Battery Insiders Reflection - Industrial Battery Applications

0:00Transcript

0:00Welcome to Battery Insiders, your podcast providing you insights and the fascinating world of batteries. Hosted by Bhavya Jha and Simon Ngelka. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us again here on Battery Insiders. Today I have with me Simon Ngelka, as per usual, to discuss the weather and all things battery as well. How's it going, Simon? Doing great. It's a gloomy day in Munich. I heard there was snow, not in Munich itself, but in Germany. So I guess we're entering winter season. How about yourself? I think that snow is your confirmation that it is winter. Yeah, we here enjoyed a nice 70-degree weekend just a little bit ago, and now it is 23 degrees when I wake up. So for those of you in Celsius, I really could not tell you where that puts us, but I will tell you we ended on sub-zero. So doing well, very cold, and trying to stay warm. And as we talk about warm and heat and electricity, we get to batteries.

1:21And to this week's, or rather this month's session for us was about industry battery applications. We had Raj from Electrovia with us. And Simon, I want to ask you, what did you think? He gave us a lot of food to think about. And I learned a couple of things about what's going on in the industry and industry for battery industrial applications as well. And I just found the technology really interesting in our conversation. It was really exciting personally as well. In fact, I kind of keep going back to it just to pick up on little tidbits of LTO and pouch versus cylindrical and the benefits of ceramic separators versus polymer. There are just a few things he touched on, but what stood out to you? Yeah, I think it was an interesting, as you say, a bit of a deep dive maybe in industrial applications, but also thinking a bit of a journey, right? Like a bit of a niche or like a specialized cell producer, right?

2:24Like talking more something, I mean, how do you, if you have some new, let's say, IP or you have some new developments, how do you commercialize this? And how do you scale this? And maybe also some of the challenges, right? He walked us through, quite frankly, which I also really thought I really appreciated, right? And also show it's not always that easy. You have to really keep adjusting of kind of, you know, what makes more sense. And what's interesting to hear their stories, right, was they like to find the forklifts and things like this or how some of these, you know, their cells can maybe be used there, but also some of the other applications they looked at, but then they didn't do it because it just didn't work. It was from economics, et cetera, or from the scale. And yeah, I think it was a nice mix between one looking at, you know, new technology applications, like what's, you know, new in technology world, like these separate applications.

3:09As you mentioned, second is application. And third, also, like how do you actually commercialize the technology? How do you, you know, grow as a startup in this space as well? Yeah, exactly. I was, you know, we talk a lot about technology and batteries. And that, I mean, that's clearly the, obviously the bread and butter of our discussion. But here I was particularly interested in, maybe this is a bit of my entrepreneurship class coming in. Grad student here. Hello, everyone. Yeah. Like how do you commercialize this? And what does it mean to be a startup in this space? He talks very, you know, he kind of walked us through the timeline of we expanded and then we actually, Electrovia, like, you know, eliminated and rather, and like closed down some of its centers. I think it was like in 2015 or so. And just how do you make it lean and sustainable at the same, and grow at the same time? It's such an interesting nexus to try to achieve.

4:11And so it was just very interesting for me to kind of put that all in perspective. But what else? I think, you know, he touches on one thing specific. Another thing that kind of stuck with me is like thinking about cost. And he makes it very accessible for our listeners thinking about like, or rather comparing the technology and its use of in warehouse versus let's talk about how it works in cars. And so when you're buying a car, you think a lot about capital costs. And he really emphasizes a few things about this technology, which are this ceramic separator. For those of you who are hearing about this for the first time, he talks about thinking about lifetime cost of like a forklift in a warehouse. And rather prioritizing safety and not really thinking as much about energy density, which I know is like a really big emphasis more very often with batteries. But if you think about it, you drive your own car, maybe total one hour, max two hours a day.

5:11It does like about one or two cycles. But something that's in a warehouse operating every day is doing one to three cycles a day. And you're really concerned about lifetime costs there. And so that kind of financial point there, I thought was really important, especially for people who may not be as familiar with industrial applications and kind of the thought process that underlies decision making in industry versus for personal use. Absolutely. And I think, yeah, I mean, also, you know, showing these differences. And of course, it's also an argument, right? A lot of new applications will try to bring, right? You will optimize something and then you're trying to convince the customer to bring them on your side, right? And I think it's always interesting value proposition, as you said, right? Like, you know, the lifetime cost, especially if you introduce like a new technology into a market, how do you even convince your customer that this will increase lifetime, right? Because you don't really have the same track record, maybe of some established other players or technology.

6:10So I think it's quite interesting to come with this argument. And of course, it can help when you have a track record, right? When you have been in the field for a while, as he was sharing. And I think he was sharing that they don't really have any failed cells, right? So I think they're talking like 10, 20 years or something. I'm not sure if I remember the exact number. But the issue actually being that, you know, these things haven't failed yet. So it's really hard to even predict, you know, how long these things last. And I think, yeah, that's often what we see with new players, right? You would say, look, it's technology, it's way better and it will last much longer. But how do you know, right? And we know accelerated testing and there's a bunch of different things you can do. But I think it's, yeah, it's always, I think it's a challenging argument for any new entrance into the market, right?

6:50To go over reliability if you're not a long established player. And of course, I think that's just what's an interesting thought for me as any startup. But still, it's probably the best argument, but it's still a tricky one to start with. And gets better over time. It's much more track record you can prove. I'm starting to think that we need like a chart or batteries for dummies or something. That is a matrix that kind of outlines different, like, you know, the conversation, just points that came out of this conversation. Really? Pouch versus cylindrical. Different technology. solid-state. LTO. Which separator? Polymer versus ceramic. What are the effects on performance versus safety versus longevity? So just throwing that out there. If anybody listening knows of that, we would love to, I'd love to see it. Simon, maybe we should be thinking about it. Because every time, it's almost like we need a dictionary sometimes. Or like a live document that kind of helps us think and keep track of like all the nuances that are coming into the industry.

7:55That was my biggest takeaway is that there's so much to think about. And, you know, we talk so much about personal use. But we, and, you know, when we're not in industry, that's not something that obviously, that may not come to mind right away. And just kind of thinking of, we almost like need a chart where you can like think about what batteries should I be using for my, for the purpose that I'm intending it for. Or I think the, the, these conversations that we have continue to help me grow and learn and expand that chart mentally for myself. I think I need to write it down now. Absolutely. And I think, I mean, that's, and that's the, the, the beauty and the tricky bit at the same time, right? I think, you know, it's this chart, as you mentioned, it's even mentioned yourself, it gets much more complex quite quickly. And we have, of course, an internal, you know, glossary and like all of these, you know, you know, definitions of these different cells.

8:51And then also thinking about, you know, BatteryMBA, where we're also trying to dissect some of these in industry trends, et cetera, but also battery 101, which is more introductionary. Then our battery testing, also our battery cycler, right? Which we're now doing lots of testing. And also we can do some benchmarking ourselves, et cetera. But as you say, the usual, the, the tricky bit is that the more in detail you get, the more complex it gets and your timeline or chart might become a map and maybe it stays in 2D and it goes 3D, you know, and yeah, there's, there's a lot of axes you can go and, which also makes it exciting. Right. And I think what I really enjoy is like sessions like this is that we do a topic at a time and learning, you know, a topic at a time, because yeah, looking at all of them at the same time, it's probably impossible. To grasp, but like, you know, taking them one by the time, it's pretty exciting.

9:38I mean, thinking back from all the topics we have covered, right. From recycling, aviation, all kinds of different applications, you know, even like, you know, aerospace we have looked at not too long ago. So I think each of them at a time, I think that's for me the way how we can hopefully cover them all. And with that, all of you listening have just learned a litany of opportunities with Battery Associates to learn more about this growing chart or map rather that Simon pointed out. So we hope that you'll join us in one of our upcoming programs or sessions. And of course, join us next month for a little, for our next conversation about our next topic. Any idea what that might be, Simon, or are we keeping it a surprise? Got a pretty good idea, but let's keep it a surprise. But yeah, there should be some surprises in store. All right. Sounds good. And with that, everybody have a wonderful holiday season. Stay warm and we will talk soon.

10:37Thanks for joining us. Talk soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.