Battery Revolution Clubhouse Recording - Demystifying E-Mobility

0:00Transcript

0:00Brilliant. Yeah. And for everyone who's new to these sessions, oh, hey, Catherine, we also record them. So yeah, you can listen to them afterwards as well. If you have to drop out at any time, yeah, you can listen to them all on batteryinsiders.com. And maybe also quicker, we can also do a quick advertisement for our Battery Den coming up in, I think now is it two weeks, Catherine, right? It's flying by. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Raymond. It's just in the two short weeks, 14 days to our Battery Den. So welcome anyone here in the audience to sign up for it. We have received a few signups and we will, if you have signed up for the event, we'll reach out to you shortly as well. So yeah, looking forward to having everyone sign up for the event. Yeah. And maybe one thing on this one. So we definitely have received them, but we're definitely looking for more and especially also for startups with less represented backgrounds, like female founders and lots less classical, let's say, founders with backgrounds.

1:04And then also maybe from, you know, from countries which are not that well represented in our direction, would love to have a really nice, diverse representation of startups in this space. And yeah, you can go on the website and our battery revolution.club website. And there's also the form you can sign up on. We also find an email on there. So you can also send us an email with pitch at battery revolution.club. And with this, you know, I think we can also kind of kick off today's session. Catherine, should I do the kickoff today and then introduce Julian? Oh, yes, please. Sounds great. Great. So yeah. Welcome back, everyone, to our 22nd battery revolution session, which is remarkable. You know, people have been following this. They know Catherine and I, we met about pretty much 22 weeks ago on Clubhouse and we felt there's room for, you know, discussions on batteries and related topics. And it's just something we are personally very passionate about. So our work, Catherine has a really exciting startup.

2:12You know, you can also find in her bio as well called Vavilius. So yeah, you can check out there. She has some really exciting work on total management. And I'm running a company called Battery Associates, where we bring lots of talented people from around the world together and also do an educational program called BatteryMBA. So battery.mba. But yeah, beyond that, we love to talk about batteries, which is really this, this is the place for that. And yeah, so we have been running these sessions and we have been really blessed by many amazing conversation starters similar to today. One thing also to say is you see on the top, there's like a rack. It says rack and there's like a red button. That means these sessions are recorded because we put them on our podcast batteryinsiders.com. We started this because there was an Android version, as many as you would know, at the beginning, but we kept doing it because, you know, we all know they're busy days and some people want to listen to things again or have to drop off in the middle of it.

3:07So you can listen to these sessions again. But this also means, you know, if you don't include the recording, please let us know, send us a message on LinkedIn or Twitter. So you can do that. It has been a problem before, but it's just something, you know, I like to say, you know, just, you know, this option exists. And then last, two last things from my side, from housekeeping. If you're new to Clubhouse, there's two things once you join on stage, which is quite helpful. So one is you can kind of raise your hand and you can do this by really slowly flickering your microphone. And if you want to give applause, you know, cause it's, it's quite noisy. If everyone shares at the same time, you know, you can flicker your microphone quickly, something like this. Great. With this, we, we love to have participation. So, you know, once the conversations that are finished, please raise your hand, join us, you know, ask questions, contribute.

4:04We love to have this, you know, nice dialogue. So don't be shy. That's also specifically from, you know, a lesser of the background again, particularly women, you know, a big invitation to join us as well. We love to have diverse discussion, diverse panels. So please join us and raise your hand later on as well. Great. And with this, I will give it to Catherine to introduce this week's conversation starter and kick off the session. Great. Thank you so much, Simon. It's funny that we met on Clubhouse 22 weeks ago and now, and now we're, you know, still going strong. And we have actually hit 2,000 followers on our club just this week. So thank you all so much for, you know, always tuning in. All your words of encouragement and, you know, active participation, you know, it's really what's driving Simon and myself to do this every single week. Every single week. So, yeah, with that, I would just like to also give a short reminder to everyone that this session lasts for one and a half hours.

5:03Usually towards the end of the session, people tend to participate really actively and, you know, want to put in their thoughts to the topic. So we really encourage everyone to join the stage early, as soon as possible, as soon as you can and feel that you have something to add to contribute or to ask. So with that, I will open up today's session with a short introduction of Julian. And in the spirit of Clubhouse, we also met virtually on LinkedIn and Julian being an Android user was not previously on Clubhouse, but he joined recently just for specifically for our session. So thank you so much for that, Julian. And a short introduction of Julian. Julian, since he joined Tesla in 2015, he has devoted 200% battery electric mobility. And after working with other setups in this field, he became an entrepreneur himself and is currently the founder of whatmobile.com. So his current focus lies in the promotion and demystifying of electric mobility, which is what's our main topic for the day.

6:05So with that, and without further ado, I'll pass on to Julian to kickstart the topic. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you, Simon. I'm super excited to participate today. It's my first time as a speaker on Clubhouse. This is my first time at all on Clubhouse. So I'm super excited, super happy to share what I know about this topic of electric mobility. And yeah, my suggestion would be that I have a couple of myths that I want to present to you. I'll talk something about around seven myths and we'll focus on the three that I think are the most relevant at the moment. But as Simon said at the beginning, feel free anytime if anyone has a question or has to add something to what I'm saying. This is not a school class. This is supposed to be a conversation and I'm happy also for inputs. Maybe I also or hopefully I also learned something on. So my personal objective for today is really bring a few misunderstandings and myths surrounding electric mobility.

7:25Answer the questions that are out there regarding charging range and daily handling of these vehicles. And possibly, as I said before, also learn a bit more from everyone attending today. So maybe on whatmobile.com, we believe in 100% electric mobility, no fossil fuels and no compromises, meaning no hybrids. And we're completely independent and we're not funded nor subsidized in any way. So I have the top seven myths of today, which I will list and go into the top three. As I announced before, number one would be EVs are expensive. Number two, range is not enough. Number three, production and recycling of batteries is problematic. Number four, charging time is too long. Number five, not enough public charging stations. Six, not enough electricity around there and no difference in environmental impact compared to combustion engine cars. So starting with number one, EVs are too expensive. There are three main topics that I always hear about and that people ask about, which is the electricity itself, the incentives that one could get in certain places around the world and the total cost of ownership.

9:03So regarding electricity, an average user will save around $700 to $1,700 in fuel every year. So that's the cost of electricity compared to the gasoline costs of a similar vehicle. Then incentives, that's very controversial every now and then. And I understand very well that people get confused because it's very, very different in every place of the world. Plus here in Switzerland, for example, where we are based, we have in every region, every canton has different rules. So the tax credits in general decrease the price of electric vehicles. In the United States, for example, there is a federal EV tax credit and that costs more or less. Again, it depends also in the US on where you are in California is higher than other places as far as I know. But that means that you, when you buy an electric car, you get some money back from the original purchasing price. This applies, for example, in Germany as well. They have incentives for up to 9,000 euros of the price tag of the car.

10:25In Switzerland, for example, we don't have any incentives on the price of the vehicle. But in certain cantons, for example, the canton of Zurich, we have zero taxes as an incentive for electric vehicles. Another example on how governments or regions are incentivizing electric vehicles is in the UK. In London, you have this so-called ultra low emission zone charge. A bit of a long word or a bit of a long sentence. That basically means that they charge vehicles depending on how much CO2 they emit to be allowed to drive in the cities. So, of course, since you have zero emissions on the pipeline of the electric car, you don't pay that in the city of London. Then, again, if there's anything that you want to contribute, please feel free. Otherwise, I continue with the total cost of ownership. So, this would be something that is a long term view of how much the car costs. So, purchasing price might still be a bit higher than a gasoline car, for instance.

11:45But an electric vehicle will save you around 46% in annual maintenance costs. This is due to lower moving parts, lower parts in general, and therefore also no friction and less replacement of these movable parts. Then, another interesting aspect to look at is between 30,000 and 65,000 kilometers of travel, an electric car will automatically be cheaper than a combustion engine car. Here, if you take an example, for instance, you take Volkswagen Golf Diesel, the most sold car in Europe, against a Nissan Leaf. You see the purchasing price or the tax price of the Golf is 27,000 and the Nissan Leaf is 32,500. Many people would say, yeah, but you know, that's over 5,000 bucks more that the Nissan Leaf is more expensive. But then you do the calculation of insurance, the taxes, the maintenance and so on and so forth. And at the end, you see that after five years, the Golf has a tax price of 31,500 and the Nissan Leaf is 30,000. It's not much of a difference in this case for five years, but you still see that the electric car is cheaper at the end than the combustion engine car.

13:18You can do the same for a Model 3, for example, very famous vehicle compared to a BMW 3 series. You have the same results. Then to the big topic or the big myth number two is that the range is not enough. They say that EVs cannot drive far because they run out of juice. That's not true. Today's EVs can easily handle most of our daily drives. The range of an electric car has increased significantly in recent years. There were the beginning, the battery density. I guess there are a lot of people in the room that know a lot about this topic and probably more than me, I'm sure. But the battery, the electricity or the energy density of batteries five years ago, for example, was not the same like today. So we have in the same space, we have more capacity to store energy and that today is definitely not an issue for the usage that we have. So we could say that a daily use is guaranteed with any electric car that you buy today.

14:35And something that needs to be considered as well is that the range is affected by driving style, using of additional power consumers in the car, like for example, the AC, the temperature, the air temperature outside, topography, if it's going up or down, if you're going here to the Swiss mountains, to the Swiss Alps, of course, you need more energy to drive up. And at the same time, the road conditions, right? If it's snowy or if it's wet by nature, the car will have more consumption. Then maybe as a little side note here, the majority of drivers in the United States drive less than 35 miles every day. That's 56,000, sorry, 56 kilometers on a daily basis. And in Europe, we're even lower. It's 32 kilometers per day on average. And that compared to the EVs today that have 300 or 400 kilometers of range as a standard, that's way more than enough. For me personally, I drive a Renault Zoe with 100 kilometers of range normally around 85, 90 kilometers in winter, depends how cold it is, and 100, 110 in summer.

16:01And it's more than enough. I have many people really, I was scared myself, to be honest, when I got the car and I convinced my wife to test this. But it's way more than enough for a daily use. And what we do, for example, when we need a longer range, when we're traveling somewhere a bit more far away, that we don't want to stop all the time for charging, we rent a Model 3. Or we need more space, for example, when parents, her mom or my parents are around, we can also rent a Model X from Tesla that's a six-seater or seven-seater even. And therefore, we also save money, because we don't own a big car that needs to be paid. And we drive more efficiently, because it's a small car for the everyday usage. And therefore, it works. It works perfectly fine. So, myth number three, production recycling of batteries is problematic. Some people say that electric vehicle batteries pose a rare errors and recycling problem.

17:11Rare errors, for some of you who might not know this, are metals in the air that are not found everywhere or others are said differently, that are very difficult to find. A couple of cobalt, a couple of nickel, there are a couple of them that are used in electric vehicle batteries. So, yes, for the production, this is actually true. Electric vehicles produce currently more pollution than comparable combustion engine cars. That is true. But on the other side, if you see, for example, BMW and Tesla already run their entire electric car productions with wind and solar energy today. At the same time, at the certain point, the combustion engine car produces more emissions than an electric vehicle because it's burning gas on the way. And that's at that point, at that certain point of mileage, the electric car will become more environmentally friendly than the comparable combustion engine car in the lifetime. And shortly on the on the rare earth again, maybe a little information. There are around 10 kilograms of lithium in a heavy Tesla battery.

18:39And as I said before, cobalt, copper, nickel, all those rare earth metals are inside there as well. But they can be reused again and again. So today we have very attractive, even economically attractive, recycling facilities that allow us to reuse these metals. So that means when a battery finally dies, that battery can be opened, recycled, and those metals can be used again, for example, for another battery. And contrary to this, fossil fuels are not recyclable in that sense. They're consumed by the engine. And that's why they pollute then at the end while they're being used. Then concerning the batteries, there's also an interesting fact that these batteries are almost, they can almost be completely recycled, almost up to 100% with today's technology. lithium-ion batteries can still be used for several years as the energy storage of a building, for example. That's the second life or reuse of a battery. And that means that actually the battery of the car, whether the life cycle or life span of the battery itself, will be much, much larger than the car itself.

20:15And this improves, of course, the environmentally friendliness or the environmental impact of the electric vehicle since, the main part, the soul and the heart of the car will be used in a different way or maybe even also in a different vehicle. If you see, for example, a vehicle that has been involved in an accident and the chassis cannot be used anymore or the car itself got damaged, but the battery is still in good shape, you can actually use that battery for another vehicle. So this would be the top three myths that I bring you today. Shall we open up for discussion already? Do you guys want me to comment on the other myths, maybe a little bit less in detail? How do you guys want to go ahead? Both works. So we have two people already raised their hands, so we can bring them on and then you can also, you know, we can do a bit of a break and then you can also address the other remaining ones if you like.

21:30Please. Sounds good. Okay, so we've got a few people. Okay, so we've got a few people. We're going to bring them up now. Hi, Prince. Good to see you. Do you have some thoughts on this topic? Hi, Simon. Good to see you. I am from India and Kerala as such. When I saw this topic, battery revolution, 22, demystifying, e-mobility, all this stuff. It was of so much interest for me because I am working in renewable battery technology. It's a dream project for me, actually. So I'm a chemist, basically, and I'm working on metal air batteries, not lithium-ion batteries. I hope you know about this, aluminum air batteries, zinc air batteries, those kind of things. All right. Hello. Yeah, no, no problem. I mean, I think that's, I hit myself twice. But yeah. So, how do you think whether these aluminum air batteries or metal air batteries, which are really environment friendly, will replace lithium-ion batteries? Because to make lithium-ion batteries, again, you are not doing so much justice to environment as this, because mining of rare earth, lithium is of course rare earth.

23:03And these days, you know, countries like China and all can only give us like lithium again. They are doing a lot of damage to environment. So, is this a sustainable thing that we have now, lithium-ion batteries? Or do you think metal air batteries or hydrogen fuel cells will overtake at the end of the earth? Like, what do you think about that? And once I have this answer, I would let you know a few more things about my work. Thank you, Prince. Thank you. I will mute you now. Yeah, perfect. Thanks. I love seeing ourselves twice. Julian, do you have some thoughts? Otherwise, I can also add something. Maybe I can say something about the hydrogen fuels compared to electric cars, in the sense of electric battery cars. Regarding the technologies, I am not so much of an expert in that field. So, if you, Simon, know more about that, I am very happy also to learn a little bit about that. Or if Prince can show me and give me an introduction on this, I am also more than happy.

24:19I think regarding a comparison between the electric battery car and the hydrogen car, the whole process of capturing power, storing the hydrogen, distributing the hydrogen, storing it then again in the pumping station, putting it back then in the car, and so on and so forth, is a very long and complicated process. That at the same time uses a lot of energy. This doesn't have to be that there is more environmental impact on this, but the use of energy to create and capture and store and distribute the hydrogen has a bigger impact. If you, for example, consider that the electric car can basically just be sunk wheel, of course, passing by the battery of the car. But that is something also I don't address it too often, especially depending on the people that I talk to. That is something that I think will come in the future, the consciousness of the efficiency of energy usage. If we see how we handle energy today, we waste a lot of energy in many sense.

25:41And I think from what I have seen so far and what I've read so far, that's one of the issues or the negative aspects if you compare hydrogen cars to electric cars, considering that the energy comes from the sun in both cases. Thank you, John. Can I add something about this hydrogen? Sure. Only one sentence. The hydrogen is three times, you will need three times more energy to use for the hydrogen car than you need for the battery car. Three times more. Yeah. So from the efficiency standpoint, right? I mean, so not in the production, but in the use from electricity back again, because I mean, hydrogen cars are also an electric car, right? Which uses hydrogen as a storage medium, but it's still an electric car. So the efficiency for electricity all the way, you know, to be used again for driving, you need the three times as much with no more energies to do so. As long as we don't have unlimited or like, you know, too much renewable energies that can be an issue or that seems to be an issue.

26:54Yeah. One quick thing, Prince, for you, for these air batteries. So I actually, my PhD, my PhD in Cambridge, I spent some time on lithium air batteries, looking at this concept quite a lot. You know, there's some exciting numbers you can create, but I think the biggest issue I've seen is the power output. To give you an example, I think back then, you know, we had this joke in the lab at some point, you know, that you can have a car which can maybe drive 600 miles or so, which back then sounded amazing. I mean, now you can get there by a little mile, but, you know, you will have these cars, you know, we can drive really long, but you could maybe go at one or two kilometers an hour. So the power output has been very low. And I think, you know, from, from application can be quite tricky. So the only application I'm aware of for lithium air, for example, which is a single use, are hearing aids, and I haven't found any other application where they're actually, you know, used or, you know, yeah, it's quite hard to find applications for them.

27:51And yeah, there's a lot of, you know, nice announcements, as you say, about lithium, aluminum, et cetera. But also, I think it's, you know, it sounds nice on paper, but we haven't really seen anything, I think, which can go commercial, which of course, you know, doesn't mean it never happens. And with sodium-ion, we can now see that it might come back, you know, and a lot of people have been talking about for many years, and now maybe CATL also can actually commercialize them more widely. But maybe they're probably for grid. But yeah, so I just want to say, so I think we just have to be a bit careful with a lot of these very nice announcements, because often, you know, the commercialization can be very challenging, right? You can do lots of things in the lab, you can build a nice prototype, but actually build this at scale, and the commercial level can be quite challenging. And that's, particularly with lithium air or any air batteries, that's what I've found so far, at least.

28:42Thank you, Simon. And thank you, Melos. Thank you, Julian. Now, what I have to say is, aluminum air batteries is not happening, it has already happened. There are a few people, in the sense of a few companies who have pioneered aluminum air or metal air technologies as such. We have a company called Finergy from Israel, who have pioneered aluminum air batteries, and they have actually constructed a car which runs on aluminum air technology. And even Indian Oil Corporation, which is the largest oil company in India, it's a public sector company, they have purchased some stake in this company called Finergy. And they are trying to, you know, construct a chain of battery outlets throughout India, because we clearly know that this is the future, because lithium is going to be a hard to find thing in the near future. But aluminum is very easy to obtain here. But the problem with aluminum air batteries, even Tesla has some patents, like around 150 patents on aluminum air technology.

29:52The problem with aluminum air battery is the recharging, like even though it has exponentially higher energy density than a lithium-ion battery, like as you told, the best technology on lithium-ion battery can give you a range of 600 kilometers max to max. But the range of aluminum air battery, but the range of aluminum air battery, it starts from 1,200 kilometers. So that is right double the range that you are talking about when you use an aluminum air battery. And again, aluminum air batteries are only one third the weight of lithium-ion batteries when you consider that particular thing. And as I told you, the only one particular problem with aluminum air battery is they are primary cells. They cannot be recharged. So all you have to do is, or the question is about logistics things, like the byproduct of the chemical reaction inside aluminum air battery is aluminum hydroxide, which is a substance which you need to recycle. Like you can produce aluminum from that. So the thing which is used up in aluminum air battery is metal aluminum, and the byproduct is aluminum hydroxide, and you get energy from that.

31:09Now, this aluminum hydroxide has to be taken out by a qualified technician, and then it has to be transported to a reactor or a facility wherein this aluminum can be, you know, retained from aluminum hydroxide through some reactions, which is again, very cost effective. So the problem is going to be availability of what's the, a lot of aluminum air batteries on the move. So let's say we have a car with an aluminum air battery pack, which can go like three, 3000 kilometers. So what happens is every 3000 kilometers, you end up changing the batteries instead of charging it. So that changing needs a very good, uh, uh, professionally qualified or a technical guy over there to, you know, extract the aluminum hydroxide and put it into a container. So some mechanism should be there to retain it. That is going to be the problem. Otherwise, uh, it's, uh, aluminum air or even sink air. Uh, I will, I will come to sink air later. The aluminum air is way ahead in all aspects of when, you know, when considered, uh, the things on, uh, the advantages of lithium and battery.

32:28My concern is lithium takes, uh, lithium has a heavy toll on environment when it comes to, uh, extracting the rare earth from, uh, from, you know, the, uh, from earth actually, as you all know, uh, lithium is a rare earth. Uh, and you, you need to, uh, do a lot of mining, a lot of chemical processes. Can I correct you? Can I correct you? Can I correct you? Please, please, please, please. Lithium is not air earth. Lithium is one of the most abundant element on the earth. Yeah, that's what also have been my addition. It's, it's, it's, uh, quite. Uh, is lithium, uh, if you are telling me lithium abundant on earth? Yeah. Yeah. It is the, uh, it is actually one of the most abundant, but what about, uh, you know, extracting it? It's like an alkali metal. How, how, how much things do you, uh, or how much, uh, energy you have to put it to extract it? I mean, I can go to the details, but I don't want to because, uh, I would occupy the, uh, the people's time here.

33:46But, uh, the, uh, lithium is not a rare earth. And, uh, like you correctly, uh, restated lithium is one of the most abundant element on the earth. And another thing is, of course. And Prince, if I may add. Prince, if I may add. Sorry, so many, if I may add. Okay. Prince, if I may add. You, you were telling me, like, uh, it's not a rare earth. It is, okay. It was abundant. Now, uh, uh. That's what, there's another myth which I pointed to Julian, which he didn't cover. However, I would, I did like the Julian number eight, uh, the, uh, item of the myth that, uh, people are mixing the rare earth elements in the batteries with the battery materials. Battery materials are mostly not rare earth, uh, uh, elements. The lithium is not rare earth. Nickel is not rare earth. The, uh, the most critical materials for the batteries and the most volume materials for the batteries are, uh, abundant materials on the earth.

34:53Like lithium, graphite, cobalt is a little bit less, uh, abundant, but manganese, the nickel, we are producing them. Uh, we are using them and producing them in millions of the tons. Like the graphite in the steel industry, like, uh, 3 million tons nickel in the steel industry and so on and so on. So those are not rare earth materials. And the people think that they are rare earth. Thanks for sharing. Divak, Divak, did you have something else? Thank you for, thank you for pointing that out. Uh, now, what do you think about the, uh, extraction procedures of, uh, lithium? Uh, yeah, it's, it's, uh, I think it's, uh, uh, ranked in first 50. I think it, it should be there, but, uh, are the extraction procedures of lithium environment friendly? Uh, people say, uh, tell us that it's, uh, it is costing the environment as same as the, uh, uh, the gasoline kind of fuels. Like all the elements, sorry, like all the metals and materials which they are mined, they can be mined responsibly and environmentally friendly.

36:06And they can mine, uh, we can use already today with, uh, electrical vehicles instead of diesels and so on and so on. So it can be done, um, environmentally responsibly and it can be done environmentally damaged. It means that, uh, the, uh, it can be done with, uh, not taking care about the, the, after you will open the open pit mine, you, uh, you destroy the environment and you destroy the environment with the diesel and so on and so on. So like the, all the mining, uh, uh, similar is to the lithium mining or nickel mining or, or cobalt mining or cobalt mining or cobalt mining. There is some social issue issues. You can do it with the children or you can do it without the children. So depends on the company, depends on the country. It can be done responsibly. It doesn't need to be done responsibly. So you cannot mix them, uh, the, the companies which they are doing it responsibly with the companies which they are doing it not responsibly.

37:11Understood. So, uh, my thing is, uh, maybe relatively this aluminum production is like, uh, a normal thing which happens over here. Uh, so it's like much easier. It seems, I don't know. I don't know. Many factors would have contributed to this, uh, notion that, uh, extracting of lithium is much, uh, on an annual, it's not an environmental friendly site when compared to extraction of aluminum. Maybe that's the thing. But, uh, as a chemist, I am more, uh, excited or concerned about the energy density and the weight things, uh, and the mileage. That's what we call here in India, uh, that, uh, a particular thing, a particular battery can give to, uh, more number of miles, uh, per charge. I mean, in this, uh, in this prospect, it is not charged actually. You need to replace the battery. And then we have hydrogen cells, uh, as you told, uh, yeah, I think Julian told this, right, about the technology of hydrogen fuel cells. Uh, I don't know.

38:18I don't remember who told, uh, I know it's pretty complex. The tanks, the, uh, the circuits, the, uh, the kinkel cells, all those stuff make it pretty complex, but it's, uh, it's not impossible. We have a few cars running on fuel cells. The other day Toyota introduced, uh, there is one thing, uh, Hyundai had, had, has had a car, a hydrogen fuel car for some time. So that is possible. So, uh, uh, do you people think a lithium-ion battery is going to be, uh, on, uh, second or third place when compared to aluminum air or metal air or hydrogen fuel cells? And we have sink air battery coming in, which, uh, they are rechargeable actually. We can recharge them now. Uh, what do you think? Ten years from now, from now, ten years from now, that means that 2030 lithium-ion battery will be dominant technology. It means that there will be 99% of the, uh, uh, batteries will be lithium-ion batteries. In the worst case scenario, if some of the breakthrough will happen, there will be maybe 95% of the lithium-ion batteries.

39:30The rest of that, they can capture 1% or maximum 5% of market share. I, I, I can add, uh, or, or agree with, uh, Milos, uh, on this. The, if you consider the, the amount of resources that, uh, is being, uh, and with resources, I'm on, I mean, research and development and money as well. That is spent in lithium-ion batteries that needs from a, from a economic point of view, that needs to come to a, to a return on investment as well. And, uh, and, uh, and at the same time, the research that is being put into this, I think we are, we're just at the beginning. If you compare batteries, as I mentioned before, the, the size of my car, the, the, the battery size, uh, physical size of, of the battery is, uh, 20 kilowatt. And, uh, this, I think three years or two, two or three years later, after, after they launched this, uh, this, uh, model, the capacity of the battery.

40:31The capacity of the battery within the same size was double than, than originally. So this is, this is growing massively. And, uh, and I, I, it's difficult to, to predict the future and, uh, please don't, don't take my word on this, but I, I would agree with Milos that, uh, that in, in the next couple of years, we will see more and more this technology evolving even faster. We are also seeing this, uh, semi-conduct, I mean, superconductor kind of thing. Uh, I've read somewhere that, uh, buses in China, uh, relying on superconductors. So, supercapacitor. Supercapacitor. Oh, I am. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, David. Thank you for connecting me. Sorry, correcting me. Uh, supercapacitors. Uh, these buses run for three, four kilometers. Uh, these supercapacitors are charged by a overhead, uh, power provision kind of thing. And then again, they get charged and then they run for another two, three kilometers or a very nominal kilometers, but, uh, that's very efficient. It turns out to be.

41:39Uh, and I think some other country, I think France also, they are, uh, they are, uh, experimenting with some rails under the roads, uh, which makes actually, you know, uh, the vehicle charging. Uh, the vehicle charge as it is moving, uh, with the magnetic field, which is directed under the vehicle. So such things are also there. Such ingenious things I should say. So what's your take on these kinds of technologies? Uh, Prince, probably I'll come, I'll come to you with this one, uh, one story, one backstory. Are you a chemist, Prince? Yeah, you could say I'm a chemist. Uh, okay. Yeah. Okay. So I'll tell you the story. And so I'm from India as well. I'm from Bangalore. So I'm just giving you this backstory. I run a company in the electric mobility space. We've done good amount of work in the battery space. Okay. And, uh, early 2015, 2016, we had a person by the name of Sujit Kumar. I'm sure, uh, Simon, Milos, Catherine, Julian, you probably would know this person.

42:41He held the world record. Yes. He held the world record in 2009 for the highest energy density cell made, which was at about 418 Watt-up per kilogram. This was tested and approved by the world records at, in the lab. And today we're talking 2021. The energy density that we have is 270 to 320 Watt-up per kilogram. So the point that I'm trying to make here is what, what's in a lab to bringing it out onto the ground. So whether be it with aluminum air, whether be it with supercapacitors, supercapacitors, we work with a company called skeleton. They've done phenomenal work in supercaps, but yet commercially available. No, even with your metal air or even aluminum air, there is a lot of work that is being done nevertheless, but until and unless it is commercially put Finergy, which is a company, which IOC already invest. They don't have a commercial ready vehicle or commercial ready product. Right. So all of this is hearsay. And that is where I would agree to everyone on the panel that till 2030, 2035, even if you go, it's going to be lithium, which is going to be a dollar.

43:53It's going to be lithium, which is going to be dominant. And about also the fact that when you, where you mentioned that lithium, probably it has just come to your spotlight now because of lithium batteries, but lithium has been and was mining even before lithium batteries became mainstream. They were used in Greece, the same one that you put your vehicles. It was used in ceramic pots. So the usage of lithium has been there, but it has only grown because of electric vehicles. So it's not something which was not there. And you know, suddenly someone invented and it's still dirty and so on and so forth. So that's a misconception. I hope that just gives you a perspective. Prince? Yeah. Yeah. In fact, to be honest, I was not at all in the right, you know, mindset when I bought this lithium. We were like, actually, I was, you know, doing something about the neodymium thing, you know, which is a magnet, you know, the magnet, right?

44:56So that neodymium is actually a rareth. So I confused the lithium and the neodymium. That's why I called lithium a rareth. Lithium is actually not a rareth as Milo's has correctly. This company called Log9 Materials in this guy. Prince, can we have this conversation offline? Meaning to say, I mean, you, I mean, there are a lot more people I'm presuming who want to come up as well. Please go ahead. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Simon. Thanks. Thanks, Prince. Simon, Julian, Milo's and Kathleen. I think there's a question for you all. The first, the first part of that. So it's two questions. The first part of the question is. So I'm from India, and I'm just getting your perspectives on the thermal effects of batteries in a country as big as India. I mean, India is completely diverse. The temperature in the north and the temperature in the south varies by close to around about 15, 10 to 15 degrees at least in peaks. Now, how important is thermal management systems for a battery capacity of approximately anywhere between about two to five kilowatt hour used in mobility applications, primarily in two wheelers?

46:26That's my first point. That's my first point. And my second question is, how important is battery data for a country as wide as India? And also, and also the analysis of this battery data, how important would it be for a country like India, which is not a devlop, but a developing country itself? Thanks. I'm done. Thanks, Vivek. If I may, I could answer the first question as a management system. So I think this pretty much depends on what kind of power ratings you're looking for. And I'm presuming a two wheeler in India is probably not looking for very high C rate or high discharge rate or charge rates of the battery itself. So if you're not putting too much stress on the battery and, you know, assuming you're using top tier tier one type of battery cell manufacturers and, you know, you're using within their recommended optimum scenario. Then thermal management system, what it does is to basically protect itself, protect the batteries from thermal runaway events and also for life, you know, lifetime and hunting purposes, just to make sure that the battery cells are operating under its optimal temperature.

47:50Now, if we're looking at very extreme use cases, be it because of the operating conditions of the vehicle itself or the environmental temperature that we are dealing with, they may potentially need to look at thermal management system. Although for two wheelers, what we most commonly see right now for this type of kilowatt hour that you're looking for are passive cooling systems. So, you know, they may use thermal material inside the batteries to kind of cool, cool the system, which my company does a lot on two wheelers as well. And because of the size constraints, that's what they look for. We rarely see passive with active cooling systems involved, which for the sake of everyone here, passive cooling basically means that you're not doing anything with additional liquid piping, etc. You're using a material to basically absorb the heat away from the battery cells. And for active cooling, that means you're adding an additional liquid cooling tubing outside of the batteries. So that's what I meant by active cooling systems.

49:03And Tesla would use active cooling system because it's very efficient for its vehicle. It's basically a large battery pack underneath the vehicle itself. But for smaller vehicles like two wheelers, size is a huge constraint, a huge limitation, especially for batteries. You know, you want to have a battery inside a vehicle. You want to have carrying capacity in the vehicle. You want to be able to take out the load, etc. So you do every inch and every space does count. And so you will ideally not opt for active cooling system. You will opt for passive cooling systems. And as I mentioned, for two wheelers, it pretty much depends on what kind of operating condition that you're looking at. And if you're looking at building a very fast electric motorcycle, which I don't think you're doing that with two to five kilowatt hour batteries. Or if you're looking for doing swappable batteries, which there's a company in Taiwan called Gogoro. They are focusing on tubeless and they do swappable battery solutions and they use passive cooling for their batteries.

50:14So, so this is, you know, to, for two to five kilowatt hour, typically what we see mostly, they would opt for, they will still offer thermal management system and they will opt for passive thermal cooling solution. I hope that answers the questions. I just don't want to ramble on before you have any other things to say to that. Yeah, Catherine, I had a couple of points to say. So, point one being, I mean, batteries operate anywhere between about 1.2 to about 1.5 C. That's the, that's 0.7 C is the average, but I'm talking about the peak. And also when you mentioned salts, I'm presuming you, you were mentioning about PCM materials, right? PCM again is a double-edged sword. So, when you, when you mean passive, do you mean air-cooled system or do you, when you say salts, were you referring to PCM as a material itself? Thanks, Vivek. So, for our company, we do use PCM. I'm happy to take this conversation offline as well.

51:17You know, errors is a really good form of cooling, but our customers typically deal with more than two-seater of discharge rates. So, they will do, they will have to opt for some kind of thermal management system other than error-cooling. Thanks, Catherine. And anyone for that, what's the question? Anyone for that, for the data piece? I can also, yes. Sure, I can also quickly jump in and maybe, yeah, Catherine, you have more, and Julian, and Milo's, and others. But, yeah, one quick thing, I think the data is really, it's going to be quite a big topic. So, to just give a quick story as well. So, I'm currently, you know, based in Germany, Munich, and currently I'm part of a, like a design sprint, and like with the Federal Ministry here of Environment. And that's exactly about this, you know, what should be the data situation coming up. And the reason for that is because there's something called the battery passport. And this has been, you know, pushed by the World Chemical Forum for a few years.

52:17We also have been involved with it for a few years as well. And now, also, European Union brought it up, so they want to have this battery passport by 2026. And, yeah, but now they're really trying to figure out what does it actually mean, you know, what is all the data they want. And, you know, it can be all the way from, like, you know, where the material is coming from, like how have they been produced, the battery, how has it been produced, then how has it been used, and then also how, you know, how can you recycle, et cetera. So, I think, you know, data transparency is going to be quite important. I'm personally quite, you know, excited about this movement now in Europe, because it's, I think it's quite important to also have, like, higher standards. To give you another kind of insight, you know, the European Union is quite, there's a lot of drive now, you know, to reduce emissions from ICEs, right, which kind of leads to, you know, getting stricter and stricter standards, which means more and more cars have to become electric, because otherwise you cannot, like, hit those emissions.

53:13But right now, we're kind of ignoring, you know, the emissions produced through the, you know, producing the AV, which is, you know, but it's required right now to kind of get the transition happen. But then over time, what the plan is to actually have standards on, you know, that you have to reduce the emissions through producing electric vehicles year over year. So, right now, let's say, you know, you can, you know, have this much, let's say, emissions through producing a battery, but in five years time, you maybe have, like, you know, reduce it by a third or so. And to actually, you know, enforce things like this, we need more data and, like, you know, data kind of these battery passwords and things, I think are going to be a really big role. What's going to be interesting to see is, right, like how these things are going to be adopted and also globally, right? I think, you know, I think in Europe, personally, I think it will happen.

53:59You know, there's a lot of drive now to make something like this happen. The question is how, you know, how detailed it's going to be, what exact data is included, who are going to host the data. So, what I've heard the latest from the opinion is that the idea is that companies host their own data. There has to be find a way to kind of, you know, make it accessible between them, which, of course, you know, can be interesting to see how this is going to work. But, yeah, I mean, personally, I was quite interested to see how other, you know, other countries will adopt things like that. You know, will it be a global, you know, battery password will be global data sharing. Will it be more on country level? So, yeah, Chris, do you know anything about in India, any plans of data sharing or is this just an interest of yours and there's nothing really announced? No, so, yeah, Simon. So, in India, there's nothing, I mean, there's nothing in particular about data sharing per se.

54:51And, yeah, I mean, the whole thing that you mentioned about battery passport makes a lot of sense. But it's now left to the OEMs as to, I mean, I don't know, probably you could give in a little more insight on this. Do OEMs really want to give in their data? I mean, would that be the norm going forward? Probably not, no. Like, I'm going to be honest. So, that's why it's pushed by Kha. I wanted to jump, but only we the one who are no. Yeah, if I may add to this as well. I agree, too. So, we make two wheelers and even I don't want to give in. Yeah, I think this is something, for example, that Tesla is very strong at. Since the beginning, they are analyzing every movement of the vehicles and the entire fleet has been monitored constantly to really improve. improve the battery efficiency, the range, and so on and so forth. And I think this is going to be one of the gold, or, yeah, to call it somehow, the gold that companies will have or are having already in comparison to other manufacturers.

56:10So, I don't think they will open up with that data, at least not for the moment. Yeah, one of the largest value in the future of what the company has is data. So, basically, I'm 100% sure that nobody wants to give this data for free. Data is in the future gold. Gold. Simon, Catherine, in order to give other people the opportunity to discuss as well, do you agree if we continue with the four next myths? And maybe we can open up then afterwards again. If it continues on the battery level, I'm more than happy since we're in the battery revolution clubhouse session. But maybe there's other people interested in the other topics around demystifying electric mobility. Yeah, thanks so much for that, Gillian. I definitely agree. And I would just like to reset the room a little bit. We are about 30 minutes left into the room. If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to jump onto the stage now. You know, just so that we have a few people lined up here.

57:23So, it would be great to give everyone the chance to speak. And I love the discussion earlier. I love how we're demystifying myths, you know, about everything. So, that's great. So, yeah. If, you know, should we, Gillian, do you think, let's move on to Milos, Dorothy, Barrett, Sijio, and Christopher, who just joined us on stage in the order? Sure. Great. Milos, do you have anything to add? Yeah, I don't know. I have a lot of things to add. But this one, what I already said, that we, Julian, you should add one more major myth, that people are mixing the rare earth with the battery materials. And battery materials, mostly, they are abundant. And there is another related myth that when the people are thinking about battery materials, they think about the metals like nickel and graphite or cobalt or whatever. They don't realize that key to those materials is not mining. Key is the, mining is important, but key is processing those materials. You can relate those material processing to specialty chemical processing or pharmaceutical processing because of the complexity of the processing and because of also value of the processing.

58:46Value of the processing, there is 10 times more value than the mining. So there are three stages before this material goes to the battery. One is mining, another is processing, and the third one is active material production or manufacturing. Thanks, Milos. I will definitely include that. I want to apologize to Milos for mixing the rare earth with the battery materials. Actually, I was working on the magnet, which you use in the electric motors, the neodymium, which is a rare earth. So that was in my mind. So I mixed up all these things. I'm so sorry. I apologize for the confusion. No problem, please. Thank you. And it fits well. And it fits well into demystifying. So it's perfect. Work me well. Nice to know that. I think Barat has been waving for a while. I think he wants to add something. Yeah. Thanks for the invite and the session is really awesome. So my initial argument is we are actually writing a paper on standardization of batteries and things like that.

59:59Actually, Milos already told standardization is not possible. We just want to move towards customization. But still, when I'm going to different sessions in the battery street, in the battery pub, and everybody are wondering whether we can do standardization like China. Like China created a standardization technique. Do you guys think will it work in different countries, in a global standardization? Is it possible? If it is possible, if it is not possible, can you say why? Or can you please comment on it? I just want to curiously know about this stuff. No possible in this decade. Great. Thanks so much for sharing that, Barat. I just want to chime in really shortly, really quickly here. I think the battery industry in China... Sorry. Is it only me or can nobody hear... I think Catherine lost connection. Sorry, Catherine. Hey, Catherine, are you back? Can you hear us? Yes. Sorry. I lost connection for a while. I was just going to chime in really quickly that the power of the point...

1:01:36I do think that standardization may take off in selected countries. And it's probably a lot to do with the political climate in each of the countries, given that a lot of the companies like CATL in China are being supported by the government. So I think that may be possible in certain countries under certain regimes. I don't want to go too much into social political issues, but I just wanted to raise the point there. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. And one more thing I just want to ask regarding the assembly structure, because in China, they are using different structure. In Europe, they are using different structure. Usually, countries like India, they're used to manufacture... They don't use to manufacture battery. They simply assemble the battery. But still, there are a lot of not good things. They are not serious about the safety of the battery. They are not using fuse in the cells. The assemblies also, it's quite a bit difficult in countries like India and Indonesia.

1:02:43They are doing it. So what do you think about this assembly industry? Because many people are assembling it. Will there be a standard to do an assembly? Because they are doing it as such their own. They are not following any safety protocols. So what's your thought on it? Yeah. So just to chime in really quickly here, if Simon or anyone else have anything to add, feel free to do that. I do think there definitely needs to be some sort of structure or standardization as the assembly process. Currently, we rely a lot on the certifications, you know, the U.S. to do performance kind of verification on the batteries. But I do certainly think that there should be standardization as to what needs to go into the batteries to make sure that, you know, we actually do comply with the highest safety center possible. So I hope that, you know, addresses what you have. I would like to also give Dorothy, Sijia and Christopher the chance to speak as well, if that's okay.

1:03:54Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. Great. So let's move on to Dorothy. Dorothy, thanks for joining us on stage. Hi, everyone. Thanks. Thanks, Simon, for inviting me to the stage. Yeah. I just have some quick questions and comments. The first one is regarding hydrogen fuel cell cars have three times emission of EV cars. Are we talking about on average because green hydrogen sounds really clean compared to battery cars powered by coal-fired power plants? Are we talking the statistic on average? My second question is regarding subsidies and tax credit on a country-by-country basis. Are the governments currently pulling more money in terms of subsidy to EV sector compared to hydrogen? Do you think the subsidy on hydrogen might be catching up to subsidies currently in EV sector? Because I was just reading the news of U.S. Senate passing on a hydrogen tax credit bill, which is very encouraging news. Although I am a proponent of free market, these clean tech companies really need some subsidies to keep on going.

1:05:36Which leads to my third question. What do you think is the key challenge that is hindering battery or hydrogen startups commercializing their production? And my final thought is I was watching some very nice images today. One is like a British countryside with ship grazing with offshore wind fire in the background. The second one is an imaginary photo of future Carly City without cars. Because as urban population growth, congestion, car accidents will be quite an issue even with self-driving autonomous EVs. So I would imagine that in a very utopian world, we will only have electrified train. Everybody do a lot of walking, cycling, dog walking. So how would you imagine the future of EVs in a very futuristic city where cars and even EVs or hydrogen cars are banned? This is Dorothy from the UK and I am done speaking. Thank you guys for having me on. Can I answer this hydrogen and third question and fourth question? Very simply, very easy. The hydrogen, there are three problems with the hydrogen in the passenger cars and maybe in the other vehicles.

1:07:26Because hydrogen is actually, hydrogen vehicles are actually electrical vehicles. So you need to change hydrogen back to electricity. So three problems are efficiency of the hydrogen, the infrastructure, the unit to build the infrastructure, and the cost of the hydrogen. Because of those three problems, the hydrogen in the passenger cars and maybe also in the other vehicles, heavy vehicles and so on, it's dead. So forget about hydrogen. We don't need to talk about that. So the first question to answer a little bit more precisely. Three times more energy using the hydrogen in the passenger cars is related to the efficiency. It means that hydrogen is highly inefficient. It means that hydrogen efficiency is like 30%. Battery efficiency is 95%. So you need to use three times more energy. It means that three times more cost. And then it depends on what kind of energy. I didn't speculate. If it's energy, green energy or dirty energy. That's what I don't know because it's today a very big mix.

1:08:46So you cannot go to the details of that. Thank you, Milo. I will add one quick thing and maybe also then give it to Julian for the city question. Another thing is because you mentioned polluting, right? So I think very much agree with what Milo said about the efficiency. Another thing is, you know, right now, most hydrogen actually comes from fossil fuels, right? So I think it's about 97 or something, 90 or something percent. So you mentioned like electricity from coal, right? We can use for like vehicles. The big problem right now is also, you know, the hydrogen at the moment is not done in the Green Bay. And if you do it in the Green Bay, then what Milo said is true. But the 30%, you know, efficiency, so you need about three times as much electricity to put in to drive your electric car, which uses hydrogen as a storage medium instead of batteries. Yeah. And Julian, we can... Yeah. Maybe, maybe. Thank you, Dorothy, for your questions.

1:09:38And I want to go back again to what Milo's explained. It's not about the emissions, that hydrogen-powered cars emit more emissions. It's about the efficiency of the energy usage of the different systems. And regarding the question on the future, that's something that I could spend the next 21 minutes on, but I'll try to keep it short. I think and I hope at the same time, as I mentioned at the very beginning, I think the first step for a more environmental-friendly future is definitely the electrification of our vehicles, a change of mentality of how we move around. And hopefully sooner than I think, but the next step in the future will be also the reduction of the size of the vehicles. We saw shortly before the pandemic, scooter companies coming out and flooding the streets with these modes of transportation. People accepted them very well and had fun, especially in summer. Then when it gets wet or it's cold and wintry outside, it's not that much fun.

1:10:55But I think also then through the pandemic, we also noticed it's actually an individual mode of transportation. And it's one vehicle that has around 12, 15 kilograms of weight transporting a person that's around 75, 80 kilograms of weight instead of the same person driving a small car like I have that's still more than a ton, a ton and a half, or even a bigger car, a Tesla Model X or anything like that that is over two and a half tons. So in order to answer that question, I see the future with way smaller vehicles that are more efficient and that actually cover our needs. We all want everything in a car, but it's always a question of what we need. And we will for sure have a multi-model. I know this is like a buzzword that's going around for a while, but we will have different modes of transportation where we can choose from for different types of movement, for different routes that we're going to drive.

1:12:06And I definitely, I insist on this. I hope and I think that after the electrification of the fleet, the efficiency of the vehicles must increase. And one of the ways of doing this is by reducing the size of the vehicles and with the size, of course, the weight. Thanks, Julian. Sorry, Catherine. I think I want to do some next and you can do some next. Yeah, let's go to Situ. Situ, what are your thoughts? Hi, Simon. Hi, Cathy. Hi, Julian. Milo. It was really great hearing you speak and a lot of things to learn. So I had three different questions. I think the second question for which Julian had a touch base upon. But still, I'd like if you could elaborate a little bit more. So the first question that I have is with respect to self-charging vehicles. So if I have to give an example of a product, the Velo bike, I think it is there somewhere in European region, I think in Italy.

1:13:17So I just wanted to know what would be the sort of shortcomings or disadvantages or negative aspects of those sort of system in terms of self-charging. The second one, second question was with respect to the strategic focus of battery technology of the future. Say, from research perspective, which are the things that has been looked into going forward? Say, as Julian said about vehicle size reduction. So is there something that is being looked into reducing the size of the battery, thickness of the battery and things like that? So on that front, if you could briefly touch base on. I know it's a very broad topic, Julian. If you could kind of briefly explain that, it would be really great. And the third one, which is not really important, but I was really fascinated to know whether there are any fault management systems right now available in electric vehicles in order to detect, isolate and repair faults in batteries for safety reasons. So these are my three questions.

1:14:23And Sijan, I'm done speaking. Thank you, Sijan. Let me comment on your second question about the battery technology and the size. I think, as we heard before, and I can agree on this, again, it's very difficult to look into the future and predict something. So I'm not going to be so bold and predict this. But I think based on how the industry has been evolving and the way it's going, I do think that lithium-ion technology will definitely persist, at least for the next couple of years. And to answer the reduction of the size of batteries, that will come automatically with the reduction of the size of vehicles. If you have less space in a car, you will definitely have to install a smaller vehicle because you have no space. And with it, at the same time, you will have more range because the efficiency of those batteries and the capacity, the storage capacity of those batteries will increase due to advancement in technology. Regarding the third question, fault systems, I think I'm not the right person to comment on this.

1:15:50I have no idea if there is anything. I know there are some systems that, for example, if the car notices there is something wrong with the battery, it just shuts off. I know that, but I'm not a technical guy. So in that sense, I don't know what those would be. Maybe Simon or someone else can give insights in that. And I'm not sure if I understood the first question correctly. Did you say self-charging batteries? Yes, yes. So I was referring to a specific electric bike by the name, I think the company's name is Vello, which is V-E-L-L-O. So I was just wondering if there is a probable opportunity to use the self-charging aspect. If I'm not wrong, it will be based upon the circular moment of the wheel itself and use that to charge the battery. So it's a probable opportunity that could be scaled to bigger vehicles. So what I wanted to know was the disadvantage of it. So maybe like friction, but apart from it, any other disadvantages?

1:17:05I think in that sense, we have already self-charging batteries. If you consider that electric vehicles, when you drive, they take the kinetic energy. When you let go of the go pedal, they recharge the battery themselves. And on the other side, I don't know of this company that you're talking about, but I know in Germany, there's a small car that's being developed and produced. I think it's called Sono Motors, where what they are doing is they're adding solar panels to the body of the car because to the people also in the room who speak German, there's a difference between a Fahrzeug and a Stadzeug. Fahrzeug in German is the name for a car and it means moving thing. But it actually is true that the vehicles don't move over 90%, if not 95% of the time vehicles are standing around. And therefore, this company is trying to take that as a major point where if your car is standing around most of the time and some sun hits the body of the car, it will recharge.

1:18:26Thank you. Thank you, Julian. Thanks so much for that. With that, we can quickly move on to Christopher. Christopher, are you still there? Yeah, I'm still here. When I originally put my hand up, it was for data, but I just want to add some of my thoughts. So I completely agree with what Milos has said. I think hydrogen from an EV format, I think it's dead in the water. And sort of the background to that is, you know, this isn't the first time sort of hydrogen's come into focus. Back in 2013, you know, there was a lot of hype back then with regards to the hydrogen. You know, and now in 2021, it's not even close to sort of the lithium-ion side. But a couple of the other myths that were mentioned, sort of the range anxiety and cost. So I think that's a mindset one, you know, certainly dealing with cost to start with. I know, obviously, the lithium-ion battery car, you know, once you start looking at sort of cost over its lifetime, it works out cheaper.

1:19:34But a lot of people, when they're looking at cars, they'll sort of look at the cost of the car. They'll not necessarily sort of think of what's sort of the long-term cost implication and the range anxiety. You know, it's exactly the same with mindset. Certainly from an ICE car, you'll go and fill up your car, the gas station, petrol station, you know. And as soon as you jump in, you can see your range. You might not, you know, you might have 300, 400 miles. That could last you a couple of weeks. When you charge your battery and you see 100 or 150, you know, it'll still last you the same couple of weeks, potentially, week, two weeks, based on your driver. It's more so when you come to sort of them long drives. And I like sort of what Julian said, where, you know, if he needs something for long range, he'll go and rent a car. So potentially that might be a future sort of issue.

1:20:35Thank you. The electric car is charged wherever it is actually parked for a longer period of time. So that means if you have a garage at home where you can install a wall box, your car will most likely be charging at night. Same when you go grocery shopping or to the cinema, your car most likely will also get in the parking garage a charging station. And then once we go back slowly to the office, that's also something that is becoming more and more usual that companies install charging stations for their employees. And therefore, this solves at the same time, this charging mentality or mindset, as Christopher mentioned before, that the charging times are too long. We're used, of course, to go five minutes to the charging. Sorry, to the, you see, I don't use that vocabulary anymore. The pumping station. The pumping station. And nowadays, I, you know, I plug out my car in the morning and have the full range of the vehicle. So this leads at the same time, then when you're on the road about the myth of not having enough public charging stations here.

1:22:21I only want to address some, some numbers. If you see, if you see, there were around 5,000 charging points in Switzerland and 17,000 in Germany. Today, we have around 30,000 in Switzerland and over 40,000 in Germany. This spring, there was also a milestone passed in the United States of over 100,000 public chargers. And therefore, I'm very happy that Christopher takes this word to the room because mindset, mindset is in many aspects a very important thing. And I think for electric vehicles and changing to an electric vehicle, that word actually summarizes what this shift takes for people. It's really a change of mindset. Thank you, Julian. I just want to point out one small detail. New is Tesla. The model played this, which they released the day before yesterday. 15 minutes, you can charge. In 15 minutes, you can charge 187 miles. That's also the other aspect of it. The fast charging of five years ago. My car has 43 kilowatt fast charging that nowadays is not even considered by manufacturers as fast charging.

1:23:57That's also evolving very, very, very quickly. Tesla, of course, is, I would say, ahead of the race because they're not only good at testing this, but they actually put it in place in their supercharged network. I know Porsche, for example, is also doing great work in this and some other companies, not to list them all. But yeah, what Milos is saying here is also true that fast charging is faster and faster and will become even faster, if I repeat the word again, in no time. Thank you, Julian and Milos. And yeah, so we have Edwin next. Hi. Julian, I have a question that's not related to battery technology. In Switzerland, to me, there seems enough money to buy EVs by citizens and companies. And you said that a lot is in place regarding finance, taxation, subsidies, and you just mentioned even charging infrastructure. You also have enough availability of EV models, even in the C&D segment nowadays. You would expect that the transition to EVs to go faster in Switzerland, as you see in similar smaller size countries like Belgium, Netherlands, and even Denmark.

1:25:25But in the latest EV readiness index of Lisbon, you ranked 13th place. What's in your opinion the reasons why Switzerland is in the middle of the list when it comes to EV adaptation? Thank you, Edwin. Very, very interesting. And I have to admit, shame on us. It is a very controversial topic. There are several reasons for this. And funny enough, you know, there are certain numbers like the one that you mentioned before and some other numbers like I think past April or the year before. I remember April. I don't know if it was this year or last year. Tesla Model 3, the most sold vehicle in the country, surpassing Skoda Octavia, which has been for 10 or 20 years the most sold vehicle here. So it is an interesting topic. We see a steady rise in electric vehicle adoption here. It's very slow at the moment. That was different before. At my Tesla time especially, we had in Switzerland a lot of people interested in the topic.

1:26:47As you mentioned before, it's a wealthy country. People are open for new technologies. They are not particularly fans of a certain brand or not necessarily fans of a certain brand like Germany is. For example, you are a traditional Audi family or a BMW family. That's not the case in Switzerland. So people were adapting the expensive models more easily. I think one of the reasons, one of the main reasons here, if there are any other Swiss or people living in Switzerland in the room, please feel free to add. One of the main reasons for this is a Tesla Model X, a Tesla Model S, a Tesla Roadster. Those were cars that were at least 80,000, 90,000 francs, dollars, more or less the same exchange rate worth. So that means that's people who buy houses. They're house owners. They can install their wall boxes with no problem. They decide if they want to do it and spend the 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 7,000 bucks on this. Now we have a different range of buyers.

1:27:54The people who are buying Nissan Leafs, Corsa E's, Model 3's, and so on and so forth, are normally people who rent apartments. They don't own the apartment or the garage, if they have it at all. And therefore, that's been something that talking to my ex-colleagues at Tesla, they have been telling me that Model 3 drivers especially are complaining to Tesla about not having the possibility to charge the car at home. I think that's a massive issue. It's difficult also between the administrative company of the building. I don't know how you say that in English. The company that runs the buildings. The building owner and the person who's renting the apartment. Who pays what? Considering the installation, the wall box, is it then part of the apartment? Should the energy be transferred directly to the apartment? Or should you have a separate counter for that parking space with the charging station? Those topics are quite controversial. In my case, for example, I can tell you what I did.

1:29:12I decided with the administration, they had to allow me to install the wall box, which they gladly did. But I had to pay the installation costs and the wall box. Although when I leave one day this apartment, well, the wall box, in the worst case, I can take with me, but the installation is part of the building. So that's a big topic, actually, that's going on here. And I think it's one of the, unfortunately, not a myth, but one of the topics to be solved in this aspect for the mass adoption of electric vehicles. Thank you, Julian. And thank you, Edwin, for this. And Rakesh, just the last one before we close. Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thank you for inviting me. My question is, how should OEMs and EV companies should play a part in designing towards recycling? This question came to my mind because, like, nowadays, we see that LFP chemistry is gaining more traction. As we see that Volkswagen has plans to introduce them in, like, entry size, entry vehicles, and also Tesla is already using them in China.

1:30:33But based on what I've read, I, like, I read that LFP wouldn't give much useful value compared to other chemistries. So how do you think battery industry should work towards, like, even from a design point of view and, like, choosing chemistry point of view should play a part in reducing the impact on environment from recycling point of view? Yeah, if I may, I think one of the important topics here to consider is circularity. If products are designed to be reused and upgraded by the production company themselves, who's probably the one who has the capabilities to do so, this circle will close. And whenever, you know, in five years, ten years, a vehicle needs an upgrade, a physical upgrade, I'm not talking about software updates, but the physical upgrade of the refurbishment, so to say, then I think this could be something that OEMs and battery manufacturers could work more together in order to have an even smaller environmental impact. Thanks so much, Gillian and Rakesh.

1:31:53I just wanted to jump in really quickly here as well before we close off the session. So, yeah, there's actually an NREL report about recycling and the fact that a lot of OEMs started off with designing the batteries, you know, just for the first years only on pretty much a cost perspective, that they wanted to keep costs low, so they only designed it to be able to last for a period of time until such batteries are no longer usable for the vehicle itself. And I think with OEMs, you know, slowly realizing the value of second life, hopefully we will see that coming up more and more rapidly in terms of how they designed the batteries to be able to repurpose or recycle a lot easier. And with regards to, I think, your point about choice of chemistry and how recyclable it is, OEMs are still pretty much driven by, I believe, the cost perspective and how much money, you know, they can make from each vehicle they sell, for example.

1:33:00So if there is a change in the business model, say, for example, a leasing business model, which could be in the interest of the OEMs to extend lifetime or the usable capacity of the batteries for a longer period of time, then perhaps they would be in the interest to choose something that is more recyclable or repurposeable in their sense. And that's just my comments and thoughts to that. Thanks, Catherine. And maybe just one last thing also I would like to add is there's actually a new report which just came out yesterday from the World Economic Forum, from an initiative called the Circular Car Initiative, an initiative I'm also part of. And the report is called Paving the Way, EU Policy Action for Automotive Circularity. There's a few other reports as well, but this is a really nice, freely available report. So if you Google that, it literally came out yesterday. There's lots of these kind of thoughts on batteries as well, but also overall the car, kind of how to get it carbon neutral and things.

1:33:57And there's a lot of data in there and tons of references. So maybe it's interesting for you to have a look at as well. And with this, yeah? Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah, and if you cannot find it, feel free to connect on LinkedIn. That's in general, I think, a good platform for Catherine, myself, but also for Julian. I think it's quite a nice way to connect. But I first want to say a really big thank you to Julian for being with us today. It makes a really big difference to have these brilliant conversation starters, providing lots of insights, answering lots of questions, but also creating a nice dialogue. So a big thank you to you. And yeah, give him a follow. If you haven't done so yet, you can see he's got a little party hat still. So he's new to Clubhouse, so we can crank up his numbers of followers and get him started on this exciting journey. Hopefully he stays around on these sessions as well.

1:34:46And yeah, as I mentioned before, LinkedIn is also a good way to connect with us. And also on top, you can see there's a Batch Revolution Club. So if you haven't done so yet, you can also follow that so you get notified. So ideally, follow all of us and you get all the notifications you can wish for because we run these sessions every week, every Saturday at 3 p.m. CET or I think 10 p.m. Singapore time, if I'm correct. Otherwise, Catherine can correct it. Great. And yeah, so we run this every week. And we already got some exciting actually sessions set up for the next two weeks coming up. And I will let Catherine mention these and also maybe do a bit of an invitation again and a plug for Battery Den. And one last thing just from my side, you know, big thanks for joining us every week. It makes so much fun. You know, I think we're learning a lot. So really, you know, really appreciate that.

1:35:33And as I said before, you can also, you know, listen to these sessions again on podcast, anywhere literally. It's on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, et cetera. If you just look for Battery Insiders. And also exciting, we just hit over a thousand listens. So growing, growing the listens as well. So it's good to see that, you know, people also listen in again. And I think it makes it also easy if you miss some of it and we can listen in. And I think many topics we address today as well have already been touched on from recycling and second life and things like that. So have a look, if you like, on these sessions as well. With this, I will give it to you, Catherine, to maybe have a bit of an outlook for the next week's session and close the delay sessions as well. Perfect. Thank you so much, Simon. And thank you once again to Julian for, you know, agreeing to do this with us. I hope you have enjoyed it.

1:36:21And do check out whatmobile.com, which is on Julian's platform. And he is really pushing very strong on his mission to demystify e-mobility. So do support him on that. And for our next week at 3 p.m. CET on Saturday, we will be having our ex-startup founder who have joined us on the previous Battery Den, Mariam. And she will be speaking to us about battery scaling up using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Very mouthful. But I'm pretty sure it'll be a great session. Mariam has, you know, a lot of interest after she pitched the first time round. And it'll be great to have her back. And especially in time for our sessions in two weeks time, which is Battery Den part two. And we're very excited to have that again with some of our panelists. It was definitely here in the audience as well. And, you know, we had a great time last time round. So we really look forward to, you know, having an even better, more exciting time this time with newer startups.

1:37:25So if you're a startup founder, please feel free to sign up on the link here that you see on the profile. Or visit batteryrevolution.club. Is it .club, Simon? Sorry, kind of missed that out. Yeah. Batteryrevolution.club. And you can sign up there, you know, to send us a short clip of your audio pitch. And we will love to have all the battery founders to connect with our panelists. You know, they're great experts, VCs, investors. So, yeah, do feel free to join us then as well just to listen in. And with that, I would, you know, just a big shout out to everyone. And thank you for joining the room. And with that, we'll give this room a close. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you.