EVs Are Growing Up—and Getting Practical

As incentives wobble and policies shift, both fleets and consumers are moving past hype toward pragmatism. Fleets are targeting the easiest wins—where electrification already makes economic sense—while private buyers, now well beyond the early-adopter phase, are embracing EVs for one simple reason: convenience. Better charging networks, lower maintenance, and real-world familiarity are building confidence. The next inflection point isn’t awareness—it’s trust, cost transparency, and access to charging, especially where people live and work. For EV adoption to stick, convenience has to be constant and economics have to pencil out.

Transcript

00:00:02 your firm has really cool interesting data. I read the reports and said, "Wow, there's a a lot to unpack there." But before we get into really great data sets, I I love to know, how are your customers thinking about making EV investments today, both in terms of fleets and private ownership, since it's two different sides of the market, but they're working together.

00:00:25
>> Yeah. You know, I think on the on the fleet side, it's um uh you know, in the market in in 2025, we've got some some uh back and forth uh kind of financial incentives and disincentives and and different focus from the government. So, uh we've definitely seen a little bit on the fleet side in terms of people realizing they don't need to do

00:00:48 what they thought they had to do for compliance, at least with the with the state of California. On the other hand, um we've my my co-workers in other parts of the company are definitely supporting fleets really all around the country who are trying to move forwards with electric vehicles. Um some of them are for compliance, some of them are for just sustainability goals, some of them

00:01:06 are, you know, just just think it's the right thing to do economically. So that's um kind of all over the place. And you know, we're helping people look at what parts of their fleets are the easiest or the hardest or the shortest term or whatever to um kind of make that make that jump, whether it's, you know, I think light duty vehicles at this point, 15 years in is is kind of a

00:01:28 little more straightforward for most people. Um on the on the on the kind of light duty residential side though, um I think it's, you know, it's kind of like the new new in some cases. People are hopeful they're going to save some money. Um there's a little bit of a sustainability thing going on there. Uh you know, in terms of like the market adoption curve, we're we're past the

00:01:48 early adopters. We're definitely somewhere in the in the middle if if not the third phase of that that adoption curve. So EVs, not everybody's driven one, not everybody's interested in one, but everybody's kind of heard about it and you know, we've seen multiple generations. So, it's just kind of uh something that that a lot of people seem open to and interested in and especially

00:02:09 with um you know, some of the big brand name charging networks, it makes it so easy to to charge if not road trip. Um so, yeah, I think it's just becoming more and more uh common for people to think about it as their next car or their next toy car for a 2-year lease or something like that. Um, part of my interest is trying to help people find confidence and security and and um,

00:02:33 convenience with it so that they choose to keep it beyond their lease or keep it for a long term or keep, you know, keep staying in the EV market and uh, don't go back to a conventional car or at least put as many miles on their electric car or plug in a hybrid car as possible. So, you hit the nail on the head, convenience. I own an electric vehicle and I had to go to a gas station

00:02:53 to put air in the tires. I felt like this is the most antiquated thing in the world. I said, "Holy God, I don't miss this place." I But it just it just hit because you're so used to the convenience of the EV. There's no oil change and those get expensive and it's just you can charge at home or you can charge on the go. And when you get used to that overall, I'm on my second EV. My

00:03:11 first one was a disaster. My second one is is amazing because the infrastructure is much better. But it's like, okay, this is so convenient. Why would I want to go something inconvenient? Do you see any of that in your trade? both from a fleet perspective because the maintenance is cheaper from a fleet and from a personal ownership you have the convenience is that once we get used to

00:03:27 it whoa this is great is that is that trend continue or am I just an outlier in that
>> um you know I think there's uh they're just such such different markets I mean the the residential passenger vehicle side is just so much about being able to make their own decisions and not having to necessarily justify it so so I think that convenience side is is so super

00:03:48 important on the on the residential side and That's one of the biggest challenges is such a large proportion of of the US population uh lives in lives in apartments or condos and doesn't have their own place to charge or a convenient place to charge. And uh so some people will will try it and because of that lack of convenience it may not work out for

00:04:08 them. They may not be able to keep it. And so what we're seeing is uh like workplace charging is super important. That's uh what a lot of the industry has been touting for the last 10 to 20 years is workplace charging really makes up for residential charging. You go there, you know, at least we used to go go to work 5 days a week and spend a lot of time there. A lot of dwell time. That's

00:04:27 what a lot of um from my perspective, a lot of the EV charging comes down to is is dwell time. What what's your opportunity to charge your vehicle? So, on the residential side, you know, especially if you have a house or a dedicated parking space where you can get electricity to it, you're you're doing pretty good. Um, I think there's a lot of arbitrage in terms of what's the

00:04:45 what's the right cost and and um, with some of the work I'm doing now and uh, with with my co-workers and my team, we're kind of digging into, you know, at least in terms of public charging, how what what's the range of costs? How how many charging stations have low costs, high costs, medium costs? How frequently is that is that happening? And how's it compared to the cost of gasoline? So, at

00:05:06 some point, that's kind of the reckoning is is, you know, how convenient is it? How economical is it? And that economical side has a lot to do with fleet. Um on on the other hand, even fleets have to think about how how well do their employees, how well do their drivers accept the vehicles. And that definitely seems to be another challenge is getting people who um you know drive

00:05:25 for a living to to accept EVs and trust them. So there's a lot of um you know similar but but just different concepts going into either market, especially when you start getting into commercialized vehicles.
>> And that's a very valid point. the range of cost is that what goes into that and does the price of land factor in if you look at some an industrial yard might

00:05:47 have a a cheaper piece of land versus something in a prime downtown area. Does that get factored into the cost to charge or what really goes into that whole equation?
>> That's a really good question. Um I I wish I was a little closer to that. Um, I think I think the some of the research we're doing and and reporting we're doing and this, you know, 562 pages of

00:06:07 goodness kind of gets at, you know, what that range of cost is and frequency of of any particular cost is. Uh, from what we've seen, it's, you know, I'm not seeing patterns, at least on the on the public side, in terms of the the cost of installing charging and the location of charging impacting what what rates people the these operators make available to the general public. Um, so

00:06:31 that's hard to say. I I would definitely say um, you know, you start looking at the industrial side or or the commercial side, there's um, larger parking lots that that, you know, might add cost because you got to get a a further distance away from where the electricity is to where the chargers are. On the other hand, a lot of those larger lots are are asphalt or dirt softscape that

00:06:52 makes it a lot lower cost to do the projects. So I don't overall I I get the feeling we're seeing a lot of kind of random pricing. Um we see a lot of the same operators, the same network service providers for instance running these charging stations. But uh in which case we'll see you know they'll have a kind of a common um pricing structure taking place. But I I'm not really seeing any

00:07:18 any specific patterns associated with you know pricing here versus pricing there. Um, and you know, there's a couple of high highriced ones, 60.7 cents a kilowatt hour, which is definitely getting high. There's a couple low ones in the 30 cents. We've seen a couple of uh maybe semi semi-private or private locations that are providing free charging just cuz

00:07:37 they like the benefits. But uh so far, I'm not necessarily seeing the the connection between the cost of building to the compared to the cost of operating these things.