Engines, EVs and Espresso: Ep 14 - Charged Up

In this week’s episode of Engines, EVs, and Espresso, we talk about the new Dark Roast coffees we’re drinking, their characteristics, and what role natural oils play in coffee beans' texture, flavor, and shelf life. Allie gives us a view into her coffee adventures in Porto, and Molly gives a full debrief of her exciting escapades at the Chevrolet Detroit GP (including a ride that she took in an actual Indycar!). We end the episode by discussing the landmark deal on EV charging between Tesla and GM and Abby tells us how it will revolutionize the future of EV charging infrastructure in North America.

Tell us what you think, and like always, stay curious and stay caffeinated.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:10

Welcome to this week's episode of engines EVs and espresso, the podcast about caffeine machine and all things in between. And Ally's here too. And I'm here to actually hear because last week, not none of us were recording last last week. We were all scattered in different places. But yeah, last week I was at the Spanish GP wrangling ed for a lovely interview. And Molly was in Detroit like riding in an IndyCar which is crazy. Drivers team owners. Right in IndyCar It was great. I have so much more coming to sitting in my drafts. So that's gonna be dumped 18 gigs of data onto my external drive that I filmed so I got a lot. What is everybody drinking this morning? Well, I'm drinking yourselves. Yes, because it is early but I did have a new bean this week as provided by my Bing dealer aka my worst influence a colleague of mine who is like my coffee partner in crime and it's from Theodorus coffee. I don't know what one it is, but he goes, I hear I remember you like dark roast here and hands me a Ziploc bag. So we trade coffee and ziplock bags or like I actually have like little like containers now that are two ounces. So like two ounces is like what I know he likes to grind when he makes coffee. And so I give him a little two ounce containers now of beans but we trade beans and people look at us like we're insane because we'll just like walk up to each other in the office. Don't care who's around and just be like here we go and hand each other a Ziploc bag of beans. And so he gives me this dark rose from Theodorus coffee and if you've not checked out the doors, they're really good just has a really great ecosystem and a really great relationship with all of his farms. And the beans he puts out are amazing. I really liked the barrel he does and then I have a geisha coming to try from him and I'm really excited but he gave me this dark roast. Yes. I had it the other day it was delicious. And I like it because it wasn't super oily. And anybody that drinks Dark Roast know our dark roast. I'm gonna say is it do you want moist then Dark Roast beans get oily because you have to roast them for so long to make them a dark roast that it expels more of the natural bean oils then you wind up with this like really oily roasted bean I hate really oily Dark Roast I'm like well off if I wanted beans in oil and if I wanted an oil I would go eat Mediterranean beans out of like the can with like the oil and like the seasonings and everything. So this is not super oily, and it's absolutely roasted toasty delicious. And I will be ordering a bag I really wish privacy Abby's visceral reaction to the constant use of the word oily. Talking about these beans, it's 730 in the morning, I'm just so sad that she has to be awake and then finally rushed. I think this is my moist I moving on on that. Oils. I will call it just oils because that's better for my brain. I also got two new beans this week. Both are Peruvian. I didn't want both of them to be Peruvian, but it ended up being. The interesting part was that I went to a new coffee roasters here in Tom called Texas coffee traders. They're the biggest Austin specialty coffee roaster. They're very economical. Actually, eight ounces was only seven and a half dollars, which is very cheap. For specialty coffee. They directly get it from the farm. Even though this was their medium roast, everything felt like it's on a little bit of the darker side because they do an air roasting technique versus a drum roasting. The first time I've seen beans have this level of fats and acids and oils just actually onto the surface, even though it's a medium roast and I saw a couple of their darker roast and yields like it's drenched in the fats and oils. So we talked about last week or a couple of weeks ago about how coffee goes bad pretty quickly if it's on the darker side because the oils have already come to the surface and I think that causes to the ranch certification, which James Hoffman's how to make best coffee at home the book that he recently released talks about it a little bit more. That's been one of my coffee learnings this week. That oils up to the surface same as Molly said, is the one of the biggest part So why Dark Roast Coffee goes back quickly. The other one that I'm drinking is also a Peruvian rose from another coffee roaster called super thin coffee here and why I already got coffee, like two different bags of coffee in the same week was, you know how we talk about this five to 30 day or per James Hoffman. It's like an eight to 30 day is your kind of mark of drinking coffee. I was drinking the first Peruvian roast at the one day mark, I actually had stomach pains. We talk about the beans D gassing because of the co2 that's coming off from the beans and to a certain point that the flavors are can be broken down properly. So that's another part. Don't lay your beans be really fresh that came out of the roaster the day before. It can just not be good for your body as well. So I don't know when this became a health podcast. But yeah, oily beans. Ah, I said that word. gassiness whoo. Oh, hey, we're talking about uncomfortable topics. Hot, hot, hot girls have tummy troubles in all three of us. Oh, gosh, it's so true. So I have to Peruvian beans. I'm traveling back for work starting next week. I don't know how I'm gonna finish them in 30 days, but we're gonna give it a try. Ali, what are you drinking? Well, it is not the morning time for me. I am in Portugal.

Currently it is 2: 6:36

18pm As we speak, and I have already had my little shot of espresso this morning. So espresso was a very big deal here. And I'm very much enjoying kind of soaking that up. Also, dark robes are a big thing here. So I've been enjoying wandering over to the coffee shops and getting my little espresso in the morning. If anybody's ever been to Porto or Lisbon in Portugal right now, you will know that walking for more than five minutes is basically hiking because it's the healthiest place in the world. It's right along not in the world. But you know it's in the running. And my favorite coffee shop here so far happens to be at the top of like five storeys of stairs. Always trying to do because they're very cool. It's very like the little place and it has this really gorgeous view. And I'm always trying not to be like wheezing by the time I get up there because like the locals are like nothing it's like no problem whatever old like old people are doing it like everybody's doing it and they're totally fine and I'm like three steps up and I'm like but then the coffee you know, re energizes me it's a good cycle and I'm you know, trying to get back in shape I guess. So I have one on one hand I've had great coffee on another hand I've really learned exactly how much like better shape I need to get in. So you know achievements all around Europe will give you the best food and also put you into shape. I remember my month in Italy having espressos every day and pasta for every meal and I lost way so yeah, the walking around is such a big part of the culture that I think it just helps movement in good ways for our body. So I am glad you're enjoying that time. You have 18 gigabytes of content that you captured the Detroit IndyCar Grand Prix from last week. Yes. Tell us tell us about that. In less than 18 minutes. I had the time of my life. It was less chaotic than we thought it was going to be but still very chaotic because that track is bumpy and that track is tight. Um, I went on a track walk Thursday with the arrow McLaren team and I watched Tony Kanaan stand over a bump on the track with Gavin ward. And the look on his face said God I'm so glad I'm not doing this and I'm pretty sure he said that at some point to the news like I'm glad I'm not racing. That track was brutal. So like the takeaway that I learned from talking to a lot of people was the track surface was not what they expected. So like we knew what the track configuration was going to be but they got there in the city of trade ground the hell out of the track. So there's a lot Rafi or a lot bumpier and a lot different, like surfaces so grip was really questionable and it was really really bumpy because the manhole covers in Detroit like to sink. There's a lot of those on the track. So it was wild. It was so much fun. I talked to so many people people thought I was a spy. I kind of learned that they're not used to creators and like influencers being like technically minded and so like we were talking to Firestone and they're giving us like the spiel of like will Firestone Tire tour and is Question about grinning. The guy who puts the tire down and looks at me and goes, Are you sure you're not a spy for Michelin? And I'm like, No, like I just I'm curious about tire grading and how you model for it and how you go like grading. The tire sucks. If I run it long enough, it goes fine. Again, like I want to know how you guys approach to how you understand that. There's like, let me go get you an engineer. And then Marcus's Erickson's team. I think they thought I was a spy as well because I was standing in the garage and I pointed out to like in front of the garage in the paddock pointed out to somebody, Hey, see the turbo exhaust like the charge air exhaust line on the Honda. It's packaged differently than the Chevrolet. See how it's tighter on the Honda. Where's the Chevrolet stuck out more? This guy's like working furiously on Marcus's car doing like a set down. His head snaps up. And he glares at me. And then it continues to walk around the car does not take his eyes off of me. And then he's like talking to somebody and it's like staring me down until I walked away. So it was kind of interesting. It was I was like, oh no, oh, no, this is terrible. And then like I just talked to Mike shank, which is really fun because I'm a sports car girly as well. So like we talked about like fuel mileage, and then like, set up and sat down, which was I didn't know there was a term for it. Like he taught me something which is really cool. And then drivers were great. I also got to go on a two seater, which was so freakin fun. Fulfill your suit face helmet balaclava, the whole nine yards in IndyCar bucket list item for me, I have broken my all time land speed record. So previously, the fastest was 137 miles an hour with Simon patch No, in a CTS V on the old Detroit course at Belle Isle, I have now gone 100 Close to 160 based on what they were saying somewhere 151 60 On the long straight at Detroit, which is actually almost as long as the longest straight and IndyCar. So that was wild. And like you think you know what's going to happen and then you don't. So like I knew that getting in, I was going to have to like brace my core to not get thrown around. Because that was like they tell you that and like conventional car Hot Laps like you like clench your abs and like really bracing your core to keep yourself like stable. That's part of why drivers need good core strength. So like they can react in the corners. So like I knew that but then like, nobody tells you, you're not gonna be able to breathe. So like, they strap you in. They're already like strapped and really tight. And you get the helmet balaclava on all that and you're like, alright, it's already hard to breathe. And then you start to pull G's in the corners. And you're like, I can't breathe, because somebody's sitting on my chest is what it feels like. So like, you can't even get a breath in. By the time you you have a second to one remind yourself to breathe, and to try to breathe. You're already in another corner pulling more G forces. And so I was like I got out the car and was wheezing. Like I went up five steps, sets of steps like ally for a coffee. I was like, like I was gasping and then they were like, well be careful, you can get dizzy. And I was like, no, no, I'm fine. And like, throw myself off the side of the radiator nor the car. Like I was meant to do that all my life. And there was a little stool there like the f1 guys have. And I was filming a tick tock after. And I actually like kept the tape because I thought it was a good take. And then I like we recorded two more takes. And the one take that I first recorded you can see how dizzy I got actually got really dizzy from pulling the G loads and not being able to breathe. And I was like Jesus like this is insane. Like I knew that like cornering and open wheel car was tough. And I mean I was in like an older style like they're not older style, but like it's not like current gen or anything like It's like day to day equipment to Cedar I have so much more respect. And now I just feel like you have so much more empathy and understanding of like what goes on in a race car. It was I thought we were gonna get to go for two laps, I was really sad that we didn't get to because I was the first group which meant we got to do the tire warmup. But it was warm enough that the tires didn't need additional warm up. I was sad. That is a lot. What are your biggest like takeaways from the weekend? Like it could be the race itself. Or it could be like an engineering thing. You notice I know you already talked about a couple of those things. But if there are things that like you would sum it up and like it's competitive if we watch like for qualifying, like no, but like everybody says, like competitive and it's like I'm very well versed in IndyCar. It was like You still didn't know who was gonna get anywhere. Like, you had no idea who was going to make fast 12 to go to Fast Six. Like it was super jumbled to, which was crazy. My other big takeaway was this, like everybody says this and like I already know this because I'm a big IndyCar girl is the openness. So like you see somebody like and you're like, hey, I have a question or Hey, like even a driver, like, like, they'll say, hey, they'll talk to you like, everybody's super nice and open and like hey, I have a question about this. Could you answer this for me and like they will. And then I like orange Gatorade when it's provided by Aaron McLaren. So I hate orange Gatorade normally, but when it's 125 degrees on track and you're dying watching qualifying and you get offered an orange Gatorade by McLaren, which is very on brand, you drink it. You are talking insights, cutting insights, but you're also talking to a gator where Gatorade was invented. She gotta like Gatorade. I like Gatorade. I just don't like orange Gatorade. I am a light. Gatorade only girly. Abby's not mad. She's just disappointed. That's all very disappointed. I love that ally narrates will my faces look like that's something we're gonna keep doing. This is very entertaining for everybody. It's my new hobby, instead of saying, I'm just going to narrate everybody's faces when we're relevant. That is actually pretty good. It's better I think. So I think from the IndyCar weekend, well my take away was, it was very accessible for the crowds to come in, hop on the top of a building and get to see the race, grab food from one of the food vendors, and not even like get full tickets from some of the vantage points, which is so different than street races we see in like other series like Formula One. And it just goes back to say that racing is such a huge ecosystem with so many different entry points for us to kind of go and explore. And not to say that each of these experience does not have a different kind of takeaway by the IndyCar experience really looked very accessible. The race was very interesting. They were gonna say it was over half of the track, you could access without a ticket to watch from and then they did a huge activation in Hart Plaza and like a huge like there were tons of stuff around the track like activations that you could just walk up to without a ticket. And then Hart Plaza. They had this whole Fan Fest didn't even have to have a ticket. It was like vendors. They had a free Steve Aoki concert Saturday night like you could go see Steve Aoki for free, like didn't have to have a race ticket just it was there for the race weekend. Like they did such a good job activating the city around the track to and like you didn't have to have a ticket for certain things which was really really I also thought a was a very interesting track to tie track with tight corners I I almost thought what was going to take over and actually win the race but I didn't see it just like last year. But overall, I thought the race was a fantastic like the last 10 laps of the race really kept you hooked, which is like something you don't get a lot of in Formula One, at least this season. The last time lapse was really really close and it made for really interesting. Yeah, and the tires hung on longer than we thought that was a big factor to the alternates which are the greens which are the white lilies. Those like typically you get a lap or two out of them maybe five if you're pushing it people were doing like 25 laps tents on the go Hoolies, which was long, they were like able to do a long alternate stint, which was interesting because of how rough the track was and how abrasive it was. But the grinding was in the direction of travel. So it wasn't like cross abrasive to the tire it was in the direction of travel. So I think that that helped the tire life. But the tire strategy with those tires lasting as long as they did because the weather was cooler, too, was a huge, huge point was really interesting as well and it definitely affected the overall race strategies because it was going to be a two stopper I think either way, but it like definitely really affected the strategy because people were able to push on on the greens for a while. Hi, again, really interesting Ray saying something I'm adding to the roster of things that I'm watching the season mostly on rather than off, but I will be watching a lot more IndyCar this season live. And it's it's bringing me a lot of joy right now. Yes. Next is to Road America, which is one of my favorite tracks in the world. So it's gonna be Milwaukee. No, no Milwaukee, it is currently. Wisconsin. Correct. Now very lucky. I'm excited to watch. I'm finally not at an f1 race when when IndyCar race is happening, so I'm very excited to watch and pester Molly with all of the thoughts and all of the questions. I've already apologized in advance for that. But more or less, it's fine. You see what we're up for it but don't mind. Yeah, ma is the walking talking racing educator that everybody kind of needs in their life. Should We talk actually about EVs, something we haven't talked about in a long, long time, Evie charge. My day job or something? Yeah, it's almost like both our day jobs or something. But let's talk about the charging partnerships that Tesla has which GM now, which comes after an announcement that they did similarly with Ford. And what does it really knock of the century, it's, it's going to revolutionize evey charging infrastructure in North America, which has been a big, big challenge. For the scaling of this industry, even in one of the most, let's say, plentiful markets, I was gonna say I think it effectively is going to kill one of the type of charging options here in North America. Because in the US, there are like three types of charges that you can do. And it's because there was a lot of chaos when there used to not be a standard. And there the standard was in place until like 2012. And so like in evey charging, you can use the SAE J, which is like what the world kind of uses. It's like the most common one. That's like, kind of the main deal with Society of Automotive Engineers. It's like the standard. And then there's CCS, which is like a combined AC and DC fast charger. And then there's Tesla, which is North American common Charging System, or nacsw, I think is what it's na T stands for its North American charging system, or whatever. And that's proprietary. That's Tesla's own amalgamation. So they were involved in the standardization in developing the SAE and the CCS standard, and then turned around and said, You know what, we're gonna do it a better way. And we're gonna do it proprietarily with our connector. And so what NAICS is, is rather than having separate pins for AC and DC, fast charging, it's all one. And Ilan chargers don't care if it's AC or DC that it's supplying, you would need the different pins to be able to handle the different current loads that are coming to your charger. But what he did is my pins are rated for anything in my charger is going to no like my plug is going to know that I'm delivering AC or DC power and it doesn't care, it's going to charge the vehicle and the vehicle will charge accordingly to the supply power that's coming through the connector, it just doesn't care. It's going to charge based on whatever's being delivered to it. And so it'll eliminate some of the complexity of the Chargers. And so with Ford, and GM now saying we're gonna go to NAICS, after they've been SAE J adopters and SAE J and CCS users from the get go, it's huge. And those are like pretty much two of the biggest users of that. So them saying we're going to adopt, the NACS has effectively killed the other charging styles. And it's also interesting when you think about it, because we always we talk about it, the infrastructure of charging is one of the biggest obstacles. And this is diabolical and brilliant from them either just saying you know what we're going to use what's already there from a cost investment standpoint for our EVs to make sure that our customers have the infrastructure, and we're going to use what's already there. And you know, what? Adopting nacsw is probably a good idea to do that, because now we don't have to invest in a lot more infrastructure for chargers. There's already a huge network there like Elon has the most successful charging network in the United States, for Evie chargers. And what's also really interesting is, why hasn't this happened sooner? I mean, we'll get into this. I think this is where you want me to go, Abby? No, I have a lot of thoughts. I think the biggest, or we even go there on what has happened. I want to talk about like why CCS has not worked. And it's almost there is a profitability decision. Right? Our favorite line stuff for profit, we're going to talk about our demand second. But I mean, the biggest challenge that CCS has had is that like it's public domain, right? It's like open source public domain. Anybody can kind of innovate on it. And it's almost the same way as Android. Let's do an Apple iOS versus Android analogy here, right? Never did like one Android, let's say device ever become the standard? Yes, that Android operating systems and you can find a whole quality of Android devices. So with CCS for example, Berkeley, the university University of California, Berkeley, checked 675 CCS fast chargers last year, in a study in the San Francisco Bay Area found that almost a quarter of them weren't functional. And 29 to JD Power did a similar study, other parts of the country did not work. And so Tesla's charging system has been much more reliable because again, because it's all vertically integrated. They created it. It's almost again that USB C versus USB conversation of course, USBs are much older technology they work But when you design a piece of technology and it has been completely integrated into your system usually is reliable and I think since I really want to talk about this is this is such a big frontier because it's almost a similar to the terms of when Tesla made a lot of its technology open source so other companies can good go innovate on it and actually work on the pattern together and accelerate development. It's almost analogues to that now Evie, charging development is really gonna, let's say accelerate together because almost Tesla, Ford and GM coming together and saying we're gonna go NACS. This is it, everybody is gonna start adopting NSCs. Now, back in the day, it was no hidden secret that the royalty to use the proprietary charger was exorbitant. It's been a conversation for a while like, Well, why don't we just go to nacsw? Why don't we colonize everybody pick one. And there's not been any adopters of nacsw because Elon wants so much money to be able to use his chargers and the royalty to the proprietary information on his chargers. And so where like I was going with this too, is I actually wonder if it became such a good business case to Ford and GM in the sense that he came down on His royalty price, that it was dumb for them to not do it from like an infrastructure business case versus cost of investment for their vehicles like to adopt the NAICS versus the like, overall benefit with the what I'm going to actually assume as a lowered royalty, it made a lot of sense for them, because, like, I'm not gonna go spend $2 billion dollars on Elance royalty, so I bet you he came down in price. And like I said this before that I actually wonder if it's to help recoup the Twitter spent if he's looking for money in other places to try and recoup what he spent. And he's willing to come down and be flexible in what he has, in terms of royalties and what he's asking to help get cash flow generated. Power has gone all up and down since Elon Twitter debacle. So that's no surprise. But there isn't. With CNBC money Mary Barra, the GMC sat down and said that this charging deal is going to save the automaker up to $400 million. And they had originally planned to spend 750, like quarter of a billion in developing the CCS system. So it's clunky, GM is not able to do a lot of it effectively, and they're going to end up saving 400 million of that. So effectively, their cost and to be able to use the NSCs chargers is only 350 million. And then Ford has just been on this like they don't really want to do much in house like this isn't a dig afford. This is like they were partnered with Rivia. And like they like they want to use other people's skateboards and technologies to help keep their costs down and their development down. They're no longer working with Rivia and they actually chose to do in house deal and then a lot of their EVs but there for a long time their stance has been they want to try and limit their in house expenditures and their in house resources and costs bend to utilize things that are already established and out there for their Eevee. So I'm like not shocked to see this from Ford at all that they're partnering up with nacsw I think GM shocked me more just because of like Mary's public disdain for Elon and in the public disdain that her and Mark have like taken. When Pete they asked them about Elon I'm talking about Mark Royce president of General Motors. They like they kind of like you can tell in their face and they kind of groan or like roll their eyes when they get asked about Tesla and Elon, so I thought it was fascinating that they chose to link up and adopted ACS after the years of them kind of having a disdain for Elon and Tesla. Yeah, so Ford, it wasn't a shock though. So there's a couple of benefits again, the three 50 million that I'm talking about is between what GM will spend now adopting Tesla's and ces charging port in their let's say, Evie charging development budget and give GM Eevee owners access to a 12,000 or more of Tesla's for fast chargers, but also both of their stocks went up 3% So overall, I think this came this deal came in pennies. I think GM got the higher let's say handier, and this deal came at pennies. And we haven't heard much from Elon from this. No big proclamations around it. So it kind of feels like this could have been something that GM put to Tesla and the Tesla's board made Elon, take the deal. Otherwise, if this was Elon On this idea he would have been talking about in every news outlet he could think about. He hasn't. It's all been controlled by GM in this announcement. So which tells me the deal went to the Tesla board. And Tesla board said We desperately need this top up. And that's I think the end of it. I guess that means we're nearly done. But full context this is happening. We're recording this right up to the very beginning of the Lemond 24 hour. So like, we really need to get it going. Molly is itching to get off this call. So we gotta go. But this was great. I learned so many things. I hope our viewers or listeners did too. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of engine season espresso. Stay caffeinated. Please don't forget to like rate review subscribe to this podcast on all your favorite listening platforms of choice and be sure to follow us on social media on Instagram at engine TVs and espresso and at racing forces and on Twitter at e cubed pod that's ECU bed P O D. Mark hasn't yet now