Best of LinkedIn: Electrification & Battery Technology CW 20/ 21

00:00:00: brought to you by Thomas Alguyer and Frennus.

00:00:02: This edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on electrification in battery technology, in weeks twenty-and-twenty one.

00:00:09: Frenness is a BtoB market research company that supports automotive suppliers with building featurebyfeature competitive intelligence That shows exactly how their product stacks up against the competition.

00:00:19: You can find more info In the description.

00:00:21: Thank you so much for joining us today.

00:00:23: We are really excited To welcome you another deep dive into next gen vehicles And mobility.

00:00:29: Glad to have you with us.

00:00:30: So for this deep dive, we are strictly looking at curated highly actionable insights that were shared by mobility professionals on LinkedIn during calendar weeks twenty and twenty one of twenty twenty six.

00:00:42: right because there's just so much noise out There.

00:00:44: exactly the goal here is to cut through all That PR fluff and explore Exactly how things like battery innovation charging infrastructure And heavy-duty fleet electrification Are actually maturing On The Ground

00:00:56: And you can really see the shift in the conversation.

00:00:58: It's fascinating.

00:00:59: like a few years ago The only thing anyone in the industry cared about was raw energy density,

00:01:03: right?

00:01:03: it Was just a numbers game.

00:01:04: Yeah exactly.

00:01:05: But now the conversation has completely pivoted toward highly specialized use cases and You know the actual end-of-life economics of these batteries.

00:01:14: Oh totally Ansara s highlighted this shift perfectly.

00:01:18: he posted about CATL launching six new cells in a single night.

00:01:22: Six,

00:01:23: wow.

00:01:23: Yeah in one night.

00:01:25: and the big insight from sorrow was about that procurement reality.

00:01:29: You don't buy the flashy headline you by-the-duty cycle

00:01:32: right?

00:01:32: It's about what the battery actually has to do every

00:01:34: day.

00:01:35: exactly.

00:01:35: take their new Noxtra sodium ion cell for instance.

00:01:39: On paper, it has lower energy density.

00:01:41: It sounds bad right?

00:01:43: But absolutely dominates in minus-forty degree climates

00:01:46: which is huge for a specific market

00:01:48: exactly.

00:01:49: and on the flip side they announced a massive five eighty seven amp hour cell.

00:01:53: but that one is strictly for grid storage.

00:01:55: you'd never put into car its just hyper segmentation.

00:01:57: yeah really as but um even with that segmentation the sheer speed of charging on the passenger side is getting ridiculous.

00:02:05: I'm

00:02:05: talking about Caleb Boyd's post.

00:02:06: yes Caleb broke down the updates on BYD's Blade Battery, two point oh and CATL's Shanksing three-point Oh.

00:02:14: I mean we are looking at sub five minute charge

00:02:17: times now.

00:02:17: wait sub five minutes.

00:02:19: yeah ten to eighty percent in Three minutes and forty four seconds

00:02:23: that is.

00:02:24: i mean That's practically The time it takes To pump a tank of gas

00:02:27: Exactly.

00:02:28: And Kalem noted this is largely thanks to isotropic graphite and some major structural breakthroughs in how the anode is designed.

00:02:35: That's

00:02:35: incredible engineering, but you know it makes me think about the life cycle.

00:02:38: I kind of view modern EV batteries like high-performance athletes.

00:02:43: Okay

00:02:43: Like that How so?

00:02:45: Well athletes don't just disappear when they lose a step right.

00:02:48: They retire from playing and become specialized coaches.

00:02:51: Oh

00:02:51: Right It's

00:02:52: same with battery.

00:02:53: When a battery drops seventy percent state of health.

00:02:56: That's terrible for a high-performance car, but it is absolutely perfect for sitting stationary on the

00:03:01: grid.".

00:03:01: That

00:03:02: was great analogy and Davide Giacobi actually posted some wild data proving exactly that point!

00:03:07: He highlighted China Tower which has this massive telecom operator... Oh

00:03:11: yeah I saw that.

00:03:11: where are their numbers?

00:03:12: They have repurposed over one hundred thousand tons of retired EV batteries specifically for Telecom backup power.

00:03:20: Wow A hundred thousand tons.

00:03:23: Yeah, and they utilize a national standard that sets a strict sixty percent state of health floor Which is fascinating because it effectively creates this massive price floor for used EVs.

00:03:33: Oh I hadn't even thought about

00:03:35: right?

00:03:35: A lot of car dealers haven't factored It in yet.

00:03:37: the use TV might look worthless as a car But The battery pack Is a highly valuable commodity For the grid.

00:03:43: That's second life dynamic is just scaling massively Right now like Dominic Lukenhof noted that JB Stravel's company, Redwood Materials is now pulling in second-life EV batteries pairing them with solar and using them to power data centers.

00:03:57: Really?

00:03:57: Just bypassing the utility grid entirely!

00:03:59: Exactly because right now you might face a five year utility interconnection delay.

00:04:04: Yeah, this micro grid setup just skirts that entirely.

00:04:07: That

00:04:07: is so smart!

00:04:08: And then Vlad Pretenko shared that Ford just pivoted a five point eight billion dollar idle Gigafactory over to strictly grid battery production.

00:04:16: Oh well yeah.

00:04:17: and the crazy part Is?

00:04:18: The major moat there isn't Just the technology.

00:04:21: Vlad pointed out it's EEgo C compliance.

00:04:24: oh for an entity of concern.

00:04:26: right By building domestically they secure the compliance needed to get all those critical financing and tax credits for grid developers.

00:04:34: That makes total sense, but you know All these ultra-fast batteries in localized grid workarounds They kind of lead into our second theme because all that means absolutely nothing if The infrastructure they plug into is just broken or grid constrained.

00:04:49: Yeah, that is the harsh operational reality we are living in right now.

00:04:53: We really are moving way past that initial land grab phase of just throwing chargers everywhere.

00:04:57: Oh, definitely and Fletcher Dyak shared a pretty sobering statistic about That.

00:05:02: he pointed out that while the US has over seventy one thousand fast charging ports.

00:05:05: right now only Seventy-one percent of charting attempts actually succeed on The first

00:05:10: try is just unacceptable for consumer adoption

00:05:13: it Really?

00:05:13: Is and Daniel Henderson corroborated this with boots on the ground data in Phoenix.

00:05:18: He found that seventeen percent of public Chargers there were completely broken.

00:05:21: Yeah, and Chris Chamberlain highlighted that this operational friction isn't just the hardware breaking down.

00:05:27: It extends deeply into the back end too.

00:05:29: What do you mean?

00:05:30: Like software glitches

00:05:31: Software sure but mainly payment processing.

00:05:35: He noted that opaque payment processing fees And broken pre-authorization systems are Just quietly destroying The profit margins of charge point operators.

00:05:45: Let me push Back on how the industry talks about This though because we hear companies boasting About like Ninety-eight percent uptime constantly.

00:05:54: Oh,

00:05:54: I know where you're going with this

00:05:55: right.

00:05:56: isn't tracking up time just a dangerous vanity metric?

00:06:00: If all it means is the charger has a basic internet connection Doesn't that?

00:06:03: Just blinds The operators to the fact that actual drivers are failing to charge?

00:06:07: yes

00:06:08: i completely agree and It seems the top players.

00:06:10: or finally realizing That too wolf schlafter shared an insight about enbw.

00:06:15: ceo martin rohm held.

00:06:16: okay what did he say?

00:06:17: He has explicitly stopped targeting a fixed number of charging ports.

00:06:21: They aren't just chasing installation numbers anymore, instead he's aiming for a twenty percent overall market share.

00:06:28: Oh interesting!

00:06:28: So quality and utilization over raw quantity?

00:06:31: Exactly

00:06:32: because the real barrier isn't manufacturing the chargers it is years long delays from regional grid operators to actually power them

00:06:42: which explains some of the crazy work arounds we are seeing deployed right now.

00:06:45: ScanderGarroom highlighted how Porsche is using these massive mobile battery trailers...

00:06:51: Oh yeah, they truck them into highway rest stops!

00:06:53: Exactly during holiday peaks.

00:06:55: They just towed these battery trailers in to handle the ultra-fast charging surge totally avoiding the need for permanent grid upgrades.

00:07:02: That's brilliant.

00:07:03: and Angela E pointed out a massive boom in stationary versions battery-integrated DC chargers.

00:07:09: Right, where the batteries built into the unit itself?

00:07:12: Yeah but he had a really strict warning for buyers.

00:07:14: He said you have to trust fleet proven manufacturers like Optigrid and Orange EV.

00:07:19: You really have to avoid these venture backed pure plays that just have a flashy pitch deck

00:07:24: because commercial environments will absolutely destroy consumer grade hardware.

00:07:28: Exactly which logically brings us to the next massive challenge.

00:07:32: Oh I know what your gonna say If the grid is struggling to handle passenger cars and holiday traffic, The arrival of Class VIII electric semi-trucks Is an entirely different magnitude Of infrastructural stress.

00:07:44: It really is!

00:07:45: But the economics are forcing it To happen anyway?

00:07:47: Duran Meyersdorf laid out the shifting math Around electric trucking.

00:07:51: Let me guess...the Tesla Semi Yep.

00:07:54: Tesla's mass production launch, aiming for fifty thousand trucks a year changes the entire game.

00:08:00: Duran noted that with energy costs sitting at roughly fifteen to thirty-one cents per mile compared to sixty cents or more for diesel.

00:08:06: Wow!

00:08:07: That is half of cost.

00:08:08: Great

00:08:09: The total cost ownership advantage was just impossible For legacy OEMs to ignore now.

00:08:14: But Jason Royk added really critical caveat To this whole narrative.

00:08:18: Yes TCO great but he pointed out that Tesla consumer style marketing you know, boasting sixty percent charge in thirty minutes is actually repelling real fleet managers.

00:08:27: Wait why would that repel them?

00:08:29: Because a depot manager can't run a logistics hub on a PR headline.

00:08:33: they need the full zero to one hundred percent charging curve.

00:08:36: They need cold weather sensitivity year five degradation stats.

00:08:41: The last twenty percent of massive battery takes much longer to charge safely.

00:08:45: Oh Of course!

00:08:46: We have map out drivership times and route scheduling down into minute

00:08:49: Exactly, and honestly.

00:08:51: let me push back on something else here too.

00:08:53: The media hype around public megawatt charging systems.

00:08:57: the MCS network is everywhere right now.

00:08:59: Yeah you see press releases about highway mega watt chargers daily

00:09:03: Right And Public Funding is flowing heavily into that.

00:09:06: But isn't a true linchpin of freight electrification actually happening behind-the-fence?

00:09:11: privately at the depot.

00:09:12: You

00:09:13: are spot on and the insights from Europe absolutely validate that.

00:09:16: jet burger noted that Germany just committed a billion euros to e-truck charging,

00:09:21: which is massive number

00:09:22: it Is.

00:09:22: but Christophe Le Fitt Philippe correctly identified that Depot charging remains The true bottleneck.

00:09:28: if a fleet operator can't secure the mass of grid power needed To charge overnight their own depot they will Just revert to diesel.

00:09:35: It has to perfectly match their operations.

00:09:38: That makes total sense, and it perfectly sets up this highly entertaining but super practical anecdote from Syed Haseeb Hassan.

00:09:45: Oh I read that one!

00:09:47: The BYD station in China?

00:09:49: Yes.

00:09:50: BYD recently deployed a megawatt flash charging station on the highway But they didn't have the grid connection ready So they powered it temporarily by massive diesel generator.

00:10:00: I mean the optics of those are ironic sure...but if you think about them It shows intense execution speed.

00:10:06: Coldly.

00:10:06: BYUD isn't waiting around for perfect utility grid connections, they are building the physical network bypassing bureaucratic delays and delivering actual electrons to customers.

00:10:17: today They can always refine their grid connection later.

00:10:19: It's all about getting hardware in dirt And learning usage patterns immediately Exactly!

00:10:25: To summarize this overarching lesson from these professionals over last two weeks The mobility transition is no longer about winning the technology argument.

00:10:34: Right, we know that EVs work!

00:10:35: Yeah

00:10:36: it's entirely about execution finding these creative gridworkarounds and securing unglamorous operational reliability.

00:10:44: If you enjoyed this episode new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:10:47: Also check out our other additions on future mobility in market evolution next-gen vehicle intelligence And commercial fleet insights.

00:10:55: Thank You so much for joining us On This Deep Dive.

00:10:58: Please remember to subscribe.

00:10:59: And before you lug off, I want to leave with one final slightly provocative thought not discussed in our main segment but it was inspired by Farazid's recent insights.

00:11:08: We constantly worry about battery degradation in vehicle to grid or V-to-G systems.

00:11:13: But the latest field data shows that V-To-G barely impacts battery life at all, The real bottleneck holding back our distributed energy future isn't the battery and it isn't car.

00:11:23: It is the bureaucratic integration layer.

00:11:25: So as you look at the mobility landscape ask yourself Are we hyper focusing on building perfect hardware when are really just waiting for four different software protocols And two regulators finally speak same language?