Carl Popham

Founder, Mobility+Energy Consulting LLC · 1 appearance on the record.

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Popham spent 17 years at Austin Energy, serving as interim Chief Information Officer and leading the Electric Vehicles & Emerging Technologies team. He is a transportation electrification strategist and co-author of the textbook Smart Cities: Applications, Technologies, Standards, and Driving Factors.

7statements → 2claims → 0claims resolved → 3.57/5average certainty → 1.71/5average debate potential →

2 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 assertions · 4 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 2 name 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.

What they said7 Episodes1

Everything Carl Popham said on Catalyst that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Popham: Most dealership salespeople earn lower commissions selling EVs

“And then for various reasons based on how commissions work, typically the salesperson on most dealerships, not all, would then get paid less.”

Carl Popham Jan 18, 2023 ▶ 2:48 Introducing: With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid

Insight

Popham: Utilities must align with dealership profitability to drive EV sales

“Ultimately, you're not engaging the dealerships because they're going to help you with your Austin Climate and Equity Plan or utility financial health goals or anything like that. It is, the mindset is, how can we get EVs through you to your customers? As quic…”

Carl Popham Jan 18, 2023 ▶ 4:48 Introducing: With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid

Insight

Popham: Utilities must lead publicly on EV strategy or lose regulatory influence

“The first thing you should kind of do as utility is decide what your strategy and your outcomes are and then make that public. Have a public vision to your strategy you know, be a speaker and be seen as a leader, because what's going to happen is there's a lot…”

Carl Popham Jan 18, 2023 ▶ 13:00 Introducing: With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid

Insight

Popham: Treating EV charging as standard load growth misses unique opportunities.

“And I think a lot of utilities mistakenly call EV growth as load growth. I think that simplifies it, because the load curves, both 24 hours and seasonally, look completely different. It's not more buildings. It's not more air conditioning. EVs charge different…”

Carl Popham Jan 18, 2023 ▶ 15:47 Introducing: With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid

Insight

Popham: Off-peak EV charging soaks up excess grid capacity profitably.

“EVs charge a lot at night, they charge in the morning, so they're charged off-peak. So it's very profitable in that You don't have to build all this new infrastructure like there's new buildings. It's soaking up excess capacity of your transmission and distrib…”

Carl Popham Jan 18, 2023 ▶ 18:15 Introducing: With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Popham: Selling an EV takes two hours versus 40 minutes for gas.

“Historically, to sell an EV could take up to two hours, and to sell a gas car takes 40 minutes.”

Carl Popham Jan 18, 2023 ▶ 2:39 Introducing: With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid

Disclosure

Popham: Austin Energy saw zero opt-outs for EV demand response.

“In our pilots, we had zero opt-outs in shifting EV load, and we had the expected number of opt-outs in air conditioning load.”

Carl Popham Jan 18, 2023 ▶ 19:04 Introducing: With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
Introducing: With Great Power, a show about the people building the future grid	Jan 18, 2023	13m

Carl Popham

Appearances (1)

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