Best of LinkedIn: Electrification & Battery Technology CW 18/ 19

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

00:00:02: This adjuvant highlights key LinkedIn posts on electrification of battery technology in weeks eighteen and nineteen.

00:00:08: Frenness is a B-to-B market research company that supports automotive suppliers with building feature by feature competitive intelligence, which shows exactly how their product stacks up against the competition.

00:00:20: You can find more info in description.

00:00:22: Hey everyone and welcome to the deep dive.

00:00:25: so glad you were joining us today because we are looking at the absolute cutting edge of electrification And battery technology.

00:00:31: Yeah, exactly We're unpacking the top trends The raw unfiltered reality of the mobility sector pulling insights sourced straight from the industry's brightest minds on LinkedIn over the past two weeks

00:00:43: right?

00:00:43: If you work anywhere in this space I mean whether you are managing a commercial fleet designing components or your just you know, trying to figure out where the market is going.

00:00:52: You probably feel this massive tension right now?

00:00:54: Oh absolutely!

00:00:55: We have these staggering technological breakthroughs happening in The Lab but they are colliding head-on with a gritty logistical reality of manufacturing and deployment.

00:01:06: really

00:01:06: Yeah it's constant friction between what is scientifically possible And what actually profitable.

00:01:12: Honestly there no where that friction more obvious than at core revolution

00:01:17: Battery cell

00:01:18: Exactly.

00:01:18: The battery itself, because I mean the industry's definition of fast charging didn't just inch forward.

00:01:24: recently it was completely rewritten.

00:01:26: It really was.

00:01:27: we saw these great posts from Caleb Boyd and Claudio Geichen And they highlighted a massive leap.

00:01:33: We were talking about BYDs new blade two point oh.

00:01:36: and CATL shanks scene three-point batteries.

00:01:39: Oh yeah Those numbers are wild.

00:01:40: Right, the headline number they shared is that these batteries are charging from ten percent to eighty percent in under four minutes.

00:01:46: Under

00:01:46: Four Minutes?

00:01:47: Let That Sink In!

00:01:47: Yeah and Caleb Boyd broke down how CATL was actually doing this mechanically.

00:01:51: he mentioned their use of isotropic graphite.

00:01:54: right isotropic

00:01:55: And I have to admit i know what regular graphite.

00:01:58: But, I mean making it isotropic.

00:02:00: What does that actually do inside the battery?

00:02:02: Okay

00:02:02: so think of a traditional graphite anode Inside a battery like um-like a parking garage.

00:02:08: okay

00:02:08: but It only has one entrance and a lot of really narrow one way ramps.

00:02:12: So when you plug in a fast charger You are basically sending thousands Of cars which are the lithium ions into that garage all at once

00:02:21: And they just get totally backed up

00:02:22: Exactly.

00:02:23: They get bottlenecked trying to find that one entry point, but what CATL has done with isotropic graphite is they essentially redesigned the garage.

00:02:31: It's now this massive open plaza with entrances on every single side.

00:02:35: Oh wow!

00:02:36: Yeah, so the lithium ions can be inserted into the graphite channel from literally any angle.

00:02:41: and you know BYD is doing something really similar with their three-d high speed lithium ion intercalation.

00:02:47: Intercalation right?

00:02:48: So they've physically removed the traffic jams at the microscopic level.

00:02:52: basically yeah

00:02:53: That is just an incredible engineering feat.

00:02:56: I mean, if you think about the user experience moving from a forty minute charge down to under four minutes... ...is a total paradigm shift!

00:03:03: It changes

00:03:04: everything!!

00:03:04: It feels like the jump from a screeching dial-up internet connection straight to downloading a for K movie on gigabit fiber.

00:03:13: Range anxiety just evaporates You know?

00:03:15: If you can fill up your battery faster than you could walk into convenience store and buy coffee

00:03:19: it absolutely changes consumer math.

00:03:22: but And this is a big but.

00:03:23: We really have to ground this in the brutal reality of the manufacturing floor, right?

00:03:29: Having the best chemistry or you know The most elegant microscopic parking garage it doesn't guarantee You will survive as a business In a bay.

00:03:37: he you foot.

00:03:38: and the account known as battery doc shared some incredibly sobering news for the European Battery Ecosystem recently.

00:03:44: well

00:03:45: you mean the insolvency of morrow batteries in Norway.

00:03:47: Yeah

00:03:48: they just filed for bankruptcy.

00:03:49: I saw that.

00:03:50: But wait, why did Morrow fail if they had strong technology?

00:04:01: It

00:04:01: does, but let's break down those acronyms quickly because it explains the exact trap they fail into.

00:04:06: So LFP, Lithium Iron Phosphate that is cheaper and incredibly durable battery chemistry China has essentially mastered.

00:04:14: Right!

00:04:14: And mass produced?

00:04:15: Mass Produced at a scale all over the world just can't touch right now.

00:04:18: Now, LNMO is next generation chemistry which removes expensive cobalt entirely and operates in higher voltage.

00:04:26: Okay.

00:04:26: Tomorrow strategy was to use safer proven LFP to generate initial revenue, right?

00:04:33: And then use that to develop the cutting edge LNMO.

00:04:36: Right it's like a bridge.

00:04:37: That sounds like a really solid transition plan on paper.

00:04:41: On paper yes but the scale gap is what killed them.

00:04:44: They opened a plant in twenty-twenty four with one gigawatt hour of annual capacity.

00:04:48: Oh wow!

00:04:49: If

00:04:49: thats it.

00:04:50: Yeah for context if you look at Volkswagen power co facility and soul skitter they are targeting twenty giga watt hours.

00:04:56: Allright massive difference.

00:04:57: So Maro was trying to survive the Valley of Death, that incredibly expensive phase between running a pilot line and achieving true mass production.

00:05:07: And they were doing this while facing an oversupplied global market plus crushing price pressure from Chinese LFP imports...

00:05:14: ...and very high financing costs I imagine?

00:05:16: Exactly!

00:05:17: It just proves you need massive patient capital play in cell manufacturing today.

00:05:23: Well if Europe is struggling to compete on the mass-production cost floor right now I mean, if that gap is just too wide for startups to cross it makes me wonder something.

00:05:31: What's up?

00:05:32: Shouldn't the industry be looking at the next phase of the life cycle like recycling before becomes a total emergency?

00:05:38: It's funny you say that because some of the sharpest strategists are doing exactly That.

00:05:42: really yeah Julian Ren Penning posted A brilliant breakdown Of a company called Syllab and they Are proactively trading To build Europe's battery recycling sovereignty.

00:05:51: Oh solid Yeah.

00:05:52: And what Really stands out Is their timing.

00:05:54: They are building industrial recycling infrastructure, including specific lines dedicated to those cheap LFP batteries right now.

00:06:01: Wait!

00:06:02: Why build massive recycling plants before the huge wave of end-of life batteries has even hit the market?

00:06:09: Doesn't a recycling business need volume to survive?

00:06:12: That is traditional thinking sure... but Silib's playing along here By securing the capability now, they are actually qualifying their recycled lithium carbonate with major auto manufacturers ahead of

00:06:24: time.

00:06:25: Ah

00:06:25: I see!

00:06:26: Yeah The automotive supply chain requires rigorous years long testing to improve a material.

00:06:32: If you wait until the scrap volume peaks and start building the plant or getting certifications.

00:06:37: You're already five-years too late.

00:06:39: So they stress testing the domestic supply chains so it's ready when the dam breaks Exactly.

00:06:44: They are building the safety net before the acrobat even jumps, that's smart but you know let's connect this back to your daily experience as a driver or maybe a fleet operator.

00:06:51: You can have a vehicle that charges in four minutes running on perfectly recycled lithium.

00:06:56: Right But literally none of that matters if the plug on the side of highway is just dead chunk plastic

00:07:02: which brings us to the actual business of pumping electrons because ultra-fast batteries are completely useless if public charging infrastructure isn't reliable.

00:07:11: And right now, the economics being a charge point operator as CPO is incredibly hostile.

00:07:18: Hostile's an understatement honestly.

00:07:20: Junaid M shared this alarming post about how two UKCPOs just clashed into administration in first hundred days.

00:07:32: they aren't failing because people aren't driving EVs.

00:07:35: They're failing, because of the hidden operational costs.

00:07:39: It's like this software and payment iceberg beneath-the-surface

00:07:42: Exactly!

00:07:43: Genade pointed out things that public never sees Like fraud configuration.

00:07:47: I mean The way a CPO handles a Fraud Attack on slow AC Charger has to be entirely different than on high speed DC charger And mismanaging it drains margins overnight.

00:07:56: Yeah.

00:07:57: Then there is the whole nightmare of pre-authorization handling.

00:07:59: Oh,

00:08:00: I've experienced that personally.

00:08:01: you plug in The machine puts like a fifty dollar hole In your credit card and then You only actually use fifteen dollars Of electricity

00:08:07: right?

00:08:07: And in A perfect system That difference Is instantly refunded.

00:08:11: But in reality Drivers are waiting days For those refunds To clear through the banking layers.

00:08:17: So what happens?

00:08:18: They get angry, they call the CPO's customer service line.

00:08:21: Oh

00:08:22: man!

00:08:22: And suddenly the CPO is paying human support agents to resolve a thirty-five dollar discrepancy that entirely wipes out whatever tiny profit they made from that charging session.

00:08:33: That

00:08:33: totally erases it and Tamar Chandlow highlighted in even deeper cash flow problem regarding roaming platforms.

00:08:39: Yeah, you know when use a third-party app to pay for charging that money bounces through chain of immobility service providers before it ever reaches the physical station owner.

00:08:48: Oh

00:08:48: yeah

00:08:49: She noted that CPOs are sometimes waiting upto three months To actually get paid For the energy they already dispensed.

00:08:55: Just put yourself in the shoes Of That business owner for second.

00:08:58: You have to fund A multi million dollar hardware installation You have to maintain the cables, the screens and then you wait a full quarter for the revenue to trickle in.

00:09:12: It is essentially forcing CPOs to act as free zero-interest banks for the entire mobility

00:09:19: ecosystem.".

00:09:20: That's brutal!

00:09:21: So who actually survives that kind of financial pressure?

00:09:24: Well Orlin Ratavi shared pretty stark analysis on this... You are in trouble.

00:09:35: Wow, which is why about seventy percent of European fast charging stations Are not yet profitable.

00:09:40: the players who are actually winning?

00:09:42: In twenty-twenty six are The ones pairing charging with retail or loyalty programs Or destinations.

00:09:48: oh

00:09:48: like cross subsidizing

00:09:49: exactly.

00:09:50: Liz Allen posted a perfect example Of this with Sainsbury's.

00:09:53: they just launched their massive smart charge hub.

00:09:56: It's at London Colmy and it makes it the UK's largest supermarket ultra rapid charging hub.

00:10:01: Oh interesting.

00:10:02: for them the charters are just magnet.

00:10:04: They don't mind if the margin on electricity is razor thin because you are going to walk inside and buy fifty dollars worth of groceries while

00:10:23: They shifted more payments to direct credit card terminals right on the charger, which cuts out The Middleman and the roaming platforms.

00:10:38: And that fixes that nighty day cash flow delay.

00:10:41: they took control of their own payment pipeline.

00:10:44: but let's look at the actual driver experience for a second because we talk about margins in Yibida But pulling up to a public Charger still feels like a gamble Right now.

00:10:51: Oh

00:10:52: absolutely.

00:10:52: So what About That Driver Experience?

00:10:54: Well Sebastian Hensler shared A Starling Stat from Montez COO.

00:11:00: One in five public charging sessions in Europe currently

00:11:03: fails.

00:11:03: Wait, one and five?

00:11:05: A twenty percent failure rate!

00:11:07: If one out of every five gas station pumps just didn't dispense fuel the public would riot.

00:11:13: Seriously why is it that

00:11:14: high?!

00:11:15: Is this just broken screens cut cables from vandalism?

00:11:18: Vandalism plays a part sure but the vast majority software.

00:11:23: It's a failure on digital handshake between car charger payment provider and the grid.

00:11:30: Right, too many chefs in the kitchen?

00:11:31: Exactly!

00:11:33: There are too many translation layers...and if just one time's out…the whole session fails.

00:11:38: Felix Hamer drove across Europe and noted that industry has to stop measuring success by merely counting number of plugs on the ground.

00:11:46: Yeah it is not a numbers game anymore.

00:11:47: The real frontier here is velocity having high power, reliable chargers paired with amenities and real pricing transparency.

00:11:55: Okay

00:11:55: so if passenger cars are blowing out CPO margins and suffering a twenty percent failure rate it makes you wonder how on earth the grid is going to handle a forty ton long haul truck pulling up for charge?

00:12:05: Oh man!

00:12:07: I mean electrifying heavy duty trucks requires completely different universe of power.

00:12:11: It's an entirely different scale engineering which seamlessly brings us to heavy-duty and megawatt charging, or MCS.

00:12:18: Because we are finally seeing policy and capital match the sheer physics of electrifying heavy

00:12:24: freight.".

00:12:24: We really are!

00:12:25: Stepp Cornelis & Johannes Mathies posted about Germany rolling out this massive new funding program.

00:12:32: It's a billion euros over four years specifically for e-truck charging infrastructure.

00:12:37: Billion Euros?

00:12:38: Yeah They're offering subsidies up to five hundred euros per installed kilowatt and that covers depots, public hubs stationery battery storage everything.

00:12:49: That's

00:12:49: huge!

00:12:50: And on the hardware side Tim Brown gave an update on the Tesla Semi.

00:12:54: he noted it is utilizing one point two megawatt charging to recover massive range like sixty percent of its battery in just thirty minutes.

00:13:01: Okay

00:13:02: To put one-point two megawatts in perspective for you a standard home might draw say ten or fifteen kilowatts at peak usage.

00:13:09: This single truck is pulling the equivalent power of roughly a hundred homes simultaneously through one single cable.

00:13:15: That's insane!

00:13:16: It

00:13:16: requires intense liquid cooling inside the cables just to keep it from literally melting in your hands.

00:13:20: But

00:13:21: wait, why are they so focused on hitting that specific thirty minute window?

00:13:24: I mean... Why not charge it slower overnight at the depot?

00:13:28: Ugh... Peter Boros and Simon Modder both highlighted this logistics reality here….

00:13:33: This is why MCS is The Missing Link In Europe.

00:13:37: A truck driver is legally mandated to take a forty-five minute rest break after four and half hours of driving.

00:13:42: Right, safety regulations

00:13:44: exactly!

00:13:45: And a commercial truck is a revenue generating asset.

00:13:48: every minute it sits idle outside that legal mandate money burned.

00:13:52: So if you can fully recharge a forty-ton truck within that exact forty five minute window using megawatt charging, You don't lose the single minutes of operational uptime.

00:14:01: That makes perfect sense!

00:14:02: The charging just seamlessly hides in the existing human schedule.

00:14:05: Precisely...that is the unlock for zero emission freight.

00:14:08: and y'know it's not only trucks

00:14:09: Really?

00:14:10: Yeah Roon Homadal and Amin Saidi shared that PSW actually deployed the world first maritime MCS Charging project in Norway.

00:14:18: so we are essentially getting a universal USB like standard for massive vessels and ferries too.

00:14:23: A USB for ships, I love that.

00:14:26: but you know getting the charger installed on the dock or at the truck depot is really only half the battle.

00:14:32: this brings to mind this brilliant analogy sourced directly from Mark Andrebeck's post on mine electrification.

00:14:38: oh i loved that analogy.

00:14:39: right he said.

00:14:40: think of a fleet depot like a lake.

00:14:42: there's a steady constant inflow of energy But when a fleet of massive electric trucks returns from the shift and plugs in all at once, it causes a sudden mass outflow.

00:14:55: Yes!

00:14:55: And you can't just build bigger pipe to get more grid connection that takes years permitting millions dollars.

00:15:02: You have to

00:15:04: orchestrate water.

00:15:05: That perfectly connects to Christophe LeFilliber's reality check on this exact point.

00:15:10: He basically said, look a billion euros for public chargers is great but the actual bottleneck keeping fleet managers awake at night is behind the fence.

00:15:18: It's depot energy management and grid connection limits.

00:15:21: if fleets cannot reliably orchestrate that lake of energy you know buffering it with stationary storage in solar they will abandon the EV transition and just stick with diesel.

00:15:32: So it is fundamentally a software and systems problem, not just hardware.

00:15:36: Exactly!

00:15:37: And Marcel Hessel emphasized this point perfectly.

00:15:40: he pointed out that megawatt charging requires a full ISO-one.

00:15:44: five one eighteen twenty digital backbone?

00:15:48: Okay I know sounds like a serious string of compliance jargon.

00:15:50: It does.

00:15:51: But what actually means for the truck driver plugging in?

00:15:54: why isn't it just copper touching copper by plugging into toaster?

00:15:57: because of the sheer danger and complexity of power transfer at that scale.

00:16:02: The ISO standard means when you plug in your truck, the vehicle or charger establishes a highly secure TLS encrypted communication channel.

00:16:10: Oh!

00:16:10: A digital handshake?

00:16:11: Right

00:16:11: they negotiate voltage, monitor battery temperature real-time authenticate billing automatically adjusts power draw based on what local grid can actually handle.

00:16:23: You need a serious digital backbone just to manage that safely.

00:16:27: Well, and once you establish that encrypted bi-directional data connection orchestrating the lake of energy inevitably leads to the final frontier of electrification

00:16:36: right?

00:16:36: Yep treating vehicles themselves as part.

00:16:42: Peter Schwier shared a really exciting update on this.

00:16:44: He was at live demonstration in Germany where a man e-truck wasn't just charging, it was actually feeding a record three hundred and twenty five kilowatts of power back into the depot...and the public grid!

00:16:55: Three

00:16:56: hundred and Twenty Five Kilowatts?

00:16:58: That's massive!

00:16:59: It

00:16:59: proved that heavy duty.

00:17:00: VTG isn't just pilot theory anymore…it is real!

00:17:04: And the financial game changer here for your business, or just as a listener who owns an EV is huge.

00:17:10: Joseph DeCordevron shared real-world data showing that if electric cars plugged in for say fourteen hours per day and made available through VTG The charging cost of that driver can drop to absolute zero

00:17:21: Zero!

00:17:21: That's wild Because automatically buying electricity when demand is low and prices are cheap, selling a small fraction of it back to the grid.

00:17:30: Max Luffler posted about how Ellie's making this consumer reality right now integrating EVs, dynamic tariffs & smart meters into one system.

00:17:44: If we connect millions of massive rolling batteries to our critical national power grids and they are all communicating via software, to push in pull-power autonomously.

00:17:55: Aren't we just opening the front door to massive cyber attacks?

00:17:58: That is The Elephant In The Room!

00:18:00: And you aren't wrong.

00:18:01: It sounds like a hacker's dream.

00:18:02: Manfred Prazabila posted a stark warning about exactly this... V-to-G carries real cybersecurity risks, especially when we rely on imported hardware and software systems.

00:18:13: We are talking about networked systems that directly impact national grid stability.

00:18:18: If the system architecture and control aren't localized or locked down Grid operators simply will not allow connection.

00:18:25: Secure local control is completely non-negotiable.

00:18:28: That makes a lot of sense.

00:18:30: So before we wrap up...we've covered a ton of ground today

00:18:32: We have.

00:18:33: And I want to leave everyone with a final thought to chew on regarding global execution speed, because across all these areas the ultimate differentiator is how fast a market can build this solution.

00:18:44: Yes, Said Hussib Hassan recently shared his first-hand account of what he called China Speed.

00:18:49: He saw live robo taxes in regular traffic and megawatt chargers everywhere.

00:18:54: Yeah while legacy markets spend years debating grid upgrades and software standards others are just building and Pewter Pollack posted an incredible update about Africa, Ethiopia completely banned the import of fossil fuel vehicles.

00:19:07: A total ban?

00:19:08: Right!

00:19:09: And that drove a massive surge to hundred-and-fifteen thousand EVs on their roads powered by local hydro and solar.

00:19:16: so The question I'll pose you the listener is this while legacy markets debate grid upgrades in standards are emerging market structurally leapfrogging us through bold immediate policy.

00:19:27: That's

00:19:27: great questions.

00:19:28: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:19:31: Also check out our other editions on future mobility and market evolution.

00:19:35: next gen vehicle

00:19:44: intelligence.