United States

Kokomo, Indiana, may not be the location the Beach Boys were singing about, but its definitely the current tune of both Stellantis and Samsung SDI, as the two announced a joint venture to build a US EV battery plant there. Together, the global automaker and battery manufacturer will invest over $2.5 billion to bring a slew of new EV jobs to Kokomo and its surrounding areas.

The transportation sector accounts for approximately 30% of carbon dioxide emissions in the US alone. As the United States and the rest of the world for that matter, continue to lean into the paradigm shift of BEV transportation, more and more countries, states, and their consumers must prepare. A new 2022 report from LeasePlan USA has measured a number of data factors and scored an EV readiness index for all of the US.

Following rumors circulating earlier this month, Hyundai Motor Group has officially signed an agreement with the state of Georgia to invest $5.5 billion in new facilities dedicated to EV and battery manufacturing. When complete, these new facilities will be Hyundai’s first EV-specific manufacturing on US soil and will produce a wide range of upcoming electric models.

A recent report states that global battery conglomerate CATL is in the final stages of vetting potential sites to bring EV battery production to the US. The move would mark the company’s first entry into the second largest automotive market in the world, and the new facilities would provide cells to BMW AG and Ford Motor Company for their EV production stateside.

Commercial EV manufacturer Volta Trucks has shared a roadmap outlining plans to bring its all-electric Zero trucks to the United States next year. Its strategy will include the 16-ton Volta Zero truck to begin, followed by Class 5 and 6 variants. Additionally, Volta Trucks is searching for a manufacturing partner on US soil to begin building the Zero trucks before year’s end.

Following entry into the North American market and plans for an HQ on American soil, Vietnamese EV automaker Vinfast, announced that North Carolina will be its new home for US manufacturing. The site in Chatham County, North Carolina, will soon house both an automotive assembly and battery manufacturing plant for Vinfast to build North American EVs like its VF 9 and VF 8.

Polestar announced it has officially begun delivering its 2022 Long Range Single Motor Polestar 2 to US consumers today. This trim delivers a 270-mile EPA range, which was announced last December and joins the 2022 Dual Motor version. I got a chance to drive it for a few days and truly believe drivers will enjoy it, especially those who are newer to EVs.

Mercedes-Benz delivered multiple press releases this morning, sharing details of its new battery manufacturing facility in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as well as interior images of its upcoming EQS SUV, one of the German automaker’s EVs that will soon begin production on US soil.

Spanish automotive brand Hispano Suiza has officially made its debut in the United States, delivering its first Carmen Boulogne all-electric hypercar to a customer during the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance in Florida. This bespoke hypercar was designed to the client’s specifications and will be one of five Carmen Boulognes produced in the world.

President Biden and the US Department of Energy have issued multiple notices of intent to allocate $2.91 billion in support of EV battery manufacturing as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The DOE shared plans to use the funds to further battery materials refining, production plants, and battery cell manufacturing facilities in addition to battery recycling.

The US branch of Chinese automaker NIO continues to make interesting moves in North America, as the company signed a ten year lease on a building in San Jose, CA. The new 200,000+ sq. ft. US headquarters is more than double the size of NIO’s current footprint, signaling that a long speculated entry into the North America could be one stop closer to becoming reality.

Multiple job postings recently added to LinkedIn by NIO’s vice president suggest that the Chinese automaker’s expansion into the US could be coming sooner rather than later. NIO has recently shared plans to expand to 25 different countries and regions by 2025.

In an unconfirmed letter to the Commander in Chief, two US Senators from California urged the administration to follow their state’s lead in establishing a phase out date for gas-powered vehicles. Furthermore, President Biden and his team are maneuvering how to reimplement vehicle emissions rules eased by the previous administration.

Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial, and political review/analysis of important green energy news.

Today on EGEB, Japan updates its toothless energy plan. Oil-producing Alaska seeks carbon-free power to save itself from thawing permafrost. A new report shows how the 20 most water-stressed countries also have the most potential for solar energy and could thus alleviate their people’s thirst by going green.

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The Obama administration unveiled their gargantuan National Offshore Wind Strategy last Friday.  If executed, this joint plan by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of the Interior (DOI) could possibly output 7,200 terawatt-hours a year, which would be enough to provide “nearly double the total electric generation of the United States in 2015.”
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZwguLJVxsM]

We’re mostly going to stay away from politics but this ad is very specifically on solar and renewables and it will hopefully kick off a debate on the energy sector that we’ll see in the run up to the 2015 elections.  The 10 year goal of moving US residences to renewables is a worthy 1st step. More from her campaign page

11:24 PM
power wall is “beautiful, fits on the wall, garage wall or outside wall of your house. 6 inches thick. 3 feet across and tall. Really easy to fit in garage or your house.”

[11:25 PM] Mark Gurman: Connected to Internet.
Smart micro grids
Ten year guarantee
[11:25 PM] Mark Gurman: “Nothing remotely in these price points”
“Our goal here is to fundamentally change how the world uses energy”
[11:26 PM] Seth Weintraub: Tesla’s selling price to installers is $3500 for 10kWh and $3000 for 7kWh. (Price excludes inverter and installation.) Deliveries begin in late Summer.

[11:27 PM] Mark Gurman: Musk says great for cold climates when there are power outages and ice storms
Good thermal management system for very cold environments

[11:29 PM] Jon Jivan: Wayyy below suggested price of $13k by some outlets. Nice to see it come in so cheap.
[11:29 PM] Mark Gurman: “Going to be huge in Germany”

[11:31 PM] Mark Gurman: Doesn’t require heavy foundations
“the integration at the system level is the big differentiator”
Ready to scale to a very large scale today

[11:32 PM] Mark Gurman: they’ve been using it for a year in house

[11:33 PM] Mark Gurman: Tesla will continue to open source the patents on all these
[11:34 PM] Mark Gurman: Giga factory designed in the same as a giant car
Fundamentally different way than approaching manufacturing and engineering

[11:39 PM] Mark Gurman: Installable by two people in half hour to an hour
Installation prices up to distributors

[11:42 PM] Mark Gurman: “This would be bigger in terms of pack utilization than the car industry, actually comparable size”
[11:43 PM] Mark Gurman: international, still need to figure out certified installers however

[11:43 PM] Mark Gurman: it’ll scale as fast as we can scale it.

[11:44 PM] Mark Gurman: international next year
Germany and Australia late this year

[11:44 PM] Mark Gurman: China early next year

Musk said “we own tesla energy.com” when asked if they’d change from tesla motors as name

Update: Here’s our first look. Looks familiar

https://twitter.com/TomerDavid_/status/593964617161805824

https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/593967615887872000

Update: Tesla Energy!

Tesla Energy Press Kit

We’ll be covering the Tesla Battery announcement later tonight but Tesla just unleashed the livestream page. Check back soon. We’ll run down the highlights here. We’re expecting Tesla to announce home and industrial battery products that allow users to store solar and lower cost, high availability electricity for use at night or during higher cost/watt time periods.  The battery will be a down payment and rental fee which should more than pay for itself in electric bill savings.

There has been further speculation that, with this announcement, Tesla Motors will change its name to Tesla, Inc or Telsa Energy to note that it is an energy storage company, not just a car company.  We’ll find out more soon, stay tuned.

In a new paper in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, Tugce Yuksel and Jeremy Michalek at Carnegie Mellon University have shown the average energy usage per mile of electric cars across the US.  You’ll note that warm but temperate climates like the California Coast and the Deep South especially Florida fare the best. Very hot desert areas like Arizona don’t do well because of the energy required to cool off bith the batteries and cabin. The North does poorly because batteries lose power as weather gets cooler.  Below, a Nissan Leaf efficiency is graphed at different temperatures which illustrates this disparity more clearly. The optimum range for operation is between 45 and 82 degrees where the 300W/mile threshold is beaten.

This all translates to CO2 emissions obviously and with the West making their energy much cleaner, they produce about 1/3rd the CO2 emissions as the north Midwest which is basically one big coal plant. In fact, that area’s energy is so CO2 intensive that running an electric car there (assuming you don’t have your own solar/wind) rivals the CO2 emissions of a fuel efficient car like a Prius.

The big takeaway is that moving to electric cars isnt enough. The grid also needs to move to cleaner power like wind and solar.

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Great interview, not much new however if you follow Tesla and its CTO into the energy industry. Some interesting bits:

Why did Tesla act differently? For a start, it does not think of itself as a carmaker. “I see us more as an energy-innovation company,” says Jeffrey “JB” Straubel, the firm’s chief technology officer, and one of the co-founders of Tesla, along with Elon Musk, the chief executive. “If we can reduce energy-storage prices, it’s the most important thing we can do to make electric vehicles more prevalent,” says Mr Straubel. “Add in renewable power and I have a direct line of sight towards an entire economy that doesn’t need fossil fuels and doesn’t need to pay more to do it.”…

Mr Straubel met Mr Musk, a freshly minted multimillionaire from the sale of his PayPal digital-payments company to eBay. “One lunch was the beginning of what eventually became Tesla,” says Mr Straubel. “We spent most of the meal talking about electric aeroplanes. But as we were wrapping up, I said I was working on a fun crazy project with cars, trying to build a lithium-ion battery pack that could last 1,000 miles.”…

“Most other companies do not believe that battery volume will grow as fast as it’s going to,” Mr Straubel counters. “They don’t understand the tight linkage between cost and volume. We’re at this crossing-point where a small reduction in cost is going to result in a ridiculously big increase in volume, because the auto industry is so big.”…

“No one wishes we could come up with a technology that makes today’s chemistry obsolete more than me,” says Mr Straubel. “We could sell more cars at a lower price. But we’re not waiting.”