Best of LinkedIn: Charging & Battery Technology CW 30/ 31

00:00:00: provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about charging in battery technology, in calendar weeks thirty-and-thirty one.

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

00:00:20: You can find more info in the description.

00:00:22: So imagine pulling up to a taxpayer funded EV charger only to realize there's like A coin flip chance that it just completely did.

00:00:30: Yeah, the worst

00:00:31: right today for this deep dive.

00:00:33: our mission is to unpack The most critical charging and battery tech trends For you because if your a next-gen mobility professional You are dealing with this shift every single day?

00:00:43: You really are I mean the industry's undergoing This massive shift Right now.

00:00:46: we're finally moving away from That raw Kilowatt chasing where It was all about who had the biggest number on a spec sheet And Moving towards solving the gritty operational realities of access and reliability.

00:00:58: Exactly.

00:00:58: The conversation is totally pivoting from pure speed to just basic access, like look at the example Alexander Muripolsky shared recently.

00:01:06: Oh right!

00:01:07: The road trip

00:01:08: Yeah he took a European summer roadtrip in a Volkswagen ID buzz and the sheer number of recurring failures that he ran into was wild.

00:01:16: It sounded like a nightmare.

00:01:17: honestly it

00:01:17: really was.

00:01:18: I mean He's dealing with apps that showed chargers were available but when actually pulled up they are completely full

00:01:23: Which is just so frustrating.

00:01:25: Totally, and then he had charging sessions that would just abruptly stop at a fifty four percent.

00:01:29: Just cam stopped plus a complete lack of remote start compatibility.

00:01:34: And all these roaming failures across Sweden in Norway.

00:01:36: Wow!

00:01:37: You know it's not just Europe.

00:01:39: I saw really similar parallel example from Rahul Piyadov.

00:01:43: He actually drove an EV.

00:01:45: uh, twenty-eight hundred kilometers from Delhi to Mumbai and back.

00:01:48: That is a serious distance!

00:01:50: Yeah it's massive yeah.

00:01:52: And his big takeaway was that the anxiety for drivers isn't actually about vehicle range anymore like It's about the uncertainty of the infrastructure.

00:01:59: So does not knowing if a station is gonna work?

00:02:02: Exactly He said finding chargers wasn't the issue.

00:02:05: They're out.

00:02:05: there is finding ones that actually worked.

00:02:07: when he was running into frozen displays Handshake errors where the car and charger just won't talk to each other

00:02:14: right?

00:02:14: The classic communication drum.

00:02:16: yeah,

00:02:16: I get this.

00:02:17: Chargers.

00:02:17: they were listed as live on his app But literally had weeds growing through the bottom of them.

00:02:22: okay weeds That's what you know.

00:02:24: It's bad Right but i mean that anecdotal stuff totally validates the hard data we are seeing.

00:02:29: prions m shared some numbers recently.

00:02:33: India actually just crossed one gigawatt of public charging load.

00:02:36: Which is a huge milestone!

00:02:38: It IS, but they did an audit across eighty-four different operators and it turns out thirty four point four.

00:02:45: two percent of CCS II and Type II chargers are just offline.

00:02:49: Wow over the third Yeah.

00:02:51: And for Public Sector Operators that number jumps to fifty one percent.

00:02:55: Over half our dead.

00:02:56: That's just wild...and you know what makes me think And I'd love to offer a bit of pushback for you, think about here.

00:03:01: Are we as an industry just totally obsessed with the wrong metric?

00:03:05: Like focusing too much on speed?

00:03:07: Yeah exactly We constantly pushed through these flashy uh six hundred kilowatt mega chargers.

00:03:12: But Alexander Klose made this really great point.

00:03:14: He noted that in eighty kilowatt hour battery needs about thirteen minutes To charge to eighty percent at two hundred and fifty kilowatts.

00:03:21: Okay but if go upto six hundred Kilowatts It drops to six minutes.

00:03:26: I mean, most users won't drive out of their way just to save seven minutes.

00:03:30: Yeah

00:03:31: That's a really fair point.

00:03:32: Well,

00:03:33: it's like buying a ten thousand dollar commercial espresso machine for your home kitchen you know?

00:03:37: Like sure!

00:03:38: It's fast but reliable.

00:03:40: standard coffee maker is actually what you need to just get your caffeine and work on time.

00:03:44: that's the perfect analogy dense, reliable.

00:03:47: two hundred fifty to three hundred fifty kilowatt networks are way more practical.

00:03:51: definitely

00:03:53: speaking of practical CJ Johnson shared an interesting strategic point on this.

00:03:57: Walmart is quietly dominating charging space right now Really?

00:04:01: Walmart!

00:04:01: Yeah.

00:04:02: While all these dedicated charging operators are like scrambling to find locations and overpaying for them, Walmart added over eight percent of new fast-charging ports in the US last quarter.

00:04:12: That is a massive chunk of market.

00:04:14: It IS And they aren't trying be an energy company.

00:04:17: They just realized that EV Charging has essentially become a commercial real estate business.

00:04:22: Ah...and

00:04:23: already own best corners

00:04:24: Exactly.

00:04:25: They have the massive grid hookups The parking lots.

00:04:28: It's brilliant

00:04:29: it really is.

00:04:30: Though just to round out this whole infrastructure theme, Kate Kudoli shared a quick data hit that puts public charging in perspective.

00:04:37: Despite all these public network struggles we've talked about homecharging is still absolutely king.

00:04:43: Oh for

00:04:43: sure.

00:04:44: Yeah it accounts for uh ninety six percent of the roughly three hundred and sixty-six thousand new UK charger installations modeled for twenty twenty

00:04:55: five.

00:04:55: Wow Ninety-six percent.

00:04:57: Yeah, massive.

00:04:58: well since we just talked about the you know diminishing returns of ultra fast charging for consumers.

00:05:03: Maybe we should pivot and look at what high speed charging actually does to the physics of the battery.

00:05:07: Let's do it.

00:05:08: And hey real quick if you want to catch our future deep dives where?

00:05:11: We track all these engineering shifts.

00:05:12: make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss them.

00:05:14: good call.

00:05:15: So on the battery health side Merlin Frank brought in some really interesting data.

00:05:20: citing Geotab is twenty twenty six EV battery Health analysis.

00:05:23: What did it show?

00:05:25: Well, it shows that mostly AC or low power charging results in about one point five percent annual degradation

00:05:31: Which is totally expected.

00:05:32: right.

00:05:33: normal aging yeah.

00:05:34: Totally normal.

00:05:35: but frequent high-powered DC fast charging can push that degradation up to three point zero percent per year.

00:05:42: Right and Dr.

00:05:43: Manjeet Singh Grewal actually explained the science behind why that happens, The main culprit is lithium plating.

00:05:49: Lithium

00:05:49: plating how does that work?

00:05:50: So at high C rates the lithium ions are moving so fast they cannot intercalate or embed into the graphite anode fast enough.

00:05:58: okay instead of embedding They just plate as metallic lithium right on the surface.

00:06:05: thermal stress and even electrode cracking.

00:06:07: That sounds pretty severe, but you know I do want to push back on the doom gloom a little bit with some real-world data from Dr Isabel Sheldon.

00:06:14: Okay what does she see?

00:06:15: She actually checked the telemetry On her own BMW i-four using the car data portal And after sixty two thousand miles of real world driving Her battery still had ninety four percent Of its original capacity remaining.

00:06:29: Wow Ninety Four percent After sixty Two K miles.

00:06:32: yeah, and if You strap late that The battery won't even hit the seventy percent warranty threshold until around three hundred and ten thousand

00:06:39: miles.

00:06:40: That's practically the lifetime of a car!

00:06:41: Exactly, it is like high power fast charging is sprinting.

00:06:45: I mean you wouldn't sprint everywhere your go right?

00:06:47: Your body would just give out Right totally But doing that occasionally when on road trip It not going to permanently ruin your body.

00:06:54: The battery will at last the car if thermal management system does its job

00:06:57: And makes total sense.

00:06:59: but eventually these batteries do age-out Which brings up second life economy.

00:07:04: And Masiyaj Makulich had a really strong warning for professionals buying into this space.

00:07:09: Oh,

00:07:09: what was the warning?

00:07:10: He warned against buying used EV battery modules based on just a single average state of health metric

00:07:15: Because an average can be misleading

00:07:18: Exactly.

00:07:18: An eighty percent average could look great, but it might hide a batch of modules that have severe cell imbalances or mechanical damage.

00:07:25: So buyers really need individually tested results to actually judge their integration costs.

00:07:31: That is super important to keep in mind though speaking the second life supply chain I saw a really surprising insight from Leanne de Boucher.

00:07:39: She visited moment energies massive Second Life EV battery repurposing site in Vancouver.

00:07:44: Okay And the biggest feedstock they are processing right now isn't actually retired EV batteries.

00:07:51: Wait, really?

00:07:51: What is it?

00:07:52: It's surplus new batteries resulting from overproduction.

00:07:54: Oh

00:07:54: wow!

00:07:55: So brand-new packs that just never made into a vehicle

00:07:57: Exactly Just straight form factory to second life market.

00:08:00: That is wild, but you know those second life batteries are becoming incredibly capable as standalone products.

00:08:07: Jonathan Carrier highlighted this company ally.

00:08:09: their MX-Mobile battery is a three hundred kilowatt hour system.

00:08:13: that's huge battery yeah and it can now plug directly into a public CCS to DC rapid charger.

00:08:19: It just hooks up in recharges from twenty percent to eighty percent In just over an hour.

00:08:24: Oh, that's brilliant.

00:08:25: Right it completely removes the need for dirty diesel generators on construction sites.

00:08:30: That is such a good use case and you know connecting that massive ally mobile battery to the broader scaling of heavy-duty energy needs.

00:08:39: I mean, the biggest infrastructure challenges right now are really shifting to commercial fleets and bi-directional grid

00:08:45: integration.".

00:08:46: Oh without a doubt!

00:08:47: Sebastian Lukie brought this up noting that ECOG's twenty thirty market model actually projects that commercial fleet charging demand will overtake passenger cars globally by the end of the decade.

00:08:57: Really?

00:08:57: By twenty thirty?

00:08:58: Yeah...and

00:08:58: that massive amount of energy will primarily be delivered through depot charging behind the fence

00:09:03: which makes sense because Jor-Yan Van Guestel reports that MAN is actually running series production right now of MCS ready trucks.

00:09:13: MCS, the megawatt charging system?

00:09:15: Yeah

00:09:16: exactly.

00:09:16: and these trucks are capable of charging it up to seven hundred fifty kilowatts.

00:09:20: That's a staggering amount.

00:09:22: power to push into vehicle

00:09:24: It Is!

00:09:25: And Nicole Shelton added Tesla just opened its first public mega charger site in US which can deliver upto one point two megawatts across six different stalls.

00:09:34: One point two megawatts.

00:09:36: That's just crazy.

00:09:38: and there is a massive influx of funding helping to accelerate all this.

00:09:42: Javier Mark Tondo Compo highlighted the EPA clean ports program.

00:09:46: Oh, yeah The grants

00:09:47: right.

00:09:48: they just released a seventy five million dollar zero emission truck RFP.

00:09:53: It's offering up to three hundred thousand dollars per battery electric class eight trucks, specifically for the San Pedro Bay ports.

00:10:00: That kind of funding is gonna move the needle fast but you know there's a competing parallel path for these heavy trucks that we have to mention.

00:10:07: Michael Barnard shared some data on battery swapping.

00:10:09: Oh Swapping Right?

00:10:10: Yeah, CATL's Kiji program in China has already built three hundred and five heavy truck swap stations.

00:10:15: And they're aiming for nine hundred by twenty-twenty six.

00:10:18: a truck can pull in at about six minutes be back on the highway with a full pack.

00:10:22: Six minutes entirely neutralizes The whole charging downtime argument.

00:10:25: it really does.

00:10:26: but I've got A provocative question For you on that.

00:10:29: swapping is efficient sure But if It takes hold In Europe Do European OEMs end up just surrendering the core operating rules of their freight systems to a single battery provider, like CATL?

00:10:41: Oof.

00:10:42: I mean yeah.

00:10:42: if CATL dictates the chassis design to fit there SWAT mechanism The legacy OEM is basically building a metal box around someone else's tech ecosystem.

00:10:51: Exactly it's massive shift in power

00:10:53: It Is.

00:10:54: But bringing it back to the grid, there is a massive standard update from Mark Moulton that totally changes the game for vehicle-to-grid or VQG.

00:11:02: Okay what's the update?

00:11:03: It's the recent ISO one.

00:11:04: fifteen one eighteen dash twenty amendment one.

00:11:07: and why does?

00:11:08: because it allows an AC-Connected EV to finally behave as a certified grid code compliant generator.

00:11:14: Oh

00:11:14: wow, so its not just small pilot project thing anymore?

00:11:17: Right!

00:11:18: It moves V-to-G into scalable commercial reality Because the car can autonomously respond to grid frequency changes in milliseconds.

00:11:26: That is incredible.

00:11:27: and you know synthesizing all these trends Walmart mastering charging real estate CATL standardizing truck chassis It leaves us with a really provocative final thought for you to mull over.

00:11:39: What's that?

00:11:39: The future winners in e-mobility might not be the traditional car makers at all, I mean what happens to legacy OEMs when?

00:11:53: That is a fascinating question.

00:11:55: We'll have to see how it plays out.

00:11:56: if you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:12:00: also check our other editions on commercial fleet insights autonomous and mobility markets And software defined in AI-defined vehicles.

00:12:08: Thanks so much for diving into all of us with keep pushing the industry forward.

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