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Duncan McIntyre

Founder and CEO, Highland Electric Fleets · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutiveLinkedIn ↗highlandfleets.com ↗

Duncan McIntyre is the founder and CEO of Highland Electric Fleets, which provides turnkey fleet electrification services. He previously co-founded Altenex, an energy procurement marketplace acquired by Edison International.

10statements → 4claims → 3claims resolved → 33%fully supported → 4.1/5average certainty → 1.7/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 2 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 assertions · 6 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Duncan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Electrified municipal fleets run at scale are cheaper for cities
“When that's done at scale it's not only affordable, it's just cheaper for cities to run electrified fleets.”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 7:35 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Most major US cities fail EPA air quality standards
“When you look at urban areas around the country, the EPA, Has a, you know, you can go to their website and look up who's in attainment of air quality that's fit for being healthy for human life is effectively the way they describe it. And most of our major cit…”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 59:16 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea

How they sound: speaking style how? →

217 words/min while actually speaking · 15.1 um and uh per 1k words · 15.2 false starts per 1k · 36.8% of pauses land inside a clause

No argument clarity score for Duncan McIntyre: only 2 usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 2,907 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Duncan McIntyre said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Disclosure
Over half of fleet prospects reject climate-focused sales pitches
“Maybe a third to half of the folks that we engage with commercially are interested in talking about climate change and CO two, but more than half of them, if you start the conversation that way, the conversation's over.”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 5:29 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea
Disclosure
Highland charges school bus fleets $3.50 per mile for turnkey electrification
“So we will often get paid by the mile. We might get charged, we might charge a customer three dollars and 50 cents per mile, And they get all the equipment. They get all the services. If the charging station breaks and the chart, the bus isn't charged, we just…”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 30:29 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea
Disclosure
Highland pre-purchases electrical switchgear 18 months ahead of signed contracts
“We are buying switchgear, 18 months in advance for projects we don't even have under contract yet, because if we don't have switchgear, we're not We're not getting the infrastructure completed and we can't get up and running.”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 41:14 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea
Assertion Supported
Electrified municipal fleets run at scale are cheaper for cities
“When that's done at scale it's not only affordable, it's just cheaper for cities to run electrified fleets.”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 7:35 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea
Disclosure
Highland earns a third of New England revenue from grid services
“And we earn Very, we earn various amounts of money, but you know, in New England, as an example, we earn about a third of our revenue. Just from providing grid services.”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 20:03 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea
Assertion Contradicted
Most major US cities fail EPA air quality standards
“When you look at urban areas around the country, the EPA, Has a, you know, you can go to their website and look up who's in attainment of air quality that's fit for being healthy for human life is effectively the way they describe it. And most of our major cit…”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 59:16 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Pediatric asthma rates exceed 30% in some California communities
“And so there are places in California where we're, you know, engaged with municipal leaders, where Pediatric asthma is over 30%.”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 1:00:10 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea
Assertion Contradicted
Highland operates the largest electrified bus depot in the US
“Our depot in Bethesda, Maryland, you know, draws five megawatts of power when we're charging. It's the largest electrified depot in the country. Running 200 school buses and five megawatts is like five hospitals coming online overnight.”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 12:31 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea
Disclosure
School bus fleets sit idle for 91% of the year
“Our school bus fleets are on the road nine percent of the hours in a year, and the other 91% of the time they're sitting idle.”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 18:53 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea
Disclosure
Highland feeds power back to the grid from half its projects
“And about half of our projects today are backflowing power from our fleet of batteries to the grid when the grid needs the power the most.”
Duncan McIntyre Jun 12, 2023 ▶ 19:54 The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
The Electrification of Everything: From Sky to Sea Jun 12, 2023 16m
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