Best of LinkedIn: Electrification & Battery Technology CW 46/ 47

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

00:00:02: This edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on electrification and battery technology in weeks forty six and forty seven.

00:00:09: Frennus supports automotive enterprises and consultancies with market and competitive intelligence.

00:00:14: So product teams and strategy leaders do have the optimal base for their strategic decisions.

00:00:20: Welcome back.

00:00:20: We've got a fascinating stack of source material from the last couple of weeks.

00:00:25: And you know, if there's one big theme, it's this.

00:00:27: What's that?

00:00:28: The whole electrification sector.

00:00:30: It's not talking about hypotheticals anymore.

00:00:32: We are seeing a... really hard pivot from these isolated pilot projects to scalable commercially viable systems.

00:00:40: And it seems like it's being driven less by flashy new gadgets and more by these critical policy shifts and partnerships.

00:00:47: Exactly.

00:00:47: That's right.

00:00:48: I mean, the industry is scaling up fast, but with that scale comes new challenges, right?

00:00:52: Regulations, supply chain security.

00:00:54: So for you, the listener, we've clustered the top insights into three core areas that really define the shift maturity.

00:01:00: First up, we're looking at the enormous infrastructure build out, specifically how charging networks are trying to solve this crisis of reliability and user experience.

00:01:09: And second, we're going to dedicate some serious time to a massive regulatory breakthrough that is finally unlocking the real commercial potential of vehicle to grid or VTG.

00:01:20: That's a huge one.

00:01:21: It's a game changer.

00:01:22: And finally, we'll tackle the competitive realities of the battery life cycle.

00:01:27: Everything from overlooked material shortages to the severe pressures that are reshaping European OEM and dealership strategy.

00:01:35: All

00:01:35: right, let's jump in.

00:01:36: So,

00:01:36: theme one, charging infrastructure and networks.

00:01:39: For heavy duty transport, the network is moving at a speed that is, well, it's genuinely impressive.

00:01:44: The collaborative approach seems to be winning out.

00:01:46: Oh,

00:01:46: absolutely.

00:01:47: The momentum in heavy duty corridors is unmistakable.

00:01:50: You can really see it in the build-out pace.

00:01:52: David Watts highlighted the progress of Milance.

00:01:54: That's the joint venture, right?

00:01:55: Trotin, Daimler Truck, and Volvo Group.

00:01:58: That's the one.

00:01:59: And they're moving so fast.

00:02:01: They already have thirty charging hubs operational across Europe with four more under construction as we speak.

00:02:07: So that's not just a plan on paper.

00:02:09: No, this is operational reality for large-scale logistics right now.

00:02:13: And that kind of infrastructure, it relies on some serious power.

00:02:17: We're talking about the megawatt charging system, MCS, which is really defining this scale up.

00:02:22: Right.

00:02:22: And Michael Keller noted that the progress being driven by Sharon is extending way beyond just highway stops.

00:02:29: They're standardizing these ruggedized solutions for heavy industries.

00:02:33: Like what?

00:02:34: Like mining all trucks.

00:02:36: And even standardized marine shore power.

00:02:39: It's really about standardizing industrial-level energy transfer.

00:02:42: You know, it's a huge sign of institutional confidence when you look at the financing behind it.

00:02:45: For sure.

00:02:46: Thomas McKella shared that Plug-It Finland secured substantial support from the CFF.

00:02:50: Okay, for listeners who might not track those acronyms daily, can you break that down?

00:02:54: Yeah, that's the EU's Connecting Europe facility and the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure facility.

00:03:00: It's basically the mechanism designed to push these huge public infrastructure projects.

00:03:05: into reality.

00:03:06: And securing that kind of funding for sixteen public MCS locations.

00:03:10: It just underscores the definitive shift from, you know, national pilots to continent-wide execution.

00:03:16: This expansion brings us straight to the user experience, which is still the main battleground.

00:03:21: Oh,

00:03:21: absolutely.

00:03:23: Carlos Radcovitch has brought up a great comparison on charging costs.

00:03:26: He pointed out that while fast charging in some mature markets like Italy can get, well, frustratingly close to one euro per kilowatt hour.

00:03:34: Which is a lot.

00:03:35: A lot.

00:03:36: Meanwhile, Lithuania stands out with these really affordable, stable rates.

00:03:40: Around thirty to thirty-five cents per kilowatt hour.

00:03:43: That price volatility across borders is still a huge headache.

00:03:46: And then there's the physical user experience, the frustration of ice-seeing when a combustion engine car blocks an EV spot.

00:03:53: Right.

00:03:53: Bill Pierce cited the adoption of automated solutions to fight that.

00:03:57: Companies like Pogo in the UK are using AMPR, automatic number plate recognition.

00:04:01: So camera systems that just automatically detect and find violators.

00:04:05: Exactly.

00:04:06: We saw similar laws passed recently in U.S.

00:04:09: states like New Jersey.

00:04:10: Automation is really seen as the only way to enforce it at scale.

00:04:14: I want to dig into the access point for a moment because partnerships seem to be the fastest way to improve convenience.

00:04:21: They are.

00:04:22: Diane Collish shared that Eden Red, a major fleet solution provider, is integrating the Tesla Supercharger network.

00:04:29: Wow.

00:04:29: Okay, so that immediately gives their corporate users access to, what, twenty thousand superchargers across Europe?

00:04:35: Twenty

00:04:35: thousand plus.

00:04:36: It just massively strengthens the viability of corporate EV fleets overnight.

00:04:40: But convenience doesn't mean a thing if the charger doesn't actually work.

00:04:43: And that is the core problem.

00:04:44: Carlotta Ochoa and Evan Duman highlighted a staggering pain point.

00:04:49: Sources show that up to twenty-three percent of chargers in the field are non-functional.

00:04:53: Twenty-one percent of all charging attempts fail.

00:04:56: That level of unreliability just destroys consumer trust.

00:04:59: It's the ultimate barrier.

00:05:00: But wait, why is the hardware failing so much?

00:05:03: Are these physical breakdowns or is it a software issue?

00:05:07: The sources strongly suggest it's the latter.

00:05:10: It's the sheer complexity of integrating all this diverse software and the payment protocols across different manufacturers.

00:05:16: I

00:05:17: see, so that's why we're seeing this surge of investment into software solutions that can simplify the chaos.

00:05:23: Exactly.

00:05:24: The investment in ECOG's Universal Core OS, for example, is aimed squarely at achieving nearly ninety-nine percent uptime by basically standardizing the operating system of the charger itself.

00:05:35: So the focus is shifting.

00:05:36: It's not just about building more ports.

00:05:38: It's about making the existing ones smarter and way more reliable.

00:05:41: Precisely.

00:05:42: And the data analytics are getting surgical.

00:05:44: Javier Menendez described Montez AI-powered network operations center agent.

00:05:49: It can solve certain operational tasks in thirty seconds.

00:05:52: that used to take hours of manual diagnostics.

00:05:55: That's the shift from reactive maintenance to real operational intelligence.

00:05:59: That's

00:05:59: what you need for commercial scale.

00:06:01: And before we transition, there's a quick but crucial security footnote from Kyle Bolto.

00:06:05: The QR code payments, while super user friendly, have created a fraud risk.

00:06:09: Criminals are covering original codes with their own.

00:06:12: I've seen that.

00:06:13: So Europe is responding.

00:06:15: New regulations are coming that require dynamic QR codes on integrated screens by twenty twenty six.

00:06:21: It just shows how fast the whole ecosystem has to mature.

00:06:24: Yeah, it really does.

00:06:25: OK, let's pivot to theme two.

00:06:28: Energy and grid integration.

00:06:30: This is where policy isn't just supporting adoption.

00:06:33: It's really defining commercial viability.

00:06:36: We're talking about bidirectional charging, V to G.

00:06:39: And the game changing policy wins that just came out of Germany.

00:06:42: Tell us about that.

00:06:43: The German legislative breakthrough is, I would argue, the most important development in the last two weeks for VTG.

00:06:49: Mark Muller and Daniela Moes detailed the crucial obstacle that's finally been removed.

00:06:53: Which was?

00:06:54: The abolition of double grid fees and double taxation for stored energy.

00:06:58: OK, I want to stop there for a moment because for our listeners, that might sound like bureaucratic jargon, but this was the single biggest reason VTG was dead on arrival commercially.

00:07:08: Explain what that double taxation actually meant.

00:07:10: Certainly.

00:07:11: So before this change, if you drew electricity from the grid to charge your car, you paid taxes and fees on that energy.

00:07:18: Simple enough.

00:07:19: But then, if you later sold that same stored energy back to the grid during a peak demand event, which is the whole point of V-to-G, you were taxed and charged grid fees again on the energy you sold back.

00:07:31: So you were being taxed twice on the exact same unit of energy.

00:07:35: Precisely.

00:07:36: which made the economics completely impossible.

00:07:39: It meant V-to-G was just stuck in what Eugen Filippenko Siebert called pilot project purgatory.

00:07:45: And this new rule changes everything.

00:07:47: It changes everything.

00:07:48: It treats EVs like large mobile batteries, removes that punitive double burden, and instantly makes V-to-G a profitable model.

00:07:56: And now we can talk about the real economic potential this unlocks, which is just massive.

00:08:01: Marcus Grote shared details on the upcoming BMW and EON partnership in Germany.

00:08:06: What are they aiming for?

00:08:07: They're aiming to enable the equivalent of up to fourteen thousand kilometers of free driving per year for the driver, just through smart energy use and VDG revenue.

00:08:16: Wow,

00:08:17: that fundamentally transforms the total cost of ownership.

00:08:19: The car moves from being a liability to an asset.

00:08:22: And we saw a similar high impact partnership in Sweden.

00:08:26: Volvo and Vattenfall are offering a year of free home charging up to about five thousand one hundred fifty kilowatt hours.

00:08:34: Martin Salomon calculated that's about twenty five thousand kilometers of free driving.

00:08:38: The incentive structure is becoming overwhelmingly attractive.

00:08:42: It is.

00:08:43: And the system-wide benefits are even bigger than the individual ones.

00:08:46: Tanya Suarez highlighted the scale we're talking about.

00:08:49: If ten million EVs were V-to-G capable, they could offer one hundred gigawatts of power and six hundred gigawatt hours of capacity to the grid.

00:08:57: Okay, that one hundred gigawatt figure is staggering.

00:09:00: Put that into perspective for

00:09:01: us.

00:09:02: Well, as Giovanni Palazzo and Maximilian Wilshals emphasize, that amount of decentralized flexibility just dwarfs Germany's entire existing pumped hydro storage capacity.

00:09:12: Which

00:09:12: is what, about seven gigawatts?

00:09:13: About seven gigawatts and forty gigawatt.

00:09:15: hours, so this flexible capacity is absolutely crucial for grid stability, especially as we add more intermittent renewables like wind and solar.

00:09:23: And this isn't just a European thing, V-to-G is moving beyond pilots globally.

00:09:27: That's right.

00:09:28: So, Hal Hasley confirmed that bidirectional charging is now commercially available in markets like Australia for V-to-G, V-to-H, and for home backup.

00:09:37: And the tech is keeping pace.

00:09:38: It is.

00:09:39: Christian Sevdari presented research showing the VTG response time, how fast the car can feed power back to the grid, is dropping from a four to six second delay down to just one or two seconds.

00:09:50: And that speed is critical for participating in the reserve electricity markets.

00:09:54: It's vital.

00:09:55: And standardization efforts, which Rishabh Gojhe noted, like the IEA Task-Fifty-Three, are working toward global interoperability to make this truly scalable.

00:10:04: OK, let's move to our final theme.

00:10:06: battery technology, lifecycle, and competition.

00:10:09: Let's start with circularity and the materials challenge.

00:10:12: It's a broader issue than just securing lithium and cobalt.

00:10:15: That's

00:10:15: right.

00:10:16: The dark horse of battery recycling, as Massive Mikkel has called it, is graphite.

00:10:21: Graphite.

00:10:21: Most people overlook it.

00:10:22: Completely.

00:10:23: But it makes up twelve to eighteen percent of a lion battery by mass.

00:10:27: That is more mass than lithium, cobalt, and nickel combined.

00:10:30: And here's the acute supply chain risk.

00:10:33: Europe imports something like ninety-nine percent of its battery grade graphite.

00:10:37: Ninety-nine percent.

00:10:38: And the supply chain is heavily, heavily concentrated in one nation.

00:10:42: That immediately threatens the entire goal of European battery autonomy.

00:10:46: So, despite its strategic value, what happens to it in recycling?

00:10:50: Well, that's the problem.

00:10:52: McCoolich noted that recycled graphite often just gets burned or sent to a landfill because recycling processes haven't prioritized it.

00:11:00: Its value has been overlooked.

00:11:01: It's a critical supply chain blind spot.

00:11:04: That brings up the question of volume.

00:11:06: Hans Eric Mellon projected that by twenty thirty Europe will have about thirty seven and a half thousand tons of end-of-life EV batteries ready for recycling.

00:11:15: Right,

00:11:15: but here's the important point he makes.

00:11:17: That volume is still far below our current recycling capacity.

00:11:21: Why

00:11:21: is that?

00:11:22: Because, contrary to some early projections, vehicles are just staying on the road longer than expected and a significant number of them are being exported outside of Europe before they even reach that end-of-life recycling window.

00:11:33: So the recycling industry built up capacity for a turnover rate that the market isn't actually delivering yet.

00:11:39: Exactly.

00:11:39: This material challenge feeds right into the intense competitive pressures facing traditional OEMs.

00:11:45: Doran Meyersdorf highlighted a stark warning from Ford's CEO, Jim Farley.

00:11:51: What did he say?

00:11:52: He was talking about Chinese EV makers.

00:11:54: He cited their high quality and superior in-car technology and warned they have the capacity to potentially put us all out of business.

00:12:03: That is not corporate hyperbole.

00:12:04: That is a very real threat assessment.

00:12:07: The cost challenge is undeniable, and it comes directly from manufacturing scale.

00:12:11: Timor Gull highlighted the core issue there.

00:12:14: He did.

00:12:14: China is the lowest cost producer and will have produced six times the number of batteries the US has by twenty twenty four.

00:12:21: If you control the cheapest inputs and the largest volume, you dictate the market price.

00:12:25: So innovation becomes the only real mitigation strategy, focusing on software, user experience, solving those pain points faster than the competition.

00:12:33: Right.

00:12:34: And this disruption isn't just hitting manufacturing, it's hammering the traditional retail model.

00:12:38: Pablo Tilleria Bassadone detailed how EV penetration is already causing a twenty to fifty percent decline in traditional after sales revenue in mature markets.

00:12:48: Like Norway and the Netherlands.

00:12:50: Exactly.

00:12:51: Which

00:12:51: makes sense.

00:12:52: Fewer moving parts, less service.

00:12:54: No oil changes.

00:12:55: So what are dealerships doing to survive this shift away from that profitable service bay?

00:13:00: They have to rebuild their entire profitability model around what you could call new engines.

00:13:05: So

00:13:06: what are those?

00:13:06: Highly sophisticated services, managing software subscriptions, monetizing charging revenue, offering battery health certificates, and professionalized used EV remarketing.

00:13:18: The role of the dealer is fundamentally changing.

00:13:20: From a service shop to more of an energy and lifecycle management hub.

00:13:23: That's

00:13:23: a perfect way to put it.

00:13:24: And finally, let's just ground this all in the sustainability narrative.

00:13:28: Randall Tiny-Smith reaffirmed the lifecycle math.

00:13:30: Which is so important.

00:13:32: It is.

00:13:32: While EVs have a higher initial carbon debt from battery production, that debt gets paid back pretty quickly around eleven thousand miles in Europe.

00:13:41: After that, the full lifecycle CO-II emissions are roughly three times lower than a petrol car.

00:13:46: It confirms that every hurdle we've discussed today, infrastructure, policy, competition, it's all about reaching operational scale.

00:13:53: It's not about questioning the underlying necessity of this transition anymore.

00:13:57: So what does this all mean for you, the strategic leader?

00:14:01: The past two weeks show policy and technology are really converging to create commercially viable charging and grid flexibility solutions.

00:14:10: The shift is definitively from demonstration to deployment.

00:14:13: Which demands immediate focus on scaling that heavy-duty infrastructure and capitalizing on these.

00:14:18: VDG policy wins we're seeing in countries like Germany.

00:14:21: Right.

00:14:21: And we connect this to the bigger picture, considering the vast economic potential that VDG is unlocking.

00:14:27: and the critical supply chain issues exposed by overlooked materials like graphite, this raises an important question for you to think about.

00:14:33: And that is...

00:14:35: What specific cross-sector collaboration, beyond just the usual automotive and energy players, will be required to ensure Europe retains its competitive edge and achieves material autonomy in the next decade?

00:14:47: If you enjoyed this deep dive, new additions drop every two weeks.

00:14:51: Also check out our other additions on future mobility and market evolution, next-gen vehicle intelligence, and commercial fleet insights.

00:14:58: Thank you for joining us for this analysis.

00:15:00: And remember to subscribe so you don't miss the next one.