Summer 2023 Roundup (Part 2)
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Coming to the end of summer and it’s been a hot one around the world. A bird’s eye view of what’s been happening. ICYMI here’s part 1 covering June and July.
And here’s a photo of my friend Loki.
🇺🇸 $15.5B from the DOE
The Department of Energy has announced $15.5B to retrofit existing auto manufacturing facilities ($2B from the Inflation Reduction Act + $10B through the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program + $3.5B via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) to make the US a powerhouse for EV manufacturing and boosting jobs as we go through the green transition.
The DoE also posted a notice citing intentions to provide an additional $3.5B to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for EVs, the grid, and upstream raw materials with a key goal of “Enhancing national security by reducing the reliance of the United States on critical minerals, battery materials, components, and technologies from foreign entities of concern”.
Other news from the DoE includes a $398M loan guarantee for Eos building 3-12 hour zinc-based batteries for long-duration energy storage. Eos hopes to produce up to 8 GWh per year by 2026 in its Pennsylvania factory. Zinc is not one we’ve covered much on at Intercalation Station, but look out for it in an upcoming issue.
In other related news, Norway-based battery gigafactory Freyr announced their move to the US to set up shop citing better access to investors and funding. Steve Levine describes the move as “the most vivid demonstration yet of the IRA’s potency”.
One year on from the IRA, the DoE’s substantial financial actions signify a pivotal step toward making the US a dominant force and highlighting the importance of public funding.
🔋 Large companies making moves
CATL’s new battery
CATL launched their new Shenxing Superfast Charging LFP battery with the ability to charge 20-80% in 10 minutes. Production is expected this year in Germany and Hungary to be in vehicles by early 2024.
This brings them in line with a handful of startups claiming to be sub-10 minutes for 0-80% charge.
The main key technology improvements around their fast charging appear to be around their graphite including a “gradient distribution of the electrode's porous structure” with “high-porosity structure in the upper layer and a compacted structure in the lower layer of the electrode, ensuring both high-energy density and super-fast charging”. This is helpful in preventing dangerous dendrite growth in fast charging. Other techniques on their website to improve fast charging include high-porosity separators and isotropic graphite.
It's worth noting that this idea isn't novel - EnPower has done this for years. But it is cool to see this going into EVs in less than 12 months!
TATA: From Tea to Gigafactories
After the fall of Britishvolt, TATA Group — a huge Indian conglomerate that owns 30 companies like Jaguar Land Rover for EVs and TATA Coffee for delicious tea and coffee, and many more — is taking a chance on the UK to become a heavyweight in the battery/EV market. TATA announced plans to set up shop in a £4b factory in Somerset, promising 40 GWh and 4000+ new jobs by 2026. This would be the biggest compared to other announced battery gigafactory plans in the UK, including:
Envision AESC’s 35 GWh in Sunderland by 2030
AMTE Power’s 10 GWh in Thurso
Britishvolt’s 38 GWh in Blyth (no longer active)
It's a bonus for the UK, which has struggled to keep pace with other nations in the gigafactory game. We wanted to give a shoutout to our friend Charlie at Ratel Consulting for compiling this interactive battery factory map: “We wanted to create a free resource for the community that was both needed and can evolve with user input”.
Tesla tweaking their charging?
Recurrent released a report on battery degradation in Tesla electric cars using data from 12,500 vehicles. Tesla claims its batteries only lose about 12% of capacity after 200,000 miles.
They looked at two groups: one group that uses fast charging (>90% of the time) and another group that rarely uses it (<10% of the time), and they found “no statistically significant difference in range degradation”.
This is interesting, but we have so many questions! This special edition issue from Reuters discusses Tesla’s secret team to suppress driving range complaints.
While the article discusses practices done over 10 years ago, it’s not that uncommon for EV OEMs to slightly exaggerate numbers by putting an asterisk for “assume perfect weather, temperature, road conditions, and at steady speed”. It’s also a little strange to show “battery age (days)” on the x-axis since this causes confusion between actual cycles and the number of days. We’d be curious to see the raw data for the 12,500 vehicles, specifically how they were charging, how they were driving, and where those cars were geographically.
We were also interested to see that Tesla acquired German-based wireless charging startup Wiferion for $76 million a few weeks ago. Wiferion specializes in charging for industrial robots, automated machinery you might see in a warehouse, rather than electric vehicles. It’s unannounced whether Tesla’s strategy is for their manufacturing operations vs. their EVs. We did a deeper dive into other companies working on wireless charging.
Nexeon x Panasonic
After 16 years since their spinout from Imperial College London (yes, that’s how long it can take) Nexeon has inked an agreement with Panasonic to supply silicon anode powders to Panasonic’s new Kansas $4b plant! We touched on Nexeon’s anode tech back in 2021 (maybe a bit outdated).
BTW. Have you heard about the LG Chem x Plug and Play Startup Challenge?
Innovation challenge run by Plug and Play Tech Center and LG Chem to give startups, R&D groups, and SMEs the opportunity to scale up their solutions and join LG Chem as R&D partners on their journey towards a more sustainable future.
Challenge Topics:
♻️ Circular & Recycle: Circular Naphtha, Mechanical Recycling;
🔋 Sustainable materials: New materials / Technologies for EV and Battery, High-efficiency Energy Systems, Bio-based Materials;
🧪 Functional Materials: Special Additives & Compatibilizer, 3D printing, Eco Friendly Materials.
Winners get access to LG Chem’s global network, funding, and unparalleled opportunities for collaboration with experts to scale up or PoC their technology.
Apply now: https://lnkd.in/eRGqJX68 (Deadline: 20th October 2023)
💸 Notable fundraising (+ bankruptcies)
🏭 Verkor raised over €2b (€850m Series C led by Macquarie Asset Management + €600m debt + €650m grant) to construct their first factory in Dunkirk. 🤯
🏭 Northvolt raised a $1.2b convertible note from Blackrock et al. They will continue to build production to prepare supplying batteries to Europe. They currently operate a factory in Sweden and will build factories in Germany and North America. 🤯
🏭 Redwood Materials raised a $1b Series D co-led by Goldman Sachs and Capricorn to accelerate battery recycling in the US. CEO JB Straubel aims to start production in Nevada this year and build a second factory in South Carolina. Redwood is now worth over $5 billion. 🤯
🏭 Ascend Elements raised $542m to fund the Apex 1 facility in Kentucky to manufacture sustainable cathode precursor (pCAM) and cathode active material (CAM) from recycled batteries.
🚁 Archer Aviation raised $215m from industry aviation juggernauts Boeing and United Airlines, along with Stellantis (who announced their partnership to build eVTOLs with Archer earlier this year).
🔋 Lyten raised a $200m Series B to scale up and deliver lithium-sulfur batteries in 2024.
🚌 Another one bites the dust… Proterra goes bust. This comes after a few others screeched to a halt this summer including Nikola, Lordstown, and Arrival. The Energy Gang podcast had a little section where they covered Proterra (listen from 21:50). TDLR; EV manufacturing is a super high-capital intensive low-margin business.
🏭 Chinese manufacturer SVOLT is investing around $30m and setting up battery cell and pack manufacturing in Thailand. In a similar light to the $15.5B US DoE initiative, SVOLT will be retrofitting an existing plant and hopes to produce up to 60,000 packs per year.
🚗 VinFast (Vietnamese EV manufacturer) went public in the US stock market via SPAC.
🚀 Interesting startup movements
🔋 The expiration of LFP battery patents in 2022 has democratized access to the tech, leading to a surge in production. Industry giants like CATL have moved in (e.g. the LFP fast charging battery announcement above), as well as startups where companies including Mitra Chem (raised a Series B led by GM Ventures for AI-enabled LFP and LMFP) and American Battery Factory (raised a Series A to set up a battery gigafactory in Arizona for first cell delivery in 18 months). India-based Reliance is also investing in LFP production by 2026. Reliance also recently acquired Na-ion battery company Faradion.
LFP is set to become more geographically diverse, allowing for local manufacturing to be able to use domestically produced LFP batteries.
🧱 Energy Vault (the company known for lifting heavy concrete blocks up and down which some people are skeptical of) has built their first gravity storage system near Shanghai. But now it looks like they’re pivoting into electrochemical batteries with an offtake agreement of 7 GWh from Kore Power.
🔋 EU Innovation Fund announced their funding as part of their €3.6B award to 41 projects. Norway-based graphite producer Vianode won €90m for a large-scale plant to scale up synthetic graphite production. Freyr was also a recipient of a €90m award in the same scheme for their Giga Arctic gigafactory along with Stora Enso (bio-based anode materials) and BASF (for a battery recycling plant in Spain).
🏷️ Meanwhile, flexible batteries had a moment this summer! Imprint Energy was acquired by CCL Design, developing ultrathin batteries for IoT devices, sensors, wearables, and more specifically to CCL Design, smart labels.
🔬 Research world
A Guide to Making Highly Reproducible Li-Ion Single-Layer Pouch Cells for Academic Researchers. We can now make reproducible results to compare apples to apples between groups!
Multiscale dynamics of charging and plating in graphite electrodes coupling operando microscopy and phase-field modelling. How graphite changes during lithiation + some beautiful pictures.
From material properties to device metrics: a data-driven guide to battery design. A dive into how material properties, cell design decisions, and manufacturing costs influence and relate to performance metrics (energy, power, cost, lifetime, safety).
🎧 What else we’re reading and listening to
LFP cell costs fell about 10.8% MoM from July to August. Want to know more about prices? Sign up for our Battery Component Price Report 😊
A good background to batteries with Harry Dempsey, Peter Campbell, and Christian Davies from the Financial Times.
Techcrunch on tracking US EV battery manufacturing construction 1 year after the IRA was signed.
Very interesting visualization of gross margins in different parts of the battery value chain (@ShanuMathew93)
Monetizing Energy Storage - a FREE book by Oliver Schmidt and Iain Staffell.
A super interesting library of cells and respective parameters we found somewhere … not sure who the creator is!
Benchmark: Battery demand for manganese set to increase 8-fold this decade
Minviro whitepaper: the “future landscape of global LFP production from an environmental sustainability and cost perspective”.
Bloomberg: China Reaches Peak Gasoline in Milestone for Electric Vehicles… “Chinese oil giant Sinopec made a surprise announcement that mostly flew under the radar. It’s now expecting gasoline demand in China to peak this year, two years earlier than its previous outlooks.”
🌞 Thanks for reading!
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