Battery Insiders Reflection - Battery Hype

0:00Transcript

0:00Welcome to Battery Insiders, your podcast providing you insights in the fascinating world of batteries. Hosted by Bhavya Jha and Simon Engelke. Welcome back, everybody. How's it going, Simon? Doing well. How about yourself, Bhavya? Doing well. I was just thinking it's almost we're approaching our one-year anniversary of doing this podcast and the weather has returned to the gloomy weather that we used to discuss on the early days of this. That's true. We're getting full circle. Full circle. Yes, absolutely. And so, yeah, we just talked about battery, the hype around batteries with our Clubhouse community. Seemed like a pretty exciting conversation. People didn't really want to leave. But yeah, what did you think? Yeah, I think I really enjoyed it. I think, as you said, it was a discussion where I think it was something for everyone, you know, where everyone, even if you're not in the battery field itself, maybe I think everyone has seen the hype. You know, everyone has seen the articles. If you're somewhat in the sphere of batteries, you've ever Googled batteries, you'll probably find some interesting announcements.

1:15And I think the big question is always, what does this actually mean? Is this meaningful? Is this something, you know, which is actually a real breakthrough or maybe just something which is a battery hype, which was the topic? And we're very fortunate to have old Rico, Lissy with us, who has been in the battery space for quite a while in the UK. And he's also been quite involved with something called the Battery Pub, which is similar for the battery branch now for UK, like a meetup. And for Europe, it's like a meetup once a month or so, where a lot of battery enthusiasts meet up as well. And no, I think it was interesting. So for me, really what stuck with me was this question of what does the battery hype, what are negative aspects of it? And I think, because one thing, you know, you could wonder, why should we even care? You know, I mean, it's nice if people talk about what you're doing.

2:06I mean, every time there is a hyped up announcement somewhere, people talk to me and ask me, hey, you know, what does it mean? Et cetera. So it's not a bad thing, you know, for me per se all the time. But I think the bad thing is if you have investments, which go into maybe things which make not so much sense, because at least if you think about the resources are finite, there's not unlimited resources. If you take away, you know, money and resources from a good idea, put it in something which makes no sense, and it just creates some money for some people, that's not good. So that's kind of my takeaway, which kind of means for us as a community of battery enthusiasts and scientists and experts, we might want to call out the hype and like, not just the hype, but like, there's hype and I think there's fraud, right? And I think if there's things going wrong, we don't want to make sure that people know it is making no sense, because we want to make sure that not resources are wasted.

2:58And one thing also we mentioned at the end was the question of the diligence, which I'm happy to talk about a bit more again later. What do you think, Bavia? What do you think about this topic? Well, I think, like you said, there is a lot of hype around batteries. And people, if they haven't already seen it, hopefully now have, come to understand, you know, through the news and whatnot. But there is a lot you have to sift through. It can be a bit overwhelming. And, you know, if you read it and you buy into it, then you're in for quite a ride. But, you know, if you're skeptical about it, it's really, I think it can be a lot for those who are not sure about what the battery, what battery capacities are. There's a lot of language around this as someone who has also, I mean, at some point we all entered this world, right? And for some of us, it was definitely maybe a bit easier because of our STEM backgrounds versus those of us who, you know, are just coming in as maybe early or even later adopters, but are very curious about it.

4:00And so how do you make that accessible? And I mean, you know, I think that some of the work we even do hopefully kind of helps like sift through all of the information. I'm not necessarily saying there's like false information out there, but there can be misleading metrics, misleading information. Lots of like hype around like this one discovery that this one startup is doing or this one new innovation. And then we think people start making massive claims about that being the next big thing. And, you know, there's like car companies out there that definitely can contribute to that. You know, one little change in their model or in the chemistry of a battery changes the entire conversation for the week. Like it's just so fast, so fast evolving that. Yeah, like almost the speed of the change is kind of what contributes to the hype, but it's like a double edged sword. It's also what can be very intimidating and honestly make people probably shy away from it, I would imagine as well.

5:01Just, you know, I like how my life is right now. Why do I need to change things? So there's a big behavioral aspect to this that I think the hype plays a role in. And I also find it interesting because batteries recently I've been thinking about this batteries, you know, can charge fully charged many things. And of course, I talk about them most often in EVs and, you know, battery electric vehicles be EVs. But when you talk about like cost and what's actually like necessary for the transition, I've been pushed on this recently on plug in hybrid EVs and how if we if it's really just about cost and making things just generally more electric, why not go for the PHEV initially? Because, you know, your average Joe in in, you know, at least in the US context, isn't just looking for a car that's electric. He's also looking for a car that's going to get in places that are 300, 400 miles away. And of course, with battery range that really gets really when you think about battery range that can make a full fully like BEV very expensive.

6:07And so as we talk about like the hype around batteries and batteries, I'm like, OK, it's worth asking, but what is required for the transition to to so that we can live out this type of batteries? But anyway, that's my two cents on that. Absolutely. And I think one thing maybe I just want to quickly add to this one thing, it's because important what you said as well is, you know, I think it's we shouldn't underestimate how many backgrounds we need to really fully understand the problem. And I think, you know, you mentioned maybe, you know, some people maybe don't come from the science or from the engineering or, you know, from the hard tech. But and of course, that's very helpful to assess the like, you know, the technical feasibility and things. But we also need all these other factors, right? Like, you know, I think often as a scientist, maybe you don't look into like is the financial, you know, does it financially make sense?

6:58Because you maybe get so excited about the technology itself, right? But there might be some other factors. Other factors can be regulation, you know, policies, policy changes. So even, you know, you have like, even let's say you have the best technology, you know, out there, but it kind of, you know, there's some other limitation. Let's say you use a material which is just really terrible for the planet and you don't get that or it's very tricky to get or you cannot, you know, compete in other industries or something where then it could also mean that this hype actually won't work out, right? So it's not just one thing in isolation. I think really to make it work, you need all of them. I guess one of the things, right, with the Battery MBA, I'm just thinking, right, where it's so useful when you then, we have these discussions, right? Where we have people from all different backgrounds, you know, talking about these different challenges and you realize, okay, maybe you have this policy, you know, head on policy lens.

7:43And that's actually very complimentary to what you have, maybe from a technical background of business, et cetera. So I think that's just one thing. And maybe just one last thing also, because we mentioned actually in the podcast as well, the work of due diligence. And I think that's something also personally quite exciting for us right now is at resources where we have seen, you know, quite a bit of demand from companies, but also particularly from investors and investor conglomerates. And I think, you know, asking us for technical assessments. I think, you know, just an open invitation. If anybody has any questions here, please get in touch because we love to do this kind of work. And again, kind of connect to what I said earlier, you know, we really want to make sure the money is spent on the right thing. So if we can help on this, I'm always happy to do so. Thanks so much, Simon. I think I'm excited to see if we are able to hear from anybody and, you know, obviously happy to keep the conversation going outside of our larger clubhouse discussions as well.

8:38So, yes, like Simon said, please feel free to reach out. We're always interested in talking to others who are curious about this space. And we always look forward to learning from people, no matter, regardless of which background you come from, because like Simon said, it all, it all intersects at batteries. And with this, see you next week, Bavia. Bye. Bye.