Speaker 1: This is Tom Rowland's Reese and you're listening to Switched on,
Speaker 1: the podcast brought to you by BNF. In an era
Speaker 1: of trade wars, tariffs and global oversupply of key renewable technologies,
Speaker 1: keeping the European Union's battery manufacturing sect competitive is proving
Speaker 1: a challenge. In a bid to stimulate growth and secure
Speaker 1: its domestic automotive industry, the EU proposed its Industrial Action Plan,
Speaker 1: bringing about a new protectionist stance for Europe. Where others
Speaker 1: have thrown up near insurmountable barriers to entry, the EU's
Speaker 1: plan is somewhat different and could see some of the
Speaker 1: Chinese battery giants enter interjoint ventures with European companies to
Speaker 1: build out the manufacturing capacity on the continent at scale.
Speaker 1: And seeing as we're discussing batteries today, we also take
Speaker 1: time to assess BYD's brand new pack. The company says
Speaker 1: that some of their new evs will soon be able
Speaker 1: to add two hundred and fifty miles range in just
Speaker 1: five minutes of charging. This battery could potentially be a
Speaker 1: game changer. Today I'm joined by b and EF energy
Speaker 1: storage analyst Andy Leach and from our Trade and Supply
Speaker 1: Chains Team analyst Matthew Hales, who share findings from their
Speaker 1: recently released research notes titled Plan to save EU battery making,
Speaker 1: Marx Protect Shift and Chinese battery makers double down on
Speaker 1: European factories, which b and EF clients can find at
Speaker 1: BNF go on the Bloomberg terminal or on BNF dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to talking about EU battery manufacturing. Andy,
Speaker 1: welcome to.
Speaker 2: The pod, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: And Matthew welcome to the pod.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for having me back.
Speaker 1: So this EU action plan around batteries, can you tell
Speaker 1: us what it's all about before we dive into the details.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: The kind of the main outline of what this policy
Speaker 3: is about is it's a action plan about the auto
Speaker 3: industry in the EU. It comes from a kind of
Speaker 3: collaborative discussion that the EU and auto industry players have
Speaker 3: been having over the last month, and it's a proposed plan.
Speaker 3: It's not a policy legislation in itself. Everything within this
Speaker 3: document still has to go through the EU policy process,
Speaker 3: which can take up to a year. Might be a
Speaker 3: bit quicker given the importance of this stuff, but because
Speaker 3: it's to do with the automotive industry and the transition.
Speaker 3: It contains a lot about EV manufacturing and therefore batteries.
Speaker 1: And just before we go into the details, I mean
Speaker 1: you mentioned it might become law in less than a year.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you feel like there's broad political consensus
Speaker 1: that this is a good thing.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So many of the automakers have been under pressure
Speaker 3: at the moment with the emission standards that the European
Speaker 3: Union has set. So what those emission standards are is
Speaker 3: that by twenty twenty five, so this year, automakers were
Speaker 3: supposed to reduce the emissions of the fleet of cars
Speaker 3: that they produce compared to twenty twenty one levels by
Speaker 3: fifteen percent. Given the intense price competition from Chinese electric
Speaker 3: vehicles coming into Europe and also slower EV demand in Europe,
Speaker 3: what this has led to is it's pretty tricky for
Speaker 3: auto makers to meet those targets, and so the EU
Speaker 3: is offered to, instead of having stringent twenty twenty five targets,
Speaker 3: spread those reductions between twenty twenty five and two twenty seven.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious to know about how this fits into
Speaker 1: the broader context of the EU's on shuring ambitions. And
Speaker 1: you know, one just very sort of basic question is,
Speaker 1: given what you've just said, could the European automotive sector
Speaker 1: not just rely on batteries imported from China in order
Speaker 1: to scale their EV manufacturing and sort of meet those
Speaker 1: stringent emissions requirements.
Speaker 2: Yes, the short answer is yes, they can do this. However,
Speaker 2: this would mean a loss of jobs in EU countries
Speaker 2: where the automotive industry has been instrumental in providing industrial jobs.
Speaker 2: Across many countries in the EU, there are also local
Speaker 2: battery manufacturing facilities. These are typically at the minute owned
Speaker 2: and operated by companies which are based out of East Asia,
Speaker 2: not actually China too much at the minute, but mostly
Speaker 2: South Korean and Japanese companies like LG, Samsung and Panasonic.
Speaker 3: Just to jump in and give some sort of broader
Speaker 3: context on the eve's on shoring ambitions and how this
Speaker 3: plays into it, I mean, if you're going through the timeline.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty three, the EU reveal the Net Zero
Speaker 3: Industry Act, and what that was was a policy in
Speaker 3: which the EU first staked out targets for domestic manufacturing
Speaker 3: of clean technologies. That's all the bits that we need
Speaker 3: to achieve the energy transition and then within that year,
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, the EU
Speaker 3: and different member states in Europe were working out how
Speaker 3: to fund these industries, what pots of money to use,
Speaker 3: and how that would all work. The Commission asked Mario Draghi,
Speaker 3: the ex Prime Minister of Italy, to write a report
Speaker 3: about how the EU was lacking competitiveness, where it was
Speaker 3: lacking competitors and what reform was needed. That came out
Speaker 3: the end of twenty twenty four, and the EU Commission
Speaker 3: looked at what it should be implementing, and in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five we've had what I can only describe as
Speaker 3: a flurry of policies. In the earliest part of the
Speaker 3: year we had something called the Competitiveness Compass, pretty much
Speaker 3: laying out how the EU is going to be regulating
Speaker 3: and writing new legislation over the next couple of years
Speaker 3: to achieve its on shoring goals. We then had the
Speaker 3: Clean Industrial Deal, looking more at heavy industries, but also
Speaker 3: there's some focus on on clean technologies. And then we
Speaker 3: have this in this action Plan for the automotive sector.
Speaker 1: And the goal is very much focused on on showing
Speaker 1: the entire supply chain for well, not just electric vehicles,
Speaker 1: but because we're talking about batteries, I suppose for this
Speaker 1: podcast specific electric vehicles, aiming to ensure the entire battery
Speaker 1: chain without you know, minimizing foreign dependencies.
Speaker 3: There absolutely so, the Netze Industry Act staked out targets
Speaker 3: across a bunch of technology. So across all these different technologies,
Speaker 3: the EU wants to meet forty percent of demand in
Speaker 3: twenty thirty for these different products. And this ranges quite
Speaker 3: a lot between the different types of technology. So batteries,
Speaker 3: for example, is a ninety percent target, which is much
Speaker 3: much higher.
Speaker 1: There's something I just want to sort of really fundamentally
Speaker 1: sort of get your take on, is whether this is
Speaker 1: good strategy because ninety percent for batteries and industry whether
Speaker 1: the EU, to my understanding, is quite a long way
Speaker 1: behind China, But that is critical to another industry, automotive,
Speaker 1: where the EU is not, you know, a million miles
Speaker 1: behind China, but needs to evolve to a electric vehicles.
Speaker 1: If we believe that's the future, then is it not
Speaker 1: creating its own roadblock to itself? If you know, by
Speaker 1: trying to own the entire supply chain so fully, is
Speaker 1: it not a gamble that you're going to lose the
Speaker 1: whole supply chain in terms of competitiveness, whereas a safe
Speaker 1: option might be to say, Okay, we're not going to
Speaker 1: compete with China on batteries, but we can make better
Speaker 1: cars than China, so let's focus on doing that using
Speaker 1: Chinese batteries.
Speaker 2: I think you're hitting the nail on the head with that,
Speaker 2: tom So the EU on capacity terms, is far behind
Speaker 2: China in cell manufacturing, but put even worse in things
Speaker 2: like component manufacturing anodes, cathodes, separators, and electrolyte. This industry
Speaker 2: is lacking and part of the problem has been previous policy.
Speaker 2: So other policy incentives have really focused around the big
Speaker 2: ticket item of cell manufacturing, pouring large amounts of money
Speaker 2: and subsidy into this, whereas components and other parts of
Speaker 2: the supply chain haven't received as much help, and as
Speaker 2: a consequence, those announcements haven't come. Now, trying to force
Speaker 2: this in a relatively short period of time going to
Speaker 2: twenty thirty is certainly going to be a challenge, particularly
Speaker 2: as Chinese manufacturers like bide c Atl and others are
Speaker 2: continuing to improve their products. So you're competing against the
Speaker 2: moving targets as well.
Speaker 1: So I think we've kind of set the broader landscape
Speaker 1: and you know, we've you've kind of painted the picture
Speaker 1: of the EU has targets, it has policies in the pipeline.
Speaker 1: Tell me about what's actually been happening in the European
Speaker 1: battery manufacturing space, because I think we've been talking about
Speaker 1: it in slightly abstract right now, but yeah, be good
Speaker 1: to get some more detail on that.
Speaker 2: Sure. So, as I mentioned, making batteries in the EU
Speaker 2: has to date largely been companies based in Asia, and
Speaker 2: as I said that of South Korea and Japan at
Speaker 2: the minute, and more and more of the announcements are
Speaker 2: coming from companies in China as well now. So in
Speaker 2: the start of this year we saw CATL, the world's
Speaker 2: largest battery manufacturing company, and CALB, another large Chinese manufacturer,
Speaker 2: both pressing ahead with billions of euros of investment seven
Speaker 2: and two billion, respectively. So seven billion euros for coatl's
Speaker 2: one hundred gigawor toarer factory in Hungary and two billion
Speaker 2: for Colb's fifteen gigaar tower factory in Portugal. And that
Speaker 2: is in front of the backdrop of the United States
Speaker 2: making it more difficult to invest. And at the same time,
Speaker 2: in Europe you're having local companies such as Northfault really struggling,
Speaker 2: filing for bankruptcy in the US at the end of
Speaker 2: last year and filing for bankruptcy at home only last month.
Speaker 2: So there is a battery industry in Europe. People are
Speaker 2: putting lots of money in but at the minute, the
Speaker 2: vast majority of capacity that exists is owned by Asian players,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the capacity which is likely to
Speaker 2: come online in the near future is probably going to
Speaker 2: be coming from work with Chinese players.
Speaker 1: So if Asian players are investing in manufacturing capacity in Europe,
Speaker 1: you know, from an EU perspective, that's not necessarily a
Speaker 1: bad thing. But I mean, is that perceived as something
Speaker 1: that the EU wants to try and balance out and
Speaker 1: more generally, how does the action plan shake up this
Speaker 1: picture you've just painted.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a bad thing. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: Coatl is the largest battery of manufacturing company in the world.
Speaker 2: But not only are they the largest, but themselves among
Speaker 2: with others like Goshen and coelb BYD, they make very
Speaker 2: good quality products. So it's not like that they're making
Speaker 2: less good products. They're actually making some of the world
Speaker 2: leading products these companies. So I think it's good to
Speaker 2: have these companies building factories in Europe, and if they do,
Speaker 2: then that does come with local jobs.
Speaker 3: I mean, just as Andy was saying, I think, I
Speaker 3: think really what the EU Commission has done with this
Speaker 3: policy plan is it's just taken a stock take over
Speaker 3: how the battery industry has developed in Europe, realized that
Speaker 3: the homegrown manufacturers like Northfolt haven't been very successful where
Speaker 3: East Asian companies have been. And they're basically trying to
Speaker 3: come up with a way of incentivizing joint ventures between
Speaker 3: East Asian companies and European countries to have some level
Speaker 3: of knowledge transfer happen within Europe. And as Andy says,
Speaker 3: local jobs.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So the key thing here is not about,
Speaker 1: you know, making it that European owned companies have some
Speaker 1: kind of unfair advantage in Europe. It's about joint ventures
Speaker 1: and ensuring knowledge transfer if there are is going to
Speaker 1: be manufacturing located in Europe. Is that really the sort
Speaker 1: of the essence of the action plan.
Speaker 3: So the action plan has got multiple elements and I
Speaker 3: think that's one of the main takeaways that we had
Speaker 3: from it. It's a bit of a shift from what
Speaker 3: the EU was saying before, where it was trying to
Speaker 3: have its own manufacturers make the batteries. This is something
Speaker 3: new in the clean tech space. This has done quite
Speaker 3: a lot. This is how China became so competitive in
Speaker 3: areas like solar back in the day, was through imposing
Speaker 3: joint ventures. And so what the Action Plan is doing
Speaker 3: is it's kind of a signal shift that the EU
Speaker 3: is open to these policies.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, we'll get onto the US in a second,
Speaker 1: because it's hard not to. But what's specifically in the
Speaker 1: Action Plan is there that is sort of incentivizing slash
Speaker 1: forcing joint ventures to happen.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of elements. The first is that there's
Speaker 3: an idea that foreign direct investment rules might be tweaked
Speaker 3: within the EU, so that if a East Asian company
Speaker 3: was trying to set up a manufacturing facility in the EU,
Speaker 3: there would have to be some form of joint venture happening.
Speaker 3: It's not clear at all at this point how that
Speaker 3: will be enforced, how strict that would be, what that
Speaker 3: will entail, but that will become apparent over the coming months.
Speaker 3: There's a second element of this, which is the EU
Speaker 3: is looking at something they've phrased as European content requirements.
Speaker 3: This is something that the EU has generally stayed away
Speaker 3: from before, just because the term local content requirements is
Speaker 3: seen as a breach of international trade law. A lot
Speaker 3: of the time, the EU is strongly committed to upholding
Speaker 3: WTO rules and being one of the free trade blocks
Speaker 3: in the world, but there's a growing shift happening within
Speaker 3: the Commission's mindset that they're going to have to start
Speaker 3: incentivizing European manufacturing in ways that they haven't previously done.
Speaker 1: So, you know, we've kind of been hinting at the
Speaker 1: US and we're recording this after America's Liberation Day with
Speaker 1: sort of an announcement of broad ranging tariffs around the world,
Speaker 1: and you know this is there were tariffs implemented before
Speaker 1: that they are more targeted and they'll be I'm sure
Speaker 1: there'll be some afterwards. But we're living in this crowd
Speaker 1: of a brewing global trade war with the US kind
Speaker 1: of at the center of the melee, and the EU
Speaker 1: has internet rejected protectionist policies with these announcements. Do you
Speaker 1: think that things like local content rules could start playing
Speaker 1: in a new direction.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so. I think the European content requirements is a
Speaker 3: pretty big shift on the EU front. If it's required
Speaker 3: that evs sold in the EU must have some form
Speaker 3: of a European battery, that's quite a big shift what
Speaker 3: the traditional over the world.
Speaker 1: You say it must have a European battery, I mean,
Speaker 1: does that mean in order to qualify for certain incentives
Speaker 1: or do you mean that there's just going to be
Speaker 1: you can't have an EV that doesn't have a certain
Speaker 1: proportion of local content.
Speaker 3: From my understanding, the actual way it's going to be
Speaker 3: implemented hasn't really been set out, but it is most
Speaker 3: likely to be actually selling into the EU.
Speaker 2: Right from my perspective, there are many places around the
Speaker 2: world that produce a lot of batteries. China's the largest.
Speaker 2: China is already being hit by tariffs and by the US,
Speaker 2: I should say, and we'll wait to see how these
Speaker 2: additional tariffs play out, but China already has enough manufacturing
Speaker 2: capacity to produce multiples of the world's battery demand. And
Speaker 2: if you take one of the larger markets out like
Speaker 2: the US, with a relatively large EV market and a
Speaker 2: growing stationary storage market. Out of the mix, there's going
Speaker 2: to be a lot of factory capacity and a lot
Speaker 2: of batteries being produced that need somewhere to go, whether
Speaker 2: or not they end up in the EU. I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe some of these policies, once we know exactly how
Speaker 2: they'll be implemented, might make that tricky, but they're likely
Speaker 2: to end up somewhere exactly.
Speaker 3: And these new tariffs which have been unlocked, because the
Speaker 3: imports will be coming into the EU most likely as
Speaker 3: the second most high value market compared to the US,
Speaker 3: it's going to put additional pressure onto the Commission in
Speaker 3: terms of how does it deal with that, How does
Speaker 3: it deal with the pressure of imports coming from elsewhere
Speaker 3: which are more cost competitive than what it can produce
Speaker 3: at home. And the EU is going to have to
Speaker 3: figure out whether it will apply trade barriers in terms
Speaker 3: of higher tariff or whether it's going to use these
Speaker 3: local content rules in some form.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting just the mind shift the world has
Speaker 1: gone through in the last however many years. Because you know,
Speaker 1: when you're describing there's overcapacity in China, America has shut
Speaker 1: the door and says doesn't want any of the batteries.
Speaker 1: You would just think someone else is going to benefit
Speaker 1: from some really really really cheap batteries and you know,
Speaker 1: can create all sorts of value off the back of that.
Speaker 1: But instead that's not the direction things going. This is
Speaker 1: not really a question, it's just a reflection, I suppose,
Speaker 1: on how different things are from the sort of the
Speaker 1: neoliberal world of not very long ago.
Speaker 2: One comment I could add to that, and what we
Speaker 2: saw last year was a very sort of steep decline
Speaker 2: in battery prices, and this wasn't a regional thing but
Speaker 2: a sectoral thing. EV demand was slower than we'd anticipated,
Speaker 2: and as a consequence, there was you know, were seeing
Speaker 2: a similar thing with batteries being produced in battery capacity
Speaker 2: out there without the demand, but in this sense because
Speaker 2: of consumer pressures rather than geopolitical ones. And as a consequence,
Speaker 2: we saw significantly more stationary storage build out than we'd anticipated.
Speaker 2: So while EV sales were down, it meant that another
Speaker 2: demand sector in stationary storage was up. And it's possible
Speaker 2: that we see something similar happen with the US making
Speaker 2: it difficult for imported batteries to come in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting I remember my first ever time co
Speaker 1: hosting the switch to On podcast. We were talking about
Speaker 1: US protectionism around solar, and I remember saying, solar is
Speaker 1: famously this low margin business like manufacturing PV because of
Speaker 1: you know, over capacity, and so I was sort of
Speaker 1: just saying, like, is this really an industry worth fighting over?
Speaker 1: There must be other parts of the value chain with
Speaker 1: the margins are bigger. I find myself wondering, you know,
Speaker 1: listening to what you're saying, whether the same can be
Speaker 1: said around some of this fight to secure a battery
Speaker 1: manufacturing industry. Is you know, in the long term future
Speaker 1: of electric vehicles, is this just going to be the
Speaker 1: really low margin part of the business is there? Is
Speaker 1: it sort of somewhat misguided to be although it's a
Speaker 1: significant fraction of the value of an ev right now,
Speaker 1: do you go what I'm it makes it hard to
Speaker 1: see how anyone's going to make any money in this
Speaker 1: environment that seems to be evolving.
Speaker 2: I think there's a few different pressures at play, and
Speaker 2: cost is of course one of them, but there's also
Speaker 2: the geopolitical risk and supply chain risk of trade. And
Speaker 2: you mentioned when we're recording this podcast. Any days after
Speaker 2: a ginormous change in or what looks like it's going
Speaker 2: to be an absolutely ginormous change in global trade. Being
Speaker 2: able to have a secure supply chain is looking like
Speaker 2: a short supply chain in where we are today and
Speaker 2: the political and geopolitical climate we find ourselves in. So
Speaker 2: the shorter you can make that supply chain, the more
Speaker 2: confident and the less risk there is in that supply chain.
Speaker 2: And that's something that maybe five or ten years ago
Speaker 2: was less of a risk, and as a consequence, there's
Speaker 2: been a bit of a scramble in the last few
Speaker 2: years to try and unsure this. And yes, of course
Speaker 2: you need and want to be cost competitive, but there's
Speaker 2: also a supply chain risk play here as well.
Speaker 3: One thing, just to add to what Andy said there
Speaker 3: is the way that the EU and the US talks
Speaker 3: about this is different, and I think that's really interesting.
Speaker 3: The US has for the first time with its auto tariffs,
Speaker 3: and now the reciprocal tariffs are being implemented using the
Speaker 3: same bit of legislation, and it's a direct call for
Speaker 3: putting tariffs on clean tech products as a result of
Speaker 3: a national security risk. In the EU, it's not talked
Speaker 3: about in the same way it's about reducing reliance increasing diversification,
Speaker 3: and so they're slightly different terms, but the end product,
Speaker 3: I think best motto that Andy just said there, it's
Speaker 3: best supply chains short supply chain.
Speaker 1: Just for the sake of definitions for those of you
Speaker 1: not familiar with the term that Andy used ginormous. That
Speaker 1: is a compound word that combines giant and enormous, so
Speaker 1: he means really big, really big changes happening around the world.
Speaker 1: So Andy, you remember of our battery team, it would
Speaker 1: be hard to not ask a quick question on BID's
Speaker 1: exciting new battery that has been making headlines. So what
Speaker 1: is the big deal?
Speaker 2: Great question, tom so, Bid, which is the world's largest
Speaker 2: seller of electric vehicles, last month announced a battery pack
Speaker 2: which in five minutes can add four hundred kilometers of
Speaker 2: very or two hundred and fifty miles. So this is
Speaker 2: bringing battery packs really close and similar to the experience
Speaker 2: of filling up an internal combustion engine tank with petrol
Speaker 2: or dieseled.
Speaker 1: So it has this impressive charging rate. How is that possible?
Speaker 2: Yeap. So typically when we talk about megawat charging, so
Speaker 2: mega what being a thousand killer charging that has been
Speaker 2: in the context of commercial vehicles, so vans and lorries
Speaker 2: semis if you're listening to this in the US, because
Speaker 2: the amount of power needed is very, very large, and
Speaker 2: the infrastructure likely is going to be more costly, and
Speaker 2: as a consequence, people are thinking about the bigger vehicles.
Speaker 2: This is the first time we've heard people talking about
Speaker 2: megawat charging, So a thousand killer Watch charging for passenger
Speaker 2: ev How is this possible? So we're still waiting for
Speaker 2: all of the details on this, but we know that
Speaker 2: they're talking about a dual gun technology, so this means
Speaker 2: maybe plugging two chargers into the same car. So this
Speaker 2: could potentially be a challenge if it's a busy charging
Speaker 2: station or something like this, but we can get that
Speaker 2: mega watch charging. The other thing to comment on here
Speaker 2: is the charging infrastructure is what we've been told so far,
Speaker 2: actually requires a battery in the charger. So in the
Speaker 2: charger when you go to your charging station, there needs
Speaker 2: to be a battery there because the amount of power
Speaker 2: required is too great to be pulling that straight from
Speaker 2: the grid into the car. So there's a battery and
Speaker 2: you're charging your car from a stationary battery at the
Speaker 2: charging station to sort of reduce some of the constraints
Speaker 2: that maybe the grid would bring.
Speaker 1: I mean, as a battery analyst, you must be loving this.
Speaker 1: It's a battery that requires demand for more batteries.
Speaker 2: Yes, so it covers both sides of the biggest part
Speaker 2: of battery demand, which is stationary storage and electric vehicles,
Speaker 2: to provide something which ultimately consumers want and will hopefully
Speaker 2: increase the adoption of both evs. And then as you say,
Speaker 2: as we need more of this charging infrastructure stationary storage
Speaker 2: batteries as well.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. I mean, and I realize been now
Speaker 1: sort of straying off the topic of batteries onto the
Speaker 1: sort of the grid. But was this always going to
Speaker 1: happen at some point that battery charge, you know, as
Speaker 1: these advances in charging technol logy happened, that charging stations
Speaker 1: when it would inevitably be a source of stationary storage.
Speaker 2: So there's a number of different ways that you can
Speaker 2: solve the issue of range anxiety or charging speeds. Switching
Speaker 2: batteries is one of them. There are some companies out there,
Speaker 2: like Neo in China who are doing this, so changing
Speaker 2: your battery and that obviously can be very very fast.
Speaker 2: I think they have it down to sub five minutes
Speaker 2: in a charging station. These battery packs are quite heavy,
Speaker 2: so it's not as simple as taking a battery out
Speaker 2: of a remote control or something like this. There's the
Speaker 2: machinery that does it, but the other the alternative is
Speaker 2: charging faster and faster. And as you charge faster and faster,
Speaker 2: Whilst she said in the previous question that this sort
Speaker 2: of is more batteries going everywhere, maybe as you charge
Speaker 2: faster and faster, you're actually happier with a smaller battery
Speaker 2: pack because you know, when you get to a charging station,
Speaker 2: you don't need to wait so long and you get
Speaker 2: halver many miles or kilometers of range very very quickly.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of different factors pulling demand and
Speaker 2: sort of charging speeds. And one of the caveats just
Speaker 2: to say here as well, is this charging in for show,
Speaker 2: which it doesn't exist anywhere. So currently top of the
Speaker 2: range charging infrastructures three hundred and fifty kilo what so
Speaker 2: this is three times greater than that, So it requires
Speaker 2: a build out of charging infrastructure as well.
Speaker 1: Got it, And I suppose in terms of charging speeds,
Speaker 1: does this sort of represent the end of the road
Speaker 1: in that I just can't imagine there ever being a
Speaker 1: need for it to be faster than what you've just stated.
Speaker 1: You know, once you go from five minutes to three minutes,
Speaker 1: I mean, what difference does it make to anyone unless
Speaker 1: you're like doing formula E or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I completely agree, so that there's certainly diminishing returns
Speaker 2: going from thirty minutes to five minutes, from going from
Speaker 2: five minutes to one minute, consumers will notice this less.
Speaker 2: So is it the end of the road. Will innovation
Speaker 2: continue to come? It probably will. What we haven't talked
Speaker 2: about is charging faster almost certainly always degrade your battery
Speaker 2: more so, if I were to have one of these cars,
Speaker 2: without having any more details from bid but I would
Speaker 2: say I would try and charge it slowly as often
Speaker 2: as possible. But when I do a long journey, then
Speaker 2: that's what I'm going to say. Okay, I want to
Speaker 2: do this in five minutes. And just to put that
Speaker 2: into some context, And I don't know if this will
Speaker 2: land with our international listeners, but from London you could
Speaker 2: drive to Edinburgh with one five minute charge with one
Speaker 2: of these cars. This is a particularly long journey and
Speaker 2: I think most drivers would probably stop at least once
Speaker 2: on that journey.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say, as a brit living in
Speaker 1: the US that I understand your context that driving from
Speaker 1: London to Edinburgh is like going from one side of
Speaker 1: the planet to the other. But to Americans that's like
Speaker 1: popping out for some milk. Andy. Thanks very much for
Speaker 1: joining us today.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Tom being great being back on
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 1: And Matthew thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Today's episode of Switched On was produced by Cam Gray
Speaker 1: with production assistance from Kamala Shelling.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg n EF is a service provided by Bloomberg Finance
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