Ford's Very Tentative Battery Plan | 28 Apr 2021

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On today’s podcast:

• Ford's Tentative Battery Plan
• The Wild Ways GM's Getting the Lyriq and Hummer EV to Market so Quickly
• Volkswagen’s Project Trinity EV
• Tesla to tweak application for German gigafactory, ministry says
• Renault is gearing up for EV sales of 65% by 2025
• Amazon’s first electric vans started delivering packages in the Denver area
• Hyundai's N-Day - Teases Performance Electric
• Samsung First US Battery Factory

 

Show #1066

 

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are in the world, welcome to EV News Daily for Wednesday 28th April. It’s Martyn Lee here and I go through every EV story so you don't have to.

 

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FORD'S TENTATIVE BATTERY PLAN

This is where we were last year.

 

Jim Hackett, President and CEO: "It's a question that when maybe a year ago, we started to see lines starting to arrange around make versus buy, own versus source, so we had a deep discussion about this. I've met with a number of the people that you know that are in the supply side of this. And it was our estimation, in fact, our whole team went through a really deep dive on this six months ago, that the supply chain has ramped up since Elon built his Gigafactory. And so there's plenty there that does not warrant us to migrate our capital into owning our own factory. There's no advantage in the ownership in terms of cost or sourcing as what Ford can draw on."

 

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2020/07/31/ford-f-q2-2020-earnings-call-transcript.aspx

 

 

" Ford Motor plans to invest $185 million into a new battery lab as a step toward manufacturing its own battery cells for electric vehicles, the company announced Tuesday. The funds will go toward constructing Ford Ion Park, a “pilot facility” for production that’s expected to open by the end of next year outside Detroit. The planned 200,000-square-foot lab is designed to accelerate development of the technologies as the company plans to “eventually manufacture” new battery cells and batteries" writes CNBC: "The company currently purchases cells from suppliers such as South Korea-based SK Innovation.  Ford’s new facility will not be a full battery cell production facility like Tesla has or like General Motors has announced as part of $4.6 billion investments in two U.S. battery cell production plants with LG Energy Solution. Ford is hiring 150 people for Ion Park and has already brought on some employees."

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/27/ford-moves-to-make-electric-vehicle-battery-cells.html

 

Ford Authority said: "The Ford Ion Park team also is exploring better integration and innovation opportunities across all aspects of the value chain – from mines to recycling – working with all teams within Ford, including experts at Ford’s new Battery Benchmarking and Test Laboratory, Ford Customer Service Division, plus key suppliers and partners."  The continue: "This 200,000 square-foot learning lab will include pilot-scale equipment for electrode, cell, and array design and manufacturing and will use state-of-the-art technology to pilot new manufacturing techniques that will allow Ford to quickly scale breakthrough battery cell designs with novel materials once the company vertically integrates battery cells and batteries"

 

https://fordauthority.com/2021/04/ford-ion-park-revealed-as-new-battery-research-and-development-center-video/

 

THE WILD WAYS GM'S GETTING THE LYRIQ AND HUMMER EV TO MARKET SO QUICKLY

"Reservations for the $59,990 2023 Cadillac Lyriq will begin in September. Meanwhile, deliveries of the vehicle are set for the first quarter of 2022. The original timeline saw the Lyriq going on sale at the end of 2022." so how did GM engineers knock 9 months off the timeframe? asks MotorTrend: "Credit a mix of cost-cutting necessity, a need for speed, the flexibility of a new electric vehicle architecture, and the realization that greater reliance on virtual tools can get the job done.  The Lyriq is part of a new wave of electric vehicles from GM on its new BEV3 electric vehicle architecture, now referred to as the Ultium platform because it uses Ultium batteries developed by the automaker with LG Chem. The first Ultium-based vehicle to hit the market will be the 2022 GMC Hummer EV pickup this fall. The Lyriq will be second to bat. Both vehicles are being developed twice as fast as core GM products were created in the past."

 

And neccessity is the mother of invention. GM slashed costs by $4.5bn annually from 2018, and that forced designers to use virtual development more extensively.Also less reliance on building prototypes, wind tunnels and physical crash tests. Which you can do hundreds of times over without the month it takes to rig a real test car with all the sensors.

 

So what are the other platforms important to EVs? They include MEB at VW, and E-GMP at Hyundai.

 

https://www.motortrend.com/news/gm-cadillac-gmc-lyriq-hummer-ev-market-launch/

 

VOLKSWAGEN’S PROJECT TRINITY EV

"Volkswagen is hard at work on its next-generation electric vehicle currently known as Project Trinity is expected to debut in 2026. It will be one of the first VW group vehicles to be built on a new dedicated electric vehicle architecture, called Scalable Systems Platform (SSP for short), that will allow for more range, more advanced tech and a slight rethink of VW’s business model (because most of the group's models will end up using this platform)." reports InsideEVs: "The SSP chassis architecture is also important to delve deeper into. It will eventually not only replace today’s MEB platform, but also the PPE platform used in the VW group’s larger and more luxurious electric offerings. PPE isn’t even out yet, but Audi used it to underpin its close-to-production A6 e-tron concept that recently bowed at the Shanghai auto show. The plan is said to be for SSP to be used for around 80 percent of the VW group’s future models."

 

https://insideevs.com/news/503889/vw-project-trinity-ssp-platform/

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/volkswagen-project-trinity-herald-car-buying-revolution

 

 

TESLA TO TWEAK APPLICATION FOR GERMAN GIGAFACTORY, MINISTRY SAYS

"Tesla (TSLA.O) plans to tweak the application for its planned gigafactory in Europe, the German state in which the plant is being built said on Tuesday, adding it was not possible at this stage to say how long it would take to approve the site." reports Reuters: "Tesla had said on Monday that the construction of the factory, located in Gruenheide outside Berlin, was moving forward, adding production and deliveries were "on track for late 2021". The Ministry of Agriculture in the German state of Brandenburg said the amended application would include the construction and operation of a battery cell factory, which was previously flagged by Tesla."

 

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/no-timetable-approve-teslas-german-gigafactory-german-state-2021-04-27/

 

RENAULT IS GEARING UP FOR EV SALES OF 65% BY 2025

"Renault CEO Luca de Meo has set new targets for the electrification of the brand in Europe. In 2025, the share of electrified passenger cars should be 65%. By 2030, that figure should be at least 90%." says Next Greencar: "By 2030, emissions from Groupe Renault vehicles sold in Europe (i.e. including brands such as Alpine or Dacia) are to be reduced by 65%, but only by 35% worldwide. This suggests the French company expects a significant hybrid share of new car sales in 2030. The CEO also announced that Renault will not develop a new engine for the “last generation” of diesel vehicles. Instead, he said, an existing engine will be adapted. Renault develops and builds its own internal combustion engines, some of which have been supplied to other carmakers, including Daimler."

 

https://www.nextgreencar.com/news/9139/renault-is-gearing-up-for-ev-sales-of-65-by-2025/

 

AMAZON’S FIRST ELECTRIC VANS STARTED DELIVERING PACKAGES IN THE DENVER AREA

"The first Amazon deliveries using new Rivian electric vans reached Denver this week, one of 16 U.S. locations the online retailer plans to deploy electric vehicles on its routes." says ColoradoSun.com: "The Denver-area routes are part of an initial test in different climates that is also occurring in a few other U.S. cities before the Rivian EV program expands. But its R1T electric truck and R1S electric SUV are different from the custom Amazon vans. The consumer models are expected to have a range of 300 miles, compared with 150 for the Amazon vans. The limited range means Colorado delivery routes will be in the Aurora, Boulder, Denver and Thornton neighborhoods near existing Amazon warehouses, said Nikki Wheeler, an Amazon spokeswoman.  “The range we’re sharing is what we have seen based on current testing,” she said."

 

https://coloradosun.com/2021/04/27/amazon-electric-vans-denver-rivian/

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/amazons-custom-electric-delivery-vehicles-are-starting-to-hit-the-road

 

HYUNDAI'S N-DAY - TEASES PERFORMANCE ELECTRIC

"Hyundai is on a wild streak lately, building high-performance versions of its existing vehicles like the Kona N, revealed today. However, in announcing that sporty compact crossover, the company also teased that it would soon build a full-blown N vehicle based on its all-electric E-GMP platform, indicating that zero-emissions performance will soon be on the menu from Hyundai." says Motor1: " Lessons from the Veloster N ETCR program seem to have informed Hyundai’s high-performance aspirations, evidenced by the RM20e concept that debuted last year. The RM20e prototype, which was developed in partnership with Rimac, boasts a wild 810 horsepower"

 

https://www.motor1.com/news/503719/hyundai-electric-hydrogen-n-model/

 

SAMSUNG FIRST US BATTERY FACTORY

"Samsung's first megafactory on American soil is looking more likely after it agreed a deal to provide batteries for electric vehicle (EV) startup Rivian. The potential development of a mega-plant in the US would represent a massive step forward for Samsung SDI — the battery affiliate of the South Korean tech giant — which to date only has one facility outside of Asia, in Hungary." says Business INsider: "While Rivian has yet to reveal its production targets, Bloomberg reports that the company will try to produce as many as 40,000 new EVs in its first year with that figure eventually rising to 300,000."

 

Simon Moores, managing director at research group Benchmark Mineral Intelligence: "At a production rate of 40,000 EVs a year, Rivian will need over 7 gigawatt-hours of lithium-ion battery cells annually. If all of this supply is from Samsung that's the equivalent of 12% of the Korean battery maker's annual capacity in 2020. Any multi-gigawatt-hour contract with an automaker will need a plant on the same continent"

 

Moores said that shipping large quantities of lithium batteries over long distances was "difficult" and that they were registered as hazardous goods.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-first-us-megafactory-battery-rivian-2021-4?r=US&IR=T

 

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