It is not for lack of a good initial plan, right?

And there were some external factors like supply chain disruptions, like the LCFS sort of distortions. But the real missing piece is the state. Right? The state's willingness to make good on the promise, right? The state's willingness to continue investing because this plan is necessary, this platform is necessary to fully decarbonize our transportation fleet. And we should be really grateful, especially to drivers who put up with way more by way of inconvenience than I think you could ordinarily expect.

But 15,000 cars is not nearly enough to create a self sustaining platform. And CARB knows that. This I alluded to before, and Miss Elliot and I have talked about it lots. There seems to be a disconnect between some agencies, right? And in fact, the Governor's plan as a whole, where the California Energy Commission has a responsibility, has an explicit responsibility to do the grants that were supposed to stand up 200 stations by now.

And I think it's important to note that there aren't 64 stations right now. On any given day there's, give or take 35, 40 on a regular day. More importantly, the number of nozzles is phenomenally Low because you have certain stations, like West SAG, that have one or two at any given time, and where the equipment to some earlier points, it does not withstand heavy duty cycles. And so you're expected to wait ten minutes between fills.

And I actually went to fill my car on the way to the airport Monday morning and I did not have an hour and a half to wait in front of the eleven cars, behind the eleven cars waiting at UCI in Irvine for the one pump that's at that station. That's not good enough for a critical piece of technology that is integral to our decarbonization plans. And so thank you for helping us elucidate those facts. Next steps are always harder.

And I know that many of you have been involved in the advocacy not only for the CTP reauthorization, but all of the other elements. And again, Senator Archuleta, there's a lot of credit for the Bill last year on permitting expedition. So with that, any other comments from the Senator? I'd just like to thank you all for being here. Everyone in the audience, God bless you. Thank you for listening and bringing this forward. Thank you. And thank you to our panelists. But thank you to everybody.

Thank you staff for helping organize it, particularly Brendan Wong who did a lot of work to get everybody here. And this is the first hopefully of a number of important conversations that Senator Archime and I will hope to facilitate as part of that larger conversation about zero emission vehicles and how to get from here to there. So thank you everybody and I guess thank you to the panelists. I think we do still have to take public comment.

And so Ms. Moderator, if you are there, could you let us know how many people are still waiting on the line? I won't be surprised if there's nobody to comment as part of this committee hearing.

Mr. Chair, we currently have nobody in queue. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to have a question or comment, press 1 0 on your phone's keypad at this time.

And while you do that, let's take public comment from here in the hearing room. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Members first want to thank you for the opportunity to address you and for convening the hearing today. By way of background, ChargePoint was founded in Campbell in 2007 and we're one of the largest EV charging companies in North America with 240,000 ports across the nation and about 60,000 ports here in the state of California. So as was evident at this hearing, we hear you loud and clear. We've heard from drivers and lawmakers alike that EV charging stations need to be more reliable.

We understand that to truly achieve our zero mission vehicle future, EV drivers need to have confidence that when they pull up to an EV charging station that they'll be able to get their charge given. This ChargePoint is absolutely committed to ensuring that our stations are reliable and accessible to all EV drivers.

So with that, we're excited to share that this past July, ChargePoint has launched our new Network Operations Center that will implement 24/7 proactive station monitoring using predictive analytics and leveraging applied machine learning to more rapidly detect station downtime and in turn improve Charger uptime and ensure faster incident response. Additionally, ChargePoint is adding to our training programs for charging, installation, installers and small businesses by introducing a comprehensive training program to certify electrical contractors, ensuring a station is installed correctly and will improve reliability from the start.

These initiatives are coupled with our reliability testing lab where we rigorously test all of our chargers to make them fail in order to learn how to make them more reliable. Once fully implemented, we anticipate that our stations will surpass a 98% uptime across our entire network. So certainly want to say thank you again for convening the hearing and for the opportunity to provide some comments and we look forward to working with the Legislature on developing the best EV charging experience for all EV drivers.

Thank you very much and thank you for your testimony. Next please.

Thank you very much, chair and Members, Damon Conklin with the League of California Cities. Just wanted to briefly underscore some of the comments that were made before, specifically relating to streamlined permitting 1236 from a few years ago, as well as AB 970 and last year's Senate Bill 1291, all kind of geared towards local municipalities and helping to ensure that every level of government is reaching those same transportation and climate goals in an expeditious manner.

We have made some tremendous progress in the last couple of years as I think some of the graphs had shown earlier. One little bit of note though is just those local municipalities that are still in the red in Gobiz's. Some of those local permitting authorities defer to other agencies to permit on their behalf. And so there's I think some more hopeful numbers or rosier numbers than what are being expressed right now by Gobiz's dashboard. So I just want to share that with the Chair and Members.

We have already a deemed approved kind of shot clock and only can look at these permits through health and safety. Our role is really to ensure greater compliance. We've held numerous educational workshops, shown best practices, pointed to toolkits and we'll continue to do so and look forward to working with you and the other Members on this issue.

Thank you and thank you for your testimony. Next please.

Afternoon, Senator Newman. Vince Moramajon with Air Products. Really appreciate you taking the time to pull this together. Thank you Brandon for doing the legwork on this. Air Products is the only US based industrial gas company and the world's largest hydrogen supplier with over 110 facilities globally that are capable of putting out 10,000 tons per day of hydrogen.

Additionally, we are investing $15 billion by 2027 to increase clean hydrogen production, which is going to increase global capacity by 40% above what we currently are able to do today in the State of California. We have significant assets and we actually recently announced a $2 billion investment in a sustainable aviation fuel facility that's going to be coming online in Southern California. We believe that Clean Hydrogen's role in the energy transition is best suited to decarbonizing heavy industry and heavy duty transportation.

And to that latter point we are actively working to convert our global fleet of 2000 trucks to hydrogen fuel cells. We believe it is important to set that example and to lead from the front. And we're working with leading OEMs to advance vehicle developments and infrastructure deployment more quickly. And on the infrastructure side itself, we believe that we need to collectively work together to move more quickly to meet and exceed the state's goals of deploying 200 hydrogen stations by 2030.

However, we think that an important factor needs to be considered when it comes to these hydrogen investments that we talked about, whether it be through CTP or other mechanisms, and have come across a couple of different barriers that have largely resulted in smaller fueling stations and therefore inability to take advantage of greater economics, economics of scale. Right. So one of the first challenges is related to permitting.

The permitting of the hydrogen stations has been challenging and with limited exemptions, which has been resulting in the undersizing of stations. Another challenge is the fact that so much of the Capex funding that comes from the CEC has been incredibly supportive, but it's been solely focused on that goal of number of stations rather than taking a more holistic vision of three primary metrics, which includes the number of stations but also scale and reliability, which is probably the most important one.

And finally, we know that access to land is a challenge, and that's just the way it is when it comes to densely populated areas and are looking to the state's leadership to help figure that out. Ultimately, I think it's time to have a conversation about how these funding mechanisms roll out and how we smooth out that process, once again placing a stronger emphasis in the rules that govern the funding mechanisms related to reliability as well as scale.

So, as we look to work in other sectors related to developing the hydrogen economy, I would flag that we are working to develop robust manufacturing across all areas of the value chain. We're also working on the development of across the board workforce training programs, and we're actually working in close coordination with labor who has actually been supportive of our investments that we are planning for California.

And we also want to make sure, as others have alluded to, that the maintenance facilities that support ZEVs have robust spare parts and are able to actually keep these vehicles and the infrastructure on the road. So, as a society, we're ultimately trying to replicate in two decades what has taken 150 years to develop in terms of an energy supply chain for transportation. And so we need to all come together, as Senator Archuleta was saying, to make this vision a reality.

As a company that is literally investing billions of dollars into California, we stand ready to do our part and look forward to working with you to make all this a reality. Thank you.

I appreciate it. Thank you. Next, please.

Yep. Hi there. I'm Renee Samson. I'm the Director of Public Policy for FreeWire Technologies. FreeWire Technologies is an energy storage, integrated DC, fast charging company and software company. I'm also here as a representative of the EVCA Association, as there's several Members Member companies that were in this room today. And so we also, as Derek from ChargePoint pointed out, we hear you. And we are, as an industry, actively working on many of the concerns that were discussed here today.

A couple of the things that came to mind when some of those concerns were raised, one relates to warranties. And one of the things that I would encourage with any of the new programs coming out, particularly incentive programs being funded in part by state funds, is to ensuring that we're incentivizing warranties and longer warranties. So three years just is not sufficient and our customers should have the ability to be able to purchase warranties that will last for the life of the station.

I'm also going to mention an idea that I've brought up several times with the CEC and now with the EPA grant program that may come out next year if it's refunded, and that is a rip and replace. One of the problems that we see quite often are these older stations that have gone out of warranty and the owners of those stations can't necessarily afford to fix them.

And for many of us who have business models where we sell hardware, we as a company do not own that hardware. We don't even have the ability to go in there and just take that station out to clear our name. So we would encourage the CEC to consider a rip and replace program that would replace some of those lower power 50 kilowatt stations with the higher power stations. I also did want to mention the NAX issue, the connector issue.

The EV perspective on that is just one side of the coin. We as an industry have all made very affirmative statements that we do follow the market and that we do plan to work with industry and with the standard bodies. The SAE was mentioned earlier in order to put out a safe and reliable product. So as it exists now, there is no adapter that can be utilized in order to plug your NAX into like a CCS, et cetera.

However, it's a product that we must now develop that will work on every single car, as was alluded to earlier, not just one brand. So there's a standards process that that product must go through. And we as individual companies also need to have our accountability on testing and ensuring that that product is going to work every time that someone comes in and pulls up. So we very much, as an industry, support those standards once they're passed.

And we urge that the state doesn't try to rush us into something that is just not technologically feasible at this time.

I appreciate that.

Yep. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Samson. Next, please.

Good afternoon, Senators Newman and Senator Cortese. Cory Bullis on behalf of Flo EV charging. We are a charging station manufacturer and network operator founded in 2009. You heard some comments today from the representative from Kia about charger uptime not being really well defined, well measured, and ultimately, thus well understood. You also heard referenced in today's discussion, mr. Ting and Ms.. Ray's, Bill Assembly Bill 2061 from last year to increase charger uptime and reliability broadly.

Charger Help, one of the panelists today and Flo EV charging were proud co sponsors of that legislation from last year. And I would just share for the committee's background that that legislation really does try to holistically address charger reliability by specifically defining or providing guidance to the Energy Commission on how to define uptime. It provides guidance on how to measure uptime and ultimately has lots of requirements in it related to uptime data reporting to the Energy Commission.

So those issues we feel, are being well covered, and we're looking forward to seeing the implementation of this legislation. Also, in response to Senator Cabayaro's question about where do we go from here? What policies are perhaps needed to continue to increase charger uptime? We would say at this time that letting the AB 2061 process play out is going to be a critical first step. We need to see those regulations get published and finalized.

We need to see what the data starts to say about charger reliability issues. There's going to be a lot of nuance there that the Energy Commission will have to parse through. That's going to be a critical foundation that we need to get through first before we can understand, at least as it relates to charger reliability and charger uptime, where do we go from there? So we urge the committee to follow that process closely. Thank you.

Thank you. And next witness, please. Last guy, last guy. Welcome.

Hello, Senator Newman. Thank you very much for this hearing. And thank you for making this hearing a safe space for hydrogen nerds very early. My name is Glenn Rambach. I've been involved in energy development since the hydrogen and fuel cells since the early 90s. In November 2015, I became the first retail customer of the West Sachs Station. That was the only station north of Los Angeles for several months.

Refueling was a quick, yet lonely process, but who would have thought that that we would call the good old days? But it is the same as the presentation we heard from Charger Help was very encouraging in the EV session. We need something equivalent of hydrogen reliability czar someone with authority, opportunity and budget to organize and help the resources necessary to solve this. I think that's going to be done just by virtue of this meeting. There seems to be a course that's chartered to solve this problem. I really appreciate that, and I look forward to seeing the solution path.

And I thank you and I commend you since 2015. That's impressive. So that concludes the comment within the chamber. Let's go to the phones. Mr. Moderator, I know we have some number of people on the line. How many, if you don't mind me asking?

We currently have eight people.

Eight. And so in the interest of time, and I do appreciate everybody waiting, I'd ask you to limit your comments to a minute each, please, so please proceed.

Line 56, go ahead.

Hi. Thank you so much, Senator Newman and everyone, for bringing this together. This is Jennifer Hamilton. I'm calling in two capacities. One is the Deputy Director of the California Hydrogen Business Council which is the oldest and largest hydrogen trade association where I will say that hydrogen needs to work across the board in all end uses and all applications. And as a consumer and Toyota Marai customer and a fueling customer in the Sacramento region, I will say that we desperately need the CTP reauthorization.

We need to continue funding these stations and getting this infrastructure on the ground as has been discussed and the points made. But I would support the comments from my colleagues earlier and especially right now when two thirds of our fueling network is non operable and we are relying on that single West Sacramento station for our fueling needs and it's not sustainable for the thriving public in the Sacramento area. So thank you very much again.

And I do hope also that we can be more cohesive in our messaging around zero emission vehicles that we can address or alleviate the bias that has been seen over the years towards one technology over another and recognize that zero emission vehicle does not equal one or the other. It's both.

Right. I appreciate that and thank you for calling in and nice to hear from you. Next please.

Line 46, go ahead, please.

Hello all. My name is Alexia Melendez Martineau, and I'm representing Plug In America today. We're a nonprofit organization that represents the voice of the EV consumer. We have EV drivers that are Members of ours all over the country, many of whom are concentrated in the state of California. We're also based out of LA. And thank you so much for the opportunity to comment here today. I'm here to share insights that we've collected on issues and opportunities with our current public EV charging options.

It's really exciting to see such a focus being placed on the future of this system and how to really make it work for the industry and for consumers. One thing that we've learned through our 2023 EV driver survey is that electric vehicle owners, they love their vehicles, they are smitten with the vehicles and they fully intend to continue driving electric.

But while they really love the vehicles and the technology and the opportunities that it offers, they voice significantly more frustration with fast charging infrastructure than the previous year with the most common issues that we've seen being broken or nonfunctional chargers or even too few charging locations.

So, given this feedback from current and prospective EV drivers, we'd like to highlight the importance of not only creating a prevalent network of chargers, but also ensuring that those chargers are both accessible and reliable one way we see charging accessibility can be improved is through streamlining payment systems. Streamlining these systems for consumers can help ensure that all consumers can use the available infrastructure, and currently, chargers often require or use Memberships Apps and unique cards to initiate payments.

Consumers should be able to pay for charging as easily as they pay for gas and plugin. America has been a longtime advocate for having more ubiquitous accessible payment options like the ability to use a credit card at charging stations. Additionally, in order to improve access, addressing roaming challenges the key component so that customers can charge their vehicles anywhere in a way that is consistent and convenient.

We've long recognized the need to further develop and improve the public charging network, and we look forward to continue supporting the adoption of EVs and deployment of needed reliable charging infrastructure. We're here to support with any resources that we have available to improve EV access and the charging experience for Californians. Thank you again to the committee for considering our comments today to help support consumers and advance the EV transition. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next caller, please.

Line 60. Go ahead.

Good afternoon, Chair. My name is Mariella Ruacho from the American Lung Association. Transportation is the number one resource reason California has the most polluted air in the nation and too many of our vulnerable communities bear the greatest health harm. The Lung Association State of the Air report confirms that the need for major shifts to zero emission our progress on clean air is increasingly at risk by both climate change and inconsistent support for long term investments.

Our most recent report on zero emission vehicles found that California could gain $169,000,000,000 in health benefits, avoid 15,000 polluted related deaths, and avoid hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks by shifting to zero emissions. We appreciate the hearing today and call on the Senate to move Assembly Member Rayes and Senator Gonzalez AB two four, one Bill forward when it comes to the Senate to ensure stable funding and more certain paths to support clean air policies. Thank you.

Thank you. Next caller, please.

Line 50. Go ahead, please.

Hello, my name is Tracy Frank and I'm in my Mirai right now. I've driven one for over five years and this car is phenomenal. I love it. I want to continue to be a part of zero energy solution. And having said that, as was discussed today, the hydrogen infrastructure is quite abysmal. The inconveniences are many. Where I get my car service is 70 miles away.

But improvements in the availability of hydrogen, the reliability of the station, and lowering the cost of retail hydrogen, which has doubled in the past six months, are all critical for the future of these cars and the expansion of the people who drive them. I'm grateful to Toyota for subsidizing me driving this car in the state of California for additional rebates. It's not one particular company's fault that this experiment isn't working as well as it could because there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen. And I'm hoping that you will help with that organization and focus to keep hydrogen alive.

I appreciate that. Thank you. An extra credit for calling from an actual fuel cell electric vehicle. Next caller, please.

Line 62, please go ahead.

Hello. My name is Robert...I've been driving a Mirai now for years. The current state of hydrogen is that it's dying. When I first got my Mirai was $13 a kilo. Today it's $36 a kilo. That means it cost me to drive 240 miles. $180. My hummer is 50% cheaper. I bought the Mirai to replace the Hummer. The Hummer is actually way cheaper to drive than the Mirai.

Now, the Facebook group I belong to, which is a Hydrogen Mirai user group, it's just full of people in misery because the pumps are always down. The price just seems to every little thing. True Zero raises the price of hydrogen. And now it's to the point that it's completely unacceptable for 240 miles for $180 is just not doable. I don't know what world you live in where that's doable. True Zero has constantly, through this whole thing, treated us customers horribly.

And as a taxpayer, I think we should really audit them to see what they're doing, all the money that they're getting from us because their equipment is constantly broken down. And right now, I'm in a rental car, thanks to Toyota. Toyota has been awesome, by the way. I'm in a rental car because the hydrogen infrastructure is completely broken. 100%. In fact, we're out right now, and that's why I'm in a rental car. And that's all I got to say, is something has to be done with the infrastructure. I love the hydrogen, I love the Mirai, but the infrastructure is completely dying.

I appreciate that. Points well taken and certainly seconded by others prior to your call. The next caller, please.

Line 64, please go ahead.

Hi. My name is John Michael Parkin. Also calling from my Mirai. I produced and directed a documentary called At War with the Dinosaurs that takes a look at what's going to replace fossil fuels and become the successor to fossil fuels. And one thing while we were producing the doc that became readily apparent is that every single automotive OEM that we talked to and we talked to all of them, we talked to them a number of times.

They said they wanted to build fuel cell electric vehicles. And the reason they expressed this both on and off camera is because of the fact that they could build larger vehicles that were heavier, that had much farther ranges. And they also said that they could drive down the price of a fuel cell electric vehicle faster than they could a battery electric vehicle. And I'm not sure you can look at any technology cooperation commitments today and see in disparate industries where the same.

Types of things that have happened in the automotive industry where all of these companies and corporations that are typically in competition with each other are now cooperating each other, right? Toyota is cooperating with BMW. Honda is building a joint facility with GM in Brownsville, Michigan to create fuel cells. And there's many other examples as well. And the bottom line of all this is consumers need choice. They need to be able to choose the type of EV that they're going to drive.

Is it going to be a ZEV fuel cell, electric vehicle or both? And there are 31 million registered vehicles in California and it's not possible to charge all of these from the grid. And it's wonderful the fact that you can charge at home, but maybe there's something to the fact that we can still create infrastructure in the same way we did for the last hundred years.

Because if you look at it from the perspective of just Tesla drivers alone, every two to three days, if those Tesla drivers are paying for their own charging infrastructure at home, which they are, I know everyone likes to say that they give away that infrastructure for free every two to three days. Those drivers are building the equivalent of a four port hydrogen station. So that onus that commitment is on those particular EV drivers.

And so I'm just hoping that the same consideration can be made when talking about the funding for infrastructure and commitment can be made for fuel cell stations as they can for bev for better electric stations. Because of the fact that a four port station over a seven hour period distributed 225 hydrogen. That was the equivalent of 1.2 energy, and the equivalent of that is 20 Tesla superchargers running full tilt.

Right. Appreciate it. Going to have to ask you to wrap up your comments.

Okay, that's pretty much it. I just want to say that I appreciate the fact that you guys are giving a lot of consideration to what's going on and if we could step up infrastructure deployment in California, I'd appreciate it.

I appreciate that and I agree. And the goal of this hearing was to create a forum to have exactly that conversation. Any other callers on the line?

We have two left in queue. Mr. Chair, line 69 please go ahead.

Hi there. My name is Andrea Hedstrom and I'm representing the organization Goat Farmers for Common Sense. And I'll be reading from a California Globe article by Kitty Grimes dated April 5.

Ms. Hedstrom, I'm sorry, I'm going to give you a minute and a half, so please continue.

Well, a lot of the other callers got a lot more than that, but I also acknowledge that you said the limit was 60 seconds. I appreciate that, I appreciate the latitude.

Certainly, go ahead.

California can't power the state. I'm sorry, what? I'm having a hard time using my time well...

I said please proceed. I said please proceed, Andrea.

There's a lot of feedback on the line, so I'm having difficulty exercising my constitutional rights to express myself. But that being said, California can't power the state, but is still forging ahead with electric truck mandates. Maybe California should figure out how to fix our electric grid before we outlaw gas, cars and trucks. Reading in this article a bit further down, Michael Schellenberger has been warning California's bet on renewables and its shunning of natural gas and...

Nuclear is directly responsible for the state's blackouts and high electricity prices. California's owners, operators of trucks, small business owners, and farmers and ranchers whose livelihoods is tied to having safe, affordable and reliable trucks for transporting goods, were targeted by the California Air Resources Board and are required to install diesel particulate filters in all commercial trucks. And now California is heading straight into even more commercial trucking regulations with electric trucks.

The disconnect between California policies and politics are at such odds with the rest of the country, it's a wonder that the other 49 states haven't excommunicated the Golden State from the union. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced their approval of California's advanced clean truck regulations, officially allowing California and six other states a waiver to enforce a 2020 rule, not law ramping up sales of zero emission trucks and big rigs, including half of all heavy duty trucks sold by 2035.

Confirming that this is ordered by the California Air Resources Board. The CARB said promoting the development and use of advanced clean truck will help CARB achieve its emission reduction strategies, as outlined in the State Implementation Plan, sip sustainable Freight Action Plan, Senate Bill SB 350 and Assembly Bill AB 32 in October of last year, more than Saturday.

I'm going to have to ask you to wrap up, please.

Representative, you don't have to ask me to wrap up. You let others speak longer and I appreciate the same courtesy.

I've given you the courtesy, however, as-

We talked about in the coffee shop the other day, I still haven't been able to address the fact that there's no such thing as an electric tractor.

I appreciate that. You're well over two minutes.

Other people have spoken longer. Well, you know what? You don't have to limit it. You're chair. You can let me speak longer and I certainly have a lot more to say.

I appreciate that. I don't know what to say.

You don't know what to say? Just like you did in the coffee shop.

I know what I wanted to say. So if you could please wrap up.

Dealing with these hardcore regulations. You're really affecting people's lives.

I'm going to take that as your close. Thank you. Thank you for the call. That's well over three minutes. Thank you, Ms. Hedstrom. Next caller, please.

Hello. My name is Omar Samila. I am from Southern California Orange County. And of course, like everyone mentioned here, like the gentleman. True zeros for treatment of customers, and of course, their stations are constantly down. And of course, the fact that we have too few hydrogen stations in the state of California alone, and not to mention, like 50% are usually online. This needs to change. And, of course, 2025 is not too far away. 200 stations outlined by the Governor in 2018.

Line 70, please go ahead.

I'm not sure how feasible that is now, given that the current pace and all the permitting, hopefully that will improve over time. And, yeah, it seems like permitting is the real issue for these hydrogen stations. And of course, the high cost and the worrisome is, of course, true. Zero is $36 per kilogram. I'm filling up the use here because I pay $10 less to fill up. It's terrible. I cannot take this car anywhere. I have to drive it within my area, like, 50 miles.

Appreciate that.

I'm just going to wrap it up there.

No, thank you. As a fellow Mirai driver from Orange County, I appreciate your comments. And do we have any other callers on the line?

Mr. Chair, there are no additional callers in queue.

All right, I thank all the callers. I apologize to any caller who felt they did not have enough time, and unfortunately, this committee went well over its allotted timeline, and that is the reason for that. It's not a preference for any particular caller. So thank you, everybody. Thus concludes what I consider a very good and thorough informational hearing on transitioning to a zero emission energy future. I do appreciate all of the witnesses, all of the testimony, and particularly the input participation of my colleagues and staff. So thanks with that. The committee hearing is adjourned. Thank you.