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Grayson Brulte:
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Hello, I'm your host, Grayson Brulte. Welcome to another episode of SAE Tomorrow Today, a show about emerging technology and trends and mobility with leaders and innovators who make it all happen. On today's episode, we're absolutely honored to be joined by Jim Mullen, Executive Director, Clean Freight Coalition.
On today's episode, he'll discuss the future of decarbonized trucking. We hope you enjoy this episode. Jim welcome to the podcast.
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Jim Mullen:
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Thank you. Grayson. Happy to be here. Looking forward to the conversation.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Happy to have you here because you're a leader in trucking. You take a very pragmatic approach to trucking. You're looking at things through a real world lens and your coalition is focused on choice for the trucking industry You want to decarbonize trucking, but you want your members to have the choice that make economic sense For their businesses so they don't go out of business and I applaud you for that Jim, Senators Klobuchar and Ricketts are looking to introduce the Flex Fuel Fairness Act. What impact will that have on the trucking industry if that indeed becomes law?
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Jim Mullen:
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It would be very positive impact on the trucking industry and be a very positive impact on the environment as well. That's incentives for ethanol production and use of ethanol in heavy trucks and along with battery electric as well, but this is a clean fuel and that the singular focus that our policy makers have placed on battery electric comes not only at the expense of the industry, but also the expense of the environment.
If you could start incentivizing and utilizing these cleaner energies today to power these heavy trucks, the environment absolutely benefits today and. Like a lot of things in life, you follow the dollar and all these incentives going towards battery electric. So you're not producing as much of the other sources as we should be. And again, that's the bottom-line detriment goes towards the environment and of course the consumer.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Why is there such a focus on going to class eight electric? I understand the push on the passenger side, but the class eight side, I want to give you some economics here. You're a new class eight diesel truck on average is $160,000. And a Class 8 electric is $457, 000, or 118 percent more. That's a lot of money. You have some economists saying that we're going into a recession, some that we're not. There's the bottom line is, the Fed's slowing down the economy. And how is a trucking company going to come up with an additional 118 percent more capital outlay? It seems outrageous, and especially in this economic environment.
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Jim Mullen:
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It is outrageous, and two things. Not only is it $118,000 capital outlays just for the purchase, but you throw in the federal excise tax, which is 12%, above and beyond just the purchase price. Federal excise tax was a tax which was implemented to fund World War I, Grayson, World War I. And it's still on the books, and it's 12 percent for heavy vehicle purchases. What was the number used for? For the new truck?
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Grayson Brulte:
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$457,000 on average.
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Jim Mullen:
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So call it 450 10% is 45,000 plus nine, so that's $54,000 just in the federal exercise tax. That's why our group, our coalition and our members are all advocating for the elimination of this federal exercise tax A, it's no longer necessary, obviously, although it's, it just goes to the coffers, but it's counterproductive Going back to what's available today. Technology's available today. With an immediate beneficial impact on the environment and refreshing the fleets with new equipment would absolutely provide that immediate benefit.
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Grayson Brulte:
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We have to, in my opinion, remove the excise tax and let's look at California. For example, here, 52 percent of the Class A trucks on the road today are 2010 or older models.
If we move the excise tax and offer choice, say, okay, you'd like to get an LNG. You like to get a hydrogen. You like to get a renewable diesel. That's going to have a positive win for the environment, but yet it's battery electric or nothing, it seems.
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Jim Mullen:
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Yeah, it's ridiculous. And we will talk more, I'm sure, about some of the limitations of battery electric. The range of battery electric is not sufficient in a lot of applications. The added weight of the two 16,000-pound batteries is... And so there's all types of problems with it. Why is the issue that I can't really understand? Great. So why is it just this almost singular focus on battery electric? And I'm not sure if it's because folks that have promulgated these regulations and policies don't understand that the battery electric.
Truck is a much different species than the passenger vehicle. We can talk about the infrastructure to abide by CARB guidelines on battery electric, zero emission trucks. If the nation adopted that, you want to know how many battery chargers would have to have built between now and 2032? 1.4 million. 1.4 million. That's 15,000 chargers a month to electrify the fleets. So that's outstanding number, right? It's huge, astonishing number. And I don't know that anybody's talking about it and, how you're going to electrify the generation and distribution of enough electricity for that 1. 4 million. It's just these discussions, they're being had at some levels, but apparently not at the levels that need to be had. And so we're trying to inject that conversation to the situation.
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Grayson Brulte:
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A mutual friend, Lee White always has this great line and I'm going to quote Lee. Why wasn't a trucker at the table for these conversations?
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Jim Mullen:
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That's a great question. I don't know. Because it's lack of foresight, maybe they think that the truckers don't have the environment in their interest, which is crazy. A couple facts for you. What one truck emitted in emissions in 1988 is the equivalent of 60 trucks today. So 1 to 60, we've eliminated about 99 percent of all emissions from the tailpipe, the stack since 1988, that the industry has made tremendous strides and are very good stewards of the environment. And so these regulations, which. Really pull these timelines out of the thin air and trying to cram him down the throat, not only of the trucking industry, but really the nation at large.
And we will talk more about this, but we talk about 118 percent for the purchase of a battery electric truck. You're going to have more trucks because. You have less payload because you have 16,000-pound batteries in a lot of these applications. The range is 180 miles, maybe 200 on some applications.
So the cost to the industry is going to be astronomical. Industry can't absorb it. So as you said, you're either going to go out of business or are you going to pass some of that cost along? So the cost to the consumer is absolutely going to go up. And you talk about here we are in times of inflation, talks of recession, and now you're trying to throw this gasoline under the fire, it just doesn't add up.
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Grayson Brulte:
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It's a recipe for disaster. Wall Street would love it. Powell would have to cut rates. If that's where they're going to go, Powell would have to cut rates to stimulate the economy because these policies are going to drive us into a deep, dark, nasty recession.
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Jim Mullen:
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And really it's, again, the only saving grace is all of the timelines are Crazy and unattainable, but that gives some breathing room.
And that's where the folks like the members of clean freight coalition and your platforms can perhaps put some sanity in this conversation. Cause we have to over, have to reevaluate what we're trying to do here. There was a letter. Signed by 88 Democratic members of Congress last week, asking the EPA to adopt the CARB greenhouse gas three timelines.
So you can imagine if that were to occur, if the EPA were to adopt CARB regulations across the entire country, that would absolutely put us in a tailspin that would be very hard to recover from. I talk a lot about. The COVID pandemic and I was the acting administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration when that pandemic hit and I saw very up close.
All of the pinch points within that supply chain, things that you wouldn't expect one little pinch point here to have such wide consequences down the chain. And, that was caused by a never seen before, basically world pandemic. You're going to see that type of pain in the supply chain. If this comes to fruition and It's not because of a worldwide pandemic. It's just because of really bad policies and regulations.
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Grayson Brulte:
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It's self-inducing. The timeline for CARB and the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association, they agreed to it. I'll use the word. You know this word. Too many people know this word. You can say there was collusion because it says by 2045, 100 percent of all medium and heavy-duty trucks sold in California have to be zero emissions.
They're trying to make that national. And in response to that, The Clean Freight Coalition released a press release and I'm going to quote, say the following. The CFC and its members are committed to the sustainable and affordable transition to zero emission trucks. However, the unachievable standards and timelines set forth by California regulators jeopardize the entire supply chain and risk truck dealers having limited compliant products to sell and fleets holding onto their trucks longer.
You're right. And I'm going to, let's go back into the supply chain. There's not a lot of talk about the supply chain snags today, but there still is. Look at ABB Power Grids, wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi. Look at Siemens, two of the largest large scale infrastructure suppliers for heavy duty electric trucking.
ABB Power Grids, they don't even have a certification to bring it to America yet. And there's a two-year delay to manufacture it. So now if you're going to bring on 15, 000 chargers a month, there's already a two-year delay. Where's the equipment going to come from? This has a recipe of. Mess, just a flat-out economic mess.
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Jim Mullen:
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Yeah, absolute mess. And it's not just economic mess. So when we talk about, when the coalition talks about the infrastructure necessary to electrify fleets throughout the country, there's a couple things you got to talk about. Of course, you got to talk about the minerals required to build these batteries.
Some of the countries that are major suppliers of these minerals. China, the Congo. These aren't exactly the most reliable trading partners, right? And so you start at the minerals where are we going to come up with all this? And I know that congress has pushed some money towards which is great towards additional mining efforts. But again, this isn't Hollywood where you build it and they will come you have to be realistic about these things And so you look at the minerals then look at the grid actually did a study.
That's that Found that concluded that to electrify the heavy truck freight truck industry, it would consume 14 percent of the existing electric infrastructure grid. 14 percent to do just a long-haul space, 10. 5 percent of the existing infrastructure. So you have this generation problem. So of course, we're not using coal fired factories anymore.
Nuclear is really nowhere to be found. How are we going to do this wind and solar? The storage and transmission of wind and solar is very problematic. And so then, what I did is I went and talked to some folks that build these power plants. I said, okay if state X said to you today, I want to build a power plant today, how long would it take you?
And he said if that state X is Texas, it's a little over seven years. And by the way, that's the fastest state in the country that would, she can build a power plant because of the permitting process. Seven years. And we're going to consume 14 percent of the existing grid to electrify just the trucks.
If you, if they're all passenger vehicles, ASHRAE study says it's close to 40 percent of the existing grid. So where's all this power going to come from? So you've talked about the minerals being problematic. You've talked about the generation being problematic. We've talked about how all these charges that have to be built on timelines that can't be achieved.
And by the way, when I talk to fleets, they say that the quickest I've heard anybody tell me they can get chargers installed and operational in their terminals, it's been three years, three years of the quickest I've heard. It's a lot of them when they go to the utility providers and say, Hey, look, I need 10, 10 chargers.
These utility folks, they're going to laugh at them. A large mortar carrier wanted 10 charging stations in a terminal in Illinois. It wasn't even that big of a terminal for them. I think they run maybe 60 trucks through there. And the utility providers started doing the math on how much load was necessary to actually feed electricity to these 10 chargers.
They said, that's greater than the entire electricity we produce for the entire city. There are 10 charters. So here's an example. To charge two batter electric trucks for one year is the same as providing enough electricity to power up the White House for a year. Two trucks is the same as the White House.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Let that, let that resonate.
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Jim Mullen:
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Yeah it's a huge problem, and so that's why we, we want to be commonsensical about, we want to eliminate the FET, incentivize, whether it's ethanol, CNG, hydrogen, all these other solutions, by the way, hydrogen it's going to be a good solution in the long haul space, but it's problematic right now that the cost is 10 X and there's issues with it, but you got to stick with it because from what we can see, it's maybe the best solution in the long haul space. So this battery electric, right? singular focus just as a recipe for disaster and we're all going to pay for it.
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Grayson Brulte:
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We are, and the U. S. consumer is going to pay for it because it's going to have an impact on their wall. They're going to see it in the cost of goods, and you never know. It takes one crazy politician to say, oh, let's raise a tax.
And then it's going to, it's going to, the American consumer is going to pay for that so they can pay for this boondoggle. But what I don't understand, and there are some very large fleets that are looking into this, is renewable diesel, ExxonMobil. One of the largest oil companies in the world by market cap.
They're investing heavily in renewable diesel. Dan Ahman, a former CEO of Cruise, he's running the renewables division. They're investing in Canada. I'm a lot more comfortable dealing with Canada than I am dealing with China or the Congo. Politically safe for us. Why is renewable diesel not part of this conversation?
Because that fleet, that gentleman at that fleet, who's their Chief Sustainability Officer. He said this is a really great interim step. He said, nobody wants to take steps. They just want to jump right to battery. But yet when you say jump to battery, nobody wants to pay for it. So why is renewable diesel not part of this conversation?
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Jim Mullen:
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I don't know. It's maddening. And if you talk about, so the renewable diesel, biodiesel both good alternatives. So there are companies now that are literally using manure, right? For the renewable. And so if you look at the economic or the environmental benefit of, you take away the emissions from literally the manure and you're now powering trucks with that. And so literally, not only we talk a lot about zero emissions or net zero, but this is also positive, net positive, right? And we're just not putting enough money into it. And you, we keep talking about the why. I wish I had that answer, Grayson.
I think. That is ignorance. I hope that it's ignorance and not something other than that, because those are very viable solutions, and it provides immediate impact and environment today. There's a little bit of good news. California announced the other day that clean diesel now accounted for greater percentage of consumption in California than traditional diesel.
So that's good news, the kind of the thorn in the side, however, with that scenario is they're incentivizing the heck out of it, which is great, but they're doing so by taxing traditional diesel. So you're talking about where's that cost going, it's going again to the consumer. So we got to quit putting the entire burden on the backs of the trucking industry and finance.
Better way to incentivize whether it's bio, whether it's renewable diesel. And that's great that the companies, what's the name of the company you refer to person?
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Grayson Brulte:
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Covenant logistics. Oh, yeah.
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Jim Mullen:
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I have had numerous chats with Matt Cleland. Yes, that's. About these sources and actually, he's a great spokesperson for, he's aware that there are immediate benefits and why we're not putting more money and effort into it is mind boggling.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Yeah, it is mind boggling because the renewable diesel use in the United States is accelerating and this is according to the energy information. Today, there's 11 domestic plants in six states producing 1. 7 million gallons per year, up from roughly 1. 3 million gallons in 2021. So clearly, there's a demand from the fleet side, yet politicians are turning a blind eye.
So here we are. I'm going to give you a hypothetical scenario, and you could think I'm crazy, but let's just say that we saw what happened at UPS, we saw what happened at Yellow, and Friday we find out if the big three all go on strike. Because to get what they want, the 40 percent pay increase. What if the trucking industry went on strike even for one day and said, if you're not going to allow us to take steps will shut down the economy with that finally force some action to have a compromise.
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Jim Mullen:
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It would be very interesting to see that's for sure I mean it again going back to the code of pandemic, you know We were all up in arms because we couldn't get the types of products. We normally get within 24 hours, right?
And everybody was going mad and guess who saved the day truckers absolutely saved the day and that was only three years ago, and now the thank you they get is we're going to put these unattainable timelines on you at insane costs, and you're just going to have to deal with it. And your question earlier, Lee's question earlier, why wasn't a trucker at the table?
I don't know. They give kudos to trucking when it suits them, whether politically or otherwise, they should be a constant part of that dialogue. I think I may have mentioned earlier. There's a joint office between the Department of Energy and the Department of Transportation. That was set up to its sole purpose, Grayson, is to help facilitate the electrification of the country's vehicles, including heavy trucks.
Got a good, solid group of people in that joint office. But it became pretty clear to our coalition when we talked to them that they did not have the trucking experience. And you started telling them some of the challenges that you and I have talked about and some others. And I think it became very apparent to them quickly that it's going to be much more difficult in the trucking space than the passenger car space, and they're not ready for it.
And I'm told that they've gotten some folks on board now that do have some trucking experience. I just hope it's the ones with the right kind of trucking experience to be beneficial. But I guess the point of that, Grayson, is I just don't think that. They sufficiently educated themselves before they started setting the standards and then part of the problem, you talked about that agreement between the truck engine manufacturers and carb.
This isn't a criticism, but it's factual, right? So the marketing materials that companies put out have consequences. And when some of these folks start saying they can achieve. X emission standards on these on some certain timetables, then I think other folks are under the false assumption that is if they can make a truck that can do this, then certainly that truck can fit into our nation's supply chain and our fleets.
That's a fallacy just because they can produce a truck doesn't mean that truck is reliable, affordable, sustainable, can be used in all applications. And so it would have been real easy if a trucker was involved in that conversation to say, Hey, that's great that you can produce a truck that can go 180 miles and you've taken away 16, 000 pounds of my payload, but that doesn't work.
That just doesn't work in real life. And by the way, it hasn't been tested. If you see a repeat of 2010, where some of those new engines came into production. And had horrible uptime and all types of mechanical problems and issues. That almost crippled, it did cripple a couple of OEMs and it caused a huge problem structure within the supply chain and certainly the truck market, and that was only, what is that, not even 25 years ago. A mass terrible creation. It's Monday morning. Not even 15 years ago. Not even 15 years ago. And here we are.
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Grayson Brulte:
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We’re right back at it. Because if you had a trucker at the table, they might say, you want to do this. Let's work on an ease in plan for dredge sub 90 miles, and then figure out from electrical infrastructure standpoint. Do we have enough a conduit on both sides? Can we do this? Okay, it's going to take. Three years to get the equipment, build it out. Maybe you start with 10%, 20 percent and ease in on the dredge routes. If you go from say the port of LA San Pedro to Fontana, that's a well-known, traveled dredge route. Maybe you pioneer with that, but yet it's all or nothing. There's no practicality.
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Jim Mullen:
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Zero practicality. I just thought of this morning. In fact, when I was thinking about things for you and I talk about in the electronic logging device world. If you run short haul, which is 150 miles less, you don't need an electronic logging device if you're trucking, you could make it very similar to that.
If you want to take advantage of the electronic logging device, short haul role, you got to be on a zero emission truck or, a BV or CNG or whatever, just, I don't know if that's the right method, but we do allow for those types of things regulatorily on other areas whether it's the farm exemption, agriculture exemption, the short haul exemption for ELDs. Okay. You could do that the very same application, right? If you're a short haul, you gotta be running on a zero-emission truck.
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Grayson Brulte:
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It's a positive step. And then if you're going to do long haul, you can use the renewable diesel or you can use. Hydrogen, you can use another alternative because it, it makes practical sense.
So let's just say the courts don't overturn carb and 2045 rolls around and we have one of those, Oh, you insert in the four letter word right there. Do we start to see the freight starting to shift to the. From the Port of L. A. to East Coast ports of Savannah, Charleston, and Jacksonville. We're already starting to see some volumes there because of the union issues of the port. But do we see an acceleration, because you're starting to see that port. Yeah, absolutely.
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Jim Mullen:
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You're right. You're seeing it already, whether it's Georgia or South Carolina and I think you'll continue to see that. And when we talk about California, it's not just California, I think it's what a 14, 15 other States now have opted in on certain parts of CARB standards.
So it's not just California. And like I said earlier, if those 88 Democrats that signed that letter, the EPA had their way, it would be nationwide. We'd be under the CARB standards. So yeah, it's not just California, it's other States, but it's predominantly on the East coast or the West coast. And you said, I think there's one up in the Northeast.
Yeah, I think. Grayson, you're absolutely going to see continued growth for the ports in Georgia and South Carolina. The trucking industry has seen what happens when you have a patchwork of regulations in an interstate commerce industry on a number of levels before. And it just is extremely challenging, if not impossible to navigate in certain respects.
And this could be one of those respects. Could you imagine if, I've heard people talk about this, you run a battery electric or A zero emission truck in California, hook it up to a diesel truck in Arizona to get the, to Texas, the costs that would have to be injected into the network to accommodate for that would be pretty severe, not to mention just your drivers, it would be all types of problems.
So it's a problem that continues to be perpetuated by people that don't understand the ramifications or choose to turn a blind eye to ramifications. One or the other.
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Grayson Brulte:
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And it could also further accelerate the driver shortage. You're really, you're pushing people out of work. That's what's going to happen.
Oh, I have to do this, and this. No. Just there's so many consequences that goes across the board that nobody's taking a holistic approach on this. So where's the pressure on the EPA coming from? Who's putting that pressure? Because whoever putting that pressure needs to sit down with an economist and have a real brutal, honest conversation. Cause they're not going to like what they hear.
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Jim Mullen:
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Yeah, it's the administration and their advisors. That's this is their agenda. They're pushing. They're fully committed to it. They haven't shown any indication that they're willing to back off in fact they maybe even putting their pedal to the metal and even further so it's a political game I think you have to assume right because if you look at The realities of the situation, the economic and the environmental realities of the situation and the infrastructure, you'd have to be real dense Grayson to not figure out that it just doesn't add up and these people aren't dense, so it's gotta be a political issue for them.
These 88 senators or members of Congress just signed this letter, I think if you sat down with them and their staff and kind of went over some of the stats we went over, I'm not sure how they would explain that. How would they explain that they're in favor of regulatory timelines, that if you look at what we're talking about, it just can't be achieved. I don't know what their answer would be.
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Grayson Brulte:
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I don't know. You just have to look at passenger cars. It's very publicly documented. There's apps and service dedicated to this. Broken chargers. I drove back from Tampa down south in Florida and we had to stop at two chargers that are broken. Now, you mentioned that in freight that is mission critical on time. Oh, we're going to stop to go. Charger's broken. We can't go. You're going to have an O, insert another four-letter word there. You're going to have a major problem. The writing's on the wall. We have a problem, but there are solutions to decarbonize trucking. So how do we introduce infrastructure that is both technology neutral and scalable?
That's not going to have a detriment to the economics of trucking.
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Jim Mullen:
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Yeah, we have to get over this infatuation with the better, better electric. That's first of all, you have to get over this infatuation illogical effects, infatuation, in fact. And as we talked about, the Ricketts Klobuchar bill, Cornyn has a bill on hydrogen.
There's all types of different opportunities out there that we're not grasping onto, and it's inexplicable. And again, this is what this coalition was formed for the sole purpose is to promote public policies that provide for a rational, affordable and sustainable transition to zero emission trucks.
We're fully committed to improving the environment, reducing our carbon footprint and getting to zero emission. But we've been around, and you talk about the membership of this coalition, it's the fleet, so the American Trucking Association. National Tank Truck Carriers, Truckload Carriers, National Motor Freight Traffic Association, which is the LTL Association, and then you have NATSO, the truck stop operators, the folks that service the trucks and the drivers, and then you have the American Truck Dealers, which is a division of NADA, so you have a very diverse division.
Wide lens through which we have experience in this industry and across the board uniformly. It's this isn't going to work. This isn't going to work. This isn't going to work. And here's why. And here's things you can do to help today. And that's why we have been formed. That's our task. And we're going to keep at it.
Just have to keep at it, Grayson, hit the hill a lot. Things like your platform, SE's platform, which we greatly appreciate to get our message out. And you'll see a lot of us, now that the Congress is back in session, you're going to see a lot more of us than you have. We just started it really in April and had, most coalitions took a little bit, a couple months to figure out exactly how to do what we're doing. But now we got our feet under us and we're running hard. You'll see much more of us in the future.
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Grayson Brulte:
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You were recently on the Hill. What were those conversations like?
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Jim Mullen:
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They were very productive conversations. And some of them, it's not that we're preaching the choir. But, for instance, meeting with Senator Ricketts. He knows this issue very well. And obviously he's proposing legislation to assist. But we were on both sides of the chamber. We're in the house and the Senate side had meetings with some Dems.
In today's political environment you really got to work on that low hanging fruit. And we absolutely believe repealing the federal excise tax is low hanging fruit. And so we had some folks from both sides of the aisle that absolutely think that it's time to reevaluate the federal excise tax.
And we'll push that really hard now that Congress is back in session. I think that we educated some folks who weren't already aware of these obstacles. That, that oh four letter word moment that you're talking about, you can see it in their face and their staff like, Ooh, didn't know. Didn't know. It's education's the first step for folks that, that otherwise aren't on board with you. And so that's where we're now.
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Grayson Brulte:
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You're making a positive impact that's gonna benefit the environment and the American consumer. That's where this is gonna come down to.
It's gonna trickle down to the American consumer and the environment. Jim, in your opinion, what is the future of Decarbonized Trucking?
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Jim Mullen:
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First off, I think it needs to be all those different opportunities and alternatives that we've been talking about, right? I think we have to start talking about things other than battery electric.
And I think you're going to have to see those different alternatives in order for the supply chain to actually get the decarbonization. Otherwise, it's just not going to happen. Or again, you're going to have three times as many trucks and your goods that you buy every day are going to.
Go through the roof. So we'll get there. It's not on the timeline set forth by car. It's a slower process, but like we talked about several times, if you do it strategically, you can saturate certain sectors of the market quicker. And it was their thing. So you talk about California and the ports and all the drage trucks out there, I think they rank around 40th in the country of oldest fleets, or at least percentage of their fleet older than 2010s.
If you were to look solely at, and I'm not passing the buck on drayage, cause they have some issues with this. I've talked to a drayage operator. He says, Hey, Mullen, if I have to go to entirely battery electric. I can do two turns on diesel. I only get one turn per truck on battery electric, so I'm gonna have to buy a lot more trucks.
And by the way, I'm still waiting for the utilities to juice up my chargers. So it's not as if, I mean you have fleets now that today, Grayson, today want to be. Utilizing these technologies, even though they're not fully tested because they want to be good stewards, they want to do their part and that they're not able to do so because of different issues in the process.
So to get back to your original question, what's it look like? It's going to take all types of fuel power to satisfy the various applications, and it's going to take some very strategic thinking rather than this one size fits all nonsense that we're doing right now.
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Grayson Brulte:
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We'll have to explore all options. What you described with drayage, perhaps that's not the solution, but perhaps that, that individual has decided to put in renewable diesel, was able to get access to. That's a positivity. Maybe perhaps Drage only works in certain things or port operations become battery electric. We have to, in my opinion, explore all options, not do a one size fits all. Test and try.
Okay, this works, the economics aren't going to make sense. We're going to go this because the economics make sense and we're helping reduce emissions. That's a positive. We have to try and explore. It's not a one size fits all solution that you can say to an individual or a family car.
Okay, everybody in America must buy a small car because that's the say we're going to do it. Could you imagine the rebellion? If they said that your cars in America can only have 90 miles, which some individuals want for battery People will be coming out with pitchforks. Yeah, if that nonsense tried What is the American consumer like more than anything choice?
You want to drive a big SUV, god bless. You want to drive a mini cooper, god bless you have your choice America. We run on choices. We enjoy our freedom America is the home of freedom and what you're describing what car trying to do They're taking away It is your members and the trucking industry's job, in my opinion, to embrace their freedom and to choose.
Jim, as we look to wrap up this insightful conversation, what would you like our listeners to take away with them?
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Jim Mullen:
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A couple of takeaways. One, the trucking industry is spending a tremendous amount of time and resources. When I say the trucking industry, I just don't mean just the fleets, but the entire ecosystem.
They're spending tremendous amounts of time and money trying to get to zero emissions. And they have a proven track record of being good stewards. I talked earlier about, what one truck in the 1988 is the equivalent of 60 truck emissions today, so the industry is fully committed to this and what we need folks to understand is a lot of these issues we've been talking about today.
It's not the same thing as passenger vehicles, even if you wanted it to be. It's not. There are so many different applications in the trucking space that, that battery electric is not a one size fits all. And so there, there needs to be a more holistic view an effort on these other options other than battery electric.
And we need to start incentivizing those other options today. If you would put the time and effort into the bio diesels, the renewable diesels and the subsidies behind those that we are giving battery electric, we'd make immediate improvement to the environment and do so without tremendous cost to the supply chain and to the end consumer.
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Grayson Brulte:
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For our listeners, I'm going to reiterate this very important point, if you bought it, a truck brought it and that's very important. The truckers are the backbone of the U. S. economy, the trucking industry. As your Amazon packages to show up, they do it, they make it happen. You see a trucker say, thank you.
They need the choice to deliver your goods in a cost-efficient manner. And don't forget, they have to run a business that is profitable. Today is tomorrow. Tomorrow's today. The future is clean freight transportation. Jim, thank you so much for coming on SAE Tomorrow Today.
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Jim Mullen:
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Grayson, appreciate your time.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Thank you for listening to SAE Tomorrow Today. If you've enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, please kindly rate, review, and let us know what topics you'd like for us to explore next. Be sure to join us next week as we speak with Omar Bar-Yohay, an Israeli entrepreneur, founder, and former CEO of Eviation Aircrafts, maker of the world's first all-electric commuter aircraft.
SAE International makes no representations as to the accuracy of the information presented in this podcast. The information and opinions are for general information only. SAE International does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this podcast.
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