Volkswagen enters battery business with $20B investment

https://www.arenaev.com/vw_creates_new_company_and_enters_global_battery_business-news-461.php

by oblio • 4 years ago

303 283 4 years ago

40 GWh or half a million vehicles per year (80 kWh each). A lot but also not a lot if you consider hundreds of millions of vehicles need to be replaced.

If we used plug in hybrids with 10 kWh batteries, this would be enough for four million vehicles.

eveningcoffee• 4 years ago

Yes, but do customers want plugin-hybrids instead of fully electric?

Gravityloss5• 4 years ago

If it's a lot cheaper for similar range, yes. Or if it has better range for same price (ie compared to a small battery electric car).

It depends on your driving profile. For most of the year, I do small trips, below 50 km per day. Then I do maybe 10 200-400 km trips a year.

I could get maybe 80% electric kilometers with a modest plugin hybrid.

eliseumds2• 4 years ago

In emerging markets, hybrids are a much smarter choice. Here in Brazil there are few fast chargers (say 40kW+), and a great bunch of them are broken anyway. My next car will be a plug-in hybrid. Maybe an electric in 10 years.

01100011• 4 years ago

I love my EV, but I'll be switching to a hybrid when the lease is up. EVs are great but charging is currently a pain. I have no doubt I'll switch back to an EV in a few years, but right now, they're not worth it to me.

eulers_secret• 4 years ago

As an apartment dweller, I would want a regular hybrid.

So would the folks I know who only have street parking.

For many of us, electric or plugin just strait-up aren't an option. We get forgotten about all the time, but lots of us exist!

bretpiatt• 4 years ago

For VW to build 10 million electric vehicles to keep numbers up [1], at 60kWh per vehicle which approximately the midsized ID.3 [2], they need to build roughly 12x this capacity, so ~$240B investment which is about what the whole company is worth today [3].

[1] https://www.best-selling-cars.com/brands/2020-full-year-glob...

[2] https://www.drivingelectric.com/volkswagen/id3/range

[3] https://ycharts.com/companies/VWAGY/enterprise_value

oblio8• 4 years ago

They don't have to build absolutely every battery, they can still work with partners.

nine_k• 4 years ago

Won't a next factory cost less, due to the accumulated know-how, optimizations, improvements, etc?

I suppose the investment goes not just to civil engineering and land.

rgbrenner• 4 years ago

The 20b covers 6 of these plants… totaling 240gwh or 3m vehicles (4m ID.3s).

gadflyinyoureye• 4 years ago

Hybrids make more sense than EVs when you compare emissions over the course of the cars life. https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/hybrids-are-better

jlmorton• 4 years ago

That's not what that link says. It says that hybrids deliver a larger CO2 reduction per unit of battery, and because batteries are scarce, we would do better CO2 reduction by focusing limited battery capacity in hybrid vehicles, as this would lead to the greatest number of miles traveled on electric charge, along with some savings from the weight of batteries.

It definitely does not say that BEVs have higher emissions over the course of a car's life. It pretty clearly shows that BEVs have the largest decrease in CO2 emissions, as you would expect.

csours6• 4 years ago

Disclosure: I work for GM, this is solely my own opinion and experience.

There is a strong assumption that battery costs will come down, and raw material extraction will ramp up.

It is important to remember that we are currently extracting megatons of fossil fuels and just burning them to ash and carbon dioxide yearly.

There is also a strong assumption that batteries will be very recyclable in the future (recycling batteries will make economic sense)

Consider that a plug in hybrid needs two full propulsion systems. Both of those systems need to be engineered, tested, integrated, built, warrantee-ed, and serviced.

If battery prices do come down, the cost of the extra battery pack will soon be lower than the added cost of the ICE propulsion system.

It is my understanding that these factors led GM's leadership team to stop producing the Volt (plug in hybrid) system and transition to all EV.

If, however, battery prices stay high or go up for an extended period of time, this bet will look worse.

Fortunately for consumers, there is choice.

atlasunshrugged• 4 years ago

This is a really helpful industry perspective, thanks csours. When GM and others are thinking about this, is it focused on beliefs in specific markets or globally? I know that many commodities trade globally but there is a ton of noise in DC about critical mineral supply chains and America's reliance on China but at the same time minimal movement on extraction and even less on processing domestically because of the environmental factors/NIMBYism. But if there were another trade war with China, would that change the equation for GM or are the rest of the markets a large enough weight that doesn't matter? Do you think GM and others believe there will be U.S. mines brought online or that all the growth in extraction will come from abroad? Given the pushback in other places (e.g. Serbia's Rio Tinto mine, Mexico nationalizing their sector, etc.) I'm pretty skeptical about being able to depend solely on foreign growth.

PaulWaldman2• 4 years ago

It is my understanding that these factors led GM's leadership team to stop producing the Volt (plug in hybrid) system and transition to all EV.
If, however, battery prices stay high or go up for an extended period of time, this bet will look worse.

It's interesting to me that GM was really a pioneer in PHEVs with the Volt. They decided to transition their strategy at the same time as it seems like most other manufacturers debuted their first PHEVs. I have several friends that had Volts who went to other manufacturers because their use case still required a PHEV.

Was this purely to push buyers into the Bolt? This seems like an odd strategy since the Bolt, using LGs battery technology, is a transition technology itself for GM because it doesn't utilize the Ultium architecture.

How expensive would it have been to allow the Volt to solider on for a few more years with minor updates until an Ultium vehicle in a similar package with an extended range were available?

snake_doc2• 4 years ago

As opposed to oil, battery prices are highly influenced by China’s grip on the battery value chain at least until 2030.

Just as China will influence steel and aluminum prices through central planning, battery prices are unlikely to remain higher than current peak as long as the government continues its current stance on stable prices.

paganel4• 4 years ago

It is important to remember that we are currently extracting megatons of fossil

Extracting oil doesn't leave the total devastation behind it as extracting cobalt does [1]. A several orders of magnitude increase in that sort of abomination that I linked to doesn't have anything to do with "saving the planet", it's all politics and money. There's also the whole "child labor" thing [2] but let's assume that countries like Congo will sort it out sometimes in the next 10-20 years, they most probably won't, but there's always hope.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/2013-02...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/a...

piokoch• 4 years ago

"There is a strong assumption that battery costs will come down"

On what bases? Typically bigger demand leads to price increase, do we have new sources of Lithium/Cobalt/Copper that would increase production significantly?

someweirdperson2• 4 years ago

If battery prices do come down, the cost of the extra battery pack will soon be lower than the added cost of the ICE propulsion system.

That definitively matter for some cars.

However, the relationship between humans and cars is not like it is between humans and most other products. The same car by features can easily be sold for twice the price, or even higher with minor added conveniences, improved quality, or brand. Add $5000 for a different color.

As long as an ICE is a feature people want to their car to have it won't matter that a battery is cheaper.

Gravityloss5• 4 years ago

Of course the electric car is simpler, and batteries are getting cheaper. But the electric car with enough range for my use case is significantly more expensive in total still.

We have tax advantages for electric cars, very expensive fuels, very cheap electricity. Still the deal doesn't close yet.

The infrastructure is hopefully developing also, so they would get working chargers and working payment systems by the time the batteries have become cheap enough too. And charging systems that don't cost thousands per post for apartment building parking lots.

In a sense, the system is riddled with so many inefficiencies at every layer. The only way to do it properly is to have a vertically integrated company like Tesla. They have their own chargers and do a lot of their own components instead of using subcontractors. They don't use low quality charging services or apps or payment cards. The experience can be controlled only that way.

jillesvangurp3• 4 years ago

Or build smaller cars. Not everybody needs an 80kwh SUV. That's just the current market, which seems to favor stupidly big, heavy, and inefficient cars. That's not going to stay that way and VW is already planning to build smaller and cheaper cars. There are some cool vehicles hitting the market now that emphasize efficiency and range over just being big. E.g. Lightyear has very good aerodynamics and weight and a few other manufacturers are focusing on that as well.

A light city car like a Nissan Leaf does pretty well with just 40kwh. The original one shipped with just 20kwh and that was a relatively heavy vehicle. Imagine the same vehicle with twice the energy density. It would have a lot more range. A few kwh go a long way on light vehicles. Electrical motor cycles have somewhere in the range of only 4-8kwh. A lot of electrical bicycles have less than 1 kwh. 10kwh is plenty for a light vehicle.

Anyway, hybrids have all the downsides of owning an ICE car (lots of moving parts, pollution, expensive fuel, maintenance cost, etc.) with only some of the upsides of owning an EV (torque, fuel economy, etc.). Basically, in terms of cost and complexity, they don't make a lot of sense. The cheaper batteries get, the less sense they make. Right now EVs are just really expensive which means not everybody can afford one. However, cheaper, smaller EVs are perfectly feasible and a lot cheaper to make. Once the high end market saturates, smaller, lighter and cheaper EVs are the next obvious growth market. From next to nothing to many millions in volume is going to happen relatively quickly. In such a market, hybrids don't really stand a chance.

Those hundreds of millions of vehicles will be replaced over the course of 2-3 decades. Annual production volume of cars will be mostly EVs by mid next decade; in about 15 years. From then on, another 15 years or so later, most ICE vehicles will have been decommissioned. The value proposition at 2022 cost levels is already pretty great for EVs (with incentives and if you can afford them). Another 3 decades of technical improvements, economies of scale, etc. is going to only improve the economics.

rodet• 4 years ago

Making lighter vehicles is a big strategy to make electric affordable quick indeed. Maybe some companies will manage to find good solution and implement them quicker than car makers? Renault managed this with the Twizy.

I investigated myself plugin hybrid vs full electric, and full electric won for the simple fact that a plugin needs to be charged every day I will drive somewhere. For the electric, I can recharge it once a week or twice a month and it will cover my needs. I don't have an in-house charger so this is a massive difference.

cptskippy• 4 years ago

Or build smaller cars. Not everybody needs an 80kwh SUV. That's just the current market, which seems to favor stupidly big, heavy, and inefficient cars.

From my perspective, this is a regulatory issue.

Auto-manufacturers have been pushing products and platforms that streamline, simplify, and reduce cost. That means if their premier work truck, consumer truck, and SUV all share the same underlying platform it's a win. This doesn't incentivize the development of multiple platforms that are right fit but rather marketing manipulation to make the consumer think something is the right fit.

paganel4• 4 years ago

you consider hundreds of millions of vehicles need to be replaced.

They probably won't be all replaced. A minority of people (I'd put it at around 15-20% max) will afford to own an EV (price + place to charge it), while the great majority of us will be left with old combustion-engine cars, Cuba style (or until the law will prohibit them entirely, most probably).

goodpoint• 4 years ago

Or, even better, build less cars and more trains.

fulafel• 4 years ago

We need to cut down on cars a lot, the emissions equation doesn't make sense otherwise. Because (a) replacing cars is hugely CO2 intensive and (b) there doesn't seem to be any reasonable timescale path to leaving the currently known oil/gas deposits in the ground and not pumping & burning them up. Until there is, EVs are just additional emissions.

dukeofdoom• 4 years ago

Great news for coal miners

Barrera• 4 years ago

PowerCo will use the prismatic unified cell architecture in its batteries which allows for use of different cell chemistries. The cells will be manufactured from 2025 with the factory planned capacity to be 40 GWh which is enough to supply 500,000 electric vehicles. By 2030 PowerCo plans to have all six European factories up and running with a combined capacity of 240 GWh. The unified prismatic cell harnesses synergy effects and can offer manufacturing savings of up to 50% when compared to current batteries.

I didn't see anything in this announcement about where raw materials will be sourced from. It looks like the idea is to support multiple chemistries, but it's far from clear where the materials for all those batteries will come from.

greenthrow4• 4 years ago

Do they announce where they will source the aluminum and steel when they open a new car plant?

There is an odd fixation with battery materials due to fossil fuel and nuclear anti-battery propaganda.

tuatoru• 4 years ago

Also due to the recent spike in the price of nickel, as Russia is (used to be?) one of the major exporters. (There's more nickel than lithium in nickel-based lithium batteries.)

Edit: and cobalt is mined in the Democratic Repuplic of the Congo, which seems to be held in opprobrium by Western countries.

Iron and phosphate are much easier to come by.

linsomniac• 4 years ago

The impression I get is the supplies for batteries are rather more rare than the aluminum and steel, so if current companies are having problems sourcing them it seems like a worthwhile question to ask.

Whether it's in this factory or Tesla or whomever, there is going to be increasing demand in any case.

panick21_3• 4 years ago

No its not propaganda. Its about that the best minerals people all predict that lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite is gone be in shortage.

Given the amount of new battery factories, compared to the amount of new mines, you will see a shortfall.

That is why its important to actually consider those things.

LAC-Tech5• 4 years ago

I had a great amount of fun today hammering my tiny petrol engine.

It's 1.5L with no turbo that's 10 years old (toyota yaris hatchback). I can floor it, it revs noticably, but it's so underpowered that I have zero chance of losing control because while it sounds like it's working hard, there's barely anything behind it.

I get that EVs are the future. They make more sense. But a small childish part of me will miss the "experience" of hammering under-powered petrol engines.

KerrAvon• 4 years ago

Some EV builder will eventually provide sound/haptic emulation so that you can have the tactile experience of anything from a Keicar to a Bentley V12 by modifying some simple settings. One of the most promising things about EVs is that they really can be software defined. Also one of the most scary. Hope they use Rust.

LAC-Tech5• 4 years ago

I want mine to sound like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDWU67tyknU

formerkrogemp2• 4 years ago

The Ford Mach E already comes with optional engine noise synth. As do some other electric bikes and cars.

Pokepokalypse2• 4 years ago

As a former dub-head; that Yaris is a fun little go-kart. And almost as un-killable as the legendary Hilux.

Really wish we could have gotten a decent GT version in the US. But Toyota is what Toyota is.

LAC-Tech5• 4 years ago

For months I had to drive my Yarris up and down a pretty rough track - no gravel, full of potholes, just hardened earth and stones.

The Yarris with its little go-kart wheels handled it like a champ, even if I'd bottom out almost every single time. Even climbed up it fine provided you kept it above 25km/h all the way :) Took to a mechanic later and he said the suspension and undercarriage were fine.

maest• 4 years ago

I am very excited about a future where there will be almost no petrol engines getting revved at stupid volume levels only because it's "fun".

LAC-Tech5• 4 years ago

I hear you - loud cars are annoying, and I probably over-emphasised how loud it was. It's stock exhaust on a subcompact family car, but the cabin isn't the quietest and it has to rev very highly to do anything.

It's my lame safe way of having a little bit of fun. Certainly quieter than all the trucks on the road, and slower than a lot of the SUVs.

JKCalhoun• 4 years ago

Get ready for the insessant sound of squealing tires, sigh.

tomcam3• 4 years ago

Uh revving the Yaris is not something likely to disturb you or even attract your attention

pwarner• 4 years ago

People still ride horses...

gnarcoregrizz• 4 years ago

I recently got an electric motorcycle, and it’s a similarly visceral experience. I can hear the tires digging into the dirt and have a much better feel for traction and speed because of it. The effortless (and extreme) torque, with just a small whir, is a riot as well.

People often complain about electric (particularly motorcycles) not being “loud enough”. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t noise, or that there’s not anything to be in tune with.

LAC-Tech5• 4 years ago

I worry about effortless power and immediate torque. Means it's too easy to go too fast.

tomcam3• 4 years ago

Some of the Yaris models are kind of hideous but I think they’re going to go down in history along with cars like the Volkswagen bug for sheer practicality. Not the kind of vehicle to get a reviewers attention but the price performance ratio was pretty damn good for us civilians. I really enjoyed using one as a loaner when I left my car at the Toyota dealership.

But a small childish part of me will miss the "experience" of hammering under-powered petrol engines.

Well they are small, light, and pack about 105hp into a modern efficient engine developed by one of the great auto engineering staffs in history. Why not have a little fun with it?

alkonaut4• 4 years ago

I’m not so excited about the future where an 18 year old feels like flooring their used EV with shitty brakes, and 0-100km/h acceleration that is twice as fast as an 80s Lamborghini.

This isn’t a problem yet because these cars are still a few years out from being affordable by those drivers and they are still in good shape.

Remember what happened to those kids in the 90s that drove souped up M3s or Nissan Skylines?

Lio2• 4 years ago

Don't worry, you'll probably be able to simulate that with some kind of "retro mode".

Many ICE cars already artificially pump in the sound of an older, nosier engine when you put them into sports mode.

My 4 cylinder diesel GTD sounds like a V8 when I floor it (unless I have the windows open of course. In which case I can actually hear the engine and like all diesels it just sounds like a tractor).

You'd just need to add some kind of engine response curve to the EV throttle[1] to simulate hitting the correct rev band/gear change.

1. Even that word is a retro throwback in an EV, as is "driver" when you really think about its etymology.

techdmn• 4 years ago

I've been a gearhead practically my whole life, so I totally understand. Personally I think ICE cars will soon be thought about much the way we think of steam locomotives. They're pretty cool, some people will always love them, tinker with them (or models), there will be shows, etc. But compared to modern transportation they are loud, slow, stinky polluting machines that no one in their right mind would ever use for daily transportation. ICE had a good run (ignoring the whole climate change thing), but times change! See also: carburetors, manual choke, drum brakes, leaf springs, etc. ;-)

Pokepokalypse2• 4 years ago

Somehow, I think 20 years from now, they'll discover that VW's EV's were programmed to cheat on emissions tests.

Tagbert3• 4 years ago

No. Just on their SATs.

Havoc• 4 years ago

Well Tesla definitely managed to make the giga moniker stick

nixass2• 4 years ago

Tesla will face sad (for them) reality in years to come

nielsbot2• 4 years ago

You mean competition?

jillesvangurp3• 4 years ago

You mean being the undisputed king of the hill in terms of online battery production manufacturing capacity in a market that right now seems to have an unlimited demand for batteries? They are building new factories as fast as they can with a head-start on everybody else and they seem to be getting really good at it.

VW is planning to be where Tesla is this year in about five years in terms of GWH per year. Tesla is moving really aggressively in terms of new production capacity, partnerships with Panasonic and others, and strategic investments in supply chains as well as expansion into other applications for batteries (e.g. supporting the grid). I'd say, it will be a while before anybody catches up in terms of volume and economics. It's going to require more than what VW is investing right now. And I think they will invest quite aggressively. This isn't their last move; just the latest one.

jupp0r10• 4 years ago

PowerCo will use the prismatic unified cell architecture in its batteries which allows for use of different cell chemistries. The cells will be manufactured from 2025 with the factory planned capacity to be 40 GWh which is enough to supply 500,000 electric vehicles. By 2030 PowerCo plans to have all six European factories up and running with a combined capacity of 240 GWh. The unified prismatic cell harnesses synergy effects and can offer manufacturing savings of up to 50% when compared to current batteries.

Why can't journalists use units correctly? I'm assuming the above is per year (but who knows?).

Side remark: it's actually kind of cool that you can literally specify the battery output of these factories in Watts.

atwood228• 4 years ago

Why can't journalists use units correctly?
Side remark: it's actually kind of cool that you can literally specify the battery output of these factories in Watts.

The unit is Watt hour storage capacity.

mh8h• 4 years ago

I think he means the capacity will be 40 GWh / year = 4.56MW.

csours6• 4 years ago

Watt is power, Watt hour is energy. 1 Watt hour is 3600 joules, which looks suspiciously like 1 joule = 1 Watt second.

Most batteries now advertise energy capacity in kWh or thousand Watt hour(s). 1 kWh would be 3,600,000 joules or 3.6 megajoules, which does honestly sound more badass.

In the past batteries would advertise capacity in Amp hours, but you have to know the voltage of the battery to convert Amp hours to energy.

jupp0r10• 4 years ago

The rate of production can’t be specified using energy, it needs to be the time derivative of it (unless the overall output of the factory from being opened to being closed is specified, which I don’t think is the case in the article). The unit needs to describe - power.

Whether you use Joules or horse power weeks is beside the point as they can easily be converted into each other.

Retric3• 4 years ago

Battery production is measured in Wh per year because you care about capacity to store energy. 40GWh = 40,000,000 kWh / (80kWh per car) = 500,000 cars.

240 GWh = 3 million 80kWh cars.

galangalalgol3• 4 years ago

Isn't Wh/yr just W/8766? The units are still W but with a divider.

skrause• 4 years ago

Saying that the production capacity is 40GWh is like saying that a factory can produce a thousand cars. And then you are asking: Per week? Per year? In total?

parentheses• 4 years ago

OP is right. GWh is the measure of a battery’s capacity. How often will that total battery capacity exit the manufacturing facility?

pinot• 4 years ago

Annually

SnowHill99023• 4 years ago

It’s not really watts as there is no real power output. It’s an accident that the units are homogeneous but the output is in Wh/y, where Wh is a convenient way of describing the capacity of a battery (under standardized conditions) and not real energy outputted.

osrec2• 4 years ago

Could you elaborate please? Why is there no real power output?

ajmurmann• 4 years ago

Thanks for adding the "/y" which is what was missing for me.

jupp0r10• 4 years ago

That’s like saying that battery capacity isn’t really kWh because there’s no real energy storage when they are empty. The unit for energy capacity output is still Watt (or horse power seconds per year or any other unit).

Besides that, those battery cells are charged as part of the production process (though not completely), so I could argue that actual energy is leaving the factory.

BurningFrog• 4 years ago

Why can't journalists use units correctly?

If they could, they would have better paying jobs.

I don't mean to say journalists are stupid. They're generally not at all. But their required talents are verbal and social.

epistasis6• 4 years ago

Rough rules of thumb for battery production that I heard in 2021:

10x increase in world production capacity every five years.

Currently at about 200-300GWh/year. Expect 2-3TWh/year by 2026, and 20-30TWh/year by 2031.

Volkswagen had better pick up the pace quite a bit.

benj111• 4 years ago

This is one of the reasons I'm not sure why car companies are getting directly in to batteries. Plus they are locking themselves into a technology which may well be superseded.

It seems to me equivalent to pc manufacturers making their own chips.

neuronic• 4 years ago

Yes but this assumes infinite availability of the resources required for battery production. Given they are in Africa and Asia, this is gonna be way more difficult in the rising new world order with the shrinking influence of the US and EU as the Pax Americana is dying a slow death.

BRICS nations and friends will make the near future very uncomfortable for Westerners used to affluence.

randomly123• 4 years ago

hi. interesting stats. Could you please give some references for this? thanks.

ojbyrne• 4 years ago

Why can't journalists use units correctly?

I’m pretty sure the answer is - they took physics in high school, they’ve been (on average) at least ten years out of high school, and it never came up, even once.

galangalalgol3• 4 years ago

Do people outside of stem fields have this issue with us? It is really strange to think that most people don't remember any calculus or statistics, or chemistry or physics. While my social intelligence is certainly lacking, I do at least feel like I understand what my friends in non-stem careers are talking about, and the opposite is definitely not true.

rat99882• 4 years ago

It is usually accepted per year when not specified. For example when you talk about GDP, it is yearly. Salary? Yearly usually yearly unless specified. Factory production? Yearly.

And no, you cannot use watts, unless you invent a new unit, watts of capacity?

The units used are correct.

Sniffnoy5• 4 years ago

It's energy over time, that makes power. 240 GWh / 1 Year = 27,379,093 W.

gambiting5• 4 years ago

>Salary? Yearly usually yearly unless specified.

That's a very uniquely English thing. Where I'm from(Poland) you always list the salary per month and that's how people talk about it. I've never seen anyone refer to a salary on an annual basis.

nicklovescode• 4 years ago

I find the watt thing cool too, and I'm glad you pointed it out

throwaway123989• 4 years ago

Great

EV boom will propel the battery manufacturer to be the next manufacturing Behemoth. It's so much a core of any EV that the industry capital has to be consolidated to be able to produce sufficiently good product and iterate rapidly to match the market demand.

My bet is on CTAL though. Not Volkswagen

Cipater2• 4 years ago

CATL, you mean.

olivermarks• 4 years ago

Wondering where VW is going to source raw materials for all this

Tagbert3• 4 years ago

Australia is the largest producer of lithium with Chile second. https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/03/lithium...

lysp• 4 years ago

Big issue in Australia is we like to dig things up and essentially give them away internationally.

Fossil fuel companies have a very big say in government decisions. There is a recent change of government, so they'll have slightly less of a say - but still a large amount.

What we really need to do, if we were forward-thinking enough, is value-add our resources. Instead of sending away lithium and buying back batteries, we should develop the capability locally.

JumpCrisscross• 4 years ago

Do Australia or Chile have material processing capacity? There is a world of difference between lithium and the sorts of refined powders battery makers use to produce the finished product. Besides Redwood Materials in the U.S., I think that refining capacity is almost entirely in China.

alkonaut4• 4 years ago

Any ”Gigafactory” built these days likely has a plan for producing raw materials through recycling old batteries. There have been cells produced already with nickel/cobalt/manganese from old cells. Lithium will also be recycled into batteries. See e.g the “Revolt ett” plant in Sweden.

https://northvolt.com/articles/recycled-battery/

I haven’t heard anything about this plant but I’m assuming something similar for this plant.

MilaM• 4 years ago

I have no knowledge if they have all the raw materials secured for the planned capacity. But at least they are publicly on record thinking about it:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

mupuff1234• 4 years ago

What does this mean for QuantumScape which is backed by VW?

jillesvangurp3• 4 years ago

If they stay on track to start ramping up production capacity from about 2-3 years from now, like they have been consistently saying they will, there will be plenty of demand for high energy density, fast charging batteries from VW and other manufacturers. Solid state batteries are going to be popular for expensive high performance vehicles.

People think in either or terms when it comes to battery tech. The reality is that it's a market that is going to keep on doubling in volume every few years for the next few decades. There will be cheap and low density batteries and there will be more expensive high density batteries. The latter won't replace the former and there will be demand for both.

VW will want to be cover the entire market in a decade or so ranging from cheap affordable light cars to expensive, long range luxury vehicles. They'll sell way more of the former than of the latter but make a lot of revenue with a relatively small amount of vehicles. Quantumscape is a great candidate for supplying batteries for those.

hinkley2• 4 years ago

It seems like the main values of Tesla's cylindrical cells are that cylinders pack fairly tight, but also they make for pretty cool looking assembly lines because you can roll them around. Neither of these are particularly useful qualities in a production vehicle.

I'm curious if a prismatic cell solution - especially if they take 'prismatic' literally instead of meaning "rectangular", can be better optimized for heat dissipation. It's easier to tune surface area to internal area when you can make more sophisticated shapes, like truncated cuboids to provide rectangular cooling channels, or concave surfaces to make cylindrical ones.

ggm2• 4 years ago

batteries are round because the process to make them was a flow process, and its natural to roll things up from ribbons and sheets. Folding introduces more complexities: how do you make the fold the right length? what does it do to the barrier between things?

folding and layers don't mix as well as rolling and layers. swiss rolls, sushi rolls, battery cells are basically the same thing with chemistry differences.

capacitors come in cans for much the same reason. you take sheets of "stuff" and cover them with semi liquid other "stuff" and you roll them up and then cut the long rolls into short segments, put them in cans, attach electrodes and you have a capacitor. Sorry battery. Sorry Swiss roll. Sorry, sashimi. No: we got that order wrong.

hinkley2• 4 years ago

Prismatic cells are still rolled as far as I’m aware, and from the few videos I’ve seen. They just don’t start with round core, they start with a different shape, such as a flat one for rectangular cells like in cell phones or Apple laptops.

Apple hit a trifecta when they started making their own batteries. The MacBook where they introduced them got twice the battery life. The new OSX version had better battery management. The prismatic, unpackaged cells occupied 30% more volume within the case, because they dropped the packaging, the round cells, and used a tiny motherboard. And finally the chemistry of the new cells increased the watt hours per cubic centimeter by 30%.

But the difference between a laptop and a car is that the laptop batteries were maybe 3/8” thick. Plenty of top and bottom surface area to dissipate heat. Or so they thought (lots of swelling batteries in those models).

If you wrapped the battery around a thin trapezoid, or a very thin parallelogram, I think you get that truncated cuboid shape once you have laid up a half dozen layers or so, because of the way the radius of the corners builds up with each wrap.

Neil44• 4 years ago

Pleating is a pretty solved problem too, many filters produced by the million are pleated and can be safety critical too.

gruturo• 4 years ago

Cylindrical cells also leave space for cooling (and heating!) channels when you assemble them together. Some companies tried to pack them more efficiently and then realized you NEED the cooling channels to avoid thermal runaways, fires, premature degradation, limp mode and extremely slow charging....

dzhiurgis• 4 years ago

Dunno if true but it’s much simpler - pouches are still under patent, while cylinders expired.

dainiusse• 4 years ago

In a gold rush sell showels...

dwardu• 4 years ago

So when will we be invading Afghanistan because they have large deposits of lithium

theK3• 4 years ago

I still cannot understand how the world tollerates VW still to this day.

There has been ZERO change in the company's corporate culture since Dieselgate and while there is a lot of green washing happening and the enterprise is visibly moving towards electricity powered products this is just a company going where the money is. They are still the same ruthless business as they where a dozen years ago!

FeepingCreature2• 4 years ago

The ruthless businesses of the world are following the money to a carbon neutral future?

As XKCD said: Mission fucking accomplished.

theK3• 4 years ago

Let us just hope that the world won't have to regret that ideology once the green money well dries up...

alkonaut4• 4 years ago

“Tolerates” as in what? Buys their vehicles?

I’d sooner but a VW post dieselgate than a BMW with a seat heater subscription that’s for sure…

theK3• 4 years ago

Wow, this must be the most short sighted comment I've read all day! :-)

Sure, go ahead and throw you money at the company that went criminal lengths to hide their pollution!

lizardactivist• 4 years ago

I suspect one of these factories will suffer a disastrous fire soon after opening and starting operations.

dragonsh• 4 years ago

This will make Volkswagen completely dependent on China given they control most of the Lithium battery supply chain. [1]

So in essence whether US/EU thinks of Green Energy or Fossil fuel sustainable way for the companies to thrive is to include Russia or China.

Given the current geo-political turmoil, may be its a good thing less chances of conflict and willingness to resolve through dialogue.

[1] https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/china-d...

Maursault• 4 years ago

Batteries are neat, sure, but too bad they're just not necessary. It would be cool if wireless power was a thing, would be a thing, where we never worried about it, just took power for granted, and electric things just worked as if by magic but invisibly supported by really cool technology, and no one ever mentioned an EV's range again. Boo, Nikola, for getting my hopes up. I mean, it's 2022! Come on with the future already. Nope, global pandemic and war instead. Welcome to the future. Super. I want to go back to the 60's.

ruskyhacker• 4 years ago

Hopefully they don't "cheat" the range tests...

Volkswagen enters battery business with $20B investment

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