BRIAN SANTO: I’m Brian Santo, EE Times editor-in-chief. You’re listening to EE Times On Air, and this is your Weekly Briefing for the week ending July 10th.
In this episode…
The automotive industry began re-introducing electric vehicles more than 20 years ago. After al that time, electric cars still represent only a sliver of total auto sales. But that might change relatively soon. Auto industry expert Egil Juliussen has reasons to believe that electric cars will be more cost-effective than vehicles based on internal combustion engines in as little as five years. That is significantly faster than most people expected.
Also, the supply chain is something you never hear about unless something goes wrong, and now we’re hearing about it a lot. The supply chain starts with basic materials, and that’s one of the most difficult parts to manage. We’ll talk about that in a moment.
Battery EVs vs. the Internal Combustion Engine
Some of the very first automobiles back in the late 1800s and early 1900s were electric-powered, but ever since, the internal combustion engine has been the dominant means of propulsion.
The revival of electric cars began in the 1990s. This new generation of electric cars took two basic forms. One category can run on either gas or electricity. These are now commonly referred to as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs. The other runs entirely on electricity. Those are battery electric vehicles, or BEVs.
Today, the fervor for Tesla vehicles might make one think that electric vehicles have become more popular than they are. In 2019, only two to three percent of all new vehicles sold were electric, and that statistic depends on the source.
Most long-term projections expect electric vehicles to gradually grow from today’s market share of roughly 2.5 percent to perhaps as much as 45 percent or 50 percent by 2040, with most of the growth coming after 2030.
Egil Juliussen has been analyzing the automotive industry for a long time. He recently wrote a two-part series for EE Times presenting evidence that the EV market might move much faster than expected. He believes that within five years, electric vehicles are likely to meet several criteria that will make them fully competitive with those based on internal combustion engines. International editor Junko Yoshida called him up to talk about it.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: What are those criteria?
EGIL JULIUSEN: The first one is the price of the battery EV needs to be competitive with the combustion engine vehicles. And we think that’s going to happen when the battery reaches $100 per kilowatt hour. That’s roughly five years from now.
The second one is that you’ve got to have lots of models that cover all the use cases that the customer has. VW needs to have 20 or 30 models that are battery EV, from small cars to SUVs. GM needs to have it for their trucks. That’s on the way, and we think today there are relatively few models, but in five years, there are quite a lot of models that are planned. We think the COVID economy might slow it down a little bit, but there’s going to be a tremendous amount of models available. That covers then the user needs. So many more people then have a product they want to buy.
The third part is the operational cost. The battery EVs are actually already ahead of combustion engines. That’s the equivalent price of fuel, so the electricity cost versus gallons of gas. It’s going to range by region and surely by country. So in the US, it’s about 50 to 70 percent electricity equivalent to gasoline. So there they’re ahead already.
Then it has to do with the maintenance cost, since the battery is so much simpler. There are maybe tens of moving parts versus literally thousands of moving parts. So anything that’s moving eventually wears out. And there is basically no fuel in terms of cooling things and stuff like that. Brake fluid,* you name it. So there are fewer things that need to be replaced, and hence there are already roughly (again it’s going to vary a little bit) 50 to 70 percent better than what the combustion vehicle engines are.
[ * After this interview was recorded, Juliussen said he meant to say “cooling fluid.” – ed. ]
If you go to fuel cost in Europe, now you’re talking four to six times more expensive, and so there it’s even bigger.
The last one is the refueling time. And here the battery EVs are not going to match the combustion engine for a long time. But the fact that you essentially can have your own refueling station in your garage, it’s a major advantage. So that really means that people who have a garage are going to be the earlier people who are acquiring. There it takes 10 or 12 hours if you have 115 volt type to recharge. But that’s overnight; that’s not a problem. So that may make up the disadvantage of refueling for a long time. But eventually, you have to figure out how to put charging stations where people tend to spend an hour or so. Because when you have fast, high-performance battery charging, you can pretty much get 80% of it today probably in 30 to 40 minutes. Still a lot more than the five minutes. But it’s better. But if you’re in a shopping center or at a restaurant, then you can get that done.
The other point is that you aren’t going to charge it more than once a week or so, unless you drive a lot. If you just take the average driving distance, in the US it’s about 13,500 miles or so that you drive per year, you divide that out 250 miles and you get 54 times. But the range anxiety means people will charge more often. But as they learn how to do that, it’s not going to be such a big problem overall.
Then eventually all of this happens, and the battery EV thus becomes the major selling type of power train. Again, it’ll take time.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: But you are predicting that battery EV will no longer be a novel item, but it is going to be the common thing probably within five years’ time.
EGIL JULIUSEN: In five years, that doesn’t mean that battery outsells combustion engines. That means they’re competitive at basically everything. And that’s when the market really takes off.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Gotcha. So that’s really the beginning of the takeoff. Five years’ time, battery EVs start to make sense.
EGIL JULIUSEN: Yes. In every aspect except the refueling time.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: I just want to go back to the battery cost thing. You wrote that battery costs have dramatically declined already. Tell me how much it was before, 10 years ago, and how much it is now.
EGIL JULIUSEN: In 2010, it was essentially $1,000 per kilowatt hour. Today, 60 kilowatt hour is sort of… you’ve got to have that to be competitive. That’s $60,000. That was ridiculous. And of course at that time they didn’t have that much battery. Then by 2019 it had dropped to $156. The benchmark is $100 per kilowatt hour. Then you multiply that by the 60, now you have $6,000. And now you’re pretty close to what the power train with the transmission, all of that, what that is for a typical car.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: It’s a magic number.
EGIL JULIUSEN: It’s a magic number.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: $100 per kilowatt hour. It’s interesting. Every high tech market item, I remember I used to write about LCD. “When LCD becomes mainstream…” And that was I think like $100 per certain size of the screen. In this EV case, you’re talking about $100 per kilowatt hour. We’re getting close to that.
EGIL JULIUSEN: Yes.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Very good. In terms of the variety of EV models coming, are you actually hearing that from auto makers? Are they promising that?
EGIL JULIUSEN: Yes. They are promising that. If you look at what IHS market has, they essentially track every model that is being produced and being sold, and they go usually until about 2031 or ’32 timeframe. I would look at those, and somebody like VW… and they said publicly, too, they’ll have well over 20 models by 2025. GM is sort of in the same range. Pretty much all the major automotive companies. They’re all going towards battery vehicles. They do understand that now it’s the long-term winner. They may not have 20, but they’re going to have 10 or 15. And it’s going to increase over time. If you go to Europe, where they really want it because they’re much more into cutting down the CO2. So there it’s much higher. Norway is already 50% battery EV already in sales.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Wow! Really? Fifty percent?
EGIL JULIUSEN: Over 50%, yeah. There’s a separate reason for all of that, which might be worth a different column, just writing about the different perspectives by country. Because it varies quite a lot in what they’re doing and so on. So that might be worth another column.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Let’s set that aside. That’s an intriguing thing. Something like a battery EV, this is not really just about technology. It’s about how society embraces new technology, how society actually builds policy behind it. It’s interesting.
All right, good. Now let’s get back to the technology. One of the things that really got me excited when I read your part two on your battery EV story was this: You wrote about emerging technologies to improve battery EV. Specifically you talked about wireless charging and supercapacitors coming out. Wireless charging, I kind of get that. But tell me about supercapacitors. What the hell is this?
EGIL JULIUSEN: Well, it’s a large capacitor. The good news about capacitors is, you can charge them really fast because you just dump the current in there and all of a sudden it’s there. So the idea that it’s possible. And I don’t know if anybody is doing this, and it may be a pie in the sky. But idea is that you would have a supercapacitor as part of the battery system, and that would charge up really fast. Then while you’re no longer hooked up, then it would charge the battery. That’s the idea. But again, whether that’s going to happen or not, that’s unknown. But that’s the idea. I compared it to a cache memory in the computer industry, which is potentially the equivalent to that. And that supercapacitor could also be between the charging station and the electricity network. Because there it’s a problem of getting… You’ve got to pull a lot of current there, too. So having standby supercapacitor with extra power there that you then load into it when the car’s there, that could be done as well. But again, these might be pie in the sky, but you never know.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: But it’s an idea that’s kind of floating around that could help the charging dilemma.
EGIL JULIUSEN: And wireless charging, that’s pretty well established. The smartphones are doing that now, and many of the cars have that for the smartphones. Qualcomm actually was a major investor in that, but they sold their business to Witricity about a year ago I think, maybe a little bit more. So there are companies working on that. Wireless charging for cars is much more realistic. And it’s more convenient because you don’t have to go plug stuff in, you just park in a certain space and there it goes.
And also, it has one advantage. The wireless charging can be more efficient than plug-in, because it goes through all this power adapter and all this. That generates heat, so anytime you have heat, that means some of the electricity is being wasted. So the operational cost of wireless charging could be better than plug-in charging. But the infrastructure to put in is more costly. So that’s the issue. But I’m pretty sure the robotaxis, most of those are going to be battery EVs over time, they’re going to have their place where they use that, because it’s going to be more convenient for them.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Wow. Great. Let me come back to this supercapacitor thing. Are you aware of any companies who mentioned that they’re working on this?
EGIL JULIUSEN: No. I don’t think so. There’s an old technology, maybe 15 years ago, there was a company that actually tried to develop a similar concept. It was a spinning wheel. They got pretty far along, and then they abandoned it. It would be sort of a similar technology. You spin a wheel and it has a lot of energy, and then that drives the car. It’s not totally unheard of, having the concept of this. So a supercapacitor in some ways would be simpler. Again, I didn’t spend enough time to go into that. I thought it was intriguing enough to mention.
JUNKO YOSHIDA: Exactly. The pie in the sky story is always welcome. Okay, well thank you so much, Egil. It was fun talking to you as usual.
EGIL JULIUSEN: Okay. Thank you.
BRIAN SANTO: Juliussen estimates that once battery EVs become competitive with traditional cars, sales will slowly begin to grow. Recall that battery and hybrid vehicles had roughly a 2.5 percent market share in 2019. In his articles, Juliussen cites estimates that battery EVs – and this is just battery EVs – will have a 13 percent market share by 2030. Add in hybrids, and that number jumps to 21 percent.
We’ve got links to Juliussen’s two-part series on the podcast web page, or just do a web search for the headline “Battery EVs: Not If, But When and How Fast?”
Strategic Materials & the Supply Chain
The US trade war with China has profoundly affected the high-tech market. The electronics industry has been concerned primarily with the roles of chip manufacturers and the suppliers of equipment for making ICs, because that’s where the biggest disruptions in the supply chain are today.
But those disruptions have given companies around the world a reason to re-examine their entire supply chains, and there’s growing concern that China controls the market for nearly 35 precious minerals and metals that are necessary for manufacturing a very wide range of products, everything from drill bits to semiconductors. But it’s not clear precisely how concerned the global industry is about that.
Recently, a supplier of tungsten conducted what appears to be the first survey of US companies on their views of the part of the supply chain having to do with precious minerals and metals. Materials that topped the list of specific concerns include tungsten, indium, tantalum, barium, germanium and phosphorus. Most of those are important in the manufacture of semiconductors and other electronics systems.
Not all the respondents in the survey are sourcing their strategic materials from China, but among those that do, many of them rely heavily on China. A little over 10 percent get 40 to 50 percent of their strategic materials from China. Another 20 percent of respondents get between 30 to 40 percent of their strategic materials from China.
Three-quarters of the respondents say that supply chain disruptions are their biggest threats to their manufacturing business in the next 12 months.
The company that conducted the survey is Almonty, a specialist in supplying tungsten. We spoke with the company’s chairman and CEO, Lewis Black.
Can you tell us what the goal was with the survey and what the results were?
LEWIS BLACK: I think there’s a lot of information out there regarding what the supply chain issues that are being faced by companies are looking like. But there were no real sort of studies done on it. So we’re hoping that by starting off that process of really asking companies directly rather than political leaders, we could get a much better sense of what the current process is within US companies. And ultimately it showed to us what we suspected. That further diversification is imperative and that there is an over-reliance, especially on China, for products. Because ultimately there are very few other alternatives.
BRIAN SANTO: The companies you spoke to, you were talking about the end customers of materials. Did they also include any of the other suppliers or procurers of rare materials?
LEWIS BLACK: Essentially, these were all end users. Because ultimately the end of any chain is where the answers are to be found. They’ll drive what the rest of the chain looks like.
BRIAN SANTO: And you didn’t ask just about tungsten. You asked about a multiplicity of different materials.
LEWIS BLACK: Yes, we did. And that was very important, because not everyone uses tungsten, although many do. But it’s to get an overall picture of what the situation was.
BRIAN SANTO: Did you ask the survey respondents what materials they were using?
LEWIS BLACK: We asked them, obviously, What sector are you in? So there was a broad range of industries. We also then asked them, What are the strategic metals that you’re most in need of? And then we also asked them, Where do you get these from? So then you can start building a picture of their current supply chain. And then finally we asked them, What worries you? So it’s given us a good overall picture among over a hundred companies of the current concerns are with US companies. And from all over the United States. This was another question we asked them: Where in the United States are you?
BRIAN SANTO: Can you characterize some of the different industries that were surveyed?
LEWIS BLACK: Yes. We spoke to automotive, maritime, oil and gas, machine tools and industrial household good, jewelry, electrical, manufacturing both nontechnology and technology, aerospace. This gives you an example. It’s a very broad range. Because tungsten is used extensively through most, if not all, manufacturing.
BRIAN SANTO: As you know, a lot of our readers are in the electronics industry and the semiconductor industry. Did you get any results that spoke directly to that segment?
LEWIS BLACK: Yes. We spoke to consumers in the electrical space. And we found that, obviously, they are voracious consumers of tungsten. For instance, in South Korea, which is the largest producer of semiconductors in the world. They actually consume more tungsten per person than anywhere else in the world because of the semiconductor business. So tungsten is an absolutely essential ingredient in the production of semiconductors.
BRIAN SANTO: Now I understand that some of the alternate suppliers include Mexico, some of the other Asian countries, Vietnam I think was mentioned. Is it an issue of whether the materials exist elsewhere? Or is it an issue of the infrastructure to extract those materials?
LEWIS BLACK: At Almonty, our mandate is that we’ll only operate in safe jurisdictions. When we say “safe,” we mean with legal systems. So they’re all allied with the United States. I think that the biggest problem that a lot of countries face is the knowledge. The knowledge of how to extract tungsten. It’s very technical. It has been during the ’80s and ’90s and into the 21st Century, low-cost countries have had obviously a huge advantage. Even though currently they’re not so low cost anymore. But it’s almost extinguished all the knowledge in the West. And that’s really been the main problem.
In terms of infrastructure, a mine requires power and water and a road to get in and out. So they apply to that. But it’s about stability of supply. If you have a contract, does it mean anything? Can it be enforced? Are there often disputes? Is it transparent so there are not conflict material? There’s a very broad spectrum now that includes conflict material. So there are lots of those questions that unfortunately apply to many of the current sources that you can acquire from.
BRIAN SANTO: This is consistent with what I’ve heard about the supply chain, whether you’re talking about a raw material or a finished good. If you want to repatriate a capability, one of the biggest barriers is just the knowledge base. Do you know how to do what you intend to do? And often those skills are lost, right?
LEWIS BLACK: Yes. Absolutely. If there’s no industry for them to exist in, then people retire and they move on.
BRIAN SANTO: What are the courses of action or remedies that are options for these companies as they look for alternative suppliers?
LEWIS BLACK: There’s one school of thought that says government should be more actively involved. I don’t subscribe to that because traditionally governments perhaps don’t make the best decisions in regard to such technical projects. A mine is a very complex project, and there are many governments who have tried this approach, and it has not worked. It’s cost a lot of money, and ultimately they’ve ended up with no more supply than they currently had. I think that government can encourage customers to consume from more allied countries through tax benefits, simplification of the import/export process, preferred status. There are a number of programs that could be incorporated. And the market itself then would ensure that the best projects are developed, and they’re developed in neighborhoods where you can function and where you know that you can rely on that supply, and it’s transparent. So that’s really what I would expect to look to government to do. Encourage the end consumers to diversify their supply chain by offering them incentives to do so. And therefore free market principles will encourage development.
BRIAN SANTO: Excellent. Any other recommendations for a functional, diversified supply chain?
LEWIS BLACK: You have to have a strategy. You either have two strategies. You either have the strategy where you hold a vast amount of inventory to protect yourself from supply chain disruptions, or that you try and encourage multiple allies to develop supply chain options for you. I think this ultimately means increasing the knowledge base, but you can’t rely… We are the leaders in tungsten outside of China. But I say to all my customers, Don’t go more than 30 or 40 percent of what you require for me. And even then, in the long term you should reduce it. It’s not good business to be dependent. It has to be a broader diversification.
BRIAN SANTO: Very good. Anything that I’ve neglected to ask about that’s pertinent to the issue?
LEWIS BLACK: No, I think you’ve covered it very well.
BRIAN SANTO: Well, great, I want to thank you very much for your time.
LEWIS BLACK: Thanks, Brian.
BRIAN SANTO: We should note that the actual supply of most precious metals and minerals has been flowing. Few shortages have been reported. The concerns are entirely tied up with uncertainty with the political situation and the awareness that that situation has created about relying too much on any one source.
I want to thank my colleague Barb Jorgensen from EPS News for contributing to this segment. There are few journalists who know anywhere near as much as Barb does about the global supply chain. You can find her coverage at epsnews.com.
Calculus and Cookies
But enough about the future! It’s now time to dwell in the past. Just about every week, we like to celebrate the anniversaries of interesting events in technology history, and by “technology” – imagine me making air quotes – I mean anything sorta tech-y / science-y / math-y. Today we’re going to set our Wayback Machine to…
…July 1, 1646. That was the day Gottfried Wilhelm von Liebniz was born in Liepzig. Liebniz is renowned for developing differential and integral calculus pretty much at the exact same time as Sir Isaac Newton, but completely independently. The argument about who invented the calculus raged during their lifetimes, but Newton had more influential political backing, and the political fallout would dog Liebniz for the rest of his life. Despite that, Liebniz made significant contributions in the fields of philosophy, physics, psychology, computation and more. He designed mining equipment, hydraulic presses, submarines, and a steam engine.
Much is known about Liebniz’s career, but we have only second-hand information about his first job out of college, which was as a secretary of a secret alchemical society in Nuremberg. Scholars are skeptical about some of the details of the single retrospective account of that period in Liebniz’s life, but now that we’ve noted that, it’s a great story, so we’re going to repeat it anyways.
It seems that Liebniz, already a notable genius, didn’t know anything about alchemy or chemistry. And let’s note that alchemy and chemistry would be pretty much the same thing for another 100 years or so until Antoine Lavoisier would come along. But that’s a different story.
Liebniz was keen to infiltrate this society to learn alchemical secrets, so he hatches a plot to ask for a job. The problem is, he doesn’t know anything about alchemy. So he hunts down some of the thickest texts on chemistry he can find, and extracts some of the most obscure and convoluted language he can find in them. He then writes a letter to someone known to be one of the secret society’s members, and he does a core dump of the impenetrable jargon he got from his books. The recipient of the letter reads this gobbledygook and decides, Whoa! This Liebniz guy must be an alchemical adept already. And he gives Liebniz the job.
Seriously, who hasn’t lied on their resume?
Now I wanted to bring up Liebniz as much for Liebniz himself, as also because of Liebniz-Keks cookies.
(AUDIO: LIEBNIZ-KEKS COMMERCIAL)
Liebniz-Keks were originally just butter cookies. But the company subsequently introduced a version covered in chocolate.
A) I like the cookies and B) How many other mathematicians have cookies named after them?
Take that, Newton. And no, Fig Newtons were NOT named after him.
That’s it for the Weekly Briefing for the week ending July 10th. Thank you for listening. The Weekly Briefing is available on all the major podcast platforms, but if you get to us via our website you’ll find a transcript, along with links to the stories we mentioned, and other multimedia. Visit www.eetimes.com and click where it says RADIO to find the full archive of podcasts
This podcast is Produced by AspenCore Studio. It was Engineered by Taylor Marvin and Greg McRae at Coupe Studios. The Segment Producer was Kaitie Huss.
I’m Brian Santo. See you next week.
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