Best of LinkedIn: Electrification & Battery Technology CW 48/ 49

00:00:00: Brought to you by Thomas Allgeier and Frennis, this edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on electrification and battery technology in weeks forty-eight and forty-nine.

00:00:09: Frennis supports automotive enterprises and consultancies with market and competitive intelligence, so product teams and strategy leaders do have the optimal base for their strategic decisions.

00:00:21: Welcome back to the deep dive.

00:00:24: This week we've been digging through, well, a mountain of posts on electrification and battery technology.

00:00:31: We've pulled out what we think are the most strategic conversations from LinkedIn over the last two weeks.

00:00:35: And it's a critical time to do that.

00:00:36: You know, when you pull it all together, the articles, the comments, there's this one clear pattern.

00:00:41: The whole industry has, it's moved past the theoretical stage.

00:00:45: Right,

00:00:45: it's no longer a debate about if.

00:00:46: Exactly, it's all about how fast things are actually happening on the ground now.

00:00:49: It's about execution.

00:00:51: Totally.

00:00:51: The focus has just completely shifted to scaled implementation.

00:00:54: We're talking real certified products, huge infrastructure projects, and this urgent push for software and AI to wrangle all the complexity.

00:01:03: So

00:01:03: that's what we'll unpack today.

00:01:04: We'll look at V-to-G, heavy-duty transport, charging UX, and some really surprising data on batteries.

00:01:11: Let's jump in.

00:01:11: I think the biggest breakthrough has to be bi-directional charging or V-to-G.

00:01:16: It's moving from a cool concept into actual production.

00:01:19: It's no longer a prototype in a lab.

00:01:21: No, it's a core feature.

00:01:23: So what was the thing that finally cracked the nut on this?

00:01:27: It was regulation.

00:01:28: It often is.

00:01:29: Dr.

00:01:30: Leodmila Simon pointed to this really decisive shift in German energy law.

00:01:34: OK.

00:01:35: It finally got rid of the double burden, the grid fees, and electricity tax on power.

00:01:40: You feed back to the grid.

00:01:41: Ah, so it actually makes financial sense now.

00:01:43: Instantly.

00:01:44: that one change makes VDG economically viable in one of Europe's biggest markets, it removes the penalty.

00:01:50: And the hardware followed right behind that.

00:01:52: I saw Manfred Priccibilla confirm that the first batch of seventy-two VDG chargers from Ambibox, they've left Germany.

00:01:59: And they're not for a pilot project,

00:02:01: right?

00:02:01: No, this is a full commercial deployment in Finland.

00:02:03: It's for that joint energy bank project with the VW Group in Vattenfall.

00:02:07: These are series production units.

00:02:09: And it's fascinating to see the global OEMs jumping in.

00:02:11: Colin Piszczki noted, Volvo is bringing this to North America with the twenty twenty five EX-Ninety.

00:02:17: Right.

00:02:17: With Decribble.

00:02:18: Yeah.

00:02:18: And Hyundai is expanding its V to H pilots planning for the U.S.

00:02:21: soon.

00:02:22: So it's not just a European thing.

00:02:23: Not at all.

00:02:24: Matthew Downey highlighted a huge milestone down under a bi-directional charger.

00:02:29: Just got CEC approval in Australia and New Zealand.

00:02:32: That basically opens up the entire region.

00:02:34: And this is the so what for whom?

00:02:35: listening as Mila R put it.

00:02:37: V-IIG lets the EV become a true grid asset.

00:02:40: It can discharge power during peak hours, cushioning the grid.

00:02:43: So you buy cheap power at night.

00:02:45: And you sell back when it's expensive.

00:02:47: It's peak value arbitrage.

00:02:49: The car literally starts generating value.

00:02:50: That completely changes the total cost of ownership calculation.

00:02:53: It's not just a vehicle anymore.

00:02:55: It's a revenue center.

00:02:56: Okay, so speaking of massive energy demands, let's pivot from cars to trucks.

00:03:01: Our next theme is megawatt charging, or MCS, stepping out of the lab and onto Europe's main highways.

00:03:08: The speed of this is what's notable.

00:03:11: Julian Tuotti said that, you know, with regulatory pressure and falling battery costs, the TCO gap between electric and diesel trucks is closing way faster than anyone expected in Europe.

00:03:21: And that's being backed by some serious money.

00:03:23: We saw posts from Timo Cileber and Christian Sardari about the HDVE project.

00:03:28: That's a, what, seventy point three million EU investment?

00:03:32: Yep, and it involves major players like Eon and Voltix.

00:03:35: They're planning around three hundred and thirty MCS chargers at fifty-five sites.

00:03:40: And crucially, as David Watts pointed out, this is the first big private truck charging project without an OEM directly involved.

00:03:47: Right.

00:03:47: That shows the market itself has confidence.

00:03:50: The energy providers and CPOs believe it's going to happen, which de-risks it for everyone else.

00:03:55: But the technical challenge here is just... Immense, Jesus Monforte Hernandez laid it out.

00:03:59: A Class A truck needs about one point six megawatts to get four hundred miles of range in a thirty minute break.

00:04:05: That is a serious amount of power.

00:04:07: It is.

00:04:07: Which is why the architecture has to move to fifteen hundred volt systems.

00:04:10: You have to raise the voltage to lower the current, otherwise the cables would just be impractically huge.

00:04:15: And that's why we're seeing companies like DSpace, as Michael Struckles confirmed, rushing to support MCS testing protocols like ISO-one-fifty-one-eighteen.

00:04:23: The tech has to keep up.

00:04:25: It does raise that big strategic question from Rachel Lai, though.

00:04:29: Will MCS win globally, or will China's battery-swapping model take over?

00:04:34: Right.

00:04:34: China is seeing, what, a hundred and seventy-five percent year-on-year surge in electric truck sales?

00:04:39: And it's all built on LFP batteries and these huge CATL swapping networks.

00:04:43: It's a completely different infrastructure bet.

00:04:45: And on the operational side, Raj Chauvery stressed that it's less about the hardware and more about smart pricing, tariffs, load profiles.

00:04:52: Yeah, the software layer.

00:04:53: Yeah.

00:04:53: And then there's the immediate problem, Jacob Rock's Stadia's flagged.

00:04:57: Right now, public truck charging actually costs more per mile than diesel because of VAT.

00:05:02: Ouch.

00:05:03: So the economics are still a bit backwards for fleets until the policies catch up.

00:05:06: Exactly.

00:05:07: So moving from those huge high power projects, let's talk about the infrastructure where, you know, most of the charging actually happens, the daily experience.

00:05:14: Yeah.

00:05:14: Yeah, and we have to start with what Marcelo Crowe called the silent giant, all the private home and company chargers.

00:05:20: The

00:05:20: ones we forget about.

00:05:21: Right.

00:05:22: But they're controllable, they're VTG capable, and they are the foundation of the TCO advantage for most people.

00:05:29: But the public network is, well, it's a mess.

00:05:33: Paul Jan Jacobs thinks Europe will hit one point two million public chargers by the end of twenty twenty five.

00:05:38: But Wolfschlachter pointed out that in Germany, charger utilization is averaging just fifteen percent.

00:05:43: Fifteen

00:05:44: percent.

00:05:44: That's really low.

00:05:45: It just screams inefficiency.

00:05:47: And

00:05:48: that inefficiency leads directly to a terrible user experience.

00:05:52: Lars Christian Grudemulsen's example from Norway is just... It's almost funny.

00:05:57: A twenty

00:05:57: charging app.

00:05:58: Twenty

00:05:58: apps.

00:05:59: Operators are actually refusing to allow roaming because profitability is so low.

00:06:03: they're desperate to lock in customers.

00:06:05: It's punishing the user.

00:06:06: And that friction is why, as Dunstan Power noted, OEMs are finally putting their foot down.

00:06:11: They're demanding plug and charge ISO one fifty one eighteen as a baseline.

00:06:15: They're using their buying power to force the issue.

00:06:17: They have to.

00:06:18: And you can see UX becoming a real brand differentiator.

00:06:22: Ryan Davenport's road trip analysis was great.

00:06:25: He praised Tesla for consistency, but said Rivian had the best dressed chargers.

00:06:30: Because they just work with easy tap to pay.

00:06:32: It's the simple things.

00:06:33: It is.

00:06:34: And in cities, you're seeing real ingenuity.

00:06:36: Christian Wisniewski showed how Prague is turning lamp posts into AC chargers.

00:06:41: And Rohan Smith mentioned curbside charging partnerships in Australia to solve the apartment problem.

00:06:46: But even with all that, Maddie Fennart had a really good warning about smart charging.

00:06:50: Right, the perception problem.

00:06:51: Exactly.

00:06:52: If your charging rate suddenly drops because of grid load balancing and you don't know why, it just feels broken.

00:06:57: It feels like a limitation, not a feature.

00:07:00: Transparency

00:07:00: is key.

00:07:01: You need that communication and trust.

00:07:03: Okay, let's pivot from the chargers to what's inside the car, the battery itself.

00:07:08: This part, I think, really changes the game.

00:07:11: on long-term value.

00:07:12: I agree.

00:07:12: I found Martin Salomon stated to be just... jaw dropping.

00:07:16: Me too.

00:07:17: He's showing that for modern EV batteries, so twenty twenty two onwards, the replacement rate is only point three percent.

00:07:24: Zero point three.

00:07:25: It's incredibly low.

00:07:27: The degradation is so slow that I mean it's very likely these packs will outlast the vehicle itself.

00:07:33: Which completely undermines that old fear about a massive battery replacement bill down the line.

00:07:38: It does.

00:07:39: And it also explains why we're seeing the industry back away from the extreme range race.

00:07:44: Katelyn Harrison pointed out that NIO actually stopped making its hundred and fifty kilowatt hour battery.

00:07:49: Because drivers just preferred the smaller, cheaper, seventy-five kilowatt hour pack.

00:07:54: Exactly.

00:07:55: It reinforces the idea that good infrastructure, not a massive battery, is what solves range anxiety.

00:08:01: But this huge reliance on batteries brings up a massive strategic risk for Europe.

00:08:05: Absolutely.

00:08:07: Owee Hoek is sure it's made a very strong case for Europe to adopt an Airbus business model for batteries, a continent-wide effort.

00:08:14: To catch up on R&D and manufacturing?

00:08:16: Yes,

00:08:16: because relying so heavily on Asian suppliers means you're risking your strategic autonomy.

00:08:21: And as Hannah Paragard noted, this isn't just about cars, it's about battery energy storage systems, BES, for grid security.

00:08:28: If you don't control the battery supply, you don't control your grid's future.

00:08:32: Simple as that.

00:08:33: And one final point here.

00:08:34: A sort of hidden cost that ms.

00:08:36: Michela's raised.

00:08:37: The logistics footprint.

00:08:38: Yeah.

00:08:38: The Co Euro from shipping heavy hazardous battery scrap all over Europe, sometimes twelve hundred kilometers just for a permit is almost never tracked in the final Co Euro numbers.

00:08:49: That's a huge blind spot in the circularity discussion.

00:08:51: It is.

00:08:52: And managing all this scale we've just talked out.

00:08:55: Well, none of it happens without our last theme.

00:08:58: The digital layer.

00:08:59: software, AI, and policy.

00:09:02: Javier Menendez called EV charging the perfect industry for AI.

00:09:07: It makes sense.

00:09:07: You have massive amounts of data, an incredible technical complexity.

00:09:11: AI is really the only way to scale this stuff profitably.

00:09:14: Even a half percent improvement in uptime on a big network is a huge deal.

00:09:18: And we're seeing companies make AI operational now.

00:09:21: Casper H. Rasmussen detailed how Monta is using its servers to let tools like ChatGPT perform automated tasks.

00:09:27: So it's not just for analysis anymore?

00:09:29: No, it's for generating RFX answers, managing bulk actions.

00:09:33: It's moving to the operational core.

00:09:35: But all that smart tech needs a smart regulatory backbone.

00:09:40: Jeff Berger made the point that you need updated metering rules and tariffs to let things like V-to-G capable EVs actually participate in energy markets.

00:09:49: The policy has to enable the technology not block it.

00:09:53: And the industry is pushing for collaboration too.

00:09:56: Marco Muller announced the Everest CPO Forum, which is basically an open-source effort for charger firmware.

00:10:02: So they can turn lessons from the field into industry-wide progress.

00:10:06: Exactly.

00:10:06: It's about shaping the supply chain together.

00:10:08: Okay, so if we pull everything from the last two weeks together, the big takeaway is electrification is officially in execution mode.

00:10:15: Yeah, the debate is over.

00:10:17: You see it with certified V-to-G tech hitting the market and massive private capital funding MCS corridors.

00:10:23: It's happening.

00:10:24: So for professionals, the focus really has to shift.

00:10:26: It's no longer about what tech to choose, but how to build and manage the systems to handle the scale.

00:10:33: It's about regulation, AI, and user experience.

00:10:36: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:10:40: Also check out our other editions on future mobility and market evolution, next-gen vehicle intelligence, and commercial fleet insights.

00:10:46: And here's a final thought for you to take away.

00:10:48: We saw data that EV batteries will likely outlast the vehicle, and we saw that V-to-G policies are finally making economic sense.

00:10:57: So what happens to the entire energy ecosystem when millions of cars on the road suddenly become guaranteed utility-grade storage assets and not just transportation assets?

00:11:07: Something to think about for your next strategy meeting.

00:11:09: Thanks for diving deep with us.

00:11:10: We'll see you next time.