InEVitable: Why the EV Transition Will Happen (Messy or Not) with Mike Colias

In this episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite, we speak with Mike Colias, author of InEVitable: Inside the Messy, Unstoppable Transition to Electric Vehicles, and guest co-host Shawn Wilson, a business development leader in EV infrastructure. From the streets of Detroit to the battery factories of China, we explore what’s shaping the future of electric mobility, why legacy automakers fell behind, and what this transformation means for entrepreneurs and communities of color.

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All right, everybody, thank you all for joining another episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite, series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism, supporting black businesses. And today is, a very special day for me because we have Mike Elias, who is, a reporter. He used to be a reporter with the Wall Street Journal and is currently the editor for Reuters. And his focus is on US automotives. And he is also the author of Inevitable Inside the Messy, Unstoppable Transition to Electronic Vehicles, our special guest host is, a friend of mine from a gathering of brothers here in San Antonio, where once a month we meet to just meet and fellowship and have community. And we met. Maybe it might have been over a year ago. And I found out that that Shawn Wilson here is he's an expert in sales and business development and has leadership expertise in delivering technical and practical solutions in electrification, with a specific focus on EV charging infrastructure solutions. So that being said, he's in the EV industry, building the infrastructure that's going to make electric vehicles, more prominent, more ubiquitous, in the United States. And so I figured he was the perfect person to steer the technical parts of this conversation. and so before we get into that, Mike, I want to tell you, a few things that piqued my interest in your book. I'm going to tell you how I found your book, but I'm going to tell you, my just brief experience with electric vehicles. So my wife and I, went to South by Southwest last year, and at South by Southwest, the big title sponsor was Rivian. It was Rivian. Rivian. Rivian. Rivian. Rivian. Rivian. Rivian. Rivian was everywhere. And it was really interesting how they merged just their basic come test drive of Rivian as part of the South by experience because you could test drive a car anywhere right. But they made it a special thing because part of South by you could register you can come in. They have these this nice event space and all that. And me and my wife drove this Rivian. And my wife was like, man I want one now. We can't afford one. We can't afford one. But it was nice. It had 18 cameras. It was electric. And then they did this thing. We were like, it was it was almost like we were driving on a wall, like the. It was like a decline or an incline, depending on how you look at it. And the car could drive on at the angle and not tip over and away. A gasoline car would because of the way the weight of the battery. So my first real experience with an EV was that, and it really piqued my interest into like, what's going to start happening with EV infrastructure infrastructure as we make this inevitable transition? Well, lo and behold, like maybe two weeks, three weeks, a month later, within a month later, I'm in Barnes and Noble, I'm walking around and I just see this book and I'm like, oh, let me check that out. And so since then, I actually before I got this copy, I got it from the library and I read it and it's really interesting and I'm excited for what you have to share today. And so my first question is, is, as we get started, can you tell a little bit about your story, how you got to do got into, the journalistic side of vehicles and EVs and then tell us the story of the book and how it emerged, Merged. Through your research and your years and years of expertise and experience. Yeah. You bet. and thanks so much for having me on. That's a it's a cool. That's a cool story. Rivian. Yeah, they're they're really, you know, they've been really careful and smart with their brand, and it's very, like, outdoorsy. I could see it being South by southwest. you know, they've they've. And there's a lot of Rivian in the book too. so that's funny that that's that was kind of your first experience, with an EV. And we can talk more about them later. But, you know, I think, I've always been a business journalist. I started my career in Chicago, and I didn't know anything about the car business. I was writing about other stuff, and, for, I guess, family reasons. I ended up moving to to Michigan, and I figured out really quick. Well, there's there's one great big industry around the Detroit area that I better familiarize myself with. Right. So, and right away I thought it was like, you know, really, it's a really fun industry to write about. I mean, it's huge. It's global. You know, there's there's tons of, like, people to talk to, sources to make, you know, there's car dealers, there's parts suppliers, you know, big advertising companies, unions, factory workers. You know, there's all there's all there's like the, the sourcing universe. When you're a journalist, you want to find people who will tell you stuff. Right. And that's there's just so much of that, in autos. And then it's just, it's a really, you know, people have passion around what they drive, right? And they everyone remembers there's emotion that goes into it. And people remember what their parents drove or what they they grew up driving and riding in, you know, and so, for, you know, I just, I, I fell in love with covering the industry right away and then, you know, it quickly, very quickly, I realized that, you know, not only is this, you know, this is before all the disruption started. Right? And so, you know, right around this time, so 20 say, I started covering the industry in 2010, around 2015, 16, 1617. That's when we really started hearing people talk about autonomous cars and, you know, electric cars was was part of the story, but it was really like the driverless car thing was really going to take off. And so that that was a few years where, you know, we were writing about like the fact that people were just going to be taking robot Ubers everywhere, you know, and, and, I'd say that kind of died down. Everyone realized that that's going to that's a little further off than we think, and that's actually starting to pick back up again. But really 2018, 1718 is when the rest of the industry started following Tesla, essentially. Right? I mean, Tesla really drove a lot of this. And, you know, that's when the a lot of the companies that I've been covering in Detroit, General Motors, Ford, and then even beyond that globally, Volkswagen, they all started talking about, you know, we're going to go electric in a big way. We're going to spend tens of billions of dollars on this. We're going to have, you know, dozens of models. And I just realized, like, this wasn't just like a once in a decade or once in a generation story. This is like a once in a century, like complete, like turning an industry upside down and realized that there was more to tell about what was going on in the car business beyond just what I could do day to day writing stories for the Wall Street Journal, there was a there was a book here. Right. And so that's that's kind of like how this all started, was, you know, I just I knew there was a lot of, a lot of good back stories to tell. And so I wanted to sort of unfold that, in a book. Yeah. It's fantastic, you know. And then the bigger part is also that, you know, it seems like it's a new thing. Like you said, it launched with Tesla. But the reality is, if we go back to like, I think the first inventor was the first electric car was 1888. And there were all sorts of different attempts at it that sort of came and went. so how do you think that's impacting the public opinion now. Yeah, no, it's a really good point. And I didn't realize that until I started doing some research. But, you know, back in the, you know, around 1900, there were, just as many electric companies, electric car companies as were gas. And there was even some steam engine cars. and eventually, you know, the gas engine cars won out partly because Ford Ford made gas engine cars. And once they, sort of perfected the, the moving assembly line, they essentially invented that. And so they were cranking out cars and that's and they were cheap. People wanted that. And so that sort of ruled the day. And so electric cars kind of fell by the wayside. and part of it was for some of the same reasons as today. You know, once people got outside of cities, there weren't, you know, there were gas stations where you could get fuel, but there weren't places to charge your car, you know, so people wanted to, the gas engine just was, was a safer play for people. And so that that for the next century. That's essentially essentially what it was. and now, you know, electric cars. It's it's interesting. I mean, there's everyone has an opinion. It's gotten pretty political over the last few years. and we we can get into all of the sort of, you know, there's been a lot of ups and downs for, for the electric car story in the last even five years. I mean, three years ago, it was it was still there was a ton of hype around it. And, you know, there was waiting lists and people were paying 20 grand above sticker to get a Ford Lightning or whatever. And now, a lot of that's died down, at least here in the US. And this is a very regional story, and we can talk about what's going on in other in other countries. But, you know, now it's just it's sort of like the car companies have to figure out sort of how to. None of them are walking away from this. They're all saying, we think this is the way it's going to go, but it's not going as fast as we thought. And so that's created this interesting tension of, you know, how the companies are figuring out, okay, how many of these do we need? How how hard should we push this? you know what? How are regulations going to play a part in this? So it's it's gotten interesting to see, you know, now that we know that it's not going to go as fast as the industry thought, you know what they're going to do about that. So, I'm really interested in sort of like what's happening in China. And I think a lot of what you talked about early on in the book is how, like, deals got made in China. There was a Chinese, entrepreneur who was making batteries for cell phones. But come to find out, they were actually thinking about getting into electric vehicle space. And so, you know, there's there's all of this talk about like, like trade wars with China and things like that. So could you give us some context, like globally, right. From your research, from your your journalistic expertise of like, what's happening with electric vehicles, not just in America, but like, in a more global sense. Yeah. And that that story definitely starts with China. And, it's hard to exaggerate how big China is relative to the rest of the world when it comes to electric cars. I think something like 60% of all EVs sold on the planet are sold in China. and the origin story there is really interesting to just how they came to dominate. you know, China's car industry really only dates back to like the 1980s. They really didn't make cars before then, and they started to open up the broader economy in China. And one of the ways they did that is they invited big car companies like General Motors and Volkswagen and Toyota come to partner with our, you know, mostly state owned Chinese companies who are making cars. and we'll let you set up factories here and you can access this big giant market. And so that's the way the car industry in general in China evolved over the last 30 or 40 years. and so these, these Chinese brands were sort of working with these foreign companies and learning alongside them, but they were also competing with their own brands. And the Chinese companies realize, like, they weren't going to they weren't going to compete very well with these big behemoth companies on internal combustion engine cars. It's super complex to put together an engine and a transmission. you know, we think of EVs as being like this complex, state of the art thing, but really, like, you can snap together an EV with some stuff off the shelf, or at least a powertrain. You can take battery cells and electric motor and a few other parts and like that. That's why, you know, you've seen all these startups come up. And that's how Tesla started, is just some guys out in California strapping together, laptop batteries. Right? I mean, it's like the the underlying complexity of the powertrain in an EV is not that difficult, and it requires much fewer parts. And so companies can kind of just put something together. And so the Chinese realized we're never going to match these guys on like gas engine technology. We've got to leap ahead some other way. And they quickly decided that we think we can get there with electrics. We don't think they're going to follow us in any real significant way because they're tied. Their profits are tied to gas engine technology. Right. And it's, you know, around that same time, this is like early 2000 when they made that bet. Elon Musk was kind of making the same bet, you know, half, half a world away. we think we can, you know, carve out a niche here that the other car companies aren't going to be able to compete on. And so that's really how it started with China. It was a it was an intentional decision to go electric part of it. You know, they wanted to be dependent from, foreign oil, which, you know, same as the US, but, they wanted to clean up their environment, but they really wanted a way to beat these big, these big companies that had set up shop in their in their country. And so that's and then they brought to bear a lot of advantages. Right? They've got a bunch of raw materials. They mine they mine a lot of the minerals that go into EV batteries over there. If they don't mind it, they at least process it. Most of the processing for all of the key minerals like lithium and cobalt, magnesium, like all all that stuff is processed in China. And so they've just had these built in advantages and it's allowed them to turn into this behemoth, EV maker. And, you know, a lot of government support for people who buy EVs. They've really steered the market in this direction. You know, it's interesting. one of the things I appreciate about how you wrote the book is that the book is storytelling Playing with sprinkles of technical. Right. And so I like how you explained in the book I'm not a car person. I'm not. So I have no idea how complex a gasoline engine is. And the way that you broke that down in the book, would you just explain how complex it is and that it's almost like the scientists in Detroit work for Ford and GM. They view the gasoline engine not just as science, but as like a piece of art. And they're very beholden to the art that is the gasoline engine. And, I'm wondering if when I think about art, I think about culture. Okay. And so while China is building an industry around electric vehicles, in my mind, they also have to be building a culture around electric vehicles as well. So this past weekend, we took my father in law out for Father's Day. And so we're going to this nice restaurant. We're parking in the parking deck. And what I see is, like special parking spaces for electric vehicles or eco friendly vehicles. And I'm wondering if part of the reason why America is behind on electric vehicles is because we don't. We haven't built a culture around being an EV type of society, and I see that as an example with the parking space of us building a culture around being an EV society, or even Elon Musk jumping ahead with Tesla being a cultural icon and fixture for what it means to have an EV. So I'm just wondering if you could speak to there's all these technical and business things, but what does it what does it look like to build a culture around EVs? And real quick, Shawn may jump in. He's having technical difficulties with his camera, but he's still here, so he may pop in with some questions too. Yeah, yeah. No, it sounds good. It's a great question too. I mean, I think when you're dealing with a new technology like this, which is really it's it's a pretty big change from as a car owner. You know, this is a different way of of owning a car, right? You're plugging in your car every night and you're in your garage like it's a foreign concept to people. You've got to figure out completely different places to stop to, to refuel your car. it's not, you know, it's not something that a buyer is going to take lightly. You've got you've got to, like, really sort of convince people and create the right conditions for people to feel comfortable. And it's a little bit more expensive, right? I mean, they're like maybe 20% on average, more expensive than the comparable gas powered car. So like, you've got to like people really need to want to do this. I mean, the best way to do that is to create a brand that has like an aura that people, gravitate towards. And for a long time, that was Tesla. And that's gotten that story's gotten a little messy here in the last year. But, you know, Tesla's brand. You know, I've watched car brands through the course of my 15 years covering the auto industry. Try to, you know, General Motors like trying to breathe new life into brands like Chevrolet or Buick. it's it's just so hard. You can make beautiful, excellent cars. And it's just the brand means so much when people are spending that kind of money. And it's like it becomes a little bit of an identity, what you drive and. And so that's probably the easiest way to to create that kind of cultural, you know, embrace of EVs is to have some really cool brands, a Rivian, a Tesla, you know, that people can then latch onto. there are there are other ways of, you know, I mean, like the parking spaces. I mean, that's sort of like, a corporate or a government thing where you can sort of sort of, you know, give people a little bit of a, a carat, to, to go that route. Right. And to, well, okay, I can park I can park closer at the grocery store or in China it was okay, I can get this registration for free rather than spending $10,000 on registration for a gas powered car. That's a lot of how China, you know, steered things in that direction. They made it really, financially, a big financial incentives for people to go electric instead of gas. We've done a little of that here. There's $7,500 tax credit for many people who buy EVs. There's some restrictions on that. But, you know, I think creating those conditions is very important. And China's done it really well. And in terms of brands, they've got a ton of, new, newer EV brands that are, you know, they've got the cool factor going. I mean, if you saw if you went into the Beijing Auto show, the Shanghai Auto show, you'd see some really cool sheet metal. and it's not what people, most people might think when they think of a Chinese car. you know, ten, 15 years ago, they were cheap, unreliable. Now they're, you know, they're they're excellent vehicles and and certainly excellent value because they've got a huge cost advantage over Toyota GM Volkswagen. Yeah. Okay, let me tell you about the book. The part of the book that hurt me a little bit. Okay. So I, the the the Detroit legacy auto industry has been part of helping a lot of Americans realize the American dream. Right. And I think part of the reason why so many, like, Americans were like into the the American cars, right, was because I think the degree of separation that you have from somebody who was working in an in that industry or in an in an industry related to that industry was probably very small. If we go back 30, 40, 50 years ago. So my dad worked for General Motors his entire life. Right. So my dad was high school educated, didn't go to college. Right. but was able to get into, like, he worked a blue collar job but had a white collar lifestyle. And that's because of what Detroit was, even though we lived mostly in Buffalo. and so when I heard the story at the very beginning of GM trying to unveil the electric Hummer, right, and the way the wheels would move and pivot, and then one of my mentors is actually in the audience now he's got the, the Tesla truck. So he let me drive it. He's like, you gotta be careful now because the wheels in the back pivot just like the wheels in the front. But I test drove his Tesla truck before I read the book. So I was like, wait a minute. I was like, wait a minute. GM had this. First we had the cool toy first, but for whatever reason we didn't hear me saying we and I don't even work for them. But they they paid for me to go to college because my daddy worked for him, right. So and we didn't like we didn't make that happen. And so I'm just wondering if you could share your, your thoughts about, like, how did we get behind, like trying to leap forward, but what were we doing that didn't allow us to grow and transform in ways that we should have? Yeah, that's another really great question. And like the GM chapter, I think it's the first chapter of the book. And it's probably. Yeah, for someone who's got some allegiances, and fond feelings for GM, it's probably frustrating because it's just this like time after time, GM had these breakthroughs, right? That that, really, they they could have grabbed a huge lead on electric cars and they kept, just kind of frittering that away. Right. And then they, they'd come up with another one and then that would, they would just kind of give up on that. So the EV one, back in the 90s was kind of the first we call it mass market electric car. They didn't make that many of them a few thousand. And then they decided it was going to lose too much money. And so they backed away from that. And there was a movie called Who Killed the Electric Car in the, you know, mid, I think 2004 or 5 or something. They took a lot of heat for that. But I mean they were, they were trying on electrics. Right. And then there was the Chevy Volt came out in 2010. and that really sort of symbolized, you know, GM had just gone into a short bankruptcy and they had to get some government bailout money. And the Chevy Volt was considered like this technological marvel. Right. And, and, you know, had it didn't it wasn't a huge seller. But the people who bought it, really, it was like a cult following. it turned a lot of heads in the industry. and again, GM just wasn't able to to capitalize on that. And meanwhile, during that whole time is when you had Tesla, you know, kind of doing its thing. No one really paying attention. Finally, by the time that Detroit executives did start paying attention, it was like it went from like this curiosity to the Chevy Volt. I think we I talk about this in the book. I mean, it was one of the reasons that even came into being was because, Bob Lutz, this kind of larger than life executive at GM at the time was like, I'm seeing what Tesla is doing and I'm paying attention. And he was like one of the few like a lot of the executives just kind of blew it off as, as this, startup that wasn't going to really ever break into full, you know, they weren't going to be able to figure out how to make cars or they weren't going to ever be profitable. Bob Lutz was paying attention, and he was like, we need something to fight this. And that's that's where they made the Chevy Volt. But in general, most of Detroit and you could say the same thing for Tokyo and Germany, like all of the traditional automakers are, they kind of blew off the Tesla threat for a really long time. And I think it's just the inertia of a big companies like this. You pay attention to what you're what's delivering the bottom line, right? And it's internal combustion. And so they're just never they they would talk about electrics. They would come up with prototypes. But there was just never the real drive to really embrace it in a big way because it wasn't paying the bills and the electric cars that they were making, they were losing billions of dollars on and they still are. you know, eventually Tesla got so big they couldn't ignore it. And that's part of a big part of what played into this big pivot to EVs that we've seen over the last five years. So. yeah, I actually have quite a lot to say on this particular topic. maybe you could help us better understand. Or maybe if you agree with the fact that I feel like Americans always have a great comeback story because we can do it. So, you know, the this adaption adaptation seems to always be an issue. We feel like we can do it whenever we want to. So it always seems to go to the back burner. There's an assumption that this is not going to last. It's going to be just like in the 1900s, that it's going to be here for a minute and it's going to go away. We're going to transition into something else. EVs are history. So that adaptation piece is a big problem for our country, I think. Yeah. And you know, there probably there certainly are still people who think this is a fad and it'll fade away. and we can talk about the reasons why. Clearly, if the title of the book is inevitable, I don't believe that's going to be the case. I'm, I think, you know, if you look at the book and read through it, I'm not. I don't shy away from all of the challenges. I mean, the word messy in the title is is carrying a lot of weight, right? There's it's it's not, it's not an even, smooth transition. It's not going to be it's going to take a long time and I don't know, and I don't think we ever get to 100% or even even 75% of all sales being electric. I mean, right now, China's in the 40 plus percent range. Europe's around 20%. We're just below 10%. if you include plug in hybrids in that mix. But, so it's going to it's a long time in the US, I think gas cars are going to be around for a very long time. but you're right. I mean, it's it's, you know, that that adaptation thing, we're seeing the companies catch up. Ford, General Motors, they are still pouring a lot of money into this. They're coming out with some really cool stuff GM has struggled to get their first models out the door. They were having manufacturing issues. Trouble putting together the battery packs? They fixed all that they've got. They've got some really, like, good values. Now, the Chevy Equinox is, I think starts in the mid 30s. If you get a tax credit with that you can get it under 30 grand. That's really hard to do. Get a nice EV. I mean it goes 300 miles of range. Like they're the the domestic. The Detroit car companies are catching up on this. it's the cost advantage that the Chinese have. That is probably what they're most worried about. And so they're not competing against the Chinese companies in the US. There's hardly any, you know, China built cars that are sold here, a few Volvos, maybe Polestar. But in general, tariffs have made it almost impossible. You know, we're not going to see that for a long time. But the executives I talked to aren't counting on tariffs to protect them forever. They know that that they're going to have to compete against the Chinese in other markets and eventually here, if you if you give people the choice of buying a $25,000 great value, really cool technology, they're going to that stuff's going to find its way into the country. This is what the Japanese did in the 1970s and 80s. Right? I mean, so every executive I talk to knows that this is something they're going to have to solve. if, if they want to be successful going forward. Yeah, I was watching I can't remember where I heard or saw this data, but you used to have to pay a whole lot of money for the type of performance and quality that EVs provide. You had to spend a lot of money to get that type of performance. But now, like you said, it's under $30,000 and you can still get that kind of performance, which is very attractive for, you know, typical muscle heads, you know. Yeah. No. That's right. And I mean, that's a good point too. It's when you talk about performance, I mean, these cars are it's like instant torque. You know, you go 0 to 60. Most of them not even just like not even performance sporty type EVs, most of them 0 to 60 in less than six seconds. Some of them for like like Ford Mustang, Chevy Corvette or, you know, type speed. Right. acceleration. They're quiet, they're quick. They are fun to drive. They feel like, you know, you feel like you're driving the future. That's why you don't see a whole lot of people who go electric, go back to gas. And there's a little bit of that. But surveys show that I think it's something like 80% of people are going to stick with that powertrain. Tesla's had one of the strongest brands again up until recently, in the industry. You know, that's that underpins one of my you know, that's that's a big reason why I think this only goes up from here. And I don't know, that's not going to be a straight line and it's going to take a long time. But people really love the cars when they get in them. And that should that counts for a lot because we talk about this messy transition, the the inevitable messy part of it. Do you think a lot of the messy part is being driven from the corporate manufacturers, the Ford GM's, the CEOs there? Or do you think it's being driven mostly by the public? Or a combination of both? Yeah, I think it is a combination. I mean, I think on the on the business end of things, you know, we went from all that, all of that enthusiasm early in this decade to now, it's clear that they, they whiffed on, on their volume forecasts, how many of these they were going to sell, right, and how many they were going to make. And, you know, had these really big estimates around, you know, GM was saying they were going to be done with gas cars by 2035. I mean, nobody thinks that's going to happen. They were they and others were saying by 2030 the market could be 40% electric. You know, in the US. There's just, you know, everybody knows that that's not going to happen now. And I think the two big reasons for that and this gets into the messy part, is one price. They thought they were going to get more cost out of the battery and other things to make this sort of like comparable with gas powered cars from a price standpoint. By by right about now, 2025, that hasn't happened. The batteries are still pretty expensive. you're seeing some great deals on EVs now. so the pricing has eased off a lot, but that's that's to the advantage of the consumer, not the companies. The companies are losing a lot of money on these, and they're lowering the price because the demand is not where they thought it would be. so, you know, that's that's on the, on the corporate side of things. I think on the consumer side, I think there's a lot of interest, a lot of curiosity around EVs. But I do think and we can talk about this and it sounds like, Shawn, this is one of your sweet spots, the sort of infrastructure around it. It's just, you know, we've gone through that early adopter phase, right, where you've got about 10% of the population who's who just is going to want an electric car or want to be the first one on the block to buy a Rivian or buy a Ford Lightning. All those people have their EVs now, you know. And now you're getting into more discerning, consumer like people who are definitely curious and want to be, either for environmental reasons or just they think it's a cool technology, but it's, you know, you've got to spend more. It's the unknown. Where exactly am I going to charge this? Like, how much is it going to cost me to put a charger in my garage? Like, all these things start to creep in, and you know this. Now that you get to this level of buyer, it's just gotten harder than the companies expected. There's more hesitancy around it from the consumer standpoint. Yeah I agree. And it's it's it's a tough thing because which came first the chicken or the egg and the early adopters are embracing it. Whereas you've got I mean, our whole country in every way. And I don't even know if it's something we can ever solve for Mike, but this is a whole nother part of the messy. We're so polarized, it's either one or the other. It's never a combination of you. We can't do this collectively and collaborate on it. There's the other parties pushback. You're driving an EV and it's oh my God, that's a problem versus the other half that says, hey, you know, we're not necessarily tree hugging folks either, but this is part of a solution that we have to address the the air quality and the climate. But yeah, no, it did. It did very much become a a polarizing, politicized issue. Right. Just even in the last three years, I think this really, this really broke along these lines. and it is too bad. And, you know, there's plenty of conservatives and Republicans who, who, who drive Teslas. And, you know, Elon Musk is like added a whole interesting, multi-dimensional, you know, he's he's you have to credit him with driving the EV transition forward, probably more than anyone on the planet, right? But then there's been a lot of mixed, mixed messaging. And he'll I think he's on record as saying he doesn't think there should be any federal subsidies for, for electric cars. And of course, that's going to make it harder for, some of the other brands to, to catch on. But, you know, I, I think my, my take on that is I think the longer they're around, the more people on your block that have one, the more you might get into one that your neighbor drives or your friend drives. I think a lot of that's going to sort of go by the wayside, and it just becomes another cool car that you might consider or you might not. more the more the charging infrastructure starts to build out, you don't have to think about it quite as much. The prices start to come down. I mean, I think, I think it's not going to be such a foreign idea to some people where you've got to like point a finger and say, you know, what are you thinking buying that? Yeah, I know we're going to hop around a little bit, but you're, you know, you're we're never going to be able to cover all the great aspects of the book in a, in a podcast. I do want to touch on the, the part where you referenced how the industry is going to have to sort of reshape itself in terms of, you know, now changing from a nuts and bolts, the, oil and gas, the that sort of piece to going electrified and a different mindset and technical skill set that will be required in order to manage these and maintenance on these vehicles. Talk a little bit about how you sort of came into that part of it. Yeah. I mean, you know, you might wonder, like, why is this such a big deal, right? Like, why is this so hard for the industry to do? It's, you know, you still has four doors in a in a hood and and brakes and steering wheel and all that. but I think the guts of the car are so different in the supply chain that you need to get the parts, in the minerals that go into the batteries. It it requires a complete rewiring of the auto industry supply chain, which has been built up over, you know, many decades now. That's that's one that's one big factor in why this is so difficult. it does require a different skill set. I mean, there's a whole chapter in the book about, these, these mechanical engineers who were like, experts at, making the internal combustion engine operate as efficiently as it can and as cost effectively as it can. And these guys or a couple engineers at Ford who just early in this decade took buyouts, you know, well before retirement age because they they weren't being pushed out of the company. But like the fun stuff was all gone, right. It was, you know, they thought that the fun stuff was really the, you know, like Langston said at the beginning, the art and science of the internal combustion engine. And that fun had gone away. And, you know, they didn't like, you know, EVs are very straightforward and don't require that sort of entrepreneurial sort of approach, I guess, to, you know, figuring out a problem with a gas engine. So that's just like one example of how the, the sort of workplace has to shift and the skill set has to shift as you make this transition. But those guys are still needed to. Right, because the gas engine is not going away as quickly as these companies thought. And so they are going to still need to innovate on the gas engine side of things. But it is a it is sort of this slow change. And I think the hardest one for companies like GM and Volkswagen and others. And this has been this has been difficult for them just in the last few years is, you know, as you as you electrify, it becomes easier to add digital stuff to the car. You beam down updates like you would your smartphone. Right. And Tesla has really been out front on this. I mean, this is a whole nother aspect of why Tesla has leaped out to the the lead that it has on electric cars is because they have figured out this sort of advanced platform smartphone approach, to adding digital features and, you know, even self-driving aspects that the car companies have really struggled to get that right. And they're they're trying to bring people in who understand software. But it's really difficult for a manufacturer that screws together cars to come up with some of those innovations. And so that's I think that's the next big area that the car companies are worried about being able to keep up. And the Chinese, by the way, are doing this really well, too. I mean, super fast updates of their sort of, you know, user interface and the features they're adding, like the big guys can't keep up with what the Chinese are doing right now. Yeah, we've spoken a lot about the negatives related to and the challenges for, moving to electrification is adoption is a problem. The cost is expensive, there's a lack of infrastructure, there's a pushback in terms of, you know, adaptation to the whole concept of there's a lot of pushback on there. Why is your your mindset still that it is inevitable? Yeah. So I think a couple things, I mean, I'll go back to China as one of them. Right. China shows you, I think what happens when you when you eliminate those two big barriers, right? Price and charging issues. the cars over there now, the EVs are being sold at very low prices relative to, you know, sometimes lower than a gas powered car. they're affordable. They're good values. People can get into them without breaking the bank. and then you look at, I mean, they're charging infrastructure, something like, I want to say 25 times more fast chargers, in China versus the US. Like, it's just, you know, they've really and again, government money, they can kind of do what they want, and they've sunk a ton of money into it. And so the buyers don't have to worry about high prices. They don't have to worry about being able to find a charger by and large. And so what do you see? almost half of the market is now electric. Electric cars. you know, and some of that is the incentives that the government offers for people to buy these. But, I think that shows you what can happen if you get those things right. If you if the conditions are right for electric cars, then if you're these other automakers around the world looking at that happening and going, you know, what's happening in China now isn't just going to stay in China. It's it's it's right now it's being exported around the Chinese EV makers are moving into Europe and moving into Latin America. the car companies are going to have to compete against this. And so you can feel probably feel good if you're GM or Ford and just leaning into selling pickup trucks in Texas. but and it's going to probably pay the bills for many more years. But I think if you're looking long term, you realize you're going to have to compete. And that's why we've not seen they've slow walked some project. There's been some, some cancellations of of factories, but none of them are completely pulling out of this electric car race because they know that their futures depend on it. Yeah, it's a good point. it just seems like the narrative is not I mean, we're not really getting the message out to the general public, and we're not supporting it. So it almost isolates the benefits to the countries that are adopting it. And we really don't know a lot about it. Yeah. I mean, it's it's, you know, you can draw parallels certainly to, other industries like semiconductors, for example, right. Where, you know, we don't we don't make many of those here anymore. And we saw what happened with this computer chip crisis a few years ago. And, we're seeing a little bit of, of what happens now when you when when stuff that is strategically important is is has to go through China or through Asia. and it's, it's important to our domestic manufacturing and, and, and the stuff that's sold here, it becomes a huge problem and you don't want to be reliant on that. And that's why we've seen a bunch of battery plants, constructed in the US and are still under construction now. I mean, more than it has been a complete building boom in the last five years of car companies teaming with battery makers to build these huge, multi-billion dollar factories that employ thousands of people. I mean, it is it's been like a manufacturing renaissance in that, in that realm, you know, all that, all that could be in jeopardy if federal money is, is pulled, which we're likely to see happen, under the Trump administration, because they're on record as saying they want to they want to strip a lot of this funding out. And I think you just need to look at it from a big picture. You know that. That's the that's the complaint a lot of people have when they look at sort of industrial policy, like, are we setting the conditions to be able to compete against China on things like semiconductors, on things like battery technology? Sometimes it requires government help because governments in other places are helping, are helping their private sector. And so those are all big questions that are swirling around this whole EV transition. Yeah. Which kind of, with our political transition, you know, Inflation Reduction Act is really the only tool that we have. And it seems like it's in a lot of cases, under attack. What's your perspective on that? Yeah, I think we're going to see I mean, the the budget bill in DC right now, would phase out that $7,500 tax credit, that would go away eventually. there's actually a lot, a much bigger pot of money that's available to companies that are making those batteries I just talked about. you know, tens of billions, maybe even over $100 billion of federal funding. In that IRA, legislation. we don't know what's going to happen with that because it's interesting. A lot of those battery plants are built in red states. And so it's going to be harder for, I think a senator in Georgia who's seen, you know, $20 billion of investment into electric cars and, and batteries, even though they're Republican who never voted for the IRA, it's going to be harder for them to vote, to strip that funding if if there's jobs, you know, tens of thousands of jobs on the line in their state. So I think the tax credit goes away. The consumer tax credit, I think some of that battery money is probably going to stick around. but either way, there's no question that the Trump administration's going to it's going to create headwinds, for the for the EV transition in a way that we didn't see, certainly under Biden, which was, you know, a big proponent of what they were trying to do. So real quick, I want to I want to ask you all a question. Two questions based upon your expertise. one is what opportunities do you see for folks who are interested entrepreneurially in this inevitable transition into, electric vehicles? Like what opportunities are there for like, new entrepreneurs to be a part of, like rebuilding, you know, our automotive, automotive infrastructure here in the country. And the second question is, and I'll repeat it if it's necessary, if all politics aside, I'm not asking you all to make a political, you know, commentary because we've been politicized. What car you buy. Okay. What is if you could buy an EV today, someone would give you an EV today. What would your choice be of EV and why? So the first question is what opportunities do you see for people to take advantage of the changes that are happening with the electrification of our automotive industry and infrastructure. And if you could have your choice of an EV just because it's objectively what you like, what would that be? If someone could just give you an EV for free? Yeah. yeah, I, I love the, Yeah, the entrepreneurial questions. Great one. because that was, you know, in writing the book, a lot of the, you know, there's a lot of it is what the big car companies are doing. Right? Here's what GM is trying to do. Here's how Volkswagen got into this, Toyota, which is an interesting story because they never really like, were fully embraced the EVs. And so like those those are kind of like cornerstones of the book. But what I almost what I liked more were talking to people who were sort of the small entrepreneurs in the background who are just kind of like trying to solve problems around this. So like, I'll just I'll just mention a few of the ones that I really like. I loved their story, and maybe it'll like give some of your viewers and listeners like some ideas around how you can sort of get involved in the industry. But, you know, one was a guy who, for almost a decade now, he's he got into charging, like in the mid teens, you know, he was he was he was putting he was just taking advantage of state and federal money that was available for electric chargers. And he was putting him in Oklahoma, which is like, I can't think of many worse places to, to to try to get the EV transition going. I mean, it's a gas and oil state. It's, you know, it's it's, sparsely populated. You know, it's it's a red state, deep red state. So he just had this belief that like, eventually, you know, there's going to be pickup trucks that were in this did happen. They're not doing as well now. But, you know, you saw Ford and GM and Rivian and Tesla all go into the pickup truck market. but, you know, he was just stringing together this, this network of electric charging stations along highways in Oklahoma and other places, in the plains like that. and, you know, he's been able to make that work through just scrounging for all the public money he could figure out and going to a place like, you know, someone's city hall and saying, hey, I can put this charger in for free. You just need to let me have access to your property to do it. And, you know, and TBD, like I last I talked to the guys. It's it's he's he's doing well, but it's an example of, like, a kind of a leap of faith business model that you're building around this transition, like, you know, kind of assuming it'll, it'll come, another, another was, someone kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, he was trying to solve the problem of, what do you do if you live in an apartment building or, you know, densely populated city, you're in a condo building or something. How do those people charge? And he This is a again, more than a decade ago, I think he had a Nissan Leaf like one of the early EVs, and there was no charger in his, in his condo building. And he went to the he went to the association and the building owner and said, we need to install some, some chargers. And they basically were like, well, we're not we're not interested. And so he then offered to pay to have these chargers installed, something like ten grand. And the owner was like, yeah, I don't think, I don't think this is for us. And so he decided to start a business around basically being plug and play for a condo or an apartment building owner to say, I'll come in, I'll help you with the installation. I'll, I'll figure out the billing and how to divide up the the electric bills among your tenants and figure out the optimal times to charge. And so, I mean, I think last I heard from him, he had raised over $50 million in venture capital funding. so, you know, there's there's another guy who's, set up shop in the desert out in California. He's trying to figure out ways to to more environmentally like, more sustainably take lithium out of, this brine underneath the desert floor. And you kind of clean it up, take the lithium out, pump it back down into the earth so it doesn't. It's not as environmentally damaging as, like, mining the stuff. and, you know, all this stuff has a long way to go right in this in this slowdown in, in EV adoption in the US hasn't helped. But those are some of my favorite stories are the people who are trying to build businesses around. Yeah. Solving these problems. Right. and then the second question. What car? Oh, wow. I mean, you mentioned Rivian. Like, you know, they've got those round, headlamps like, those can be polarizing. Not everyone loves them. I think they're really cool. And it's a it's like this rugged look, you know, it's an outdoorsy sort of Patagonia vibe. I could see buying, you know, if money was no object. Because those those probably start around 80 grand, right? if money was no object, I could see buying one of those, maybe the SUV and, having fun going, going camping in that and and, I think that would be. That'd be on my short list. Let's put it that way. Me too. Me too. I thought it was ugly until I wrote it. It, to be honest. Then I wrote it. It was the whole thing. It's like, you know, the baby comes out ugly, but then you find out it's yours. It's cute. So, Yeah, I. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd say, I mean Hyundai Kia are making some really cool stuff now too. really good looking EV they those, you know, they're kind of sister Korean car companies, but they, they've really got, like, a pretty wide selection. They're one of the few that have actually come out with like, a bigger three row for families, like the Kia Ev9. and so, yeah, I think, I think there's way more to choose from now than there was two years ago. And that'll probably that'll probably continue. Yep. So, I think it's a great couple of questions to kind of start finishing on. And to me, a lot of it is going against the status quo. I mean, for for most Americans, I think the mindset is always if if it's not broken, if it's not broken, how do you still convince people that it still needs to be fixed? You know, that mindset right there is that I mean, you're swimming against the current. You're fighting against a headwind. There's a ton of opposition with 7% adoption rate. I think the opportunities are clearly, to me, everywhere. I have a good friend that I speak to on a regular basis. He's he's been willing to EVs for many, many years. He's owned Teslas and all sorts. And, you know, we talk about the adoption rate being at 7%. There's no bad place to put a charger. So see, I want to put one here. What do you think about he says over and over and over. At this point, there's no bad place to put one and I have to agree with it. So in that sense, it could be more like a gold rush. Buying up any particular opportunity that you see or location that is suitable is probably not a bad idea. But persuading, I mean, I get the some of the apps that tell you exactly where all the chargers are located, and then you look at the demographics where you know, there's a bunch of EVs and then you don't see the infrastructure there, but there are service stations that would be ideal locations. And you talk to the ownership there after you've done, you know, months and months and months of research to get in front of the right people and they go, yeah, we're like you pointed out, Mike, we're not interested. It just makes you scratch your head like, yeah, dude, how do I convince you that it's not broken? Yes, you're making revenue, but is it always going to be there? Are they waiting for a tipping point? like 51% penetration. And then all of a sudden everybody and their mom's going to do it. I don't know, but right now it's just trying to persuade people that just because it's not broken doesn't mean it still doesn't need to be fixed. Mm. So opportunity to me is literally everywhere, which is one of the key reasons that I love this space that we're in. And I'm happy to be part of this early adoption rate. I feel like if we were doing an aircraft reference, the plane is just pulling away from the gate. you know, maybe that's a that's a scenario. We haven't made the runway yet. We're definitely not up to speed or in the air. We're we're just pulling away from the gate at this point, which is a great place to be if you want to invest in time, money and energy. Yeah. So so there's that part in terms of EV, I, I wouldn't disagree with the Rivian for sure. I do like the idea, the lucid though, you know, pretty modern looking, fast charging, excellent performance, well built, great amenities inside. You jump in those and it doesn't feel, you know, plasticky or anything like that. It feels very high end, very luxurious, with some outstanding performance and some of the best battery tech in the industry too. yeah. The founder of that company or the long time CEO was a Tesla, you know, longtime Tesla guy who really understood the battery tech. so yeah, lucid. Lucid is an interesting, interesting company. All right. So my last question, is again, rooted in the fact that this podcast emerged as a book club. And it's for you, Mike. if there was an additional chapter of the book or section of the book, what would it be or what would it be about? Yeah. So, I think the second or third chapter is all about China, and it's one of the longer chapters. And I told you earlier how it was really interesting for me to go in and sort of learn how that all came to be. I think in just the couple of years since I worked on the meat of the book and, and, and since it's come out, I mean, now, you know, and I know we've talked about China quite a bit on this, during the show, but like, it's the it is the it is the biggest issue right now in the, in the global auto industry. All all of the other reasons why I laid out that China has jumped ahead on EVs. What that's caused in China now is this huge overcapacity. You've got so many EV companies now and so many factories. They've got like something like twice as many factories, twice as much factory space as they need. And so what's happening is most of the consumers now want electric cars. And so there's this huge surplus of gas cars. And what they're doing with those are they're exporting them all over the world. And so China, just in the last couple of years, I mean, 5 or 6 years ago, they hardly exported any cars. Now the the number one exporter of cars, they passed Japan. they're all over Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa. and so that whole and even those are now gas cars because the buyers in China generally don't want them, but eventually that's going to be converted into electric cars. and, you know, we talked about all these traditional automakers needing needing to compete against that. I think the sort of takeover of the car business by the, by the Chinese. Is this the next big story? in this industry? Yeah. Mike, thank you for joining us. Shawn, thank you for joining as guest co-host. I appreciate the lens and expertise that you all brought. Mike, tell us real quick where you can where we can find the book. Your preferred place, maybe to get the book, maybe where to follow you. I know you're a journalist. so people can find out more about what you're writing and where to get the book. Yeah. so I recently left the Wall Street Journal. You can find a lot of my, you know, stuff over the last decade there. And now at Reuters, which is, you know, you can look up my author page there. you can find me on LinkedIn. the book Amazon's the easiest place. You know, there's probably there are independent bookstores that have it. you can try there, too. That's always a good thing to support your local independent bookstore. and yeah, if you, if you buy it on Amazon, I love people who write reviews, even even if it's not favorable. I love the feedback. So don't don't forget to do that if you end up checking out the book. All right. Thank you both. I appreciate your time and audience. Thank you for joining us. There's a link to the podcast in the chat. If you want to listen to more of our episodes, this one should be out in the coming weeks and months. Thank you. Thank you too