Battery Revolution Clubhouse Recording - Sustainable EV Batteries

0:00Transcript

0:00Welcome back, everyone. Really excited to have you all for a 32nd, by now, Battery Revolution session. People have been following us for some time. We've been running these pretty much every week since 32 weeks. A quick backstory is that Catherine and I, we actually met on this app. We felt there was kind of a need for some more battery discussions, especially also all these discussions, not just purely about batteries, but also really like, you know, how they're going to infect other industries, other sectors from like, you know, like the vehicles, energy systems, grids, IoT. I mean, we had all kinds of things, but then also all the way from raw materials, like what we spoke about last week with James Whith from Bloomberg and NEF, as well as we talked about recycling, we talked about different use, about data. So really having like, you know, discussion about all these really important things. And also today, we're probably going to touch on quite a few of them, because as you know, today we're going to talk about sustainable EV batteries.

0:57And before I kind of going to introduce our speaker for today, there's just a quick housekeeping. If you're new to Clubhouse, if you haven't really used it much in our sessions, there's like two kind of things we do when we open up the floor, because we really love to have you all on. But just to kind of to structure it, it's really nice if you then kind of can raise your hand like this. So really slowly just clicking your microphone. And if you want to applaud or something, feel free to do like a quick flicker like this. So yeah, that's quite straightforward. And that really helps us also to motivate the session a bit later as well. And I think I also saw you, Catherine, to unmute. Do you want to quickly say something or you want to jump in a bit later? Yeah, sure. Sorry. I was having bad internet earlier, so I couldn't catch the discussion. I hope I didn't lose anything. So thanks very much for introducing and sharing and you're giving us a good reminder of why we started the room.

1:56It's always great to share the story with the audience. So yeah, today we're excited to have Tillman with us sharing about sustainable EV batteries. I think we have we have got topics on EVs before, but not particularly focusing on EV battery packs in general. So really looking forward to that and particularly with a sustainable sustainability focus as well. So yeah, excited for the topic. Absolutely. Maybe just one quick word. I mean, I think Tillman can introduce himself best. But maybe some people know him. He's also quite active, I feel, on LinkedIn. He's sharing with interesting things. And I've been fortunate to know him for a bit longer now. And yeah, he works with SYSTEMIQ, which I think is also really an exciting company. And he can maybe share a few words about your work and your work with them as well. But yeah, I think with this, maybe Tillman, you want to introduce yourself and then introduce the topic. Yeah, gladly. And thanks for the warm introductions, Catherine and Simon.

2:53And great to see you all here also. All the our discussion join us today. Some of who we've already been in touch. So it's great to just continue the conversation here. As Simon pointed out, I'm working with SYSTEMIQ and that's a change company. We call ourselves a change company because we're we've been founded. We were founded 2016 in reaction to the Paris Accord by the two then leaders of the McKinsey Global Resource Institute, Jeremy Oppenheim and Martin Stuchtei, two senior McKinsey partners. We really saw that we need a much more accelerated and systemic approach to solving sustainability challenges. So essentially decarbonization, as well as also other concerns of planetary boundaries, such as biodiversity crisis, resource overconsumption, ocean health and so on and so forth. And our goal is really to look at the conjoined challenges of sustainability and economic prosperity in a way that we look at the entire value chain of what makes a business, what makes economies. So we work on sustainable finance.

4:06We work on sustainability strategies together with corporates or medium sized companies, small companies of all sizes with politics as well. We create these coalitions and analytics to set the foundations for co-creating this kind of change. So not only looking at like corporate consulting or not looking at only studies, but really bring those together. And so we've been working quite a lot with the World Economic Forum, the European Commission, various corporates on the topic of sustainable batteries for quite some time. And in that space, I've been leading our work on sustainable and circular batteries. Two years ago, we had a great milestone on that together with the Global Battery Alliance. And on McKinsey, we launched the Vision for a Sustainable Battery Value Chain in 2030 report, which is a seminal report by the World Economic Forum on the topic, where we really pointed out how batteries can become that unlocking force for sustainability, both in the mobility sector, clearly, you know, with being in electric cars, a main driver for decarbonisation, but also in the power sector, particularly with, you know, vehicle to grid and basically that sector integration, but then also in stationary applications, helping more renewables get into the grid.

5:27We've also worked with the German Academy for Technical Sciences and about 20 corporates and other organisations in Germany, in the Circular Economy Initiative Germany, where we looked at this from a scientific and corporate perspective, circular batteries, how can we recycle them, how can we refurbish them better, what impacts might that have on the German market in context of the European and global one, and published on that as well, and have been in touch since then, also with the German ministries for the economy, with the environment, working on the digital product passport for batteries. So the battery passport, as the EU also calls it, all the global battery lines. So that's kind of the scope that we're looking at. We're trying to find the theory of change, the analytics and the drivers, or I do for the battery part, how circularity can be used in the wider sense. So not only looking at recycling, but the whole life cycle of batteries, but how they can also then be used in a more sustainable power and renewable system and a more sustainable mobility system, but of course also how they can become more sustainable themselves.

6:41themselves as of course the production of EV batteries is quite, well, it's very resource intensive. And as we all know, I think no needs to explain this in any detail here, like lithium, cobalt, nickel extraction and refining is very energy and resource intensive and can come with quite a few environmental and human rights challenges. So that needs addressing as well. Yeah. So from, from that side, basically just to, to, for, for the framing of the size of the challenge, many of you probably saw the publication of the latest IPCC report on climate change just two weeks ago, where it was made crystal clear really how fast and how far we are hurling towards the thresholds of, of a safe climate that can sustain our civilization. And I mean, of course, it's not about saving the planet. It's really saving an ecosystem that supports a human civilization and especially the 10 billions that, that we are going to be by mid century. And, and so that, that really made crystal clear how fast we need to act now.

7:57The, some, some scenarios in the IPCC report claim or find that really we have just like maximum four or five years to really reverse our carbon emissions. So not stop them from increasing and really turn around and, and start decreasing in order to have even a chance of, of staying within the Paris agreed goals of 1.5 degree sales, I guess. So yeah, rapid action is needed. And luckily with batteries, we, we actually have that one technology in one of the major sectors of the, of the carbon emissions that actually can support a deep decarbonization at scale right now. No. So, and that, that I think is a big difference from discussing other solutions to decarbonizing transport, which as you know, contributes like a third of all CO2 emissions in the EU and, and cars, 60% of that alone. So, so when we compare batteries to sin fuels, to fuel cell powered vehicles, to, to green gas vehicles, that's all great options as well, physically less optimal to, to put it, put it nicely just because of the efficiency grade.

9:22So I personally don't think that it can ever make sense economically or physically. That's another debate to be had, I think, and to, to have a fuel cell powered vehicles or, or sin fuels and cars. But for the most part, these are not scale technologies, right? So for green hydrogen, for sin fuels, just ramping up these industries will take at least another decade for them to make any meaningful difference. And so that makes, I think, the big difference between battery electric cars and every other decarbonization that is happening as we speak at, at a breakneck speed. Well, and the announcement of so many other OEMs by now in the last year and a half, especially, that this is a sector and a technology transition that is happening as we speak at, at a breakneck speed. And so that makes, I think, the big difference between battery electric cars and every other decarbonization technology for mobility. And, of course, the key question then becomes, OK, don't we create just another problem, right, with creating so many batteries, producing them, all the energy consumption, the destruction of nature for extract and the resources.

10:35And to an extent, that's definitely true, right? Mining has always has a footprint, always will have a footprint. Energy consumption, at least for the time being, has a major CO2 footprint attached to it. Although, of course, some renewables can be used. But, like, every new study that's coming out shows more and more clearly that already today, over a lifetime, electric cars have a lower CO2 footprint than any other drivetrain that's available, especially lower than petrol and diesel. And that over time in the future, of course, as we use more renewables in production, as we treat them in a more circular fashion, extend life, reuse them, recycle them well with ever-improving technologies, that's just going to grow bigger. And just for a few stats to show that size, there's an amazing study by the research organization Ricardo, together with EFOY, for the EU Commission, determining the environmental impact of convention and alternative fuel vehicles through LCA. It's a beautiful name of that study. It's basically the mother of all LCA.

11:47So if you're at all interested in that topic, I really recommend looking at it. It's such a well-founded, extensive study. They have been investigating over 65 different fuel and drivetrain combinations with the entire lifecycle. So it's really end-to-end, including from extraction all the way to recycling. And found that result, know that better electric vehicles are really just better for the environment. As we speak today, so on average today, that's 45% of the footprint of a petrol car in Europe. So on a new average. And even in coal-rich grids like Poland, it's just 83%. So there's an at least 70% advantage of electric cars over lifecycle compared to petrol cars. Already today, on average, it's already 45%. Sorry, 55%. And they say, from projecting out into the future with more renewables, that it could go all the way up to 75% improved sustainability compared to a CO2 footprint compared to petrol cars. So I think that is just the clear sign that it's a great step to take right now.

13:03It's scalable. And we're moving forward fast. And if we put that together with just economics, where we see, you know, with that magical number of $100 per kilowatt hour capacity for batteries, we're very much nearing the break-even point from which onward battery cars will just be the most economical solution. So it's just a few years out where it's really no turning back for most markets. And so then it's not just not going to be a question of, you know, will we phase out petrol cars 2035 or 2040, but it's rather a question of how long do we need to still produce petrol cars in which markets where, you know, we can't provide enough electric cars and charging infrastructure. So I think that that's great and helpful signs in the context of the decarbonization needs that we have and really, really important. And at the same time, as we pointed out, it's still a major CO2 emitter to produce batteries. It's still a major resource consumer.

14:13So ultimately, of course, we need to make sure to use as much renewables as we can in every single step along the entire way. Luckily, again, also renewables have become cheaper and grid parity, at least in so many markets, and will just turn over more or less just from sheer market forces over the coming years. But still, that needs to be accelerated. And one big, big thing that can contribute quite heavily to the lifecycle sustainability of battery vehicles and the batteries which contribute like two-thirds of the footprint ultimately of a mid-size car is ultimately its, you know, approaches of circular economy. So extending life as much as possible, refurbishing batteries that may break earlier than intended, using them as a service provider in a grid. So that's smart charging, that's bidirectional charging vehicle-to-grid services. And then, of course, also putting them into re- or further-use second-life applications in stationary storage, for example, and then doing good recycling. All of that is important. But what's important to keep in mind is all of that is time-bound.

15:30And that is something that is easily forgotten or is hard to match, basically, across the lifetime of a vehicle. If we look at, okay, recycling, that's great. But given the crazy speed of the market acceleration, if a battery today lasts 12, 15 years, and, you know, now there's ever new news of batteries, you know, the million-mile batteries from CATL, BYD or Tesla as well, those batteries will last like 15, 20, 25 years just as they go. So in 25 years' time, that's basically at the end of our runway for until we hit catastrophic climate change. So that's way too late to do anything. So recycling, yes, we need to take care of it, you know, that it will happen increasingly, and it will be able to provide some shares of battery materials as well and with lower environmental or human rights footprints. But it is, you know, for the time being and actually for deciding whether we are able to stave off climate change. It's essentially, to be blunt, it's irrelevant, you know.

16:37So what we need to do is we need to focus on sustainability now in the batteries, in the production, and then use them as best as we can in the application. So that's, especially with smart charging, vehicle-to-grid, that's the interaction with the grid and how much renewables can we use with that and how well can we use them in conjunction with the power system and how productively also can we use them through, for example, shared mobility, right? Like if we don't use one battery transporting one person, but rather use them as a pool service opportunity, that could dramatically, of course, reduce the relative or per-person kilometer footprint. So all of these are quite important. It does mean that we need to definitely, for one, well, solve the chicken and egg problems of, you know, smart charging renewables in the grid to power. So, you know, these are interactive. And then why would you create a car and produce a pricey technology to make it bidirectionally charging if the user or the consumer owner of the car can't have a power contract that actually, you know, provides the opportunity to use it?

17:49So that's also a question of power market regulation and of charging infrastructure. So all these play together. And so there we have, you know, the systemic effect we need to, in order to decarbonize mobility, together with power, really look at this in a comprehensive view. And so it's power market regulation. It's technology development. It's the regulation on sustainability of batteries, such as the EU has put forth with a battery regulation. And all these come together to, yeah, I think really create an amazing opportunity to, you know, in this particular sector, really have an opportunity to drive sustainability forward at really amazing speed, which is not the privilege of many other sectors. And so I think that is one opportunity that we all jointly, you know, should be aware of and should drive with the politicians, with our business decisions, with our investments. And I'm sure that the economic opportunities are, you know, as they are emerging already, will follow at massive scale. So I think it's a great market to start into as well.

18:58And with that, I'm already seeing a few hands up. And I think that covers quite a bit of the breadth and I hope gave some inspiration. And so I'm really looking forward to that, to our discussion. Thank you so much, Tillman. And maybe just one quick thing before, of course, Milo will join us and probably some other people as well. And I would love to have like two quick questions, because I think it's also interesting for our audience, because it came up before. So one is, you know, second life and things. And I think maybe even Milo has some questions and some thoughts here. He wants to share, but I think, because I think, you know, the work you did with the Circle Economy Initiative Germany, on, you know, kind of, I think you had a quite interesting model kind of there, kind of trying to assess, right, which batteries would go into second life, which one recycling. This would be one question, if you just want to say a few words about this, because I think it could be interesting, also made for other people to look at this report.

19:49It's called Resource Efficient Battery Life Cycles. And then a second one would be, because it was in the news this week, and you just spoke also about energy providers. I saw, you know, that Tesla finally announced they also will be an energy provider in southern Germany. And they have this tool called like Autobitter. And of course, it's been in the U.S. before, and I think Australia maybe. And I think, you know, it's only like coming, and you were just waiting for it. But I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on this one as well you want to share. Yeah, gladly. So, yeah, you raised two super interesting points. So, second life, batteries, is it's a discussion point that has been, so ever since I started working on this for all those years, I find that positions or opinions on this are almost polar. So, some companies or some experts say, you know, it's never going to be economic, it's never going to scale, it's not going to be happening.

20:43And others say, you know, this is just the greatest opportunity, reduce liability at end of life, create greater and additional value, and really have an amazing impact also on sustainability. And I think one reason why that polar difference comes, apart from, you know, of course, individual expertise or position, is the, well, the complexity of assessing it. And I think, ultimately, what we looked at in the German study, together with, for example, also Öko Institute, who did the appraisal for the European Commission, as well as three of the German OEMs, we found that, you know, it's probably going to be just a fairly small share of the, you know, end of life vehicle batteries that will have a commercially viable end of life, second life opportunity. The thing is, given the comparative size of the battery market in the automotive market and the stationary applications and demand, basically, it's still a sizable chunk that could be supplied, a sizable chunk of the demand of batteries in the stationary storage.

21:57I don't think it would be necessarily like home storage, smaller size storage, simply because you will have to recertify a battery that comes from a car and you put it into a second life, because it becomes a different product, right? So you'll have to take it apart. You have to test it. You have to repackage it. You have to recertify it. All of that comes with quite a huge cost premium or cost as you do it. And then you have remaining lifetime that will, by definition, and certainly in terms of technology, be shorter than a standard stationary battery at that time. So, you know, again, time-wise, if a battery comes out of a car in 10, 15 years' time, imagine how technology will be looking like in 10 years' time. Look back on the lithium-ion batteries 10 years ago or the technology readiness of LFP batteries. It's a far cry, and especially with the money that's coming in. So I agree with that side of the discussion that I don't think that most batteries will be competitive, especially for consumer products, and probably not be a very viable opportunity.

23:05At the same time, if you have applications that have tiny transaction costs, for example, large-scale, industrial-size storage units, and especially if you have kind of an intermediary use before you recycle them ultimately, and basically you don't have any additional or very minimal additional costs, then I think very much that will be quite a common intermediary use for some time, kind of as, you know, go in, use for a few months, move out, and recycle. And that could be quite a big opportunity ultimately. So very interesting market. It will be a battery-per-battery assessment, and so testing is very important, you know, analytics, the data that you have, so the battery passport will be important. And so it's going to be interesting to see what happens ultimately and how large that market will scale. But I don't think it will be, you know, in terms of impact, again, long lifetimes, so way too late for effective climate action, and in terms of relative size of the automotive battery market, that it will be substantial.

24:10Yeah, so that's on Second Life. And on the power market and, you know, Tesla providing a power contract, I mean, that's something that they've been announcing quite a long time already. And, yeah, that is that point on variable energy tariffs and the power regulation that allows small parties to participate in the power markets and the technology that allows that to be, you know, compensated in economic terms. And I have no doubt that if European regulation, you know, the harmonized power market is progressed and allows that in greater consistency, that that will be scaling like wildfire, simply because of the economics and simply because of the benefit it has in higher renewable energy share power systems. And so, yeah, Tesla is really positioning itself at a great timing, obviously, you know, and all the power providers in European markets should do well trying to get offers into the market as well. I know that Tesla cooperates with Octopus Energy from the UK, which are leaders in the field, at least in the EU.

25:28So, you know, as so many times before, I'm sure that Tesla has a few years head start and will be interesting to see what Tesla does with the power sector. And that is a big part what contributes to their stock market assessment, right? Like their valuation is it's not a car company. It's a comprehensive technology company that has a one, like a turnkey offer. Others will have, will struggle providing, you know, as good an offer as they do. Will be interesting to see. Thanks so much, Tillman. It's really interesting. I do have a short follow-up question, if I may. And I do see Vino's, you know, raising up their hand. So I will also pass on the mic to him later on. But you mentioned that there are, there are a few companies or there are probably only a few automobile companies that would be effective in adopting a Second Life model. I was wondering if there's, if there's any, is it a patent to that?

26:26For example, is it a business model that makes Second Life viable? Or is it a technology that makes Second Life viable? I don't know if you have any thoughts to that. So I don't think there's one answer to that. I know from our relationships with the larger OREMs, international ones of all sorts of nations, and with a bunch of utilities, that those are quite interested and basically intrigued and are testing this, right? So many of them have teams, like engineering teams, and then analyst teams on this, looking for business models. And so it depends on who you ask, kind of what the specific business model is, right? So smaller companies may have the business model or advantage that they have a specific, like analytical offer, for example, or certain technological, like IP, for example, in testing. There's, you know, two companies in Munich that are interesting in that sense, LiPlus, that does like a rapid battery state of health testing. Like it just takes a fraction of a second, like one button literally, to give you the entire value of the battery.

27:48And then you can assess that. That is a great business case for that smaller company. Then you have Twice that does analytical predictive analytics on batteries. For those smaller tech companies, I think there's a more straightforward case in, you know, supplying the market. And for the larger ones, like OEMs, you know, there's probably a case in pushing out liability on end-of-life management, you know, since they're required to recycle them and have to bear the costs. And for the utilities, for example, the business case, of course, is, you know, if you are a grid provider, you need increasingly intermittent storage. And so where do you get the storage from? Do you buy new? Do you buy used? You know, from them, I hear, they don't see the business case at all. You know, given the advances in LFP batteries, you just think of those or other batteries technologies, other storage technologies. But they do see it in terms of the CO2 advantage, right? Basically getting CO2-free storage, if you will.

28:49And so that will be interesting in the future, right? How the CO2 footprint, the relative one, or the sustainability footprint may be increasingly, you know, an actual kind of hardcore factor of business models, even though, you know, just on sheer pure economics, it may not be the best option in terms of lowering your CO2 footprint because it lowers your CO2 costs or liability, may become one. So, you know, again, it'll depend on the specific applications. Thanks so much, Timon. That's really helpful. Milo, you have joined us at the stage. I'm sorry for hogging us at the stage with all the questions. Do you have any thoughts? Yeah, I have thoughts, I have comments, and I have also some questions. So one comment only, you probably already expected, the second life of the battery is dead on the arrival. This disruption is not environmental disruption, is not the climate change's symptoms of this problem. It's not the problem. The problem is the energy, how we are generating the energy.

30:06So basically, this disruption is technology disruption. It's technology-driven disruption. And those batteries, which they will come to the recycling, like Tillman said, 10, 20 years from now, there will be not technologically competitive with the batteries in that time, which they will be deployed much cheaper, much better to energy storage systems and so on. So basically, outside of some small niches, market, mum and pub operation, the second life of the battery is not viable technological option. But my question is more toward the topic of the room. It means that electrical vehicle and batteries. So given all the factors, what do you think, Tillman, how many battery electrical vehicles will produce in 2030? Well, you know, if I, you know, had the real answer to that, I'm sure I'd be able to sell that for good money. But more than we think, that would be my answer for, you know, and just empirically looking back, what I find striking is that in the past, you know, predictions of, of, of market ramp ups of these innovative technologies, especially batteries, especially PV, have always under, been underwhelming.

31:44Like they've always underestimated the, the speed of market uptake. And then for example, the current IEA and BNEF forecast, like even the ones from this July, they haven't taken into account the latest regulatory decisions in the EU, Fit for 55, nor the Biden administration's call for, you know, half of the cars being electric by 2030. So basically the, those predictions, they're already outdated. And I think what you'll see is that basically every quarter year, probably you'll see them revised upwards. And so we'll, we'll see a very strongly exponential growth. And so if we, currently see that it would be 50% in, in the Western market, my guess personally would be given the compounding effect of all the additional strategies and investments coming into the market. Now I'd be quite surprised if it was below 80% in developed markets in 2030, 80% of the new sales. And the remaining 20, again, that's just because we lack supply, not because we lack demand. It's because the charting infrastructure may not be ready in all places.

32:53It's because simply car producers will, will lack all the materials and batteries to produce the cars. And so it's going to be a penalty to buy, you know, those ridiculously expensive and, and, and outdated, low performing, old, stinky gas, guzzling cars. it's, it's just going to be something that some people will have to live with. But yeah, in the Western world, basically, I think combustion engines will be pretty much done by the end of the century. I think you are right. That's not, it's not demand. We will demand for, we will have demand 100% for the battery electrical vehicles, not 80 and not 50. The question is how much, how many we will be able to produce. Supply, yes. To produce because of the limitations of the batteries, and not even batteries, but limitation of, limiting factor is battery materials, in my opinion. So, but what do you think about the number, not how many percent, but the number of the vehicles, how much we will produce in 2030?

33:57You said 80%. 80% of what? Well, I mean, of the vehicle market, no? And, so we'll have a couple of hundred millions in Europe, for example. So, you know, you can calculate back on the number there. I mean, you are saying that a couple hundreds of millions in Europe? Yeah. No, Europe has only like, I don't know how much, but no more than 20, 30 millions. Yeah, so, sorry, I was, I mixed up the, the stock, stock and flow, but yeah, indeed. So, a couple of dozen millions. So, indeed, it's, it's, you know, depending on the demand, you, you'll see 100% demand, but then, supply of battery materials will be the constraining factor and, and ramping up the production facilities. What I think will be quite interesting is now the acceleration of LFP batteries that we see quite a bit over the last couple of months, especially, or last years now. And, let's see what sodium batteries will be able to provide as well, you know, which really changed the game in terms of the materials needed.

35:11Yeah, in my practice, when I'm estimating something, I don't count the, not commercialized technologies, because not commercialized technologies can happen in one year, 10 years, 100 years, or never. So, sodium-ion batteries, they are not yet commercialized. LFP, you are right. LFP coming back of the LFP batteries is real stuff. And, the batteries will start, not now, but in several years, they will start to, basically, more, more segmentized batteries that will be, different battery for energy storage system, different battery for the, for the consumer electronics, different batteries for the electrical vehicles, even, what kind of electrical vehicles, different for small, different for the big, different for the trucks. And so on. Yeah, I agree. And I mean, also within, within size, size is the one, performance is the other, right? So, as we see in, in all the larger OEMs, they're looking at LFP for the smaller and more budget cars, and NCA or NMC batteries for the higher performing cars, you know, so they'll have different technologies for, you know, depending on how much performance you want or need.

36:32Yeah. Yeah. And I agree with you. Tillman, that predictions are almost always wrong, because they are trying to predict from the past, like your former company, McKinsey, predicted that the 900,000 cellar phones in 2000 for the AT&T, and it was, and it was 100 million. So, predictions are always wrong, especially by the reputable companies who are predicting based on the spreadsheets. Basically, this is, and this is transportation disruption, and disruptions are always coming in the S-curve. We are already on the tipping point, already behind the tipping point. So, this disruption, it will happen. It's not a question if, it's the question when, how fast. That's why my question was, how fast we can make this disruption. And this disruption is also triggered by the energy disruption, bigger disruption, which is energy disruption. Yeah, absolutely agree. Yeah. And by the way, on the non-linear predictions, you're probably aware, or know, Rethink X, they're an interesting think tank from the US. Yeah, they are very good. They are very good.

37:54Tony Seba is very good. Yeah. In the, in the describing disruptions, how disruptions work over 10,000 years of the civilization, they are always basically doing, doing the, because that's the basically science of the disruption. Those are based on the facts, but the prediction, also prediction, he could be wrong, because predictions are very, impossible to make. But he is, he is quite accurate. Sometimes he's a little bit off in the timeline. Because of the problems like the batteries, let's say, you know, it's very complex, electrical vehicles, and even batteries, it's very complex supply chain. So we need massive investment to the supply chains. I'm saying that trillions of dollars. Absolutely. And I think what is, what is hard to, yeah, take into account in, in these predictions, in particular, is the one thing is, like, aggregate scaling up. The other thing is, like, kind of unlocking, decisions, like, especially of political nature, right, where, a turnaround of a major corporate, or of a larger, political market, or entity, can make, just basically, a chaotic impact, on the entire predictions, that you had before, right?

39:27So, you know, the Biden administration's 50%, let's see, maybe the next administration turns that around, and actually has a mandate on, on fuel cars in 2030, because it's, it's less, less progressive, and doesn't believe in climate change, would have quite a major impact on the markets, as well as, you know, supporting infrastructures, as well, in the future. Yes, you are absolutely right. Basically, we don't know to predict the forces of the speeding up, or slowing down, disruption. And even well-meaning, especially government regulations, sometimes they have the opposite effect. So, basically, even, like the, 50% of the, of the, car, electrical vehicles, in 2030, and he, invited only General Motors, and Ford, to the table, and General Motors, and the Ford, they will, they will meet this, this, this goal, of the disruption of the, sorry, electrical vehicles, 50%. They will meet it better. They will not produce any, uh, uh, ice cars, because they will be out of the business. Bankrupt companies, they cannot produce, uh, electrical ice.

40:47Thank you very much, Milo. And maybe we want to, do we have some new people joined us, and I also see some more, maybe in the audience, who want to join us, on this topic of, sustainable EV batteries, with Thurman, and Balerjaday, from SYSTEMIQ. Divi, would you like to go next? Sure, thanks, I mean, I mean, very interesting conversations, I had to drop off, in the middle, but, uh, as usual, I mean, this is one, uh, uh, room that I look forward to, week after week. Uh, uh, I mean, so this is, uh, taking off from where you last left off, uh, you're talking about LFP batteries, I mean, there's potential for it, but the biggest challenge with LFP batteries, is the memory effect, right? Now, typically, when you look at all these batteries, which are being put out, it's in 85, north of 100 kilowatt hour, memory effects, going to be a big challenge. So I just want to understand from you, as to how do you see that, you know, uh, I mean, there's not only for Tillman, I mean, Simon, Catherine, Milos, I mean, all of y'all can, uh, chime in as well.

41:44Uh, how do y'all see this effect, and, uh, how do y'all think companies are going to, uh, negate the effect of, uh, memory itself? Yeah, Diva Gamir, thanks for the question. And, um, you know, in fact, these quite deep tech kind of considerations, right, how actually the individual technologies behave, um, I think is, is a major point that is quick to miss in aggregate, um, analytics. And, you know, with, well, one example also, by the way, coming back to second life batteries, when, when people say, well, they have 80% of capacity left at end of life. Um, what's, what's rarely taken into account, of course, is the decrease in round to round trip efficiency, right? So that, uh, simply, uh, the, the, the efficiency over lifetime decreases and can be decreasing quite dramatically. And then the remaining cycles may just be a few at 80%, no, depending on, on, uh, the battery and technology management and so on and so forth. So maybe 80% is very, very much close to, uh, dead altogether.

42:52Um, and indeed, so that, that's often left out on the memory effect of the LFP. Frankly, I think there's people way better place to answer. that, uh, here in the forum. So I'd hand, like to hand that back into the audience. Divi, what do you mean memory? What do you mean memory? Um, so Milos, I mean, one of the reasons why, uh, I mean, uh, uh, why we've not really gone ahead with, not, not only us. I mean, when you look at it, majority of the companies don't go ahead with LFP is because of memory effect. So what I mean by memory effect is now the more that you start using, uh, a battery for, let's say, I mean, if it is to give you a hundred kilometers of range, but if you use it 30 kilometers every day, the battery starts to think that the life of the battery is only about 30 kilometers or 40 kilometers. The remaining 60%, the remaining 60% gets plated.

43:47That's the biggest challenge which comes in with LFP. So that's, I mean, that's technically one of the reasons why LFP did not really take off. And that's the reason why an MC besides the energy density kind of took off. So I just want to see how the world is kind of tackling this at this point in time. I don't know if that helped me, look. Yes, it helped. I understand you now. Thanks, David. No, I mean, really interesting point. I didn't really, you know, um, yeah, I think because it's kind of memory effect, maybe just really quick, right? For many people, I think it's more kind of used from the, um, you know, the effect would have like nickel, cadmium, nickel, metal hydride, batteries, et cetera. And for lithium iron, right? You don't usually really have memory effects, but also I've been just, you know, I think you have some for LFP as you mentioned, which is interesting, but I'm not sure. I mean, I don't know how big the effect is on the new kind of batteries.

44:37Cause there's been, I think also a lot of optimization. One other thing I also heard is we have discussed also before, um, one of the issues with LFP on, uh, essentially, you know, like to, to, like to, to, to measure or you to predict the state of charge or state of health at any given time. Um, so I think that's also what I've heard is can be quite tricky as well with LFP buses, et cetera. We have like really interesting, we also going to bring in a future speaker who spends a lot of his time on kind of, um, helping bus companies to kind of try to predict how long the bus is going to run for, because there's been lots of incidents with LFP buses just stopping in the middle of the road, because essentially the prediction of the remaining range was, you know, done in the wrong way because LFP here going slightly really nerdy, like, you know, the voltage profile is so flat.

45:23Actually makes it very tricky to measure it accurately. And if you want to do it really accurately can become quite expensive. So, yeah, so there's just some complication there. I heard, which is quite tricky from a measurement side, but I'm just curious to be, do you have any numbers on how big the memory effect is? It's like state of the art LFP batteries, because, yeah, I mean, I haven't really heard it being the cast that much, um, before on the memory effect. I'm just curious if you have any numbers on how big it is supposed to be. Uh, seven, I mean, this is, uh, this is, uh, this is the biggest problem of LFP. I mean, like, uh, it's not, I don't have numbers to back, uh, to back it, but, uh, we started using LFP batteries in India in 2015. And by 2017, I mean, it's shelf life was much lesser than, you know, what an NMC would have lasted. So, I mean, we've, we've personally had a firsthand experience and even, uh, recently we did work with another company, uh, where we tested their batteries, left it out in storage for about, uh, six months.

46:21And then, I mean, six months primarily because of COVID. And when we, uh, when we again kind of did an analysis on the capacity of the battery, the battery had faded. It's not something to do with the technological advancement at this point in time. Uh, but, uh, this is like what you said. I mean, even nickel cadmium had the same problem and that's something that we foresee with, uh, LFP as well. Well, super interesting point. I think we should bring, I mean, especially now with the announcements, right from Tesla, from Elon Musk on Twitter, I think over the last two days or so, um, you know, it was, yeah, it was, it was, you know, quite heavy move into it. It would be interesting to see, you know, maybe they have found some ways to, to reduce these effects. Um, because yeah, who knows, right? Maybe there's relatives, et cetera. But yeah, interesting. If anybody here in the audience has any thoughts on it, would love to have it.

47:09I'm also, we'll take it back. And I think we're going to look into this a bit further, maybe for future session, especially when we're going to bring on one of these really, um, LFP experts who deals a lot with LFP and, and in the use case. So I think you might have some interesting things. Cause the only thing he has told me so far, what I've heard from them is that these LFP batteries have just been lasting forever. So that's kind of, um, what I've heard from their side, but I'm curious to, to see, um, the use cases. Because one quick thing, Divi, because in your case, you use them like in smaller settings, right? You're using like in smaller packs, scooters, et cetera. Is this correct? Yeah, that's, that's right. That's right. Uh, Simon, but, but I mean, at the end of it, capacity is capacity, right? Whether, I mean, I, I did it with a smaller battery pack, which is about, uh, 3.2 kilowatt hour.

47:52I did it with a single cell. So the effect is an effect. Great. Yeah. No, thanks for opening up. This is an interesting point as well. I think now we have, um, next speaker will be saga and I think Dan sunt. I'm correct. Sorry. Oh, you're on the phone. Yeah. Hello. Hello. Sorry. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Yes. Um, I was just listening in and out because I was just busy with some other things. Um, so, you know, you're talking about the EV batteries. My question is in terms of supply chains, um, I know this has been a problem for a while, but it seems to be maybe not being taken a look at in earnest so much, but in terms of the supply chains, going back to, um, um, where a lot of these minerals are coming from India, Afghanistan, uh, South America, Peru. Um, and unfortunately these batteries are designed, described as sustainable, but the resources are coming from, uh, sovereign lands or lands that have been deforested.

49:04How do you explain that? I can answer maybe this question. The, um, first of all, the batteries are major part of the raw materials or materials for the batteries are not coming from the India, uh, Afghanistan. Uh, the Latin America may be, yes, uh, some countries like Peru and Argentina, uh, but for the, uh, all the resources in the world are coming from the, uh, from the ground. Everything what we have, it's made out of the materials, everything physical and materials. We need to mine them. So it's the question only how we are mining those materials in the first stage of the battery materials, battery materials. They have three stages, the mining, uh, specialty chemical processing, and then active materials productions, anode, cathodes and other components. So, um, so you can do it environmentally responsibly, uh, the socially responsibly, or you can do it, uh, opposite way. And that's with everything what we have in the world. So batteries are not exceptional. So you can make the batteries, um, uh, environmentally responsibly or socially responsibly, and you can make them not.

50:23Uh, but, but here's the question. They are, um, quite questionable because where they are being mined, this not, um, of land that has been mined before is virgin land is actual forests. And if I'm not seeing the full supply chain of where these resources are coming from, from the point of deforestation, where are they from? And they're showing only a small segment of the supply chain. And then how can be, how can they be shown and described as sustainable? Um, I cannot, I cannot, I cannot imagine which material you are talking about, which we need to do massive deforestation. So basically we are talking about lithium, which is, uh, uh, it's called lithium-ion battery. It's not deforestation. If you are talking about mountains are sliced off in Peru. Uh, there's a lot of issues with Bolivia. I mean, Sagar, why the mountains would be, uh, sliced off of Peru? This is, yeah, because the rights have been sold off in Peru and Bolivia. The rights have been sold off in Acmeas.

51:27I'm asking for full-site supply chain accountability. If these products are being sold as green, then I want to see, because here's the thing, when, when these resources, I don't want to take the space here, but you're wrong. No, no, let me finish, please. Let me finish, because this is my last. Let me finish, because this is my last. This is very important, because I know this is going on in Africa. I've spoken to people from those regions, and they're telling me this is happening. So how is it that these can be described as sustainable, when the resources and the water and the soil is extracted, to make something carbon neutral, by actually removing something that's been there for thousands of years? If I don't see it described on the product, and what you're saying to me is just hearsay. Where is the full supply chain map from the point of extraction to the point, me as a consumer in the UK? I don't see it.

52:20Where is it mapped out? Where's the full responsibility? That's what I'm asking for. Yes, Sager brings up a good point. It's once the truth is known about how devastating the mining process is, it'll be reviewed as a green technology. I think so. Maybe tell them what you go. If I can reply to that, and Sager, I fully agree, the overall impacts of any technology, and any economic activity we have really, are rarely seen in the fall. I mean, looking at meat consumption, every kilo of beef consumes 12,000, 20,000 litres of water, often in water-starved areas, it's fed with soy that is often farmed in Brazil on deforested areas. I think that is a fundamental challenge with much of all of human activity. That is fundamentally the huge challenge that we face, besides climate change, on the sort of easier end where it's CO2, it's methane, and that's the largest chunk of the emissions already, and it is kind of understandable where much of it comes from.

53:32The actual impacts on biodiversity, on local ecosystems, can be devastating for many of our economic activities. And of course, with battery materials, that's no difference there whatsoever. Looking at the entire comparative effect of petro cars, for example, consuming 10 tons of fuel over their lifetime, where does that fuel come from? What's the ecological impacts from their extraction? Often also devastating. Just thinking of African countries with enormous oil spills, for example, or the Gulf, you know, just so many examples. And it's all catastrophic. Clearly, similar story with batteries, and it must be addressed. As Milos pointed out, much of the lithium is not rock extraction, at least not in Latin American countries, but rather it's saline evaporation extraction, right? Much of it also comes from Australia, with maybe fewer of those challenges. But totally right. The materials, wherever they are being used, must become more sustainable, and mining is a difficult sector for that. What I find encouraging, in fact, is the questions, or like the latest developments with tracking and tracing of materials, far upstream.

54:54There's a bunch of companies that have really promising technologies up where they can actually go all the way up to mines, where you really just need a smartphone, to have analytics all the way at the production source, that, you know, with very low cost, are able to actually trace through mass balance and through analytics, the actual material, all the way from the individual mine, all the way into the individual products, plural, right? Because it will be a very complex journey of all the materials into all the products. But that is now technologically feasible. So I think that is a huge advancement that, you know, was even 10 years ago was probably almost unthinkable. So that, that I find encouraging. Does that transparency give you sustainability? No, it doesn't, right? Not immediately. It does allow you though, to start managing it and calling it out. And so I think that is, is really, really important that we of course make that transparency happen. So that is part of the EU battery passport bid that I alluded to in the beginning, which, which we're also trying to work on, trying to get the transparency from all the way up the value, the value chain all the way into the products and making sure that that is accounted for and transparent and then can be managed and improved.

56:10Will it be free of impact? Definitely not. Is a battery a product that is massively worse than, than, than other mineral containing products? I don't think so. I don't see it from the research that I've seen. Must be addressed, of course, especially as we expand our demand, no, and, and, and resource extraction, right? Because that is right now, it's the, the time to, do it better than we did in the past. Um, just want to, maybe I could, I think, I think if you compare electric vehicle batteries or batteries in general, to the alternative, um, it's one mining operation versus multiple mining operations. So for you to run, um, electric vehicle, I mean, for you to run, um, internal combustion engine vehicle, um, lots of oil, uh, or petroleum, um, that is mined continuously, has to be, you know, taken out of the ground to keep this vehicle running. Whereas, with an electric vehicle, it's one mining operation. So as the lithium is taken out, that could run you for, you know, a million miles, um, until it's, you know, disposed off or recycled.

57:23But then we are also at some point going to get to a different point where the rich, I would say, big car demand, um, where, I mean, the number of cars on the road, um, uh, keeps on either reducing or platos. And at that point, um, replacing vehicles will be more expensive compared to replacing the batteries. So we'll probably get to a point where we are now transitioning to urban mining, where we are basically getting the existing batteries, recycling them. And I think Tesla has mentioned they can recycle about 80, more than 80% of the electric vehicle batteries. Yeah, they've got 90%. So we have technologies now. Yes. So, um, when we get to urban mining, to the urban mining stage, um, we'll be reducing the amount of, uh, demand on mined minerals, uh, fully mined minerals, like from the ground. So we'll get to a point where we don't need to take as much, um, lithium or as much cobalt from the ground, out of the ground, and we'll be basically, you know, recycling more than we mine.

58:35And I think that's what we need to work up to. Um, there'll be, and as they say, as the saying goes, you cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. We'll have to break a few eggs on the way. Um, because right now there are a lot of OEMs that wants to make electric vehicle batteries or want to make electric vehicles, but they don't have the batteries to work with. And, uh, we need to, I would say, get over this hurdle of the first few millions of, you know, tons of, of, of, of mined, um, battery minerals. And when we get to, you know, I would say, big car demand, um, we'll be able to sort of take that, uh, demand, um, for minerals, at least those taken out of the ground directly. Um, uh, we'll have, we'll, we'll get to a point where we take it down a notch. Thanks everyone. Let me just, um, reset the room, uh, the room real quick.

59:36Uh, it's always the case where we were towards the end of the session and we have a lot of people who want to speak. Um, so, you know, we have got about 25 minutes left in the, in the session. Really appreciate that. Everyone, um, you know, the chance to speak. So it'd be great if we keep our points short and sweet. Um, so I believe, um, sure. Um, uh, Oh, sorry, Geoffrey, Geoffrey, I don't think you had the chance to speak yet. Um, we were just responding to the question. So Geoffrey, if you have any thoughts or comments on the topic, that'd be great. I think Sandra says. Oh, sorry. Um, thank you. Oh, sure. Sorry. Can I go? Okay, great. All right. Thank you. Well, I am a founder for, uh, an autonomous air mobility vehicle, which is basically a flying car. And, uh, we are operating from the United States and I'm developing two variants. One is a full battery variant. Another one is a hybrid between a hydrogen fuel cell and battery.

1:00:38So, uh, this may not be the right forum, but I support my question. Are there sustainable battery solutions with high power density that we need to get the thrust for a vertical takeoff landing? I mean, we are scouting for a high energy density batteries. And where do you see, uh, the future is for batteries in this, in this space. Um, and there is a saturation point. There's probably a 450 watt hour limit, water per kilogram limit on energy densities. And, uh, because of that, that limits the, the operating range for these vehicles. But, but this market is exploding now, um, that so many, uh, operators and so many developers. And so a lot of investment. Uh, so the, the technologies, uh, the propulsion technologies going towards hydrogen fuel cell. So I would like to know what future holds for battery technologies in the, uh, urban air mobility or, or air mobility in general. Thank you. Should I answer or somebody wants to answer? If nobody, I will answer.

1:01:44So, um, there are several technologies, which, uh, they are able to meet the, your requirements means that the aviation requirements for higher energy density battery, but no one of them is yet commercialized. So basically, I don't know how long it will take to commercialize those technologies, uh, uh, it taken, it can take a one year or it can take 10 years because battery is very complicated, very complex system. And in breakthrough technologies happened only a few, few of them. Most promising technology is basically not revolution, but evolution. Uh, I'm saying that most promising technologies, uh, are not limiting factories are not the capacity, energy density of the anode. Right now we are using first generation anode for the last 30 years, which is graphite anode. So most promising technology is to, to, which could be commercialized very soon. It's second generation anode, which is the graphite, uh, uh, natural graphite, synthetic graphite, and silicon mixed anode. not primitive silicon, but more, um, uh, sophisticated silicon, basically silicon metal alloys or elementary silicon.

1:03:07If those technologies will become, uh, commercialized, that will give you at about 400, uh, uh, watt hours per, uh, per kilogram. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And that's what we are operating with is nano coded silicon, uh, anodes, uh, we are, we are a supplier that we selected, but the thing is, um, if you have to go for regional transportation, which is around 300 mile distance, um, it looks, looks like we are at the very edge or probably beyond the range of batteries. Uh, so that's why we're seriously looking into hydrogen fuel cell, but I, I wish there is a day when we'll have more battery technologies available. Yes. But like I said before, like I said before, son, the, uh, those technologies are, are not yet commercialized. I'm, I know about many of them. I invested to one company right now, a few, a few weeks ago. So most promising technologies are in the, uh, adding silicon to the graphite, uh, not replacing graphite with the silicon.

1:04:04That's, uh, more down in the end of the decade or maybe next decade. But I'm saying adding silicon to the, so good off. Thank you. And so just really quick, go back to our, um, like raising the hand. So I saw a few people want to speak. I saw Dvick, Sriram and Tillman raising their hand. So should we go? Tell me, do you want to go quick? Yeah, a quick, quick reply to sound. And, uh, because we, we've been working, uh, over the last year or so with, uh, uh, regional, uh, vertical tech and land, uh, taking a tech off and landing, um, producer, um, and they looked at their sustainability of, of their batteries. And I think fundamentally, uh, I mean, the sustainability of, of batteries, powering EV tolls, uh, two cars, fundamentally the same challenges. I think fundamentally, the challenge is that you'll go through your batteries much quicker. Um, given the power you need and power requirements and cycling that you have.

1:05:02And then what we looked at with that producer was that they estimate that they need to replace their, their battery, um, for, you know, to, to, to make their business case work for the kilometers. They, they fly for these, uh, pricey little toys, um, that they would have to exchange them twice to, to six times per year. And so that's, uh, a lot of battery you go through. So it's really very much like, you know, almost like a fuel that you go through. Um, and so that will be beyond 90% of the sustainability impacts of your, of your, um, EV toll will be the battery. And, and so I think, uh, more than the actual sustainability of the battery you use is, is how you deal with all the spent batteries that you need to take care of. And of course, I mean, first and foremost, the electricity you use, right. But, um, then the batteries that you'll spend them quite quick. And that is actually an interesting opportunity for, for second life batteries, because you'll have a battery that, is, um, competing today.

1:06:00No, it's not competing in 15 years, but it's competing today with technology of today. Um, as it comes out of your, your, your EV toll in, in three months and half a year. Um, and so, yeah, maybe, maybe, uh, kind of a niche market for second life as well. Um, and of course you'll have to take care of good recycling. Um, yeah, good luck with your, uh, with your venture. That sounds quite interesting. Thank you, Colin. Thank you. And I think Divik, would you like to go next? Yeah. Uh, I just want to add, uh, I think you should look up for these two companies. Uh, one, uh, one that I would suggest is this company called Zen labs. Uh, they've been working on Silicon for a really long time. Uh, I think they've done considerably, considerably, considerably good amount of progress, uh, with the Silicon anode. Uh, they've been working on it since 2006. And, uh, the other company that I would suggest is this company called Aonix.

1:06:50Again, the, uh, both of them are U S based. And I think that these are two companies, which I would just want to point you towards for your Evital batteries. Divik, I would just, I will just point out about those two companies. Both of them are, uh, trying to commercialize the Silicon adding to the graphite. You are right. One of them is, um, most probably fraud. So, uh, I don't want to go to details. So be careful, some with whom you are working with. Thank you, Milose. Thank you. And this may be just a quick send also to say nothing here is any investment advice. So that's just important. We keep saying this in these sessions as well. Um, and I did the name each one. Thank you, Milose. I appreciate that. And then, um, Sriram, would you like? Uh, yeah. Um, I just wanted to add to, um, the really great summary that, uh, Tillman had for both the EB talk question, as well as the, uh, sustainability, um, of the, uh, uh, of the sourcing of some of these battery materials.

1:07:57Um, in terms of EV talks, uh, we'll definitely, uh, you know, the two companies that are aiming to go public, uh, at the moment in the, in the San Francisco area, you know, Joby aviation and Archer, um, they're certainly not looking at, uh, ranges in the, in the, the 300 mile range that son, uh, mentioned. They're definitely much shorter. Uh, uh, they are able to build vehicles, uh, with much, uh, lesser, uh, energy density than the 400 that is purported to be, uh, the, the breakaway number. Uh, but in the coming decade, we're definitely going to see, uh, progress in the lithium metal side. And, uh, as Miloq mentioned, we're definitely going to see, uh, the quantity of, uh, silicon increase in the anode. Uh, SILA Nano is going to be supplying, uh, some of its, uh, products later this year. Um, and, uh, so we'll definitely see that, uh, energy density increase, uh, as we go along in the decade. And just, uh, uh, coming back to the, uh, sustainability of the supply chain, um, issue.

1:09:02I just wanted to point everyone to the 2020 Tesla impact report. Um, uh, you will see some of the discussions around, uh, sourcing cobalt, uh, being addressed there. And, uh, you know, the move towards LFP is certainly driven by lower cost, but to a certain extent, um, it's also driven by, uh, the sourcing issues with cobalt. And we're seeing a lot of the EV companies try to take, uh, try to take, complete control over the entire supply chain. So I think there's definitely promise in ensuring that the entire supply chain is sustainable and that, uh, the ethical issues are solved, um, as, uh, the supply chains are more integrated, um, and, uh, expanded, uh, to serve, uh, larger companies. So I just wanted to, uh, make those pointers. Thank you. Thank you. I just point out, COA nanotechnology is not yet commercialized. Thanks so much, everyone. Um, Geoffrey, do you have a point to add to the topic? Um, I would say, I think I've seen, I've seen quite a bit of, um, work on alternative, um, alternative storage, um, options or alternative, um, energy options for EV2.

1:10:31Um, um, I think, um, um, hydrogen, um, I have a friend who was working on an EV2 and, and they were using hydrogen for, uh, uh, the V2. Um, I don't know if you've looked into that, um, but apparently, according to them, it's much lighter. And the landing weight is less, um, compared to, uh, takeoff weight. So, uh, or maybe a combination of both, um, batteries and hydrogen or DNA batteries. In fact, you know, have a lower 90 degrees. So, maybe you could look at that as an option. Um, yeah, that's my addition to, uh, to Santi's question. Thank you. I think, Tillman, you're raising your hand. Yeah, and if somebody wants to reply to Geoffrey, they can jump in. I have, uh, another question to the group. If not, um, yeah, we, we had this one point on sodium-ion batteries in the beginning. And Milo's, you pointed out, they're not commercialized yet, which is, um, of course, correct. Um, given that, um, given the latest announcements of CATL from end of July, um, especially with, with a claim that they will be able to produce, um, these sodium-ion batteries that, that they have presented, uh, in the same, uh, factories as the regular LFPs, I think it was, or, uh, other batteries.

1:12:04Um, it seems that there could be a very fast path to commercialization for at least CATL. Um, and so given that them, you know, could, uh, circumvent the supply issues that we discussed in the beginning, as well as many, or if not, well, very, very nearly all, um, sustainability issues, uh, not even needing lithium. Um, it seems to be a very promising tech and very enticing announcement. So I just wanted to ask into the round of, um, of, of experts here. What do you think of, uh, CATL's announcement and the potential of sodium-ion batteries to make a dent in the, um, yeah, performance battery? I think CATL, uh, uh, sodium-ion battery technology is, uh, is coming from defensive position. Uh, the, uh, the patent for the, uh, for the, uh, iron phosphate batteries is expiring. Uh, so basically anybody, uh, will be able to produce, uh, ion phosphate batteries in the near future. And, uh, they are trying to come with the technology, which is more suitable for the energy storage systems.

1:13:23And, uh, if somebody can crack it down, maybe, uh, CATL can, but I'm not very optimistic about it. Thanks, Minos. Christopher, did you have a point about this? Yeah. So, uh, I agree with, uh, the points that Tillman's made, you know, CATL have come out and it does seem as if it could be a very fast sort of, uh, commercialization of them because you can run it down the, the current lines without sort of too many changes as my understanding of it. Uh, uh, and I definitely think that there will be, uh, you know, a niche market for sodium-ion to begin with. Uh, but I think we've, we've said it numerous times, you know, the, the lithium-ion battery is on, is on a charge ahead, you know, but certainly there will be space for sodium-ion. And there's, there's more companies than just sort of catalog or trying to commercialize it at the, at the moment. Uh, so yeah, I think it's, it, it'll be interesting to see how it develops in the future.

1:14:42Thanks so much, everyone. Um, sure. Um, do you have another point to make or we can move on to Thomas? Yeah. Um, I would like to change the topic. Going away from more technical discussion. Uh, commercial question. I mean, we, we all agree that I think, you know, uh, like, the ability to, uh, to, to, uh, to, to, to, to, to, uh, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, Electrobability will be sustainable only if we have proper recycling of the batteries. Otherwise, we always will have the problem. Now, today, the recycling of the batteries, even as Tillman pointed out, climate change is not so relevant. It will only start to happen in 10, 15 years. But still, we need to think about recycling today. But today, the recycling as such is not profitable. I think it's some kind of government support is needed. I know a bit of the situation in Switzerland. There is a mandatory recycling fee from the government, all car imports.

1:16:00So my question basically to Tillman and the rest of the group is, how do you see the financing of the recycling? Will it always depend on government support? Or will it become profitable by itself because it will be cheaper than having the virgin material for battery? It's a great question, Thomas. Yes. And indeed, a very important one for long-term impact. Just for scale also, you pointed out that in the long run, we'll be not needing so much mining if we recycle better. Looking at the market or given the market and then the lifetime of batteries, that's like we're looking at maybe 10% of global supply of cobalt, nickel, hydrogen, lithium in 2030 and maybe 20-ish in 40. So it's going to take well into the 50s until like a big chunk of the demand could be supplied with recycling. That said, kind of in a steady state assumption that we are still working with lithium-ion like nickel and cobalt-based batteries, right? And in the long run, as we just discussed, it might as well phase out much faster than we may think right now.

1:17:18And in that case, of course, demand for especially cobalt and that great nickel may look dramatically different. And that brings me to the answer. I think it will depend extremely on the demand and the corresponding or resulting market prices for battery materials, as well as, of course, the performance materials of batteries, right? Not only the metal salts, but more so the actual battery performance materials or cathode materials, whether it's a profitable operation or not. In the long run, from what I see in the current development, technologies are very promising for actually creating lower bill of materials and lower costs than virgin mining for some of these materials, including even lithium. With quite innovative approaches of extracting high performance, near 100% quality battery materials straight from black mass or from the thermically reduced material. So that looks very, very promising and might as well really be cheaper than virgin or a break even as virgin materials in the long run. Nonetheless, I think there will always need to be the government intervention to create these kind of markets, especially now shorter term as the technologies need investment.

1:18:55And that comes not so much through financial incentives, I think, but really by setting the standards for end of life management. So that is, you know, the battery regulation and similarly how the Chinese battery recycling regulation is working, just mandating hundreds or high rates of recollection of batteries, highest rates of recycling of batteries at high quality is the surest way to make sure that it happened and that market exists. And mandating the OEMs, those that put the batteries in the market to actually collect and, you know, be accountable for it. That is the surest way of doing it. Luckily, that's already the way that EU is approaching it, that China is approaching it. And so that I think is quite promising. I don't think it will be a market that will be even close to the similar size of virgin batteries. But it will be a very important one to keep sustainability happening over time. I think we have now already, like Teoman said, technologies.

1:20:01Just a quick follow-up question, maybe before you answer, Milo. I mean, I agree, you know, the government intervention is not always the best way. Even if you have mandatory battery recycling from the EU or government, for a private company to be active in this area, you still need to be profitable. But, you know, how do you become profitable now because you have to start and ramp up operations now if the government doesn't support you in some form financially? Thomas, that's what I wanted to answer you. We have already first companies, which they are commercial companies, private companies, relatively profitable, or they are commercializing the technologies. Some of them, they are already going public. So the government, it seems to me, the government, by over-regulating this and over-picking up winners and losers, is damaging. Leave it to private sector. Private sector will solve the recycling of the batteries. So the government should take off their hands of the recycling of the batteries. Yeah, so I think going in a similar direction, as Milo said, like picking winners is certainly not something that is recommendable.

1:21:24I think setting the boundaries for what societal goals we want, as in high levels of recycling and sustainable batteries, which I think is critical to set that target. That is really important. Then certainly providing innovation capital and VC capital in a more innovative way than maybe happens right now would be preferable. I think in the US, the DARPA challenges and DARPA budgets and innovation projects are a great example of a bit more agile and quite effective support for these high capex and high risk investments at the beginning of technologies. And so that kind of technology open, you know, competitive innovation support, I think, is a great thing for any sector. And that could also encompass recycling. Ultimately, yeah, it'll be a matter of economic competitiveness. And luckily, you know, with Redwood Materials raising money, with Lifecycle raising like these hundreds of millions, there's clearly interest in the VC world to support the development of these kind of technologies as they are commercially emerging. So I don't think there will need to be strict, you know, heavy handed government intervention to boost these kind of tech.

1:22:50All right. Thank you. And thanks. Maybe also just one quick thing to add as well, but also here again, you know, the battery chemistry also makes a difference, right? Because if you, for example, have like, you know, any chemistry with lots of cobalt, for example, in it, like if you go LCO in the beginning, you know, if you go like LCO, if you now go NMC, even NCA still has some cobalt, nickel, etc. But once you go to LFP, right, it's even less value in it. And then there's different recycling techniques you need, etc. to extract value from different chemistries as well. So that's maybe just something to be aware of. And that's why, as you also said, Milo's and Tillman, innovation is key to keep up with all the chemistries. And we have always the most effective recycling technique for each different chemistry. Great. Great. I think we have Nangen also joined us. We have three more minutes. Hey, thanks. I heard somebody actually mention Silicon Annual has not been commercialized yet.

1:23:45Is that statement specific for EV market or actually apply all the consumer product? Yeah. I said Silicon added anode. It means that graphite based anode. Second generation anode, which is natural synthetic and silicon anode. Not the third generation anode, which is replacement of the graphite with the silicon or lithium. So that's what I see like in the end of the decade or next decade or maybe never. Okay. You know, if I remember actually on cell phone or, you know, consumer product, you know, there's some like high voltage battery. I saw that's related to silicon anode. I guess that's the original version of silicon anode you're not talking about? For the last 30 years, we have the graphite anode, which is first generation anode. Then for the few last years led by the Tesla, we have the silicon, we added silicon like 3 to 5% of the silicon to anode. But this silicon is primitive silicon, SiOx or silicon oxide. So what I'm talking that the companies that are on the race, there is race to incorporate sophisticated silicon to existing graphite to anode.

1:25:24If a silicon aterize a around the world. It takes a considerable amount of time. It requires a lot of permissions and has a lot of regulations around it because of the safety aspect. And that's why you find that many of the manufacturers of factories are trying to station their production facilities near their largest customers because of that shape in nightmare. Does anyone have any thoughts on some work that's being done on standardization of battery supply chains from a shipping perspective, shipping of the finished product that is the battery. And also on the recycling front, I know there's a lot of restrictions around shipping or transporting second life and third life batteries. So I know that's going to come up as a huge problem later on because second life batteries or batteries that are due for recycling are usually a lot more dangerous or potentially dangerous than brand new batteries or batching batteries. So any thoughts on that? I mean, just thinking with the time, I think just maybe also looking at the time because we just half passed, maybe this is also a good time to direct to the last session, no, two times ago we had.

1:27:26The Sriram also was on the panel earlier today because we had a great session there on battery safety and we spoke a lot of things. There's also some interesting work done by like for like about low battery lines when they did it also with the robotic form on these kind of like, you know, regulation perspectives. But I think just looking at the time, I feel we kind of could open up a new topic. So maybe we want to kind of like, you know, delay this on the next session or in the future session, because I think otherwise we were going to talk longer than we planning to. And I think we just want to make sure we don't run too long. So I think with this, it might be a good time to close today's session. Before I will leave actually Catherine to do that, I will just announce a few quick things. One, I want to do a really big thank you to Tilman and Valid for being here with us today for really an exciting session.

1:28:13I think we could see there were a lot of, you know, a lot of thoughts and perspectives and questions and a lot of emotions, which I think is also important because it is an important topic to create sustainable EV batteries and creating sustainable transport, but also energy sector. So thank you so much for being with us. If you want to hear more from him, you might want to follow him. I see you, I think, almost doubled your follow account. So that's great. And maybe people can keep do that. And maybe we can keep on this platform somewhere in this way if enough people follow you. And then you can, of course, also follow the battery revolution club on the top left, if you haven't done so yet. You know, there's always, so then you always get notified for future sessions, because we're going to have another one next week, which we don't think exactly know yet to, but we have a really nice list of people going to speak in the future. So look out for that. And then also just really quick, we actually now start also doing some good reflection videos on these sessions as part of the battery insiders podcast. So if you want to listen to this or watch them, please go on batteryinsiders.com or look for battery insiders on Spotify, Apple podcasts, et cetera. And we're also going to do a quick video with Tillman as well on LinkedIn. We're probably going to post it next Wednesday or so Thursday on the battery and battery associates LinkedIn profile. And then just to read the last thing from my side is you also have a battery day coming up on the 23rd of September and Catherine going to be there as well. A lot of us going to be there. It's going to be really exciting event. It's like our yearly event with battery associates. And we're going to like summarize essentially the entire year, what has happened from industry research and policy, as well as give outlooks with, you know, with people like James from Bloomberg Neff from last week and many other experts, Steve Levine as well was on a previous session. So it's going to be really fun. Yeah. Please, if you want to join that, please go on battery day.info. You also see it in my bio and I think also in battery evolution bio and sign up there so you don't miss out. Brilliant. And with this, I want to give it to Catherine to close today. Thanks so much, Simon. And really a big thank you to Tillman. This session is really engaging and, you know, I really love all the discussion from everyone as well. So thanks for that. And once again, just a quick reminder, these sessions are always recorded and you can, if you miss any part of the session, feel free to catch them up on Spotify or Apple podcast. So one quick note on that as well. You know, as Simon mentioned, we also have fire-cell speakers and we have a great lineup for the future sessions, but we're really looking forward to having more female fire-cell speakers joining us as well. So, you know, if you do know anyone or if you're if you're interested in a topic yourself, please feel free to let myself and Simon know and we would love to have more female fire-cell speakers joining us. So with that and without further ado, thank you so much for staying past our usual time. I'm really, really looking forward to our next session.

1:31:11At the same time, Saturday, 3 p.m. CET. I'm looking forward to having everyone back next Saturday. Thanks, everyone. If you're a incredible incredible incredible incredible incredible incredible