Assembly Standing Committee on Utilities and Energy

Good morning. I call this Joint Hearing of the Select Committee on Electric vehicles and Charging Infrastructure and a Committee on utilities and energy to order. We are here for an informational hearing to discuss electric vehicles or EV charging, and before we begin, I just have some housekeeping to go over first. There will not be phone testimony.

Public comment is either going to be in person or via email to the Committee. Additionally, I will maintain decorum during the hearing. We will not permit conduct that disrupts or otherwise impedes the hearing. Any individual who's disruptive may be removed from the room. And with that, let's begin. So the transportation sector is currently the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in California, and evs will be critical to meeting our zero emission goals.

The prior Select Committee hearing focused on where chargers are being built and who's left out how the state is responding, and understanding that to have an equitable EV transition means more than chargers, but investing in electrified public transit infrastructure and more. However, as passenger vehicles account for around one quarter of California's ghgs, barriers to rapid EV adoption need to be addressed next to cost, which is decreasing availability and reliability of charging networks are the biggest concerns folks have when considering switching to an EV.

And recent experiences of EV owners demonstrate a troubling trend in charger reliability shortfalls. And I'd also note we've seen that EV vehicles are the selling of EV vehicles or EV vehicle sales have been down, and we know that one of the big concerns leading to that is people's concerns about range anxiety. We all know about range anxiety up here.

My colleagues on the Select Committee no doubt have a story or two to share about their own charging experiences, as do I, and our focus will be to delve into the many aspects of EV charging difficulties consumers are facing, what government and industry are doing in response, and how the Legislature can engage to help create greater certainty for consumers. With that, I'd like to thank you again, Chair Petrie Norris, for your collaboration on this hearing, and we'll turn it over to you for opening remarks.

Thank you, chair Schiavo. And I want to just start by thanking our Select Committee chair and her team for taking the lead on this Joint Hearing and for all of the great work that you've been doing in this space. We all know that transportation electrification is absolutely critical if California is going to deliver on our ambitious climate goals. And I think that the importance of charging infrastructure really cannot be overstated. So, yeah, EV owners in the room.

So I think, as the chair said, we've all got one of those stories, right? You're 20 miles from home and you got 10 miles of range. You pull over to the side of the road, you find a station, a charging station on your way. You're delighted. You pull in, and it's just as you're about to exhale and say, zero my God, this thing is broken. It's every EV owner's worst nightmare.

And I think that the reality is, if we don't fix this now, if we don't fix this fast, we are not going to encourage EV adoption across the State of California. And our Committee, the Utilities and Energy Committee, has been working in partnership with Cherishiavo and the Select Committee focused on unraveling some of the issues and challenges and obstacles towards the deployment of EV chargers, namely infrastructure buildout and distribution planning.

As the background paper highlights, it remains a major concern how vast and equitable adoption of evs is going to be hindered by a public charging system that is inoperable, inaccessible, and ultimately unreliable. This is just too important. We have to get this right. And so really looking forward to our conversation today and to this discussion to identify remaining obstacles and what we can do as policymakers to break those down and ensure that we build California's confidence in the reliability and accessibility of our EV infrastructure. So with that, thank you, chair Schiavo.

Thank you. And I want to open it up to Members if you have anything.

Thank you. I want to thank both of you for putting together this hearing. Last year I penned an op ed that was titled a vote of no confidence for EV charging companies. And much of my thinking on this issue remains the same. I'm still very concerned about this area and how we can demonstrate to consumers that evs are viable options as we move forward.

Right now in California, as both of you have said, we do not have the consumer buy in that's necessary for us to meet our 2035 EV goals. As an EV driver, I am also frustrated by the lack of reliable charging infrastructure. And I'm not alone. Several media outlets, including the LA Times, have published articles reflecting on the lack of consumer confidence that is jeopardizing our climate goals.

The glaring lack of sound charging infrastructure continues to keep evs out of reach for many Californians and deters us from meeting these important goals and look forward to the hearing today.

Thank you. So with that, we will begin our first panel, and I'll ask the panelists to all come up and provide opening statements, and then we can turn to Committee for questions. We'll start with Commissioner Monahan and then move to Dr. Tal, Director of EV research at UC Davis. Hello, Commissioner. How are you?

Good morning. I do have some slides. There we go. And I hope you all can see the slides. Or do you have copies?

We do have copies also.

Oh, great.

And we can see them.

Thank you. Well, good morning, chair Schiavo, chair Petrie Norris, and Members of the Committee on Utilities and Energy, and Members of the Select Committee on evs and charging infrastructure. So I'm Patty Monahan, Commissioner at the California Energy Commission, and I'm the lead for transportation. I'm here with EV charging reliability subject matter expert Taylor Marvin.

When it comes to zero emission transportation, the Energy Commission is responsible for analysis of charging and hydrogen infrastructure needs, providing funding for the buildout of zero emission vehicle, or ZEV, as we like to call it, refueling infrastructure and advancing a more reliable fueling network. I appreciate the partnership with the Legislature on how we can improve the charging experience for EV owners. We need to rapidly build out charging infrastructure while simultaneously improving the reliability of the network.

Our vision is that EV drivers will be able to conveniently charge their vehicles whether they are at home, at work, or on a road trip. This vision has helped shape the state's investment in EV charging deployment in recent years. However, we recognize this vision has yet to be achieved. There simply aren't enough chargers to meet the growing demand, and there aren't. And the ones that are available are too often broken or they don't successfully charge the vehicle. The next slide, please.

So here's the State of the current charging network. We have 94,000 public and shared private chargers as of July of last year, and shared private means chargers that are located behind a fence. So this could be at a workplace or at a multifamily dwelling or in a parking garage. The CEC has funded about 9% of the total chargers. Ratepayer dollars through utilities have funded another 30%, and other state agencies and local districts have provided about 2%.

So in total, the publicly funded chargers is about 40% of the total. That leaves 60% of the chargers that are built through private sector settlement agreements like electrify America Investments and other sources. Next slide, please. So we have to do an analysis every two years of the amount of chargers needed to meet state goals. We recently, actually, just last week, we approved the most recent AB 2127 report. And let me just walk you through what this chart shows.

So we have the 94,000 chargers available today that I mentioned from the last slide. With existing state funding, we should be able to reach the state goal of having 250,000 chargers deployed. Our analysis, the last bar is the analysis that we just conducted, and it indicates we need 1 million chargers by 2032 million by 2035. So basically we need a tenfold ramp up in the next seven years for chargers and it continues like this. Of course, the state cannot be responsible.

State funding cannot be responsible for all of those chargers. The majority has to come from the private sector and is coming from the private sector. Next slide, please. So one of the main sources of state funding for chargers is the CEC's clean transportation program. The Clean Transportation program was originally authorized in 2008. The program provided and continues to provide about $100 million per year for the Energy Commission to issue grants to diversify transportation fuels beyond petroleum.

Thanks in large part to folks in this room and the administration's partnership with the Legislature, the Clean Transportation program was reauthorized last year through Assembly Bill 126. This Bill extended the program through 2035 and directed the CEC to focus on zero emission transportation. AB 126 also required the Energy Commission to regulate the uptime of stations that are funded by the state and by ratepayers, and to consider additional metrics to improve charger reliability.

More to come on this in the past several years, the Legislature and the Governor have provided additional onetime funding for zev infrastructure through the annual budget. The total amount of funding through the annual budget, including the governor's proposed budget from January this year, is 3.3 billion. This slide shows some of the highlights of the program over its history, including providing funding for nearly 25,000 passenger vehicle chargers. Some of those are still being built. We've just given the money out for that funding.

130 hydrogen stations, providing 40 grants for zev related manufacturers. I like to say California is the new Michigan when it comes to ZEV manufacturing, workforce training for over 32,000 people, and leveraging over $1.0 billion in other funding. Next slide AB 126 requires the CEC to ensure that at least 50% of program funding benefits Low income and disadvantaged communities. We're in the process of defining metrics for what constitutes a benefit. Our historical investments have exceeded the 50% target when it comes to project location.

Nearly 60% of our funding has been in Low income and disadvantaged communities. And when you remove statewide investments like workforce development, the number increases to nearly 70%. And we recognize, though, that we need to be vigilant to ensure that state dollars support a more equitable clean energy future, particularly in Low income, rural and disadvantaged communities. Next slide, please. So just last week, in addition to approving the 2127 report, we also approved a $1.9 billion investment plan for the clean transportation program.

You can see there's four buckets of different investments, but I'm really going to focus on the blue highlighted one about access for charging infrastructure for passenger vehicles. As you can see, we're allocating 658,000,000 to build out light duty charging infrastructure using funding for fiscal years 23 through 27. I also want to talk about two additional pots of money, which are outlined in green below. Our investment the first is the national electric vehicle infrastructure project, or Nevi. It's federal funding to build out fast charging infrastructure.

California is expected to receive 384,000,000 from this program this year. The program is entirely dedicated to passenger vehicle fast chargers, but in the future we have the option to expand to medium and heavy duty ZEV infrastructure as well. The second little tranche is something that's been in the media lately, which is the federal EV charging reliability and accessibility accelerator, or EV raw, which is a lot easier to say. California received over $60 million in federal funding to repair and replace broken chargers. Next slide, please.

Now let me turn to CEC actions to improve charger reliability. In 2021, we started incorporating reliability requirements into the grants we Fund. These include a minimum 97% uptime requirement, maintenance, and reporting. The Federal Government followed California's lead and is also requiring at least a 97% uptime in the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program. Last year, we provided a grant to UC Davis, and Gil Tall is here to talk about that to study charger reliability across the state.

We're going to use interim results from this study to evaluate our activities in reliability and see what more we can do to improve reliability. We're also going to use that data to daylight how different charging providers are performing. Next slide please. This is the slide I'm going to spend the most time on. It's complicated, but I think it's really important to understand the landscape.

So AB 2061, which was passed in 2022, requires the CEC to develop uptime, record keeping and reporting standards for EV chargers installed in and after 2024 that were state or ratepayer funded. So remember, that's that 40% slice of the current chargers. In September 2023, we published draft standards to meet the reporting requirements. The draft included reporting standards for all public and shared private chargers so we could have a more accurate count of chargers deployed and a better understanding of how network chargers are being utilized.

The draft also proposed that publicly funded chargers would provide data on successful charges. The proposal included data sharing agreements that should improve drivers ability to navigate to functioning chargers. This aligns with the requirements of AB 126, and I'd like to thank our Assembly Member, Erwin for all she's done to advance this. AB 126 gives the CEC more direction on our role to advance EV charging reliability.

It requires the Energy Commission to develop uptime standards for state and ratepayer funded electric vehicle chargers installed in 2024 and beyond, which would apply for a minimum of six years. It also allows the CEC to consider additional reliability metrics, including, but not limited to, success rate, to initiate customer satisfaction and the number, nature, or length of events that interrupt service. We're in the process right now of developing that second draft, so I can't speak specifically to what's in it.

Our plan is to release that second draft sometime late next month or early in April, and then I welcome comments and engagement with the Legislature on our draft. Our enforcement authority is something we are exploring, but at a minimum, it includes the ability to insert funding clawback provisions in agreements with providers that are awarded state funding, and to refer noncompliance with the EV charging regulations to the Attorney General's Office for potential action. Next slide, please.

So I want to conclude by thanking the Legislature for its really important role in improving the customer charging experience. AB 2061 and AB 126 have given the CEC direction and authority to improve the EV charging experience, particularly for state and ratepayer funded chargers installed in 2024 and beyond. As I noted in my presentation, about 60% of today's chargers are not publicly funded and they will not be covered by the performance standards, including uptime.

They will be covered by some of just the record keeping and reporting out. So there will be data from them. It's just we can't hold them to a performance standard. However, we expect our standards will help raise expectations for all chargers in the state. In addition, daylighting data on the performance of charging providers will help customers make more informed choices and ideally, will foster more competition for the most reliable EV charging system. Thank you and I welcome your questions and comments.

Thank you so much. And we'll turn it over to Dr. Tal now and then open it up to questions from the Committee.

Good Morning Church Gabo chirp, Patri Norris Committee Members, thank you for having me here. My name is Gil Tal. I'm the Director of the Electric Vehicle Research center at UC Davis and a Professor at UC Davis. And I will use my 5 minutes today to present results from our 17 years of studying evs, not just from one specific study, doing everything between interviews and surveys and big data analysis to look at this issue of accessible dependable and affordable charging options for all. And next slide, please.

I will start by saying that my comments are a little bit about topics that we need to consider further down the road and they are not replacing in any way or supposed to talk about slowing down or changing the need for installing many, many more chargers. As the CEC is doing and all the work that the CEC is doing now, it's about the next steps and not instead of what's happening now.

I will focus a little bit on these issues that the consumer experience and all of us in the room that kind of talk about that sometimes it's much harder to measure and regulate what we call the errors that are invisible to the CPO, to the charging providers. And we'll start with the next slide, please. The issues that are not a technology issue, but more policy issue. On the left side you see chargers that were covered by snow after Caltrans were plowing the road.

The road was plowed, but the chargers are on a private land and Caltrans will not plow it. And as long as we don't have good discussion of who and how, they will not be accessible. On the right side, we see chargers here around our capital that are closed on weekends and nights. So they can be used by commuters, but they cannot be used by local people who buy evs and would like to charge overnight or on the weekend because the parking garage is locked.

Again, a policy, regulations, legislation that we need to work on to connect these dots between who own the charger, who operate the charger, and who make sure that we can get to the charger. So these are additional policies that we're really far from having it. And I think that a lot of the accessibility in California right now is limited by these kind of issues, not just technology.

Going to my next slide, I would like to point on the need to maybe reconsider in the future if 97% is the right number for everywhere in California. We have a full papers. In my notes there are more numbers, but this is an example. On the right side, we have 100 chargers in the same location and maybe down in the Bay Area or a very dense area, and maybe 10 of them are always offline because this is the easiest way to fix them.

Only send the technician when the tens one is broken. So that's a 90% uptime. On the left side we see this road from reading to Eureka. And if that road will have 97% uptime, it means the 10 days of the year the charges will be off and 10 days of the year people who live there will not be able to use this road. So that's 97% uptime for this area. We may need much higher than 97% for a higher density.

We may need lower than that to save money. Again, I'm not saying tomorrow, but considering down the road will be an important topic. Now the next slide will say why it's so important. We strongly believe that strong business model is the best way to get reliable infrastructure. The charging providers need to make money on operating them. Otherwise we always keep chasing the problem. Past trends show a risk of charger abandonment post contract.

If it's five years or 10 years, the one that makes money will be operating the one that lose money may not be there when we need them. And we have enough experience from previous cases. So we need to think about new way to contract charges down the road. And I'm not talking about 24, 25, 26 but 2030 and even later down the road, build, operate, transfer, pay for a service instead of paying for hardware. All of these things need to come down the road.

We need to study how it's being done in other countries. Norway for example is ahead of us and others that are already exploring these kind of business models. Unfortunately, that's lead to my next slide and next question that we need to open, which is if we open it to new business models and new ways to make revenue, should we consider some price control?

Today in California, if you pay more than 60 cents per kilowatt hour, you probably should drive the hybrid version of your car, not the electric version of your car. And we are going this way when the charging infrastructure business model is pretty rough. That's why I have this gumball machine on the right. It's a rough business. You don't sell an expensive commodity, but in order to do it, you need to sell prime options and sell more.

And that can create problem for communities that depend on public charges that don't have other option, cannot install solar panels, and they will need these charges all the time. So ideas like dynamic pricing, premium services and so on are good for the business model, but may need to be considered as the impact of disadvantaged communities and lower income people.

And I think that my last slide and I will not go over all of these models that I talk about will add one more consideration, which is charging network neutrality. In order to make money, we need to sell the clear or the TCA, like the fast lane. That's a way that we make money in the US. But again, if some communities, if I buy a 10 years old used EV and that's the only charger I can use.

Is it okay that I will always get a lower service? And how much we allow selling better service and how much we would like to regulate it is a question that we will need to answer in the future. And I will stop here and be happy to take any questions. Thank you.

Thank you so much. So I'll open it up to Committee Members. Folks have questions. I see. Assembly Member Irwin.

Thank you. All right. I really appreciate this conversation again. And, Director Monahan, everything that you are doing over at the CEC, I think you definitely understand the urgency of this. So I understand that the CEC is proposing to rank charging companies based on reliability. Has there been any thought about attaching funding based on these rankings?

At this point, we're just committed to doing the rankings, but we are committed to thinking through how best to utilize that to improve the reliability of the network. So we haven't actually moved to that next step, but we're open to all ideas about how we could use that data, not just to sunlight it, which I think competition alone will provide some incentive for reliability, but also to use it. And so welcome ideas in that.

Okay, great. And then we talked a lot about broken chargers. If chargers are installed with state money, who is responsible for fixing them?

So since 2021, we have been requiring a 97% uptime in our grants. And so the grantee is responsible for ensuring meeting that requirement that will go forward with our reliability standards that will be not applied not just to the chargers that we Fund, but to any ratepayer funded chargers as well.

Okay, great. And then I've been through the whole charging an EV and driving in a Tesla, and, of course, there's such an ease with the plug and charge model. And so what's necessary for us to get.

So I know we'll have Tesla speaking soon, so I don't want to speak on their behalf. But what I'd say is that Tesla is a good model of how when you own the vehicle and you own the infrastructure, it's a lot easier to make it interoperable. And as Tesla opens up their network, they'll encounter the same, I think, some of the challenges with interoperability that face other charging providers.

But one of the keys to moving forward with this future, where everybody has a plug and charge capability, I mean, there's standardization, and we're doing passing standards that would open the door to a plug and charge future. We need more roaming agreements, and we need a way to encourage evsps to have more roaming agreements and to give consumers that plug and charge experience, which really is superior.

And do you think when you're talking about roaming agreements that the Legislature should mandate roaming agreements?

I cannot speak to what the Legislature is doing. I can say that we're exploring what we can do with our authority.

Okay. Thank you so much. And then I just have one comment for Director Tal. I hadn't really thought about these reliability metrics and how maybe they can be different for cost when you have cost considerations. But don't we need a better definition for uptime? And maybe you can explain that because in our last meeting we had a long discussion about how in some ways it's almost meaningless.

Absolutely. It's not meaningless, but it flawed for sure. And we do need a better definition. And that's why I said that this is a long term kind of goal, because we have to figure out first what is it that we are regulating before we can go there. We work for the CEC and other grants to try and reconcile between what we measure right now as uptime and consumer experience and close this gap. And it will take some time, but we are working on it here.

Right. Thank you and appreciate your work here. Both of you have done outstanding work. Thank you.

Thank you. Assemblymember Wood.

Yes, thank you for the information this morning. I think four of us anyway, are electric car owners. So we have a strong interest in this. And I will say, I own a Tesla. I've owned it for five and a half years. And it was a difficult decision to buy an electric car considering the district that I represent, which is one of the are just in California on the north coast. So that drive from Eureka to across to reading, I know that.

And until recently, there really wasn't any infrastructure available. So I couldn't do that in an electric car with any confidence that if I encountered cold weather or whatever, that I could actually make it. So there is infrastructure there. Now, rural California struggles with that. I want to go back to the CEC and what you're doing around 2061, what I heard you say is that you'll be tracking anything installed after 2024 and beyond, but nothing for the 94,000 existing chargers out there we are tracking.

So we're going to be requiring every public and shared private charger to provide data to us. We want locational data. We also want utilization data. We're being careful though, around confidential business information because the providers have told us that if you publish utilization data that could be used against them in some way. And so we're trying to be sensitive to some of the confidential business concerns. But we're definitely going to collect data from all chargers.

The performance data, the performance of holding chargers accountable to performance AB 126 gives us and well, tells us to require uptime and look at other reliability metrics for the state funded charger. So that 40% bucket and installed on or after Jan 12024. So we're having performance metrics on that subsection of chargers. Okay, I'm sorry it is murky in that confusing slide I showed. I appreciate how the scribbles on my paper, knowing that you're going to have requirements around this. Are there going to be penalties for non compliance or are you just going to have requirements?

So on the enforcement side, for grants that we issue, we can claw back money. We can also elevate non compliant. We can bring non compliance to the Attorney General. And we're exploring know whether there's any other enforcement we might be able to do. But those are two clear enforcement options.

Okay, thanks. And Dr. Tal, you mentioned, I think you said if you're paying 60 should be driving your hybrid or you should consider driving a hybrid.

Yes. If we take a vehicle that have both, like just as an example, the Kia Nero have both full electric and a hybrid version. And you look at gas price today, more than 60 cents per kilowatt hour is equal to driving this car as a gas car.

So that brings to kind of the point there's a pretty big variation in what it costs. I don't pay that for a Tesla, not even close. And so one of the incentives to be able to drive an electric car is that you're going to hopefully save money over gasoline. But some of the charger systems that are out of the network that I'm used to when I plug in, it's a significant difference in cost. And so there's a big sticker shock associated with that.

So there's huge variability out there on what people are paying, apparently. And so that uncertainty, I think is problematic for consumers as well. I know we're looking at interoperability over time. I know some, it's like 25, 26 and beyond for some of the companies. So I guess as someone who's used to a network that is very reliable and very cost effective.

And while I want everybody to have that, I'm a little leery about what that's going to mean for my experience, having had a bit selfish here. I mean, reality is when I bought the car, I bought it with a bunch of assumptions. We'll see how that all plays out. If I have to pay a little bit more, I'm okay with that. But the access I've enjoyed is going to diminish as more and more people have access to networks.

And in rural communities where the infrastructure is arguably smaller, that's going to create challenges for adoption. And that's kind of one of my big concerns is as we saw the first half of 23, we saw surging EV sales and then a drop off in the second half of the year. And there's a number of factors there. The rebates are confusing for people, the cost is still high. And then you add the charging piece of this, which is what we're talking about today.

Can any of you opine? We have this goal of not selling gas powered vehicles in California by 2035. But if this adoption doesn't change and change fairly quickly, what are we looking at realistically for this goal? Because I'm concerned about that.

Well, I'm always hesitant to look at quarterly EV sales data. I like to look at the year because there's the year with six months. Yeah. When we look at sort of the trajectory of EV sales, we've seen herky jerky years and some years where we basically were flat in terms of sales growth. I mean, last year, we had the highest sales ever, one in four, up from 21% the year before. So we are still seeing year by year increases.

I would say, though, the issue around we need to make sure there's charging infrastructure, because that is a major barrier and concern for people. Most of the people who bought evs to date have a home where they can charge, and we're moving into that next tranche. And so accessibility for EV charging infrastructure is going to be really critical. So I'm not discounting the importance of infrastructure. I would say, to me, it's not clear yet that there is a dip in the data. I'd look over year over year.

I would like to add a small clarification and follow Commissioner Monahan. 60 cents is not the maximum amount we should allow. I just want to make sure that it's not. Because if you most time charge at home or Low price level two, and every once in a while on a long trip, pay more. I think it's perfectly okay. So I don't want someone to think that it should be the maximum. On average, it should be lower than that.

And that's important for people who cannot charge at home, that they will have the option for lower than this amount. And the one thing that we tend to ignore on looking on the sales trends is that the supply is changing dramatically every quarter. The car companies need to sell more in the other 177 states to ramp up to 2025 and six. And I think that we always kind of, like, ignore the fact that we have supply ups and downs in the state. And the big picture is that the demand is strong.

And then the final question, and thinking about accessibility of infrastructure, I think of people who rent in apartment complexes. And I'm concerned about that because there just isn't a lot of infrastructure in existing multifamily housing complexes. And if we don't figure out a way to get that up, we're going to have potential. People aren't going to be able to afford these electric cars. They're going to continue to drive cars that are going to become less reliable, more polluting over time.

And that doesn't help us with our clean energy goals. That doesn't help us with any of this. And then just a final comment. We had a hearing yesterday, and one of the things that came up this is regarding just electric transmission and the challenges we're facing there. We're really concerned about affordability of electricity as we electrify everything. The cost of electricity is skyrocketing. And our consumers are really, really frustrated by that.

And I think we need to be honest with people, more honest with people, that we absolutely have to do the work related to climate change. But we need to be realistic, and the consumers need to understand that there is a price to pay for that when we electrify everything. And I'm willing to pay that price, and I hope that everybody, for the sake of their children and their grandchildren and generations to come, gets that. But it is affecting people in a very big way, and we have to be cognizant of that.

Can I make a quick comment, Assembly Member, please?

Yeah.

I fully agree with the concerns around affordability and the concerns that the increasing price of electricity is making it harder to electrify everything. We're really looking at ways to capitalize on the fact that evs are a flexible load that you can charge often, not always, but often you have some flexibility about the timing of your charge. And as investron utilities roll out time of use pricing that incentivizes charging in the middle of the day, the hope is that evs become this beneficial load.

They basically charge in the middle of the day. You basically run your vehicle on sunshine. You pay very low prices for doing that, and you help sort of equalize the prices across the entire grid. And that means we have to have the right policies in place so charging behaviors become grid friendly instead of harming our grid.

I guess the concern I have there is you look at the number of people who commute from the Central Valley, the Tracy area, into the Bay Area every day. If everybody, as our goal is to get them on electric vehicles, how in the world are they going to, in some cases, have not? Everybody's going to have the capacity to charge on the other end to make it home at night. And so these are big picture things.

That are, I think I totally agree. And what we see is that charging at home is the number one place people charge. Charging at work is the second most. Public charging is the third. So in terms of priorities, we're really trying to focus on that. How do we provide access in or near multifamily dwellings? How do we provide access in or near workplaces? And then how do we make sure that public charging is fast and reliable? Thank you.

Thank you. Chair Petrie Norris.

Thank you. Hi. Thanks so much for being here. Commissioner Monahan, a couple of questions. So, as you said, we started to adopt performance standards in 2021. I believe in your update, you said that the final regulations are expected by the end of 2024. Is that correct? What's taking so long for the standards.

Or for the system to become more reliable.

What is taking so long for us to develop performance standards? So take three years seems like a very, very long time for us to even understand what parameters we're utilizing for oversight and enforcement.

Well, the standards were first initiated because of AB 2061, which was passed in 2022. And so we started working on standards at that point. We issued these draft standards, and then AB 126 added new requirements around mandating uptime and other aspects. And so we're revising the regulation to take AB 126 and AB 2061 into account simultaneously. So we're moving as fast as we can. But I hear your frustration. We want to get to the finish line with strong standards, and so are.

We right now distributing money with no strings? Are we continuing to distribute any money with no strings attached?

So since 2021, we have been requiring uptime in our grants, and then we have made those increasingly stringent around actually including maintenance and including reporting on a more frequent basis. So we do have reliability requirements tied to the grants that we're giving out today.

And is that also true for the $800 million in settlement money that's being distributed by CARB?

So that money, we're focusing on AB 126 authorities around public and basically funded by the state or funded by ratepayers. And that gives us very explicit authority on performance from that sort of basket. The electrify America settlements are regulated by the Air Resources Board. And as far as we know, there haven't been very many, if any, state dollars as part of that. So it's a separate. And the settlement agreement, I don't know if you saw that little slice of settlement agreements. Around 3% is what we're estimating. Out of the 94,000 chargers, about 3% are coming from settlement agreements.

$800 million is a lot of money, and I guess I would relate to that as state money. And I think it's really important, whatever the bucket is, that at this point, any future funding has performance requirements and enforcement attached, whether it's programs being administered by yourselves or programs being administered by another agency. Which actually leads me to another question.

So some critics have suggested that one of the reasons that there's been lax oversight is the result of there being somewhat diffuse responsibility across state agencies for EV infrastructure and rollout. What are your thoughts on that? Do we need more centralization and just clearer accountability within the State of California?

Well, I'm in my fifth year now as a Commissioner, and I have seen a much more distinct set of roles around EV charging in this five year period. Initially, the Air Resources Board was funding more on the infrastructure side. We were funding more on the vehicle side. There wasn't a clear division of roles. We have a clear division now. So ARB does vehicles, we do infrastructure.

And I think the passage of SB 123, which moved authority over payment from the Air Resources Board to the energy Committee, is an example of that, where we're trying to get more clear. Another example would be the money. That is, the federal money is flowing through the California State Transportation Agency, but we are working with them in a contractual relationship, and we're going to be the ones giving out the money for EV charging. So I have seen much more clarity with state agencies.

That said, there's still some funding I know is coming from different state entities to deploy EV charging and hydrogen. And I think, honestly, we need as much infrastructure as we can, and we need to make sure that it's more reliable.

Okay, good. Well, glad to hear that in your assessment, there has been some progress made on clarity and definition of roles and responsibilities. Just one question, Director Gil Tal So I like that you highlighted the example of Norway and suggested that we have an opportunity to look to other countries, other states. Is there someone other than Norway who's getting this right? Is there a state or country that we can look to as a model?

Yeah, other European countries are getting, I don't know if they're getting it right, but the model is paying for service instead of paying for hardware, which kind of give more control to the state or the Federal Government in some places to make sure that they get what they paid for. If the charter is not walking, you're not getting paid. That's one model. The other is to contract the places that are more higher revenue with the one that are lower revenue and make them a bundle.

And that's, again, something that France is doing and UK is doing. So there are many other models, and I don't have enough information to say if all of them are better. Sure, we need to explore them.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Member Gomez Rayes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, it's such a pleasure to be here in a room with stakeholders who are interested in decarbonizing transportation. And I want to thank my colleagues also for all of their help in getting AB 126 to the finish line. Thank you. Yes. I will tell you that when we talk about reliability, that is an issue. And I appreciate Assembly Member Erwin. Her input was always very important as we were going through the entire process of AB 126.

So I think everybody would agree that making sure that we have the funding available for the infrastructure. And through AB 126, we've got $2 billion over through 2035. So I'm excited to see all that we can do. But I appreciate the conversation about what we do on reliability. And I like the accessibility, dependability, affordability. And that reliability is so important. And your comments regarding the enforcement, because it's clear that that's something that we want to see. How do we enforce?

If we have a rule that says you've got to be 97% reliable, and if they're not, how do we enforce that? So I appreciate your comments about including clawbacks so that if we're giving you the money to do this and you're not doing it right, well, you're not going to get it. You're going to have to give some of that back. That is extremely important. I think the consumers want to know that as they go green, that we're going to provide the infrastructure.

It's going to be reliable. They can refuel, they can feel good about it. And I want to thank my colleagues who have gone completely green with the electric vehicles. I'm still at the hybrid level, but I thank you all for taking that step, specifically now on enforcement. You've talked a little bit about clawback, and as we begin this new legislative year, we're looking to other areas, other language we need to include that provides the power that you need for that enforcement because that is important.

As my colleague, as the chair has talked about, we're putting the state money in. This is state investment, which means it's taxpayer investment. And we want to be able to tell the taxpayers, here's how we invested your money. And this is a great program. We're getting the infrastructure and this is how reliable it is. But we're assuring you that if it's not reliable, we're going to take care of it.

So my question would be, is there something more you would want from us as we go through this year? And I heard your answer earlier, I'm not going to tell the Legislature what to do, but suggestions on some of those things that we need to include, we need to consider as we're putting together our policies, our legislative priorities.

Well, first, I want to thank you personally for all you did on AB 120. Had I seen you there, I would have started with you because you have been a champion from the get go. So thank you so much. And as I said, we're exploring all options for enforcement internally. And I want to say also with this question of scope in terms of the universe, we're exploring all options as well. And I can't tell you what to do.

I can say that the legislation that has passed so far has given us direction and authority to promote a more sustainable, reliable, charging infrastructure system. So just thank you for that clarity. But I can't tell you what to do.

All right. We don't want you to tell us what to do. We do want your input. Honestly, we do want your input in this because just as Professor Tal, you were talking about your 17 years of studying this. So when you provide input, you're not saying, you'd better do this, legislators, but you're saying, here's what I have found, and this is something that might be able to take care of an issue that continues to haunt us.

So we do look to all of you, because of your experience, because of your studies, to provide that input. Because we're in this together, the people of California deserve to have us do the very best that we can. And that reliability issue is extremely important, and I know it is to you also finding ways to enforce, and I understand it's only 40% of the infrastructure that is done through state funding.

But even with that 40%, if we work with them and provide some greater incentive for them, then they will be used more than the other 60%. And maybe that 60% wants to participate in what it is we want to do. When we're talking about reliability, there are things that we can do, and I want to be sure that we continue as partners in that regard. And I can assure you that as long as assemblymember Erwin is involved, reliability is going to be at the very top every single time. And I thank her for that.

Thank you, Assembly Member Connolly.

Thank you, chair. Just wanted to start with a couple of comments as well and then a few questions. And really also underscoring I'm all in on being part of this movement and achieving our ambitious goals. Frankly, to get to 100% evs, in fact, many of us have been pushing for a faster timeline than 2035. I appreciate the prior work of my colleagues on this Committee and elsewhere in the Legislature on this issue, as well as the work of the two committees.

Taking a page from my colleague from the north coast, I've been a longtime Ev owner, not a Tesla, but have owned the same car for five years, have had a relatively good experience with it, have virtually seen every possible challenge, I think, faced by drivers in this space. And I wanted to recount one thing in particular, and it goes to reliability. I think that's the crux of why we're all here today.

And you may have noticed, I think it was probably an AP article a few days ago because it was in all the papers about some of the challenges folks are facing and kind of the lead example, literally to the detail reflected in experience I recently had as well. The day was memorable because it was the NFC championship game a few Sundays ago. The Niners won. I was at the game. Nothing was going to deter my good mood. But there was an effort too.

Namely, so took the ev down from Marin to Santa Clara. No charges available at the game. They were all taken. So, okay, I was going to take my chances on the round trip. That became evident it was not going to work out. So in the East Bay began an odyssey that evening of hitting a couple of designated spots. All the chargers were either taken or out of order. I was finally down to 0% left. So pulled into the final possibility.

Four charging stations, three out of order, one with a line to the point where I literally found myself haggling with the other folks, waiting. Hey, you do a half hour, I'll do 45. That is kind of a subculture I think is probably developing out there. Ended up waiting an hour and charging an hour because I was the last person standing.

So made it home probably 12:00 a.m. 01:00 a.m. The article conveyed virtually the same situation with the four chargers, three out of order and a weight that is untenable. How is anyone beyond just the 100%? I'm into the last breath. Folks going to weather that realistically when they have obligations and places they need to be. So I guess I have a few questions, and obviously we'll also look forward to hearing from the second panel as well.

To CEC Commissioner Monahan, can you confirm that under AB 2061 that the CEC, rather than the CPUC, has the regulatory authority for charges that were funded in part by ratepayer dollars? So is it the CEC?

The CEC has. The AB 2061 basically told us that you have to pass record keeping and reporting requirements for state and ratepayer funded chargers.

Okay.

And I'm sort of distinguishing it from AB 126, which has performance standards, uptime requirements.

Okay, great. And following up on my colleague, and this is going to really hinge on enforcement of the 97% uptime standard. Unfortunately, it was not here, but it sounds like funding clawbacks were mentioned. But then also potential enforcement by the Attorney General's Office, if you can elaborate on that.

Yes. So for non compliance, we could bring it to the Attorney General office for potential Enforcement.

Okay. I think that's a good move, and I think it's going to be crucial. Final question. The background document states that projects receiving Nevi funding are required to be able to charge via combined charging system ports. But it also states that vehicle manufacturers are shifting toward the Tesla connector, also known as the north American charging standard. So will this seeming divergence in changing port design between charger funding requirements and vehicle industry standard create issues down the road? I know there's talk of more universality, but how does the landscape look in that regard?

Yes. I mean, last year, basically, automaker, after automaker started announcing that they were adopting the Tesla. I'll just call it the Tesla charging standard. And this is, in a way, creating more competition across the entire charging landscape. And I view competition as a good thing. We need standards so that chargers can talk to each other, so that there's data sharing, so we have consistent codes that tell you why a charger is failing to charge. Proprietary data, to me, is what is going to hinder the market.

I mean, we need to have as much transparency as possible. Standards provide that transparency, and having one single charger provides that transparency, it makes it cheaper over the long run. In the short run. It's complicated because we thought we were aligning on a different standard than the Tesla one. It looks like all the automakers are moving towards one. We'll see what they do with the actual vehicles, but over the long term, I think that's a good thing.

Over the next couple of years, it creates some uncertainty for people who have older vehicles. And we have to make sure that if you're buying a used vehicle, you can conveniently recharge it. And I think your horror story really speaks to the fact that we need chargers. We need to build these chargers fast, and they need to be convenient. And when you're on a road trip, they need to be fast.

Thanks. Anyone else on that point.

Very quick, two things. I can bring the mic to me. Thank you. One is, regardless of what we are doing and we're doing, and SCC and others are doing amazing job, it's only getting better. Now, a lot of this technology that was failing the three out of four was just because we're learning on the job.

I keep saying that we are building this airplane while flying, like some of the companies today, that we have problem with them, but I hope that we are doing better job, and it's only getting better regardless of everything else. It's just the trend. But at the same time, I think that even if we will build all the chargers after the game, you will have hard time to find a charger. The same way that we have congestion and we are not building 12 lanes of roads.

We are not going to build our way out of congestion all the way through. Some days, that's a great example. It's still going to be a day that you need to plan ahead and so on.

Thank you. And nice to end on a positive note. There is hope. And we know you're doing a lot of testing of chargers, so it's good to hear that from you. So I want to thank the panel today. I know we need to move on to our next panel, and you're all excused. But thank you so much for being here and sharing information today.

And while we're bringing up the second panel of advocates, I'm just, just going to share a little story of my own while we're doing the transition. And I know I've shared this before, but my daughter and I took a road trip from La to Sacramento for Thanksgiving, and she wanted to take the train.

I said it's a good experiment to take our new EV, and it ended up taking us four extra hours with ending in a parking lot in a mall at 11:00 at night with my daughter crying because she said we should have taken the train. And this is a problem with longer distance charging, too, which is a real challenge and one of the reasons I had a Bill on electric roads and electrifying roads last year, because I think we need all the options.

And to be able to charge and drive at the same time, especially for long distance trips, I think is really critical. So I know the second panel is going to dive into what consumer advocates are hearing, how industry is responding and looking towards the future, on how the state can position itself to prepare for a million needed chargers on the horizon. Thank you so much for joining us today.

And similar to the prior panel, ask that panelists provide their opening statements following an agenda order, and then we can turn to the Committee for questions. And we'll start with Megan Meckelberg, who's representing the Electric Vehicle Charging Association. Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you chair Shavio and Petrie Norris for inviting me to join this panel today and to staff for their work on the backgrounder. My name is Megan Meckleberg, and I am representing the EV charging Association here today, also referred to as EVCA. If you hear me use that name. Founded in 2015, EVCA is a not for profit organization of 22 leading companies that design, manufacture, install, operate, and maintain EV charging software, hardware and more.

EVCA provides a voice for industry to educate and partner with policymakers on critical policies to help the market scale and achieve California's EV charging goals. We readily acknowledge that we are here today to discuss very legitimate challenges with the EV charging industry. We've all read the news articles. We've seen the surveys, the analyses, the frustrated social media posts and we know that the bottom line is that while we're here, there are many reasons that the charger may be inoperable.

There is no doubt room for improvement among all our actors in the charging ecosystem. We wholeheartedly agree that highly reliable charging is essential to making sure that we can meet our EV charging goals. We want to continue to partner with government, industry, and other stakeholders to collaborate on improving the overall charging experience. Over the last few years, industry has not been sitting idly. We have been working to improve charger reliability, and while we've made progress, we know we still have work to do.

I'd like to share three actions in particular with the Committee today. First, you heard earlier from the CEC about their reliability proceeding initiated by Mr. Ting and Ms.Reyes through their AB 2061. Two of the EVCA Members jointly sponsored this legislation, and EVCA was proud to support it. Now, as a result, California is creating a first in the nation reliability standard for EV chargers, and we know policymakers in other states are watching this development so that they can replicate it.

Second, the backgrounder references the Chargex consortium. Led by the Department of Energy's National Labs. EVCA Members are participating in this effort, which is focused on improving the overall charging experience, especially reliability. Chargex includes automakers, charging companies, universities, and other stakeholders. Some of the topics of this consortium is focused on payment standards, diagnostics, hardware interoperability testing, and better definition and measuring of performance metrics related to charger uptime. Chargex released a report just this past September identifying 26 different causes of charger failure.

Chargex workgroups in this report showcase that there is not one single issue broadly causing reliability problems. And while we're experiencing a death of a thousand cuts kind of scenario right now, by better defining and isolating potential causes, we have begun to better address them. Which leads me to my third point. EV charging technology is constantly improving and evolving under extreme pressure.

The private industry has poured tens of millions of dollars into charger development and technology resources to improve the consumer experience and make charging infrastructure more durable. Companies have also launched comprehensive maintenance programs, installed software for improved downtime detection and increased offerings for replacement parts and expanded warranty services. Those are just a few of the actions that EVCA Members are doing to address this issue.

Many of our Members are here today as well, and they will share about what their individual companies are doing to address reliability during the public comment period. So we know we still have a long ways to go to get to where the industry needs to be and to increase public confidence in the EV charging experience. I'm hopeful that my comments today show you that we recognize that there are real challenges, and we are taking actions to address them as a still nascent industry.

Collective understanding of charger reliability and how to make it work is still a work in progress. There is not one single solution, and the work involved to craft precise solutions to address various components of charger reliability can be complicated and takes time. Partnership with the Legislature and state agencies has been critical to this development. With continued partnership, we have the utmost confidence that we are going to resolve these issues to meet our 2035 goals. Thank you. And I look forward to this discussion.

Thank you. And now turn it to Francesca Wall, who's senior charging policy manager at Tesla.

Thank you, chairs and members of the committee, for having Tesla be part of this conversation today. It's incredibly important, and we're pleased to be here. I do have a few slides, but I think I will only show kind of one key one. So if you could advance this slide and next one. All right, I will focus on this one. I'm sorry, the dots are a little bit small. So. My name is Francesca Wahl. I lead EV charging infrastructure public policy at Tesla.

I've been with the company for almost nine years, and I've been engaged in the California regulatory space on EVs and charging infrastructure over the past decade. So I've spent a lot of time thinking about charging and what it means from a policy perspective. One other thing I'd note is Tesla is engaged on the Executive advisory board of the Chargex consortium, which was mentioned in the backgrounder. So we are very active in these discussions, not just thinking about ourselves, but also from a broader industry perspective.

So last year, Tesla delivered over 1.8 million evs. So while the numbers on EV sales, you're hearing a lot about that in the news, it was a record year. It was up from 1.3 million in 2022. And Model Y was actually the best selling car in the world of any vehicle. So I do think EVs are here to stay, and there's a lot of opportunity to celebrate the progress. With that,

Tesla has also invested a lot on the EV charging infrastructure side, because we know that in order to sell evs, we have to have an incredibly reliable network. Even if a customer spends most of their time charging at home, which 80% of our customers still do rely mostly on home charging, they want to know that if they're on a road trip, they can get there. So that's why in 2012, we started building out the supercharger network.

And today we have over 50,000 superchargers globally, with just over 6600 here in the State of California. So we've seen an incredible amount of growth, and we are constantly trying to keep up with the pace of vehicle adoption again, in order to share, to make sure that you have a seamless experience. We're also big believers on the concept of charging where you park. I think a lot of the reliability discussion has focused on the fast charging side in our minds.

But level two charging access, this concept of integrating it seamlessly into our lives, is just as important in order to meet long term EV deployment goals. So we also have a level two charging network. It's called the destination charging network. I don't have it up on the screen, but it's basically an amenity. We work with site hosts to provide all over the country and the world, so that if you're at a hotel, a restaurant, you can have access to charging at your destination.

We're seeing a lot of need for growth, and with that growth, we know that customer experience is at the core. So we really pride ourselves in the fact that in our impact reports, we disclose our uptime, which is over 99%. Again, I think largely that is driven by the fact that we're really selling cars at the end of the day, and we know we need the reliable charging access to sell those cars.

And we've invested a lot in the technology to be able to share live data with drivers to make sure that before you ever get to a supercharger, you know exactly what to expect. You know what the price will be, what the availability of that site will be, how charging tends to trend over time at that site. So is it more busy in the middle of the day than the end of the day?

So we've spent a lot of time thinking through how we communicate with the customers. And I think that in and of itself is a key part of why we're able to have a very reliable network. Obviously, we're vertically integrated, so we're able to control. We own and operate the superchargers, we service them. We are in full control over that. The final thing I wanted to mention, because it's come up a lot, is what's Tesla doing about opening this network to non Tesla vehicles?

So we announced in 2022 and published on our website that Tesla's connector standard, known as the North America charging Standard, now being standardized by the Society of Automotive Engineers, SJ 3400, would be available for anyone to use. And that sort of started a ripple effect in mid 2023 with major automakers announcing that starting with model year 2025, they would be transitioning to the NAC standard.

We're now proud to say that almost 100% of the EV market has announced their transition to the NAC standard, which we think is an incredible milestone to have achieved over the last six to 12 months. And so we're very optimistic about the future with that, those NAC partners, as we call them. So the major automakers that have all announced have access to the Tesla supercharger network that we will be opening up here in the near future.

I can go into the details of that a little bit later, but there's obviously a lot of questions around how we're going to provide access, what that will look like, how that will roll out. But in the interest of time, I will leave it at that and look forward to any questions you may have for us. Thank you again for having us today.

Wonderful. Thank you. And Alexa?

Alexia.

Alexia. Sorry.

No problem. It happens all the time. Hello, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Alexia Melinda Martineau and I'm a policy manager at Plug in America. Next slide, please. Plug in America is a national nonprofit based here in California. Founded by EV drivers, we work to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles supported by a robust charging network.

We represent almost 100,000 EV drivers across the country, and we leverage their real world insights to drive the market forward and to continue to advance the transition. Our insights are compiled through a national survey that we conduct every year. And this year, I'm happy to share a few early insights with you. We use this survey to better understand the user experience from initial thoughts about electric vehicles through the vehicle acquisition process to experience with the EV after a purchase. Next slide, please.

Our survey last year showed diminishing driver satisfaction nationally from 2022, which is shown on the screen in orange. I'm not sure if that will show up in your handouts to 2023, shown in blue on issues like reliability and charging location distribution with public fast charging networks. This data, I'll caveat, does not include the Tesla supercharger network, and I can. Speak to why that is a little

bit later, given we are moving past early adoption. This may explain some of this change in satisfaction, as newer drivers are less familiar with the experience in the networks and may need a little bit more education on how the process works. That being said, as Megan said, there's definitely room for improvement across the board, as this chart should pretty clearly show you. Next slide, please. So, our 2024 survey is currently open, and as it is still accepting responses.

Any early insights we share with you today are still subject to change. That being said, we have an overwhelming amount of feedback from California based drivers, so we have a pretty strong sample to share with all of you today. Next slide, please. So top of mind for EV drivers is charging availability and reliability. As many of you in the room know as EV drivers yourselves, these data points reflect questions about driver expectations when they bought or leased an EV.

And as you can see, 62% of California EV drivers said that public charging availability was a concern for them at the time they bought or leased an EV. And over half of California EV drivers said that public charging reliability was a concern for them at the time of vehicle acquisition. Next slide please. When we look at the driver experience, charging reliability remains a concern for the vast majority of drivers in their user experience.

After vehicle acquisition, two thirds of California EV drivers reported chargers being non functional or broken was a concern with their usual fast charging network over the past year. This metric includes both public DCFC networks and the Tesla Supercharger network. When you separate these two groups, 91% of non Tesla network users said that nonfunctional or broken chargers were concerned over the past year. In other words, if you're not driving a Tesla, nine in 10 California drivers are experiencing reliability concerns.

This doesn't mean that it's happening every time, just means over the past year they've had at least one experience. Next slide, please. So overall, this chart includes the top reported concerns for California respondents usual fast charging network. Aside from the availability and reliability concerns I just illustrated, each of these bars, separated by Tesla in orange and other public fast charger networks in blue, show the percentage of overall respondents that reported that metric as a concern on our 2024 survey.

There are a number of significant concerns that are key in supporting current EV drivers and increasing EV adoption. So there, first and foremost, are not enough chargers at each location. I think that's made clear by your story. Charging locations are too far apart, charging speed is too slow for drivers, the cost is a lot of times too high, and there are insufficient amenities available for them at places where they'd like to charge.

So with all of these concerns in mind, what does a best in class experience look like for the driver? So next slide please. So we've used our own surveys and other research to identify these four essential pillars to achieve an excellent EV user experience, starting with ample access to charging, meaning that charging is cited to serve all residents of the state and locations can serve all drivers, that there are enough chargers at each location and that pricing is both affordable and transparent. On reliability,

Chargers should be functional, aiming for a 99% uptime, with the caveat that we understand that that might not be the best metric moving forward in the long term, they should be proactively maintained and quickly repaired and have easily accessible customer support to assist individual drivers. For seamless payment. We agree plug in charge is the easiest way for most drivers to initiate and pay for their session, and we envision this as the primary option moving forward.

But especially in the near term, providing a variety of payment options is crucial to ensure drivers can make the transition to Evs and pay as they are comfortable and able. Additionally, no app membership should be required as this can be cumbersome and a deterrent for drivers. And of course, safety is of the utmost concern. Safe locations and other security measures in addition to colocation with amenities will ensure drivers feel comfortable utilizing stations that we install and have amenities available while they charge.

So this vision, as you've heard, this vision of a best in class experience is being pursued by the state and by the industry. Many companies are hard at work to improve the charging experience. I personally visited Electrify, America's new flagship station in San Francisco, and it definitely was a best in class experience. And EV Go, Chargepoint and others have launched their own programs to improve reliability through maintenance, rapid detection of downtime, and much more.

Additionally, as you've heard from Commissioner Monahan, the CEC's Inventory and reliability reporting process will provide the state a foundation to help us better understand charging deployment needs and improving charging reliability for drivers. All of this work can continue to flourish with ongoing funding support for clean transportation programs to help close the gap on needed charging infrastructure across the state.

For more detailed recommendations on a best in class consumer charging experience, plug in America has extensive comments that we've submitted on federal minimum requirements for publicly funded chargers, which we're happy to articulate after this hearing. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you, and I'm excited for the discussion to come.

Thank you so much. And I think we'd all be interested in seeing those comments. If you want to share them, you can share them with us and we'll pass them on to the Committee Members.

Absolutely.

So now I think we're turning to video. Camille Terry, who's the Chief Executive Officer for Charger Help.

Hi, good morning. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear and see you.

Okay, perfect. Well, thank you all so much for having me today. My name is Kameale Terry. I'm the Co founder and CEO of ChargerHelp. Our primary goal is to improve EV charging reliability. We work on charging stations across the US, and we focus on three core areas. So we look at field service data in an aggregated space.

So looking at what was done in the field, what was learned, how can you improve either the software hardware of the station or even how that station is being deployed? We also work with workforce reskilling. We worked with a lot of our colleagues through EVCA, with the SAE international to create the first ever EVCA technician maintenance certification. And then we also solve reliability through our subscription based labor model.

And the reason why I started Charger hope and why I'm actually very excited that we're talking about reliability. I actually used to work for a network provider a few years back, and one of the things that I saw and what I learned about this industry is that reliability was a problem because of three main reasons. The first had to do with the warranty model. So oftentimes a lot of your site hosts are small businesses.

They're multi unit dwellings, they may be cities, they're folks that typically participate in some type of rebate program in order to get infrastructure. Early on, when folks were getting rebates in order to install infrastructure, they would purchase it through usually a network provider or a reseller. Most of the warranty packages that were offered for site hosts were typically parts only warranty. And in our industry, there's something called non vertically integrated.

So Tesla, as I said earlier, they're a vertically integrated system, meaning that the software, hardware, car connector is all made with the same company. For most of the rest of the industry, we do not have vertically integrated systems, whereas like the software is made here, the hardware is made here, the connectors made there, the payment system is made here. And so when we were selling the parts warranty, right, it really had to do with the hardware of the station.

And we found that a lot of site hosts, that they couldn't prove that there was a physical issue with the hardware of the station. They did not have capital or budget to actually solve the problem that they were experiencing. So that's one thing that we seek to help with. The other thing that we saw was that there are a lot of complexities with non vertically integrated systems, specifically around software interoperability.

Oftentimes when we have technicians go on site, we may sit on the phone for hours with our network providers troubleshooting different issues, because a lot of the problems that we do experience aren't problems that the network providers may have experienced before. So there is an opportunity there to figure out how do you learn from the field? And that is a lot of what we do. And then the last piece that I'll touch on briefly is about a skilled workforce.

When I was in my prior role, oftentimes we had a lot of folks that did the installation of charging stations. But when it came to helping us troubleshoot or understanding systems or understanding software issues, there really wasn't a workforce that was able to do that. And that's why we worked with our colleagues, with SAE International in order to create the first ever EVCA technician maintenance group and create a standard around what does it take to have someone be able to solve issues out in the field?

And the thing that I want to wrap up with as we think about what is missing or what are some of the recommendations and what are some of the things that we've seen. Just last year, we did our 18,000 filled service interaction, and we worked with all of the industry. Today, even had the opportunity to work with Tesla. And the things that we've learned the most is that there's a lot of data missing when you don't aggregate data from the field.

I heard a colleague earlier state that folks will be required to send out data that is coming off of their charging stations, but sometimes that data is not true and that there's missing data and missing information. And so I do think there is a space to figure out how do we incorporate the data that comes from field service interactions when a station is experiencing issues, really for us to work further, further, starting from there and then working backwards. Thank you all so much for your time.

Happy to chat more about some of the things that we've been working on and doing. And I also want to do a nod to my colleagues because it has been very impressive to see the industry come together to solve this issue that is not a new issue, but I think this is the first time they're actually working together to solve it. So thank you all so much for your time.

Thank you so much. So I want to open it up to Committee Members if anyone has questions. Okay.

Hi. Thank you to all of our panelists for being part of today's hearing. I want to ask a question about kind of looking forward. So as Commissioner Monahan shared in her comments, over the course of the next. God, 10 years, five years, five years. We need to have a 10 x increase in our charging network. So we've got 94,000 charging stations today. We need 1 million by 2030, 2 million by 2035.

Just love your perspectives on kind of the key challenges and obstacles that you see as we work to achieve that goal. And what you would like us to do as policymakers to help make that. A possible achievement.

I can start. So that's a great question, first off. So thank you for asking it. Outside of reliability, I would say the number one thing and barrier that we run into today is that we can't get our infrastructure in the ground fast enough. And that is a problem across every single operator.

You'll hear us all talk a lot about capacity planning, energization timelines, how quickly can we get new service and power to a site, and how quickly can we get those stations in the ground. So for Tesla, we have very ambitious goals of more than doubling the network every one to two years. So I said earlier, we have about 6600 fast chargers, which we've all privately funded. We haven't taken public funding in California to date.

So we're talking about enormous amounts of power and scale that we have to get to. California has done a great job of passing policies to help with that. Right.

SB 410 came out of the Legislature last year, which is looking at capacity and timelines. The Public Utilities Commission now has a proceeding on this. But for us, that's really a huge gating item that we need to deal with. And it's not just light duty infrastructure that will be impacted also medium and heavy duty. So we really want to see that solution come to fruition and figure out how to do it in a cost effective and affordable and quick way.

Um the last stat I'll leave you with is that for us, 50% of our pipeline in certain utility territories is impacted by a capacity constraint, meaning we can't get those stations online anywhere from two to eight years. So it's a real challenge now. And so we care a lot about all this other stuff, but we also have to think about how do we just get more charging out there?

And I'll just add, so, echoing everything that Francesca just laid out here, I would add that permitting is another challenge. And I know that you, chair Petrie Norris, are interested in that as well. But I think when it comes to permitting, the Legislature has done good work in trying to streamline and ask local governments to have plans for how to make permitting faster. I think that there's still challenges with that, both from an implementation standpoint, an enforcement standpoint.

Companies, if they need to escalate things, they have to go back to that local government two weeks later and say, here's another charging project. So I think that there's still this push and pull that's happening. And you see that with other infrastructure, right? We see that with housing as well. But I think that EV charging faces a lot of those same concerns that you see in that space. And that just adds to, like she said, the complexity. And then you have all of the other complexities of just the industry in itself, both from a technological and hardware perspective.

Based on our survey, I would say that one of the biggest issues for drivers, particularly in California, which is relatively unique compared to the national market, is that we now have millions of evs that have been sold in the state in the past year. And I think thinking about that, one of the things that keeps coming up for us is that access piece based on the number of chargers at each location.

A lot of times you'll drive up to a location and two stories that we've heard today, you'll find four chargers. To reach the volume of adoption that we need, we certainly need more chargers at each location, particularly in our higher concentrated density areas. So that would be 1 point of concern for us is how can we think about increasing the number of chargers at each location and thinking long term to lay out the foundation for continuing to increase that over the next five to 10 years.

So, not necessarily putting in all of those chargers at once, but what kind of early groundwork are we doing to ensure that those stations can be expanded as the market grows? So that would be one another, especially as we're kind of reaching the mass adoption phase in California, is how can we continue to make sure that drivers are educated on what this whole system looks like? There's a lot of differences from just filling up a gas tank. It's not quite as simple.

At face value, a lot of customers don't understand what is a kilowatt hour? How does that translate to what I was paying per gallon? All of these kind of wonky things that people don't really think about or don't really want to think about. So I would say that from our perspective, continuing to invest in education, particularly for communities who haven't seen mass penetration of EVs, is a big priority.

And helping to make sure that consumers feel empowered to make the decision to drive an EV, because this all rests with those individual decisions at the dinner table.

And I want to just check in with Kameale if you have anything to add.

The one thing I will add is that outside of, you know, I think we missed kind of the conversation around site hosts. And site hosts are typically, like I said earlier, they're going to be small business, multi unit dwellings. These are now entities that are responsible for a fueling experience, which is different than how gas station owner operators typically where they align at what they're known to do.

So I think that there's a lot of work just even on site host understanding now, like, hey, you have a publicly funded charging infrastructure. One, how do you think about expanding that? But then two, I think that the reliability piece and the experience piece that the site hosts should be more responsible for needs to be talked about a little bit more and figure out how can we support and educate them.

Thanks. Yeah, appreciate everyone's thoughts on that. And certainly as the year moves forward, look forward to digging into those issues. More with all of you.

Thank you. And Assembly Member Connolly, thanks.

Appreciate the conversation. How widespread are roaming agreements, and is there any data available on their effect on the customer experience so far?

Sure, I can take that one. So companies are increasing their roaming agreements every day, right. We know that it is helpful to a driver that if they have an app that they want to use, that they can see other chargers on that app. That way they're not having to have so many apps. That said, it takes time and there's a certain level of trust that has to happen in order for a roaming agreement to work. Right. You're talking about the location of a charger.

You're talking about is it available that real time data? And then also how the payment is working between the companies. Right. And so there's a trust that has to happen between each company because it's a bi directional relationship. If you have one company that makes a relationship with another, both of those chargers show up on each other's apps. Right. And that is absolutely a benefit to the consumer. And those are happening more and more every day.

It's just a matter of, again, the time that it takes to kind of put those agreements together.

Great. So we're aware of there are a number of factors which are exceptions to the charger uptime calculations. For example, power outages, vehicle side issues, scheduled maintenance, it's vandalism. Delving into that a little bit, how can it be conclusively determined that a no charge event is due, for example, to vehicle side issues?

To ask your question slightly differently, you're asking what specifically? How we can know if it's a vehicle issue. So I think that if we think about it from the consumer side, I think to ask a consumer to figure out, is it your car or is it your charger? Is a heavy ask. Right. It's a very complicated system.

Um, but I think that what we can do is increase our interoperability testing, which is something that EVCA is definitely supportive of with the automakers, to make sure that that kind of connection is happening. As you see more standardization in the underlying protocols that allow the cars to talk to the chargers, I think that we'll start to see that decrease. But as I mentioned, there's 26 different points of failure.

So to ask a consumer to know all 26 of those and be able to figure out, like, a technician is a lot to ask. So certainly appreciate that. That is definitely a challenge. But the industry and the automakers are working together to figure out how to reduce that from happening. And then. Yeah, I guess I would leave it to other colleagues to add more.

Yeah, the only thing I'll add is. Go ahead, Kameale.

I'll wait. Sorry, there's a lag. I'll wait. Go ahead.

Well, I was just going to add in the backgrounder, it mentioned the error codes that are being discussed by the chargex consortium. And my understanding in speaking with our technical team is that the open chargepoint protocol, OCPP air codes that exist today are focused much more at a site level than a charger level. And so this is one opportunity to start digging into what's happening at a charger level.

And so while those codes haven't been vetted in the field, the industry can now gain experience with them. So I think we would caution against sort of requiring them because they haven't been vetted. But it's a very good opportunity for folks to get experience and start to standardize that process.

Yeah, I would agree with that, Kameale?

Sure. Yeah. So this is one of the main reasons why we believe self service data is so important. We see the actual when you deploy infrastructure, that is your true lab, there's a lot of companies that, yes, you will test certain cars on your charging station or your software in the lab, but from our experience that we'll see that sometimes if someone touches a firmware update or something changes in the software of the car or the charging infrastructure, there are issues that comes about.

But what we've been able to do is by deploying technicians, gathering information from the field of what car is having an impact negatively on what charging infrastructure. You can start building out large data sets in order to figure out how do you get to this? How do you figure this out sooner?

So I do think that, once again, there is this opportunity to start getting more data from those service organizations in order for us to get a better understanding of how the infrastructure is actually operating once folks have left the lab.

Thanks. Another question kind of in this vein. Does the exemption of charger downtime for vandalism remove a key incentive to repair damaged.

You know, we don't know exactly what the vandalism timeline is going to look like based on the CEC's uptime requirements, for example, since they're still developing those. But what I would say is that vandalism is challenging for a few different reasons. And one of those reasons is that a charger and a charging network does not necessarily know that a charger has had an instance of vandalism just by nature of it being a separate location. Right.

So until someone goes to the charger and tells the charging network that there's something wrong, that is the first instance in which you actually are notified of that. Right. And there's increasing technology now to add more sensors and things like that. So that if a cord is cut, for example, because cords do have copper in them, and so there is sometimes an incentive to cut those cords to get the copper, for example. And that's an instance of vandalism that we do see occurring.

If someone goes up to a charger and sees that, then they'll notify the network. And then that's the point in which you kind of start that clock and that time in which, okay, we need to get out there and go and replace that cord. So I just want to kind of note the complexity.

But I would say that based on what we're seeing in the draft regulations, the time in which they would be able to use that as an exemption would be pretty quick to get a technician out there.

Good. And then finally, how common is it for chargers to be restricted to only certain hours of operation?

That is a question that I will have to get back to you on.

Well, even with vandalism, even with restrictions. So it depends if a station is owner operated or not. Right. But a lot of the publicly funded stations are not owner operated by the network provider. They are essentially, technically should be responsible by the site host. So some site hosts will put restrictions even if they receive funding.

Right. And some site hosts will allow there to be vandalism, not fix the station, even though they've received some type of public funding. And that's why I do think that one of the gaps we have here is how do we hold some of the site hosts responsible for stations that are not owned and operated by network providers. And the last thing that I'll say to that is that when we think about uptime and reliability, I think there are different folks that should be held responsible.

Should network providers be responsible for vandalism? Maybe not, right? But should site hosts folks that have taken the government funding to deploy the infrastructure, should they be responsible for vandalism or not allowing other folks to charge in the infrastructure? I think that there's room to have a better conversation there because everything should come back down to what is the driver's experience and how the driver is thinking about utilizing this charging station.

Instead of maybe protecting ourselves against what we're responsible for, let's find the right party to put that responsibility on to ensure that we put the driver first.

For us. Our superchargers are open 24/7. But I think it also gets back to the point earlier. It's really important to be able to have sites that have key amenities and are safe. Right. And so safety is a big one. So we have key criteria now that we look to meet with lighting and accessibility and other elements, especially because we're also building much, much larger sites now. So sites, over 100 chargers.

Right. And so oftentimes that means in a way out there area off the highway. And so you want to make sure it's a safe space. You have restrooms, other amenities, so drivers feel comfortable using them at all times of night, especially transportation. Network company drivers are using them often overnight. So you want to make sure it's a safe space.

Thank you. Appreciate this. We did a Bill last year relating to trying to improve efficiencies on hookups for homes and things. But we're trying to interact with local governments as well, because local governments need to communicate to the utilities when projects are coming and that doesn't happen on a regular basis. That was a piece of what we're doing.

I am sort of a nerdy person, and so I actually do sit sometimes when I'm charging and have nothing to do and work out the economics of what this is costing me versus what it would cost me for gasoline. Because sometimes in many areas I don't have cell coverage, but I go back to. And the other thing I think is really important to us in the long run is data aggregation. We see huge challenges with that in the healthcare space.

So obviously, we're seeing it in every space out there that getting data, all data together so we can get a really clear picture on what's happening throughout the industry and is really important. But I want to go back to something that came up yesterday and it kind of came up here again today. This is a critical, critical issue for us in electrifying our vehicle fleets for climate change and transmission permitting and construction is 10 to 12 years.

And that is going to greatly impact our ability to do that. We talked about this yesterday, and that alone will make it difficult for us to achieve our 2030 goals and our 2035 goals and so on. And while we heard in the first panel that CARB is all about the cars and CEC is all about the charging infrastructure, and we heard yesterday that CEC and CalISO and the PUC are all working together, it begs the question, should there be somebody in charge of the whole thing?

Maybe somebody in charge, one person accountable for both pieces of this puzzle and then once again in the transmission space, one person responsible for bringing people together and making sure things get done and having demanding accountability so that we can actually achieve our goals. That's more of an editorial statement.

I'm getting to the end of my career here in the Legislature, and so maybe my filter has come off every day now, but it's important, I think if we cannot have accountability, we need these agencies talking with one another, but we need somebody oversee them so that there is a driving force that says we are going to reach these goals and you guys are going to help us do that together. And the same with the transmission and interconnection issues we're facing. We need that.

I think that's limiting our ability to be successful on this really important issue. So thank you. I didn't have a question. I just was editorial, obviously.

If I may, just to add on to that, I would just say that in our space, we do see great partnership with Gobiz, who does have a Zev development, market development lens. And so they are looking, and I would say have been very good partners. So I would just add to your list of agencies, just them as an additional plug. Thank you.

Thank you. We won't go through any more of our anecdotal stories because we all have the horror stories about charging. But I am sort of curious. Ms. Mekleberg, your take on why we are able to have such a seamless experience with Tesla and that everybody can see how to get to 2035 if you drive a Tesla and the experience they're having with other charging networks. And I specifically want to talk about this plug in America.

The survey results for customer satisfaction, it's trending in the wrong direction significantly from 2022 to 2023. So how are you going to get back in the game? Because with everybody switching over to the Tesla charging standard, there's a real concern that there's not going to be charging companies keeping up, the other charging companies keeping up. So I know that Ms. Terry talked about the non vertically integrated. How do you get over that?

Sure. So just want to start by saying, yes, we agree. And that's what we're here to talk about today. Right. We do absolutely have a problem. So I just want to just start there. But all that to say, I do think that it is extremely complicated when you have charging companies who are not integrated with, let's just start with the vehicle.

For example, you have automakers who are creating vehicles, and then the charging companies are on the back end trying to figure out, okay, how do we make this charger now applicable with this new vehicle that is now on the road as an example? Now, again, we are seeing standardization. Many of the charging companies will also move towards the north American charging standard and start to have those connectors on their charging station.

So that's one example of kind of how the industry is also moving in that direction. I would also say that as we laid out, there is just an extreme complexity. Right. Sometimes you have vertically integrated between the software and the hardware. Sometimes you have two different companies who are providing the software and the hardware. And then you add the payment standards or the payment options, you add the vehicle itself. And then sometimes there's connection problems just in terms of the actual Internet connection, for example.

So there's just a lot of things that have to work in order to make the charging experience work. And I can't speak to Tesla and how their secret sauce. But what I can speak to is that the industry is making great strides to try to improve that because it also benefits them for their consumers to be able to use their chargers. Their chargers being up is best for everyone, and it will only increase the number of people who are confident in the system.

So definitely share the goal that I think we all have, which is to increase the number of people who can use public charging and the other options out there. And many of EFCA Members don't just do public charging, they also provide other types of charging. So we're working on it.

We're also interested to see what's going to come out of the CEC and very much engaged there and like, you know, supportive of the effort to even start that conversation, as well, as well as all the conversations happening at the Federal Government. We're seeing conversations in Washington state now as certainly we are taking efforts individually, and then we'll also comply with the performance and reliability standards that are being established now.

And then who's responsible for the broken chargers that were paid for with CEC money? And then I'm kind of going back to the previous conversation that we had. Maybe the motivation isn't there to fix them as quickly because we're paying for the equipment rather than, or we're subsidizing as taxpayers the equipment rather than the service. What are your thoughts on how we get Ms. Terry's company to get even bigger and get there more quickly?

What are your thoughts on the payment model and the incentives to keep chargers going?

So on the first part of what are. Sorry, could you repeat just the first part of your question one more time?

Well, first, who's responsible?

Okay. Yes. So first, who's responsible? I think it depends. And that is part of the complexity, right. There's very different business models. Sometimes you're selling to a third party. Sometimes the operator is also the owner of the charger. So it depends when you're accepting the money from the CEC, who the grantee is, which I think Commissioner Monahan pointed out as well. And so there is just a variation in terms of whose responsibility it is.

What I will say is that companies are, I mentioned ONM agreements, operations and maintenance agreements. Those agreements are starting to lay out what the chain of responsibility is. So you're seeing more and more of those agreements which will say, okay, the site host is responsible for this, the operator is responsible for this and the maintenance. Then you'll have a service level agreement, perhaps, that is responsible for the on the ground maintenance.

So those kinds of agreements are happening in real time and trying to figure out who exactly is responsible and how that will work. So at least on that part, could you repeat your second question?

How do we incentivize the companies to quickly fix their chargers? And does there have to be a different financial incentive?

I think that the market is doing some of this to an extent. Right. If a charger is not being utilized, that is lost financing for whoever the site host is, whoever is making money off of that charger. So I think there's a market incentive here. And then as we are seeing, we're seeing regulations come in, we're seeing performance metrics come in. So I do think that that is happening.

I understand it's probably not happening as fast as we would all like it to be, but I do think that those efforts are being made.

Okay. And then finally, we've talked about this before. We had a Bill last year to, we know that these platforms share data, and we had a Bill to share some of that data, specifically whether the charger was working or not, whether it was being used or not in real time, as opposed to uptime, which is reported, maybe, I don't know, once a month or once a quarter. But then there was some concern expressed by the charging companies that this information was proprietary.

And for me, I think that it's really critical that we think about these chargers as an ecosystem, not everybody's little business plan, because otherwise they're going to be stranded assets. So maybe you can just go into why that information is proprietary.

Sure. So I think that, on one hand, we talked a little bit about roaming, right? And so that is happening. And I do think that that is addressing part of this problem, again, realizing, not happening fast enough to the proprietary data aspect of it. I think that when you look at how the companies are created and how they kind of decide where to put their chargers, that is really information that they consider proprietary.

And so when we start to maybe hand that off to a third party, I think that the concern is that how is that data going to be used? How is that going to be shared, and how does that impact their ability to then decide where the right charger is?

And so you do have programs at the CEC and others where they say you need to be putting them in, for example, with the Nevi program, in corridors, for example, or with the CEC, they say 50% should go to disadvantaged communities. So to an extent, the government is kind of helping to make some of those decisions.

But when it comes to the other percentage of those chargers that the companies are deciding on their own, where to put that data is how they decide and how they make those decisions. So I would say we're obviously happy to continue these conversations, definitely understand the underlying goal. But I think that when it comes to a third party administrator, there's just some intricacies that come in that does make it hard for companies to figure out how they are going to be competitive among the larger ecosystem.

And ultimately, the more competitive market should result in a better charging environment for everyone.

I think we all have that goal. I think you were the one that mentioned that it's never going to be as easy as putting gas in your car, but I think it can be if you back up into one of those Tesla chargers and you don't have to give a payment, and you just drive off as soon as you're full, I mean, that should be the experience for everybody here. We don't think there's many people in California that would do what Mr. Connolly did.

Um, get to zero at midnight in a deserted parking lot, except for the 10 people waiting in line for the charger. So we really need to make this experience as seamless as possible. And I think that if we all work together, we can get there. Some of it. People have to change how they think about their business models. But we can't just have Tesla be the only ones that survive. We need, need a whole thriving ecosystem.

And again, that might require relooking at the business models and seeing how we can get everybody in a car and everybody to have an easy charging experience so that we see these satisfaction numbers going up, because we know that the number of evs sold has gone down. There could be over the last two quarters. There could be many reasons for that, but if it's because of these dissatisfaction numbers, we're all in trouble in California. So thank you very much.

And just one comment on that last point. Assembly Member Irwin. We can't necessarily link the satisfaction that we've had to EV adoption numbers, but we know that EV drivers repeatedly tell us that one of the primary concerns that they have when they purchase or they begin to think about purchasing an EV or acquiring an EV, however that looks for them, is access to charging.

And what they tell us over and over, which we've alluded to both on this panel and the previous panel, is that ideally access to home charging, because we don't want people to have to rely on public charging. Public charging should be for longer distance travel. It should be for those outlying use cases like what Assembly Member Connolly experienced. Hopefully a little bit better than that. But we want people to be able to have access to home charging.

So I think one thing that as a state we should be thinking about is how can we co locate some of these conversations around public charging reliability and public charging access with home charging access, particularly for, and we've mentioned this earlier, particularly for renters and for dwellers in multifamily housing. How can we make sure that they have access to Low cost charging as well? Absolutely, I understand that.

And I do think that we need to look at should there be grants even for single family homes, updating the electric systems there? And for multifamily, it's a very expensive Proposition. So if we really are talking about 8070% of the charging being at home, we need to look how to facilitate that, too. Absolutely. Yeah. Appreciate you raising that. When I got my ev, the first three months I was on the public charge.

So I have a million stories like assemblymember Connolly, and I swear fights are going to start happening at some of these charging locations and there will be Saturday Night live skits about this once more. People take up evs because it is the wild west at some of these places, but completely changed my experience when I got home charging. Right.

And so I don't have to worry very often unless I'm driving a lot in the district and then to the airport and then back and then I haven't got to charge and I have to drive all around my district and then my car is flashing at me telling me to pull over and stop. But it's costly. We have a difficult budget this year and so it's complicated stuff for us to figure out, but it's also costly for folks. Right.

I bought what I think was probably the cheapest ev or one of the cheapest with a decent range on the market and it's burdensome for me. Plus you have to pay for installing, which is 1000 or $1,500 usually, I think for installing a home charger. And I had hoped that I could just come and plug it into the charger that my dryer used, but my dryer is really old and it was an old plug and so it was not the right plug.

So I ended up having to pay that cost as well. So that's a whole other barrier that people are experiencing and even harder when you're in multifamily and apartment dwellings. I just wanted to go back a little bit to the roaming agreements I know we talked about a little bit. One of the things that I always think about, I hadn't really thought about this until I talked with one of the rental car companies, is that rental cars are also transitioning to electric.

And I think about my mom or my dad renting an electric car and they don't have one or whoever. And there's such a learning curve when you get an electric car and you have to get a million apps for every little charger that you're going to use. And it's hard for me to imagine how this is going to work for people and it not be a total nightmare for their experience.

And so I think that not only for that scenario, but just for all of our sanities, these agreements are so important. And I've been hearing about some silver linings, which is exciting to hear. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel on this around? Are we ever going to be able to get to one app where we can see everything and we can pay and we can pull up and just charge as easily as an integrated system? We know happens at Tesla.

Is that in our future, do you think? I think that, as I mentioned, I think that there's more and more agreements that are happening every day. I cannot promise you that tomorrow there will be an app that all of the roaming is happening among all of these companies. It's extremely complicated, but definitely happy to continue this conversations and keep you updated as more and more of these agreements go into place. And I'm sure you'll see it on your apps. Right.

But yes, I think that those are happening. We see the benefit to EV drivers, and I think that that's going to ultimately be what's pushing. Great. Yeah, we agree. So another question just on, I know you were talking a little about the ONM agreements, operation and maintenance. Is that what it is? And there's been some talk that Ms. Terry discussed around accountability, around site hosts. And can you explain a little bit more about what is going into those agreements these days?

Are there requirements in there that require them to be more proactive? Like there's discussion of vandalism earlier if they're required to check the chargers every single day and report any issues? Are there kind of pieces in agreements that would help a better experience for everyone and for site hosts to be more proactive and engaged in maintenance? I think I'm going to let Ms. Terry go from the beat. But you guys are doing the agreements, correct? Yes.

What I can say is that I'll let Ms. Terry add on to what I'm going to say is every agreement is different. And so I can't tell you that all the O m agreements have these five things, but what I can say is that they are in addition to those on M agreements and figuring out who's in charge of what. There's also really exciting things happening on predictive modeling.

So predictive analytics saying, okay, hey, this charger has been used for the last seven days at 90% rate, whatever it is. Right. And maybe the next day they're not seeing that that charger is being used as much. Okay. Maybe there's something going on.

And so I think that as technology advances, you're also going to see more and more proactive engagement from companies as they figure out, okay, is there a component of this charger that is acting or malfunctioning that they can see on the back end that again, it still doesn't necessarily solve the problem of someone coming up to a cracked screen, which may not have a sensor to be able to notify you of that, but at least it's moving in a direction in which technology is also advancing some of those issues.

And like I said, I think on the ONM agreements, it really just depends. Ms. Terry, I don't know if you had anything to add. Yeah, sure. So, you know, for us, because when we deployed smart infrastructure as an industry, the ideal was that you would never have to send anyone out. Right. It was that the charging station itself will tell you everything. And what we found just through our data sets is that we're not necessarily fully there.

I do think that there is an opportunity to have predictive analytics, but there's still a lot that has to be annotated from the field. And so I think that there is room, and there's room to, yes, one whole side host accountable. But how often you should check up on things? How often does something break a lot of that information? You can learn now and then prescribe it to models later.

So I do think that there could be more work done, and I feel like I'm a broken record now, but I am a strong proponent for field service data. When you dispatch someone to the field, there is so much that you can learn and understand. And the reason why we built charger help the way that we did, and why we even partner with other field service organization is to get the data from the field.

And I believe that the organizations that have done that, they're able to learn because you get more annotated real time data to put it against what the data from the station is saying. Because one of my biggest concerns has been that we do see OCBP data sometimes misinform information, not truly show what the transaction information is. There is a bit of a misalignment there, and we do know that there are more thought that's being done into these O and M contracts.

But I want to push us to getting to a place where we start getting more data from the field in order to build out predictive analytics that is actually based on something with a human being in front of the station, not just the unit itself telling it what it thinks, but having a human validate it until we get into a more confident space where we can really trust the data that's coming off of the station. Thank you.

Yeah, it seems like, I know research is happening in universities, but this is everyday research that's happening in the field. Right. And it's really critical that these worlds come together to get more information and be able to figure out solutions. And it just feels like on the ONM agreements, that the industry has an opportunity here to be really proactive and come up with some standards about what should be included in all of these agreements because we, as the Legislature, I'm sure, come up with some ideas.

But you all can just do this right now, right? And it seems like that's an area where there really is an opportunity for improvement and more accountability and would love to see movement in that direction and just making kind of proactive strides. I wanted to ask Ms. Wall, so I know the transition over to the Tesla interface is happening and wanted to check in. I've been hearing kind of dribs and drabs about some hiccups with some of the different car manufacturers.

And so how is that rollout or testing going? What are some of the challenges that you're seeing? What's the feeling about being able to make the goals and the deadlines and progress generally in that space? Yeah, maybe just taking a step back. Something I did not mention earlier is how non Tesla drivers will gain access to the Tesla network. So the primary way that will happen is via adapters, which we hope is a very short term solution.

But Tesla is working with the automakers that we have signed NAC's agreements with to then provide them with this automaker manufactured adapter that we're manufacturing and designing. And then they will be responsible for providing that to their drivers. So the CEO, Ford, has already announced that those adapters will be available free of charge to Maqui and f 150 drivers. And so that will be one of the primary ways of gaining access to the network.

And the moment the network opens overnight, you will have access to thousands of fast chargers. As a Ford, GM, Rivian, or other brand driver. The other thing that I think is important to note is that we're being very methodical about the rollout. So it's not like we're opening up the network to every single automaker overnight. That would be great, but also really challenging to integrate and diagnose issues with.

So there will be an order to access that will roll out within this year for those drivers to be able to access, so that again, we can diagnose any issues as they come up. And then the means of accessing the network will be via the Tesla app. I know we all don't love apps, but we do have a pretty great app. And so we have a lot of information livability status in there today. So that will be one way.

The second way will be via the automakers app, if they have one. So that gets to some of the roaming discussion. The third way will be in the great State of California via a SMS text or QR code based system. So you don't have to have an app necessarily. So it'll be a browser interface on your phone that you can replicate an app with and then ideally plug and charge. And we are committed to rolling that out. So the idea, know we have your information once.

And every next time you come to a Tesla supercharger, you can just do what Tesla drivers do, which is plug in charge and be on your way. So all of those things are to replicate the same customer experience that we provide our drivers today. And I can't sit up here and say there won't be challenges with that because I think there will be. But we're being very methodical about it to make sure we're not creating a different experience.

Why we're doing this, part of it's our mission. And our mission is really to make sure that you don't just buy an EV once and then never buy one again because you had a bad experience. We want to make sure you continue to be an EV driver. Your second car is an EV, your third car is an EV. And so it's really important to us to do it right and work with other companies and entities to make this happen. So we'll have more learning soon.

But there's a lot of testing and interoperability being done behind the so. And I just want to make sure I heard you right. So you're saying that Ford will have access this year? I can't say exactly how they will roll out, but in terms of the timeline, we haven't announced publicly. But the way access will work is the way the commitments were made to adopting the NAx connector. So Ford, GM, Rivian, Volvo were amongst the first.

And so you will see those on the network before some of the other entities. And that's because we have true partnership agreements with these companies. Okay, thank the on the roaming agreement issue is know Tesla's charges are being opened up. Will there be roaming agreements? How are you all feeling about sharing this data that some people don't feel comfortable about sharing? Yeah, it's a good question.

We will have roaming agreements with automakers if we're using their app or if their customers are using their cup to charge on our network. We will have to share live data and information with them. But I think I share the concerns mentioned earlier in terms of we have to be very specific about who has access to what data and to just make sure that none of that data then gets used from a competitiveness perspective to get a leg up on someone else, essentially.

So for us, I think we're very open and transparent about making sure that there's access to the right information for the consumer so that they can leverage that. I feel like there's an opportunity for some app developer to have really strong data protection agreements, help us all come together. And then you were talking about wanting to make sure there's a good experience. I just want to make sure I'm understanding what you're saying with that, which is there wouldn't be any for non Tesla owners.

There wouldn't be, like, throttling of the charge, know, slowing down the charge or limiting in any be the experience that you have as a Tesla owner is going to be the experience you have as a non Tesla owner, is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's correct. That's the objective. That's the goal. And we know obligations to serve those drivers the same way. Great. Thank you. And just a couple more questions, then I want to open it up to public comment.

So, Ms. Martineau, did I say the last name right? Hey. So the oversight requirements from Nevi and the draft regulations for reliability cover publicly funded chargers. How does plug in America think the state should engage in oversight for all the hundreds of thousands of chargers being built with or without public funding? Yeah, that's a really good question.

I would say that we're really looking forward to the CEC's ongoing process right now because we think that will give us insight into what other information gaps that there are. One thing that's challenging is, of course, we don't want to ask individual consumers, tell us what's in your home. We need access to your data. Certainly that's not the route we want to take, but understanding the home charging picture can really help us to understand what do we need publicly.

So one thing that we've considered at Plugin America is trying to get data for harder to access charging areas, which include multifamily housing buildings and other kind of workplace charging buildings, where we're talking about a greater volume of people using those chargers. That would be an area where we'd be interested in, because often it's not an individual customer or consumer that's managing those chargers that tend to be managed at the building level. And that's something that we'd be interested in.

But as for how that oversight goes to assess the full picture, I think that's why we're particularly interested in what the CEC process looks like to understand where those gaps are and what we can do moving forward. Great. Thank you. And one last question for Ms. Terry, and really appreciate the work that you've done around the EV technician certificate. I don't know if it's a certification or know and just creating standards and a workforce that's much needed in this space.

So I was wondering what your thoughts are about what the state could be doing to make sure that both regulators and workforce is ready for the task. If we're supposed to be getting to a million chargers, which I think we'll see by 2030, then clearly we need a whole lot more support on the maintenance side to be a part of that.

Of course, I could take all the compliments, but I do want to acknowledge there was a colleague of manufacturers like Flow, ABB, electrified America, Tesla, that actually worked on this. Essentially, we call it a body of knowledge that was put together with SAE and those manufacturers, and they worked on it for eight months, meetings every two weeks. And these were engineers from these major manufacturers collaborating on what an actual EvSe technician needed to learn. So just really want to acknowledge that partnership.

And it was amazing to see for someone that's been in the industry for a while to see that collaboration. I think what the state can do around this really is one SAE will be working to be in the certifying body arm. So we came up with this body of knowledge. It's available online. So workforce development programs, colleges, literally anyone now has access to what allows a person to be a great technician that is available for free online through SAE.

And SAE will start administrating the test, I believe, in Q two of this year. And I think that it would be great if the California government could accept the EVSE technician certification from SAE as a best practice. Right. Because as we worked with the industry to come up with this and folks will be taking this test, if there could be an acknowledgment from the state that this is an agreed upon best practice, I think that would be awesome.

In regards to O&M. We continue, would love to continue to be hopeful with getting data from the field and being able to bubble that up when necessary. And thank you again.

Thank you. So, any final questions before we move on? Okay, so I just want to thank our panelists. I know this is a complex issue. I know that there's a lot of hard work happening right now to figure it out. And I know that we have shared goals, that we want the experience to be a lot better, that we want people to take up evs, and we want there to be affordability and accessibility while folks are at it. So I'll release the panel now and wanted to move on to public comment. So anyone who'd like to provide public comment, we are going to allow for 1 minute of public comment, and due to some constraints we're supposed to end as close to noon as we can possibly. So please introduce yourself, your name, organization, and your comment.

I am Sarah Raffleson and I am at EVgo. Like many of you, I'm an EV driver and I'm also a toddler mom, so I can relate to those EV driving family road trips that were discussed earlier as well. I drive the drive, so I want to just share that customer experience for us is paramount. We share the same goals here that have been discussed, and I want to tell you that the customer experience is a top priority. We also know it's an equity issue.

So we launched over a year ago a program called Renew, and as part of that we are investing in a lot of network enhancements. We're building larger stations so we have that redundancy and can meet that customer demand. We are upgrading and sometimes actually decommissioning legacy equipment in the field that has sometimes been there for over 10 years and just no longer meets our standards for reliability.

And we're replacing that with more State of the art newer infrastructure that has higher reviews from customers, higher plug scores, and better uptime. We also started measuring something called one and done success, which is beyond uptime. It is a measure of if a customer shows up at a charger, are they getting what they came for, which is a full charge, and whether the reason for a failed charging session is hardware, software, vehicle interop, which I think came up a lot today, or even just customer education.

We won't rest until we reach 100% one and done success. And we saw in the first half of the year an improvement by six percentage points. We'll be announcing in the next couple of weeks additional progress on that. I heard a lot of questions related to wanting more solutions, and I'll just share we are working very closely with the Chargex consortium in the national labs, and there is no silver bullet.

Being a network that needs to serve all drivers means that we have to do a lot on codes and standards. So I'll just say knowing that I've got limited time, some things like adapter regulation, encouraging more standardization of port locations, and other things are things that I think California can explore to complement what the Federal Government is doing. And with that, I know I'm at time. Thank you.

Thank you.

Julee Malinowski-Ball on behalf of the California Electric Transportation Coalition. Cal ETC. Is an organization that has a little bit of everyone among the stakeholders in this industry in our membership. So we're representing kind of across the span of utilities and automakers and EVSCs. We really appreciated actually this hearing. We thought your panels were great and your questions were thoughtful, and we think conversations like this should definitely continue.

We just want to agree that with what you've heard today is there's a massive amount of effort going into the success of this industry and the user experience, people and resources. It's happening. We want to also mention that we are very supportive of what's going on. The Energy Commission and their data driven approach. We look forward to what the new drafts that are coming out will be at the table conveying that.

And then finally, we just want to just let you know the utilities that came up as interconnection and getting in the ground, the utilities are working very, very hard to also respond to this need. They have leaned into the PUC process and are part of the solution here today. Thank you for your time and look forward to continuing the conversations.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Chairs and Members of the Committee, thank you so much for the great discussion. Rachel Mueller here on behalf of Electrify America and because of time and don't want to miss any of my notes, I'm just going to read so pardon that electrify America is the largest open DC fast charging network in the United States and has invested more than $2 billion over the last 10 years in zev infrastructure, education and access.

Electrify America currently operates more than 250 stations here in California, which is 1100 chargers delivering ultrafast charging and hyperfast charging speeds of 150 to 350 California ev drivers. We also have over 50% of our investments in Low income and disadvantaged communities. Electrify America has demonstrated a broad set of technical capacities around network performance and reliability.

Our holistic approach includes predevelopment equipment testing at our center of excellence test center, providing customers with 247 support through our customer Contact center and our network operations center, an internal field service engineer program staff training through a proprietary curriculum for both routine preventative and emergency maintenance, reoccurring preventative maintenance through onsite field service checks and supply chain maintenance through newly expanded warehouse and distribution capabilities.

Electrify America recently received approval from CARB for our cycle four funding ZEV investment plan, which covers the year 2024 to 2026, and this includes investments focused on customer service experience. In cycle four, Electrify America will invest 172,000,000 in operations and maintenance station reliability upgrades and deployment of next gen charging technology at new sites. Electrify America also has committed to deploying the J 3400 or NAX connector at its sites by 2025.

Electrify America saw 2.3 million charging sessions in California in 2022, out of a total of 5.2 million nationwide, and is on track to surpass that number in 2023. So our investments in 2024 and beyond will continue to focus on customer experience to drive Zev adoption in support of California's goals. Thank you for your time today. Thank you.

Thank you chairs and Members of the Committee Jesse Cuevas on behalf of Zeal Energy, who has developed the next generation of chargers to address the issues of reliability. Zeal was actually founded by a group of individuals who were frustrated with no charge events and sought to solve these problems. Zeal's charging infrastructure does not rely on an Internet connection, which causes most of the reliability issues today. Instead, users are provided app based tokens that they can later authorize charging events without Internet service.

That means that chargers can work in parking garages, in communities with hard to access Internet, and other places similar to that with near 100% uptime and frictionless user experience. We've been actively engaged in the CEC's regulatory process and strongly support adopting an uptime standard for all chargers. We look forward to continuing to work with the Legislature to support and improve the EV charging experience. Thank you.

Thank you.

Afternoon chairs and Members. Cory Bullis on behalf of Flow EV charging we are a charging station manufacturer and network operator. There's two issues I'll quickly comment on from today's hearing. First, regarding reliability, we were one of the proud co sponsors of AP 2061 alongside Charger help, and we're excited to see the final standard coming out from the Energy Commission at the individual company level to ensure high reliability. We have a vertically integrated product, another topic of discussion today.

So that means we make the hardware and the software all in house within our company. It helps us better prevent reliability issues in the first place, but then also troubleshoot reliability issues in the field more quickly. Second, on the topic of roaming, I really appreciate the comments made on this today. We're a strong supporter of roaming agreements. We were one of the first charging companies in North America to have a roaming agreement in place with another fellow Member of the industry.

I think this is perhaps maybe a small framing issue or reframe. I would point out roaming to us is about empowering the consumer to choose their favorite app regardless of what network the charging station is on. So while there's tons of apps out there, and maybe that causes fatigue for consumers. It's not so much about reducing the number of apps that are out there.

It's more about you get to pick the one that works best for you and then you get to use that one to access, to find and use any charging station you want. And I think you heard Commissioner Monahan speak positively about roaming agreements. The Energy Commission has been looking into this issue. We would strongly encourage the Committee to engage in that process to talk with them more about how to accelerate roaming agreements. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Mal Scoron. I lead Chargepoint's regulatory engagement across the US. Chargepoint is the largest charging network in North America, and we design and manufacture our hardware and software to work together seamlessly to provide a superior customer experience for drivers across the network, as well as make it easy for site hosts to offer charging services that align with their business.

There are over 54,000 public and semipublic ports on the Chargepoint network in California, which means that over half of the ports in state are on our network. Our charging network is reliable, and we continue to improve that with our investments in research and development, manufacturing and testing. I welcome you all to visit Chargepoint's interoperability testing lab in Campbell, California, where you can see how we work with our products, designed in house and along with automakers, to make sure that that customer experience is smooth and seamless.

ChargePoint is supportive of uptime requirements for station owners as this aligns with what we offer our customers directly for O&M Services, and it helps ensure the overall health of our network. Our O&M Services are really made possible by the thousands of electrical contractors that we employ, along with other charging providers in the State of California, to install and replace chargers. And they're doing a great job on the ground to deliver those services and make sure that chargers are reliable when drivers need them.

Finally, I just wanted to highlight the great work being done at the Energy Commission in order to establish uptime requirements. We've been engaging with the CEC to establish those regulations, as well as to establish a consistent framework for reporting, and we're looking forward to seeing those finalized this year. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I don't know if there's any closing comments by other Members.

I'll just close by saying thank you, chair Schiavo Members, and to all of our panelists for your focus on oversight and accountability. As we have highlighted in this hearing, we have incredibly ambitious goals to decarbonize the transportation sector in California, and we've invested hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to help achieve that goal.

But I think we all know that writing the check is the easy part, and we've got to make sure that those dollars are actually delivering results and that implementation is working and that the charging network is accessible, available, and functional. So I am encouraged by some of the progress that we've heard in today's discussion. I think we know we've got a really steep climb to get to a million charging stations by 2032, million by 2035.

So this will certainly continue to be an area of focus for our Committee as we move forward. So thank you. Appreciate your partnership.

Thank you. And same, really appreciate your partnership with this hearing and tackling this difficult question. And I want to thank the panelists who were here today for their testimony and participation. I think that it was really insightful and helpful for us to figure out kind of where to dig in on this issue and the important progress that is being made.

I know that the EV charging work is going through a lot of growing pains, but as discussed today, we're finding the weak points and there is action being taken to remedy these issues. And I do appreciate, I know, as we see from the consumer data and surveys, there's a lot of frustration in this space, but there's a lot of progress and a lot of hard work happening. And I appreciate that everyone is taking it very seriously to address these concerns.

And we certainly want to work together. And I know that there's commitment from our Committee to continue to work to make progress in this space. So I'm really looking forward to doing that work together. And I want to thank my staff, Grayson, my Legislative Director, and Kathleen, who is a new science fellow with the energy, utility and energy Committee. So welcome and thank you for your work on this. And we've concluded our agenda.

This Joint Hearing of the Select Committee on electric vehicles and charging infrastructure and Committee of Utilities and Energy is adjourned.