Expanding Access to Electric Vehicle Chargers, with Kimathi Boothe

The Full Transcript

Kristin Hayes: Hello, and welcome to Resources Radio, a weekly podcast from Resources for the Future. I’m your host, Kristin Hayes.

In today’s episode, the third in our series on electric vehicles (EVs), I’ll be talking about charging stations, which are another really critical piece of the EV puzzle. Joining me to talk about this important topic is Kimathi Boothe, who is vice president of energy operations at Dunamis Clean Energy Partners. Dunamis is a Michigan-based technology, manufacturing, and engineering firm focused on energy efficiency and environmental-service solutions, and EV charging stations are a big part of their business, as well as a topic very close to Kimathi’s heart.

Just two quick notes about our series: If you’ve missed a previous episode, no worries. You can click around in our show notes or our podcast homepage to catch up. Or if you don’t really need to know all the details about EVs, just tune in again in a couple of weeks when we’ll return to our normally scheduled programming. But of course, I hope you’ll stay with us.

Hi Kimathi, it is great to talk with you today.

Kimathi Boothe: Hi Kristin. Absolute pleasure to be joining you today.

Kristin Hayes: Thanks. Let me kick off. I’d love to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself to our listeners and maybe tell us a little bit about your professional journey that led you to working on EV charging stations and where you are today.

Kimathi Boothe: Sure. I’m an electrical engineer by trade and training, and when I came out of school, EV chargers were the furthest thing, probably, from my mind. But I have spent about 20 years in the energy-management and energy-efficiency space, particularly doing energy modeling and engineering for the commercial and industrial building sector, and that led me to doing some back-of-the-house, as you would say, engineering for Dunamis Clean Energy Partners over a decade ago, as they were pursuing energy-efficiency projects. As the company grew—I had started my own business in 2007—more of that work became Dunamis work.

In 2015, we launched an effort to develop, design, and manufacture light-emitting diode lighting, and that really propelled me to even more of an in-depth journey with Dunamis. I got a phone call one Sunday evening from Natalie King saying, “Hey, can we meet at the Coney Island tomorrow morning?” We met at the Coney, and that is where she relayed her vision of building EV charging stations. That was in early 2019, and I officially joined Dunamis Clean Energy and eventually Dunamis Charge at that time.

I don’t want to say the rest is history, but we’re making history.

Kristin Hayes: I love it. That’s a great way to characterize that, and it sounds like it was a little bit of destiny maybe that led you to have your life intertwined with this particular company. It’s really great to have your perspective on this, what I would argue is a very important piece of the EV puzzle around charging stations.

Let’s dive in, and to kick us off, I’d love to ask for a refresher on something that I talked about with my very first guest in the first episode of this series, and that’s around the different levels of charging stations and what those mean. Really quickly, can you just give me a quick refresher on that?

Kimathi Boothe: Sure, absolutely. Commonly, there are three different levels of EV charger that we are experiencing in the marketplace now. The Level 1 charger is 120 volts. You plug that right up into your regular wall socket. It generally takes anywhere from 11 to 24 hours to charge your car fully, which translates to about 5 miles of charge per hour. As we move up in speed and power, we move to a Level 2 charger. Those we plug into a 240-volt socket; those are like your electric dryer or your electric stove, for example. Now, we’re talking fully charging your vehicle in two and a half to 8 hours, and we’re looking at ranges of maybe 20 to 70 miles per hour of charging.

Then, we go to the ultimate level—what we refer to as DC fast charging (some people call that, colloquially, Level 3 charging)—but in those instances, you’re charging your vehicle up in 15 to 30 minutes. You can get anywhere up to, in some of the most advanced vehicles, close to 1,000 miles of range in an hour. We’re probably a few years away from that for the average vehicle, but that’s the type of capability that you see among those three charging ranges.

Kristin Hayes: That’s perfect. I found myself leaping at the chance to say to you what a great “grounding” that is in this particular subject matter … That’s an electricity pun, but it’s hard to resist.

Kimathi Boothe: No, I’m with that.

Kristin Hayes: Oh boy.

Kimathi Boothe: Keep them coming!

Kristin Hayes: But that really was a great refresher on that very important terminology for the rest of our conversation.

One other thing that I wanted to ask you about was that there are other important differences between the charging station types that are currently available in this country, and so I’m hoping you can say a little bit more about those other differences; for example, plug types, which is a really interesting topic of conversation these days, too.

Kimathi Boothe: Yeah, it certainly is interesting. One analogy I use with EV chargers and the like is somewhat analogous to the cell phone and the cell phone charger. Many people are familiar with Tesla. They were one of the first mass-marketed cars out there, and they have a pretty robust and extensive charging network. Tesla built out a network somewhat similar to Apple. You get an Apple phone, and everything is Apple, Apple, Apple.

Aside from that, there are actually other charging companies and charging networks out there that we could equate to the Android, for example. You have a variety of other companies building charging stations and building charging networks, they all rely on a similar communication protocol, but they’re in fact different companies all operating and striving to build the same type of product.

I don’t know if that completely answers that question, but in addition to that, where the consumer really finds the difference is at the charging nozzle itself. For Tesla, they develop their cars to charge directly with Tesla charging stations, and there’s a particular socket that fits that. I don’t know how much you want to get into the technicality of this here, Kristin, but the other charging networks outside of Tesla use a completely separate, different type of charging socket, and we can get into the names of those.

There are efforts now to commonize those, so whereas previously, there’s only been one standard here in the United States, the SAE J1772 standard, we’re now moving to a place where we’re going to standardize the Tesla charger, or the SAE J3400, commonly known as the North American Charging Standard. That’s a name that Tesla calls their charger.

It can be somewhat convoluted—the effort put forth by the government and, really, all of the stakeholders in this space is to make sure that, from the customer’s perspective, whether you’re pulling up to a Tesla charger or any other brand charger, that the experience is the same, that you get high-quality support when it comes to charging those vehicles, and that the chargers work, most importantly, when you pull up.

Kristin Hayes: Right. That’s really critical. I hope we can come back to that, too—this question of maintenance and who actually is responsible for making sure that these charging stations are working.

But that was great; that was a wonderful introduction to the world of acronyms and terminology, and I think you hit on something really important, which is that in the relatively short term, the idea is that we will harmonize towards this North American Charging Standard. We will move towards a slightly more harmonized system, but right now, there’s this multiplicity, and you really need to know what your plug type is in order to know which charging station you can access—is that right?

Kimathi Boothe: That is correct. What I would say is Tesla provides an adapter for the J1772 chargers, and many charging manufacturers—Dunamis is one of them—will be introducing the North American Charging Standard charging plug to our lineup, as well. Again, that just speaks to the harmonization when it comes to really creating a great charging experience for the end user.

Kristin Hayes: Well, and I think your cell-phone analogy is apt there, too, because I do think we’ve all gotten somewhat used to having different charger types and having adapters that go between them, and maybe it’s not ideal, but we’ve all gotten used to it. I do think that in this interim period, we’ll learn.

Kimathi Boothe: You got it. Apple had a Lightning charger, and Android had the USB charger, and now we’re all moving toward a commonized USB-C charging, so I think there’s a similar trend in EV charging.

Kristin Hayes: With that background about the various types of chargers available, I’d love to talk about some numbers. Let me ask you: How many chargers are installed in the United States right now? I’ll be honest, I’m not even sure that’s a knowable number, because I’m not sure that it’s possible to keep track, or if that number is really changing too fast. But I’d welcome your insight on our current state in terms of numbers of chargers, and maybe, of those chargers that we do know about, what is the general breakdown in those levels that you talked about and the plug types that you talked about? Just give us a landscape of what the network size and configuration looks like right now.

Kimathi Boothe: I think you’re right on both counts in that it is somewhat difficult to track the daily deployment or real-time deployment of EV chargers. But we do have some good insights, particularly when it comes to the public or publicly available chargers. The latest data coming out of 2023 is that there are about 160,000 publicly available chargers throughout the nation. When we talk about chargers, the charger may have one or two or multiple ports, meaning availability to charge nozzles within that.

But there are roughly a little more than 160,000 publicly available chargers. That breaks down to about 126,000 or 127,000 Level 2 chargers, just over 20,000 DC fast chargers, and then close to 1,700 Tesla Superchargers. In 2023 alone, there were probably about 50,000 Level 2 chargers added and about 10,000 DC fast chargers added to the US market.

Kristin Hayes: Okay, so some significant growth then.

Kimathi Boothe: Absolutely. We’re expecting, just within the charging infrastructure, probably 16 percent or maybe close to 20 percent growth year over year at this point.

Kristin Hayes: To put a finer point on it, those are the publicly available ones that would be in places like parking lots at Walmart, or at hotel parking lots and things like that, as opposed to the perhaps even less knowable number of ones that are installed at people’s homes, at car dealerships, or things like that. Is that kind of the distinction there?

Kimathi Boothe: That’s exactly right. The difficult part to track is the individuals who are putting those chargers in their homes or the private companies that just want charging solely for their employees and the like. There are some estimates—I can recall a study that Intel provided—and they estimate that to meet the demand of vehicles by 2030, we could see upwards of 29 million chargers deployed. The more conservative estimates are around the 3-million-chargers range, but when you really look at incorporating the residential and that private space, the numbers could get quite large.

Kristin Hayes: Well, that brings me to my next question, which I think is a great segue from where we are right now. I’ve heard people say both of the following statements: First, there are charging stations everywhere; and then second, there are basically no charging stations in this country. I realize that those statements sound very contradictory, but I think maybe they’re not actually as contradictory as they sound, and they just apply in different settings and circumstances. I wanted to ask you—160,000 on its face sounds like a big number, but I’m sure it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the number of gasoline stations, for example. How do you think about the volume of charging stations? What’s your take on those statements, and when they’re accurate or not?

Kimathi Boothe: Both of those statements are accurate. To your point, it depends on where you’re at, most importantly. We are the United States, but we are very diverse and very different when it comes to geography, topology, behaviors, and the like. If you go to California, you will see chargers probably everywhere, relatively speaking. When you go to the Dakotas, you probably won’t see chargers everywhere. That becomes a function of the demand and the density in all of those areas.

I would say every single state in the nation has seen an increase in EV registration as well as EV-charger deployment, so there’s no state that has either stayed the same or declined in that area, but certainly there are areas that have leaned in more to adoption, and infrastructure leads that. As infrastructure is deployed, you see more people seeing charging stations, and the confidence of actually buying and driving those vehicles increases.

Kristin Hayes: Let’s talk a little bit more about another really important point that you just hit on, which is equity in charging-station deployment, which I think is a term that can mean lots of different things, but I’ve heard of terms like “charging-station deserts” and places where there really aren’t chargers available, even where, perhaps, there is demand or could be demand.

There’s this complicated relationship here—this chicken-and-egg relationship, if you will—between the installation of chargers and people feeling comfortable buying the cars, as you noted. I know this is a topic that’s an important policy question, and I know it matters a lot to you, so let me ask: What does equitable deployment of charging stations mean to you? Has that been happening to date? And what policies or practices should we be thinking about in terms of an equitable deployment?

Kimathi Boothe: I think the chicken-and-egg analogy is one that we use often, particularly in this industry, but what we do know is that, for real adoption to take place, infrastructure needs to be in place at least two years before that. Where there is a gap, we do know really what it takes to start to fill that gap. When we talk about equity and where charging stations are available, of course, when you’re talking early and very early adopters, infrastructure and even the benefits go where the money goes. That’s what we have already started to see with what we call this fourth industrial revolution around electrification and e-mobility.

I think what’s very important to note is that, when you can provide infrastructure in all places, then it really not only spurs adoption of any particular technology, but it also opens up the opportunities for new technologies, new innovations, and for communities to take advantage of that technology. For us, deploying in, for example, inner cities, we have a program that’s called the Communities in Charge program, where we’re intentionally partnering with utilities to deploy charging in areas that probably wouldn’t see EV charging for 5 or 10 years. But what we know is, if we can get that infrastructure in place, we’ll have some of the greatest impact, because we’re placing chargers in areas with the highest pollution, the highest levels of poverty, and the least access to mobility and transit—all of those. If we focus efforts there, we have a tremendous and huge impact.

For us, our slogan is “EVs for everyone,” and we really lean into making sure that all communities are able to benefit from the technology and what comes about from putting that infrastructure in the ground in our communities. That also extends to workforce development and community education and the like, so it’s really multifaceted, and it’s more than just putting some power lines in the ground; it’s more than just having people come in and install it; it’s more than just having additional people trained on how to operate and maintain those units. It really extends out to allow people to really be innovative and provide very good solutions for their community.

I think often about the first electric line. It was to power a light bulb, and now, we think about all of the things we do with electricity, from cell phones and TVs and monitors, and all of those innovations only became possible because of the infrastructure investments that we made in electricity. We’re in another revolution at this point, and it’s really to our benefit to be as inclusive as we can to make sure that we can really benefit as a society.

Kristin Hayes: I just want to give you guys a shout-out for the program name of Communities in Charge, because that’s also a really excellent name and great combination of factors, and I really appreciate your emphasis on how holistic this is, too. Just putting charging stations in places is not enough to actually really reap the benefits that you’re looking for, so thank you for talking us through that.

Kimathi Boothe: You know, Kristin, sometimes—particularly in the Black and the Latino community and urban communities—we often think, Wow, they’re so progressive. But these are some of the most conservative communities, believe it or not. My auntie, who lives in the heart of the city—if you present her with a charging station and an EV charger, something that she doesn’t know about, she will push back and say, “You know what? I won’t need a charger for 20 years.” Education becomes critical as we deploy this technology, and it’s really educating people about the benefits.

Kristin Hayes: I want to ask about another word that I heard come up several times in your previous answer, which is around investment in infrastructure, and I want to tie it back to policies that have passed over the past few years to enhance EV charging infrastructure in this country. There’s a lot of money in legislation, whether it’s the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or the Inflation Reduction Act. There’s money for this kind of investment, and I wondered if you could just give us a quick refresher on that funding, what levels we’re talking about, and how it’s being distributed. Then, my somewhat provocative question for you is: As someone who’s very embedded in this industry and very aware of the challenges and opportunities, do you see that that funding is going to have the opportunity that the policy designers hoped for?

Kimathi Boothe: Great question. To take the first part of that question first, there really, over the last several years, have been several government programs around tax benefits and credits, along with direct incentives, to spur electrification and e-mobility as a larger framework. But certainly the most popular would probably fall under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as that created the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, otherwise known as NEVI. That stimulates the economy with $5 billion that goes to states to strategically build out EV charging, and the thought is that we’ll put chargers every 50 miles throughout the major corridors—the highways and expressways throughout the United States—and that starts to provide us an infrastructure to really move the country around with electric vehicles.

I think if that investment had not been made, we would not be as far along with adoption and the innovation, the technology, the research—everything that it takes to deploy EV chargers and adopt e-mobility as a better solution in terms of transportation. I won’t spend time going into all of the programs and how it’s distributed by state. Just know that the federal dollars go to the state, and each individual state is developing programs to solve those environmental and transportation issues as it relates to electric vehicle charging in their state.

One other important factor I would say with respect to policy that I think has made all of the difference in that … In the language of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and even the CHIPS Act … to codify equity as part of that language has made all of the difference in the world. When you say that 40 percent has to benefit disadvantaged or disinvested communities, now the conversation begins to change in terms of how we deploy, and where we deploy, and when we deploy.

Otherwise, as I mentioned from the start, only the rich and famous would have EV chargers and EV cars, quite frankly, so I don’t know if that gets us to where we want to be with respect to the environmental solutions that we need to come up with.

Kristin Hayes: That’s great, and it sounds to me—I want to ground truth this with you—like you do feel like the policy decisions and really the amounts of money that have been set aside through Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act are driving the electrification of the transportation sector in a way that really is matching what the policy gurus hoped for. They’re putting new dollars in the hands of states that can really make these investments, and that is changing the infrastructure picture and the equity picture and leading us down the right path. It sounds to me like the short answer to if you see that funding having the impact that the policy designers hoped for, the answer is yes.

Kimathi Boothe: I think the short answer to that is yes.

Kristin Hayes: All right. That’s great.

I feel like I should leave it on that wonderfully positive note, but I do want to come back to this maintenance question that came up just a little bit earlier in the conversation, because I do think that’s been something that has been a challenge, particularly in the early days of EV adopters—understanding when they’re going to be able to access these fairly (at that point) limited numbers of charging stations. They really needed to know that they were going to be working. What does the maintenance structure look like? Who is actually owning these chargers and responsible for maintaining them, and how is the conversation or the trajectory around functional, working chargers evolving?

Kimathi Boothe: In a word, one of the biggest issues in EV charging is reliability. For non-Tesla units that are currently deployed, most of those units average being down 76 percent of the time. That means three or four months out of the year, that station isn’t working. The big move—why people wanted to move to Tesla, quite frankly, and use the North American Charging Standard Tesla charger, was because of reliability: the Tesla Supercharger network is up about 96 percent of the time.

A big factor of that is in the vertical integration of software and connectivity and all of that good stuff. Where we’re able and starting to make good strides in that is in operations and maintenance in terms of keeping those chargers up. What often happens is that we deploy a charger, we put it in the ground, but because there’s all types of network connections, if one of those connections is down, then the whole charger is down, and now we are starting to talk about an operations-and-maintenance type of issue.

More and more, you’ll find chargers coming with some type of service-level agreement, meaning that, in addition to the warranty, if the charger goes down, you can call up a service center, and they’ll send a repair technician out. We’ve developed chargers (just as is the trend throughout the world) around over-the-air updates. Everyone—not everyone, but certainly, people are familiar with your phone getting an update, and now you have new features, or even the Teslas or the new cars that get new features.

We’ve built that same type of platform into our chargers and other manufacturers, as well, so that we can improve on that operations and maintenance, as well as improve on the overall uptime of charging. There’s really a push now to standardize uptime at that 98 percent uptime level.

That takes many partners. It’s not just hardware, and it’s not just software, but it’s really how all of those systems work together, and operations and maintenance becomes the on-the-ground person making sure that that happens.

Kristin Hayes: Great. I’m glad we talked about that, too. Those were some really interesting statistics and solutions that everyone’s experimenting with, so I’m glad we worked that in.

I’m also so sorry that we’re out of time, because I’ve really enjoyed this conversation; it’s been wonderful.

I do want to give you a chance to give us some recommendations, so to close, I’ll turn to Top of the Stack. I’d love to hear your recommendations on good content about this topic or others that you might want to recommend to our listeners. Kimathi, what’s on the top of your stack?

Kimathi Boothe: I find myself reading so much EV content and EV-charging content that I’m always looking for something off of that. Just last week, I picked up the book James: A Novel by Percival Everett. It’s a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective. This book is actually by the author … you may be familiar with the movie American Fiction, which is an adaptation of the book Erasure by the same author.

Kristin Hayes: Very cool. All right, well that’s a great recommendation, and we will put a link to that on the page for this episode, so thank you so much.

Thank you again. It’s just been really great to talk with you. I look forward to staying in touch and seeing how things evolve with your important work.

Kimathi Boothe: Thank you so much for the time and the conversation. It has been wonderful. I’m looking forward to the whole series being released, and I’ll be watching, following, and sharing.

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