Best of LinkedIn: Electrification & Battery Technology CW 06/ 07

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

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

00:00:09: Frenu 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.

00:00:18: Welcome back to The Deep Dive!

00:00:20: We are looking at a very specific—and I have to say —a very loud slice of industry from mid-February.

00:00:28: twenty-twenty-six

00:00:29: Loud is the right word.

00:00:30: Looking at the research pile this week, I got this distinct impression that industry has finally graduated.

00:00:37: Graduated?

00:00:38: How

00:00:38: so?!

00:00:39: We're not looking at science fair projects anymore!

00:00:41: This is heavy industrial scaling.

00:00:43: That's a perfect way to frame it.

00:00:44: The posts from Week Six and Seven weren't asking will-this work.

00:00:48: They were asking how do we make this pay for itself?

00:00:50: Right It's shift from deployment into execution.

00:00:52: Exactly...we aren't just putting chargers in ground.

00:00:54: We are trying figure out how to blast a megawatt of power onto truck without, you know melting the grid.

00:01:00: Or bankrupting the logistics company in the process?

00:01:03: That too!

00:01:04: So we've got a few big flusters to get through today.

00:01:07: first this absolute explosion and heavy-duty trucking infrastructure.

00:01:11: megawatt charging is finally here.

00:01:13: And

00:01:13: second The hardware itself Is getting a lot smarter.

00:01:16: We're talking robots predictive maintenance...and yes even cow manure.

00:01:21: And we will wrap up with what feels like the Holy Grail, vehicle to grid.

00:01:26: It looks like it's finally moving from let's call it pilot purgatory-to an actual product.

00:01:31: Okay!

00:01:31: Let's start with The Big Rigs Heavy Duty.

00:01:33: If you were scrolling LinkedIn in mid February You just could not miss the acronym MCS

00:01:39: megawatt charging system.

00:01:41: It was everywhere, and you know for good reason.

00:01:43: Peter Van Aprildorn flagged this And he really really nailed the why.

00:01:47: it's not just about the cool technology.

00:01:49: no Not at all.

00:01:49: its About labor law compliance

00:01:51: The EU mandatory rest periods.

00:01:53: exactly in Europe a truck driver must take A forty five minute break after four point five hours of driving.

00:01:59: that's it non-negotiable?

00:02:00: and

00:02:01: if your electric truck takes say two hours to charge

00:02:04: You've just broken the logistics chain.

00:02:07: The truck is sitting there idle when the driver's ready to go, and that just kills the

00:02:10: economics.".

00:02:11: But with MCS you can charge from twenty percent to ninety percent inside that mandatory forty-five minute window.

00:02:17: Precisely!

00:02:18: The truck fits into the existing human workflow... ...and that is why we are seeing this mad rush to deploy.

00:02:24: I think it was Claudia Ville who reported on a major site in Prague

00:02:29: The one from Eon and M&M.

00:02:31: That's

00:02:31: the one!

00:02:31: They've got four hundred kilowatt chargers active now, but the entire site is prepped and wired for a full MCS upgrade.

00:02:38: And it's not just on off-sites Is It?

00:02:40: Now Riddell found massive development in Letterworth In the UK.

00:02:43: Massive is right.

00:02:44: This isn't two chargers at back of a gas station.

00:02:47: they are planning thirty-two MCS ready chargers.

00:02:49: that's proper freight corridor hub...and

00:02:52: its global too.

00:02:53: Saw Al-Khateev shared some footage from Jordan of electric trucks hitting ultra fast chargers.

00:02:58: So the hardware is rolling out, but here's a friction point and it's one that industry doesn't always talk about enough—the cost of electrons themselves!

00:03:05: Because pulling a megawatt for the grid at five in the afternoon?

00:03:08: is expensive.

00:03:09: It's ruinously expensive!

00:03:11: The demand charges are insane.

00:03:13: if you spike the grid during peak hours, the utility company penalizes and they penalize you heavily.

00:03:19: Right

00:03:19: Tommy Leoska laid out a math on this didn't he?

00:03:21: He

00:03:22: did...and he argues that for an electric truck fleet to even compete with diesel..the energy cost has to stay under um zero point one euro per kilowatt hour.

00:03:33: That Is A Very Very Tight Ceiling especially with current energy prices.

00:03:38: It is, so how do you cheat the system?

00:03:40: You use B-E-S-S.

00:03:41: Battery Energy Storage Systems.

00:03:43: Right!

00:03:44: You don't plug the charger straight into the grid... ...you plug it in to this massive battery buffer.. ..you fill that battery at three a.m when power's cheap and then you dump it into truck at noon.

00:03:53: So your peak shaving.... flatten out your demand curve, so the utility doesn't hit you with those massive fees.

00:03:59: Correct

00:04:00: and You avoid the grid upgrade costs because you don't need that mass of connection pipe And you avoid the peak pricing?

00:04:06: We're seeing this move from theory to reality.

00:04:10: In Abahiyufa shared a huge win from Perth Australia.

00:04:13: This was The Toll Group an Asahi beverages project.

00:04:16: Yeah They just launched the largest route-to-market electric fleet there

00:04:20: With the Volvo FE trucks.

00:04:22: I think Yes!

00:04:23: It's not a test.

00:04:25: This is a commercial operation doing thirty six thousand deliveries.

00:04:28: A year they've made the math work

00:04:31: and speaking of making them at work in maybe the biologist John Matheson found my favorite story, The Week.

00:04:37: Oh!

00:04:37: The Farm Charger

00:04:38: in Steinshire Norway.

00:04:40: fantastic it's public charger but its powered by bio gas that produced right there on site from

00:04:45: the farm zone cow and chicken manure.

00:04:47: It sounds funny But actually brilliant example of decentralized infrastructure.

00:04:52: you take local waste Convert it to electrons and sell directly to a customer.

00:04:56: No massive transmission losses, no grid strain.

00:04:59: It's perfect.

00:05:00: Let's pivot to the tech that makes all this possible because as we add All these trucks on all these chargers The grid is starting to scream!

00:05:07: It really is.

00:05:07: Harvey Knight shared A pretty staggering number.

00:05:10: Global Grid investment hit four hundred seventy billion dollars in twenty-twenty

00:05:14: five.

00:05:15: Wow

00:05:15: And EVs are fighting for That capacity.

00:05:17: against you know AI data centers.

00:05:19: Everyone wants more juice

00:05:20: Which brings us to BYD.

00:05:23: Syed Hasip Hasan did a technical breakdown of their new megawatt flash charger and when I first looked at the numbers, i thought there had to be a typo.

00:05:31: A

00:05:31: lot people do.

00:05:32: they're claiming one megawat output from single gun.

00:05:36: that's enough to charge heavy truck in minutes

00:05:38: but grid connections only about two hundred kilowatts.

00:05:41: like standard fast chargers.

00:05:42: right if you know even basic electrical engineering sounds impossible.

00:05:47: You can't give out more power than you take in.

00:05:48: Unless

00:05:49: you have a buffer?

00:05:51: So it's that BS concept again, but its integrated right into the unit and on steroids.

00:05:56: Syed explains they're using a battery with four C discharge rate.

00:06:00: Okay for those who don't speak battery engineer Can you unpack four c for us?

00:06:04: Sure!

00:06:04: C-rate is just measure of how fast a battery can discharge all capacity.

00:06:09: One C means takes an hour.

00:06:11: FourSeam means it can dump its entire energy load in just fifteen minutes.

00:06:15: So, as a fire hose versus garden hose?

00:06:17: Exactly!

00:06:18: The BYD unit sips power gently from the grid all day and then when car plugs-in blasts that stored energy out at extreme speed.

00:06:26: That solves infrastructure problem for so many places they cant dig up street to lay thick new cables.

00:06:32: It democratizes ultra fast charging But while BYD is solving the power issue others are solving space issues.

00:06:39: Michael Mayor Rosa spotted a solution in China from a company called Sayino.

00:06:43: This is the one that addresses getting ice-seed,

00:06:45: right?

00:06:46: When a combustion engine car parks and an EV spot... The Sayino Solution is a robot but it's not one that rolls on the ground.

00:06:53: It hangs from a rail system on the ceiling of the parking garage.

00:06:56: I saw the video.

00:06:57: this its mesmerizing.

00:06:58: you just park at any random spot open your app And this robot zips along the ceiling lowers a cable and plugs into your car.

00:07:05: It turns every single parking bay into a potential charging station without having to install hardware at every single spot.

00:07:12: it's flexible!

00:07:13: It is very efficient, but you know whether its robot on the ceiling or cable.

00:07:17: in street we have low tech problem threatening all

00:07:20: this Security.

00:07:23: Calum Godfrey highlighted a case of Cable Theft.

00:07:26: Comperor is expensive and these chargers are often just sitting ducks.

00:07:30: But solution he shared was pretty intense wasn't recording the theft?

00:07:34: No, passive recording is useless.

00:07:37: The thieves are gone in

00:07:38: minutes.".

00:07:39: This was an active system — it detected the thieves approaching at one-thirty in the morning and instead of just calling police…the operator voiced down live through a high decibel speaker... Pretty much!

00:07:52: Step away from the charger!

00:07:54: Imagine hearing that in dark parking lot at two AM?

00:07:57: And it worked—the thieves just fled.

00:08:00: It shows as this becomes critical infrastructure.

00:08:03: Protecting it becomes just as important as building

00:08:06: and maintaining.

00:08:07: It too.

00:08:07: York Colby brought up predictive maintenance.

00:08:10: MBV energy is using data to spot anomalies like a tiny temperature spike in a connector before it fails.

00:08:16: So we're moving past the era where you just pull up to a charger?

00:08:19: And hope this screen isn't broken.

00:08:20: reliability Is becoming the new luxury product definitely

00:08:24: okay.

00:08:24: Let's move to our third cluster, and this is one that has been five years away for the last.

00:08:29: what ten years?

00:08:30: vehicle-to-grid VG The eternal promise the idea that your car is a battery on wheels That can sell power back to the grid,

00:08:39: but it seems.

00:08:39: The weight might actually be over.

00:08:42: Dr.

00:08:42: Leo-Mila Simon and Michael Rahi dropped some massive news out of Germany.

00:08:47: Yeah, BMW and Ian have launched the first commercial VTG offer for private customers.

00:08:52: And just to be clear because we see pilots all the time this is not a pilot.

00:08:55: No If you have compatible BMW in their specific wall box You can sign up today.

00:09:01: Your car stabilizes the grid and get paid.

00:09:03: It's standard tariff Not science experiment.

00:09:06: The incentives are finally getting heavy enough To actually matter.

00:09:10: Christoph Fuchs noted a deal between Ford and Octopus Energy in the UK.

00:09:14: This one is The Game Changer, starting in summer of twenty-twenty six.

00:09:17: they're offering a tariff where if you participate in VTG You get free charging for up to sixteen thousand kilometers per year.

00:09:25: That's wild!

00:09:25: that basically years worth of driving For an average person as the car effectively has zero fuel cost.

00:09:30: Correct And just think about total costs calculation there.

00:09:34: Suddenly the EV isn't just a car, it's an asset that earns its keep!

00:09:38: It subsidizes its own lease basically...

00:09:40: But I feel like theres always.

00:09:41: but with UTG

00:09:42: There is ALWAYS BUT.

00:09:44: IT IS INCREDIBLY HARD TO IMPLEMENT AT SCALE.

00:09:47: Allison Jeffers pointed this out in the new Renault V. The Car Is Ready The Tech Works But the whole chain of enablers, chargers and software regulations often breaks

00:09:59: Young toward.

00:10:00: JV mentioned this in Norway, it's the interoperability standards.

00:10:03: Yeah

00:10:03: yeah ISO one fifty-one eighteen twenty.

00:10:06: It's a language The car speaks to the charger to negotiate selling power back and frankly A lot of chargers just don't speak it fluently.

00:10:12: yet

00:10:13: He called it plug and pray instead of plug and play

00:10:15: which is perfect.

00:10:16: Francis Bell had a really strong take on this.

00:10:18: She argued we just need to stop doing these bespoke pilots.

00:10:22: She's right, We've proven the tech works!

00:10:33: Exactly.

00:10:34: Though we are seeing some cities just brute force this transition, Robinberg gave an update from Utrecht.

00:10:40: Oh!

00:10:40: Utrech is the poster child for this.

00:10:42: They're ripping out ten-year old chargers even though they still work and replacing them with VTG units

00:10:48: There betting entire city's energy resilience on batteries of parked cars.

00:10:53: It a bold move

00:10:54: Very bold Okay.

00:10:56: For our final theme Let look at the batteries themselves Because there was chatter about donuts This week.

00:11:02: The donut battery.

00:11:03: Marco Miller posted about

00:11:05: this.

00:11:05: And I'm assuming it's not pastry-based?

00:11:07: Sadly, no!

00:11:08: It refers to the internal structure.

00:11:10: The headline number was four hundred watt hours per kilogram.

00:11:14: For context that is significantly higher than most commercial batteries today.

00:11:19: We sure are hovering around two hundred and fifty maybe two hundred eighty which eighties wrong Right?

00:11:23: so the common section was immediately skeptical Is this vaporware or just a supercapacitor?

00:11:29: But Marco debunked the magic.

00:11:30: He explained it's likely not a new chemical discovery, but a manufacturing one.

00:11:34: They're probably using a bipolar stack design.

00:11:37: Okay break that down.

00:11:38: for us What does actually mean?

00:11:40: So in traditional battery pack You have what you'd call dead weight Copper current collectors Cooling plates casing wiring.

00:11:49: It is all packaging

00:11:50: Right!

00:11:50: The overhead

00:11:51: Marco suggests.

00:11:52: this new design uses screen printing to deposit the active materials directly, which removes about forty percent of that passive weight.

00:11:59: So it's not like chemistry is twice as powerful… It's just that half packaging is heavy!

00:12:03: Exactly – you're just stripping out all non-energy components.

00:12:07: and its a reminder we don't always need a new molecule for break through ….

00:12:11: sometimes build the box better.

00:12:13: You know Rachel Lye had similar argument with Tesla didn't she?

00:12:16: this whole debate of LFP chemistry versus NMC.

00:12:20: Which

00:12:20: is better, yeah

00:12:21: And she argues that Debate completely misses the point.

00:12:25: Safety isn't just about juice inside a cell.

00:12:28: It's about system engineering around it

00:12:30: The thermal management

00:12:31: Cooling loops BMS software Physical spacing of cells.

00:12:36: You can take safe chemistry Put in badly designed pack and have fire Or more volatile chemistry Put great packs like Teslas Perfectly Safe.

00:12:45: And speaking of safety architecture, Eibon Miranda raised a really critical point about how China is influencing all this.

00:12:51: This is the geopolitical angle- China is implementing these new incredibly strict standards.

00:12:57: The big one is no thermal propagation

00:12:59: Meaning if one cell ignites... ...the fire cannot possibly spread to the cell next?

00:13:05: Yes!

00:13:05: The pack has to contain failure completely and because China is the biggest EV market in world that just becomes de facto global standard.

00:13:14: If you want to play, you have to meet that bar.

00:13:17: Charles Lister backed this up with supply chain data too!

00:13:19: He

00:13:20: did I mean China just dominates the battery supply chain.

00:13:23: South Korea is a distant second.

00:13:25: Europe is trying to catch-up but This Is The China Price.

00:13:28: Now coupled With China Standards It's The New Entry Ticket.

00:13:31: So if we look at Weeks Six and Seven as A Whole What'S The Big Takeaway Here?

00:13:36: I think it's maturity.

00:13:37: We aren't just celebrating that an electric truck exists, we are now solving the forty-five minute charging window problem….

00:13:43: …we aren't excited about V-to-G concepts – commercial tariffs offer free mileage

00:13:48: and inventing new chemicals.

00:13:51: We're refining the manufacturing process itself to strip out dead weight!

00:13:56: It feels like this industry is hardening...

00:13:58: ...it becomes less of a vision but much more of balance sheet.

00:14:02: And exactly where needs be to scale.

00:14:05: Well, that is a wrap for this deep dive.

00:14:07: If you enjoyed the episode.

00:14:08: new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:14:11: Also check out our other editions on future mobility and market evolution next-gen vehicle intelligence And commercial fleet insights.

00:14:18: Thanks for listening.

00:14:19: keep questioning.

00:14:20: see you next time.