PLANET EV
There is an entire eco system of new start-ups popping up across the planet vying to get in on the EV revolution action. As with all historical technology leaps there will be winners and losers, acquisitions, mergers, breakthrough technologies and dead enders
Just as with the space race, multiple new technologies and innovations are being born out of the revolution. Investment banker Morgan Stanley, in 2020, profiled over 60 companies which have a significant interest in electric car adoption. These names are not just carmakers, they include silicon chip manufacturers, mining, chemical companies, battery technology companies, charge point operators, and even big oil divisions. Although global EV penetration, as of 2021, is still only at 23%, Wall Street always goes where the money action is and it is a clear sign that the investment community smells the forthcoming EV action.
There is a fascinating array of new start-ups appearing globally.
Israel has emerged as a global EV hotspot. The small country has spawned several highly disruptive technology start-ups. One such start-up attained great media attention in early 2021 with their announcement of revolutionary new battery technology. Store Dot has claimed to have developed a new generation lithium-ion battery that can be charged within five minutes. I’ll cover new battery technologies, including future solid-state batteries, later.
Another Israeli start-up, REE, has developed a completely different way to develop the floor plate of electric cars. With its design everything is integrated into a single universal floor plate, with independent motors at the corners. Each ‘corner’ of the floor plate acts independently on each wheel and can be maintained individually. REE claims that this will make manufacturing more efficient while allowing for a greater and easier variety of car models to sit on top of its platform.
Other Israeli start-ups such as Driivz, providing charging management platforms, ElectReon, for wireless EV charging and Addionics, for 3D battery pack design, are blazing an EV innovation trail.
In the UK, battery maker Britishvolt is developing a $3.5 billion battery production facility in northern England while in the US, Sila Nanotechnologies is specialising in increasing the volumetric energy density of batteries, reducing the cost per kilowatt hour and has already raised almost $300 million.
In Germany, Quantron, specialises in the electrification of existing ICE vehicles, while in the UK EO Charging has developed the world’s smallest smart home charger.
There is also a host of software start-ups and mobility-as-a-service start-ups in the electric car space. Whilst my own UFODRIVE company was the first to go all digital and all electric, we are no longer alone. There have been a host of car sharing platforms launched across the globe in just the past three years. The future of car ownership is changing rapidly, in part because of electric cars.
Worldwide EV momentum is growing, with an entire EV ecosystem now also emerging and an unstoppable race towards our electric future under way. Global sales of electric cars are now 10x the level of just five years ago. President Biden’s $174 billion investment in EV development, announced in mid-2021, is testament to the level of focus now on electrification and decarbonisation. Prediction models for electric car adoption from only four and five years ago are already out of date. These models are constantly being revised; investment bank UBS predicted in early 2021 that they now expect 100% electric mobility by 2040. I believe it will in fact be quicker, I predict that close to 100% of all new car sales will be electric by 2030.
Who will be the winners & losers? ICE resale values will plummet from the mid-2020s. They will become legacy technology. This will be driven by better EV ownership economics, better customer experience, regulation, and climate consciousness.
The only survival route for all legacy automakers now is to create totally independent electric operations with start-again thinking. They need to push all their brain power and fresh ideas into these divisions and then wind down the internal combustion operations over time. Any Frankenstein effort to combine the two businesses will hinder progress with hierarchical bureaucracy and management layer self-interests. If they go down this route Tesla, who have already eaten their lunch, will eat their dinner too.
US carmakers will spend over $250 billion chasing Tesla over the next three years. By 2030, Tesla, will be just another automaker, everyone will be electric. Will they be the Toyota of the automotive world with the greatest numbers of car production per year? – it’s very possible given their already giant head start.
Others, like Volkswagen, will catch up and may even overtake. Regardless of which companies make it and which don’t, we will all be the beneficiaries. Clean air, quieter streets, and a big contribution in reducing carbon dioxide emissions to save our planet will be the reward.
The tipping point has happened, the world has shifted, and the next generation will be a fully electric generation. However, there are still over 1 billion internal combustion cars on the roads, and consumers must fully embrace electric for these to disappear.
With over 90% of cars sold every day still powered by fossil fuels, there is still a long way to go before everyone thinks electric. All the ingredients are now in place, and soon electric cars will be mass affordable.
For everybody to buy an electric car, all the misconceptions, facts and fiction need to be addressed. Electric cars work today, even for long journeys. Batteries will improve, range and charging will get better, but right now the public still needs convincing.
In the next few blogs, I’m going to clarify all the fact and fiction around electric cars. Later I’m going to go into some detail on battery, range and charging and how we can transition our whole world to clean mobility powered by clean energy.
