How to Know if your EV transport is a match made in heaven

This episode is sponsored by DriveItAway. Whether you’re looking to rent, buy, or simply test out an EV, DriveItAway puts you in the driver’s seat. Visit driveitaway.com for more details. OTC: “DWAY”

Episode Highlights:

 

(0:00) – Introduction

(0:35) – Episode beginning

(0:54) – John’s background

(2:20) – What’s important to know when transporting an EV?

(5:30) – The “EV Roadtrip”

(8:32) – Dispelling EV myths in auto transport

(11:22) – Episode wrap-up, how to connect with John

Links

Connect With John Robertson

Transcript

Elena: John Robertson is here and I’m so excited to see you and meet with you and to interview you, John, how are you this afternoon?

John: I am great. How are you?

Elena: Excellent. Well catch up the listeners on what you are doing today and a little bit of your background in automotive.

John: Sure, no, that’s a long and sordid tale, as I’m sure you can imagine. I literally started well in college at an automotive manufacturer. So I’ve been engaged in the auto industry my entire career, either in one fashion or another. At one point I was fortunate enough to travel the world in the auto industry is an ISO 9000 auditor. Not everyone might be familiar with that term in this industry, but it’s the quality assurance role within automotive manufacturing. So spent a lot of time in automotive manufacturing and eventually at some point in my career pivoted into sales and call centers and eventually into transport where I’ve spent almost the last 15 years in the transportation of basically finished car logistics secondary move market as well as primary move market with asset based carriers as well as currently what’s your broker now broker base carrier and actually have watched the advent of EVs. As from the days we first moved the very first Tesla and actually left it sitting outside gen one and a cold minus 20 degree Detroit parking lot and killed several batteries that had to be replaced all the way to today, where as I mentioned, you Elena, we just recently sent a sales crowd on all EV dealer tour, which was kind of fun, too.

Elena: Yeah, I love that real world stories of EVs in the wild, but first let’s talk about as you had mentioned about that Tesla battery getting filled in those sub zero temperatures. There are differences that need to be considered when you are transporting an EV. If you can break it down for us, John, what are some of those differences and what’s really important for folks to know?

John: Sure, I think the biggest thing you know when you’re transporting an EV probably the number one thing to recognize is that there isn’t really a huge difference. There’s a little bit of a phobia in the industry today amongst carriers where they’re concerned and you know, I literally I don’t know if I told you the story, Elena, it’s a funny one but I literally had a customer who was purchasing a class eight EV, which is you know, the latest and greatest right as a requirement. They told us that to transport this EV, which is going to go on a very large truck of course because itself is a large truck still don’t get into the details. They let us know that that vehicle that was going to do the transport needed to have a charging unit on it. Now I have always been one of those people that you know, I think I know everything but when somebody tells me something I questioned myself and say do I really know everything? Or do I not know everything? So I literally reached out to the manufacturer of the class eight vehicle and said guys, the customer who bought this vehicle from you says I need to have a charging unit on my transport unit and they basically said no, you don’t like Actually no. Yeah, no, no, that’s it then they kind of got a chuckle out of it. And in the reality is that you know, a lot of the drivers, a lot of the transporters even the customers that have bought these things get worried about oh, I’ve got to transport it. Number one, it’s gonna weigh so much more. Well, it weighs a little bit more it does I mean, that’s the reality is depending on the vehicle and we tend to 20% more than a standard vehicle overall you know, a large car hauler can haul 80,000 pounds total weight, and the truck itself weighs 40 that makes 40 worth of cars they can carry so do the math, and maybe I’m carrying seven EVs instead of you know, eight combustion engine vehicles right so there’s there’s a little difference there, which drives a little bit of cost. But the reality is you don’t need a charger. The reality is they don’t need to be fully charged. I’ve run into that to where the driver will call our dispatch department, our carrier coordinators, and they’ll say, Well, I can’t pick up the EV and we’re like, Well, why can’t you pick up the EV and they’re, well, they have to be fully charged in order for me to load them otherwise, it’s not going to last three days between Nevada and Ohio. Or like, no, no, it’ll last about three months on 40% charge so you’re good, don’t worry, you know, and all that education piece so I wouldn’t say there’s as big a difference in transporting them is there is a bigger difference in the education of people that are transporting them to understand and then last but not least, the only part that’s a little funky about them is because they are all electronic controls. You do have a 12 volt battery, you do have the regular battery and if the 12 volt battery does die and you lose some of those controls, they may be harder to get into neutral in order to steer and unlock the steering column and things like that which can make them a little more difficult to load than a regular unit that you might be able to put into neutral without the battery. So there’s minor little issues there. But other than that, pretty much the same.

Elena: Like you said the big E word which is education and getting this education out to the masses I think is another way for folks to feel more comfortable doing more things with EVs. So I can’t wait any longer. I need to know the story. I need to know in full detail the story of where you sent some of your folks on an EV road trip. How did it go?

John: It went well. Now this was not a minor road trip. Okay, they left from Boca Raton where our headquarters are headed up through Tampa, all the way around to Dallas all the way to the east out to South Carolina and then all the way back through Charlotte and all the way back down to Boca so they were gone in about four days. It was all in a in a nice Tesla. They enjoyed the ride very much i quizzed them before they left I said listen, I said there’s a couple of things that I know from our sponsorship drive across America race and everything and watching all those specials which you were you know, that was just a huge event. I said so when you get charged anxiety, I said I want you to call me you know I said when you get to because I want to hear it in your voice. I want to hear the urgency of you know where it says we’ve got 27 miles to go and the nearest charging station is 33. So you know we rolled the windows down and turn the air conditioner off in order to save like Guys Guys Guys doesn’t work that, you know, but it’s so funny, and it was so real to hear it in their voice. And of course, the good news is it was a Tesla, you know, Tesla has the largest network of charging stations still so they were never in that big anxiety where they’re searching for a lot of the third parties that are still bringing their products online and so in the Tesla environment it was a little safer. We did do an interesting thing where we experimented with the the overall cost of driving the vehicle on the tour. It was in fact actually less expensive to charge the Evie It was nice our rental car company I’m trying to avoid brand names. Our rental car company unfortunately didn’t do a great job of telling us that they were going to send us a bill for all the charging at the very end of the trip. And the meters all said zero when the guys charge so they’re merrily charging along thinking that there’s no charge and all of a sudden we get a big bill at the end of the trip. So that’s that’s a learning point. They really should have let us know that there was going to be a big charge. Maybe it was somewhere in the fine print no one read but we got the big charge at the end of it and at first we were like oh my gosh, you know it’s 400 and some dollars charge on top of the you know, it’s more than the rental car was and whatever and then we did the mileage. Well, what’s the price of gas today? We actually did better with the EV than we would have if the guys had been filling the tank. So it was actually a good exercise there too. And then and then on top of that all the goodwill that they got driving an EV into dealerships right because even though the EVs are out there even though most people have seen him and everything it was always interesting for the guys to drive in and in a dealership and have some of the sales guys at the dealerships and such come out and check it out. And how are you doing and how’s the trip and you know, all that good stuff. So a lot of fun. A lot of lessons. Like I said, My guys are a little hesitant to do it again. They’re kind of like maybe next time we’ll take a regular car because I think that you know in their heads that anxiety thing, bit them a little bit even though I warned them, but I think they’ll we’ll see. We’ll see what happens next time. It’s it was a lot of fun.

Elena: So going back to auto transport and dispelling myths because you’re really good at this, John.

John: One of the things I’m seeing from the auctions and from some of the manufacturers is that they’re really needing to come out with you know, the system that rates vehicles and vehicle conditions and everything. And so there’s a lot of talk nowadays about how they’re going to rate the battery. So how does the battery get rated when that unit rolls down the line at you know, 120,000 miles and it’s two years old? Well, is it two years old that makes the battery bad? Is it 120,000 miles that makes it better? How do we rate that battery so that when dealers are purchasing those vehicles on an auction, whether it’s virtual or live, and then what kind of assurances are they going to get from manufacturers so I’ve also heard a little bit about that, that manufacturers are going to come out and be able to I hesitate to use the word warranty because I don’t think it’s really a warranty but kind of a stand behind the longevity of a battery that comes down the line. I think that’s a big step in it. I think the other thing too is that the technology is changing so quickly on them. So you know, year over year over year, the both the reliability and the reliability, the features and the amount of warranty work that needs to go on and the fixes and things I at least remember when they first came out it seemed like electronic vehicles had a recall every three weeks as because it was new technology you know it’s not a function of anyone doing anything appropriately. It’s just a matter of that’s what happens when something new hits a market like that is the vehicles get more recent model years obviously a lot of that gets a lot better, just like it did with combustion engines and just like it did with all those things as that industry grew transporting from the auctions. Yeah, it’s a little bit of a concern. I think, you know, a lot of people don’t still understand that there’s a 12 volt battery in an electric vehicle that runs everything just like it does in a gas engine. So you know, there is a little bit of ignorance around that and you know, oh, the battery’s bad. Well, first question which battery you know, if it’s terrible battery, it’s 130 bucks and you’re up and running. If it’s the big battery, it’s you know what, 3000 4000 $5,000 to fix that battery, so a lot of that and then last but not least I think in the used car industry, one of the things that we’re going to need to pay special attention to and there are some big companies out there that might have three letter acronyms for the name that start with a and end with B that have come up with a way to do this, and that is a lot more undercarriage inspections because the location of that battery is conducive to carrier damage. So a lot of times that undercarriage can be a little bit low and if we hit the ramps incorrectly, you can actually damage the undercarriage, which is right where the battery is. So that gets very important when you’re looking at a used vehicle. Especially if that vehicle has been transported a few times. Is there some damage that’s done on neath there that could hurt the reliability to vehicle so under carriage gets real important.

Elena: Absolutely. See this is why I love talking to you John’s I always learn something ever I talk to you. So no, that is really interesting. That’s a great point. Before I hit record on this episode, we were chatting a little bit before and all the conferences that we’re going to be seeing each other at So John, you’re going to be sick of me in March and April. I’m sorry about your luck there. For just to keep the listeners up to date. Where are you going to be speaking in the next couple months and how can folks connect with you?

John: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. Thanks, Elena, and I’m looking forward to seeing you at these conferences. It’s always good. So we always have so much to talk about. So I’m sure we’ll catch up. I will be at the CAR conference at the end of March. We’ll be doing a panel with Jay and his team from ATI Auto Transport Intel which is a great, great show and we’re going to be talking about transport and some of the some of the things that are going on in the industry there as usual. So that’ll be fun, and we will actually have a booth at the car conference as well. So anyone that wants to chat and stop by and talk about technology and talk about EVs we will be happy to do that. Also, we will be at the Auto Intel Summit in April. That’d be fun. I’m gonna get daring here. I’m gonna draw back the curtains on transportation, not just for EVs, but for everything. And we’re going to talk about the various components of the transportation industry and what’s the difference between a TMS and dispatcher and what’s the difference between a broker and the shipper and the carrier and what’s an owner operator and by the way, which one of those people are holding the insurance it’s going to fix this vehicle if it gets damaged. You might want to know that before you book your transport. So if you want to hear about what’s going on behind the curtains, that’ll be our presentation at Auto Intel Summit. We’re really looking forward to that.

Elena: I love it. John, I am really looking forward to your session at Auto Intel. So I appreciate your time. Thank you.

John: Thank you, Elena. Always a pleasure to talk to you soon.