Watch: Q&A with Albert Gore, Executive Director, Zero Emission Transportation Association

Albert Gore, executive director at the Zero Emission Transportation Association, lays out the trends shaping the next phase of EV adoption and how better charging, clearer visibility, and growing awareness of everyday benefits are pushing the market forward.

Catch up on the highlights below and watch the full interview here.

On why more people are choosing to drive EVs:

“They’re just good products. They’re fun to drive. They have a lot of appeal just as a fun car to drive. They’re ultra-modern.

“Getting behind the wheel of an EV is the most powerful experience someone can have… There are things about it that need to be improved, but plenty of things about gas cars that aren’t ideal as well.

“There are a huge range of benefits associated with it… If you have access to workplace charging or home charging, you wake up with a full battery every day… Utilities are starting to offer programs that let EV drivers provide backup power or even support the grid.”

On how charging infrastructure is rapidly improving:

“Charging is out there. It’s not as visible as gas stations are, but there is a lot of available charging with much higher uptimes and reliability than… in versions one and two of fast chargers. There’s been a huge improvement over the last five years, particularly the last two years, in high-powered, high-uptime chargers.

“You want to ideally match [charger deployment and vehicle deployment] so that you’re building stations as they will be utilized… But costs are coming down, utilization is coming up—that’s gonna mean a lot more chargers much more quickly.

“Most people don’t fully appreciate how much charging is done away from fast chargers… Most people are charging at home with a level two, upwards of 90% of the time.”

On increasing visibility and how that reduces range anxiety:

“The cost to provide charging access to a parking space has dramatically declined over the last five or six years…Curbside charging is ubiquitous in a lot of other places in the world. We’re just scratching the surface here…I think that’s something that will dramatically increase charging access and also visibility for people who are used to seeing gas stations everywhere they look.

“If people see a charging post where they see parking meters or utility poles or light posts… your range anxiety goes down significantly.”

On the benefits of EVs and why adoption will keep growing:

“You can actually make the grid better, put downward pressure on electricity prices and provide some revenue for yourself under these utility programs…We have dozens of gigawatt hours of batteries in EVs already in this country distributed around the grid. That’s going to grow… and the capabilities provided by that technology will grow.”

“The real challenge for any new vehicle on the market today, gas or EV is affordability… Supporting domestic manufacturing… is going to be more consistently possible than supporting, say, EV policy or climate policy has been when you have a change in administration. My hope is that we will continue to support them. That’s going to bring down costs for EVs and that is going to further accelerate adoption.”

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