Qmerit’s Tracy Price says EV charger electrician shortage could complicate rollout

Shift: A podcast about mobility

Automotive News

Business

4.8 • 31 Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The convergence of “megawatts and megabytes” requires a new skillset for electricians who will install and maintain the nation’s emerging network of EV chargers, says Price, CEO of Qmerit. Price highlights the challenges to recruiting and quickly training EV charger technicians, identifies charging differences in urban, suburban, and rural areas, and explains why some automakers likely felt like they had to add Tesla’s charging connectors.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and
0:02.0	welcome to Shift, a podcast about mobility.
0:04.0	I'm Hannah Letts,
0:06.0	E. reporter for Automotive News
0:08.0	and for Pete Bigelow this week.
0:10.0	Tracy Price, CEO and founder of Electric Vehicle Charging Company,
0:14.4	Kumerit, joined me to discuss the evolving charging landscape
0:18.2	and the need for more electricians to install and maintain those chargers.
0:22.2	The trades have long faced a labor shortage,
0:24.8	but Tracy says the scarcity of labor has become more acute as the nation sets lofty
0:29.7	E. V goals. Here's Tracy. All right, welcome Tracy. Thanks for joining Manchiff today.
0:35.0	Happy to be here. Thank you. So I want to talk at first about Q Merritt, what you
0:40.0	guys have been doing. You handle mostly a charter installation, education, technician
0:44.9	recruitment. Walk me through that and then I have some more specific questions about the
0:48.6	recent happenings and into the industry. Sure. So Kumerit was one of the early pioneers in the industry. Sure. So Kumerit was one of the early pioneers in the industry, made some big bets on commercial
0:57.7	charging in our prior company and probably did the majority of the commercial and public charging
1:04.1	installations for most of major auto OEMs.
1:07.5	When I spun this company out of a public entity
1:11.2	that had acquired my prior business, they asked us to focus on residential.
1:15.6	And that was really the long pole in the tent and the harder road to take.
1:20.4	We looked at some information that said that 85% of all level 2 charging was going to take place at the home.
1:26.0	And so we iterated on the model for several years,
	...

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