Best of LinkedIn: Electrification & Battery Technology CW 02/ 03

00:00:00: brought to you by Thomas Alguyer and Frennis.

00:00:02: This edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on electrification and battery technology in weeks two and three.

00:00:07: Frennis supports automotive enterprises and consultancies with market and competitive intelligence, so product teams and strategy leaders have the optimal base for their strategic decisions.

00:00:17: Welcome back to the deep dive.

00:00:19: We have a lot to get through today because, you know, looking at the feeds from the last two weeks, the whole tone has really shifted.

00:00:26: It really has.

00:00:27: We're not seeing those flashy concept car posts or the big net zero twenty fifty promises right now.

00:00:34: No, the fluff is gone.

00:00:35: If I had to summarize the mood from the sources we've looked at so weeks two and three of the year.

00:00:42: It feels like the industries walked out of the showroom and onto a construction site.

00:00:46: That's

00:00:47: a great way to put it.

00:00:47: It's messy, it's loud, and it's all about execution now.

00:00:51: Exactly.

00:00:51: It's growing pains, right?

00:00:52: The industry is hitting those awkward teenage years where things start breaking, systems get stressed.

00:00:57: And the solutions have to get a lot more sophisticated than just, you know, build more stuff.

00:01:02: Right.

00:01:02: So that's the core theme we need to explore today.

00:01:05: We're going to look at how charging infrastructure is being forced to mature from like a simple numbers game to a real economic one.

00:01:13: And we have a massive reality check coming for heavy duty trucking.

00:01:17: Huge.

00:01:18: And we're also going to dismantle some of these myths about battery health that are probably costing sleep managers a lot of money.

00:01:24: For sure.

00:01:25: Okay.

00:01:25: Let's start with that first point.

00:01:27: Infrastructure.

00:01:28: For the last five years, the metric has been so simple.

00:01:32: Quantity.

00:01:33: How many plugs can we stick in the ground?

00:01:34: Yeah, just get them out there.

00:01:36: But looking at a post from Michael Chan.

00:01:38: That whole strategy seems to be hitting a wall.

00:01:41: He was analyzing the situation up in Canada, specifically around tariffs.

00:01:45: And

00:01:45: this is a really crucial piece of context.

00:01:47: Canada has cut its tariffs on Chinese EVs down to what, six point one percent?

00:01:52: Just six point one percent.

00:01:53: Now you compare that to the US where there's essentially a one hundred percent tariff wall.

00:01:58: Canada is, well, it's opening the floodgates.

00:02:00: Chan notes they're expecting an influx of potentially forty nine thousand new affordable EVs.

00:02:06: That

00:02:06: is a massive volume of vehicles and they're going to change the demographic completely.

00:02:11: Right.

00:02:11: And this is where his insight on dwell time becomes so important for landowners.

00:02:15: When you have that many cars coming, you can't just put a charger behind a shed or, you know, in a dark corner of a parking lot anymore.

00:02:23: So it's not just providing a service, it's about... It's

00:02:25: about asset utilization.

00:02:26: You can't create a stranded asset.

00:02:28: Right.

00:02:29: He argues that understanding dwell time, how long a car actually sits there, is now non-negotiable.

00:02:35: If you install a fast charger where people park for eight hours, you've wasted your money.

00:02:39: And the other way around, too.

00:02:40: Exactly.

00:02:41: Chan's point is that with this flood of vehicles, the location strategy has to be laser focused.

00:02:47: The whole spray and pray approach to infrastructure is dead.

00:02:50: This lines up perfectly with what Cecile Post was saying.

00:02:53: She had a phrase that really stuck with me.

00:02:59: Grow

00:03:00: Up is the perfect way to put it.

00:03:01: I mean, until now, you had early adopters enthusiasts who would tolerate a broken charger or a clunky

00:03:08: app.

00:03:08: Right, we've all been there.

00:03:10: Fleets will not.

00:03:11: Post argues that the whole conversation is shifting from availability, is there a plug, to reliability and performance, throughput, session success.

00:03:21: Those are the new KPIs.

00:03:23: Because for a fleet, A failed charging session isn't just an inconvenience.

00:03:27: It's a hole in the P&L.

00:03:28: Precisely.

00:03:29: If a delivery van fails to charge overnight, that truck doesn't roll the next morning.

00:03:34: That's lost revenue.

00:03:35: Full stop.

00:03:35: And we actually have some hard data that shows quality as a revenue driver.

00:03:39: I saw Tom Hirst from Fast and Share their Q-Four Numbers.

00:03:42: They're posting, what, forty-four percent revenue growth?

00:03:45: That's a staggering number in this market.

00:03:47: It is.

00:03:48: And Hirst isn't being shy about why.

00:03:49: He attributes it to their model.

00:03:51: Reliable hardware, high visibility, you know, those yellow canopies, and decent location.

00:03:56: That sounds

00:03:57: so obvious, doesn't it?

00:03:58: It does.

00:03:59: Turns out, if you build a station that people aren't afraid to use at night and that actually works, you make money.

00:04:04: It's a validation of that premium experience.

00:04:06: But there's a darker side to this build out.

00:04:09: As these stations get more common, they're becoming targets.

00:04:11: We saw a report from Vladislav Vladipov that was, frankly, pretty alarming.

00:04:16: I think alarming is the right word.

00:04:18: He was flagging a crisis in cable theft.

00:04:20: And he wasn't talking about, you know, kids just vandalizing screens.

00:04:23: This is organized.

00:04:25: He broke it down.

00:04:26: He said with hydraulic scissors, a thief can cut a high-power charging cable in about twelve seconds.

00:04:31: Twelve seconds.

00:04:32: You could be at a stoplight longer than that.

00:04:34: And here's the brutal economic part.

00:04:36: The scrap copper in that cable might get them maybe fifty euros.

00:04:40: Okay.

00:04:41: But for the operator, the cost to replace that liquid-cooled cable, the labor, the downtime, you're looking at fifteen hundred euros or more.

00:04:49: That's

00:04:49: just unsustainable.

00:04:50: A couple of those a month and your profit margin is gone.

00:04:54: Lattapov calls it an infrastructure vulnerability.

00:04:57: Not just petty crime, it's systemic.

00:05:00: If users show up and cables are missing, trust just evaporates.

00:05:04: It's another one of those growing pains.

00:05:05: Speaking of pain, York Cole brought up the user experience side of things.

00:05:09: He called the payment landscape a jungle.

00:05:12: A jungle of apps, RFID cards, QR codes that don't load.

00:05:16: It's a mess.

00:05:18: And he was contrasting it with plug-in charge, which seems so simple.

00:05:21: You plug it in, the car talks to the charger, bailing happens in the background.

00:05:25: Why is this still a debate?

00:05:27: Because of data and control, right?

00:05:29: Operators want you in their app ecosystem.

00:05:31: They do.

00:05:32: But Kolb's arguing that the friction is now costing them business.

00:05:36: Users are just tired of downloading a new app for every fifty kilometers they drive.

00:05:40: Like Cecile Poe said, the market needs to grow up.

00:05:43: A mature market has to be seamless.

00:05:46: Okay, let's shift gears to the heavy weights.

00:05:48: Theme two.

00:05:49: The trucking sector.

00:05:51: If passenger cars are having growing pains, heavy-duty trucking feels like it's just waking up to a nightmare of missing infrastructure.

00:05:58: The gap is startling.

00:06:00: Gerald Wolfforth put some numbers on this that really frame the problem.

00:06:03: There are roughly ten thousand electric trucks operating in Europe right now.

00:06:07: Okay, ten thousand.

00:06:08: That sounds like a decent start.

00:06:09: It

00:06:09: does.

00:06:10: But do you know how many true heavy-duty fast-charging locations exist for them?

00:06:15: I'm guessing not.

00:06:15: ten thousand.

00:06:16: About three hundred.

00:06:17: Three hundred.

00:06:17: That's not a bottleneck, that's a pinhole.

00:06:19: It is.

00:06:20: You have ten thousand assets fighting for three hundred spots.

00:06:23: And Wolfarth made another point that I think gets overlooked in all the tech specs.

00:06:27: He talked about human infrastructure.

00:06:30: Because these trucks have drivers.

00:06:31: Exactly.

00:06:32: And drivers have legally mandated rest times.

00:06:35: They need lounges, showers, safety, good food.

00:06:39: He mentioned the Bakoo World concept.

00:06:41: Right.

00:06:41: If you just stick a megawatt charger in a dark, unpaved lot with no bathroom, you're failing the driver, not just the truck.

00:06:49: And in a driver shortage, that really matters.

00:06:51: But the

00:06:51: hardware is coming.

00:06:52: We saw that post from Leonard Olson about a major opening at the port of Gothenburg.

00:06:56: Yes, this is the megawatt charging system, MCS.

00:06:59: It just launched at a Circle K at Wittermottet, involving Volvo trucks and the port authority.

00:07:04: So for anyone listening who isn't an engineer, can you explain why MCS is such a big deal?

00:07:09: It's the difference between a garden hose and a fire hose.

00:07:12: A standard fast charger might peak at, what, three hundred and fifty kilowatts?

00:07:16: If you're looking.

00:07:16: Right.

00:07:17: MCS targets over a megawatt.

00:07:20: That allows a massive semi-truck battery to charge during the driver's mandatory forty-five minute break.

00:07:25: Without that, long-haul electric trucking just doesn't work.

00:07:29: We also saw a very interesting strange bedfills moment.

00:07:32: John Jerica's got a scoop about beat pulse.

00:07:35: This was fascinating.

00:07:36: He spotted that beat pulse and oil majors charging arm is installing Tesla MCS chargers at a site in California.

00:07:44: Tesla

00:07:44: hardware at a BP site.

00:07:45: Yeah.

00:07:47: It signals a few things.

00:07:48: One, Tesla's hardware manufacturing is probably way ahead of the pack for MCS.

00:07:53: And two, BP Pulse is being pragmatic.

00:07:56: They don't care about the branding war.

00:07:57: They just want something that works.

00:07:58: They want reliable, seven hundred fifty kilowatt pull-through bays that work.

00:08:02: It makes the whole idea of high-power trucking corridors feel much more real.

00:08:06: Christopher Filiburne thinks this year, twenty twenty six is the tipping point.

00:08:10: He says electric trucks are going to shake up everything when it comes to grid planning.

00:08:14: He's right.

00:08:14: But shake up is a polite way of saying break.

00:08:16: Philip Graf had a necessary reality check here.

00:08:19: He's seeing depots that want to electrify.

00:08:22: They buy, say, six electric trucks for a pilot.

00:08:24: They go to plug them all in at the same time, and the local grid connection just fails.

00:08:29: So the trucks are there, the chargers are there, but the pipe from the power plant is too small.

00:08:33: The grid constraint is the new range anxiety, and graph points out you can't just add more power.

00:08:38: It takes years to upgrade substations.

00:08:41: This is forcing fleets to get really smart about when they charge, not just where.

00:08:45: Which is a perfect lead-in to theme three, battery technology and lifecycle.

00:08:50: Because if the grid is constrained, the health of the battery becomes your most valuable asset.

00:08:55: And there's so much misinformation floating around here.

00:08:58: The biggest fear for any fleet manager is that they buy a hundred and fifty thousand dollar electric truck and in three years the battery is dead.

00:09:05: Charlotte argue from Geotab just dropped a data bomb that should silence that fear.

00:09:10: They analyzed twenty two thousand seven hundred EVs.

00:09:14: a massive sample size.

00:09:15: It's real data, not anecdotes.

00:09:16: And they found the average degradation is only two point three percent per year.

00:09:20: So after ten years, you still got almost eighty percent of your range.

00:09:23: Correct.

00:09:24: The batteries are outlasting the vehicles.

00:09:26: But she went further and took aim at the whole twenty to eighty percent rule.

00:09:31: You know, the commandment that you must never charge above eighty percent.

00:09:34: Oh yeah, I feel like my car scolds me if I try to go to a hundred percent.

00:09:37: Well, for a fleet, that twenty percent buffer is just lost utility.

00:09:41: Geotab's data shows that charging to one hundred percent for daily use as a penalty of only about point eight percent degradation.

00:09:47: That's negligible.

00:09:48: It's just noise.

00:09:50: If charging to one hundred percent means a driver can finish a route without stopping, the ROI on that extra range just crushes the tiny bit of battery health you might lose.

00:10:00: Fleetman.

00:10:00: managers need to stop babying these batteries and start using them.

00:10:03: Exactly.

00:10:04: But managing that health isn't just about chemistry, it's software.

00:10:08: Lipika Sharma made a strong case that the innovation is moving from the cell to the BMS, the battery management system.

00:10:14: The brain of the battery.

00:10:16: It's the brain.

00:10:16: It decides everything.

00:10:17: And she highlighted that as we move to second life batteries, the history of that battery matters.

00:10:22: She mentioned the battery pack Aadhar number or B-Pan in India.

00:10:26: Is that like a digital passport for the battery?

00:10:28: That's a great way to put it.

00:10:29: It tracks the battery from the mind to the recycling center.

00:10:32: So if you're buying a used battery pack, you need to know, was this thing fast charged every day?

00:10:38: was it sitting in extreme heat?

00:10:40: The BPN gives you that transparency.

00:10:43: And eventually all those batteries end up in recycling.

00:10:45: As a multi-bretel, shared a huge update about CILIB securing over sixty-three million euros for a facility in Europe.

00:10:52: But the real story wasn't the money, it was the chemistry they're targeting.

00:10:55: LFP.

00:10:56: Right, LFP.

00:10:57: And this is a really important nuance.

00:10:59: LFP lithium-iron phosphate batteries are great.

00:11:02: They're cheap, they're safe, they don't use cobalt or nickel.

00:11:06: But because they don't have those expensive metals, traditional recyclers hate them.

00:11:10: No gold in the trash, so to speak.

00:11:12: Exactly.

00:11:13: It costs more to recycle an LFP battery than the materials inside are worth.

00:11:17: So it's an economic dead end.

00:11:18: Syllab claims to have cracked the code to make LFP recycling profitable.

00:11:22: If they have, that unlocks the circular economy for all those affordable EVs we talked about earlier.

00:11:27: Before we leave tech, I have to mention Ali Zulfa-Garion's post on structural batteries.

00:11:32: This sounds like pure engineering wizardry.

00:11:34: It's the idea of making the battery part of the car's frame.

00:11:38: So instead of a box of batteries sitting in the chassis, the battery is the chassis.

00:11:42: It saves weight, handles vibration better, it's complex, but it just shows we are still in the very early innings of vehicle architecture.

00:11:50: Okay, let's move to theme four, bi-directional charging, or V-to-G, the dream that our cars can power our lives.

00:12:01: Bastion Girol introduced a German term that I thought was perfect.

00:12:05: Stetsäuge.

00:12:06: Stetsäuge.

00:12:07: It's a play on fartsides or vehicles.

00:12:09: It translates roughly to standing things.

00:12:11: Which is so accurate, right?

00:12:12: My car sits in my driveway, ninety-seven percent of the time.

00:12:15: It's an idle asset.

00:12:16: Girol's argument is that this is economic madness.

00:12:19: We have these massive batteries just sitting there, doing nothing.

00:12:22: And Giron Bruanouge pointed out that German regulators are finally waking up to this.

00:12:26: They're removing the double charging fees.

00:12:28: Yes.

00:12:29: Previously, if you took electricity from the grid into your car, you paid a tax.

00:12:33: If you then sold it back to the grid, you might get taxed again.

00:12:36: It just killed the business case.

00:12:38: But Manfred Recibel from Ambibox came in with a bit of a reality check on what V-to-G actually does.

00:12:43: Yeah, and I think we need that reality check.

00:12:45: People hear V-to-G and think, great, if the power goes out, my car runs my house.

00:12:49: The prepper dream.

00:12:50: Right.

00:12:51: But PraiseBilla points out that V-to-G is mostly about grid services, stabilizing frequency.

00:12:57: shaving peaks.

00:12:58: To actually run your house in a blackout called islanding, you need very specific, expensive hardware.

00:13:05: And just connect from the grid.

00:13:06: Exactly.

00:13:07: So you don't electrocute the linemen fixing the wires.

00:13:10: So V-to-G is a financial tool for the grid, not necessarily a survivalist tool for the homeowner, at least for now.

00:13:16: And Jacob Gommasmar pointed out another boring but critical bottleneck.

00:13:20: smart meters.

00:13:21: The infrastructure lag strikes again.

00:13:23: You can't have a dynamic energy trade with your car if your house has a mechanical meter from nineteen ninety five.

00:13:29: Right.

00:13:30: And he notes that while commercial VDG offers are coming in twenty twenty six, the lack of smart meter rollout in places like Germany is a massive break on the whole system.

00:13:39: Interestingly, Rob Safrada and Piotr Paulak noted the U.S.

00:13:42: might be moving faster here.

00:13:44: The Toyota and Oncrapilot in the US.

00:13:47: Turning cars into virtual power plants.

00:13:49: Because the US grid is, let's say, less stable in places than the European grid, the incentive to use cars as backup is much higher.

00:13:59: Okay, let's zoom out for our final theme, market design and geopolitics.

00:14:03: We started with Canadian tariffs, but Bill Pierce raised a red flag about what that actually means.

00:14:08: Pierce

00:14:08: argues that Canada is essentially becoming a backdoor.

00:14:11: If Chinese EVs enter Canada at a six percent tariff and supply chains get established there.

00:14:16: It becomes very difficult to stop those vehicles or at least their components from filtering south.

00:14:21: He thinks it's a direct threat to the U.S.

00:14:23: auto industry's protectionist bubble.

00:14:24: But while the politicians are building walls, the companies are building bridges.

00:14:29: Michael Gansler reported that Ford is in talks to use BYD's batteries for their hybrids.

00:14:34: The irony is delicious, isn't it?

00:14:36: Ford.

00:14:37: An American icon might need to partner with BYD, the Chinese juggernaut, just to survive.

00:14:43: It's survival over ideology.

00:14:45: It shows that politics is one thing, but supply chain reality is another.

00:14:50: If Ford wants affordable hybrids on the road next year, they can't wait for a domestic battery factory to be built.

00:14:56: They have to buy from the leader.

00:14:58: We're

00:14:58: also seeing huge moves in the Middle East.

00:15:01: Inabey Euphut and Rami Ashri shared news about ADNOC launching the largest charging hub in the region.

00:15:07: Sixty charging points on the Ylevan Highway.

00:15:09: What I like about this is that it's anticipatory.

00:15:12: They aren't waiting for EV traffic jams.

00:15:14: They're building the capacity first.

00:15:16: And

00:15:16: finally, in France, Alexander Claret highlighted a new bill about freight.

00:15:21: Thirty percent zero emission freight by twenty thirty five.

00:15:24: But there's a twist.

00:15:25: This

00:15:25: is a huge shift.

00:15:26: The bill places the burden on the shippers.

00:15:28: The company's hiring the trucks, not just the carriers.

00:15:31: So if you're a major retailer,

00:15:33: you are responsible for making sure your goods move on green trucks.

00:15:36: That forces the money to trickle down.

00:15:38: It changes the whole conversation.

00:15:40: Before

00:15:41: we wrap up, I have to ask you about the air powered

00:15:43: car.

00:15:43: Rachel Lai posted about this, a car in China that runs on compressed air.

00:15:48: It sounds like steampunk, doesn't it?

00:15:50: The hundred-kilometer range, two-minute refuel.

00:15:53: Is this real tech or just a distraction?

00:15:55: It's

00:15:55: probably a niche.

00:15:56: The energy density of compressed air is terrible compared to batteries, but I love that it exists.

00:16:01: It shows we aren't done inventing.

00:16:04: We get so focused on lithium ion, but hey, maybe for a forklift or a campus vehicle, air is fine.

00:16:10: It's

00:16:10: a good reminder to keep an open mind.

00:16:12: So, looking back, Canada's opening doors, thieves are cutting cables, trucks are waiting for power, and fleets are finally doing the math on battery ROI.

00:16:20: The common thread is maturity.

00:16:22: The easy days of PowerPoint presentations are over.

00:16:25: Now we have to dig the trenches, upgrade the meters, fight off the thieves, and balance the grid.

00:16:30: It's harder, but it's real.

00:16:32: Real is good.

00:16:33: We like real.

00:16:34: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:16:37: Also check out our other editions on future mobility and market evolution.

00:16:41: next-gen vehicle intelligence, and commercial fleet insights.

00:16:44: Thanks for listening to the Deep Dive.

00:16:46: Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next update.

00:16:48: See you back.