Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Game Changers. I'm Bloomberg producer Matt Goldman.
Speaker 1: As the Earth is facing an increasingly consequential climate crisis,
Speaker 1: inquisitive minds all over the globe are hard at work
Speaker 1: trying to find solutions. Many of them have been able
Speaker 1: to translate their Eureka moments into action at a greater
Speaker 1: pace and scope than the sometimes gloomy headlines will have
Speaker 1: us think. In this four part mini series, will meet
Speaker 1: the visionary minds who attempt to sculpt the future of
Speaker 1: sustainable energy and global resources. We'll get a peek behind
Speaker 1: the curtains of their factory floors here of the sometimes
Speaker 1: surprising origins of their ideas, and be introduced to a
Speaker 1: potentially greener tomorrow. Episode one is all about transportation. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: they want me to clap, They want me to clap? Hey,
Speaker 1: pen too good? Are you? So? This is This is
Speaker 1: our new drive train. It's called duo power. Our original
Speaker 1: drive train was a single electric motor. Ryan Popple is
Speaker 1: showing us around the Protera factory floor in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 1: He's a tidy man in his early forties, confidently determined,
Speaker 1: always with the number or stat to counter any question
Speaker 1: we might throw his way. He speaks of the place
Speaker 1: with fondness and an unbridled enthusiasm, like he's treating us
Speaker 1: to a glimpse of the global future. The place is huge,
Speaker 1: meticulously clean, filled with worrying busy robots, and dotted with
Speaker 1: enormous vehicles. For the uninitiated, the scene is at once
Speaker 1: familiar and futuristic. At pro Terra, they build buses, electric buses.
Speaker 1: That is, yes, so so pro Tera, I would say,
Speaker 1: is a is a late stage technology, venture backed company.
Speaker 1: We are several hundred ease um, We have over a
Speaker 1: hundred enterprise scale customers, and we have orders across the
Speaker 1: United States and in a couple of Canadian provinces. We
Speaker 1: often get the question, is pro Tarra bus company? Orse?
Speaker 1: Pro Terra technology company? I think pro Tear is probably
Speaker 1: the first bus manufacturing company that is a technology company.
Speaker 1: But I think in the twenty one century, if companies
Speaker 1: are going to remain relevant, if they're going to survive,
Speaker 1: they are going to have to become technology companies. Paints,
Speaker 1: more rap What else do we look at? Oh, here's
Speaker 1: l A D O T so this is this is
Speaker 1: one of the first bodies that's going to start on
Speaker 1: the line soon. And this sole this is a thirty
Speaker 1: five ft bus. It's part of a series of electric
Speaker 1: buses that are going to be built for the city
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles and their teachers. Together, busses and freight
Speaker 1: trucks generate of all global warming emissions that come from
Speaker 1: the transportation sector, and there are a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Almost one million registered buses roll around the streets to
Speaker 1: the United States. Here Ryan sees an opportunity not only
Speaker 1: to help the environment, but to take a robust share
Speaker 1: of an almost untapped but potentially huge market. And we've
Speaker 1: taken a long view and said, we know that the
Speaker 1: future of this market is electric, and we're not going
Speaker 1: to waste any of our time trying to be good
Speaker 1: at diesel buses. The industry lifespan, or the remaining lifespan
Speaker 1: of the diesel bus industry is very short. It's probably
Speaker 1: less than ten years. So we're able to simply focus
Speaker 1: on building and perfecting an electric bus and the charging
Speaker 1: infrastructure associated with it. But his passion and ideas didn't
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere. To trace his journey to this
Speaker 1: futuristic factory floor, we have to travel back to a
Speaker 1: different time in a very different place. I serve four
Speaker 1: years on active duty. I UM had the pleasure of
Speaker 1: serving as a as a tank commander, a tank platoon leader,
Speaker 1: UM Humby platoon leader, and a couple of other functions
Speaker 1: as well. UM and deployed to the Middle East in
Speaker 1: early two thousand three and participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Speaker 1: You know, certainly got a lot of experience with vehicle
Speaker 1: technology and heavy vehicles. UM. It was a remarkable experience
Speaker 1: to be able to serve with other UM, other soldiers
Speaker 1: and UM lead troops and work for some of the
Speaker 1: best leaders I've ever encountered. At first, his interest in
Speaker 1: sustainable energy was utilitarian rather than idealistic, But it also
Speaker 1: was a pretty stark experience in terms of just seeing
Speaker 1: how volatile some parts of the world are, in particular
Speaker 1: parts that were very much dependent on FORUM for fuel
Speaker 1: production or petroleum supply. So, you know, seeing UM depolling
Speaker 1: into Kuwait and then UM operating in Iraq with with
Speaker 1: an infantry division, you definitely get a sense that that
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of parts of the world
Speaker 1: that aren't necessarily the best places to underwrite for long
Speaker 1: term energy supply. So When I finished up in the
Speaker 1: army in two thousand four and went to business school,
Speaker 1: I very much wanted to work on something related too.
Speaker 1: I guess what would be referred to as energy security,
Speaker 1: and as I looked into it, I was not convinced
Speaker 1: that we were going to produce our way out of
Speaker 1: the problem. If you if you really look into the
Speaker 1: way the oil markets function, regardless of how much oil
Speaker 1: the US produces, we really don't have control over the
Speaker 1: price of oil we are. We are not the cheapest
Speaker 1: marginal capacity that's Saudi Arabia UM. And so if we're
Speaker 1: going to have some energy security or energy independence, we
Speaker 1: have to create alternatives to petroleum. Armed with his new
Speaker 1: ideas in perspective and a business degree to boot, Ryan
Speaker 1: gravitated to a company that seemed to match his ideas, Tesla.
Speaker 1: My reason for being at Tesla was not because I
Speaker 1: was a sports car enthusiast. It was because of the
Speaker 1: environmental sustainability, that the clean tech aspect of what Tesla did.
Speaker 1: By moving over to an investing role for four or
Speaker 1: five years, I really got to look broadly at the
Speaker 1: entire carbon problem, the sustainability problem, and I was able
Speaker 1: to find companies and technologies like pro Terra that took
Speaker 1: the technology that I loved and appreciated from Tesla but
Speaker 1: deployed it into a category that um that probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have access to clean car technology for a long time.
Speaker 1: But eventually Ryan realized that even though electric cars seemed
Speaker 1: like a huge step in the right direction, they still
Speaker 1: came with insurmountable issues when we look at urban sustainability.
Speaker 1: The concept of everyone being able to afford an electric
Speaker 1: car and driving an electric car is a very bad
Speaker 1: thing from a congestion and lifestyle perspective. You cannot solve
Speaker 1: the congestion problems simply by making cars cleaner. So Ryan
Speaker 1: envisioned a world with environmental stability but without the congestion.
Speaker 1: The answer, he realized, was right under our noses, mass transit.
Speaker 1: During his time at Tesla, he had been introduced to
Speaker 1: pro Terra, a company that seemed to fit his evolving
Speaker 1: sustainability philosophy. I joined pro Terra in twenty four seen
Speaker 1: as the CEO when the company was just starting to
Speaker 1: ship commercial product, and my role since then has been
Speaker 1: perfecting the technology and really ensuring that e V can
Speaker 1: become of the city bus market in North America. By
Speaker 1: the way e V means electric vehicle, becoming one of
Speaker 1: the market seems pretty grandiose, but if you zoom in
Speaker 1: on the data, it doesn't actually seem like that crazy
Speaker 1: of an idea. Replacing internal combustion busses with e busses
Speaker 1: as well in the works, and electric buses will take
Speaker 1: over half of the world's bus fleets. By the caveat,
Speaker 1: almost none of this work is happening in the United States.
Speaker 1: As of China already had a fleet of over four
Speaker 1: electric buses, and counting in Europe, we're looking at just
Speaker 1: over two thousand in the US about six hundred six hundred.
Speaker 1: That's less than one percent of America's public transportation fleet.
Speaker 1: So there's certainly a lot of room for growth. But
Speaker 1: how is Ryan planning to seduce a market that clearly
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to see the virtues of electric buses.
Speaker 1: The benefits of going electric aren't always direct. Environmental improvements
Speaker 1: can be slow and works in tandem with other technical
Speaker 1: and philosophical changes, and perhaps more important for a potential buyer,
Speaker 1: the buses with chargeable battery will last for about twelve years,
Speaker 1: but that does come with an upfront cost for the
Speaker 1: manufacturer and hence also the consumer. Back at the factory floor,
Speaker 1: Ryan showed us how it works. Here's another set of battery,
Speaker 1: or here's another look at the Praterra energy storage system.
Speaker 1: So again, these are each ten kilo what hours. That's
Speaker 1: over a megawatt hour of energy right there, just in
Speaker 1: those ten packs. It's designed to be in a transit
Speaker 1: application for twelve years. It's electrically and mechanically warranted for
Speaker 1: that amount of time. We are trying to educate the
Speaker 1: market to think about the fact that the battery represents
Speaker 1: the energy that the vehicle is going to use over
Speaker 1: a twelve year life. And when you buy a diesel bus,
Speaker 1: you don't pay upfront for twelve years of diesel fuel.
Speaker 1: That would be hundreds of thousands of dollars of capital expenditure.
Speaker 1: The answer comes from the business side, not the factory floor.
Speaker 1: Potera offers a kind of energy payment plan. So a
Speaker 1: lot of the smaller cities that don't necessarily have the
Speaker 1: capital for the switching cost, what we do is we
Speaker 1: break the battery out of the cost of the vehicle,
Speaker 1: and they pay for the vehicle for the same price
Speaker 1: as a diesel bus and then they pay for the
Speaker 1: battery over time like it was the fuel, and that's
Speaker 1: enabled a lot of cities that that might not necessarily
Speaker 1: have the capital to make the switch, to be able
Speaker 1: to do so now. So we're there technically and financially.
Speaker 1: The only thing Ryan c is holding us back is politics.
Speaker 1: As an American, UM, I'm well aware of that. Our
Speaker 1: tradition is that you know, it's that famous quote that
Speaker 1: eventually Americans will do the right thing. Um. So I
Speaker 1: think we're approaching that point where we are going to
Speaker 1: wake up and then we will respond with an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of energy and create UM. And technologically we are.
Speaker 1: We are at the moment where we can start really
Speaker 1: scaling clean energy. The energy balance of a solar panel,
Speaker 1: as in the amount of energy you put in to
Speaker 1: build a solar panel compared to the lifetime amount of
Speaker 1: energy that'll it'll put out, exceeds that of fracking oil.
Speaker 1: So we're we're at a point where the science and
Speaker 1: the economics suggests that this is going to happen. The
Speaker 1: only thing I worry about is if we hold back
Speaker 1: or distort the markets and unnaturally extend the life of
Speaker 1: the fossil fuel industry by another decade or two, once
Speaker 1: Americans have come to their senses. Ryan has lofty ideas
Speaker 1: and what the future holds for electric vehicles. So all
Speaker 1: of the markets that share the same characteristics as the
Speaker 1: city bus market, meaning markets where vehicles are driven a
Speaker 1: lot of miles per year, and they're operating in an
Speaker 1: urban or a fleet based region, and they're using a
Speaker 1: lot of energy per mile, we think all of those
Speaker 1: markets are great applications for EV. And that includes things
Speaker 1: like school buses, like coach buses, refuse local delivery, construction,
Speaker 1: mining vehicles. All of those applications are are going to
Speaker 1: move to e V for the same reasons that the
Speaker 1: city bus market moved to e V. I believe that
Speaker 1: my my kids who are um, you know, grade school,
Speaker 1: in high school, when they are adults and when they're
Speaker 1: actually at a point in their career where they can
Speaker 1: make a difference, it will be too late to have
Speaker 1: made a difference. So they we will be in a
Speaker 1: we will be in I guess an adaptation or mitigation
Speaker 1: mode if our generation doesn't do more about this. So
Speaker 1: I think that you know, when I look at my
Speaker 1: own career trajectory and my peers were ideally positioned to
Speaker 1: do something about this. This episode was produced by Magnus
Speaker 1: Hendrickson and presented by Yours Trulli MATC Goldman. For a
Speaker 1: visual experience of Game Changers and other video content, check
Speaker 1: out YouTube dot com Slash Bloomberg special thanks to Francesca
Speaker 1: Levie and Jordan Applinger. See you next time.