Dr. Daniel Sperling is one of the world's leading experts on electric vehicles. His knowledge runs very deep. Dr. Sperling founded the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. He has written 13 books, including Two Billion Cars, and published 250 papers. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed him to the powerful California Air Resources Board, a position he held for 13 years. Dr Sperling has also built a deep understanding of China's EV industry. In this episode we talk about his work at CARB, China's ambitions, interactions with Elon Musk and how demand for electric vehicles will continue to vary by state and by country for the next decade. Dr Sperling also offers some practical advice to people who are on the fence about EVs.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Where top executives and crazy entrepreneurs gathered to talk about
the future of electric vehicles. This is the Driving with
Done podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hello and welcome to the Driving With Done podcast. I'm
your host Michael Dunn. This week we sit down with
doctor Daniel Spurling, the founder of the Institute of Transportation
Studies at UC Davis and also a former board member
at the All powerful California Air Resources Board or CARB Now.
(00:36):
I first met doctor Spurling wow fifteen years ago. It
was in Beijing at a major summit at which the
Minister of Industry first hinted at China's ambitions to create
its own all powerful EV industry. Doctor Spurling was speaker
that day, and he surprised many of us when he said,
(00:56):
if there's one country on the planet that can make
EV's work, it's China. Boy, did he crush that one,
oprescient or what. Later on, when I came back to
the United States, we met up again. This time we
worked on a book he later published called Three Revolutions
about the future of electric autonoms and shared vehicles. And then,
(01:17):
most recently, I was on a panel with him just
a couple weeks back in Chicago, an SAE event where
we had a really good debate about the trade offs
between staying with ice vehicles for as long as we
can here in the United States or transitioning quickly to electrics.
You're going to like this episode because not only do
(01:38):
we talk about electrics, but we also get an insider's
take on two larger than life personalities in California. That
is doctor Sperling's interactions with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Elon Musk.
What were they like, what did they say, what did
they do? Let's get into it on the Driving with
(02:00):
On podcasts. Dan Sperling, Welcome to the Driving with Done podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It's a pleasure to join you now.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I was just thinking the first time we met was
in the city of Beijing at a high level summit
around electric vehicles. You were giving a talk on the
future of electric vehicles. You just published a book called
two Billion Cars, and I remember at the time you saying,
if any country in the world can get electric vehicles
going to get them right, it would be China. So
(02:37):
my question, what did you see in China fifteen years
ago that gave you the confidence to predict what we
have here today.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I think what I saw was, on the one hand,
they had really become an industrial giant even at that time.
But the other part of it was they were really
frustrated about the auto industry that here they were importing
huge amounts of oil, importing cars, They were in these
(03:09):
joint ventures where they were clearly junior partners, and there
was no path forward for them to develop a really
export oriented, successful internal combussion engine industry. So I thought
I was looking at it more from the point of
view of them seeing an opportunity and bringing their industrial
(03:32):
capacity and capabilities to it to bear.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Okay, did you at the time hear anything from their
leaders or have conversation with them that would you got
the sense all of that these guys are ready to
make a move here.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
No, I don't think so. Not at that point in
two thousand and nine. No, they were just kind of
starting to talk about it. But it was really I mean,
you probably know the history better than I in terms
of decisions that were made, but I don't. I think
it came after that time. They were just dabbling. You know,
they had the air pollution problem too.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yes, they did, And I think you're exactly right. They
were dabbling kind of wishful thinking. Can't things be better?
Let's find a better way, let's switch flip the script.
But you know, electric vehicle sales in China in two
thousand and nine like point zero zero zero one percent.
It was all global brands ice powered vehicles. So it
(04:26):
was only later made in China twenty twenty five where
we started to see real action. But you had that
sense of something possible there. And salute to you because
today China is an absolute juggernaut when it comes to
electric vehicles. We all know that China builds more via
evs than the rest of the world combined, buys more evs,
the batteries, the whole nine yards. So let's bring us
(04:49):
up to present. You are aware today.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I am in Davis, California. Uh huh, sitting in my
office talking about things electric vehicles in China as a
matter of fact.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
But right, what do you have? How did you get
how do you get to work? Do you drive or
ride a bike?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Or what? Well? You know? I've owned I had one
of the very first Toyota Priuses back in two thousand.
I had a second generation. I had a leaf electric
vehicle from Nissan. I had a hydrogen Toyota Marie Car
for a few years and now my favorite. Okay, So
(05:31):
I do have to say I don't own a vehicle,
but my wife does, and so she has a Tesla
that we've had for many years that she's had. But
I'm very clear, my favorite zero mission vehicle is my bicycle.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Oh a bicycle, okay.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
And that's how I got to work. And it's not
even electric.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Does it have a brand name? Is it an import?
Is it domestic? What tell us more?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
It's trek. I don't know where to I bet they
make those in China. Almost all of them are made
in China, I believe all certainly all the electric bikes.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So you have been early early You mentioned the leaf,
you mentioned the prius, early early on this truck toward
How did you first get interested in the field of transportation?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Well, I came about a little round about because you know,
when I grew up at that time, I grew up
in a rural area on a farm. All my neighbors,
all my friends, they were out there tinkering with their
cars every afternoon, every night, every weekend. They even our
next door neighbor raced a stock car where there was
a speedway close to us, you know where they were,
(06:43):
you know, making lots of noise running up and down
the street. But I was not a car guy. You know,
many people assume that of me because I've focused so
much not a car guy. But I think what happened
is I worked in the Peace Corps and I saw
in the Honduras, I saw, you know, how bad things
(07:03):
can be. And then I worked. I got a job
at EPA, and I saw how much big bureaucracy doesn't
always focus on the right problems. And I got inspired
and say, okay, where can I make a different transportation?
And actually I was thinking more mass transit at the
time and out of that, but it was merging environment
(07:24):
and transportation that really got me to where I was.
I for my PhD dissertation, I did work on the
ethanol in Brazil and the sin fuels program that Jimmy Carter,
who just turned a hundred, promoted back in the day.
And I just kind of evolved from looking at alternative
(07:47):
fuels thinking well, that's not really good enough. You know,
we're looking at methanol and compressed natural gas, and I
ended up with electric vehicles.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Is there a moment in time for electric was you say,
oh wow, this is something spectacular.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, it was a late eighties. I had a graduate student,
he did his PhD dissertation and I had been focused
more on methanol and natural gas and ethanol, and he said,
no electric vehicles. That's where that's the solution.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
The late eighties. This is even before lithium ion batteries
are not I think.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Yeah, that is before lithium mine. They were what were they?
Nikad and and then eventually nickel metal hydride. Yeah, that
was well before lithium iron.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Let's back up just a little bit. I love the
little detail. So rural area where what state?
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Upstate New York near Albany. Chicken farm, chicken and egg farm.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Nice. So you're but you're now in Californa. We're gonna
get to California. Then you went to Honduras. What shape
that decision?
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Okay, funny thing. You know, stuff happens in life, right,
you know. I was at Cornell and I was hitchhiking
to see a girlfriend about sixty miles away, and this
VW van picks me up. It looked like a hippie van.
It was filled up with Peace Corps recruiters. And they
(09:13):
recruited me, and.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I thought, oh my goodness, that's incredible. Your hitchhiking upstate
New York on your girlfriend's place. VW van pulls over,
get in.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I get in. And I had studied French, so I said, okay, yeah,
I'll go someplace where they speak of French. West Africa.
They said, okay. Then I get A few months later,
I get a job offer Central America Honduras. I mean
I think I knew two words of Spanish, kukaracha and
(09:42):
audios beautiful.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
So there was no option B. Option A is Honduras,
Option B Honduras again, right exactly, or be unemployed or
something after Honduras come back. How did you land in California.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
I wanted to see Mexico in the West coast in California,
so I actually wanted to buy a motorcycle in Hunduras.
I couldn't get one. So when I got to La,
I bought a motorcycle and I was going to use
that to go cross country. So I drove from La
up to the San Francisco area. Kind of froze my
(10:20):
tush off because I thought California beach boys, and it
was along the coast. It's freezing, of course. But I
got there and I never left. I thought, wow, I
really like it here. And I got a job at
EPA in the San Francisco office, and I applied to
one graduate school, Berkeley, because I didn't want to leave
(10:41):
a area. Yeah, and that was it.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
It. It is freezing along the coast. That's the biggest
surprise for me having moved to California. As you yeah, sunshine,
blue skies, ocean, but.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
It gets cold, yeah, and right on the coast, and
if you're not dressed for it. You know, I just
had this very light jacket. I'm thinking, you know, sunshine. Yeah, yeah,
it was cold.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
All right. So you're at the then you begin you
actually started the Institute of Transportation Studies, is that right?
And you see Davis, that's right.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
So after I finished my PhD, I got a job
at you see Davis again. It was the only place
I applied because it wrote a position description that matched
me perfectly.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Well. Yeah, just like West Africa, French speaking. You weren't
taking any chances this time. No, I will write, I
will script it, uh huh.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
And I was there a few years and so I
you know, at Berkeley they had an Institute of Transportation
Studies didn't do environmental topics, but had one, and I said,
well why not at Davis and the caltrans people, they'd
been looking for another campus to build up some of
their automated vehicle testing, and so I said, okay, let's
(11:59):
do it. They supported it, got money off and running.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
That was late eighties and the focus was not yet electric.
That would come many years later. But you had that
seed of interest from your graduate students, so that kernel
was there cooking all along you At the same time,
while you're in California. I don't know the timing around this,
but you were also pivotal a board member at the
(12:24):
powerful agency called the California Air Resources Board or CARB
for people outside of California not familiar with it. Tell
us a little bit about that, how you got started,
what its mission was, sort of highs and lows along
the way.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Yeah, So started having a midlife crisis when I got
my around fifty or so. You know, being in academia
it's great, but you know, writing papers isn't exactly you know,
what you want to do for your whole life and
trying to make things happen. Yeah, how to make things happen,
And so the Air Resources Board was going through some changes,
(13:00):
and basically what happened is Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed me to
the board and it's really been a fabulous job because
it's a pure policy job. You don't have to deal
with staff. You know, you're on the board, you don't
have to do staff, personnel, budgets, and there's enough board
members you can pick what you want to focus on.
(13:21):
So I held the automotive seat on the board, I
was the transportation guy.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
And how many people on the board.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
So at the time, I think there was about nine,
but it grew to be about thirteen or fourteen, and
they were mostly politicians on the board, so I was
one of the few technical people. And you know it,
you know, CARD was going through a big change because
until so this is two thousand and seven, until that time,
(13:48):
had been strictly focused just on local air pollution. And
I really built up a really strong reputation and had
strong technical people and had a strong engagement culture with industry.
But then all of a sudden, now they're doing climate change.
So two thousand and six, that was the AB thirty two,
(14:10):
the bill that the law that started kicked off California's
commitment to reducing greenhouse gases. And so three months after
I was appointed, Mary Nichols was appointed. So she was
my partner, so she was the chair, and you know,
that was a great experience working with her for all
those years. And card was going through a big change.
(14:33):
You know, when you deal with air quality, it's mostly
smoke stack and the tailpipe kind of technical fixes. That's
what they'd done, that's what they were good at. Now
you're dealing with the whole economy because greenhouse gas is
CO two. I mean, that's everything industry and transforming industry,
transforming the automotive industry, transforming how people get around. So
(14:59):
it was a really big deal and it was a
really big change. It was, and I was on it
for sixteen years until a year and a half ago.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Let's talk a little bit more about what that change meant.
So you're focused on tailpipe emissions, essentially trying to get
reduction in from internal combustion engines and maybe pivot to
electrics or hybrids. And then suddenly the scope goes really
wide and says all emissions from all industries were going
to make California the cleanest state put cleanest geography in
(15:29):
the country and the world. Basically, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
So carbon California. You know, air quality is what they
were really about until time. And so when the first
zero mission vehicle mandate was adopted in nineteen ninety, it
was purely for local air pollution, and you know that
went through gyrations and didn't work out very well. But
the whole focus on electric vehicles was about air pollution.
(15:54):
So when two thousand and six it started to do
a ref Think, but even then, and if you want vote,
if you want popular support, are you going to get
it because people are going to get clean air and
healthy air or because people want, you know, less climate change.
At that point it was obvious the answer is clean air.
So clean air really was the motivation for electric vehicles
(16:20):
even at that time, and it's just gradually morphed over
time where the climate imperative started to play a bigger
and bigger role.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I see, I see. Let's stay on. I don't know
anybody who knows emissions electric vehicles better than you do.
So let's go a little bit deeper here, because it
is a highly controversial topic in factor you and I
just last week we're in Chicago at a high profile
lees say event where it was clear that the opinions
(16:51):
were mixed, you know, as with regards to electric vehicles.
So if in a if we're you have you know,
we're in the elevator and someone goes electric vehicles thumbs up,
thumbs down, what's your take on electric vehicles?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Electric? The only question with electric vehicles now is how
fast the timing of the transition. You know, there's some
details that we're going to have plug in hybrids or
hydrogen fuel cells, but it's mostly battery electric vehicles. And
the question is, so California has a rule one hundred
percent of sales must be zero mission by twenty thirty five.
(17:28):
The European Union also China is expected to be at
one hundred percent in the next six seven years. So
it's really a question. And the speed is going to
vary from one area to another. And I think that's
probably a lesson that you know, you and I you
know have learned is California is going to be faster
(17:49):
than the rest of the country, but China is going
to be faster than us, and Kansas will be slow
and so on.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
What makes electric vehicle in your view superior to gasoline
powered vehicles. There's a lot of people out there saying,
leave us alone, we just want to drive our gasoline
powered cars. Why they rush to electrics.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
So even the auto industry is committed to it, and
they have the same question about exactly how fast. But
the reason they're committed to it, the reason I'm committed
to it, is it's not only an air pollution strategy.
It's not only a climate strategy. It's an economic strategy.
Because these vehicles, even with those heavy, expensive batteries are
(18:35):
they're definitely going to be less expensive on a total
cost of ownership basis, meaning if you take into account
both the purchase price of the vehicle as well as
the operating cost, then in many situations it's already cost
competitive and for many people. But pretty soon they're going
to be superior in almost all circumstances, and eventually the
(18:59):
price of the vehicle will actually be similar to a
gasoline vehicle. So I mean that's why I'm it's you know,
I came into this business from an environmental perspective into
transportation in vehicles and fuels, but this is now turning
into an economic strategy. That means it's good for the consumer,
it's good for the economy.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Now China has a giant lead on us when it
comes to electrics and batteries and batteries supply chains, all
the way through processing, even control of indirectly or directly
of many of the minds around the world. What's your
view with regards to China's ambitions, What does China want
to get done with its leadership? And how should the
United States or the West respond.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Orse that's the you know, that's the million dollar question,
trillion dollar question, I guess. So clearly they've built up,
they've put the subsidies in, they've encouraged these companies. Some
of it come from central government, a lot of it
from the local government where they support local companies. And
(20:02):
clearly this is part of their industrial policy that they
wanted an export industry, and this is a good one.
You know, there's all the local domestic benefits and oil
use and pollution and so on, but there's also these
export opportunities and benefits. And clearly they built up a
(20:23):
huge capacity, way more than what the domestic market needs. Now,
the question is was that how deliberate was that and
building up such a huge capacity and how much did
it kind of just happen because they got on a path.
So I look at it that on the one hand,
you had all these local governments supporting these companies and
(20:44):
companies sprouting up everywhere to make electric vehicles, clearly had
the central government committed to this path. But at the
same so you know, now they have this huge overcapacity,
and you know, the question is how did they get there?
And I think part of it, though, is the domestic
market didn't take off nearly as fast as they hoped.
(21:04):
You know, I did a paper about ten years ago
looking at forecasts for the Chinese automobile industry, and these
numbers just like went straight up. You know, the United
States was eight hundred cars per thousand people, and you
know at the time they were like less than less
than one hundred. So all the forecasts where it was
going to go up to four or five hundred, and
(21:27):
it doesn't look like that's going to happen now. So
I think part of it is a domestic market didn't
evolve as fast as they expected, and they kind of,
I won't quite say bumbled into over capacity, but I
don't know that how truly intentional it was. It wasn't
intentional to build up the industry. So anyway, that's where
we are now, and they have tremendous over capacity. A
(21:50):
lot of their companies are going bank starting to go
bankrupt in China. You know, you know this might better,
you know better than anyone. And what do we do
about it? You know, I have a friend from the
European Commission. She said, you know, the Chinese were just
invaluable in helping replace the natural gas they lost from
Russia by bringing in all of those solar panels and
(22:14):
you know, greatly reduced pollution and greenhouse gases. So the
question is what about Chinese evs? And I think if
you looked at it, you know, if we had purely
an open economies global economy and say, well, that's great.
You know, we're going to bring in low cost electric vehicles,
good for the environment, good for you know people, you know, travelers,
(22:35):
low costs. But the world is a lot more complicated
than that.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Alas, yes, it is twenty twenty four. Will historians look
back on twenty twenty four and say it's the beginning
of the end, beginning of World War three? Don't know,
we'll find out. I do want to circle back you mentioned,
and I really got my touch. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed you.
Tell us how that happened. Did you get a phone call?
(23:01):
Did you meet him somewhere He pointed you to the
board of car tell us more.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Okay, So how I first met Arnold is a few
months before that he had asked a professor at Berkeley
and myself to develop what became now as a low
carbon fuel standard. So this he said, you know, we
just passed this law for climate change, and you know,
(23:26):
I really want to make sure that agricultural industry is
at the table and we get biofuels in there. Can
you come up with some way of creating a policy
that will support biofuels and biofuel investments and other low
carbon investments. And so we did. We did this. We
(23:47):
did a six month intensive program where we kind of
below the radar. We brought in all the oil companies, utilities,
the NGOs. We worked with the Schwarzenegger's office and sources
board and came up with a plan and we tossed
it over the fence, you know, six months later, and
(24:07):
it was eventually adopted. And it's probably what I've become
most famous for is that low cover and fuel standard
for those those that six months of work.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
All right, so he he somehow identified you to author
that you submit that report. It cakes gets great traction
and visibility, and then he comes back to you and says,
meet me at the gym.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
We'll go smoke cigars and lived weights. It actually happened
in parallel. You know, I had put in a at
you know, I got pretty enthusiastic. I put in an application,
and so they fell up a little anecdote I'll pass
on for you and your listeners is he also appointed
(24:52):
this woman, Sandy Berg, to the board two years before me,
and we fell in love a goodness. So all right,
a few years later we saw we saw you know, Arnold,
and we told him, we said, you're our matchmaker, and
(25:13):
he greatly enjoyed that.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I bet he gets a big kick out of that
being around him. How would you describe him in a
couple of words? Is he larger than life, down to earth,
regular guy. What's distinctive about Arnold?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Well, he's not as big as you think. I think
he's like five eleven or something. But of course he is,
you know, sturdy looking guy. He's charismatic, he's he's a
really friendly, charismatic guy. But you know, he's got that accent,
and you'd think that someone like him would not be
(25:47):
so successful as a politician, but he had that. He
has a charm and you know, he likes people, and
I think that's what And he listens, you know, he
does listen and listen to Actually he opened up the
first so he had this idea about a hydrogen highway,
and the first station on the hydrogen highway was at
(26:10):
UC Davis and I think two thousand and five, right
right after he became governor. And that's actually the first
time I met him, when he came to the campus.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
And so he's got a vision. I think he's got
a book out there. It starts with a vision. Where
do you want to get to? I love that? All right,
there's more than one big personality in California. Of course.
The other one is Elon Musk. What if any interactions
you while you're at car he's at Tesla, What kind
did you guys have any kinds of interaction or what?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
I did? Hear him talk several times I was in
the same room. And then when I got on the board,
he sent his people to lobby me to increase the
zero mission vehicle mandate when we didn't raise it as
much as he wanted. Although a little digression, the reason
(27:03):
Tesla survived is because of the Air Resources Board and
that ZEB mandate, because he was able to sell billions
of dollars of credits to other companies.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
But the listeners who are less familiar with that story
than you and I might be, can you tell us
a little bit more about the equation there?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Okay, So California adopted this requirement, zero mission vehicle requirement
that car companies had to sell a certain number of
electric vehicles, increasing over time. And if a company cannot
meet that requirement, it can buy credits from another company
(27:41):
that is oversupplying, overproducing. And so Tesla was obviously the
one company way overproducing because all I did was electric vehicles,
whereas all the others, almost all the others were lagging,
and so they needed credits to meet the requirement, so
they bought credits from from Tesla. Now this was not
(28:04):
just California, so it California pioneered this tradeable credit program
with zero mission vehicles.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
But there's a man several other states do that, right.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Other states do it, and then this kind of tradable
credit idea really caught on, so it's used by EPA
for fuel economy as well. And then Europe with their
zero mission requirements also created some sort of a tradable
credit program. So you put them all together, and Tesla
(28:38):
just made a lot of money. They were, you know,
the early model esque that Tesla was selling. It was
selling for about eighty thousand dollars about. They were getting
about twenty thousand dollars per car, and credits they sold
to other companies, you know. So that's why I say
CARB is the only reason Tesla is the reason Tesla
(29:02):
is still alive today. It would have gone bankrupt.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
No Carb, no Tesla.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
So anyway, meanwhile, he still didn't The point of this
is he should appreciate CARB and what.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
He never did and would Why would that be You'd
think he'd be a massive zealot in favor of CARB.
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
We didn't do it fast enough and big enough.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Okay, I mean, that was it awesome. So we've covered Arnold,
We've covered Elon's since moved to Texas. I think let's
pivot Dan to another really exciting technology and that is
autonomous vehicles. California again, they say the future is already here,
is just unevenly distributed. In California is really the heartbeat
(29:51):
of autonomous vehicle developments here in the United States. There's
other cities Pittsburgh and Miami and Austin, but it's really California. Again,
what are you seeing that gets your attention when it
comes to autonomous vehicles? Where are we on that arc
towards the day when we get in a car and
you're like, oh, yeah, it's driving itself.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
So, first of all, I call them automated vehicles, not
autonomous because.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Remember that yes, automated correct.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
You know, the word autonomous came because Google was the
first one to really start promoting these vehicles. And Google,
Silicon Valley company. How do Silicon Valley companies think? They
think that, you know, act fast and break things, and
they think they're just going to do it. And so
(30:38):
they did their image of these vehicles where they were
truly going to be autonomous and they would communicate, they
would you know, learn, you know, watch other vehicles and infrastructure,
but they would be autonomous. In fact, they are not autonomous.
They are connected. And so they communicate with other vehicles,
they communicate with infrastructure, you know, roads, traffic signals. So
(31:02):
they're automated and connected, but they're not autonomous. If you
look at.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
The English dictionary, what would autonomous means? Totally self propelling
and deciding and independent independent. We're not there yet.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
It never will be, because it's always going to be integrated.
You know, I wrote this book called Three Revolutions, you know,
bringing automated, shared and electric vehicles together, steering it towards
a better future. And thank you for writing one of
the chapters in that book.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Thank you for having me. That was awesome.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Yeah, and you know that was a period, you know,
twenty sixteen twenty seventeen, when there was tremendous hype for
these automated vehicles, and it's turned out, you know, the
engineers thought, just like Google at Silicon Valley, think they
can make anything happen. It turned out that wasn't quite
(32:00):
so easy. But now we're at the point where okay,
so I'll cut to the chase. What I think, So
everyone's obsessed about the safety of these vehicles. Yes, and
you know, my take on it is that you look
at the average person driver and the average automated car.
These average automated cars probably already a better driver. You know,
(32:22):
they don't drink, they don't fall asleep, they're not distracted.
But in all situations, you know, clearly they're not superior
in all situations. Humans still we humans still have some
capacity that makes us superior to machines. And that's all fine.
(32:45):
And so I say that because they're pretty close to
being more than good enough from a safety perspective, from
you know, the way I look at it. But what
everyone ignores is that automated viaicles have show more potential
to create really sustainable transportation sustainable cities then maybe anything,
(33:10):
you know, once you get beyond electrification. And so if
these vehicles are shared, not personally owned, but shared, they
have multiple riders, they're run by a company like Uber,
they pick up a lot of passengers, they drop them off,
pick them up, drop them off. And if you have
enough riders, you can do that in a really efficient way,
(33:33):
so you can bring it. When you do that, you
provide a service like that, the cost per passenger is
so low, much lower than driving your own car, much
lower than mass transit, And that way we can create
truly public transportation in this country. And you know, one
way of looking at it is I estimate that about
(33:54):
twenty percent of the population is marginalized by our focus
on cars for transportation art our centric transportation system, either
for economic reasons or physical limitations, or you know, a
household that has maybe one car and three adults and
(34:15):
a car that's not completely reliable. So you know, mass
transit serves one to two percent. We are it's morally
irresponsible for how we provide mobility and accessibility to people
in this country. I don't see any good option, you know,
to really just provide a public service of public transformation,
(34:38):
never mind all the efficiencies that come with it, you know,
other than with these shared automated vehicles. And so that.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Mean would that mean that for example, with buses or
are often clunky and big and slow and out on time,
they might go away. We don't need them anymore because
we have much more efficient system of nice vehicles or
SUVs that can cart people on.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
I think we'll have big, you know, buses, and we'll
have rail systems, but they only for very dense corridors
where there's a lot of people going from one place
to another, and for dense downtowns San Francisco, New York, Boston.
But once you get out of those down away from
those downtowns and very dense corridors, I think that's where
(35:27):
you know, these automated shared automated vehicles and the vehicles
can be you know, like the automated vehicles that GM
started was about to produce the Cruise, the Cruise Origin
it held five or six people, and Zooks the company
owned by Amazon, that's one of the other key automated
(35:48):
vehicle providers. You know, these vehicles hold five six people
and they're intended to be shared rides. Now, the next
step would be more vans that are twelve fifteen, twenty passengers,
could be could be would be automated as well, and
you just bring the cost way down and we and
(36:11):
it's a superior service. I like to say most of
us would rather be chauffeured than deal with the hassles
of driving. When I do drive that test, I turn
that autopilot on immediately. I love it.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
It's true there's a lot more congestion. Driving San Diego
to La twenty five years ago was a dream. Driving along.
It's like, oh, I hope the traffic's not too bad,
right you kind of stop and go. One of the
things you said got my attention. China's left ahead of
us in electrics for the reasons you outlined, the willingness
(36:48):
and the wherewithal for the Chinese government to shape behavior
of its citizens. Does this tell us as sort of
a predictor that China might also race ahead of us
in avs because they can go there and the populace
is much more willing to you know, leave their private
car to go to shared transportation.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Well, they are putting a lot of investment into it.
There's some companies there that are doing well. I think
the consensus is that they're close to some of the
US companies, but clearly not ahead. And so it I mean,
we've got tremendously innovative, creative engineers and companies, and you
(37:27):
know what I'd like to make sure is we create
the incentives to move that along. And as I kind
of implied earlier, not for personally owned automated vehicles, but
for these shared ones. So that's a big difference, because
do we want people just to replace their manual vehicle
(37:49):
with an automated vehicle? And I think not. I mean
it's okay, but it's much better if those vehicles are
used for the you know, the public.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Benefit trade out of your tesla to a shared.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
I would, my wife wouldn't. That's you know, she at.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Home right now. Let's let's ask her.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
You know. You know, that's kind of the big challenge
for what I'm talking about is share is the sharing
part of it, And I mean the way I put
it is everyone has a price. I mean, we get
packed like sardines into airplanes, and you know, very unpleasantly.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Absolutely right, yes we do. And it's more and more
feeling like a sardine, even up front. You know, you're
getting tight. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
So I think that you know, if we can do
it cheaply enough and it's a high quality service, and
you know, frankly, you can have these vehicles. You can
put a little wall between the passengers and service to
make it more feel more secure, that you're not going
to have coffee spilled on you and so on. But
(39:05):
I know there's a little a pill battle and I'm
not sure. I'm not in the mainstream yet proposing this,
but I do think that's that's where we're going to
end up.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Will we see something like carb emerged for automated vehicles,
an agency that says this is really good for the state,
for the nation, for the world. Any any indications on
that front.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Well, I think there's two parts. I mean there's three parts.
So one is the safety part. So we have regulatory
agencies for safety, but they don't quite know how to
deal with it and they're lagging. And that's partly why
there's controversy, because you know, the rules don't really exist yet,
at least not in a level that needs to be.
And then there's the encouragement policies and encouragement for the sharing,
(39:53):
and that's probably going to be more local governments that
are needed for that. And then there's the economic development
motivation and you know, and that is building an industry,
building the technology that will benefit us. And as you
kind of said earlier, all the major automated vehicle companies
(40:16):
have started are in California. The General Motors, Cruise, the
Zeokes from Amazon, the way Mow from Google. They're all California,
all northern California companies.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Yeah, go California. There's still there's still a lot of
spice here. All right, Dan, final question for you, you are
you find yourself. Next time in Chicago, you're on the
elevator and someone knows who you are and says, hey,
I'm really struggling with going electric. It gets cold here
in the winters, and I don't know, I like to
(40:50):
drive long distances. What's your advice or what would be
your words to persuade them to go ahead? Jump in
the water's fine?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
You know what I would say is try out a
plug in hybrid. And I've been a champion of those
from the beginning, because people are going to resist there,
whether I mean we're seeing it, they're politicized ideologically, people
might be opposed. They might be opposed because you know,
(41:19):
they have a bunch of kids they carry around and
they don't want to worry about stopping to charge with
a bunch of little kids. There's lots of reasons. So
I think we're going to you know, like getting to
one hundred percent. I think we can get to seventy
or eighty percent without too much trouble. But then there's
going to be a lot of resistors. And so that's
why I say plug in hybrid. We've regulated to plug
(41:43):
in hybrids now, so they have to have a minimum
electric range of fifty miles starting in a couple of years.
So you buy that, and you know you'll end up
using electricity most of the time anyway, end of the day.
It's not the most efficient way to do it. You
got to asoline power plant, got electric vehicle batteries, you know. So,
(42:06):
But I think from a behavior customer perspective, it's a
it's a good transition for those that are a little
nervous about it.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Kind of a bridge rather than leaping across that right canyon.
You're saying, let me take a bridge first to this
whole thing, then I can go all electric. Okay, phenomenal, Dan.
Last thing I saw that you've written thirteen different books,
two hundred and fifty published articles. Is there another book
on the horizon?
Speaker 3 (42:34):
You know, I've been wondering that myself. You know, what
happens is stuff happens, Things change, And I mean we're
on the path, clearly electric vehicle path. We're clearly on
that path. We have a lot of you know, we're
still the mobility side. There's a lot of questions still.
(42:55):
You know, it's not only the automated vehicles and the
sharing got the bicycle, you know, my favorite zero mission vehicle,
the bicycle, and what's going to happen with transit, so
you know right now, I don't have the kernel yet,
but I think it's going to come in a few years.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Right, beautiful Dan Sperling, thank you very much for joining
me this afternoon. Is always enjoyable to talk to you,
always learn something new. And yeah, we'll be looking for
the book.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
What a pleasure of being with you. Thank you so much.
And what a great service you do understanding the Chinese situation.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Thank you so much. It's a battle every single day
to try to figure it out. That's part of the joy.
All right, Thanks so much. We'll see you soon. Without exception,
every single time I have a conversation with doctor Dan Sperling,
(43:55):
I learn new things and this time was no different.
Let me share with you three takeaways. Number one, he's
firm in his belief that electric vehicles are the future,
not only because they're good for the environment, but from
an economic point of view. He believes they win out
today and they'll continue to win out in the future
(44:16):
as battery prices go lower. Number two, Yes, China has
a massive overcapacity when it comes to evs. Was it
by design? Jury still out in his view, But the
most important takeaway there is that the rest of the
world has to reckon with this massive machine of an
auto industry China that is now exporting in record numbers.
(44:38):
Will China overwhelm the West with its low cost evs,
let's find out? And Third, fascinating to get the inside
scoop during his time at CARB, how dependent Tesla was
for survival at the time. Look at that the models
in the early twenty tens was raking in twenty thousand
(44:59):
dollars in credits for every vehicle delivered. I did sense
a little bit that Elon might have been more grateful
at the time, but hey, Elon had bigger and more
ambitious things to get done. He's an entrepreneur. That's a
wrap on this episode of the Driving with Done podcast.
Thank you so much for joining. If you have comments, questions, ideas,
(45:23):
please do send them to me. You can find me
via Doneinsights dot com or dm me on LinkedIn or
x This is the Driving with Done.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Podcast where you meet the experts creating the technologies that
will power tomorrow's cars electric autonomous software to find This
is a Driving with Done podcast.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Thank you for joining.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
This episode of the Driving With Done podcast. To connect
with Michael donn, visit doneinsights dot com or find Michael
on x or LinkedIn. This is the Driving With Done
podcast
Where top executives and crazy entrepreneurs gathered to talk about
the future of electric vehicles. This is the Driving with
Done podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hello and welcome to the Driving With Done podcast. I'm
your host Michael Dunn. This week we sit down with
doctor Daniel Spurling, the founder of the Institute of Transportation
Studies at UC Davis and also a former board member
at the All powerful California Air Resources Board or CARB Now.
(00:36):
I first met doctor Spurling wow fifteen years ago. It
was in Beijing at a major summit at which the
Minister of Industry first hinted at China's ambitions to create
its own all powerful EV industry. Doctor Spurling was speaker
that day, and he surprised many of us when he said,
(00:56):
if there's one country on the planet that can make
EV's work, it's China. Boy, did he crush that one,
oprescient or what. Later on, when I came back to
the United States, we met up again. This time we
worked on a book he later published called Three Revolutions
about the future of electric autonoms and shared vehicles. And then,
(01:17):
most recently, I was on a panel with him just
a couple weeks back in Chicago, an SAE event where
we had a really good debate about the trade offs
between staying with ice vehicles for as long as we
can here in the United States or transitioning quickly to electrics.
You're going to like this episode because not only do
(01:38):
we talk about electrics, but we also get an insider's
take on two larger than life personalities in California. That
is doctor Sperling's interactions with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Elon Musk.
What were they like, what did they say, what did
they do? Let's get into it on the Driving with
(02:00):
On podcasts. Dan Sperling, Welcome to the Driving with Done podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It's a pleasure to join you now.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I was just thinking the first time we met was
in the city of Beijing at a high level summit
around electric vehicles. You were giving a talk on the
future of electric vehicles. You just published a book called
two Billion Cars, and I remember at the time you saying,
if any country in the world can get electric vehicles
going to get them right, it would be China. So
(02:37):
my question, what did you see in China fifteen years
ago that gave you the confidence to predict what we
have here today.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I think what I saw was, on the one hand,
they had really become an industrial giant even at that time.
But the other part of it was they were really
frustrated about the auto industry that here they were importing
huge amounts of oil, importing cars, They were in these
(03:09):
joint ventures where they were clearly junior partners, and there
was no path forward for them to develop a really
export oriented, successful internal combussion engine industry. So I thought
I was looking at it more from the point of
view of them seeing an opportunity and bringing their industrial
(03:32):
capacity and capabilities to it to bear.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Okay, did you at the time hear anything from their
leaders or have conversation with them that would you got
the sense all of that these guys are ready to
make a move here.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
No, I don't think so. Not at that point in
two thousand and nine. No, they were just kind of
starting to talk about it. But it was really I mean,
you probably know the history better than I in terms
of decisions that were made, but I don't. I think
it came after that time. They were just dabbling. You know,
they had the air pollution problem too.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yes, they did, And I think you're exactly right. They
were dabbling kind of wishful thinking. Can't things be better?
Let's find a better way, let's switch flip the script.
But you know, electric vehicle sales in China in two
thousand and nine like point zero zero zero one percent.
It was all global brands ice powered vehicles. So it
(04:26):
was only later made in China twenty twenty five where
we started to see real action. But you had that
sense of something possible there. And salute to you because
today China is an absolute juggernaut when it comes to
electric vehicles. We all know that China builds more via
evs than the rest of the world combined, buys more evs,
the batteries, the whole nine yards. So let's bring us
(04:49):
up to present. You are aware today.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
I am in Davis, California. Uh huh, sitting in my
office talking about things electric vehicles in China as a
matter of fact.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
But right, what do you have? How did you get
how do you get to work? Do you drive or
ride a bike?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Or what? Well? You know? I've owned I had one
of the very first Toyota Priuses back in two thousand.
I had a second generation. I had a leaf electric
vehicle from Nissan. I had a hydrogen Toyota Marie Car
for a few years and now my favorite. Okay, So
(05:31):
I do have to say I don't own a vehicle,
but my wife does, and so she has a Tesla
that we've had for many years that she's had. But
I'm very clear, my favorite zero mission vehicle is my bicycle.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Oh a bicycle, okay.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
And that's how I got to work. And it's not
even electric.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Does it have a brand name? Is it an import?
Is it domestic? What tell us more?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
It's trek. I don't know where to I bet they
make those in China. Almost all of them are made
in China, I believe all certainly all the electric bikes.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So you have been early early You mentioned the leaf,
you mentioned the prius, early early on this truck toward
How did you first get interested in the field of transportation?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Well, I came about a little round about because you know,
when I grew up at that time, I grew up
in a rural area on a farm. All my neighbors,
all my friends, they were out there tinkering with their
cars every afternoon, every night, every weekend. They even our
next door neighbor raced a stock car where there was
a speedway close to us, you know where they were,
(06:43):
you know, making lots of noise running up and down
the street. But I was not a car guy. You know,
many people assume that of me because I've focused so
much not a car guy. But I think what happened
is I worked in the Peace Corps and I saw
in the Honduras, I saw, you know, how bad things
(07:03):
can be. And then I worked. I got a job
at EPA, and I saw how much big bureaucracy doesn't
always focus on the right problems. And I got inspired
and say, okay, where can I make a different transportation?
And actually I was thinking more mass transit at the
time and out of that, but it was merging environment
(07:24):
and transportation that really got me to where I was.
I for my PhD dissertation, I did work on the
ethanol in Brazil and the sin fuels program that Jimmy Carter,
who just turned a hundred, promoted back in the day.
And I just kind of evolved from looking at alternative
(07:47):
fuels thinking well, that's not really good enough. You know,
we're looking at methanol and compressed natural gas, and I
ended up with electric vehicles.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Is there a moment in time for electric was you say,
oh wow, this is something spectacular.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, it was a late eighties. I had a graduate student,
he did his PhD dissertation and I had been focused
more on methanol and natural gas and ethanol, and he said,
no electric vehicles. That's where that's the solution.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
The late eighties. This is even before lithium ion batteries
are not I think.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Yeah, that is before lithium mine. They were what were they?
Nikad and and then eventually nickel metal hydride. Yeah, that
was well before lithium iron.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Let's back up just a little bit. I love the
little detail. So rural area where what state?
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Upstate New York near Albany. Chicken farm, chicken and egg farm.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Nice. So you're but you're now in Californa. We're gonna
get to California. Then you went to Honduras. What shape
that decision?
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Okay, funny thing. You know, stuff happens in life, right,
you know. I was at Cornell and I was hitchhiking
to see a girlfriend about sixty miles away, and this
VW van picks me up. It looked like a hippie van.
It was filled up with Peace Corps recruiters. And they
(09:13):
recruited me, and.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I thought, oh my goodness, that's incredible. Your hitchhiking upstate
New York on your girlfriend's place. VW van pulls over,
get in.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I get in. And I had studied French, so I said, okay, yeah,
I'll go someplace where they speak of French. West Africa.
They said, okay. Then I get A few months later,
I get a job offer Central America Honduras. I mean
I think I knew two words of Spanish, kukaracha and
(09:42):
audios beautiful.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
So there was no option B. Option A is Honduras,
Option B Honduras again, right exactly, or be unemployed or
something after Honduras come back. How did you land in California.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
I wanted to see Mexico in the West coast in California,
so I actually wanted to buy a motorcycle in Hunduras.
I couldn't get one. So when I got to La,
I bought a motorcycle and I was going to use
that to go cross country. So I drove from La
up to the San Francisco area. Kind of froze my
(10:20):
tush off because I thought California beach boys, and it
was along the coast. It's freezing, of course. But I
got there and I never left. I thought, wow, I
really like it here. And I got a job at
EPA in the San Francisco office, and I applied to
one graduate school, Berkeley, because I didn't want to leave
(10:41):
a area. Yeah, and that was it.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
It. It is freezing along the coast. That's the biggest
surprise for me having moved to California. As you yeah, sunshine,
blue skies, ocean, but.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
It gets cold, yeah, and right on the coast, and
if you're not dressed for it. You know, I just
had this very light jacket. I'm thinking, you know, sunshine. Yeah, yeah,
it was cold.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
All right. So you're at the then you begin you
actually started the Institute of Transportation Studies, is that right?
And you see Davis, that's right.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
So after I finished my PhD, I got a job
at you see Davis again. It was the only place
I applied because it wrote a position description that matched
me perfectly.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Well. Yeah, just like West Africa, French speaking. You weren't
taking any chances this time. No, I will write, I
will script it, uh huh.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
And I was there a few years and so I
you know, at Berkeley they had an Institute of Transportation
Studies didn't do environmental topics, but had one, and I said,
well why not at Davis and the caltrans people, they'd
been looking for another campus to build up some of
their automated vehicle testing, and so I said, okay, let's
(11:59):
do it. They supported it, got money off and running.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
That was late eighties and the focus was not yet electric.
That would come many years later. But you had that
seed of interest from your graduate students, so that kernel
was there cooking all along you At the same time,
while you're in California. I don't know the timing around this,
but you were also pivotal a board member at the
(12:24):
powerful agency called the California Air Resources Board or CARB
for people outside of California not familiar with it. Tell
us a little bit about that, how you got started,
what its mission was, sort of highs and lows along
the way.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Yeah, So started having a midlife crisis when I got
my around fifty or so. You know, being in academia
it's great, but you know, writing papers isn't exactly you know,
what you want to do for your whole life and
trying to make things happen. Yeah, how to make things happen,
And so the Air Resources Board was going through some changes,
(13:00):
and basically what happened is Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed me to
the board and it's really been a fabulous job because
it's a pure policy job. You don't have to deal
with staff. You know, you're on the board, you don't
have to do staff, personnel, budgets, and there's enough board
members you can pick what you want to focus on.
(13:21):
So I held the automotive seat on the board, I
was the transportation guy.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
And how many people on the board.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
So at the time, I think there was about nine,
but it grew to be about thirteen or fourteen, and
they were mostly politicians on the board, so I was
one of the few technical people. And you know it,
you know, CARD was going through a big change because
until so this is two thousand and seven, until that time,
(13:48):
had been strictly focused just on local air pollution. And
I really built up a really strong reputation and had
strong technical people and had a strong engagement culture with industry.
But then all of a sudden, now they're doing climate change.
So two thousand and six, that was the AB thirty two,
(14:10):
the bill that the law that started kicked off California's
commitment to reducing greenhouse gases. And so three months after
I was appointed, Mary Nichols was appointed. So she was
my partner, so she was the chair, and you know,
that was a great experience working with her for all
those years. And card was going through a big change.
(14:33):
You know, when you deal with air quality, it's mostly
smoke stack and the tailpipe kind of technical fixes. That's
what they'd done, that's what they were good at. Now
you're dealing with the whole economy because greenhouse gas is
CO two. I mean, that's everything industry and transforming industry,
transforming the automotive industry, transforming how people get around. So
(14:59):
it was a really big deal and it was a
really big change. It was, and I was on it
for sixteen years until a year and a half ago.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Let's talk a little bit more about what that change meant.
So you're focused on tailpipe emissions, essentially trying to get
reduction in from internal combustion engines and maybe pivot to
electrics or hybrids. And then suddenly the scope goes really
wide and says all emissions from all industries were going
to make California the cleanest state put cleanest geography in
(15:29):
the country and the world. Basically, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
So carbon California. You know, air quality is what they
were really about until time. And so when the first
zero mission vehicle mandate was adopted in nineteen ninety, it
was purely for local air pollution, and you know that
went through gyrations and didn't work out very well. But
the whole focus on electric vehicles was about air pollution.
(15:54):
So when two thousand and six it started to do
a ref Think, but even then, and if you want vote,
if you want popular support, are you going to get
it because people are going to get clean air and
healthy air or because people want, you know, less climate change.
At that point it was obvious the answer is clean air.
So clean air really was the motivation for electric vehicles
(16:20):
even at that time, and it's just gradually morphed over
time where the climate imperative started to play a bigger
and bigger role.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I see, I see. Let's stay on. I don't know
anybody who knows emissions electric vehicles better than you do.
So let's go a little bit deeper here, because it
is a highly controversial topic in factor you and I
just last week we're in Chicago at a high profile
lees say event where it was clear that the opinions
(16:51):
were mixed, you know, as with regards to electric vehicles.
So if in a if we're you have you know,
we're in the elevator and someone goes electric vehicles thumbs up,
thumbs down, what's your take on electric vehicles?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Electric? The only question with electric vehicles now is how
fast the timing of the transition. You know, there's some
details that we're going to have plug in hybrids or
hydrogen fuel cells, but it's mostly battery electric vehicles. And
the question is, so California has a rule one hundred
percent of sales must be zero mission by twenty thirty five.
(17:28):
The European Union also China is expected to be at
one hundred percent in the next six seven years. So
it's really a question. And the speed is going to
vary from one area to another. And I think that's
probably a lesson that you know, you and I you
know have learned is California is going to be faster
(17:49):
than the rest of the country, but China is going
to be faster than us, and Kansas will be slow
and so on.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
What makes electric vehicle in your view superior to gasoline
powered vehicles. There's a lot of people out there saying,
leave us alone, we just want to drive our gasoline
powered cars. Why they rush to electrics.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
So even the auto industry is committed to it, and
they have the same question about exactly how fast. But
the reason they're committed to it, the reason I'm committed
to it, is it's not only an air pollution strategy.
It's not only a climate strategy. It's an economic strategy.
Because these vehicles, even with those heavy, expensive batteries are
(18:35):
they're definitely going to be less expensive on a total
cost of ownership basis, meaning if you take into account
both the purchase price of the vehicle as well as
the operating cost, then in many situations it's already cost
competitive and for many people. But pretty soon they're going
to be superior in almost all circumstances, and eventually the
(18:59):
price of the vehicle will actually be similar to a
gasoline vehicle. So I mean that's why I'm it's you know,
I came into this business from an environmental perspective into
transportation in vehicles and fuels, but this is now turning
into an economic strategy. That means it's good for the consumer,
it's good for the economy.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Now China has a giant lead on us when it
comes to electrics and batteries and batteries supply chains, all
the way through processing, even control of indirectly or directly
of many of the minds around the world. What's your
view with regards to China's ambitions, What does China want
to get done with its leadership? And how should the
United States or the West respond.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Orse that's the you know, that's the million dollar question,
trillion dollar question, I guess. So clearly they've built up,
they've put the subsidies in, they've encouraged these companies. Some
of it come from central government, a lot of it
from the local government where they support local companies. And
(20:02):
clearly this is part of their industrial policy that they
wanted an export industry, and this is a good one.
You know, there's all the local domestic benefits and oil
use and pollution and so on, but there's also these
export opportunities and benefits. And clearly they built up a
(20:23):
huge capacity, way more than what the domestic market needs. Now,
the question is was that how deliberate was that and
building up such a huge capacity and how much did
it kind of just happen because they got on a path.
So I look at it that on the one hand,
you had all these local governments supporting these companies and
(20:44):
companies sprouting up everywhere to make electric vehicles, clearly had
the central government committed to this path. But at the
same so you know, now they have this huge overcapacity,
and you know, the question is how did they get there?
And I think part of it, though, is the domestic
market didn't take off nearly as fast as they hoped.
(21:04):
You know, I did a paper about ten years ago
looking at forecasts for the Chinese automobile industry, and these
numbers just like went straight up. You know, the United
States was eight hundred cars per thousand people, and you
know at the time they were like less than less
than one hundred. So all the forecasts where it was
going to go up to four or five hundred, and
(21:27):
it doesn't look like that's going to happen now. So
I think part of it is a domestic market didn't
evolve as fast as they expected, and they kind of,
I won't quite say bumbled into over capacity, but I
don't know that how truly intentional it was. It wasn't
intentional to build up the industry. So anyway, that's where
we are now, and they have tremendous over capacity. A
(21:50):
lot of their companies are going bank starting to go
bankrupt in China. You know, you know this might better,
you know better than anyone. And what do we do
about it? You know, I have a friend from the
European Commission. She said, you know, the Chinese were just
invaluable in helping replace the natural gas they lost from
Russia by bringing in all of those solar panels and
(22:14):
you know, greatly reduced pollution and greenhouse gases. So the
question is what about Chinese evs? And I think if
you looked at it, you know, if we had purely
an open economies global economy and say, well, that's great.
You know, we're going to bring in low cost electric vehicles,
good for the environment, good for you know people, you know, travelers,
(22:35):
low costs. But the world is a lot more complicated
than that.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Alas, yes, it is twenty twenty four. Will historians look
back on twenty twenty four and say it's the beginning
of the end, beginning of World War three? Don't know,
we'll find out. I do want to circle back you mentioned,
and I really got my touch. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed you.
Tell us how that happened. Did you get a phone call?
(23:01):
Did you meet him somewhere He pointed you to the
board of car tell us more.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Okay, So how I first met Arnold is a few
months before that he had asked a professor at Berkeley
and myself to develop what became now as a low
carbon fuel standard. So this he said, you know, we
just passed this law for climate change, and you know,
(23:26):
I really want to make sure that agricultural industry is
at the table and we get biofuels in there. Can
you come up with some way of creating a policy
that will support biofuels and biofuel investments and other low
carbon investments. And so we did. We did this. We
(23:47):
did a six month intensive program where we kind of
below the radar. We brought in all the oil companies, utilities,
the NGOs. We worked with the Schwarzenegger's office and sources
board and came up with a plan and we tossed
it over the fence, you know, six months later, and
(24:07):
it was eventually adopted. And it's probably what I've become
most famous for is that low cover and fuel standard
for those those that six months of work.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
All right, so he he somehow identified you to author
that you submit that report. It cakes gets great traction
and visibility, and then he comes back to you and says,
meet me at the gym.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
We'll go smoke cigars and lived weights. It actually happened
in parallel. You know, I had put in a at
you know, I got pretty enthusiastic. I put in an application,
and so they fell up a little anecdote I'll pass
on for you and your listeners is he also appointed
(24:52):
this woman, Sandy Berg, to the board two years before me,
and we fell in love a goodness. So all right,
a few years later we saw we saw you know, Arnold,
and we told him, we said, you're our matchmaker, and
(25:13):
he greatly enjoyed that.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I bet he gets a big kick out of that
being around him. How would you describe him in a
couple of words? Is he larger than life, down to earth,
regular guy. What's distinctive about Arnold?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Well, he's not as big as you think. I think
he's like five eleven or something. But of course he is,
you know, sturdy looking guy. He's charismatic, he's he's a
really friendly, charismatic guy. But you know, he's got that accent,
and you'd think that someone like him would not be
(25:47):
so successful as a politician, but he had that. He
has a charm and you know, he likes people, and
I think that's what And he listens, you know, he
does listen and listen to Actually he opened up the
first so he had this idea about a hydrogen highway,
and the first station on the hydrogen highway was at
(26:10):
UC Davis and I think two thousand and five, right
right after he became governor. And that's actually the first
time I met him, when he came to the campus.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
And so he's got a vision. I think he's got
a book out there. It starts with a vision. Where
do you want to get to? I love that? All right,
there's more than one big personality in California. Of course.
The other one is Elon Musk. What if any interactions
you while you're at car he's at Tesla, What kind
did you guys have any kinds of interaction or what?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
I did? Hear him talk several times I was in
the same room. And then when I got on the board,
he sent his people to lobby me to increase the
zero mission vehicle mandate when we didn't raise it as
much as he wanted. Although a little digression, the reason
(27:03):
Tesla survived is because of the Air Resources Board and
that ZEB mandate, because he was able to sell billions
of dollars of credits to other companies.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
But the listeners who are less familiar with that story
than you and I might be, can you tell us
a little bit more about the equation there?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Okay, So California adopted this requirement, zero mission vehicle requirement
that car companies had to sell a certain number of
electric vehicles, increasing over time. And if a company cannot
meet that requirement, it can buy credits from another company
(27:41):
that is oversupplying, overproducing. And so Tesla was obviously the
one company way overproducing because all I did was electric vehicles,
whereas all the others, almost all the others were lagging,
and so they needed credits to meet the requirement, so
they bought credits from from Tesla. Now this was not
(28:04):
just California, so it California pioneered this tradeable credit program
with zero mission vehicles.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
But there's a man several other states do that, right.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Other states do it, and then this kind of tradable
credit idea really caught on, so it's used by EPA
for fuel economy as well. And then Europe with their
zero mission requirements also created some sort of a tradable
credit program. So you put them all together, and Tesla
(28:38):
just made a lot of money. They were, you know,
the early model esque that Tesla was selling. It was
selling for about eighty thousand dollars about. They were getting
about twenty thousand dollars per car, and credits they sold
to other companies, you know. So that's why I say
CARB is the only reason Tesla is the reason Tesla
(29:02):
is still alive today. It would have gone bankrupt.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
No Carb, no Tesla.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
So anyway, meanwhile, he still didn't The point of this
is he should appreciate CARB and what.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
He never did and would Why would that be You'd
think he'd be a massive zealot in favor of CARB.
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
We didn't do it fast enough and big enough.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Okay, I mean, that was it awesome. So we've covered Arnold,
We've covered Elon's since moved to Texas. I think let's
pivot Dan to another really exciting technology and that is
autonomous vehicles. California again, they say the future is already here,
is just unevenly distributed. In California is really the heartbeat
(29:51):
of autonomous vehicle developments here in the United States. There's
other cities Pittsburgh and Miami and Austin, but it's really California. Again,
what are you seeing that gets your attention when it
comes to autonomous vehicles? Where are we on that arc
towards the day when we get in a car and
you're like, oh, yeah, it's driving itself.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
So, first of all, I call them automated vehicles, not
autonomous because.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Remember that yes, automated correct.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
You know, the word autonomous came because Google was the
first one to really start promoting these vehicles. And Google,
Silicon Valley company. How do Silicon Valley companies think? They
think that, you know, act fast and break things, and
they think they're just going to do it. And so
(30:38):
they did their image of these vehicles where they were
truly going to be autonomous and they would communicate, they
would you know, learn, you know, watch other vehicles and infrastructure,
but they would be autonomous. In fact, they are not autonomous.
They are connected. And so they communicate with other vehicles,
they communicate with infrastructure, you know, roads, traffic signals. So
(31:02):
they're automated and connected, but they're not autonomous. If you
look at.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
The English dictionary, what would autonomous means? Totally self propelling
and deciding and independent independent. We're not there yet.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
It never will be, because it's always going to be integrated.
You know, I wrote this book called Three Revolutions, you know,
bringing automated, shared and electric vehicles together, steering it towards
a better future. And thank you for writing one of
the chapters in that book.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Thank you for having me. That was awesome.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Yeah, and you know that was a period, you know,
twenty sixteen twenty seventeen, when there was tremendous hype for
these automated vehicles, and it's turned out, you know, the
engineers thought, just like Google at Silicon Valley, think they
can make anything happen. It turned out that wasn't quite
(32:00):
so easy. But now we're at the point where okay,
so I'll cut to the chase. What I think, So
everyone's obsessed about the safety of these vehicles. Yes, and
you know, my take on it is that you look
at the average person driver and the average automated car.
These average automated cars probably already a better driver. You know,
(32:22):
they don't drink, they don't fall asleep, they're not distracted.
But in all situations, you know, clearly they're not superior
in all situations. Humans still we humans still have some
capacity that makes us superior to machines. And that's all fine.
(32:45):
And so I say that because they're pretty close to
being more than good enough from a safety perspective, from
you know, the way I look at it. But what
everyone ignores is that automated viaicles have show more potential
to create really sustainable transportation sustainable cities then maybe anything,
(33:10):
you know, once you get beyond electrification. And so if
these vehicles are shared, not personally owned, but shared, they
have multiple riders, they're run by a company like Uber,
they pick up a lot of passengers, they drop them off,
pick them up, drop them off. And if you have
enough riders, you can do that in a really efficient way,
(33:33):
so you can bring it. When you do that, you
provide a service like that, the cost per passenger is
so low, much lower than driving your own car, much
lower than mass transit, And that way we can create
truly public transportation in this country. And you know, one
way of looking at it is I estimate that about
(33:54):
twenty percent of the population is marginalized by our focus
on cars for transportation art our centric transportation system, either
for economic reasons or physical limitations, or you know, a
household that has maybe one car and three adults and
(34:15):
a car that's not completely reliable. So you know, mass
transit serves one to two percent. We are it's morally
irresponsible for how we provide mobility and accessibility to people
in this country. I don't see any good option, you know,
to really just provide a public service of public transformation,
(34:38):
never mind all the efficiencies that come with it, you know,
other than with these shared automated vehicles. And so that.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Mean would that mean that for example, with buses or
are often clunky and big and slow and out on time,
they might go away. We don't need them anymore because
we have much more efficient system of nice vehicles or
SUVs that can cart people on.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
I think we'll have big, you know, buses, and we'll
have rail systems, but they only for very dense corridors
where there's a lot of people going from one place
to another, and for dense downtowns San Francisco, New York, Boston.
But once you get out of those down away from
those downtowns and very dense corridors, I think that's where
(35:27):
you know, these automated shared automated vehicles and the vehicles
can be you know, like the automated vehicles that GM
started was about to produce the Cruise, the Cruise Origin
it held five or six people, and Zooks the company
owned by Amazon, that's one of the other key automated
(35:48):
vehicle providers. You know, these vehicles hold five six people
and they're intended to be shared rides. Now, the next
step would be more vans that are twelve fifteen, twenty passengers,
could be could be would be automated as well, and
you just bring the cost way down and we and
(36:11):
it's a superior service. I like to say most of
us would rather be chauffeured than deal with the hassles
of driving. When I do drive that test, I turn
that autopilot on immediately. I love it.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
It's true there's a lot more congestion. Driving San Diego
to La twenty five years ago was a dream. Driving along.
It's like, oh, I hope the traffic's not too bad,
right you kind of stop and go. One of the
things you said got my attention. China's left ahead of
us in electrics for the reasons you outlined, the willingness
(36:48):
and the wherewithal for the Chinese government to shape behavior
of its citizens. Does this tell us as sort of
a predictor that China might also race ahead of us
in avs because they can go there and the populace
is much more willing to you know, leave their private
car to go to shared transportation.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Well, they are putting a lot of investment into it.
There's some companies there that are doing well. I think
the consensus is that they're close to some of the
US companies, but clearly not ahead. And so it I mean,
we've got tremendously innovative, creative engineers and companies, and you
(37:27):
know what I'd like to make sure is we create
the incentives to move that along. And as I kind
of implied earlier, not for personally owned automated vehicles, but
for these shared ones. So that's a big difference, because
do we want people just to replace their manual vehicle
(37:49):
with an automated vehicle? And I think not. I mean
it's okay, but it's much better if those vehicles are
used for the you know, the public.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Benefit trade out of your tesla to a shared.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
I would, my wife wouldn't. That's you know, she at.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Home right now. Let's let's ask her.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
You know. You know, that's kind of the big challenge
for what I'm talking about is share is the sharing
part of it, And I mean the way I put
it is everyone has a price. I mean, we get
packed like sardines into airplanes, and you know, very unpleasantly.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Absolutely right, yes we do. And it's more and more
feeling like a sardine, even up front. You know, you're
getting tight. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
So I think that you know, if we can do
it cheaply enough and it's a high quality service, and
you know, frankly, you can have these vehicles. You can
put a little wall between the passengers and service to
make it more feel more secure, that you're not going
to have coffee spilled on you and so on. But
(39:05):
I know there's a little a pill battle and I'm
not sure. I'm not in the mainstream yet proposing this,
but I do think that's that's where we're going to
end up.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Will we see something like carb emerged for automated vehicles,
an agency that says this is really good for the state,
for the nation, for the world. Any any indications on
that front.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Well, I think there's two parts. I mean there's three parts.
So one is the safety part. So we have regulatory
agencies for safety, but they don't quite know how to
deal with it and they're lagging. And that's partly why
there's controversy, because you know, the rules don't really exist yet,
at least not in a level that needs to be.
And then there's the encouragement policies and encouragement for the sharing,
(39:53):
and that's probably going to be more local governments that
are needed for that. And then there's the economic development
motivation and you know, and that is building an industry,
building the technology that will benefit us. And as you
kind of said earlier, all the major automated vehicle companies
(40:16):
have started are in California. The General Motors, Cruise, the
Zeokes from Amazon, the way Mow from Google. They're all California,
all northern California companies.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Yeah, go California. There's still there's still a lot of
spice here. All right, Dan, final question for you, you are
you find yourself. Next time in Chicago, you're on the
elevator and someone knows who you are and says, hey,
I'm really struggling with going electric. It gets cold here
in the winters, and I don't know, I like to
(40:50):
drive long distances. What's your advice or what would be
your words to persuade them to go ahead? Jump in
the water's fine?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
You know what I would say is try out a
plug in hybrid. And I've been a champion of those
from the beginning, because people are going to resist there,
whether I mean we're seeing it, they're politicized ideologically, people
might be opposed. They might be opposed because you know,
(41:19):
they have a bunch of kids they carry around and
they don't want to worry about stopping to charge with
a bunch of little kids. There's lots of reasons. So
I think we're going to you know, like getting to
one hundred percent. I think we can get to seventy
or eighty percent without too much trouble. But then there's
going to be a lot of resistors. And so that's
why I say plug in hybrid. We've regulated to plug
(41:43):
in hybrids now, so they have to have a minimum
electric range of fifty miles starting in a couple of years.
So you buy that, and you know you'll end up
using electricity most of the time anyway, end of the day.
It's not the most efficient way to do it. You
got to asoline power plant, got electric vehicle batteries, you know. So,
(42:06):
But I think from a behavior customer perspective, it's a
it's a good transition for those that are a little
nervous about it.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Kind of a bridge rather than leaping across that right canyon.
You're saying, let me take a bridge first to this
whole thing, then I can go all electric. Okay, phenomenal, Dan.
Last thing I saw that you've written thirteen different books,
two hundred and fifty published articles. Is there another book
on the horizon?
Speaker 3 (42:34):
You know, I've been wondering that myself. You know, what
happens is stuff happens, Things change, And I mean we're
on the path, clearly electric vehicle path. We're clearly on
that path. We have a lot of you know, we're
still the mobility side. There's a lot of questions still.
(42:55):
You know, it's not only the automated vehicles and the
sharing got the bicycle, you know, my favorite zero mission vehicle,
the bicycle, and what's going to happen with transit, so
you know right now, I don't have the kernel yet,
but I think it's going to come in a few years.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Right, beautiful Dan Sperling, thank you very much for joining
me this afternoon. Is always enjoyable to talk to you,
always learn something new. And yeah, we'll be looking for
the book.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
What a pleasure of being with you. Thank you so much.
And what a great service you do understanding the Chinese situation.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Thank you so much. It's a battle every single day
to try to figure it out. That's part of the joy.
All right, Thanks so much. We'll see you soon. Without exception,
every single time I have a conversation with doctor Dan Sperling,
(43:55):
I learn new things and this time was no different.
Let me share with you three takeaways. Number one, he's
firm in his belief that electric vehicles are the future,
not only because they're good for the environment, but from
an economic point of view. He believes they win out
today and they'll continue to win out in the future
(44:16):
as battery prices go lower. Number two, Yes, China has
a massive overcapacity when it comes to evs. Was it
by design? Jury still out in his view, But the
most important takeaway there is that the rest of the
world has to reckon with this massive machine of an
auto industry China that is now exporting in record numbers.
(44:38):
Will China overwhelm the West with its low cost evs,
let's find out? And Third, fascinating to get the inside
scoop during his time at CARB, how dependent Tesla was
for survival at the time. Look at that the models
in the early twenty tens was raking in twenty thousand
(44:59):
dollars in credits for every vehicle delivered. I did sense
a little bit that Elon might have been more grateful
at the time, but hey, Elon had bigger and more
ambitious things to get done. He's an entrepreneur. That's a
wrap on this episode of the Driving with Done podcast.
Thank you so much for joining. If you have comments, questions, ideas,
(45:23):
please do send them to me. You can find me
via Doneinsights dot com or dm me on LinkedIn or
x This is the Driving with Done.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Podcast where you meet the experts creating the technologies that
will power tomorrow's cars electric autonomous software to find This
is a Driving with Done podcast.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Thank you for joining.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
This episode of the Driving With Done podcast. To connect
with Michael donn, visit doneinsights dot com or find Michael
on x or LinkedIn. This is the Driving With Done
podcast
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