Battery Insiders Reflection - Battery News

0:00Transcript

0:00Welcome to Battery Insiders, your podcast providing you insights in the fascinating world of batteries. Hosted by Bhavya Jha and Simon Engelkow. Good morning, Simon. How are you doing? Very good. It's a beautiful day in Munich. How about you? Oh, same. But now we have moved to New York. So I am speaking to you from my new apartment, a bit of a transition from Memphis, Tennessee, but really exciting nonetheless. As long as the battery news are exciting, I think, you know, it's going to work. You're right. That is what may be the only constant in my life. So we had a really interesting conversation with the group just now. What did you think about it? It seems like there's a lot going on and lots to think about as we approach Battery Day. Exactly. No, I think it was a great session, as you say, in preparation for Battery Day. So maybe just quick context. We have our Battery Day coming up on the 23rd of September, and it's our yearly event from Battery Associates and also going to be our anniversary in some way for Battery Associates.

1:12So some celebration there. But essentially what we're doing right now is we're preparing. We're going through all the news worldwide from, you know, from industry news, but also scientific news and research news as well as policy updates. And, you know, summarizing it all, trying to summarize the most important ones. There's so many, of course. And we are just trying to make like a nice timeline essentially for Battery Day. And the idea of this session was to just, you know, talk a bit about with the community about, you know, whether there kind of has been the most transformative news for them from the past year. And it's so interesting because I think, you know, everyone has like a bit of a different lens depending on what background you have, what industry you're in, as well as, you know, where you're based in the world. Because, of course, you know, the Battery world is quite, you know, quite diverse. I mean, it can be at least. And that's something I quite enjoyed.

1:58So I think there was a bunch of interesting news. What do you think, Bavia? Yeah, I feel like the conversation went in a lot of different directions. I think the one that stuck out to me and I think is one that I focus on a lot too is, you know, form factors and battery chemistry and the implications of it. I really appreciated that on our call, there were some folks who were contextualizing like the value of batteries and thinking about these characteristics in the context of what the past year has been. And, you know, when we talk about like powering things at home, why is that so important? How does that play a role in the grand scheme of things? What kind of impact will that have on the grid? These are also some questions that I came out with after the conversation. But that's what stuck out to me. Did you have any news bites that were of interest to you? Yeah, no, I think I agree that that's kind of something in there.

2:53It's also, I think, interesting to kind of put into the bigger context. I think also this discussion about, you know, which came up a few times as well, you know, from one of our speakers as well about regulatory driven to technology driven something. I think just quite a nice kind of thread we found and kind of looking at, you know, some of the updates. I think if I look about this year, you know, it has really accelerated a lot, you know, I think in the battery field and I think that's very much connected to, of course, the announcements of, you know, regulatory announcements for, you know, like kind of going Europe, going, you know, essentially going electric for transport from 30, 50% or 55% and then 3,500% also in the US, you know, what's kind of being proposed there by Biden's administration. And I think, but now also kind of seeing, you know, that, I mean, one, you know, there's some strong push now from the, from policy side, but also from team tech technology advancements, right?

3:49I mean, if you just think about Nuremberg Ring, you know, like Tesla now, you know, breaking all the records. And we see now also, I think, you know, like all this kind of smart kind of driving, assisting technologies, you know, where also very much connected to, I think, to electric cars, because essentially, you know, the vehicle vehicle becomes like a platform. I think that's for me, one thing this year where I think the battery is just, the cars are getting so good. And also one last thing maybe from this perspective as well, which came up a few times is the cost reduction, right, of batteries and how much more of those anticipated. So I think now the battery costs, I think the numbers are so from Volkswagen, they're saying about 40% of the battery car costs are the battery. And I think 95% right now of these is essentially from China. And to kind of think about, you know, how this is going to shift over the coming years and all these gigafactories being announced, you know, in Europe by 2030, 1,000 gigawatt hours being announced.

4:42And so there's so many updates in this kind of regard. So I think the momentum has been really tremendous this year. And it's one of the reasons, of course, we also want to do this kind of summary on battery day, because I think, you know, you always read about it, like, you know, the news, it always comes up. But actually putting it into context and kind of understanding actually what does this mean? I think it's a big one for me. So I really enjoyed the discussion because we had, of course, experts from different areas. And yeah, I thought it was very engaging. So I take it that some of these, that this conversation may have some influence on the battery day agenda. Oh, 100%. All right. We're looking forward to it. Definitely. Yeah, should be good. See you there. Yep. See you there. Bye.