Battery Insiders Reflection - Demystifying E-Mobility

0:00Transcript

0:00Welcome to Battery Insiders, your podcast providing you insights in the fascinating world of batteries. Hosted by Bhavya Jha and Simon Engelke. And welcome back. How are you doing today, Bhavya? Doing well. Not much has changed here, Simon. How are you? Very good. And enjoying the summer. It kind of feels like it, which is fantastic. It's kind of funny, you know, when we started, kind of, it's been quite gray and now we are in the middle of it, at least in Europe and Munich. Getting really nice. Yes, we've made it through two seasons. I don't know if you've heard, but the heat in the American South has particularly picked up and, you know, like the grid in Texas, for example, is like super overwhelmed right now. A bit relevant to our weekly conversations that we have on battery revolution. Very true. Yeah. I mean, climate change is real. It's real. They're telling people that, you know, you need to keep your, if you're out of the house, keep your temperature at this 70 plus or 80 plus degrees when you're sleeping, keep it at 82 degrees. So much for trying to use any kind of AC these days.

1:17Absolutely. Yeah. And it's, yeah, I guess kind of, as you said, it's quite well connected to our topic of this week, which was demystifying electromobility. So a brilliant conversation started at Julian Ucross from Bradmob Mobile. Yeah. I think it was a really engaging session. What did you take away from it? Yeah, I loved his conversation. I think, you know, I love, first off, I love his branding of being the demystifier. I think that is so important when it comes to batteries, as quirky as it sounds. And, you know, he really just started like right off the bat, like here are the seven things that people will always debate us on. And the us being those of us who, you know, support energy and climate energy transition and, you know, really just plain believe and simply believe in climate change. And he just kind of hit it right off the bat that, Hey, it's, you say it's expensive. This is the reality. You say charging is a problem. Here's the reality. Let me tell you where we are really at when it comes to recycling. Or, you know, if people say that there's no environmental impact and rather no difference in environmental impact and internal combustion engines. Well, let me let me check you on that. I think the seven things that he hit on are the almost the seven like core points that I like see repeatedly coming up in our conversations, not just, you know, on our weekly discussions with the group, but also those that I face on a day to day when I talk about the work that I do in the areas that I'm interested in. Absolutely. No, I very much agree. And I think what's also quite interesting is, you know, that even in this session, we had some, you know, some misunderstandings.

3:02And, you know, people were thinking, Oh, wait, I heard this somewhere. And, you know, for example, I think the discussion was about batteries have raw materials in them, right? Or like not raw materials, sorry. How do you call it? Critical materials. I think what he was talking about. And of course, like, you know, and then it was, Oh, wait, actually, I misconfused it with magnets in the car and things. And that's the thing, right? It's a quite complex topic. And people misunderstand it often, which I guess also one of the reasons why we have these sessions and also, you know, the battery insiders, the podcast, but also these clubhouse sessions. And I think also one thing which was quite interesting as well as to, you know, the, the standard you put things on, right? I think people have been a, which is good. I mean, you know, I think it's a good thing would happen, but I think people have been much more critical and like, you know, much more investigative, let's say with EVs, you know, also where the materials coming from, where's electricity coming from and all these kinds of things. And if you think back about fossil fuels, right?

3:55I don't really know many people ever asked these questions in a similar way. And which, you know, again, I think it's a good thing, but I think also, you know, that's on the other hand, it leaves sometimes maybe people being very like, you know, kind of trying to, you know, to figure it all out. And sometimes it can be quite overwhelming from the outside and complicated. And I think that's why we need this conversation. And of course, you know, batteries are not perfect, right? I think there's many things still to improve, but I think, you know, it's, as it has been discussed, right, it's, it's the, it's the better option we have and we, you know, we want to, we want to do our best to reduce emissions, our best to, you know, combat climate change as much as we can. So, yeah, I think it was really nice how kind of he framed these biggest talking points, let's say, from people who, you know, maybe try to, you know, provide an alternative and kind of just proving them one by one.

4:41Yeah. I, you know, just from what you have just said and the conversations that we do have, I often find myself wondering about, you know, when like cars first came out, was there this level of skepticism? And, you know, I kind of come back to that saying that, well, necessity is the mother of innovation. You know, like when we needed something, we, as humans needed something, we made the thing that we needed, the thing that had four wheels to move and we put it out there. And, you know, I guess to really know what the debate, the discourse and the, you know, skepticism was like, we probably have to, you know, do a little bit more of historical research, heck, maybe even like put ourselves back a couple of decades, centuries ago. But, you know, now it feels like whenever we try to take something these days, that is, that was innovated at some point and has become streamlined and like, you know, the main, or sorry, the mainstream norm now to change it is such an uphill battle. And I feel like, I often feel that way when it comes to talking about electric vehicles and batteries, like to make one change in a car to even go hybrid, not even full electric. It felt like that was one massive effort. And now to go fully electric is another massive effort. And then to, you know, use more renewable or more recycled resources is going to be another effort. And so it's interesting that, you know, we have proponents for these, we definitely have proponents for these changes that we want to see and eventually are manifested, but it goes through so many road bumps before it gets there. And it just makes me wonder like, huh, I wonder if that same level of skepticism was there when we, when this whole, like, innovation, this, this technology first even, you know, came out.

6:30And now we have seven myths that we have to debunk before this seems like a viable option, right? I mean, admittedly, electric vehicles are here and they're on the road and we're going to have batteries that we have to deal with in like the next 10 years. Hopefully we'll be dealing with more batteries because more people will invest in EVs, but I guess, you know, that only time will tell, but until then every day, like the hard, good work, the good fight continues, right? Absolutely. And I think, I mean, there's two things to it, right? I think they're quite, quite, quite, you know, interesting. And I think the one is, you know, about learning, you know, from before, and I think learning from the past, it's always a big one. I'm also just now thinking back, which is nice. Now, you know, we can refer to other previous sessions. There was a nice session with Maggie and Charlie about Second Life and things like this. And I think he would also, they would also talk about, you know, standardization and the ICE market, right, to kind of where essentially then companies came together, right, and kind of develop standards, which have been quite important, right? And now the big question, again, we have been discussing many times before, how can we create, you know, the right standards for in the battery space and the V space, which, you know, support innovation, don't stop it, don't block it, but, you know, providing, you know, the important like groundwork for, you know, like an equal playing field and, you know, for, for those ethical concerns, et cetera. Then the second thing to this one is, I was trying to think of it, you were saying, yeah, maybe I'm actually forgetting it right now, which is fine. But we might come back later. No, no, totally fine. And yeah, you know, in some ways I find that his, you know, debunking of these myths was like, kind of hitting on some of the points like we have talked about recently, you mentioned that. And as we go through these topics, and it's kind of interesting that, okay, wow, there was so much that we, there was, we had so much to discuss. Look how many sessions we, you know, have had on this. And it makes me curious, like, what else is there? And what am I, what are we missing from our topics? So for those of you listening, like, please reach out and tell us what your thoughts are and, you know, where you, what you'd like to see discussed, where you see the discussion going. I know we've got another battery session coming up with different startups.

8:53Battery Dan, yeah. No, it's coming in two weeks. Exactly. Yeah. Also next week, we have another session as well on EAS. And so, yeah, that's, that's quite nice. So also we're trying now to have these more regular uploads every week. And always the week after, essentially the day before we have the next sessions on Friday as we're trying to publish these. There's just one last thing, because I just remembered what I actually want to say in my second point, which was about, I think, also not underestimating innovation. I think, you know, in the physical limits, right? And I think that's the quite interesting thing, right? I think, and also physical, but also chemical limits and opportunities, of course, on the other hand, you know, if you look at combustion, right? Like, we know the most efficient they can get, right? So, thermodynamics, you know, we know the same thing for batteries, right? And what are kind of limits we can imagine. And there's some, you know, of course there's one engineering limits, right? Like production limits and things like this.

9:46And then there's also, you know, yeah, just from a physical standpoint, and I think from a physics standpoint, I think that's really gets me quite excited right now, right? Because I think with ISE and things, right, we have been kind of hitting a limit also in the car space and through batteries, right? We have seen the cost reduction, for example, right? Over the last 10 years, right? 97% or so. And now we have seen the improvement of, you know, capacity and energy density and things. And of course, there's some new technologies. And I think there's still quite something which can be done. And of course, there's limits again. But I think just from innovation standpoint, same for materials, replacing, you know, problematic materials like cobalt, et cetera. One thing I'm quite excited about, there is still a lot of open space for innovation. And I think we can really see this right now. So I think often people would think, oh, look at this EV, which often people have done in the past, right? Look at, that's what an EV looks like. And it's terrible.

10:38You know, we don't want that. And then, you know, you need to come to like Tesla and others, right, to push it. But I think there's still so much space, right? And like, and I think people often think what we have today is what's always going to be there. But there's so much more in front of us. And I think that's something personally, I'm quite excited about as well, which kind of links into these myths as well, because often these myths are from the past as well, right? People would say, oh, look, if you know, you're charged and right with only coal, but now we see coal gets displaced, which is needed and amazing. Absolutely. The necessity concept or component has continued to be there. And that's just changed a bit, you know, as we come to terms with, and already have acknowledged that this is what's happening. Climate change is real. And, you know, if it is our necessity to change and adapt, so that we cannot, we can do better for the environment and for ourselves and future generations.

11:33So I think there is a good, good camp of people out there working towards that. But hopefully, these myths become a thing of the past too, so that we can move on and keep working towards, you know, addressing other issues that pop up as we scale battery technology. Absolutely. And they're always going to be, yeah, you're always going to get more excited and new myths as well. I think we're not going to end there, but I think it's a constant, it's a constant process. And we are very happy to discuss the future as well and dig into them. Yes, absolutely. Great. With this, I think we're looking forward to next week's session on EAS, we'll kind of like scale up on things. I think it's going to be quite a fascinating discussion with a former participant of the BatteryMBA. So she was pitching last time. And then in the week afterwards, we could have our next Battery Den. So, sorry, Battery Den. So if you want to be part of that, please, please get in touch. Fantastic. Looking forward to it.

12:34Sounds great. See you. Bye-bye. Talk soon. Bye.