EVU Pro Report: Europe diesel truck ban — BYD Yangwang U7 — The real recycling % of EV batteries

Hey, Pro!

We’re back in action. You’ll get two newsletters from me in your inbox here simultaneously (good luck haha), and the Tesla-special coming in hot on Monday evening.

Plenty of news to share, with the pace our industry is moving on. As it happens ever so often, I had to cut out about another 1,000 words I had written on different news so we could fit all of this report here into one email.

Before we start, here’s a big welcome to our newest members, Mike, Ervin, and Brad! I hope you’ll find the journey through the EV Universe rewarding.

Words today: 2,755 | Reading time: 12 minutes | Read online for a better reading experience (with lot more picturess to show what we’re talking about).

EU reached a deal on (nearly) phasing out diesel trucks. (link) Manufacturers will have to cut the average emissions of new trucks by 45% in 2030, 65% in 2035 and 90% in 2040. From 2035, the targets will also apply to vocational vehicles such as garbage and construction trucks.

There is also a new target for urban buses - 100% by 2035 and 90% by 2030. It also seems that despite the heavy fossil lobby, e-fuels aren't added as a loophole? That's a win.

State of Michigan mandates the gov agencies to replace all their cars and light-duty vehicles to zero emissions by 2033, and medium-and-heavy-duty vehicles by 2040 — which makes up ~8k vehicles. (link) Currently, three of these are EVs.

State of Delaware approved the Advanced Clean Car II Act, with a few tweaks: 43% of the model year 2027 car & (non-heavy) truck sales must be zero-emission, with gradually increasing to 82% by 2032. (link) Interestingly, they don’t set a date for 100%. Delaware currently has one of the lowest EV counts in the US: just above 5k as of end of 2022. (link)

General Motors says it has ~$1.4B reserved as the first phase of the new investment cycle in Brazil, aimed at sustainable mobility. (link) Just in November last year, GM attempted to cut 1,200 jobs in Brazil, but canceled the plans after large strikes and began a voluntary buyout program. Seems that Brazil’s new program (called Mover) to incentivize green mobility might be working to attract carmakers. I expect some other OEM announcements in the country soon… and perhaps that’s also why we saw BYD make a quick move into Brazil recently?

In case you didn’t know this, the current cars run a bit differently over there. As far as I could understand from afar, they use something called flex-fuel, which contains a mix of E20-E25 gasoline and up to 100% hydrous ethanol fuel (E100). The ethanol comes uses sugarcane as feedstock, so you could almost call ‘em Sugarcane cars.

Mars 🤝 Einride to put 300 electric trucks into operation in Europe by 2030. (link) Note, that Einride’s latest business model — as opposed to what we saw a few years back — has changed and now offers freight capacity as a service (FaaS), with installing and operating necessary chargers through its Einride Sage OS, optimizing routes and potentially using autonomous systems. This means Einride sources its trucks from different OEMs (like eActros 300) instead of building the trucks itself.

Uber partners with Smartcar and starts using its API to integrate battery state of charge (%) into its Driver app, enabling eligible EV drivers to ensure that they’re only assigned rides within their remaining battery range. (link) Smart. We did that for our e-taxi fleet in ~2018 — it’s a great way to increase efficiency on all sides.

VinFast is launching its first US dealership in North Carolina with its partner Leith Automotive Group, near the $4B EV factory it’s building (link).

TALENT

• Alexander Lutz becomes Lucid Air’s Managing Director Europe, switching out Michael van der Sande. (link)

• Herbert Diess is the new Executive Chairman of the Board of The Mobility House, “spearheading V2G technology.” (link)

• Polestar replaces its Head of Sales (Kristian Elvefors) and CFO (now Per Ansgar, but temporarily). Former head of China at VW and CEO of Škoda, Winfried Vahland, joins the board.

FUNDING

• Lightship raises $34M Series B round, co-led by Obvious Ventures and Prelude Ventures, to bring the electric travel trailer L1 to the roads. Production is set to start later this year. (link)

• Arrival is reportedly in talks with EY to act as an administrator if the company cannot get rescue funding. (link)

BYD Yangwang U7 luxury sedan information has been published in the China’s MIIT application (which means it’s reached the last major regulatory step needed for sales). It will have 4 electric motors for a 960kW output and 270km/h top speed, uses BYD’s in-house battery division FinDreams’ LFP batteries, and should start at 1M yuan ($140.5k) (link)

VinFast revealed two new products at CES this month - the VF3 city car and the Wild pickup truck concept. (link)

The Jeep Wagoneer S is set to go on sale from fall 2024, first in the USA and Canada and then globally. (link). 3.5s 0-60mph. Unlike the Jeep Avenger, the Wagoneer will launch exclusively as a BEV.

Maserati has reportedly halted development of the Quattroporte Folgore electric sedan announced for 2025. Deliveries of the electric versions of the GranTurismo and Grecale, which were originally planned for 2023, have also not yet taken place. (link)

Per French media, the plans for electric versions of Opel Manta and Opel Insignia are shelved (link). And that’s too bad. I kind of enjoyed how the ElektroMOD Opel Manta looked like. Can we have nothing special?!

Watch tip: An Autoline video on Tesla & BYD teardown insights done by Caresoft (1h 9min), showing just how far ahead they are of legacy OEMs. (video)

Acura EV prices for the US launch are now set: $64,500 for the ZDX A-Spec and $73,500 for the ZDX Type S), set to arrive in dealerships this spring (link). Interestingly Acura offers every buyer a choice between these three charging packages, a move I haven’t seen in quite this form yet:

POV: Aito M9 SUV and it’s projector screen, along a a mini fridge. (link)

MAN says it has received 700 pre-orders for its eTruck, three months after the sales launch. (link) The large-scale production is scheduled to start in Munich from 2025, small series production this year.

♻️ Circular Energy Storage (CES) launched a new global recycler database with 370 recycling facilities listed, based on capacity, process, feedstock, chemistry, etc. (link)

It does seem to fall under their £7,500/year subscription, and I usually link you to just the non-paywalled stuff, but I thought it’s worth mentioning nevertheless, as the first thorough resource I’ve found for this.

While we’re on the topic, I’ve found the founder of CES, Hans Eric Melin, has gone down a rabbit hole himself and, in a thorough post on LinkedIn here, provides us some great insight. He speaks on why the very widely quoted (and found even in plenty of peer-reviewed science papers) data of “only 5% of li-ion batteries are collected” is completely wrong and how it became the industry-wide ‘data’ to use in the first place.

And with their own paper from 2023 (link), they estimated 59% of the batteries that were available for recycling were recycled. PS — this also doesn’t mean that the other 41% ended up in landfills, rather that they just couldn’t find where they were. Although a small scale example, I personally know that whenever an used EV battery pops out in our small market, there will be a line of people trying to buy it for their DIY energy storage systems. Guess if that pops up on any radar? ;)

As I consider Melin one of the most up-to-date people about battery recycling on the planet, I suggest following him on LinkedIn.

ProLogium opens its first factory for solid-state cell series production (106Ah, ceramic solid electrolytes) in Taoyuan, Taiwan. Annual capacity is currently 500 MWh, with plans to expand to 2GWh. (link) The first deliveries to OEMs start later this year, so we might see the first Nio, Mercedes or VinFast — it’s partners known so far — vehicles testing it out this year.  

SAIC-GM-Wuling presents a battery pack for electric vans, the thinnest battery pack for this purpose so far at only 14.8 cm (5.8″) deep. (link)

Comau (Stellantis subsidiary) 🤝 LiNa Energy to develop a manufacturing solution for solid-state sodium battery cells.

OneD Battery Sciences 🤝 Koch Modular Process Systems to build a factory in North America producing 20,000 tons of silicon graphite anode material per year (enough for ~1M EVs). (link)

Lithium deposits were found in Yaijang, Sichuan province, China (1M tonnes, pegmatite lithium deposit) and Phang-Nga, Thailand (14.8M tonnes of ore with 0.45% lithium content). Note that deposit finding doesn’t automatically mean it’ll be feasible to use it.

Aptera 🤝 CTNS for battery technology, and a potential joint venture. (6min video).

FUNDING

At the WEF in Davos, EIT InnoEnergy (EU body) and Demeter (VC and PE firm) announced establishing a €500M battery raw materials fund “dedicated to the development of a resilient and diverse battery raw material supply chain for Europe.” (link)

Sion Power, raises $75M in Series A funding, led by LG Energy Solution. (link) Sion Power plans its Licerion lithium-metal battery to hit the roads in 2027. It has demonstrated successful 20Ah cells, currently develops 56Ah, and has sent samples to several car OEMs for validation. Notable — Sion Power also added Stefan Jacoby as Chairman of the Board — formerly of GM International ops (President) and Volvo Car Group (Global CEO), and VW Group of America (CEO) (link)

International Battery Company (IBC) raises $35M in pre-Series A funding (plans for $70M Series A), led by RTP Global. (link) The company HQ is in California, produces its NMC cells in South Korea, but plans to deploy them specifically in India, along with building a 10GWh facility in Bengaluru by 2028

Eatron Technologies raises “millions” in Series A2 funding, led by LG Technology Ventures. Eatron provides AI-powered battery management software. (link)

Stellantis presented its STLA Large platform for the D and E segments. (link) Note, that it’ll also be used for hybrids and ICE. It has an 85kWh or 118kWh battery, which should enable up to 800km ( 497 mi) range for sedan purposes. Both 400V and 800V architectures will be available.

This platform is what will be initially used by eight models from 2024-2026, from the Dodge and Jeep brands in North America and later also by Alfa Romeo, Chrysler and Maserati. Here’s a 1-minute overview by Stellantis (video)

EV production

Neta is building an EV factory in Malaysia, plans to expand to more than 50 countries. (link)

Lucid Motors expands its AMP-1 plant in Casa Grande (AZ) by about 3M sqft, meant for producing the upcoming Gravity SUV (link).

HummingbirdEV announced the establishment of a microfactory in the United Arab Emirates (link)

Great Wall Motors (GWM) starts to build EVs in Thailand, starting with GWM Ora 03 (which is also expanding well in Europe, even made it to the media of my little Estonia for its cheaper-than-others starting price). GWM also assembles the battery packs in this plant, with a partnership with SVOLT. (link)

BYD is reportedly looking to build a $1.3B EV plant in Indonesia with 150k/year capacity, with construction to start this year. (link) Context: outside of China, BYD has (or is building/buying) factories in Thailand, Uzbekistan, Brazil, and Hungary. Uzbekistan plant started production just this week. (link)

Volkswagen is still struggling with a shortage of its new APP550 electric motors from the components plant in Kassel (since ~November now?), and both Zwickau factory and Škoda factory are producing EVs at a slower rate. (link in 🇩🇪 ) Reportedly, the Kassel plant is producing the APP550 only at ~30% of the capacity because of a problem connected to the stators.

SALES

While I’ve already gathered a bunch of EV sales numbers globally and you as a Pro member get access to our magnificent spreadsheets starting this upcoming week, I thought I’d give you a good glimpse of the world’s largest EV market on the side we don’t usually get — China’s EV fleet (link):

China has now 15,520,000 all-electric vehicles on its roads.

As of end of 2023, China had 336M automobiles on the roads total. So about 4.62% of the whole fleet of the world's biggest car market is fully electric.

And every ~4th car now added is fully electric (26.7% BEV mix in 2023).

In the ‘regular’ newsletter you’ll find me outline the China/Europe/US preliminary EV numbers for 2023.

Chargie has been granted “Authorization to Operate” within US federal government systems by GSA, and receives FedRAMP Authorized Designation.

This means it can design, operate and install networked L2 and L3 chargers for gov agencies and fleets in the US. (link)

ChargePoint also received this authorization (link) These two are the only charging providers I’ve seen authorized so far (link to FedRAMP marketplace).

UK: The Association of Fleet Professionals has set up a committee to explore ways van fleets can share chargers. It comes as a survey revealed 58% of fleets would consider sharing their depots. (link) Via Fast Charge

IONITY lowers prices for its Passport customers in all 24 European countries, from €11.99 → €5.99.

NEW PRODUCTS

China: Hyper (the EV brand of GAC Aion), unveiled the H640, a 640kW charger that runs at 800A (up to 1000V). The company plans another 1,000 chargers in 2024 and has 2,695 built so far. (link) The company claims to add 500 km (311 miles) of range in 6 minutes.

Tigo Energy launches the 22kW GO EV Charger in Germany, meant to be integrated with Tigo’s EI Residential solar-plus-storage solution. (link)

NEW PARTNERSHIPS

GM Energy Partners 🤝 FreeWire, primarily to deploy for GM’s Envolve fleet and commercial customers. (link)

Octopus Energy 🤝 Gett to offer easy (and discounted) charging for the 4,000+ London (semi-)electric taxis through Octopus Electroverse (Octopus’ charging roaming service) (link)

MAN Truck & Bus 🤝 ABB E-mobility to advance the development of megawatt charging stations, explore new EV integrations, and develop new software solutions for electric trucks. (link)

NEW DEPLOYMENTS & PLANS:

• Austria, +400 chargers in 95 Hofer supermarket chain locations in Styria province, in cooperation with Energie Steiermark (link), with the first now opened in Leoben. Hofer plans for 2k new charging points in 485 locations across Austria by 2026. Context: Hofer is a subbrand of the massive retailer Aldi which has a global footprint of over 12,000 stores in 19 countries.

• Nordics, +1,250 high-power chargers will be installed by Nima Energy by the end of 2026. Its current target is 150 HPCs in Sweden. (link)

• Gridserve unveiled its new hub near Gatwick, UK. Gridserve reportedly has a £1B ($1.27B) plan to deploy ultra-rapid charers in 100 charging hubs within 5 years in UK. Gridserve already has secured 80 sites for those hubs. (link)

• Elywhere, the Norewegian up-to 200kW EV charger provider (with BESS), expands to US and Canada (link).

• Electrify America shared an infographic about their 2023 network (link), claims to have reached 4,000+ DC chargers installed in 900 locations in US and canada, and has upgraded 680 chargers in 2023.

FUNDING:

Trojan Energy, an UK-based on-street EV charging provider, raised £26M ($33M) in Series A funding, from BGF and Scottish National Investment Bank (link).

Monta raises €80M ($87M) Series B, led by Energize Capital, GreenPoint Partners and Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund. Monda plans to double employee count, invest in development and expand the partner network across Europe and US.

Monta focuses on charging software, handling the app and operations for companies that run charging stations for customers or employees. Background: Monta has raised €130M total since its founding in Denmark in late 2020, has now expanded to 20 countries and “grew it’s revenue sixfold last year”. (link)

MAN Truck & Bus CEO, Alexander Vlaskamp, for a Spanish media (link in 🇪🇸, via Electrek):

That’s it for this week, folks! Thanks for being with us.

See you soon.

— Jaan