Jigar Shah

That the people that you're hiring actually have experience on building what you are building. And it turned out that most of those were union contractors, right? We also, by the way, like if you talk to the unions, like they didn't love me either because I was like, what? where's your marketing materials? Like, what are you doing to like promote the fact that you're reducing risk, right?

You know, we had a lot of tough conversations with the unions and I think the unions are more competitive today than they were four years ago around how they win business because we held them accountable too, right? And so, you know, this is not something where this was a requirement. This is something where we said, okay, we have low unemployment rates, right?

This project is going to fail if the people you hire are not people who can actually do the skilled work that you are suggesting that you need in the loan application to loan programs office. So this is a source of risk for us, right? On the community side, I'd say,

A lot of the times our companies were led by extraordinary CEOs who were not focused on communities, not because they're bad people, but because they're focused on their technology succeeding. So they would outsource this work to their head of HR. But the head of HR would be like, well, let's put in a playground. And I was like, seriously, that's what you think the community needs?

And so we would hold a listening session with the community and say, what do you need? And we would make the CEO and CFO come there. And it was clear that they had never met the community leaders before. They had outsourced this to the HR people.

And when they met the community leaders, the community leaders were like, we have all these people in this neighborhood that are extremely impoverished that want to work at your factory, but there's no public transportation to get there. Would you put in a bus service to do that? And the CEO was like, hell yeah, of course we would do that. Why is this the first time I'm hearing about this?

And then we looked at the HR person and say, why didn't you bring that idea to them? And so we facilitated the conversation. We didn't mandate anything. But once the CEOs and CFOs heard the request, they were like, these are eminently reasonable, and this reduces the risk of running my... facility. Like, look, I get where Ezra's coming from.

And it was like, I think it was like some article he wrote about a homeless shelter in San Francisco or something. But when you think about what we're doing here, these are infrastructure projects that have to last for decades, decades and decades and decades. I just think that the notion that you would do all this stuff without being thoughtful is ridiculous.

I mean, I don't know. Like, do you think that if you're going to make a multi-decade commitment to a community that you should like have the CEO and CFO actually meet the community once before like you sign on the dotted line? I don't know that this is a requirement here. I think we're talking about best practices.

I think today, American entrepreneurs and innovators are more prepared to do big things in our country today, and their investors are more prepared than they ever have been, right? This has never been about the loan programs office. And I love the fact that we're being told on the one hand that we're rushing money out the door, and on the other hand, we're being told we're being too thoughtful.

But this has been about applicants. We have an absolute threshold that Congress reconfirmed in the 2020 Bipartisan Energy Act that passed saying you have to make these applicants meet this threshold, right? And so we have been working to get everyone to meet that threshold. Now, we can do a lot of mentorship, but we can't drop our standards. We can't cut corners. We can't do any of those things.

I think today— People are more prepared and people are more sober about what it takes to do big things than they ever have been. And as a result, I'm very proud of every loan that we've made. I think that they are going to be pretty successful. But more importantly, I'm really proud of what they're catalyzing.

It took about 15 years from our first loans and the utilities signing their first power purchase agreements with these solar farms for there to be full market acceptance of solar within the big money centers from pension funds to others, right? I think we can cut that in half. I think we can do that in seven and a half years.

And, you know, for all of the executive salaries that we're burning by asking tough questions, I think if we cut their time to trillion-dollar scale in half... That makes their companies more likely to become hugely successful and profitable. But it also means that the climate benefits faster from that scale. And so I'm proud of the formula that we put in place.

And I really think that it's going to last the test of time, regardless of the president, regardless of administrations. I think this is something that American innovators and entrepreneurs recognize that they have to do if they want to be successful.

Look, I think that these are superior cars, right? Let's be crystal clear, right? If you want a performance car at an affordable price, that's an EV, right? And so I think we entered office with maybe, what, like 500,000 vehicles or so sold in 2020. And today, I think we're four to five X above that number. So it's been a remarkable period of growth. over the last four years.

I think that today we are now at escape velocity on EVs, and people now believe that it's only a matter of time before this happens. I mean, both my in-laws and my parents just bought a plug-in hybrid, and they never drive over 34 miles a day, and so they are basically fully electric, and they love it. And I think that when you think about where American innovation is headed right now,

I think we're on track to meeting the goal of 50% EV sales by 2030 with EVs that were plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Yeah, so I think that we're not done yet, but I'd say that, you know, we've got battery manufacturing, right? And now you've got the 30D tax credit. And so the 30D tax credit says, buy your components to make those batteries from the United States, right? And so lithium processing, graphite processing, nickel manganese.

When you think about the battery manufacturing facilities that we're building now, all of them have already been future-proofed so that when those next generation technologies come in, they can immediately be inserted into the existing manufacturing process.