Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio this weekend. I
Speaker 1: was taking my son for a bike ride at a playground.
Speaker 1: It's right across from the Tesla showroom here in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: and there was this sandwich board outside the Tesla showroom,
Speaker 1: and I believe it was handwritten. It said, this is
Speaker 1: not a place to charge your Tesla. And I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, interesting, people must be driving their Tesla's here
Speaker 1: thinking that they can get some juice. Well, someone who
Speaker 1: knows something about juice is Mark Hockinson, president of the
Speaker 1: Technical Solutions Group at A b M Industries, joining us
Speaker 1: on the phone from California. A b M Industries it's
Speaker 1: a three billion dollar company. It's one of the largest
Speaker 1: providers of e V charging stations here in the US. Mark,
Speaker 1: how are you. I'm great, Tim, how are you doing well? Thanks?
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. I want to get into the
Speaker 1: economics of this in a minute, but but first I
Speaker 1: just want to get an idea from you about how
Speaker 1: much demand for power has increased from your charging stations.
Speaker 1: As we've seen gas prices go up and these traditional
Speaker 1: automakers invest billion, tens of billions of dollars in order
Speaker 1: to catch up to Tesla. Yeah, that's that's a great question.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think the demand for e V
Speaker 1: has been there the last couple of years, and I
Speaker 1: think what's exasperating and now obviously our our our high
Speaker 1: gas prices. Um. You know, we've been a fortunate to
Speaker 1: be a pretty integral part in developing the EV infrastructure
Speaker 1: here in North America, having installed around twenty thousand d
Speaker 1: C fast chargers across North America. And I think, you
Speaker 1: know what's going to continue to happen is you know,
Speaker 1: larger deployments. I think there's gonna be probably even increased
Speaker 1: demand for electric vehicles, knowing that gas prices are four
Speaker 1: or five and six dollars a gallon. Uh, And I
Speaker 1: think some of the challenges we're seeing now really are
Speaker 1: tied to supply chain, right, you hear everything that's going on,
Speaker 1: But I think that's a blip in the radar, and
Speaker 1: that the the electric vehicle is certainly something that's here
Speaker 1: to stay. We kind of draw akin to what happened
Speaker 1: when air condition became more prevalent in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: and the demand that's going to put on our utility
Speaker 1: infrastructure for the need for power and uh, I think
Speaker 1: that's gonna be something that's gonna play itself out here
Speaker 1: over the next several years pretty quickly. We'll take into
Speaker 1: the supply chain part of it, because I feel like
Speaker 1: we talked about supply chains all the time, but I'm
Speaker 1: not familiar with what you actually need to build an
Speaker 1: e V charging station. Can you walk us through the
Speaker 1: shortcomings on that front? Yeah, so you know, we had
Speaker 1: a b M here. We don't actually build the e
Speaker 1: V charging units. We we contract with over forty o
Speaker 1: e M s across the globe, So our focus tends
Speaker 1: to be more on the actual infrastructure play from the
Speaker 1: design of you know, the power solution that's actually needed
Speaker 1: to get to the charger, and also to ensure that
Speaker 1: our clients have the proper utility to support whatever their
Speaker 1: e V deployment might be to help future proof. What
Speaker 1: do you mean, the proper more than the laser seeing
Speaker 1: right now tend to be on the microchip side, So
Speaker 1: the actual intelligence that you see within these chargers tends
Speaker 1: to be the things slowing things down. Hey, Mark, what
Speaker 1: do you mean when you say, the proper utility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know what we've found. You know, since EV
Speaker 1: has been around for a while, right, and I think
Speaker 1: it was somewhat, um, you know, fashionable to to go
Speaker 1: ahead and install like one charger at a commercial property,
Speaker 1: whether it's an office building, a retail, or a parking lot. Um.
Speaker 1: But as the demand and increase for EV vehicles will
Speaker 1: grow at a over over the next several years, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of owners, whether you're a mall or a
Speaker 1: uh an employer, are going to have to rethink their
Speaker 1: infrastructure as it relates to their parking. And it's really
Speaker 1: important for anyone that's deciding to deploy an e V
Speaker 1: strategy is to really understand what those demands are going
Speaker 1: to be over the next several years. Otherwise you can
Speaker 1: see yourself paying millions of millions more than you really
Speaker 1: needed to without having the proper design and engineering done
Speaker 1: up front. I feel like when I hear EV infrastructure,
Speaker 1: immediately think of President Biden making a lot of speeches
Speaker 1: about trying to build out this infrastructure and make the
Speaker 1: Unitstates a little bit more energy independent. But I'm curious
Speaker 1: what the relationship is in terms of building out this
Speaker 1: infrastructure and how much support you and your colleagues are
Speaker 1: getting from the fiscal government. Yeah, I think you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of that is going to be funneling through
Speaker 1: the Department of Energy and down through the States. Regarding
Speaker 1: that five billion dollar infrastructure bill that you that you mentioned, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're really playing well with you know,
Speaker 1: analyzing where those dollars are actually being deployed. But you're
Speaker 1: also seeing a lot of private enterprise going ahead and
Speaker 1: making these investments. Um, they're significant carbon tax offsets that
Speaker 1: can be gained out of deployment of large EV infrastructure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's something that is also the right thing to
Speaker 1: do for the environment. Um, how does this end up
Speaker 1: looking ten twenty years from now? And I know that
Speaker 1: you're not the ones you're working on the infrastructure behind these,
Speaker 1: but you know, the corollary that I have is gas stations.
Speaker 1: Do we see gas stations get replaced by e V
Speaker 1: charging stations or or is the is such that the
Speaker 1: way that people drive, they're charging at home, so we
Speaker 1: won't necessarily see a one to one mix here ultimately, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't I don't think you know, fossil fuels
Speaker 1: aren't going to go away anytime soon. Right there. We
Speaker 1: learn that this year and heart exactly right. So I
Speaker 1: think you're gonna see you have companies like Electric Fi
Speaker 1: America which are actually building and developing dedicated e V
Speaker 1: stations right where you can have a retail component, you
Speaker 1: can go in and have a great experience as a consumer.
Speaker 1: But you're gonna also see a lot of the larger
Speaker 1: fueling stations across the country pivot and become more of
Speaker 1: a hybrid model, right because they're gonna have to meet
Speaker 1: the demand for the fossil food vehicles that will still
Speaker 1: be around. But then you're gonna see another thirty million
Speaker 1: e V vehicles they're gonna be put on the road
Speaker 1: over the next five years. So um, they're gonna have
Speaker 1: to be able to adapt. And I think the biggest
Speaker 1: question that we've been seeing and hearing a lot from
Speaker 1: our large clients is really the reliability and resiliency of
Speaker 1: our electrical infrastructure and our power good. Right, So now
Speaker 1: we're talking about alternative solutions relative to maintaining that infrastructure
Speaker 1: so that it's when you go to plug in your vehicle,
Speaker 1: it's actually providing you a charge. That's where like micro
Speaker 1: rids and things are becoming more hot time. Yeah, Mark,
Speaker 1: you're joining us from California, my home state, where people
Speaker 1: who live there are familiar with rolling blackouts when it's
Speaker 1: hot as a result of grid management. So you know
Speaker 1: more than anyone all about that. Mark Hawkinson, president of
Speaker 1: the Technical Solutions Group at a b M Industry, is
Speaker 1: joining us via zoom from California. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week on Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg