Gagan Dhillon: 0:03

The commercial fleet market accounts for roughly around 10 percent of all CO2 emissions that we emit into the atmosphere. And so if we can make progress on that through the software and tools that we're working on and help our customers visualize how much co2 they're offsetting by switching to electric by switching certain routes to electric. That's a pretty compelling value proposition

Tom Raftery: 0:24

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 182 of the climate confident podcast. My name is Tom Raftery. And before we kick off today's show, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of this podcast's, amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping this podcast going, and I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about climate. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable with options starting as low as just three years or dollars. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee and your support could make a huge difference in keeping this show going strong. To become a supporter. You simply click on the support link in the show notes of this, or any episode or visit. Tiny url.com/climate pod. Now in today's episode, I'm talking to Gagan Dhillon from Synop and we're talking about the electrification of transportation specifically, though around things like school buses and drayage. And in upcoming episodes, so next week I'll be talking to Shravan Kumar from Gramener about urban heat islands and how we can manage those. The following week Dev and Xavi from Mittulabs will be talking about rice. So if you like rice, that's a good one. The following week again, I'll be talking to Carina Gormley, and we'll be talking about government and policy and how they interact. And the week after that again. I'll be talking to Michael Barnard. And we'll be talking about CCS. So watch out for that one. Okay. But back to today's episode, I mentioned today, I'm talking to Gagan Dhillon. Gagan, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Gagan Dhillon: 2:28

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Tom. I'm excited to be at the Climate Confident podcast. Everybody, my name is Gagan Dhillon. I'm one of the founders, CEO of Synop. And Synop is building software to help commercial fleets all across the globe electrify their assets.

Tom Raftery: 2:45

Okay, superb. And tell me, Gagan, you are the CEO and founder of Synop. What was it that led you to decide to set up Synop? What's the kind of the origin story there?

Gagan Dhillon: 3:02

Yeah, I mean, you know, ever, ever since I was probably in, in college you know, had always had this interest and desire to want to, to build something, want to be able to be a part of something you know, that I could see grow and, and also make sure that it was something that had a, a broader impact on, the world around me and the around and and around us. So, you know, I was working in the world of commercial fleets for a number of years from 2018 to early 2021, and was working with large you know, multinational OEMs. And I realized that, there was this big level of interest in electrifying these big vehicles, like the Class 8 semi trucks, the electric, you know, or at the time diesel buses that all these OEMs had. And I didn't think that anybody was really out there building software that was going to connect a vehicle, a charger, the utility all in one place, which is kind of what you needed for all this to work. And so I kind of had this like ground level view into some of the problems and challenges in this, you know, this industry was going to face. I didn't think the big car companies were going to make that, just knowing my exposure to them and knowing what they were working on. I knew there was an opportunity to start something. And so it was sort of like this perfect perfect timing, if you will, of you know, getting an opportunity, seeing, you know, seeing where, where I can make an impact and knowing that I'd been waiting a long time to do something like this. So myself and my partner, Andrew, who went to high school and college with me we, we took a, you know, we took the swing in the summer of 2021, almost three years ago to start this company. And You know, we've been fortunate enough to get to this point today.

Tom Raftery: 4:45

Okay, well, tell me what it is your company, your platform does, because I've got an EV and I don't have or need a platform for charging it per se. I mean, I have the app on the phone that comes with the, the, the car and I can schedule my charging using that, for example. That's one thing. So I can imagine that's at least part of what Synop does, but I'm sure there's a whole lot more, right?

Gagan Dhillon: 5:16

Yeah. I mean, let's, let's, let's think about it from this perspective. You are a single driver with a single vehicle. And you know, it's, it's pretty easy to be able to find a charger. It's pretty easy to optimize charging schedule, charging around your schedule. Now think about it. If you had a hundred EVs or 200 EVs and you have only a hundred chargers or, you know, 50 chargers. Those EVs are running continuously because these vehicles, these fleets operate, whether it be school buses, class eight semi trucks, delivery vans, they're always running. The number one metric for a fleet is to see is uptime, right? Uptime is how much are my vehicles on the road. And so how do you optimize to make sure that these vehicles A) have enough state of charge at all times to be able to complete the routes that they need to complete. And B) how do you make sure you're not paying extra for the energy that you're using to charge these vehicles, right? So those fundamentally, those are the two problems that we're working to solve from, the first step of our solution. Make sure the vehicle the right vehicle is charged at the right time with the right amount of charge. So that's step one. And so there's a bunch of software optimization that goes into understanding the duty cycle, understanding dispatch times, how much power the vehicle can draw, and then hitting that target state of charge. And then number two, We don't want to pay extra for energy, right? We want to be able to optimize when we charge how much that energy costs us because that ultimately goes into the 2nd, most important metric fleets have, which is TCO or total cost of ownership. So we want to keep that total cost of ownership on par with diesel vehicles. Or in some cases cheaper than diesel vehicles. So at its core, those are the two problems we are solving and set out to solve on day one. There's probably two or three other solutions that we've come up with since then that we can get into that that really enhance the value proposition as well.

Tom Raftery: 7:03

Well, seeing as you brought it up, let's talk about those additional things that enhance the value proposition. Tell me, what are those?

Gagan Dhillon: 7:11

Yeah. I mean, you know, I think the, I think one of the most important ones is being able to and this is very specific to certain use cases, but think of these vehicles as virtual power plants, right? They are pretty significant in battery pack size. They hold a lot of energy. And at times there's downtime. You can use that energy to lessen the strain on the grid. Right? And so that's this concept of vehicle to grid, V2G. And so we've been able to work on and develop our own proprietary software around V2G that enables us to send energy back to the grid from school buses, in a lot of cases. And, you know, last summer we sent back enough energy to power a thousand homes in the US for a month, which is a pretty significant amount of energy, right? And it's pretty cool to be able to do that from a fleet of school buses. So there's the ability for us to lessen the strain on the grid by using that type of use case. There's the ability for the rep fleet to make additional revenue by utilizing that use case. So that's one. It's pretty early still, but it's 1 of the more exciting use cases that we found in the world of fleet electrification. And then the other one that, you know, that I, I think everyone really recognizes is being able to lower the amount of emissions that these diesel vehicles are emitting into the our, our atmosphere. If you think about it, the commercial fleet market accounts for roughly around 10 percent of all CO2 emissions that, we emit into the atmosphere. And so if we can make progress on that through the software and tools that we're working on and help our customers visualize how much co2 they're offsetting by switching to electric, by switching certain routes to electric. That's a pretty compelling value proposition

Tom Raftery: 8:50

Indeed. Indeed. Talk to me as well a little bit about drayage and this is something that people on this, people listening to this podcast may not be familiar with the term. So, I know it's something that Synop are working on. So talk to me a little bit about what it is, first of all, and what it is you're doing for that space.

Gagan Dhillon: 9:40

Yeah, I mean drayage is the is the delivery of goods from essentially the port you know, the ports. So, you know, in Europe, think of the big major ports like the port of, I believe it's the port of Rotterdam, or if you think about the big major ports in the United States, you have the port of New Jersey, the port of Los Angeles, right? So these ports where all the shipping containers come in from all around the world, there's these use cases of these vehicles that are doing the same thing day in and day out, and you can predict really well what they're doing day in and day out because they're, you know, within these confined spaces, or they're within these spaces that aren't far away from the port. And so that's a use case that's really easy to electrify because you can predict how much energy you need. You can predict the duty cycle of the vehicle. And you're seeing a lot of regulation around these ports to require them to electrify. So there's not excess emissions that are just being thrown off by these current diesel vehicles. So this whole concept of drayage, is not something we've invented. Drayage has been around forever. Drayage is, delivery of goods from ports into the warehouses around them, but electrifying that journey is what we've been really focused on, and it's something that we found a lot of success in. You know, we've got a few hundred electric trucks in the Drayage space operating today, the United States that we're helping customers and partners operate and you know, as, as more and more regulation spreads across the US and also the, the globe for electrifying those ports. We think drayage is going to be a pretty significant use case.

Tom Raftery: 11:05

Okay. And the big pressure on shifting drayage from diesel to electric is to reduce the, the pollution around ports, particularly ports have a lot of pollution from the cargo ships, number one, but also from the, these little, they're not a little, but these, these drayage vehicles, which move the containers within the port area. So it's, it's a combination, right?

Gagan Dhillon: 11:32

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, you know, there's already efforts that companies like Maersk and others are undertaking to try and cut the CO2 emissions from the ships themselves, right? You're starting to see companies that deploy sails in some cases on these big, big ships, because that's one way for them to be able to reduce those emissions. But if you think about the port ecosystem, the vehicles that move in and around it are a pretty big contributor to those emissions. Right? And so if we can electrify as much of that as possible, it's going to help that, you know, it's going to only help make an impact on lessening the emissions that are thrown off at ports.

Tom Raftery: 12:07

Yeah. And it, of course, it's noise as well as CO2 emissions, but it's also things like SOx and NOx and particulate matter pollution as well. Right.

Gagan Dhillon: 12:19

Yeah. And, and I think, look, all pollution is pollution is not made equal, right? Like, noise pollution is something that impacts us in different ways, right? Smog and other things that we inhale from a pollution standpoint impacts us in different ways. And so, you know, we have to be able to cut to the core and really understand how can we at least start to make a difference in and around these communities these ports are operating in? And then what does that, from a macro standpoint, have as an impact on the rest of CO2 emissions across the globe? Like, that's, those are, you know, those are the things we really have to focus on.

Tom Raftery: 12:52

Yeah. And you mentioned that diesel trucks and drayage and et cetera they, they account for about 10 percent of global emissions. What's the addressable market like in terms of number of vehicles or I don't know, income per annum, or, you know, what are you, what are you looking to, to get to in Synop in terms, not just in emissions reduction, but in the business scenario.

Gagan Dhillon: 13:18

Yeah, I mean, I think for us, right, like, and just so I understand the question, is it more of like, what type of business are we trying to build, or what is the metric we really care about?

Tom Raftery: 13:27

Let's go with both.

Gagan Dhillon: 13:29

I mean, you know, I think we're, we're, we're looking to build a business as as anyone would be to that, that is truly global at scale, right? Like, truly global at scale and can really make an impact on multiple use cases across this ecosystem of transportation, right? So, for us, we're focused on school buses. We're focused on the drayage application, which is typically semi trucks, and delivery vans, right? Those are the 3 things that we're really, really focused on. And for us to be able to see global scale across those, which we believe we will, that's the type of business we want to build because it's an impact on 3 key parts of transportation, and it's an impact on 3 key areas that we know are electrifying. The 2nd part, you know, the thing that we really care about. I think, you know, CO2 emissions is definitely high up on the list of how many CO2 emissions we are helping our customers offset. You know, we've helped our customers drive over a million miles through electrification already in the, in the three years that we've been around. So that's a pretty cool milestone you know, for, for us. And, and as that more and more happens as more and more of these vehicles become electrified. These routes become more and more longer. That CO2 number just continues to grow. Right? And that the emissions offset number just continues to grow. And I think that's the way we can really measure our impact.

Tom Raftery: 14:47

Nice, nice. Yeah, great. And, talking about school buses, for people who are listening who might be unaware, can you explain why school buses are such a great use case for the vehicle to grid that you mentioned earlier?

Gagan Dhillon: 15:04

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, school school buses run a pretty cyclical routing. When we were all kids, if we lived in a school district that had school buses and we rode that school bus, we're on the school bus the same time in the morning. We're going through the same drive in the morning, the same in the same drive in the afternoon. Right? So we can predict from a fleet optimization standpoint, the use case of that school bus really well. The 2nd part of it is the school buses are pretty big battery packs if you think about it. And so, you know, there's this application of, okay, we can predict the duty cycle. We know how much energy is required. Current technology enables batteries to be able to have that much state of charge to complete these routes successfully. And so it's a, it's a use case that, you know, is pretty, when you think about it, It's like, it's the perfect fleet electrification use case. Right. And for the, for the reasons I mentioned, and then you have this added benefit of, oh, these buses have a lot of time where they're not on the road. And you can use that energy to then supplement other problems, like solving for vehicle to grid, being able to provide extra energy back to the utility when it's in a time of need. So, so we feel like school buses are the perfect you know, the perfect use case for, for those reasons. And you're going to see not only in the US there's a lot of regulation backing a switch to electrification of school buses, but it's also coming in other countries as well.

Tom Raftery: 16:31

Okay, and it, it lines up as well, the times that school buses are not being used very often lines up quite nicely with the peak demand on electricity grids, right?

Gagan Dhillon: 16:45

Yeah, if you think about it, historically, the peak demand on electric grid is usually after 4 pm when everybody's home, right? And so everybody's got the TV on, they've got the AC on, the heater on, whatever the case is. And these school buses are typically sitting idle. So that's one time, one, you know, we typically see V2G events get

scheduled 5: 17:01

30 in the afternoon, and they'll go until 8 pm. Right. And so that's historically kind of the range we've seen, but it's also seasonal, especially here in the US right. And so when I when I say seasonal, V2G events typically happen here in the summer when the temperatures are really hot, there's, you know, a big strain on the grid, and we're sending a lot of energy back to the utilities during summer times, and so that's another time that we really see, you know, these V2G events happen.

Tom Raftery: 17:32

How open are utilities to this? Because I know it'll probably depend from region to region, but are they open to taking electricity back from buses in that kind of environment?

Gagan Dhillon: 17:45

I mean, it depends on you're you're absolutely right. It depends on region to region. It depends on the utility. You know, we, we found that utilities are very excited and very open to this idea and concept but now it's, it's hard to do V2G, right? Because you need to have a vehicle that can send energy back. You need to have a charger that can send energy back and you have to have a utility that can accept that energy through some sort of interconnection. Right. So like all three of these things have to work in harmony. And Oh, by the way, you have to have software that can facilitate this transaction. So there's like three or four layers that, that have to really work for V2G to really work. And then I think utilities are starting to invest in those resources. Utilities are starting to invest in wanting to do these programs. But as I mentioned earlier, It's still very early. Now, utilities are incentivizing certain fleets and certain vehicles to be able to send energy back to the grid. You know, we've had, we've had a utilities offer up to $12,000 a year in credits to fleets for being able to draw power from their vehicles at peak times. Right? So there's certainly a real revenue component to this as well.

Tom Raftery: 18:50

Okay. And are school districts open to this? And is it potentially a revenue generator for them?

Gagan Dhillon: 18:57

School districts are certainly open to it. It's It's definitely a revenue generator for them. I think the market is too early for us to define, like, how much consistent revenue that there is from this but the school districts, the fleets that, you know, the fleets that operate these school buses on behalf of the school districts they're definitely, opting into these programs.

Tom Raftery: 19:18

Okay, cool. Cool. And what are the, the main challenges for fleet managers, not specifically school bus managers or fleet managers, but fleet managers in general for shifting from diesel or internal combustion to electric?

Gagan Dhillon: 19:38

I mean, I think the the number one thing is there's a lot of regulatory requirements that are coming down to make this shift, right? You know, there's been so much that's been happening in the US and also in Europe from a regulatory standpoint, from an emissions standpoint, that requires this switch. Now, over the last few years, battery technology has also reached a point where making the switch is a bit more realistic because these batteries can hold much more power. They can deliver the required state of charge. And they can do this at a cost parity that's either similar to, or less than operating a diesel vehicle, right? So if you put your fleet manager hat on, you're the manager of a district in, you know, whatever school, you know, school district you're operating in, let's say somewhere in the US, you care about this switch because it's lower cost of maintenance, it's lower cost of fuel. This fuel is energy instead of diesel. And the third thing, the kids love these, the drivers love them because it's such a more comfortable experience. Right? And that's something that we really have to pay attention to as well.

Tom Raftery: 20:46

Okay. One, one area that you didn't mention that you're working with is the fleets of taxis. Is that a conscious decision or do you think that's too fragmented a market? Or is there another reason that you're not working with them? But I have to think, I have to think they're a good use case as well for a shift to EVs.

Gagan Dhillon: 21:08

absolutely. You know, and I think taxi companies fall into a lot of the same, a lot of the same use case parameters that school buses fall into. Right. And we, we have a couple of taxi fleet customers. Right or wrong we were focused on some of the big heavy duty vehicles at first. And, you know, the, the taxi companies were sort of still figuring things out. And I think, you know, each taxi company is going a different way. Some of these taxi companies, like the Uber and Lyfts, if we consider them taxi companies. They're not operating their own fleet, but they are incentivizing their drivers to get an electric vehicle and there's reimbursement programs that they're setting up and incentives they are setting up for that driver. Right? So we really can't play a part in that. There are individual fleets that are operating as taxi companies that are looking to electrify, that have their chargers that have their vehicles that they've purchased. We are starting to work with a couple of them. I think taxis is a big use case over time in electrification. I think there needs to be more infrastructure investment for taxi fleets to really take off in these big cities in electrifying. But you have great companies like Rebel that are doing that here in the US right. You have a lot of other companies that are looking to do that across other parts of the country as well. So, you know, taxi's definitely something that you know, we're newer to, but a use case for, we're just as excited about.

Tom Raftery: 22:23

Okay. There are a lot of vested interests in the transportation sector who don't want electrification. What, what misconceptions are out there about EVs sometimes put out there purposely, sometimes not? What misconceptions are out there about EVs and the shift to electrification and transportation that you'd like to address?

Gagan Dhillon: 22:51

Sure, I mean I think uh we should stay away from who's putting these misconceptions there it'll get us both in trouble. But you know, certainly. Certainly misconceptions you know, for whatever reason get planted. I think the biggest one is range and anxiety, right? Everyone's always talking about range and anxiety, and you're not going to have enough range to get this done. And your truck is going to be on the road. The kids are going to be stranded in a school bus because they ran out of charge. Look in three years, over a million miles driven, we've never had a vehicle run out of range, right? We've never had a vehicle lose power because it doesn't have enough state of charge. So I think that's always the biggest misconception. I don't know where this came from. I think it's probably somebody in a Tesla a few years ago, probably ran out of range or some EV. And then they just like pop this fear into everybody's mind. Right? So range and anxiety is always the first one that we always have to help people sort of get comfortable with if they have some sort of, you know, a mistrust with it, if you will. But then, you know, I think the other the other 2 that always come up is the cost, right? They, they think these are more expensive to operate. They think that it's going to be more expensive to maintain. But if you look at the TCO, and I'm going to only talk about the school bus segment over time, our customers have seen it is about 5 cents per mile cheaper to operate an electric school bus, everything in, than it is a diesel school bus of the same equivalent, right? And that's before you really start to do more energy optimization, you start to do more and more optimization on the route. 5 cents a mile adds up over a year, right? And so, the cost challenge is something that we always have to navigate. And then the third one is availability of chargers. Availability of charging infrastructure. I would say this one's a little bit more founded at times because infrastructure still has some catching up to do with the industry, but you are seeing big investments by not only governments, but by big corporations to make sure that that infrastructure is in place for, you know, for these electric vehicles. As they're electrifying on their routes.

Tom Raftery: 24:53

And you mentioned energy optimization there, and it's not something we've. dug into yet. Tell me a little bit about that, how you're helping companies there, because my understanding is it's around variability of rates for charging. So, typically, I want to think between, I don't know, for the, the utility company that I'm using, there's a three cent per kilowatt hour charge if you charge between midnight and 7am. So, it's a little bit more I'm assuming it's something like that. Variable rates where it's more expensive if you're trying to charge between 5 p. m. and 7 p. m. say, versus if you charge that kind of midnight to 7 a. m., it's a lot cheaper.

Gagan Dhillon: 25:37

Yeah. So, so when we talk about energy optimization, what we're talking about is this concept of rates. So, you know, Hey, if I plug in my school bus at 4 PM, but our software and the utility recognizes that the best time to charge and the cheapest time to charge is between 10 PM and 4 AM. We won't start charging that vehicle until 10 pm, right? So that's the first concept of energy optimization, which is make sure that I'm not paying for more, you know, more for energy than I need to be. That's the first step in energy optimization, but perhaps the more important step in energy optimization is this concept of, curtailment and demand response. So what does that mean? Every utility provides different parameters that that you can have for how much energy you can use. So, if I, I'm going to put my hat on and say, hey, I'm a, I'm a taxi fleet company. I have built a charging depot in the middle of Chicago, Illinois, right? I can charge my vehicles there at any time, but. I know from the utility and I know from software that I use, which could be set up, that from 4 p. m. to 10 p. m. every day, I can only use 10 kilowatts of power. Any other time I can use 50 kilowatts of power, but from 4 p. m. to 10 p. m. I can only use 10 kilowatts of power because that's how much energy the utility has you know, allotted for my particular location, if you will. So that's the second part of energy optimization that's really important is even if I plugged in all my vehicles and they're all charging as soon as 4 p. m. hits, that charging rate is going to drop from 50 to 10, and it's going to stay at 10 until 10 PM. Right? So that's a really important part of energy optimization, because if I go over that 10, you know, that 10 kilowatts you know, site limit that I have, then I'm incurring demand charges, I'm being hit with extra costs, and I don't want to do that. The utility doesn't want to do that to me. That's the second most important piece about energy optimization.

Tom Raftery: 27:41

Okay, and I'm guessing as well, A third part might be that you want your fleet of vehicles, whatever they are, to be at the state of charge they should be at, or their, fleet manager wants them to be at, at a particular time so that when the driver arrives at the car it's at 80 percent or 90 percent or 100 percent or whatever it's set to be for that driver for that day.

Gagan Dhillon: 28:07

Yeah, that's also, that's also part of it, right? That we, we don't think that's more energy optimization. That's more vehicle optimization, right? And so, you know, we're hitting the required state of charge. We, we, we sort of see that as vehicle optimization because Charging the battery too much or charging the battery to full all the time is going to destroy the life of that battery over time, right? So we, we, we sort of categorize that as vehicle optimization, but it's just as important, right? As energy optimization. So we have charging optimization, vehicle, and energy optimization is sort of like the three pillars of what we focus on.

Tom Raftery: 28:40

Okay, cool, cool. Do you have any success stories you can point to?

Gagan Dhillon: 28:47

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a number and we have to think about, we really have to think about what the definition of success is, right? Right. I mean, I think for us, the definition of success is uptime is, is the, the, the first one and you know, our, our customers that operate. So, Synop today has over 5, 000 assets on the road that we're managing for customers, right. That, that are in the field deployed. And we're running on 99. 5 percent uptime across those assets, right? So that's the number one success metric that we really care about. And, And then the second, you know, the second one I think is certainly that V2G, the work that we've done, right, which is powering 1000 homes in the US. They're sending back enough energy to power 1000 homes in the US for a month. That's pretty big deal. That's pretty big number. You know, pretty big number. We don't think anybody else has done that. You know, that that amount of discharging across you know, across the US and this summer we're on track to do even more than that. And that's a big success for our school bus customers , our electric fleet customers in that segment. And then, you know, I think the third one is, and some of these we can talk about. Some of these are companies that we're partnered with, you know, prefer to share on their own. But having driven, I sit, I share that we drove over a million miles for, you know, over the last few years for our customers, that true number is over 2 million. We have a single customer that's already electrified a million miles of their own, you know, fleet. So for us, that's a pretty big, a pretty big tale and a pretty successful tale as well.

Tom Raftery: 30:15

Nice, nice, nice. Where is this all going? I mean, I know we're very early in V2G yet, and I know it's challenging for the reasons you laid out. You need chargers that can do bi directional charging. You need vehicles that can do it. And then you need the proper use case, like school buses is an ideal one. But you also need school boards who are amenable and utilities who are amenable. So that's challenging. Where is, where is the future going for fleet electrification? Will V2G play a large part of it or will it be very niche? And if we just set that aside for a second, what else is the, is coming in the future of vehicle electrification or fleet electrification?

Gagan Dhillon: 31:00

I mean, let's, let's just think about where the future is going. Right. And I think looking at where this is going, we need to look at where on the personal auto side, it went right. And that was Tesla started this sort of movement and all these other car companies from consumer pressure that had to follow that movement. And now every single tier one OEM that is in been around for over a hundred years has a very strong lineup of electric vehicles, right? That are appealing to us as mass consumers. That same thing is going to happen and is happening across the heavy duty segment of the markets, right? And, and so you're seeing the Volvos, the Daimlers, the Volkswagen groups of the world develop these, you know, these big school buses now that are electric, diesel trucks that are now shifting to electric. They're redoing their entire supply chains to follow this demand of electrification. So we think that the acceleration is just happening, right? This is an industry that is still 12 to 24 months away from really, really hitting its stride from a sense of scale. And we anticipate that over 50 percent of all vehicles that are in a fleet will be electric by 2030, right? Those are the metrics that everyone is following. Those are the, the, you know, the targets that all the OEMs have as well from a production standpoint. So we're still a number of years away from this industry really being where it's humming. Electric vehicles are not, you know, this sort of, Oh, it's cool. It's actually the norm, right? And diesel vehicles are starting to be phased out. That's where we see this going. Now, when we think about V2G, that use case is still very early. V2G is going to live well in the school bus world. It's going to live well in the school bus segments. There's still other applications that have to be defined and developed and tested with, you know, cars that you and I might own with other, you know, big trucks with delivery vans. Those, those use cases of V2G still need to be developed and still need to be defined. So that's still very, very, I would say. It's still in a niche, and that niche is school buses. It's not something else. So, you know, when we think about V2G, it's certainly exciting. It's certainly something that we're investing more and more development time into, but we have to also understand there's one segment of this market that it really applies to right now, and we need to figure out what other use cases develop over time.

Tom Raftery: 33:24

Fair. Fair, fair. What actions can people listening to this take to support the transition to electric fleets in their own communities and industries?

Gagan Dhillon: 33:36

I think the biggest thing anybody can take in any endeavor they want to, they want to go on or advocate for is educate themselves on the benefit of that. Right. And understand the benefit of that. It's you know, understanding the cost of ownership of these is much lower than it is for diesel vehicles, understanding the benefits from a health perspective. It's going to have in our communities and then advocating for that, whether it's at a fleet or business you work at, if it's through regulatory or legislature work that you're able to have access to, but being an advocate for this is the most important thing that we can do as individuals as people, because the more we advocate for this, the more CO2 emissions we're able to take off out of the atmosphere, the better, you know, the better environment we create for ourselves. I think it's education and it's advocacy that really needs to happen from an individual perspective.

Tom Raftery: 34:30

Very good. Very good. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Gagan. Is there any question I did not ask that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Gagan Dhillon: 34:46

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the things we, we probably didn't cover is sort of the, the regions that this is happening in, right? Where, where is this happening and, and, and where is it important that this happens, right? So if we, if we think about it, Right now, Europe and North America are certainly leading the charge in electrification. Right. But if we think about historically where a lot of, you know, pollution has has happened for a lot of the, you know, the, the world is continuing to develop and, you know, there's an opportunity South America and Asia where there's. You don't, you're not going to have to go undo all these, you know, like this already existing massive set of infrastructure. You can, as those companies invest in modernization as countries in South America or Asia invest in more and more infrastructure, they should start with electrification, not start with diesel and then switch to electrification. The technology is already there for them to forget entirely about making moves in diesel infrastructure, start with electrification. And really go from there and start to have an impact on their local environments as well. So I think the regionality is something that's important because this is still very focused on developing countries, right? Like, and that's, I'm sorry, and developed countries is where it's very focused, but there's other nations, other parts of the world where having electrification, it's just as important as you know, as it is in North America and Europe. So that's something that I would, you know, yeah, that I would share as well.

Tom Raftery: 36:17

The, the only caveat I would throw in there is that while we're speaking of Asia, China is probably ahead of Europe and the US in terms of electrification of fleets. But apart from that, yeah, there are other parts of Asia, which are still very far behind. Cool.

Gagan Dhillon: 36:33

Absolutely. Absolutely. China's doing a great job.

Tom Raftery: 36:36

Yeah. Yeah. Great, Gagan. That's been fascinating. If people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Gagan Dhillon: 36:45

Yeah, I'm always available on you know, I, I, I guess LinkedIn is the most professional place to contact me, you know, to, to LinkedIn, Gagan Dhillon. Always, always keep an eye out on that. You can visit synop at synop.AI. So S Y N O P dot AI. And always happy to reach out from there. But appreciate the audience. Appreciate everybody taking the time to, to, to listen to more about what we're doing. And, and you know, I also want to thank you, Tom, for you know, having me be a guest on Climate Confident.

Tom Raftery: 37:15

Yeah. No, no, absolutely no problem. It's a, it's a, it's a topic that I have a strong interest in electrification of transportation. So no, it was a pleasure for me to have this conversation, Gagan. So thank you for, for coming on the podcast.

Gagan Dhillon: 37:29

Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Tom Raftery: 37:32

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.