How can McDonald's encourage people to drive electric?

Rex Huppke here! I'm taking over for Jenn Bane this week.

I spoke with Nadia Gkritza, a 美国普渡大学 professor. Nadia is the campus director of a national research center called Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification, or ASPIRE.?

I used to be a scientist myself – a chemical engineer, to be exact – but I dropped that and became a writer because I didn’t like making money.

I have an electric vehicle, and I love it. I also fancy myself a trendsetter. Why do you think the rest of America hasn’t followed my lead?

We find the most common barrier — the one that's cited most — is purchase price. And then, range anxiety.

What’s that?

[It’s] the sense that [drivers] might not be able to go where they want to go, and when they want to go. Even if vehicles are parked for more than 90 or 95% of the time, it still becomes a barrier.?

Charging stations aren’t commonplace like gas stations.

I think that's a lot of the motivation for the NEVI plan. (Rex here: That’s the National Vehicle Infrastructure Plan, a U.S. Departments of Transportation and Energy?program that’s investing $5 billion over five years to create a national network of EV charging stations). It’s getting [charging stations] out there close to interstates where people can see them, and also eliminating some of these barriers and, and what we call these charging deserts.

So charging stations need to be more visible. What else will make the idea of stopping to charge more appealing??

We find that these are more acceptable if there are more amenities around these charging stations, like shopping, restrooms and maybe entertainment. People want to have something to spend the time on, even if it's 20 minutes on a long distance trip.

It’s very American that people would want to shop or eat. Like if there’s not a McDonald’s, they won’t convert to EVs. What do you think it will take for a fuller transition to electric?

A lot of people refer to it as a chicken-and-egg problem.

That sounds delicious.

The question is, should we wait until people buy more EVs to invest in more infrastructure??Or do we need to invest in infrastructure so people start. Will that help with adoption? I think it's both.

So we need better infrastructure, charging stations with fun food and shopping opportunities, lower-priced EVs and…

And some capability for home charging, specifically in areas where you have more multi-unit dwellings. Plus you have to accommodate an increase in charging demand? So there are a lot of different pieces that need to come together.

You’re working with a national group called ASPIRE, which stands for Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification. And one of the areas you and your colleagues are focusing on is wirelessly charging big electric trucks, like tractor trailers, while they’re moving at highway speeds.

Yes, this technology is called “dynamic wireless power transfer.”

I remember the little electric race tracks I played with when I was a kid, but I’m guessing this is slightly more advanced. How does it work? Is it like wirelessly charging a cell phone?

It’s based on an electromagnetic field. You generate that field and move power to the vehicle as it passes through. The benefits, besides environmental, is that with this technology, if you have enough highway segments electrified, you don't need to have as large a battery. And if you don't need to have a large battery for fleets of trucks, that means you can have more cargo, which obviously generates more revenue. We believe this can be a technology that can be financially feasible and also attractive to the fleet operators.

Shifting to largely electric rigs would certainly be a sea change, environmentally speaking. How far off are we from being able to do something like this?

So at ASPIRE, we have what we call the road map. We have in place a couple of pilot programs right now. We have done extensive testing in the labs, so now we move that to the open roadway environment. And after that, the vision is, four or five years from now, can we incorporate this into an interstate?

It’s truly amazing. Oh, one last thing. If electric cars are called EVs, should electric truck be ETs??

Sometimes we call them ETs. They talk about zero-emission vehicles or zero-emission trucks, because they also want to consider hydrogen and fuel cells as part of the solution for de-carbonizing long-haul freight. It will likely be a combination of different solutions that will wind up working.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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