CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine - Issue 56 July/Aug 2021

ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE

ISSUE 56 | JULY/AUGUST 2021 | CHARGEDEVS.COM

THE LEGENDARY SUV BRAND’S FIRST PLUG-IN HYBRID

JEEP 2021

p. 48

Wrangler 4xe

A CLOSER LOOK AT HEAT PUMPS IN EVS

ELECTROEXTRACTION BATTERY RECYCLING TECHNOLOGY

SOLVING ENERGY CAPACITY NEEDS FOR FLEET CHARGING

HOW FORMULA E LEADS TO PRACTICAL EV ADVANCES

p. 26

p. 32

p. 68

p. 74

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— Getting faster means never slowing down High power that's easy to use and built for business The electric vehicle market is accelerating faster every day. Charging services will also need to be faster, more convenient, and always ready for EV drivers, today and tomorrow. Charging operators must also maximize assets while building their brand and a business. ABB's Terra HP delivers on that high performance promise – up to 350 kW with dynamic power sharing functionality – in a safe, reliable, and intelligently connected system. With more than a decade of experience pioneering charging technology, ABB is your e-mobility partner of choice. abb.com/evcharging

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THE TECH How does a heat pump work?

CONTENTS

26

32

26

Why heat pumps are dominating EV HVAC systems

32

Electroextraction

Nth Cycle says its new filtering methods will significantly reduce transportation costs for Li-ion battery recycling

current events 12

Mercedes-Benz acquires motor technology firm YASA Phillips 66 makes strategic investment in battery material supplier Novonix

13 14

Umicore buys a stake in solid-state battery developer Solid Power Toyocolor to supply carbon nanotube dispersions to SK Innovation Tesla signs deal with BHP to secure nickel for battery cells

16

Five companies produce almost all EV battery cells for the US market Li-Cycle and Univar to provide waste management for Li-ion production

16

GKN Automotive accelerates development of next-gen 800 V eDrive tech

18 19 20

Albemarle to open Battery Materials Innovation Center in North Carolina Switched reluctance motor-maker Enedym secures $15 million in financing Niron Magnetics raises $21 million to commercialize rare earth-free magnets Proterra and LG Energy Solution sign long-term battery cell supply agreement New paper examines environmental impact of brine-based lithium extraction

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21 22 23 24

CATL’s new sodium-ion battery can be mixed and matched with lithium-ion Faraday Institution develops ultrasonic recycling method UCAP Power acquires ultracapacitor-related assets from Maxwell Technologies LG Chem to invest $5.3 billion in battery materials by 2025

8/29/21 1:30 PM

THE VEHICLES CONTENTS

48 2021 Jeep Wrangler 4xe

The plug-in hybrid version of the Jeep Wrangler offers useful all-electric range and great electric torque—if drivers plug it in. Do they?

48

current events 38

Tesla signs new long-term battery cell supply agreement with CATL

41

Moscow will have 1,000 electric buses by the end of 2021

40

NYC’s new school bus contract includes electric bus pilot Volvo Penta starts producing powertrain for Rosenbauer’s electric fire truck

41 42

Proterra to supply battery tech to ROUSH CleanTech for Ford F-650 EV Merchants Fleet introduces turnkey fleet electrification adoption tool Recurrent’s battery guides analyze range of pre-owned EVs

43 44

Nissan to build a 35 GWh battery plant and produce a new EV in UK Lilium secures order from Brazilian airline for 220 electric jets

45

Jet It and JetClub order eFlyer 800 electric planes from Bye Aerospace

45 46 47

Heart Aerospace secures $35 million for electric planes Lightning eMotors to deploy up to 7,500 electric shuttle buses Volvo C40 Recharge EV goes on sale in the US

IDENTIFICATION STATEMENT CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine (ISSN: 24742341) July/August 2021, Issue #56 is published bi-monthly by Electric Vehicles Magazine LLC, 2260 5th Ave S, STE 10, Saint Petersburg, FL 33712-1259. Periodicals Postage Paid at Saint Petersburg, FL and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine, Electric Vehicles Magazine LLC at 2260 5th Ave S, STE 10, Saint Petersburg, FL 33712-1259.

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE CONTENTS

68 TeraWatt

68

Infrastructure

Addressing the massive energy capacity needs of EV fleet charging depots

74 ABB charges into the

future with Formula E

74

current events 62

Elon Musk offers more details about the opening of Tesla’s Superchargers ChargePoint to acquire has·to·be for €250 million

63

Denver company teams with Fermata Energy for V2B charging pilot VW Group CEO calls out shortcomings of IONITY charging network

64

ORNL’s modeling tool help select best sites for highway charging stations

62

In-Charge Energy to support GM’s new Ultium Charge 360 fleet charging

65

Rivian to install charging stations at all 56 Tennessee state parks Southern California Edison aims to help site hosts install 38,000 EV chargers

66

Gridserve plans 50 charging hubs in UK, with 350 kW chargers ABB delivers chargers for Gridserve Electric Highway charging network

67

Shell to install 800 chargers at Waitrose UK supermarkets Urgently to use SparkCharge’s on-demand fast charging solution

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THERMAL STABILITY FOR EXCEPTIONAL BATTERY PERFORMANCE High-performance alloys for EV charging and battery management • L ow T C R an d hi gh th er mal s t ab il i t y ele c tr ic al r e sis t an c e al loy s • Hi gh p er m eab il i t y an d high C ur ie temp er at ur e nickel al loy s • E xa c tin g vo lt a g e an d cur r ent r e gul atio n

Advance your EV potential CarpenterElectrification.com

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Publisher Christian Ruoff

Contributing Writers Jeffrey Jenkins Charles Morris Christian Ruoff Tom Spendlove John Voelcker

Associate Publisher Laurel Zimmer Senior Editor Charles Morris Account Executives Jeremy Ewald

For Letters to the Editor, Article Submissions, & Advertising Inquiries Contact: Info@ChargedEVs.com

Contributing Photographers Nicolas Raymond Christian Ruoff

Technology Editor Jeffrey Jenkins Cover Image Courtesy of Stellantis Graphic Designers Deon Rexroat Kelly Quigley Tomislav Vrdoljak

Special Thanks to Kelly Ruoff Sebastien Bourgeois

ETHICS STATEMENT AND COVERAGE POLICY AS THE LEADING EV INDUSTRY PUBLICATION, CHARGED ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE OFTEN COVERS, AND ACCEPTS CONTRIBUTIONS FROM, COMPANIES THAT ADVERTISE IN OUR MEDIA PORTFOLIO. HOWEVER, THE CONTENT WE CHOOSE TO PUBLISH PASSES ONLY TWO TESTS: (1) TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE THE INFORMATION IS ACCURATE, AND (2) IT MEETS THE INTERESTS OF OUR READERSHIP. WE DO NOT ACCEPT PAYMENT FOR EDITORIAL CONTENT, AND THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED BY OUR EDITORS AND WRITERS ARE IN NO WAY AFFECTED BY A COMPANY’S PAST, CURRENT, OR POTENTIAL ADVERTISEMENTS. FURTHERMORE, WE OFTEN ACCEPT ARTICLES AUTHORED BY “INDUSTRY INSIDERS,” IN WHICH CASE THE AUTHOR’S CURRENT EMPLOYMENT, OR RELATIONSHIP TO THE EV INDUSTRY, IS CLEARLY CITED. IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ANY OPINION EXPRESSED IN THE CHARGED MEDIA PORTFOLIO AND/OR WISH TO WRITE ABOUT YOUR PARTICULAR VIEW OF THE INDUSTRY, PLEASE CONTACT US AT CONTENT@CHARGEDEVS. COM. REPRINTING IN WHOLE OR PART IS FORBIDDEN EXPECT BY PERMISSION OF CHARGED ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE.

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Publisher’s Note Timid governments versus the tide of technology

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Government efforts to promote EVs continue to be inefficient, unfocused, and downright timid. In the US, the bipartisan infrastructure bill that was making its way through Congress as we went to press contains only a few tidbits for electrification. There’s $7.5 billion for public charging and $7.5 billion for electric school buses, which are welcome, but only a down-payment on the investment that will be needed. Other priorities, such as a revamping of the federal EV tax credit and the electrification of the government fleet, remain vague proposals.

The bill also contains a few measures that can only be called giveaways to the fossil fuel industry. One is a proposal to promote the production of blue hydrogen, made from natural gas or coal. A recent study published in the journal Energy Science & Engineering found that GHG emissions from such hydrogen may be 20% higher than emissions from burning coal, and 60% more than burning diesel.

Fossil interests are pushing hydrogen hard, and policymakers are listening.

The UK and German governments have also announced major investments in hydrogen projects whose benefits are highly suspect. Hydrogen may have a constructive role to play fueling certain industrial processes, commercial vehicles, and perhaps oceangoing ships and long-haul aircraft, but the real impetus behind the proposed “hydrogen economy” is to find a way to keep burning oil and gas. The big picture that’s emerging is that the world’s policymakers will encourage a long, gradual transition to clean energy and transportation, and that protecting oil companies’ short-term interests will be a priority.

Legacy automakers are acting on similarly long timelines—most are moving in the right direction, but their plans envision a slow and orderly transition that will take decades.

Ready for the good news? Technology is moving so fast that the actions of governments, and the entrenched interests of the legacy automakers, are becoming less important every day. Tesla has been moving full speed ahead for several years now, and it’s forcing the old guard to move in the right direction. The Big Three seem to think they’ll still be getting 50-60% of their sales from gas burners a decade from now. But with the rise of great EV options, the resale value of those dinosaurs on wheels could be comparable to that of obsolete computers—if that happens, who’s going to buy them? Hopefully the legacy brands will figure this out and accelerate plans to offer a wide range of compelling EVs as a strategy to steal market share.

Things are moving fast in the commercial vehicle realm. As regular Charged readers know, fleet electrification is red-hot. Fleet operators obsess about cost per mile, and the costs of operating EVs are now attractive even without government subsidies. An ecosystem of charging management and other key services is emerging, making it much easier for fleets to electrify.

If, as seems likely, V2G becomes widespread within the next couple of years, the case for electrification will become absolutely irresistible.

For better or for worse, government policy was an important driver of EV adoption in the early days. Now, for better, it’s technology that’s driving the electric bus.

Christian Ruoff | Publisher EVs are here. Try to keep up.

8/29/21 10:09 PM

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© 2020 Chroma Systems Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.

8/29/21 2:01 PM

Image courtesy of YASA

THE TECH

Mercedes-Benz acquires motor technology firm YASA Mercedes-Benz has announced the acquisition of YASA, a manufacturer of electric drive technology. YASA will operate as a subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz, but will continue to operate from its headquarters in Oxford, England. YASA will provide electric motors for Mercedes-Benz’s AMG.EA electric platform, while continuing to supply existing automotive supercar customers.

YASA says its proprietary axial-flux electric motor delivers the greatest efficiencies and highest power densities in its class, with the smallest possible size and weight.

“Working with Mercedes-Benz since 2019, it was always clear that we shared the same commitment to engineering excellence, innovation and reshaping mobility for the electric age,” said YASA CEO Chris Harris.”

“YASA’s impressive axial-flux technology allows future fully electric Mercedes-AMG performance cars to stay a step ahead of the competition,” said Philipp Schiemer, CEO of Mercedes-AMG. “Thanks to electric motors with higher power density and continuous torque delivery we will redefine the future of driving performance.”

Oil giant Phillips 66 makes strategic investment in battery material supplier Novonix Multinational oil giants are beginning to invest in companies in several different sectors of the EV industry. Phillips 66 has announced plans to acquire a 16% stake in Novonix, a supplier of materials, equipment and services for the battery industry. Phillips 66 will reportedly pay a total purchase price of $150 million, and will nominate one director to Novonix’s board.

Brisbane, Australia-based Novonix was spun out of Dr. Jeff Dahn’s famed battery lab at Dalhousie University, and now has operations in the US and Canada, and sales in 14 countries. The company manufactures high-precision coulometry cyclers, and provides battery performance testing, as well as prototyping, development and demonstration services.

Phillips 66 manufactures specialty coke, a key precursor in the production of lithium-ion batteries. Novonix produces synthetic graphite, and processes specialty coke to make high-performance anode materials. The companies say the investment will support the development of a domestic supply chain for batteries for the EV and energy storage markets.

Novonix’s anode materials business is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where it is increasing capacity to produce 10,000 metric tons per year of synthetic graphite by 2023. The new investment will support a capacity expansion of an additional 30,000 metric tons per year, which is expected to be completed by 2025.

“This strategic investment enables Phillips 66 to directly support the development of the US battery supply chain,” said Greg Garland, Chairman and CEO of Phillips 66. “It advances our commitment to pursue lower-carbon solutions while leveraging our leadership position and expertise in the specialty coke market and supporting Novonix’s emerging position in US-based anode production.”

“Phillips 66’s investment will provide us with the capital needed to support growth and ongoing R&D as we continue to scale our synthetic graphite production and develop new technologies for higher-performance energy storage applications,” said Novonix CEO and co-founder Chris Burns.

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Image courtesy of Solid Power

Umicore buys a stake in solidstate battery developer Solid Power Umicore has announced that it holds a stake in solid-state battery specialist Solid Power, following Solid Power’s announcement of its intent to become a publicly listed company. Umicore built its stake through earlier Series A and B investment rounds.

Solid Power also counts Ford, BMW, Hyundai and Samsung among its investors. The company claims that its all-solid-state batteries can deliver a 50-to-75% increase in energy density compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries.

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THE TECH

Toyocolor to supply carbon nanotube dispersions to SK Innovation Japanese ink and materials manufacturer Toyocolor has been tapped to supply its Lioaccum series of conductive carbon nanotube (CNT) dispersions to the North American and European operations of battery-maker SK Innovation.

Lioaccum dispersions are used as a conductive additive in Li-ion cathodes to help expand battery capacity.

These batteries will be installed in EVs manufactured by the Volkswagen Group and Ford.

Toyocolor researchers in Japan successfully achieved high conductivity levels by replacing carbon black in the battery cathode with a small amount of Lioaccum CNT dispersions as the conductive additive.

At present, Toyocolor is providing SK Innovation with Lioaccum dispersions produced by its sister company LioChem in Conyers, Georgia. Parent company Toyo Ink plans to invest approximately 10 billion yen to strengthen its global battery dispersions production network between now and 2026. The group hopes to develop this line into a core business with annual sales of 20 billion yen.

Contrary to popular belief, the most important mineral in EV batteries may not be lithium, but nickel.

According to the Nickel Institute, the metal, which gives cells higher energy density and greater storage capacity, is an essential component for Li-ion battery cathodes—in fact, it’s the most important metal by mass in the cathodes used in EVs. Elon Musk has often said that Tesla’s production of vehicles is constrained by its supply of battery cells, and in 2020 he made a plea to the world’s mining companies: I gotta have more nickel! (or words to that effect).

Earlier this year, Tesla proposed to invest in a battery project in Indonesia, which has a lot of nickel (and, as it happens, a lot of deforestation and other problems associated with supplying raw materials to the rich world).

Now Tesla has signed a deal with BHP, the world’s largest nickel miner, in order to secure supplies of nickel—and the two companies claim that this nickel will be produced in as sustainable a manner as possible.

“BHP will supply Tesla Inc. with nickel from its Nickel West asset in Western Australia, one of the most sustainable and lowest carbon emission nickel producers in the world,” said BHP in a press release.

“Demand for nickel in batteries is estimated to grow by over 500 percent over the next decade, in large part to support the world’s rising demand for electric vehicles,” said BHP Chief Commercial Officer Vandita Pant. “We are delighted to collaborate with [Tesla] on ways to make the battery supply chain more sustainable through our shared focus on technology and innovation.”

According to BHP, sustainability measures will include: “a focus on end-to-end raw material traceability using blockchain; technical exchange for battery raw materials production; and promotion of the importance of sustainability in the resources sector, including identifying partners who are most aligned with BHP and Tesla Inc.’s principles and battery value chains.”

Image courtesy of BHP

Tesla signs deal with BHP to secure nickel for battery cells

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To Be Reliable PowerStrip 9580

High-End Cut & Strip Machine for Efficient and Precise Wire Processing The PowerStrip 9580 was designed with a focus on high-precision processing, excellent production output and a high degree of production flexibility to cover a wide range of applications. High Voltage cables used in EV applications can be measured, cut and stripped in one automated operation. All processing and functional modules can be retrofitted at a later date, making it a futureproof investment.

High-precision processing of a wide range of wire processing applications Modular, flexible and retrofittable machine concept Innovative machine control for high productivity and process reliability Short changeover times and intuitive machine operation Wire Solutions for a Connected World

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Five companies produce almost all EV battery cells for the US market Five companies (AESC, LG Chem, Panasonic, Samsung and SK Innovation) produced almost all the battery cells used in plug-in vehicles for the US market over the past decade. Total capacity produced was 75,933 MWh. Panasonic supplied 74% of all the cells, and a majority of these were installed in Tesla battery packs.

A small percentage of the Panasonic battery cells went into vehicles from Ford, Toyota and Honda. LG Chem’s battery cells and packs primarily went into vehicles produced by Chevrolet, and smaller amounts went into Audi, Hyundai and other vehicles. AESC was the only cell manufacturer that supplied a single vehicle make— all its cells and battery packs went into Nissan vehicles.

Li-Cycle and Univar to provide waste management for Li-ion battery production Li-Cycle has partnered with Univar Solutions to provide waste management solutions for lithium-ion batteries.

Univar will collect, sort and divert waste at Li-Cycle facilities.

Battery recycler Li-Cycle uses its proprietary Spoke & Hub technology to achieve a high material recovery rate and to produce new battery materials from recycled batteries. Univar Solutions’ OnSite Services team currently serves the automotive, aerospace and consumer electronics sectors.

“This partnership with Univar Solutions will enable us to deliver additional value for both new and existing customers by providing them with total waste management solutions,” said Ajay Kochhar, CEO of Li-Cycle.

Image courtesy of GKN Automotive

THE TECH

GKN Automotive accelerates development of next-gen 800 V eDrive technologies GKN Automotive, a maker of electric driveline technology, is accelerating its development of next-generation eDrive technologies. These future 800 V systems are already at advanced stages of development—GKN Automotive is testing them in real-world conditions, and working with global OEMs to prepare the systems for production.

GKN says its future eDrive technologies promise faster charging times and superior performance, as well as greater systems efficiencies, which could enable increased driving range and/or reductions in vehicle cost, complexity and weight.

GKN’s work with Formula E as a partner to Jaguar Racing is contributing to its rapid development of next-generation eDrive systems. “Constant testing to improve efficiency, performance and extending the range of batteries in the ultra-competitive world of electric motorsport creates a direct link from race to road,” says GKN. “Cutting-edge developments currently being developed for Jaguar Racing will likely be available on near-future road cars in just three years.”

“These high-tech 800 V systems will create faster-charging cars with better battery range, improved driving performance and even greater efficiencies,” said GKN Automotive CEO Liam Butterworth. “GKN Automotive intends to continue delivering an increasingly electrified future.”

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Albemarle to open Battery Materials Innovation Center in North Carolina Albemarle Corporation has announced the opening of its new Battery Materials Innovation Center (BMIC), located at the company’s Kings Mountain, North Carolina site. The BMIC is expected to be fully operational in July 2021, and will support Albemarle’s lithium hydroxide, lithium carbonate and advanced energy storage materials growth platforms. It has been equipped to enable synthesis of new materials, material properties characterization and analysis, material scale-up capabilities, and material integration into battery cells for performance testing.

The facility includes a dry room with a multi-layer pouch cell line that can create cell-phone-size batteries to demonstrate critical aspects of battery performance and accelerate transition of new products to customers. The lab will also develop lithium metal anode technologies that will increase battery energy density by using lithium metal rolling to produce lithium foils of 20 microns or thinner. The team plans to demonstrate lithium foils as thin as 3 to 5 microns using technologies in development.

“The completion of the Battery Materials Innovation Center provides us with realistic and relevant cell building capabilities to generate meaningful data for next-gen battery material design,” said Dr. Glen Merfeld, Albemarle Lithium’s Chief Technology Officer.

“With this new resource, we will be equipped to optimize our lithium materials for a drop-in solution for customers that will help them deliver high-performing cost-effective batteries for the rapidly growing electric vehicle market.”

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8/29/21 10:11 PM

Enedym, a developer of electrified powertrains, has secured $15 million in new financing from an international group of investors. The company will use the new investment to accelerate its motor development and increase its footprint in the electric motor market, focusing on OEMs in the automotive, micromobility, wind farm and industrial markets.

Enedym builds switched reluctance motors (SRMs), which require no rare earth permanent magnets. According to the company, its SRMs are potentially as much as 40% less expensive than competing designs. They also feature high efficiency at high speeds, fault-tolerant operation, and the ability to operate in harsh environments and at high temperatures. SRMs have traditionally faced

Image courtesy of Enedym

Switched reluctance motormaker Enedym secures $15 million in new financing round

challenges in the areas of acoustic noise, torque ripples and power density, but Enedym claims to have addressed these problems.

“Having the financial and strategic support of these sophisticated investors both validates our market opportunity and strengthens our momentum as a company,” said Dr. Ali Emadi, founder and CEO of Enedym. “This investment will help us ramp up our operations and grow our team.”

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2021-08-17 13:52:34 8/29/21 2:14 PM

Niron Magnetics raises $21.3 million to commercialize rare earth-free magnets Niron Magnetics has raised $21.3 million in new financing from the Volvo Cars Tech Fund and Volta Energy Technologies to build a pilot production facility in Minnesota for its Clean Earth Magnet technology that eliminates the need for rare earth minerals in magnets, replacing them with iron and nitrogen. Existing investors include Anzu Partners and the University of Minnesota.

Niron says its production process is less environmentally damaging than alternatives, and that its magnets are less expensive and more sustainable.

The first generation of Niron’s Clean Earth Magnet will offer a magnetic field strength of approximately 0.9 tesla.

The second-generation magnet will offer a magnetic field strength of 1.5 tesla, and will address higher-torque-density applications and high operating temperatures.

Proterra and LG Energy Solution sign long-term battery cell supply agreement Proterra has formed a new agreement with LG Energy Solution to provide a long-term supply of cylindrical battery cells, to be manufactured at a new LG plant in the US. LG will deliver cells to Proterra’s factories for the manufacture of the company’s commercial EV battery systems. Proterra hasn’t released any specific numbers, saying only that it will commit “a low nine-figure dollar sum” to secure “multiple gigawatt-hours of dedicated US-manufactured battery cell capacity on an annual basis.”

Proterra and LG have also extended their existing battery cell supply agreement through 2024. Proterra says it will have a stable supply of LG battery cells through 2028.

Image courtesy of ANL

THE TECH

New paper examines environmental impact of brine-based lithium extraction A new paper from Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) analyzes the process of extracting lithium from brine.

In “Energy, Greenhouse Gas, and Water Life Cycle Analysis of Lithium Carbonate and Lithium Hydroxide Monohydrate from Brine and Ore Resources and Their Use in Lithium Ion Battery Cathodes and Lithium Ion Batteries,” published in the journal Resources, Conservation & Recycling, the researchers explain how they modeled brine-based lithium extracted from the Salar de Atacama, a large salt flat in northern Chile.

The lithium is naturally dried in large ponds to evaporate the water, concentrate the lithium and remove impurities. Materials and energy are later added to produce lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide. These two end products are shipped worldwide to battery cathode producers that process them into a variety of battery materials.

The formal analysis used Argonne’s open-source modeling tool, GREET (Greenhouse gases Regulated Emissions and Energy in Technologies), and incorporated detailed data from the Chilean firm SQM. The researchers augmented their data by modeling ore-based lithium extracted from spodumene ore in Western Australia.

“The results show that concentrated lithium brine and its related end products can vary significantly in energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, sulfur dioxide emissions and water consumption, depending upon the resource allocation method used,” Jarod Kelly from Argonne explained.

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CATL’s new sodium-ion battery can be mixed and matched with lithium-ion in the same system Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) unveiled its newly-developed sodium-ion battery at a recent launch event, together with its AB battery pack solution, which enables the integration of sodium-ion cells and lithium-ion cells into one pack.

The sodium-ion battery works on a similar principle to the lithium-ion battery, shuttling sodium ions between the cathode and anode. However, compared with lithium ions, sodium ions have a larger volume and higher requirements regarding structural stability and the kinetic properties of materials. This has become a bottleneck for the industrialization of sodium-ion batteries.

CATL has been researching sodium-ion battery electrode materials for many years. For cathode materials, CATL has applied Prussian white material with a higher specific capacity, and redesigned the bulk structure of the material by rearranging the electrons, which solved the problem of rapid capacity fading upon material cycling. In terms of anode materials, CATL has developed a hard carbon material that features a unique porous structure, which enables the abundant storage and fast movement of sodium ions, and also an outstanding cycle performance.

CATL says its sodium-ion battery cell can achieve specific energy of up to 160 Wh/kg, and the battery can charge to 80% SOC in 15 minutes at room temperature. In a low-temperature environment of -20° C, the sodium-ion battery has a capacity retention rate of more than 90%, and its system integration efficiency can reach more than 80%.

CATL’s AB battery system solution allows designers to mix and match sodium-ion and lithium-ion batteries, and integrate them into one battery system, controlling the different systems through a BMS algorithm. The system can compensate for the current energy-density shortage of the sodium-ion battery, and also expand its advantages of high power and performance in low temperatures.

CATL says that sodium-ion battery manufacturing is perfectly compatible with lithium-ion battery production equipment and processes, and that production lines can be rapidly switched to achieve a high production capacity.

CATL has started its industrial deployment of sodium-ion batteries, and plans to form a basic industrial chain by 2023.

“It is interesting to see CATL develop an integrated battery management system to accommodate lithium-ion and sodium-ion battery cells under the same battery management system and boost the total energy density of the battery cell,” said Wood Mackenzie Senior Analyst Le Xu. “Sodium-ion batteries could potentially solve cost challenges faced by Chinese renewables developers, bringing energy storage cost down to a new level.”

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WE ENABLE E-MOBILITY

Faraday Institution develops ultrasonic recycling method Faraday Institution researchers working on the recycling of lithium-ion batteries at the Universities of Leicester and Birmingham have developed a new method to recover materials from end-of-life EV batteries. The new process uses ultrasonic waves to separate valuable material from the electrodes. The researchers say it delivers a higher purity of recovered materials compared to current separation methods.

The team developed an ultrasonic delamination technique that blasts the active materials from the electrodes, leaving virgin aluminum or copper. This process proved highly effective in removing graphite and lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxides (NMC). Materials recovered using the technique were found to have higher purity than those recovered using conventional recycling approaches, and are potentially easier to use in new electrode manufacture. The approach adapts technology in widespread use in the food preparation industry.

Current delamination recycling techniques use concentrated acids in a batch immersion process. The new ultrasonic technique is a continuous-feed process that uses water or dilute acids as the solvent, so the technique is greener and less expensive to operate. It can delaminate 100 times more electrode material in a given time and volume than existing batch delamination techniques. The research team has tested the technology on the four most common battery types, and find that it performs with the same efficiency in each case.

Current recycling methods for lithium-ion battery recycling typically feed end-of-life batteries into a shredder or high-temperature reactor, and use a complex set of physical and chemical processes to produce usable materials streams of the lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper they contain.

Such pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical recycling routes are energy-intensive and inefficient.

The disassembly of lithium-ion batteries has been shown to recover a high yield (around 80% of the original material) in a purer state than was possible using shredded material.

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THE TECH

UCAP Power, a San Diego-based developer of ultracapacitor-based power solutions, has purchased the Korean-based ultracapacitor business of Maxwell Technologies, along with other related assets, including the Maxwell brand.

Maxwell Technologies is probably best known for being acquired by Tesla in 2019, which many believed had less to do with its pioneering work with supercapacitors (aka ultracapacitors) than with its “dry electrode” technology—a far simpler way to make the anodes and cathodes that form a battery cell.

Some of UCAP Power’s execs previously held positions in Maxwell Technologies’ leadership and product teams.

With the addition of the Maxwell ultracapacitor-related assets, which include system patents and products, UCAP Power plans to build upon its foundation in the energy storage market. The company recently launched a battery replacement solution called POWERBLoK, which incorporates integrated charging and control to offer a scalable, long-life, safe and sustainable alternative to lead-acid batteries.

“We’re thrilled to combine Maxwell Technologies Korea’s ultracapacitor manufacturing capabilities and one of the largest patent and product portfolios in the industry with the growing family of products developed by UCAP Power,” said Gordon Schenk, CEO of UCAP Power. “This combination creates a clear market leader in the wind turbine, reserve power, automotive and microgrid application markets.”

Meanwhile, UCAP has announced the close of a special-purpose venture round of funding led by Grantchester C Change.

“Grantchester C Change is the perfect partner for UCAP Power given their broad global reach in the Energy sector and their talented base of operating partners,” said Gordon Schenk.

“We believe that UCAP Power is ideally positioned for significant and rapid growth in support of the global transition to electrified vehicles for both commercial and consumer use,” said Liz Griggs, Managing Partner and CEO of Grantchester C Change.

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Image courtesy of Maxwell Technologies

UCAP Power acquires ultracapacitorrelated assets from Maxwell Technologies

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THE TECH

LG Chem to invest $5.3 billion in battery materials by 2025, aims to rule anode market LG Chem plans to invest 6 trillion South Korean won ($5.3 billion) in battery materials by 2025, including efforts in anode materials, separation membranes, cathode binders, radiant adhesives and carbon nanotubes.

LG Chem’s goal is to grow into the world’s largest comprehensive battery materials company, and to become the world’s number-one supplier of anodes. A vast range of projects, including new plants, new alliances with other companies, and expanded R&D efforts, are on the table.

“Over 30 projects including [mergers and acquisitions], joint ventures, strategic investments, etc to make a paradigm shift to an [Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance]-based business portfolio are being reviewed,” said LG Chem CEO Hak Cheol Shin. “This will be the most revolutionary change since the establishment of the company that will upgrade the value and sustainability of LG Chem, and tangible achievements will become available from the second half of this year.”

Construction of LG’s new Gumi Plant, which will have an annual capacity of 60,000 tons of anodes, will begin in December. The company’s anode production capacity will increase almost sevenfold, from 40,000 tons in 2020 to 260,000 tons by 2026.

LG Chem will cooperate in various ways with companies possessing mining, smelting and refining technologies, in order to further secure its sources of metals. A joint venture is being prepared with an unnamed mining company for the stable supply of raw materials for anodes.

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THE TECH

A CLOSER LOOK AT WHY HEAT PUMPS ARE DOMINATING EV HVAC SYSTEMS

By Jeffrey Jenkins

Image courtesy of Tesla

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Heat pumps have two huge advantages: They can operate in both directions and they can transport more heat than the energy required to operate them. eating or cooling the interior cabin of an EV substantially affects the vehicle’s on-road efficiency, and the HVAC system often gets the proverbial “rented mule” treatment. In an ICE vehicle—particularly an underpowered one—there is a visceral reminder that running the AC, at least, costs something, since there is a palpable hit to acceleration whenever the compressor kicks in. In an EV, while using the HVAC won’t detract from the maximum output of the traction motor, it does still demand energy from the battery, so there will be a hit to range. Even more perverse is the fact that the abysmal energy conversion of an ICE—ranging from 30% for a modern gasoline design to as much as 50% for a comparable diesel—means there is plenty of waste heat available for heating the cabin, whereas the high efficiency of the EV drivetrain means a supplemental heat source is required, especially in colder climates (which is also where heat pumps perform poorly, but more on that later).

If you want to heat up a space that is cold, there are a number of options, from burning a fuel to directly converting electricity into heat (i.e. with a resistor) to actively transporting heat from a colder location to a warmer one with a device called, appropriately enough, a heat pump (note, however, that it takes work to oppose the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that heat naturally flows from hotter to colder locations). Ignoring the “burning fuel” option as anathema to the objectives of a magazine about EVs, the remaining two options—a resistive heating element and a heat pump—are both used in EVs.

H

Resistors have the advantage of being very reliable—they are pretty much the simplest electronic component possible—and even when not the primary source of heat for an EV, are often used as a backup for a heat pump system (for when the outside air is too cold—the same is done with residential heat pumps).

Heat pumps, however, have two huge advantages: They can operate in both directions (that is, provide heating or cooling of the cabin air) and they can transport more heat than the energy required to operate them. This ratio of heat delivered versus input power is known as the Coefficient of Performance, or COP, and as might be expected, a resistor will always have a COP of 1—it can’t deliver more heat than the energy supplied to it, of course—while all of the various types of heat pumps can achieve a COP of greater than 1, and if the cabin air is being heated, some of the waste heat from the heat pump goes into the cabin, boosting COP further still. However, most heat pumps (specifically, those that rely on a compressible refrigerant, which is the vast majority of them) can only work across a rather limited temperature range—if it gets too cold outside, they simply stop finding heat to pump into the cabin, hence the need for a backup heat source. Also, the COP goes down as the difference in the hot and cold side temperatures goes up—in other words, a heat pump trying to heat the interior of a car (or a house) when the ambient temperature is freezing cold might not be any more efficient than a resistive heater (this is another reason why a backup heat source is often needed). Furthermore, heat pumps using a compressible refrigerant are invariably

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THE TECH

How does a heat pump work?

more complicated than either a simple resistive, or even a fuel-burning, heater, which generally means they will be less reliable, and said refrigerant will either be inflammable (e.g. cyclopentane), a potent greenhouse gas (e.g.

CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbons), or toxic (e.g. ammonia).

Regardless of whether the cabin air needs to be heated or cooled, it takes energy to perform such work, and the energy required is proportional to the volume of air and the temperature difference, to the first degree. Given that most EVs—even most buses—have relatively small cabin volumes compared to, say, a house, it wouldn’t seem like much heating/cooling capacity would be required. Unfortunately, most vehicles of any kind have little or no insulation to prevent the gain or loss of heat from the cabin and, worse, the copious amounts of glass and metal comprising the vehicle body make an efficient collector (or radiator) of heat, bearing more than a passing resemblance to a solar thermal panel for heating water. This means that the capacity of the heating/cooling system must be several times higher than would be expected on the basis of air volume or occupant load (after all, humans, cats, dogs, etc shed heat too). How much higher the capacity needs to be is a rather difficult question to answer, as an EV, unlike a house, might find itself in Anchorage, Alaska one week and Albuquerque, New Mexico the next, so it has to contend with radically

Most vehicles have little or no insulation to prevent the gain or loss of heat from the cabin, so the capacity of the HVAC system must be several times higher than would be expected on the basis of air volume. different ambient temperatures and solar heat gain values (aka insolation, or the amount of power received from the sun over a given surface area). Consequently, there is more than a little hand-waving and guesstimating that goes into sizing the climate control system for a vehicle, and whereas with an ICE one can be profligate with the heating capacity, at least (after all, for every 100 kW of power output

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there’s likely to be 100-300 kW of waste heat available), the cooling system can’t be so grossly oversized without penalty, regardless of the traction system. Furthermore, the heating system exacts no penalty on range for the ICE vehicle, but definitely increases energy consumption in an EV. Before diving into practical examples, some explanation of the—often bewildering—terms, units and equations used in HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air-Conditioning) is in order, starting with the most obvious, which is that it takes energy to heat up a given mass of air, water, etc, and that the rate at which that heating occurs is defined as work, or power. In the US, the most common rating for refrigeration systems and air conditioners is the BTU, but note that this is actually a unit of energy, whereas a unit of work is intended (the correct unit would be BTU per hour, then). Fuel-burning heaters or heat pumps are also commonly specified in BTU (with the ”per hour” omitted, once again), but resistance heaters are almost always specified in watts (or kilowatts). To convert between the two, the ratio is 1 W = 3.412 BTU / hr. To bring all of this into a concrete example, I’ll use the specs from the window AC unit in my shop: it’s rated at 6,000 BTU on the box (though the data label does correctly refer to “BTU / hr”) and consumes 5.1 A at 115 VAC, or 586 W, which works out to a COP of 3.0 (that is, 6,000 / 3.412 = 1,758 W of heat moved vs 586 W used), which is fairly good, all things considered.

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THE TECH COP vs. current relationship of a Peltier element for temperature differences (dT)

Moving on to an actual EV example, and starting at the simpler end of things, the electrical resistance heater used in the early models of the Nissan LEAF was rated at a maximum output of 5 kW, or approximately 17,000 BTU / hr, which for comparison’s sake is sufficient for a small house or large apartment here in central Florida, despite the 8x or so difference in air volumes! Given a traction battery capacity of 24 kWh, and a power demand of 15.5 kW to travel at 60 mph (100 kph), the max range will be 93 miles (150 km).

Running the heater at the full 5 kW output the entire time, however, will increase the power draw to 20.5 kW, reducing the maximum range to 70 miles (113 km), or a reduction of approximately 25%!

A better solution—and one which has been all but universally adopted by EV OEMs—is to use a heat pump, and by far the most popular type is one in which a refrigerant gas is compressed to a hot gas, condensed back into a liquid, evaporated into a gas again (absorbing considerable heat in the process), then repeating the cycle, all in a closed loop. In ICE vehicles this system pumps heat in one direction, of course, but in EVs there is a compelling incentive to make the system bidirectional (using electrically-controlled valves), at which point the higher COP of a heat pump directly translates into a reduced impact on range (at least in heating mode). In fact, if the COP in cooling mode is n, then in heating mode it is theoretically n + 1, on the assumption that all the heat from the work going into the heat pump ends up getting transferred to the hot side (along with the heat picked up on the cold side). Reality is never quite as ideal as theory predicts, but it is nonetheless true that COP for a heat pump is always higher when viewed from the hot side, rather than the cold. Another trick that can be done with a heat pump (in cabin heating mode, anyway) is to capture the waste heat from the traction inverter, motor, etc, extending the temperature range over which it can operate without resorting to a backup source such as a resistance heater. This also lowers the temperature difference between the hot and cold sides, improving the COP as a consequence of improved Carnot, or thermodynamic, efficiency (heat pumps

The problem with these Peltier-effect thermoelectric heat pumps is that they don’t have a terribly impressive COP unless the temperature difference between the hot and cold sides is kept low. are the same as heat engines, just operating in reverse).

The compressible-gas heat pump gets all the action because it is the most efficient (i.e. it has the highest COP), but it does have some downsides—it requires a mechan-

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ical compressor, which will wear out over time, and a refrigerant gas that is toxic, inflammable or a terrible greenhouse gas.

A purely electric type of heat pump is possible, however, and the most common example found these days relies on a phenomenon first noticed in 1834 by the French physicist Jean Peltier.

Basically, when current passes through a junction of dissimilar metals (or semiconductors), one side gets colder than the ambient temperature, while the other side gets hotter. Reversing the current flips the assignment of hot and cold sides, while causing heat to flow across the junction will set up a current—i.e. the junction will act in similar fashion to a photovoltaic cell.

The problem with these so-called Peltier-effect thermoelectric heat pumps is that they don’t have a terribly impressive COP unless the temperature difference (dT) between the hot and cold sides is kept very low (i.e. a dT of 10° C or less), and the COP peaks at a current substantially less than the maximum rated value (i.e. it declines at both low and high currents). For example, at a 30° C dT and at 80% of maximum current, COP as viewed from the cold side will only be around 0.50 for the typical Peltier-effect device! Needless to say, that’s too high a penalty to pay, hence the continued dominance of compressible-refrigerant heat pumps in any application larger than coolers for 6-packs.

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Images courtesy of Nth Cycle

THE TECH

REFINING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY

FOR BATTERY MATERIALS Nth Cycle says its electroextraction technology will significantly reduce transportation costs for Li-ion battery recycling

By Charles Morris

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Nth Cycle Founder and CEO Megan O’Connor

A

s the e-mobility transition accelerates, demand for critical minerals is growing exponentially.

Companies on the cutting edge, such as Tesla, are already experiencing shortages. However, to extract ever more minerals by mining and dispose of the waste in landfills, would be to continue the practices that got the world into its current environmental mess. Furthermore, expanding mining operations here in the US is often extremely difficult, due to permitting regulations and logistical challenges.

Fortunately, large amounts of the critical minerals needed for the energy transition are already in circulation today. Increasing the efficiency of recycling offers a way to “close the loop,” creating a circular supply chain that can provide the needed raw materials for batteries and other components and minimizing the need to expand the world’s mining operations.

Nth Cycle works with battery recyclers and miners to recover production-grade critical minerals from separated electronic waste and low-grade mine tailings. The company says its electroextraction technology—an alternative to the more traditional methods hydrometallurgy and pyrometal-

lurgy—enables customizable, mobile, clean and consistent recovery of critical minerals.

Charged spoke with Megan O’Connor, the founder and CEO of Nth Cycle, about the company’s process and how it fits into the recycling industry.

A Megan O’Connor: My background is in environmental

chemistry, and I got my PhD in civil and environmental engineering. While I was at my PhD, that’s actually where we developed the core technology. My co-founder Chad Vecitis, who’s now our VP of R&D, was a full-time professor at Harvard and actually developed this technology over 10 years ago. I had him on my PhD committee and [we adapted] the technology for metals recycling specifically, so that’s how our core technology for Nth Cycle came about.

We started the company in 2017.

Q Charged: Tell me about the capabilities of your

technology, and how it differs from what came before it.

A O’Connor: We like to call ourselves a metals processing

company. We’re not specifically in the battery recycling

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THE TECH We actually use a combination of electricity with water filtration. That’s really where our core IP is—combining these two technologies in a process called electroextraction or electrowinning. space, or the mining space—we cover all feedstocks across the supply chain. Our true mission is to enable a very low-impact, streamlined supply of all critical minerals for the energy transition. We work with battery recyclers, mining companies, refineries, and everything in between, looking at all feedstocks to solve this critical issue of supply chain management. Compared to some of the folks you see in the battery recycling space or the mining space, who use traditional hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy, we are a replacement or enhancement to those, with a technology called electroextraction.

Our electroextraction technology is very modular. It has what I call the three Cs: it’s clean, consistent and customizable. It has a wide variety of locations that we can deploy in, and that really helps us take advantage of the different feedstocks that North America has to offer, and tap a lot of these valuable resources that we haven’t been able to go after in the past. We can also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 75% compared to traditional hydro and pyro, and create a very consistent output. It’s really critical, especially in the battery recycling space, where you get a wide range of feedstocks coming from different cathode chemistries, to be able to produce a very consistent output.

solvent extraction. They use a number of different solvents to pull out these metals, one by one, to produce the final battery-grade material.

How our technology differs is, we don’t use any high temperatures or high pressures or solvents to pull these metals out. We actually use a combination of electricity with water filtration. That’s really where our core IP is—combining these two technologies in a process called electroextraction or electrowinning, which is used very frequently in the mining and refining space. You can think about pushing electrical current across a very large filter, and that electrical current helps us capture the metals selectively. That’s really how our technology differs from the hydro and pyro, and helps us get to those very little operating costs, because our only input is a very low level of electricity that can come from a hundred percent renewable, versus the high chemical and energy use of the other two.

Q Charged: How does using electricity and filters

capture the specific materials you want?

A O’Connor: We can actually tune the voltages that we

technology complement traditional hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy processes?

apply to our system, so we’re playing with the reduction potentials [the tendency of a chemical to acquire electrons from or lose electrons to an electrode] of the metals themselves. Each metal has a different attraction to different voltages that you apply, so depending on how we apply those, we can actually select for the different metals as we apply a different voltage to each filter that we have in our system.

By combining the two processes, we’re turning it from a batch process to a flow-through, continuous process. You can imagine a basic water filter, like you’d use for well water or a pool, and we’ve simply figured out a way to electrify it safely. So, we push the fluid through, like we’re filtering water, but then we apply that voltage across [the filter], the metals precipitate out selectively and fall to the bottom, and we can collect them from there.

A O’Connor: Pyrometallurgy you can think of as a large

Q Charged: What kind of materials are the filters

Q Charged: How exactly does your electroextraction

furnace—really high-temperature, high-pressure furnaces that take the waste, burn it into ash, and pull out the metals as slag. Hydrometallurgy is where they take the waste and dissolve it in acid, and then follow that up with

made from?

A O’Connor: That’s part of the innovation—using a

carbon-based filter in our system, instead of using tradi-

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tional filters you’d see in filter presses. That’s how we’re able to get the very low operating costs, as well as significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Using a carbon filter is our key enabler in this entire process of using electricity to produce these metals, so the reduction in the volume of chemicals that we use by using this filter instead is how we reduce the greenhouse gas emissions.

We did not design it specifically for this. These are filters that are used in a wide variety of other applications, and we adapted it for this application ourselves. We do not make them internally.

We make the electric revolution work.*

Q Charged: In the other applica-

tions they’re used in, are they used with this kind of electricity across the filters, or is that something new?

A O’Connor: That is something

new that we do. They are used in a couple other different applications in the fuel cell battery space, but we specifically use them for this water filtration application.

*

Q Charged: In a typical lithi-

um-ion battery recycling process, would this be an added step that would help what’s currently used, or would it replace things?

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THE TECH It is a significant cost to them to transport all of that mass when only 20% of it is valuable, so the real value we bring is a very effective, clean way to upgrade this material

to drastically increase the price of that final product. So, it’s going from a waste product to a suite of valuable products for them to sell. And for the vertically-integrated folks, a much higher-quality product that goes into their final refining stage.

Q Charged: So, at the locations where the batteries are broken down to black mass, you will install your system, separate out the valuable things, and then ship those.

A O’Connor: That’s right. Our core value to them will be

two buckets. We have the legacy recyclers, who have been around for a while, recycling other types of batteries, and have moved on to lithium-ion. They’re really good at logistics. They collect these materials, and then they shred them down into what’s called black mass. This black mass is a mixture of the cathode and the anode. It’s a lot of graphite, and then the metals of interest like cobalt, nickel and manganese. Right now, these folks are losing money on this product, because it’s not worth very much. What we’re doing there is actually adding our process on, to upgrade that product to a much more valuable battery metal product for them to sell.

Then you have folks who are more vertically integrated in the space, who are going all the way from collection to producing the battery sulfate materials, which are going directly back into manufacturing, and there we can actually slot in right in the middle. So that would be, not necessarily a replacement, but an enhancement to increase the quality of the product in the middle of their process to make their other unit processes much more efficient. They have a hydrometallurgical step at the end to produce a sulfate, and we can significantly reduce the emissions and the energy use required for that final step by coming in in the middle and helping to upgrade that mid-grade black mass.

The big value that we bring, to both parties actually, is a significant reduction in transportation costs. Both parties have to ship this black mass to a different location, whether they’re selling the black mass or transporting it to another site internally to process. It is a significant cost to them to transport all of that mass when only 20% of it is valuable, so the real value we bring is a very effective, clean way to upgrade this material—not only to reduce the transportation costs, but also, for the legacy recyclers,

a much more efficient, cleaner way to process that black mass into these separated valuable products.

Q Charged: What materials can you extract with this

technology?

A O’Connor: We recover cobalt, nickel, manganese,

graphite and copper.

Q Charged: Do those come out as a usable product, or do they have to be processed?

A O’Connor: Those come out as usable products, and

they’re metal hydroxide powders.

Q Charged: What phase is the company in? Are you in production? Do you have these systems in any active lines?

A O’Connor: We’re actually ramping up to deploy our

first two units in the field in early 2022. Our first couple of partners are in the recycling space. They’re folks that are in the logistics game, who have collected this material, and we’re going in to upgrade it to a more valuable suite of metal products.

Q Charged: Other than batteries, are there some other

processes that you’ll use this technology on?

A O’Connor: Yes. We are also looking at projects in the mining and refining space, working with mining companies who are looking at new ore bodies, especially in the United States and Canada. There’s a lot of cobalt and nickel assets here that have not been able to be tapped, because the technologies are either too expensive or can’t fit within the permitting regulations in each state. And so we’re

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simulation case study looking at those to go onsite and actually upgrade the raw ore, to create more supply of these critical materials here in the States, so we don’t have to rely as heavily on overseas supplies.

Q Charged: Will you be producing the systems, building the equipment and everything?

A O’Connor: No. We have our

internal system that we scaled with, but at that scale, we will do all contract manufacturing. Our model is to own and operate these filters on-site with our customers, but not actually sell the units themselves.

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Q Charged: What are the next steps for the company? Are you out there actively seeking partners, or is there still technology development to do?

A O’Connor: We are actively seeking partnerships, especially in the mining space. We are also actively fundraising to deploy for our first couple of projects beyond the pilot. We’re hyper-focused on the North American market, because it’s such a critical piece, I think, in creating a circular economy, and not only that, but really reducing the risk that the manufacturers here face, relying so heavily on overseas supply chains, because there will be a significant gap in the supply of all these materials. If we truly want to reach our goals of electrification over the next decade, and even beyond, we really need to find an alternative source.

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The COMSOL Multiphysics® software is used for simulating designs, devices, and processes in all fields of engineering, manufacturing, and scientific research.

8/29/21 2:25 PM

Image courtesy of CATL

THE VEHICLES

Tesla signs new long-term battery cell supply agreement with CATL As EVs move into mass production, the industry is going to need an insane—make that ludicrous—amount of batteries. Trendsetter Tesla long relied solely on Japan’s Panasonic for cells, but around the time production began at Gigafactory Shanghai, it started working with other suppliers, including Korea’s LG and China’s CATL. Tesla and CATL signed a supply agreement in February 2020, and now the companies have inked a new Production Pricing Agreement that will extend the relationship to December 2025. We’ve seen no details of what capacities are expected, or what battery chemistries are to be supplied.

CATL has quickly grown into the largest battery cell manufacturer in China, and is setting “a blistering pace of expansion.” It supplies several of China’s numerous EV producers, and is building new battery factories around the world to support EV production in other markets.

CATL’s comment on the current contract: “The signing of the agreement represents Tesla’s further recognition of the product quality and production capacity of the company’s batteries, which is conducive to strengthening the long-term and stable cooperative relationship between the company and Tesla, and in line with the interests of the company and its shareholders.”

Moscow stops buying diesel buses, will have 1,000 electric buses by the end of 2021 Moscow boasts the largest fleet of electric transit buses in Europe. By the end of 2021, there will be 1,000 e-buses on the streets of the Russian capital.

Now the Moscow transit authority reports that it will generally buy no more diesel buses. “Starting this year, by the decision of the Mayor of Moscow, we will not buy diesel buses, except for transportation in a special mode,” said Makim Liksutov, Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Transport. “Only electric buses. We will also install about 200 electric charging spots a year for the development of personal electric transport.”

Over the next 4 years, the city plans to buy 2,675 more electric buses, and authorities expect to have converted the entire fleet to electric drive by 2032.

Moscow winters are notoriously nasty, but the transit agency reports no problems—electric buses have operated through three winters now, logging more than 40 million kilometers and more than 90 million passengers, “without interruptions.”

E-buses are popular with riders and residents. Transit agency Mosgortrans reports that the electric bus has become the main mode of transport for one of every five Muscovites, and that replacing one diesel bus with an electric bus reduces CO2 emissions by 60.7 tons per year. A survey of passengers and residents noted “a major improvement of the environmental situation in the area and in apartments, especially whose windows overlook the road.”

Russian truck manufacturer KAMAZ recently opened a new plant to produce electric buses in Moscow. Local production and maintenance of e-buses is expected to significantly reduce costs and improve service.

By 2023, Moscow plans to install 372 new charging stations for electric buses, bringing the city’s total to over 500.

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Image courtesy of Volvo Penta

THE VEHICLES

NYC’s new school bus contract includes electric bus pilot New York City has finalized a new contract to operate its fleet of school buses, and an electric bus pilot project is part of the plan.

The five-year contract, which involves 41 companies, half a dozen municipal agencies, several labor unions, and a budget of $1.5 billion per year, will govern school bus operations in the city through the next mayoral administration.

The Big Apple contracts with a fleet of 10,000 school buses, which serves over 200,000 students and completes some 3.6 million bus trips per year.

The new contract involves several green measures—the bus companies will reduce the average age of their buses, will provide fully air-conditioned vehicles, and will implement improved practices and technological advances to streamline routes.

Some of the operators will pilot both electric school buses and vans, and the first are expected to be on the road for the start of the school year in September.

The first NYC school bus company to introduce an all-electric full-size school bus will be Logan Bus. The operator will collaborate with Amply Power to provide fully managed charging of five buses. The pilot project includes a V2G bidirectional EV charging system from Rhombus Energy Solutions. (Read our interview with Amply CEO Vic Shao in Issue 55 of Charged.)

“Making the city’s school bus fleet greener will play an integral part in the fight against climate change, and will be a welcome addition for children and parents of the NYC schools,” said Corey Muirhead, Executive VP of Logan Bus.

Volvo Penta starts producing powertrain for Rosenbauer’s electric fire truck Volvo Penta has commenced production of bespoke electric drivelines for vehicle manufacturer Rosenbauer’s new fire truck.

Volvo Penta and its customer Rosenbauer adapted proven technology from Volvo Trucks and Volvo Buses to create a completely new vehicle architecture. The new truck, named Revolutionary Technology (RT), pushed Volvo Penta’s electric drivelines to new heights. Unlike other Volvo Group EVs that might have two or three electric machines, the RT required four to do its job. All four electric machines have to be able to run simultaneously—two for propulsion, one for a range extender to provide extra battery power, and one for power takeoff for such applications as rotating the foam pump.

Due to the required compact dimensions of a city fire truck, Volvo Penta created a new Active Cooling Unit, in collaboration with Rosenbauer. The new ACU draws on a 600 V system instead of the conventional 24 V, and this extra power is used not only to cool the batteries, but also to offer cooling capacity to the vehicle.

Three test fire trucks powered by Volvo Penta electric drivelines have already been delivered to Berlin, Amsterdam and Dubai. Crews have been amazed at the many advantages of not having a large diesel engine, including increased crew cabin space and more side panel storage.

The first electric drivelines have now entered the production stage at the Volvo Penta Vara plant in Sweden. Here the ACU is manufactured, and the system is kitted—loaded with software and packed together—to make installation as straightforward as possible for the customer.

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Image courtesy of Proterra

Proterra to supply battery tech to ROUSH CleanTech for next-gen Ford F-650 electric truck Commercial EV innovator Proterra (NASDAQ: PTRA) builds electric buses, and also provides its powertrain technology to other OEMs under its Proterra Powered business unit. The company’s latest collaboration is with ROUSH CleanTech, a firm that’s involved with several aspects of electrification, including production design, functional performance validation, compliance testing, assembly setup and vehicle second-stage manufacturing.

Under the new agreement, Proterra will supply its battery technology to ROUSH for the development of its next-generation Ford F-650 all-electric commercial truck. ROUSH CleanTech will integrate its control systems and Proterra’s battery tech with Ford’s medium-duty chassis.

The all-electric ROUSH CleanTech Ford F-650 is a purpose-built Class 6 commercial electric vehicle that is available in several configurations, including utility trucks, shuttle buses and box trucks. It will be equipped with Proterra’s H Series battery systems, which are designed for packaging between frame rails. The battery system powering ROUSH’s F-650 can provide 165 kWh of energy, delivering an estimated 125 miles of range and supporting a payload of nearly 8,500 lbs.

Penske Truck Leasing will be the first customer for the new EV, and the three companies will collaborate on continued fleet electrification.

“The goal of the ROUSH CleanTech, Proterra, and Penske collaboration is to remove any and all barriers to help fleets transition to a cleaner future,” said Todd Mouw, President of ROUSH CleanTech. “It’s clear the market is looking for trusted brands like ours to develop innovative technologies while also supporting the entire lifecycle—from vehicle design and development to infrastructure assistance, after-sales customer support and more.”

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Image courtesy of Recurrent

THE VEHICLES

Merchants Fleet introduces turnkey fleet electrification adoption tool Fleet management company Merchants Fleet has launched a new tool designed to educate and assist clients as they make the transition to EVs. Merchants Fleet has been providing fleet management and leasing solutions for over 50 years. The company’s new AdoptEV service provides a personalized plan to guide current and potential clients through the process of integrating EVs into their operations.

The AdoptEV program includes a comprehensive review of an organization’s fleet needs, vehicle and charging recommendations, and a mechanism to track and report the savings compared to ICE vehicles.

“As a nationwide fleet provider, Merchants plays a crucial role in accelerating the transition to EVs for our clients,” says Brendan P. Keegan, CEO of Merchants Fleet.

“The latest updates to our client services—the development of AdoptEV and our membership with the Corporate Electric Vehicle Alliance (CEVA)—reaffirm our commitment to innovative solutions that’ll help propel our nation into an emission-free future.”

Merchants Fleet has also joined the Corporate Electric Vehicle Alliance (CEVA), an initiative led by the sustainability non-profit Ceres to promote the adoption of EV-friendly policies and industry best practices. Joining CEVA gives Merchants the opportunity to work with other like-minded organizations that are interested in accelerating electrification.

“Fleet management companies will play an essential role in moving the automotive and trucking industries to a net-zero future, and Merchants Fleet will help fuel our efforts as we work toward a rapid, cost-effective, and successful transformation of the US transportation sector,” says Sara Forni, head of the Corporate Electric Vehicle Alliance.

Recurrent’s new battery guides analyze range of preowned Tesla Model 3s and Chevy Bolts Recurrent, a Seattle-based startup that provides independent reports on the condition of used EV batteries, has released the first two in a planned series of EV battery guides for consumers. The two public guides offer an analysis of overall battery performance over time in the Tesla Model 3 and the Chevrolet Bolt.

Recurrent’s EV shopping guides break down key information for consumers and industry professionals to provide a better understanding of how age, temperature and mileage impact each model’s range.

“Our goal with this information is to give people the confidence to purchase a pre-owned electric vehicle,” said Scott Case, co-founder and CEO of Recurrent.

Recurrent’s Tesla Model 3 guide analyzed data from more than 1,500 cars in the US whose owners signed up to share their data with Recurrent over the course of 7 million combined miles. In the first 20,000 miles, the Tesla saw an average decrease in range of 40 miles, but after the 20,000-mile mark, range degradation leveled off.

The Chevy Bolt guide analyzed data from 1,000 cars, which logged 4 million combined miles. The data shows that the Bolt’s real-world range can be both longer or shorter than the EPA range estimate, depending on conditions.

For both vehicles, the actual range may be slightly below what the car’s dashboard gauge indicates in very hot or very cold weather.

Recurrent plans to follow these two guides with editions for other EV models.

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Image courtesy of Nissan

Nissan to build a 35 GWh battery plant and produce a new electric crossover in Sunderland, UK

Many in the media have been asking two questions about Nissan. As its aging LEAF becomes a byword for EV obsolescence, will the company rejuvenate its once cutting-edge electrical efforts? And, amid the uncertainty following Brexit, will the automaker remain committed to its Nissan Motor Manufacturing plant in Sunderland, England, which employs some 7,500 workers?

A recent announcement appears to deliver a resounding Yes to both of these existential questions.

Nissan, together with battery supplier Envision AESC and Sunderland City Council, will invest a cool billion euros in Nissan EV36Zero, an “EV manufacturing ecosystem” centered around the Sunderland plant. The automaker also announced plans to produce a next-generation electric crossover at the site.

Nissan will invest up to £423 million in its UK operations, and expects to install production capacity of up to 100,000 units of the new crossover, which will be built on the Alliance CMF-EV platform. UK production will be exported to the European markets traditionally served by the Sunderland plant. “Other production locations have not yet been confirmed,” says Nissan, adding that more details about the new vehicle will be released closer to the sales launch.

Envision AESC, which is already producing batteries for Nissan’s LEAF and eNV200 in Sunderland, will invest £450 million to build a battery gigafactory adjacent to the Nissan plant. Initial annual capacity will be 9 GWh, and future phases of investment could bring capacity up to 25 GWh by 2030. Nissan says a new Gen5 battery cell will offer an increase of 30% in energy density.

Sunderland City Council is leading a project that aims to build a 100% renewable electricity microgrid, incorporating Nissan’s existing wind and solar farms. Initial plans suggest the creation of as many as ten solar farms, with 132 MW of generation capacity, as well as a 1 MW stationary storage system using second-life Nissan/Envision batteries.

“This project comes as part of Nissan’s pioneering efforts to achieve carbon neutrality throughout the entire lifecycle of our products,” said Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida. “Our comprehensive approach includes not only the development and production of EVs, but also the use of on-board batteries as energy storage and their reuse for secondary purposes. The experience and know-how gained through the project announced today will be shared globally, enhancing Nissan’s global competitiveness.”

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Image courtesy of Azul

Image courtesy of Bye Aerospace

THE VEHICLES

Lilium secures order from Brazilian airline for 220 electric jets Azul, a Brazilian airline that serves 110 destinations and operates a fleet of more than 160 aircraft, has ordered 220 electric aircraft from Lilium in a $1-billion commercial deal and strategic alliance.

The companies aim to establish a co-branded network in Brazil. Azul will operate and maintain the Lilium Jet fleet, and Lilium will provide an aircraft health monitoring platform, replacement batteries and other custom spare parts.

The companies say the new service, which is scheduled to be in operation in multiple regions in 2025, will allow passengers to travel faster than existing high-speed alternatives, with zero emissions.

The Lilium Jet is a 7-seat electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. It’s powered by electric jet engines integrated into the wings, which rely on Lilium’s Ducted Electric Vectored Thrust technology.

“Azul has brought convenient and affordable air travel to underserved markets across the Americas, and this makes them an ideal partner for Lilium,” said Daniel Wiegand, co-founder and CEO of Lilium.

Jet It and JetClub order eFlyer 800 electric planes from Bye Aerospace Electric aircraft manufacturer Bye Aerospace has secured a pair of launch customers for its eFlyer 800, an 8-seat all-electric twin turboprop-class airplane. Jet It and JetClub, North American and European sister companies that provide fractional aircraft ownership, have agreed to purchase a fleet of eFlyer 800 aircraft.

Bye Aerospace expects the eFlyer 800 to deliver a range of 500 nautical miles with 45-minute IFR reserves, a maximum payload of 1,540 pounds, a 320-knot cruising speed and a 35,000-foot ceiling, at one fifth the operating costs of traditional twin turboprops. The aircraft features two wing-mounted electric motors, each with dual redundant motor windings, quad-redundant battery packs, and a full-airplane parachute. The company is targeting the air-taxi, air-cargo, regional and charter aircraft markets, and is targeting an FAA certification date in 2025.

Jet It CEO Glenn Gonzales and JetClub CEO Vishal Hiremath will both join Bye Aerospace’s Strategic Advisory Council.

“As an aviation company run by aviators, we believe electric propulsion is the next major innovation in air travel, and Bye Aerospace will be one of very few manufacturers able to certify an environmentally sustainable aircraft that meets the needs of our expanding customer base,” said Gonzales.

“While private aviation contributes only 0.04% of global emissions, we are working toward zero percent,” said Hiremath. “The past two years of exponential growth of the brand in the US has shown us that business travel is essential to protect jobs and economies, but not at the expense of the environment.”

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Image courtesy of Heart Aerospace

@l>CSM Power analysis on the electric powertrain HV Breakout Module 3.3 ► Three-phase current and voltage measurement ► Voltages up to ±2,000 V ► Currents up to ±1,400 A ► GBit/s XCP-on-Ethernet interface

Heart Aerospace secures $35 million for electric planes, purchase order from United Airlines Gothenburg, Sweden-based Heart Aerospace has raised $35 million in a Series A financing round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, United Airlines Ventures and Mesa Air Group.

Heart Aerospace’s first aircraft will be the ES-19, a battery-electric 19-passenger regional airplane. Heart expects to begin deliveries for commercial use by 2026. The first-generation aircraft will have a maximum range of up to 400 km (250 miles), using today’s lithium-ion batteries. The company expects to increase that range as battery energy densities improve.

In 2020, Heart demonstrated the first iteration of its electric propulsion system, consisting of a 400 kW electric motor, a motor controller and a battery pack with an integrated BMS system.

Heart says its ES-19 will offer significantly lower operating costs compared to similar-size gas-turbine aircraft, and will be quieter than its turboprop counterparts, with less vibration and noise—characteristics that make it ideal for the development of short-range regional air travel.

As part of the agreement, United and Mesa (a regional air carrier that provides scheduled passenger service for American Eagle, United Express and DHL Express) have placed purchase orders for a total of 200 ES-19 aircraft, with options for an additional 100 planes.

“I can’t imagine a stronger coalition of partners to advance our mission to electrify short-haul air travel,” said Anders Forslund, CEO of Heart Aerospace. “There’s United, one of the world’s largest airlines, who’s poised to be the global leader in decarbonizing air travel, and there’s Mesa, the largest operator of 19-seater aircraft in history. This combination of nearterm commercial viability and long-term climate investment philosophy is exactly what we need to make commercial electric air travel a reality.”

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Image courtesy of Lightning eMotors

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Lightning eMotors and Forest River partner to deploy up to 7,500 electric shuttle buses

Lightning eMotors (NYSE: ZEV), a provider of specialty commercial EVs for fleets, and Forest River, a Berkshire Hathaway company, have formed a strategic partnership to deploy up to 7,500 zero-emission shuttle buses.

The $850-million deal calls for Lightning to build fully electric powertrains and provide charging products and services for Forest River over the next four and a half years.

Lightning eMotors will manufacture electric powertrain systems at its facility in Loveland, Colorado, and ship them to Forest River’s factory in Goshen, Indiana, for final assembly. Forest River has more than 500,000 square feet of production space, and plans to dedicate 100,000 square feet to install Lightning’s powertrains.

Manufacturing of Forest River Lightning EV shuttles has already begun, and Forest River expects to deliver several dozens of the new electric shuttle buses to its network of over 100 dealerships by the end of this year.

The vehicles that Forest River and Lightning will co-produce are Class 4 and 5 shuttle buses with gross vehicle weight ratings ranging from 14,500 to 19,500 pounds. The buses will feature battery configurations from 80 kWh to more than 160 kWh, and ranges between 80 and 160 miles. Available configurations will have between 12 and 33 passenger seats, with available ADA options, and bus lengths of 20 to 34 feet. All vehicles will be compliant with Buy America guidelines.

Lightning’s charging division, Lightning Energy, will offer a comprehensive suite of infrastructure products and services to Forest River dealers and shuttle bus operators, including Lightning’s DC fast charging hardware with integrated vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capabilities.

“This has the potential to be the largest contract ever in the electric shuttle bus market, and we believe it will be the catalyst for other large commercial vehicle OEMs and fleets to accelerate their adoption of commercial electric vehicles,” said Tim Reeser, CEO of Lightning eMotors. “Forest River’s family of shuttle bus companies, including top name brands like Starcraft, Glaval, and Champion, maintain a dominant market position, selling over 10,000 units per year in the Class 4 to 6 shuttle bus space. “ “We decided to work with Lightning eMotors after several years of extensive research because of their market and technology leadership in the commercial EV segment,” said David Wright, President of Forest River’s bus divisions. “I was especially impressed after visiting their manufacturing facility in Colorado, driving their vehicles, and talking to their customers. It is clear why Lightning eMotors is at the forefront of fleet electrification.”

8/29/21 2:33 PM

Image courtesy of Volvo

Volvo C40 Recharge EV goes on sale in the US The C40 Recharge is the first Volvo model designed as a native EV (that is, not adapted from a legacy fossil-fuel vehicle).

The new EV, which “has all the benefits of an SUV but with a lower and sleeker design,” will go on sale in the US this year at a starting MSRP of $58,750.

The new C40 Recharge will initially be available in the Ultimate trim level, which incorporates every available option, including the Android operating system, a fixed Panoramic Moonroof, Pixel LED lighting, Pilot Assist, Harman Kardon Premium Sound, 360° Surround View Camera and 20-inch wheels.

Online pre-orders for the C40 Recharge began in March.

Production will begin in Ghent, Belgium this fall, and the first US deliveries are planned for the fourth quarter.

All 2022 Volvo EVs sold in the US will come with 3 years of complimentary charging (up to 250 kWh) on the Electrify America network.

Volvo Cars aims to make fully electric cars 50 percent of its global sales by 2025.

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8/29/21 2:33 PM

THE VEHICLES

2021

JEEP WRANGLER 4Xe

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Image courtesy of Stellantis

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THE LEGENDARY SUV BRAND’S FIRST PLUG-IN HYBRID The plug-in hybrid version of the Jeep Wrangler offers useful all-electric range and great electric torque—if drivers plug it in. Do they?

By John Voelcker

JUL/AUG 2021

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THE VEHICLES

he accelerating pace of electric vehicle launches has brought us to this: The fi rst Jeep in the US to get a plug-in hybrid version is the legendary Wrangler. In Europe, it was smaller Jeeps—the subcompact Renegade and compact Compass family SUV—that got their plugs fi rst. But for North America, it’s the big dog, the quintessential Jeep 4x4.

The Wrangler 4xe (pronounced “four-by-e”) will become Jeep’s third plug-in hybrid for Europe, where far more stringent emission rules encourage plug-in cars of all types. On both sides of the Atlantic, the 4xe will be followed by plug-in versions of every other Jeep by 2025, parent company Stellantis announced during a July press briefi ng. That event was meant to show that the new company, a combination of the old Fiat Chrysler Automobiles with Europe’s Peugeot Citroën, had the plans to electrify its model line that FCA conspicuously lacked.

We tested the 2021 Jeep Wrangler 4xe in late May, and found that it largely lived up to both the Wrangler legend and the promise of a plug-in hybrid. That’s not surprising—the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, the company’s only previous plug-in hybrid, is a well-executed PHEV with an EPA-rated 32 miles of usable electric range that retains all the virtues of the Pacifica minivan.

The two couldn’t be more different. One’s the best of the dwindling segment of 7- and 8-seat vehicles that aren’t hulking SUVs. The other is the SUV that started it all, an iconic vehicle known the world over for ruggedness and go-anywhere capability. The very fi rst Jeep, in fact, hit World War II battlefields almost 80 years ago now.

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Plug-in planned from Day One Its modern-day descendant, the Jeep Wrangler, is redesigned about once per decade. It was all-new for the 2018 model year, and was engineered from the start to accommodate 2021’s PHEV version. The plug-in powertrain is offered only in the four-door Wrangler Unlimited model, not the shorter two-door Wrangler. The 4xe’s 17.3 kWh battery pack sits under the rear seat.

The Jeep’s electric motor is rated at 100 kilowatts (134 horsepower) and 181 foot-pounds of torque. It’s sandwiched between a 2.0-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder

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Images courtesy of Stellantis

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We tested the 2021 Jeep Wrangler 4xe and found that it largely lived up to both the Wrangler legend and the promise of a plug-in hybrid.

JUL/AUG 2021

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THE VEHICLES engine (rated at 270 hp and 295 lb-ft of torque) and the 8-speed automatic transmission. The combination is connected to a transfer case that distributes power mechanically to all four wheels. The e-motor also provides regenerative braking to recharge the battery, and there’s an integrated 33 kW (44 hp) starter-generator as well.

Total output is quoted at 375 hp and 470 lb-ft, which is exceeded only by the Wrangler version with a massive 392-cubic-inch V8.

The charging port sits high up on the cowl, between the back of the hood and the front edge of the driver’s door. It’s covered by a latched black plastic cover, but that and some graphics are the only exterior signs that this Jeep differs from any other version in the current lineup. Inside, a row of three buttons lets users select among Hybrid (the default), Electric (when the battery is charged), and e-Save (to hold battery charge for later use) modes. The e-Save button also toggles to invoke Battery Charge, which recharges the pack using engine power.

Over five days, we put 276 miles on our test Wrangler 4xe. We plugged it in five times, and despite an overall route that skewed more to long-distance highway travel than around-town errands, we managed to do 138 miles on grid electricity alone.

A full charge using the Level 1 charging cord took just under 17 hours, while Level 2 charging took about two and a half hours.

The 4xe’s 17.3 kWh battery pack sits under the rear seat.

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Images courtesy of Stellantis

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THE VEHICLES

Default: hybrid, not EV The plug-in hybrid Jeep Wrangler isn’t like the Chevy Volt or Toyota Prius Prime: It doesn’t run first as an electric vehicle when the battery is fully charged, adding engine power only after the battery depletes. Instead, Hybrid is the default mode. To get it to run as an EV, you have to push the Electric switch—every time you turn the key.

Floor the accelerator in an emergency, of course, and it kicks on the engine to provide maximum power.

In part, that’s because this is a remarkably heavy vehicle for a 100 kW motor to move. It produces decent torque (181 lb-ft), but drivers will learn the limits of its e-acceleration if they try to stay electric-only. An extra 500 pounds over the plugless 2.0-liter model’s 4,500 lbs, however, gives the 4xe the best ride of any Wrangler Unlimited.

Images courtesy of Stellantis

To get it to run as an EV, you have to push the Electric switch—every time you turn the key.

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The EPA rates the 4xe at 22 miles of electric range and an unimpressive 20 mpg operating as a hybrid.

The EPA rates the 4xe at 22 miles of electric range and an unimpressive 20 mpg operating as a hybrid.

Several reviewers have noted that the plug-in Wrangler produces just half the electric range of the Toyota RAV4 Prime from a similar-sized battery. But Wrangler buyers aren’t looking for a family compact crossover, and RAV4 shoppers are hardly likely to want a truck with two solid axles.

In Electric mode, we found the Wrangler 4xe delivered 20 to 25 miles of electric range in mixed usage.

The range was lower at highway speeds, of course, but around town, it wasn’t hard to keep the car in Electric mode by avoiding hard acceleration. The power meter topped out at 25% of the scale under electric-only propulsion, and the highest power delivery we saw was 80 kW. We’re always a little startled when an EV’s transmission shifts gears, and there was plenty of that in the hybrid Wrangler.

Drivers hoping for one-pedal driving will be disappointed. A Max Regen button increases the regenerative braking, but it won’t take the Jeep all the way to a stop. Instead, the driver has to brake at about 4 mph to bring the car to a complete stop.

Powertrain aside, the 4xe is otherwise the very popular Jeep Wrangler. It’s less noisy than previous generations, and with the soft top up, it’s possible to talk in normal voices even at highway speeds. One of very few new vehicles sold with two solid axles, it wanders continuously on the highway—although somewhat less so than lighter Wranglers that have higher centers of

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THE VEHICLES

Images courtesy of Stellantis

gravity. We didn’t do any extreme off-roading, but past excursions in Wranglers suggest that its rough-terrain capabilities will be matched by very few other vehicles.

One unexpected benefit: occasional waves and acknowledgements from other Wrangler drivers. The Wrangler may be selling in higher volumes (and at higher prices) than ever, but the mystique remains strong.

Do drivers plug it in?

Compared to battery-electric cars, plug-in hybrids face two challenges. First is that many car shoppers don’t understand how they work—and dealership salespeople may not be any better at explaining their benefits.

Second, and more crucial from a policy perspective, is that to justify the subsidies and tax incentives lavished on plug-in hybrids as a way to reduce vehicular emissions of carbon dioxide, they have to be plugged in.

Did they plug in daily? Once or twice a week? Or did the plug go largely unused?

Plug-in hybrids that never connect to the grid might as well not have a plug at all.

Chrysler’s two Detroit competitors have been fairly forthcoming about the charging behavior of drivers of their plug-in hybrids. As early as 2012, Chevrolet frequently trumpeted the statistic that two-thirds of total miles covered by Chevy Volts were done on grid power.

Similarly, Ford claimed about half the miles covered by

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THE VEHICLES

its C-Max and Fusion Energi PHEVs were on grid power or electricity regenerated in hybrid mode.

We reached out to Jeep to ask what kind of charging behavior it had seen among early Wrangler 4xe owners.

Did they plug in daily? Once or twice a week? Or did the plug go largely unused?

Anecdotal evidence exists for both extremes. Lawyer Martin Hewitt, of Fayetteville, New York, bought a 4xe in late June 2021, his second Wrangler within five years.

Within three weeks, he had put 1,480 miles on it. He plugs in daily, and despite a long road trip largely on gasoline, he proudly notes he’s covered 25 percent of those miles on grid electricity.

Of 80 owners who responded to a survey in a Facebook group for 4xe owners—hardly a scientific sample, of course—59 (71 percent) said they plugged it in “every chance I can, day or night, every day” and another 14 (18 percent) said they charged “overnight, every night.”

Jeep forums are mixed. One “Jeep guy” wrote, “I didn't buy the 4xe because it was a hybrid. I bought it for the 475 lb-ft of torque and 375 hp.” But, he noted, he plugged in at the Moab trailhead, taking two hours to recharge, then did the Hells Revenge trail “in All Electric in 4L, and it performed better than any of my other Jeeps. It just flawlessly dominated a 8-10 level trail. No gas or brake... it crawled on its own and regen brake going down. In silence, I ‘mapped the earth’ [and heard nothing] but rocks crunching, birds chirping, rivers running…”

On the other hand, one early 4xe owner on a Jeep forum—in response to a question about charging behavior—said he’d never plugged it in and had no intention of doing so. He bought the 4xe, he said, because it was

Images courtesy of Stellantis

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more powerful than the rest of the range, and with the federal income-tax credit, it hadn’t cost him any more.

Auto journalist Adam Tonge noted that his neighbors had purchased a 4xe purely for its low lease cost and because they liked the color—and had no idea it plugged in. Analyst Ed Niedermeyer responded that plug-in hybrids have the advantage that “you can buy one by accident and start using it with no real difference in user experience.”

Data: no dice. Sales: high.

Unfortunately, despite several requests, Jeep flatly declined to provide us any data on the charging patterns of 4xe owners.

That’s regrettable, because it suggests that the company knows many Wrangler buyers choose the 4xe for its attractive

www.RhombusEnergy.com

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THE VEHICLES post-incentive cost or its relatively high performance—and don’t, in fact, plug it in at all.

In July, Jeep claimed the Wrangler 4xe was the bestselling plug-in hybrid in the US for the second quarter of 2021 (April through June). That likely translates to about 12,000 PHEVs sold in three months.

Much of that may have been due to very attractive pricing offered by Stellantis. How about a lease cost of $265 per month, with $3,940 due at signing?

That includes the $7,500 federal income-tax credit, and lessees may benefit from various state, local, and corporate incentives on top of that. That monthly cost is fully $80 lower than the next cheapest Wrangler lease deal— for a version that costs $20,000 less.

Yet this is a Jeep that Motor Trend calls “a niche Wrangler in search of the right owner, ideally a Jeep fan with a nagging jealousy of the neighbor's Tesla but who isn't ready to go fully electric.” The auto enthusiast magazine went on to note, “Access to a charger and a commitment to plug in at night, juicing the heavy battery for local use the next day, are musts.”

So how many of those 12,000 owners plug in their 4xe Jeeps? The company apparently does not intend to share that data.

$54k MSRP Our test vehicle, a 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sahara 4xe, carried a base sticker price of $47,495—now raised to $51,025. The Firecracker Red Clear-Coat paint added $495, a Cold-Weather Group of heated front seats and remote starting added $995, and a Safety Group and Advanced Safety Group together added another $1,790. Between them, features included forward collision warning, adaptive cruise control usable down to 0 mph, advanced brake assist, automatic high beams and rear parking sensors.

On top of that were remote keyless entry ($645), a black Sunrider soft top ($595), a storage bag for the soft

Images courtesy of Stellantis

In July, Jeep claimed the Wrangler 4xe was the best-selling plug-in hybrid in the US for the second quarter of 2021. That likely translates to about 12,000 PHEVs sold in three months. top window ($75), and a package combining cargo rails and a cargo-floor mat ($195). Adding in the mandatory destination fee—a whopping $1,495—the total bottomline recommended price was $54,030. (It would likely be $3,500 pricier now.)

Five years ago, plug-in hybrid Jeeps seemed like a pretty radical idea all by themselves. But now Jeep will be going further. This spring it unveiled the Jeep Magneto Concept, an all-electric two-door Wrangler with 70 kWh of batteries split among four packs distributed through the frame. It has a single 212 kW (285 hp) electric motor that powers the usual transfer case and mechanical 4-wheel drive. That power and

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Jeep Magneto Concept, an all-electric two-door Wrangler

its 273 lb-ft of torque, Jeep said, intentionally duplicates the specs of the standard 3.6-liter V6 engine fitted to today’s Wranglers. That will let current owners assess the different driving and rock-climbing capabilities of the electric Jeep concept.

Stepping stone to all-electric The Magneto was shown off and cliniced at the annual Moab Easter Jeep Safari, an off-road event and gathering of the 4x4 faithful. The company said it will reappear there in 2022 and 2023, presumably with modifications based on the intervening year of consumer feedback and road testing. Production seems likely for the 2024 or 2025 model year.

In some ways, electric power is perfectly suited to the extreme situations Jeeps are designed to handle:

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careful application of torque at very low speeds to climb steep hills, traverse rocky fields, and get out of deep mud or sand.

With maximum torque from 0 rpm, electric motors dispense with the need to match the narrow power band of an internal combustion engine to the desired speed using multiple gears and reductions, especially at a slow crawl.

The Wrangler 4xe is a fi rst taste of electrification for the storied Jeep brand. And it may achieve the emission-reduction goals of the regulators who endow it with a $7,500 federal income-tax credit— but only if it’s plugged in. We have yet to see evidence that a majority of Jeep owners do in fact plug in their plug-in hybrid Wranglers.

Bring on the Magneto. That one has to be plugged in.

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Elon Musk offers more details about the opening of Tesla’s Superchargers

ChargePoint to acquire European e-mobility provider has·to·be for €250 million

During Tesla’s Q2 earnings conference call, Elon Musk released some more details about the plans open up its proprietary Supercharging network to drivers of other electric vehicles, a hugely important development for the EV industry. Musk explained that non-Tesla EV owners will be able to use the Tesla smartphone app to manage and pay for their charging sessions: “We are thinking about a real simple thing where you just download the Tesla app, you go to the Supercharger, you just indicate which stall you are in, you plug in your car, even if it’s not a Tesla, and you just access the app to tell it, ‘turn on the stall that I’m in for how much electricity,’ and this should work for almost any manufacturer’s electric car.”

Given the ubiquity of the Supercharger network, non-Tesla drivers will have every incentive to sign up for an account, and once they do, they’ll get firsthand experience of how the Tesla ecosystem works, while giving Tesla access to their contact info. It’s a clever idea that requires no buy-in from the other automakers. Tesla has already retrofitted CCS plugs to European Superchargers, and has now confirmed plans to make an adapter available in the US. Predictably, many current Tesla owners are against the move to open up, and they do have a point. In some areas, both Supercharger and non-Tesla charging sites are already overcrowded. Musk confirmed that Tesla plans to introduce dynamic pricing at heavily-used stations in order to encourage shorter charging sessions.

Opening up the Superchargers may not only be a way to lure some customers away from other brands—it may also unlock billions in government subsidies. This certainly seems to be the case in Norway and Sweden, where Tesla has been talking to local governments about taking advantage of incentives for which only charging stations that serve all EVs are eligible. Here in the US, the proposed Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework includes $7.5 billion in funding for a national charging network, and the administration has made it clear that only charging networks that are open to all EVs will be getting the goodies.

ChargePoint (Nasdaq: CHPT) offers EV drivers access to hundreds of thousands of charging sites in North America and Europe, but the company is more than just a network operator—it’s involved in just about every link in the EVSE value chain.

The next addition to ChargePoint’s empire will be the European e-mobility provider has·to·be, which ChargePoint will acquire for some €250 million in cash and stock. The transaction is expected to close in 2021. The has·to·be team, customers and technology will become part of ChargePoint’s operations.

Founded in 2013, has·to·be has offices in Munich and Vienna, and about 125 employees. Volkswagen is an investor and a key stakeholder. The company has approximately 40,000 networked ports in its network, and offers access to over 250,000 more through open roaming agreements. It boasts a strong market share in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The company has over 1,000 customers in a variety of sectors, including Aral, Audi, GP Joule, Ionity and Porsche.

The has·to·be software platform is designed to address the complexity and fragmentation of today’s European charging landscape, and is compatible with widely deployed European charging stations and e-mobility services.

“Customers rely on our charging software platform every day to meet their technical requirements,” said Martin Klässner, co-founder and CEO of has·to·be. “Together with the resources of ChargePoint, we will continue in this spirit and achieve even greater scale as the market continues to expand.”

Pasquale Romano, President and CEO of ChargePoint, said, “As an established leader in North America, our continued investment in Europe is critical to our stated growth strategy. has·to·be [is] a leader in its own right, with a talented team and an impressive base of customers committed to e-mobility and robust technology. Our combined assets should position us to accelerate our leadership as electrification continues to take hold across continents.”

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Image courtesy of Fermata Energy

The Alliance Center, a coworking and event space in Denver, is testing a bidirectional charging system with Vehicle-to-Building (V2B) capabilities, in partnership with Fermata Energy. The system allows the battery pack in an EV to provide power to a building—and that came in mighty handy during the recent record heat wave. As many Denver residents suffered power outages, the Alliance Center drew on energy stored in the EV’s battery every afternoon.

Colorado CarShare manages the car, sharing it with its members in the Denver and Boulder areas, so the Alliance Center must reserve the car for the peak hours when it wants to use it as an energy source. This is where Fermata Energy comes in, providing data and support to calculate when the organization should manually reserve the vehicle. In the future, this process should become more automated, allowing anticipated weather patterns to determine optimal usage times without human input.

“You can utilize the vehicle in the event of some sort of power outage, for resiliency, for a customer that doesn’t have power for their home or for their building,” said Chris Bowyer, Director of Building Operations at the Alliance Center.

During the mid-June heat wave, Denver set up 10 cooling stations at recreation centers. Installing V2B or V2G systems at such community centers could be hugely helpful. One of the bidirectional chargers is already in use at a recreation center in Boulder, and Fermata is planning to install one at a church that could be used as a gathering place in the event of a natural disaster.

“Hopefully, the data that comes out of it can show how many vehicles I would need, or how many buses another property or another entity may be able to use to…be able to provide a resource to community members,” said Bowyer.

Image courtesy of IONITY

Image courtesy of VW Group

Denver company teams with Fermata Energy for V2B bidirectional charging pilot

VW Group CEO calls out shortcomings of IONITY charging network Andreas Gross, Volkswagen’s Spokesperson for E-Mobility, recently posted an account of a trip he took with his family in a VW ID.3 from Germany to Italy. He gave a mostly positive report of the ID.3 and of the public charging facilities he used.

One of the commenters on Herr Gross’s post was VW Group CEO Herbert Diess. He enjoyed Gross’s account of his trip, and noted that he had recently driven through the same highly scenic region. However, he had some bad things to say about the IONITY charging station at the Brenner Pass.

“Too few charging points at the Brenner! Only 4—everyone stops there at the Shopping Center. Occupied,” wrote Diess. “No toilet, no coffee, one charging post out of service/defective—a sad state of affairs. This is anything but a premium charging experience, IONITY!” Like other high Alpine passes, the storied Brenner Pass suffers from multiple environmental issues. Massive amounts of auto and truck traffic spew forth fumes, which tend to settle in the steep mountain valleys.

Widespread vehicle electrification would deliver outsize benefits to places like the Brenner.

Fortunately, this is one user comment that’s likely to spur some action. Volkswagen is one of the owners of the IONITY joint venture, and Diess is arguably the most EV-savvy CEO of any legacy automaker at the moment.

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ORNL’s open-source modeling tool helps planners select best sites for highway charging stations When deploying public charging stations, selecting the best sites is critical. Hundreds of chargers around the country sit unused—we’ve all driven by them—and most of these were installed years ago, before planners understood the importance of proper siting.

Now researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a nationwide modeling tool to help infrastructure planners decide where and when to locate fast charging stations along interstate highways.

The free open-source software, called REVISE-II, takes into account EV growth forecasts, charging technology capabilities, intercity travel trends and driver demographics to help planners make good siting decisions.

Planners can select various assumptions, and the model will generate scenarios for future infrastructure requirements, so that selected sites will not only fulfill today’s needs, but also accommodate future growth as more EVs hit the roads.

“Providing infrastructure for intercity charging is a necessary step to make EVs fully competitive with conventional vehicles,” ORNL’s Fei Xie said. “This is a freely available planning tool that takes into account the complexity of intercity travel and helps decision makers more carefully plan these capital-intensive projects to support a nationwide, electrified future.”

In-Charge Energy to support GM’s new Ultium Charge 360 fleet charging service In-Charge Energy, a provider of turnkey infrastructure services for commercial fleets, has been named a preferred provider for GM’s newly-announced Ultium Charge 360 fleet charging solution.

“Electrifying fleets play a key role in GM’s vision to get ‘Everybody In’ on an all-electric future. GM is working with In-Charge to support fleet customers as they move toward an electric vehicle line-up,” said Alex Keros, Lead Architect for EV Infrastructure at GM. “Our collaborative approach to helping fleets go electric will streamline implementation while building charging infrastructure that fits their unique, ongoing electrification needs.”

As a part of Ultium Charge 360’s fleet service, InCharge Energy will be available to provide infrastructure support for GM fleet and BrightDrop customers. This includes fleet and facility planning, engineering and design, utility interconnection, construction management, hardware and software selection and supply, final installation and commissioning, monitoring, maintenance, repair, reporting and finance. In-Charge uses its own field technicians to directly perform many of these services.

As the demand for EV charging infrastructure grows, many utilities are dealing with long waits to upgrade facilities, and some fleet operators are taking delivery of EVs only to find that they face a long wait to get the necessary charging equipment up and running.

“With these challenges, it is very important to work with an infrastructure partner early,” said Terry O’Day, COO of In-Charge Energy. “GM understands this dynamic as well as anyone in the EV industry, and this announced relationship reflects the need to move vehicle and infrastructure decisions forward concurrently.”

Image courtesy of GM

Image courtesy of ORNL

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

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Rivian to install charging stations at all 56 Tennessee state parks EV startup Rivian, which plans to bring an electric pickup to market this year, followed by an SUV in 2022, is targeting the outdoorsy set, and part of that plan is to deploy public chargers at national and state parks around the country.

Now the EV-maker has partnered with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) to install Rivian Waypoint charging stations at Tennessee state parks. The goal is to have charging stations available at all 56 state parks, depending on the availability of electricity and planned future park upgrades.

Rivian will oversee the design and installation of the Level 2 chargers, providing any necessary utility upgrades at no cost to taxpayers. Rivian will also cover all network access fees, equipment service and maintenance for 10 years.

The open-network chargers are compatible with all EV models, and can provide up to 11.5 kilowatts of power.

Drivers can monitor charging using the Rivian app.

EV charging at Tennessee State Parks will initially be free. According to the Tennessee State Parks agency, “any potential future cost to drivers may be dependent on systemwide utilization to recover electricity costs.”

Rivian will begin site surveys and engineering this summer. Installation is scheduled to begin as early as fall, and to continue into March 2022.

“As Tennesseans increasingly rely on electric vehicles, our state parks can play a significant role to enable recreation in all corners of our state,” TDEC Commissioner David Salyers said. “TDEC is committed to clean air, and the shift toward electric vehicles is an excellent step forward for air quality.”

Earlier this year, TDEC and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) announced a partnership to develop a statewide EV charging network that will provide fast charging stations every 50 miles along Tennessee’s interstates and highways. The initiative is expected to add around 50 new fast charging sites throughout the state.

Southern California Edison aims to help site hosts install 38,000 EV chargers Southern California Edison has opened its Charge Ready program to businesses, government agencies and other nonresidential customers. The initiative has a budget of $436 million and a goal of adding some 38,000 new EV chargers throughout SCE’s service area over the next five years. Under the program, SCE installs and maintains the supporting infrastructure, while site hosts typically own, operate and maintain qualified charging stations.

The large-scale program is modeled after a smaller pilot that ended in May, in which SCE partnered with businesses, local governments and other organizations to add more than 2,700 charge ports at nearly 150 sites.

The first site to participate in the pilot was the city of Lynwood, where six chargers were installed to charge the city’s fleet of EVs, and eight more were installed in the civic center public parking lot.

SCE also helped the city of Long Beach install 102 ports at five sites, including the city’s fleet services yard and several public attractions. “The best part of participating in Charge Ready is being able to provide a benefit to both our public and our fleet,” said April Walker, the city’s Project Management Officer. She added that Long Beach would not have been able to deploy the large number of chargers without Charge Ready’s assistance.

Charge Ready helped to install 200 ports at Fairplex, the site that hosts the Los Angeles County Fair and 400 other events throughout the year.

In the interest of making EV charging available to all Californians, Charge Ready sets a target to locate 50% of the chargers in state-designated disadvantaged communities, and those that suffer most from the negative effects of air pollution.

In addition to Charge Ready for passenger EVs, SCE has launched a program for trucks, buses and off-road industrial equipment called Charge Ready Transport, which aims to add charging to support at least 8,490 medium- and heavy-duty EVs over a five-year period. The $356-million program is also modeled after the Charge Ready pilot.

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Image courtesy of ABB

Image courtesy of Gridserve

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Gridserve plans 50 charging hubs in UK, with 350 kW chargers Sustainable energy provider Gridserve has unveiled plans to develop a £100-million EV infrastructure project in the UK. The Gridserve Electric Highway will offer a network of over 50 electric hubs, each with between six and twelve 350 kW chargers. Ten of these hubs are scheduled to go into service this year. The company also plans to install an additional 300 rapid chargers at motorway service stations.

Gridserve recently took over an existing public charging network that was developed by a company called Ecotricity.

“Anyone who’s driving an electric car in the UK will be aware of what was called the Electric Highway,” said Robert Llewellyn, host of the YouTube series Fully Charged.

“It was a very brave first step. They were first out of the gate in many ways. They put a charging network across the entire country.”

Unfortunately, Ecotricity wasn’t able to maintain the Electric Highway (several too-early public charging networks around the world have suffered the same fate), but the company laid down a foundation for Gridserve to build upon.

Within six weeks of acquiring the Electric Highway, Gridserve has installed new 60 kW+ chargers at over 50 locations, and is equipping new sites at the rate of around two per day. It plans to replace the entire network of 300 old Ecotricity chargers by September, and to enable every type of EV to charge with contactless payment options.

The company’s first Motorway Electric Hub is a bank of twelve 350 kW Gridserve chargers alongside twelve Tesla Superchargers, which was opened to the public in April at Ruby Services. This will be the blueprint for the company’s future sites.

ABB delivers chargers for Gridserve Electric Highway charging network UK charging provider Gridserve is expanding and upgrading its network of public charging stations. The company says its Electric Highway will include coverage for 85 percent of the UK’s motorway network, plus towns and cities across the country.

Gridserve will install ABB’s Ultrafast DC and Fast DC chargers at many of its sites. ABB’s Ultrafast DC 350 kW chargers will be installed at 50 of Gridserve’s new Electric Charging Hubs—between 6 and 12 charging units at each site. Gridserve will also install 300 ABB Fast DC 60 kW chargers to upgrade 150 existing sites that Gridserve has acquired from Ecotricity.

ABB’s chargers support Gridserve’s Autocharge, a new feature that recognizes an individual EV, and automatically initiates charging and handles payment (analogous to the Plug & Charge system in the US). Gridserve also appreciated ABB’s ability to support rapid deployment, as the company plans to place more than 10 new Electric Hubs into service before the end of 2021.

“We’ve chosen to use ABB EV chargers as they have the technology and capability to help deliver our ambitious plans for the Gridserve Electric Highway network, and provide the best possible charging experience for EV drivers,” said Gridserve CEO Toddington Harper.

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Image courtesy of SparkCharge

Shell to install 800 chargers at Waitrose UK supermarkets Image courtesy of Shell

Oil companies (we’ll consider using the term “energy companies” when products other than petroleum make up at least half their revenues) are starting to invest in EV charging, and Shell is at the forefront of this trend. Now the company is expanding its partnership with the UK supermarket chain Waitrose.

The companies are targeting the installation of 800 Shell Recharge public charging points at up to 100 Waitrose locations across the UK by 2025. Each site is expected to have six 22 kW and two 50 kW fast charging points.

EV charging is expected to debut at the first Waitrose shop early next year. This will represent the first foray into destination charging for the oil giant’s Shell Recharge-branded network, which it hopes to expand to 5,000 charge points at gas stations (forecourts to our British mates) and other locations by 2025. (Shell has been offering DC fast charging at some of its retail sites in the Netherlands and the UK for some years, and it also has ownership interests in a couple of public charging operators.)

“We want to make EV charging as hassle-free as possible and support our customers wherever they want to charge,” said Shell UK Retail General Manager Bernadette Williamson.

“This is an important partnership for Waitrose and means we can offer even greater convenience to more of our customers,” said Waitrose Executive Director James Bailey.

Service provider network Urgently to use SparkCharge’s on-demand fast charging solution Urgently has partnered with SparkCharge to add ondemand EV charging to the services offered by its roadside and mobility assistance programs.

The partnership combines SparkCharge’s Roadie, a portable, modular fast charging system, with Urgently’s Smart Mobility Assistance platform.

“Mobile EV charging is among the innovative and vital services Urgently has identified to support our partners’ EV strategies and enhance the ownership experience for their customers,” said Chris Spanos, CEO and co-founder of Urgently. “Partnering with SparkCharge, we can provide EV owners an enhanced sense of security that they will not be stranded without access to reliable on-demand charging assistance.”

Urgently sees on-demand EV charging as an essential element of smart mobility assistance. The partnership with SparkCharge will support its network of roadside service professionals, many of whom are eager to expand their capabilities for servicing EVs. “We anticipate EV assistance calls will become a significant percentage of our business in the years ahead, so it’s imperative that our service capabilities keep pace,” said R. Blair Gentry, President of Blair’s Towing & Recovery, in Northern Virginia, and a member of Urgently’s service provider network. “We are excited to work with Urgently and SparkCharge to expand our service capabilities for our EV customers.”

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Terawatt Infrastructure aims to address the massive energy capacity needs EV fleet charging depots

By Charles Morris

Q&A with CEO Neha Palmer

Images courtesy of TeraWatt

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“ s more fleets of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles go electric, there’s a growing awareness that building the necessary charging infrastructure will be a complex proposition, requiring specialized expertise and considerable capital.

Fleet vehicle depots will need to incorporate not only charging stations, but energy management systems, and possibly energy storage and on-site generation. These sites will also require massive amounts of power capacity, and that means close coordination with local electrical utilities. Many fleet operators are turning to third-party companies to manage all these elements as part of a turnkey charging service.

TeraWatt Infrastructure offers a comprehensive platform that combines financing, energy management and project development to help organizations make the transition to EV fleets. The company has been acquiring real estate in strategic locations near major highway exits, metropolitan areas and logistics hubs—potential

A

What we’re talking about at TeraWatt is having dozens of chargers in one location, dozens of vehicles charging simultaneously, which requires more than just a simple grid connection.

sites for future charging centers. It also provides fleet operators a suite of solutions and asset financing for infrastructure projects at their own sites.

TeraWatt has only recently come out of stealth mode, and has yet to announce any major customers. However, the company got the attention of the media in May when it appointed Neha Palmer, a seasoned expert in the energy management field, as CEO. Ms. Palmer was Google’s Head of Energy Strategy for 10 years, and she managed the tech giant’s buildout of its energy-hungry data centers. Her unique experience is expected to be an invaluable asset to TeraWatt as it works to develop largescale EV charging infrastructure projects.

“Neha Palmer tackled Google’s data center energy consumption through a decade of massive growth, while also bending the will of the world to achieve net zero emissions,” said TeraWatt Infrastructure co-founder Ben Birnbaum. “It’s difficult to find someone with the kind of infrastructure development experience that the world is

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

going to require to make it successfully through the transition to electrified transport, given the complexities of the energy requirements and the sheer volume of watts and capital required.”

Ms. Palmer explained to Charged how TeraWatt Infrastructure intends to tackle the problem of providing power for charging large EV fleets.

A Neha Palmer: My background has been energy my entire career. I worked at utilities, and over the last 10 years, I was at Google helping lead the energy strategy for the global fleet of data centers. We built a team that was building out the energy strategy for these really large energy-intense pieces of infrastructure. Everything from transmission lines and substations, all the way to clean energy supply to make sure the data centers were clean. We went from eight sites on two continents to dozens of sites on four continents. We really changed the way corporations were buying energy, focusing on clean energy.

I was looking around at what the next big thing would be in terms of being able to reduce carbon emissions, and very quickly triangulated that it was electric vehicles.

Electrification kind of has to go in sequence. The grid has to get clean so the source of power for those vehicles is clean, so it’s kind of a nice virtuous cycle. I started looking for opportunities there, met the founders of

“

When I think about the number of charging stations that will be required for all the fleets that want to transition, it’s kind of mind-boggling.

TeraWatt, and it just made a lot of sense. The experience I have in interconnecting very large-scale, energy-intensive infrastructure to the grid is definitely the way that we’re trending for electric vehicle charging, particularly for fleets. TeraWatt was conceived of by the founders as a way to help fleets electrify, focusing on the large amounts of electricity, infrastructure and other things that they’ll need to charge many vehicles at once.

I think when a lot of people think of charging, they think of, for example, a Whole Foods, where there’s a couple of charging slots. What we’re talking about at TeraWatt is having dozens of chargers in one location, dozens of vehicles charging simultaneously, which requires more than just a simple grid connection. It requires things like on-site storage, on-site electricity generation, and a really large interconnection to the grid. All of that starts to become a new asset class, and TeraWatt was built to help companies make that transition. We can own those assets for them if

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Images courtesy of TeraWatt

they don’t want to buy them themselves, and we can help them develop those assets as well.

We have property across 18 states that we’ve started developing into charging infrastructure. We’re focused on logistics hubs and highway corridors, where we believe that the early movers on fleet charging will be. We can help build out entire facilities that are pre-positioned for electric vehicles, but we can also help customers who are transitioning their current sites and help them think about how to do that as well.

Q Charged: What vehicle use cases are you focusing on?

A Neha Palmer: There are two areas of focus. One is last-mile logistics, where you might have companies like FedEx, UPS or Amazon, that are making deliveries and have a warehouse with trucks coming in and out. The second area of focus is along highway corridors, where we believe there’s an interesting chicken-and-egg issue.

Once those vehicles come to market en masse, there’s the need to have charging for those vehicles to truly be used in the way that traditional freight operates.

“

There is a significant amount of coordination with the utility, and sometimes it’s a different provider for the actual electricity.

And then who owns the lines might be a different utility.

A Neha Palmer: We are here to help fleets in general.

The infrastructure required is kind of agnostic to what you’re charging. It really is about: Do you have enough power to bring to bear for the number of vehicles that want to charge? And can you manage that entire piece of infrastructure, from connecting to the grid to delivering power to these vehicles?

Q Charged: So, your niche would be the really power-

hungry, big hubs that have lots of throughput.

A Neha Palmer: I think there’s a lot of different paths.

The ecosystem is still, I think, shaking itself out. OEMs are certainly interested. A lot of them realize that in order to be able to deliver a large number of vehicles, they need to provide a charging solution, but they’re focused on manufacturing vehicles. They don’t necessarily want to own a bunch of infrastructure, and they might not even have the in-house expertise to deal with the scale.

A lot of these OEMs have been delivering pilots of one or two vehicles. But when you start to scale to dozens of vehicles, that’s a step change in the amount of infrastructure required. We’re having conversations with OEMs where they’re saying that this could be a really interesting partnership opportunity. We are able to own those types of assets, and we are structured in a way that can bring a low cost of capital to finance those assets.

A Neha Palmer: Absolutely. We really see an acceleration in the medium- and heavy-duty vehicle market. The total cost of operation for those vehicles is already positive in terms of switching to electrified vehicles. And yeah, we’re focused on those large-scale operations that will require many megawatts of charging, as opposed to just a couple of vehicles charging at one time.

The amount of energy intensity, I think, is something that people are starting to recognize, but have not anticipated. It takes a long time. My data center experience tells me that it can take two to four years for an energy-intensive piece of infrastructure to be interconnected to the grid with the reliability you want. And when I think about the number of charging stations that will be required for all the fleets that want to transition, it’s kind of mind-boggling. There probably is not enough capacity on the grid at this moment to meet the full demand that will be required once we have full electrification, so there need to be other solutions in the market. That’s where you start to see infrastructure with storage, on-site generation—all of these other aspects of charging at scale.

Q Charged: Say a municipality wants to electrify

Q Charged: Walk us through the steps and the chal-

Q Charged: Will the fleet operators be the customers

that you would integrate with directly? Or would it be vehicle OEMs?

their school bus fleet or their transit fleet, would you do that as well?

lenges if you wanted to electrify one delivery area of the city for, say Amazon, for example.

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

“

I think that [a utility having the capacity you want in the right area is] somewhat of a wild card for people as they think about developing these charging hubs.

A Neha Palmer: The first thing is just understanding the

power availability in any location. Can you get the amount of power in the timeframe you want it? Oftentimes you’re going to have to build at least a simple line from wherever the substation is to the site, so that has a timeline associated with it. And then the capacity. Is there capacity in that substation to meet your load for the amount of charging you want to do simultaneously?

There is a significant amount of coordination with the utility, and sometimes it’s a different provider for the actual electricity. And then who owns the lines might be a different utility, so there’s a lot of coordination from that perspective. And then, if it’s a greenfield site, you’ll have to permit all the things that would be required to permit.

That would obviously be a building, if there’s a warehouse, but it might also include other elements. If you wanted to have solar on a site, if you wanted to have energy storage, all of those things require lead time and special permitting requirements and other considerations.

Q Charged: How often does a utility have a large

amount of excess capacity in an area where you need it?

A Neha Palmer: That is a huge question that a lot of

people are looking at right now. It depends on the utility. It depends on what industry might have been built up there, and maybe it’s gone. There may be areas where you had a lot of industrial activity, and it might have shifted over time. It really depends on what has happened previously. And you might have areas that are greenfield, being built out over time. I think that is a somewhat of a wild card for people as they think about developing these charging hubs.

Q Charged: Are utilities often willing or able to scale up their capacity in a local area for you if you give them some kind of guarantee that you’re going to use it?

A Neha Palmer: It’s all about timeline and money.

Maybe they can, and maybe it doesn’t cost a lot because the amount of infrastructure required isn’t great. There might be some capacity in the local substation. Sometimes however, they’re in a constrained location and reconductoring a line or whatever it might be, takes a really long time. They may have to build a new line, and that can take many years in some cases.

I think it’s a case-by-case basis, and I think that this is going to seed a lot of innovation. You see where people want to interconnect existing facilities, [but] if the power isn’t there, people are going to figure out alternatives. And I’m really excited for us to participate in that and see what types of innovation can help to move along faster, because in some cases it will take longer than people want to wait for the ability to charge in specific locations.

Q Charged: What kind of storage do you think will be

required?

A Neha Palmer: I do think storage will be a critical part

of the equation. It can allow a facility to interconnect with a little bit less trouble, because they can make the load flatter. They might provide services back to the grid where you have instability—it might be another source of

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Images courtesy of TeraWatt

have some sort of storage component to it. So certainly the uptake is there and, again, it’s really driven by those cost curves, making it a lot more cost-effective to use, and batteries have such interesting applications. It’s not just pushing power to the grid. You can absorb, you can push, you can provide other types of services to the grid.

Q Charged: What’s next for the company? Are you working on any pilot projects?

A Neha Palmer: We are looking at our portfolio and

“

There’s not a lot of people out there that have experience with this scale, because it’s a new asset class and there are very few installations of this scale.

revenue for these types of installations. I think a lot of the freedom you have with storage, it’s kind of following what happened with solar over the last 10 years—you see the cost of storage coming down significantly. I think that you’ll see a lot more use cases for batteries, and I think it will be a key component of these types of facilities.

Q Charged: Is there a lot of storage being installed on

the grid currently, at the utility scale?

A Neha Palmer: It’s definitely growing. You certainly see

a lot of use cases where it’s becoming very common. Ten years ago with solar, you wouldn’t even think about putting on storage. And I think it’s the opposite now— with a large solar installation, you’re probably going to

starting our development of those assets. We were in stealth mode for a couple of years, and we just came out a little over a month ago, but over time we have been building that portfolio out, and now we’re moving to that next stage of looking at what we want to develop. We’re working with partners and we’re hearing what their needs are.

Where are these going to be located? I think the customer will drive a lot of that, so we’ll also look at expanding our portfolio to places where customers are asking us to be, and then start to develop there. We’re definitely looking at where customers want us to be, where our portfolio exists, and that overlap in terms of how we’re developing.

Q Charged: Do you think you’ll be a fleet management

company? Will you help with the backend for the fleets or will you be more of an infrastructure provider?

A Neha Palmer: That’s a great question. I think we see the gap in the market right now for the infrastructure. There’s not a lot of people out there that have experience with this scale, because it’s a new asset class and there are very few installations of this scale. So, we certainly will have to integrate forward into what the fleet is doing, and that will be a piece of it, and integration into the grid as well. But really where we can provide value is our ability to own these assets and develop them, so that’s the infrastructure piece.

Q Charged: Are you open to more partners?

A Neha Palmer: We’re talking to lots of different customer types. Municipalities, OEMs, end users who are saying, “I have to install larger infrastructure—how do I do it?” The customer conversations are broad at this moment. Our focus really is on How do we help you scale? It really doesn’t matter what that end use is. How do we bring you the infrastructure you need to scale your fleet the way you need to?

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ABB CHARGES INTO THE FUTURE WITH

FORMULA E

By Charles Morris

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8/29/21 10:15 PM

THE INFRASTRUCTURE he global electric racing championship Formula E has been a huge success by any measure. Automakers like Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Nissan, and Jaguar have embraced the series, which is surely the world’s most prominent showcase for electric vehicle performance. Charged attended the New York City E-Prix in July, and spoke with several execs from EV infrastructure powerhouse ABB. All told us that their partnership with the electric racing series has brought a tremendous amount of public awareness to the company, and of course, to emobility in general.

However, for ABB and the many other companies involved with Formula E, it’s by no means all about marketing—there’s some important product development going on. As the saying goes, “Race on Sunday, sell on Monday.”

ABB’s work with Formula E (and with the participating OEMs, all of which are also ABB partners) has led to numerous practical advances.

T

From the racetrack to the street “A lot of what we do with Formula E, we’ll pull the lessons learned and the improvements to our mass-market chargers or equipment,” ABB Global E-Mobility Executive Stephanie Medeiros told Charged. ABB is currently providing UPS systems for Formula E’s broadcast center, and it provided 50-kilowatt chargers for the Jaguar I-Pace trophy, a racing series that was presented before the main Formula E races for two seasons from 2018 to 2020.

The real action will begin with the 2022/23 season, when ABB will become the official infrastructure supplier for Formula E. The companies are already working closely together to develop a third-generation charging system that will allow the Formula E racers to charge in less than a minute during pit stops, adding a new dimension to the races.

“We’ve been [working] on it for quite a while now— we’re designing the specifications, working on the prototypes,” Ms. Medeiros told us. (Technical specs such as voltage and power levels haven’t been announced yet.)

The Gen3 charging system will supercharge not only the race cars, but also the promotional value of the racing series. “The power will be higher, so we can promote even more how EVs are exciting to drive, and the fast charging tech will give the opportunity to show that the range and the time of charging is becoming less of an issue nowadays,” said Medeiros.

“

A lot of what we do with Formula E, we’ll pull the lessons learned and the improvements to our massmarket chargers or equipment.

We asked for an example of how something that was developed for Formula E would have wider applications for ABB’s everyday customers.

“Formula E is a very unique application, because not only are we taking this equipment and shipping it all around the world, but we’re also connecting it to so many different power sources and different grids,” said Medeiros.

“Typically, with electrical equipment, you install it and then you just leave it there for 10, 15-plus years. We’re taking this [equipment for Formula E] and shipping it around the world. You have to make sure that the equipment is robust and reliable enough that it will work when you get to the next destination. That’s a lot of really good data...there’s so much value and data we can take from that.”

“And the same thing with the chargers,” Medeiros continued. “The mobile [Gen3] chargers are going to be wheeled, because you want to maneuver them very easily when we put them in garages. It’s power electronics—you want to make sure that it’s safe, reliable and robust, so that when you plug it in, no matter what kind of rate or energy source, you’re going to get something that’s reliable. We’re going to take those lessons learned, and then put it into chargers.”

Efficiency is everything In the racing world, efficiency and weight are critical, and advances made in the pursuit of speed can also yield advantages in terms of range and vehicle design that can be applied to less glamorous vehicles. “Energy management is EVs,” Formula E Chief Championship Officer Alberto Longo told us. “You need to manage your energy in order to be efficient. Efficiency is what we are about. Th is is not about who is going the fastest.

Th is is about who is managing energy better.”

Dan O’Shea, Director of Utility Strategy and Business Development for ABB in the US, gave us some more examples of the two-way exchange of ideas between Formula E and more mundane markets.

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When Formula E started, range was limited, so each driver had two cars, and performed a swap mid-race. The Gen2 racer has enough range to last the whole 45-minute race, and the Gen3 car’s super-fast charging will make it possible to reduce the battery size. “As you progress, the batteries get smaller, because you can charge it faster,” said O’Shea. “Well, this is happening in the commercial space with trucks and buses. When electric transit buses first hit the market, they had an inverter on board, and they charged with alternating current. Now, the general consensus seems to be that having the [AC-to-DC] conversion happen off-board lightens the bus, and makes room for a bigger battery. As the batteries get denser, that bus will have more range, and maybe more flexibility, because the charging will happen with DC. Bringing the charging off-board, to [lighten] the vehicles, you can see that this is happening in Formula E. There’s obviously this technological synergy between what happens in Formula E and what makes it to the commercial model.”

Don’t most of today’s e-buses offer both Level 2 and DC charging? “Some of them do, but I don’t know that they’re being made that way anymore,” says O’Shea. “With CCS combo, you’ve got your J1772 Level 2 and your CCS in one port. If you have that port, you do have the option [of using AC or DC charging], if you have an inverter on the bus. The industry is still so young—I can’t tell you that in five years it’s going to be that way. I was told adamantly, five years ago, that AC charging was what was going to be happening with buses. And that is not the case.”

“We work closely with the auto, bus and truck OEMs to create the products that they’re going to need, and we’re in development constantly. We have a unit today called the Terra 184, which is 180 kilowatts in a smaller form factor.

This cabinet is the same size as our 50-kilowatt cabinet, which can charge one vehicle at a time. Now you’ve got a cabinet with the same footprint, with 180 kilowatts, but it can charge two cars at 90 kW. The progress of the power electronics makes for smaller and more efficient power modules. We’ll be applying that kind of technological progress to the Formula E Gen3 charging application.”

Like computers, EVSE components continually get faster, smaller and cheaper. “Sometimes I use the comparison to Moore’s law,” said O’Shea. “It’s not really that crazy of a compression time—12 to 18 months, halving in size and doubling in power—but it is analogous. Like I said: 50 kilowatts, seven years later, same size cabinet, 180 kilowatts.

Images courtesy of ABB

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

What’s happening there? The power modules are denser, components are smaller. The unit is a lot smarter.”

Fleets are neat What’s the hottest and fastest-growing area in the EV world at the moment? “I would say fleets,” says Stephanie Medeiros. “Obviously, for the last few years, it’s been passenger cars, and we’re not done with electrifying passenger cars. The next big thing was electric buses. Now it’s fleets, and that’s coming in huge, huge numbers. When looking at the total emissions that come from transportation, commercial transport [is a major part of it] especially as you’ve seen during the pandemic where deliveries just increased significantly. Obviously if you electrify that, you’re really going a long way to cleaning up the air.”

The fleet market may be red-hot today, but as battery prices continue to decrease, demand for fleet EVs, and associated charging services, could break the thermometer. “We always talk about the total cost of ownership of an electric vehicle, and that’s pretty much on par with a combustion engine vehicle, because maintenance costs are lower, and [charging cost] is usually lower,” said Medeiros. “But what’s really important is upfront cost, and we know that upfront cost is going to go down year over year. A lot of studies are saying that, in five years, electric passenger cars will be cheaper on average than combustion engine cars. And that’s mostly due to the battery. Once you get to that point—because obviously when you’re electrifying commercial fleets, the ROI is superimportant—then it’s going to be making the overall story for electrification more attractive.”

One of the hottest topics on the EV scene these days is charging management for vehicle fleets. Charging large numbers of vehicles at once requires a complex package of hardware, soft ware and services to maximize reliability and efficiency, and minimize costs. Naturally ABB is involved in this area, but the company is working with a partner to provide charging management services to its EVSE customers.

“We have an excellent partner called In-Charge Energy [the subject of a feature in our March/April 2020 issue], and they do a great job of offering turnkey solutions for fleets,” Dan O’Shea told us. “They have a team of some of the most qualified, experienced charging people in the world. They work with our hardware primarily, and they have software as well that addresses the needs of

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“

Efficiency is what we are about.

This is not about who is going the fastest. This is about who is managing energy better.

the vehicles, and also of the building—energy management behind the meter, on the customer side. They offer that service. There are other companies that do just the software—you’ve got Mobility House, ViriCiti, Electriphi, which was just purchased by Ford.”

“The fleet sector has pulled ahead. At first [our focus] was public charging—we had to get chargers on the road so that people [wouldn’t] have range anxiety. This was really the focus in 2010 through 2013. Once fleet managers understood that the return on investment, and total cost of ownership of these vehicles, was better than gas, and they could justify that largely without incentives, that really accelerated the development of fleets, and that incited development in the energy management space. There’ll be more of that. We are developing, and have developed, fleet-specific solutions. We have a lot of bus operators that use our software to operate the chargers on the buses. And then when it gets more complex, when energy management is needed, they layer the fleet-specific software on top.”

Coming attractions CHARin, a consortium of vehicle OEMs and other players, is developing a new charging standard for heavy-duty

vehicles, called the Megawatt Charging System (MCS).

We asked O’Shea if MCS is the coming thing, and if there are any competing standards in development. “There’s testing going on at the labs with the auto OEMs and the charging manufacturers, and they’ve come up with a megawatt connection,” he told us. “We participate in CHARin, we’re a founding member. There are technical hurdles, cooling being the primary one, whether or not a human is going to actually operate that, or it’s going to be automated, for the actual connection, there are things to work out, but it is happening. It’s amazing. I don’t know of other standards that are working on a megawatt—it doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”

I also asked O’Shea about vehicle autonomy as a solution for the problem of drivers who don’t have the option of installing a home charger. Could self-driving cars go off and charge themselves in the middle of the night?

“Is that here, or on Mars?” O’Shea quipped. “I talk about this a lot because I get asked about driverless, autonomous and self-parking. It’s a thing that is eventually going to hit the streets, but the merging of humans and computers driving together is something that needs to be worked out.

Now, with a fleet situation, let’s imagine that your driver

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE gets back [to the depot], and just has to leave the vehicle at the gate. We already know that a vehicle can find its way to a parking spot. That already happens, so I could see that that would be a viable technology to deploy.”

“For ABB e-mobility, when they need hardware to charge it, we’re going to make it. Whatever format that needs to be [for an] automated charging experience, we’ll be able to do it. We’re network- and software-agnostic. If it’s on the Open Charge Point Protocol [OCCP] platform, we’ll be able to provide the hardware and the network services that need to be applied for that solution.”

Is ABB pushing for one solution or the other? “Not really. We lead in the development of power electronics for the use cases that are out there. Would we build something because we think there’ll be a market for it?

We know where the market is now, and we’re building and releasing products for it.”

“I’ll give you an example. We released a 24-kilowatt DC charger last year. There’s a three-phase version and a single-phase version. I wasn’t exactly sure what the uptake of that would be, because since the first 50-kilowatt charger came out, it’s always been bigger, faster, better, right? You go to 350, you go to 600, a megawatt. Well, we released a 24-kilowatt charger, and this is probably the most popular launch of a product we’ve ever done.”

“What it really speaks to is that it’s about the use case.

How long is that vehicle going to be parked there? When is it needed? And if you can mitigate your upstream electrical service, and limit those costs by having a 24-kilowatt charger, instead of a 50 or 150, why would you not do that? I used to say, your car is like your cat—it’s asleep most of the time. It charges when it’s asleep. Now, if you have a depot where you need your cars every eight hours, or you know the dwell time, then you can do the backwards math up the electrical supply chain, to see what power you need so that that vehicle is ready at 6 am. It doesn’t have to be 50, 150 or 350—it could be 24.”

What kind of customers are buying the new 24 kW model? “A lot of auto OEMs for their dealerships, and fleets. We have a great deal with Lion Electric. Their trucks are selling with our 24-kilowatt unit. We have bus companies that want the 24-kilowatt. We have others that want 150. It’s about the dwell time, and the use case.”

ABB: Early EV leader It’s quite fitting that the lead corporate sponsor of Formula E is ABB, a global electronics giant that is involved

“

Images courtesy of ABB

It’s always been bigger, faster, better, right? You go to 350, you go to 600, a megawatt. Well, we released a 24-kilowatt charger, and this is probably the most popular launch of a product we’ve ever done.

in many aspects of the electromobility industry, from charging infrastructure to batteries to utility integration to robotics.

The company’s name reflects its Swedish and Swiss roots: the A is for ASEA, an electrical manufacturer founded in Sweden in 1883, and the BB is for Brown, Boveri, a group of electrical engineering companies formed in 1891 in Switzerland.

ABB is a major manufacturer of EV charging hardware—it provides chargers for some of the world’s largest

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public charging networks, including Electrify America and Europe’s IONITY, and for many large EV fleets around the world. Just to give two examples, in June the company announced a deal to supply 2,000 AC charging stations to Austria’s postal service, and another to provide charging infrastructure for 1,000 electric buses in Qatar.

Also in the past few months, ABB has sold electric power systems for ferries in Lisbon, bi-directional chargers for V2G kiosks in France, an energy storage system for highway chargers in Switzerland, fast chargers for utilities in Japan...the list goes on and on. “When they need hardware to charge it, we’re going to make it,” Director of Utility Strategy and Business Development Dan O’Shea told Charged.

Full disclosure: ABB has been a regular advertiser in Charged since our early days.

Formula E’s founders There are more manufacturers involved in Formula E than in any other form of motorsport in the world, and one reason for this is because it’s an exciting way for companies to promote their electrification efforts. In fact, part of the impetus for creating Formula E was to appeal to sponsors who wanted to green up their images.

At the New York City E-Prix in July, Formula E co-founder and Chief Championship Officer Alberto Longo told Charged that, back in 2012, a lot of sponsors were starting to be concerned about the environmental aspects of gas-powered motorsports. “It wasn’t the right messaging for their companies. I knew that we needed to create a platform that really invited all these big brands that didn’t have a place in promoting [gas-powered racing] because of the sustainability angle.”

As the legend goes, Alejandro Agag met with some bigtime motorsport sponsors at a restaurant in Paris, and told them that if they ever organized an electric championship, he would love to be the promoter. They were non-committal, but he insisted that they sign something on the spot, so they signed a preliminary agreement on a napkin, which laid the groundwork for the founding of Formula E. Agag became the CEO, and the rest, as they say, is history. Formula E (officially the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship) has been a huge success, not only as a showcase for EVs, but as an exciting sporting event that attracts loads of spectators both live and broadcast.

It’s also a financial success—the series came very close

to turning its first profit during the 2019-2020 season, despite having to cancel 9 of the 14 scheduled races due to the pandemic. The series was just wrapping up its seventh season as we went to press, and planning its eighth for 2021/2022, which will include 16 races in 12 locations, from Cape Town to Vancouver to Seoul.

Alberto Longo told us about some of the big changes in store for the following 2022/23 season, which will feature a redesigned Gen3 race car. “Every four years, I think we need to change, because technology is advancing so quickly that every four years, your technology is obsolete—completely, 100%. ABB is such a great partner for that. But, at the same time, we’re taking care of the [investment] of the teams. We don’t change earlier than that.”

“It’s going to be a much nimbler car, much quicker.

The weight of the battery is going to be much lower, and it’s going to have more range. And obviously that means that the cars are going to be way quicker than they are today. The batteries are going to be exactly the same for all cars—the powertrain is going to be what the teams and manufacturers can play with.”

Some have accused Formula E of hypocrisy, because although the race cars are electric, staging the event requires a large number of diesel trucks (at the 2019 race in Bern, protesters rode bicycles around the racecourse to highlight the irony). Formula E is continually working to reduce its environmental footprint.

“Sustainability measures are totally linked to efficiency as well,” Longo told us. “We travel the world with more than 300 tons of equipment. That’s not efficient. We need to talk to our teams, in order to reduce as much as possible the footprint that we leave. Efficiency has always been at the core of Formula E, but we’re pushing the boundaries there, and hopefully we will get way more efficient. I’m calculating more than 35% saving of CO2 emissions, by the new way that we’re going to manage our logistics.”

“Combustion engines are over, end of story,” Longo concludes. “You can believe it, you can not believe it, but this is happening now. It’s not the future anymore. Most of the first-world countries in the world today, they’re banning the sale of internal combustion engine cars [by] 2025, 2030. The commercial interests of all the big manufacturers are aligned with a platform like Formula E. The investment that these manufacturers are putting into EV technology is going to make us grow way faster than any other form of motorsport.”

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9 - 11 NOVEMBER 2021

STUTTGART, GERMANY

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What flavors of V2X are ready to serve? idirectional charging, or V2X, which enables EVs to discharge energy from their batteries for fun and profit, is one of the most exciting opportunities in the e-mobility field. Transforming vehicles from wasting assets (aka money pits) to revenue sources could be the biggest disruption since Tesla transformed EVs from kale to ice cream.

Like ice cream, V2X comes not only in different flavors, but in different types of cones. There are many possible applications—some are merely useful (backup power), some can save on energy costs (peak shaving), and some can generate cash income (demand response, frequency regulation). There are also different use cases, from delivery fleets to school bus fleets to personal vehicles.

Which of these are in commercial operation right now, which show promise for the near future, and what will be required to drive widespread deployment? Charged contacted some specialists in the field to find out.

All applications require a bidirectional-capable EV and a bidirectional-capable charger. Some may require cooperation with the local utility, and perhaps the services of a third-party service provider to make it all work.

Several companies offer bi-capable EVSE, including charger manufacturers ABB and Rhombus Energy Solutions, as well as V2X service providers Nuvve and Fermata Energy, which collaborate with various charger manufacturers.

At the moment, the only bi-capable passenger EV in widespread use is the Nissan LEAF. More are in the pipeline, including the upcoming Ford F-150 Lightning and all future EVs from VW and Volvo (starting next year). On the commercial side, Blue Bird now includes Nuvve’s V2G integration on all its electric school buses.

School buses are often cited as an ideal use case, and they account for many currently operational or near-operational V2X projects. (Some believe that there are more cost-effective use cases. Fermata CEO David Slutzky tells us that an e-bus can cost $200,000 more than a diesel model, and has perhaps 155 kW of dispatchable capacity, whereas 3 LEAFs provide a total of 186 kW.) AMPLY Power, which provides charging as a service for EV fleets, recently began a V2B project with Logan Bus, which operates 2,500 school buses for New York City. “A demand response aggregator called CPower is going to be dispatching DR for us on that project. It’s already in place,” AMPLY CEO Vic Shao told Charged. “We can dispatch power from the bus battery to the building, to reduce the net draw from the grid.”

Full V2G—sending energy to the grid as a dispatchable resource—is not far in the future, but it will require close coordination with utilities. “The hardware set in use on Logan Bus is V2G-capable,” says Shao. “Right now we’re not doing V2G,

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but it’s a demo we can do in the coming months. It requires participation from [the utility], so V2G is in a demonstration phase right now, but the equipment that we have deployed is capable.”

Rhombus has deployed V2G pilots in several states. “Many of these will begin transitioning to production projects this year or early next year,” VP of Marketing Mike Heumann told me. “The largest stumbling block seems to be getting utilities onboard...and determining how the utilities will handle distributed energy resources (DERs, of which V2G is a subset).

These problems are [like] those home solar power experienced 1-2 decades ago, which were eventually resolved.”

“We’re already doing commercial deployment of behindthe-meter demand-charge management,” says Fermata’s David Slutzky. “We’re reducing customers’ electric bills by backfeeding into the building load [at peak times], reducing their demand charges.” Projects with the cities of Denver and Boulder are in operation. “The vehicles are saving the equivalent of the cost of the lease of a Nissan LEAF, so we’re getting a free vehicle every month, just from demand-charge management.”

According to the NREL, there are 5 million commercial customers with demand charges above $15 per kW in the US. “If you have two or three events a month, it’s not problematic from a battery degradation standpoint, but you can make $9,000 a year,” Slutzky explains. “That’s a free car and charger in five years. Our second killer app is demand response. At the utility level, they have their own version of a demand charge from wherever they’re sourcing their electrons. On good days, we do both—we’re reducing the building load during its peak, and that peak is often coincident with the utility’s peak, so I can get double pay for the same event.”

Slutzky agrees that utilities are the key. His company has deployed several bidirectional chargers at utility sites. “Utilities need to understand how the technology works, experience it.

We’re working with utilities to identify different value streams that can be extracted from a parked EV, and help them figure out the best way to monetize that.”

Frequency regulation is another application that’s taking place today—Nuvve has been working with Danish grid operator Energinet since 2016. Multiple EVs are connected to bidirectional DC chargers controlled by Nuvve’s V2G GIVe platform, and Nuvve bids the available battery capacity on the regional market. Over a two-year period, each vehicle generated an average of $2,000 in revenue for Nuvve’s customers.

“V2G is completely disruptive,” Mr. Slutzky concludes. “It’s going to change ownership models. You’ll see an emerging business model where vehicles are owned by a third party— they rent out the mobility duty cycle to a traditional customer, and then they use it for revenue-generating opportunities while the car’s parked.”

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30 November - 2 December 2021 Stuttgart, Germany

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This event gives me real access to see some of the challenges that are met at an enduser level and with companies that are really working with the end-user in mind.

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Dr. Limhi Somerville., Advanced Battery Research, Jaguar/Land Rover

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