“Who’s Saving the Planet?” Podcast Interviews Gustavo Occhiuzzo

EVCS co-founder and CEO Gustavo Occhiuzzo recently spoke on the “Who’s Saving the Planet?” podcast about the electric mobility revolution and what we as a company are doing to help realize a truly carbon-neutral future. During the conversation with hosts Anthony Noto and Jessica Miles, Occhiuzzo made several critical points that help listeners understand where we are now in that mission, the obstacles we face, what EVCS has done to overcome those obstacles, and what we can do better as a global community. Here are some of the most prescient points:

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Committing to Electric

Occhiuzzo points out that approximately 20% of drivers who have owned hybrid electric or full electric vehicles in the past subsequently reverted back to gasoline-powered vehicles. That signals a failure by the EV industry to retain its customers – to generate “EV loyalty,” so to speak. According to a recent Enel X article (https://evcharging.enelx.com/resources/blog/638-breaking-the-barriers-to-ev-adoption-what-your-business-can-do-to-help), the two largest barriers to creating this loyalty are limited EV charging access at MUDs and range anxiety. EVCS aims to address this conundrum by making charging stations much more ubiquitous at MUDs, businesses and public spaces.

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Funding Drives Expansion

The expansion of new technologies in the marketplace is often hampered by a lack of available funds, and electrified transportation is no different. Occhiuzzo notes that EVCS’s ability to expand has been fueled by government subsidization, and where our presence is most prolific is in places where subsidies are most abundant. Therefore, one of the key ways EV drivers can help us expand infrastructure is by supporting government subsidization measures like cap-and-trade or renewable energy grants across more areas of the country.

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Addressing the Lag

Currently, the installation of EV charging stations significantly lags EV auto manufacturing. Occhiuzzo notes that while we’re on track to see 1.5 million EVs on the road by 2030, we’re not yet on pace to see a requisite number of chargers to service such vehicles. Even in LA, there are about 100 EVs for every one public charging station. The impending bottleneck caused by this gap will continue to stifle more robust EV adoption. He admits that we can’t do it alone and that more installers will be necessary to address the type of goals vocalized by California governor Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration.

Occhiuzzo founded ridesharing company Green Commuter

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Partnering with Utilities

We are witnessing an increase in energy efficiency across multiple sectors, from retail products to smart homes, while the transportation industry struggles to keep up. But once it does, says Occhiuzzo, we will need buy-in from utility companies that must shore up their grids to handle the additional load and ultimately find ways to generate power from renewable resources. He acknowledges that this process will likely take 10 to 20 years, but that, in the meantime, EVCS has been buying its electricity from renewable energy producers (even ones that are hundreds of miles away) through certificates that offset electricity generated locally by fossil fuels.

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Carbon Neutral vs Carbon Negative

Occhiuzzo declared our goal to be more than just reaching carbon neutrality; it’s actually reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by replacing current infrastructure with clean energy technologies that amount to becoming “carbon negative.” In addition to our essential mission of installing more chargers, we have engaged in efforts to reach this goal by working with utilities on issues like demand response, battery storage and V2G technology that mark the future of the EV revolution.

You can listen to the podcast episode in its entirety here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0NEFTuZ6M78Ics5RPsuFqj?si=T27kkqnlR2ON0lKaZCu4yw&dl_branch=1&nd=1

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Installation of the Month (February 2021): Hollywood & Highland

In the movie Spider-man, Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.” The phrase, which came to be known as the “Peter Parker Principle,” is just as true today as it was 20 years ago when the movie first premiered. And just as Peter took seriously his newfound powers, we take seriously our responsibility to facilitate broader access to vehicle electrification options – quite literally the “great power” here is the electricity that keeps EVs moving. We also understand the power of movies and television to convey the importance of electric mobility, be it through information, entertainment or influence marketing. As such, Hollywood has become a tremendous partner in advancing the EVCS mission.

Installation of the Month (January 2021): Barlow Respiratory Hospital

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2020: A Year in Review

Two thousand twenty has been a year of undeniable adversity, but also one of remarkable achievement. A year of firsts and hopefully a few lasts. A time of toil and tribulation, but also of triumph. For genuine success is partly defined by our ability to hurdle those implacable obstacles that make the result so noteworthy in the first place. Now, as the EVCS team looks back on this unusual year, we take stock of our unique achievements that made 2020 one for the books.

Electrification Progress in the Age of COVID

It’s pretty clear that vaccine or no, COVID will be here for a while, and with it the new normal of face masks, social distancing, telecommuting and (consequently) less road travel. While some might view this with trepidation, we see it as an opportunity. Since the earliest weeks of the pandemic, major metro areas like Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago – those with large reductions in automobile traffic – immediately began seeing improvements in air quality, according to articles in the New York Times and Washington Post. More recent, an NPR story noted ozone pollution has decreased as much as 15% in many of these places. It seems an unintended consequence of the lockdown has been to accelerate the transition to responsible mobility by demonstrating its positive effects on the environment.

Commentary on Geotab’s 2020 EV Fleet Trends Article – Part II

Two weeks ago, we published part one of our commentary on Geotab’s in-depth article, “Electric Vehicle Trends 2020: Top 6 Factors Impacting Fleet Electrification” (https://www.geotab.com/white-paper/electric-vehicle-trends/). Again, the idea was to assess whether each of the trends were evolving as Geotab predicted and, if so, how EVCS was responding to them in the marketplace. Below are the final three trends referenced and our thoughts on each.