Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Chill, WI Isn't and I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy. The
Speaker 1: surging price of oil and other fossil fuels has has
Speaker 1: certainly got a lot of people talking more about the
Speaker 1: energy transition e vs. Electric cars, renewable energy on the grid,
Speaker 1: solar panels, wind, etcetera. But it also seems clear that
Speaker 1: all that is going to be very expensive as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the ultimate irony. Just as oil prices are
Speaker 1: spiking and everyone's going, oh, we need to, you know,
Speaker 1: quicken the transition away from fossil fuels, it seems like
Speaker 1: all of the commodities that you actually need for that
Speaker 1: transition for decarbonization, those are spiking too. Yeah. Not only
Speaker 1: are we seeing a surgeon price. And if you look
Speaker 1: at all these crucial metals, whether it's nickel or cobalt,
Speaker 1: or the price of lithium, all these crucial ingredients, not
Speaker 1: only are the church mostly up into the right, there
Speaker 1: aren't that many of them. It's not just that they're costly.
Speaker 1: It seems like these markets again kind of like we
Speaker 1: are extremely tight. There's not just a bunch of it
Speaker 1: to be easily procured from what I can tell. Well,
Speaker 1: so this is something that I'm really curious about. What
Speaker 1: exactly is the supply of these essential metals for batteries
Speaker 1: because I'm sure you remember the rare earths, Like I
Speaker 1: don't want to call it a bubble, because clearly there
Speaker 1: was something to it, but rare earth stocks where some
Speaker 1: of those um two Yeah, everyone was like, by rare earths,
Speaker 1: by rare earths, there's only so much of them, and
Speaker 1: it just seemed a little speculative. And so I'm wondering
Speaker 1: how much of that bowl case was true. Is there
Speaker 1: actually a finite amount or is it the case that
Speaker 1: it just takes long to get the mind's up and going,
Speaker 1: it takes a while to increase production. I honestly don't know.
Speaker 1: With words I recall a lot of the story too
Speaker 1: is they're not that rare, but they are, they're very
Speaker 1: pollutant the process of mining, and so which countries actually
Speaker 1: want to do that? And China seemed to be the
Speaker 1: most willing. So the other thing that happened recently in
Speaker 1: battery news specifically is Joe Biden announcing that the Defense
Speaker 1: Authorization Act sort of these tools the government has for
Speaker 1: procurement would go to this space and American metal supply.
Speaker 1: So this is clearly a lot of interest. Who gets
Speaker 1: to build the batteries, how costly it's going to be,
Speaker 1: who has access to the metals, what it's going to
Speaker 1: take to ramp up production, increased urgency. Clearly in this
Speaker 1: moment on these questions absolutely and all brought into focus
Speaker 1: by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions, and
Speaker 1: the fact that Russia holds something like I think it
Speaker 1: was eleven percent of the world's nickel supply. But even that,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what type of nickel they
Speaker 1: actually hold. I don't know if it matters what type
Speaker 1: of nickel you have in the market. I have so
Speaker 1: many questions, and yeah, I'm eager to learn. Great, Well,
Speaker 1: let's dive right into this. We're gonna be speaking all
Speaker 1: about batteries and the battery supply chains with James Fifth.
Speaker 1: He has a principal at Volta Energy Technologies, a VC
Speaker 1: firm focused on this area. Previously headed up energy storage
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg and f up until very recently. So James,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming out on odd lots.
Speaker 1: Tory Tracy great to be on here and yeah, big
Speaker 1: clime fans, so so thank you very honest to be
Speaker 1: able to speak well we we we uh. We spoke
Speaker 1: with their former colleague Net Bullard earlier in the year
Speaker 1: and when we asked him who should we talk to
Speaker 1: about batteries, he said, you were the man so very
Speaker 1: excited about this. Why don't we start very big picture?
Speaker 1: What is when we talk about the battery market, what
Speaker 1: is the market today? How much is evis, how much
Speaker 1: is grid storage? Like, what are we talking about when
Speaker 1: we sort of take a big, sort of eagle eye
Speaker 1: view at the battery market. Yes, so it's it's a
Speaker 1: great starting space. And I think that's probably what I
Speaker 1: started is if we go back a decade, really the
Speaker 1: battery market was confined to consumer electronics, so your cell phone,
Speaker 1: your laptop, your iPad, that's what Littiman batteries went into.
Speaker 1: And at the time kind of passenger vs were almost nothing.
Speaker 1: But by the time we got to the end of
Speaker 1: the last decades kind of twenty, what we found is
Speaker 1: that the kind of biggest demand sector for litty Mind
Speaker 1: batteries had flipped and it was no longer that consumer
Speaker 1: electronics sector. It was instead passenger electric vehicles, And just
Speaker 1: to kind of, you know, try and put it in
Speaker 1: a bit of context. Back in kind of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: at the end of the year, there was almost two
Speaker 1: hundred giga one hours of battery demand. Now there's lots
Speaker 1: of jargon in the battery industry, so let me kind
Speaker 1: of try and break that down a little bit more So, essentially,
Speaker 1: if you look at a passenger EV if you look
Speaker 1: at your Tesla model as for example, you might find
Speaker 1: that you have a hundred kill or what our pack
Speaker 1: Now there's a lillian kill what hours in a gig
Speaker 1: of one hour, and so if you have a hundred
Speaker 1: kill what hours kind of per vehicle, what you find
Speaker 1: is that you're looking at around um what does that
Speaker 1: end up being kind of ten thousand vs per gig
Speaker 1: or what hour. So when we had two hundred giga
Speaker 1: one hours UM on the market, that's you know, enough
Speaker 1: for around two hundred thousand evs. But of course, as
Speaker 1: I say, I wasn't just going into kind of Tesla's etcetera.
Speaker 1: It was going into consumer electronics. But also, as you
Speaker 1: pointed out, you know, staciary storage, but stacialy storage is
Speaker 1: again kind of a much smaller chunk compared to the
Speaker 1: the EV market, But just because it's smaller doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's not important when we're kind of looking at that
Speaker 1: energy transition kind of sector. Can I ask a really
Speaker 1: basic and embarrassing question, but you know, when we say
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries, how exactly are these medals used in
Speaker 1: batteries And is it the case that you're always going
Speaker 1: to need a certain amount of them or are their
Speaker 1: efforts underway to make them more efficient and use fewer
Speaker 1: or less metals in them. So again, another kind of
Speaker 1: great question, um, and it's it's there's a fairly nuanced answer,
Speaker 1: but I'll again try and kind of you know, break
Speaker 1: it down to the basics. So if you look at
Speaker 1: what's happened kind of over that period of time from
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten to twenty, the kind of average
Speaker 1: kilograms required per battery has decreased because there have been
Speaker 1: improvements in in you know, primarily the kind of cathode
Speaker 1: which is one of the active components. But again, you
Speaker 1: know within the battery space there are different chemistry, so
Speaker 1: different cathodes that use different metals. The kind of key
Speaker 1: ones that have been used over the last decade is lithium,
Speaker 1: and you find lithium in everything, So you have lithium
Speaker 1: mixed with either nickel, manganese and cobalt, or you can
Speaker 1: have um lithium mixed with with iron and phosphate. So
Speaker 1: you have these kind of predominantly kind of leading and
Speaker 1: competing chemistries, and each has its advantage and disadvantage. If
Speaker 1: you have the lithium mind and phosphate, which is called LFP,
Speaker 1: those batteries are a relatively low cost because you only
Speaker 1: have kind of lithium in it. That is expensive, but
Speaker 1: you have a lower kind of energy density, and what
Speaker 1: that means is in a given kind of volume or
Speaker 1: for a given weight, you can't get as many kind
Speaker 1: of kill what hours, So that limits the range of
Speaker 1: an electric vehicle essentially. Whereas the nickel, manganese and cobalt
Speaker 1: batteries otherwise known as NMC, they have a higher energy density,
Speaker 1: so you can go further in your e V, but
Speaker 1: it comes with the downside of higher costs because you've
Speaker 1: got nickel in there, you've got cobalt in there, and
Speaker 1: you've got littium in there. So you're always kind of
Speaker 1: playing this this game to try and balance the kind
Speaker 1: of performance versus cost of any of these lifting mind batteries.
Speaker 1: So when we think about the e V market, what
Speaker 1: is the current state of the art technology and is
Speaker 1: the roadmap for does it seem fairly clear words going
Speaker 1: in terms of say, what kind of tech will go
Speaker 1: into batteries ten years from now or is there still
Speaker 1: is it still open in terms of there being debate
Speaker 1: about what path the industry will ultimately take. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: great question and one that I could probably talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, four and out that I'll get. I'll try
Speaker 1: and supervid just frame the debate for us a frame
Speaker 1: of the discussion. So you know, I mentioned we have
Speaker 1: this kind of n MC or this LFP chemistry, and
Speaker 1: over the last decade, you know what's happened was the
Speaker 1: use of LFP was really confined to China, and outside
Speaker 1: of China, in Europe and in the US, companies were
Speaker 1: focusing on nickel based chemistry, so like the NMC and
Speaker 1: the states of the art had kind of more and
Speaker 1: more nickel being added. So that increased the energy density,
Speaker 1: which is why you know EV ranges have kept on increasing.
Speaker 1: And it seemed like that you know, those nickel heavy chemistries,
Speaker 1: we're going to be the kind of dominant technology over
Speaker 1: the next decade. But actually what's happened is Chinese companies
Speaker 1: in particular have come up with an innovative way to
Speaker 1: to in reality kind of squeeze more juice out of
Speaker 1: the batteries using LFP. So now these low cost kind
Speaker 1: of lithium and phosphate batteries can give you ranges that
Speaker 1: are not as high as a nickel based battery, but
Speaker 1: you know, in most cases suitable. And that's why we
Speaker 1: see companies like Tesla and VW saying that they'll use
Speaker 1: these these LFP batteries and their kind of low cost
Speaker 1: entry level evs. So that's the kind of big trend
Speaker 1: that we see now is actually this this l FP
Speaker 1: is coming back onto the market. While it's not kind
Speaker 1: of technically as stated the art as some of these
Speaker 1: high nickel chemistries, actually engineers have done a fantastic job
Speaker 1: at making it, you know, enough for what most consumers
Speaker 1: need and then just to kind of finish if we go,
Speaker 1: you know, in ten years time, I think what everyone's
Speaker 1: really hoping for and looking forward to, it's sort state batteries.
Speaker 1: You know, you've probably heard people saying the Holy Grail,
Speaker 1: and that's probably taking it a little bit far, but certainly,
Speaker 1: you know, they promised to kind of make Evis faster
Speaker 1: pass um, you know, the performance that you get today,
Speaker 1: and make that kind of idea of a four D
Speaker 1: five hundred mile range kind of realistic. So how much
Speaker 1: does the recent volatility in metals prices, the surges that
Speaker 1: Joe and I were describing in the intro supply constraints,
Speaker 1: given Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions, how
Speaker 1: much does all of that throw a spanner in the
Speaker 1: works of the sort of long term trajectory of battery
Speaker 1: development and technology that you just described. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of clearly been a pretty difficult time in the
Speaker 1: battery industry. I mean, coming off the back of the
Speaker 1: kind of pandemic and the logistics problems that have come
Speaker 1: from that. You know, we're then thrown into this terrible
Speaker 1: war between Ukraine and Russia, which then creates kind of
Speaker 1: more turmoil in the commodities market. And you know, as
Speaker 1: you said, getting Tracy around kind of ten percent of
Speaker 1: the world's nickel is kind of mind in Russia. But actually,
Speaker 1: as as you kind of rightly pointed out, not all
Speaker 1: of that can be used in kind of electric vehicles
Speaker 1: and littemon batteries. Nickels divided into kind of two classes,
Speaker 1: so you have class one and class to Class one
Speaker 1: is typically the higher purity material, whereas Class two can
Speaker 1: be contaminated with with iron in particular, So it's a
Speaker 1: class one material that you need in litemon batteries, and
Speaker 1: Russia actually produces around sev of the world's kind of
Speaker 1: supply of this class one material. So the sanctions imposed
Speaker 1: on Russia, you know, do create problems for the battery
Speaker 1: industry going forward. And these are as, i say, kind
Speaker 1: of exacerbating problems that have actually been there in the past.
Speaker 1: I think it was two years ago so that Elon
Speaker 1: Musk pleaded for for for nickel miners to invest in
Speaker 1: more capacity and start producing more nickel, and that hasn't
Speaker 1: really had And there's some more capacity that's been in
Speaker 1: the works coming online in Indonesia for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: but not to the extent that most kind of automated
Speaker 1: is expect will be be needed. So there are kind
Speaker 1: of supply chain constraints coming up there. And not to mention,
Speaker 1: you know, on top of that, the volatility and pricing
Speaker 1: doesn't help. And you know, I should I should point
Speaker 1: out that actually a lot of automakers and sell manufacturers
Speaker 1: what they've done is they've they've locked in long, longer
Speaker 1: term supply. So we heard of again Tesla locking in
Speaker 1: this kind of longer term deal with with Valet, the
Speaker 1: Brazilian nickel minor. And when you have these longer term contracts,
Speaker 1: you're not as exposed to the kind of volatility in
Speaker 1: the spot price market. But when it comes to renegotiating
Speaker 1: those contracts, you know, when whenever whenever, that is, if
Speaker 1: prices are high, the price that you'll end up paying
Speaker 1: for that kind of new contract is going to be higher.
Speaker 1: So the uncertainty, you know, doesn't help the industry at all.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, it's it's really
Speaker 1: consumers that end up kind of feeding the bike because
Speaker 1: most of those prices have passed through to automatacy then
Speaker 1: process that through to the consumer. So you know, the
Speaker 1: other problem for consumers as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: and I may be wrong, but as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, yes, there is the cost, but there's also
Speaker 1: just like it seems like at least speaking from the
Speaker 1: US perspective, that we're basically maxed out. Consumers are willing
Speaker 1: to buy not just all of the evs that exist
Speaker 1: on the market, but more. And so you have these
Speaker 1: waiting lists from the legacy automakers that you know, in
Speaker 1: some cases are over a year people waiting to say,
Speaker 1: like buy a new electric truck or something like that.
Speaker 1: So we have this it seems like the demand is massive.
Speaker 1: And then you look at these charts of e V
Speaker 1: market penetration expecting the future, and they're all like the
Speaker 1: classic up into the right. And so I guess the
Speaker 1: question is, like, how much of a constraint is battery
Speaker 1: supply to essentially the trajectory of e vs the people
Speaker 1: forecast if it were just from a demand perspective, because
Speaker 1: it looks like demand is now the problem. Well, the
Speaker 1: supply of new of nickel and other metals allow for
Speaker 1: that sort of like hockey stick like growth in EV penetration. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: this is this is a million dollar question, um, And
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, certainly battery supply is consideration, you know,
Speaker 1: I think we'll certainly see that kind of hockey stick
Speaker 1: like growth up into the right in electric vehicles. I
Speaker 1: think the question is, you know, how steep is that transient?
Speaker 1: As you say, there's a number of kind of potential
Speaker 1: bottomnecks within the supply chain that could limit that growth. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, if we go to the raw material side
Speaker 1: of things, it's literally is there enough lithium or nickel
Speaker 1: that can be dug out of the ground to meet
Speaker 1: that demand? And based on current trajectories, you know, well
Speaker 1: will will be okay for the next kind of two
Speaker 1: or three years. There's going to be potential shortages you
Speaker 1: know in lithium and nickel and cobalt. Then after that
Speaker 1: it really depends on whether the new minds that are
Speaker 1: slated to come online do manage to come online or
Speaker 1: you know, if there are delays. One of the key
Speaker 1: that we should be watching one of the problems as
Speaker 1: I said, so so so within Indonesia, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of new projects which are using a technology called
Speaker 1: h PAL so high pressure acid leaching. Now this is
Speaker 1: a promising technology, but there's only one operating mind in
Speaker 1: the world that uses it today. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: riding on a technology that is to some extent not
Speaker 1: that widespread. And if those minds don't come on online,
Speaker 1: then then we start to kind of run into issues.
Speaker 1: Then on the lithium side of things, you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's there's a huge number of kind of minds that
Speaker 1: are looking to open. We have kind of new minds
Speaker 1: opening in Australia, we have new refining refineries opening in Australia.
Speaker 1: There's a Chinese company that's just helped open a new
Speaker 1: lithium refinery. So we've we've got a lot of kind
Speaker 1: of potential projects coming online. And then within the US
Speaker 1: we look at something kind of new lithium projects that
Speaker 1: are that are being stated there. There are companies like
Speaker 1: Standy Lithium and others that are looking at geothermal projects. Similarly,
Speaker 1: in Europe we have Fulcan Lithium which is also looking
Speaker 1: at a geo thermal project. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: activity in the sector. It's just a question of can
Speaker 1: you push those through to the end and actually execute
Speaker 1: on them, and that's that's harder to do. So, just
Speaker 1: on that note, can can you go back to what
Speaker 1: Joe and I were kind of hinting at earlier? Are
Speaker 1: there enough of these medals in the ground to satisfy demand?
Speaker 1: And is it the case that it just takes a
Speaker 1: while to build the minds, develop new technology to actually
Speaker 1: extract them. So so there's slightly enough in the ground.
Speaker 1: It is as you say, though, it just takes a
Speaker 1: while to develop these projects. If you look at a
Speaker 1: typical kind of mind development time, you could be looking
Speaker 1: at kind of seven to ten years, and that becomes
Speaker 1: an issue if that hockey stick growth takes off faster
Speaker 1: than expected. If of setting more uvs this year, that's
Speaker 1: hard because you can't just get a new mind operating
Speaker 1: this year. Similarly, you can't get a new cell manufacturing
Speaker 1: plant operating overnight. So that that that's where the issues
Speaker 1: come as if demand is there faster than than supply
Speaker 1: can keep up, you know, which is always going to be,
Speaker 1: you know, an issue in any kind of growing market,
Speaker 1: how does that supply demand balance work. But until the
Speaker 1: last year or so, it seemed like supply was going
Speaker 1: to be ahead of demand, and suddenly that's flipped and
Speaker 1: we've seen this kind of great up taking in electric vehicles.
Speaker 1: So we know that governments around the world are thinking
Speaker 1: about this and concerned, and of course we saw we
Speaker 1: got the news from the White House recently about wanting
Speaker 1: to accelerate domestic sourcing of key medals. What steps are
Speaker 1: being taken around the world to make it such that
Speaker 1: some of these new projects maybe move faster or approved
Speaker 1: faster or developed faster, and what are the what policies
Speaker 1: should be. We'll be watching to see whether or whether
Speaker 1: they prove effective. Again, this is a This is a
Speaker 1: difficult one because I think there's lots of discussions around
Speaker 1: the world of needing to open new minds, and you know,
Speaker 1: the signing of the Defense or the invoking of the
Speaker 1: Defense Production Act in the US is a great indicator
Speaker 1: that the US government is backing the battery supply chain
Speaker 1: and wants these minerals to be there. But in most
Speaker 1: of the kind of western world, the problem isn't government
Speaker 1: support so much, it's the permitting and the processing. You know,
Speaker 1: there's still amount of opposition to digging minerals out of
Speaker 1: the ground in Europe or the US. One of the
Speaker 1: kind of recent European lithium projects that was slay to
Speaker 1: start operation a year or two ago in Portugal ran
Speaker 1: up against environmental kind of lobbyists and and has been
Speaker 1: delayed a couple of times since then. So we've got
Speaker 1: this kind of split environmental group where lifting batteries are
Speaker 1: good for the environment because you get evs on the
Speaker 1: road and polluting cars off the road. But there's still
Speaker 1: this concern around local impacts on the environment and and
Speaker 1: and kind of habitats. That's the real issue, and it's
Speaker 1: it's hard for a lot of Western governments to kind
Speaker 1: of balance that. So although we see money and and
Speaker 1: and kind of government sentiments supporting these projects, it's slightly
Speaker 1: harder under ground to actually kind of carry them forward.
Speaker 1: There are some countries that are better than others. So Canada,
Speaker 1: for example, is expected to announce around one point six
Speaker 1: billion US dollars to support mining of kind of critical
Speaker 1: battery materials in its upcoming budget. And in Canada the
Speaker 1: kind of legislation is much more friendly to minors, so
Speaker 1: there we can see projects coming online faster. You know. Similarly,
Speaker 1: in countries like Indonesia, as they say, where you have
Speaker 1: these nickel projects being developed, it can be easier to
Speaker 1: get these minds up and running from a kind of
Speaker 1: permitting perspective. So it's really, i think, i'd say, in
Speaker 1: in in the US and in Europe, it's watching see
Speaker 1: what else kind of what legislation follows things like the
Speaker 1: Defense Production Act. You know, how how does the government
Speaker 1: then move to support these minds in a more material way?
Speaker 1: If you like I was about to ask, what does
Speaker 1: it actually mean if a government says they're going to
Speaker 1: spend X billion dollars to boost domestic mining capacity, Like,
Speaker 1: how does that money actually flow? And is it the
Speaker 1: case that maybe, I don't know, maybe designating land for
Speaker 1: for this activity would be more useful in terms of
Speaker 1: boosting production. How does it actually work? It's it varies
Speaker 1: a lot by location, so we're still waiting to get
Speaker 1: the kind of final details. Canada's one point six billion,
Speaker 1: for example, But you know there that that that money
Speaker 1: might go to help carry up feasibility studies. It could
Speaker 1: be offered in the way of loans to kind of
Speaker 1: buy equipment or to kind of start operating projects. In
Speaker 1: the US, the Defense Production Act makes will make around
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty million in funds available which companies
Speaker 1: can use for these kind of feasibility studies, so assessing
Speaker 1: where they could build new minds or for upgrading equipment
Speaker 1: and infrastructure so they can get higher yields have become
Speaker 1: more environmentally friendly in the process. So there's lots of
Speaker 1: different ways that it can be spent. We don't kind
Speaker 1: of soft and see land being directly kind of designated
Speaker 1: four minds. But again that's that's an knocking that could
Speaker 1: be on the table. I want to switch a little
Speaker 1: bit to the state of grid storage. And you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: as we've seen, particularly in Europe, the electricity prices have
Speaker 1: gone absolutely nuts, and there's a lot of interest in
Speaker 1: increasing renewables, particularly wind and solar, but of course it's
Speaker 1: seems like for them to really work and to have
Speaker 1: like a zero emissions grid, you would need a lot
Speaker 1: of backup battery power to back up those powers. So
Speaker 1: where how big is that market right now? Just grid
Speaker 1: level batteries. Yes, the good market, as I mentioned, is
Speaker 1: smaller in terms of demand for batteries than the passenger
Speaker 1: electric vehicle market. But as you say, it's it's key
Speaker 1: to this renewable energy push. You really need to have
Speaker 1: those batteries on grids in order to kind of avoid
Speaker 1: curtailment and and and really decarbonized grids. But if we
Speaker 1: look at it on a let's say, kind of giggle
Speaker 1: on our basis, So this this unit we use for
Speaker 1: measuring battery demand, um it represents somewhere around kind of
Speaker 1: five percent of the total demand for batteries today, So
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's very small, but it is it's critical,
Speaker 1: and its use is going to kind of continue growing.
Speaker 1: So as we get into you know, as you say
Speaker 1: in Europe, particularly as we get it further into this decade,
Speaker 1: demand will will increase and we'll probably see somewhere around
Speaker 1: kind of a hundred thirty giggle what hours of cumulative
Speaker 1: batteries deployed on on the grid to help support renewable integration.
Speaker 1: So can I I apologize for this, but I always
Speaker 1: get lost at like d thirty kilt hours and how
Speaker 1: to how to think about that? And how big is that?
Speaker 1: Like how big? Well, how big is there? Yeah? That's
Speaker 1: um that is one that I'll have trying to work
Speaker 1: out the top of my head. I think the way
Speaker 1: to think about this is that there's a project that's
Speaker 1: being built in Florida that's about nine hundred megawae hours
Speaker 1: and I can't remember the exact number that they gave,
Speaker 1: but that's something like thirty football fields. So it's a
Speaker 1: huge amount of space that's required. But the thing to
Speaker 1: remember is that these are generally not that nine hundred
Speaker 1: megawae hour in size. You know, they tend to be
Speaker 1: smaller projects around anywhere from a hundred to two hundred
Speaker 1: megawa hours, and they're they're distributed around the grid where needed.
Speaker 1: So you're not going to kind of walk into, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, come off the highway and find just a
Speaker 1: field full of batteries. You know, they'll be more distributed
Speaker 1: probably on the edge of let's say solo farms, and
Speaker 1: the space compared to solo farm is kind of tiny.
Speaker 1: So a lot of our discussions so far has been
Speaker 1: about the idea of countries securing domestic supply of medals
Speaker 1: that are vital to building batteries. What what do companies
Speaker 1: do in this situation. I mean, you mentioned Elon Musk
Speaker 1: saying that he wanted better domestic production of I think
Speaker 1: it was nickel. But what can you know big car
Speaker 1: companies or battery makers, actually, due to secure supply, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot they can do themselves at the moment. Typically,
Speaker 1: battery manufacturers and particularly automakers have automakers don't want to
Speaker 1: be vertically integrated. If we look at what's happened over
Speaker 1: the last kind of a couple of decades, companies like
Speaker 1: VW have tried to reduce their kind of vertical integration
Speaker 1: and secure supplies. It's only that's now changing if they
Speaker 1: want to make sure that they can get hold of
Speaker 1: these kind of critical battery materials. A lot of them
Speaker 1: are signing these longer term off take agreements, but actually,
Speaker 1: you know, increasingly more and more of them, they are
Speaker 1: actually investing in small scale lithium producers. So I Testa
Speaker 1: again as an example, invested in a company called Piedmont
Speaker 1: Lithium in the US or it has a long time
Speaker 1: off take with them. Similarly, a lot of Chinese battery
Speaker 1: producers in particular are investing in or taking kind of
Speaker 1: exerting states in small scale minds in order to make
Speaker 1: sure that they have availability to that for that material
Speaker 1: in the future, and so they have better kind of
Speaker 1: visibility on what that pricing is going to look like.
Speaker 1: It helps reduce their exposure to the kind of volatile
Speaker 1: kind of spot price market. Essentially. So I want really
Speaker 1: talk about the broader trajectory of batteries, and you mentioned
Speaker 1: something interesting at the very beginning, which is that maybe
Speaker 1: in ten years will have solid state batteries. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about that A bit more, what is the breakthrough that
Speaker 1: everyone is hoping for. Let's start there. What does that
Speaker 1: mean if we were to switch from the lithium iron
Speaker 1: approached to the solid state and why that would be
Speaker 1: such a game changer. So, yeah, slid state batteries have
Speaker 1: have have really been on the horizon for for for
Speaker 1: well over a decade now, and the big difference is
Speaker 1: that today when we look at a lithium ion battery,
Speaker 1: there's three important components. So you have the two electrodes
Speaker 1: called the cathode and the anode, and then they're typically
Speaker 1: separated by a liquid electrolyte. So this liquid electrolyte helps
Speaker 1: move lithium between the two electrodes, and that's the kind
Speaker 1: of basic principle of how the battery works. In a
Speaker 1: solid state battery, you get rid of that that liquid
Speaker 1: and you replace it with a solid material that lithium
Speaker 1: ions can can move through. So it's really kind of
Speaker 1: quite ingenious. And by getting rid of that liquid, you're
Speaker 1: removing fuel source. So one of the problems with lickingmone batteries,
Speaker 1: and it's a very rare occurrence, but you do often
Speaker 1: you do occasionally hear about evy battery fires and they're
Speaker 1: often fueled by this liquid electrolyte. So if you get
Speaker 1: rid of that, battery has become much safer and actually
Speaker 1: it then allows you to manufacture much denser batteries as well,
Speaker 1: so smaller volume, less weight in some instances, and again
Speaker 1: that helps increase the range of your vehicle. That's also
Speaker 1: another big debate. I think I mentioned this earlier, but
Speaker 1: some people believe that range anxiety is one of the
Speaker 1: things that holds back electric vehicles, and I think it's
Speaker 1: certainly true if you think about the you know, the
Speaker 1: one long journey that you do each year where in
Speaker 1: the UK where I'm based, you might drive let's say
Speaker 1: three miles in one go, and you can't really do
Speaker 1: that in an evening today. It's going to be right
Speaker 1: on the edge of the limit of what navy can do,
Speaker 1: particularly if you have the air con on, if you've
Speaker 1: got the stereo on. All of these things drained the actually,
Speaker 1: so to range anxiety is considered by some to be,
Speaker 1: as I say, one of the things that kind of
Speaker 1: holds that back. When I think about when I get
Speaker 1: an e V, you know, I got a hybrid of
Speaker 1: plug in hybrid because I want to drive around London
Speaker 1: on electric But for that longer journey, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be started charging for you know, minutes. With solid
Speaker 1: state batteries, you could get a four five hundred mile
Speaker 1: range out of that battery on one charge, and you know,
Speaker 1: then suddenly range is not an issue. Really you need
Speaker 1: to stop during that time anyway, to to grab a coffee,
Speaker 1: to run to the restroom, you know, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And so I think solid state batteries that kind of
Speaker 1: promising technology that would just level the playing field between
Speaker 1: internal combustion engine vehicles and electric vehicles. Here's another really
Speaker 1: dumb question from someone who doesn't know anything about this space.
Speaker 1: But you know, you're talking about increasing the capacity of
Speaker 1: the battery in order to increase the range. Are there
Speaker 1: any efforts underway to decrease the charging time so that,
Speaker 1: you know, actually charging your electric vehicle would be the
Speaker 1: equivalent of pulling into a gas station and just getting
Speaker 1: more gas. That's again one of the kind of big
Speaker 1: focuses of a lot of water makers is this charge time. Today,
Speaker 1: charge times have come down, but a lot If you
Speaker 1: get a Porsche Tike and you can do k charge
Speaker 1: in about twenty minutes or so, so that's that's, you know,
Speaker 1: not too bad. I think it's probably slightly longer than
Speaker 1: most people would want to stop at a gas station
Speaker 1: if they're on a long journey, but it's not unreasonable.
Speaker 1: But mass market e vs, you know, the kind of
Speaker 1: v W golfs, etcetera, are not at that charging speed yet.
Speaker 1: But most automakers, for some of their models, they're looking
Speaker 1: to reduce charging time down to let's take kind of
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen minutes, and perhaps as a result of that,
Speaker 1: you need a smaller battery, so you're stopping a little
Speaker 1: bit more often. But actually on long journeys, most people
Speaker 1: want to stop everything let's say kind of two three
Speaker 1: hundred miles anyway, so it's perhaps not such. Are there
Speaker 1: any like big bang other big bang breakthroughs that people
Speaker 1: are working on? So it seems like, you know, over time,
Speaker 1: engineers get more and more ingenious about as you mentioned
Speaker 1: the Chinese battery, engineers have found a way to get
Speaker 1: more range out of the cheaper approach, and that that's
Speaker 1: a potential breakthrough. Are we looking at a sequence of
Speaker 1: just ongoing like sort of like squeezing more water from
Speaker 1: the stone or squeezing more juice from the lemon or whatever.
Speaker 1: Or are there other sort of like big step change breakthroughs,
Speaker 1: maybe like the solid state battery that we should be pursuing,
Speaker 1: because I feel like in the discussion, particularly around UM
Speaker 1: the grid and the use of renewal bars, people are
Speaker 1: talking about we just need to pour a ton of
Speaker 1: money in this into R and D, etcetera and get
Speaker 1: the big breakthrough. Is that how it's going to be
Speaker 1: or or just be just incremental progress over time. So
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in kind of innovation helping to
Speaker 1: reduce costs and improve performance. The question of is it
Speaker 1: going to be a big breakthrough is it going to
Speaker 1: be kind of smaller incremental ones. I used to be
Speaker 1: a believer in the kind of big step change, but
Speaker 1: actually I think now you know what I've come to
Speaker 1: realize after working in this field kind of twelve years
Speaker 1: or so, it's actually it's lots of kind of small
Speaker 1: incremental changes that add up to make the big difference,
Speaker 1: whether that's in cost or or in performance. And just
Speaker 1: as an example of that, from two thousand and ten
Speaker 1: to battery pack prices fell by from over a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars parkular with our back in two and ten down
Speaker 1: to around a hundred and thirty dollars parkular what so
Speaker 1: kind of a huge change there, and there's not one
Speaker 1: thing that you can kind of pinpoint on that helped that,
Speaker 1: but there was lots of kind of small incremental changes,
Speaker 1: things like changing the mix of metals in the cathode,
Speaker 1: so reducing the amount of cobalt, increasing the amount of nickel,
Speaker 1: as well as kind of improvements to the manufacturing process.
Speaker 1: Economies are scale and manufacturing as well and within the
Speaker 1: supply chain have been key to that. And so if
Speaker 1: we look at what's going to happen over the next decade,
Speaker 1: there's lots of kind of similar improvements and technologies on
Speaker 1: the horizon. Solid State is just one of those, and
Speaker 1: actually solid State will kind of will will benefit from
Speaker 1: a lot of these other incremental changes. So the area
Speaker 1: that I'm really interested in the moment is the manufacturing
Speaker 1: process itself. It's it's something that although people have got
Speaker 1: better at doing it over the last thirty years, it
Speaker 1: hasn't really changed. And suddenly we're seeing a wave of
Speaker 1: new companies coming to the market who are really focusing
Speaker 1: on how they can kind challenge the status quo and
Speaker 1: reduce costs, and so there's a couple of technologies that
Speaker 1: are going to throw out here. One's called prelithation. So
Speaker 1: this is is in theory, a relatively simple thing to do.
Speaker 1: You add a little bit of extra lithium into the
Speaker 1: battery during the manufacturing process, and for various reasons, that
Speaker 1: bumps the energy density by about And what that kind
Speaker 1: of increase in energy density means is that you need
Speaker 1: less nickel, cobalt, manganese in the battery. And when you're
Speaker 1: looking at the kind of manufacturing capacity you're producing kind
Speaker 1: of more giggle what hours for every plant that you have,
Speaker 1: and therefore your your kind of cost per giggle what
Speaker 1: our produced comes down as well. So there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of innovations like that that are close to being
Speaker 1: commercial commercialized, you know that they're in the pilot stage,
Speaker 1: and I'm really looking to all of those to kind
Speaker 1: of see how the industry develops. But as I say,
Speaker 1: even technologies like that will will end up benefiting solid
Speaker 1: state as well in the future. So it's it's really
Speaker 1: no one silver bullet, but but lots of innovations at
Speaker 1: the same time that will help push the industry forward. So,
Speaker 1: speaking of the future. Here's a big picture question. But
Speaker 1: the recent turmoil that we've seen in commodities, is that
Speaker 1: a net positive for decarbonization and battery adoption or a
Speaker 1: net negative because I could kind of see arguing it
Speaker 1: both ways. So on the one hand, you have higher
Speaker 1: oil prices and maybe people look for alternatives to traditional
Speaker 1: fossil fuels. But on the other hand, you clearly have
Speaker 1: higher metals prices as well, and that might make batteries
Speaker 1: even more expensive for consumers, as you described earlier in
Speaker 1: the conversation. So what's your your gut take on whether
Speaker 1: this is all good or bad for batteries. There's one
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about a lot over the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. I think if I go with my gut,
Speaker 1: I think it's a good thing. You know, as you say,
Speaker 1: high oil prices do incentivized people from from driving their
Speaker 1: combustion vehicles. It makes them think about, you know, what
Speaker 1: should I do when I'm getting my next vehicles? Should
Speaker 1: I go for gas again? What happens if I end
Speaker 1: up in this kind of same situation? And so I
Speaker 1: think that will push people towards evs. And although the
Speaker 1: metals prices are higher now, and that's not great for
Speaker 1: the battery market. We actually went through a similar situation
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and eighteen where cobalt prices hit
Speaker 1: almost a hundred thousand dollars per metric time, and and
Speaker 1: lithium prices were at an all time high back then.
Speaker 1: That that they're now higher than they were then, but
Speaker 1: that actually resulted in innovation within the battery space. Suddenly
Speaker 1: manufacturers looked to reduce the amount of cobalt that were
Speaker 1: in their batteries, and that resulted in in kind of
Speaker 1: much better performance and people were expecting. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's it's this uncertainty today will kind of result
Speaker 1: in innovation within the batteries base. And I think actually
Speaker 1: in the supply chain, higher commodity prices, you know, that
Speaker 1: typically incentivizes new production. So we'll see more companies interested
Speaker 1: in in in digging nickel, lithium, cobalt out of the ground.
Speaker 1: And so in the long run, I think this is
Speaker 1: a positive for electrification. There's this old Thomas Edison quote,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure if it's apocryphal or not, but
Speaker 1: I've seen it a bunch in battery talk, where I
Speaker 1: guess Edison was like a battery skeptic way back in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds, and you referred to the storage
Speaker 1: batteries quote a mechanism for swindling the public by stock companies,
Speaker 1: and you basically thought all these battery companies were frauds.
Speaker 1: They like weren't going to shake out and people just
Speaker 1: lose a lot of money. Is there a lot of
Speaker 1: flim flammery in the battery world? Flim flammery. That's a
Speaker 1: great word. I think that's my my new favorite synonym
Speaker 1: for securities. Yeah, Like, is the is it a space
Speaker 1: that there's like a bunch of people promising all kinds
Speaker 1: of like yeah, we're have this big breakthrough blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and it's always five years out or it's always ten
Speaker 1: years away. And meanwhile, a bunch of people there is
Speaker 1: a lot of money chasing something like Holy Grail or
Speaker 1: a company they're just going to change everything. It's certainly
Speaker 1: true to say that there has been that within the
Speaker 1: battery industry, and there were a number of companies in
Speaker 1: the kind of twenty tens that over promised and underperformed.
Speaker 1: I think that the probably the biggest one that people
Speaker 1: will remember is the UK consumer appliance company. Dyson brought
Speaker 1: a solid state company called sack T three in I
Speaker 1: think it was seventeen or so, and within to two
Speaker 1: or three years they had wound down that part of
Speaker 1: the battery research team because sack T three couldn't deliver
Speaker 1: on the promises that it had made. So there are
Speaker 1: examples of that, but I think there's a lot more.
Speaker 1: I would say that's a kind of transparency in the
Speaker 1: battery market than perhaps when Edison was around. So I
Speaker 1: think companies so I think, you know, companies tend to
Speaker 1: understand these days that you know they won't get away
Speaker 1: with misleading investors. But I think it's certainly true to
Speaker 1: say that, you know, on the investing side, there's there's
Speaker 1: a huge amount of interest in the market. We see
Speaker 1: the valuation of companies kind of increasing at a phenomenal
Speaker 1: rate in the VC space these days. So there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of incentives for companies to really make sure
Speaker 1: that they can produce as much as they can, but
Speaker 1: that creates kind of disincentives or the wrong incentive at times.
Speaker 1: So there could be the possibility for somebody who's perhaps
Speaker 1: not repetable getting into the market and misleading investors. But
Speaker 1: if investors are smart about this, they will make sure
Speaker 1: they understand the technology and they'll make sure they're not
Speaker 1: taken for a ride. And you know, if they are
Speaker 1: taken for a ride, perhaps that's you know, as much
Speaker 1: of a comment on their diligence process as it is
Speaker 1: on on whoever takes them for a ride. Does that
Speaker 1: hold true for China as well? I mean, I remember
Speaker 1: billions of dollars or I guess trillions of u N
Speaker 1: being poured into the e V and the battery space
Speaker 1: in recent years. And this is something that China has
Speaker 1: been very vocal about boosting as a strategic interest, strategic
Speaker 1: industry for the country itself. And it seems like whenever
Speaker 1: China designates something to be strategically important, often there's a
Speaker 1: tendency for overproduction or a build up of over capacity
Speaker 1: and maybe inefficient allocation of capital. These are all euphemisms
Speaker 1: that I'm using what's going on in China. Yes, so,
Speaker 1: as you say, China has heavily invested in the EV
Speaker 1: and battery space, and we have seen that kind of
Speaker 1: over investment in capacity over the last decade. If you
Speaker 1: look at the number of kind of tier three and
Speaker 1: tier two supplies in China, you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of excess capacity there particularly that's kind of tiers three space,
Speaker 1: where companies invested quite heavily in any fifteen and they
Speaker 1: really failed to secure any contracts with any large automakers,
Speaker 1: and so as a result, there's a lot of stranded capacity,
Speaker 1: and those companies tend to look to lower value markets
Speaker 1: to try and utilize that capacity. But if you look
Speaker 1: at the kind of tier one and tier two sector,
Speaker 1: you have companies like c at, L, B y D, EVE, Energy,
Speaker 1: Ghost and high Tech, and you know, they have capacity.
Speaker 1: They're building more and more capacity every year, and most
Speaker 1: of that capacity is being taken by automakers. So in
Speaker 1: that sense and the kind of tier one and tier
Speaker 1: two markets actually that that capacity that is being utilized,
Speaker 1: and those companies, you know, have a very kind of
Speaker 1: solid grip on the supply chain and and on battery technology.
Speaker 1: Can we talk dollar amounts for a second. I often
Speaker 1: when I hear things like kill a lot of hours,
Speaker 1: and it's hard for me to wrap my head around
Speaker 1: how big that is. But I have a better sense
Speaker 1: of when we're talking about dollar It's like, what is
Speaker 1: the dollar size? Of the battery market these days. I
Speaker 1: don't know, however you want to measure it, whether sales
Speaker 1: or market cap of companies, etcetera, And like, where do
Speaker 1: you see that in ten years or what are the
Speaker 1: expectations of how big this industry is going to get
Speaker 1: over the next decade or so? Yes, So, so if
Speaker 1: we put it into dollar amounts, if we looked let's say, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's say and your sales, Yeah, they'll be around
Speaker 1: fifty four billion battery sales in two If we go
Speaker 1: to you're looking at around a hundred and sixty billion.
Speaker 1: So these are markets that are that are big today
Speaker 1: but are growing, you know, very quickly, and market caps,
Speaker 1: you know, are kind of growing at a similar rate.
Speaker 1: I think the one that probably most people like to
Speaker 1: point to is Quantum Escape, which is a listed company
Speaker 1: working on solid tape batteries and it's it's market cap
Speaker 1: when it kind of went public virus back went up
Speaker 1: to in the tens of billions. And this is for
Speaker 1: company that is pre revenue and kind of how hasn't
Speaker 1: produced anything yet. So there's a lot of money going
Speaker 1: around the market. Valuations are high, but it's going to
Speaker 1: be a big market and you know there's a lot
Speaker 1: of fighting to win market share. Well one last point,
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned Quantum Escape, but in my mistaken
Speaker 1: that they're really I feel like I've looked at this before,
Speaker 1: but am I mistaken? There don't seem to be that
Speaker 1: many like pure play public battery companies out there. Like
Speaker 1: when I've looked before, is I go who's public? Who's listed?
Speaker 1: What battery starcks? Should I be watching? My mistaken there
Speaker 1: aren't that many, you know, so you're quite right. There
Speaker 1: are in China more listed companies, Contemporary and Forex Technology
Speaker 1: or CTL being the largest, But outside of China, a
Speaker 1: lot of the largest factory manufacturers that are there today
Speaker 1: are not pure place. So LG Cam, for example, had
Speaker 1: a battery manufacturing unit that was part of this bigger
Speaker 1: kind of chemicals company. They actually I POD earlier this year,
Speaker 1: so they I fiods LG Energy Solution. And we then
Speaker 1: also have from Koreer sk Innovation the oil and gas
Speaker 1: company or one of the parts of the oil and
Speaker 1: gas company, and it has a battery unit that it's
Speaker 1: about to spin out called s k o N. So
Speaker 1: we are seeing more pure play companies, you know, starting
Speaker 1: to list but it's it's not kind of as bigger
Speaker 1: public markets as it could be. But I think that
Speaker 1: would like to change over the next couple of years,
Speaker 1: as we have the Korean companies I p O ing
Speaker 1: more Chinese market, Chinese companies entering the market, and we'll
Speaker 1: probably see a few more I p O s in
Speaker 1: Europe and the US as well. I know British Fault
Speaker 1: looking to I p O at some point potentially, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure North Fault will in the future I p O.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's kind of great, kind of huge
Speaker 1: demand I imagine when they do well. James, this was
Speaker 1: an absolutely fantastic overview. I think is Tracy and I
Speaker 1: we're talking about this is not an area that we
Speaker 1: know much about. The only thing we really know is
Speaker 1: that it's like really important and then we have to
Speaker 1: learn more. But this was like sort of a great
Speaker 1: intro to the topic. So I really appreciate you coming
Speaker 1: out outline, and I thank you for having made pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, James. That was really helpful. Tracy. I
Speaker 1: found that to be extremely helpful. I mean, I joked
Speaker 1: at the end, but it really wasn't a joke. All
Speaker 1: I really know about batteries is that they're a big deal.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get become a bigger deal. No, I
Speaker 1: totally agree, And this was a really good first step,
Speaker 1: and I thought James was very clear and a lot
Speaker 1: of the ideas that he laid out. One thing that
Speaker 1: I was thinking about throughout this episode, and I think
Speaker 1: this is maybe this will be the motto for odd
Speaker 1: Lots for this year. But any problem that can be
Speaker 1: solved with money probably isn't really a problem, right. I
Speaker 1: think I've said that before, And with something like mineing
Speaker 1: these medals that are vital for the decarbonization process, for
Speaker 1: building these big batteries and getting everyone moving into electric vehicles,
Speaker 1: it seems like the issue there is really a time
Speaker 1: and be our country is going to be willing to
Speaker 1: actually dig up their land in order to do this.
Speaker 1: And I think there's still a big question mark. And
Speaker 1: James kind of hinted at this. Canada in the US
Speaker 1: can throw billions of dollars at this issue, but how
Speaker 1: much is that actually going to speed up the production
Speaker 1: process and is it going to happen at all given
Speaker 1: environmental concerns. I love that as our new motto. I
Speaker 1: mean that is essentially what we talked about with the
Speaker 1: Salton posts are right like that we've had. We are
Speaker 1: like we are past the age of monetary driven problems
Speaker 1: and now into the age of like sort of physics
Speaker 1: problems and engineering problems and domestic politics problems and geopolitics problems,
Speaker 1: all of these things like, yes, there is a monetary cost,
Speaker 1: but also like will this through work or not? Well,
Speaker 1: this new method of cheaper extraction of medals that that
Speaker 1: James was talking about, I forget the acronym he used,
Speaker 1: but you know this new thing that they're using in Indonesia,
Speaker 1: will it pan out and proved to be a cheaper
Speaker 1: way of separating nickel and cobalt. All of these questions
Speaker 1: are like, they're very interesting and no amount of money
Speaker 1: can guarantee their success. Absolutely, that's a perfect summary. Great,
Speaker 1: well that should we just yeah, all right, let's leave
Speaker 1: it there. This has been another episode of the All
Speaker 1: Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe wisn't All. You
Speaker 1: can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwarts. Follow our
Speaker 1: guest James Frith, Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen
Speaker 1: Arman and Colin Tipton at Colin Tipton. Follow the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: head of podcast Francesco Levi at Francesco Today, and check
Speaker 1: out all of our podcasts at Bloomberg under the handle
Speaker 1: at podcasts. Thanks for listening. Hey, there are AD Thoughts listeners.
Speaker 1: We are very excited to let you know that Ad
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