Kilowatt Hour The Kilowatts

S:2 E:1 - We’re bringing back the Kilowatt Hour Podcast in an all-new model. With all of the EV news this week, we decided it was time to wrangle up our friends Raj, Lacee, and Ricky to chat about what’s going on!

This week, aside from working through a few technical difficulties, we chatted about Rivian's pricing snafu, Lucid's lower than expected delivery numbers, the impact of Ford's new electric vehicle business unit called "Model e" and Kia/Hyundai's recent strength in the market.

If you know Craig Coker, you know he is serious - serious about having fun. I met Craig and his family at a Tesla Corsa Track Day event a couple of years ago and even during his first few track events, it was clear this wasn't just a hobby to him, he wanted to make this his career. Since then, watched Craig rise through the Tesla Corsa amateur racing ranks and now he's starting to capture several lap records. He's making a name for himself as an up-and-coming star in the EV and Motorsport communities and landing sponsors along the way. When called upon after a crash during practice at Pikes Peak International Hill Climb 2020 Craig switched gears entirely and helped rebuild the Unplugged Performance car to ensure Randy Pobst made it safely to the top of the mountain. Craig is just an all-around great guy with a fierce competitive spirit and a dream; we are lucky to call him a friend.

We sat down with Craig last week to talk about his experience racing EVs, revisit our time at Pikes Peak last year, and discuss his ambitions for setting some more lap records later this year.

Last October, 36 teams of drivers set out on a navigation rally raid through the Nevada desert for the 2020 Rebelle Rally, and for the first time ever, one of those teams was competing in a fully electric vehicle.

Two-time Rebelle champions Emme Hall and Rebecca Donaghe were looking for a little extra challenge this year, but without an off-road capable electric vehicle on the market, they were going to need some help from a manufacturer. Fortunately, they found EV startup Rivian was open to the challenge too, and provided one of their earliest drivable prototypes to the team. Finally, with Power Innovations providing electricity along the way, a new electrified category was born.
After starting strong, the team would ultimately finish the 2020 rally in 6th place, proving the R1T prototype to be extremely capable as an off-road vehicle.

We sat down to chat with Emme and Rebecca to discuss their experience pushing electric vehicles like the R1T to their limits, learnings from last year, and hear about their plans to bring another Rivian to the starting line in 2021.

In our first episode of Kilowatt Hour, we were joined by industry legend, Chelsea Sexton. Chelsea began her career working at GM, helping to launch the EV1. After fighting to convince GM to continue the program, Chelsea became a lifelong advocate for Electrification and she sat down with us this week to share her thoughts on the state of the Electric Vehicle market today as well as her thoughts on how we can all, more inclusively, advocate for EVs with "More ice cream & less spinach."