Report #94: US builds battery chain — Tesla lets you vote on SC locations — Battery Data Genome

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Hey, Jaan here.

EV Universe has a birthday coming up. More on that next week. Meanwhile, I just keep being astonished at how fast our industry is moving.

This week, we'll talk about:

• US makes $2.8B worth of battery supply chain moves;
• Tesla opens Supercharger location voting;
• Foxconn and Xiaomi have big plans;
• Tesla Model Y might break into global top 5 already this year.

Words: 2,357. Time to read: 11 minutes. Feels: electrifying.

- Jaan

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The US makes its battery moves

In February, the US Department of Energy announced the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding of around $3B to help develop a national battery supply chain.

Now, we've learned the 20 recipients of the $2.8B funds - and there are quite a few familiar names on the list for us (link, 22pp pdf):

The $2.8B should result in an additional $9B of investments from the companies themselves.

The funding should support, among other things:

• Developing lithium supply for 2M EVs/year,
• graphite for 1.2M/year,
• nickel to 400k/year,
• silicon oxide production for anode materials for 600k batteries/year,
• electrolyte salt, electrode binder, iron phosphate cathode material facilities.

The specifics of funding and project information on each can be found on the factsheet (link). I also saw quite a few of the involved public company stocks pop north of +30% right after the news came out.

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The IRA moves people too

The funding will support Hyundai was planning to start construction on its $5.5B EV plant in Georgia early 2023, but has now, after the IRA passed, brought it forward and will start next Tuesday, the 25th (link). At the same time, an executive of Hyundai says the elimination of tax credits for imported EVs is 'an astronomical blow' to its business. (link)

The $5B in NEVI funding to build the 500k-charger network has gotten us a bunch of announcements for new DC charger plants, like the new (or soon-to-come) plants from Tritium, ABB, Wallbox, FLO. The latest news came in last week, with the Korean SK Signet going for a plant in Texas (link).

I am and likely will continue to be skeptical of any government intervention in the market for the foreseeable future... but looking from afar, the IRA has created a huge buzz in the renewables and EV industry in the US & Canada. I know people moving to the States and Canada just to join the wave from all over the Universe. Heck, even I gave it a little thought. I like the energy.

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🌌 Around The 'Verse

The most clicked link last week: The Polestar 3 world premiere (video).

Just in: Tesla Supercharger Voting. The platform is now live and every 3-month voting cycle, logged-in members can cast multiple votes to help Tesla decide on new SC locations. (link) You can see the leaderboards and suggest new locations for the next voting cycle. Globally.

This goes live while Tesla Supercharging reached an impressive milestone: 10 years of Supercharging. 35k+ stalls located in 46 countries have charged a total of about 20 billion miles so far. (link)

Tesla Q3 Earnings are out. Here is the Shareholder deck (29pp pdf).

The good stuff came from the live-streamed Q&A with Elon Musk (1h6min), which I'll be dissecting in tomorrow's Pro Report along with a bit of the financials. Save yourself an hour and gain knowledge by getting in Pro (here).

Norway's budget proposal reportedly includes plans to impose VAT and weight tax on new EVs priced over 500,000 NOK ($46.8k) and more, from January 1st. (link)

The VAT will be calculated on the part of the price that exceeds the threshold and the weight tax 12.5 NOK ($1.17) per kg for exceeding 500kg. For example, this would raise the price of a Model Y AWD by around $6k, a Taycan 4S Sport Turismo by around $11.6k and a Model S Plaid by around $18.7k.

Here's a refresher on how Norwegian car sales look by fuel type, last updated with September data (link):

California Air Resources Board's (CARB) upcoming public hearing on 27th will consider the Advanced Clean Fleets regulation, which would set a date also for medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sales to be zero emission starting in 2040 (pdf):

• Drayage trucks, last mile delivery, and government fleets by 2035;
• Refuse trucks, local buses, and utility fleets by 2040;
• And all trucks and buses where feasible by 2045.

BMW will move the electric Mini production out of its historical home in Oxford UK, to China. (link)

Lincoln (the luxury division of Ford), gave its 650 dealership stores a choice of either investing in putting up DC and L2 chargers ($500k-$900k investment depending on area) or being stuck with selling ICEs. To recap what we've covered previously in our reports (link):

• Ford also set conditions (including chargers) and those deciding against, will be left with only the ICE side of the business.
• Cadillac says EVs or Bye, offering buyouts.
• Buick also says EVs or Bye, offering buyouts.
• Chevrolet says it won't go for buyouts, instead hopes that the Buick and Cadillac dealers that take the payouts will end up selling exclusively Chevy vehicles.

Electrify America has now added battery energy storage systems to over 150 charging locations in the US, with the latest passing the MWh level in Baker, California: output of 1.5MW at 3 MWh storage, coupled with a 66kW solar canopy. (link)

Foxconn unveiled its Model B crossover and Model V pickup truck at an event in Taipei. The pickup will be produced in Taiwan, Thailand, and the US. Since Foxconn continues to have no plans to sell vehicles under its own brand, so there are rather 'reference designs' for potential clients.

So far we know that the client list includes:

• Fisker (the project PEAR) - they initially promised 250k/units per year starting in 2023 (link).
• Lordstown (Endurance), while Foxconn also bought its Ohio plant, makes the Endurance and invested into the company and jv. (link)
• IndiEV (One), the latest oddball of our industry we covered at length here: (link)
• Byton used to be a client too, but Foxconn terminated their plans once the company started to go under (link).

All these are to be made in the plant in Ohio that Foxconn bought from Lordstown. Foxconn has said they want to account for 5% of the global EV market within three years. While this seems like a bit of a stretch goal, I do expect Foxconn to work its way up the EV chain. Currently, it's scooping up the EV oddballs and we might see a few more incoming too. In X years, however...

Foxconn also has a battery play in the works, both in developing solid-state batteries and it is also building its first R&D and battery factory in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, which will dish out its first LFP cells in Q1 2024. (link)

PS! In the Pro Report tomorrow: Unveiling of GMC Sierra EV pickup truck, Rolls Royce Spectre, Mercedes-Benz EQE, Cadillac Celestiq, Jeep Avenger, and more. Jump in (here).

Terawatt Infrastructure will develop the first charging purpose-built centers for medium- and heavy-duty trucks along the I10 highway, stretching from Long Beach CA to El Paso, TX. (link)The facilities are said to be about 150 miles apart and near highway exits, so if my Maps skills still work we should be looking at about 6 of these hubs with the first go.

More details and the possibility for fleet operators to reserve capacity in the coming weeks. I'll be keeping a close eye on this space. Enabling fleets and especially heavier-duty fleets to go electric has a great impact. It's also capital intensive, although Terawatt should be set for a good start with its latest $1B funding round (link).

Trevor Milton, the founder and former CEO of Nikola Motors, was convicted on three of the four counts of fraud he was under trial for: two counts of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud. Milton said he "did nothing wrong" and was only "talking about a business plan". He now faces up to 20 years in prison. (link)

Opel announced the Rocks-e Design Challenge for non-professional design students and talents under 27 years of age. The winner gets its design brought to life as a one-off special. (link) 19 days left to enter at opeldesignhack.com

In case you've missed it, Rocks-e is the sister vehicle for the Citroen AMI.

Rivian has already fixed a "significant majority" of the more than 12k vehicles it recalled, most within the first 10 days (link).

IONITY says its QR codes on chargers may have been manipulated by fraudsters to lead to payment sites not associated with IONITY. (link)

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Chart of the week

I've been saying this for a while now.

The Tesla Model Y will be in the Top 3, if not at the very top, best-selling vehicle in the Universe next year. Of any fuel type. This should turn quite a few (million) heads toward EVs.

Colin McKerracher from BloombergNEF gives us a good overview of what the current standing would look like with last year's best-sellers (link):

I don't map out ICE sales so I can't give you context on how well the current combustion flock is doing, but from this, it does look like Model Y could crack the top 5 already this year. Which, by the way, is something that BNEF was able to predict already in January (link).

As a banana for scale, here's Tesla overall market share across the Universe, over time:

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Stuff I'm...

...watching

👀 The Polestar 3 we covered last week as it launched? We've now got some walkaround videos. Here's Jack from the Fully Charged Show (video), or Jonny with The Late Brake Show:

👀 Some production shots from Rivian's Normal plant (1min video), as they claim to be on track for producing 25k vehicles this year.

👀 This Mercedes EQE SUV video has the ever-sharp Mat Watson from carwow questioning why on Earth doesn't the EQE SUV have a frunk. The explanation is funny (and a bit sad too): (video).

👀 A deeper look into Sono Motors Sion with Carl from Munro Live, interviewing the COO Thomas Hausch next to the car. Really great questions and remarks from the interviewer here:

👀 I see more and more charging networks play a little with the looks of their chargers, utilizing the otherwise-blank space on them with decals.

Here are EVgo chargers that are decorated with the upcoming Black Adam movie. The  ⚡️ theme fits in nicely and the deal with Warner Bros includes a $5 coupon after completing a charging session. (link)

Back for the whole month of July, I noticed GRIDSERVE in the UK wrapped a bunch of its DC chargers in a 'happy birthday' gift wrapped theme and created a social campaign around it where you could win free 1,000 miles on the network. Considering how many pictures are added on Twitter under the game tag (link), the campaign went really well.

...reading.

📚 Some of the back story of Romeo Power and its founder Michael Patterson, up to its recent acquisition offer by Nikola (link).

📚 Battery Data Genome, a massive new research project led by Argonne National Lab, aims to build a set of standards for how the battery data is formatted (link, 19pp pdf):

"The primary roadblock to a battery-data-science renaissance is the requirement for large amounts of high-quality data, which are not available in the current fragmented ecosystem.

The proposed Battery Data Genome looks to broadly transform innovations and revolutionize their translation from research to societal impact."

📚 Lithium has to scale 20x to meet the demand in 2050, per BMI (link)

📚 Indian BEV sales overview. Thanks, David, for inviting me to collaborate on this one! (link)

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Tweet of the week

A thread, actually. (link) The Founder and CEO of Xiaomi, Lei Jun, took to Twitter to share his thoughts on the EV industry and his vision.

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The manufacturing threshold of EVs has been dramatically lowered compared to gasoline cars: 30,000 components are highly modular, and the cost of batteries has fallen by 80% in the past ten years (with at least 50% more room for cost reduction in the future).

The manufacturing threshold of EVs has been dramatically lowered compared to gasoline cars: 30,000 components are highly modular, and the cost of batteries has fallen by 80% in the past ten years (with at least 50% more room for cost reduction in the future).

I'm convinced that the world's top 5 brands will hold more than 80% of the market share when the EV industry reaches maturity. In other words, the only way for us to succeed is to be one of the top 5 and ship more than 10 million cars annually. The competition will be brutal.

Brutal indeed.

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See you next week.

Jaan

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