Battery Insiders Reflection - Battery Day 2022 Summary

0:00Transcript

0:00Welcome to Battery Insiders, your podcast providing you insights and the fascinating world of batteries. Hosted by Bhavya Jha and Simon Engelke. And we're back. Thanks for joining us, everybody. Welcome back. Today, as per usual, I have Simon with me. And we are in our respective areas in Germany and New York. So, Simon, due diligence. How's the weather over there? It's great. It's very, I think we are. Okay. Well, for those of you listening, that will probably be his answer for the next few months. No, I'm kidding. But we did have a hint of that in New York. Like, you know, I think it was probably residual weather from Hurricane Ian. It was coming right up to us. We had three days of gray. Mind you, it was like hot last week. So it's like we just skipped fall and went right into winter. And every New Yorker was horrified and weather confused. I think it was pretty funny, actually, because I'm walking around campus and people are like wearing, you know, more summery fall type clothes and then like holding or rather they're actually wearing winter clothes and then holding on to their like last iced coffee of the season, you know, in hopes of kind of retaining or hanging on to some of the summer weather we had before we hit winter and just skipped fall.

1:33But balance is restored. We are back. And it's back to fall now. And hopefully things down in Florida are also better. If any of our listeners are tuning in from there, we hope you are safe and doing well in this very tricky time. So with that, it sounds like the most recent happening in Battery Associates world has been our big, big battery day, which marks now, I believe, two years of Battery Associates. You know, Simon, we were just talking about the day and the conference and it's also an anniversary. So how do you feel? Yeah, feeling great. And maybe that's also a bit like in regards to, you know, why we always talk about seasons and days because, yeah, time, you know, it's all measured in time. And I think a lot has happened. Very, very proud of a lot of the well bits. I mean, we don't talk about many of them here, but yeah, the team has done extremely well over the last three, two years now, as you say, and has built some really, really cool things from, you know, building some great projects with partners to develop hardware and software and also like, you know, train fantastic leaders all around the world with the BatteryMBA and some other training offers.

2:47So no, it's been really good. And as you say, it has been a great anniversary in some way, but also our Battery Day, which we, you know, we don't want to use it to celebrate ourselves necessarily, but like, it's really about celebrating the industry and, you know, also maybe highlighting some of the challenges to really have this dialogue, which is so important to us. Maybe I can just quickly start by summarizing just a day quickly before I'll let it to you to introduce maybe some of your takeaways from some of the sessions. Yes, please give us the pulse. Where, where, where is the battery world right now? Yeah, I'm not sure if I could cover it all, but I will at least cover what we covered during the day. So this was our first 12 hour event. I think our first event Battery Day was about three hours. I think that we went to about, I don't remember, was it six or nine? And now we went to 12.

3:31So that was an interesting decision, but I think also an important one because we realized we really want to cover all the relevant or like essentially all the time zones. So yeah, we started early at 9 a.m. CT. So we're not from European time, but it can do your own transmission. Then we actually released our Battery Timeline, which was something we started last year, which is quite nice. You can look it up on LinkedIn. I think also on YouTube now, or it will be up soon, where essentially we summarize a lot of the battery developments for the entire year. This is based on our battery newsletter we have. Maybe once a month, you can also get for free on Battery.associates. And you just once a month, we're summarizing some of the most interesting battery news we came across. And then we had our first panel on Battery Market Overview in Asia, which we also covered in this podcast. I won't talk about this right now.

4:20Then the second panel on Battery Use Case, Mobility vs. Stationery, also covered in the podcast, also with the moderator, Bianca. Then we had closing networking, of course, very important to us, a lot of networking breaks. A keynote from one of our gold sponsors, Corona Cells, which was great as well. But their technology they're bringing to the market they're working on. More about the role-to-role process they're working on. Then we had ScaleUp Gigafactories in Europe, which also was really nice. I think it was really well-received. We actually had two of the LFP startups in Europe with us. The only two pretty much we're fully focused on right now. One is called Freya, one in FNS, one in Serbia, one in Norway. So I think it was really nicely received. Then we had one on lithium and battery recycling, which also we addressed a little bit in the podcast through Mark who was there, which was really great. Then we had a bunch of deep dives from training to the Skruller Cells again on their production, a bit of a deep dive, particularly deep dive.

5:18Then we also had two battery-mb-8 case studies, which is really exciting, on European Gigafactories as well as a V-Market in India. Something new, because these have just been launched over the last year. So this was really nice from these battery-mb-8 case studies to be shared in this form as well. You can see it's a long event, but we're almost at the end. So then we had another panel on solid-state batteries and lithium metal, something we also spoke about in the podcast. I will leave it to Pavia as well. We can talk about this a bit later. Then we also had one panel on U.S. battery policies, responsible sourcing. Also really, I think, very timely with the Inflation Reduction Act and other developments. But yeah, also it was a nice session as well. Then we had a few more deep dives. One is also with Rihanna from Water Foundation. Of course, we know them well, and it was great to collaborate in a new way. And we talked about this new battery report.

6:05They worked on a new version for that. It was exciting. Also a battery cycler for Battery Associates. Something we're really pushing hard. It's a lot of work to build hardware. We're learning, for sure. But yeah, getting really closer and closer to release more widely. We gave a great update there, another release. And then, yeah, also talk about recruiting again with Events Search, one of our other gold sponsors of the event. So they also had a nice career session as well as an insight session for HR professionals, how to find battery talent. Yeah, that's pretty much it. A bit of an outlook. And then we went to the closing. So, Bavia. That's fantastic. It sounds like some of the main themes. And from the conversation that I heard, a few things that really stuck out were, well, one, we talk a lot about in the energy field. And right now I'm in academia. So that's the lens I'm approaching this with. We talk a lot about the geopolitics of oil and gas, of energy.

7:01Of course, that's, I think, now many more people's front of mind. But I think the geopolitics of batteries and the questions of sourcing and the role of Asia, specific players like China, I think, really, really, you know, very prominent in the conversation during battery day. So that would be like the one big thing. And the second one I would say is like scale. We know the technology is here. It's here. It can get better. It's gone through learning curves. What's it going to take to scale? And I think that really ties into like the gigafactory conversation. Because those are popping up everywhere. U.S., Asia, Europe, you name it. And just rapid speed. I think I went to like, you know, another like battery related conference where that was focused just on gigafactories about like two weeks, two months ago. And the number of gigafactories that have powered up over in Asia versus the U.S. versus elsewhere. It's just like the next realm of competition. And how do we gain competitive advantage as well?

8:15You know, this is a lot of what countries are thinking about. And I think we already begin to see that in different laws and directives that are being passed across the world, including the Inflation Reduction Act. I think all of these are very salient topics. And it's interesting that as Battery Associates has grown, that the battery world has become also more important to like each of these countries that were discussed. And so the geopolitics, the sourcing, I found personally most interesting. I guess it's not too surprising. I came into this world with a policy hat anyway. So I think those were like probably some of my biggest takeaways. But I don't know. What were some questions that you felt like were still lingering in the air or could be maybe even great topics for future Battery Insiders podcasts or things that Battery Associates may want to dig deeper in on? It's a lot, right? I think there's so many topics to cover. But I think also if you think about trends and also things, you know, which I think is quite nice if you look back now to last year, we have, you know, we also have this question at the end, like what are we seeing for the next coming year, right?

9:28And also, I think James Firth, also one of our, you know, treasured speakers also again for this event, but also last year at the closing. And he was really talking about how he would see the U.S. like the coming year to be the year of the U.S., right? So we had the year maybe before as a big year for Europe. And now we had it for the U.S. And I think especially now as the Estillation Reduction Act and these kind of, you know, developments, we definitely can see a strong push there. So I think that's quite exciting to see. I think also now there's a lot of discussion also about India, for example. I think that's a big kind of thought that maybe this coming year will be a year for India, which means there's a lot of announcements of developments happening. And if you think also before about Europe, right? So I think also put it into context. I think before we have seen a lot of announcements the year in Europe as well.

10:12So look also in our first timeline. I mean, of course, there's still a lot of developments in Europe as well. But what's interesting is Europe had this plan to produce about a third or so of the battery capacity in the world. So this was really also planned, you know, to get to a European Union in Europe more widely. And what's interesting, if you're looking at all the announced capacity, we're actually seeing something like this, right? It could happen if all of these things actually take place. But the other question is who are actually going to build all of these factories, who provide the equipment, tools, and all of these, as you said, raw materials, et cetera. So there's a massive supply chain. And also then, of course, at the end of recycling and scrap, all of these are topics. So what's quite exciting is there has been a strong push now to, I think, get these things into place or get them started. And now you have to really fix all of these other issues.

10:58And it just keeps opening up, right? Like people think, OK, now I have to produce this. I need this part. And the energy costs, and of course, now low, you know, events as well, which means the energy costs get higher and things like this. And so I think, yeah, it's just also interesting to see how things are going to mature and also how they're really going to develop and scale, as you said, but also scale in a sustainable way from a, of course, ethical, environmental, but also really in a financial way as well, right? So that these things really going to last for the long term. So yeah, I think super exciting. And I think personally, I believe we're going to be very covered for the next year or so for these topics to discuss because people just going to come. It sounds like we have our work cut out for us and plenty to continue to talk about in the next coming days, weeks, and months.

11:46So that'll be all of that'll that'll be that'll be a good lead in for our future topics that we cover on the podcast. But I guess for now, we will call it a day. Battery day is over. We have many more topics to be discussed, and we will be hosting our sessions over on Clubhouse as we have been the first Saturday of every month. And Simon, if there's anything else you'd like to add or any teasers that our audience should hear about. I think let's, let's not tease them, but we already have a speaker confirmed. So look out for the next one. Well, in that case, we'll see you there. Thanks. See you then. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.