Best of LinkedIn: Charging & Battery Technology CW 34/ 35

00:00:00: Provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus, based on the most relevant LinkedIn post about charging in battery technology.

00:00:06: In calendar weeks thirty four and thirty five.

00:00:09: Frenness is a B to be 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.

00:00:19: you can find more info in the description.

00:00:22: So for today's deep dive we are really digging into the top charging and battery tech trends that have been just dominating LinkedIn lately.

00:00:32: Yeah, exactly.

00:00:33: And our mission here is to deliver a super focused completely no fluff analysis for you.

00:00:39: We want to extract actionable insights from next-gen vehicles and mobility professionals right?

00:00:44: So we are skipping all the hype and looking at where the industry actually heading based on real world data.

00:00:49: Right because if look in the industry years ago it was about getting steel in ground.

00:00:53: Oh yeah chaotic build out phase.

00:00:54: Just get a charger out there anywhere.

00:00:57: Exactly, but looking at the conversations from last couple of weeks we have clearly matured past that We're actually seeing the dawn of like a genuine DC fast-charging price war which is

00:01:08: wild.

00:01:09: think about

00:01:10: it.

00:01:10: Is Bill Pierce and Mac Hogan?

00:01:12: Actually shared some data on this And the dynamic is shifting so incredibly fast.

00:01:16: you've got newer entrance Like Iona in Walmart and they are just aggressively undercutting these established giants.

00:01:22: Yeah, like Tesla and Electrify America.

00:01:24: Right?

00:01:24: Exactly!

00:01:25: The data point that stuck out to me was that IANA is averaging about thirty-eight cents per kilowatt hour while Tesla in EA are way up at an average of fifty six cents per kilo one hour.

00:01:37: Fifty

00:01:37: six

00:01:38: cents?!

00:01:38: That's a huge

00:01:39: delta!!

00:01:40: How is it even economically

00:01:41: possible??

00:01:42: A gap this large isn't just a discount... well its completely different business model for IANA and Walmart taking massive loss to buy market share.

00:01:52: largely a strategic loss.

00:01:53: leader play, right?

00:01:55: But with a massive retail twist.

00:01:57: If you're Walmart the charger isn't really the primary product.

00:02:00: The groceries are the product

00:02:02: Right.

00:02:02: they just want you in the store.

00:02:03: Exactly so.

00:02:04: if they can offer electricity at near wholesale cost They capture it captive audience for You know twenty to thirty minutes inside their aisles.

00:02:12: But the pure play operators, like Electrify America...

00:02:15: We don't have a supermarket attached.

00:02:16: Right?

00:02:17: They don't that to offset the margins they have make their profit entirely on the electrons.

00:02:21: Oh man so the charger is literally just bait.

00:02:25: And what's super fascinating is how this pricing strategy directly correlates with driver satisfaction, Lauren McDonald brought up some insights from the latest JD power US electric vehicle experience.

00:02:37: public charging study.

00:02:38: Oh yeah I saw that.

00:02:39: Yeah

00:02:39: and Iona Mercedes Benz HPC and Rivian absolutely topped the list for satisfaction.

00:02:45: but then The Legacy players you know like ready charge in Chargepoint.

00:02:49: they saw these massive drops.

00:02:51: It just goes to show You Know the era of competing on Just existing is over.

00:02:55: Totally!

00:02:56: Operators

00:02:57: are having to compete on service and retention now, not just at availability.

00:03:01: But

00:03:01: you know even with these retail giants pushing prices down there's still a massive friction point.

00:03:06: Lissy Shaw did this brilliant analysis showing that Public charging is still up to eight times more expensive than home-charging.

00:03:13: Eight times?

00:03:14: That's just, it's staggering!

00:03:16: It is.

00:03:17: and if you're a mobility professional listening to this You have to look at that ask like why the gaps are so huge.

00:03:22: Well really comes down these

00:03:24: hidden

00:03:25: invisible structural costs that Home Charging doesn't face.

00:03:30: Shaw points out things like traffic regulation order fees

00:03:33: Which or what

00:03:34: Exactly.

00:03:35: It's basically an administrative cost.

00:03:37: you have to pay the local authorities.

00:03:38: just To designate in EV only parking bay on a public street.

00:03:42: Wait, just for the permit?

00:03:43: To paint the lines on the ground literally

00:03:45: Just to paint the line.

00:03:46: okay and then On top of that You have commercial standing charges like at home pay for what you use.

00:03:53: But a commercial operator gets hit with utility demand charges, so the utility bills them based on the highest fifteen minute peak of energy they draw in a given month.

00:04:02: Oh wow!

00:04:03: So if one massive bus plugs-in... Exactly

00:04:07: One bus plugs it at high power and the operator pays a massive demand fee for that whole month.

00:04:12: It doesn't matter whether the charger sits completely empty.

00:04:15: That is brutal, and then you throw in VAT differences.

00:04:18: And the baseline cost to just turn machine on is astronomical.

00:04:22: Yeah it really is

00:04:23: Okay.

00:04:23: so let me try an analogy here because if your infrastructure plan are listening You have to wonder Are public chargers basically destined To become The airport food of electricity?

00:04:33: Oh that's I like that.

00:04:35: Let's follow that logic.

00:04:36: Right Because think about A sandwich at the airport costs like three times what it cost on the street, because of structural overhead.

00:04:44: operating inside a terminal is sky high.

00:04:47: You know security commercial leases logistics

00:04:49: and you're a captive audience.

00:04:51: exactly.

00:04:52: so if this structural over head have public charger makes inherently uncompetitive with eating or charging home doesn't that mean CPO's basically offer premium lounge experience to justify?

00:05:04: I mean, they have to.

00:05:05: You cannot charge a premium for a mediocre airport sandwich and you definitely can't charge the premium for plastic box sitting in dark unlit parking lot.

00:05:14: No one wants

00:05:14: that!

00:05:15: Right?

00:05:15: To get someone to pay fifty-six cents per kilowatt hour...you need canopies, squeegees well lit bathrooms security The whole package.

00:05:24: Which honestly brings up a very dark reality for these operators because the moment you build that premium physical lounge, You have to defend it!

00:05:33: Yeah...the physical infrastructure realities are harsh.

00:05:35: right now

00:05:36: They really are.

00:05:37: We're seeing physical vulnerabilities in these networks That are completely upending the economics.

00:05:42: Like Maxime Riznichenko shared A situation that honestly blew my mind.

00:05:47: He found eleven charging cables completely severed at a single, highly visible shopping mall in Spain.

00:05:56: Cameras and security in foot traffic.

00:05:58: Yeah, the copper theft is just surging And the financial hit isn't even just the price of cable.

00:06:03: The charger goes down on the driver stranded the brand loses trust

00:06:06: and they bleed revenue every single hour.

00:06:08: It's offline

00:06:09: exactly but Jordan M noted that the industry has been forced to adapt.

00:06:14: They're deploying hardware solutions now like EV Baywatch which are basically physical security and monitoring overlays.

00:06:22: and Are they actually working?

00:06:23: Yeah, they're reporting zero repeat attacks on protected sites.

00:06:27: Wow!

00:06:28: I mean it requires a systems level defense that nobody really modeled into their business plans five years ago?

00:06:34: Definitely not

00:06:35: because you aren't just installing a charger You are basically deploying an unattended ATM That dispenses highly valuable copper.

00:06:42: Such a good way to put it.

00:06:44: And this pressure to lower prices and improve satisfaction while fighting theft, It's fundamentally changing how European operators buy hardware.

00:06:52: Rachel Lay noted that European buyers are consistently choosing Alpetronic chargers even though they're way more expensive up front

00:06:58: Right?

00:06:58: Her explanation for why was really crucial.

00:07:01: She pointed out that Alpetronics power modules weigh over one hundred kilograms.

00:07:05: Okay hold on.

00:07:06: Why is that selling point?

00:07:08: If a module breaks, wouldn't you want it to be super light and modular so like one technician can easily swap out?

00:07:14: You'd think so right!

00:07:15: But its all about thermal mass.

00:07:17: When you push massive amounts of power through electronics they get incredibly hot which causes components to expand.

00:07:24: And then when the cool... They contract.

00:07:26: Oh..and that thermal cycling brakes things

00:07:29: Exactly Over time.

00:07:31: That destroys the solder joints in the silicon.

00:07:34: By over-engineering heat sinks and using much heavier robust components, you mitigate that thermal fatigue.

00:07:42: So when Lai asked how you replace something that heavy in the field... The company's response was basically why focus on repairing it?

00:07:49: Make sure doesn't fail.

00:07:50: That makes so much sense!

00:07:51: They're not buying hardware.

00:07:52: they are buying uptime.

00:07:54: they're buying the absence of a headache.

00:07:55: They'd rather pay a premium upfront than deal with dispatching

00:07:58: technicians.".

00:07:58: But it's funny, right?

00:07:59: Because while commercial operators are finally learning to buy exactly what they need at the consumer level we are totally over-engineering our own homes... I'm all

00:08:07: hundred percent!

00:08:07: It is classic case of spec chasing.

00:08:09: David Streitfeld actually brought this up.

00:08:12: He observed that people will routinely install these massive Forty-eight amp charging circuits in their home garages simply because Their car's spec sheet says it can accept forty eight amps

00:08:23: which sounds completely logical to a buyer like if the car Can take it give her the maximum speed.

00:08:29: but what is The actual consequence of doing that?

00:08:32: and residential house.

00:08:33: The consequences That pulling forty eight Amps Continuously triggers the need for A total electrical panel upgrade For the entire House.

00:08:41: you're basically pushing your home's grid connection to its absolute limit which costs thousands of dollars in electrician fees.

00:08:49: When

00:08:49: reality, fourteen-to fifteen amps is plenty power for a twelve hour overnight charge.

00:08:53: Right!

00:08:54: You're asleep The car does not need to recharge in two hours.

00:08:57: We are applying this transactional gas station mentality... ...to our

00:09:00: driveways.".

00:09:01: It's just a massive misallocation of capital!

00:09:03: Definitely,

00:09:03: and hey real quick if you ARE finding this deep-dive valuable take a second to hit that subscribe button right now so you ensure you catch all our future editions?

00:09:11: Yes

00:09:11: please do because we really need talk about the receiving end of all these power.

00:09:15: Oh…the

00:09:16: batteries?!

00:09:16: Right Whether you're charging at fifteen amps at home or four hundred kilowatts in a public hub, the ultimate question every professional and consumer asks is what does this doing to the battery?

00:09:27: The degradation debate.

00:09:29: We've been having it for a decade.

00:09:30: we have but the latest real world data is finally settling it.

00:09:34: Andrew Nicholson and Richard Berger shared findings from a massive European dataset an Arvol BNP Paribostudy of like twenty-four thousand battery certificates.

00:09:44: Wow and it showed that batteries are retaining about ninety-three percent of their capacity after seventy thousand kilometers, And they remain above ninety percent even after six years at a hundred sixty thousand kilometers.

00:09:56: Right really?

00:09:56: Over ninety percent!

00:09:57: Let me play the skeptical consumer for second here.

00:10:00: If my smartphone battery can barely get through afternoon or two years How is car battery retaining that much capacity After six years daily use?

00:10:09: Because

00:10:09: your phone has no cooling system right When it gets hot It just bakes the battery.

00:10:12: chemistry EVs have these sophisticated liquid cooling systems and complex battery management systems, the BMS.

00:10:18: The BMS acts like a traffic

00:10:20: cop Exactly if the battery gets too hot it actively chokes the charging speed And pumps coolant through the pack to protect the cells.

00:10:27: So the car is actively defending itself?

00:10:30: And Pedro Pacheco highlighted a great example of this with BYD's flash charging acid test.

00:10:35: Oh what about that?

00:10:36: yeah They drove a car thirty thousand kilometers in just nine days and flash charged it three hundred fifty times in a

00:10:43: row.

00:10:44: That is just continuous brutal utilization

00:10:47: And the result was only one point three percent capacity loss.

00:10:50: It absolutely proves that fast charging by itself Is not the battery killer we always assumed it was

00:10:56: Provided, The thermal management system can keep up.

00:10:59: But um We do have to look at exceptions To understand how degradation actually happens.

00:11:04: Brandon Flash shared A personal test of his own Tesla, which had a hundred and eleven thousand miles on it.

00:11:10: And he actually lost twenty three percent of its capacity.

00:11:12: Ouch!

00:11:13: That's a massive drop?

00:11:14: It is now.

00:11:15: you might point out that He used two megawatt hours of DC fast charging over the car's life.

00:11:20: I think that's the reason.

00:11:21: But wasn't the fast charging was?

00:11:22: no

00:11:23: The real culprit Was at.

00:11:24: the car have been sitting in the one hundred degree plus heat Of the desert Southwest for years.

00:11:28: Heat Is the ultimate enemy but why does ambient heat destroy the battery when Fast Charging doesn't.

00:11:34: It's because of how heat slowly alters the chemistry.

00:11:38: There is a layer inside called the solid electrolyte interface, or SEI.

00:11:43: When the battery just sits in extreme heat day after day, that layer thickens.

00:11:48: It constantly consumes active lithium and increases internal resistance.

00:11:52: Ah!

00:11:52: So it's chronic environmental thermal stress.

00:11:55: baking chemistry over time not a temporary burst of fast charging?

00:11:59: Precisely.

00:11:59: Okay but Nezalipsina brought up really crucial safety warning about this totally shifts how we have to look at it.

00:12:06: she pointed out state-of health which is percentage.

00:12:09: capacity.

00:12:09: number isn't the whole story.

00:12:12: What do you mean?

00:12:13: Well, as cells age their thermal stability and their gas generation characteristics change independently of their capacity.

00:12:20: so You can have two cells that both show say an eighty percent state-of-health.

00:12:23: They hold the exact same amount of energy Okay But because of how they aged maybe one was baked in the desert And the other was kept in Seattle.

00:12:30: They will have totally different safety behaviors.

00:12:32: Oh wow So one might be way more volatile right?

00:12:35: let me try another analogy.

00:12:36: here is Battery state of health basically like a human's body mass index, like BMI.

00:12:44: Well

00:12:44: let's unpack that.

00:12:45: We obsess over the single top level number right?

00:12:48: If your state-of-health is ninety percent or your BMI Is twenty two.

00:12:52: you look at the chart and say great I'm perfectly healthy But BMI doesn't tell you if your arteries are clogged.

00:12:57: Oh i see where you're

00:12:58: going.

00:12:58: The type of environmental stress the battery experiences Like that chronic heat is Basically hidden high blood pressure.

00:13:05: You might have A Great BMI but That Hidden internal brittleness is what actually triggers a thermal runaway heart attack.

00:13:12: That's a brilliant way to visualize it, you can't just look at top level number and assume the safety characteristics are same in year seven as they were on day

00:13:19: one Exactly.

00:13:21: Which brings us into our ultimate stress test?

00:13:24: If heat and high utilization push these chemistries to edge there absolutely no bigger proving ground right now than heavy duty freight or megawatt charging.

00:13:34: Oh hundred percent.

00:13:35: And we're moving so fast from these little isolated pilots to massive network-wide deployments.

00:13:42: Like Jesse McConan pointed out, that port operators like DP World are standardizing terminal wide charging... That's

00:13:47: huge!

00:13:48: ...and Ricard Steiber highlighted Einride's commitment to deploy five hundred electric Tesla semis for U.S.

00:13:55: freight roads.

00:13:55: Five

00:13:56: hundred?

00:13:56: But honestly the most extreme example was from Anders Gassadal.

00:13:59: He visited the LKB iron ore mine in Sweden.

00:14:03: They are running a hundred and twenty ton, Scania battery electric vehicles twelve hundred fifty meters underground.

00:14:10: Underground with heavy payloads?

00:14:12: Yes relying on alpatronic chargers just sitting down there in the dirt-in-the dark

00:14:16: That is insane.

00:14:17: but Christian Gehring and Maren Reynolds really grounded this whole conversation for me.

00:14:22: They argued that commercial truck charging is not actually an infrastructure topic.

00:14:26: Wait, how

00:14:27: was building massive megawatt chargers NOT an infrastructure?

00:14:30: Because it's fundamentally and operational on economic topics!

00:14:33: A high-power charger doesn't automatically create value.

00:14:36: what actually matters are the grid connections The fleet depot processes And the asset utilization.

00:14:42: Right because if a truck is charging It's not moving freight.

00:14:45: Exactly so the logistics schedule.

00:14:47: Like when the driver's legally mandated to rest, that dictates what charging hardware you buy.

00:14:52: Not the other way around.

00:14:54: And Marie Haddarm made such a good point about this.

00:14:56: Delivering megawatt power safely without human-driver intervention requires real world physical emulation not just end stage software compliance.

00:15:06: Well yeah because the thermal loads at one megawatter so extreme

00:15:09: They can literally melt cables in seconds.

00:15:13: And if an autonomous truck is charging, there's no driver sitting in the cab to smell smoke and hit the emergency stop button.

00:15:18: Oh wow!

00:15:20: I didn't even think about that.

00:15:21: so safety protocols have to be bulletproof.

00:15:23: They HAVE TO BE Which actually makes me wonder because these operational requirements are so intense Do you think passenger EV charging will soon start borrowing technology from the trucking sector rather than other way around?

00:15:36: That's a fascinating question.

00:15:38: Historically trucks just scaled up passenger car tech.

00:15:41: But now dealing with megawatts and a hundred-and twenty ton payloads, they are solving thermal and grid problems that passenger engineers haven't even seen yet.

00:15:51: They're becoming the apex predators of charging tech.

00:15:54: so if we pull all these threads together you know the DC fast charging price war is to push for uptime.

00:16:00: The truth about battery degradation And this massive mega watt scaling What does it all mean?

00:16:05: Where's at all heading?

00:16:07: well here Is a final provocative thought for you to chew on.

00:16:10: If battery degradation is largely a myth and grid integration is advancing rapidly, perhaps the ultimate bottleneck for next decade of mobility isn't technology or cost.

00:16:21: It's simply physical real estate.

00:16:22: The sheer fight for the square footage required to park in power a fully electrified world.

00:16:27: Oh

00:16:27: man, that is a whole other deep dive right there!

00:16:31: If you enjoyed this episode new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:16:34: also check out our other editions on commercial fleet insights autonomous and mobility markets software defined AI-defined vehicles.

00:16:42: Thank You so much for listening.

00:16:43: remember hit subscribe so don't miss any of future Deep Dives.