Dave welcome to the jayla garcia podcast. I only like to have interesting guests, and so that's the reason why you're here today, um today, you're representing well, i looked at your background and you uh uh have been working with a lot of interesting people, uh in your in your professional career right, but today You're representing the chadimo america, and so that's why we want to talk to you, because i you know, as you know like i, like electric cars, i converted a car 10 years ago and i it's a diy version, but i always wanted the the my crowd. The diy crowd always dreams of the day that we can do our diys and and fast charge them right, and it's happened here and there, but i think it hasn't happened fully right. Not all of us can do it yet and so yeah, one of those dreams was always to to to connect to the chatimo uh, because you guys were kind of early on one of the first ones that kind of spread uh.

You guys had a lot of uh success with the leafs right, that's where the chatimo was and stuff and so yeah. Let's talk about that! What what part of uh? What role do you play there at chatham sure i'm i'm responsible for the north american chatimo uh? We've we've never had a real formal association here in north america, we've had a few meetings back when i was with mitsubishi motors. I was chief engineer for mitsubishi motors responsible for their electric vehicle program for 14 years wow, and so i i was tasked at one point to help support chatimo in north america, and so i would basically the volunteer spokesperson for years and years. I would go to all the different conferences and committee meetings and things like that and represent chatimo uh.

Why? Because chatimo is the pioneer of vehicle, quick charging and the important part of that was. Is you know, they've been charging, you know battery, you know forklifts in and aircraft vehicles with lead acid batteries. You know for long long, long time, um, but the difference was is that was always just plugging in a massive amount of electricity and just blasting the battery and it, and it was always charger based, so the charger would would uh set the charging level of the Batteries but there was no closed loop control, so they'd blow up batteries because there's be a battery that had some sort of fault or short and just blow it up, because there's no feedback circuit. So back at the beginning of in the early 2000s um tokyo, electric power company - that's the big utility in in in japan, uh mr anagawa uh uh, takafumi anagawa.

He they call him crazy anagawa because he looked at electric vehicles and the coming age of electric vehicles. As very important for the for the health of the world and the environment, but also for for utility companies, they get to sell more electricity, and so one of the things that they really identified early is if they look at tokyo with all the high-rise buildings and The high density, how are they going to charge all these vehicles, and so that's when they started thinking about quick charging, but quick charging then must be important that it has to be safe and it has to be safe, not just for the customer and the and The vehicle, but for the grid, because they're, a utility company they're, not a car company they're, a utility company, so safety to them - is another level of importance, above even car companies. So they their team, worked on what became chatimo. Then the idea was that there was a communication between the the vehicle and the charger and that that they had a communication linkage by can bus communication and so that you plug in a vehicle.

The charger would say: hey, are you a vehicle and the vehicle would say yep i'm a vehicle, and this is how much electricity i want. This is the charging level give it to me at this charging level and as the charge cycle would go along the charger. Would be commanded by the vehicle to reduce simple concept, simple and very safe to this day there has not been a single charging accident with a chat, amo charger wow, and so you know this is back in 2005 and as things start that was about that was Back in the days that i was working on electric vehicles with our folks at mitsubishi, in you know, in the r d division and back in 2005, there was like four guys working on electric vehicles. It was early in the early days yeah because everybody you know across town from mitsubishi, toyota's toyota city is right next door and it's all about hybrids in 2005., and everybody would ask me dave when's mitsubishi going to come out with a hybrid and it's like well We're kind of working on electric vehicles they're, like ah electric vehicles, they'll, never work.

You know you got to go hybrid and look where we are now. We were actually right at the time. So the story goes with. Chatimo is chatimo.

They developed this standard as an experimental and it was adopted by mitsubishi and subaru and honda and nissan and toyota, and that was the basis of the chatimo organization back. Then it wasn't called chatimo until 2009, but at that time they started. Everybody started developing test vehicles that were using the chatimo standard to be able to quickly charge their batteries, so chademo has been the the originator of it and they're the pioneers of it, and the whole purpose of it was to provide electric vehicle charging for for all Of these customers in all these high density areas - yes, so yeah, that is the that is the difference between chatimo and just regular charging. For those of you, don't might be watching this and don't know like there's different levels of charging and usually at home when you buy an electric car, it's ac charging, it's usually like 3.3 kilowatt to 6.6 kilowatt.

I think that's what this is going, but chattamos. It's up to 50 up to a hundred. What's the capacity, the upper capacity of chat amount up up to 150 right now up to 150.? Okay, but most all the chatimo chargers that have been rolled out are in the ballpark of 50.. There's some there's some that go as low: they go to 25 and 20., but most of them are 50 is pretty much standard and about five years ago they rolled out some that are going up to 100 and 125..

Okay yeah. So, to give you an idea, it's charging really quick right, you're charging in in in minutes, as opposed to hours in a lot of cases right, and so that's the revolutionary thing about dc fast charging um. It's that it charges very quick. The charger is outside of the vehicle, the ac charging, the the actual chargers inside and so whatever your kind of cap at whatever equipment you carry on board.

But when you go to one of these uh dc charging stations, the charger is there in the actual unit. Right, it's almost like the gas pump that little box that's standing there, that's your charger and that could vary. It could be a little one. It could be a bigger one, it could even increase in in uh in the future, and so that's the the.

I think. That's the you know, the biggest achilles heel of the electric vehicle is the charging time right because you can, or traditionally you couldn't you weren't able to quickly replace that energy uh that fuel that you used in there and so dc fast charging was the thing that It's it's making it possible to travel with the evs, and so yeah chatham was one of the first ones, yeah um. So it's pretty much all the japanese car manufacturers that have it that are members of that right have uh. Have there been other manufacturers that are outside uh, the japanese that did oh yeah uh they're, the chatham organization, there's 480 members worldwide? Okay - and the very interesting thing is - is this you know we're talking about fake news.

You know you can hear fake news, saying basically that oh chatimo is only used by nissan and mitsubishi and that's exactly wrong. Uh. The true the truth of that is is chatimo is used by bmw, citron, honda, hyundai kia, jaguar land rover, mazda, mercedes nissan peugeot, porsche subaru, toyota and volkswagen: oh wow, okay. So there are versions.

There are vehicles that have the chatimo technology and the plug uh. From all those companies yeah and because the basic is, is that japan has 7 700 chatamo stations all over japan, okay, and if you want to sell an electric vehicle in japan, you need to have a chat, email, plugin, ah, okay, yeah, because they've done an amazing Job of spreading the infrastructure all over japan when you drive somewhere in japan, you don't have to think about. Well, i got to pull out my map to know where the next charging station is because i'm you know concerned if i'm gon na have enough charge now. Next rest area that you come to you pull in.

If there's you know, if there's a gas station, there's probably a charging station, that's how much the infrastructure has grown in japan that it really is. I have friends in japan who have driven nissan leafs to the top of hokkaido all the way as south as far as possible and didn't have a single problem. Finding charging along the way - and so you know, chatimo - has over 35 000 charge points worldwide. There's 6 000 here in north america, there's 16 000 in europe: oh wow, okay, yeah! So when so, when you hear people talking about how how chatimo is this other standard is like no they're they're chatimo, there's over two million vehicles worldwide that are compatible with the the chatama standard.

That's more than anything else, that's equal to the chinese standard gbt and it's in far in excess of all the other charging standards combined now chatimo, and but i got ta just be cautious - here - is somebody's gon na say what about tesla tesla's actually uses chatham-o. Oh in japan, all over here in the u.s they have, they have a stake, have a common little adapter that they plug their port into and then they plug it into a chat, emote station and so teslas are part of that. So there's. Basically, it's about half and half between chatimo native and teslas, there's about a million each worldwide.

So yeah you talk about that that you know there are the chatimo there's more people charging with chatimo than just about any other standard, um yeah, yeah yeah. No, i i have looked in here in southern california, and it didn't seem to be too many of them. I know that for the law large part they're like at nissan um dealers here in southern california, right at least in the part where i'm at i kind of remember like looking at it and be like oh there's one there there's one over here, there's one over There and then every time you look it's like. Oh it's at a nissan dealer, and and that's because it was very popular right.

I mean all the leaves in north america were chatimo. Well, they were level two and chatimo right. They had two plugs in there yeah, and that was also because, at the very beginning, back 2009 2010 nissan released the the leaf, as it was the first full electric vehicle in the united states that in a production electric vehicle - and they were very dissatisfied at the Rollout of chatimo chargers, and so they themselves supported a development program that they came up with a low-cap cost chatimo charger that they made available to their dealers and their dealers that wanted to sell the leaves installed the chademo charger at their location. So those chargers.

Actually many of those have have basically have you know: they've been they've been replaced a couple times over because they've been so old and they've been there for so long yeah, but chatimo is in numerous locations. I myself am surprised. Sometimes, when i'm out - and i start i pull up my plug - share app looking for some place to charge my car and i find some place that i didn't even know and i pull around the building and there's you know - shopping centers that have now it's very Very common evgo chargepoint have uh, you know, stations that have multiple standards, so you can easily find a chat mode port just about anywhere. You go these days, yes much better than it was ten years ago.

I'll tell you, yeah yeah smile on my face. Yeah. Definitely like charging it's not what, especially here in southern california, there is quite a bit of it right um. When you look in the map, it's just like uh, you, you zoom out, and it's just south california, it's just charging everywhere, just the red little dots everywhere.

Right, so definitely it's it's easy to drive an electric car uh here in southern california. No problem i mean you'll, find charging uh and you'll find whatever you know. It's like there's like almost everything here um. So what are the? What's? The future look like right, because i think uh here in the states, not every car, has that right.

I think it seems like now there's like a wars. It was like something that came to like the vhs and the beta wars that happened in japan with the uh with the video tapes. You know thing right. Eventually, one of them ended up winning the other one or whatever for a while.

There was both standards were available and they were, they were different and they were used for different things. But then you know the mass market basically chose one over the other one. Um, do you see that is that is that fair to say that that's what's happening here with chatimo and now ccs combo, which is another one? That is a competing uh and i guess it's a newer standard right that that uh also does fast charging dc uh on cars. Yeah it it it's.

This is. This is pretty funny, because i was part of those discussions at sae. I was part of the sae 1772 committee, okay, and i was there at all of those discussions and i remember back in 2009 2010, forgive my inaccuracy, i was there. I just didn't mentally uh tattoo, the date on my forehead but uh.

You know, i remember that we were discussing this about how to go forward with uh standardizing electric vehicle charging and by that time uh chademo had been around for four or five years and we went came into the meeting and one of the suppliers came into the Meeting and threw a charging cord down on it. That was a chademo cord and said. Well, what do we need to standardize here? It is it's all done, it's all complete. Why don't we standardize around this? You know we don't need to develop anything and we were happy to do this.

I was representing chatimo at the time and said you know we're happy to to make the ip available, and you know, let's work. You know work forward to continue to develop this standard, but strangely, at the time uh the the the chairman from general motors for the sae committee said no. Thank you very much, but no thanks we're we're going to look at we're going to go a different direction and that's where the conflict started, because it the the sae committee and what has become charon. They started developing a competing standard but - and they say well why? Why is there competing standards and well there's competing standards because you created it because i sat at a meeting with all of them.

It was a closed-door meeting that we were talking about this stuff and saying, and we basically said you know what chatimo would like to work with you guys and let's work together to create even a better standard. If you guys want to develop a standard, let's create even a better standard, and they arrogantly said we have the better standard. It's right here, it's ccs and we looked at them and we said it's exactly the same as chatimo with a different form and and at that time it was new. It wasn't like established.

No, no, they they hadn't it was it was. It was writing on a piece of paper. It wasn't even it wasn't even a prototype at that point. Oh wow, okay, and we had cars that were already out there, charging on chatham connectors and so it you know, there's always been this conflict and we've.

Never. You know, we've never engaged it. We're not there's no chattamole, there's no world domination involved in this chatimo. The whole point of it is is that we pioneered this so that people could drive electric vehicles.

It was needed and to this day we have we still. He keep our hands open and say: we'd, be happy to work with the charred group to come together to have one single standard. That does all the things that chatimo does is backward compatible to all the existing electric vehicles, but has additional features, and you know, and then, when we hear from we hear from the other group, is like well yeah. We could all standardize, please adopt our standard, but at that time it didn't exist.

There's standards, it didn't even exist well. Why? So? Why would a manufacturer now choose one over the other one right, like it's kind of hard to understand that from a consumer uh end right, especially like me, i i own a tesla, i diy right, and so i understand level two perfectly right. I know the differences, but then the tesla, the tesla charging network. We understand it because so i never use chatimo on a daily basis or even to charge or a ccs combo.

So i, from my perspective, it's kind of hard to like see, okay. So these are two different competing standards. What would a yeah? What would i like? Rivian, for example? That's my next car right. We pre-ordered that and stuff what would rivien take into consideration to choose either chatimo or ccs combo.

That's that's! That's the big question. That's going on right now within industry and nissan actually with their their announcement of the aria, is a is a classic example of that you know what they are looking at, just like the list that i came down from i rattled off before of automakers. If they want to do business in japan, they have a chat amount and the question that nissan was asking kind of. As a test is, do they sell more arias in the united states if they, if they adopt ccs? Is there? Is there more ccs than chatimo or do the customers prefer ccs over chatimo and no one knows nissan has nissan has not decided that from now on that they're going to drop chatimo, they just adopted this one vehicle to ask this question of: do you design the Charging for the market because remember, there's five fast charging standards worldwide, there's two called ccs: there's the ccs in north america and then there's the ccs in europe, but they're not compatible yeah, they're, different they're, very different connector and everything right through your face: yeah yeah and So you know you have tesla, you have ccs1 ccs2, you have gbt for china and you have chatama so there's five standards worldwide.

But the question is: is, do you? Is it better to have a regional solution or is it? Is it necessary to have a global solution yeah and as chatimo? You know what we're not we're, not interested in in dominating the world, with the standard we're interested in making electric vehicle charging available to ev drivers yeah, and there are challenges with making a uh globalized standard right, because i guess i think europe has different electricity. It's got three phases fairly common here, we're here in america we don't have it, and so maybe that's the reason why you can't just easily pick one and then go. That's it that's what we're using from here on kind of thing. Yes, we don't even have global vehicles.

Yeah the automotive industry has been fighting. This battle for a long time is that vehicles are different in every different market. There's different standards, there's different requirements, but there's different customers. If you look at the vehicles, especially, i think it's entertaining when i was working for mitsubishi looking at the vehicle designs for southeast asia, southeast asia, their idea of a a uh attractive vehicle is much different than in the north.

America. Oh really, they have a different eye. Oh yeah, you look at some of the ones for for thailand, you look at them and you go that's very interesting. I won't drive that okay and so, when you look at that, you know the the vehicle designed themselves as global are as regional, it's not global.

So why does charging need to be global yeah? I think there's a there's, an argument because the the same - it's not needed like the same challenges that, like maybe electric charging uh faces in in japan, for example, are different than here right like here. We have so much more exp, you know land, it's things are separated so much farther so you're putting in more miles in between charging. So maybe you need more of those and maybe more you know like closer together, maybe than over there or something like that. So there are, there are definitely differences by region, uh of how customers use a vehicle, and so and that's a really interesting point is the way the customers use a vehicle.

One of the things that that has been developed in chava, because chatimo is ahead of the other charging standards just on the development curve that you know, they've been working on the standard for 15 years, where other standards have been more like 10 years and so by 2000 by 2012 chatimo had a fully capable vehicle to grid interface, and so by 2012, there's chattamole cars that that can take the bat the power off the battery and provide it to the grid provided to the house provided to a building. Whereas other standards are not there even today, yes - and that is a very uh interesting subject, because really the exciting thing about electric cars in the future is the fact that they could be a distributed energy source right or uh, a utility energy utility because they're, what Happens with cars, they have such a big battery and when you combine them all together, we all have one in our garage. Then it becomes a real good source of energy that the grid can use to supplement or to even you know, for for anything and so yeah. As far as i know, chatham was the only one that has a vehicle to grid chatamo's, the only one that has a production ready vehicle to grip.

Yes, now, no manufacturers have taken up that right or can, or there are vehicles which you can already do that with oh absolutely, oh, there are okay, all the the the the mitsubishi. I mean the mitsubishi outlander, the nissan leaf. They are all vehicles. Oh even more entertaining to me is the uh toyota mirai fuel cell vehicle, oh yeah, it's vehicle to grid compatible, it's a fuel cell vehicle without a battery pack, but in the trunk there is a chatimo port to be able to do bi-directional.

Really so that that means you're burning uh. What would that? What would the fuel be? Hydrogen hydrogen, yeah, you're, burning hydrogen to create electricity to power, your house or your power, your oh wow yeah. It becomes a clean hydrogen powered uh generator exactly, and that is that is. The big point is especially well.

The story goes, is fukushima happened? Yeah there was the the the the that's for me. That's when we all learned that the name tepco yeah, we learned the name - trust me, mr anagawa was it was the point person for the fukushima disaster he worked for tepco, did all of that stuff and had to walk away from his dreams of electric vehicles. For a number of years to save tepco yeah, and so he worked there very hard on that, but the important part of the fukushima story was at the time all the evs, all my my r d evs for mitsubishi all the rd uh nissan cars, every manufacturer Grabbed all their electric vehicles and brought them back to japan and made them available for the disaster relief, because what they were able to do is they were able to establish the electric vehicle infrastructure that much quicker than the fuel infrastructure. So they used all these electric vehicles at the time to be able to move people around that weren't able to to have any transportation, except for electric vehicles, and so based on that.

They really expedited the continued development of vehicle to grip, to be able to use that power. Mitsubishi came out with a small off-board box that they called the meve power box and you could plug it into the the port, the chatama port and you could plug in a rice cooker you could plug in a coffee maker. You could basically get 1500 watts of electricity off the battery from the imev and be able to power, simple electronics and then from there. Nissan came up with the leaf to home system, which was a big 10 kilowatt unit that they had in a garage and they were able to take the power off from the the nissan leaf and provide it to the building.

And so chadamo's been doing this. For quite a while - and we have some manufacturers now that have demonstration projects here in north america, there's one down at uc san diego, a company named nuvi, there they're they are powering uh, the ev fleet and also the micro grid on the university of san diego. With electric vehicles and that's what we're looking at, you know they're looking at that with school buses, they're looking that with buildings. All of these things that they're they're they're, looking at using the batteries on vehicles to provide backup power, but even more important.

These days is because of the fires and all the inf problems we've been having here in california and the shutdowns before, whenever there's wind conditions, they're shutting down the grid, there's a lot of people that are looking at their battery electric vehicle and saying why can't i Plug my house into this, so that when the grid comes down, i can plug in my house and there's a number of really interesting companies that are working on products right now that are going to be able to be able to use that and demonstrate that that's Going to be able to power your house when the great electricity goes down it's down yeah, so that for those of you are listening to like that, that is the the holy grail here right, like you, have this giant battery that is parked in your garage. Most of the time is doing nothing when you look at when you really look at when you're using your car. Most americans only use it for like 30 minutes a day or something and then the rest of time sitting there doing nothing right and they're the biggest batteries that you probably have ever seen, probably ever owned. And so why don't we put it to use and the great vehicle-to-grid thing is where it is connected to the grid, and there is energy going back and forth as whatever the grid needs.

If the grid needs it right now, they'll take it from the battery right. But then, if there's a surplus, then they'll shove it back into the battery and then they they keep it charged. But then what you're talking about now is yeah a real problem that here in california we are experiencing where and uh the it's the it's the the interruptions of service for different reasons right, because the grids are unstable because of the whole. You know because they're they're, private and you know the whenever there's wind, there's a uh.

Well, there's a danger of fires right and so since uh, apparently we a bunch of us up there in california they sued pg e and uh. They had to settle for something like 13 billion dollars because they basically killed a whole town. They burned it down right because they they couldn't keep their lines safe, uh. Now that what they're doing is they're just shutting their power down and so yeah you're right.

Why can't we just use that battery this giant battery? That is sitting in our garage for most of the day? Why can't we use it and you're right? You can't use it. We have a tesla, i have mine over here. It's not set up to use it. I mean i could do it on my diy if i take out some cables and wrench and you know, go diy on it, but you know most people don't have the ability to do that, and i can't do that with my tesla.

My tesla doesn't have a bi-directional way to go out uh. You know, i think it could easily be done, but they just i don't think elon thinks it's an important thing um and in fact he said that publicly right but yeah, so that the chatimo is probably the the only only way that we will be able to Do that quick right because, like i said it's been used in japan, already uh yeah, and do you have any more details about the companies that are into doing that here? What does that look like? What is it? Is it uh? Is it gon na be expensive, or do we have to wait a few years or is it gon na it's just around the corner, uh yeah, there's, there's there's other companies that are doing it. You know fermata is that's coming up to to do that. They're.

Looking at it right now that they've got a demonstration project that is going to be that they're going to be providing information about really soon and the the price is becoming really reasonable or the the price goals for many manufacturers are very reasonable, comparable to gas power Generators, yes, but now you don't have a gas pump, the problem with gas power generators - and i i've just this with a number of utilities all over the united states problem with gas fire generators. Is they sit outside or they sit in the garage for six months. Eight months a year the gasoline gets old. The spark plug needs to be replaced so that when the grid goes down, you got to pull out the flashlight and fix your generator so that you can power your house, whereas your car is sitting there in the garage too, and all you got to do is Plug the car in and you're good yeah yeah.

That is a challenge like uh. You know you can't just store a car like a classic car in your garage and just forget about it right like there's. No, you know you, it won't start the next time. You know if you leave it a year there.

It just won't, and you know, that's that's the thing with generators. They require an upkeep uh. You have to go and fire them up every once in a while. There's like this whole thing and you're right, if you're, if it's your car you're, always using it, you know it's working or you know that it's not working.

It has an issue until you know that you're not going to be able to have that um and then also there's a noise generators are noisy for the most part uh. They pollute it quite a bit because it's kind of unregulated right anything of those smalls they're regulated now. Everything in california is well regulated at this point, but yes, but they are they're noisy and they that they do. They do create emissions yeah, whereas the electric vehicle, even you, know how they've implemented it with charge with with the chatimo, is that you plug in one of these vehicle-to-grid appliances.

The vehicle knows what its charge level is and it will shut off before it kills it before it drains its battery. It shuts off at a level so that you can go charge your car. So if the you know the next town over has electricity, you can drive your car to the next town, charge your car up to 100 and then bring it home and plug your car back in, and your house is now back up and powered yes yeah. That is, and what's really interesting, is that uh that uh, the the utilities are called eversource.

It's the northeast utilities for the new england area. They have many power outages due to you, know uh ice storms and things like that. They've done many surveys with their customers and interesting what their customers are most interested about. These days is maintaining not their electricity, not their refrigerator, not the the heater but their communications.

Can they charge their cell phone? Can they charge their laptop computer? Can they be in communication with their families to say, hey, we're all right and that's easy to do off the car. That's only a little bit of power and that can last a long time running it off the car. Yes, yeah that these cars have giant batteries. Yeah, so you can run your house for days if you're just running, you know uh critical loads, that'll last you for months i mean you know it's a huge battery, um you're right.

Here's, the other thing um 2020 has thought. Is that that how reliant we are on being connected right, like most of us or a large part of us, are working at home remotely right? And you know when, when pg e decides, that they don't want to make sure their lines are safe and they're? Like now, it's too risky, if you're, if we cast another fire, you're gon na you're, gon na sue us we'll just turn it off. You know - and this is okay in the last two months - i've had two of these shutdowns and one of them has been 12 hours wow. Now that imagine that's that's a day that my neighbors here now.

Luckily i hoard a bunch of batteries. I have a warehouse with like megawatts of batteries. I was up and running you know, but my neighbors aren't. You know what i mean like but like it was funny because there's a there's, a big factory here, right next door to us.

We kind of i kind of don't like them because they're they run 24 7 and they make pipes or something and the machinery is loud and it's always there. It's just this constant noise where, like they don't oil their machines, i don't know, i don't think that's. I think that's just a normal noise that they have to make, but it sounds like loud right and i remember that day i i came out, it was just quiet and i'm like. Oh these guys have to go home because there's no power and without power right.

No one can do not. You know, you can't get work done and i think a lot of people that were even were at home and they're working at home. You know if you can't be on zoom, if you can't have the thing, if kids are being, you know, they're learning, remote learning right now. If you have no power, you know, so it really life kind of stops.

Our modern way of life kind of stops and people don't realize that until they're up into this this, you know new reality um. This is happening here in california, but i think in many places it's happening right earlier in the year. I think it was happening in australia uh where they were having trouble, keeping their grids up on. You know online and stuff, and i think many other places it's happening right and so having a vehicle to grid system.

I mean yeah, that's a dream that is the dream: uh, and not only that like having energy independence. It's it's a goal that we should all have um. I think it's also going to help the grids. I think the grids need vehicle to grid because i think what people don't understand is that whenever there is like a huge demand on the bid, whenever we all go home, let's say: there's a hot day, you know extra hot and we all go home and turn Our acs on full blast or whatever um the grid sees a lot of stress and in order to alleviate that stress, what they have to do is they have to fire up extra power plants or they have to sometimes uh.

You know make deals with other grids that are neighboring and get some of their power. You know, so they have to do all these deals and sometimes that costs a lot of money. Sometimes it costs a lot of money to have uh power plants that are just stand by there. Just so they can uh meet that demand, right, uh and so vehicle to grid could help that, because, if we all have our electric vehicles connected to the grid charging or just an idling there like most of them do all day, then that's how we can uh Fix the the surges and the problems and that's why we can keep from having to pay, maybe top dollar to get someone else's electricity.

You know here in california. I think what we have to do, sometimes, because there's there's problems on both sides. Also, sometimes there's not enough electricity, but sometimes there's too much electricity right. I heard there's a surplus, and so we have to pay other states neighboring states.

This has happened, uh where we have to pay them just to take our excess electricity. You know, and so we're like. If we have a bunch of electric cars, we could just dump it on those batteries. You know, and so it would fix so many problems i think, and that the our grids are are now having right and the reason why they're becoming unstable is because of all that right.

There's a demand, there's an increase in demand that they're having trouble keeping up with and then also trying to keep the the power line safe. You know um because of the the fires and the whole thing. I think all that could be eliminated. I think with the vehicle to grid, so it's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing that we should all strive to do um. I wonder because there's so many you know when you look at what's going to happen in in california and many of the states there's going to be so many more electric vehicles. You know people get concerned that if i oh, if they take back the energy off my car, i'm not going to be able to get home. But when there's when there's millions of these cars, you know even now the the amount of cars that there are electric vehicle electric vehicles out there that could be plugged in and charging they would only be taking a small amount of electricity off just a small amount.

Even sometimes, you know people when we before coven, you know when we parked our cars and parking lots and went in the office building yeah. All those cars are sitting in the parking lot for eight hours, if they're sitting there and they're being charged for like two. After that, two, they can go up and down and up and down - and you know, be discharged and recharged and discharged and recharged and just fall and help the grid. Okay, and that lowers the electricity for all the cost of electricity for all of us.

Yeah, because what you're saying those those power plants out there, those expensive power plants we pay for those to run for this, the rate payers we're the ones that pay the bill at the end of the day, and so, if our cars are out there and they're They're replacing these expensive power plants, then our total electricity cost goes down and that's good for all of us yeah and then they could be schemes like right now. Utilities will give you a discount. If you put like a switch on your ac on your ac. You know equipment right so so they have the ability to shut it down.

If they have a you know a big search of energy and they can't they can't meet the demand. So then they throttle down your thing and they'll give you money for that yeah right. If you have energy storage in your building in your warehouse, uh they'll sign a contract with you for the rights to use that energy, and it could be quite a bit of money actually because they're quite desperate they, you know they they're in the business of buying Energy, and if you somehow have energy, then they would pay you money, so even in in a future, when we all have electric cars, it could be a a scheme where we get money for having our battery going up and down. While it sits there idling uh in the parking lot right, and so we have to kind of look into that.

It's not just you know for the for the good of the society and stuff, but you could also. It could also be a means of like saving money, because you know whatever you're you're getting paid for it. You can just deduct it from the overall cost of your running a vehicle or whatever. So well, you know we're not we're not talking about pennies here either.

You know there's a number of these demonstration projects that have been successful. There's been one in in hawaii, because the university of delaware has been doing this for a long time there you know ucsd has been doing it. You know fermata is doing it newbies doing they're doing it in europe. They know that this isn't just a couple dollars here and there they're talking that you can get a couple hundred dollars a month for being able to take the the power off your car yeah.

When there's millions and millions of cars and only a little power is coming off the car yeah, we might not get a couple hundred dollars a month, but it's better than nothing. Yeah yeah and it's it's yeah the grid right. We don't nobody likes to be there and then the lights go off and you're like oh grab. I got 12 hours of this.

You know possibly sometimes even more if you live out in remote areas like in the hills areas here in south california, it's day, sometimes because you're at a higher risk of it or so, and you get that more comment. You know me. It's only been twice in the last couple of months or whatever there's some people out in the hills that are having this moral like regular, free windstorm. I think even right now we have santa anas and i think that there's some shutdowns down in san diego yeah.

So you know these are the people that you know like you and the jehu power wall. You know that people are looking at other ways to to to use electricity or to store electricity. People are starting to do this and think about this with solar panels and then, when you start talking thinking about solar panels that inverter unit that runs the solar panels, that puts that energy into your house is the same kind of box that you would use for. A car yep, it's the same kind of power, electronics, it's exactly yeah, and so we're not we're not talking about we're.

Not talking about you know we're not dreaming of a future here of technology doesn't exist. This is all stuff, that's being you know mass-produced at this time, it's just a different way of using it. It's a different way of thinking about these yeah yeah, so much that that box is so much the same that i just had robert llewellyn from fully charged and he goes and he gave me an idea. He goes jehu you.

What you need to do is you need to try and do a diy version of vehicle to grid, and i'm like thinking like oh yeah, i could do that. I could just use the grid size inverter, they have, they go up to like 600 volts and i'm like i could totally diy. That's like no big deal like he's like you should do that video. You know you and i go.

Thank you for the idea. I might just take you up on that. It's actually it's not it's actually not that difficult to do to do the in direction because you're, basically, what's solar, solar's d is solar. You know where you have micro verse.

You know some of those is dc yeah and so you're, just putting dc off the car yeah. Now mitsubishi did a project in japan that they had all of these used battery packs and they hooked them up and they took solar, inverters and modified them to become bi-directional. Wow. Usually, solar inverters are going one way it's just powered in, but then they modified them to be bi-directional so that they could just also charge and then so discharge and then charge right.

So they were going back and floating them back and forth and they had solar on the roof. They had wind. They had vehicles that were in operation that they were plugging in. So they had this whole infrastructure all built up of all these different ways to use electricity off electric vehicles, and it was quite amazing to see that it was basically off the shelf stuff that was slightly modified, yeah and, and you know, the question is: is that We we have the the hardware exists, and now what we're doing is we're we're helping change the regulations that allow these things to happen that allow people to be able to use these things both on the car itself, but also in the house or in the grid, Or in the the businesses - yes very exciting, but you know that's one of the key things that chadamo's has brought because go back to the beginning of chatham.

Chatima was developed by a utility company. They weren't developed by a car company, and so chatimo. Has this much larger view about electricity than just the car itself? The car is part of the whole view of electricity. Yes, and chatimo isn't done yet.

Chatimo is working on many future projects. At this time, uh chatimo 2.0 higher powered output to be able to charge. You know up from two to 400 kilowatts at a time. Wow.

Is that the target 400 kilowatts? That's one of the targets, wow, okay, you know this is this is all in development right now, but also much more. You know. Another avenue that chatimo is working on is they're working with the chinese on what's called the choji standard. Okay and the choji standard is very interesting because it's a new standard design, there's a clean sheet of paper and the idea of this was is to go beyond just 400 and go up towards a megawatt wow, because you know in california, and in many other places Now we're looking at doing electrified trucks, yes, so big rigs, yeah, and how to charge those yeah that now we need to look into that right, because that's a different level, just as important.

You know here in southern california, our freeways are just full of drugs right and we have two major ports in southern california and so there's a lot of goods that come in and so yeah major parts they're two major ports that aren't connected to a rail head. Yes, welcome to southern california development, yes, and so we have all these diesel trucks that pick up the stuff off the boat and drive it. What 40 miles to the the rail head. And then it comes off there and goes on the railroad and goes out to the western united states.

Yes, and so one of the first things that they're looking at is these dreaded trucks of these trucks that just cart these boxes back and forth. But the point of this is: is that we have to have the we. You know we can look forward to it. You know a new use for electric vehicle charging at these higher levels, but if we're going to have a clean sheet of paper, why don't we start looking at this? Can we start to come together with one charging standard? Can we find a charging standard? That's so generic that you could actually put adapters on your.

You know a little adapter cord to plug into this, so i have a nissan leaf that i've had since 2009. You could put an adapter on this standard and charge it with chattano or yeah. Oh, so your neighbor comes in with a gentle chevy bolt and they can they could put a ccs adapter on it and charge. You know when we start thinking this way of your tesla could charge on the same thing so that when you have one charging station and just like they do in europe, you have your own little adapter cord that you adapt to it.

You plug it into your car, you charge it, you throw your adapter cord back in the trunk and off. You go yeah, yeah that because um from the consumer uh perspective, we don't really care right. I mean i don't care if it's chattamole or for ccs combo or you know tesla or what what do i care? I just need jews in my car. I need miles you know in the tank, so i already you don't know you just want juice and that's the point.

Chadamo just wants to put juice in your tank, yeah yeah yeah. Is that compatibility uh there now like can like, let's say because i think my my that ribbon that i pre-ordered is going to have ccs combo right. I think that's, i think, that's what they've gone for, and i i did that because i was like well. How am i going to charge this? You know, so i kind of did some research, i'm like oh ccs combo is there, is there, will there be an adapter? Is does one side or the other one have to decide to to allow compatibility between the two or how does how do you think that's gon na work, yeah uh! That's that's a tough question because uh ccs and charon aren't interested in adapting to other standards.

They want everybody to adapt to their standard. It's a world domination yeah. They do seem to be want to or interested in oral domination. I had i had one of the representatives uh in the podcast and it seemed like he was very like into that right and i'm like oh, okay, okay, so that's that's their thing and it's good or whatever i mean you know, whatever floats your butt against, but Like i say yeah from the from the consumer perspective, i don't care like what do i care? I don't care what the plug is.

You know as long as it works, it doesn't work safe and it's safe. That's the most important thing again: i go back to is chat emote from the beginning. Safety has always been first when utility companies do something it's all about safety, safety, safety, safety, safety and then see if it works. Yeah there's a bit more right like, like you said: if it comes, you do care about the utility.

I mean i don't care too much about the u3d, but i do because i want to have power. I don't like it when the power goes away right. So you know like, if we're putting solar panels, you know you want to face them south, because that is the they're more efficient. But if you want to do the best thing for like society and like the grid, then you face some west here in california right, so that you pro you don't provide the most of the energy during the early days when there's a surplus, but you provide it Once they're like everybody's, going home and stuff, so i'm like yeah, that's probably a good thing.

You know, because you can do a little bit good for your for your pocket, but then you know you if you help collectively help the grid stay on. That's a good thing so because that's that's good remember who pays for the grid? Yes, we pay for the grid, the you know the utility companies they don't get paid for how much electricity they sell. They get paid for providing electricity to all of us. Remember they are a monopoly they're a state-sponsored monopoly yeah.

They are regulated by the state that basically says that we're going to give you a monopoly, but we're going to control you very carefully for the benefit of the rate payers yeah and we pay their bill. But we don't necessarily pay it by how much electricity we we spend it's, how much it costs them to provide us the electricity. So, whenever we're able to reduce the cost of electricity of generation of transmission, it's better for us as rate payers that we don't have to have a next rate increase, and so that's that's what we're looking at here, you know when we look at the bigger infrastructure. Is we want electric vehicles to be a benefit to the grid instead of another load yeah so will so? If, if so, if ccs combo is not willing to compromise, do you think chadama will to as far as compatibility? So let's say that i i have my ccs combo equipped truck and i'm in the middle of you know the usa somewhere in texas somewhere in right now, texas texas, is probably a bad uh.

Ah. Well, maybe let's say i decided to go to full charge next year and on my way there i find myself on a chatimo station. Will do you see a future where maybe i can charge my ccs combo equip vehicle with the chatham charger? Well, that's that's. What we're looking at is what does the future look like? That's why we're evaluating the the choji standard and seeing, if that's the basis for us to have a standard, that's fully compatible with all the different existing standards and the future.

That's the question that chatimo is working with right now is trying to look at the future and say: how do we provide this? How do we provide a standard, that's open that allows this to happen instead of closing the door yeah and that's that's the big difference between the ccs folks and the rest of us. I i don't know what elon's talking about right now, but they're much more interested in selling cars and making cars work and that's why they created their own charging system. They wanted people to charge their cars. Yeah yeah.

I think elon doesn't care to tell the truth. I think, because i think he's publicly said that that he will uh build cars with other charging uh, which he already does in europe. He does right yeah and in japan he does and in japan he does yeah so yeah, so they you know. That's the the point is, is that you know car companies are gon na.

They wan na sell cars, and so they're gon na provide charge charging whatever the most chargers are in that area to provide benefit for their customers, okay, and so, as as a supporter of charging standard, we're trying to find what that future is that's going to be. That's going to be safe and compatible for as many vehicles as possible. You know we're the original, the originators and the pioneers of quick charging, and that came from that that same view. We want to provide charging for customers - ah, okay, so i guess yeah.

I i think it's uh. We are a bit in that race right now, um how how many stations you said there are in the u.s uh the chattanooga in north america. There. Let me go double check my numbers here: six thousand currently, six thousand yes most of them in the us, probably right, oh they're, up in canada too, oh well, canada, okay, yeah, canada, they they were right behind us.

The first one we had in the u.s was in vacaville california, vacaville's all places. I know that place because there's a big uh shop that restores volkswagens there, it's a tiny town right. It's not a huge place. Okay, it's it's almost halfway between sacramento and san francisco and they were.

They were uh. They were pioneers with electric vehicle charging back in the 2000s. You know 2005 to 2010. They were the one of the first that had a significant amount of electric vehicles there and so right off.

The i-80 uh chatimo installed the first in north america, uh chatamo charger and then right behind that up in in portland they installed one and then up in british columbia in vancouver. They installed one all within about six months. Oh wow and i worked with the the the canadian government and they are very strong supporters of electric vehicles and so there's lots there being lots for canadian. Remember, canada has the population of california yeah, you know so you know canadian lots and us lots are different, but by a factor of ten yes wow, you know they're all across the united states, now there's corridor projects.

You know one of the most one of the most exciting was the the the the green highway. That goes all the way from vancouver all the way down to california and that that is finished right.