Best of LinkedIn: Charging & Battery Technology CW 32/ 33

00:00:00: Provided by Thomas Algeyer and Freeness, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about charging & battery technology in calendar weeks thirty-two and thirty three.

00:00:08: Freenes is a B to D market research company that supports automotive suppliers with building feature by feature competitive intelligence That shows exactly how their product stacks up against the competition.

00:00:18: You can find more info in description.

00:00:20: So imagine nationwide power plant costs government zero dollars.

00:00:25: It's entirely decentralized and, you know, spends like ninety-five percent of its time sitting completely idle in our driveways.

00:00:32: Today we're looking at how the mobility transition is shifting.

00:00:35: We are moving out this kind of chaotic experimental hardware buildout And entering a really ruthless optimization game.

00:00:43: Yeah it no longer about just planting flag on map.

00:00:46: I mean it's about utilization margins The actual underlying physics.

00:00:51: Yeah,

00:00:52: the mindset across industry has just fundamentally fractured.

00:00:55: I mean operators are realizing they have to manage grid interconnects exactly like utility companies do and simultaneously you know we're seeing heavy trucking scale up.

00:01:08: Electric vehicles themselves are rapidly transforming from just being energy consumers into mobile power plants that actively support the broader grid.

00:01:16: So we're going to explore these top trends and see exactly how this is playing

00:01:19: out.".

00:01:20: that is not being used.

00:01:30: The stranded capacity, it's like the biggest secret in the industry right now.

00:01:34: Michael Greenberg recently analyzed EVGO quarterly earnings and numbers are just staggering.

00:01:39: Okay how so?

00:01:40: Well

00:01:41: evgo has roughly six hundred megawatts of connected utility capacity across their network but management noted about thirty five percent of that capacity currently sitting unused based on daily usage patterns.

00:01:53: Forty-five

00:01:53: percent

00:01:54: Yeah, forty-five percent.

00:01:55: That is nearly two hundred and seventy megawatts of energized secured urban grid connection that it's just sitting idle.

00:02:03: Wow I look at that two hundred seventy megawatts and i just think of owning prime digital real estate.

00:02:09: You've already endured the multi-year permitting nightmare, right?

00:02:13: you paid for the trenching, the transformers...the actual location.

00:02:16: Oh yeah all our stuff.

00:02:17: Exactly so.

00:02:18: if you own an interconnect with that much excess juice in a dense urban area purely selling vehicle charging feels like a missed opportunity.

00:02:26: It

00:02:26: really does!

00:02:27: You could rent out that connection for edge AI compute processing data locally nearby autonomous

00:02:34: or

00:02:34: drop in battery storage and play the arbitrage market buying power at night, selling it back at noon.

00:02:40: Yeah!

00:02:40: It shifts core business model completely.

00:02:42: The interconnect itself becomes a monetizable asset entirely separate from charging dispenser Right.

00:02:48: So operator who controls urban grid capacity is sitting on one of the scarcest resources in modern energy economy.

00:02:55: They're basically pivoting from being a charging network to distributed energy resource networks.

00:03:00: But securing those grid connections at maximum scale is prohibitively expensive, which is why we're seeing operators engineer these clever ways to cheat the math.

00:03:10: Brandon Flash recently broke down The Engineering At The New Tesla Diner site.

00:03:15: Oh yeah!

00:03:15: The massive one

00:03:16: Right.

00:03:17: And this location runs roughly twenty sessions per stall PER day Which it's like four to five times the utilization of a typical fast-charging site?

00:03:25: That's

00:03:25: huge.

00:03:26: It is!

00:03:26: And across eighty stalls, this has theoretical max output and nameplaked capacity of twenty six megawatts

00:03:32: But it doesn't actually draw anywhere near twenty six mega watts of continuous utility capacity.

00:03:38: Precisely They're relying on real-world arrival patterns and these power routing cabinets because, you know when a vehicle plugs in at say...a ten percent state of charge it pulls maximum amperage.

00:03:50: But as it fills up past seventy percent the battery chemistry basically demands a slower charge rate so that power cabinets dynamically detect this And they shift that excess amperages to an newly arrived vehicle next to it.

00:04:01: Yeah!

00:04:02: That power sharing is key.

00:04:04: It means you can deliver an ultra-fast experience to eighty cars simultaneously without paying the utility for a dedicated twenty six megawatt grid connection, which

00:04:12: would be astronomical.

00:04:13: Exactly and avoiding those utility costs is literally a matter of life.

00:04:17: And death for these sites.

00:04:19: high utilization hubs Can leverage that power sharing?

00:04:22: To keep their operating costs in check per session.

00:04:26: But low utilization sides they're getting absolutely crushed by archaic utility tariffs

00:04:31: right.

00:04:32: Steve Burkett highlighted a really painful example of this in Gorham, New Hampshire.

00:04:37: A small business owner opened the forestall supercharger site to basically serve an EV charging desert

00:04:42: So that entrepreneur is effectively providing a public service and they're just being penalized for it?

00:04:47: Devastatingly penalized.

00:04:48: The site is facing nine thousand dollars per month in utility demand charges, regardless of how many cars actually plug-in.

00:04:54: Oh my gosh!

00:04:55: Nine thousand dollars

00:04:56: Because commercial electricity isn't just billed on the total volume energy you use.

00:05:01: It includes a demand charge based upon peak power drawn during specific window Usually like fifteen minutes, right?

00:05:07: So even if only two cars charge all month If they haven't a plug-in at the exact same time and pull high power for fifteen minutes The utility sets the monthly rate Based on that massive spike.

00:05:19: I mean it threatens to survival of the site entirely.

00:05:21: see.

00:05:22: That structure essentially guarantees that independent operators in emerging markets will fail because demand charges make high utilization a matter of financial survival.

00:05:32: And you can see exactly why retail behemoths have this massive structural advantage here.

00:05:38: Oh, absolutely.

00:05:39: Shiri Levi-Laur pointed out that Walmart's current EV charging expansion isn't really about them trying to become a standalone energy provider?

00:05:47: No they're playing an entirely different margin game.

00:05:49: right?

00:05:49: I mean They already own the real estate and they already have these vast grid connections for their super centers.

00:05:54: so For them, deploying chargers is literally just a customer acquisition strategy.

00:05:59: Yeah?

00:06:00: If they lose money on the demand charge it doesn't even matter because the real goal is keeping a driver-on-the-property for thirty minutes.

00:06:05: Exactly.

00:06:06: The charging margin is totally irrelevant compared to capturing revenue of a cart full groceries or an overpriced coffee.

00:06:16: And because demand charges require high utilization to survive, operators can't just plant a charger in the dark corner of parking lot and walk away anymore.

00:06:25: They have to actively lure drivers-in which completely changes the nature.

00:06:29: The

00:06:31: site is the product.

00:06:38: That's a crucial distinction, the hardware is just baseline expectation now.

00:06:43: I mean drivers don't evaluate charging session based solely on voltage.

00:06:47: they evaluate entire arrival experience.

00:06:49: Can i easily see stalls from street?

00:06:52: Is there room to maneuver larger vehicle or trailer without totally stressing out

00:06:57: Well it...is safe at night

00:06:59: Exactly.

00:07:00: Is there an easy path to a clean restroom?

00:07:02: It's product design, civil engineering and hospitality all just colliding on a patch of asphalt

00:07:07: And the consumer data strongly backs this up.

00:07:11: Bart Saunders highlighted The latest JD power study On public charging.

00:07:15: Oh what did that say?

00:07:16: So fast-charging satisfaction is Up twenty seven points year over Year which is A substantial leap.

00:07:22: But the really fascinating detail is that three different networks now actually outrank Tesla superchargers in overall satisfaction.

00:07:30: Wait,

00:07:30: really?

00:07:31: Three of

00:07:31: them?!

00:07:32: Yeah!

00:07:32: That's a seismic shift.

00:07:34: and consumer perception compared to even two years ago...

00:07:37: It IS…and a lot of this satisfaction correlates directly with location amenities rather than just pure uptime.

00:07:44: The studies show sites located at hotels rank highest for satisfaction followed by convenience stores or restaurants

00:07:49: Mixes

00:07:50: and dealerships, which you know often have chargers locked behind gates or completely blocked by inventory.

00:07:55: They rank the lowest.

00:07:57: so what surrounds the charger is truly becoming The primary differentiator.

00:08:02: By the way if you are enjoying this deep dive into the underlying mechanics of the mobility transition make sure You hit subscribe on the feed So you don't miss future additions.

00:08:10: We are tracking these structural shifts constantly

00:08:13: so while the ideal customer experience focuses on amenities operators also have to confront the gritty physical vulnerabilities of these sites.

00:08:22: Yeah, we have to talk about the copper theft epidemic.

00:08:24: people are literally cutting the thick heavy cables off public chargers just to sell the copper as scrap completely breaking the station.

00:08:32: it's awful.

00:08:32: Tor solar fred valenza raised a really provocative proposal Bring your own cable, or BYOC standard for level two and three chargers.

00:08:44: You basically keep the heavy expensive cable in your vehicle plug it into the station And then take with you when you leave Which

00:08:50: is an interesting idea because It removes the target For thieves entirely pushing The liability of the cable onto the owner.

00:08:57: It does, but the physics of fast charging make that almost impossible to scale for consumers.

00:09:01: I mean a liquid-cooled DC fast charging cable capable pushing four hundred amps is essentially high pressure fire hose full of glycol!

00:09:10: Its thick its rigid especially in cold weather and incredibly heavy.

00:09:15: asking consumer to wrestle dirty firehose out their trunk directly contradicts premium retail experience we were just talking about.

00:09:24: But the fact that the industry is even debating consumer-carried liquid cooled cables shows how severe the vandalism issue has become.

00:09:32: Yeah,

00:09:33: it also highlights why we need rigorous standardized safety protocols.

00:09:37: Graham Warnall shared a really sobering reality check after finding a badly burned three pin plug socket in a multi story car park.

00:09:44: Oh wow

00:09:45: yeah EV owners Desperate for a charge, we're plugging standard cables into these charred domestic sockets that were just never rated for continuous high-imperage

00:09:53: straw.

00:09:53: That is catastrophic fire hazard waiting to

00:09:56: happen!

00:09:56: Exactly which?

00:09:57: why the industry's moving aggressively towards smarter heavily regulated standards.

00:10:01: on the back end Yulia Zbutska shared insights from Mercury Consortium Which certified its first three devices and they are setting really strict technical requirements For how chargers must behave when interacting with wider grid.

00:10:14: So they're essentially writing the software rulebook for grid compliance.

00:10:19: Exactly that!

00:10:21: For instance, They mandated sub-three second response times.

00:10:25: so in the grid experience is a frequency drop and sends a signal to ramp down power.

00:10:29: To avoid a localized blackout The charger has to respond almost instantly.

00:10:33: Oh That's smart Yeah...They

00:10:35: also instituted an anti stranding rule.

00:10:37: So if a manufacturer cloud connection goes offline for seven days say due to a software company going bankrupt The charger has to allow a local override.

00:10:46: This ensures the site owner can switch network providers without their hardware turning into expensive

00:10:51: paperweights.".

00:10:52: That resilience is crucial, so passenger car networks are refining the retail experience and locking down software standards but commercial fleets one that basically solves for logistics, math and raw industrial power.

00:11:06: It is an entirely different order of magnitude!

00:11:08: And the strange thing is from a macroeconomic planning perspective grid operators are largely flying blind on where this commercial powers actually going.

00:11:16: Chris Jackson made a brilliant observation about the data gap in European truck charging.

00:11:20: Ah, the disparity between public monitoring and private realities?

00:11:25: Precisely.

00:11:26: Europe rigorously tracks its two thousand four hundred five public truck charging sockets.

00:11:31: I mean they are mapped down to the individual plug on government dashboard Sure But this system completely fails to track private depot chargers.

00:11:38: And the ICCT expects that seventy-to eighty percent of fleet energy will actually be consumed behind a fence at private logistics hubs.

00:11:46: So grid planners and policy makers are modeling the future of the grid based on the smallest fraction of actual energy demand.

00:11:52: That blind spot is terrifying because we aren't talking about fifty kilowatt passenger chargers here.

00:11:57: Harla Ribeiro highlighted Man Truck & Bus recently hitting seven hundred and fifty kilowatts in the new megawatt charging system, or MCS.

00:12:05: that takes a heavy-duty commercial truck from twenty percent to eighty percent battery capacity under thirty minutes which was wild.

00:12:12: Pushing seven hundred and fifty kilowatts requires astonishing thermal management.

00:12:17: You can't just push that much current without melting components, I mean it requires intense liquid cooling in both the dispenser and throughout the truck's battery pack.

00:12:26: but hitting that thirty minute window is The Holy Grail because its perfectly aligned with a driver's mandated rest break.

00:12:31: It means the charging process no longer penalizes the freight schedule

00:12:35: And the physical architecture of trucks is evolving just as fast.

00:12:38: to support this Tobias Sangvol noted that Volvo's upgraded FH-Aero electric is adding sixty percent of its total range in just fifty minutes on megawatt charging.

00:12:49: Oh wow!

00:12:50: Yeah, and more importantly they completely redesigned the axle by moving the electric motors directly onto the rear axle.

00:12:57: They freed up substantial chassis space which allowed them to package the batteries more efficiently And unlock two extra tons of payload capacity.

00:13:04: That

00:13:05: is massive for a fleet operator Huge.

00:13:07: They are systematically removing the traditional compromises of electric freight.

00:13:11: And this transition isn't waiting for the next decade either, The deployment speed is accelerating right now.

00:13:16: Chris Welch just took a megawatt charging hub live at his depot in Cambridge after a grueling eighteen-month build process involving you know these complex grid upgrades and Jan Niklas Ellerich announced a public truck charging park opening in Germany.

00:13:31: These immense industrial power hubs are switching on today.

00:13:35: But to push megawatt charging into a vehicle without the cells physically degrading or just catching fire, The underlying battery chemistry has to evolve.

00:13:43: And as that chemistry gets more advanced it is fundamentally reshaping global supply chains.

00:13:48: Let's

00:13:48: look at market concentration happening right now.

00:13:51: Ashley Zoomalt Forbes laid out stark warning about CATL.

00:13:55: They hold roughly forty percent of the global EV battery market but their strategy expanded far beyond mobility.

00:14:02: They are pivoting heavily into building energy storage systems designed for AI data centers and grid scale backup.

00:14:08: She made a very apt comparison, likening CATL to TSMC in the semiconductor space...

00:14:12: It's the perfect analogy!

00:14:14: I mean, TSMc manufactures the world's most advanced chips creating a bottleneck everyone relies on.

00:14:20: And CATL is doing the exact same thing with batteries.

00:14:24: Through this aggressive vertical integration, they don't just build the cell.

00:14:28: They are involved in refining the raw lithium Manufacturing the pack and writing battery management software.

00:14:35: So Western automakers increasingly buying a highly optimized black box.

00:14:40: It creates dual prong dependency where both our mobility infrastructure and AI computing infrastructure rely on single manufacturing choke point.

00:14:50: While the geopolitical implications of that are definitely complex, The technology they and others were producing is undeniably robust.

00:14:57: We have enough empirical data now to dispel the lingering myth about how these batteries actually perform in a real world over time.

00:15:04: Yeah there's this persistent Really outdated assumption that consumers will have to replace a fifteen thousand dollar battery after five years.

00:15:11: But Raul Oridondo shared data from roughly ten-thousand real world battery tests and it showed Korean models, specifically the KIA Ineuro are retaining over ninety seven percent of their original capacity at sixty two thousand miles

00:15:26: which is incredible!

00:15:27: Retaining ninety seven per cent after that kind mileage proves that battery degradation isn't a cliff you fall off.

00:15:34: It is an incredibly slow, manageable slope.

00:15:37: The internal software holds a hidden charge buffer and the thermal management systems condition the battery before fast charging.

00:15:51: Well, if the battery degrades that slowly and electric motors have a fraction of moving parts in combustion engine.

00:15:58: The lifespan of power train vastly outpaces the life span of cars interior Oh totally.

00:16:03: So is an EV actually just highly durable rolling energy storage system?

00:16:08: That happens to transport people as secondary function?

00:16:11: Economically you might be right.

00:16:13: The residual value of a ten-year old vehicle might eventually be tied closer to its remaining battery capacity for grid storage than it's actual mileage.

00:16:22: Yeah, and the innovation curve on these rolling batteries is currently outpacing the grids ability to support them

00:16:28: which brings us to the charging speeds.

00:16:30: Martin Salomon highlighted Geelys new nine hundred volt LFP battery.

00:16:35: Now LFP stands for Lithium Iron Phosphate, a chemistry that is famously durable and doesn't use volable cobalt though historically it was just too heavy.

00:16:46: But Geely managed to charge this new LFP pack from ten percent to seventy percent in roughly four minutes.

00:16:52: the physics behind Basically come down to the nine hundred volt architecture.

00:16:56: right

00:16:56: because of ohm's law

00:16:57: exactly power

00:16:58: equals voltage times current.

00:17:00: So if you double, the voltage two nine hundred volts You can push The same amount of total wattage while basically cutting.

00:17:05: The current in half

00:17:06: and Current is what creates heat In the wires in the cells.

00:17:09: Exactly so.

00:17:10: less Heat means?

00:17:11: You Can Push Power in Faster Without Degrading the Battery.

00:17:14: the catch Is that Outside Of Highly Specific Test Environments The Global Charging Network Just Isn't Ready for it.

00:17:21: no

00:17:21: The technology inside the car is here, but physical infrastructure to feed it power that fast simply doesn't exist at scale yet.

00:17:29: Because these batteries are so vast and durable and capable of moving energy so quickly they're poised to become most important distributed asset for global energy grid itself.

00:17:39: This where vehicle-to-grid or VTG transitions from theoretical concept into a physical reality.

00:17:47: Sleep Kirchow had shared an incredible analysis of a program in Denmark that enrolled ten thousand electric vehicles into V-to-G network.

00:17:55: And the combined battery capacity for just those ten thousand parked vehicles equals four hundred megawatt hours.

00:18:01: That's massive!

00:18:02: That holds more capacity than any single purpose built grid scale battery installation in the entire country, and

00:18:08: the grid operator didn't have to spend a dime of capital on building batteries.

00:18:12: The consumers bought them to commute, and while they're parked ninety-five percent of the day.

00:18:21: It totally transforms a depreciating asset into a revenue-generating grid appliance.

00:18:27: And it is hitting the mainstream faster than most realize.

00:18:31: Matthew Bell noted that Volkswagen has unlocking bi-directional charging capabilities on more of their twenty, twenty six models and they aren't doing with massive hardware recalls or unlocking via free over-the-air software update.

00:18:44: Suddenly tens of thousands vehicles are capable powering home or feeding the grid overnight.

00:18:51: The implications for grid architecture are profound.

00:18:54: Kurt Johnson argues that our current centralized grid model is inherently fragile, I mean we see recurrent transformer shortages and deep vulnerability to extreme weather events all the time.

00:19:05: Right, he believes we are being pushed toward a decentralized microgrid architecture.

00:19:09: so neighborhoods corporate campuses or even single homes that can disconnect and operate independently when the main grid fails Exactly.

00:19:17: And the cornerstone of that resilient architecture isn't a noisy diesel generator.

00:19:21: it is the bi-directional battery sitting silently in the driveway.

00:19:24: Steve Altander takes that concept even further injecting an autonomous edge.

00:19:28: Oh

00:19:28: this was wild.

00:19:29: Yeah, imagine a scenario where the local grid is under extreme strain in this specific neighborhood during heat wave.

00:19:36: Autonomous EVs acting as mobile batteries could literally reposition themselves.

00:19:42: they drive to where grid support is needed most plug-in and balance the load without human intervention.

00:19:48: It completely flips our assumption that an EV only provides grid services where its owner happens to park it.

00:20:13: Can the aging power grid handle millions of electric vehicles?

00:20:16: Right, we've all heard that.

00:20:16: But

00:20:17: looking at the unprecedented decentralized storage capacity Of these bi-directional batteries Looking how they can stabilize entire regions With zero capital costs to utility The real question going forward might actually be Can the ageing grids survive without them?

00:20:32: That is the paradigm shift defining next decade.

00:20:35: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:20:39: Also check out our other editions on Commercial Fleet Insights, Autonomous Mobility Markets and Software Defined and AI-Defined Vehicles.

00:20:47: Thank you all for joining us on This Deep Dive!

00:20:49: We appreciate your time.

00:20:50: Thanks for listening And don't forget to subscribe.