Seat Belts Gone Wild and Clever Charge

[00:00:21] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving, and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host. And on today's episode, we've got some news. We have a tweet from a member of our Kilowatt community, Joseph, that we're going to go over and then let's see. Oh, we have a new patron, Bruce. Bruce, welcome to the community. Bruce went to patreon.com forward slash Kilowatt or supportkilowatt.com. And he signed up. And thank you so much for joining us today.

[00:00:51] Bruce and I have already actually exchanged a couple of emails so he knows where to go if he needs anything, which is Bodhi, B-O-D-I-E, at 918digital.com. And what else? Oh, we are going to have another interview from CES. And that interview will be from a company called Clever Charge. Or maybe it's a service called Clever Charge and the company's called something else. Anyway, we'll get to it when we get to it.

[00:01:20] Let's go ahead and jump into the news. Nissan has a plan to buy 20 gigawatt hours of batteries from battery maker SK. And just in case you didn't want to do the math, that will power around 300,000 EVs. All of those EVs are for the North American market. The story says the United States, but I would imagine, you know, all things being equal.

[00:01:48] We don't know what will happen in the future with trade wars between us and Canada and us and Mexico. But as it stands right now, I would imagine with all things being equal, some of those cars will go to Canada and Mexico as well. Nissan invested around $500 million into its Canton, Mississippi plant to upgrade the plant so it could build EVs. So this is where those EVs are going to be built.

[00:02:16] Production should start in 2026. And I would imagine that we'll see some maybe new and innovative EVs from Nissan around that time as well. I can't imagine that all this hubbubaloo is for the Nissan Aria, which is admittedly a very nice car, and the Nissan Leaf, which is maybe a little long in the tooth. What I'm saying here is I feel like Nissan's going to have more than just two EVs going forward.

[00:02:44] So we'll see what they start building at that plant. Kia is recalling 80,000 Kia Niro EVs, plug-in hybrids, and hybrid vehicles. Now, normally I don't talk about plug-in hybrids and hybrids on this show, but the issue has to do with seatbelts and airbags. And they have the potential of malfunctioning, which is a huge safety issue.

[00:03:11] And I want everybody out there to be safe, no matter if you're driving an EV or a hybrid, no matter what the flavor of the hybrid is. This does not affect – this does not – this doesn't – this does not affect – it sounds weird when I say it. This doesn't affect the ICE vehicles, at least not now anyway.

[00:03:33] But according to the safety notice, there's a wiring harness in the floor on the front passenger seat that can get damaged and will not function as intended. And the damage comes from manual front passenger seats being moved back and forth. If you have power seats in your Niro, then you're fine. You're safe.

[00:03:56] But if you have a manual, a Kia Niro, and your vehicle is built between 2023 and 2024, then you might come under this safety recall. If you own a 2025 version of one of these trims, then you're safe. The breakdown of the recall goes like this. Plug-in hybrids, there's 8,811 of them. The EVs, straight EVs, 21,900.

[00:04:25] And then the hybrids themselves, 49,535. It looks like this safety recall may also be expanded to cars built between June 21, 2022 and December 17, 2024. So if you have one of those vehicles, expect a notice in the mail.

[00:04:46] Hyundai has confirmed that it is close to rebadging commercial Hyundai EV models and then selling them to General Motors, who will then sell them to us here in the United States. This is one of those stories we're going to keep an eye on because Hyundai's CEO did not give us a lot of details. And I listened to the GM earnings call today. Also, GM mentioned it, but also didn't give a lot of details. So just keep that in the back of your head.

[00:05:15] By the way, I am planning on taking the entire month of March off, but I will have content for you. And one of those pieces of content will be the General Motors earnings call. Let's see. Speaking of General Motors, GM deployed three of their mobile hydrogen-powered generators in Los Angeles to help those EV owners affected by the wildfires. It allows them to charge their vehicle.

[00:05:40] They also deployed three chargers powered by propane and one charger that is powered by biofuel. And the propane chargers can charge two EVs at a time. And the biofuel chargers could actually, or charger, I should say, can charge five EVs at a time. Now, I've been doing this podcast long enough to know that somebody is going to email me about, you know, there you go.

[00:06:07] An EV is being charged off of dirty energy, off of fossil fuels. Yeah, it's also an emergency. You know, I wouldn't want this to be the way we charged EVs every single day. But when, you know, in a situation where there's an emergency, we do what we got to do to get people out of that area safely. And right now, it kind of sounds like the California fires have largely been mitigated. And it definitely helped with the rain that they got last week.

[00:06:38] GM is also offering some crisis assist services. So if you have a GM vehicle and you have OnStar, OnStar will help navigate around the affected areas of the fire so you don't get yourself in a place that you shouldn't be. Or maybe in a place where roads are closed or whatever like that. And it hasn't updated in Apple Maps or Google Maps or whatever. They're also providing support for customers whose vehicles either got damaged or were just completely destroyed during the fire.

[00:07:06] And the details on this were a little bit fuzzy. But basically, they're helping with new vehicle purchases if your vehicle was destroyed. And it sounds like there's a little bit of money that goes with that. But I wasn't 100% sure on that. And they're helping with coverage for your repair deductibles if it was just damaged. So I would just say on those two parts, this is subject to terms and conditions.

[00:07:35] And I would take a look at the terms and conditions before getting too excited about this. But it is nice that they're helping. And honestly, this is a very small effort from a very large company the size of GM. And I recognize that they could probably do more with the resources that they have. But I will say that I doubt that these mobile chargers existed a few weeks ago.

[00:07:58] And I would imagine as we go forward based on the California wildfires, we're going to see these kind of efforts from many different companies during the next emergency to help people get to safety. So I want to encourage more companies to do this.

[00:08:15] I am sure in the next natural emergency, whether that's hurricanes or tornadoes or fires or whatever, companies like GM and Tesla will have expanded on things that they've already done. One, because it's a good thing to do. And two, because it's good publicity for the companies. But I'm sure that as we go forward into this, that GM and Tesla will expand that. And then other companies will come on board.

[00:08:45] And hopefully, and fingers crossed here, is all of these organizations and companies work together to deploy these resources in the best way that helps the victims of these natural disasters. So I would like to see more of this is what I'm saying. All right, let's go ahead and jump to our EV or excuse me, our Tesla news. And we only have two Tesla stories today.

[00:09:12] So the other stories we kind of already covered and we didn't get a lot of, you know, extra news. So I wasn't going to bring that into this. And then, you know, there just wasn't a lot of Tesla news. So we're going to jump off with Tesla China is giving 30 days of enhanced autopilot and actual smart summon to Chinese owners for free. Tesla says that this is to celebrate the spring festival. And I'm going to be honest. I take a bit more cynical approach.

[00:09:42] I don't think this is to celebrate the spring festival. I think it's ready to go. And Tesla would hope that after the subscription is over, that they subscribe to the service or after the free period is over. I should say they subscribe to the service. Otherwise, Tesla, if they were just doing this to be kind and celebrate the spring festival, they would just give it to them for free and they can keep it forever.

[00:10:05] It is important to note that Tesla is testing full self-driving supervised in China, but it is not available to the Chinese public, the Chinese Tesla drivers as of yet. They're still testing and going through that certification process. Tesla's spring festival promotion started on January 24th. And hopefully we'll hear how folks in China like the service.

[00:10:32] And speaking of China, Tesla has joined a group of automakers who are suing the European Union because of the EU implied import duties on EVs built in China. So tariffs, right? One of the places that Giga Shanghai exports their vehicles to, obviously Asia is a big place that Giga Shanghai will export vehicles, but they also export them to Europe, even though we have Giga Berlin.

[00:11:01] And some of the automakers included in this group are BYD, SAIC or SAC, which is the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. They do the MG brand and some other brands. And then Geely. Obviously, these companies think that the duties are unfair. And, you know, the European Union thinks the fact that some of these companies, if not all of them on some level, get support from the Chinese government is unfair.

[00:11:31] The duties range from 8% on Tesla products, which doesn't seem like that's too bad, up to 35% on SAC products or vehicles. And the European Union says that the duties are in response to the Chinese government underwriting the Chinese EV industry, which gives those Chinese companies an advantage over other EV makers, which is 100% true.

[00:11:57] And there's another separate lawsuit from the Chinese Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronics has also filed a case to have the duties nullified. I have zero faith that these companies will be successful in getting the duties nullified. But we'll see. Next up, we have a tweet from a listener. And it's really maybe disingenuous to call it a tweet.

[00:12:27] It's an explainer. So a couple weeks ago, I had a story about the Ram EV pickup. And Joe, who is Joe, the number four, Cyber Tesla, Joe for Cyber Tesla, on Twitter if you want to go and follow him. But he pointed me to a post that he had made on the Ram pickup EV. And I'm going to play that for you now. Oh, by the way, this is a lengthy post. It's about three minutes long. I am a terrible reader. And I was just going to stumble through this.

[00:12:56] So I had Eleven Labs read the post. This is not in my voice. This is not in Joe's voice. This is Will from Eleven Labs. So let's go ahead and listen. By the way, Eleven Labs is AI if you didn't know. All right, now let's listen. AI generated voice. All right, now let's listen. The Ram Charger EV takes a mediocre technology concept and transforms it into a potentially awesome product. At the moment, even the longest-range EV pickups and or work vehicles struggle with extended-range towing.

[00:13:25] Even the enormous batteries in GM products aren't quite up to the task. When you factor in charge speed versus efficiency, something often overlooked, and the scarcity of pull-through charge stalls, the situation becomes even more challenging. The Ram Charger addresses all these issues without inheriting the main problem with most hybrid vehicles. Hybrids have a tendency to combine two fragile and very complex powertrains into one package.

[00:13:52] This made sense when EV prices were significantly higher, but not anymore. The Ram Charger employs a fully capable EV system enhanced by an onboard generator, which is far simpler than a series hybrid. Transmission? Gone. Driveshafts? Gone. Super-complex engine? Not needed. We now operate at one RPM, which extends longevity while running much cleaner and more efficiently.

[00:14:20] No need for multiple oil coolers, complex transmission controls, or other failure points since the engine does not drive the wheels. I love old cars, but realistically, engines are not ideal for the demands we place on them for vehicle propulsion. Idling is terrible for them, and inefficient. RPM variance is hard on them, and inefficient. Changes in opposing torque are also hard on them, and inefficient.

[00:14:48] This is why oil needs to be changed more frequently for non-highway driving. Highway driving maintains consistent RPMs. A range-extended EV pickup like the Ram Charger solves issues faced by both EV and ICE pickups, by prioritizing the EV component and enhancing it with a generator designed solely to extend range when necessary, and potentially provide additional power. Edison Motors had the right idea with their products.

[00:15:15] While there's a place for fully electric semis and pickups, for now, a series hybrid approach makes a lot of sense for many applications. The Ram Charger will offer a battery capable of covering 99% of driving needs while providing ample power and reducing battery degradation due to its adequate size. Looking at you, Chevy Volt. It will allow hesitant buyers to transition without the ticking time bomb of issues that parallel hybrids have become.

[00:15:43] A large percentage of owners will install home charging and might even use just the battery on road trips, making it significantly cleaner and cheaper than any ICE truck. Even if someone runs it solely on gas, the motor's conditions will be better, resulting in higher efficiency, reliability, and cleaner operation. Though it pains me to admit it, the Ram Charger will also cater to those who insist on driving for hours without brakes by leveraging the generator. This truck fills a void in the market.

[00:16:13] I honestly can't believe no one has capitalized on this opportunity yet. In the long run, I still believe that full electric will dominate, but for now, this vehicle makes so much sense that I would actually recommend it to people seeking its benefits. All Stellantis has to do now is not screw it up. I agree with 99% of the stuff that Joe says in this post. Here's where I am a little bit cautious. Call it cautious.

[00:16:43] Number one, even though Elon donated a bunch of money to the Republican Party and Republican candidates, a lot of my more conservative friends still don't have anything good to say about EVs. And most of these conservative friends drive pickup trucks. Now, I do think that that will change, and that's not a big thing to overcome, but for whatever reason, they're still anti-EV in a lot of different ways.

[00:17:08] And I would imagine when they come around to being pro-EV or when they just decide that EVs are going to work for them, they'll say that they had different opinions. But I was there for the arguments. I know what your opinions were. You made them very clear. I will just say that. The other thing is, is dealers need to be on board. You know, for a variety of different reasons, you may have dealers who, A, they don't have this truck on their lot,

[00:17:36] so they're not going to try and sell you a truck that they don't have on their lot. Or B, they may have had, you know, XYZ pickup truck on the lot for even longer, and they would rather sell you something that's been on the lot for longer. So that's kind of a, dealers are kind of a mixed bag there. And then we have the final cost. If Ram is smart, you know, they will price this very competitively.

[00:18:04] Almost maybe just a slight premium over what an EV-only truck would cost. But like Joe, I don't have any confidence that Stellantis is going to do that. I think they're going to put a huge premium on this, and the price is going to be too high and not competitive. And people will be like, well, I could buy this truck that is an EV plus a generator for, I don't know, I'm making up numbers here, $90,000.

[00:18:34] Or I can buy this EV for $78,000. Or I could buy the same pickup, but it's just a gas-powered version of these two pickups for $68,000. I'm probably going to buy the $68,000 one. Now, I don't know if that's the way the pricing is going to go. I'm just using that as an example. But I do think that Joe brings up a lot of good points here.

[00:18:56] And I will say that Scout has the harvester version of their SUV and pickup trucks. And what the harvester version is, is basically it's a generator, just like what Joe was talking about here, that powers the battery. Like there's no transmission, there's no motor or anything like that. It's just a little generator that powers the battery, and it happens to be powered by gasoline.

[00:19:24] I think this kind of thing might be needed in the market. I do also feel like it's going to be a blip. I think in 10 years, this isn't going to be needed. But it might be a good transition. Even if somebody buys this, like let's say they have range anxiety, and they spend the premium, the extra money for this version of the car, and 99% of the time they don't use the generator portion of it.

[00:19:52] And they're like, okay, they felt comfortable in their purchase. And the next time, they're more likely to buy an EV. So not everything needs to be like 100% or nothing. Let's make people comfortable with the technology and let them know the benefits of owning an EV. And then finally, he mentioned like pull-through chargers and things like that. A lot of my friends, a lot of firefighters are tradespeople outside the job, right?

[00:20:22] They have part-time jobs, whether they're landscapers or they do construction or they paint or whatever. Mobile mechanics, mobile detailing, that kind of thing, where they pull a trailer. You would be shocked if you pulled into a fire station parking lot where employees parked and see how many trucks with ladders are on it

[00:20:44] or how many trailers are parked in parking spots waiting to go to work as soon as these folks get off shift. So I think that for those people in particular, this is really important. So thank you, Joe, for sharing this with us. I'm going to read off his Twitter account. Again, it's Joe, J-O-E, four, the number four, Cyber Tesla.

[00:21:14] And go and check out what he's doing. All right, everybody. That is it for me this week or today. On Friday's episode, we're going to talk about Tesla's earnings call, which is happening tomorrow on Wednesday. And yeah, let's go ahead and get to our interview, which is Clever Charge. Clever Charge, and the company's name was Dan Law.

[00:21:40] And Clever Charge is a level two home EV charger that uses this thing called a Clever Key. And the Clever Key hooks to your OBD2 port in your vehicle. And then the Clever Key and the charger talk to one another. And they talk about, you know, let's just imagine they're gossiping. They gossip about the health of your battery, how much charge you have, how often you drive.

[00:22:06] Is it important to charge tonight or should we charge another vehicle tonight if you have multiple EVs in your house? If you happen to have multiple homes, there's a solution there for you too as well. But the thing that I took away from this was how the Clever Key and the charger work together. So basically, there's an integration when you buy a Tesla and a Tesla wall connector, right?

[00:22:30] This kind of gives people who might have a Kia and instead of, you know, getting their wall connector from ChargePoint, they get a Clever Charge connector. And there's that integration that is almost Tesla-like. And, you know, Rivian's got something similar with their level two chargers and Ford as well has something similar with theirs.

[00:22:51] But if you don't have a company or if you didn't buy a car and the automaker has a level two charger, this might be something to consider. Now, we're going to play the interview and then we're going to play the music and we're going to call it a day. So thank you everybody for listening to the show. If you want to email me, it's Bodie, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com. You can follow me on Twitter or X at 918digital. And, yeah, we'll play the interview and have a great day.

[00:23:22] All right. I am here with Scott Bolt of Clever Charge. Scott, what is Clever Charge? So Clever Charge is a level two home EV charger. And what makes it unique is that we have a patented technology using what we call Clever Key. So Clever Key plugs into your electric vehicle and then it allows us to pull the information from the vehicle into the charger. And then we have information about the charger and the vehicle.

[00:23:50] And we can come up with some really nice AI algorithms on the server to help the customer and EV owner know when they need to charge and which vehicles they need to charge. So this is an OBD2 connector. Is that correct? Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So once you have this plugged into your car, you said that you can, you get access to like the vehicle's health information. Through AI, you learn the person's driving habits. You want to talk a little bit about that? Sure.

[00:24:20] So imagine it's like, it's Sunday and Clever Charge has figured out that on Mondays you drive about 100 miles with your vehicle. And it's Sunday evening and Clever Charge knows that your vehicle is in the garage, not plugged in, and it only has 80 miles in it. Clever Charge would then give you an alert to let you know you need to come back to the garage and plug your vehicle in or you won't have the range you need tomorrow.

[00:24:45] Another example is range is low and you drive into the vehicle, you drive your vehicle home and when it gets near the charger, it knows the state of charge on the vehicle and it can let you know, do you need to plug it in right now?

[00:25:26] Okay. So there's multiple households, multiple chargers and multiple vehicles. And with all of that information, it can tell you which electric vehicles you need to be charging and when you need to be charging. It also takes into account your time of day of rates and it decides when the best time to keep your cost down is to charge on all of those vehicles. And then how much does the system cost just with the level 2 charger and just one of the keys?

[00:25:57] We haven't announced pricing on it yet. Pricing will be announced in the next month, but it'll be competitive with other level 2 chargers that are on the market today. Okay. And then my follow-up question would be how much of the other Clever key, but we don't have to go there. I am seeing that we have a CCS connector here and then on the screen you have a NAX connector as well. Do you get that choice? Absolutely.

[00:26:25] You can use either an NACS version or a CCS version or a J1772 version. I would let your listeners know that essentially all the OEMs in North America are moving toward the NACS standard, so you'll see less and less of the 1772 moving for you. Yeah, thank you for correcting me. That is a 1772 and not a CCS. My bad.

[00:26:52] Oh, I had another question and it just escaped me. When do you expect to start shipping and all that good stuff? We're actually just awaiting shipment now, so we actually have been producing Clever Charge now for a while. As soon as we receive shipments, we'll be shipping. So within the next month or two, we'll have product and be unsaleed. Okay. And is there anything special with installing this Level 2 Chargers that you need to do?

[00:27:21] You know, I know Tesla has an OBD2 port, but it is hidden and it is difficult to get to. Most other car manufacturers make it easy to get to. But is there anything special with the Level 2 Charger that you need to do? Or do you just install it like a standard Level 2 Charger? Okay. It's installed like any standard Level 2 Charger. It has, you can either have your electrician hardwire it or they can put a NEMA standard 1450 plug and you can plug it in that way.

[00:27:49] On the Tesla and all vehicles, you know, CARB was a little slow on the draw with zero emission vehicles. But there's actually legislation that went into effect. All model year 2026 and newer vehicles have to obey the OBD2 standard just like ICE vehicles did. And all vehicles moving forward will have it and it'll be all easy to find just like it is on a gas station. Perfect. Scott, how would people find Clever Charge? All right.

[00:28:16] You can go to www.clevercharge.com and there's a lot of information up on the website about Clever Charge. Perfect. Thank you very much, Scott. Thank you very much for your time today. All right, buddy. Thank you.