Hi everybody. Welcome to Shift a podcast about mobility. I'm Pete Bigelow,

your host and reporter at the Automotive News.

I'm pleased to be joined by Ashley Nunez on the podcast today.

He's a research fellow with the Harvard Law School and Director for Federal Policy, Climate

and Energy at the Breakthrough Institute, a Washington DC-based think tank.

You may remember Ashley from his first appearance on the Shift podcast about two and a half years

ago when he provided a reality check on the rosy outlook for autonomous vehicles at the time.

And much of what he projected in that conversation has come to fruition.

More recently, Ashley wrote a commentary in the Chicago Tribune

that ran earlier this month, and it caught my attention.

It's why I wanted to invite him back today.

This time he's writing about electric vehicles and how the price drops

recently don't really help low-income drivers and he detailed why that's such a

big problem. He's going to expand upon that today and discuss the importance of helping lower income Americans purchase EVs, not just from an equity perspective, but in terms of more rapidly reaching emissions reduction goals.

And that is the tip of the iceberg.

Ashley and I talked about EV affordability, charging challenges,

the effectiveness of the Inflation Reduction Act act and more than anything the complexity

involved in this broad goal of reducing emissions and combating climate change.

Without further ado, I'm pleased to bring you this conversation

with Ashley Nunez.

Ashley, welcome back to the Shift podcast.

It's great to be with you again today.

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