Join some of the world’s leading experts for a vibrant discussion about solutions to climate change and what we can all do to advance them.
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Energy and Transportation Nexus
The IPCC recently estimated that greenhouse-gas emissions from electricity generation and land transportation could be cut by 73% and 67%, respectively, by 2050 by reducing demand alone. This panel will discuss some of the more realistic and timely options to reduce emissions from these sectors. Questions raised will include:
– What kinds of technology will be required and in what contexts?
– Will solar and wind dominate the future of fuels to power energy and transportation, or will nuclear, hydrogen and other energy sources play a growing role?
– What kinds of policies are required to accelerate adoption of low-to-no carbon options, not only in industrialized countries but developing ones?
Moderator: Detlof von Winterfeldt, Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Policy, Planning, and Development and J.A. Tiberti Chair in Ethics and Decision Making; Executive Director, USC Center for Sustainability Solutions
Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Former Deputy Director General/CEO, IIASA
Marlon Boarnet, Director of METRANS Transportation Consortium
Jacquelyn Birdsall, Senior Engineering Manager of the Fuel Cell Integration Group at Toyota Motor North America Research and Development
Sponsored by:
USC Price
USC Viterbi
USC Center for Sustainability Solutions.
Promotional Sponsors:
USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future
USC Dornsife Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability
– My name is Detlof von Winterfeldt. I’m a faculty member here at USC, both in the Viturbi School of Engineering, Enterprise School of Public Policy. And I’m also the executive director of USC Center for Sustainability Solutions. So I’m moderating this panel on energy and transportation, particularly as they relate to climate change.
And let me introduce the panelists. Let’s start from the very left. Jacquelyn Birdsall is a senior engineering manager of the Fuel Cell Integration Group at Toyota Motors, North America Research and Development. Her mission, the mission of her group is to improve the quality of life for all by developing fuel cell solutions
To replace gasoline and diesel engines. A very admirable job. Prior to joining Toyota in 2012, Jackie held several roles in the automotive industry. She had over 20 years of experience in hydrogen. In addition to her activities in hydrogen, Jackie takes an interest in promoting STEM learning and diversity in industry. And in 2015, she was honored by the Manufacturing Institute
As an emerging leader and by the automotive news as a rising star. So say hello to Jackie. In the middle is Marlon Boarnet. Marlon is a professor in the Price School of Public Policy at USC and the director of METRANS, which is the Transportation Consortium for Research at USC, and in partnership with the Pride School of Public Policies, the Viturbi School of Engineering and Cal State Long Beach.
Prior to directing METRANS, Marlon was the founding chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis at USC, and he served as vice dean for Academic Affairs at the Price School. Marlon served as president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning from 2019 to 2021,
And his research focuses on land use and transportation, links between land use and travel behavior, and associated implications for public health and greenhouse gas emissions. Say hello to Marlon. And to my left is Nebojsa Nakicenovic, he has an impossible name. So therefore, everybody calls him Naki. He’s the deputy chair of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission. He was Deputy Director General and Acting Director General of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis that I just talked about, and a professor of Energy Economics at Vienna Technological University.
Among other physicians, he is the director of the activity called World in 2050. This is a series of books, right? Fellow of the World Academy for Arts and Science, and on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change. What wasn’t on your vita was you were also the director
Of the Global General… Global Energy. – Energy, that’s right. – You ever seen that book? It’s about this thick, literally. It’s used mostly as a door stop these days. Or I’ve seen it as a raiser for computers, so you can put the computer on top of it. Sorry about that. Naki’s research interests include patterns of technological change, including the evolution of energy, mobility, digital technologies, economic development, and climate change. Say hello to Naki. So we have a bunch of questions here that I wrote down in preparation for the panel, but I don’t wanna make it too rigid and mix it up. I also think if you hear something in between, step up to the microphone and I’ll give you the questions,
Rather than waiting all the way to the end. So if you hear something interesting, you wanna follow up, just step to the microphone, we try to keep track of who’s standing there. So my first question is… Actually, I was inspired by Robin Craig from at the earlier panel,
Who had the food and water panel, and I just… And she asked, “Well, what the hell is this food and water nexus?” So I’m gonna ask the same question to the panelists right now. What the hell is the energy and transportation nexus? And I wanna do it from a global perspective,
A California perspective, and an industry perspective. Just explain how you see the energy and transportation connection, especially with hinting it to the climate change issue. Naki, why don’t we start with you? – Thank you, Detlof. Well, first of all, let me say I’m really delighted to be here, especially after the grand start
Of the conference this morning. It was a great panel. So your question about the nexus, I would say we have been used of thinking in silos. Here is energy, here is transport, here is water, here’s land use. In fact, I would say the nexus is all these four things together,
Not just energy and transport, because it’s impossible to untangle it nowadays, given the challenges that we are facing. So just for example, to make it a little bit concrete, if one of the big transformations in transport sector, as I believe will be electricity and perhaps hydrogen, I call it hydricity edge,
If that’s one of the directions in which we are going, then the whole energy system has to change, not just the transport system, because you have to produce zero-carbon electricity and hydrogen, you have to transport it, you have to store it so that it’s really tied together,
But then also tied together with water and land use, because land will be required for production of renewable energy, much larger amount of land than we’d have with the fossil power plants. Perhaps we need to store carbon in the land as well, not just have healthy diets and healthy food,
As we heard from the previous panel. So basically what I’m trying to say is I think that the challenges that we are facing together are systemic, they’re integrative, and they cannot be resolved in the silos. So we need, I think, new thinking, both about our behaviors, our values,
And about how the demand for services, in particular, energy, mobility, and food, healthy food, how that can be provided by a system that will not endanger our existence on this planet. And I think that’s the direction in which we’re going unless we change. So I’ll make it brief, also.
– I would just add that it requires a new approach to systems analysis as well. You have to look at the whole system, though. – [Nebojsa] Yeah, so we need transformational science as well- – There you go. – [Nebojsa] Not just the transformation itself, yeah. – Marlon, how does it… (laughs) How does it look from a California perspective? – I think those things just hit the nail on the head. I mean, these sectors have been in silos that worked well enough, let’s say. It’s not that it worked, but we could kind of believe that it worked
When we imagined that the problems were simpler. By the way, thinking these problems were simple was mostly our lack of awareness of the environmental issues. It wasn’t that there really was some simpler time. So we need to approach this as systems. And in our political apparatus, in our agency apparatus,
In our industrial apparatus, all these entities that never really had to act together had to. And I mean, think about power distribution, for example, electric power, potentially hydrogen distribution. The direction that technology and transportation takes us will require some rapid building and permitting of new infrastructure systems.
And these entities, the best way I can phrase it is that when they think they’re talking well across silos, it feels like they’re only barely talking. And I don’t mean that in a negative way, but these are skills that institutionally, we are not good at yet. – [Detlof] Thank you very much.
And Jackie? – Yeah, so I’ll be speaking from the automotive industry perspective. Totally agree. We used to be siloed. It used to be that we produced the vehicles, the oil companies produced the gasoline or the diesel. We know that when a customer went to the station, they could fill up.
That is no longer the case when we move towards both battery electric and fuel cell electric vehicles, we realized that we need to be more vertically integrated, more part of the supply chain if we want to ensure that the customer is going to have a good experience with the vehicles.
Just because right now, that ecosystem doesn’t exist. So I think it’s a great opportunity for collaboration. When you talk about looking at it from a decarbonization point of view, the carbon intensity of that electricity going into our battery electric vehicles or the carbon intensity of the hydrogen going
Into our fuel cell electric vehicles, we also need to play a part in that part of the ecosystem, which is a place we’ve never played in. And honestly, we don’t know yet how to do that successfully. So it’s really pushing the bounds of the automotive industry
As well as how do we make sure that our customers have a good experience with this infrastructure that just doesn’t exist yet? – Thank you. So let me move to the climate change issue. We all hear a lot of doom and gloom. What was the phrase used?
The terrible future or something like that, about climate change. And I’d like to turn this around and ask the panel, at least for transportation and energy, and maybe some other related areas, can you paint a positive scenario that could be created, maybe not high a likelihood, but a positive scenario for climate change
In the transportation energy area in particular, for let’s say 30 years from now? Roughly 2050. Let’s start with, again, the same sequence. – Well, that’s a great question, Detlof, and the one that’s close to my heart, because I think we have been painting horror scenarios and it’s probably appropriate
Because there are great dangers facing humanity. At the same time, I think to make this transformation really attractive to people, we need a positive narrative. And that means also a positive scenario. And I think for me at least, there is one that is the UN 2030 agenda with its 17 sustainable development goals.
I think that gives the vision of where we should go. But like all of these things that are negotiated, there are many, many problems. One of them is that the mobility is not central to it, it’s distributed across the goals. So we need an integrative approach.
And what I just said before in my view. And I mean, we should realize that the transport sector and mobility is about 20% of global emissions. And if you take all of the greenhouse gas emissions together, we emit about 50 billion tons every year.
It’s one of the largest mass flows on the planet. And the mobility and transport is about eight gigatons, and electricity sector about twice as much, about 16. So these are the major causes. And again, I think one needs to look at it in an integrative way of how to deal with the climate.
Now, how could one make that attractive? I personally think that some of the technological and institutional solutions that are out on the floor can make that very attractive. It just wasn’t one example, I think driving electric cars, and I think many of us do, perhaps one day also electric hydrogen cars.
I think it has positive features. I think we have to change our mindset of thinking in terms of kilometers or miles, in terms of kilowatt hours. We have to think in terms of service. What is the service that’s provided? And this is where I think one of the biggest challenges lies,
Is providing attractive service to everybody. And I’ll say something that might be controversial. I think one of the steps would be going away from ownership to usership, so that not all of us have to own everything. That we can use the infrastructure, we can use the vehicles much more efficiently.
And a car that’s shared is probably, would require 10 times less resources because it would offer 10 times the service. So I would see… This is an area, and this is where, just to conclude this thought, where the digitalization I think can play a great role. Many of these technologies are already semi-digital,
And they can be easily integrated through AI and convergence of digital technologies to provide convenience service. And maybe the last thing I wanted to say, to come to this conference, I had three separate trip legs. One to get to the airport, then from the airport to the airport here,
And from the airport here to the conference. Now, why can that not be integrated? I mean, I think we have everything that is needed to make that… Optimal is the wrong word, but to make it very attractive for all of us. And I think this will require some changes
In the values and norms, but I think that’s the way to go. So less ownership, more sharing, peer-to-peer services. And I think that will reduce the resources that we need. And perhaps we’ll be more convenient. At least, that’s what I believe. – [Detlof] Thank you. And Marlon, California had made some strides
In the right direction with electric vehicles, and trucks are still an issue. Can you give us a pass forward to a better future in energy and transportation? And also, we might wanna mention one of the major obstacles in getting there. – Yeah. But before I think about the path forward,
Let me highlight how much really incredible progress we’ve made. And I mean, just breathtaking. I’ll give you a couple of statistics. California’s power grid today generates about 60% of its electricity from non-fossil fuels. Wind and power are the most rapidly-growing generating sectors. Secondly, today, 25% of all new cars sold
In California are battery electric, one out of four off the lot, battery electric. Five years ago, if I had told you that was gonna happen, that would’ve been weird. 10 years ago it would’ve been shocking. And so there’s incredible reason for optimism. I mean, I don’t even have to paint the scenario,
Is what I’m saying. Progress… We are rapidly coming up to kind of some steep parts of the S-curve. Scenarios going forward, with transportation, it’s interesting because transportation kind of touches everything. Your neighborhoods, how you get to school, the air you breath, your risk of accident.
So the short answer is that there’s a lot of potential, if we could harness it, to use this as a chance to remake our neighborhoods and our systems. Half of all trips in the U.S. are less than three miles. Could we move that onto a mode that doesn’t involve two tons of metal?
No disrespect to… (laughs) Maybe Toyota would would get into that business. There’s a lot of possibility. There are some barriers, and a lot of it is the integration. And this would require new infrastructure systems, power distribution, likely hydrogen distribution. Where would that be? How would you permit that?
For the power, would do substation upgrades look like this? So a lot of this is the tough policy work of thinking through how to move permitting fast, how to do construction fast, how to have the skilled workforce in place. But let me take the positive spin.
We’ve always figured out how to do this. Somehow in California, we sometimes trick ourselves into not doing it. But I mean, this is the nation’s fifth largest economy. We can do it. I’m gonna argue this isn’t rocket science anymore. We’re kind of hitting a stage
With some of these technologies where it’s a little bit more just roll up your sleeves, build the infrastructure, move forward, if I can simplify. – Thank you very much. And Jackie, I mean, you’re a specialist in hydrogen use, just specifically for hydrogen, what is your dream scenario? The pathway forward that would make you really happy in 20 years? – Oh, well actually, I wanna start with a story, also about where we’ve come in. First of all, if you were looking at less than two miles from around my condo, I have an e-bike. (laughs) So that’s how I get around,
Not 2,000 pounds of metal, no sir. All that is needed to get me where I needed to go. If I’m not driving that, I’m driving my 2021 Toyota Mirai, which is a hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric vehicle. And her name is Hope, because as any automotive engineer, I name all of my vehicles.
And so Hope is my daily driver when I have to go into the office. I started working on the Toyota Mirai before the first generation launch. 2003 actually was the first time I worked on a prototype fuel cell vehicle, because I so believed in the potential
For a decarbonized future where we still give people the mobility they need to achieve whatever their goals are, whatever their dreams are, right? We need mobility, it’s a thing. I was on the team that launched the first and second generation Mirai. And then in 2016, they came to our little garage
Down in Gardena, they being the State, Air Resources Board, actually, and said, “Hey, we love your fuel cell technology, we love the Toyota Mirai. Do you think you guys could build us a semi-truck? And we were like, “No. (laughs) We’ve never built a semi-truck before.”
But what we ended up doing is we went and built… We bought a chassis from Kenworth, without their knowledge. They know about it now. We took apart two gen one Mirai vehicles, just chopped them apart, put in the powertrain into a Kenworth chassis. And we demonstrated to the world
The first ever fuel cell electric truck that could pull 80,000 pounds with zero emissions. We got the attention of the state, we got the attention of actually, what we call our mothership in Japan, who originally were like, “What are you Yankees doing? A bunch of cowboys over there building a truck.”
They said, “Wow, this is a phenomenal idea. How do we build more of them?” We are going into production with them next year. We have demonstrate… Thank you. (laughs) We have demonstrated 10 of them running around the ports of L.A., where right now 16,000 diesel semis go in and out of that port every single day. So imagine the impact on the air quality around the communities that live around this port, the congestion on that 710 freeway.
I mean, is there just. The implications there are just horrendous. So we are working towards a zero emission port. To that end, we actually also, on our own Toyota Logistics Services Campus, where we typically receive vehicles that come in from Japan and send them all over the United States,
We built what’s called a tri-generation fuel cell system. We take biogas from the Central Valley Waste gas, put that into a high temperature fuel cell that creates 1.2 tons of green hydrogen every day that we’re using to fill those trucks. And again, this is all stuff that Toyota doesn’t typically do,
But we found good partners in Pack R. We found good partners in fuel cell energy. We found good partners even in Shell, in their hydrogen division to make this a reality. And so when you ask me, what do I think it looks like, what my dream would be in 20 years.
And that would be that hydrogen is there as one of the alternatives along with electric, along with battery electric vehicles, to be able to fill those gaps where battery electric just doesn’t work for that fleet or that customer, right? We need both technologies, we need all technologies that are available right now
To decarbonize as fast as possible and to take advantage of whatever our renewable resource is, be it land, be it sun, be it water, biogas, whatever. We are in this great place where we can build a fully-sustainable infrastructure and transportation system around whatever the region has available.
And it also creates fantastic new green jobs, while we’re at it. – Thank you. You actually are the excellent person to answer a question that some of you might know the answer to, but can you explain what the difference between hydrogen powered cars and electric battery electric vehicles is? – [Jacquelyn] Yeah, so-
– Also the pros and cons. – Sure, sure. So the hydrogen vehicles we make are not internal combustion engines. They’re fuel cell electric vehicles. So they are all electric. But the only difference is instead of plugging it in and recharging it, you refill it with hydrogen.
It takes about five minutes to refill a hydrogen. My Mirai, I get about 340 miles when I refill it at any one of the hydrogen stations around here. Obviously, to our customers, that means if they’re looking to drive a fully zero-emission vehicle, they can either choose to get a battery electric
That they can recharge at home, never have to go to a station again, right? Just pull in at home, recharge it, and you’re on your way. Or for those customers that don’t have that opportunity, be it they live in apartment complexes, they have a shared vehicle, they need a quick refilling time,
They can go to a hydrogen station. So it’s really just up to customer use case. And then once you look at these industrial opportunities. like fuel cell electric trucks versus battery electric trucks, just comes down to do you have room to park all your trucks and charge them at once?
Or does it make… Do you have a tie in to the grid? If you need six megawatts of power to recharge your truck, is that what you wanna do or do you wanna build a hydrogen station or rebuild a truck? So the whole idea is that we wanna offer both options
To our customers, which is why we build both battery electric, fuel cell electric, also plug in hybrid electric, hybrid electric. So the customer can choose whatever powertrain is best for their lifestyle. And I’m happy to get into how the actual electric chemical device works as well,
If you want, but I don’t know if you wanna go there. (laughs) – I don’t think so. Unless the audience wants it. Maybe want… We have a whole bunch of people already lining up, so it’s great. I’m gonna sit back and let you ask the question.
– [Audience Member] Hey, it’s so nice to meet you. Jackie, I’m so excited you’re here. I drive a Mirai. – Ah! That section? – [Audience Member] I wanna say, I love the 2023 Mirai, I just bought it. – Yes. Oh, my gosh. I love- – [Audience Member] I wanna say, I love the car. – Me too. – [Audience Member] Beautiful car, drives so well. I love the idea of hydrogen.
But we gotta address the elephant in the room. There used to be 57 hydrogen stations. There are now only 53 in the state. And of the 53, there are probably about 13 that are operational right now, in this moment, based on my app that I just checked before coming up here.
And so Toyota is the one that is largely spending the marketing dollars to promote and push hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which is what attracted me to it. How is Toyota taking responsibility or addressing this hydrogen infrastructure issue? ‘Cause I get that it’s a technology issue, I get that it’s a fuel issue,
But there’s an issue here, right? There’s a gap between the promises and the solutions. And so this is such a great room to (laughs) be able to ask this question. So I apologize for putting you on the spot, but I’d love to just hear. – No, so we actually…
I mean, we meet with the fuel providers every week. We track every day how the stations are doing. Hydrogen retail stations in California originally were around 90% uptime. Now, because we’ve launched so many vehicles, we’re looking at about 60% of time. And even that statistic doesn’t show
The issue that we’re having with the early built stations where we were trying to really leverage state funds. So we were trying to best match supply versus demand so there’s only one dispenser. Now you can have a lineup of Mirais at a station, right? And instead of taking five minutes to refill,
It takes you an hour because you need to wait for that one dispenser to open up. So even when we look at the data, the data doesn’t really show what our customers are really… What I experienced in my Mirai as well. As I mentioned earlier, we are at an interesting kind of change
In perspective of automakers, not just Toyota, but the other automakers, that we do need to have more ownership in the infrastructure exactly for this reason. We were depending on certain infrastructure providers to come to us with a reliability, with the fuel actually being delivered to the stations
That they said was going to be available. And unfortunately, that really just has not been the case. If you look at how much hydrogen we use in the market versus what is produced in the U.S., it’s about 1% that’s even made available to the automotive market.
The rest of it’s used for the petrochemical industry. So we really have a small voice when we come to the table and say, “Hey, we need more reliable hydrogen deliveries to our stations or to the field provider stations, we don’t have a big play there.” When you look at state funding,
The state of California, out of $400 million for zero-emission infrastructure, only 10% of that went to hydrogen, the rest went to chargers. So we also have significantly less investment and government directions that is giving people the vision of what hydrogen could be, and therefore seeing investment on the field provider side.
So really, that’s… Your point is excellent. It’s something that we’re working on every day to the best our abilities, but I think honestly, we need a more collaborative ecosystem and we can’t work in the silos anymore. Automakers can’t work separate of whoever’s providing the electrons or the molecules. We need to be one.
– [Detlof] A couple of more questions from the audience. – [Audience Member] Yeah, so kind of piggybacking off that question, my question was also about hydrogen and infrastructure. So what are some cross-industry strategies to assist in the adoption of more hydrogen infrastructure? Obviously, we see that it’s a proven, viable technology
For medium heavy duty vehicles and it’s up and coming for light duty, but how can we more widely make it available for all these different vehicle types? – That’s a great… I’m sorry I’m sort of talking- – [Detlof] Well, maybe Marlon can address that. – (laughs) Unless you guys wanna.
– Let me complicate the picture a little bit. I would not say it’s a proven viable technology for medium and heavy duty trucks at scale. It will be someday, but I don’t think that day is today. Meaning… California’s, by the way, requiring very rapid transition of the medium and heavy duty truck fleet to zero emission. And when we talk to truckers,
There are some truckers who are early adopters of battery electric, that technology has some real difficulties for a trucker. Ballpark, four to six hours to fully charge, range requirements that may not fit with your needs. You need to bring in easily maybe 15 to 20 megawatts
Onto site, talk to your electric utility provider, that stuff. So, but they’re trying it. I think on the hydrogen fuel cell side, it sounds like truckers are thinking of when they get a hydrogen fuel cell truck, heavy duty, they’re viewing it as an on-road pilot.
They’re trying to figure out what is this gonna mean for us in terms of maintenance? What is the model whereby we partner with a manufacturer if something goes wrong? Can the manufacturer… What does the manufacturer’s guarantee in service looks like? It’ll happen, but to say it’s a viable…
I don’t think I’m gonna find a real trucker who’s gonna honestly say, “Hydrogen’s a viable solution today for my business.” They might say it’s a technically viable solution. Now the flip side, I’ll tell you, most truckers want hydrogen to become economically viable fast. The long haul truckers can fit hydrogen
Into their operational procedures more seamlessly than battery electric. So these same folks, I think they would really hope that soon, they could see how, for their business model this works out. I think the short answer is a couple of things. It’ll take the infrastructure. That infrastructure will have to be there
For a trucker in a way that’s pretty seamless. And I think there will have to be a learning curve. They’ll have to know enough about what the business model looks like. I think that will get figured out, by the way. They’re partnering with the manufacturers. And there are some changes to business models.
I think that will somewhat get figured out. I think it’s the infrastructure where we need to really get focused. – So let me- – Can I add a story to that? – [Detlof] Naki, you wanna say something? – Yeah, yeah, very quickly. I mean, I think we have to think also
In terms of the whole energy system, not just that mobility, trucking, and the cars. Because as the energy system becomes less carbon intensive, whether it’s nuclear or renewables, in both cases, you need long-term storage because nuclear cannot do the peaking. Renewables are intermittent. And hydrogen is probably, in the long run,
One of the best ways, in addition to the short term storage with the batteries and pumped hydro. Hydrogen is probably the solution in the long run. So hydro electric… Electron and proton, let’s say, can combine very well, you can convert one into the other. So there is an issue of scale here.
And I think that might help also transform the mobility toward hydrogen if we have hydrogen in the system already. Because then you have learning curves, you have positive returns, positive externalities. And in Germany, there was a 100-kilometer pipeline set for the hydrogen for the chemical industry.
So that’s another thing that we have to develop. And I think about 5% of global energy is converted to hydrogen, if I remember that correctly. And but it’s not integrated, it’s sporadic, it’s geochemical industry there. So I think, and probably the same thing with the fuel cells.
Fuel cells could be a source of electricity, hydrogen, and that would also bring larger markets and perhaps bigger learning for the customers and for the electric cars and trucks. – Okay, thank you. I get one more question from the audience. I actually had two. Then I’m gonna go back to take the panel.
– [Audience Member] So, so far we’ve hit on infrastructure and the associated convenience, the learning curve, range, which seems to be improving since Hope now has a range of 320 miles. But another barrier is cost or the purchase price that’s borne by the consumer. So how quickly do you see this coming down?
– As we all know, nobody can predict the future. So I’ll going just make some stylized facts. I think the dynamics of the vehicle fleets, if that’s what we are talking about, is about 30 years for replacement of the vehicle fleet from the old to the new technology.
That was true for the shift from horses to motor vehicles. It’ll be probably true for the next generation of vehicles. Electric, perhaps electric hydrogen hybrids. So I would say 30 years or so. And what is really important, because you mentioned the cost, what is really important is the scale up
And the size of the markets. And the technologies that are granular in nature, small scale, think of the mobile phone, digital phone, they have an in incredible learning. I mean, and photovoltaic cells, about 20% cost reduction per doubling of the global market. So I think that’s the formula.
Because right now, I mean, hydrogen is expensive. I mean, you have to avoid it if you can. It’s an expensive energy carrier, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be expensive once we expand the markets. And then on top of it, has the environmental benefits.
So I would say it in a dynamic sense, I would say three decades is the scale and that’s probably… Should that be true, that’s good luck because by 2050, we need to be carbon neutral if you’re going to achieve climate goals. – Yeah, I just wanna add,
I mean, it’s amazing what the development of the electrical vehicles have done, even in prices. I mean, the Tesla Three is quite competitive in the mid-range now. Or they think so. For most people, the Tesla Six is a little bit out of range. And so things are moving pretty fast. If you had… I mean, Marlon mentioned that if you had said 25% of the vehicles would be electric in California now, if you had said that a few years ago, you would’ve been crazy.
You wanna comment on the price developments and- – Yeah, I mean, spot on, it’s all about scale. From the first gen Mirai to the second, or from the first… From the what we call the FCHV-adv, which was the prototype right before the first gen Mirai.
We were able to reduce the cost of that by 95% through the development of one particular component, it’s called the boost converter. And what that did was that mated the voltage of the output of the fuel cell system to the voltage of the rest of our hybrid system.
So the fuel cell puts out 300 volts, the rest of the hybrid system’s all based on 600 volts, can’t connect that without a boost converter. As soon as we did that, we could use all the off-the-shelf components from all the rest of the hybrid vehicles that we make.
That dropped the price of the vehicle by 95%, and that’s what allowed us to launch the first generation Mirai. So as we continue to scale up, I mean, hybrid components used to be super expensive, right? It took us like 10 years to sell our first million. Now we sell 1.5 million hybrids annually.
So all those electrified components that we’re using for our battery electrics, for our fuel cell electric, for our hybrid electric, we can scale those up and and drop the costs. So for the hydrogen fuel cell technology in particular, that just means we need to build more fuel cell stacks,
Which now are going to all different types of things, like our heavy duty trucks. Now we’re building more cargo-handling equipment. We’re building stationary generators, which I actually think this is fascinating. We’re being asked to take our Mirais, put them into a stationary box, bring along a hydrogen trailer,
Provide power for days using these backup generators. We’re using them to charge battery electric fleets where a utility power isn’t available. So all of these applications that we didn’t originally intend are coming to fruition. And so we think from that, making more hydrogen tanks,
Making more fuel cell will continue to get us down to parity with battery electric vehicles. I feel like the two of them are… The price point that is kind of most similar, it’s kind of difficult right now to compare them to gasoline because new technology is inherently more expensive.
But as soon as we scale up, we’ll see that cost come down. And maybe, can you speak to arches? Did the hydrogen have an announcement on Friday? – You might know more about arches than I do. Here’s what I would say about arches. There was a very large Department of Energy grant that was awarded to a consortium in California that does include USC, I think to be fair to the University of California, I think they’re more in the leadership role, to build out hydrogen infrastructure statewide.
So, and this is a massive effort. And so a lot is happening that- – [Jacquelyn] And they announced on Friday, yeah, we got- – It was announced on Friday. – $1.2 billion for California for this. So we think that that will further reduce the… That’ll take care of the cost of the hydrogen on the market side. Because again, actually as a commercial commodity right now, hydrogen is very inexpensive. But in the marketplace we play in, they get to charge whatever they want. (laughs) – Thank you.
So let me ask you a question, that I have no idea what the answer is. And that is, are there any… We’re talking about hydrogen versus battery powered EV vehicles. Are there any realistic alternatives right now? Or is this just sort of getting these two going
And maybe hydrogen for the long haul trucks more and the EV cars for the local areas? Are there any other alternatives right now? – [Jacquelyn] Sure, do you wanna take that? – Oh no, Naki is the guy for the futurist. – Okay, well, I mean, of course there are always alternatives.
The question is what’s going to be, I think, the winning technology, nobody knows that in advance. I mean, I would of course tip for the hybrid hydrogen electric and electric vehicles, but people are also thinking about ammonia. Ammonia could be a carbon neutral energy carrier.
It’s liquid so it would be more marginal change. I mean, I think what we are talking about is really revolutionary, fundamentally changing the system. And I would in principle be a fan of that, even though I don’t know what the outcome would be. But the more marginal, more incremental technology
Might be indeed ammonia because it is liquid. You can store it on a similar tracks, you can run on a similar engines, and so on. So there are always alternatives I’d love, and who knows what the future will bring. But I think, going back to the discussions this morning,
I think we don’t have the time to waste. We have to use the technologies that are now available and close to the market to commercialize them, otherwise the shadow of not doing will be so long. I mean, at least you and I are old enough to remember, I think ’60s and ’70s,
Where the climate issue was relatively clear in the scientific sense and where are we today, 50 years later, despite greater achievements that you mentioned? So it’s time to act, I think, and with all of the risks that it involves. So that would be my response.
– [Detlof] Anybody else wanna chime in on that one? – [Jacquelyn] I would love to, do you wanna share first? – Let me quickly add, and I think that lays out the technologies clearly. I would always rank drive less as one of the options also. – [Detlof] Yeah, that was my next question. – And that opens up all kinds of, “Well, I mean, you gotta kind of be a little…” I thank you for the applause, appreciate it. Let’s be nuanced, meaning there are things you can do, right? You could have mass transit solutions, more people for the same amount of movement, telecommuting, walking, all of this bears on behavior. I would add that in as one of the options also, as we think about this.
– I mean, I too, the first was bikes. (laughs) I mean, I would love to see more bike lanes, more urban planning to accommodate that last mile or two. I may get fired for saying that. Sorry, we still love to sell cars. (laughs) The other one that I think a lot of people, it seems like policy and these discussions are focused a lot right now on how do we get battery electric vehicles,
How do we get zero emission vehicles on the road, when really, we already have a technology now that can decarbonize very quickly. And that’s plugin hybrid and hybrid vehicles, particularly plugin hybrid vehicles. A lot of people don’t need more than like 40 miles of all electric range, right?
So right now, you can go out and pretty economically buy a plugin hybrid vehicle, plug it in at home, hardly ever, if ever have to use gasoline. And then you’re actually only using the amount of battery content, battery material that you actually normally need.
You’re not building a battery sized for 300 miles, right? And so here’s kind of a number that I want you to think of, because when we think about decarbonization, it’s not just the fuel, it’s not just what goes in the vehicle, it’s about how, where are we getting those materials?
Cradle to grave analysis, right? Good environmental engineering when we build these vehicles. One battery electric vehicle, we can use that same amount of material to build six plug-in hybrid vehicles. So we can get six gasoline, traditional gasoline vehicles off the road for one battery electric. With that same amount of material,
We can build 90 fuel cell electric vehicles, ’cause we have such a small battery on a fuel cell electric vehicle. And that’s all the materials that’s required, that’s traditionally used for batteries. So it shouldn’t be a conversation of what are the only zero emission options? Ultimately, that should be what it is.
But we’re in such a critical moment right now, we need to decarbonize as quickly as possible with all the tools we have available. And I think that means that we need to include things like plugin hybrids, where it makes sense to meet the people’s daily needs,
But also for those people that are one car households that can’t afford two cars, right? Let’s incentivize them to buy one plugin hybrid, use the the battery whenever they can, and otherwise use that gasoline engine for the longer trips that they need. So yeah, I’d like to not leave those off the table,
Even though they’re not zero emissions, they are helping us to decarbonize very quickly. – Excellent, yeah. So I wanna follow up a little bit more on the demand side, on the how to deal with the consumer and encourage the consumer to do various things, drive less, use public transportation.
As a benchmark, I did some studies recently on the comparison of household footprints in Europe and Japan versus United States. And it’s just astonishing. First of all, on the big picture, twice as much… The footprint is twice as much in the U.S. as it is in Europe and Japan and Indonesia
And some other developed countries. A good portion of that is transportation. There’s house electricity and gas, as well. And food, I mean… So we have actually good panels here. We have energy, which is the house, electricity, and gas. We had the food panel earlier, and now we have transportation and electricity.
So I think that the guidance that Marlon gave, drive less, sounds great, or drive public, sounds great. How do you get that? How do you manage that? How do you get over the hurdle? And you can even use examples of USC commuters, the faculty commuters. I mean, 80%, 90% of them drive.
So what can we do about that? Marlon, you’re probably the best in place to think about how we can change behavior, commuting behavior, and also small trip behavior at the household or individual level. What kind of interventions we can do, what kind of incentives we can provide
As an organization or as a government, for that matter. – Yeah, I think kind of the meta perspective that hangs over this, and I think certainly in the U.S., kind of for the past 200 years, we’ve treated transportation as a realm where about every two generations, there’s a new cost-reducing technology,
From basically walking and horses all the way up to the automobile. And we’ve had this idea that the new technology will be completely adopted for all our transportation needs and the old technology must go away. And so the meta view is we need to get into this realm
That kind of Jackie was talking about, where you have a lot of choices and somehow the market allows consumers to match what they need well in that moment. Technology could help, but we haven’t realized it yet. Now, how do you get consumers to do that? I think we can only see some outlines.
One thing we talk about is environment-behavior interaction. We know that people drive less if they live in places where their destinations are more nearby. If you can pick up a household in Riverside and put them kind of anywhere along the Wilshire corridor, everything else equal, they’ll drive ballpark 30% less,
Just ’cause their trips are shorter. We know that people will adopt work from home if you have what appears to be a massive behavioral shock, a global pandemic, and then that knocks them off of what appeared to have been very kind of ingrained, habitual behavior. And then they like this new equilibrium.
The details, I think this is… I think we don’t really have kind of the behavioral studies that we’d love to have to kind of fine-grain that. How would you be able to understand how you, when you have to nudge people, when you have to really have a big shock,
When you need the big infrastructure. I wish we knew more. And part of it is because we haven’t… We’ve had the wrong meta framework. Our meta framework has been one technology, it’ll serve all our needs. – Let me chime in with one small bit of initial results.
We are doing a study of USC commuters, and it shocked me a little bit because when I asked them what they care about, number one is convenience. Number two is safety, number three is cost. And I had to almost nudge them to get environment included there.
And they said, “Oh yeah, that’s nice too.” So how can you get environment to be closer to number one or at least correlated with the other ones that… Naki, go ahead. – Yeah, Detlof, my response to that would be that environment needs to be a co-benefit.
So that means that mobility needs to become more convenient, that is less environmentally… That has less environmental implications. So I mean, you mentioned commuting. I mean, if you compare Los Angeles to Tokyo, I don’t know the latest statistics, but few years ago here, it was about 90% individual by car.
Tokyo was about 90% by public transport. Now one problem of that is that, at least my experience, it takes a long time to commute in Tokyo by rail. (laughs) And there is this law of constant travel time, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, from Zahavi in the ’80s.
That is quite space and time invariant. So that is just one dimensional convenience. You cannot push people to commute longer than an hour. It is not convenient. Then they’ll choose the car, for the reasons you mentioned. I just looked at the European statistics. There was a big poll in Europe
Across the 12 European member countries. And in Europe, despite all of the environmental and other policies, over 60% of mobility is still by car and walking, and bicycle is less than 25%. And if I remember correctly, rail is about 10%. There are, of course, differences between the countries and the cities.
But so I would say convenience. Convenience is important, I think you mentioned safety, no doubt. I mean cars cost about 1.2 million deaths a year. – In L.A., in particular, as in other big cities in the United States. – I was going to dodge that question
By saying I’m an engineer, not marketing, so I don’t know. But Naki just actually kind of keyed something I was thinking of, which is, if you’ve never driven an electric vehicle, they are superior to conventional vehicles. The electric motor is phenomenal. They’re quiet, no pollution. I mean, they’re just wonderful vehicles to drive. So I think this is one where, it’s environmentally friendly, but is that why people are typically buying them? I don’t think so. I think it might be because they’re just really great vehicles to drive.
I would be interested in talking to Elon team about that. (laughs) – I completely agree with that, about how Tesla is ludicrous. – Yeah, I mean they- – [Nebojsa] And they’re fast. You may never hear a Toyota person saying, “Thank you, Elon Musk,” but thank you Elon Musk for bringing battery electric,
Electric vehicles to the masses because now they’re sexy, right? They used to be kind of like- – Now, didn’t the- – Grumpy and small and now people understand they’re awesome. – Lee said today, in the morning, that the way to promote things is to get Hollywood stars to drive the car.
– [Jacquelyn] Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go. There you go. Yeah, I have no idea how it’s done. – That’s certainly way.- – [Jacquelyn] But I think you’re spot on, I think that can’t be the main motive. If it was, everybody would be driving a Prius, and people are still buying Hummers
And F-150s and stuff, so- (laughs) – Well, that’s… We’ve got a whole bunch- – Environmentalism is not the motive- – Of people at at the microphone again. – [Audience Member] Thank you. Yes, I was thinking during this conversation, oftentimes when we talk about achieving our GHG emission reduction goals,
We are often talking about just transitioning over to ZEVs. And so I’m glad that Dr. Boarnet brought up the issue of reducing vehicle miles traveled. And so, I’m curious in terms of adopting ZEVs, it seems as though our trajectory will not be sufficient in order to achieve our GHE emission reduction goals.
And I’m wondering, what has been effective in order to get people to adopt ZEVs, and what more could be done? – Who wants to take that? Marlon? – Well, the ZEV adoption’s been very rapid in the past few years. And I think it’s probably two things. The charging network has grown large enough
That I think that that fear of will you have the charger has mostly gone away. The vehicles are pretty good products. The price point came down. They do accelerate fast. I grew up in a small town in Texas and I don’t know if my wife appreciated it,
But after a test drive, I said, “My gosh, if I had this car when I was in high school, I would’ve been the king of this little town.” Which, if anyone knew me in high school, would… There’s some counter arguments that came made. But anyway… (laughs) But it would’ve helped. But no, I think we really have to think about consumer acceptance is the… And by the way, let’s not lose sight of how supporting infrastructure is
A huge part of that problem. Why do people not bike? Why do people not walk? Why do people not take transit? It’s often because the infrastructure isn’t making it convenient enough, so- – [Audience Member] Thank you, you wanna… – Yeah, a short comment on that.
I mean, I think there are examples that show that it can be done. I mean, what you’re saying, I mean, to go down to net zero by 2050, Norway is a good example. In Norway, 50% of cars are electric because of very clear policies.
And I think this is one of our big problems, that the policies are not coherent. You never know when the subsidies will be discontinued, whether the carbon tax will be introduced or not. So there are lots of ambiguities, and I think we need much, much more longer-term orientation.
That was also the subject in the earlier panel this morning, longer term orientation that we, as the consumers, know what the rule of the game is and then we can make rational decisions or maybe a little bit less rational decisions toward net zero choices. – [Detlof] Okay, thank you. Another question.
– [Audience Member] First off, I hope I don’t get disinvited from the next conference for asking too many questions. So my questions, we touched on how we can get the average consumer on board. So this is more of a policy question. And it’s open to all speakers. So have we thought about maybe a consumer benefit to emission reduction? I mean, we’ve seen the investment tax credits for the solar industry,
And they’ve worked incredibly well. We look at Texas, Oklahoma, wind farms, solar farms popping up left and right. So how feasible is it to give consumers the benefit for reducing their emission footprint? – Well, who wants to take that? I mean, I can give my personal opinion
And then pass it on to the panel. It’s still pricey to go to electric vehicles, with tax reduction and everything else. I mean, if you’re looking at the high end user, financially well off user, they have a great benefit in home charging. It’s cheaper to do at the home,
It’s more convenient, et cetera. So, but at the lower end, the price is still high and people who live in apartments have a big problem with charging. So that’s kind of my sense right now about electric vehicles and the benefits and the cost of them.
But maybe anybody on the panel wants to chime in on that one? – Yeah, so you do currently get credits when you buy a zero emission vehicle or… I don’t think low emission vehicles anymore, but definitely zero-emission vehicles. But that’s still… That doesn’t address the concern of infrastructure.
A lot of people, if they are to take advantage of that credit and purchase a vehicle, they do have access to home charging. If they are reliant on public charging, that right now, unfortunately, looks even worse than retail hydrogen. I think it’s about 50% uptime for those chargers.
So again, these are typically dual vehicle households. We need to get to a place where the infrastructure is robust enough to serve everyone that wants to drive a zero emission vehicle. So yeah, environmental equity is a huge part of it. If we are to get there, we need to ensure
That the public infrastructure is sufficient, and then make the mandate or make the rebates available to the people that want to buy or lease the vehicles. – [Detlof] We’re gonna switch microphones to over there for two folks. – [Melanie] Thank you, my name is Melanie. I wanted to touch base on the topic
Regarding public transportation. I’m from Europe, I live here for 11 years. I have lived without a car in Europe for 30 years of my life in multiple larger cities. The ticket pricing there is double than what it’s here, our salary is lower there.
And so I come here, of course I have my car initially, but five years ago I sold it. And the perception here at the times there was… You’re being kind of treated like a homeless person. Is your income so low that you cannot afford a car, why are you doing this? And I think the differences between the public transportation systems here and there, in my opinion as I experienced it, is number one, cleanliness and safety. – Yeah, yeah, safety.
– [Audience Member] It’s not clean and I don’t feel as safe here then how I feel safe on public transportation in Europe in general. This is my perspective. Number two is role models, right? I’m Austrian, so our Austrian president of the country uses public transportation to get to the office and back,
And also multiple other politicians in the city of Vienna, for example. So I think we also… Going back to the Leonardo DiCaprio example, we need lead by example. We need role models, people that are very powerful and surely have enough money to have their own cars demonstrating
That they are willing to contribute this way. – Appreciate it. – [Audience Member] And it’s doable, but it shouldn’t be having the perception of you have to do this because you can’t afford otherwise. – Well, your perception is completely consistent with what the students tell me about why they don’t like public transportation.
– [Audience Member] I mean, I still do it. I sold my car five years ago, but still I get all these strange looks. – Buy a small electric car. – [Audience Member] Maybe really lead by example if more people join me and others in being there and talking to people about our experience.
– Yeah. – Any comments from the panel? – Maybe one brief comment, since I’m also Austrian, at least adopted Austrian. Austria now has a 300-euro annual public transport ticket that you can ride anywhere you want. The only thing that’s excluded are the airplanes. – [Audience Member] Correct. – And I mean, it’s an incredible thing.
It’s very convenient. The use of public transport has increased enormously through that. – [Audience Member] It’s actually, for the city of Vienna, it’s 365 years, but for the whole country it’s about 800 euros. My mother has it and she’s retired and she uses it just in her free time to visit new cities.
And she’s absolutely in love with that ticket, so yeah. – Thank you very much for your comment. – I’ve lived in Canada, Europe, and Japan without a car, and I didn’t need them because I took public transit everywhere. – [Audience Member] We need people- – I took the L.A. Metro here once, I’m…
Props to you for going, it’s scary, especially as a… I mean, as a woman, honestly, I was very concerned for my safety, and I don’t… At least alone, I won’t do it. I don’t feel comfortable doing it again. – I have to admit that, in my now 40 years or more in L.A.,
I’ve never used public transportation. You can boo me. Boo me, boo me. – [Audience Member] And it’s a choice. – [Jacquelyn] It is. – Well, I, yeah… I was very embarrassed about this because one of our panelists, Michael Oberstein, who’s here somewhere, he used public transportation to go from his hotel to here yesterday and he goes back with public transportation.
He makes a habit out of it because he’s interested in learning about the public transportation system. But I completely agree with you. It’s not the same in Europe as it is here. Is much nicer in Europe. – Yeah, yeah. – You could probably really make a step- – Give the person behind you
A chance to ask a question. – [Meredith] Hello, my name is Meredith McCarthy. I am wondering, if the goal… We need to reduce vehicle miles traveled, how do we get single occupancy out of the equation? And I understand that if we switched to something like congestion pricing, instead of adding lanes,
Instead of building in the infrastructure, could move us really rapidly. And so I was wondering, besides congestion pricing, are there other policies that would work to move the system in the direction that we need to go? Public transportation would be so much safer if more people were in the car. – That’s right.
– It’s scary because there’s three people. – Definitely a question for Marlon, I think. – Let me… To kind of hit the highlight. Congestion pricing would be fantastic. I mean, you wanna think holistically, but one of the best things we could do would be to have a good congestion pricing scheme
Where people are paying more if they’re driving alone, during congested hours, long distances. I mean, I think we’re getting close to time, so let me just stop there. Huge benefits to congestion pricing. – [Detlof] I’m gonna ask the organizers, the clock says five minutes, but we are here on…
– [Facilitator] You can have five minutes. – Yeah, we still have five minutes? Well, great. We have three more questions. – [Nebojsa] Go ahead. – [Audience Member] Yeah, I had a question in relation to, kind of what was asked a bit earlier. So how many of you guys actually used public transit to come here? Zero. So I’m not saying it’s anything bad, but- – No, it’s bad.
– [Audience Member] I use L.A. Metro all the time and it’s honestly improved a lot. But most people just don’t know about it. The new mayor made a new initiative, it’s completely changed. So I don’t need applause for that, I think that’s just normal, but… The problem is is that you guys look just like the metro board, they all drive in to their cars and they park in downtown. or in their office in, I think they said it’s in Torrance, but one of those two. So the thing is how do we,
I guess, sort of from the top, everyone is telling us we need to use public transportation, we need to bike, we need to do this, we need to do that. But the people that are actually doing it, so it could be you guys, it could be the metro board,
It could be anything, are not following the advice that they’re giving us. So my sort of question is how do we make our leadership more in tune with what is actually going on with the people that are using the systems? Because for me, I could tell you immediately how to improve L.A. Metro,
And honestly I feel like my recommendations will be better than the KPMG consultants they hired who flew in first class, so… – Well, I’d be guilty as charged, so I have no solutions but maybe somebody else. – I mean, a part of- – What would… I mean, I guess question for us would be, what would work as a good nudge for us to use public transportation more? – [Marlon] Well, if I could?
– Sure. – It might be more than a nudge. And this is where, to move it back to kind of research. Our lack of behavioral research, I think, is kind of a scientific issue. A lot of travel behavior looks like it might be very habitual. I am a fan, generally, of the idea
That small nudges might help. I’m getting skeptical as to whether or not transportation- – Works? – How much of the realm is… We may need to think big picture. And big picture is investing. We know what we can do. If the transit system ran on 10-minute frequencies or less alone.
– [Audience Member] It does already, in L.A. 10 minute headways. Which you don’t know that ’cause you don’t ride it, that’s what I’ve been trying to say. – Well- – [Audience Member] It’s a weird- – Let me push back a little bit. It’s not helpful to have us on one side,
Other people on another side. We’re kind of all in this together. It doesn’t run on 10 minute headways everywhere. I mean, the bus system really could be improved. We could have better reliability, station safety is a huge issue. And we really do need a lot of investment
Into all that, into all the supportive infrastructure. So I’d really encourage a big emphasis on that. – [Audience Member] Okay, thank you. – [Detlof] Next person. – [Audience Member] Hi, okay, so my question kind of starts with, I think personally I think about decarbonization and climate change more on a daily basis.
And I think about what I can do. But I don’t see that in other people. I don’t see that in my peers. I don’t see that decarbonization is something that they prioritize. So I guess my question is how can we, and maybe this is a question for more of a therapist,
But how can we change people’s psyches to prioritize decarbonization? ‘Cause I think ultimately that’s something… That’s kind of the core reason why people aren’t… They don’t see the urgency in their everyday lives, so they don’t think it’s really a thing. They don’t really think about it.
So I guess, yeah, how do we change people’s perspectives? How do we change… People are told all the time, this is an urgent, big thing, but still they kind of just turn a blind eye to it. They don’t prioritize doing their part, really. I don’t see it, at least within my generation
As much as I should. So again, how can we change people’s psyche so that they see it as a more urgent issue so that we can actually achieve decarbonization at a- – So that is a great question and I would suggest you ask that question to the next panel, Which is on human behavior, basically, and perception. It is a great question, and there’s no good answer at the moment. Now maybe some of the panelists later on will be able to give you a better answer to that. We’re running out of time, so I’m very sorry.
Do we have a quick question with a quick answer? – [Audience Member] I don’t know that there’s a quick answer, but I certainly have a quick question. – Okay, well that’s good enough. – I noticed that there was a lot of applause and cheering when people said walk more, use more public transit.
I also noticed the people who were cheering and applauding were in their 20s and 30s. – Yeah. – [Audience Member] For some of us, walking even 200 to 300 yards to the bus stop is a trial. For some of us, and I don’t just mean we senior citizens, put yourself in the position of a mother with small children, particularly two small children. I have 18-month-old grandsons.
Public transit isn’t an answer. Walking more or riding in a bicycle isn’t an answer for those people. What is the answer? – Well, we’re at seven seconds from the end. I appreciate the comment. I don’t know whether there was a question there. So I would like to thank the panel. Great panel, very much enjoyed the discussion. Great audience, great questions. I like the fact to have them intermixed in the panel. And there’s more to come. So thank you very much.