Key minerals in batteries, visually – Formula E Gen3 revealed – Northernmost e-truck
Hey!
I hope you've had a zappy week so far. I'm rather late today (or well, early for me, 6 am) - sorry if you were waiting for this. I've got lots to show you!
Today, on the EV Universe:
- The key minerals in a battery, visually.
- Formula E revealed the Gen 3 race car.
- The EU's Q1 EV sales.
- An interactive US' charging network map and USPS sued.
- The northernmost e-truck in the world, US new battery bet, burning e-buses and lots more.
1,668 words this week and plenty of visuals, makes for an 8-minute read. Happy you're here.
- Jaan
⚡⚡⚡
Welcome to the
EV Universe
where I'm pretty certain we'll see a supply crisis for battery minerals very soon.
We'll start off with this nice visual from VisualCapitalist (link), which shows the amount of battery minerals that an average 2020 battery consisted of (for a 60kWh battery):
The data is taken from T&E's 2021 "Batteries vs Oil" report (75pp pdf).
Looks about right. Here's how the battery chemistries differ, by mineral content (for a 60kWh Li-ion battery):
If there are OEMs left that want to stall the inevitable electrification ( ;) ), then I'm sure the upcoming battery supply constraints will give them more than enough excuses.
Formula E presented the Gen3 racing cars for the next season (link):
The biggest change of the season is that the Formula E teams will be able to design the rear drivetrain themselves.
The peak power will now be 350kW in qualifying mode and 300kW in the race (previously 250/220kW), top speed raised to 322 km/h (200mph, previously 240 km/h).
The recuperation power has been increased to 600kW (which I think is nuts*) thanks to a new front 250kW powertrain. 40% of the energy used in the race coming from recuperation. Due to this capability, these race cars will (surprisingly) not have rear hydraulic brakes.
The race will feature a charging "pit stop" which is set to deliver ~600kW (which I think is nuts*).
Geek out even more: (link)
* both in a good way, of course.
You know,
you really ought to join us in the EV Universe Pro.
It's easy, right here: (link)
Just in: EU electric car sales
ACEA released Europe's Q1 car sales numbers today... and they're promising.
BEV market share in Europe in Q1 2022 has risen to 10.0% with 224,145 sold. This is up from only a 5.7% market share and 146,125 in Q1 last year. Highest year-over-year growth was seen in:
- Romania with 408%, but only with from 415 to 2,108 EVs
- Spain with 110.3% from 3,449 to 7,253
- France (42.7%) from 30.5k to 43.5k
- Germany (29.3%) from 64.8k to 83.7k
- The only decline was in Italy with -14.9%, from 13.3k to 11.3k BEVs per quarter.
Here's the press release (link), and data as pdf and xls.
This is how the whole market currently looks like:
⚡ Tour-de-Universe
🛠️ Tool tip: EV charging stations and U.S. Interstates visualized on this interactive map, as of Feb 15th, 2022 (link):
The data is from US DoE's Alternative Fuels Data Center and the map is developed by Esri. It also includes state data when clicked, like EVs per 1k people, total EVs, charging stations per EV.
🎫 For our UK🇬🇧 readers: Autotrader is raffling off a Peugeot e-208 (link).
⚖️ 16 US states, 4 environmental groups and the UAW filed lawsuits to challenge the USPS's overly-ICEy vehicle procurement plan (link)
🏭 Shanghai authorities stepped up and helped Tesla reopen the Shanghai factory by transporting over 6k workers and carrying out necessary disinfection work. The factory was shut down for 22 days due to the city's Covid lockdowns. (link)
With the letter Tesla sent to the officials, Tesla also confirmed its intentions to build a second plant in Shanghai, near the current Giga Shanghai - with a 450k/year capacity.
From what I've gathered, Tesla (and Musk's) relationships with the Chinese gov has warmed up quite nicely, considering the kind of conflicts I've written about through the last year.
🎉 Our last week's deep dive on the Charging Infrastructure in EU was published in InsideEVs (yay) (link).
🚗 Lucid will start exporting to Europe and the Middle East „in June or July“ via Autocar. China in 2023. (link)
🇳🇴 Norway's government is considering phasing out some of the "EV privileges". Christina Bu, the head of the Norwegian EV association Norsk Elbilforening, thinks differently saying (link):
"(The government) is now considering throwing climate politics under the bus. We must remember that over 80 percent of cars in Norway still run on fossil fuels."
For scale: in April, the BEV share was 74.1% and in March 86.1% of sales.
🇹🇭 Thailand is taking a different approach for EV subsidies: making agreements with OEMs on incentives, subsidies and tax breaks to bring EV manufacturing to the country (link).
🚛 This is big (literally): Volvo Trucks started taking firm orders for the heavy electric trucks: FH, FHM, FMX (capability 16 to 44 tonnes). Series production is set to start in the fall this year. Volvo gathered interest for >1.1k electric trucks in 2021. (link) See the technical specs I covered back in June here.
This one goes well with my Semi-viral tweet.
🚛 The northernmost electric truck has begun to operate in Longyearbyen, Norway. It's one of the world's northermost inhavited areas and the Scania electric truck works under the Norwegian postal service Posten Norge (link):
I pictured a place just in the northern tip of mainland Norway. Nope. This is where the truck is operating in:
If that's not a testament of electric vehicle being able to work anywhere, then I don't know what is.
🔋 The Biden administration announced on Monday $3.16B from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to boost US' domestic battery manufacturing and supply chains. (link) This means "creating new, retrofitted, and expanded commercial facilities, manufacturing demonstrations and battery recycling." A separate $60M is directed to second-life applications for batteries and recycling.
The US DoE also announced up to $45M in funding through the ARPA-E to support the domestic development of advanced batteries for EVs. Advanced here meaning faster charging, increased efficiency and improved resilience.
As you know I love a good acronym... and this one's called EVs4ALL, which stands for Electric Vehicles for American Low-Carbon Living (coincidence, right?). (link) Resource: USA's National Blueprint for Lithium Batteries (24pp pdf)
🔋 GM has replaced almost 50% of the 2017-19 Chevy Bolt batteries by now, 26.9k of the 57.4k (link)
⚡ Electrify America's charging sessions went from 268k in 2020 to 1.45M in 2021, delivering a total of 41.4 GWh. EA (I guess I shouldn't call Electrify America that, but oh well, it's in the game) currently has 3,500 chargers across 800 locations. (link)
⏳ EV West, one of the most popular EV conversion shops for classic cars that I've covered in in our newsletters too, says they have a five-year wait list already. (link)
Uh-oh: Three e-buses have caught on fire in the middle of the streets in Paris, with the latest this Friday - leading to RATP withdrawing its 149 Bluebus 5SE's from the circulation. (link)
📈 Atlis Motor Vehicles plans to list on Nasdaq in the second half of this year, ticker would be AMV (video). Our most recent coverage of the company was about their agreement with US Military to convert its Humvees into EVs using Atlis' XP platform for light to medium-duty trucks. Its own EV plans bet on the pickup truck XT (link).
This would serve as a potential exit for the 5,122 investors that have already put in $9,543,122 through the Reg A+ circular, which is set to end by May 15th. The offering is at $15.88 which puts the valuation of the company at $950M (no info on what they aim with the IPO yet). (link)
Atlis Motors reminds me of Bollinger Motors, which recently directed its focus from bringing an EV model to market to providing the chassis for commercial EVs. Atlis also claims to be making progress on the development of their own "AMV" battery cells.
Just in case - nothing here constitutes as a financial advice. I'm a total newb.
Stuff I'm
Watching
👀 Microlino assembly line in Turin, Italy, is finally operational and the series production is set to start soon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aY48VeDhUM
Thanks, Kārlis, for sharing this one!
👀 Fisker's little promo video that shows the Ocean on the test track, with Henrik Fisker behind the wheel. Here's Fisker's Q1 earnings release (pdf).
👀 The new swivel scree seen for the first time on the refreshed Model S:
👀 Weird EV I just discovered: the BeTRITON is now headed for production with a price of €14.5k ($15.3k)+VAT. It's a boat, an electric tricycle and camper in one, brought to live by Aigars Lauzis from Latvia.
👀 And here's an 8-minute video by Ford on it's Rouge plant with F-150 assembly, inclusing a drone flythrough (video)
Reading
📚 There's enough raw materials to make 14M EVs globally in 2023 (remember, 4.8M were sold in 2021) even without Russian supplies. The T&E study says "The best way for Europe to punish the Putin regime for its illegal war on Ukraine is to shift to electric vehicles" (18pp pdf).
📚 General Motors' 12th annual Sustainability Report (122pp pdf). It serves as a great overview of GM's current and near-future plans, models, factories, priorities. Here's an useful graph... the EV-related factories:
📚 225 reasons why people buy electric cars (link)
Listening
🎙️ The Global Lithium Podcast, hosted by Joe Lowry, also known as "Mr. Lithium". 135 episodes of gold Lithium. (link)
The key minerals in a battery, visually.Formula E revealed the Gen 3 race car.The EU's Q1 EV sales.An interactive US' charging network map and USPS sued.The northernmost e-truck in the world, US new battery bet, burning e-buses and lots more.
